One Night with Nora Page 16

  Dorothy Cecil, I realized dismally as I tried to keep track of her in the crowd, was simply too popular a person for an outsider like myself to hope to get much of her time. One of the finest craftsmen in the mystery field, she was being passed from one table to another whenever I saw her. So I gave up trying.

  Again, I’m afraid I’m saying all this badly. Making a great deal more out of it than it deserves. But it is what I recall most vividly of the evening. I still think Dorothy Cecil and I might well have had a pleasant evening together if so many other people hadn’t intervened. As it was, I felt a rather galling sense of disappointment when the stage show was over and I drifted out to the bar again with two or three hundred others. It was only a little past eleven o’clock, and a lonely hotel room waited for me. I knew I could attach myself without too much trouble to many of the small groups that were congregating and planning where to go for further drinks, but somehow I was not in the mood for that.

  I had no way of knowing I was going to meet a girl named Elsie Murray, but I realize I was definitely ready for her when it did happen.

  two

  There was a lot of jostling around and coming and going at the bar. I knew less than a third of the people there, and was feeling lonely when Fred Dannay came up and shook hands and asked me when I was going to submit another short story to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s annual contest.

  I grinned and reminded him that he and Manny Lee turned down my last effort, and asked if the other half of Ellery Queen was there.

  He said three of Manny’s seven children were sick and he hadn’t been able to make it. Neither had George Harmon Coxe who was in Panama for a few days. “And I don’t know what happened to John Dickson Carr,” he added.

  “That’s easy.” A voice snickered behind me. “He couldn’t decide whether to come as Harper’s guest as John Dickson Carr; or as Morrow’s guest in the person of Carter Dickson.”

  I turned and saw it was Avery Birk speaking. He’s one of my less favorite competitors, bald and pudgy, with a porcine face and small eyes set too close together. He’s the sort who’s always patting the girls on their fannys and making snickeringly suggestive remarks, and his writing is atrocious. You probably know his character, Johnny Danger, the private eye who beds every blonde he meets within five minutes of being introduced. A compensation, I’ve always believed, for the author’s manifest inability to bed any dame, blonde, brunette, or bald-headed.

  Avery insisted on pumping my hand and buying me a drink, and Fred Dannay eased away, and I was lonely again. Avery asked me how my books were selling in hard covers and I told him, “Lousy,” and he nodded wisely and said I’d never learned to put enough sex in my books. His were selling over ten thousand copies in the first editions, he went on, and he had an offer from one of the houses doing original soft-cover books of a $15,000 advance for a book if he would guarantee them at least five hot sex scenes.

  I knew he was probably selling about three thousand copies in hard covers, and might possibly have been offered $2,500 for a soft-cover original, so I shrugged and drank his drink and turned back to the bar away from him to be lonely some more.

  I was pouring my third drink of cognac from the bottle I’d had the bartender leave in front of me when I heard a low voice on my left saying, “I’ll bet you it’s the guy that writes Mike Shayne. Uh—can’t think of his name just now, but that’s him, all right.”

  The speaker was jammed up close beside me on my left side. My patch is on that eye and I couldn’t see who it was. I kept looking straight ahead and pretended not to hear, but there’s no author in the world who wouldn’t have listened.

  A second voice, beyond the first speaker, replied scornfully, making no effort to keep his voice low, “You mean Brett Halliday? Maybe it is. Who could care less?”

  “Sh-h-h, Lew. Maybe you don’t like his stuff, but he’s one of the real old-timers.”

  “That’s just it. His stuff is old hat. My God, I bet I outsell him four to one and I’ve only been writing three years!”

  I poured my drink down and then turned deliberately to look at the pair who were discussing me.

  The lad next to me had a fresh, round face and ingenuous blue eyes. His corn-colored hair was cut short. He caught my eye as I turned, and a flush spread over his face. He said eagerly, “You are Brett Halliday, aren’t you? I’m Jimmie Mason, a new member. I’ve only had a couple of shorts published, but I’m working on a novel now.”

