by Talbot Mundy
“Who’s that girl?” Wahl asked him, ten minutes after Jacqueline’s first dance, when Pantopoulos reappeared to hustle his waiters. “Is Conchita her real name?”
“Aha! She is a discovery — a mystery — my discovery!” Pantopoulos answered, grinning. “Nobody knows who she is — not even I! But listen:” (he whispered behind his hand) “will you try a Conchita cocktail? That is another discovery, not quite as good, but—”
Wahl nodded. He would try anything on the free list. Pantopoulos hurried away to his secret locker.
“You got a crush on that dancer?” asked Wahl’s companion. “Can’t you keep it till tomorrow? You’re out with me tonight.”
Her face fell sulkily as she looked into Wahl’s eyes. They were glittering. His face looked tense and set, as if he were trying to remember something and the memory held vestiges of humor.
“You seen her before somewhere?”
Wahl did not answer. It was a part of his creed never to answer a question unless it suited him, but to demand answers from everybody else. Papa Pantopoulos came hurrying back with a flask under his arm-pit.
“Something to help you remember La Conchita!” he whispered. “Is she not marvelous? Is she not worth a column on a front page?”
Wahl almost terrified the Greek with the sudden vehemence with which he seized his arm and pulled him closer.
“You want a write up! Front page? Introduce me to her then!”
“Ah, no, sir, she must be a mystery — for a while — for the sake of the advertising,” Papa answered coaxingly. “Ask me later on, sir. Not tonight.”
“Before I leave this place!” Wahl answered. “If she’s who I think she is, you’ll have all San Francisco in here before I’m through!”
“My God!” exclaimed the Greek. “I will do my best to feed them! Wait until after the next dance, and I will see what can be done.”
“I must see her without the mask on,” Wahl insisted. “Will she dance down here on the floor?”
“Not tonight, sir. Tomorrow I will move some of the tables up to the balcony, and clear a space for the guests to dance. Then perhaps I can persuade her to come down once from the stage—”
“Where does she live?” Wahl demanded.
The Greek shook his head, pretending not to know.
“I could follow her home, of course,” Wahl said with one of his cold smiles.
“What — an’ leave me flat?” asked his companion. Wahl ignored her. He was watching Pantopoulos, recognizing speculation in the Greek’s eyes. The Greek was obviously weighing two chances in the balance.
“If I catch her outside here, I’ll write her up without mentioning you, of course,” Wahl assured him, tossing off the rest of the Conchita cocktail.
“I will see what I can do, sir.”
Pantopoulos hurried away, still undecided, but with a new and brilliant notion in his head, which he allowed to simmer there while he ran to and fro, between restaurant and kitchen.
“Service, children! Service! Smile! Get a move on! Oh, my God! A man who runs a restaurant ought to have his head examined. Luigi, that is not the way to serve cold artichoke. Where you work last? In jail? Take that back to the kitchen!”
Cervanez rang the gong, and the curtain rose for the second dance, disclosing Ramon and La Conchita glittering white and silver in a pool of light. The orchestra swung into a lazy waltz strain that set the guests humming, and Conchita swayed slowly out of Ramon’s arms, For a second Ramon was non-plussed — stood looking at her, wondering what next; but the audience thought that was part of the performance, and in a moment he was improvising, dancing up to her, pursuing her in circles, every effort he put forth serving to emphasize her art, as the obbligato serves a tune. If her mood was not mischievous it surely seemed so from where the audience sat, and the black mask increased the delusion.
“Thunder!” exclaimed Wahl. “If she’s the same girl, she’s had teaching since. She danced like an amateur when I saw her last.”
“Where did you see her?” his companion asked, trying sulkily to make the best of the situation.
“Not sure that I ever did see her,” Wahl answered, watching the stage like a hawk. “But I think I’ve seen the man, too.”
“Well? What of it?”
“Big story!” Wahl answered.
Oh, you make me sick! Why can’t you give me a write up? Aren’t I interesting? You said I was!”
