The Case of the Fan-Dancer's Horse

Chapter number 4

Palomino had originally been a rough western crossroads town. Then overnight, with the advent of heavy construction work on the big dam, the place had mushroomed into a ready-made city.

The old time buildings, dilapidated and unpainted, had furnished the nucleus for a hastily constructed business district composed of tents, tent-houses, old refrigerator freight cars converted into little storerooms, and occasionally trailers parked broadside to the street, with boards bearing appropriate names tacked along the side.

The Grand Millinery Company did business in a trailer.

The Elite Ready-to-Wear was housed in a reconstructed freight car and The Ritz Hotel consisted of an elaborate front behind which were some four or five dozen tent-houses, arranged in rows like army barracks.

The sprawling unpainted building which had been known as Myer’s Hall in the days when an occasional mountain dance had been held at the crossroads, now housed a tumultuous night club known as “The Shamrock.”

Electricity had become one of the cheapest commodities available and over the strange assortment of human habitations, lights blazed in white brilliance. Reconditioned box cars sported glaring red neon signs and on the sides of “The Shamrock” an artist had painted a trifoliate in vivid green, the color being further enhanced by green lights. These lights invested the place with a weird and bizarre unreality. Men and women moving in and out of the night club assumed for the moment the ghastly appearance of animated corpses.

Inside the place, the floor had been crowded with tables until only a small square remained at one side of the barnlike room, and here a five-piece “orchestra” manufactured music which made up in volume anything it lacked in harmony.

Perry Mason and Della Street, having by virtue of an out-of-town mien secured a table near the orchestra, exchanged snatches of conversation in between numbers of the floor show and the blaring of the music.

“There is,” Della Street observed over her coffee, “a rough and ready air about the place that’s... well, it’s like waiting for dynamite to be set off.”

“It’s rough and it’s ready for trouble,” Mason said.

A broad-shouldered, ham-fisted man in a coarse suit which hung loosely from the belt, but which was stretched taut across the powerful shoulders, stood over the table grinning.

“Beg your pardon, Mister,” he said to Perry Mason, “but we’re just a little short of dancing partners up here. I’m a committee from the table over there. A committee of one. We think the young lady had ought to dance.”

Della Street flashed him a smile. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m not dancing tonight.”

“Well, now, that’s a shame. We couldn’t change your mind?”

Her smile was friendly, but her voice was firm. “Definitely not. I’m sorry.”

“So’m I.”

The man stood there awkwardly for a moment, then turned and walked back to a table where three other men were sitting. His face reddened somewhat at the raucous laughter of their greeting as he once more sat down.

“I wish she’d come out,” Della Street said, “and let us get out of here. You sent her a message, Chief?”

“That’s right — through the master of ceremonies. And the five-dollar bill that I used as a postage stamp should have been a guarantee of delivery.”

The lights dimmed and the master of ceremonies announced the feature performance of the evening, little Miss Cherie Chi-Chi, the wonderful, incomparable light-footed dancer.

The orchestra made noise. The lights went down until there was almost total darkness, then flared up in a deep green simulation of moonlight. Bare feet thudded on the floor. From the crowded masculine humanity which packed the place came an audible inhalation, and then, whirling around, with plumed fans showing startlingly white against the deep color of the spotlight, a girl glided into the center of the floor.

For a moment Cherie Chi-Chi stood poised, smiling, the fans held so as to conceal much of her body. Then the fans began to move. The slender white body glided through a series of dance steps. The light, a deep violet, now showed high, pointed breasts, a slender waist, smooth hips.

As the eyes of the audience accustomed themselves to the semi-darkness, it seemed that the light was getting stronger. The tempo of the orchestra became faster and faster. Then, suddenly the figure faced the audience. The fans opened for a moment, then were pressed tightly against the body and the girl’s smiling face, white gleaming teeth and the waving plumes of the fan caught the light as she backed from the dance floor, then suddenly turned and vanished through the entrance to the dressing rooms.

