Way of a Wanton

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

FOR KEN AND LAVERNA WHITE

Chapter One

I WAS as confused as a sterile rabbit, primarily because I couldn't make up my mind where to look. The little blonde that everybody here at the party called Dot was doing an impromptu cancan, and even if she wasn't dressed for that kind of dance, she sure had the equipment for it. At the same time, over in the far corner of the living room was a long-limbed lovely built like something designed by a sex fiend.

I didn't know whether to look at the dance or the design, but I didn't want to miss anything, so I alternated. My eyes were having such a difficult time of it that a couple of times there I thought they were going to collide. Finally, though, Dot finished the dance and plopped down on a couch. She was a little thing, no more than five feet tall, well rounded, and with pure white skin.

I had a swallow of my water highball, hoping it would ease the dryness in my throat. It didn't. I shifted my gaze, waited about a minute, then got up and walked across the living-room carpet toward the long-limbed lovely.

She was wearing a strapless white dress and leaning against the wall, looking out the huge window, and smooth silver-blonde hair hung down against her shoulders and curled under in a long page boy. My own short-cropped hair is almost white, like my screwy eyebrows, and this was one of the few women I'd ever seen with hair lighter in color than mine. Except old women. This was no old woman. She was several years under my thirty.

The radio was still making a lot of noise and she didn't hear me come up. I stopped in front of her and said pleasantly, “Hello. I'm Shell Scott.” I just left it there till I found out what she'd do with it.

She turned her head slowly and looked at me from deep, dark brown eyes with lashes she used like whips. Her skin had been burned brown by countless suns, and the long hair that might once have been golden blonde was startling against the nut brown of her face and shoulders. White, even teeth flashed behind ripe red lips that curved in a smile as she snapped those lashes at me a couple of times and said softly, “Hello, you. I'm Helen.”

This was turning out to be one hell of a party.

I wouldn't say it was a typical Hollywood party, but it is safe to say it was a typical wild, wanton, hell-raising Hollywood party. And so far it was much like such parties anywhere. As a private detective—the entire staff of Sheldon Scott, Investigations—I was the only outsider here in Raul Evans's home in the Hollywood hills. The other nine people were all part of Louis Genova Productions, an independent film-producing company currently engaged in shooting an opus called “Jungle Girl.” Present were Louis Genova, the producer, and the director, the writer, and the male and female stars. Also present were four of the extra gals who were to run screaming through jungles and burn at stakes. Any minute now I figured they were going to start screaming and running, even though this was late Sunday afternoon and shooting on the picture didn't start again until tomorrow. I didn't especially enjoy any of the men here—except Raul Evans, the host—but the fact of the matter is I hadn't come here to enjoy men.

Helen was looking pleasantly up at me. “Helen what?” I asked her.

“Marshal.”

“Oh, then you're the Helen. The Jungle Girl herself?”

“That's right. I haven't seen you before, have I?”

“I just got here about ten minutes back. Still on my first drink. Nice party.”

“Mmm. Nice.”

And so was she. Tall and willowy, and smiling at me now, she was a delicious woman. I told her so and added, “While you search for any hidden meaning in that, may I fix you another drink?”

“Scotch and soda. And please.”

We were in the spacious living room of Raul's hilltop home on Durand Drive behind Hollywood, and we could look through the one entire wall of glass and see the road winding away from us, getting smaller and narrower as it reached nearer to the town far below. The swimming pool was visible fifty feet from the house, and green grass surrounded the pool and extended for a hundred feet down the hillside. Here inside the room the buzz of conversation mixed with the sound of ice tinkling in glasses when the music blaring from the radio didn't drown out everything else. People sprawled on plush divans or sat in heavy overstuffed chairs; everybody seemed to have a drink. I walked across the room to a three-stool bar against the far wall and made Helen's highball plus another bourbon and water for me.

While I mixed them I looked at the rest of the people in the room. I hadn't known quite what to expect when Raul had phoned me, but it had sounded interesting. He'd called me at my Hollywood apartment about three-thirty P.M., and after the usual chitchat he'd said, “You hunting down any killers this day, Shell?”

“No killers, no nothing.”

“Come on up, then, pal. Got a live one going. We'll go for a swim later. A production.”

“Party?”

“Party. Couple of extra girls—I mean women. Think you can handle them?”

“How do you mean that?”

“You coming up?”

“On my way. Mix me a drink. I'll bring my gaudiest trunks.”

“O.K., stupid. You can bring ’em if you want to.”

And that had been all there was to the invitation. I've known Raul for over six years, just about the length of time I've had an agency in downtown L.A., and he's one of the few guys I know in the movie-making industry that I really get along well with. Lately he'd been throwing so many eyebrow-raising parties that it was getting talked about and even mentioned in some of the nosy columns. But, unlike the columnists, I figured it was his business.

So, even though I wasn't part of the filmflam crowd, here I was. When I'd first come in Raul had handed me a glass and introduced me around in that en-masse fashion common to many of these affairs, but I could remember most of the names he'd rattled off.

Raul was Genova's director on “Jungle Girl,” and he and Genova himself, a dark, worried-looking man about five feet nine inches tall, were poring over some papers on top of a grand piano while fashion plate Oscar Swallow, who had written the original of “Jungle Girl” for Genova, peered over their shoulders. Swallow was a bachelor like me, and he obviously considered himself eligible.

The only other man present, Douglas King, was also the only sensible one present, it seemed to me. He was the male star of “Jungle Girl"—and very male he was, too. He had on swimming trunks, though nobody had yet been in the pool, and he was built like a couple of Greek gods mashed together. In the movie, I understood, he was Bruta, the guy who swings through trees and rescues everybody from the apes and things. I say he was sensible because little Dot was on his lap and whispering in his ear. I guess she was whispering. She was doing something up there.

The three other girls were giggling together as I finished mixing the drinks. I eavesdropped on their conversation for a few seconds as they passed it around.

One of them, a redhead, was saying, “...a real big shot—he's got two pools. He's casting the chorus for it like Ziegfeld used to—you know, put a quarter between their thighs, knees, and calves. Have to hold all three—”

“Sylvia couldn't make it using rolls of quarters. Hell, she won't have to. It isn't by holding quarters between her—”

“That Sylvia! She lifts her lips and she's acting. If I—”

“That's not what she lifts, darling, not when she's—”

I grinned happily and walked back to Helen carrying the two drinks. I gave her the scotch and said, “I missed you when I came in. Usually I'm wider awake.”

“You can make amends now.” She peered up at me. “You must be the biggest man here. How big?”

“Six-two. A shade less. And about two-oh-five. O.K.?”

“Very.” She reached up casually and with one red-tipped finger traced a line down the bridge of my slightly bent nose. “What happened?”

“Busted. In the Marines. Not the police action; the one before that. One of the big wars to make the world safe for the dead.”

She was looking at my left ear, the ear from which a small slice is missing, so I said, “Bullet—in a private war.” This seemed like the kind of party where a man could press his luck, so I added, “As long as we're on vital statistics...” and shifted my gaze downward.

She smiled and said softly, “Thirty-five. A shade more.”

I shifted again.

“Twenty-three.”

I shifted again.

She didn't say anything. I waited a moment, then looked back at her face. She was laughing silently. I said, “No statistic?”

“Try that again. Where were you looking?”

“Why—oh, ha. Well, you know. Well—”

She interrupted my logical explanation with “Thirty-five, too. That all right?”

I grinned back at her. “It will do.”

Somebody clapped me on the shoulder just in time to keep me from getting completely lost in this conversation. I turned around.

It was Raul. “Hello again, Shell,” he said. “Glad you came?” I nodded and he added, “I see you've picked off our star.”

“Uh-huh. The movie's bound to make money.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Helen.

I looked over toward the piano, where Genova and Swallow still stood, Swallow towering over the much shorter producer. They were quite a contrast in other ways, too. Swallow was a Hollywood writer who apparently tried to look and act like a Hollywood writer, and he was a big gob of color next to Genova, who was wearing a plain dark single-breasted suit. Swallow was slow-talking, slow-moving; Genova was a little forty-year-old dynamo of rapid-fire chatter and quick, darting movements who impressed me as a man who would walk down escalators. Right now he was waving a sheet of paper in his left hand and nervously snapping the fingers of his right hand, using up some of his excess energy. The most obvious and notable part of his features was the pair of huge black eyebrows that traveled up and down his forehead as he talked. I'd heard that Genova had one god and one only: money. He was much like many men obsessed with the desire for money and the power it represents, and I'd have given odds he took pills.

I nodded toward the two men at the piano and asked Raul, “Business?”

“Yeah. It came up after the party started. Actually Genova doesn't quite fit in with the—uh, somewhat abandoned atmosphere here. He phoned about some last-minute changes for tomorrow's shooting and I almost had to ask him over.” He grinned. “Damned if I was going to leave.”

Raul's grin lit up his entire rather homely face. Invariably it made me feel like grinning back. He was almost as tall as I, but thin, and with a thick, neatly trimmed mustache riding on his long upper lip. Raul and I didn't sit around pounding each other on the back and saying how much we liked each other. The affection was there, though, and it was mutual.

Helen said, “More changes on ‘Girl,’ Raul?”

“Afraid so.” He turned to me. “We're already running over the budget on the damned thing. I wish L.G. would settle these things during working hours, though.” He grinned again and shrugged his thin shoulders. “Cheaper for him this way. The hell with it. Let's have a drink. Let's have a double.”

He wandered off. I looked around the room for a few moments, a screwy idea I'd had earlier entering my mind again. I turned to Helen. “You notice anything peculiar?”

“Peculiar?”

“Funny. Screwy. Off balance or something.”

“About Raul?”

“Not just Raul. Everybody. The whole party.”

Ever since right after I'd come in I'd had the feeling that something was off key. And the feeling had persisted despite the kicks and laughter and obvious enjoyment of some of the people present, including me. It seemed that, even for a party like this one, the guests were trying too hard, laughing too loudly, slapping backs too boisterously. There seemed to be a kind of tension in the air, as if somebody or everybody was under pressure and the feeling had spread like a stain through the room.

Helen said slowly, “I don't know. Maybe. How do you mean?”

“Well ... it's a fine party, but it's like—” I searched for the word—"like a wake. You know. Everybody's got to get plastered to have fun. Or like people pretending.”

She swallowed part of her drink. “I think you're reaching for that one,” she said. “But this is a funny collection of people, isn't it? Several varieties of worries here. Take Raul. You know his wife's at Tahoe, I imagine.”

I knew that. Raul had chased around a little too long and brazenly, and his wife, Evelyn, had finally headed for Lake Tahoe and the Cal-Neva Lodge four or five weeks back. Tahoe has pretty much replaced Las Vegas and Reno for many of the Hollywood couples who want to end it quickly. I knew Raul well enough to know he wasn't happy about it, but since Evelyn had left he'd done nothing except chase even harder, and perversely party longer and later when he had the chance.

Helen added, “Genova's got money troubles. King's wife is suing for custody of their two kids. And even Swallow has troubles of his own.” She hesitated and added, “Maybe.”

I said, “How about you? Any troubles I can fix?”

“Yes,” she said definitely. “I was having a fine time until you got so somber. Do you realize you spoiled a conversation I was enjoying?”

I grinned at her. “I'm sorry, Helen. I'll begin all over. How do you do, miss? I'm thinking of starting a nudist colony. All I need is nudists. Any suggestions?”

“That's better,” she said. “Sign me up. Where's this to be?”

“Organizational meetings will be held in the Spartan Apartment Hotel in Hollywood. That's right across from the Wilshire Country Club, which should be ideal.”

“If a bit public,” she said. “Spartan. That must be about where you live.”

“It is. I elect you queen of the Shell Scott Nudist Colony.”

She smiled. “And the king?” She whipped her eyelashes at me again, then said, “Don't tell me. But I imagine King Kong over there will want in.”

“Douglas? He's excluded; I accept applications only from humans.” I glanced toward him and was surprised to find him glaring at me. “What's eating him?”

She looked at Douglas King and waved to him, saying softly, “He likes me. We've been out on the Strip a couple of times. Very discreet because of the court battle with his wife, naturally. Nothing serious with us, although he tried. My, how he tried. Maybe he's afraid you're beating his time.”

“Should he be?”

She smiled, but didn't answer.

“Hell,” I said, “he's got a cancan dancer twirling on his lap.”

“Oh,” she said, “he's a man.” Apparently that explained everything.

I took Helen's arm and pulled her closer to me. “Listen, little sweetie,” I said, “I hope you're not one of those bloodthirsty wenches who like men to make like gladiators for the lady fair.”

She tossed her silver-blonde head. “I'm not,” she said. “Definitely not.” She reached up and started playing with my right ear. “Why? Does he scare you?”

I looked back at King. “Only a little,” I said.

I'd seen the guy around town a few times without meeting him, and I'd seen one movie he'd been in, which movie showed him stabbing crocodiles and hanging from trees by his tail or some such thing. He was a damned good-looking man if you like them beetle-browed and surly, and he was conceited as hell. He was an even six feet and had lumps all over him and the lumps were muscles. If you didn't like it he'd lump you. That was almost all I knew about him except what Helen had mentioned: that he was having some trouble in a child-custody case. I had always been inclined to think any children of his would be in a zoo, but apparently they were normal. Also, apparently, he didn't want his estranged wife to have them.

Helen finally let go of my ear. “You don't look like a man who scares easily,” she said.

I grinned at her. “Have it your way. If he even sneers at me I'll snatch all the hairs out of his chest.”

She gurgled her appreciation of my daring while I finished my drink. I said, “I'm behind on the liquor. How long's this ball been going on?”

“Since about two. You're not far behind.”

“I'll catch up, but isn't this a little unusual? Big drinking party before the movie's finished?”

“Uh-huh. But that's why we started early—so we can go home early and be fresh tomorrow. It isn't like working for M-G-M or Twentieth, say; we're more informal. For that matter, almost all of us here now were here last Thursday night, too, but that was mostly business then.”

That seemed to remind her of something, because she frowned slightly, narrow brows slanting. “You know,” she said, “I wish you hadn't mentioned that off-balance business. The wake. You started me thinking. I guess people aren't ever completely at ease after the police talk to them. Maybe that's part of it.”

“Police? What police? Who'd they talk to?”

She looked slowly around the room. “Oh, just about all of us, I guess.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Yesterday. I still don't know what it's all about, though. Zoe hasn't shown up or something. Cops wondered if we knew anything about where she might be.”

“Zoe?”

She wiggled a finger toward Swallow, resplendent in a mustard-colored jacket and chocolate slacks, with a beige scarf around his neck. “His secretary. At least, as of last Thursday.”

Now I frowned. “What is this?” I asked her. “Some kind of mystery?”

“I don't think so. All I know is she hasn't shown up at the studio. Wasn't there Friday or Saturday, anyway.”

I was going to ask her some more about this Zoe, but suddenly she changed the subject, and the direction the conversation seemed to be taking kept my mind occupied.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “There we go again, and this time it's my fault. Oh, did you bring a suit?”

“Swim suit? Yeah. It's in the car.”

She smiled in what I thought was a slightly mysterious and highly sensual fashion and said, “It's just as well, even though you probably won't need it.”

“Oh? Nobody going swimming?”

“Everybody will, I imagine.” She kept smiling and I looked at her bright red lips and thought how pleasant it would be to kiss them. And while I thought that, I also wondered if she'd meant what I thought she meant.

Just as I was about to ask if we were all to jump into the pool with our clothes on and drown, Raul gulped the last of another drink and shouted over the noise, “We're going swimming, people! Everybody get undressed. The prudes can wear suits.”

Helen's smile broadened slightly, and I thought I had at least part of my answer. I cleared my throat. “Well,” I said, “I never.” That was me. Brilliant as always.

Chapter Two

OSCAR SWALLOW swung around toward Raul. “Oh, you cur,” he cried, “not yet.”

“Excuse me a minute, Helen,” I said. “Think I'll chat with this man Raul.” I paused. “You have a suit?”

She nodded.

I looked at the deeply tanned skin of her face and arms. “You get a lot of sun, don't you?”

“All the time. But I'm not tanned all over. I have two white strips.” Her dark eyes were merry. “Little narrow white strips.”

“Oh?” I cleared my throat. “That's interesting. I—uh, excuse me.”

She chuckled as I walked across the room toward Raul. When I reached him he said, “Get your trunks, Shell, while you've got the chance.”

“O.K. What's with Swallow? Can't he swim?”

Raul laughed. He was a little tight. “Sure he swims. But he made a phone call a while back to his secretary. He has designs on the woman; wants to get her into the pool. Only she doesn't know it yet.” He laughed again. “He knows if we're all splashing around when she gets here, she'll probably never join the party.” He sobered a little and shook his head. “Can't say I blame the man. She's some woman. Some woman.”

There were a couple of things he'd said that had confused me a bit, but one above all. I said, “He called his secretary? You mean Zoe?”

He blinked at me. “Where did you hear about Zoe?”

“Why? Any reason I shouldn't?”

“No, no reason,” he replied. “Just surprised me. She's taken a powder somewhere, I guess. I meant Sherry, Swallow's new steno. He dictates most of his stuff.”

Swallow and Genova had been talking together and now they walked over to us. As they came up Genova was saying angrily, “That goddamn Bondhelm! I'd like to cut him to pieces a pound of fat at a time.” Genova's deep, booming voice was surprising in so short a man.

Raul chuckled. “That'd take about a year, considering his size.”

Genova grumbled, “The sonofabitch must of studied under Shylock.”

“Direct descendant,” agreed Swallow. He looked around and added, in one of those imitation British accents that never fool anyone except those who want to be fooled, “Things seem to have calmed a trifle. Unfortunately.”

I said, “Guess the cancan dancer ran down.” Then I asked Raul, “She in the movie?”

“Yeah, that's Dot. Dot English. But she gets eaten up by a lion in one of the first scenes.”

Swallow broke in. “Very intelligent lion, that one. Almost human, don't you think, old boy?”

I looked at him to see if he were old-boying me, but he was addressing himself to Raul. Swallow glanced over at Dot and said, “Lovely, lovely—and that creamy white skin. I think I'd call her Snow White with sex appeal.”

It about summed up my own impression of Dot, and it was a fair description, but I'd read the line before in one of the movie columns. Raul chuckled again and said, “I think that lion was you in a lion skin, Swallow.”

Swallow grinned but didn't answer as he and Genova walked to the bar.

I asked Raul, “Something else. What's this about cops asking questions?”

“Well,” he said, “you do get around.” He grinned. “Always the detective, aren't you? Believe me, I didn't ask you here to quiz the guests, Shell. Cops got a bug they should look for Zoe. Talked to me yesterday; to Genova, King, all of us, I guess.” He shrugged. “Me? I know from nothing. Why they should even ask us, I don't know. Except she's been working at the studio.” He paused and said, “For God's sake, relax, man. This is supposed to be for kicks.”

“O.K., Raul. Uh, say, you heard anything from Evelyn?”

His face sobered. “No. Looks like she's ... gone.” He frowned and looked at me. “I wish—Oh, to hell with it. Skip it, Shell. Go get your suit and glue it on.”

I nodded, handed him my empty glass, and walked out the front door and down the steps to the flagstone walk leading out to the drive. I grabbed my trunks from the front seat of my Cadillac and stopped.

A new Ford coupé pulled up behind my Cad and a girl in a bright print dress got out and started walking across the lawn toward the path. I guessed this was the Sherry Raul had mentioned. She was about twenty feet away, walking toward me, and at first I just glanced at her curiously. She was walking rapidly and my initial impression was that she was cute and curvy and a highly jiggly tomato.

“Hello,” I said.

She looked at me for the first time and said cheerily, “Hi, there. How're you?” She walked right by me and up the path, and I really didn't pay as much attention to her face as I should have. How I missed noticing, even on that first casual glance, I don't know, but even in a town that boasts such prominent women as Jane Russell, Denise Darcel, and Marie Wilson, this little cutey was right up there. They were right up there, too, and they had a personality all their own. This was three-dimensional TV and Art Studies in Action. Right then I decided that no matter what her other talents were, there was one thing she was almost sure to be good at.

