Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933
- Автор: Day Stanley, Dunn J. Allan
- Год: 1933
- Язык: английский
- Год: Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933». Краткое содержание книги:
“Eighty dollars a day,” the clerk repeated firmly, and managed to chill me with one eye while he eyed our mountainous luggage, just coming in, with the other.
Trixie pinched my arm, and smiled brightly. “Eighty dollars a day is quite satisfactory, darling,” she cooed. “Can’t you remember that we have oil wells now?”
The clerk caught it. His face cleared instantly. He handed me a registry card and a fountain pen. I registered Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, San Antonio, Texas.
We looked like wealthy young globe trotters, for our old luggage was plastered with labels from everywhere. Undercover work for the Blaine Agency means travel. When the bellhops got their toll and left us alone in the suite, I went to the connecting door of the bedrooms and moved the key to my side.
“Verboten,” I grunted at Trixie. “None of your blasted tricks now. I want some peace on this case.”
Trixie threw her hat on the bed and made a face at me. “Be yourself, ape. Nobody’s pursuing you. What has your massive brain planned for this evening?”
“The Orchid and her maid have three rooms at the end of the hall,” I snapped. “I meet her, I make her, and then we take her.”
“Just as easy as that,” Trixie marveled. “Well, here’s hoping. But don’t forget we’re married, darling, and I get some of this Palm Beach whoopee.”
“Nix,” I grinned. “That’s for me and the Orchid. You’re the neglected wife who mopes in her room.”
“You’ll have whiskers to your ankles when I do that,” Trixie said through her teeth.
The idle rich! The wisecracker who said that never had more than a week’s pay on hand in his life. Golf, tennis, swimming, riding, dancing — and bridge thrown in whenever Trixie could scare up a game. Three days of that to put us in the public eye and get our lines out.
The unlimited expense account made it possible; oil millionaires from Texas, hicks from the sticks, lathery with money. Trixie shopped at those exclusive little Fifth Avenue branch shops. They came to the hotel collect, and we had war the first night.
“Whose little gold digger are you?” I yelped. “Look at these bills I settled today! I knew you were a tough case, but I didn’t know you had mucilage fingers. Any dumbwit you drag to the altar will be going for a cleaning instead of a honeymoon. Sixty-seven berries for a hat, and I could wear it for a felt thumb protector!”
“So!” said Trixie with a glitter in her eye. “You were snooping in my packages like a second story mug, Michael Harris?”
“When I pay sixty-seven crackers for a cardboard box and four yards of tissue paper and ribbon, I want to see what I’m stung with!” I gave her.
And Trixie moved in close for battle.
“Listen to me, you sack of wind! Nobody ever dragged you to the altar and they never will. Pull those popeyes in and get this straight! I’ll send the beach up here collect if I feel like it, and you’ll pay and thank me. Whose bank account is getting nicked? Not yours! Hand you a five dollar bill and you’d start jawing J. P. Morgan. Gold digger, am I, for providing a little atmosphere? Next time I hear a—”
I slammed the door on the rest. That acid tongue of Trixie’s could lift the skin off a cigar store Indian.
We buried the subject of clothes. After all it wasn’t my money. I took a flier or so in the market those three days. And the tips I ladled out everywhere disturbed my sleep nights. But they were good advertising. By the second day every flunkey in sight was bowing and scraping when I appeared. Funny how oil millions can spread. We were the gossip of the hotel. Some turned up their noses, and some fell over themselves to gladhand us.
The Orchid did neither.
I spotted her the first evening in the dining room, and the waiter cinched it. “That is Miss Dean, sir.”
“Pretty girl to be dining alone.”
“Miss Dean seldom has anyone at her table, sir. She is, if I may be so free, a retiring woman.” And the waiter rolled an expectant eye at Trixie.
“Perhaps, dear,” says Trixie sweetly, “you would like to leave me and join her?”
And the waiter went off satisfied.
The Orchid had everything Thompson had outlined. I didn’t try to guess her age. She was like an orchid, slender, graceful, dainty, fragile. She was a natural blonde — Trixie admitted that reluctantly — with a shell pink complexion and ripe red lips. Her eyelashes were long and dreamy, her makeup a bit of art, her expression tender and demure.
One look at her there in dainty solitude and I was willing to swear Thompson was a liar and Waldo Maxwell a lecherous old reprobate. A second look and I was hardboiled again. I’ve seen enough crooks to have an extra sense about them. Her eyes wandered over and caught my grin. She took me in from hair to second button on my dinner coat, and then went on eating without a change of expression. But my neck hairs stiffened. She was like a beautiful leopard, lazily lapping cream. Claws were sheathed behind that fragile daintiness.
Trixie was on tap as usual. “All right, cave man, go into your act,” she said under her breath.
“Rats to you,” I said. “This is going to take technique.”
The waiter returned and Trixie cooed: “Yes, dear.” And we had honeymoon the rest of the dinner.
I didn’t make a move for three days. But now and then when the Orchid was on the horizon I caught her studying me. The wild and woolly west, with a wagon load of money, and extra luggage in the wife, had come to Palm Beach. I spent as little time with Trixie as possible. I ogled the women when the Orchid was around. I flashed the bankroll and made a fool of myself. Anyone with half an eye could see I was ripe picking for a smart dame.
But it was Palmer, a natty customers’ man for Trenholme and Edwards’ branch brokerage office, who gave me my break. A little about oil wells and flyers in the market made him my man. He was a good looking young chap, a little too soft and polite; but he knew his Palm Beach, and the Orchid by sight when I pointed her out on the hotel veranda.
“Corker, isn’t she?” Palmer sighed. “Haven’t met her, but I hope to. See her all the time at Corey’s. Say, that’s a place you might like. Been there yet?”
“A big gambling joint, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be glad to take you and Mrs. Blaine there any time.”
“Tonight,” I said. “Mrs. Blaine will be busy. We’ll go alone.”
I’d heard about Corey’s place; to gambling what Palm Beach was to society. With its clientele a Broadway gambler would have retired in six months. Strict cards of admission were required, and your name almost had to be in the social register to get one. Formal evening dress, of course, and once inside the old lavishly furnished frame building, set back in a tangle of trees and tropical growth, the sky was the limit. Private rooms upstairs for really high play. The drinks and food were on the house. The service was in keeping with the crowd who went there.
Palmer got a card some way. Things like that were his business. I went with a fat billfold, a boiled shirt, tails and everything — and tried to forget that in a few weeks I might be impersonating a longshoreman around the East river docks.
It was a joy to lose the first three hundred, of someone else’s money. We shifted from game to game for an hour and a half. Cool, perfumed air, beautiful women — some of them — men whose names made the newspapers, the hum and chatter of conversation, the quiet voices of the house men, now and then a black dressed automaton moving about with a tray. But no Orchid.
And then she came in, wrapped in a black coat with a roll of white around the collar. Stunning? I skipped a breath. “Palmer,” I said, “I’m going to need the rest of the evening to myself. Would you mind ordering a Rolls outside in case I need it?”
And I went to the roulette table where the Orchid had drifted. For a few minutes I watched her lose five dollar chips, and then I slipped into an empty place at her side and slapped down five hundred. I lost and raised it to a thousand. And won, and won the next time, and the next. By that time I had the Orchid and everyone else at the table with me.