Murder Takes No Holiday

10

Michael Shayne smoked a cigarette sitting in the darkness on the Englishman’s front steps. When he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel, he gulped the last of his drink and put the glass on a window sill. Powys was driving without lights. He coasted to a stop at the gate, and Shayne got in.

“Nice little Morris,” Powys said with satisfaction. “Amazing how easy it is to steal a car. Never did it before. I think it belongs to Miss Trivers, so let’s try not to get any bullet holes in it.”

He kept the lights off until they were a quarter of a mile from the Lodge. Then he decided not to run the risk of going through the town. Once again Shayne circled St. Albans on back roads.

“Don’t forget there’s a cop in front of the place,” Shayne reminded him.

“Never fear, never fear. That man is very much on my mind.”

They came in through the straggly unpaved streets of the Old Town. “Everybody asleep,” Powys observed. “Wouldn’t mind being asleep myself.”

They passed through the native market. After rejecting several possible parking places, Powys parked on a steep street beside the old church.

“I’ll look the situation over. Back in a tick.” He glanced at Shayne as he got out. “Pity you’re so bloody big, Mike. And that red hair. There’s no getting around it, you don’t look much like a tourist.”

He latched the door softly and disappeared. They were several blocks from the nightclub district; Shayne could see the fitful reflections from the big electric signs, which would go on blinking for another few hours. He heard a goombay band, perhaps playing in the Pirate’s Rendezvous. Beginning to feel trapped in the little car, he got out and stood waiting for Powys in the side doorway of the church. After a time he saw the Englishman coming up toward him rapidly. Seeing Shayne, Powys signalled. He turned and started back in the direction he had come. Shayne followed, keeping close to shop-fronts.

Powys stopped at the entrance to a narrow cobbled alley. “You’d better go in through the back,” he said as Shayne came up to him. “I couldn’t make out what kind of guard they have on the door, but with all those pretty gels in the floorshow, they must have something. I’ll pave the way. Another sudden attack of drunkenness is called for, I’m afraid. I’ll have quite a reputation before the night’s over.”

He nodded and plunged into the alley. At the next intersection he looked around the corner with care, and walked briskly across. A car went by. The instant Shayne heard the sound of the approaching motor he dove for a shadow and pressed hard against a damp wall. He waited until the car was well out of the neighborhood before he continued to the corner. Powys, across the street, waved jauntily. Without waiting for Shayne, he turned into the continuation of the alley. Shayne crossed the street at a run and saw Powys going up a short flight of steps that led into one of the buildings, probably the one that held the nightclub. The goombay band was resting between numbers, but even without the music there were muffled indications that the building was alive.

The Englishman’s walk suddenly became lurching and uncoordinated. He was gone by the time Shayne reached the top of the steps. The door was open, and the redhead looked into a long hall, poorly lit by a single 25-watt bulb. Powys was dancing solemnly with an old colored woman, who had apparently been watching the door. Shayne grinned. This was clearly a dance step of the Englishman’s invention, a weird combination of a cha-cha and a waltz. He held her in both arms, whirling her around and around while she shrieked with laughter and tried to push him away. He danced backward into an open doorway, looking down at her with his usual owlish solemnity. Shayne heard him say, “My good woman, you dance superbly.”

The redhead slipped past. Glancing to the left at the end of the hall, he saw a stove and a man in a chef’s hat, and heard the clatter of dishes. He turned right. A moment later he found himself at the foot of a steep iron staircase. Sticking a cigarette in his mouth, he looked around. A man in the costume worn by the orchestra came through a doorway mopping his forehead. A drum began to beat slowly.

“Where’s Vivienne?” Shayne asked casually.

“Working,” the man told him, without giving Shayne a second glance. “Her dressing room upstairs. First door.”

Shayne thanked him and went up. This part of the building, which the public never entered, was in a bad state of repair. The paint was peeling, the floors were dirty. He stood aside on the landing to let a dancer go by. She was barefooted, and wasn’t wearing much in the way of a costume. The first door at the top of the stairs was unmarked and without a latch. Shayne pushed it open and went in.

It was little more than a large closet. An unshaded bulb was burning above a make-up table with a fly-specked mirror. Clothes were thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. A small window that looked out on the alley was open as far as it would go, but the air in the room was heavy with the smell of cosmetic preparations and stale tobacco smoke.

Shayne lit his cigarette and made a quick survey of the room. One of the several dresses hanging along one wall had a Paris label, a sign that he was in the right place. He opened a small trunk, and found it filled with a jumble of costumes. He continued around the room, his deeply trenched face clearly showing his distaste for the job. He almost missed the small purse on the dressing table, amid a litter of jars and tubes and crumpled tissues. He cleared a space on the table and turned it inside out.

