She said, “You’re wondering-why I’m out here like this-walking down the road alone at night.”
Shayne said, “Why, no. I was expecting you.”
She jerked her bright head around quickly, lips parted in surprise. “You’re crazy. You couldn’t have been.”
“All right,” Shayne agreed, “I’m nuts. I guess it’s the moon.” He puffed on his cigarette serenely and waited for her to make the next move.
She fidgeted with her cape, holding it together with one hand while she held the cigarette in the other. “What I mean is,” she said haltingly, “no one could have expected this to happen. Not even I. I thought Fred was a nice fellow.” There was a note of deep injury in her throaty young voice.
“Wasn’t he?” asked Shayne interestedly.
“I’ll say he wasn’t. He-well, a girl doesn’t mind when she’s stepping out to have a good time. But when he admitted he was married and had two kids-” She shrugged her slim shoulders and relapsed into gloomy silence.
“So your evening is completely spoiled?”
She gave him a long, demure glance out of the corner of her eye. “Does it have to be? What I mean is-we were headed out to the Rendezvous for a few drinks and dancing. I could certainly use a drink right now.” She ended with a shaky, high-pitched laugh which the big detective did not believe originated in any gaiety on her part.
Shayne nodded gravely. He put the roadster in gear and let it snail forward. “How do you know I’m not married with a passel of brats at home?”
She smiled happily. “I can tell. You don’t look married.”
“Maybe Fred didn’t either,” he reminded her, “and not many girls would tumble to this old jalopy of mine.”
She flashed him another quick, searching look, but Shayne’s eyes were mild and he was smiling. “Well, you know how it is. I did hesitate to get in with you, but a girl gets bored stiff doing nothing night after night. I didn’t think it would be any harm to go out to the Rendezvous with Fred tonight. My name,” she tagged on as an afterthought, “is Midge.”
Shayne inclined his head. “I’ll answer to Mike-from you.”
“You’re nice,” she breathed. “I can tell it already. You’ve got hair that makes a girl just itch to run her fingers through it. You’re the kind who would know when a girl wants to be petted and when she wants to be let alone.”
Shayne chuckled with genuine amusement. “I call this old jalopy of mine the Mayflower,” he warned, “because so many puritans have come across in it.”
Midge laughed delightedly and leaned back, pressing her silk-clad shoulder against him.
“I thought that gag was old enough to be new to a gal your age. Is that the Rendezvous ahead?” Shayne asked as they approached a building gleaming with red and yellow neon lights.
“That’s it.” She shivered and moved closer to him. “If you haven’t ever been there before, drive around to the west entrance,” she cajoled. “We can go in through a side door and upstairs to a private room where no one will see us.”
“A private room? Are you ashamed of being seen with me?”
She laughed lightly. “Don’t be silly.” She trailed her knuckles over one of his big hands. “It’s only-well, I can’t afford to be seen at a place like the Rendezvous. My family-you know. Dad’s a deacon in the church and he and mother would have a fit if they knew I’d ever taken a drink.”
Shayne nodded and drove through an arched entrance, past rows of parked cars, and around to the west side of the rambling two-story building. A single green bulb burned over a closed oak door. Midge pointed it out. With a giggle that didn’t quite ring true, she explained, “That’s where all the high-school kids go in and out.”
Shayne parked, got out, and she slid out after him. She caught his arm and held it tightly, pressing against him. The heavy door opened at the turn of the knob and they went into a long carpeted hallway. A burst of music came from beyond the partition, and there were loud voices and laughter.
Midge turned him to the right and led him to a stairway. “They gamble in the back upstairs,” she told him in a conspiratorial whisper, “and they say you can order most anything you want served in the private rooms.”
Shayne climbed the stairs with her and didn’t probe further into the suggested evils of the upstairs rooms. A dark-featured man wearing a white mess jacket lounged at the top of the stairway. He nodded woodenly to Midge and led them to a closed door at the end of a row of closed doors. He opened it onto a dimly lit cubicle with a small table set for two. There was an overstuffed couch in the room and a deep club chair in the opposite corner. The man said, “I’ll send a boy right up,” and went out, closing the door behind him.
Shayne stood in the center of the small, intimately furnished room and rumpled his coarse hair. “It’s a nice quiet place for high-school youngsters to do their consorting,” he observed dryly. “Lots more fun learning the facts of life here than by observing bees and flowers.”
Midge’s laugh was constrained, as though she didn’t quite know whether to take him seriously. She dropped onto the couch and took a compact from her purse, examined her face in the tiny mirror.
Shayne saw that she was older than she appeared in the moonlight and by the faint light on the instrument board. At least twenty-five. She was tall, and had extremely nice legs. The heels of her black suede slippers were run down, and the backs of her hands showed clearly that they were used for hard work.
When a discreet knock sounded on the door, Shayne swung around and opened it. A middle-aged waiter entered bearing a menu, but Shayne waved him aside. He asked the girl, “Would you like champagne?” and she clasped her hands to breathe, “Oh-yes.”
“Domestic,” Shayne ordered grimly. “Thirty-four or thirty-five-and bring me a triple slug of cognac in a beer mug. Martell, if you have it.”
The waiter bowed and withdrew. Midge patted the couch beside her. “Sit here beside me. He’ll pull a table up for us when he brings the drinks.”
Shayne sat down, leaving a foot of space between them. He glanced past the table to a closed inner door and growled, “Where does that lead to?”
Midge followed his glance. Color crimsoned her cheeks. “I think that’s a-a lavatory.”
“You seem to know a hell of a lot about the setup,” Shayne commented in a thoroughly disagreeable tone. “For a girl who knows her way around like you do, I can’t quite feature you walking home from the buggy ride.”
Her eyes lowered swiftly to her tightly clasped fingers. She drew her breath in with a little gasp and said sharply, “Just because I know about things is no reason for you to think I’m-bad.”
Shayne laughed aloud at her naive choice of the word. As yet he had no idea why he had been steered to the private room, but he was evidently going to have a few laughs finding out. He stopped laughing and assured Midge, “On the contrary, I think you’re pretty damned nice.”
He got up and wandered to the closed inner door, turned the knob without result. Midge watched him with eyes clearly frightened now. She murmured. “It’s-I think it’s connected with the next room too. They’ve locked it from the other side.”
Shayne’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing. He returned to sit beside the girl and called, “Come in,” when a knock sounded on the outer door.
The waiter had a split of domestic champagne in a silver bucket of crushed ice, and a beer mug a third full of cognac on a tray. He deftly slid the table over in front of them, pulled the cork from the champagne bottle with a gratifying plop, then poured a tall glass of the cold bubbling liquid for Midge.
He laid a check face up before Shayne and waited stiffly. Shayne glanced at the total and whistled. The amount was $23.50-115.00 was marked opposite the word Service.
Shayne shook his head angrily and pushed the bill aside. “That’s highway robbery. I want to see the manager.”