She went past me and started up the path and I watched her revolve away, then followed about ten feet behind her. I'd been having fun inside the house watching Dot and talking to Helen, but nice as that had been, I felt right now as if I'd gone from the famine to the feast. She heard my footsteps on the path, looked over her shoulder, and smiled, then kept on going. She seemed like a happy little gal.

I followed her inside, then went over behind the bar for a drink while I sized up the situation. Swallow swung around as soon as the girl came in and said exuberantly, “Ah, Sherry, my dear. So glad you could come.”

He had a habit I'd noticed of acting as if he were the host, but what annoyed me most about him—so far, at least—was that phony British accent he'd stolen. Like a lot of affected fakes, he rolled “ripping” trippingly off his tongue, along with “old boy,” “by Jove!” and even “bloody” in perfect pear-shaped tones. He had already changed into trunks that might have been tailor-made.

Sherry said something to him and he threw back his head and laughed. I'd have bet he did that a lot; it made his neck look big and strong and the muscles rippled in his throat. He even laughed pear-shaped. Raul and Douglas King both headed toward him and the late arrival, but I lost track of the action right then because Helen walked across the room and sat on one of the bar stools.

She smiled. “Do you remember my drink, Mr. Scott?”

“Shell, honey. And it's scotch and soda. Coming up.”

Helen said without sarcasm, “She's lovely, isn't she?”

“Who? The new one? Well, yes. More cute than anything else.”

“She sort of sparkles. You know who she is?”

“Swallow's temporary secretary or something, isn't she?”

She nodded. “She ought to be in the picture.”

I grinned at her. “She wouldn't get past the Johnston office. For that matter, I don't know how you're going to. Breen will turn green.”

“You're sweet,” she said.

Laughter bubbled from the little gathering a few feet beyond us, then Douglas King detached himself from the others and walked up to the bar. He sat down and patted Helen's thigh, looking at me.

“Mix me a drink,” he said.

I didn't like the flat way he said it, as if it were an order, but I let it pass. “What are you drinking?”

“Scotch on the rocks. You're the private eye, huh?”

“That's right. Only we're seldom called private eyes.” I mixed the drink and put it in front of him. He grunted. Just for the hell of it, I grunted.

Helen said, “I think I'll slip into my suit.” She gave me a big smile when she said it and I winked at her. King grunted. Maybe he had a pain.

Helen walked off and left me and Bruta together. I finished my drink and picked up my trunks. Some of the others had changed into swim suits and I wanted to be around for whatever the hell was supposed to happen out there at the pool. I stepped from behind the bar as King tossed off his drink and plunked the glass down on the bar top.

“Mix me another,” he said. Same flat tone again.

I grinned at him. “Sorry,” I said pleasantly. “There's a new bartender on now.”

He looked squarely at me and said softly, “Mix me another one, anyway.”

He was still sitting on the stool, all nine hundred pounds of him swung around a little toward me, and we were looking straight at each other. Obviously he was pushing this beyond the point of light chatter, and there were several things I could have done. I could have stared at him for several minutes to see which of us would look away first—which seemed pretty stupid—or I could get nasty, or I could clobber him one. I was getting damned unhappy with this boy, but I'm not a guy who goes around looking for trouble. In my business I get enough without looking for it. And maybe the guy did have a pain.

So I said, “Let's not be silly, King,” and walked away. He didn't spring on my back and bite me, so I went over toward the piano, where Swallow and Raul were talking to the outstanding woman in the room. Behind them Genova was rapidly shoving papers into his brief case. The girl had her back in the curve of the piano top, her elbows resting on the polished black surface behind her, and I added an inch to my unofficial estimate.

She glanced at me as I came up, then in apparent answer to something Raul had said she laughed merrily and replied, “All right, Raul. I won't be angry.”

I cleared my throat.

Swallow said, “Well, as long as you're here, how about a drink?”

“All right. Only one, though. I still think it's a dirty trick.”

I cleared my throat very loudly.

Swallow said, “I shall make it myself,” and headed for the bar. Big of him.

I dug Raul in the ribs. When he turned toward me I said, “Hello, pal. What's new, pal?”

He grinned. “I've been expecting you,” he said. Then he turned to the girl and said, “Sherry, this is one of my old, evil friends. He's a private investigator named Shell Scott, and not as tough as he looks. Shell, this is Sherry.”

“Hello, Mr. Scott,” she said, and her voice was as soft as a whispered “Kiss me.” She added, “I remember you. You're the man who was following me.”

“For years,” I said. “And call me Shell.” I might have said any number of other things, but this was the first good chance I'd had to take a look at her face; I took it, and it kept me fully occupied for a while. She was only about five-four or so, and she was looking up at me from big eyes that were the clear blue of sky after rain. Her lips were full, soft, and red as the edge of a rainbow, and turned up mischievously at the corners now in the start of a smile. Silky hair, the rich color of dark mahogany, tumbled down to her shoulders. Right here, I decided, was a woman who could have all of my time she wanted.

Finally I found my tongue again. “We sort of go together: Shell and Sherry. Names do, anyway. You joining the party?”

She smiled. “I thought there was some work for me to do here—typing or note-taking or something. That gay deceiver over there"—she glanced at Oscar Swallow across the room mixing drinks—"led me to believe there was. But as long as there isn't, I'll just drink and run.”

Raul spoke up. “I move that Sherry remains.”

“Second the motion,” I agreed.

She laughed musically. “Gentlemen, you're overruled.” She turned and took her drink from Swallow as he came up, then asked me, “A detective? Are you here picking up clues or whatever detectives do?”

“Uh-uh. Just enjoying myself.” I looked around the room. Almost everybody else was in a swim suit now, and that made me consider how lovely Sherry would look at the beach. Particularly a private beach. She was sipping at her drink and listening to Raul, so I excused myself and hunted up an empty room. I changed into my trunks and when I came back into the living room I noticed everybody was now ready for a swim except Genova—who wasn't really invited, Raul had told me.

But there was one thing missing: the bosomy Sherry. I spotted Raul, long and thin in a pair of faded green trunks, and walked up beside him.

“What happened to the little—”

He knew what I'd started to say. “She left. I figured she would when she found out Swallow didn't really have anything important cooking but just wanted to make a pass at her.” He smiled. “But I wish she'd stayed.”

I'd been wishing the same thing, myself. Then Raul turned away from me and yelled, “Outside, everybody. Hit the pool.”

We all trooped out, blonde little Dot prancing in the lead, looking very fetching in a bright yellow two-piece bikini. Everybody seemed to be happy, yelling and laughing, and I decided I'd only been imagining that something was dampening the spirits around here. The pool itself was a beauty. It was about sixty feet long, and at one end there was a diving board and at the other end was the feature of Raul's pool that made it different from most of its Hollywood counterparts. That was the waterfall. It wasn't a very big waterfall, but water was pumped continually up from the pool to splash down over artistically piled rocks and back into the pool again. It was pretty, and had a pleasant sound to it, and if you tried hard you could almost imagine it was a country stream. The house and grounds were isolated enough. Even the other homes nearby were out of sight.

We grouped around the pool and I spotted Helen and walked up beside her. She looked even better in her light blue one-piece suit than she had in the strapless white dress.

“I was looking for you,” she said. She went on casually, “How do you like my new suit? Usually I wear a two-piece, but I liked this one. Do you think anybody will really go swimming in the nude?”

I swallowed. The sun was low now, but it was still plenty bright. Very damned bright, if you asked me. I said, “In the— Is that on the program?”

She shrugged. “All I know is what Raul told everybody when he got the party together,” she said, smiling broadly. “That we could bring suits but we couldn't wear them in the water. You know: Hang your clothes on a hickory limb...”

“He—he didn't tell me that.” I thought back to Raul's invitation. “That is, not exactly.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Scare you?”

My heartbeat had speeded up a little bit. I looked down at Helen's brown eyes and red lips. The way she was smiling now, her lips seemed to thin and look almost savage. Their red seemed like the stain of blood and her dark eyes had narrowed and appeared almost black.

I said, “No, I don't think so.”

She squeezed my arm gently just as Raul shouted loudly, “No suits in the pool! Who's brave enough to be first in?”

Raul was only a few feet from me and I called to him, “Hey, you serious?”

He swung around a little unsteadily and shouted, “Hell, why else have the damn pool?”

There was quiet for about three seconds, and it appeared we were all going to stand there looking foolish, and then Dot, dear delightful little Dot, squealed bravely, “I'm brave,” and ran toward the diving board ten yards away.

Well, now I knew.

Chapter Three

DOT ran to the end of the pool and climbed up on the springboard. The quiet of a moment before was gone now and somebody yelled, “Attagirl, Dottie,” as she reached behind her and fumbled with her skimpy yellow bra.

I heard Swallow's British accent close by as he said happily, “Ah, this is a lovely Hollywood innovation: The Casting Pool.”

Dot unfastened the bra and pulled the cloth from her body, then held it high over her head for a moment, posing before us all. Men yelled and the girls squealed and I said weakly, “Attagirl.”

I was wishing Sherry had stuck around. Then Helen stepped closer to me, her arm sliding around my waist, her soft thigh pressed against mine. I put my arm around her bare shoulders and pulled her closer to me, my throat tight. Dot threw the bra away from her and it was a spot of yellow on the surface of the water for a moment before it sank slowly downward. Then she put her hands on the brief bikini trunks, stood motionless for long seconds, then slowly slid them down from her hips and kicked them into the pool.

That really broke the ice, if it hadn't been broken before. One of the other girls whose name I couldn't remember, a sweet-faced redhead, started to peel off her suit, and Raul went over to help her. Dot still stood on the springboard, and now she started bouncing up and down, squealing. Talk about bouncing! You never in your life saw such bouncing. This looked like one of those times when pretty soon a man would feel more conspicuous with his clothes on than with them off. No matter what happened, pretty soon I was going to be damned conspicuous.

Dot yelled, “Come on in, everybody,” and dived into the pool. I was surprised: No steam came up. Right then Helen said softly beside me, “Well?”

I turned and faced her. She was smiling easily, and as I looked at her she unfastened the single strap that was looped around her neck and helped hold up the top of her suit. With her fingers hooked in the cloth over her full breasts she said, “Are you going to join me?”

I said, “You know something? I feel a little silly. Probably I should have had one more drink. Two more. Several.”

She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and chuckled throatily. “Oh, you're like a little boy.”

“The hell I'm like a little boy.”

She laughed; then, looking at my face, with her red lips smiling and her teeth pressed together, she pulled the suit down slowly and smoothly, without hesitation, baring snowy white breasts that jutted from the darkly tanned skin above and beneath them. With the suit down, her body naked to the waist, she paused.

“Shell,” she said, “don't make me do this all by myself.”

I was stalling for time now. “Don't mind if I'm a little slow, Helen.”

“It's all right. I like to do everything slowly, myself.”

“Everything?”

“That's what I said.”

“Is that good?”

“Oh,” she said softly, “it's so good.”

She stood looking at me, her hands still holding the blue cloth bunched low at her waist. I could see the beginning of white skin at her hips where the sun hadn't touched her flesh. She stepped close to me, the tips of her breasts touching my chest, and said again, “Well?”

I couldn't stall any longer, and now I didn't want to. Helen and I were going for a swim. I put my hands on the top of my trunks, hesitated for a moment, and somebody screamed.

I thought, What the hell? Isn't this the idea? And then I heard the scream again. Louder this time, piercing and shrill and with the taut thread of panic and horror in it.

I looked to my left and saw Dot climbing frantically from the pool, stumbling, then getting up and running toward me, her mouth open, still screaming.

She started to run past me, but I grabbed her arm. She screamed again and I shook her roughly. “What the hell's the matter?” I yelled at her. “What's wrong with you?”

She quieted down a little, and breathing rapidly through her open mouth she gasped, “There's someone dead in there. Someone dead!”

All the babble had died down, the shouts and squeals and laughter stopped, and people started gathering around us. I said, “Take it easy, Dot. You must have made a mistake. That's silly.”

She was over her first panic, but her eyes were still staring and her lips twisted as she said raggedly, “No. It's true. God. It's something dead.”

Nobody said a word for several seconds, and suddenly it seemed a little chillier. The sun was lower now, getting ready to dip behind distant trees that cut jagged chunks out of its base. There wasn't any sound except the gurgling of the imitation waterfall. There was tenseness now, all right, and maybe fear. Just like that, in a few seconds, everything had changed.

I said, “What happened? Why do you think there's something ... dead? Where?”

She let out a long shuddering breath. “In the pool. I was going to swim underwater and come out from the waterfall. I thought it would be fun. And I put my hand on it—on a face.”

She turned and pointed at the spot where swirling water dropped into the pool. All of us looked where she pointed, but we couldn't see beneath the rippled and foaming surface of the water. I looked around me. Everybody who had been inside when I arrived was out here now. Genova was the only one fully dressed. Some of the others had swim suits on, some nothing at all. There wasn't anything exciting about the nakedness any more.

Swallow spoke to Dot. “Couldn't it have been a rock? Or something else there?”

She didn't answer, just shook her head.

“Listen, Dot,” I said. “You weren't the only one in the pool. What probably happened was that you touched somebody else swimming underwater.” I tried to grin at her. “Probably some guy made a pass at you. Hell, I don't blame him.”

Nobody even smiled. It was going to take more than feeble remarks to save this party. I glanced around again. Of all the people besides Dot, the only two who were wet were Raul and his redhead. I asked them, “Were either of you down at that end of the pool?”

They both shook their heads. Raul said, “We were under the springboard. And ... there wasn't anyone else in the water yet.”

Louis Genova had been standing on the outskirts of the crowd, a brief case in his hand as if he'd been about to leave. The bastard, I thought, he's not sticking around or joining the party, but he'll stay long enough to get a peek. Now he spoke. “Obviously,” he said in his deep voice, “nothing will be settled by talking. Somebody will have to see if anything is there.”

I think that had become apparent to almost all of us, but nobody wanted to speak up. The idea of a dead thing down there under the water wasn't pleasant.

Genova went on, “Well, which of you men wants to settle this? I can't very well leave till it is settled.” Genova, the boss, the Producer speaking.

Nobody spoke for a few moments, then I said, “O.K. I'll take a look.”

My words were almost like a signal. Helen looped the single strap around her neck and refastened it in silence. The girl with Raul picked up a black swim suit and turned her back, modest now. Dot looked around her as if she were still dazed; her yellow bikini was at the bottom of the pool. She turned and walked toward the house. I looked up at the sun again; it was half hidden behind the trees and a definite chill was in the air.

I walked to the edge of the pool and dived in.

Chapter Four

THE WATER was cold. I felt it close around my body and I opened my eyes as I swam along the bottom toward the cement wall at the pool's edge. Above me the water from the falls made the surface swirl, and the murky illumination that filtered through the ripples and bubbles of foam sent fragile shadow patterns gliding below me like scurrying mice. I swam forward through the thready shadows until I saw a heavier, more solid shadow that didn't move.

I swept my hands through the water hard, then moved them slowly to keep myself at the bottom as I drifted close to the darker shadow. Then my face was a foot away from it and I could see the long cobwebby threads of hair waving idly in the slow currents, and the paler blob of the face beneath it; a woman's face with distended, bulging eyes staring into the water that slid against them and filled the open mouth.

I could feel a shiver of revulsion twist through my body, but for a moment more I looked at her. The almost frightening thought sprang into my mind that maybe she was alive, but then I knew it couldn't be true. Her body was fully clothed and twisted strangely. I could see that a heavy weight held her down below the surface, and that something had cut a mark deeply into her throat. The thought that she might be alive persisted insanely in my mind, and I reached forward with one hand. I touched her neck, felt the heavy wire that was twisted around it and buried in the flesh, then with a bitter moistness in my throat I turned away and kicked to the surface.

The others were standing at the edge of the pool. They moved back as I swam toward them and climbed out dripping. Nobody asked what I'd found; my expression must have made it obvious. They waited.

I gulped air into my lungs and then said, “There wasn't any mistake. There's a dead woman down there. It looks like she was murdered.”

The silence lasted an uncomfortably long time. Finally Oscar Swallow, perhaps impelled by a desire to hear somebody say something, said in a shaky voice, “That's the trouble with Hollywood: Somebody's always crashing the parties.”

Nobody appreciated his remark, but at least it started the others off. Raul groaned, “Oh, God, my God. Murdered!” and King swore softly.

I looked around at all the faces. “Well,” I said, “anyone here know anything about this? Any ideas on how or why a dead woman's in there?”

Nobody spoke. Half of them looked away from me, slowly shaking their heads. “Raul,” I said, “this is your home. You know anything about it?”

“God, no. What a horrible ... No, Shell. I don't understand. I don't get it.”

After a few moments I said to Raul, “I guess I'll have to use your phone.”

He looked at me as if he were startled. “What for?”

“Somebody has to call the police.”

“Oh. Well...” He let it trickle off.

Suddenly Douglas King said belligerently, “Call the police, hell! I don't want to get mixed up in this. No sense in any of us getting mixed up in it.”

I was still standing with my back to the pool and the others stood in a little group facing me. I looked at King. “You're no more mixed up in this than anyone else, but we're all involved a little just because we were all here when the body was found. And of course we have to call the police.”

Genova scratched one of his bushy eyebrows and stepped closer to me. “Let's not be hasty about this, Mr. Scott. I can see King's point. Douglas can't afford any adverse publicity right now. Particularly the kind represented by this—this near saturnalia.” He hesitated. “For that matter, neither can I.” He looked around him. “None of us can.”

“It's not a matter of—” I started, but Swallow interposed, “I've done a couple of radio scripts in which bodies were moved from the spot where they were found. If I might suggest—”

This time I interrupted him. “Wait a minute, all of you. What is this? Surely there can't be any objection to calling Homicide.” I looked from one face to another. Nobody came over to my side. One of the girls said, “Can't we just go home? Golly!” There was a little mutter of agreement. With her, not with me.

“Damnit,” I said. “Whether you like it or not, I'm calling the cops. Hell, nobody likes being mixed up in a murder.”

Raul finally spoke up again. “Shell,” he said hesitantly, “why murder? Maybe—”

“No maybe, I'm afraid, Raul.”

He grimaced and shook his head. It occurred to me that several of the people here had good reason for not wanting their names on the front pages—particularly under black headlines either hinting or screaming of not only murder but pagan orgies. King, Genova, Raul. I didn't know about Swallow, though he didn't seem happy. And the girls all seemed to want to go home. I wasn't a very popular guy.

I mentally said the hell with it and took a couple of steps toward the house, but King jumped forward and grabbed my arm.

“Take your goddamn hands off me, King.”

He let go, but he said, “Listen, Scott, just because you got a tin badge of some kind, what the hell makes you think you're running this show? You forget about the cops, fellow.”

Genova stepped up beside him and seconded the motion almost as forcibly. “I agree with Mr. King. I'm afraid I'll have to insist, Mr. Scott.”

“You insist? You insist? And who the hell are you? Will you people get it through your heads that there's been a murder?” I looked at King. “And for your information, friend, that tin badge, as you call it, isn't the only reason I'm phoning.”

“You're not phoning.”

I ignored that and went on, “I'm a licensed private investigator, sure, and I've got to call the nearest authorities when a body's found or I'll never find another job. But any citizen has to do the same thing.”

“Not if nobody else knows about it,” said Genova.

“Raul,” I said sharply, “just for the record, have you any objection to my using your phone and calling downtown?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “Do anything you want, Shell.”

“Thanks. Well, then—”

“I warn you, Scott.” Genova again. “I must insist that you leave this matter to me. This ... matter is not any of your business.”

“Well, how do you like that?” I said to nobody in particular. “Two seconds more of this and you can damn well bet I'll start making it my business.” I stepped up close to him and looked down at him. King was standing on my right, wiggling some of his muscles. I said to Genova, “And will you please stop warning me? If you've got to insist, insist to the police. As far as I'm concerned, that settles it.”

All I heard after that, for a little while, was King saying harshly, “No, it doesn't,” and then it seemed as if those artistically piled rocks of the waterfall leaped across fifteen feet and banked artistically against the side of my skull. I went sailing backward and my fanny hit the grass and slid a little way and there was a lot of noise inside my head and I wondered where I was at. My ear burned and pain roared along my skull and then I was lying on my back, propped up on my elbows and looking at King, standing six feet from me with the fading sunlight behind him and looking fierce as all hell. I thought he was going to put his foot on my chest and yell like an ape.

