There Is Something About a Dame Read online

  I nodded. “I’ll play it your way for the time being. Can I have my gun back now?”

  She jerked her head toward the foyer that led to the front door.

  “You’ll find it on the hall table just before you go out. Now then, kindly get out and leave me alone.”

  It was curious. I didn’t phase her in the least. She talked to me as she might to a child. There was no warmth or inflection in her save the mammoth ennui and lack of concern that seemed to dominate her mind. It’s a little shocking to your ego when you run into women like that. It isn’t that you want them to fall over your neck and make cooing sounds. That isn’t what throws you, no. It is a total lack of femininity that tosses the whole scheme of things right out the window. Savannah Gage was a stone. Not a woman.

  It was a weird sensation. I know the breed but they always give me the willies.

  I made up my mind and headed for the front door. I wanted out but a sudden notion halted me.

  “One more question, Miss Gage. And then I’ll buzz off, I promise.” She started to rise from the settee with some irritation so I got it in fast. “Are you in love with Sir Stewart St. James?”

  I couldn’t get a rise out of her before, But I got one now. She stared at me for one helpless confused second and then she erupted. But I mean erupted. She roared and quaked, her sides bursting.

  When the sound of her unfeminine laughter got really unbearable, I took the foyer fast, scooped up my .45 and left. I slammed the door behind me to drown out the sound of her unnatural hilarity.

  Even waiting for the down elevator, I could hear her howling back in the apartment.

  The Queen was dead, all right. Long live the King.

  “Most friendship is feigning,

  Most loving mere folly … ”

  TWELVE

  I forgot all about Savannah Gage and concentrated on the front of the building when I got outside. A five-minute vigil near the entrance while I smoked a Camel convinced me that no one was staked out on the place. She’d taken me to the East Forties where towering stone surrounds Tudor City and the News Building. My watch told me it was nearly one fifteen. A low rumble in my stomach convinced me that it was about time I fed the inner man. I thought about it for a couple of seconds, then hailed a passing cab on Lexington and told the driver to take me to Columbus Circle. I had to restrain a tendency to look over my shoulder to see if the Voice was following me. The character was beginning to give me the heebie jeebies.

  It just didn’t make sense. None of it. Shakespeare manuscript or no Shakespeare manuscript. Marlowe or no Marlowe. I couldn’t understand why all the heat was being put on such an innocuous soul as Memo Morgan. Of course, I hadn’t seen him for a long time before today and maybe he wasn’t innocuous anymore. Money has changed too many people I’ve known for me not to appreciate its powers of transformation.

  Ten minutes later, I was safely hidden in a smoky-dark restaurant where the grille is always open. It was late in the day but I was hungry so I had the midnight works. Steak, potatoes, string beans and a pot of coffee. Before the food showed up, I treated myself to dry Martini. It helped me think. The place was empty except for the help and a solitary drinker at the bar. I cased him for trouble. The only trouble he had was his own and he had brought it in with him. He was staring morosely into an empty beer glass and sobbing quietly. He was about thirty-five and too fat for his age. Beyond that, he passed out of my thoughts. I had some mental wood to burn.

  The office was out. For one thing, the broken window wouldn’t make it the ideal place to flake out on such a breezy night. For another, I didn’t feel like answering the questions of the cops who were probably sitting around waiting for me to come home. Monks must be steaming because the report must have reached his desk by now and I hadn’t mentioned a word to him at the hospital.

  Sir Stewart St. James. World-famous actor on a wild goose chase after a dream. Memo Morgan marked for the slaughterhouse because he knew something. A hatchet man with an unforgetable Voice who popped up everywhere ready to maim and kill. Savannah Gage, a queenly looking actress who wasn’t feminine at all. Put them together and they spelled confusion, the sweetheart of the boys like me.

  I tried forgetting about the whole thing as I did justice to my steak, potatoes and coffee. The meal felt good but the way things had been going I should have had a food-taster try it for me first. The Voice had strange powers.

