given a neat card with my name on it and the date. In minute printing the card told me that for ten bucks I could use the amenities of the club for one night only. I hated to think what it would cost me to use the amenities for one month.
A hat check girl relieved me of my hat and Juan relieved me of his presence as he swooped away to prise another ten bucks from a guy who had been unwise enough to bring a guest. Suzy took me into the bar which was the longest and plushiest room I have ever seen. I paid out a small fortune on champagne cocktails and then settled down to make pleasing conversation. I hadn’t got far before a stocky little man came over with a bundle of menu cards and asked if we would care to order dinner.
We ordered dinner, or at least Suzy did. She said she would start with oysters, and I betted myself they would cost a buck piece, then she decided to take the grilled river trout, pheasant and French salade, ice cream and Brie cheese to follow. I said that would do me too. The stocky man scribbled the order down on a pad and went on to the next group.
‘For a girl with your shape you eat pretty well,’ I said. ‘How do you manage it?’
‘Do you think I have a nice shape?’ she asked languidly.
‘Sure, and you have a nice appetite to go with it. Don’t you diet or something?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. The subject didn’t seem to interest her. ‘Shall we have one more?’ and she lifted her empty glass. This went on for half an hour and I was beginning to wonder if I had brought enough money with me when she finally decided it was time to eat. We went into the restaurant.
Two skimpily dressed girls were doing a song and dance routine on a dais near the band as we took our seats. They were good, and so was the band. It was while we were working through the river trout that a party arrived at a table near ours. I could tell they were important by the way the maitre d’hotel brought them down the aisle. He walked backwards and flourished his arms. If he had had a flag he would have waved it.
There were two girls and two men. The girl who led the way caught my attention. She was around twenty- six: small, compact, with a shape under her flame coloured evening gown that made my eyes pop. She was dark, and her glossy black hair was piled up on her perfectly shaped head. Her face was as lovely as a greek sculpture; cold, perhaps a little hard, and very, very haughty. But there was a flame burning within her that made her more than a beautiful woman: it made her alive, desirable, seductive and feminine as Helen of Troy must have been feminine.
She was magnet to men. There wasn’t a man in the restaurant, including the band and the waiters, who didn’t look as if he wanted to be her escort. You could see the expressions on their faces change when they caught sight of her: they were hungry for her; very, very hungry. I caught myself wondering if I looked like that too. I felt maybe I did.
The other girl with her was nothing to look at; pleasant, a little too plump, wealthy of course, but the dark Helen of Troy need never worry about her as a rival.
The two men were the usual rich, well fed, middle-aged guys you can see any day after ten-thirty a.m. controlling large syndicates, banks or chain stores. You could almost hear their ulcers creak as they moved, and their port wine faces told of their fiery tempers.
‘Don’t you know better than to stare?’ Suzy asked crossly.
‘Am I the only one?’ I said and grinned at her. ‘Who is she? Not the one with the big bosom, but the dark, little one.’
Suzy raised her lip scornfully.
‘I can’t imagine why men go for her. I think she’s nothing but a horrible, oversexed animal.’
‘I like animals,’ I said, ‘I once got a medal for saving a dog from drowning. Who is she?’
‘I thought everyone knew her. My goodness! Even if I did have her money, I would know better than to make an exhibition of myself the way she does. Why Piero doesn’t go down on hands and knees when he shows her to her table I can’t imagine. He does everything else.’
I leaned forward and trying, without a lot of success, to keep my voice from shouting, repeated, ‘Who - is - she?’
‘I’m not deaf,’ Suzy said, recoiling. ‘Cornelia Van Blake if you must know.’ She lifted her elegant shoulders. ‘I should have thought even someone from New York would have known that.’
‘Cornelia Van Blake?’
I stared at Suzy, frowning. Where had I heard the name before? In what connection had I heard it?
‘Does she live in Tampa City?’
‘Of course. She has a house on West Summit and an estate of ten acres. In case you don’t know, West Summit is the high tone district of Tampa City. Only millionaires can afford to live there.’
Millionaires.
I felt a sudden creepy sensation crawl up my spine.
Of course! I remembered now. Cornelia Van Blake was the millionairess Joan Nichols had met in Paris. I remembered Janet Shelley’s exact words:
I looked again at the dark girl who was scanning the menu that the maitre d’hotel was holding for her. She didn’t look the type to me who would fraternize with an unsuccessful showgirl: she didn’t look the type to fraternize with anyone. If she ever sat next to an iceberg I would bet even money the iceberg would be the first to stoke up the fire.
‘Which one of those well fed guys is her husband?’ I asked.
Suzy wriggled impatiently.
‘My dear man, she is a widow. Her husband died last year. Don’t you know anything?’
‘That was his hard luck,’ I said, and making an effort, I dragged my eyes away from Mrs. Cornelia Van Blake and continued to bone my river trout.
I found I wasn’t hungry any more - anyway, not for the trout.
CHAPTER NINE
I
It wasn’t until Suzy and I had been dancing for some little time and had broken off to go to the bar for a drink that I brought Mrs. Cornelia Van Blake up again as a subject for conversation. Suzy had discovered I could dance. I haven’t a lot of talent beside concocting a good yarn, but dancing is one of my specialities. Suzy was pretty good herself, and after we had done one circuit of the floor, she unbent enough to say I was good. A second circuit found her unbending even more, and at the end of a particularly dashing tango, she was behaving almost like a human being.
‘Let’s get outside two big highballs,’ I said, ‘then we’ll come back and show them how it really should be done.’
‘Where did you learn to dance like that, Chet?’ she asked, linking her arm through mine.
Chet.
Well, it takes different ways and means to break them down. I wondered under what conditions, if any, Cornelia Van Blake would break down.
‘My dear woman, it’s not something you learn; it’s something you’re born with,’ I said airily.
Suzy giggled.
‘That serves me right. All right, I apologize for being high hat, but the men Hart asks me to take out sometimes are really the limit. You can’t imagine.’
‘Think nothing of it. A girl’s got to keep her dignity if she doesn’t keep anything else.’
She gave me an old-fashioned look.
‘And don’t think because you can dance, there’s anything else to it, because there isn’t.’
I pushed open the bar door.
‘Don’t start screaming for help until you’re being crowded,’ I said. ‘Who said I wanted anything else?’
‘I know an opening gambit when I hear one,’ she returned and climbed up on a stool and flapped her hands at the barman.