I lay there for a few seconds after I could have got up, getting the rage inside me a little more under control, because when two guys who know how have at each other, there's a very good chance one of them will, literally, get killed. But it was becoming apparent that King didn't know how; he was another guy with muscles in his back and head, and he stood over me now in the traditional, slightly modified John L. Sullivan pose. He cut a pretty picture, but if he'd really wanted to discourage me he should have been kicking me or stepping on my face.

When my vision was completely unblurred I could also see the expressions on some of the other faces. Genova's showed open glee, Swallow's an attempt at impassive boredom, and Raul's a worried frown. Some of the gals looked either frightened or interested, and Helen was biting her lower lip and squeezing her hands together in front of her. Right at that moment King cut a much prettier picture than I did.

Genova clapped King appreciatively on one of his mangrove-root shoulders as I got slowly to my feet. King waved Genova out of the way and concentrated on me as I stepped toward him. He was grinning. My hands were down low, almost at my sides, and King must have thought this was going to be a cinch. That was what I wanted him to think. The distance between us narrowed till I was close enough for him to hit me again, and he waved his left hand in what he fondly imagined was a feint and hauled back his big right fist.

I brought my open right hand up and wrapped it around his throat as if I were going to choke him, only I didn't do it slowly and I didn't choke him. As soon as he'd waved that left hand I'd started my right hand up as hard as I could from my side, and I damn near buried its edge between his chin and Adam's apple as he got ready to bust me. He went sailing back with his arms flailing and fell solidly to the ground, out cold before he hit. If he'd managed to club me with that slow right fist it would have been a different story. But as long as he hadn't, I could just as easily have killed him.

He lay on the ground with his head rolled to one side and his legs twisted awkwardly. He wasn't grinning. Nobody let out a peep as I walked up toward the house.

Chapter Five

Two uniformed patrolmen pulled on the rope and the weight at the end of it began slowly rising through the water of the swimming pool as photographers’ flash bulbs popped. It was after sundown, but Raul had turned on the floodlights around the pool and the scene was brilliantly lit. The waterfall was silent now for the first time in days, and at the moment the only sound was the noise made by the two officers as they heaved on the rope that one of them had fastened to the body.

It was about half an hour after I'd phoned the police and there was quite a crowd present. Besides the two patrolmen, who had been first to arrive, there were a couple of plainclothes detective sergeants, technical men from the crime lab, and the coroner. The print men hadn't had much to do while the body was in the water, but they were ready and waiting with the surveyor, who had finished most of his work. Ben Nelson, the captain of the Hollywood Detective Division, was supervising operations in person. I'd hoped that Captain Samson might come out from Central Homicide downtown, but Nelson was a good man and I knew him fairly well.

Most of the party guests were in the living room, but Raul, Swallow, and I were out near the pool. I took Raul aside. “Look, I don't give a damn about those other guys, but this doesn't look good for you. This is your home; she's in your pool. You got any ideas about it at all?”

He shook his head, then pulled nervously at his thick mustache. “Another thing, Raul,” I went on. “You didn't seem too happy about my calling the cops, either.”

He looked at me. “Guess I wasn't too happy. Hell, who would be? But I wasn't thinking straight—I've never been anywhere near a murder before. And what thinking I did was about Evelyn.” He frowned. “God, I guess this ties it with her.”

“Maybe not, Raul. Might be this mess could even help.”

He shook his head and said bitterly, “Maybe, but I'm afraid this wraps it up. I wish—” He broke it off. “I'll tell you something, Shell. I've been—and still am—a goddamned fool.” He shrugged and walked away.

I went to the edge of the pool as the two policemen heaved again and the body slid smoothly from the water as more bulbs flashed. In a moment the dead woman was lying suddenly on the grass. Her body had been weighted with a heavy iron grill, and stiff wire was wrapped around her throat and ankles and then attached to the grill. Oscar Swallow, on my left, took two steps toward the body, then dropped to one knee, staring.

“Zoe!” he cried. “My God! She's killed herself.”

It didn't mean anything to me for a minute, but it finally struck me as such an obviously screwy remark that I walked up beside Swallow and looked at his face. The shock and horror on his features seemed real enough. While I wondered, Captain Nelson's men closed in efficiently around the corpse in the case that was going to raise quite a bit of hell in Hollywood.

An hour later Zoe's body had been wrapped in the gray rubber sheet and hauled away in the wire basket. We were all in the living room again, but it didn't look the same now. All five of the girls sat close together on a huge divan, Raul and I stood behind them leaning against the piano, and King and Genova sat in deep chairs on our left. Swallow sat all by himself at the bar. Captain Nelson, flanked by the two detective sergeants, stood in front of us all with a notebook in his hand.

He and the two sergeants had already talked to us one at a time in another room; now he looked at Raul. “I guess that about does it. Mr. Evans, you got this group together about two this afternoon, except for Mr. Genova, who came a little later, and Mr. Scott, who arrived after four o'clock. Is that correct?”

Raul said, “That's right.”

The Captain went on, “And there was a similar gathering here last Thursday night?”

Raul nodded. “Except for the two girls on the end there.” He indicated a couple of girls named Susan and Peggy. “Then Archer Block was here, too—he's another writer from the studio.”

Nelson turned to Genova. “And that gathering was your idea, Mr. Genova?”

Genova said testily, “As I have already explained twice, Captain, we got together—Raul, Swallow, Block, some of the cast, and I—primarily to go over the shooting script of ‘Jungle Girl.’ I can't expect you to understand"—here Captain Nelson frowned a little—"but we're already running over our budget and have five more days of shooting. It was imperative that we discuss ways of cutting expenses. That's all there was to it.”

Captain Nelson sighed, then looked slowly over all of us. “All right,” he said. “It's pretty obvious that Miss Zoe Townsend came to this house last Thursday night, while most of you were gathered here, and was murdered. She's been out in that pool ever since. And yet none of you knows anything about it, none of you even saw her, you don't even know why she'd come here in the first place.” He paused and looked at Raul. “Anybody feel like adding anything to that? Anything at all?”

Nobody spoke for a moment, then Genova said, “I don't have anything to add, but I hope none of my people will be tied up. I couldn't afford—”

Nelson interrupted him. “Mr. Genova. Whether you can afford it or not, if any of your—your people hold out anything they'll be tied up. For quite a while.”

Genova looked sick. King had been sitting quietly, with one hand kneading his throat gently. Now he said a bit hoarsely, but belligerently as always, “How about the papers? So help me, if this gets into the papers...” He didn't finish, but glared around the room. He let the glare stop on me. We were back where we'd started. Now he had company: Genova gave me a glare too.

Nelson didn't reply to King—there wasn't much he could say, as reporters had already come and gone—but he flipped his notebook shut. “O.K. If nobody has anything to add, you can all go home. You know what I told you—we'll likely want to talk to all of you again.”

There were three or four simultaneous sighs. The girls got up as I walked over to Captain Nelson and outside with him. I knew him pretty well; not nearly so well as I know Captain Samson downtown, but well enough to talk to. We walked out toward the pool and I said, “Incidentally, Ben, I wasn't even here Thursday night.”

He grinned at me, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and offered me one. I lit them for us and he said, “I don't figure you knocked off anybody, Shell.”

“Thanks. You figure she got it Thursday night?

“Or Friday morning. Not much doubt about that, but we'll know more after the autopsy. Job was done in a hurry, too.”

I knew what he meant. She'd been strangled by somebody's hands, then wired to the heavy grill of Raul's barbecue and dumped in the handiest spot quickly available: the pool.

I said, “What's this about her coming here? And I understand you talked to most of these people here yesterday.”

“Not me personally; Sergeant Price from Missing Persons did, though.” He looked at me. “Gal named Lola Sherrard reported this Townsend dame missing on Saturday morning. Missing as of Thursday night. Said this Townsend took off for here—your friend's place—about eight P.M. or a little before on Thursday. Never came back. Well, now we know why.”

“Yeah. Anybody here know she was coming?”

He shook his head. “Not so far as we know. Apparently none of them did. She just up and came, uninvited.”

“What for?”

“God knows. We'll dig into it deeper. Maybe the roommate can help us. You know how it is with most missing-person beefs, Shell. But we'll check it now.”

“Uh-huh. Well, be sure to let me know if you want me, Ben.”

“Don't worry.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Say, you're not on this thing, are you? Officially?”

“No.” I thought about Genova and King warning me, and King slugging me, and I added, “But I'm getting interested.”

He grunted and headed for the pool. I went back into the house. A couple of the girls had left and Swallow was just leaving. Raul was mixing drinks, so I went over to the bar and took the bourbon and water he handed me. He looked as unhappy and harried as I'd ever seen a man look.

Helen walked slowly across the room, a fur coat draped over one shoulder. “How about one for me, Raul? I need it. I need a double.” Then to me, “Hello, Shell. Glad you came?”

I gave her a small smile. “Well, yes and no. But it hasn't all been unpleasant.” The three of us chatted idly, sipping our drinks. It was pretty deadly. Finally I said to Helen, “Cheer up, for God's sake. A long face won't help anything.”

She brightened a bit, then took a long swallow of the scotch and soda. She made a face, then gave me one of the pre-pool smiles. “Better?”

“Much. Now I go for you.”

“I'm disappointed in you, Shell.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. You didn't pull out a single hair.”

I was looking at Helen, but I heard Raul choke on the last of his drink. “Give me time,” I said. “Say, how'd you get here?”

“With King.”

“Uh ... you know what I'm thinking?”

“Well, hurry up, then. I've had enough of King, I think.”

I turned to Raul. “Look, chum. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Sure, Shell. Sorry about ... well, everything.”

“Don't be. Hell, I'm on your side, if that's anything.”

“It is.” He gave me a grin. “Beat it.”

I walked Helen to the door, then stopped and helped her put on her fur coat, primarily so King wouldn't think we were sneaking out. But all he did was rise a little out of his chair, then sink back down into it.

Helen and I walked to my Cadillac and climbed in. She lay back against the cushions and relaxed on the drive into Hollywood, and we chatted casually, working the depression further out of our minds and getting back nearly to normal. Helen commented on my Cadillac, a new black job that I'd bought to replace the sick-yellow convertible I'd driven for ten years until it got blown up in Las Vegas along with a hell of a fine guy. This was a convertible coupé, too, but nice as it was, I sort of missed the old buggy.

As our spirits rose a bit, the conversation began getting more like our earlier exchanges, and finally I had Helen nearly convinced that she hadn't lived till she'd seen the tropical fish in my apartment.

“Fish?” she asked me. “Why fish?”

I looked at her. The Cad's top was down and that beautiful hair of hers streamed in the wind like silver threads. She didn't seem to mind the wind. I said, “They're pretty and a lot of fun. All colors—some even like your hair. Some like your eyes.”

“Oh, Lord,” she groaned. “That's the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.”

“That's not what I meant. I mean these fish are pretty colors. Regular riot. You really should see them. All kinds of tropical—”

She broke in, “All right, Shell. I'll come see the things if you'll just stop talking about them.”

I didn't even get to tell her about my new Rasbora heteromorpha. But we found other things to talk about until I pulled up in front of the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore. When I opened her door she got out and smiled at me, then waved toward the Wilshire Country Club grounds across the street. “Isn't that where your sun worshipers are said to worship?”

“Yes, indeed. Shall we reconnoiter? Perhaps we can have a subcult of moon worshipers.”

She gave me a low ha-ha and walked around the car. I picked up my key at the desk and guided Helen up to my combination living room, bedroom, kitchenette, and bath. My phone was ringing as I unlocked the door, but it stopped when we went inside and I flipped on the lights.

I told her to make herself at home, and headed for the kitchenette and bourbon. Behind me she let out a little squeal and said, “Oh, they are pretty.”

I turned around. The two fish tanks are just inside the living room at the left of the door. The aquarium lights were still on as I'd left them earlier, and Helen was bent over, peering in at the riot of colors.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “The goddamn fish.”

She smiled wickedly at me, then returned to contemplation of the tanks. I went to the kitchenette, returned with two highballs, and handed her one.

“Just happened to have some scotch and soda,” I said, then spent a couple minutes explaining what she was looking at, and led her to the oversized chocolate-brown divan in front of the ersatz fireplace.

“Aren't you going to tell me more about fish?” she asked, smiling.

“Later, later.” I sat down beside her. “How do you like the place?”

“Nice. What I've seen of it.”

“I'll show you the rest in a minute.”

She sipped at her drink, then placed it on the low black coffee table, leaned back against the cushions of the divan, and stretched her long legs out in front of her, high heels sinking into the thick shag nap of the gold carpet. Her eye caught the bright nude on my living-room wall and she said, “That looks like something painted at Raul Evans's pool.”

“Doesn't it? Not nearly as nice, though. Say, Helen, you were at Raul's party Thursday night, huh?”

“That's right. It was a much milder party; mostly business.”

“This Zoe didn't show up?”

She shook her head. “No ... I know you're a detective. Are you working?”

I laughed. “Not on the case. But almost everybody there is good and griped at me for getting the cops in.”

She nodded. “And the newspapermen.” She made a face. “I can't wait to see the papers. They dredged up Dot's yellow bathing suit, you know. The reporters will have a field day with that.”

“Yeah.” Actually I didn't much care about the men at the party, except for Raul. Both he and Evelyn had been damn nice to me in the past, and anything I could do to help either one of them I'd have been glad to do. And, being me, I'd enjoy helping the women. That made me recall Sherry, and I also thought of something Captain Nelson had told me. It had occurred to me that Sherry might very well be a nickname for Sherrard.

I asked Helen, “This Sherry that was in for a little while in the afternoon—what's her full name?”

“Lola Sherrard. Why? You want to look her up in the phone book?”

“No, just wondered. She was Zoe's roommate, huh?”

“That's right.”

“And who's this Bondhelm that everybody likes not at all?”

“I don't know exactly. He's got money in ‘Jungle Girl.’ Anything else, Detective Scott?”

I grinned at her and put my drink on the table beside hers. “I'm sorry. I guess I particularly resent the afternoon's grisly complications because they interrupted a highly entertaining episode.”

She smiled, her lips thinning. “It's a shame we didn't get our swim. You don't even know if I can swim. I might have sunk right to the bottom.”

“No matter. I wouldn't have let you down.”

She chuckled and looked sideways at me from the dark brown eyes. “I'd have died if you had.” She laced her hands behind her head and wiggled slightly against the cushions of the divan. I leaned closer to her and she didn't move, just smiled up at me.

“Well, hell,” I said, “I don't have a pool, but I've got a tub.”

She laughed and wiggled.

Her face was only a few inches from mine; I looked at her parted lips and leaned closer to them and the goddamn phone rang. I thought: The hell with that noise, and kept on leaning. The phone kept on ringing. Helen's eyes widened, then narrowed again, and she unfolded her arms and put them around my neck, still smiling as she eased her body lower on the divan and pulled me down to her. The smile went away as I pulled her against me and pressed my lips to hers. Her arms tightened, pulling me against her with surprising strength, and I could feel the fluid curve of her breasts against my chest. Pretty soon I didn't know if that ringing was the phone or something inside my head. After long seconds she pulled her mouth from mine and frowned.

“Will you turn that thing off, or break it?”

“Come on.” I got up and pulled her toward the bedroom.

“Isn't the phone in the front room?”

“Uh-huh. Extension in here.” As a matter of fact, there was. The lousy phone was still ringing as I turned on the bedroom lights and walked to the thing. I picked up the receiver and growled, “Yeah?”

“Mr. Scott?”

It was a man's voice. I told him I was Shell Scott while Helen scooted up on the bed and lay down with her head on the pillow. Watching her, I listened as the voice said, “This is Peter Bondhelm, Mr. Scott. I've been trying to get in touch with you. I have a proposition that I believe will interest you.”

I almost told him I thought I had a proposition that interested me a hell of a lot more than anything he could offer, but I said, “What is it?”

Helen kicked off her high-heeled pumps and, lying on her back, pulled her feet up under her. The hem of her white dress slid noiselessly up from her knees, baring a long, curving length of golden thigh.

Bondhelm had said something to me, but I hadn't the faintest idea what it was. I asked him, “What was that again? I'm sorry, I missed it.” Helen wasn't looking at me; she lay relaxed, one knee swinging slightly back and forth while she stared at the ceiling.

Bondhelm said, “I want you to come right out to my home if you possibly can, Mr. Scott. It's in connection with the murder of Zoe Townsend. I'd like you to undertake an investigation for me.”

Right now what I wanted to investigate wasn't a murder. I said, “Well, I'm tied up at the moment. Just what is it you want?”

“I'll explain all that here, Mr. Scott. I'm at sixteen-twenty Temple Hill Drive.”

There was a long pause while neither of us said anything. Helen's knee kept swinging gently. Then Bondhelm said, “There should be at least ten thousand in it for you. Possibly more. A great deal more.”

This wasn't quite as intriguing as Helen's thigh yet, but it interested me; over there on the bed, though, was something inflation hadn't affected. I forced myself to look somewhere else. That helped, and almost immediately I wondered how it happened that Bondhelm already knew about the murder. There weren't any papers on the streets yet and I was pretty sure it wouldn't have hit the radio or TV broadcasts this soon.

I asked him, “Ten thousand what?”

“Dollars, Mr. Scott. Nice, fat dollars.”

“Not so fat these days. How about a cost-of-living differential?”

He let out a little sputter. “I don't understand your attitude, Mr. Scott.” His voice hardened a little. “I'm offering you good money to conduct an investigation.”

I kept my eyes on the ash tray by the phone's base. I wasn't my usual self; ordinarily a ten-thousand-and-up fee would have sent me scampering. And I was curious to know what Bondhelm's interest in this was. I was trying to figure out how much I'd have left after taxes, and if, considering everything, it was worth it, when Bondhelm said impatiently, “Mr. Scott! I am going to hire an investigator. I had hoped it would be you. However, I want somebody tonight. Well?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Five agonizing seconds went by. “O.K.,” I told him. “I'll talk it over with you—if it won't take too long.”

“Fine. The time it takes depends on you. Sixteen-twenty Temple Hill Drive. I'll be expecting you.”

He hung up. I slowly replaced the receiver and walked over to the bed. I sat down beside Helen and worked up ten per cent of a grin. “Honey,” I said, “I give you my house. I've got to take off for a few minutes. Won't take long. Be right back. You sit tight. Yessirree.”

She kept looking at the ceiling and sighed. I said, “I'm about to make lots of money. I'll wine you and dine you. We'll throw money away. I'll buy you some fish.”

I still hadn't moved her. I said, “You relax. Freshen up. Look the place over. Have a drink. Huh?”

“Get lost,” she said.

Her knee stopped moving. I reached over and gave it a small push, hoping that would start it going again. It didn't. I patted her knee gently, then bent and kissed the smooth skin just below it. Right away I knew that was a mistake, and I got up. “Be right back,” I said.

She finally turned her head and looked at me. She smiled a little, but it was apparent she wasn't hilarious. “Don't be too long, darling,” she said softly.

“I'm practically back.” I hadn't worn my gun to the afternoon party, so now I went to the bureau drawer and took out the short-nosed .38 Colt Special and the leather holster. I took off my coat, strapped on the gun with great deliberation, then put the coat back on.

“See,” I said. “Important business. Very hush-hush. Secret Service.”

She smiled a little more broadly. “All right. But, as I said, don't be gone all night. I've got a big day on ‘Jungle Girl’ tomorrow.”

I wouldn't have minded a big day on Jungle Girl myself. I said, “Don't go ‘way,” blew her a kiss, and took off.

The address Bondhelm had given me was a two-story stucco building on the corner of Temple Hill Drive and North Beachwood Drive, about three miles from my place. I made it there in four minutes. A man opened the door when I rang.

“Mr. Bondhelm?” He nodded, and I said, “I'm Shell Scott.”

