Love Has No Alibi

by Octavus Roy Cohen

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1945 by Octavus Roy Cohen.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  CHAPTER I

  THE DOOR of the passenger elevator opened and closed. I counted four, which was about how long it would take for someone to walk from there to my apartment.

  But my buzzer didn’t sound. Way down the hall I heard another door closing and I encased myself in a shell of disappointment. I knew now that I’d have to wait an eternity for the girl I was in love with. Perhaps five minutes.

  I glanced around the tiny apartment. It was neat as a pin except for the suitcase I’d opened when I dashed in from the train. I had showered and shaved and changed clothes and trotted out a half bottle of scotch, a jigger, a bottle of soda and two glasses. I hadn’t had time to do anything else, nor any particular desire. Waiting for Dana was a nerve-racking job.

  I was alone, but still the apartment looked crowded. It consisted of one room which looked like a living room, but had a wall bed trickily concealed behind what appeared to be a closet door; a kitchenette with a shiny electric icebox and an efficient four-burner-and-oven gas stove, a sink and four roomy cupboards; a sort of dressing room, and a bathroom.

  It was furnished comfortably in a Grand Rapids motif: chairs that were made to relax in, a radio-phonograph, a grayand white couch which was roomy enough for two, a gateleg table on which you could place a modest dinner or a vase of flowers according to the mood of the moment, and—near the two windows which looked down on the street—my drawing board, across which were scattered dividers, compasses, ruling pens, triangles, irregular curves, pencils, hunks of art gum, and a bottle containing India ink. That was in case I got an inspiration when I was at home. I’m an architect. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1939.

  Then the buzzer broke the silence. I hadn’t heard the elevator door open or close. I hadn’t heard footsteps in the gloomy hallway from which opened a dozen apartments which were duplicates of mine, plus a couple which boasted two rooms each.

  I almost tore the door down in my haste to open it. Dana was standing there, framed in the yellow light of a discouraged ceiling bulb. She walked in and closed the door. I stood looking at her for a long time, and then I wrapped her up. She didn’t seem to mind. I said, “You’re twice as gorgeous. I wish your husband would let me marry you.”

  She walked past me into the room. She took off her coat and hat and tossed them on a tall, narrow chair which served no purpose other than to fill up a gap in the wall between the bed closet and the foyer. She had on a black dress with beige trimmings, and she didn’t do it any harm. I said, “I wish I knew a lot of language. I’d start telling you how wonderful you look.”

  But I knew there weren’t enough words in the dictionary for that. I might even describe her, but I could never explain how she made me feel. One look at her, and I got all full of emotions. Frankly and unblushingly, I was in love with her.

  She sat on the couch and started to pour highballs. I sat alongside and reached out for another kiss. That lasted a long time, but since it was just a trifle after six o’clock in the evening, we didn’t worry about time. Over the rims of our glasses we silently toasted each other and then sampled the scotch. She said, “I thought you’d never come back.”

  “Eight days,” I said. “Forever. But this is worth it.”

  “Nothing is worth being separated from you.”

  I said, “You wouldn’t kid me, would you, Dana?”

  “About what?”

  “About . . . well, you know . . .”

  “Being in love with you?” Her laugh tinkled across the room. “How else can I prove it?”

  “That question,” I said, “has an answer. But it’s the wrong one. So we’ll let it ride.”

  For the next few minutes we acted like a couple of silly kids. You’d have thought we hadn’t seen each other for years. Every once in a while, I’d come down out of the stratosphere and try to remember that this was Dana Warren in my arms, the Dana Warren, the Dana of Ricardo & Dana.

  The whole world knew about Ricardo & Dana. This girl was one-half of a dance team that ranked way up yonder with the best; with Veloz & Yolanda, with Mary Ray & Naldi, with the de Marcos, with anybody else you could mention. Toplining at the Club Caliente, grabbing fabulous money and choosing their own spots. That made it more than understandable that I should be in love with her, but nothing could explain why she appeared to enjoy throwing her affections at a big lumbering guy like myself whose only romance up to a year ago had been with an assortment of T-squares and triangles.

  On the dance floor, Dana was describable. Here, in my apartment, with my arms around her, there wasn’t a chance to make someone else understand what she looked like. To say that she was twenty-three years old, that she weighed 108 pounds, that she was five feet four inches high, that she had a lithe, slender, exquisite body, that her hair was nut brown, her complexion clear, her eyes big and gray . . . that was to give vital statistics which weren’t important. It all added up to the fact that she was Dana Warren and that, by a strong effort at self-hypnosis, I could pretend she was mine.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t maintain that illusion for very long at a time. I knew, all too poignantly, that she was the wife of Ricardo Sanchez, her dance partner, and that they had been married for almost five years. The fact that they hadn’t lived together for the last four and a half years was gratifying, but it didn’t bring our relationship any closer to a permanent or satisfactory basis. All we could do was to be together constantly and to hope that Ricardo would some day give her the divorce without which we couldn’t consider matrimony.

