by Jerry eBooks
The man in the white suit sat morosely on one of the bar stools of the Palm Room and nursed his second Martini. Robottom was a tall man and his athletic figure was erect. Even his silver hair stood up like cropped and frosty grass.
Was he waiting to meet somebody? Thelma Loomis wondered. She drooped a little as she remembered her own companion. Then she saw Mr. Trim’s watery brown eyes welling curiosity and waiting.
“Oh, I’m sorry—what were you saying, Mr. Trim?”
“I was saying that you must have quite a fascinating job, Miss Loomis. Lots of folks probably envy you the chance to mingle with movie people.” She sized him up again. He certainly wasn’t much. Small, nearly bald, a pug nose like a doorknob on a tan prune, and discolored, broken teeth.
“I really should have stayed in Palm Springs this week end,” she said. “I just had a hunch that someone important might pop up here.”
“And they haven’t?”
Miss Loomis snorted. “The only interesting people here are that cute couple in Cottage fifteen—and, of course, Sagmon Robottom—the Prince Charming of archaeology. Robottom’s the All-American Boy grown up.”
“He looks like a dashing fellow,” said Mr. Trim. “But what’s so unusual about the couple in Cottage fifteen?”
“The wife has a peculiar memory. Remembers everything she’s read until she says it, then it’s gone for good. And that won them a quiz contest. They—” Mr. Trim sprang to his feet.
“Holy smoke! Are they here already?”
She watched him navigate swiftly toward an exit.
* * * * *
“It beats me,” John Henry said. “Why’d he bust in here?”
“Oh,” Sin said, “I guess he just made a mistake, like he said.” Now that all the inside lights were blazing away and the windows and doors locked, Sin wasn’t afraid any more. “Why don’t we forget it?”
Sin had on her nylons, when the rap came on the cottage door. John Henry was still pants-less. Clutching the dressing gown tight around her, Sin headed for the door. Vernon, the freckled bellhop, stood outside grasping an envelope in both hands. He thrust it toward Sin, “I’m supposed to deliver this invitation.”
John Henry came up, hastily buckling his belt.
“Invitation?”
The freckled youth was pained. “From the hotel. They’re throwing a big costume brawl tomorrow night.”
“Oh, honey!” Sin’s eyes sparkled. “I love costume parties.”
“This one you’re supposed to come as what you’d most like to be,” Vernon said. “Now isn’t that something?”
“It’ll be fun,” Sin said stoutly. “Maybe,” Vernon doubted.
After he’d gone away, Sin repeated, “It’ll be fun.” Her husband laughed.
II
“BARSELOU speaking.”
“Odell.”
“Where’d you see Anglin last?”
“He was trying to crack the hotel from Andreas Street.”
“Then keep that Las Dunas sewed up.”
“We are. Incidentally, our Mr. and Mrs. Jones have checked in.”
“Gayner told me that. There was only one couple from San Diego today. Now listen, Odell—tonight may mean whether or not we ever see the Queen. Anglin’s got to be found quick. If he contacts anybody at all—”
“I’ll call you back.”
“And get this through your thick skull. This is one time when it’s smart to keep up with the Joneses. . . .”
John Henry had his white shirt buttoned when a knock sounded again.
Sin said firmly, “I’m not going this time. I intend to get my clothes on.”
“All right, all right,” Conover muttered and went to the front door. He opened it to say gruffly, “Yeah?”
It was a wizened little man in a black serge suit and his late fifties. He had a big smile and his hand was outstretched.
“Mr. Conover, my name is Trim. On behalf of the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste Company may I welcome you and Mrs. Conover to Azure.”
“Well, thanks,” said John Henry uncertainly. “Won’t you come in?”
Mr. Trim stepped in and stood blinking in the living room. John Henry could see no suspicious bulge under Trim’s let armpit.
“What was it, honey?” Sin demanded from the bedroom.
It broke the silence. Mr. Trim cleared his throat.
“Mrs. Conover, I represent the Bry-Ter Tooth-Paste Company.”
