‘Two highballs,’ I said, climbing up on the stool beside her. I took a quick look around the crowded bar in the hope of seeing Mrs. Van Blake again, but she wasn’t in the room. ‘I’ve often thought it would be nice to be a millionaire. If I wasn’t naturally lazy, I’d do something about it,’ I said after I had paid three times too much for the highballs. ‘Take that Van Blake girl. How much did you say she was worth?’
‘I didn’t say. No one knows. Her husband is supposed to have left her five million, but everyone thinks there was more than that. He invented some gadget to do with oil drilling, and they say the royalties on that alone are worth thousands a year. She’s lousy with money. Van Blake put the money up for this club. He had a controlling interest in it, but when he died, Cornelia sold out to Royce. He owns and runs it now.’
‘I wonder what he paid her?’ I said, looking around the plush bar.
Suzy shrugged.
‘Plenty. She wouldn’t part with anything for nothing.’
‘You said her husband died last year?’
‘That’s right. He was murdered.’
I nearly dropped my highball.
‘Murdered? How come? How did it happen?’
She stared at me.
‘The papers were full of it. Why don’t you read them if you have such an inquisitive nature?’
‘Never mind my nature. I bet the New York papers weren’t full of it. Anyway, I have better things to do than bother to read newspapers. I listen to the radio and let it go at that. Who murdered him?’
‘A poacher. Van Blake hated poachers. He used to ride over his estate every morning before seven o’clock, believe it or not and if he caught a poacher after his game, he set about him with his riding whip. Well, he did it once too often. He got shot, and served him right.’
‘He sounds like the Feudal type. What happened to the poacher?’
She shrugged. The subject obviously didn’t interest her.
‘I don’t know. He got away. The police never found him.’
She finished her highball and slid off the stool. ‘Come on; let’s dance. I can’t be too late tonight. I’ve got to pose for Hart tomorrow around noon, and I don’t want to look like a corpse.’
‘That, madam, you could never do,’ I said gallantly, and followed her back to the restaurant.
We danced until one o’clock, and then Suzy said she had to go home.
All the time I had been in the club I had kept my eyes open for Hamilton Royce, but I didn’t see anyone who looked remotely like what I imagined he would look like.
As we were leaving the restaurant, I asked, ‘Isn’t Royce on show tonight? I wanted to catch sight of him.’
‘I haven’t seen him. He’s not always on show,’ Suzy said indifferently. She paused in the lobby. ‘Wait for me here. I won’t be long.’
I watched her disappear into the Ladies retiring room. Quite a crowd were leaving by now, and the lobby was pretty congested. I backed against the far wall to get out of their way. To my right was a passage, and at the far end, I saw an oak-panelled door. It was a pretty plush looking door, and it aroused my curiosity. Behind such a door the owner of a nightclub as gaudy as the Golden Apple might conceivably dwell. I had come to the club for the express purpose of getting a look at Mr. Hamilton Royce and so far I had been unlucky.
I didn’t hesitate for more than a couple of seconds. I could always say I thought the door led to the gentlemen’s retiring room.
I looked quickly around the lobby. The receptionist was busy totting up the night’s loot. The hat check girl was surrounded by departing members, all clamouring for their hats. Juan, still flashing the knife blades in his eyes, was bowing to a fat, important looking man, obviously a Senator, who was leaving. Three flunkeys were occupied on the steps of the entrance, whistling up cars.
No one was paying me the slightest attention.
I edged to the opening of the corridor, then walked, not too quickly and as nonchalantly as I could, towards the oak paneled door. I turned the door handle and pushed gently. The door swung inwards as silently as a leaf settling on the ground.
I looked into a big, luxuriously furnished room: a man’s room; a man with plenty of money to spend on his comforts, and who hadn’t missed a trick in satisfying those comforts. I didn’t let my eyes roam around the room longer than a split second.
The man and woman struggling silently by the fireplace caught and held my attention.
The woman was Cornelia Van Blake. The man was tall and thin and handsome, with an eyebrow moustache and the beautiful tan of a sun lizard.
He had hold of Cornelia, the way Rudolph Valentino used to get hold of his women in the silent movie days. He held her two wrists in one hand, his right arm was around her waist, and he was bending her back while he tried to clamp his mouth down on hers.
She was struggling to break free, and she must have been stronger than she looked for I could see he was having his work cut out to hold her.
When a man forces his attention on any woman it has always seemed to me that he is presenting himself as a target for violence.
I don’t often use violence as I’m too lazy to make the effort, but during the war, when I was unfortunate to get drafted into the Marines, I was the undisputed lightweight champion of my battalion, only because I found it less exhausting than getting on the wrong side of my battalion commander who was a boxing fanatic.
Without considering the consequences, I took two quick steps into the room.
The tall man let go of Cornelia and faced me, his eyes glittering with fury. To ease his embarrassment, I hung a right hook on the side of his jaw. It was a nice punch, and the results on him were devastating.
He shot backwards, thudded against his desk, swept some costly gewgaws to the floor and slid down on top of them.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t appear sooner,’ I said to Cornelia who was adjusting the top of her topless dress that had slipped a few inches during the infighting.
She didn’t even thank me.
I’ve seen angry women in my time, but never one as angry as she was at this moment. She was as white as a fresh fall of snow and her eyes blazed like red hot embers as they say in Victorian novels.
She looked at me as if I were transparent, then looked at the tall man who was still lying on his back, although he was shaking his head and trying to get life back once more into focus, then she went out of the room, and as she passed me I felt scorched by the white-hot blast of her rage.
I sought relaxation by dipping into the gold cigarette box on the desk. I took a cigarette and lit it. One drag sent a tremor up to my memory. Egyptian Abdulla. I looked at the cigarette to make sure, then I looked at the tall man who was by now dragging himself to his feet. I remembered Bernie’s description of the mysterious Henry Rutland: over six foot, lean, suntanned, eyebrow moustache and a gold link bracelet on one wrist and a gold strap watch on the other.
This guy had a gold bracelet on his left wrist and a gold strap watch on his right. Even without the gold ornaments, the description fitted him like a glove.
But this seemed scarcely the time to step up, shake him by the hand and say, ‘Henry Rutland I presume.’
This seemed to me to be the time to ease myself out of the room, turn my discovery over in my mind at leisure and decide how best to make use of it.
As Royce staggered to his feet, clutching on to the desk for support, I took two steps towards the door, then paused.
The door had opened silently. Standing in the doorway, his swarthy, cruel face hard and set was Juan. In his right hand he held a .38 automatic and it was pointing at me.
II
For a long moment we stared at each other, then he stepped into the room and closed the door, setting his back against it. Royce sat down behind his desk. His fingers touched the side of his jaw. His eyes brooded