Below, the drum-beat had quickened. Shayne disregarded the few coins, the hairpins, lipstick and eye-tools. There were several torn scraps of newspaper and a folded letter. The drum-beat was now very fast; the girl’s number must be nearing its climax. He pulled the letter out of the soiled envelope and read it quickly. It was on a letterhead of the American consul, addressed to Mile. Vivienne Larousse at a St. Albans hotel. In stiff official language it listed the conditions under which French citizens could be assigned a quota number for permanent admission to the United States. Mile. Larousse’s chances, the consul seemed to feel, were not good.

Shayne thrust the letter back and picked up the newspaper clippings. The lines on his face deepened. They were radio schedules, like the one he had found in the Camel’s desk, and a light pencil-line had been drawn in the same way around several listings. The drummer in the main room of the nightclub was slapping his drum with mounting frenzy. He beat out a complicated series of rhythms in a final excited flurry, and there was an abrupt burst of applause. Shayne swept the assortment of objects back into the purse. Before he snapped it, he looked at the radio schedules again. One of the little circles had been drawn around the six o’clock news on Wednesday in the previous week. That was the exact moment when Albert Watts had locked his travel agency and walked off toward the bay, not to be seen again alive.

Closing the purse with a snap, Shayne stepped back against the opposite wall. His eyes were bleak. The crowd continued to applaud, and mixed with the clapping there were a few drunken shouts. Gradually the noise died. A moment or two later, Shayne heard the click of high heels on the iron steps. The door opened.

In addition to high-heeled slippers, all she seemed to be wearing was a light cotton wrap, which she wasn’t bothering to hold together. When Shayne had seen her earlier that evening, her face had been alert and interested. Her eyes had been alive. Now, coming into a mean, sordid room where she believed herself to be alone, her face sagged and was without luster. She seemed years older. Sitting down at the dressing table, she leaned forward to look without pleasure at her reflection in the mirror. She had reached up to take off her eyelashes when she saw Shayne.

“Hi,” he said.

She whirled. Her eyes were wide with shock.

“Now take it easy,” Shayne said. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

She wet her lips and took a deep breath, pulling the wrapper across her breast. “Mr. Shayne. You gave me a bad moment, do you realize that?”

“Sorry. I didn’t think I ought to walk in here with a brass band.” He pulled the trunk out from the wall and sat down. “How was the show? You got a nice hand.”

Some of her quick expressiveness came back to her face. “It was not too bad. But this last show is difficult, after midnight. All the undrunken ones have gone home, and the pigs who remain-I feel that we have been wallowing all of us in the same sty. It will be hours before I can sleep.”

“Maybe you ought to go into some other business.”

She gave him an angry look. “Unhappily, I have never learned to operate a typewriter. I do not wish to be a clerk in a store. That is not my talent. But I begin to think I have been wrong, I am a third-rate artist and such I shall always be. And yet, here in this third-rate place, is it possible to be anything else? If I stay here much longer, I predict what will happen. One night after this last show, I will come up here and I will not have the courage to look myself in the face, which is necessary to change my make-up. And I will shoot myself.”

“I doubt if you’ll do that, baby,” Shayne said. “Not so long as half the population of the world is male. You may not make it in show business, but I think you’ll make it.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “This I hope is a compliment.”

“Have the cops been bothering you?”

She made a scornful sound. “I am not bothered by flics, of any nation. Somebody told them you and I danced together, so they asked me questions. They showed me a picture. It was bad, very fuzzy, on one of those little police placards. I did not recognize it. And you? Did you see the Camel?”

“Yeah, I saw him,” Shayne said. “It seemed to me we were getting to be pretty good friends, but then we had an argument and now I don’t think he likes me.”

“Then I am sorry. I do not like you either.”

“It’s not that simple. All I want from you is a little information. He won’t know I’ve been here unless you tell him.”

“And why should I not tell him? I dislike this job of his very much, but I would dislike even more to be without it. In three weeks’ time, I would be deported.”

“Didn’t you say something about wanting to go to America?”

A gleam appeared in her eye. She turned toward him a little, moving the chair so her wrapper opened. “Are you going to take me?”

Shayne grinned. “Don’t waste it on me. Your best bet is still Paul Slater.”

A wrinkle sprang up between her eyes. “What do you know about Paul Slater?”

“Quite a bit, baby. I made friends with the night clerk at the Half Moon. He didn’t know your name but he could describe you. Before he was finished the poor guy was drooling. It seems you’ve been coming there to see Slater.”

She thought a moment. “I would like a cigarette, please.”

He took out his pack, shook out a cigarette for her and held the match. She put her hand on his wrist as she took the light, then breathed out smoke slowly and looked up at him through her long artificial eyelashes.