“Oh, how thoughtful,” Sin threw out to him, but she didn’t appear.
“I’ve been commissioned by the Company to sort of look after you—see if I can do anything to make sure you enjoy your stay here.”
“Are you staying here at the hotel, too, Mr. Trim?” was John Henry’s question. The black-suited man nodded. “Then we’ll know where to get in touch with you—if we have to.”
“That’s right! Mr. Trim massaged the door handle wistfully. “I’m always available—day or night.” His laugh was forced. “Well, good night, Mr. and—uh—Mrs. Conover. Welcome to Azure.”
He stepped out onto the brightly lit porch, peered at the cottage wall, and turned.
“Say! That looks like blood!”
John Henry sighed, “It certainly does,” and closed the blue door.
They went to the Ship of the Desert for dinner. It catered to a clientele that could pay four dollars for steak without expecting stock in the restaurant.
The Conovers ate at a candle-lit table near where a small waterfall rippled over neon-illuminated rocks. The amber light of a moon threw faint shadows against the walls, which were painted in blues and browns to simulate the sweep of the desert. Palm trees carried out the illusion. The waiters wore burnooses, but the management had underwritten the lushness with an excellent cuisine.
Sin finished her dinner. “Now if I can just have some more coffee—”
John Henry reconnoitered after their waiter.
“Odd,” he said softly. “I thought for a minute I saw our friend with the gun. That was the first time anybody ever drew a gun on me,” he said.
THE DUTIES of assistant personnel manager of an aircraft parts factory didn’t satisfy a deep-rooted urge for adventure which lurked behind his conservative manner. He had never been able to make Sin understand this.
“Sin,” he said, “I don’t think you have any love of adventure. A mysterious stranger with a gun, a bloody handprint on our front porch—and I’ve a feeling we’re being watched.” Her green eyes didn’t change expression but he flushed, anyway. “All right, all right—I still think something’s going on behind our backs. I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow we haven’t accidentally upset some criminal conspiracy. We do know it involves a transfer of something. Didn’t the man say he had ‘it’ for me? And he looked like a miner.”
“ ‘It’ could be anything.”
“I’d like to meet that fellow again. Next time, I’ll find out just what’s going on.”
Their Arab-gowned waiter returned with coffee. He poured skillfully and deposited a woven salver containing the bill on the table.
“I won’t be surprised next time.”
John Henry stared balefully at his coffee. “Just let anybody make a suspicious move.”
Sin sipped some steaming liquid. “Good coffee,” she murmured. Then she jumped and screamed, “Johnny!”
John Henry had knocked over his coffee cup. All around, customers saw a young man with a white face staring at the bill on the woven salver.
Sin reddened at being part of the floor show. She looked at the spreading brown stain. “Honey, you’ve ruined their tablecloth.”
“There” he whispered. “Look at that!”
His forefinger stabbed toward the salver. Sin looked at the bill, then she stared, awestruck.
It wasn’t a bill, at all. It was just an ordinary playing card. The Queen of Diamonds. And across the queen’s face someone had written:
“Your deal. . . .”
The head waiter, colorful in his Foreign Legion uniform, w
aited for the Conovers to reach the balcony. Sin held tight to John Henry’s arm. He could feel her trembling and the greenish eyes were slightly scared.
The headwaiter knocked on the oak-paneled door at the end of the balcony. A man’s voice grated, “Come in,” and the Foreign Legionnaire bowed the Conovers into the office ahead of him.
It was all leather except for the spacious plateglass window. A burly man who stood there wheeled as the headwaiter closed the door.
“This is the owner, Mr. Barselou,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs. Conover.” He bowed and left.
“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Conover,” Barselou rumbled in a slow-freight voice, “suppose you sit down and tell me what seems to be the trouble.”
Sin sank into the leathery embrace of a chair, but John Henry advanced belligerently.
“This,” he said, and flipped the pasteboard queen face up on the desk.
