“Black narcotics to me. Why don’t you hold your nose and ask Edward Fowler about them? They’re friends of his.”
“Thanks for the tip, Toby. Society news is scarce. Everybody’s on the way north.”
“Business is scarce, too.” Toby sighed. “For two dollars I’ve filled the Sunset with musk and hashish.”
Glen Neal took a small notebook from a hip pocket and made notations with a tiny pencil. The morning papers would carry comments about Mr. and Mrs. Durlyn Bessinger, if he found them worthwhile. He returned to his table where the others were waiting.
Edward Fowler was seated just inside the window. He was a big man with prominent nose and chin, noticeable chiefly for his slowness of speech and movement. In a single winter he had built up a reputation in Miami as a splurging gambler, ready to bet heavily on dogs, horses, or cards. His clothes, speech, and type of bridge proclaimed him to be English. Direct inquiry evoked only his lingering smile, and assurance that he was a Bohemian, born and bred.
Toby, watching him through the window, found himself fascinated with Fowler’s coat. Unmindful of the heat, the big man was wearing a heavy black and white check, adorned with conspicuous round leather buttons. It topped a pair of expensive, wide striped, black and white flannels, and equally expensive black and white sports shoes. The sight of so much heavy cloth made Toby uncomfortably warm.
He turned away to resume his fanning, when the sound of a shrill voice, raised in heated protestation, effectually put a stop to all play in the card room. Toby jumped to his feet with a muttered curse and went hastily inside. He knew the voice immediately. There was only one voice in the world with its shrill grating shrewishness. It issued incongruously from the cupid-bow lips of Millie LaFrance, and more than one man was willing to bet that Millie was the answer to all dreams about blondes.
She was going strong when Toby entered. The object of her raucous tantrum was her partner, Edward Fowler. He made two attempts to break in quietly, but she refused to interrupt her tirade.
“He deliberately threw me!” Millie screamed at the approaching Toby. “It’s the second time he’s done it tonight and I won’t stand for it. Down four tricks on a little slam bid—and we’re vulnerable, too! I don’t like that sort of bridge—and I don’t intend to stand for it!”
Fowler rose to his feet. Standing, his unusual stature was marked. He towered over the two men and the girl, still seated. His face was darkly flushed. A small vein jutted out strongly on one temple, and beat visibly with an irregular pulsation.
“You’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid,” he said softly to Toby. “I have another engagement. I’ll be glad to settle any losses this lady has sustained tonight due to my execrable playing.”
He turned back to the table, gave a slight formal bow from the waist to the trio he was leaving, and walked from the room into the hall. Glen Neal rose and followed him, evidently to secure more information about the imposing Bessingers.
Toby Munroe took the chair just vacated by Fowler, and idly riffled the cards. “I’ll fill in if you want to play some more,” he told the slightly mollified Millie.
She glanced at a jeweled wrist watch, and flashed a smile toward the cold eyes of Ben Eckhardt seated at her right. Everything about Millie was flashing except her voice. The smile had little effect upon Eckhardt, who had a reputation for flintiness when playing with cards or women.
“It’s just after eleven. I’d like another rubber.”
“I’ll play,” said Eckhardt. “Let’s cut, Toby.”
Dave Button, the man on Millie’s left was absently watching the door to the hall with deepset eyes which made dark pools in his wrinkled saffron face. He liked bridge for high stakes, as high as he could get. He was a flawless player, too flawless to suit many people. He watched Glen Neal return to the room and resume his seat opposite Eve Farraday. Then he said to Toby: “Ed Fowler is trying to catch your eye, Toby. I think he wants to speak to you.”
Dave Button cut a King of Spades and won the deal with Eckardt as his partner. Toby went to the door where Fowler was waiting, stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He was back shortly, followed by Juan the club attendant and steward. Juan renewed ice water in the glasses, emptied the full ashtrays, and silently departed for the kitchen.
“Fowler settled his account in full,” Toby remarked as he picked up his hand.
“And mine?” Millie looked over her cards.
“And yours.” Toby’s inflection was far from friendly. “He said he was leaving town.”
“One spade,” Dave Button bid, and without changing his tone said: “When?”
“Tomorrow,” said Toby. “I’ll double a spade.”
From below the windows the sound of a departing automobile came clearly into the room.
Eckhardt folded his cards into a neat pile and laid them face down on the green velvet cloth. “Pass!” He was listening to the sound of the departing car, noting the clatter of loose gravel against the fender. The gravel was very loose on Satsuma Road which led from the club to West Flagler Street.
“I don’t think he’ll leave without seeing you, Dave. Have you bid, Millie?”
“Two hearts.” Millie re-sorted her hand.
“I don’t think he will,” said Dave Button. “He owes me sixty grand.”
The Sunset Bridge Club had been dark for two hours. The last player had left before two o’clock. Just after two, Juan Andres, the steward, had locked the front door and gone home. He would return at ten the next morning to clean the club rooms for the afternoon players. The two story house was utterly devoid of life, but not of sound.
Recurrently, from the kitchen, came the click and whirr of an electric icebox as it turned off and on. In the downstairs hall an electric clock purred with