  When I finished my third cup of coffee, I slid out of the booth, paid my check and bought a dollar’s worth of nickels and dimes from the cashier. There was a lot of necessary phoning to do.

  My first call was to Monks. Sometimes I think he never sleeps.

  “Thanks for finally getting around to telling me about your office,” he said dryly. “Personal beef or has it something to do with Morgan?”

  “I honestly can’t answer that yet, Mike. Look, I want to ask you a favor—”

  He snorted again. “You’re going to need plenty of references. You’re pratically lost your lease on that office. Your landlord and Olaf the super have had their fill of you. Not to mention that rug dealer down the hall. Christ, you make friends wherever you go.”

  “It’s my sunny disposition. I’ll take care of that rap. Mike, how do you stand with the bobbies over in merry olde England?”

  It was too early in the morning for that line of approach. He swallowed hard on his end of the line.

  “Give me that again?”

  I tried not to laugh. I succeeded.

  “Does London cooperate with you from this end? I have a line on something and I’d appreciate their help.”

  He growled. “Of course, we have communication with them. Hands across the sea and all that. We’ve worked with them in the past. Why?” His tone was icy.

  “Got a pencil? Good. Write this down. Arthur Zwick. He’s a car salesman. Don’t know what company. I’d just like to know anything there is to know about him. He was in the American Army in War Two but seems to have settled down in England since then.”

  “Okay, Ed. What’s the rumpus about him?”

  “I can’t tell you until you hear from London. Take my word for it, Mike. If it’s important I’ll let you know right off.”

  He sighed. “Suit yourself, Sherlock. But don’t mess around in this, will you please? Bad enough the way it is or do I have to get down on my hands and knees all over again? I know what you can do but you sure can louse up an investigation.”

  “Guilty, Your Honor. How about the memory man?”

  “Still coming back the hard way. Know better tomorrow. So go back to your nice ratty office and leave me alone. At least until tomorrow, huh?”

  I laughed that time.

  “Okay. But one piece of advice—what with all this payola jazz and phony contest stuff, maybe you’d better back into that TV program where Memo won all that dough. I don’t think there’s a connection with his present headaches but you never can tell. So you might check the former staff and officials of the network. Hell, if they were on the up-and-up, answering a quiz themselves shouldn’t hurt them.”

  He whistled. “Now I know why I tolerate you. That is a smart piece of thinking. Never crossed my mind. I’ll make a deal with you. Turn in that PI card of yours and you can still have that job with the city—”

  “Maybe in the next life, Michael,” I said. “See you tomorrow.” I hung up, drummed on the silent phone for a long second and considered the advisability of calling Sir Stewart St. James. It was late and my information could wait but I was kind of certain he’d be up. He was an actor and their hours are just as shot as mine. I got a musically voiced operator who gave me his number with alacrity. Nothing sacred about Sir Stewart. Privacy obviously didn’t mean as much to him as it does to most celebrities. He wanted the world to know where he was.

  His voice was alert and wide awake when he answered the phone.

  “St. James here,” he intoned with perfect diction.

  “It’s Noon, Sir Stewart. Just wanted to c
heck with you on something. Savannah Gage ring a bell with you?”

  There was a pause from his end that can only be described as pregnant. But he wasn’t having a baby just yet.

  “How the devil does she come into this?”

  “You’ve answered the question. Now tell me some more.”

  I could almost see him drawing himself erect as he sounded his answer.

  “Savannah Gage is quite the nastiest, ill-tempered, most boorish actress it has ever been my misfortune to be on the same stage with. She’s a bit of a name in West End but she’ll never make it here. She can’t play anything but ladies, at any rate, and only second ladies at that, if you get my meaning.”

  “Got it. But what do you know about her lately—?”

  His tone was surprised. “Why, nothing. She’s still in London, I fancy, performing her brittle, witty specialties. See here—how does her name come across your path?”

  I told him, leaving out the garbage pail tournament and the undressing bit. I didn’t tell him either that I knew for a fact he had recognized her when she roared past him in the red Dodge. When I had finished my report, I heard something any continental theatre-goer would have paid good money to hear. He swore. Classically.