Barselou picked up the card. After a moment of study, he smiled amiably, and murmured, “ ‘Insipid as the queen upon a card.’ ”
Sin replied automatically, “Aylmer’s Field. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”
Barselou quirked an astonished eyebrow but John Henry didn’t intend to explain about his wife’s trick memory at this moment.
He said, “That’s what goes on in your restaurant. That’s why I insisted on seeing you.”
Barselou chuckled. “I’m further in the dark than you are, Mr. Jones.”
“Conover,” Conover corrected.
“Sorry. I’ve been thinking all evening about somebody named Jones. Tell me about the Queen. Like a mystery story, isn’t it?”
“Okay,” said John Henry. “It was like this.”
When he was done, Barselou rubbed a spadelike hand over his heavy jaw before he spoke. “Incredible.”
Sin said, “We’re getting tired of that sort of thing, Mr. Barselou.”
Pale eyes sparkled. “Why? has something else happened?”
John Henry silenced his wife with a glance. “We’re tired from our trip, that’s all.”
“Yes, quite a drive from San Diego,” agreed the restaurant owner, fiddling with the card again. “The queen symbol intrigues me—yet you say it or this ‘your deal’ inscription has no significance for you.”
“What are you going to do about the waiter responsible?” John Henry wanted to know.
Barselou said, “The simple fact, Mr. Conover, is that we have no such waiter as you have described.”
“Don’t tell me a stranger could walk in here, serve us our meal—and nobody would know the difference! How about the headwaiter? How about the cook?” Barselou remained undisturbed, almost mocking.
“Perhaps it was a joke, Mr. Conover. Perhaps intended for somebody else. About all I can do is apologize profoundly—and pick up your check, of course.”
John Henry’s stubborn chin jutted out. Barselou’s bland assumptiveness annoyed him. “That’s very nice,” he said, “but if it’s all the same to you I think we’ll take a look around before we go.”
ODELL lounged restlessly against the stucco wall of the restaurant, up the alley. Wadded up under his arm was an Arab burnoose.
He wondered if Barselou had got anything out of the young couple. The queen right in their laps ought to start some fireworks.
A faint scuff of shoes against the pavement twirled him alertly around. Somebody was coming down the alley from the other direction. The man stumbled as if he were having trouble with the dark. Odell slid his hand to the cold butt of his .32.
The footsteps stopped. A match rasped and the blackness was momentarily shattered as the stumbling man held the flame in front of him, peering.
A silent laugh rippled Odell’s fat. Talk about luck! Here was Anglin walking right into the net. He put the gun muzzle on the dark blob and walked toward the other man.
“Anglin, don’t make any funny moves,” he said, “and you’ll be all right for a while. The chief says no obituaries.”
“Odell!”
Anglin groped wildly for the door in the alley next to his hand. Odell dropped the bundled burnoose and jumped forward, pistol menacing.
Before Anglin could find the handle, the door abruptly swung open, letting a flood of bluish-white light into the alley. Odell could see a figure outlined in the doorway. And the amazed face of John Henry Conover.
John Henry thought the alley had exploded. He barely had time to recognize the weather-beaten prowler in the doorway when the man was driven violently against him, staggering him. Then he realized the noise had been a gunshot.
Sin screamed, “Johnny, Johnny, are you all right?”
“Okay, honey.”
Automatically, he held up the leather-jacketed body by its armpits. He couldn’t see anything in the gloom, but he could hear the sound of footsteps, running.
Barselou brushed past him. John Henry felt a shudder go through the figure in his arms. Sin was staring at the man.
“He’s hurt!”
Wetness had dyed the back of the leather jacket. The man twisted his head and squinted his foggy eyes. Recognition showed there.
“You already got it,” the man choked. “Don’t—” The head lolled helplessly.
“Dead?” Barselou scanned the body narrowly.
“Think so—or close to it.”
Together, the two men eased the flaccid form to the linoleum under the fluorescent kitchen lights. Barselou’s big hand rested lightly on the man’s sunburned wrist. Then he got up, grunting.
The great kitchen was packed with white-shrouded cooks, helpers, and robed waiters. The headwaiter was as white as his Foreign Legion trousers.