“Fine. Come in, please.” He was a monstrous man, perhaps an inch shorter than I, but with the kind of fat that usually comes more from glandular trouble than over-eating. He shut the door, then walked ahead of me into a room off the hall we were in. He walked ponderously into the room, turned around in front of a mammoth overstuffed chair, aimed his gigantic fanny at it, and fell backward. Air whooshed upward from the cushions as he let out a sigh, then looked up at me from eyes half hidden in the folds of fat in his cherubic face. Perspiration gleamed on his pink cheeks and forehead. So this was Peter Bondhelm. He made me think of a slug.

He was slow-moving, but he was fast when it came to explaining what he wanted of me. He nodded me to a chair already placed opposite his, and when I sat down he said with surprising rapidity, “I know of the night's events and that you were present when Zoe Townsend's body was discovered. I want you to find out, if possible, who murdered the girl, and report to me. The sooner the better. I'll pay you well.”

He stopped. I asked him, “She was—that is, did you know Miss Townsend?”

“Never saw her.”

I let it ride. “You said something about ten thousand dollars. Or more.”

He bobbed his head. He lifted one pudgy hand to a table alongside his chair, picked up some folded papers, then bent slightly forward and extended them toward me. As I took them he said, “I am the major financial backer of the movie ‘Jungle Girl.’ I own seventy-five per cent of the stock—seventy-five of the one hundred shares—and Louis Genova owns the remaining twenty-five. I have executed that written assignment, which you hold, transferring two shares of my stock to you. The two shares in the production are your fee if you take the case.”

He was beaming at me as though he'd just informed me I was his heir. I looked at the top paper, written in a sloppy hand and beginning, “I, the undersigned, do assign and transfer...” and going on to say that stock was transferred to Sheldon Scott.

“Hey,” I said, “wait a minute. What the hell is this? I thought you said dollars.”

“Same thing,” he said. “Good as gold. This makes you part of the movie industry, Mr. Scott.”

“That doesn't overwhelm me.”

“And I grant you that the par value of the two shares is only eight thousand dollars. But say the net profits of ‘Jungle Girl’ are a million dollars. You hold in your hand the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars.”

“Slow down, Mr. Bondhelm. Why not say a billion? That stinker's not about to net a million. And suppose it's a flop? I got a handful of paper.”

His eyes narrowed and almost went out of sight in the fat around them. He didn't answer.

I looked at the papers I was holding, and wondered how heavy twenty thousand dollars would be. I said, “I'd prefer to have money. If I take the case.”

He shook his head, once left, once right. “No. I can't give you money. I have only one offer.”

I looked at the “potential profits” in my hand again. I thought about Helen. I said, “Mr. Bondhelm, the proposition isn't entirely unattractive, but I'd have to know more about your interest in the case. Maybe it's unusual, but it's the way I work. Also, what if I don't learn anything—or the police have the killer tomorrow?”

He didn't answer for quite a while and his eyes did their disappearing act again. He was a strange character; I didn't like him at all. He opened his eyes wide and stared impassively at me. “You would keep the shares, Mr. Scott, if you contributed materially to the solution of the case. Naturally if you, ah, accomplish nothing at all, you couldn't expect so large a fee.” He paused, then went on rapidly, “But inasmuch as it seems obvious that one of those present at the Thursday-night gathering at Mr. Evans's home killed the girl, I would naturally expect you to concentrate most of your efforts on them. I ... have my reasons.”

This was very damned screwy. I said, “Well?”

He sighed and leaned slightly forward, then pulled a wadded handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it over his perspiring face. He started talking, and I think he'd been intending to tell me this all along. “I want to be very frank with you, Mr. Scott,” he said. “I make a good deal of money through investment in motion pictures. Mr. Genova's last picture was a—a flop, as you say. His financial backers left him. None of the banks would take another chance with him. I was the only man he could get to finance the movie. We formed a corporation to produce ‘Jungle Girl’ and he put up all he could get his hands on: one hundred thousand dollars. I advanced the remaining three hundred thousand. Before I did, however, I had inserted into our contract a clause stating that if at any time the picture went three per cent over the budget, all rights were relinquished to me. You can understand that it would be to my advantage if the film did go over the budget.”

The old pirate. I was beginning to understand, all right. Over the budget equals Genova out and Bondhelm in the driver's seat. I could understand now the frantic efforts of Louis Genova Productions to keep expenses down. I could also understand something else: I was getting tired of Peter Bondhelm.

I said, “In other words, all I have to do is pin the kill on somebody in the picture, huh? For two shares of maybe worthless stock I frame somebody and ruin the ‘Jungle Girl’ budget.”

He said easily, “Not at all, Mr. Scott. You will decide—determine who is the guilty party. It merely seems apparent to me that someone from Genova Productions is the logical choice.” He hesitated and mopped his face again. “I will say this: If, by any accident, you should interrupt shooting—or be forced to interrupt it—and those interruptions worked to my benefit, there would be more shares waiting here for you.”

The slimy sonofabitch was trying to pay me to wreck the movie. I got up and tossed the papers into his lap, then turned and started out, but he yelled after me.

“Mr. Scott! You misunderstand me. Please. I've been very frank with you, haven't I? Please don't think I want you to do anything illegal or underhanded. You ... may do what you see fit.”

I turned around and walked back to the chair he was still in. Maybe he needed help to get out of it. I said, “Now you listen a minute, friend. I interrupted a highly pleasant evening to come out here because I thought you had a legitimate offer. I wouldn't even touch the case with strings on it. Not for all your damn stock.”

He calmed down and seemed to become quite agreeable. The upshot of it was that I could do it my way. Finally I said, “And why me? There are a lot of other detectives—and some of them might even go for your strings.”

He cleared his throat. “I understand you are acquainted with one or two of the Genova people. Also you were present at Mr. Evans's this evening. Obviously that alone gives you a great advantage over anybody else I might hire. I might also add, Mr. Scott, that your excellent record is quite well known.”

“One other thing.” I thought a moment and stretched the framework of my question a little to see if I could get more. “The dope on Zoe's murder hasn't hit the papers or broadcasts yet; so just how did you know all this so soon?”

He shook his head again, left, right. “No. It isn't necessary for you to know.”

And he wasn't expanding on that, either. We went around some more, but after another five minutes I said, “O.K. But understand this: I'll take the case, I'll follow any lead I see fit, I'll report to you. But that's absolutely all. I handle this the way I would any other case. And for three shares.”

It took five more minutes, but when I went out the front door I had a client and three shares in ‘Jungle Girl.’ Three shares, quite possibly, of nothing.

Back at the Spartan I trotted eagerly up to the second floor and down the hall to my apartment. I opened the door and stuck my head inside.

“Hey, Helen,” I yelled. “Yoo-hoo.” The lights were burning brightly, but there was no answer. “Here I am,” I cried. “I'm back!”

I shut and locked the door and there still wasn't any answer. I waited a moment. Oh, no! I thought. She can't have done this to me. Then I started thinking clearly again: She was asleep. Well, I thought slyly, let her sleep. The doll, she was already in bed, that was what. I turned out the living room lights and tiptoed into the bedroom. I was wrong: That wasn't what. There was still the indentation of Helen's long, lovely body on the bedspread, but the long, lovely body was gone. A note on the table—resting against the phone, of all places—said, “Shell, darling, it got a little late for me. And I was tired. Too tired. Did you make lots of money?”

I undressed anyway, showered, and fifteen minutes after I'd torn up the note I climbed sadly between cold sheets. I'd looked everywhere in the apartment, and Helen had gone, all right. There was no doubt in my mind that I was alone now. The shape I was in, I had even looked under the bed.

Chapter Six

THE first alarm pulled me halfway up from delicious, dream-drugged sleep and left me suspended in warmth and drowsiness. Then the second alarm banged against my ear and I blinked stupidly around me, remembering the party, the pool, and finally Helen. The strange thing was, I'd been dreaming of Sherry.

Twenty minutes later, still only about one-third awake, but dressed in a tan gabardine suit, brown knit-wool tie, Cordovans, and my .38 Colt, I went downstairs, climbed into the Cad, and headed for breakfast. The Cad is still so new that I'm not quite used to it, but it's a beauty.

It made me feel like a capitalist, which I was, and as I drove away from the Spartan I flashed my chrome happily at a two-year-old Chevy parked around the corner on Clinton. On Sunset Boulevard I turned right and headed for Lyle's, where I often have my meager breakfast when I'm too lazy to cook my own mush. Automatically I checked the rear-vision mirror and idly noted another two-year-old Chevy about a block behind me. A green one this time; I couldn't remember what color the other one had been. Not that it mattered; it was too early in this case for guys with submachine guns to be following me.

With a number of other people, I feel that the first half hour or so of each morning is best forgotten. I hate life, people, food, damn near everything—at least till I have coffee. Lyle's was up ahead on my right at the corner, and as I pulled in to the curb and parked, a Chevrolet went by. Just for the hell of it I sat there and watched it as it went a block past St. Andrews Place and took a right on Western. I got out, bought copies of the Times, Examiner, and Crier from the metal stands in front of Lyle's, and dropped my three dimes in the slots. The Times and Examiner were for news; the Crier for dirt. I'd barely glanced at the headlines when I spotted the green Chevy again, and this time I was damned sure it was the same one. The driver had driven around the block and parked on St. Andrews facing Sunset—and me. It looked very much as if he were waiting there to pick me up when I left. I didn't get it.

Neither did I like it, so I folded the papers under my arm, walked across St. Andrews, and turned right. As I approached the Chevy, the man sitting behind the wheel ignored me completely. Maybe too completely—and maybe I was in even worse shape than I usually am before breakfast. But, if nothing else, I wanted a good look at this character, just in case.

I walked around to the driver's side of the car and he didn't once glance at me. A very uncurious boy. I stopped and leaned on the door, and he finally looked up.

“Morning,” I said. “Haven't I seen you somewhere before?”

He was a little man with a narrow face and horn-rimmed spectacles perched on his sharp nose. A small bald spot was eating its way outward from the top of his head. “Why ... good morning,” he said. He looked puzzled. “I don't believe so, sir.” He frowned and added, “I'm sure I've never seen you.”

“Maybe around the Wilshire Country Club,” I said pleasantly. He started to shake his head and I went on, “Not exactly the club—across the street on Clinton, just off North Rossmore.”

He blinked at me. It occurred to me that all this was a bit silly if he was a tourist examining the smog. I said, “I made you from across the street and thought I'd let you know.” He didn't say anything to that, but if for any reason he had been tailing me, he'd know what I meant. I left him and jaywalked back to Lyle's, wondering if I were cracking up. At least I'd know him if I saw him again, though a further meeting didn't seem likely then.

In Lyle's I ordered toast and coffee, then skimmed through the Crier, which was on top of the stack of papers. The front page was having a fit over the murder of Zoe Townsend. It was all there, complete with sly and indignant conjectures about bathing suits in pools, Hollywood orgies, love nests. I was reminded again that those who express the greatest shock and most towering indignation about alleged immorality or indecency are almost invariably the ones most avid for the intimate and sensual details. I read on. The police were confident. A picture of the body under a sheet was on the second page. It was the usual coverage, the kind of story I was used to by now.

A waitress brought my toast and coffee as I glanced at Fanny Hillman's movie-page column, “The Eye at the Keyhole.” I'd never seen Fanny, but with a kind of masochism I had from time to time read her column, and I had long ago come to the conclusion that she was referring to the bathroom keyhole. She wasn't in the same league as the big-shot gossip mongers, being a relative newcomer, but she had her own following of morons. It was obvious from Fanny's vocabulary that she could win an argument with any half-wit in the land.

Fanny was Hollywood's Pandora with a new box to open every day including Sunday; she was another self-appointed guardian of public immorals, and it was safe to bet that if she had her way General Motors would swing hastily into mass production of chastity girdles. She was a news maker, quite literally, and exaggeration was her legitimate technique; people were potential items, no more, and she used them like a blood bank. It was my considered opinion that she was a gal who never let her left hand know what her right hand was scratching. As you may have guessed, I have no use for the Fanny Hillmans.

I gritted my teeth and plunged into her column. It took a man with a strong stomach to read the stuff, but to write it Fanny must have had a stronger stomach than a mortician who brings his lunch to work. The column gushed forth this morning with a reference to the murder beginning, “The stark-naked body of delicately lovely Zoe Townsend, brutally strangled by a ‘person or persons unknown,’ was last night discovered in the swimming pool of one of our town's foremost directors...”

Zoe hadn't been naked, but I particularly liked that “person or persons unknown” bit, wondering what was the record number of persons ever to strangle a body. I stopped being even slightly amused when I reached the bottom of the column. I got so unamused that I almost strangled, myself, on my first gulp of coffee—the only gulp I was going to get—and punched a thumbnail through a halftone photo of Lili St. Cyr. Fanny ended each day's column with what she called, coyly, “Can You Guess?” Usually I didn't try; this morning I didn't have to.

Even if Bondhelm hadn't offered me what seemed like a potentially attractive deal for working on Zoe's murder, I would already have had a more than usual interest in the case for three other reasons: my affection for Raul himself and a desire to help him any way I could, the fact that I'd been given a lot of hell last night and don't like clubheads ordering me around or shoving me around, and the further fact that until this case was satisfactorily cleared up a number of people were going to be damned unhappy with me. But now, with the appearance of “Can You Guess?” I had what was, at least for me, a better reason for tying into the case than Bondhelm's offer.

What Hollywood He-Man bruised what Hollywood detective last night when that detective angled his nose where it didn't belong? Is rumor true that the detective promised to be good and crawled back into his ... shell?

I read the item again, my coffee cup poised in the air. Once word gets around a town that a private investigator is yellow or can easily be scared off a case, that investigator is in trouble. A little of that kind of libel is a lot. I put my cup back in the saucer slowly, without spilling a drop, got up, tossed a dollar bill on the counter, and left. At last my dream was going to come true: I was going to meet Fanny Hillman.

I was so griped when I drove away from Lyle's that I almost forgot to check on the green Chevy. I took a look, though: no Chevy.

Fanny rarely worked at the Crier building, as she had her own office in a little building straight down Sunset about two miles. I was there a few minutes after I read the item. I parked in front of the building and sat in the car for another sixty seconds. I couldn't just barge in and bust Fanny in the snoot, as much as that idea appealed to me at the moment, so I waited till I'd calmed down a little. And when I'd cooled a bit I started wondering how Fanny knew about the beef I'd had with King. So far as I knew, nobody had mentioned that business to the police.

Next door to the office building is a malt shop with a pay phone on the wall. I went inside and called Captain Nelson at the Hollywood Division. When he came on I said, “Hello, Ben. Shell Scott here. Anything new?”

“Nothing fancy.”

“You see Fanny Hillman's column?”

“I did. And I'm glad you called. That was you, wasn't it?”

“How'd you guess? Yeah, it was me and King. That's why I called. Did you or any of your boys give that to the press?”

“No, we didn't,” he growled. “You know why? We didn't know about it. Listen, Shell, I spent some time talking to you all alone, just like I did with the rest of that crowd, and this is the first I hear of a fight. All you mentioned was a little beef. That's to be expected, but a fist fight, no. Why did you hold out on me?”

“Sorry, Ben. It didn't seem too important at the time—as long as I did get the call in to you. And I imagine Genova must have told the rest to keep their lips buttoned.” I briefed him quickly on the beef I'd had about phoning him, then added, “I can understand why neither King nor Genova would want to get splashed in the papers, but I overruled their objections.”

He grunted. “You got any more you forgot to tell me?” His voice was edged with sarcasm.

“No. One more thing, that is. I'm working on the case now for a client. If anything comes up, you'll get it.”

“Yeah.” Nelson knew, as did most of the L. A. police, that I had a long record of working with the authorities instead of against them—particularly because I'd worked so long almost hand in glove with Samson, the Central Homicide captain downtown. But Nelson still said he'd like to see me if I remembered anything else. Then he asked me, “How about Evans? He give you any trouble?”

“Raul? Not especially. He just wasn't happy about a body in his pool. Neither was anybody else. I hope you don't lean on him too hard.”

“We won't lean on anybody especially till we get more. But the dame was at his place. You got any ideas why?”

“Nothing yet.”

“O.K.,” he said. “Say, Shell, how about the yellow suit in the pool?”

I laughed, told him I'd see him later, and hung up.

Then, not laughing, I headed for Fanny. Her office was one of four in the building, and apparently consisted of two or three rooms. Inside the first frosted glass door I found a guy at a typewriter and asked him, “Fanny Hillman around?”

“Yeah, she's here.”

“This ‘Eye at the Keyhole’ thing. When's the Crier's deadline for it?”

He glanced up at me and said, “Depends what edition. Eleven P.M. for the morning edition. What's—” He broke it off, started a smirk, then killed it as I felt my jaw muscles bulge. Maybe I didn't know him, but he knew me. He jerked a thumb toward another frosted glass door behind him. “You'll find dear Miss Hillman right back there.” I didn't wait to ask him if that “dear” was an expression of admiration or contempt, but followed his thumb to Fanny's door. I couldn't help noticing a couple of glances directed my way from the two gals who were also in the room. I could feel my face burning. Fanny, being a Fearsome Filmland Power, had an office all to herself. I took a deep breath in front of the door, told myself, Take it easy, Scott, and went in.

The old bat looked up and gave me a blank stare as I came in. She wasn't as fat as Bondhelm, but give her a few more years past forty and she'd make it. Her pale eyes looked at me from a round, vacuous face. She'd been reading something on the stained-walnut desk behind which she sat, and I'd have given eight to five right then that it was either her own column, Tillie the Toiler, or Dotty Dripple.

She was really a galloping horror. She had hands of the type generally called “dishpan hands,” but the same thing might have been said of her face. She looked like a woman who would disappear every Halloween and turn up dancing around a bubbling pot; give her a broom and you'd lose her.

Still giving me the blank stare, she said, “Yes?” going up. She had a voice like Howdy Doody's.

I decided to play it light. Maybe this hag had really believed her own words. The least I could do was give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Good morning, Miss Hillman,” I said pleasantly. “My name's Scott. I, uh"—I give her the nicest smile I could find—"crawled out of my shell to correct a misapprehension. About your item in this morning's Crier.”

She sucked at something in one of her teeth. Or maybe one of Dr. Cowen's teeth. She knew who I was, all right. “I'm very busy,” she said shortly. “Can't you get to the point?”

“Yeah, lady, I'll get to the point.” Just like that she'd popped me. Here I was all sweetness and light and damn near ready to tickle her under the chin, and she was giving me this old routine. I slammed the door behind me and walked up to her desk. I came at her so fast that she scooted backward three inches in her swivel chair.

I said deliberately, “The point is pretty damn obvious, don't you think? In the first place, I don't like my name in your sticky column. In the second place, I resent libel and slander. Specifically I object to the implied accusation that a local ape man made me crawl, which he didn't, and the further implication that I could be scared off a case. Maybe I could be, but it hasn't happened yet.”

She said sweetly, “What case, Mr. Scott? What are you talking about? And I'm certain your name isn't in the column ... the sticky column, I believe you said?”

I'd had a death grip on the Crier, opened to this dear girl's word; now I slid it across the desk at her and started to point out my name. Then I stopped. Actually, my name wasn't in there.

She had noticed my hesitation and was smiling at me, happy as a clam, and I said, “Isn't it obvious who you were talking about?”

“Whom, Mr. Scott. About whom I was talking, you mean.”

“You know bloody well what I mean!”

Grammar lessons she was giving me. Pretty soon old sweetness-and-light Scott's brain arteries were going to open up and start squirting at each other. I sprayed air through my teeth and said more slowly, and more quietly, “Look, you know that's me who—whom—whom—well, godalmightydamn.”

Oh, she was happy now. She was having a ball. Only once in about a year do I get as griped at anybody as I now was at this quivering monstrosity, and a guy never builds toward peaceful relations feeling that way.

I took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Miss Hillman, I don't know where you got your information—though I've got an idea—but the item's as phony as house dice. For your information, I'm the boy who called the cops—and when I did it I hadn't promised to be good. Also, I have a client for whom I'm now investigating the murder of Zoe Townsend. Tooth and nail. There's an item for your column. For free.”

“I'm afraid it isn't very newsworthy, Mr. Scott.”

