“That’s easy to believe,” said Shayne. “What happened?”
“Well, Sandra brought the record player out on the terrace. It was a beautiful night with a full moon, and we danced on the grass. At first, we pretended it was a big party and Ricky and Sam tagged Sandra and me — you know, changing partners every few minutes. After a while we stopped dancing. The others had drinks. I don’t drink, but I did smoke another cigarette.” She paused, seemingly unable to finish her story.
“You can tell me anything, Julia. I know what marijuana can do.”
“You do?” She widened her violet eyes at him. “It made me into a person that wasn’t me at all. I took off all my clothes and started dancing. I was floating in the air, and my body didn’t mean anything at all. I felt exultant — and freed from everything on the earth. I kept reaching up, and floating toward the moon.
“Then — Ricky was dancing with me. He’s a good dancer, and at first I didn’t realize that he had taken off his clothes, too. Then he tried to — Well, it was horrible, and it brought me back to my senses. I remember screaming and running to my room. I locked the door and ran to the bathroom. I was horribly nauseated for a long time.
“The next morning they all raved about my dancing and said I ought to go on the stage. They said I should take any job I could get for experience, and that I was bound to become a Hollywood star. I — well, I just swallowed it all. The spring vacation was the only chance I would have, and Ricky said he could get me an engagement in Miami. They all dared me, and I agreed to let him be my manager if he could get me a job.”
“And you signed a contract with him?”
Julia nodded her head absently. “He had one typed up and I signed it before I went back to school. I didn’t read it, and when I came here to take this job I found out it was for three years and he was to collect all the money. That’s why he acts the way he does. He knows he owns me, body and soul, and he’s afraid for me to talk to anybody because he thinks I might ask them for help.”
“No contract like that is worth a damn,” Shayne snapped. “Besides, you’re only eighteen.”
“I didn’t think it was, either,” she said. “I decided to see a lawyer when I found out I had to dance — without any clothes of any kind. Then he threatened me, and I didn’t know what to do. There was Father in Washington, and Mother who has been ill, and I was afraid of what he might do. I found out he wasn’t anything but a cheap booking agent for second-class night clubs. I felt trapped. I didn’t know anybody here. I was all alone with him, and he acted terrible.” She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with dry sobs.
“That’s all over now,” Shayne told her. “You won’t have to see him again. How did he threaten you?”
She kept her face covered with her hands and said in a choked voice, “He had a picture of me that the other man snapped with a flash camera that night in Fort Lauderdale — of us dancing together like I said. I didn’t even know they’d snapped a picture. It showed my face, but not his. Just a man’s — naked body. He threatened to send it to my parents unless I did what he said.”
A muscle twitched in Shayne’s cheek, and his eyes were bleak. He said curtly, “So you went ahead and danced at La Roma?”
“Yes.” She lifted her head defiantly. “But not — the other. We have separate apartments, and I lock my door every night. I told him I’d kill myself if he insisted on anything else, and he — I guess he was afraid I would.”
“Let’s get back to last night and Mrs. Davis,” said Shayne casually.
“I don’t know any Mrs. Davis,” she vowed. “If any friend of Mother’s was there, I didn’t see her. I try not to see anyone when I’m dancing. I pretend I’m alone in the moonlight.”
“What about the note she sent backstage?” he demanded grimly. “And the singer she asked about you?”
“Honestly, Mr. Shayne, no one gave me a note. And if anyone asked Billie for me, she didn’t tell me about it.”
Shayne frowned and tugged at his left ear lobe. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was well past four o’clock. He growled, “I think we’d better settle this Mrs. Davis angle right now.” He went to the telephone and asked the operator to get the Waldorf Towers. When they answered, he asked for Mrs. Elbert Davis, listened to the phone ring a dozen times, and interrupted the hotel operator when she began, “I’m sorry, sir—”
“Do me a favor, please,” he said swiftly. “This is Michael Shayne. I left an important message in Mrs. Davis’s box earlier in the evening. Please see if my note is still there.”
He drummed impatiently on the desk until the operator reported, “Yes sir. A note signed by you is still in her box.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and hung up, shaking his red head angrily. He returned to the couch, sat down wearily, and said, “I don’t know what the score is. Right now, Mrs. Davis seems to have vanished in thin air.” He hesitated, then asked, “Is there any chance that Moran was around the club last night and heard her asking for you? Could he have intercepted the note she sent back — and told Billie Love she wasn’t to talk about you?”
Julia’s face was pale from fright. “I suppose he could have done that. He stays around most of the time. You saw how he was about me talking to you.”
Shayne nodded grimly. “He had plenty of reason for keeping you away from people.”
“Mr. Shayne!” she cried. “Do you think he found out where she’s staying — and did something to her?”
“What do you think?” he asked bluntly. “You know him better than I do.”
“He’s vicious, and greedy for money. But I don’t see—” Her voice faltered, and a puzzled frown puckered her brow. “What good would it do him? I had agreed to finish my engagement — one more week. And he was keeping all my salary except bare living-expenses.”
“You’re forgetting the photograph that was mailed to your mother.”
“Do you think Ricky did that?”
“Who else? Who else knew your real name? Why wouldn’t it be a natural for Moran? Have you discovered any traits in his character that make you feel he wouldn’t blackmail your parents?”
“No. I — oh, I’ve been an awful fool,” she said miserably, and a big tear spilled from each eye.
Shayne didn’t contradict her. He settled back and sipped cognac and let her cry.
Presently she dried her eyes and asked timidly, “If Ricky did send the picture, and if he saw some friend of Mother’s inquiring about me last night, what would he be likely to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Shayne sourly. “He may have followed her to her hotel — and then when I came around to talk to you last night he could have gotten the wind up and decided he preferred to deal with a woman rather than with me. That is, if he knew who I was.”
“Oh, he did,” she exclaimed fervently. “That’s why I slipped away and came to you. He was terribly angry after you left La Roma, and told me a lot about you. That’s when I made up my mind I’d see you.”
“Did he stay at the club after I left?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “He was waiting for me when I finished my last number and went out.”
Shayne’s thoughts were racing in circles. There was that sixteen hundred dollars Mrs. Davis had in cash. There was his stop with Rourke at the Daily News and the drive to Farrell’s — which might have given Moran time to get from La Roma to the Waldorf Towers ahead of him when he left the note.
He came to his feet abruptly and asked, “Do you think Moran had any suspicion that you were coming here tonight?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure he didn’t. I went in my own apartment just as though I was going to bed, and waited a few minutes until he went in. Then I slipped out and down the back stairs and came straight here.”