  I shook hands with him. He had pudgy fingers but they pressed hard on mine. I said, “Good luck, Jimmie, but it’s a tough racket.”

  “I don’t see anything tough about it,” a voice sneered from beyond him. “What with reprints and all, any hack writer who’s got brains enough to know what the public wants can pick up ten or fifteen grand a year without half trying. Know what Matthew Blood got for his last twenty-five-cent original?”

  I looked past Jimmie Mason at a dark, thin, angry face. He had a mustache that reminded me of Peter Painter’s in Miami Beach. Wavy black hair was parted carefully in the middle, and he wore a little red-and-white polka-dot bow tie. I never saw a person I instinctively disliked mote, and more easily at first sight.

  Of course, I should be honest enough to admit his attitude toward my writing wasn’t exactly calculated to make me love him. In eighteen years I’ve learned pretty well to laugh off criticism of my books, but it had taken me a good many years of hard work to reach the point where my income was over ten thousand a year, and it didn’t sit too well to be told by a young punk that any hack writer could do it without half trying.

  I said, “No. And I’m not particularly interested what Blood got for a slop-bucketful of sex and sadism.”

  “Cut it out, Lew,” begged Mason. “You’ve had one too many drinks. This is Lew Recker, Mr. Halliday,” he went on hastily. “He writes suspense novels. You know—‘The Writhing Worm.’ It got swell reviews.”

  “I doubt if he ever reads anything except his own stuff,” Recker put in. “And, God! What a bore that must be.”

  I set my glass down slowly on the bar. I know my face was stony, and I’ve been told my one eye gets a peculiar fixed glare when I’m really angry. At that moment I was really angry. I work damned hard on my books. I try to make each one individual and, with the varied material Mike Shayne’s cases provide, I think I succeed. If I wasn’t so particular, I could do four books a year and double my income. So now I was in a mood to start something.

  Jimmie Mason looked frightened and tried to push in front of me. I put my left hand on his shoulder and shoved him back from the bar. Then I felt a hand gripping my right shoulder hard, and heard a cool voice saying urgently, “Brett! I want you to meet someone.”

  I recognized Millicent Jane’s voice. Millicent has always been one of my favorite people. She not only writes extremely well, but she is poised and lovely and clever.

  How much Millicent had seen or sensed of what was going on between Lew Recker and me, I don’t know. But the interruption was opportune enough, and I set my teeth together hard and turned to see Millicent smiling coolly and holding the arm of a girl wearing a simple black crepe dress. And she had pleasant, intelligent features, dark-brown ringlets on her head, and one of the most kissable mouths I’ve ever looked at.

  I said, “Hi, Millicent. I’ll buy a drink,” but she shook her head and stepped back a little and said in her rich voice, “I’ll take a rain check on it, Brett. This is Elsie Murray, who’s here as a guest tonight and she’s been dying to meet you all evening. Why don’t you buy her a drink?”

  I said, “I will,” and, “Hello, Elsie. Why should you be dying to meet a has been like me? I’m not Matthew Blood, you know.”

  She said, “I know.” She was tall for a girl. Five-eight, I’d guess, and she held herself erect as though she were proud of her height. “I know all about you, Mr. Halliday. I’ve read every book you ever wrote. Not only that, but I actually went to the trouble of getting them all together and r
eading them in the order in which they were written, from ‘Dividend on Death’ right through to ‘One Night With Nora.’”

  She didn’t say it gushingly, but with a quiet sincerity that made it sound real. She moved up to the bar beside me and I looked down at the clean neckline beneath the upswept brown curls, at the pleasant fullness of her body that was just right for her height. I took in a deep breath and she smelled good. No perfume that I could discern. Just a clean female fragrance that made me want to press my face against her hair and inhale it. Or against the back of her neck. Or her lips.