“Yeah? Well, it's true. Does that eliminate it?”

She didn't say anything. I said, “I came in here to ask you, pleasantly, if you'd correct the erroneous impression you gave in this column. I say quiet seriously that it could be damaging to me. Now, how about it?”

“That's absurd. If that's all...”

“It's not all. Where did you get your information? From King? It had to be from somebody involved. Somebody who most likely phoned you.”

No answer. She sucked at something in her teeth again. This time she got it.

I leaned forward on her desk, the palms of my hands moist on its smooth surface. “Tell me this,” I said. “Do you print anything that anybody tells you? Is a phone call all you need? I'll give you some hot items: Ava Gardner just shot Anthony Eden; Eisenhower confesses; the Pope has switched to Calvert's; Arthur Godfrey—”

“Please, Mr. Scott!” Her face wasn't pale white any more; it was getting as red as mine. “Get out of here!” she screeched. “I won't listen to any more of this...”

That was all. No use kidding myself, Fanny and I would never see eye to eye at that keyhole. I turned and started to leave, and now that she'd apparently survived the battle she gave the knife one more ladylike twist: “If it had been you in my column, Mr. Scott, what would you have done about it?”

I yanked my head back toward her. “What would you say to my hauling Zoe's killer in here and plopping him in your lap tomorrow? With instructions to brush up on his technique?”

Her round face got very mean-looking all of a sudden, then went back to normal, which was worse. She said icily, “Oh? Then you already know who the killer is. Why, that's just wonderful, Mr. Scott. Maybe I do have an item.”

“Now wait a minute—” I choked it off. This was a losing game and I'd had it. I left the door open as I went out. Fanny and I hadn't been engaged before, but we were sure as hell quits now.

I got some more eyeballing as I left and I gave out glares indiscriminately. In the Cad, I made a highly illegal U-turn in the middle of the street, buzzed back to Lyle's and had cardboard toast and two cups of brown water, then leaped back into the Cad, angrily ground the gears, and jerked away from the curb like a madman.

Just as I shifted out of low, something went plunk against the car somewhere and I wondered if I'd sprung something in the Cad's innards, or maybe hit a pedestrian. If a pedestrian, I hoped it was one of Fanny's faithful followers. But the rear-view mirror showed the road clear behind me and the motor purred sweetly.

Twenty minutes later when I parked in front of Genova's studio I was back to what would pass for normal. I was a little irritated with myself for getting so worked up in the first place, but even before I'd read today's Crier I'd had enough of Fanny Hillman to last me for several years. Now it was for life.

I got out of the Cad, slammed the door, and stared at the gleaming black side of the car for a few seconds while my throat got slightly drier. Now I know what that plunk I'd heard back at Lyle's meant.

There was a neat round hole—obviously a bullet hole—in the metal of the car just back of where I'd been sitting when I erupted so violently away from Lyle's. Apparently I could thank Fanny for one thing: She'd got me mad enough to save my life.

Chapter Seven

I POKED my finger into the hole in the Cad's side, remembering I hadn't heard a shot. I could have missed it as I ground the gears. A lot of things were puzzling me. First of all, why anybody would be after me already. Within the last half hour somebody had tried to kill me, murder me, and they'd come so close that I could feel the muscles tightening involuntarily in my back and I looked around me nervously. But I didn't know beans about who had killed Zoe, and that was the only case I had any connection with now. And why hadn't I been shot when I stepped out of Lyle's? There was an explanation for that, though, which made sense. If a man wanted to shoot me and be far away before the kill was noticed, his best bet would be to wait till I was in the car, where I might not be spotted for a while, rather than drop me in plain view on the sidewalk.

I opened the car door again and hunted around inside. I was lucky enough to find the mangled slug—if you can call that lucky—and now even if I didn't know the why, I knew two other things: one, that some guy had shot at me; two, he knew he'd missed. With one more glance all around me, I headed for the entrance to Louis Genova Productions.

The studio stretched a couple of city blocks on La Brea and was actually named Arcade Studios; Genova was merely renting space here till “Jungle Girl” was completed. I walked across the sidewalk and through the gate, and picked up the pass that Bondhelm had said he'd have ready for me. The guard waved me in after telling me where the offices were. Inside the Administration Building, at an information desk, I asked another guard where Genova was.

“Well, either in his office"—he pointed—"down the hall there and to the right, or maybe on the sound stage yonder.” He pointed again, in another direction.

“They shooting ‘Jungle Girl'?”

“Yep. Won't let you in if they're shooting. They's on Stage Three.”

“Where would I find the writers? They in this building?” He nodded and I asked, “How about Oscar Swallow?”

“Down the hall and round to the right. Numbers on the doors. He's in Seven.”

I thanked him, went down the hall and right to number seven. The door was ajar so I poked my head inside and said, “Hello.”

I got more out of that hello than I usually do, and I had only a brief glimpse of the luscious Lola Sherrard before she fell down. She was sitting behind a desk at the right of the door, her eyes closed and dark brows furrowed in obvious concentration. She was wearing a blue skirt and white blouse, and a little frilly handkerchief was tucked into the V of the blouse, in the hollow between her breasts. From where I stood it looked as though she could have stuffed a Turkish bath towel down there.

A pencil was crossways between her white teeth, but that wasn't important. She was tilted far back in a swivel chair, with her feet propped on the edge of the near side of the desk, and as I stuck my head inside, Sherry's head jerked up and she opened her eyes wide. She let out a startled “Oh!” and yanked her feet off the desk, and her swivel chair started scooting out from under her. In a flash of white, blue skirt, and waving pink arms, she went down as her chair slid back against the wall behind her.

I threw the door open and jumped to help her. She was sitting on the floor behind her desk with her mouth open wide, looking appealing as sin. She lifted her face up to me and said, “Golly!” Then she held her hands toward me so I could help her up.

I grabbed her hands and pulled. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Are you hurt?”

“I don't ... think so.”

She came to her feet, standing close to me, and put both hands behind her and rubbed herself gently where she'd landed. If she'd planned it, she couldn't have struck a more appealing pose.

She looked even better than she had during the brief time she'd been at last night's party. The soft red lips were in a small pout as she blinked her clear blue eyes at me, then suddenly she laughed. “Wasn't that silly? Hello. Guess I should lock the door if I'm going to sit like that.”

“My fault,” I said. “I shouldn't have popped in the way I did. I thought maybe Swallow would be here. But I am glad to see you again, Sherry.”

When I said Swallow's name she frowned once more and the amusement went out of her lovely face. “Him,” she said, contemptuously, I thought. “He should be in before long. I think he's on the set. Oh, sit down.” She nodded toward another chair and pulled her own chair back under her. She sat down gingerly, then bounced a couple of times and beamed at me. “All well,” she said. I thought my teeth were going to start chattering.

When I got settled she asked me, “What are you doing here at the studio, Shell?”

“I told you last night that I'm a detective. Well, now I'm working. On what happened at Raul's after you left.”

She pressed her lips together. “Zoe?”

“Uh-huh. Sherry, didn't you report her missing?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes. She's— We lived together. I liked her a lot.”

“I'm sorry, Sherry. If you don't want to talk about it—”

“I do, though. Is that what you're doing, Shell? Looking for...”

“For whoever killed her,” I said. I thought about everything that had happened in the last few hours and added, “I've got some very good reasons of my own for wanting to find the one that did it.”

“I know who did it,” she said flatly.

I stared at her. That one had jarred me. “What? What do you mean?”

She sighed. “I've already told the police,” she said. “They told me I don't have any proof.” She sighed and fell silent.

I didn't want her to stop now. “Maybe I could help,” I said. “Anything at all might help, Sherry. Can you tell me?”

She was quiet for a while longer, then she looked at me. “I think I'd like to,” she said. “Shell, Zoe left our house Thursday night—you know there was another bunch at Raul's that night?” I nodded and she went on, “Zoe hated Oscar Swallow, and I don't blame her a bit.” Her face looked angry now. “She told me weeks ago that she'd ruin him any way she could, and that's why she went to Raul's. She was going to do something to get even with him in front of all the people who were there, all the people who knew him and worked with him. She left about eight o'clock and never came back. Finally I told the police she hadn't come home. Then just this morning they talked to me again and I told them why she went to Raul's. I don't think the police have even said anything to him—and I thought they'd arrest him.” She stopped, staring at the corner of her desk.

Now I was getting something I could sink my teeth into. “What was she going to do?”

Sherry shook her head. “I don't know. She just said she was going to ‘get’ him. She'd found out something about him she said would run him out of town. I don't know what it was.” She looked at me and said defiantly, “But it's perfectly obvious what happened. Before she even got inside Raul's, Oscar Swallow murdered her. I just—”

She broke it off in midsentence, because right then Oscar Swallow walked into his office.

“Well, hello there,” he said brightly to me, each word enunciated with how-now-brown-cow clarity, and he gave me a smile. It was a tight smile, though, and a poor one, and it seemed evident that he'd heard Sherry's last remark. He could hardly have missed it. Perhaps he'd even been standing out in the hall listening; there was no way to tell.

“Morning, Swallow,” I said. Then I pushed it a little. “We were just talking about you.”

“Oh? Well, by Jove. Nothing foul, I hope.”

I grinned at him. “I'm not sure. You been on the set?”

“Yes, I have. I have been there all morning watching the temple scenes. It's still quite a thrill seeing one's ideas come to life, so to speak.” He took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply and squirting the smoke out his long, straight nose. “What brings you here, Mr. Scott?”

I was wondering if he'd mentioned being on the set all morning so I'd feel he hadn't been playing target practice with me, or if it was only casual conversation. I said, “The Townsend murder. I've got a client who wants me to try finding her killer.”

He was slightly contemptuous. “Do you expect to find him here? Or her, as the case may be?”

“Seems logical.”

He shrugged. Sherry had been sitting quietly up till now. She said to Swallow, “Don't you feel anything? Now that she's dead?”

“Sherry, dear, I'm naturally terribly sorry. Zoe was a lovely thing, and she was my secretary for a long time. But there's nothing we can do now.”

Sherry didn't answer, but she was making a visible effort to control herself. She got up and walked out.

Swallow slid up on a corner of his desk and hiked up the carefully creased leg of his trousers. “Did you want to see me, Mr. Scott?”

“Yeah, I thought I'd drop in. I'd like to talk to all the people who were at Raul's Thursday night. Just to get the picture.”

“This is part of your investigation, I take it?”

“You could call it that.”

He smiled. “I won't be much help. I remember little of that Thursday night. Mr. Genova insists that there be no late parties, or, oh, carousing when we're shooting the following day—but I'm not in the movie. At any rate, I fear I drank to excess. I passed out and slept on the floor most of the evening. I really don't remember quite how I got home.”

“When was this?”

“Quite early Thursday night. Shortly after seven, I believe.” He chuckled. “That's what they tell me. But my point is, Mr. Scott, that I could hardly have had anything to do with Zoe's death—assuming that she was killed at Raul's home. I'm simply trying to make things easier for you, you understand. You see, you can eliminate me immediately.”

“Sure,” I said. “I just eliminated you.” I got up. “Thanks, Swallow. Everybody else on the set?”

“Everybody you'll want to see, I imagine. Except Genova; he's in his office. Number one.”

I walked to the door and turned. “Oh, Swallow, one more thing. When the police pulled her from the pool last night you said something to the effect that she'd killed herself. It struck me as a little strange.”

“Oh,” he said, “did I? Perhaps I did. Well,” he went on slowly, “Zoe and I worked together for quite some time. We were—rather close for a while. It simply seemed incredible that anybody could have murdered her. Naturally I assumed...” He let it trail away.

“Any reason why she should have killed herself?”

“No. I don't know of any reason. It was—merely an assumption.”

I thought Swallow looked uncomfortable. I let it ride for now. Sherry came back in from outside then and walked over behind her desk. I said, “O.K. See you later, Swallow. You too, Sherry.”

She gave me a bright smile as I went out.

I knocked on Genova's door and went in when he yelled from inside the room. He had a French phone at his ear, but when he saw me his thick black eyebrows drew down and he growled, “All right—good-by,” into the mouthpiece and hung up noisily. He kept frowning at me. “What do you want?” he asked,testily.

“Just like to talk to you, if it's all right, Genova.”

“It's not all right. I got enough troubles without you. Now get the hell out of here.”

This guy and Fanny should hit it off fine. I could feel myself getting hot under the collar. “O.K., if that's the way you want it,” I said. “I thought I'd let you know I've got a client I'm investigating the murder for. The murder we're all mixed up in—including you.”

He leaned back in his chair and started nervously snapping the fingers of his right hand. “So you managed to make it official. You're the nosiest damn man I've seen for quite a while, Scott.”

For a guy about five-nine and a hundred and sixty pounds, he was a little too belligerent. A private detective, though, is still just a private citizen, and Genova didn't have to be nice to me. But he was becoming a trifle too personal, and I was getting awfully fed up with most of the people I'd rubbed against in this case. It would have given me great pleasure to pin Zoe's murder on about six of them.

I said, “Fortunately—or unfortunately—that's what I get paid for. And as long as Bondhelm pays me to—”

“Bondhelm!” He came up out of his chair as if he had springs in his bottom. “Bondhelm! You're working for Bondhelm? Why, that sonofabitch! So help me, if you so much as give us five seconds of trouble on this picture I'll have the law on you. Why, you sonofabitch, you. You goddam son of a—awp!”

That was as far as he got. He was wearing a blue tie, and I shot out my left hand, grabbed the tie, and yanked him toward me. His thighs hit the edge of the desk and he folded over on top of it with his face about a foot from its top. I jerked up on the tie and stuck my face down a couple of inches from his and sprayed words in his face. “Give this a good listen, Genova. You can object all you want to about my nosing around. You can even get a little tiresome. But keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll twist you around till you've got your feet in your mouth. You got that?” I held him a second longer, then shoved him back into his chair.

He landed heavily and sat there for a moment without moving. Then his hands came up and gripped the chair arms till the knuckles showed white. He made a couple of noises that weren't words, just angry choking sounds. His face twisted and his lips parted over his teeth, then he pressed them together and pulled them apart again. I could see the saliva glistening on the inner side of his pulled-down lower lip. Louis Genova was all unstrung.

It seemed like a good time for it, so I leaned on his desk and said, “You know, a man who gets as mad as you are right now could get mad enough even to strangle a woman, I'll bet.”

Oddly enough, instead of getting worse and maybe falling down on the floor and biting his tongue, he got better. Slowly. He stopped wiggling his lips, finally took his hands from the chair arms, and relaxed by degrees.

Normal color flowed back into his face and he said slowly, his poise recovered now, “You take an unfair advantage of me, Mr. Scott. I imagine you do push-ups.”

That was the most human thing I'd ever heard him say.

I took a deep breath. “O.K., Genova. I— I should apologize, maybe. I do apologize. But I think that works both ways.”

He looked at me then. “Yes. Well, I'm sorry for what I said, Mr. Scott.” Pretty soon we were going to kiss each other. He went on, “It was your mention of Bondhelm. Perhaps you don't understand, but he'd do almost anything to— to sabotage production. Perhaps you don't understand.”

“I know what the score is. But I won't do any man's dirty work, Genova. You can depend on that. My concern, and my only concern, is who murdered Miss Townsend.” I waited a minute, then added, “If you don't want to talk to me, you don't have to. But it'll look funny if you don't. Especially to me.”

His face hardened. “Don't threaten me, Mr. Scott. I will absolutely not stand for threats.”

This Genova was actually a pretty hard boy. It occurred to me that he'd be able to take shots at me. Or hire somebody to do it for him. I was still stabbing in the dark, but I said, “Incidentally, Genova, you wouldn't have had a little man following me this morning, would you?”

He blinked at me and looked puzzled. “Little man? What do you mean, a little man?”

“Skip it. You mind a couple of questions?”

He thought about it. “Not if you make it fast. I am actually extremely busy. You might as well sit down.”

I climbed into a chair at the side of the desk—a good five feet from his slightly crumpled tie. “All right, here it is fast,” I said. “Thursday night you were at Raul's. Along with Raul, Swallow, King, Helen, Dot, and maybe a couple of others. I know Zoe left to go to Raul's about eight that night. What can you give me, including where you were then? Also, what's this about Zoe being out to give Swallow trouble—and where was he during the evening?”

“That's all?”

“That's it; at least for now.”

“All right.” He swung his chair around to face me. “I know absolutely nothing about any trouble between Zoe and Oscar, or anything else about her except that she was his secretary. We discussed business till seven-thirty or eight o'clock, at which time I left. The party was growing more ... lively then. However, I was assured the group would soon break up, inasmuch as we were shooting the next day. Swallow, though, had been drinking all evening, and apparently even before he came to Raul's. He quietly went to sleep and I believe he was on the floor when I left. People just stepped over him.”

At another time that might have been an amusing picture. Particularly of the immaculate Swallow. I said, “You know, naturally, that I'm trying to find out who at the party had opportunity to kill Zoe. Would you say that lets Swallow out?”

“I'd say no such thing. All I know is what I've told you.”

“O.K. Now, on the opportunity angle—how about you, Genova?”

He smiled. “Obviously I had no opportunity. I left before any of the others and was home long before any violence that might have occurred.”

“How does that follow? I'm just guessing, but couldn't you have met Zoe? While the others were inside?”

He squinted at me. “Of course not. I left the grounds. Why, I didn't even see the girl.” He frowned. “Why, good Lord, you can't possibly think...”

“I don't think anything in particular. I'm just asking.”

He swallowed, looking a bit strained. “It's idiotic to even suspect I had anything to do with it. I didn't even know the girl except as an employee.” He swallowed again. “Well, doesn't that cover it?”

I got up. “O.K. Thanks for your time.”

“All right,” he said. “I hope you don't bother me again.”

This was more like the old Genova. “So do I,” I told him. As I started to leave he added:

“Mr. Scott, you mentioned opportunity. Doesn't there usually have to be motive also?”

He sure had me there. At least till I found out more about the Zoe-Swallow business. “It'll turn up,” I said. He was pulling at one of his black eyebrows as I went out.

I headed back for Swallow's office. I wanted to know more about Sherry's suspicions, but I'd also begun to think that the writer's office might not be a healthy place for her since he'd overheard her accusing him. Kind of a funny thing, too, despite all the other attractive and even beautiful women on the fringes of this case, Sherry was getting to be more and more on my mind.

The studio here was a fairly busy place, and there was really no logical reason for worry to nag at my mind as I neared Swallow's office. But it did until I knocked and heard Sherry's smooth voice answer.

I poked my head inside and said, “Hello.”

“Won't work this time,” she said grinning. “I learned my lesson.”

I went in. Swallow was visible through the open door to a farther room. I asked Sherry, “Any bruises?”

“I haven't looked. Not yet.” She was smiling, and even as sweet and cute as she looked, it was almost a lead-pipe cinch that she had plenty of hell in her. With that incredible shape she couldn't have helped hearing about the differences between boys and girls.

I said, “I didn't mean to rush you.” I walked over and sat on the corner of her desk. “You know, I wish we were chatting under different circumstances, Sherry.”

Her face sobered immediately and I knew she was thinking of Zoe again. “Look,” I said softly, “I didn't know Zoe, myself, but if you liked her I know she must have been O.K. The thing now is to find out the who—and the why.”

She glanced toward the open door of Swallow's office, then back at me. “I suppose so.”

“Look,” I said. “I'd like to see some of the people on the set. Why don't you and I have a look? You can show me the way. O.K.?”

She smiled that impish smile. “O.K. Just a minute.” She got up and walked to Swallow's door. “Oscar, we're going over to the set. All right?”

“We? Who's we? Oh, Scott. Hello again. Fine. I'll go along with you, if you don't mind.”

I did mind a bit, but he was already coming into the outer office. We went out and down the hall, Sherry in the middle. She grabbed my arm and hung on, friendly as a pup. I wanted to put my arm around her and squeeze her. I couldn't help contrasting Sherry with Helen. Maybe Helen had a trifle more polish, more smooth glamour, but this Sherry had enough for me. Take Sherry and Helen to the beach and Helen would lie on the sand under an umbrella; Sherry would be out in the surf riding the breakers. I had an idea I'd be out there, too.

