There Is Something About a Dame Read online

  My foot kicked something. A dull clang and a sudden smell of decayed fruit and rubbish meant a garbage can. I stopped walking because the gun left my back.

  “Hold it.” The undertaker quality of that awful speak-box went so well with the setting of the alley. A bat screaming and wheeling up in swift flight wouldn’t have seemed out of place at all. Charles Addams cartoons and Bela Lugosi horror movies.

  “Turn around.”

  I turned, the surprise of the request almost making me jump two feet. But I hadn’t gained a thing. My dreams were worse than I realized and twice as valueless.

  The man standing before me looked like a shadow, the wash of the street lights behind him, dim and far off like some bad nightmare. I couldn’t see his face or form. The lights distorted his size, made his fedora and shoulders seem comically larger and grotesque. There was a brief glint from the mountainous .45 in his right hand.

  Music of the traveling cars punctured the quiet. Otherwise the alley and the neighborhood was quieter than Boot Hill. Far off, a tug hooted like an owl in the fog lying over the Hudson River.

  “Did St. James give you anything besides information? Don’t play games and I’ll make it easier for you. One quick one in the heart. Otherwise you’ll die slow.”

  Even at slightly normal conversational level, the tones gave you the creeps. I shook off a shudder, trying to forget the jam I was in.

  “Nothing,” I said. There wasn’t a comeback in me.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Come and see for yourself.” I couldn’t do a thing with the man’s features. The hat and the darkness held off the slightest illumination. Only the shift of the .45 in his fingers captured a glint now and then.

  The Voice chuckled.

  “You should have listened to me today. Now it’s too late.” The gun gleamed again. “I’ll search you when you’re dead.”

  I can’t say what it was that made me do the next foolish thing I did. Maybe I was scared, more scared than I had ever been. Maybe it was the utter finality of this faceless killer’s voice that said so clearly what was coming up on the menu. Maybe it was the darkness and not wanting to die in a smelly alley. Maybe it was the enormous feeling we all have for wanting to stick around a while longer. But whatever it was, I took the only chance I had.

  The cocking sound of the gun shattered the stillness like a firecracker. I had wild visions of my blown-out middle and bursting pain. That was enough. I moved. Moved like the dying lunge of a rattler before it sudsides for the last time.

  My upraised hands, palms out, just above my waistline was the answer. The Voice was a scant foot from me. Death was that close but so was the nose of the glinting .45. My right hand shot forward flat against the muzzle and pushed while my left arm slammed upward in a short uppercut. I had my body behind the whole movement. I had to have or it wouldn’t work otherwise. The little man in my skyrocketing brain waited for the sound that meant my life or death. It came.

  The Voice muttered an oath and pressed the trigger of the .45 which, for that split-second forward push of my palm, was still leveled directly at my stomach. Click! My rioting heart heard the noise and did a flip flop of ecstasy as my short left hook thudded off the Voice’s right shoulder which had reared protectively. That tiny fraction of push which throws the slide back over the frame of the .45 making it impossible to fire—one of the five safeties found on .45s—had worked. But once the pressure lifts, or the gun holder falls away from you, the gun is ready to go boom again. I had my chance. I threw both arms around the Voice, locked one on his .45 wrist and the adagio was on.

  But it wasn’t any dance. Neither of us talked like they do sometime in those sword duels. There wasn’t any breath for it. We reeled, twisted, rhumbaed and sambaed in the narrow alley breathing in each other’s faces, grunting and panting like overweight wrestlers. I concentrated on that gun hand and kept my exposed groin away from the menace of his feet. We locked and pushed and groaned for an edge in the struggle. I exerted pressure on the wrist. And got a result I wanted one way or the other.

  The roar of the .45 blasted the alley with a flash of orange and yellow as the thunderous noise reverberated within the confines of the closed-in walls. The Voice didn’t like that at all. Noise and attention and policemen on the run wasn’t on the menu either. The Silent Kill was over.

