Well, we drive all night, pass through Dago about seven in the morning, and roll up to the bridge across the Mexican border just as they’re getting ready to open it for the day. Miss North only has to show her face and we clear it, only as usual one of the guardsmen can’t resist hollering after us, “Drop around, don’t be bashful!” which is the catch-word from one of her pictures. She’s so used to hearing it she just smiles.
After that comes a sandy stretch with a lot of cactus, and then flowers, fountains, and a lot of chicken-wire architecture show up, and that’s Agua. Miss North engages her usual layout and signs the book “Peggy Peabody” or something, to fool any reporters that may be hanging around. Everybody always stays up all night down there, but I suppose she has to have some place to powder her nose in and change clothes between losses. Anyway, I see to it that I have an adjoining room with a communicating door between. Then we separate to scrape off some of the desert, and in a little while she knocks on the side door.
“You’re armed,” she says, “so maybe you better take care of this for me until tonight,” and she hands me a little two-by-four black toilet case with her initials on it in gold. “I’m so absent-minded I’m liable to mislay it just when I need it—”
Well, I’m just nosey enough to snap the latch and look in it—it isn’t even locked, mind you!
“It’s the stake for tonight,” she smiles sweetly. “Fifteen thousand. I didn’t bring much along this time because I’m so sure of doubling or tripling my ante.”
“But, Miss North,” I groan weakly, “carrying it around like this—”
“Yes, don’t you think that’s clever of me?” she agrees. “I just dumped out all the gold toilet articles. No one would think of looking in there.” Then she says, “See you later,” closes the door, and leaves me to do the worrying about it.
Well, the first thing I decide is, it don’t stay in that beauty-kit, which hasn’t even got a key to it. No matter where it goes, it gets out of there. So I empty it out—it’s all ticketed just the way the bank gave it to her—stack it neatly inside a big, roomy envelope, seal it, write her name on the outside, and take it down to the manager’s office. He’s an American, of course, and perfectly reliable.
“Put this in your safe,” I say, “and keep it there until Miss North or me calls for it when the session opens tonight.”
“If her luck,” he grins, “is like what it usually is, she might just as well not bother taking it out, because it will only come right straight back in again.” Then he takes out a fat bundle of vouchers and tells me not to bother Miss North’s head about it, but don’t I think maybe she’d like to clear them up and start with a clean slate before she starts plunging again the next few nights?
“But Timothy wrote off everything she owed you people, right after she was down here the last time, and that’s over two months ago,” I object. “I heard him hollering, that’s how I happen to know. Lemme see the dates on some of those.”
Well, some are only from the weekend before, and all of them are later than the last time she was there.
“There’s somebody been down here impersonating her,” I warn him, “and getting credit from you. You better warn your bankers and notify the police.”
His face drops and he tells me, “I never know when she is here and when she isn’t. She always stops off under an alias anyway. Well, I can’t afford to attract attention to a thing like this, it would stop the picture people from coming here, so we’ll just have to forget about these, and I’ll tip off my staff not to let it happen in future.”
And he tears the whole lot of them up and dribbles them into the wastebasket. Most of them were only for medium-sized amounts anyway (which is another reason I know they’re not Fay’s), but it just goes to show there are some regular guys, even in his business.
Well, she comes downstairs after awhile, but I don’t tell her about it, because she’s down here to relax, in the first place; and in the second, it’s Timothy’s look-out, not hers, and everybody in her business has this impersonating stunt pulled on them at one time or another. It’s nothing new.
She’s wearing smoked glasses to keep from being recognized; but then, almost everybody else around is, too, so it don’t mean much.
Well, we spend a quiet afternoon, me tagging after her while she strolls and buys picture postcards; and then at five she goes back to her room to get ready for the fireworks, telling me I can eat downstairs, but she’s going to eat alone, up in her room.
Now, here’s where the first mistake comes in. I have a right to stick with her, even if I have to eat outside her room door, but I figure everything’s under control, that she’s safer here than she would be in her own home, that I’m right down at the foot of the stairs if she needs me, and that she’ll be down again as soon as she’s through dressing.
So I sit me down in the big patio dining-room, and I tear a sirloin at four bucks a throw (not Mex, either). After awhile the dancing quits and the stars, I mean the ones in the sky, show and the big gambling rooms light up, one after the other, and things get right down to business. And still no sign of her. I know I haven’t missed her, because I’m right on a line with the stairs and she’d have to pass me on her way in. So I dunk my cigarette and I go up to see what’s keeping her.
Well, it seems I pick just the right time for it. A minute later and I wouldn’t have seen what I did; a minute sooner and I wouldn’t have either.
Just as I get to the top of the stairs and turn down the corridor leading to her room and mine, I catch a strange dame in the act of easing out of my door. She didn’t get in by mistake either, one look at the way she’s tiptoeing out tells me that. “Oho,” I say to myself, “a hotel-rat—or rather a casino-rat, eh?”
