“Which one of you was it that Beaumarchais called?” Archie asked.
“Me. He said he wanted me to come over and bring another girl. He sort of implied that the other girl would be for him because you were kind of young and naive and he wanted me to lead you by the nose. I never guessed what a long nose you’d turn out to have; I never figured a kid like you to go around sticking it in everybody’s business.”
“Just call me Pinocchio.” Archie sloughed off her insults. “How did the professor happen to know you in the first place?” he wondered. ,
“Through Vito. About a year ago he came recommended from some connection of Vito’s in Paris. Vito sent me around to his hotel room one night. The professor had me come over two more times, and then he went back to Paris. The next time I heard from him was last night.”
“How did you happen to pick on Dixie Keller to go with you last night?"
“Now that you mention it, I didn’t exactly pick on her.” Helen frowned. “In a way, she sort of asked herself along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, at this party, the one where I first met Dixie, there was a Frenchman who knew Beaumarchais. He mentioned him casually in connection with some scandal that had been front-page news in Paris. It seems this Frenchman—I don’t remember his name--was a former newspaperman who’d gotten to know Beaumarchais when the scandal hit the fan. He really admired the professor and was sort of gushing about him. Well, it wasn’t long before I realized that he was talking about the same Professor Beaumarchais I’d gotten to know -- well, intimately, you might say. So I mentioned this fact, and that’s when Dixie sort of perked up her ears and latched onto me.
“By that time, the party was getting pretty wild. To be honest, it was turning into a real old-fashioned orgy. This Frenchman began sort of teasing me to demonstrate some of Beaumarchais’ love-making techniques. Dixie egged him on and volunteered to cooperate if I'd take on the professor's role. So that’s what we did. Our impromptu act was a big hit.
“When it was over, Dixie stayed with me and got me to promise to fix her up with the professor the next time he came to New York. It struck me as odd because girls in our profession don’t usually go around picking out their customers. Particularly if they haven’t even met them.”
“So when the professor called you, you called Dixie,” Archie guessed.
“Nope. That’s the funny thing. She called me before the professor called and told me she’d heard he was in town and reminded me of my promise to get her together with him.”
“She’d heard he was in town?” Archie thought about that a moment. According to what the professor had told him before he’d been killed, his visit to New York was top secret and known to only a few top-level American and French government officials. So how had Dixie Keller come to hear about it? “Did she mention how she happened to know he was in New York?” Archie asked Helen.
“No. But she asked me if I thought he’d call me, and when I said there was a good chance, she insisted on coming over to be sure I kept my promise. It was a funny situation. I didn’t know how I was going to get the professor to let Dixie substitute for me, but as things turned out it was no sweat. He fit right in with her plans when he called and arranged for me to service you and bring along another girl for him.”
“Yeah,” Archie agreed. “It fit in with her plans. and it cost him his life. Have you seen Dixie since last night?"
“No.” Helen seemed to be about to say something else, but she stopped herself.
“Spill it.” Archie was firm.
“She called me,” she admitted reluctantly. “The phone was ringing when I got home after I left you. She was — well, I guess ‘strange’ is the word.”
“Strange how?”
“It’s hard to explain. It was almost as if she was elated about something. I mean, she came on like she was worried, which would have figured, but underneath it was as if she’d just won the Irish Sweepstakes. I asked her what happened, because I didn’t really know. All I knew for sure then was that there’d been shooting. That’s when she told me that the professor had been killed.”
“Did she say ‘shot’ or ‘killed’?” Archie asked.
“I’m pretty sure she said ‘killed’.”
She would have had to hang around a minute or two after the shot was fired to have made sure of that, Archie thought to himself. Unless, as seemed a decided possibility, she had fired the bullet herself. “Go on," he told Helen. “Exactly what did she say happened?”
“She said they’d been making love and there was this shot and the professor keeled over dead in her arms. That’s all.”
“Did she have any idea where the shot came from, or who might have fired it?”
“If she did, she didn’t mention it. But then her whole attitude was so funny. She didn’t act like a girl who’d just seen a man killed while he was making love to her. It was like the only reason she was mentioning it was to be polite. Yeah, that’s it. Like she knew she had to be polite, but was anxious to get it over with so she could talk about her real reason for calling.”
“And what was her real reason?”
“She wanted me to put her in touch with Vito.”
“Vito? Why?”
“Vito has connections. All kinds of connections, you know? She wanted to make a business arrangement through him with the ‘family’.”
“You mean the Mafia?” Archie sounded as puzzled as he looked.
“Yeah. She wanted to hire a couple of gunsels."
“Gunsels? You mean she wanted somebody burned?"
“No. That’s what I thought at first, too, and I told her I didn’t want to get involved. But she swore up and down that wasn’t it. She finally convinced me that all she wanted them for was protection.”
“Don’t those boys come pretty high?” Archie wondered. “She must have been plenty scared.”
“She didn’t sound scared. Like I said, more excited. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been too expensive ’cause she didn’t want them for too long.”
“How long?”
“About a week. I got the feeling she was planning to split after that. Not just take off from New York, but probably leave the country.”
“I see. Did you put her in touch with Vito?”
“I told her where to reach him.” Helen shrugged. “I figured after that it was up to him if he wanted to get involved and set things up for her.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to ask him.”
“Well, see if you can find out. I’ll call you later.” Archie started for the door.
“Are you sure you don’t have time for a quickie?” she asked. “On me?”
“I’ll call you later,” he repeated, and started out once again.
“Wait a minute! What’s that?” Helen hurried to the door, blocking his way. “It’s Vito!” she exclaimed after listening an instant. “He’s back. Quick! Get in the bedroom.”
Archie did as she instructed. Then he stood just behind the closed bedroom door and listened.
“What are you doing back?” Helen asked as she opened the hallway door in response to Vito’s knock. “And why are they with you?” she added as Squint and Batman followed Vito back into the room.
“On account of Squint here is a butterfingered numbskull,” the bandy-legged little Vito told her disgustedly. “We got to do a fast retake.”
“Why? What happened?”
“We get all the way over to the East Side carryin’ the film cans an’ we’re crossin’ the street an’ this idiot drops one of them. It rolls right across the gutter, bounces up on the sidewalk, an’ keeps on rollin’. It rolls right up to the feet of a trucker what’s unloadin’ a van, an’ he picks it up.”