  “—confounded nuisance. If that Gage woman is prowling about, my worst fears are realized. Damn it all to Cain and back, there must be something in this Morgan affair.”

  “You left me in Spokane, Sir Stewart. What do you mean?”

  His chortle was bitter. “Noon, Miss Gage has a father who is a don of English at Oxford. To put it precisely, he is rather famous as a Shakespearian scholar. His theses on Our William practically earned him a peerage with the royal family. Surely, even your American mind can fancy the niceties all this implies.”

  “I get you. Poppa Gage would be more than a wee bit interested in finding an original, undiscovered Willie.”

  “In a word, you have dotted the I and crossed the T. Damn, I wish I had gotten to Zwick sooner. He must have spread his tale around the theatre before he talked to me. Else how could Savannah have learned the story—?”

  “Hang onto your title. She hasn’t done anything yet but purr a little. And we still have to talk to Morgan. This might be much ado about nothing, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  He laughed a bit more naturally.

  “Shakespeare is catching, isn’t he? Well, enough of Miss Gage. Do come to the play this evening. I’ll look forward to seeing you.”

  “Ditto,” I said. “Good night, Sir Stewart. Keep your door locked and sit tight.”

  “Roger,” he said and hung up.

  The booth was getting uncomfortable but I had one more call to make. I made it. I got that number from the operator too. A different operator but just as musical. I had voices on the brain, anyway.

  I must have awakened her. The ringing of the phone was putting me to sleep before she answered it.

  “Miss Gage here,” she said in a deep, sleepy alto. I kept my mouth shut and waited. Her voice rose on a tone of annoyance. “Hello—who is there, please?” I listened carefully. There was a curse in the receiver, then she started fuming. “See here, whoever you are. Calling at all hours and then not having the decency to reply is—” She started spluttering so I hung up. I hadn’t intended answering her anyway but I wasn’t missing any bets.

  She had a deep strong voice for a female. She was an actress. They have to know how to mimic and assume dialects. I only had a Voice to go by but I couldn’t be sure about Savannah Gage. She had the tonsils for it and the magnified effect of her voice over a telephone wire was mannish.

  She just might or might not be the mysterious Voice who’d been bugging me. The fight in the alley should have been with a man the way it felt but you only stay alive in this business by trying everything once and asking questions twice.

  I walked home to my drafty office before I realized I didn’t really want to sleep there. I didn’t. I walked down a few blocks to a fleabag hotel that hadn’t been condemned yet and registered. I signed the registrar H. P. Lovecraft, gave my address as Boston, Mass., let the sleepy clerk stay where he was behind the desk and walked up one flight to my room. I fell asleep almost immediately, hearing Sir Stewart’s sonorous voice quoting gently.

  “Good night, sweet private eye, and flights of clients, sing thee to thy rest—”

  Shakespeare was catching.

  “Give thy thoughts no tongue … ”

  THIRTEEN

  Breakfast, a hot shower and shave put me all together again. It was going to be a hectic day. That was my first notion. There was Police Headquarters to visit, the play Henry the Fifth to see and a possible interview with the cause of it all, Memo Morgan. If—the poor slob hadn’t kicked off while I was pounding my ear.

  I had my coffee, toast and orange juice in a greasy spoon close to the hotel while I digested the Daily News. The only way to save your stomach is never eat anything fried in a one-armed joint. They really can’t botch up coffee and toast that much. I read the News thoroughly to see what importance, if any, the shooting of Memo Morgan had. I found a stick of type on page three that gave a thin outline of the details and mentioned Memo by name. There was no mention of myself for which I was deeply grateful. We’d beaten it to the hospital too fast for the newshounds and Sol Miner had kept his legal trap shut. So far so perfect.

  I left the paper on the counter when I ankled out of the joint. I struck off for Police Headquarters which was a spit and a cough away. It was nearly noon, again. Time enough for Monks to have gotten some word from Roosevelt.

