She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

Chapter III

The Club Rotunda didn’t open until four p.m. and at five after four there wasn’t as yet a customer in the place. Waiters, finished with setting up their tables, stood about in groups, chatting. The bartender, his back bar already spick-and-span and his ice-well full of cubes, brooded over a racing form. Club Manager Sam Black, wearing a dark suit which had been cleverly tailored to minimize the massiveness of his chest and make him look less like a gorilla, had completed his final check of details and stood near the front door with a stupid expression on his face.

Black had deliberately cultivated the expression to hide a remarkably shrewd intelligence because it came in handy when customers he didn’t know inquired about the casino upstairs. He had used it so much that sometimes, as now, it automatically formed when it wasn’t needed.

An attractive young woman with golden-blond hair curling about a delicately featured face came in the front door and stopped hesitantly just inside. Sam Black, accustomed to judging the social status of patrons at a glance, automatically noted the good quality of the white knit suit she wore before noting the delectable manner in which it caressed the shapely body beneath it. Then he took a second look and wondered if he was getting old.

Approaching her, he erased the accidentally stupid expression and smiled pleasantly. “Table or bar, Miss?”

“Neither, thanks,” she said. “I’m just looking for a job.”

Black looked surprised. She didn’t impress him as the sort of girl who would have to settle for a waitress job. With her face, figure and well-bred bearing, it seemed to him she would have little trouble getting a job as a dress model. He said, “We don’t use waitresses. Only waiters.”

“Oh.”

“We use some girls — a cocktail hostess, a cloakroom girl and a cigarette girl — but I’m afraid those jobs are all filled.” He spoke with real regret, for she was not only a lovely girl, but the intangible air of breeding about her appealed to him. She possessed the aura of “class” he liked in Rotunda employees and which he found so hard to get.

“I see,” she said. “Thank you, anyway.”

She was starting to turn when he said, “Just a minute. There may be something upstairs in the... uh... banquet room. Let me check with the boss.”

Walking over to an alcove next to the cloakroom, he lifted a house phone and spoke into it. After a short wait he said, “Clancy? Didn’t you say something last night about needing a new girl up there?”

There was a pause. “Come on down and talk to one who just came in,” he said.

Hanging up, he said to the waiting girl, “There may be a vacancy in the upstairs cloakroom. The boss will be right down.”

A few moments later the mirrored doors of an elevator — directly across the room from the front door — opened and a slim man just under six feet tall stepped out. Only about thirty, or possibly a couple of years older, he had prematurely silver hair that was a startling contrast to his finely arched coal-black eyebrows. His even-featured, somewhat aristocratic face was slightly marred by a thin scar running from his left ear nearly to the point of his chin, but it didn’t really detract from his appearance. The girl decided it only made him look more interesting.

As he walked toward them, the controlled animal grace of his movements struck the girl at once. Though his pace approached indolence, there was something in his manner which suggested perfect physical co-ordination.

Halting a pace from her, the man exposed even white teeth in a friendly grin, then glanced at Black and said, “This the lady, Sam?”

“Uh-huh. This is the Rotunda’s owner, Clancy Ross, Miss. I don’t believe you gave me your name.”

“How do you do,” she said to Ross. “I’m Stella — Graves.”

Sam Black, catching the hesitation before the last name, hiked up his eyebrows and looked at Ross. The latter gave no indication that he had noticed it.

“Sam says you’re looking for a job,” Ross said.

“Yes. As I told Mr.... ah—”

“His name’s Sam Black,” Ross said. “He didn’t introduce himself because he has no manners. I just keep him around as a pet.”

“You keep me around to do your work while you play,” Black said without rancor.

A couple came in the front door. Black said, “Excuse me,” and moved toward them.

“Shall we discuss it at the bar?” Ross suggested, lightly taking her elbow and steering her in that direction.

At the bar she ordered a martini and he a Scotch and soda. When he offered her a cigarette, she shook her head. Flipping one into his own mouth, he brought out a silver lighter and touched flame to it. Again his remarkable physical co-ordination called attention to itself. Even in so simple an act as lighting a cigarette he exhibited flowing grace; his movements reminded her of those of some master swordsman.

