It’s the McCoy

Chapter Four Night-Club Confessional

The Hawaiian dancers in the floor show, accompanied by twanging guitars and the chanting of weird Polynesian melodies, swayed through the concluding motions of the hula. The music rose to an emotional crescendo, then died away on that peculiar, plaintive note which characterizes Hawaiian music. For a moment, the girls were motionless. Then they bowed as lights came on, and diners burst into applause.

Paul Pry smiled across into the watchful eyes of Merva Bond. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

“Oh, I thought it was wonderful,” she said. “I think those Island dances are just—” She broke off in the middle of the sentence. Her face twisted into an expression of pain as she pressed her hand against her left side. Her breath came in a quick, gasping intake. Then once more, the smile was back on her face. “I just adore those Islanders,” she said. “Some day I’m going to Honolulu and learn to do the hula. Tell me, Mr. Bock, do you suppose I could get one of these girls to teach me how to do the hula?”

“You might try,” Paul Pry said, his forehead wrinkling with sympathy. “What’s the matter? Does your side hurt?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, laughing. “Just a little catch that comes in there sometimes, a little twinge of pain, at the most unexpected moments.”

“Forget it,” Paul Pry said. “It will be all right in a day or two. Probably just a little aftermath of the accident. I certainly feel like a criminal spoiling your vacation.”

“Oh, but you haven’t! You’re making it simply wonderful!”

Paul Pry inclined his head. “Dead game!” he muttered, half under his breath.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a thought that slipped out.”

“A good thought?” she asked.

“Very good.”

Suddenly her eyes accused him. “You’ve been stringing me,” she charged.

“Stringing you?” Paul Pry asked.

“Yes. You told me that you were a sharpshooter going around looking for investments.”

“But I am,” Paul Pry insisted.

Her eyes were hard as steel. “You,” she said, “are the business manager for Mr. John J. Smith who has the most expensive suite in the Altamont Hotel, and Mr. Smith, as tomorrow morning’s newspaper will announce, is in reality the Rajah of Rajore.”

Paul Pry’s face showed surprise. “You do get around, don’t you?”

“I found out about it,” she told him, “by accident.”

Paul Pry’s face twisted into a frown of annoyance.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Do you resent my asking that you be fair with me?”

“No,” Paul Pry said, “but I didn’t want to tell you. And yet I couldn’t go on deceiving you, but I had to.”

“Why did you have to deceive me?” she asked.

Paul Pry shook his shoulders as though shaking off a burden of deception. “All right,” he said, “if you want to know the truth, I’m an international gem thief. The Rajah of Rajore has a ruby on his turban that’s worth something over a quarter of a million. There’s no ruby exactly like it anywhere on earth. I happen to want that ruby.”

Paul Pry scraped back his chair.

“Now then,” he said, “you understand why I didn’t want you to know. You’re too nice a girl to associate with crooks, and yet I couldn’t keep on lying to you. This will be good-bye. It was swell while it lasted.”

Her eyes were big and starry. “Oh,” she said, “I respect you so much for telling me. And, after all, you know, I don’t think it’s exactly a crime to rob the very rich and— Well,” she rushed on, with a quick, nervous laugh, “anything that you do seems absolutely all right. I—” Her face twisted into a spasm of pain. “Oh,” she said, “that hurts. Excuse me. I’ve — I must go to the restroom and lie down for a moment. Promise me you won’t leave. Promise that no matter what happens, you won’t go away, that you’ll stay here and wait for me. I want to see you. I want to talk with you. But I can’t now. Oh, my side hurts!”

Paul Pry was on his feet, bending solicitously over her. She let him pull back her chair, walk for a few steps at her side, then said, “Wait, please. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and threaded her way along the crowded dance floor to disappear behind the curtains of the ladies’ room.

Paul Pry beckoned to the girl who was selling cigars and cigarettes.

“Want to make five bucks, sister?” he asked.

Her face was, for the moment, coldly scornful. Then, as her eyes studied his profile, the corners of her lips twisted slightly into a smile.

“How?” she asked.

“The jane who was with me,” Paul Pry said, “is a married woman. There’s just a chance she may be taking me for the old badger game. She slipped into the ladies’ room, and I think she’s telephoning. She’s a blonde with a—”

“Yes, I noticed her,” the cigarette girl said. “What do I do?”

“Slip in there and hear as much of the conversation as you can, then relay it back to me.”

“For five bucks?” she asked.

“For ten, if you make a good job of it,” Paul Pry said.

She flashed him a smile over her shoulder as she vanished in the direction of the dressing-room.

Five minutes later she was back, bending over the table, her tray, with its assortment of cigars and cigarettes, held temptingly close, so that the aroma of tobacco drifted to Paul Pry’s nostrils. Her smile was disarming, cordial, and impersonal.

“Cigars?” she asked. “Cigarettes?”

Paul Pry gravely indicated a package of cigarettes, and took a wallet from his pocket.

She tore open the cigarette package, and, as Paul Pry took a cigarette, bent close to hold a lighted match.

“You’re hooked,” she said, as Paul Pry inhaled the first, deep drag from the cigarette. “She’s calling a guy she calls Soup, and says she’s all set to take you to the cleaners. That you’re not to be rubbed out right away, because you’re going to pull a chestnut out of the fire first.”

Paul Pry said, “Thanks,” and handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

“Just a moment and I’ll get you your change.”

He shook his head. “My compliments,” he said.

She smiled down at him. “Sorry that the rose you picked was so full of thorns,” she said. “Try me some night. I haven’t any husband,” and she was gone, moving along the table repeating in a voice of cultivated sweetness: “Cigars? Cigarettes?”

It was ten minutes before Merva Bond returned. She had removed every trace of make-up from her face. Her lips were no longer a vivid splash of crimson. Her cheeks had ceased to glow with orange rouge. She looked ghastly white, and the quivering pallor of her lips would have aroused masculine sympathy in the breast of any man who had not made an intensive study of feminine facial embellishments.

“I’m afraid,” she said, putting a quivering hand on Paul Pry’s arm, “this spell isn’t going to go away. I think I’d better go lie down, if you don’t mind. Will you take me home, please?”

Paul Pry responded at once with the swift action of a born executive. He sent waiters scurrying to find his waiter and bring the check. The hat-check girl came to the dining-room to bring Merva Bond’s wraps, and the doorman had a taxicab drawn up at the curb, waiting.

Merva Bond smiled her gratitude with pale lips as Paul Pry handed her into the cab.

Directly behind the cab was a black sedan with four men seated in it. These men had their chins lowered into their coat collars, wide-brimmed hats pulled low over their foreheads, shading their faces. They sat grim, tense, purposeful.

Merva Bond raised her eyes, caught the gaze of the driver, and gently shook her head.

The driver turned and said something to the men in the rear seat. Then the touring car turned from the curb and vanished into the traffic.