The flimsy walls of the place threatened to bulge out and collapse with the roar of applause.

The lights went on hurriedly, signifying that there would be no encore.

Della Street glanced at Mason. “Some dance,” she said.

“Darn good-looking kid,” Mason observed. “Apparently she has no Mexican blood though, very white skin, red hair— The eyes, I believe, were blue.”

“Yes, I saw you studying her face.”

Mason grinned.

The audience continued to demand an encore, but the master of ceremonies announced two gifted hula dancers straight from the Island of Oahu. Someone started ukulele music and once more the lights went down.

The grass-skirted, full-figured, tawny girls who bounded out into the spotlight soon demonstrated their ability to hold the attention of a masculine audience anywhere.

By the conclusion of the second hula, the two Hawaiians had so completely captivated the audience no one recognized Cherie Chi-Chi, attired now in a neat-fitting suit of small patterned plaid which made it almost appear to be a tweed, when she glided quietly up to Mason’s table.

He was on his feet at once. “Do sit down,” he invited.

“Thank you. The head waiter gave me your note.”

“I’m Mr. Mason. This is Miss Street, my secretary.”

She smiled a greeting to Della, said to Mason, “You’re the man who put the ad in the paper in El Centro?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see a Mr. Callender?” she asked.

“I saw him.”

“Oh,” she said, shortly, and made no other comment.

“How about a drink?” Mason asked.

She nodded. A waiter who had been watching her attentively, glided quickly to her side.

“The usual thing, Harry,” she said.

The waiter glanced inquiringly at Perry Mason and Della Street.

“We’ll nurse these,” Mason said.

The waiter noiselessly dissolved into the blue haze of tobacco smoke which hung over the tables.

“Been here long?” Mason asked.

“Not very.”

“Like it?”

“Uh huh.”

“You seem to know the waiter quite well.”

She laughed and said, “We all of us pull together. Something about a job like this that makes you get acquainted fast and stay friendly.” Her eyes became wistful as she went on. “Traveling around this way, those who are in the same line of work are the only friends you have. The real friends.”

“What’s the elevation up here?” Mason asked.

“Around fifty-five hundred. We’re a little over a mile high.”

“Quite a change in the climate from the Imperial Valley.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Mason asked, laughingly, “are you going to ask about your property?”

“My horse?”

“Of course,” Mason observed, “as the finder of property, I have to keep it in the vague category of personal property until you have identified it.”

“But it’s mine.”

“All you have to do is to identify it.”

“A chestnut horse. A little taller than the average. He handles his legs nicely. Slim barreled, hot-blooded, but not too hot. A saddle made by Bill Wyatt, Austin, Texas.”

“Anything else?” Mason asked.

“Oh, yes, a Navajo blanket and a quilted under-pad to go next to the horse.”

“You have had the horse long?” Mason asked.

“Two or three months.”

“White star on his forehead?”

“That’s right.”

“One white hind foot?”

“Yes, the right.”

Mason smiled and said, “I haven’t seen him”

She was frowning now, irritably. “Don’t be silly.”

“I tell you, I haven’t seen him.”

“Of course you have. You even know the description. You know about that star on the forehead and you know about the white right hind foot.”

“Just because I describe a horse doesn’t mean I have him.”

The waiter brought the drink.

She said, angrily, “What are you trying to do, hold me up? Is this a blackmail proposition?”

The waiter produced a check from his pocket, stood casually by the table.

“Simply put it all on my check,” Mason said.

“Yes, sir.” The big waiter moved closer to the table. “The drink all right, Miss Cherie?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Fine, thanks.”

He continued to hover around.

Cherie Chi-Chi looked at Perry Mason. “You didn’t find a horse?”

Mason made his smile affable. “No horse.”

The index finger of her left hand was tracing little designs on the tablecloth. “You found something. You put an ad in the paper.”

