When Dorinda Dances

Chapter VI

Chief Will Gentry waited impassively until he and Shayne were alone before settling back and rumbling, “Okay, Mike, I know who the stiff is, and you’ve given me your version of how he died. Now, you’d better give me why.”

“Yeh,” said Shayne morosely. “But you won’t like it, Will.”

“I wouldn’t like anything at this hour in the morning,” Gentry grunted. “Don’t you ever go to bed?”

“This happens to be one of my busy nights,” Shayne told him with a slow grin. “I’ve told you Ricky Moran was some sort of a booking agent and was managing a dancer at La Roma.”

Gentry took a cigar from his mouth and looked at its glowing tip. “You’ve told me that,” he said patiently.

“I went out there for dinner last night. I saw the girl dance. After the first show, I bought her a dinner, and we talked. When she was through for the night she came here. About four o’clock. Moran got suspicious and followed her. He didn’t know my room number, and when Dick called me from the desk I got him to stall Moran until I called back. That gave me a chance to get the girl down the fire escape. But Moran didn’t buy it when I tried to tell him she hadn’t been here. He got tough and pulled a gun. I’ve told you the rest — straight self-defense,” he ended with a trace of smugness.

“My God,” Gentry groaned. “You still tomcatting? Maybe it was self-defense in the final analysis, but it’s not good. Fighting over a dance-hall twitch! You steal a guy’s doll—”

“Moran was her manager,” Shayne broke in evenly. “She assured me he had no other strings on her. How the hell was I to know he’d take it that way?”

Gentry moved his graying head slowly from side to side. “What in hell does this dancer have that a hundred others don’t have?” he asked disgustedly.

“For one thing—” Shayne took the picture from its face-down position on the table and handed it to Gentry, then settled back to watch the chief’s face with ironic amusement as it turned a deeper shade of red.

“This does tear it, Mike.” He slapped the photograph down on the low table between them. “If the papers get hold of this, I’ll have to bring you to trial. Damn it, half the ministers in town will be preaching about it next Sunday. You’ll be lucky to get off with forty years.”

“Yeh,” said Shayne. “That’s why we’ll have to give the papers some other story. That — and because of Dorinda’s real name.”

“What’s her name got to do with it?”

“Everything. I’m going to level with you, Will. I have to. That girl is the daughter of Judge Nigel Lansdowne.”

Chief Gentry’s rumpled eyelids rolled up, and his slightly protuberant eyes bugged out. “You don’t mean—”

“I do. Her name is Julia Lansdowne. Relax, and I’ll give you the whole story.”

Shayne began with Mrs. Davis’s visit to his office and continued with all the subsequent events leading up to Moran’s death.

“There it is,” he ended. “If ever a man deserved to die, Moran did, but I wish he had stayed alive long enough for me to wring the truth out of him about Mrs. Davis.”

Gentry shifted his solid body in the chair and chewed his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Then you think Moran got to her?”

Shayne shrugged and said, “It’s the only thing I can think of at the moment. It’s broad daylight,” he went on, gesturing toward the east windows, “and she still hasn’t phoned me. What’s your guess?”

After a moment’s thought, Chief Gentry suggested, “She may have come in after your last call and thought it was too late to phone you — not knowing your reputation,” he ended acidly.

“I hope so.” Shayne waved a big hand toward the telephone on the desk. “Why don’t you try the Waldorf Towers and see what you can get on her? When she went out last night, whether she had a visitor answering Moran’s description.”

Gentry heaved his bulk from the chair and went stolidly to the phone. Shayne listened with alert hopefulness until the chief began asking questions that indicated Mrs. Davis was still not in, then relaxed, awaiting a report.

“I didn’t get much,” he announced as he cradled the receiver and started back to his chair. “The clerk came on at midnight, and doesn’t know Mrs. Davis by sight. I thought you said she was out at La Roma night before last,” he added casually, reseating himself.

“She was. According to her story.”

“If I remember correctly, you said both Moran and the girl denied she was there,” said Gentry.

“Moran would naturally deny it if he heard her asking about the girl — and intercepted the note she sent backstage. And it’s my guess that Davis was just a name she was using, which explains why Julia didn’t recognize it.”

“But this Dorinda — or Julia,” Chief Gentry contended, “should have recognized the woman herself.”

“If you had seen her dancing you would realize that she wouldn’t have time to see anyone in the audience. Not even her own mother. Her story sounded pretty factual to me.”