Well, I want to see what she’s up to and find out who she’s working with, if possible, so instead of giving myself away I quickly step back onto the stair-landing and lean over the railing as though I am watching what was going on below. Her head was turned the other way, so I know she hasn’t spotted me. She thinks the coast is clear. She closes the door carefully after her and comes hurrying along toward where I am. I turn around slowly and size her up. She is a tough-looking little customer, with jet-black hair and layers of paint all over her map that you could scrape off with a spoon. She is dressed like a dance hall girl, too—or like what people that never saw one think they are like—only personally I never met one that was such a dead giveaway. In fact, I wonder how she ever got into such a ritzy place with such a get-up. She’s got a red shirtwaist on, and a yellow and black checked skirt, like Kiki, that hurts your eyes, only it misses her knees by a mile. But what interests me mostly is that in one hand she is hanging onto that toilet case that Fay turned over to me when we got in. I know it by the gold initials on it. She has lifted it from my room, without bothering to find out if it still has the money in it or not; maybe on account of Fay being right next door, she didn’t have time. It is easy to see, though, that she must have overheard Fay tell me what was in it earlier in the day; that’s how she knew what to go for. Probably eavesdropped outside our doors.
Well, she brushes by me close enough for me to touch her. She doesn’t look at me at all, and I don’t raise a finger to stop her.
It may sound funny, my not jumping on her when she is right at my fingertips like that; but the reason is I happen to know there is no money in that toilet case. And as I said before, I would like to see if she has a shill working with her, and where she is heading for with what she thinks she has. Besides, a slippery staircase is no place to tangle with the kind of a customer she looks to be like; the casino bouncers are down below, and she is going down there anyway.
So I let her get two steps ahead of me, and then I turn and start down myself, as if I just remembered something that required my presence below. And I have one hand loose, ready to collar her if she tries to break and run for it.
But she doesn’t; instead, she slows up and takes her time, not hurrying any more, lik
e when she first came out of the room. I can see that she is going to try to bluff it out.
She swaggers along real tough, and everyone is turning around to look at her. Then, when she gets down to the bottom, she happens to pass a guy with a cigarette stuck in his mouth—and doesn’t she reach out and calmly take it away and start puffing it herself, without even a thank-you!
She passes by the main entrance without a look, and heads straight for the big gambling room, cool as a cucumber.
“Well,” I say to myself, “if this don’t beat everything for sheer, unadulterated nerve!” Instead of ducking, she is going to hang around the premises awhile and try her luck with money that she just lifted, which is so hot that smoke ought to be coming out of that case she is carrying this very minute—if it happened to have anything in it! All I ask is just one look at her face when she opens it and finds out what her haul is worth, maybe that will take some of the swagger out of her.
In I go after her, and I buttonhole the nearest bouncer, whom I know by sight.
“Send out for the cops,” I say. “I’m going to present you with a pinch in just about thirty seconds. Camille, over there, squeezing her way in to the middle roulette table—keep your eye on her.” And I tell him what she’s done.
He sends out for the policia and he also sends for the manager, and then him and me and the other bouncer close in on her and get ready to pounce when I give the signal. But first I want to get a load of her disappointment.
Well, they’re as thick as bees around that table—two or three deep—but that hasn’t stopped her; she’s used both elbows, both hips and her chin, and blasted her way through to the baize. We can’t get in that far; all we can see is her back.
“Wait a minute,” I motion them, “she’ll be right out again—into our arms. She hasn’t an5rthing to play with.”
You can hear the banker say, “Place your bets,” and “Bank is closed.” Then the clicking of the little ball as the wheel goes spinning around.
Not another sound for a minute. Then a big “Ooh!” goes up from everyone at once.
“Killing,” says the bouncer, knowingly.
“Wonder what’s delaying her?” I say. “She ought to have found out by now. Maybe she’s picking people’s pockets—”
The same thing happened a second time; a big long “Ooh!” sounds like a foghorn.
The manager shows up, and I tell him the story out of the comer of my mouth. “—caught her in the act, and followed her down here. But all she got was the empty kit,” I snicker.
“That’s what you think,” he squelches. “I got my doubts! A voice on the wire, claiming to be Fay North, asked me to turn back that envelope, less than ten minutes ago. I took it up to the room myself—”
“Did you see her take it from you?” I ask excitedly.
“No, that’s why I think something’s punk. An arm reached out from the room, but she stayed behind the door. Claimed she was dressing.”
“Grood Gawd!” I moan. “And you turned over fifteen grand like that without—”
“You told me North or you would claim it. The call came from 210, that’s her room, I checked it with the switchboard operator.”
“That’s my room!” I tell him. “North’s is 211, she wouldn’t be in my room; she’s too much of a lady! This phony was in there; I saw her coming out. C’mon! We’ve wasted enough time. The hell with the payoff.”
The Mex police had come in by now, two of them, both higher-ups, this being the casino. The manager and the bouncers shoo everyone aside, the crowd falls back, and we get a good look at what has been going on. The phony is left standing there all alone. But she is so taken up she never even notices. And she has the fifteen thou all right. Or at least she had it to start with; now she must have two or three times that. In fact, everything in sight is piled up in front of her, nearly chin-high. Her system, it seems, has been to blow the bills she bets with her breath, like handfuls of leaves, letting them land wherever they want to on the number mat. The banker is green in the face.
