He struck a match and held it for her, asking politely, “May I?”
She cupped her hands, touching his fingers to move the flame to the end of her cigarette. He felt something being pressed between his fingers, and she drew in smoke and moved her hand away from his and said composedly, “Thank you.”
He shook out the match as the bartender set her cocktail in front of her. When the man moved away, Shayne dropped both hands into his lap beneath the bar and unfolded the tightly creased and minutely folded half of a thousand dollar bill which she had pressed between his fingers. He glanced at her and saw that she was looking down at the piece of currency in his hands, that she knew he had received it safely and must now know definitely who she was.
He had no idea why she was playing it this way, but he went along with the act, making it appear that they were complete strangers, drawn together by the coincidence of both liking sidecars.
He drained his glass and motioned to the bartender for a refill, asking her, “Have you ever tried one at the Brown Derby? They’re pretty special.”
She murmured, “I’ve heard that.” There was a tightness in her voice and Shayne felt she was trying desperately to convey something to him without saying it aloud.
He glanced up and down the bar, wondering what she was afraid of here, why she insisted on carrying out the rather absurd pretence to such lengths.
He became conscious then that someone was standing very close behind him and just to his left, close enough, Shayne realized, to be able to overhear anything they said to each other.
He said, “I’m a stranger in town… just trying to see some of the sights. I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but… can you suggest a good place to go for dinner… where some of the stars might be hanging out?”
She chuckled throatily, as though genuinely amused, but behind the sound Shayne thought he sensed overwhelming fear, incipient hysteria.
“You would not be… making a proposition, I trust?”
Shayne said lamely, “Well, I…” Then he turned to her with a wide grin, glancing out of the side of his eyes at the man who stood so close behind them and declaring, “A perfectly honorable one. If you happen to be free for dinner…?”
He turned his head farther to the left and glanced balefully at the man who stood there and told him harshly, “If you’re trying to order a drink, there’s an empty stool right down there.”
He was a fat man with pale, innocuous features. He looked as embarrassed as though he had been caught in the act of peeking through a keyhole, and muttered, “I’m sorry, I… Of course. I had no intention…” He turned and moved to the empty stool Shayne had indicated.
Elsa’s voice was low and strained, very close to his ear. “Let’s get out of here.” She slid off the stool and turned toward the outer door.
He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar and followed her, noticing that the fat man craned his head around to watch them go out together, exactly as a
Shayne went out the door into the Hollywood night behind Elsa and saw the doorman holding the door of a taxicab open while she stepped inside. He strode across the sidewalk and dropped half a dollar into the man’s hand and got in beside her.
The door closed softly and the taxi pulled forward. She pressed warmly against him and put her head against his shoulder and began sobbing like a frightened child.
Shayne put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her very close, and spoke soothingly with his mouth against her ear:
“It’s all right now. Relax.”
“I’ve been so damn scared… so long.” She whispered the words against him, stopped sobbing and held her breath for a long moment, then let it out in a shuddering sigh.
He began, “Now tell me for God’s sake…” but she hushed him with two fingers pressed against his lips, and murmured, “Just hold me without talking now. That driver…?”
Shayne repressed a snort of derision. She had a bad case of the willies, all right. Did she think that every taxi driver in town was in league against her?
Instead of arguing the point at that moment, he asked her in a low voice, “Where to?”
“Tell him… the Roosevelt Hotel.”
They were headed east on Sunset, and when Shayne told the driver, “The Roosevelt, please,” he nodded his head and continued in the same direction.
The blonde stirred against him and moved away slightly, but not out of the circle of his arm. She turned her head to look up steadily into his eyes, and in the bright lights of the boulevard he saw that her dark eyelashes were wet.
“Michael Shayne.” She pronounced his name softly, almost disbelievingly, in a voice too low for the driver to hear. “You don’t remember me, do you? But I would have recognized you anywhere.”
“Ten years ago?” he asked in the same confidential tone.
She nodded slightly and a faint smile curved her full, red lips that were only inches away from his. “Mary Devon.”
He repeated the name to himself, frowning and halfclosing his eyes, mentally going back over the years as he had done on the airplane earlier that day. Ten years back? She would have been in her early twenties… and she must have been beautiful even then to have matured into this improbably lush woman whose body was so warm against him.
Mary Devon? Damn it, there was a nagging memory, but he could not grasp it. He shook his head slowly and said, “Sorry, but you’ll have to help me out.”
“I was afraid I didn’t make much impression on you, Mr. Shayne. Why should I after all? You only saw me for a few minutes that one time. And you were pretty well preoccupied with my room-mate’s suicide which later turned out to be murder.”
Cogs clicked in Michael Shayne’s mind. “Helen Taylor,” he said. “The Wanda Weatherby case. You were Helen’s room-mate. A television actress.”
“It was radio in those days. I never saw you again, but I never forgot you, of course, and I kept reading about you in the papers. So, when I got into this… horrible mess… you were the only person I could think of to turn to. I’ve been so… utterly alone. I feel as though I’m just beginning to come alive again, to emerge from a frightful nightmare.”
She kept her voice low, but it pulsed warmly and with a new vibrancy.
The taxi had switched over to Hollywood Boulevard and was approaching the Roosevelt Hotel on the right. Mary drew away from him and sat up a little straighter, and he leaned forward to look at the meter and got out his wallet.
She took his arm as they went in the brightly lighted entrance, and pressed it tightly against her side while they moved toward the elevators and the desk.
Just in front of the desk she turned him away from the elevators to the left, past the desk and entrance to the dining room, and out the side entrance.
He looked down at her in utter astonishment as she paused there at his side. “Where are we headed now?”
“To my hotel,” she told him triumphantly. “Isn’t that the way a detective does it? I’ve got so careful these last few days that I never take a cab that’s waiting in front of a place directly to my hotel. I always change at least once and then take one that’s just pulling up. Like this,” she added as a taxi drew up in front of the side entrance to let out a passenger. “You see,
Shayne said wryly, “I see,” without seeing at all. She looked and acted sane enough, but she either had one hell of a persecution complex or he was right smack in the middle of one hell of a case.
He helped her into the cab and she told him, “The Perriepont Hotel this time. I’m almost sure it’s safe for us to go there,” she added cheerfully. “I just checked in there this afternoon after ditching my tail at the Hilton as I explained in my note. That’s why I was so long getting to the Brown Derby… and