We went from the Administration Building across the lot to Sound Stage 3. The red light was burning over the entrance, which meant that shooting was going on, so we chatted and made small talk till the light winked out, then the three of us went inside. I'd heard someone say they were shooting the temple scenes, and I could see the set about fifty feet from the door we'd come through, past a whole mess of people, most of them standing quietly. Overhead were a number of scaffolds and catwalk affairs, some with lights and other equipment not presently in use on them, and around the set itself was what looked to me like a million dollars’ worth of machinery: cameras, mikes, booms, dollies and trucks, reflectors. Several sizes of lights were focused on the set, and two big cameras were visible straight ahead of us.

We picked our way over some electrical cable on the floor and walked up to within a few feet of the set. I saw Raul talking to another man and I asked Sherry, “What's going on now? O.K. if I barge over to see Raul?”

“Might be better to wait, Shell. He's talking to Frazier, the director of photography. Fixing up the camera angle and lighting for this scene, I imagine. You mind waiting?”

“Not with you. Besides"—I nodded toward the set—"this is kind of a kick.”

I watched the activity while Sherry kept me informed about what was going on. Finally Raul went over to a little canvas chair with “Director” painted on its back and sat down. Frazier and the head electrician finished lighting the set, then somebody yelled, “First team!” and Helen walked out of a little knot of people and up to a small altar in the center of the set. She leaned back against it and waited.

She was wearing a brown thing that looked like tanned skin—animal skin—hanging in jagged shreds down her smooth thighs and barely covering her breasts. Very nice it was; maybe I'd ride a couple of breakers and at least come in to say hello. Then I spotted King just off the set on the edge of light. He had on shorts of the usual leopard skin and a necklace of polished claws was around his neck, light glinting from them when he moved. He looked approximately as big as Gargantua. Well, I wanted to talk to Gargantua about an item in this A.M.'s Crier; I had a pretty damn good idea who'd given Fanny her “scoop.”

I'd have to wait until this scene was over, though, so I watched as the last touches were given the lighting. Then Raul turned and said something to the assistant director near him and the assistant shouted, “Roll ’em!”

A bell rang somewhere and after a few seconds the man on the mike boom called, “Speed!” and some guy stepped up in front of the camera lens with one of those little two-stick hinged affairs that said, “Scene 121,” and clapped the sticks together. Raul yelled, “Action!” It seemed that it took one hell of a lot of yelling to get this thing started. But it appeared to be on its way now, and I noticed that King had climbed up on a raised platform out of camera range and was squatting on his haunches. Helen stood in front of the altar, and as the electrically operated cameras preserved it all she made a mess of mystic signs and sank to her knees. Some more scantily clad savages, female, came in and made signs and went out. Helen fiddled around up there for half a minute more, then King let out a wild yowl that nearly scared the pants off me and leaped down beside the altar. Helen turned, screamed—I didn't blame her a bit; I'd have screamed, too—and fought briefly with King as he grabbed at her. Then suddenly she fainted and King picked her up with remarkable ease and slung her over his shoulder. He walked off the set with the cameras, it seemed to me, trained squarely on Helen's lovable behind.

“Cut!” That was Raul yelling again. A bell rang a couple of times and noise bubbled up around us.

I turned to Sherry. “Seems like nice work.”

She laughed. “Doesn't it? They're finishing up here today. The rest of the shooting is on location out of town.”

I saw King walk over and say something to Raul. “Excuse me a minute, Sherry. Be back in a shake.”

I walked up to Raul, sitting in his canvas chair. He spotted me as I came up and gave me a big grin. King didn't give me a big grin.

“Hello, Shell,” Raul said. “You looking for a job?”

“Not exactly. How's it going?”

He bobbed his head. “Going good. We'll finish up O.K. Everything under control. What's with you? How'd you get in here?”

“I'm back at work.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The obvious thing?”

“Yeah.” King was looking at me, which is to say he was glaring at me, so I said hello to him.

He didn't answer. His jaw muscles danced a little.

“Say, King,” I said. “You see Fanny Hillman's column this morning?”

“I saw it, crumb.”

I could feel that old, familiar tightness starting to squeeze my stomach muscles. I said, “For a grown man, you've got the shortest damn memory of anybody I ever saw.”

“My memory's fine. I remember how funny you looked on your butt.”

“About that column in the Crier this morning,” I said quietly. “Any idea how that obvious error got into so conservative a rag?”

“Now, how would I know, Scott? You looking for trouble?” He came around Raul's chair and stepped up in front of me. I had given this guy a short spell of blankness just the night before, but he wasn't the least bit frightened of me. I wasn't exactly sure whether he frightened me or not. Looking at him, I was positive that he was holding his breath, and right then he took a deep breath. His stomach looked like a flesh-covered washboard, and I wondered if it would go ping! if I slapped it. I didn't slap it.

“No,” I said, “not exactly. I mean I'm not looking for trouble. But I'm curious about that item. Among other things.”

I suddenly noticed how quiet it had become. My voice was abnormally loud because I'd been trying to talk over the buzz of conversation and sound of people moving around. Some men were still working on the set, moving the altar now. I glanced around. Everybody near us was looking our way, standing motionless as if expecting some fireworks. It seemed likely that they'd get to watch some.

King was about six inches from me and now he said, “I'm gonna tell you something, Scott. I'm gonna break your damn neck.”

That was all he said. Somehow I'd expected more. Then he put a large hand on my chest and shoved me back about six inches.

That's all it takes. Because of some peculiar quirk in me, that is the easiest way in the world for anybody to bring out my worst side. I could feel my cheeks get hot and it was almost as if I could hear the blood rushing through my brain. I balled up my fists and started to lunge back at him just as Raul said frantically, “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” and at the same instant I realized what I'd been about to pull.

I didn't know for sure that I could take King in a brawl, though after last night I thought the odds were in my favor. But even if he threw me to the floor and jumped up and down on me I couldn't afford to clobber him. If I so much as gave him a fat lip, all hell would break loose: Bruta, the star of the show, wouldn't be able to emote in front of the cameras and Bondhelm would practically die of happiness. This was exactly what Bondhelm had hinted at last night: “If, by any accident, you should interrupt shooting...” Involuntarily I shuddered, and my fists peeled open. It seemed suddenly as if everything was ganging up on me in this case. And I couldn't think of anything to do about it.

King had his head stuck forward on his trunklike neck and his ludicrous chin was pushed forward, making a beautiful target somewhat like a ledge of granite. Everybody was still looking at us, waiting for the fearless Shell Scott to tear King limb from limb, or vice versa. And here I stood wondering what the hell. I'd had it. I was stuck in the damn tree and the beavers were mad at me.

“King,” I said, and stopped. I didn't know what I could say. I tried again. “I told you once before, let's not be silly. Haven't you got anything better to do?”

He grinned widely. He figured he had me crawling now. “Scott,” he said, “let's settle this once and for all. I said I was gonna break your neck. Didn't you hear me?”

“I heard you.” I could hardly get the words out, I was so mad. I could feel the sweat starting to come out on my face, and my hands were again squeezed into fists so tight that I could feel the pain where my fingernails cut into my palms.

We stood facing each other, staring into each other's eyes from about six inches apart, and finally after what seemed like an hour King's lips curled and he said, “Well, well.”

He took another breath, let it out, then turned his back on me and swaggered slowly away. With the tension abruptly ended, conversation swelled up again. I could imagine what was being said.

Raul started barking orders to his crew and I just stood there behind his chair for a few seconds, feeling a little sick inside and not wanting to look at anybody. Then I turned and walked back to Sherry. She looked curiously at me. I might have imagined it, but I thought she looked disappointed. In me.

“What was all that, Shell?”

“King wanted to break my neck. Didn't you hear him?” My voice still wasn't under control.

“I heard him, Shell. You sound funny.”

“I feel funny. King and I had a beef last night, after you left. Guess he wants more. Let's forget about it, huh?”

She didn't say anything else. Neither did I. We were standing in semidarkness about thirty feet behind where Raul sat, the two of us by ourselves now. Swallow had wandered off somewhere. I wanted to talk to Swallow some more, and also to others who were here now, so Sherry and I stood quietly while preparations were completed for shooting the next scene.

Raul shouted, “Get this one and we knock off for lunch.” Things quieted down and I could see Helen and two other women standing in front of the cameras. Some of the lights were moved and one of the shirt-sleeved electricians standing about twenty feet from Sherry and me adjusted a junior spotlight that lighted up the background behind the three women.

As I watched, my breathing went back to normal and the dryness eased out of my throat. I'd had just about enough, I was thinking. First a guy shooting at me, and now this mess with King. The thought of that bullet hole in the side of the Cad started the tenseness pulling slightly between my shoulder blades again and I looked around the spot where we stood, looked into the grayness and the shadow, at the unused equipment looming darkly in the gloom. Nothing moved, and I realized that I had actually been looking for something moving near us. I shrugged. I was getting too jittery. It was the dimness in here, the lack of reality and the shadows.

Finally Raul called, “Action!” again and the scene got started. I watched for a minute, then thought I heard something overhead. It seemed a little unlikely, but in the quiet as the take proceeded I had thought some kind of noise had come from above us. I glanced at Sherry, but she was intent on the action before the cameras. I looked up.

There was one of those catwalks overhead, almost hidden in the darkness high above us, and squarely above Sherry and me there was a heavier blob of shadow. For one queer moment I remembered that darker shadow I'd seen as I swam through the water of Raul's pool, and then that heavy blob above us moved.

I strained my eyes at the movement, hardly believing what I was seeing, and just as I decided that the shadowy outline must be that of one of the huge arc lights, it toppled from the catwalk and plummeted toward us.

Chapter Eight

FOR A fractional part of a second, only a breath of time, I stared as the bulky metal hung on the edge of the catwalk and started to fall. Then I yelled, “Look out!” and leaped to my right, my hands outstretched as I crashed into Sherry and sent her sprawling forward. Her scream knifed through the silence as the rending crash came from behind me when the light hit the floor.

Raul shouted something, but I didn't hear what it was and I was only barely conscious of the other shouts and cries, for even as the light crashed behind me I was leaping for the spotlight that the electrician stood by a few feet away. I grabbed the edge of the spot and felt its heat against the skin of my hands as I swung it around and up toward the ceiling.

The light fell on the narrow catwalk and I saw a man racing along it toward the far wall. I trained the strong beam of light on him and saw his hand go up before his eyes, trying to block out the blinding glare. Then he stumbled and yelled hoarsely as one foot slipped over the edge of the catwalk. For a moment he hung there, with his arms waving frantically, then fell, screaming. His body dropped through the beam of light and into the darkness beneath it, then thudded sickeningly against the floor as the scream stopped abruptly.

I felt a little sick. I pulled the beam of light down till it splashed over the crumpled body several feet from me. Several of the cast and technicians were moving either toward me or the man on the floor, and I left the spotlight trained across the room on the unmoving figure there, then walked toward it. I heard voices crying, “What happened?” “What the hell's going on?” and a woman's voice repeating, “He fell! I saw him fall!” as I walked past those who were already in front of me. Two men were standing between the man on the floor and me, and as I stepped around them somebody found a switch and lights brightened this whole area of the sound stage.

There was no doubt that the man was dead; his neck was twisted and bent at an impossible, almost comic, angle. His horn-rimmed spectacles lay a few inches from his nose, one lens shattered, the jagged pieces of glass reflecting the light that poured over him. The little bald spot had eaten its way outward as far as it ever would. Apparently I hadn't lost the little man in the green Chevy this morning; I'd lost him now. I knelt by him. There was no breathing, no pulse. I looked at his staring eyes; one pupil already appeared larger than the other. He was one dead little man.

Raul pushed through the gathering crowd of shocked and curious people. He put his hand on my arm and said, “For God's sake, what happened, Shell?”

I turned and looked at him. I was so jittery that for a moment I even searched Raul's face to see if I could read any guilt or insincerity there. Then I realized I was being silly and answered him, “I don't think I know exactly, Raul.” I pointed to the catwalk above us. “What kind of screwy setup is that up there? Where does that thing go?”

“Huh?” He followed my pointing finger. “Oh, that? Goes over to the wall. Runs into another one over there, too.” He pointed to another catwalk that led off at right angles from the one above us. “Damn things are all over the place. Why, what's that got to do with—with this mess?”

“The little guy there tried to drop a light on my head. That was the crash you heard. I guess he meant to take off in the confusion. Or get down and back in the crowd. Who is he, anyway?”

Raul looked at the little man and swallowed. “Think his name's Henson. He's a grip.” He swallowed again. “He was. You put the spot on him?”

“Uh-huh. That wasn't in the script. I wasn't supposed to be able to jump around.” Suddenly I thought of Sherry. I swung around and headed back to where I'd left her sprawled on the floor, then I saw her standing a few feet from me, leaning against a wooden beam. I walked over to her.

“You all right, honey?”

“I guess so.” She managed a weak smile. “Some—some more bruises, but I think that's all.” She paused and then added, “Thanks to you. What happened, anyway? What does it mean?” She looked back to the crumpled arc light that had narrowly missed us.

I didn't get to answer her.

A door at the side of the room crashed open and Genova descended upon us like a thin Napoleon. His booming voice preceded him. “What's the matter? What's the matter? What happened? What happened?” He was getting unstrung again. Apparently somebody had reported to him that there was confusion on the set and he'd come to add some of his own to it. “Raul,” he yelled. “Raul!”

Raul was kneeling by the body. “Here, L.G.” he said, and Genova wheeled and walked up beside him. He spotted the dead man and stood looking down at him, speechless for a few seconds, then he said rapidly, “What's this? Who is this man? What happened?”

I gave Sherry's arm a squeeze and walked over to the center of activity. “He's dead, Genova,” I said. “He was up—”

Genova snapped his head around at the sound of my voice and his bushy eyebrows crawled up his forehead like black snails. “You!” he roared. “You! You did it! You're trying to ruin me! I'll have—”

It was my turn to interrupt. “Shut up a minute, Genova. Get it through your head that the guy's dead. This isn't any picnic; that little man just tried to kill me. Come over here.”

I spoke so roughly and sharply that my voice cut through the confusion and Genova followed me to the broken light on the floor. “Take a fat look at that,” I said. “The dead guy pushed it off the catwalk there"—I pointed and Genova looked up and then back at my face—"and I was just lucky enough to hear him. I swung a spot on him and he fell. Get it through your head, Genova: He was trying to kill me.”

It was relatively quiet now. Genova stared at me for a moment, his mouth sagging a little. He looked dazed. Finally he said plaintively, “Do you know what this is costing me? Three thousand dollars. Every hour it costs me three thousand dollars.” His voice got stronger; this was something of which he was positive. “I'll be ruined,” he said loudly. “You're trying to ruin me!” He turned and looked at all the others standing a few feet away and shouted, “He's working for Bondhelm! Ask him! Ask him!” There was an exclamation point after every word.

Raul walked forward. “Look, L.G.,” he said quietly. “I'm not sure what happened here, myself, but I don't see how it could have been Shell's doing.”

“He's working for Bondhelm,” Genova muttered uncertainly. He just couldn't get all this through his head.

I said, “Genova, listen to me a minute. I've told you what happened. I sure as hell didn't plan it. The person responsible is that little guy on the floor, or somebody he was doing his dirty work for.” I looked slowly around the room—at King's dark face, Helen in her brief costume, a couple of other women's faces I recognized, then back past Raul to Genova again. “Somebody here,” I added. “Somebody in this room who wanted me dead.”

It got as quiet as the inside of a coffin. I heard the rustle of cloth as a woman moved slightly, and change jingled faintly as Raul took his hand from his trousers pocket. I said, “This is for the police now.”

Genova mumbled something softly and looked pained, and spurts of conversation shot up again. Suddenly I remembered one face I hadn't seen in the group.

“Where's Swallow?” I asked abruptly.

“Right here, old boy. You want me?”

He was leaning indolently against a table on my right and slightly behind me, smoking a long cigarette. “No,” I said. “Just curious.”

He stared back at me blandly as the sound of sirens penetrated into the sound stage from the open door. At least I wouldn't have to call Homicide; somebody had already phoned the police.

I walked over and stood beside Sherry. The noise behind me swelled up almost to normal and she said quietly, “Thanks, Shell. For pushing me out of the way, I mean. Golly, it scared me.”

I grinned down at her. “To tell you the truth, honey, I'm not positive whether I pushed you out of the way or just banged into you while I was running like hell.”

She smiled. “It doesn't make any difference. Shell, are you really working for Bondhelm?”

I groaned inwardly. I'd hoped Sherry, at least, wouldn't share Genova's low opinion of me. But she didn't look angry or contemptuous, just interested.

I said, “I'm working for Bondhelm, it's true. But only to find out who killed Zoe. Maybe he's got some not very nice reasons for wanting me nosing around, but they're not my reasons. He's just paying my way.” I swallowed, realizing it actually did make a difference to me, and added, “I'd kind of hoped you'd take that for granted.”

She smiled sweetly up at me. “I do, silly. And you were calling me honey.” She put both her arms around my right arm and squeezed it gently, one warm breast soft against it. Then she let go and said mischievously, “Why don't you poke that old King, anyway?”

When she'd squeezed my arm like that. it had sent a tingle all through me, but I think I liked her words almost as well. Funny how good it made me feel when the idea penetrated. In addition to everything else, I was thinking, this was a smart little cookie.

I was still trying to think of something to say when the siren slowed and stopped outside. Right afterwards the two plainclothes sergeants who had conducted the interrogations with Captain Nelson at Raul's place came in. They were the two detectives assigned to the case, and now they had something else to chew on. Genova looked like a man who was slowly bleeding to death.

It was two o'clock before I'd gone through my story enough times, including the episode of the bullet hole in my Cadillac, and could leave. Before I took off I talked with Sherry on the set and arranged to meet her that night. She'd be having dinner at Joseph's on Cypress Avenue, she said, but after that she'd be at her apartment, at least by eight P.M. There was no chance to talk much more to her in all the hubbub and confusion, so I told her I'd see her at eight and left. On my way out I saw Helen, who made a face at me and tossed her head. It seemed I was developing a real talent for getting people mad at me. I didn't care too much right now, though; I could still feel the warmth of Sherry's yielding breast against my arm.

Chapter Nine

I DROVE downtown to City Hall, took the elevator up to the Temple Street floor, and walked down the long hall to Room 42: Homicide. Captain Phil Samson looked up from his desk in the inner office when I entered.

“Hi, Shell. At it again?”

“Yeah. I been talking to so many high-powered characters I figured it was time I relaxed with a pooped-out cop. Got to slow down once in a while.”

“Hah!” He reached for one of his odious black cigars, stuck it between his strong teeth, and scowled at me. Sam and I had been scowling and growling at each other for years, but there's damn little we wouldn't do for each other. His age shows in his gray hair but not in the size or set of his big jaw. And I'll say this for Sam: In a world where honesty is still the greatest and rarest virtue, he's an honest man. He'd have had my respect for that, even if I hadn't liked the old warrior.

He said gruffly, “She was killed by John Smith. Now hurry and get your name in the papers and we'll pick him up.”

I grinned at him. “I already got my name in the papers. Seriously, you getting anywhere?”

He shook his head. “Not much yet—but I understand we're getting quite a lot on you.” He shifted the cigar, clamped his teeth into it. “Give us time. You're talking about the Townsend one, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh. I was there; guess you know that.” He nodded, and I spent the next five minutes briefing him on the story from last night to now and getting odds and ends from him. After I'd told him about the latest episode I said, “It comes out the little guy was a grip. Worked around the sets—named Henson, James Henson. I know damned well he was only a hired man paid to fix my wagon, but naturally he's not talking. Two to one he's the sharpshooter who missed me, too.”

Sam frowned. “I wonder how long you'll last,” he said, looking at me curiously. Then he shrugged. “Well, I'll get the reports from the Hollywood boys, but this is the first I've thought much about Bondhelm. We'll see.”

“Think he could be mixed in the murder?” Sam got out a wooden kitchen match. I hoped he didn't light that stinking cigar. “You know better than that, Shell. Maybe her Aunt Mary killed her. It's a little too soon to figure.”