  Sure, that’s what I thought of the first moment as I looked down at her—fleetingly and without forming conscious thoughts on the subject. At the same time, I was saying jokingly, “That must have been quite a job—with Dell bringing out the old reprints right along with the new ones.” I nodded to a hovering waiter and as he stepped closer she said, “Can I have a drink of cognac? It would be silly to drink anything else with Brett Halliday, wouldn’t it?”

  I let out a deep, satisfied breath as the waiter brought her glass. Everything had righted itself suddenly, and the evening was no longer a total loss. Avery Birk was still bellied up to the bar at the other side of Elsie, but even the smirk on his fat face as he looked at her didn’t bother me. I even forgot all about Lew Recker on my left as Elsie looked at me gravely.

  “That’s when I got started collecting your books so I could go through them in order,” she told me. “When it reached the point where one book I’d buy on the newsstand had Michael Shayne married to Phyllis and so very happy; and in the next one I’d find him flirting with a secretary named Lucy Hamilton; and then in the next he’d just be meeting Phyllis Brighton for the first time when she was afraid she’d murder her own mother.” She shook her head in dismay. “It was terribly confusing.”

  She had violet eyes, I guess. If there is any such thing as violet eyes. Maybe a deep, deep blue with lavender shadings. Her eyebrows were heavy and straight and unplucked. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties. She didn’t look virginal, but she looked—How do you say it? Virtuous? No, that’s too stern. Chaste? Too prim. Perhaps the word I want is fastidious. She didn’t look untouched or untouchable, but a man would take it slow with her and let her lead the way. You had a feeling she wouldn’t be coy about leading if she once decided that was what she wanted to do.

  But she would do the deciding.

  That was okay with me. I learned long ago that sex is pretty dull and uninteresting unless it is completely mutual between man and woman.

  She had a drink of straight cognac and didn’t bother to wash it down with anything. She didn’t gulp it, but she didn’t make any great pretense of inhaling the bouquet in preference to drinking it down.

  And we talked some, mostly about my books. She wanted to know all about Michael Shayne—whether there really was a private detective whom I’d patterned him after, or whether the whole series was just a figment of my imagination.

  When I assured her there really was a Michael Shayne, and all I actually did in my books was to fictionize his cases, she nodded happily and said, “I felt sure of it all along. He’s so real that you just know he can’t be made up. Not like—oh, that freak of Van Dine’s. The one who said ‘comin’ and goin’.’”

  “Philo Vance,” I supplied.

  “U-m-m. Even the name is patently fictitious. Characters like that remain so exactly the same book after book, year after year. They never develop.”

  I grinned and shrugged. “Writers like Van Dine have it easier than I. They control their characters. Mike Shayne makes his own decisions, and all I can do is record them for posterity. Speaking of private detectives,” I went on, aware of the way Avery Birk continued to look at her from the other side, “are you acquainted with one named Johnny Danger?”

  She was looking sideways at me and fiddling with her empty glass. Her fingers tightened on the glass and the curving line of her full lips became straight and rigid. She said in a low voice, “I know Avery Birk is right behind me. Don’t force me to put my opinion of his books into words he might hear.”

  I laughed aloud and reached for the bottle to pour us each another drink. As I set the bottle down, I caught the bartender’s eye and made a gesture to indicate I wanted my bill. As we both lifted our glasses, I said, “It might be fun to go some place where we could discuss Johnny Danger without insulting his creator.”

  “I’m sure it would be fun,” she agreed simply. “That is—my God! I’m not monopolizing you, am I? I know there are hundreds of people here who must want to talk with you. When I saw your name on the guest list this evening, I was just dying to come to your table and introduce myself. But there were so many important people there—” Her voice trailed off and she raised her glass to drink half the cognac. “Wasn’t that Dorothy Cecil you were sitting beside at dinner?”

  I nodded. “On my right.”

  “She’s—very attractive. And don’t you love her books?”

  “They’re all right.” I’m afraid I said it gruffly. The crowd in the barroom had thinned down considerably, not more than twenty-five or thirty people remaining as the hour approached midnight. Some of them I knew casually, though most were strangers. “Do you have a coat checked?”

