I didn’t like that. Whoever was operating The Green Door had probably spotted us by this time and sent a delegation to look us over.
I looked over at Danby and wondered what he’d say if he realized that his fee might also include compensation for a damned good working-over.
He was a grouchy guy who had taken my money and then wished he hadn’t assumed any obligation.
“This is going to be bad,” he said. “If the club finds out, I’ll have a hard time explaining—”
“So what?” I asked. “Where is the club going to find someone else who has your experience, someone else who knows all of the people and all of the ropes? And what if it does? When it finds out what he wants in the line of wages it’ll get a terrific jolt. I’ll bet it doesn’t know how wages have gone up. It’s probably keeping you on at the same old wages.”
“No, the club has given me a couple of raises.”
“How much?”
“One fifteen percent and one ten percent.”
“Over how long a time?”
“Five years.”
I made my laugh mirthless and sarcastic. Danby began to meditate on whether he was underpaid and abused. I saw he liked the thought. I liked it, too. It kept his mind occupied.
I looked at my wrist watch. It was nine-fifteen.
A car drove up and parked. It was a club coupe, about three years old, but a good make and it looked well cared for. The man, who didn’t seem to give a damn whether he left the car parked right in front of The Green Door or not, jumped out and looked up and down the street, then entered through the green door.
Danby said, “That’s Horace B. Catlin. If he sees me here he—”
“You drive a car?” I interrupted.
“Sure.”
“This fellow is a member of the yacht club?”
“That’s right.”
I said, “Wait here for an hour. If I’m not back inside of an hour, drive the car to this address, ask for the man in charge, and tell him the entire story of what we’ve been doing this evening.”
He took the card which had the address and looked at it curiously.
“Let’s see,” he said, “that’s down there. Let me see—
I’m trying to get the cross street.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Put the card in your pocket. Be sure to ask for the man who’s in charge and then tell him the story. It’s a quarter past nine. If I’m not out of here by ten-fifteen go tell your story.”
I slid out of the car, tossed my hat over on the seat, walked bareheaded across the street, and, just before I got to the entrance to The Green Door, looked over my shoulder.
Danby was sitting there studying the card.
I hoped he wouldn’t realize that the address was that of police headquarters until he got there.
I turned the knob and pushed the green door open.
It swung back on well-oiled hinges and I stepped into a little hallway. A flight of worn board stairs, uncarpeted, echoing and splintered, stretched up to another door.
I started to raise my hand to knock on the door, then realized it wasn’t necessary. I’d gone through a beam of invisible light and a little shutter slid open in the door. A pair of eyes regarded me through a small window of plate glass which must have been an inch thick.
“Got a card?” a voice asked, which evidently came through a microphone and wires.
I produced one of the cards I had picked up at Bishop’s place. I had written my name in the blank line.
The eyes on the other side of the plate glass regarded the card, the voice through the loud-speaker said impatiently, “Well, shove it through the crack.”
It was then I noticed for the first time the very narrow slit in the thick door.
I pushed the card into the narrow opening.
There was a period of complete silence, then I heard an electric mechanism pulling bolts back. The heavy door rumbled to one side, running on rollers on a steel rail. The heavy rumbling and the vibration of the stairs as the door moved showed the reason for the microphone and the amplification of the voice. That door must have been as heavy as the door of a vault. Looking curiously around me, I suddenly realized that the stairs were the only bits of wood in the entire entranceway. I had gone through the green door and entered a steel inspection room. A raiding party of police equipped with picks and sledge hammers couldn’t have done more than dent the defenses.
“Well,” the voice said impatiently, “go on in.”
I noticed that the voice had said “go in” instead of “come in,” so I wasn’t too surprised to find on entering that the guard was no longer standing by the door. He had stepped into a steel, bulletproof closet on one side of the door. I could see the closet, but I couldn’t see him. He probably had a revolver covering me.
I walked over the sunken steel rail on which the door had slid, and entered a completely new world. My feet were in a soft, thick carpet which felt like moss in a forest. The hallway glowed with the soft effect of indirect lighting. There was that atmosphere of casual, easy wealth, which is so necessary to a high-class gambling place. It’s designed to put the customer on the defensive right at the start, to make him feel that he’s associating with wealth and standing.
There’s enough of the social climber in most people so that they fall for this stuff and consider it a privilege to be admitted to a place that specializes in taking their money. They’d walk out the worse for wear financially, but still with a certain deferential restraint. It’s an atmosphere that cuts down on beefs and scenes, and makes even the thought of rigged wheels and marked cards seem a social sacrilege.
That atmosphere is a business investment and doesn’t cost as much as one would think. It takes a few props. One is the paintings in heavy frames, carefully illuminated by shaded frame lamps. If the customer doesn’t appreciate them he shamefacedly considers it’s due to his own artistic ignorance. Actually the paintings are twenty-dollar copies in fifty-dollar frames, illuminated by ten-dollar lights.
The customer who can appreciate the price of the frame better than the worth of the painting, thinks they must be old masters. Otherwise why all the frame and illumination on the painting?
The other props are even more simple — Carpets with rich colors and sponge rubber underneath, and the artistic use of color in the draperies. In the soft, indirect lighting it looks like a million dollars. By daylight it would stink.
I entered rooms containing exactly what I had expected to find.
The first room was nothing but a conventional cocktail lounge. It had tables, cushioned stools, a bar, love seats, dim lighting, and the all but inaudible strains of organ music.
Two or three couples were at the tables. A party of three stags were at the far end of the bar with money scattered in front of them, two bottles of champagne, and all of the external evidence of celebrating a huge financial success.
I wondered whether they were also part of the props.
A coldly courteous individual handed me the card which I had left with the doorman downstairs.
“May I ask exactly what it was you were looking for, Mr. Lam?”
“Exactly what you have here,” I said.
The cold eyes softened a bit. “May I ask where you got your card? Who vouched for you when you got it?”
I said, “The card’s properly signed.”
“I know, but sometimes signed cards are given to various sources for distribution.”
I said, “This was given me by the owner.”
He looked a little surprised then, turned it over, and said, “You know Mr. Channing personally then?”
“That’s right.”
“Then the situation is entirely different,” he said. “Just go right on in, Mr. Lam.”
Before I could move, and as though he had been struck with an afterthought, he said apologetically, “I am afraid I’m going to have to comply with the regulations and ask to look at your driving license and make sure you’re the person described on the card.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, and flipped open my wallet, showing him my driving license.