“Yeah.” We shot the breeze a while longer, then I got from him the names and addresses of everybody who'd been in the Thursday night group and also at the Sunday afternoon party. The names were the same except that Archer Block, the other writer, had been present on Thursday, and two of the girls, Susan and Peggy, hadn't been around then. That left those I was interested in.

Sam lit the cigar, and smoke—I'd swear it was green smoke—spewed out of his mouth. It was time I left. “Sure easy for you to get rid of me,” I told him. “You got anything for free?”

He blew smoke at me. “Nope.” He paused. “On second thought, there's one thing you might think about. The girl was pregnant.”

“Zoe? The dead one?”

“That's right. Don't know who yet.”

I thought about it. I remembered a lot of things, and maybe now I knew why Swallow had said, “She's killed herself.” “Sam,” I said, “I'll give you odds. Swallow—Oscar the fancy Swallow. The writer man. Just a hunch, Sam.”

“Oh?” The big jaw wiggled on his cigar. “We'll find out.”

I took a breath, choked a little for Sam's benefit, then got up. “Two more little things you might gnaw on, Sam. One, it looks like somebody phoned Fanny Hillman right after King and I beefed. Her deadline was eleven P.M. and Ben already told me she didn't get the info from the police. Two, somebody also got in touch fast with this Bondhelm guy because he called me about nine P.M.”

He nodded, and as I went out he told me to watch myself. He didn't have to tell me; I had a hunch that if I didn't look alive I'd be dead.

Back in the Cad I sat thinking for a minute or two, then pointed the buggy's nose toward the Hollywood Freeway. Little Dot English wasn't working today, her stint in “Jungle Girl” having been finished some days back, and she might have some things to tell me. For all I knew, she might have some things to show me.

She was in a suite in the ritzy Francis Hotel. Not room; suite. Dot was doing all right. I rang and heard footsteps come toward the door, then Dot's tousled blonde head poked out and she said, “Oh, hello. Mr.—Mr. Shell?”

“Just Shell O.K. if I come in?”

“Well, I'm not exactly dressed...” She thought about that a minute and then laughed fit to kill. It was a bit funny. My most vivid memory of Dot was when she was bouncing on the springboard.

“Oh, hell, come on in,” she said.

I went in. She wasn't “exactly dressed,” but she was covered up well enough. Apparently she'd been sleeping late, and she had on pajamas of white silk. Thin pajamas. It was a neat little sitting room we were in, with the bedroom and rumpled bed visible through an open door on my left. The furnishings looked expensive. She sat down on a couch against the wall and patted the cushion beside her while she turned the knob on a table radio beside the couch.

“Sit down, Shell,” she said. “What brings you up to see me?” She smiled as if she had a pretty good idea. I didn't quite tell her it was the wrong idea; not right at first.

I sat down beside her and said, “It's really about Miss Townsend's murder. I thought maybe you could help me clear up some tag ends.”

“Tag ends.” She laughed. “It sounds like a game.”

I laughed with her a while, then I said, “No, no game. I'm serious. Like your help.”

She looked puzzled at that, but she said, “Sure, I'll help if I can.” Then she smiled again. “How did you know I was here?”

“I was just out at the studio. They said you'd probably be home, since you got eaten up by a lion in one of the early ‘Jungle Girl’ scenes.”

She laughed some more. “He didn't eat me up, really. He was just a toothless old lion. Kind of a sweet old lion. He just gummed me a little.”

I grinned at her, showing my teeth. I wasn't learning much about Zoe, maybe, but I was getting a pretty good line on Dot. The radio had warmed up by now and she reached over with what might have been a practiced gesture—and if it had been practiced it was time well spent because it did things to the top of her pajamas and me—found some romantic music, and turned the volume down low.

It seemed like time I got around to asking questions, but I didn't know quite how to start. In any murder investigation, when you have to talk to a lot of people involved, there's always the possibility—no matter how slight—that the very one you're talking to might be a killer or accomplice, so you have to keep that in mind. But at the same time you don't want to embarrass or annoy the hell out of nice people who happened to get caught in the fringes. Especially nice people like Dot.

Finally I said, “It looks like somebody at Raul's Thursday night ... did it. She was choked to death. Do you know when Zoe showed up?”

She shook her head. “No. I guess nobody knows. Nobody saw her at all. Gee, it's sure funny.”

“Isn't it. Uh, when did Genova leave?”

“I'm not sure, exactly. I was"—she giggled a small giggle—"I was outside with Raul. I guess it was around eight, though, or a little after.”

“You were with Raul outside?” She nodded. That would have been very near the time Zoe was heading for the house. She must have arrived around eight or a little later, from what information I'd gathered.

“What were you—” I stopped. I'd started to ask what she and Raul had been doing, then realized it might not be the most gallant question I could think of.

She was ahead of me. “Oh, we weren't doing anything. I mean, not really—you know.” She looked at me with a small smile on her lips. Her eyes were green, I noticed, and her skin was almost as smooth and white as the pajamas. Little Snow White. She went on, “We were just sitting out back in the swing.”

That was on the opposite side of the house from both the pool and the barbecue pit. I asked, “Around eight, huh? Did— that is, was Raul with you all the time?”

“Uh-huh. Except when he went for a couple drinks.”

“When was that, Dot?”

She hunched her shoulders and dropped them. “I dunno. Not for sure. A little while before we went inside. I remember we went inside about half past. Past eight, I mean.”

I got out cigarettes, gave Dot one, and lit them for both of us. “How long was Raul gone, Dot?”

“Only a couple of minutes. Just a little bit, time to mix two drinks.” She blinked at me. “That's silly, anyway, Shell. Raul wouldn't hurt anyone.”

“Yeah, I know that. Just asking questions. You're sure he wasn't gone more than two minutes?”

“Two or three, that's the most.” She grinned at me. “He was in a hurry to get back.”

I returned her grin. “I'll bet he was, Dot.” She scooted over closer to me on the couch.

“Do we have to talk about that awful thing?”

Obviously she meant the murder. I said, “One more thing. Where were Swallow and King? And Helen?”

“Douglas and Helen were together all the time. Swallow passed out, the fool. Raul and I rolled him over to the wall before we went back.”

By George, she was right up against me now. I cleared my throat. “You know much about Swallow, Dot? I mean the kind of guy he is, where he came from, and so on.”

“I just know him to speak to. Pretty good-looking fellow. Good writer, too—I read his book. You read it?”

“ ‘The Savage Christian'?”

“Uh-huh.” Her breath caressed my neck.

“No. Good, huh? What was it about?”

“Well ... why ... about life. Yes, about true life. I guess. I couldn't say exactly, but it sure was good. Lots of big words in it. Shell?”

“Yeah?”

“Let's not talk about them, or about any murder, Shell. Is that really why you came to see me?”

Her breath was warm on my neck as she moved her lips closer to me. She pressed her lips gently against my neck and I felt the hairs on my skin start wiggling. She started nibbling on my ear. I let her nibble. What the hell, part of it was already gone, anyway.

Just to get all the business out of the way, so I could maybe do a little nibbling myself, I said, “Let's say that's part of the reason, Dot. After all, a detective is supposed to ask people questions. Part of the time, at least. But, uh, I think I've finished.”

She stopped nibbling and I turned to face her. Her mouth was six inches away, but she wasn't puckered. She was frowning.

“A what?” she asked me.

“What do you mean, a what?”

“A what. What did you say you were?”

“A detective. You know, a private detective. You do know ... didn't you know that?”

“A detective? A detective? Aren't you even an assistant director?”

The horrible truth seeped in through one of the cracks in my brain. This little tomato wasn't after my sun-bronzed body, not a bit of it. I wondered what had ever made me suppose she was. Helen and I had fallen into a pretty intimate relationship because of the circumstances under which we'd met, and the almost inevitable events that had followed, and Sherry and I had seemed to get along like bourbon and water. But that was no reason for me to suppose that all females of the opposite sex were going to start swooning as soon as I patted them on the head or somewhere.

Dot was still frowning at me, looking betrayed. I said, “I thought you knew what I was. I'm a private investigator, office on Broadway downtown. At your service.”

“Well!” She thought about that for a while. “Aren't you anything at Genova? Or anywhere?”

“That's a peculiar way to put it, Dot. I'm just what I said. But, no, I'm not any part of the movie industry. Dot? Hello?”

Her lip twitched slightly and she reached over and turned the radio up a little louder. While she was at it, I took a good look while I had the chance. It would seem my ear was safe from now on. After about a minute of rather deadly conversation I got up.

“Well, Dot, thanks very much for your time. And the help. I, uh, guess I'd better get back to work.”

She got up and smiled, pleasantly enough, but walked to the door and opened it. She said, from habit, I guess, “I had a lovely time. Good night.”

I almost had to laugh. Damn her, she was sure a cute little doll, no matter what. I walked by her into the hall, and right then I had a brilliant idea.

I turned around. “Say,” I said. “I just remembered. I am part of the industry after all. I've got some stock in ‘Jungle Girl.'”

“Oh?” She looked a little more pleasant. “How much?” I considered that one. “Not much, I guess. Not enough.” I walked down the hall as Dot shut the door quietly behind me.

Chapter Ten

I SPENT the afternoon talking to Jerri, the girl who had been at Raul's both Thursday and Sunday and who knew from nothing, stocking up on food, and finding out all I could about the various persons in the case from newspaper files, friends, and contacts I've worked up.

Swallow had been in town about a year and a half, brought here after “The Savage Christian” had stirred up some comment, and he'd worked for Genova on his previous movie, “Jungle Woman,” and on “Jungle Girl.” Apparently he hadn't done any other writing. Genova himself had produced only the two movies, and I was up on the story of those. Before succumbing to the lure of Hollywood he'd been vice-president of a trucking company—and boss of some pretty tough characters, from what I gathered. Then he'd worked a couple of years for one of the big studios. The more I learned of Genova, the more capable of murder he seemed. The only trouble was that murder, except for the professional kill, is committed by some of the most unlikely people imaginable. Zoe's murder had been no pro job, and it had been pulled off in a hurry when sudden opportunity was offered.

King, I learned, had been playing in B movies almost all of his adult life—that is, if he could even now be considered an adult. With the story of the Wild Party Murder on the front pages, it didn't look likely that King would stand a chance in his child-custody battle. I couldn't be sorry. It appeared that his wife had left him, claiming she was tired of his “Me Tarzan; who you?” conversation.

I called Bondhelm and reported that I was still alive and working, then worked my way through a prime-rib dinner. From there, after checking the address I'd got from Samson, I paid a call on screen writer Archer Block, the other writer on “Jungle Girl.”

He was a medium-sized guy, husky, with curly black hair, and a half-empty highball glass in his hand. I introduced myself and showed him my credentials, and two minutes later we were seated in his front room—both of us with full glasses. He was a pleasant character, relaxed and willing to talk, but there seemed to be nothing he could tell me that was any help.

After a few minutes he answered one of my questions by saying, “I just had that one job with Genova. I'm presently between engagements, as they say.” He grinned. “Mainly all I did was write behind Swallow. Only reason I went there Thursday night was to help with the changes Genova wanted. But I never saw hide or hair of this Zoe. I left maybe thirty minutes after Genova.”

“Good enough, Block. Thanks. What'd you mean about writing behind Swallow?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I take it you don't know much about writing in Hollywood.”

“I know from nothing.”

He pulled at his drink, leaned back, and crossed his legs. “Let me tell you,” he said. “It's my favorite subject. Well, next to one other, it's my favorite. Say the studio pays a fortune for a property—you know what a property is?”

“Not exactly.”

“God, you're ignorant.” He grinned. “Say they buy a book. Here's about how it goes, with a few of my slight exaggerations. First thing, you got to change the title. That's imperative. Then the studio gets about seven hundred writers to work on the book, make adaptations, put together a screen play. You take out some of the characters and put in others, see? If there's any sex in it you take it out and put in Love—or a pie in the face. You take out everything else and put other things in the script in place of it. Then you change the title again. The idea is to make the book completely unrecognizable. This is very important, because otherwise the film wouldn't stink. You following me?”

I returned his grin. “Vaguely.”

“Well,” he said, “that's just the beginning. You know something, Scott? The funniest script ever written in Hollywood can't be filmed: It's the Production Code. Only nobody laughs at it, unfortunately. You got to make all the scripts agreeable to the Breen office and the Code, and this makes the Legion of Decency happy. And practically everybody else unhappy. Including me. Then you sort of wrap the script around the stars and cut holes in it so it fits. Then you put in any ideas the executive head of the studio has and any ideas the producer comes up with.” He wagged his head sagely and finished his drink. “You can see immediately how sensible this is. Well, on this ‘Jungle Girl’ cliff-hanger, I wrote behind Swallow—that is, I took his original and polished it up and added sparkling dialogue, put in some laughs. For this I get paid. And get drunk.”

He fell silent for a moment and I said, “I take it you're not overjoyed with the system. But Swallow doesn't seem to mind.”

“Why would he? He can't write his name. Believe me, on this stinker he can have all the credit. I don't even want any.” He laughed, but there wasn't a lot of mirth in it. “Why ruin my glittering reputation? I got two credits. B pictures. Glittering. And Genova isn't going to win the Thalberg Award. Not this year. Sonofabitch.” He lifted his glass, saw it was empty, lowered it again. Looking at the glass he said, “They don't pay you to write in Hollywood, anyway; they pay you for obedience.”

He stopped talking and seemed to be all through, so I got up. “Thanks, Block. I'll buy you a drink sometime.”

“I'll take it.”

He walked to the door with me and told me good night pleasantly, and I went out to the Cad. I couldn't figure the guy. He'd sounded like an angry young man, but I wondered if he'd also talked like a man with bourbon on the brain. He'd sure got going in there. The funny thing was, he'd seemed completely sober.

It was a little past seven P.M. by now, so from a phone booth I called Helen Marshal.

“Hello. Helen? This is Shell Scott.”

“The late Shell Scott, I presume.” She still wasn't hilarious.

“I hope you mean what I think you mean. I'm still alive.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I had a hunch it wasn't. Sorry I took so long with Bondhelm last night, Helen. I drove seventy all the way out and back.”

“Well,” she thawed a little, “that helps.”

“Look, what say I come up and see you? I'd like to ask you some questions.”

“Can you give me a hint?”

“Yeah. I want to ask about Zoe—and maybe some questions like ‘How did you get so tanned?'”

“Well ... you coming right up? I mean, you won't get sidetracked on the way?”

“Be there in five minutes.”

“Come on.” She hung up.

I was there in six minutes. She lived in the Lexington, a small apartment hotel on Wilshire, and she opened the door right after I rang. She smiled at me and brushed her silvery hair with graceful fingers. “You made good time.”

“Good Time Scott, that's me.” I went inside and she shut the door. She locked the door. She dropped the key down the front of her dress.

“Cagey,” I said. “Does that mean we're still friends?”

She leaned back against the door. “We'll see.”

She was wearing a bright red skirt and a flowing white blouse with long sleeves and a Byron-type neckline that looked better on her than it ever did on Byron. High-heeled shoes and sheer stockings completed her outfit, at least as far as I could tell.

She said, “Come on in the kitchenette. You can ask me questions while I mix us some drinks. If you want a drink.”

“I could use one. Thanks.”

She walked away from the door and I followed her into a clean white and tile kitchenette. She took liquor and ice cubes from the refrigerator and got busy while I watched.

“Want me to do that, Helen?”

“No. Get your questions out of the way.” She looked sideways at me from dark brown eyes, then poured several fingers of bourbon into a glass. Looked like she poured a whole hand in there.

“First question,” I said. “You trying to get me plastered with one drink?”

She laughed. “Too much?”

“Well, just so there's some water. Second question. Give me all you can on Thursday night. I know Zoe probably got to Raul's a little after eight. Who was where, when and doing what, and so forth?”

She poured me my drink and fixed her scotch and soda while she talked. She didn't give me much I hadn't picked up somewhere else. She did say, “I was with King all evening after the business conference, till the party broke up.”

“When was that?”

“Around ten. Not much later.”

“And Swallow was conked out?”

“All the time. King had to slap him with a wet towel to wake him up.”

“Could he have been faking? I mean by that, could he have sneaked out when nobody was looking, strangled Zoe, then come back in and plopped on the floor?” It sounded mighty silly even to me.

She shook her head. “He was passed out, all right; drinking like"—she smiled at me—"like one of your fish. Suppose he did come to and sneaked out; it would have been pretty much of a coincidence if he'd staggered out just at the same time Zoe showed up, wouldn't it? And King and I were in the same room with him most of the time.”

That sort of narrowed things down. Maybe. At least it did if Helen was telling me the truth, and I had no reason to suppose she wasn't.

“Come on,” she said, and pulled me by the hand into the front room, where we sat down on the couch.

We'd stood in the kitchen for about ten minutes while she talked, and I'd found out about all I could concerning the case, so now when she said, “Any more questions?” I answered, “One. How did you get so tanned?”

She laughed. We were on the big couch, which was larger than most and had three or four pillow-like cushions scattered on it. We sat at opposite ends, half facing each other, with pillows behind our backs. “I'll tell you the truth,” she said, smiling. “About half of it's from the sun; the rest is General Electric's sun lamp. I lie on the bed and nap for half an hour or so while I get brown. Simple.”

That conjured up a lovely picture in my mind. I grinned at her. “Even in the privacy of your home you wear a swim suit, apparently. If memory serves me...”

“I do. I like to know how white I was.”

She had something there. I'd like to know how white she was too. We kept looking at each other and the conversation slowed down, faltered, and died.

She said finally, “Any more questions, Shell?”

“Not about the case.”

Helen stood up deliberately, smoothed the red skirt over her hips, then took two steps toward me and sat down on the couch at my side. She turned her back to me, stretched her legs out on the couch, and then lay back across my lap. I put my right arm behind her shoulders and she smiled up at me.

“There,” she said softly. “Isn't this better?”

“Much. Even nicer than last night, Helen.”

“I was pretty angry with you,” she said. “I know it was business, but no woman likes a man to leave her alone in his apartment. Especially not on his bed.”

“You'll never know how close I came to staying. I didn't think I'd be gone very long.”

She smiled, eyes slanting, and whipped those long lashes at me a few times. “And you thought I'd be there when you got back. Like most men, you wanted to eat your cake and have it too.”

“I guess. Another five seconds and I'd never have got out of the apartment, though. You made an awfully pretty picture lying there. The way you were.”

“Oh ... yes,” she said. Her tongue flicked over her lips. “I remember. I made myself more at home than I am even now.” She hesitated and then added, “And that's foolish, isn't it?”

I didn't say anything. She had been lying in the crook of my arm, her legs stretched out full length, and now she eased off first one high-heeled shoe and then the other. She brushed them to the floor, then put her feet flat on the surface of the couch and pulled them upward along the couch with agonizing slowness, her knees rising and the red skirt sliding over them.

Then she stopped, moved one knee gently as I'd seen her move it the night before, and the skirt slithered over her knees and halfway down her thighs, stopping at the edge of her rolled stockings. The smooth flesh swelled from the top of each stocking and disappeared under the skirt's edge.

“Wasn't I like this?” she asked me. “But I wasn't wearing hose last night, was I? Shell, take them off for me.”

My throat felt tight. I held her closer with my right arm and put my left hand on the rolled top of the stocking. Her skin seemed almost hot under my palm as I rolled the sheer nylon down over her knee, over the length of her firm calf, and off to drop it on the floor. Helen raised her right leg off the couch, toes pointed straight out. “Now this one,” she said huskily, her voice deep in her throat.

As I reached across her body my coat sleeve slid up over my wrist watch and I noted, without even thinking about it, that it was nearly eight o'clock. I peeled off her stocking, then brought my hand back along her leg in a long, slow caress.

Something about the time eight o'clock was nagging at a corner of my brain even as Helen sighed deeply and turned her body farther toward me. Then I remembered that it was at eight o'clock that I was to see Sherry.

