He said he would have the cards ready within an hour. I went over to a nearby cafe and read the evening paper and drank two cups of coffee.
Then I collected the cards, and a little before nine o’clock I walked into the lobby of the Castle Arms.
There was no one behind the reception desk nor anyone to take care of the elevator. A small sign with an arrow pointing to the basement stairs told me where I could find the janitor.
I went down and knocked on a door at the foot of the stairs. The door opened and the shabby little man I had seen airing himself looked suspiciously at me.
I poked my card at him.
‘Can I buy a few minutes of your time?’ I said.
He took the card, stared at it, then gave it back to me.
‘What was that?’
‘I want some information. Can I buy it from you?’
I had a five dollar bill in my hand. I let him see it before returning it to my pocket.
He suddenly became friendly and eager.
‘Sure, come on in, friend,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’
I entered the tiny room that served as an office. He sat down on the only chair. After pushing aside a couple of brooms and lifting a pail on to the floor, I found a seat on an empty wooden crate.
‘Information about a woman staying here,’ I said. I took out the five dollar bill and folded it, keeping it before him. He stared hungrily at it. ‘She’s in apartment 234.’
‘You mean Clare Sims?’
‘That’s the one. Who is she? What does she do for a living?’
I gave him the bill which he hurriedly pushed into his hip pocket.
‘She’s a stripper at the Gatsby Club on MacArthur Boulevard,’ he told me. ‘We have plenty of trouble with her. It’s my guess she’s a junky. The way she behaves sometimes, you’d imagine she was crazy. The management has warned her if she doesn’t quit making trouble she’ll have to leave.’
‘Not a good credit bet?’
‘The worst I’d say,’ he said shrugging. ‘If you’re thinking of talking to her, watch out. She’s a toughie.’
‘I don’t want to talk to her,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘If she’s like that, I don’t want to have anything to do with her.’
I shook hands with him, thanked him for his help and left. I returned to my hotel, changed, then took a taxi to the Gatsby Club.
There was nothing special about it. You can find a club like the Gatsby in any big town. It is always in a cellar. It always has an ex-pug as a doorman-cum-bouncer. It always has dim lighting and a small bar just inside the lobby. There are always hard-faced, bosomy girls hanging around the bar waiting for an invitation to a drink and who will go to bed with you later for three dollars if they can’t get more.
I paid the five dollars’ entrance fee, signed the book in the name of Masters and went into the restaurant.
A slim girl, wearing a tight-fitting evening dress that hinted she hadn’t anything else on under it, her black hair falling to her shoulders and her grey-blue eyes full of silent and worldly invitation, came over to me and asked me if she could share my table.
I said not right now, but later I would buy her a drink.
She smiled sadly at me and went away, shaking her head at the other five unattached girls who were looking hungrily at me.
I had an indifferent dinner and watched a still more indifferent cabaret show.
Clare Sims did her strip act.
She was a big, generously built blonde with an over-developed bust and hip line that made the customers stare. There was nothing to her act except the revealing of a lot of flesh.
A little after midnight, just when I was thinking I had been wasting my time, there was a slight commotion at the door and a small dark-haired man came into the restaurant.
He was wearing a shabby tuxedo and heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.
He stood in the doorway, snapping his fingers and jerking his body in time with the music: a compact figure of evil.
He was gaunt and his hair was turning grey at the temples. His face was the colour of tallow. His lips were bloodless. The degeneracy in his face told its own story.
I didn’t have to look twice.
It was Wilbur.
CHAPTER SIX
I
The dark girl in the skin-tight dress who had spoken to me moved with a hip-swinging walk towards Wilbur, a professional smile on her red lips. She paused near him, her slim fingers touching her hair, her black pencil lined eyebrows lifted in invitation.
Wilbur continued to snap his fingers and weave his thin body in time with the music, but his owl-like eyes, glittering behind his glasses, shifted to the girl and his bloodless lips lifted off his teeth in a grimacing smile that meant nothing. Then, still snapping his fingers, he moved towards her and she too began to strut and stamp in time with the music.
They circled each other, waving their hands in the air, arching their bodies, postulating like two savages in a ritual dance.
The people in the restaurant paused in their eating and their dancing to stare at them.
Wilbur grabbed the girl’s hand and twirled her around, sending her skirts flying out, revealing her long slim legs up to her thighs. He jerked her against him, then he shot her away from him at arm’s length, jerked her back to him, twirled her again, then releasing her, he prowled around her, jiggling and stamping, until the band stopped playing.
Taking her arm in a possessive grip, he led her over to a table in a corner opposite mine and sat down with her.
I had been studying him. My first reaction at the sight of him when he had walked into the club was one of relief and triumph. But now, after watching him dancing, watching the cold, vicious face, my mind went back to that moment when he had come into Rusty’s bar, knife in hand, and I saw again Rima’s look of abject terror and heard again her screams.
This was my moment of hesitation. I had known when I had begun my hunt for her that my object was to kill her, but the full realisation, how it was to be done, was something I had avoided thinking about. I knew that although I had found her, I was sure if I had her alone in that bungalow I couldn’t have steeled myself to murder her in cold blood. Instead, I had come in search of this man, knowing he wanted to kill her. I knew he would do it if he was told where she was. I had no doubt about that. There was something terrifying and deadly about him.
If I set this man on her, I would be responsible for her death; it wouldn’t be an easy death; it would be a horrible one. Once I told him where he could find her, I would be signing her death warrant.
And yet if she didn’t die, I would be saddled with her blackmailing threats for the rest of my days or until she did die. I would never shake her off.
‘What is better than money?’ she had said.