  The Weather Bureau was batting zero again. The rain that had been predicted was nowhere in sight. Blue skies and a lazy sun hung in the metropolitan heavens.

  Manhattan was humming. There was the usual quota of cabs, cars and trucks fighting for their place in the street. Shoppers and characters familiar to the scene were hurrying back and forth on their endless trips of habit and necessity. Including me. My footsteps mingled with the flocking hordes that stream through Eighth Avenue and the Fifties in New York’s unkempt midtown West Side. I couldn’t help marveling once more at the black-and-white extremes of the city I dig so much. The midtown East Fifties were spotless by comparison.

  My mind was on Monks, Morgan and Sir Stewart’s play.

  I’d forgotten about shadows and tails and people who make a living out of following people like me.

  I didn’t see him until I was crossing from Fifty-second over to Fifty-first on the downtown side of Eighth. It might have been the familiar twinge I got when I saw the big front of Madison Square Garden again. Memory of the Voice and his ghostly appearances and disappearances must have put the bit in my teeth. I sensed rather than saw the man behind me.

  It was all right anyway. He hadn’t intended avoiding me. I could see that. Whether or not he was the Voice remained to be heard.

  He came swinging toward me in a gray topcoat that must have cost more than it was worth. His black fedora was turned down on one side so far as to look like a gag. But there was nothing funny about the size of him. He had about an inch on my six feet and his shoulders were like those old cartoons of military men. Wider than wide-screen and swinging like trouble.

  I stopped walking, half-turned to see if he would swing by. He didn’t. His hands were rammed into the gray topper’s pockets so I knew he wasn’t carrying a machine gun. He executed a fancy sidestep and came directly up alongside me. I thrust my hand into my breast pocket as if I suddenly wanted a cigarette instead of my shoulder holster. He saw the gesture, let me see his teeth and then let me see his hands. He took them out of his coat and planted them on his lips. The movement was all-American, collegiate and good fellow but I didn’t buy the routine for a minute.

  We were only a few feet apart and our eyes had met. Funny thing about eyes. He didn’t try to out-stare me. Just kept looking at me until I knew that his eyes were marshmallow white around the brown balls, crueler than a foreclosure on an orphanage and that I was his ma
n.

  “I’ll keep my hands clean, Noon. Don’t be a bastard and get cute. I want to talk to you.”

  I took out a cigarette and popped it into my mouth without offering him one. He liked that. Discourtesy was something else that was up his street.

  “You’re one up on me,” I said. “I don’t know you and you’ve been on my tail longer than I can usually guess.”

  “I got a message for you, Noon. From me to you. Free of charge. Stay out of this rumble. Hands off, understand? Give Sir Stewart back whatever dough he’s given you and buzz off. Go chase skip-artists or alimony dead beats. You’re messing with my meal ticket and I don’t like it. Nod your head if you get the message. If you don’t—you’ve really bought yourself a case of the real blues.”

  I measured him with more instant dislike than I’ve ever had for anybody since I saw a corporal beat up a helpless German in Austria. I thought fast, all the time wondering how men who are built like Sherman tanks can have such grotesque, piping, little-boy voices.

  “Please tell me who you are,” I said, “so I can tell you to go to hell with the proper identification.”

  His thin smile faded and the teeth disappeared so that I could see more of his face. His nose was as straight as a ruler and far too slender to go with his full, mean mouth. High cheekbones and a brown skin saved the lack of hair on his broad jaws. He looked like a Kirk Douglas who never went to Hollywood and made good.

  “Your rep don’t throw me, Noon. My name is Devlin. Maybe you never heard of me but you will. Stay off this beef. Okay, I told you. You won’t be told twice. See you in church.” He started to turn on his heel to leave me just like that. I didn’t let him. I grabbed a fistful of his shoulder material and spun him around. He spun around only because he wasn’t resisting me. I let go of his coat when I saw the smile back on his heavy, brown face. That threw me a little. It’s my own routine without the added refinement of the cold cruelty to go with it. I very nearly laughed. But the bleakness of his smile stopped me.