“You wouldn’t interest the public, Harriet. Humpty-Dumpty’s no good after he’s smashed, and you never had far enough to fall to make an echo!”
He was watching the stage — watching Jacqueline as if his eyes could pierce the mask, talking as if he were thinking aloud. He understood as well as any one in the room that the dance was marvelous, but all that did to him was to make it seem more worth while to pillory the artist, if it could be done without risk of suit for libel.
“I think you’re a devil, Clinton!” his companion said suddenly. “You’d rather ruin any one than see them get away with it.”
The audience had risen out of the chairs again. The orchestra had speeded up the tune in response to La Conchita’s mood, and the dance was ending in a wild delirious swirl of silken skirt and stockings, with Ramon improvising faun-like leapings here and there that were a million times better than anything he had ever rehearsed. The curtain came down amid storms of clapping, and rose again repeatedly, showing La Conchita stock-still, panting, in mid-stage, and Ramon in the background, not daring to come near her. But it looked as if he were modestly conceding her the whole applause.
Papa Pantopoulos went hurrying to the kitchen to speed up the service, and Wahl, watching the fat back disappear through the swinging door, snatched opportunity.
“Stay here, or take a taxi home, I don’t care which,” he said to his companion, and started in a hurry for the door beside the stage.
Why bother to wait for introductions? Why ask questions? Why not snatch that mask from the girl’s face? If she turned out, as he expected, to be Jacqueline Lanier, good; if not, he could apologize. He had done more impudent things than that a score of times, and had only once been thrashed at all seriously, for he could use his fists a great deal better than the average.
But the door to the stage was locked, and he could not force it without attracting too much notice. He wanted this story to himself in order to do it justice, and to score another beat for the Tribune. There was a door leading under the stage from the curtained enclosure that half-concealed the orchestra. He ducked under the curtain, stepped behind the piano, kicked the door open and entered.
Just as he expected, there were steps leading up to a trap-door. The trap- door was bolted from below, and he had no difficulty in raising it. It brought him out into the wings to the right of the stage, opposite to where Jacqueline was sitting beside Consuelo. He started straight for her, almost running; but Cervanez, walking across-stage with her back toward him, heard him — turned suddenly — and sprang toward him, meeting him in the narrow gap between two flies.
“Who are you? What do you want?” she demanded. Instead of answering, he tried to avoid her, dodging around the fly, but she dodged the other way and met him face to face again.
“What do you want?” she insisted.
“An interview. I’m from a newspaper.”
“No-thing do-ing!” Cervanez spread her elbows between the flies and blocked the way.
“Why not?” he demanded. “I’m from the Tribune. Don’t you want good publicity?”
There was nothing that Cervanez wanted more; but she knew she had her choice between secrecy and losing La Conchita.
“No!” she answered, signaling wildly to Ramon with her hands behind her back. “This is private. Keep out!”
“Who is that girl? Tell me all about her.”
Wahl was trying to see past her, but the stage was only dimly lit now and the shadow was confusing. What he did see was that there was no one near enough to run to this woman’s assistance; and al
l he needed was one glimpse behind the dancer’s mask. He rushed Cervanez suddenly and sent her reeling backward on her heels; but you don’t dance for a living for forty years or so without becoming as wiry as a cat, and Cervanez sprang back at him, seized him by both arms, and screamed.
“Ramon! Ramon! Reporters! Run! Quick!”
“Damn you! Hold your noise!” Wahl hissed at her, struggling to wrestle loose from the strong lean hands. He struck her on the elbow, and she let go, screaming with the pain. But he was too late. As he leapt across the stage he saw a door on the far side slam, and heard a key turn. Then Papa Pantopoulos came running to know what the excitement was all about, and Cervanez appealed to the Greek noisily, rubbing her elbow and gesticulating like a fish-wife.
Nobody threatened Wahl, or talked of calling the police; he noticed that fact. Papa Pantopoulos used persuasion, and Cervanez, instead of abusing him for having struck her, began pleading.
