“Maybe.”
They fell silent, sipping cognac and ice water until the dance team cartwheeled from the stage as they had come on. A polite spattering of applause ensued, then died away when the M.C. took a few steps forward and raised his hands, palms outward, and signaled for silence. He made no announcement, but the overhead lights went out. Gradually, every other light in the room blinked out. For an instant there was complete darkness and an expectant hush.
Suddenly, there was an electrifying fanfare from the orchestra, and bright-blue moonlight fanned out from a semicircle of concealed spots on the floor.
Dorinda leaped from nowhere, landed on the toes of one foot, the clean lines of her slim, nude body scarcely visible in the whirling, twirling dance. She was never still for an instant. As illusive as quicksilver, and graceful as a faun dancing to the pipes of Pan. The routine was descriptive, portraying the joy of youth, freedom, gay abandon, desire, and capricious flirtation.
The low background of music interpreted her every move, yet never intruded, and her dance seemed unrehearsed, spontaneous, gay, and magically evocative.
Time seemed to stand still. Shayne sat tensely forward, trying to catch some facial expression, some clue to her character, but her head with its fair, short-cropped hair moved with the gyrations of her body.
There was a lump in his throat when the lights went out. In the black darkness he heard the exhalations of breaths long held, then thunderous applause that mounted higher yet when the dim, pale-blue and orange lights came on in the room.
The stage was empty except for the orchestra. They struck up a lively tune that was drowned by the continued clapping and the stomping of feet and wild cries of “Dorinda!”
The M.C. came forward. With a wave of a hand he silenced the orchestra, and the microphone once again slid up from the floor as he approached it. Several minutes passed before he quieted the audience, and then he said simply and gravely, “Dorinda thanks you all.”
The orchestra resumed its sprightly number, and Rourke said, “I was just getting set when she stopped. If she were my daughter I’d want her to keep on dancing if it meant the fall of democracy all over the world.”
Shayne nodded. “Why here — at La Roma? Why not Carnegie Hall?”
“In the course of human events we run into such things as Federal Statutes and State Laws,” said Rourke with heavy sarcasm, “and they insist on accentuating the positive with scraps of cloth.” His thin nostrils quivered and he added, “Maybe Dorinda figures she can get away with it here, while her folks would get onto her if she branched out.”
“Yeh,” Shayne muttered. He filled his two-ounce shot glass to the brim and drank it in one gulp.
Lawry came up to their table smiling obsequiously and hopefully. “You liked Dorinda?”
Rourke brightened. “Terrific,” he said. “You’ll need rubber walls in this joint when—”
“We must be discreet,” Lawry reminded him. “And now if you would like to dance—” He indicated a dance floor beyond the curtains which were now drawn aside.
“No, thanks,” said Shayne. “I understand that Rourke came here for a story.”
“Of course,” Mr. Lawry said amiably. “I spoke to her.” He glanced up. “Here she comes now.”
Dorinda was threading her way past the dancers on the crowded floor. She wore a simple white dress with short, puffed sleeves and a high neck, white socks, and flat-heeled, two-toned sandals. Her face was oval, her features regular, and except for her eyes she had the normal appearance of any one of a hundred coeds.
When she came up to the table Lawry introduced her, explaining that Rourke was a newspaper reporter who wanted to interview her. He made no mention of Shayne’s profession. All three men were standing, and as Shayne looked down into her enormous eyes he saw that they were deep violet and glistened with the vitality and youthful elation that had been in her dance.
He noticed, too, that a cloud of doubt, or of fear, came into them when Rourke was introduced as a reporter, and he was sure she flashed him a searching appeal before saying, “I’m pleased to meet — both of you.”
Rourke hastily pulled out a chair and seated her beside him and across from Shayne. Lawry sauntered away. Shayne sat down and asked, “What would you like to eat, Dorinda? We were just ordering.”
“Oh — I’m starved. I’d love a steak. A thick, juicy one, rare.” Her voice was pleasant, with a hint of dropped rs, yet with cultural overtones.
“So say we all,” Rourke chimed in, and leaving the ordering to Shayne he turned on all his professional charm and engaged Dorinda in conversation.
The hovering waiter appeared at Shayne’s side. He ordered steak dinners with carefully selected vegetables, salad, and dessert. When the waiter left the table, Dorinda was saying, “I–I’ve never been interviewed before, Mr. Rourke. You’ll have to help me.”
“Just give me some general background first,” he told her cheerfully. “What’s your real name?”
“Julia?” Shayne interjected.
She flashed him a puzzled glance. “Julia? I don’t understand. I was christened Dorinda.” She appealed to Rourke, asking, “Isn’t that enough? You don’t need my last name.”
“Just for the record,” he coaxed.
“I’d rather not,” she said calmly. “A lot of stars just have one name. You get ahead faster that way — with a sort of mystery, and — well—”
“I didn’t realize they taught your style of dancing at Rollins College,” Shayne broke in.
She looked at him with wide, surprised eyes. “Rollins? Are you kidding me, Mr. Shayne? My mom taught me everything I know about dancing.”
“Your mother taught you to dance?” he asked pointedly.
“Sure. Mom was a wonderful dancer — ballet.” Her full red lips tightened sullenly. “But she’d probably cut off my legs if she found out what I’m doing here.” Again she turned to Rourke. “That’s why I don’t want you to print my last name. Or my picture, either. She might happen to see it in the paper.” Dorinda shifted her position to face Rourke, and gazing steadily into his eyes, she told him of a childhood and early teen-years in a convent while her mother trouped around the world, dancing.
Shayne sipped cognac and listened, studying Dorinda’s cherubic profile, and angrily wondering how long the line would extend if all the night-club dancers who claimed to have spent their youth in convents were placed horizontally head to toe. He didn’t speak until the waiter set three sizzling steaks on the table, replete with vegetables, in oblong platters. The interview ended promptly, and when she turned her attention from the reporter to the steak, Shayne said, “How do you think Mrs. Davis felt last night when she sat here and watched you dance — and when you refused to recognize her even after she sent a note back to you?”
“Mrs. Davis?” She looked at him in astonishment. “I–I don’t remember any Mrs. Davis,” she said after a moment of frowning thought.
Shayne was puzzled. If the girl was lying, she was not only a superb dancer, but also an actress — a second Duse. He watched her pick up her knife and fork and attack the steak with the avidity of any normal, hungry youngster.
Rourke poured himself a double shot of Monnet, drank half of it, considered his plate with distaste, and asked, “Where is your mother, Dorinda?”
“She’s not in a thousand miles of Miami. I had a letter from her yesterday. She thinks I’m working in a shop here, making thirty dollars a week.” She put a sizable square of steak in her mouth, chewed it gingerly, swallowed, and said, “Um-m-m, good. I have to hurry — two more shows tonight.”
Watching Dorinda eat, Shayne swore under his breath. For two cents, he would return Mrs. Davis’s retainer and tell her to go to hell. He felt like a man who was ready to hand a child an ice-cream cone with one hand and slap her face with the other. He glanced at Rourke, but the reporter’s cavernous eyes were brooding into his empty shot glass. They both reached for the Monnet bottle at the same instant.