  I kicked my foot backward into the place where his ankle met the shoe and retwisted the .45 hand. He cursed and pushed free of me, starting for the mouth of the alley, dragging me along behind him. I hung on. I couldn’t do a thing while he still had the .45. He hammered at me with the free hand but I lowered my head and hugged him close. Finally, with a low whimper of pain, he dropped the .45. As soon as I heard it clatter to the floor of the alley, I reset my whole attack. I released his wrist and slammed a right and left into the dark face below the hat brim. I met iron that didn’t flinch.

  He thundered back with a low one to my stomach that sent me spout-over-teakettle against the opposite wall. I sailed back at him but the darkness had deceived me. Either that or his night eyes were better than mine. I saw a flash of metal too late to avoid it completely. I ducked. But a round metal disk, the garbage pail top, clanged against the side of my head. Bells went off. Steam whistles, boat whistles, carillons, chimes and all the tintinabulation in the world. Lights danced. Prisms of color, cubes of light, parallelograms of confusion pinwheeling and coruscating. I staggered erect, fumbled for the wall, dimly in the background somewhere, conscious of an emptiness and loneliness in the dark alley. Hearing leather heels murdering the sidewalk running off somewhere. Him. He was getting away. He hadn’t killed me. Meaning he’d heard the Law coming. I lurched for the alley entrance, the light blinding me.

  But it wasn’t the Law. High heels clicked toward me. I whirled. I had a glimpse of a shapely face, high, sweeping curls, a lush lower lip. Red-plaided arms reached for me, pulled me toward the curb.

  “This way, please. I must talk to you—”

  “Get me out of here,” I whispered, hearing my voice coming from the bottom of some deep well.

  “Of course. But we must hurry—”

  She half-lifted, half-carried me to the red ’63 Dodge. I fumbled weakly inside and sagged against red leather cushions. A red letter day all around. Something trickled down my cheek. I placed my hand against it and saw it come away red. I closed my eyes against the suddenly unbearable sounds of car motors, police sirens and that merry carousel going round and round in my skull.

  “Thanks, Milady,” I murmured. “Wake me up when we get to the ball.”

  I slept all the way to Milady’s apartment.

  “Age cannot wither, nor custom stale

  Her infinite variety … ”

  ELEVEN

  Time has a way of slipping past you when you had some notions about stopping the clock. But you can’t. You keep everything in focus, and all the details are under control and then something happens. Like weariness, exhaustion, extreme fatigue and lethargy. Put them all together and they spell Sleep.

  I woke up.

  Which is putting it politely.

  The first thing I saw was a ceiling. I saw myself in the ceiling. For one teetering second, I’d left my mind in hock and my senses in the fun house at Coney Island. It couldn’t be but it was. There I was in the ceiling. As large as life and twice as ridiculous.

  It was pretty hard to take seeing myself like that because I was as naked as a baby who’s just been spanked into life. I groaned, heard myself groan, hoping the sight of me in the ceiling would go away and leave me some scrap of my former sanity. I opened my eyes again. No soap. I was still there in the ceiling. As wide and as colorful as cinemascope, vistavision and stereophonic sound. I looked terrible.

  Just about the time I began to realize the ceiling was a wall-to-wall mirror and was trying to figure out just what brothel I had passed out in, a cool, feminine voice which I had heard somewhere before, said:

  “Regardless of your present state of
undress, please don’t get any silly, romantic notions. I have a gun here which I shall most certainly use if you even attempt to become annoying.”

  This was even more ridiculous but it brought my eyes down from the ceiling so that I twisted my head toward the direction of the voice. This was silly, too. As soon as I craned my neck, a hot, liquid pain coursed down the back of my head and disappeared into my right shoulder-blade. I yelped with the suddenness of it. The pain went away as rapidly as it had come but it left the memory of the man who knew how to use a garbage pail cover and live to fight another day. I was too mixed up to be embarrassed. I looked at her.

  She had a gun all right. A Webley. Big, ugly, and authoritative. The English have used that argument-stopper in three wars. She was holding it casually above her crossed knees and staring at me with a slightly bemused twinkle in her eyes from a distance of about ten feet. She could have made a replica of my office out of me before I reached for my shoes or anything else. I hadn’t seen her in the ceiling mirror because my stiff neck couldn’t bend back that far.