“Please, Mr. — er — Wahl, please do not come behind here!” urged the Greek, taking him by the sleeve and trying to lead him off-stage by the door that connected with a passage between restaurant and kitchen.
“Please!” Cervanez seconded. “She is very nervous and highly temperamental! If she is frightened she will not dance!”
Wahl allowed himself to be led back to the dining-room, but he felt nearly sure now of the dancer’s identity. He was wondering whether he dared to make the assertion in print that she was Jacqueline Lanier, without first getting absolute proof.
Nothing like keeping on harping on the same string, when you had a real story! Just sufficient time had elapsed since the first scandal to make its reappearance fresh and interesting. Perfect! The seventeen-year-old Herodias pretending to be drowned, and turning up in San Francisco on a cabaret stage, masked, and dancing a Bacchanale! Did he dare?
Not yet, he decided. He must see her without that mask on.
“Take a taxi and go home,” he advised the saddened Harriet. “I’m going to hang around outside here, and watch where La Conchita goes.”
Papa Pantopoulos, coming up behind with cocktails to soothe injured feelings, overheard him, and the notion he had carried in his head for an hour crystallized at once into a purpose.
“There, sir — another Conchita! Genuine gin from over the line, and a secret recipe of my own. What a pity we can’t advertise it! Hah-hah!”
Wahl tossed off the cocktail and bade him good night curtly, hardly giving the discouraged Harriet time to gather up her wraps. Papa Pantopoulos hurried to the stage again and summoned Ramon and Cervanez from behind the locked door, where they were guarding Jacqueline’s retreat.
“Where is she? Not gone away?” he asked excitedly.
“She is hiding with Consuelo in a room upstairs.”
“Ah! Listen to me. That man who came on the stage just now is from a newspaper. I heard him say he will wait outside to learn where she goes when she leaves here.”
“My God! We shall lose her!” wailed Cervanez.
“Listen to me!” Pantopoulos insisted. But you couldn’t listen with Consuelo coming down creaky stairs and jerking at the door to get it open.
“Who was it?” Consuelo demanded breathlessly.
“A Mr. Wahl, from the Tribune newspaper,” said Pantopoulos.
“Wahl? What’s his first name? Clinton?”
The Greek nodded. Consuelo turned instantly, horror-struck, to open the door and run upstairs again. Cervanez set her back against the door.
“Let me through! Let me through!” Consuelo almost screamed, tugging at the door-knob. “She will kill her self if that man finds her!”
“Listen to me — please!” Pantopoulos insisted. “If you leave this place tonight that man will see her, for he waits at the back door. Let her stay here. Why not all stay here? There is an apartment upstairs — a good apartment — several rooms, all furnished. You may have them. You must fulfill your contract. I can not afford to lose you, after all the expenses I have made. If you will stay upstairs I will charge you nothing for the apartment; and there are only two doors to upstairs — this one, and one to the kitchen; we will keep them both locked!”
Ramon stroked his chin, struck his attitude of Old-World dignity, and smiled.
“You are not the only one who can not afford things,” he said suavely. “We must pay our bill at the other place before the dragon will permit me to remove our belongings. Now if the senor would make payment in advance—”
The Greek sighed. “Pay!” he exclaimed. “It is I who must pay everything! Where do I get the money, when half of the dinners tonight are not paid for? Am I Midas?”
“You are he who must decide!” smiled Ramon with a low ironic bow.
Ten minutes later Ramon left the El Toro back door with money in his pocket, striding with the swagger suitable to cash in hand. A man stepped out of a shadow suddenly, confronting him, blocking the sidewalk, thrusting cavernous eyes up close to his.
“What is your pleasure, Senor?” Ramon asked mildly.
“Aren’t you La Conchita’s dancing partner? Come now, tell me who she is and I’ll make it worth your while!”
“But I don’t know, Senor!”
“Let me see her then!”
“She left for her apartment directly after the second dance,” Ramon answered without hesitating.
“Where does she live?”
“I don’t know, Senor!”