The manager taps her on the shoulder. “You’re under arrest.”
The Mex line up one on each side of her. She’s hard-boiled all right, like I knew she would be.
“Run along and fly a kite for yourself. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
I stoop down and pick up the toilet-kit, which she has kicked under the table. I shake it in her face.
“This belongs to Fay North. I saw you coming out of my room with it. The manager here turned over fifteen thou to somebody’s bare arm in that room. Now, are you going to come clean or are you going to see the inside of a Mexican jail?”
Well, she keeps looking me in the eye and looking me in the eye like she wanted to say something, and then she looks at all the winnings piled up on the table like she was afraid of something, and she just shuts up like a clam. For a minute I almost have a crazy idea that maybe it is Fay herself, under a heavy character make-up, only just then I turn my head and I see the real Fay come sweeping in the doorway like a queen, heading for one of the smaller side-tables.
“Hold on,” I say, “she’ll tell me in a jiffy. If it was just the empty kit this one lifted, you can turn her loose for my part, but if she phoned down for that money she goes to jail, dame or no dame.”
I run over and I stop Fay and say to her, “Miss North, did you call down awhile ago for that money the manager was holding for you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, and gives me an unpleasant look through her smoked glasses. “Don’t put me in a bad mood now. Can’t you see I’m on my way to the table? Please stay away from me, I gotta have quiet to concentrate—”
I go back to them and I say, “Okay, off she goes!”
“Why, you—!” she blazes at me, but she doesn’t get any further. The two Mex lieutenants drag her out backwards by the shoulders, kicking like a steer, and there’s quite a commotion for a minute, then the place settles down again and that’s that. Since neither me nor the manager can talk spicko, one of the bouncers goes along with them to prefer the charges and see she’s booked right.
Well, I’m afraid to go too near Fay, on account of she seems to be in a cranky humor and asked me not to distract her; so I sit down just inside the door where I can watch her and be the perfect bodyguard, without getting in her hair. She sure looks spiffy in her gold dress, but she keeps the smoked panes on even while she’s playing. She has the usual luck, and runs out of the fifteen thou, which the house turned back to her, in no time flat. Then she starts unloading I.O.U.‘s, and they come over to me to make sure there won’t be any mistake like there was before, but I tell them to go ahead and honor them, it’s the real McCoy this time.
About the time she’s another four or five in the red, a houseboy comes in with a message for her and she quits and goes out after him. I get up to follow her, and she gives me a dirty look over her shoulder, so I change my mind and sit down again, saying to myself, “Gee, I never saw her as snappish as this before!”
But my equilibrium has hardly touched the chair once more, when there comes a whale of a scream from just outside the casino entrance. Then another, which chokes off in the middle like a hand was clapped over the screamer’s mouth. Then there’s a shot, and the sound of a big eight-cylinder job roaring away from in front of the place with its throttle wide open.
By that time the chair is rooms behind me and I’m tearing out the entrance with my own loudspeaker in my hand. There’s nothing to shoot at but a little sinking red tail-light which is already clear of the casino grounds and just as I fire at it, it goes out, not because I hit it but because it’s too far away to see any more. The porter is sitting on the front steps holding onto his shoulder for dear life, and one of her gold slippers which fell off when she was thrown in is lying there in the roadway.
There is also a scrap of paper a considerable distance away which they must have tossed behind them. I snatch it up as I dash for the garage where Fay’s own car is
bedded.
The driver is knee-deep in a crap-game, but luckily it is going on right inside the tonneau itself, so I just leap in at the wheel and bring the whole works out with me in reverse. He hangs on, but his three partners fall out, also one of the garage doors comes off its hinges, and almost all the paint gets shaved off that side the car.
Once out it would take too much time to turn it all the way around so I just make a dive through the casino flower-beds and the wheels send up a spray of rose-petals and whatnot. The casino steps are seething with people and I yell back, “Notify the border! They may try to double back and get across with her—” but I don’t know whether they hear me or not.
As for notifying the Mex police, what could they do, chase the kidnap-car on donkeys?
“Snatched!” I tell the driver. “Right out of the doorway in front of everybody! I’ll never be able to look anyone in the eye again if we don’t head them off before this gets out. Reach over and grab the wheel.”
He’s been tequila-ing, but at least he knows what he’s doing. He leans across my shoulders, I duck out of the way, and he hauls his freight over into the front seat. I give it the lights, and night turns into day ahead of us.
“Got gas?”
“Thank Gawd!” he says. “I filled her up when we checked in, to get it off my mind.”
We finally get out of the grounds, and he tries to take the road to Tiajuana and the border.
“Left!” I tell him. “Left! They went the other way, I saw them turn.”
“But there’s not even a road that way—nothing, just desert—not a gas station from here to Mexicali! We’ll get stalled as sure as—”
“Never mind the geography lesson,” I tell him. “Don’t forget, they’re not running on maple syrup either.”
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 34