  “Just a light jacket.” She opened a black suède purse and fumbled in it, brought out a numbered check which she handed to me when I held out my hand for it.

  We both drained our glasses and I glanced at the bar check, put some bills on it, and turned away. She slid her arm into mine as we crossed to the checkroom. Walking beside me, the top of her head was just below the level of my eyes. Her arm squeezed mine with pleasant possessiveness.

  I retrieved my hat and her jacket which proved to be a black satin cape lined with scarlet satin. I slid it over her shoulders and as we went out to the street I asked casually, “Where would you like to go? I’m from Miami, you know.”

  She hesitated just a moment before saying, “What about my place? By the grace of God, there’s a bottle of brandy. And we can talk.”

  I told her it sounded just right. I held up a finger to the hotel doorman and he had no trouble snagging a taxi at that late hour.

  We got in and she gave the driver an address in the East Thirties. She had moved close to the other side when she got in and sat there demurely as the taxi pulled away. I sat not too close to her and got out cigarettes. I shook one loose and held out the pack and she took it. I put one between my own lips and struck a match. She leaned close to get a light, and her face was serene and beautiful in the little flare as she sucked in flame. Her hand had touched mine to steady the match, and she didn’t take her hand away while I got a light also. I blew the match out and lowered my lips to touch the back of her hand. Her fingers tightened spasmodically on mine, and then she drew away to her own side of the back seat and I relaxed against the rear cushion. I drew in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaled it, told her, “You haven’t told me anything about yourself at all. You’re not a member of MWA?”

  “No. Just a sort of hanger-on. Don’t worry. You’ll probably hear the entire story of my life if the bottle of brandy holds out.”

  That sounded all right to me. Her right hand was lying on the seat between us and I put mine over it. Her fingers relaxed under mine and we rode that way to the address she had given.

  three

  I paid off the taxi in front of a small, neat brick apartment building east of the Third Avenue El. Elsie went in front of me up a short flight of steps and into a small entryway with mailboxes lining both sides. She took a key from her purse to open the inner door, and we went down a short hall to a self-service elevator in the rear. It was waiting, and when we got in she pressed the button for the third floor. It went up smoothly, and I held the door for her to get out. She led the way to an apartment which she unlocked. She switched on a hall light just inside. Directly in front of us there was the open door of a small kitchenette. The bathroom was just to the right with a bedroom at the end
of the hall beyond and a living-room on the left.

  Elsie turned in the hallway and smiled diffidently and said, “Welcome.”

  Her lips were curved and inviting and I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her. She came against me without constraint, not pushing her lips or body, but not exactly withholding either.

  It was a pleasant, welcoming sort of kiss that promised more and better ones later, and I let her go without protest when she drew herself back gently after a moment. She stepped aside to turn on a floor lamp in the square living-room, then slipped off her cape and said, “Make yourself comfortable while I see about the brandy.”

  The living-room was pleasantly furnished in a hap hazard and Bohemian sort of way. There was a comfortably shabby low couch against one wall, a couple of deep chairs with reading lamps and smoking stands beside them. One wall was lined with built-in bookshelves crammed with books.

  A metal typewriter desk stood in one corner with an open portable on it, and there was a litter of crumpled manuscript sheets on the floor, a box of bond paper beside it, and a pile of typed sheets on the other side.

  There were front windows that looked down on 38th Street, and side windows for cross ventilation. Wherever there was available wall space, there were framed and unframed paintings and sketches. Some abstract oils, some realistic water colors and pastels.

  I heard Elsie moving about the kitchenette while I stepped over to the bookshelves to glance at the contents. The books were a helter-skelter jumble of modern novels, well-worn classics, works on psychology and anthropology, and volumes by some of the more liberal modern thinkers.

  I was pleased and touched to see a complete set of my books in their original bindings on the top shelf. Elsie hadn’t been kidding about her interest in my work. Not a reprint among them. I had thought I was the only person in the world who possessed such a set.