“Rot!” Wahl answered. “Of course you know. See here; what’s the use of your trying to hide her? I know who she is, but I want proof of it. The minute I have proof, you’re famous! Can’t you see the value of that?”
“But what is fame without a fortune, Senor?” Ramon asked. “No — I regret — I don’t know who she is — or where she is just now — or who you are,” he added.
“I’ll soon prove to you who I am!”
“Of what use, Senor? The acquaintance would no doubt be very interesting to us both, but—”
He bowed magnificently. Wahl leered spitefully. Ramon strode away down- street in the opposite direction from the boarding-house, glancing over his shoulder, at the first corner to see whether he was followed. But Wahl decided not to waste time tracking him. He knew of at least one better way to get results, and began to feel sorry he had put Ramon and Pantopoulos on their guard.
CHAPTER 26.
“I hate the Tribune!”
Wahl reached the Tribune office just in time to catch Mansfield senior. They met face to face in the downstairs lobby, and Mansfield turned back to the elevator. He could read in a man’s face that a story had “broken,” without having to be told in so many words and neither said anything until Mansfield sat at his desk. Then Wahl cut loose in short excited sentences.
“The Lanier girl — I’ve found her — sure of it!”
“Go to it then!” snapped Mansfield.
“Don’t dare. Can’t identify her positively. Can’t get to her. She’s dancing masked under the name of La Conchita at that El Toro place you gave me tickets for.”
“Ought to be easy,” said Mansfield.
“’Tisn’t. She’s guarded by the gang she’s dancing for, I watched the back door. Nothing doing. I think she’s living in rooms over the restaurant. Listen, though: if she’s the girl Sherry brought back with him in the boat that night, as I suspect, he’ll recognize her. Where are those photographs that came from New Orleans?”
Mansfield opened his desk drawer and laid on the blotter six pictures of Jacqueline Lanier.
“Doesn’t look like a criminal, does she?” he said, examining them one by one.
“The real ones never do,” Wahl answered. “Why not lay those on Sherry’s desk, and watch him.”
“Send for Dad,” snapped Mansfield.
So Dad Lawrence left an account of Mrs. Somebody-or-other’s function in the middle of a word and sauntered in with both hands in his pockets.
“Where’s Sherry?” Mansfield demanded.
“Gone home.”
“Get here ahead of him tomorrow, and put those on his desk. If he seems disturbed by them, try to get him to come and talk to me.”
“Good lord!” Dad exclaimed. “Why don’t you go home and pull him out of bed, and have it out with him? What’s new now?”
“I don’t care to have him tell me lies,” Mansfield answered. “I’d rather he said nothing. But here’s the point: Wahl thinks he has found that Lanier girl. He also thinks — and I’m inclined to agree with him — that Sherry really met the Lanier girl, and fell in love with her when he was down there in Louisiana. If so, he’s in a bad way. Wahl believes the Lanier girl is dancing at a café called — what’s the name of it?”
“El Toro,” sad Wahl.
“And what’s her alibi?”
“La Conchita.”
“D’you think Sherry knows?” asked Mansfield.
Neither man could answer that. Wahl was inclined to think not. Dad ventured no opinion.
“Well — put those photos on his desk, and watch him,” said Mansfield. “If he recognizes her, he’ll show it. If this La Conchita really is the Lanier girl — and if that’s what’s the matter with Sherry — I’ll break her on the’ wheel for his sake if for nothing else. By God! I’ll not have Sherry ruined by a female of that type! We’ll drive her out of San Francisco! Head-line her, until even that blind young idiot sees she’s a bad lot! D’you understand me, Dad? I’m looking to you and Wahl to help me save Sherry. She’s the worst type of woman there is!”
Dad stroked his chin. Wahl grinned.
“All right. See you boys tomorrow then,” said Mansfield, and walked out with an unlit cigar between his teeth. Wahl and Dad stood and faced each other.
“It’ll make a hell of a good story,” said Wahl.
“I’m not fond of breaking women on the wheel,” Dad answered, “but if she’s a real bad lot—”
“She’s one of the worst!”