  We could hope that. But actually, we’d long ago gotten discouraged. Ricardo knew we were in love with each other. He knew that we were always with each other. But he had made it clear that he had no intention of giving Dana her freedom. There were reasons; perhaps the most important one was that she was the best dance partner he’d ever had, and so long as the act continued to rank with the best in the world, he didn’t give three hoots whether or not she was happy. In fact, it had occurred to us a good many times that he took a sadistic delight in keeping us apart.

  We continued working on our highballs, and slowly drifted back toward a semblance of normalcy. She asked about my trip and appeared to be interested in my recital. It was one of those things: conferences with Middle West city officials about an elaborate low-cost housing plan, discussion of specifications, speculation about the possibility of getting priorities on essential materials. It was all terribly technical and should have bored her to death, but didn’t.

  “With all those fascinating things to talk about,” she said, “I’ll bet you weren’t the least little bit desolate.”

  I grinned. “I was, too.”

  “How much?”

  I gave a demonstration of a man recovering from being desolate. I said, “Now do you b
elieve me?”

  She looked at me steadily. There wasn’t any laughter in her voice. “Will you believe this, Kirk?—I love you terribly.”

  She had a habit of flooring me with unexpected moments of seriousness. I did a little talking on my own account, and we sat close together, shutting out all the rest of the world.

  Then she was on her feet and halfway across the room before I could stop her. “I need a new face,” she called from the dressing room. “I’ll be back in a flash with some new flesh. We’ve got to be going.”

  I yanked myself down from the crest of Olympus. I walked across to my drawing board and started opening the mail which had accumulated during my absence.

  It was the usual stuff: three invitations to cocktail parties, letters from a couple of lads I had known during my brief army service—before they’d put me on the politely-styled “inactive” list and taken me out of uniform; several advertisements, an announcement that an armory where I had once enjoyed playing badminton before the war was once again available to the public at certain hours. And a long brown envelope from my bank.

  I glanced at the calendar. February 2nd. It was the monthly bank statement. I opened it and pulled out some canceled checks and a long yellow sheet of paper with figures on it.

  I wasn’t particularly interested. But then I saw something and started to laugh. I laughed so loud that Dana heard me and came into the room. She said, “Let me in on it, Kirk.”

  I was still staring at the bank statement and still laughing. I said, “Look: If I were a rich man—instead of a poor, struggling, hundred-dollar-a-week architect—would you climb mountains and swim rivers to marry me?”

  “That’d be an inducement.”

  “So we’d better do something about it, Miss Warren. I’m wealthy.”

  She looked over my shoulder and said, “What’s the joke?”

  “Those lads at the bank. They say they never make mistakes. I’ll say they don’t. Only once in a while.” I put my finger on an entry dated January 28th. “Take a look, young lady, and make yourself respectful.”

  She uttered an exclamation. There it was, vividly clear to the naked eye: “January 28th—by deposit—$100,000.00.”

  Dana said, “I can ride along with a gag. What is it?”

  I said, “My real balance is $726.33. They probably entered the hundred thousand to make me feel good. Tomorrow I’ll drop in and kid their pants off.”

  “Then you didn’t make any such deposit?”

  “Are you loco?”

  “I thought it might be something connected with your office.”

  “I’m not that important,” I explained. “This is just one of those crazy things that can happen but usually doesn’t.” I looked at the final balance: $100,726.33. I said, “Let’s have fun.”

  “How?”

  “Just for tonight let’s pretend it’s real. For eighteen hours I am worth one hundred thousand dollars. We’ll pretend it’s mine. We’ll pretend there isn’t any Ricardo. I’ll go to the club with you and sit through the dinner show. Then we’ll go to a swank restaurant and make like millionaires. We’ll drink champagne and eat steak. We’ll insist on extra sugar with the coffee.”

  She said, in a solemn voice, “There is always a bleak tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’ll go back to being a poor man. But just for one night . . . why not pretend?”

  She caught the idea. She always did, as a matter of fact. For one night we’d check our sanity and forget expense. I said, “I always wondered what I’d do if I had all the money in the world. Tonight, I’ll do it.”

  “And wake up with indigestion.”

  “That’s a horrible idea, and worthy of a low mind like yours. But we’ll try it anyway.”

  She put on her coat and hat, and I grabbed mine from the hanging space behind the wall bed. I said, “I’ll sit in the corner during the dinner show. On account I like to look at you. And all the time I’ll be telling myself that in a little while I’ll have you alone. That—plus my hundred thousand dollars—will make me feel superior to everybody else in the place.”

  We went downstairs and out the front door. The February wind knifed up from the North River and cut right through us. The street was frozen and desolate. The whole city still shivered under the blanket which had been spread by the worst blizzard New York had experienced in a decade. In the week which had elapsed, the snow hadn’t melted. Tonight it had turned to ice.