  I propped myself up on one elbow. The bed coverlet under me was purple and rough which made me feel worse. So I ignored my condition since it didn’t look like I was going anywhere.

  “You could have at least put me between the sheets,” I said. “I feel kind of silly.”

  “You look well enough for all normal purposes,” she said icily. “Now down to cases, shall we? I’ll return your clothes directly you’ve answered a few questions.”

  I looked around the room. It was a lady’s boudoir. Hers obviously. There was a dresser with a three-way mirror, feminine chairs with doilies and a tall orange vase that boasted a spray of something or other. And—there was that mirror.

  “How did I get here?” I studied her. She’d skipped the red plaid coat and slipped into something more female. A tailored beige outfit with a long skirt and heavy brown shoes. Just the right thing for walking across the moors. I grinned. I had wandered into an MGM movie where they use a brace of English actors.

  Her regal nostrils curled and the basic coldness of her otherwise striking face with its tidy mop of red curls, lowered the mask a bit.

  “Fair enough. You passed out in the car. Fell asleep, if you’d rather. You let me guide you up here. Once inside, you dropped off on the bed. You’ve a large lump on your head but it didn’t bleed too much. I undressed you then. I was rather interested in your clothes.”

  “So I gather. And didn’t anybody help you?”

  Something colder took over in her voice.

  “I detest company. I live alone.”

  A warning bell went off in my head. I regarded her knowingly. Knowing my nakedness didn’t bother her a damn bit.

  “Might I inquire what’s so interesting about my clothes?”

  The Webley lifted an inch higher.

  “You should know that better than I, Mr. Noon.”

  “Lady, I don’t know anything. It’s your game, your deal and I feel like I just left Harold’s Club in Reno. Who the hell are you and what are you doing with me anyway?”

  That didn’t make her laugh. Men would never mean anything to her. Not themselves, their conversations or their attributes. My attributes didn’t mean a damn to her. Only the fact that she had me and I had something she might want.

  “Very well,” she said. “Let’s commence with Genesis, if you prefer. You’ve been retained by Sir Stewart St. James in some confidential matter. Am I correct? You know that I saw you tonight in his car and followed you all the way to his lodging.”

  “I know you have a red ’63 Dodge, if that’s what you mean. But who you are I haven’t the foggiest, Milady.”

  “Don’t interrupt. Your flippant remarks will have no effect on me whatsoever. I’m not your gushing silly young thing.” She meant it too. She hadn’t laughed at a man’s joke since the Year One. “You must tell me why Sir Stewart has seen fit to enlist your services. And more importantly, what success you have had.”

  I shook my head.

  “Ethics forbid. If a man is going to pay you money, he’s entitled to your trap being shut. Or as you Londoners might say—my lips are sealed.”

  “For a grown man, you’re rather ridiculous, Mr. Noon. I could shoot you very easily from here. You’re larger than pheasant, you know.”

  I thought rapidly. There was no sense going into all the possibilities of why she would or could shoot me. And I was begining to miss my clothes real bad.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll make you an offer. This is no life or death assignment in respect to Sir Stewart. Fact is, the world will be proud of him. I’ll tell you—then I get my clothes back and you tell me where you stand in the thing. Is it a deal?”

  She barely sighed. “If you wish. But your side first.”

  I sat up and folded my arms across bent knees. It made me feel more comfortable and less silly. Less vulnerable, for sure.

  “A very good friend of Sir Stewart’s was shot tonight by some unknown assailant. Sir Stewart hired me to find the man responsible.” I was telling her only everything she must have seen with her own two green eyes. “We had gone to the hospital to see him. He’s still very critical. That’s all there is to it. The kind Sir is offering me a thousand dollars for my services.”

  She considered that, digested it, but didn’t quite get it all down. Her nostrils curled slightly.

  “That man who ran out of the alley just as I drove up. That was the unknown assailant, I suppose.”