“The Camel always keeps a supply of gasoline on his boat. I know where to get more. Do you know boats?”

“I know boats,” Shayne said, “but I don’t know the water around here. And you can’t get a nightclub ticket in the States unless you come in legally.”

She laughed bitterly. “If I put my name on the list now, perhaps there will be a place for me when I am eighty-nine. Of course I can always meet some lonely American and become married. There will be no nonsense about having a job waiting, having two sponsors, to guarantee I will not cost your rich government any money. But it is not so simple to get married as people think. The only American bachelors who come to St. Albans are college freshmen on Christmas vacation. It is said that Americans marry younger each year. But not these children. They have other thoughts besides marriage. And as for men like Paul Slater, they are married already. Did your friend the night clerk tell you that the last thing Paul Slater will ever do is get a divorce from his wife?”

“But what if his wife gets a divorce from him?” Shayne said.

“Oh?” she said, interested. “Now that, I concede, had not occurred to me.”

He let her think about it. The door was swinging in a slight draught. Shayne pulled it open and looked out; the corridor was empty. He closed the door and leaned against it to keep it closed.

“I’m not too up-to-date on the situation,” he said, “but I may know a couple of angles you don’t. His wife has had nothing but bad breaks all her life. Maybe that’s why he won’t ask for a divorce, he’s afraid she’d crack up and he’d have it on his conscience. By this time she probably knows all about how he’s been two-timing her with a nightclub dancer. That’s a hard secret to keep in a place like this. They’ve been fighting like cats and dogs-that’s another thing the night clerk told me. I used to take her out before she and Slater got married. I still go for her. This might be just the right moment for me to show up.”

“I see,” she said slowly. “And what do you want from me?”

“I’m not sure how much of this you already know. The Camel picked her up tonight to use as a handle against Slater. Slater was ready to skip, and the only way Alvarez could hold him was by threatening to kill his wife. Slater fell for it.”

“Do not fool yourself,” she said. “If Luis Alvarez says he will do something of that nature, he will do it.”

Shayne laughed. “It’s an act, honey. He’s a big frog down here, but it’s not much of a puddle. Back home we send people like that out for coffee. The point is, where did he take her? It’s a country place, half an hour by taxi from the airport. I can’t spend my time ringing doorbells. I want to show up before anybody gets hurt.”

She looked at him speculatively. “And you think she will jump into your arms?”

“She just might,” Shayne said briefly. “Even if she doesn’t, I’m tender-hearted where this blonde is concerned. I don’t want any of those creeps to shove her around. But she’s mad at Paul. First on account of you, then because he got her into this mess. Who knows? Maybe she’ll cry on my shoulder, and we’ll get talking about old times. One thing leads to another, and she gives Paulie-boy the boot. It could happen.”

“That is why you came here, when the police are looking for you?”

“I didn’t know they were looking for me,” Shayne said. “I’m gone on the doll, but not that gone. How about this place in the country. Do you know where it is?”

“I think so,” she said. “But I have not yet decided to tell you. If something goes wrong, and the Camel finds out I was talking to you-”

“Honey,” Shayne said patiently, “he thinks the cops have got me. When I turn up, the whole thing is going to be a big surprise. Why should he connect me with you?”

She made a gesture toward the wretched little room and burst out, “I am sick to death of all this! It is only a tiny chance, I know that, and I am a fool to take it. But I am sick of the Camel, too, if you wish to know. First tell me. Is it true that Paul hit him with a wrench?”

“Somebody did. He thinks it was Paul.”

She shook her head. “It is a side of Paul I have not seen. Yes, I think I will take this chance, like a fool. You have a car?”

Shayne nodded. In a rush, as though to get it out before she changed her mind, she said, “Go out of town toward the north. Drive ten, twelve kilometers. You will come to a crossroads, the main road across the island. Turn left. Now another fifteen kilometers. It is a new house on a mountain. Many windows. The sign at the turn says-” She thought a moment. “P. Smith. Or perhaps another initial. I remember a single initial, then the name Smith.” She added, reminiscently, “The pig.”

Shayne repeated the directions, hoping the turns would be easy to find in the dark. She stood up and put a hand on his shoulder.

“There will be others besides Alvarez there. Four, I think. Take care of yourself. It would be too bad if something happened to you.”

“I agree with you,” Shayne said. “Thanks, baby. I’ll be careful going out.”

Her hand slid along his upper arm. She was being very careless with the wrapper.

“Do you know,” she said, “if the virtuous Mrs. Slater decides to remain true to her husband, you could do worse than come for me.”

Shayne grinned and shook his head. “Uh-uh. I think you’ll make some lucky man a nice wife, but I know too much about you.”