  By some miracle I got a taxi. We climbed in and held hands. I said, “Soon as the first show is over we’ll go adventuring. Between now and then, try to build up an appetite.”

  The driver asked in a bored, patient voice where we wanted to go. I told him the Club Caliente. He turned around and stared at one of us. He said, “You’re Dana, ain’t you?”

  Dana admitted that she was. The driver gave an odd sort of whistle to indicate that he was impressed. He said, “I got a kid that he collec’s autographs. Would you gimme yours?”

  She took a visiting card and a pen out of her bag. When we got to the club she handed him the card. He thanked her profusely. I handed him his fare and a big tip. He forgot to thank me.

  The Club Caliente was on the deep East Side. It stood in the middle of one of those odd neighborhoods which is in the process of transition from slum to swank. It was flanked on either side by tenements which dated back to the era when they were known as flats rather than as apartments. The entrance was on the street level: the club itself was downstairs in what had been a basement.

  Chris, the doorman, was shivering in the near-zero gale. But he smiled broadly at Dana and said, “Evenin’, Miss,” as he opened the door for us.

  We walked down the richly carpeted stairs. Near the checkroom we ran into Ricardo.

  He didn’t look very happy. His handsome face wore a sullen expression. He glanced at us with obvious distaste. He said to Dana, “You’re late. I suppose I can thank your boy friend for that.”

  She didn’t say anything. She started back through the club toward the passageway that leads to the dressing rooms. Ricardo stood looking at me. It was the sort of look I didn’t relish.

  I felt an almost irresistible desire to hit him. But I didn’t. Long experience had taught me to control myself. I shoved past him and went inside.

  But I knew then—as I had always known—that things couldn’t go on as they were. “Some day,” I said, “something drastic is going to happen.”

  I said it to myself. Just to let off steam. I didn’t even suspect how right I was.

  CHAPTER II

  VISITORS To New York are invariably disappointed by their first glimpse of famous night spots. Because it’s New York, they expect everything to be on a grand scale. They look for dance floors the size of the waiting room at Pennsylvania Station, a million tables more or less, and a lot of plush and glitter. The only thing they get that’s bigger than their anticipation is the check.

  The Club Caliente was the newest of the really top spots. If you were a member in good standing of the Cafe Society set—the sort of a dope who makes the rounds just because it’s the thing to do—the Caliente was a must on your itinerary. Maybe it came first, maybe last, maybe in between. But it’s there. It can’t be left off the list any more than the Stork can be forgotten.

  It had started modestly and bloomed like a sunflower. The manager was a smart lad who kept pouring his profits back into a venture which he figured had an excellent chance of becoming an institution. Originally a small room, plus bar, in the basement of a middle-aged apartment house, it had caught on with the name crowd and therefore had attracted the suckers who enjoy spending big money for the privilege of breathing the same overstuffed air.

  The original room had been doubled in size. The decoration job was a honey: cream and jade and expensive and soothing. The dinners were excellent, the suppers good, the drinks sizeable, the service perfect. Show talent was always the best. The weekly outgo was terrific, but the take even more so.

  The location
was out-of-the-way, but that didn’t bother the late crowd. The Caliente was one of the places to go—so they went. They went and had their pictures taken if they were important, or they watched important people undergoing the process and then got a thrill by inquiring of bored waiters who they were.

  You could stay as long as your money held out. You could eat well, drink good liquor, buy silly little dolls and woolly dogs, pay outrageous prices for gardenias and kid yourself that you were having the time of your life. You could store it all up and talk about it the next day, which was calculated to make you important in the eyes of friends who couldn’t afford what you also couldn’t afford.

  When I first met Dana Warren she was dancing at the Caliente. I got in the habit of hanging around, which, on my salary, threatened bankruptcy, but that didn’t seem important when I balanced it against the prospect of seeing Dana. Since that time she and her partner had been to a lot of other cities and now they were back at the Caliente again for as long as they wanted to stay.

  The arrangement of the place was unusual. As an architect I could imagine the headache that some fellow-sufferer must have undergone taking care of the expansion which prosperity had brought.

  At the foot of the steps was a checkroom and a sort of lobby. Passing through that, you swung back a heavy plateglass door and entered the dimly lighted bar. There was a curtain between the bar and the main dining room so that the barflies who were not stuck with a cabaret tax couldn’t see the show. Unless the curtain was carelessly pulled, which it usually was.

  The dining room, with its orchestra stand and dance floor, now occupied all of an enormous rectangle which originally had taken care of everything: kitchen, rest rooms, dressing rooms and what-have-you.

  To solve this need for more space, it had been necessary to lease the basement of the adjoining building, which was an ancient red-brick structure with two flats on each floor. Between the rear of the club and the next building, a passageway had been cut. It was a bleak, dreary, undecorated thing, badly lighted by naked bulbs which seemed always about to flicker out.