Robby was also in conversation, though not out by the pool. He was in the kitchen, and he was talking to the villa’s houseman. The tenants came and went, every two weeks or every four weeks, but the villa’s houseman stayed on. This was his house, regardless of the fact that the technical ownership resided with a real estate combine in Kingston, and he took a proprietary pleasure in discussing it. Robby listened attentively, partly because he was truly interested and partly because he could barely understand the houseman’s English.
In a far corner of the kitchen, handy to the booze, slumped Benny. His attempts to do himself some good in the solarium had come to nothing, Sassi Manoon’s non-appearance at her own party had made Sir Albert begin glaring at Benny as though it was his fault and he could do something about it, and all in all Benny had decided about the only sensible thing for him to do was get smashed. He was smashed.
In the library, Major ffork-Linton was thirty-five pounds, seventy-five dollars, one hundred sixty marks and thirty-two thousand four hundred sixty-one lire ahead at liar’s poker, which is pretty good since it is impossible to cheat at liar’s poker.
Upstairs, in a front sitting room, Miss Rushby sat at a card table with three bridge-playing ladies cut from the pack down in the living room. The lady to Miss Rushby’s right cut the pack, which did her no good because it is possible to cheat at bridge, and Miss Rushby dealt out the first hand.
Constantly on the move through the house, smiling his Styrofoam smile and cursing the day Sassi Manoon was born, was Sir Albert Fitzroy. He had greeted every familiar face, introduced himself to those faces which while not familiar did look important, and seen to it that the mechanics of the party — food and drink and ashtrays and music — were kept going smoothly. But where was Sassi Manoon? The least she could do was put in an appearance, but no, not a whiff of her. Spence had reported her drinking and surly as of ten o’clock, so God alone knew what sort of condition she was in by now. Sensing a scene in the air if he approached her, he was staying downstairs, smiling, moving from guest to guest, hoping everybody was enjoying himself too much to remember there was supposed to be a guest of honor here.
The guest of honor, in fact, was asleep. Still in her orange slacks and white top, the Scotch now nearly gone from the bottle beside her, the bedside lamp still lit, her head bowed over the novel still open in her lap, Sassi Manoon snored faintly, at last relaxed.
Someone else who wondered when Sassi Manoon was going to show was Jigger Jackson, who had been at this party long enough by now to know it was typical of film festival parties and therefore unlikely to be useful to her in any way other than to effect a meeting with Sassi Manoon. But not if she didn’t come out in the open.
There was a flight of stairs tantalizingly present, seemingly in the background wherever Jigger looked, and she knew Sassi Manoon had to be somewhere at the top of those stairs. Did she dare go up them? People did go up occasionally, when both downstairs bathrooms were in use, so she wouldn’t be questioned or stopped. But once up there, what would she do? Just keep trying doors? Do the old “Oh, I thought this was the bathroom. Say, aren’t you Sassi Manoon?”
Well, it was better than standing around down here being eyed by people’s public relations men. No one on earth is hornier or less useful to a girl’s career than a public relations man.
Enough. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Jigger went upstairs.
The first room she tried was full of old biddies playing cards, and the look one of them gave her as she stuck her head in let her know she wasn’t exactly welcome. The second was a bathroom. The third was a bedroom, pitch-black, and Jigger was about to shut the door again when she saw light flash in there, like lightning. But it couldn’t be lightning, the sky was clear and full of stars.
Curious, always wanting to know about things and following her curiosity wherever it would lead her, Jigger slipped into the room and shut the door. The window across the way faced the side of the house, so there was very little light, but the blackness wasn’t total. As her eyes adjusted, it was possible vaguely to make out the masses and shapes of furniture.
Light flashed.
There it was again? To her left, a small brilliant light, on and off in just a second, leaving a memory of whiteness on her retina, an impression of a desk under intense glare. It was like a flashbulb, only more confined in area.
Jigger squinted, trying to see. There was something, something—
A small sound. A tiny rustle of paper, soon ended.
Flash.
There was someone there. Jigger could make him out now, a darker mass against the general darkness of the room, standing slightly hunched over, in profile to her, doing something.
Rustle.
Flash.
A desk, it was a desk. There was something on the desk, papers of some kind, and he was turning the papers over, pages or whatever they were, turning them over one at a time and then shining that quick light—
Taking pictures.
Jigger had seen enough spy movies to know what this was all about. Clandestine skulduggery, microfilm cameras, high-speed directional flashguns, miniaturized spy equipment for the new miniaturized spy. And too involved in his work to have noticed her come in, the brief opening of the door impossible for him to see after watching the flashes of his own picture-taking after a while.
But here? In a movie producer’s house? What kind of international secrets did movie producers know?
Rustle.
Jigger considered the question. Am I scared?
Flash.
No.
Rustle.
Why not?
Flash.
What’s he going to do to me, that’s why not. Besides its being a full house downstairs, whatever this guy is up to can’t be all that serious, not here, not serious enough to make him do me any real damage.
Rustle.
And besides that, if I blow the whistle on him, maybe that puts me in good with my host, Sir Albert Fitzroy, the English movie producer.
Flash.
But let’s not be too hasty. Let’s find out what’s going on first.
Jigger put out her hand to the light switch, and flooded the room with light.
Kelly fainted.
Jigger couldn’t believe it. She’d turned the light on, the guy at the desk had jumped as though he’d had a heart seizure, the camera had gone spurting out of his hands, he’d stared at her wild-eyed through the glasses, and then his eyes had rolled upward disgustingly into his head, his mouth had gone slack, and he’d fallen over backward onto the floor.
Maybe it was a heart seizure. She hurried over, grabbed his wrist, and felt his pulse clicking away like the Florida Special when there’s no strike on.
Well, that was good. She hadn’t wanted to kill the poor bastard, just see him.
On the surface, Jigger displayed a hardness and callousness that was mostly defensive and partly wishful thinking. She wanted to be tough, but every now and then something would happen to sneak through that toughness and touch the humanity inside. Jigger had an Achilles heel. She couldn’t help it, she was a sucker for a shnook.
And it was hitting her now. Kneeling there beside the fallen photographer, holding his wrist in her hand, looking at his slack-jawed unconscious face, she felt an encroachment of tenderness so unexpected and unwanted as to be downright embarrassing. His glasses had fallen off when he’d fainted, one lens was broken, and with those broken glasses besides his head, plus the little pontoon-shaped marks of spectacle-wearing on either side of his nose, he looked as defenseless and pathetic as a puppy dog.