  “He’ll do until a better one comes along.” I eyed her to see which one of us was telling the truth. “You didn’t happen to get a good look at him, did you?”

  She snorted. “I told you. I don’t look at men.”

  “I don’t like rock ’n’ roll either but if it’s on the radio, I have to hear it until I switch stations. You ought to remember if he was tall or short or was carrying a bull fiddle.”

  “Lord, but you’re a bore. Very well, if you must. He was tall, well over six feet, and that is all I noticed. He was out of sight almost immediately.” She tightened her fingers around the Webley. “You’re not only a bore but you are a liar who deals in half-truths.”

  “Come again?”

  She laughed. A brittle laugh that had nothing to do with humor.

  “Tell me, Mr. Noon. Have you and Sir Stewart uncovered the missing manuscript as yet? I found nothing in your garments to even suggest you had. I rather think you never will, either. This Morgan man is a fraud. Men. Just bores and frauds.” Her tone changed. “Answer me, Mr. Noon. Have you learned anything yet?”

  I uncrossed my hands and slid one leg off the bed, easily. It wasn’t easy talking to this dame. With or without my glad rags.

  “I can’t tell you that, ma’am, until I talk to Memo Morgan.”

  Suddenly, she got up out of the chair. The clothes were mannish but the figure was all girl. Tailored lapels and long sleeves couldn’t quite hide symmetrically wide hips and a high shelf of breast that surged beneath her jacket. She was tall, too. Very tall. She wasn’t very far from six feet on the nose. She surprised me, too. She lowered the Webley so that the snout was pointed at the bedroom floor.

  “I’ll fetch your clothes now,” she said icily. “Then you shall leave. This preposterous matter interests me no further. Shakespeare himself would laugh quite heartily about the whole thing.” She turned and stalked through the bedroom door. “Rather a comedy of errors, at that.” She vanished somewhere into the other rooms.

  I blinked at her retreating back. The comment was the first human thing she had said. The first gentle revelation of character beside the other feeling I’d had about her. It was the initial, even faintly feminine touch. I stared up at the ceiling mirror and shivered. Normal sex hadn’t built that looking glass. Then I forgot about it. I wanted my clothes real bad. Now I knew why they call them glad rags. I’d be glad when I got them.

  She didn’t keep me waiting very long. She reappeared like a tall genie, and with no expression at all on
her royal face, set my clothes down in an even pile on the bed. I checked them as she vanished again like that same genie. I laughed. She didn’t trust me. My shoulder harness was intact but the holster was empty. No .45 until I was ready to leave. I sighed and redressed. I’d play it her way until I found out where she fit in. I reminded myself that she hadn’t told me that yet.

  If she expected me to act like a nosey house detective, I let her down. I resisted the temptation to make a flying search through the dresser bureau. I forgot everything but getting my pants on. When I was completely my own man again, I picked up my hat and walked out, hooking it over my right hand.

  She was sitting on a settee in the living room when I came out. The room was low-ceilinged, very plain and done in brown motif. Everything was brown and stout looking. It was the Wood Room out of a Charles Dickens era. You half expected a roaring fireplace, tankards of ale and a hoarse shout for the innkeeper.

  I circled a low, brown coffee table between us and stopped about five feet from her. She held the Webley loosely in her lap but she didn’t fool me a bit. One funny move and I’d be worse off than those three million pheasants she’d bagged in her time.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Noon,” she said without emotion. “You’ll find the door very easily. Just through here and around that turn.”

  I stared down at her.

  “You didn’t tell me who you are,” I reminded her.

  She sighed audibly and matched my stare.

  “You’re probably one of those beastly nuisances who checks mailboxes and things, and rings up at all hours, then rings off. So I’ll save you all the bother. My name is Savannah Gage. I’m an actress of some renown in Europe. Not here, unfortunately, as I’ve found to my sorrow. I’m a friend of Sir Stewart, anxious to see he doesn’t make a fool of himself and ruin a great tradition. So don’t go beating about, ringing doorbells and making wearisome inquiries. If you’re quite satisfied, I think our discussion is terminated.”