She came even closer to him. Her lips were parted, and her perfume overcame the other smells in the room. In a low husky whisper she said, “Forget.”

Shayne felt behind him for the doorknob. “You’ve made your point. Don’t push it. I’ve got just one more question. Did you ever run into a guy named Albert Watts?”

Her eyes changed slightly.

“You recognize the name?” Shayne said, improvising quickly. “Good. I heard tonight that Watts was the one who tipped off the customs on Slater. I might be able to use this with Martha. Besides being a Casanova and a smuggler, what if he’s a killer? I’ll be careful with it, because it’s the sort of thing that can boomerang. If you don’t feel like answering, say so.”

She shrugged. “It was nothing. Six months or so ago, Paul asked me to become friendly with this man. It was arranged that we meet by chance. I was charming as always, but he put his tail between his legs and ran. Paul laughed about it. He said I frightened the poor man.” She smiled up at Shayne. “But how could that be?”

Shayne said, “Paul didn’t bring it up again?”

“No, the next time I heard the name, someone said he was killed in a quarrel of some kind. I am only interested in living people. That is all? Then I think I must give you one kiss before you go.”

She came up on her toes. Her hands slipped around his body, inside his coat. Her fingers were on the overlapping layers of adhesive tape beneath his shirt.

It isn’t necessary to be a private detective to have an accident requiring that kind of bandage. It can happen to anybody, even to the hoodlum Shayne was pretending to be. But for some reason that little touch was all the girl needed. A spark flared in her eyes.

She said coldly, “So the Camel thinks the police have got you? And I see that they have not. Does that mean you are a policeman yourself?”

Shayne snorted. “Do I look like a cop?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Little things have made me wonder about you, and all at once I think that is just what you look like, a cop.”

She glanced at the door, then whirled and ran to the little window. He caught her in two strides and clapped a hand over her mouth before she could make any noise. His other arm was around her waist. She struggled against him, throwing herself from side to side. She had a dancer’s body-smooth and controlled. She tried to bite his hand, but he was gripping her too tightly.

After a moment she stopped resisting. He kept his hand over her mouth.

“If you’re going to start using your head this late in the day,” he said, “really use it. I’m a private detective. I faked up that flier the cops showed you. They had their hands on me tonight but I got away. I made them look a little stupid. That’s something no cop likes, I don’t care who he is. So I’m in the middle.”

She tried to speak.

“No, listen to me,” Shayne went on. “If I let you yell out the window, do you really think there’s anybody here who can stop me? Don’t be stupid. All that would happen is that the Camel would know you gave me directions. It wouldn’t matter to him who you thought you were talking to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

After a second he felt her nod.

“All right. I’ll let you go now, but if you make a move in any direction I’ll forget it’s bad manners to slug a lady.”

He took his hand from her mouth first. When she made no attempt to yell he released her. She whirled, pulling the wrapper together, and looked at him defiantly. Her lipstick was badly smeared.

“Get out of here!” she cried.

“You mean you’ve stopped wanting to kiss me?”

She glared at him, but in another second she smiled slightly. “I didn’t say that. I said to get out of here.”

“Maybe I’d better tie you up before I go,” Shayne said. “Alvarez may have a phone at that place of his. I wouldn’t want you to tell him I’m coming.”

She flared up again. “Try it! You will have a fight on your hands, Michael Shayne!”

Shayne laughed. “I think I could win it, but somebody might come in and untie you.” He studied her. “O.K., baby, get some clothes on.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m going with you?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Shayne said, becoming completely serious. “It’s the only way you can get off the hook. Do it right and the Camel won’t know you helped me. Slater won’t be any good to you dead. If I get him out of there in one piece, you can claim all the credit for it. Maybe he’ll be grateful.”

She said suspiciously, “Who is paying you?”

“Mrs. Slater,” Shayne answered impatiently. “It’s also true that because she’s an old friend of mine she isn’t paying me much. And there’s one thing I didn’t mention. I have a tape of a phone conversation between you and the Camel earlier tonight. You were a little cold-blooded at a couple of points there, I thought. It might hurt Paul’s feelings if he heard it.”

“You wouldn’t-”

“It would be a dirty trick, wouldn’t it?” Shayne said. “It might even give him the idea that you don’t really love him.”

“So,” she said after a pause. “Since you ask me so nicely, I will get dressed. Turn around, please.”

“Turn around, hell,” Shayne said. “And get a knife between my shoulder blades?”

She stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “In some ways you are rather impressive, you know?”

“Come on, come on,” Shayne said. “We don’t have all the time in the world.”

He put another cigarette in his mouth as she shrugged out of her wrapper.