When the drinks were before them and both had sampled them, Ross said, “The only job open at the moment is in the upstairs cloakroom. Interested in that?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Ross. That would be fine.”

“The name is Clancy,” he said. “If I hire you, I’m Mr. Ross in front of patrons, Clancy in private.”

She smiled. “All right, Clancy.”

“Why are you interested in a cloakroom job?”

Her smiled faded. “What do you mean?”

“Cloakroom attendant is a perfectly honorable profession requiring rather definite qualifications. Physical attractiveness and a pleasant personality are musts, for instance, at least at Club Rotunda. But it hardly requires either education or brains. Your speech and manner indicate you have some of both. I’d guess you’ve been to college, or at least some secretarial school.”

She stared at him, then looked away again. “Secretarial school,” she said in a small voice, and took a sip of her drink.

“Can’t you get a secretarial job?”

“I—” She paused and shrugged hopelessly.

“I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable,” he said kindly. “But as your possible employer I feel justified in knowing something about your background. You don’t have to tell me, but then, of course, I won’t be able to hire you.”

In the same small voice she said, “You mean you’ll have to check references and things for just an old cloakroom job?”

“With tips it runs to about a hundred and fifty dollars a week, if you call that just an old job,” he said dryly. “But that isn’t the point. I’m rather careful about who I put upstairs. If you turned out to be something like a runaway heiress, and reporters found you working here, it would be splashed all over the papers. I couldn’t afford the publicity.”

She looked at him in surprise. “I don’t happen to be a runaway heiress, but I should think that type of publicity would help a supper club.”

Lifting his glass, he regarded her quizzically across the top of it as he sipped his drink. When he set it down again, he said, “Don’t you know what’s upstairs?”

“Mr. Black said a banquet room.”

He grinned. “You must be brand-new in town.”

“Three days. I just came in here at random looking for work. What is upstairs?”

“Any St. Stephen native could tell you — a gambling casino. It’s quite illegal, but I pay protection to certain greedy officials, so the law tolerates me. This town is full of gambling casinos, not to mention book shops, bordellos and other dens of vice. It’s what’s known as a wide-open town.”

“Oh,” she said a trifle blankly.

“Do you have moral scruples against working in a casino?”

She shook her head. “Unless you cheat.”

He grinned. “I’m a gambler, not a con man. I have a widespread reputation for honesty.”

“A wider one for pig-headedness,” Sam Black’s voice said behind them.

Both turned, but the manager of the downstairs legitimate night club had merely been passing along the bar and had thrown in the comment as he passed.

“He’s not very respectful, considering he’s your employee,” the girl said.

“Sam’s my severest critic,” Ross admitted. “Also one of my oldest friends. He’s a little more than just an employee. In practice he’s more like a partner. But to get back to you, what’s your real name?”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know Stella Graves isn’t?”

“Intuition. Let’s stop sparring. I really have to know something about you before I can risk putting you on upstairs.”

For a few moments she studied his face. Finally she said, “My first name is really Stella. There’s a reason I can’t use my true last name, but it isn’t because I’ve done anything wrong. I’m not wanted by the police anywhere.”

“You hardly impressed me as a criminal type. But you’re running from something, and I’d have to know a little about it before I could put you on.”

“Will you accept my word if I swear it’s the truth, and not insist on writing references so that people would know where I am?”

He shrugged. “I’m a gambler. Besides, you haven’t lied very effectively so far. I think I’ll know if you’re telling the truth.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m trying to avoid being found by someone, but if I am, I can guarantee he won’t want newspaper publicity any more than you do. I’ll also guarantee that if he appears, I’ll quietly move on without being a bother to you.”

“A persistent suitor?” the gambler hazarded.

She shook her head. “Something else, I can’t tell you any more than I have, so if that’s not enough, I’ll have to look for work somewhere else.”

Clancy Ross smiled. “I guess I’ll take a chance. This is the present cloakroom girl’s last night, because she gets married in the morning. She’s marrying one of my richest patrons, and after she gets him, she’ll probably object to his gambling. You couldn’t cause me any more trouble than that. Be here at four p.m. tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile of relief.