It was about five minutes later when he was awakened by someone shaking him, launched a swing at the dim noisy disturbance that would probably have been lethal if it had landed. Instead, it whistled harmlessly through the air and Gay, following through, fell very definitely out of bed. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and his bumped head.
Peanuts Nagel gazed down at him sadly. “That’s right,” he said. “Try to kill a guy for trying to help you...”
Gay muttered, “G’way,” and started climbing back into bed.
Nagel was a rosy-cheeked stocky youngster from Wyoming. He had the reputation of being the best news photographer in New York but he was a great deal prouder of having once been known as the best rough-and-tumble fighter in Cheyenne. He grabbed Gay’s limp shoulder and swung him around and shook him until his teeth clicked.
“Listen,” he shouted. “Decker’s on the level about this! I never saw him so worked up! He says it’s a matter of life and death!”
“T’hell with ’im.” Gay put his hands up groggily and pushed thin air.
Nagel knocked his hands down, sighed deeply, drew his open hand back and took very deliberate aim; then he slapped the side of Gay’s face, hard.
Gay snapped to his feet as if some secret spring had been released. He was suddenly fully awake; his expression was no longer weary but tight, grim, menacing.
Nagel said: “I’m sorry, Johnnie, but it’s the only way I could snap you out of it...”
Gay took one step forward, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. Nagel stepped back, said: “Johnnie — if you’ll only—”
The door flew open so hard that it banged against the wall and a chubby, breathless little man rushed into the room. He stood a second, blinking at Gay and Nagel, and then he trotted over and stood glaring up at Gay with blazing eyes.
“Where’s Pamela?” he demanded.
Gay stared down at him dumbly, then he closed his eyes and shook his head sharply, opened his eyes and glanced swiftly at Nagel.
He said sourly: “What the hell is this — a gag?”
“Where’s Pamela?” the little man repeated in a slightly higher key.
Nagel moved his head slowly from side to side. “All I know is Decker said I had to find you. He said Pat Mulhearn, Pamela Arno’s manager, had called up and said it was a matter of—”
“Life and death...” Gay interrupted. He jerked his thumb at the little man. “This is Mulhearn — an’ if you’ll tell me what he’s talking about I’ll be very much obliged.”
He turned and snatched up a dressing gown from the foot of the bed, slipped into it.
Mulhearn spoke so rapidly that the words were all run together: “Pamela left the hotel at five o’clock. She came to my room and said you were in trouble and had sent for her and she was going to see you. She said she’d be back at seven at the latest.” He stuck up a pudgy hand, and looked at his wristwatch. “It’s ten after nine and I ain’t heard from her...”
His voice had risen to a plaintive wail. He almost sobbed: “What’ve you done with her, Johnnie?...”
Except for Mulhearn’s panting it was entirely still. Gay stared from Mulhearn to Nagel, back to Mulhearn with wide bewildered eyes. Then his arm shot out and he gripped Mulhearn’s shoulder, shook it savagely.
“Is this a joke, Pat? You know we’ve been washed up for almost a year. You say she said she was coming to me?...”
Mulhearn nodded.
Gay laughed. There was bitterness in the sound of it, and a kind of joy, too.
“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She was stringing you...”
Mulhearn noticed the telephone suddenly, grabbed it and jiggled the hook. He called the Hotel Shepphard and asked for Suite 14-R. Then he said: “Hello, David my lad. Have you heard from Pamela?”
Then he listened, and his mouth fell open slowly and the dark blood mounted in his chubby face. He hung up and closed his mouth and swallowed.
“Somebody’s got her,” he said.
Gay leaned over the wide central table in the drawing room of Suite 14-R and studied the sheet of yellow paper intently.
The message was neatly typewritten. It read:
“If you want to see Miss Arno alive send one man to the northeast corner of 34th Street and 11th Avenue at 10:30 p.m. sharp with $100,000 in unmarked tens, twenties, and fifties. If you let the police or newspapers in on this you’ll never see her again. Remember — one man and nobody else. We mean business.”
He glanced at his watch; it was nine twenty-eight.
Prince David Sanin, Pamela Arno’s fiancé, sat on the opposite side of the table, his thin face haggard with worry. Mulhearn paced up and down, muttering inaudibly.
Sanin said: “I’ve called everyone I know — my bankers, my attorney, everyone... It is impossible to get so large a sum that soon; perhaps if we had another hour...”
Gay drew one hand slowly down over his face. “Did you tell ’em what you wanted it for?”
Sanin indicated the piece of yellow paper, shook his head. “I was afraid to over the phone,” he said.
Gay nodded. “How did this get here?”
“They put it under the door. I was telephoning friends to see if — uh — Miss Arno was there and when I turned from the phone it was under the door...”
Someone knocked. Gay crossed swiftly and opened the door a little. It was Nagel.
Gay said: “I thought I told you to wait downstairs.”
Nagel edged in past him. “Sure — only I wanted to tell you the lobby is full of leg-men. Maybe somebody’s been tipped off...”
Mulhearn stopped pacing to snap: “We’ve had reporters in our hair all afternoon. They’re after the marriage story and pictures. They know we intended to sail on the Ile at midnight, but they can’t know anything about this...”
Gay said, “You’re sure you didn’t tell Decker what you wanted me about?”
“’No. I told him I wanted you an’ I made it strong — that’s all.” Mulhearn shook his head impatiently.
Gay crossed to one of the tall narrow windows and stared out into the darkness. It had started to rain and thin wind-swept sheets whipped across the panes, made Fifth Avenue a black and yellow blur. Gay’s face was a cold implacable mask but there was deep pain in his eyes — the shadow of tearing anxiety.
Nagel was reading the yellow paper. He whistled softly and fumbled self-consciously with the small camera which he always carried.
“Maybe I’d better get a shot of this now,” he said.
Gay turned slowly and Nagel took one look at his face and slipped the camera back into his pocket.
Mulhearn put his hands flat on the table, leaned forward and squinted at Gay.
“Who’d know about you and Pamela, Johnnie?” he asked. “Who’d call and say they were calling for you and that you needed her?”
Gay shook his head slowly. “Lots of people know about us,” he said. “But I don’t know one who’d fake a call from me and expect her to come...”
Mulhearn said: “There’s where you’re wrong, my lad.” He glanced quickly at Sanin, went on to Gay: “This is a desperate situation an’ no time to spare people’s feelings. There’s many the time Pamela herself hasn’t been at any pains to hide the way she felt about you. I’ll stake my life she would’ve come any time you sent for her...” There was something very suggestive of tears in the little man’s eyes. “It’s the likes of me that’s to blame for things like this — driving her away from the things she wanted, making a career for her, making her a Princess!...”
He sat down. “We got her a career,” he went on forlornly. “In less than a year she was the biggest box-office name in pictures — an’ she was almost a Princess... And now what good is it?”