Mason nodded. The waiter whisked an imaginary crumb from the corner of the table with a napkin.

“You found something...” Suddenly her finger stopped its motion. She raised eyelashes heavy with mascara. “You found two fans,” she said. “Two ostrich-plume fans with the initials ‘L. F.’ on them. You found a pair of high-heeled slippers.”

Mason nodded.

She threw back her head and laughed. “And I thought it was the horse! That’s all, Harry. The drink’s fine. I won’t need you any more.”

The waiter abruptly withdrew.

“Where are they?” Cherie Chi-Chi asked.

“In my car.”

She laughed. “All right, I’ll identify them. They were made by a firm in St. Louis. The initials ‘L. F.’ are inlaid in the fans in gold and the slippers were also made in St. Louis. I can give you the name of the store, if I think long enough.”

“You won’t need to. Unquestionably the property is yours. When do you want it?”

“Now.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

Mason said, “Will you hold the fort, Della? I’ll get the package.”

He left the girls, threaded his way through the crowded tables, then went out in the cold, crisp mountain air, unlocked his car, took out a small suitcase and was just locking the car again when he was conscious of a figure standing behind him.

Mason moved quickly, yet tried to keep from giving the appearance of whirling.

Harry, the big waiter, said, “She sent me out to get them, sir, so you wouldn’t have to bother taking them in.”

“It’s all right,” Mason said. “I’ll deliver them to her personally.”

“But I can take them right in through the back entrance, if you don’t mind.”

“I think I’d prefer to give them to her personally. Perhaps I can go in through the back door with you.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir. Right this way, please.”

Mason followed the man around past the parked cars, detoured a row of sour-smelling garbage pails, and went down three steps to a door which the waiter unlocked with a key he took from his pocket. They hurried along a passageway, climbed some stairs, arid walked past a row of dressing rooms.

Doors were open. Show girls without any vestige of self-consciousness were in various stages of undress as they changed the scanty garments which were billed as “costumes.”

Harry, moving with complete assurance, led the way past the dressing rooms through a little cubby hole where an electrician manipulated the lights, down a short flight of stairs into the kitchen through a service door, and ushered Mason to his table.

Della Street and the fan-dancer were deep in low-voiced conversation.

Cherie Chi-Chi looked up, smiled, “You have them?”

“Yes.”

“I told Harry to get them so as to save you carrying them through the crowd. I thought you might feel embarrassed.”

“Harry brought me back through the stage door. It wasn’t any bother at all. You see I have them in here.”

Mason propped the suitcase on his knees, opened the lid.

Cherie Chi-Chi took out one of the fans, opened it, gave a graceful voluptuous sweep as she drew it tantalizingly along the curves of her body. “They’re my favorites,” she said. “They have a beautiful balance.” She handed one of the fans to Della. “Like to try it, honey?”

Della Street took the fan, glanced at Mason, imitated the seductive motions which the fan-dancer had made.

“Oh, oh!” Mason said.

“You do it wonderfully,” Cherie Chi-Chi exclaimed. “Have you ever tried it?”

Della smilingly disclaimed any previous practice.

Harry once more hovered over the table. “Everything all right?”

“Everything’s all right, Harry, and there’ll be no check for this table. It’s on me.”

“Yes, Miss Cherie.”

The heavily made-up eyes regarded Mason intently. “And,” she said, “there’ll be a reward.”

The lights went dim at that moment as a girl who was billed as a nautch dancer, barefooted onto the stage, her feet thudding the boards like the pads of some large wild animal.

Cherie Chi-Chi bent over Mason’s chair, her arm circled his neck. “Thank you,” she said, and then hot, moist lips were pressed against the lawyer’s, held there for a tingling moment and then she was gone.

Della Street laughed at Mason’s surprise. “Strawberry?” she asked, as Mason dabbed at the lipstick with his napkin.

“Raspberry,” the lawyer said, “and damned thick.”