“He understands.” Beatrice Cornell said.
Dawn met Mason’s eyes frankly. “If you’re looking for a woman,” she said, “go get someone else. If you’re looking for photographs, that’s different. We don’t have trouble with the professionals or the experienced photographers who are accustomed to hiring models. We do have lots of trouble with amateurs, and I don’t want trouble.”
“Mr. Mason is all right,” Beatrice Cornell interposed quickly. “I told you that, Dawn.”
“I know you told me that, but... well, I just don’t want to have any misunderstanding, that’s all.”
Mason said, “I am willing to pay your rates and I assure you, you won’t have to fight me off.”
“All right,” Dawn Manning said crisply, after a moment’s hesitation, “but it’ll be a few days before you’re able to take shots showing my legs.”
“You were in an automobile accident?” Mason asked.
She nodded, said, “I got out lucky at that.”
Mason took a cigarette case from his pocket. “Is it all right if I smoke?” he asked.
“Certainly,” Beatrice Cornell said.
Dawn Manning took one of Mason’s cigarettes.
Mason held a match. Dawn Manning inhaled deeply, held the smoke in her lungs for a moment, then exhaled.
She settled back in the chair, started to cross her legs, then suddenly winced.
“How bad is it?” Mason asked.
“Frankly,” she said, “I didn’t look at myself in the mirror this morning. I was sleeping late. When Beatrice called, I jumped up, piled into some clothes and came on over.”
“Without breakfast?”
She laughed. “I have to watch my weight. Breakfast and I are strangers. Let’s take a look and see how things are coming.”
She got up from the chair, and, as freely and naturally as though she had been making an impersonal appraisal of a piece of statuary, raised her skirts almost waist-high and examined her left hip. “That’s where it’s the most tender.”
Beatrice Cornell said, “Gosh, Dawn, that would take a lot of retouching. It’s bad now and by tomorrow it’ll be worse.”
Dawn Manning kept twisting around trying to look at herself, said, “I feel like a puppy chasing its tail. Let me take a look in that full-length mirror, Beatrice.”
She crossed over to stand in front of a door which contained a panel mirror, and shook her head dolefully as she surveyed herself. “It’s worse than it was last night when I went to bed. I’m afraid I’m not going to be available for a few days, Mr. Mason. Will this wait, or do you want another model? I’m sorry. Under the circumstances, I’ll only charge you taxi fare.”
Mason said, “I think we could arrange things with the proper lighting... Could we go to your apartment? I’d like to have a couple of hours of your time.”
Dawn Manning’s face flushed. “You certainly can not,” she said, “and I’m going to be frank with you, Mr. Mason. I don’t work with amateurs without a chaperon. If you’re married, bring your wife along. If you aren’t married, I’ll arrange a chaperon. It’s going to cost you three dollars an hour extra.”
“All right,” Mason told her. “We’re chaperoned here. Let’s talk here.”
“About what? About photographs?”
Mason shook his head. “I may as well confess. I was interested in the bruises.”
“In the bruises?”
“I wanted to see the nature and extent of your bruises.”
“Say, what is this, anyway? What kind of a goof are you?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Oh-oh,” Beatrice Cornell interposed.
“All right, so you’re a lawyer,” Dawn Manning said indignantly. “You’ve got me out of bed and up here under false pretenses. You—”
“Not under false pretenses, exactly,” Mason interrupted. “I told you I was willing to pay for your time. Miss Cornell has the money.”
Dawn Manning’s face softened somewhat. “What is it you want, Mr. Mason? Let’s put the cards on the table and see how our hands stack up.”
Mason said, “I was interested in your bruises because I am interested in the automobile accident which took place last night.”
“Are you intending to sue somebody?”
“Not necessarily. I would like to have you tell me about it. And, since we’re taking up Miss Cornell’s time without payment, I suggest that we go someplace where we can talk and let her get ahead with her work, or that I make arrangements to compensate her for her time.”
“And you don’t want pictures?” Dawn Manning asked.
“Yes, I want pictures.”
“It’s all right if you want to talk here,” Beatrice Cornell said. “I get a commission on this job, you know, and I—”
“You’ll do better than that,” Mason told her. “You’ll get twenty dollars an hour for your time, as well as the commission.”
Mason arose, opened his billfold once more, took out forty dollars and said, “I’ll probably use up two hours of your time, first and last, and here’s another twenty for Miss Manning.”
“Well now, look, that’s not necessary, Mr. Mason. I—”
“You have a living to make, the same as anyone else,” Mason told her.
“What do you want from me?” Dawn Manning asked.
“First I’d like to know all about the automobile accident,” Mason said.
“Well, there wasn’t much to it. I went to a studio party last night. A photographer friend of mine was showing some of his pictures and he invited a group of us in for cocktails followed by a buffet dinner. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have gone, but he had some pictures of which he was quite proud. I’d been the model and I hadn’t seen the proofs. I was interested and he was terrifically proud of his work.
“Quite frequently, at a time like that, a model picks up new business and new contacts, and it’s nice to be out with your own kind. Most people who learn you’re a photographic model and are willing to pose in Bikini bathing suits or without them, under proper circumstances, get the idea you’re cheap and that everything you have is for sale.
“However, when you’re out with a crowd that knows the ropes and understands each other, you can have a good time and... well, it’s a nice, free-and-easy professional atmosphere. Everyone respects the work the other one is doing. We like good photography and we like good photographers. They need models to stay in business, and we need photographers to keep us going.”
“All right,” Mason said, “you went to this party.”
“And,” she said, “because I wanted to go home early, I went alone. I didn’t have an escort and took a taxi. I had some drinks, I had a buffet dinner, I saw the pictures, and they were darned good pictures. He’d used a green filter, which is about as kind to the human skin as anything you can get for black-and-white photography, and the pictures came out nice. As I said, I wanted to get home early, so I broke away before things got to a point where the drinks began to take effect. I was looking for a taxicab when this woman pulled up to the curb in a nice Cadillac and said, ‘You were up at the studio party. I saw you there. It’s a rainy night. You’ll have a hard time getting a cab. Want a ride?’
“I didn’t place her, but she could have been there. There must have been fifty people in the place altogether at cocktail time. I think only ten or twelve were invited to stay for dinner.”
“So you got in with this woman?”
“I got in with this woman and she started driving toward town.”
“Did you get her name?”
“I didn’t. I’m coming to that. She chatted with me as though we were old friends. She knew my name, where I lived and all that.