Shayne shook hands cordially and shrugged wide shoulders. He said, “I may donate a few bucks, Alex. Actually, I’m looking for someone.”
“No trouble, Shayne.” It was part question, part statement, and part plea. “Not inside? If you got to make a pick-up, just tell me and we’ll handle it quiet.”
“No pick-up,” Shayne assured him. “At least not the kind you mean. I was to meet Mrs. Julio Peralta here.”
“Her?” Griffin looked and sounded relieved. “Sure. At the far table with her back to us.” He jerked his chin to the right and Shayne’s eyes followed the gesture to see Laura’s piled dark ringlets above bare white shoulders that leaned forward eagerly as she watched the bouncing ball slow and drop into a slot.
“Mrs. Peralta, huh?” The manager’s voice dropped on a note of questioning. He sucked in his lower lip and put a persuasive hand on Shayne’s arm. “Why don’t we go in my office for a drink? She’s just starting on her second C-note and wouldn’t want to be disturbed just yet.”
Shayne said easily, “Sure,” and turned with Griffin toward a closed door on the left marked PRIVATE.
The manager opened the door on a lighted and orderly office. He crossed the room and opened the sliding door of a wall cabinet, revealing a well-stocked bar. He hesitated, asking over his shoulder, “Cognac, Shayne?”
“Please. And don’t bother with a snifter. A straight slug… with ice-water on the side, if it’s handy.”
Griffin said, “I should have remembered.” He selected an old-fashioned glass and filled it halfway from a bottle of Martell. Then he opened the freezing compartment and took out two ice cubes which he dropped in a tall glass and filled it with water from a decanter. He set both glasses on the desk and Shayne pulled a chair up and sat down while the gaming house manager made himself a Scotch highball.
He brought it to the other side of the desk and sank into a swivel chair and lifted his glass. “Here’s to crime.” His voice was blandly expansive, yet it seemed to pose a question. Shayne lifted his cognac glass to return the salute, took a sip and set the glass down.
“What are you worried about, Griffin?”
“Worried?” The manager blinked at him owlishly.
Shayne said, “This is good cognac. I appreciate it. What’s on your mind?”
Griffin looked past him at the open door. He got up, circled the desk and closed it firmly. Then he went back to the swivel chair.
“I run a quiet, decent business here, Shayne.”
“I know you do.”
Alexander Griffin sighed and squirmed uneasily in his chair. “Mrs. Peralta is a respectable, respected, and always-welcome customer here.”
Shayne took a sip of cognac and chased it with ice-water. “I’m sure she is,” he agreed calmly. “Anyone who drops half a grand an evening at your tables would be characterized in just those words.”
“That’s a high estimate.”
“Is it?” challenged Shayne.
“Quite high. On the other hand…” Griffin sighed deeply and spread out his hands. “She’s a woman, too, Shayne.”
“I have a certain feeling about that.” Shayne kept his eyes hooded as he turned the old-fashioned glass around and around on the desk in front of him. “Want to volunteer any information?” he demanded abruptly.
“About one of our steady customers?” Griffin sounded properly shocked.
Shayne said, “There’s an emerald bracelet missing.”
“I heard about that.”
“Is that all?” Shayne threw at him.
Alexander Griffin lifted one hand defensively. “I’m not a fence, Shayne.”
“Then you do think she had a hand in lifting it?”
Griffin hesitated a long time as though seeking exactly the right words with which to answer the detective. He took a long, contemplative pull at his highball, opened the center drawer of the desk and took out a blunt cigar. He lit it carefully and slowly.
“Mrs. Laura Peralta has been coming here two or three nights a week for the past six months, Shayne. She plays roulette exclusively. She buys twenty five-dollar chips and plays them, and then buys another twenty. Never more than five batches. She walks away from the table… a perfect lady… any time she has dropped her half grand. If she gets ahead and stays ahead, she cashes in around midnight. I’ve kept track… as we do in a place like this… and when she goes away ahead one night, she doesn’t buy extra chips the next time she shows up. Never any more than five hundred.”
Shayne frowned thoughtfully. “You say she cashes in around midnight, if she’s ahead. What if she’s behind, but still has some of her original stake at midnight?”
“Then she keeps on spreading chips around until she breaks or gets ahead,” said Griffin, promptly.
“Do you keep such minute records on all your customers, Alex?”
“You know we don’t. But you notice a woman like Mrs. Peralta. The house-men all get to know her and they begin talking about her. In all my years in the business I’ve never known another player who followed a line so exactly.”
“A good customer,” mused Shayne. He took a sip of cognac and made a rapid calculation. “Dropping several grand a month.”
“That’s about it.” Alexander Griffin’s voice was bland. “So you can see why we wouldn’t like it if… you did anything to disturb the set-up.”
“By ‘we’ you mean Joe Locke?”
“Joe’s the owner,” agreed Griffin. “I just work on a salary. Does that satisfy you?”
Three horizontal creases indented Shayne’s forehead. His left hand went up to the side of his head, and thumb and forefinger tugged, at his earlobe. His gray eyes were very bright and interested, and they fixed themselves on Griffin’s austere face across the desk from him.
“I don’t think so. You’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I’m telling you to stay away from her, Shayne.”
“Why?” The redhead’s voice was dangerously calm.
Griffin started to reply angrily, but checked himself. He spread out his hands, palms upward, placatingly. “You can start asking questions, Shayne. I can’t stop you… I wouldn’t try to stop you. But, don’t.”
Shayne said, “Nuts. It’s good cognac, Griffin. I appreciate it.” He drained his glass and took a sip of ice-water, and then stood up.
“I’m going to ask Mrs. Peralta the questions. There’s only one answer I want from you, and I want it straight, Griffin. During the time Mrs. Peralta’s been coming here… has she ever gone over the line and plunged deeply?”
He replied flatly, “No. She’s never dropped more than five C’s any one night. She’s got ice-water in her veins, Shayne.”
“When it comes to gambling,” Shayne amplified harshly.
“Yeh. That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it?”
Shayne said, “That’s not what I’m going to be talking to her about. Thanks for the drink.” He turned away abruptly and went to the door with silence behind him.
The roulette room looked just the same as before. Shayne strolled across to the far table and stopped directly behind Laura Peralta who was seated at the end of it. She had a stack of a dozen or fifteen five-dollar chips in front of her. He watched over her shoulder while she spread six of them out in a seemingly haphazard pattern on combinations of the numbers closest to her. The ball went around while other, smaller bets, were being placed about the table, and settled into a slot at the upper end.
The croupier raked in Laura’s chips, and she listlessly played with the stack remaining in front of her. She turned her head and glanced sideways and up at Shayne with no start of surprise, as though she had known he was standing behind her.
She said, “Hello,” composedly. “It won’t be long now. This is my last stack.”
Shayne said, “It certainly won’t be long if you keep on playing them that way.”
The ball started around the wheel again, and she turned back to the table and began arranging chips again in the same haphazard manner. “Do you know a better way to play roulette, Mr. Shayne?” She hesitated pensively with her last two chips in her hand, then dropped them on a single number just an instant before the ball dropped into the zero.