I let out a deep, satisfied breath as the waiter brought her glass. Everything had righted itself suddenly, and the evening was no longer a total loss. Avery Birk was still bellied up to the bar at the other side of Elsie, but even the smirk on his fat face as he looked at her didn’t bother me. I even forgot all about Lew Recker on my left as Elsie looked at me gravely.
“That’s when I got started collecting your books so I could go through them in order,” she told me. “When it reached the point where one book I’d buy on the newsstand had Michael Shayne married to Phyllis and so very happy; and in the next one I’d find him flirting with a secretary named Lucy Hamilton; and then in the next he’d just be meeting Phyllis Brighton for the first time when she was afraid she’d murder her own mother.” She shook her head in dismay. “It was terribly confusing.”
She had violet eyes, I guess. If there is any such thing as violet eyes. Maybe a deep, deep blue with lavender shadings. Her eyebrows were heavy and straight and unplucked. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties. She didn’t look virginal, but she looked-How do you say it? Virtuous? No, that’s too stern. Chaste? Too prim. Perhaps the word I want is fastidious. She didn’t look untouched or untouchable, but a man would take it slow with her and let her lead the way. You had a feeling she wouldn’t be coy about leading if she once decided that was what she wanted to do.
But she would do the deciding.
That was okay with me. I learned long ago that sex is pretty dull and uninteresting unless it is completely mutual between man and woman.
She had a drink of straight cognac and didn’t bother to wash it down with anything. She didn’t gulp it, but she didn’t make any great pretense of inhaling the bouquet in preference to drinking it down.
And we talked some, mostly about my books. She wanted to know all about Michael Shayne-whether there really was a private detective whom I’d patterned him after, or whether the whole series was just a figment of my imagination.
When I assured her there really was a Michael Shayne, and all I actually did in my books was to fictionize his cases, she nodded happily and said: “I felt sure of it all along. He’s so real that you just know he can’t be made up. Not like… oh, that freak of Van Dine’s. The one who said ‘comin’ and ‘goin’.”
“Philo Vance,” I supplied.
“U-m-m. Even the name is patently fictitious. Characters like that remain so exactly the same book after book, year after year. They never develop.”
I grinned and shrugged. “Writers like Van Dine have it easier than I. They control their characters. Mike Shayne makes his own decisions, and all I can do is record them for posterity. Speaking of private detectives,” I went on, aware of the way Avery Birk continued to look at her from the other side, “are you acquainted with one named Johnny Danger?”
She was looking sideways at me and fiddling with her empty glass. Her fingers tightened on the glass and the curving line of her full lips became straight and rigid. She said in a low voice, “I know Avery Birk is right behind me. Don’t force me to put my opinion of his books into words he might hear.”
I laughed aloud and reached for the bottle to pour us each another drink. As I set the bottle down, I caught the bartender’s eye and made a gesture to indicate I wanted my bill. As we both lifted our glasses, I said, “It might be fun to go some place where we could discuss Johnny Danger without insulting his creator.”
“I’m sure it would be fun,” she agreed simply. “That is… my God! I’m not monopolizing you, am I? I know there are hundreds of people here who must want to talk with you. When I saw your name on the guest list this evening, I was just dying to come to your table and introduce myself. But there were so many important people there…” Her voice trailed off and she raised her glass to drink half the cognac. “Wasn’t that Dorothy Cecil you were sitting beside at dinner?”
I nodded. “On my right.”
“She’s… very attractive. And don’t you love her books?”
“They’re all right.” I’m afraid I said it gruffly. The crowd in the barroom had thinned down considerably, not more than twenty-five or thirty people remaining as the hour approached midnight. Some of them I knew casually, though most were strangers. “Do you have a coat checked?”
“Just a light jacket.” She opened a black suede purse and fumbled in it, brought out a numbered check which she handed to me when I held out my hand for it.
We both drained our glasses and I glanced at the bar check, put some bills on it and turned away. She slid her arm into mine as we crossed to the checkroom. Walking beside me, the top of her head was just below the level of my eyes. Her arm squeezed mine with pleasant possessiveness.
I retrieved my hat and her jacket which proved to be a black satin cape lined with scarlet satin. I slid it over her shoulders and as we went out to the street I asked casually, “Where would you like to go? I’m from Miami, you know.”
She hesitated just a moment before saying, “What about my place? By the grace of God, there’s a bottle of brandy. And we can talk.”
I told her it sounded just right. I held up a finger to the hotel doorman and he had no trouble snagging a taxi at that late hour.
We got in and she gave the driver an address in the East Thirties. She had moved close to the other side when she got in and sat there demurely as the taxi pulled away. I sat not too close to her and got out cigarettes. I shook one loose and held out the pack and she took it. I put one between my own lips and struck a match. She leaned close to get a light, and her face was serene and beautiful in the little flare as she sucked in flame. Her hand had touched mine to steady the match, and she didn’t take her hand away while I got a light also. I blew the match out and lowered my lips to touch the back of her hand. Her fingers tightened spasmodically on mine, and then she drew away to her own side of the back seat and I relaxed against the rear cushion. I drew in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaled it, told her, “You haven’t told me
anything about yourself at all. You’re not a member of MWA?”
“No. Just a sort of hanger-on. Don’t worry. You’ll probably hear the entire story of my life if the bottle of brandy holds out.”
That sounded all right to me. Her right hand was lying on the seat between us and I put mine over it. Her fingers relaxed under mine and we rode that way to the address she had given.
3
I paid off the taxi in front of a small, neat brick apartment building east of the Third Avenue El. Elsie went in front of me up a short flight of steps and into a small entryway with mail boxes lining both sides. She took a key from her purse to open the inner door, and we went down a short hall to a self-service elevator in the rear. It was waiting and when we got in she pressed the button for the third floor. It went up smoothly and I held the door for her to get out. She led the way to an apartment which she unlocked. She switched on a hall light just inside. Directly in front of us there was the open door of a small kitchenette. The bathroom was just to the right with a bedroom at the end of the hall beyond with a living room on the left.
Elsie turned in the hallway and smiled diffidently and said “Welcome.”
Her lips were curved and inviting and I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her. She came against me without constraint, not pushing her lips or body, but not exactly withholding either.
It was a pleasant, welcoming sort of kiss that promised more and better ones later, and I let her go without protest when she drew herself back gently after a moment. She stepped aside to turn on a floor lamp in the square living room, then slipped off her cape and said, “Make yourself comfortable while I see about the brandy.”
The living room was pleasantly furnished in a haphazard and Bohemian sort of way. There was a comfortably shabby low couch against one wall, a couple of deep chairs with reading lamps and smoking stands beside them. One wall was lined with built-in bookshelves crammed with books.
A metal typewriter desk stood in one corner with an open portable on it, and there was a litter of crumpled manuscript sheets on the floor, a box of bond paper beside it and a pile of typed sheets on the other side.
There were front windows that looked down on 38th Street, and side windows for cross ventilation. Wherever there was available wall space, there were framed and unframed paintings and sketches. Some abstract oils, some