Gentry’s cigar was dead. He took it from his mouth and regarded the soggy end with distaste, bent forward to place it in an ash tray on the table, then asked, “How do you account for the fact that Mrs. Davis didn’t check into the Waldorf Towers from Washington until four o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

“Four o’clock? Yesterday?”

“Right. I had the clerk double-check.” Shayne scowled at Gentry’s beefy face and placid expression, shook his head in utter bafflement, and said, “If that part of her story was a lie maybe all of it was.” He paused thoughtfully, then continued. “But the girl admitted her name was Julia Lansdowne and that she was on vacation from Rollins College. Everything checked exactly.”

“Except that Moran denied every word of it,” Gentry rumbled. “According to him, Dorinda was some nameless waif he’d picked out of the gutter and taught to dance.”

“Of course he denied it,” Shayne said angrily. “But the girl couldn’t have known—”

“Hold it, Mike,” the chief cut in. “Think back carefully. You’ve said what hell of a fine actress she was when you and Rourke first questioned her. When you talked to her in your apartment later, are you sure you didn’t give her leads? In other words, I’ll bet you didn’t ask her what her name was. Instead, you asked her if her name wasn’t Julia Lansdowne, and if she wasn’t a student at Rollins. All she had to do was play along and make up a nice story to fit what you handed her.”

“I may not be as smart as one of your dumb cops,” Shayne told him with considerable sarcasm, “but I’ll swear that girl was telling the truth, Will.”

“And that Mrs. Davis was telling the truth about everything except being at La Roma the preceding night? Why would she tell you a lie that could be exposed so easily?”

“Wait a minute. There could be another answer. We don’t know that she checked in at the Waldorf Towers immediately after arriving from Washington. She could have come down the day before, stopped at some other hotel, and then switched to the Waldorf for some personal reason the next day. You can check on that when the day shift comes on. How she made the reservation — whether it was by a local telephone call—”

“I can,” Gentry agreed readily, “and will. In the meantime, I want to have a talk with your Dorinda — or Julia.”

“Sure. But you’ll help me keep this quiet. Keep her picture and her real identity out of the papers. I know you’re a damned mossbacked reactionary,” he added with a wry grin. “But I think even you will agree that anything that drove Judge Lansdowne out of public life right now would be catastrophic.”

Will Gentry snorted. “I don’t admit anything of the sort. The country is full of solid businessmen who could do the same job as well or better without taking us down the road to socialism.”

Shayne’s dismay was manifest. “But damn it, Will—”

“At the same time,” Gentry continued, lifting a pudgy, square hand for silence, “I’d feel sorry for the father of any brat who got herself into such a mess. Call Lucy and tell her we’re coming over.”

Shayne got up and long-legged it to the desk phone and called Lucy’s number. When her sleepy voice came over the wire he said cheerfully, “Don’t blame me if you didn’t get home in time to get some sleep.”

“I bet I got home before you did, at least. What is it? Trouble?”

“Sort of. Is Dorinda—”

“I knew she meant trouble,” Lucy cut in, “as soon as I saw that picture in your office. And the way you gaped at her in La Roma.”

“Will Gentry is here with me,” he told her evenly. “We’re on our way over. You and Julia get dressed, and you might put on a pot of coffee.”

“Julia?”

“Hasn’t she told you her real name? I thought you two would be chummy by now.”

“What are you talking about, Michael?” Lucy asked anxiously.

“Dorinda. Isn’t she still there?”

“Here? That girl! Why do you think—”

“Hold it, Lucy.” Shayne’s voice was hoarse. “This isn’t any gag. Didn’t she come to your place about an hour ago?”

“No. Why should she, Michael? I don’t think I’m the right—”

“This is serious. I sent her there about four-thirty.”

“Well, she didn’t get here,” said Lucy. “Perhaps she met a man on the way.”

“You’ve been right there and haven’t heard anything from her?” Shayne asked, alarmed.

“I’ve been right here, Michael, ever since about eleven o’clock.”

“Stay right there until you hear from me, Lucy. If she shows up, don’t let her get away. If she calls up, get hold of her somehow — and fast. You can contact me through Will Gentry.” He spoke rapidly, hung up, and turned with sweat streaming down his face.

Will Gentry regarded him with a faint twinkle in his agate eyes and said, “I think this is one time Mike Shayne got taken — but good.”