“Perhaps that,” he told her, “is just a pose.”
“No,” she said, “I know too much about poses. And you still haven’t answered my question. Must it be an official visit?”
“It’s rather unlikely that I’ll be in Hollywood,” he told her. “The duties of my office keep me chained down pretty well to this spot.”
“Very well,” she told him, with some indefinable expression in her dark eyes. “I won’t press the point. I’ve never had a legal training, but I can tell when a witness is evading the question.”
She was standing close to him now, and, as she raised her eyes, he felt drawn as toward some powerful magnet. It was as though he had been staring into an inky pool which had suddenly widened and risen toward him.
He laughed uneasily and said, “As though you ever had to give an invitation twice.”
“Am I to take it that’s an acceptance?” she asked.
He bowed low over her hand and said, “Yes. Good-night, Miss Arden.”
“Good-night,” she said, and her voice held a rich, throaty timbre.
He left the room, gently closed the door behind him, and took two or three deep breaths before the matter-of-fact environment of the familiar hotel corridor recalled him to the duties of his everyday existence.
He walked to the elevator, and was just about to press the button when he sensed surreptitious motion behind him. He flattened himself in a doorway and stared back down the corridor.
Carl Bittner had climbed up the stairs. In his right hand he held a camera and a battery photo-flashlight. Slowly, cautiously, he tiptoed his way down the corridor.
Selby waited until the reporter had rounded the bend in the hallway, then he rang for the elevator. In the lobby he paused to telephone room five fifteen.
“Be careful,” he warned, when he heard Shirley Arden’s voice on the wire, “a newspaper photographer is stalking the hallway.”
“Thanks,” she told him, “I’ve got my door locked.”
“Has anyone knocked?” he asked.
“Not even a tap,” she replied, “and thanks for calling.”
Puzzled, Selby left the hotel to fight his way into the windy night.
Chapter IX
Sylvia Martin was waiting in front of the locked door of Selby’s office.
“Thought you were playing possum on me,” she said. “I’ve been knocking on the door. I even tried a kick or two.” And she glanced ruefully down at the toes of her shoes.
“No,” Selby said, “I was out on what might be described as an emergency call.”
“Anything new?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Why is it,” she asked, “that a friendly paper doesn’t get any of the breaks while the opposition scores all the scoops?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” she said, “that there’s something going on at the Madison Hotel.”
“What makes you think so?”
“A little bird told me.”
“I’d like to know more about your little bird.”
“If you must know, it’s someone who advised me that Carl Bittner, the crack reporter whom The Blade has imported to scoop you on a solution of the murder case, received a mysterious telephone call and then went rushing over to the hotel, carrying a camera.”
“Well?” he asked.
She said, “Let’s go in and sit down where we can talk.”
Selby unlocked the door. She followed him into his private office, perched on the edge of his desk, kicking one foot in a swinging circle.
“Come on,” she said, “what’s the low-down?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“Have I got to wait until I read about it in The Blade tomorrow night?”
“The Blade won’t publish anything about it.”
“Don’t ever think they won’t. You’re acting like an ostrich, Doug, sticking your head in the sand and kidding yourself you’re hidden from view.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but there’s nothing I could tell you, Sylvia.”
“Why?”
“In the first place, what makes you think there’s something to tell?”
“Don’t kid me, Doug, I know there is. I suppose I can go over to the hotel and dig it out myself, if I have to, but it does seem to me that...”
She broke off the sentence but her foot swung more rapidly and in a wider arc until she seemed to be viciously kicking at the atmosphere.
Selby said, “I’d like to, Sylvia. I’d like to take you into my confidence, but you’ve got your job and I’ve got mine. You’re representing a newspaper. It’s your duty to gather publicity. Anything that you get will be spread on the front page of that paper. I have to take that into consideration.”
“We supported you during the election. Don’t we get anything in return for it?”
“Certainly you do. You get any of the breaks I can give you.”
“A lot that means,” she said bitterly. “The city editor put me on this murder case. I’ve known you for years. I’ve fought for you ever since you turned those damned twinkling blue eyes of yours on me and smiled. The newspaper I represent helped put you in office. What do we get in return for it? Not one damned thing!”
She blinked her eyes rapidly.
“Please don’t cry, Sylvia,” he begged. “You don’t appreciate my position.”
She jumped to her feet and said, “You make me so mad I could cry. Don’t you see the position you’re in? Don’t you see the position that I’m in? Don’t you see the position my paper’s in?”
“I think I do.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve been assigned to cover the activities of the district attorney’s office in connection with this murder case. I’m making a lamentable failure of it. The things I’ve found out could have been put in my city editor’s eye without making him so much as blink. The opposition newspaper has imported a crack reporter. That means I’m being pitted against a trained investigator from one of the big metropolitan dailies. It’s an opportunity for me to do something big. It’s also an opportunity for me to become the laughingstock of everyone in the newspaper business. I need every advantage I can get. And about the only advantage I’m supposed to have is your friendship.”
“Sylvia, I’m going to do everything I can for you, but...”
“That stuff makes me sick,” she declared. “You know as well as I do that you’re concealing something. You’re good enough to conceal it from me because I’m fair enough to trust you; but you’re not smart enough to conceal it from The Blade because they’re fighting you and are out on their own, getting their information independently.”
“What makes you think that they’re going to get any particularly startling information?” he asked.
“Will you swear to me that your business at the Madison Hotel wasn’t connected with some angle of this case?”
“No,” he said frankly, “it was.”
“And you saw someone there?”
“Naturally.”
“Whom did you see?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Why?”
“It wouldn’t be fair.”
“To whom?”
He thought for a moment and then said lamely, “To the taxpayers, to the Prosecution’s side of the case.”
“Bosh!” she told him. “You’re protecting someone. Who?”
“Suppose I should tell you,” he said, “that some person had become involved in this case who was entirely innocent of any connection with it except one brought about through casual coincidence? Suppose I should further tell you that the newspaper-reading public wouldn’t believe that such was the case if it were given any publicity? Suppose, because of my official position, I’d been able to get a complete and frank statement of facts, given to me in a sacred confidence? Would you want me to betray that confidence to the first newspaper reporter who asked me?”