Barselou lashed at him, “Phone Lieutenant Lay, at the police station. Get your people out on the floor. Your place is with the customers.”
John Henry had his comforting arm around Sin. Barselou paced between table and exit, his face angry. He pulled up by the Conovers and his voice was barely controlled thunder.
“What do you know about this man?”
“Nothing,” John Henry answered him. “I never saw him before in my life.” He canceled Sin’s astonished objections by-squeezing her wrist.
“He knew you.”
“He fell into my arms, that’s all. He didn’t know I was going to open the door.”
Barselou eyes blazed. He said softly, “All right—you don’t know him.”
“Too bad he didn’t get a chance to talk,” John Henry said.
Sin protested, “But honey, he did say something to you!” and Conover’s warning squeeze came too late.
Barselou hunched his wide shoulders forward.
“So he said something to you!”
“Well,” said John Henry, “he tried to say something, but he couldn’t quite make it. Too bad, too—it might have cleared the whole thing up.”
“A pity,” agreed Barselou grimly.
“It might have made things easier for everybody.”
DEAD all right,” Lieutenant Lay said and got up from beside the body.
The second in command of the Azure Police Department stood with his bowed legs apart and scowled at the wall. He was a lanky man in his middle thirties with a horse face and arms too long for his body.
The scowl swung on John Henry. “Mr. Barselou seems to have the idea you knew him.” Conover shook his head and kept silent. Lay rasped, “He’s not hard to identify. Name’s Anglin.” John Henry asked. “Who was he?”
“Oh, he hung around town a lot. Did lots of jobs. Prospected some.” He glanced at the sand that had spilled on the floor from Anglin’s clothes. “Was a guide once in a while. Used to deal faro over in Las Vegas.”
“Lieutenant,” Barselou interposed, “maybe that has something to do with the murder. A man like that is bound to make enemies.”
“Maybe. Some bozo he’s doublecrossed—or cheated at cards.”
“What’s Mr. Anglin been doing recently?” John Henry asked.
Lay muttered sarcastically, “I can’t keep track of everybody in a glorified tourist
camp like this. Anglin might have been prospecting. He hasn’t been in town often lately.”
He knelt by the dead man again, rummaging through the pockets. The black automatic came out first, to be placed on the linoleum. A dirty handkerchief, a small compass and a notebook with all the pages blank, joined the gun on the floor. After a through search, the pile also included a few coins, a half-empty pack of cigarettes, matches and a wallet. The wallet contained a driver’s license made out to Homer Anglin, and nineteen dollars.
Lay got up and Barselou tapped the officer’s shoulder, drawing him to one side. In a moment Lieutenant Lay came ambling back.
“Conover, why didn’t you tell me that Anglin said something to you before he died?”
“He didn’t.”
“Barselou says—”
John Henry’s temper flared. “Barselou’s got a lot of ideas. Why doesn’t he have one about that waiter of his that started us on the whole thing?”
Lay said, “Oh, we all have ideas.” And he let the Conovers go.
III
THE CONOVERS turned into the palm-guarded walk that wound up to the hotel’s front entrance. A rainbow of floodlights, concealed in the shrubbery, bathed the area in carnival hues.
John Henry pursed his mouth. “If we only had some idea what that Barselou is up to—”
“It’s nothing that concerns us, Johnny,” Sin said. “We don’t know he’s up to anything, I mean, it wasn’t his fault that poor fellow got shot in his alley.”
“Look at it this way, Sin. We get that queen card in his restaurant delivered to us by a waiter in one of Barselou’s costumes. We go up to his office, and you remark that we’re tired from our trip and Barselou says it’s a long drive from San Diego.”
“Oh,” said Sin softly.
“Right. How did he know we were from San Diego?”
“Johnny, he’s been checking up on us!”
“Sure, and why?”
“He must think we’re somebody else.” John Henry nodded emphatically. “Barselou thinks we’re somebody else. Anglin thought we were somebody else. And Anglin gets murdered at Barselou’s back door.”