It was a peculiar time for it, but I remembered how sweet she'd been right after she'd thanked me for pushing her out of the way when the light had fallen at the studio. And right then, too, out of some dark corner of my mind came a frightening thought. I had assumed all along, with no real proof, that the murder attempt had been for me. But it might just as easily have been directed at Sherry. I tried to force the thought out of my mind, told myself that it was obviously silly, but then I remembered other things: that Sherry was Zoe's roommate, that Zoe was dead, that Swallow had undoubtedly overheard Sherry saying he had murdered Zoe.

Helen moved against me and I brought my mind back from the frightening place it had been. I told myself I was exaggerating, imagining dangers that didn't exist. Helen's face was close to mine. “Shell...” she breathed softly. Her lips were moist and parted, gleaming in the soft light. I bent close to her, my fingers light on her smooth skin, and pressed my lips to hers.

She strained her body to me, fingers digging into my arm as her lips worked on mine. I pulled her to me, touching and knowing her, trying to lose myself in the feel of her skin and her lips, drown the nagging worry in my brain.

Finally she pulled her mouth from mine and let her head rest on my arm while she looked at me, her eyes narrowed and her lips a little tight. She looked savagely beautiful, and desirable as only a hot-blooded and passionate woman can look.

For long moments neither of us said anything. Finally I spoke, and I felt even better as I told her, “Honey, since I'm locked in, I'd better make a phone call. A short call,” I added hastily. “Much as I hate to mention it.”

Her brows furrowed slightly, then her forehead smoothed again. “Why?”

“I'm supposed to be somewhere"—I glanced at my watch—"right about now. I really should call and—put it off an hour or two, maybe.”

She smiled faintly. “Put it off till tomorrow.” Then she added, “Do you have to?”

“I'd feel better. Seriously. Mind?”

She sighed. “Well, if you must.” She frowned again. “But remember what happened the last time you used a phone.”

I grinned at her. “I'll remember.”

The French phone was on a stand at the far end of the couch and Helen sighed again, pulled herself up on her knees, and scooted to the far end of the couch. I was reminded of that first scene I'd watched filmed this morning and I came very close to forgetting about any calls. But Helen grabbed the phone, scooted back, and handed it to me.

I dialed the number Sherry had given me. While I waited for her to answer I watched Helen. She pursed her lips and blew me a kiss. I heard the receiver go up at the other end of the line. This was a lot better, I was thinking, than just letting Sherry sit in her house alone, wondering why the hell I hadn't at least let her know I wasn't coming. I got a picture in my mind of her sitting in a chair, tapping her foot, that small pout on her lips.

“Hello,” I said. “This is Shell.”

There wasn't any answer. “Hey, hello. Hello,” I said again.

Very faintly, as if done with extreme care, I heard the phone replaced on the receiver. I pulled the phone away from my ear, looked at it, then pressed the receiver with my fingers and held it down for a moment.

“What's the matter, Shell? You look so strange.”

I blinked at Helen. “I don't know. Somebody answered over there—I mean somebody picked up the phone and then put it back. But there wasn't anything said.”

I dialed the number again, the fears I'd had a moment before growing in my mind, assuming almost terrifying proportions. The phone rang and kept ringing. Nobody answered, nobody lifted the receiver. I hung up, my mind spinning. I thought back to the conversation between Sherry and me at the studio when I'd arranged to see her at eight. We could easily have been overheard by almost anybody near us. I couldn't remember who had been close by on the set. I dialed the operator and got the number of Joseph's Restaurant from Information, and dialed it.

When the phone was answered I said, “There's a Lola Sherrard who eats there a lot. She's either there now or left a little while ago. Do you know her?”

“Yes, sir. She left only a few minutes ago. Who is this?”

I hung up and turned to Helen. “Honey,” I said, “I don't like to say this, but I've got to go.”

She didn't get angry, or even object. But she said, “What is it, Shell? Sherry? Was that who you called?”

“Yeah. I was supposed to see her about the case. And I don't know what's wrong.” I got up. “But I'm afraid...” I didn't finish it. I didn't want to finish it. I turned around and started for the door, then Helen called to me, “Shell, wait.”

When I turned around I saw her reach down the front of her blouse and pull out the key she'd playfully dropped there. She walked by me, unlocked the door, and opened it, then looked at me.

“Good-by,” she said listlessly.

“'By, honey.” I went out. I trotted to the car and jumped in, started it and wheeled around in the street. I jammed the accelerator down, fear growing inside me.

Chapter Eleven

SHERRY lived in a small house on Cypress Avenue about four miles from the Lexington, where Helen lived. I had the accelerator pushed against the floor boards most of the way. I let up on the throttle and slammed on the brakes to skid around corners, then jammed the accelerator down again on straight stretches. I was scared to death now. I was afraid something had happened to Sherry, or that it was happening now and I'd be too late. I didn't put into words what I was afraid of, even in my own mind, but the sight of Zoe's twisted body and distorted face was in front of my eyes all the way. I decided I'd care a lot if anything happened to Sherry.

Finally I could see her house and I skidded to a stop in front of it, leaped out of the car, and ran up the steps. I jumped to the door and tried to turn the knob. It was locked.

I banged on the door and listened. It was quiet, but I thought I heard something moving inside. No one came to the door. The fear in me had mounted almost to panic now and I walked back across the porch, then threw myself against the door, my shoulder splintering the panels. Once more and the lock gave and I crashed into the room and fell to my knees. I was in the living room and there was no light on in here, but light spilled from an open door in back. I scrambled to my feet and ran toward it and inside.

Sherry lay face down on the floor, her left profile visible to me. I stopped and stared at her, not even thinking that somebody else might be in the room or somewhere in the house. I couldn't tell if she were breathing or not, and I was half afraid to touch her to find out. Finally I stepped forward, knelt beside her, and felt for her pulse. But even before I found it I could tell she was breathing. Color was still in her face and she breathed through her partly open mouth. Relief, a surprising surge of relief, flooded through me when I knew she was alive. I put my hand on her silky dark hair and felt a bump there close to her ear.

Only then, with the knowledge that Sherry had been sapped, did the logical sequence of thought enter my mind: Somebody else must have been here to sap her—and not long before. I looked around me, but we were alone; at least we were alone in this room. Sherry moaned softly—and then I heard something else. Something, or someone, had moved at the back of the house.

I got up, straining my ears, reached to my shoulder, and pulled the .38 from its holster. Straight ahead of me was an open window in the bedroom wall, the frilly curtains moving restlessly in a faint breeze, and even as I realized how perfectly visible I would be to anybody looking in from outside, I heard a sound out there again, near that open window.

I whirled around, jumped to the light switch on the wall, and brushed my hand over it to plunge the room into darkness. I stood still for a moment, listening, keyed up and tense, hearing nothing except the drum of my heart, then slipped out of the bedroom door and began feeling my way toward the rear of the house. As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness I could see a faint patch of light through a room beyond me. I walked toward it, reached it. This was the back door, with faint moonlight filtering in through its window, and beyond was a small enclosed porch with what appeared to be a screen door leading outside from it. I turned the doorknob in front of me and pushed the door silently open, then stepped through.

A shiver raced up my spine and my stomach muscles jerked. I didn't like a bit of this. I was sure that somebody—almost certainly the one who had hit Sherry—was outside, or had been outside. Or could even now be no more than a few feet from me. I gripped the checked butt of the gun hard in my right hand and stepped softly across the wooden floor of the porch to the screen door, then placed my left hand against it and pushed gently. The hinges protested, squeaking with what seemed incredible loudness.

I stopped moving. If anyone was still out back, he knew where I was. I made up my mind, pushed the screen door outward as I drew back one step, waited an agonizing second as the hinges squealed in my ears, then lunged forward and slammed into the door as I sprinted outside.

Fire lanced at me from twenty feet on my right and the heavy boom of a large-caliber gun crashed against my eardrums. I dived for the dirt, twisting to land on my left shoulder as I snapped my gun up and squeezed off a shot toward another spit of flame that lanced at me, and my gun kicked in my hand, its sound blending with the roar of the heavier gun. I hit the ground rolling as I heard the whine of an angrily ricocheting bullet. I kept rolling, over again and then awkwardly up on my knees, the gun still gripped in my right fist. I froze, holding my breath and listening.

I was in a bad spot and I knew it. I'd sprinted and rolled far enough away from the back of the house so that I was afraid to shoot again. I might send a bullet into the house, or into God knew what else or who else that was around here besides me and the other person behind a gun. But I couldn't sit still and do nothing while I was being shot at.

And that damned moonlight. It was faint, but there was still enough light to trace shadowy outlines in the darkness. I was in the shadow of something, the shading leaves of some kind of tree with the thick trunk barely distinguishable a few feet from me. I hoped to God it was a tree trunk. I couldn't hear a sound in the night. I felt on the ground near me for a rock or clod, something I could throw in hope of drawing fire. There was nothing. As quietly as I could I swung out the cylinder of my gun, took out the empty shell, and pressed the cylinder back in. I flipped the empty shell away from me and it hit with a small rustling sound, then rolled a few feet.

In the silence I heard, from clear out toward the street, the sound of somebody running, feet slapping rapidly against the sidewalk, the noise getting fainter. I got my feet under me and sprinted around the side of the house.

My eyes were accustomed enough to the darkness now so that I could see the outline of the wall, and I raced alongside it to the front and across the lawn as the sound of a car motor being ground into life came from half a block down the street. I turned and ran on the sidewalk, and dimly, in the light of street lamps, I saw the car pull away from the curb and roar down the street away from me. I stopped and watched it go. It raced to the corner and turned right, headlights off all the way—and that settled it for me. Whoever it was had got away.

I thought of Sherry, still all alone in the darkened house. I turned and ran back to the open front door and inside. I hurried toward the bedroom, banging my shin against a chair; then I was at the bedroom door, feeling around it for the light switch.

The light blazed on, almost blinding me with its sudden brilliance, and I saw Sherry. She was standing just inside the door, wearing a pink pullover sweater and black skirt, and holding something in both hands high over her head. Her face was twisted and frightened, and she stepped toward me with her mouth open, swinging her weighted hands down toward me.

“Hey!” I yelled, and ducked. “Hello, woops, watch it!”

She stopped just in time. Sherry had come very close to busting my skull with a bed lamp. She recognized me and wrenched the descending lamp away at the last moment. She bent over from the force of the blow, then straightened, holding the lamp in her hands. She looked at me for a moment, then let the lamp slip from her hands to the floor and stood facing me, her arms hanging limply at her sides. She just stared at me, half-sobbing through her open mouth, and there was such a mixture of fright and surprise and almost tearful confusion on her sweet face that it brought a lump to my throat.

I stepped toward her and automatically put my arms around her, pulled her gently to me as she sobbed, “Oh, oh, golly, oh, golly,” over and over.

“It's O.K., kid. Relax, honey,” I told her. “Take it easy. No more trouble, Sherry.”

She put her arms around my waist, buried her head against my shoulder, and stood there holding tightly to me and trembling. It occurred to me in a moment of rare perception that it was worth getting shot at if this happened every time. But then Sherry raised her face, one shiny tear track running down each cheek, and looked at me with wide eyes. She bit her lip and stepped back from me, looking frightened again.

“What's the matter?” I said. “What's wrong?”

She was still recovering from shock, still bewildered, and she looked from my face to the gun still in my hand. I'd forgotten about it. God, she didn't think I was the one who'd sapped her.

“Whoa, there, honey. Relax.” I put the gun back in its holster. “I'm on your side. Simmer down, sweetie.”

Suddenly she sighed heavily, then walked to the bed and slumped on it. “What happened?” she asked me. “Shell, what happened?”

I walked over and pulled a chair up to a spot where I could sit facing her. Even shaken and bewildered, she looked like all the sirens. The pink sweater, I noticed, used up an amazing amount of material getting from her waist up to her neck. This Sherry had to be seen to be believed.

I brought my thoughts back in order and said, “I don't know for sure what happened, Sherry. Looks like somebody slammed you on the head. Why, I don't know yet. I called you around eight and thought something was funny, so I charged over. You were out cold and somebody was in back. I took a look around, but whoever it was got away.”

She shivered, put a hand to the side of her head, and winced. Then she looked at me and gave me the first weak smile. “Somebody did—slam me on the head, Shell. When I came home there was a light on in the bedroom.” She looked around her. “In here. I ... I thought it was you.”

I grinned at her. She was still shaky, and I figured she could use some light conversation. “Now, what the hell would I be doing in your bedroom, Sherry? I know, but do you?”

She laughed softly and I said, “That's better. Tell me what happened.”

“I wondered a little bit myself, Shell—about the light in here. But you said you'd come around eight. I called your name and walked in. I didn't see anybody. I don't even remember if I felt anything. That's just the last I remember.” She frowned. “Until—until I woke up. I thought I heard guns or something. Shots.”

“It was guns, all right. Just a minute.” I walked to the bedroom window, shut it, and pulled the shade, then went and latched the screen and back doors. There wasn't much I could do about the busted door lock, but I turned on the living-room lights and propped a straight-backed chair under the knob. I went back to Sherry.

“All locked in,” I said lightly. “And you'd better stay that way for a while. Those noises were shots. The character who sapped you was out back when I got here. We had a war, but it was a draw.” I got serious. “Give a good listen to this, Sherry. Whoever it was meant business. There's not much doubt in my mind that the guy who sapped you is the one who killed Zoe. And there must be a good reason why he was here—particularly carrying a gun.”

She swallowed and sat quietly for a moment; then she said, “It was a man?”

“I suppose so, but I don't know. It seems likely. But right now, how's your head?”

She looked at me and blinked her blue eyes. “It hurts.”

I took a look at the bump on her head, but the skin wasn't broken. I was all for calling a doctor, but after some argument during which she insisted she was O.K. and didn't want a doc, she won. We hunted up a couple of aspirins, and that seemed the best we could do. Then I said, “You got any liquid anesthetic in the house? Anything to drink?”

“I've got gin,” she said brightly. “Gin and orange juice.”

I stared at her, aghast. “Gin,” I echoed. “And orange juice. You sure you wouldn't rather have your head hurt?”

She laughed. “It's not too bad—the head, I mean.” She winced. “Not too good, either.”

I spent the next five minutes mixing a couple of perfectly foul concoctions and chatting casually with Sherry while she got back to normal. Then I said, “O.K., let's get down to business.”

She smiled impishly and said, “O.K.”

I grinned at her. “Finish what you started to tell me at the studio—when Swallow walked in. And believe me, it's important now.”

“I believe you.” She thought a minute, then went on. “Well, I told you Zoe hated Swallow, but that was just lately. They were fairly close for a while. Then—well, then he didn't treat her right.”

I interrupted. “Sherry, the police told me Zoe was pregnant. That have anything to do with it?”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, it did. That was"—she looked at me—"Swallow. He didn't want anything to do with her after that. And Zoe naturally—you know.”

The woman scorned, I was thinking, mad at the world and the focus on Swallow. Probably the greatest hurt was to her pride, I thought, but that's as deadly a hurt as any. Incongruously I thought of Helen.

I said, “So she was out to get even and found something she thought would do it. That brings us to Thursday night. You don't know what she was up to?”

“No. But she said Swallow wouldn't be around town any more. She wouldn't have to look at his silly face.”

“She was still working for him, wasn't she? I mean as his secretary?”

“Uh-huh. Right up till the last. Sort of an armed truce till she ... could get even with him. When she didn't show up Friday at the studio, I was worried. That's why I asked Genova for her job till she showed up. I still thought she'd show up. But I wanted to be where I could see how he acted.”

We talked some more and I learned only that both Zoe and Sherry had been doing stenographic work at the studio when they'd met, liked each other, and rented this house together. Sherry had been sipping on her orange-colored drink; I'd been afraid to try mine so far. I took a cautious sip. Wasn't bad. Tasted like orange juice. I'd put two jiggers of gin in the things, I remembered. Still tasted like orange juice.

“Well,” I asked her, “now what? We're up to here and now. Why this business tonight? The guy must have been looking for something in the house. Probably in Zoe's things. Any idea what it would be?”

She shook her head. “I haven't any idea at all.”

“Let's take a look around. You feel up to it?”

She upended her glass. “I feel surprisingly good, considering,” she said. She beamed at me.

She also looked surprisingly good. She looked soft and lovely and warm. Not to mention that amazing development of hers. She stood up right in front of me and pulled the sweater down tight over the amazing development. I stared. When I remembered the way this case had started at Raul's, and what had followed—Helen, Fanny, the studio, Dot, Helen again—it was brought home forcibly to me that I was about as close to exploding from various kinds of frustration as a man can get.

“Say,” I said. “Haven't you got an old bathrobe or something similar you could slip into? A thick, lumpy old bathrobe?”

She looked down at me. “A bathrobe? Why, yes, but—” Then she laughed mischievously. “Now, Shell, stop it.”

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “that pink sweater makes conversation difficult.”

She laughed merrily. “I can't help it,” she said. “And I can't take it off.”

I came very close to getting into a pleasant argument with her then and there. But she said, “Come on, Shell, let's look at Zoe's things.”

Hell, I wanted to look at Sherry's things. But I got up and said, “You lead the way, honey.”

She frowned. “I don't know what to look for.”

“Frankly, neither do I. But apparently that guy was looking. He had to have some reason for sapping you.” I added seriously, “If he'd wanted to kill you, Sherry, he'd have done it. It would be all over by now. So he must have been looking for something.”

“Look,” she said. “I hadn't paid any attention before.”

She pointed to the dresser. The top two drawers were pulled out and the things inside had been disarranged, but none had been tossed onto the floor. We went through all the drawers but found nothing that meant anything to us. Then Sherry led me into the front room and stopped in front of a bookcase.

“About half of these are Zoe's books,” she said. “And those are her magazines and letters in the bottom.”

We went through all the books, flipping the pages as if expecting a clue to leap out, but nothing happened. I pulled the stack of magazines from the bottom shelf. The bunch of letters fell to the floor and I put them back on the shelf for the moment. “These magazines hers, Sherry?”

“Uh-huh.”

There were a couple of old pulp magazines, science fiction of the old school with lurid and sensational covers. The rest were recent slicks. Sherry left for a moment and came back with two more orange drinks. I hauled off and had right at mine this time. Still tasted like orange juice.

“You put any gin in this?”

“You'd be surprised.”

I wondered how this would mix with that handful of bourbon. Seemed to be mixing O.K. I was sitting on the floor in front of the bookcase and Sherry stood over me. I grinned up at her, then picked up Fanta Science, one of the pulp magazines, which depicted on the cover an eight-legged monster chasing a busty, half-naked lovely over hill and dale.

“Ah,” I said, “for the life of an artist. Uh, if I learn to paint, will you pose for me?”

Her lips twitched slightly and she looked at the cover. “Like that?”

“Why not?”

She hesitated only a moment, then shrugged, and her amazing breasts got restless under the sweater. “Why not?” she said. Her eyes sparkled and there was laughter in the turned-up corners of her mouth.

I cleared my throat, wondering what my next line was.

She pointed. “That thing's a greeble, I think.”

“Doesn't look very agreeable.”

She laughed happily. “I mean greeble.” She spelled it. “The thing with the legs. Up on Mars or somewhere.”

“Oh.” I had at my drink again, then watched Sherry while she took a long swallow of hers. We flipped through the pulps and the slicks. No clues. I picked up the bundle of letters.

“What are these, Sherry?”

“Some of Zoe's, but I never looked at them before. I hadn't even thought about them since—since it happened.”

I examined the top one. In the upper left-hand corner it said simply, “Swallow,” with a local address. “I think we'd better look at them now,” I said.

There were an even dozen letters, and we both read them all while we sipped on our drinks. The letters were all from Swallow to Zoe, but I couldn't find anything wrong with them. They were mushy in spots, but hardly incriminating; no breach of promise, no passionate avowals of love undying. Mainly Swallow had referred to places they'd been together or plans they'd made for an outing. A careful boy, this Oscar. But all the letters were signed, “Love, Oscar.” I wasn't sure whether or not that would mean anything in a court of law.

Finally we finished, stacked the letters again in the bookcase, and got up off the floor. It didn't seem that we'd accomplished anything. We went through a writing desk Zoe had used and I picked up a bulky book of mimeographed pages bound in a green paper cover. The name “Jungle Girl” was on the cover.

“This the movie?” I asked Sherry.

She took it from my hands and flipped through it. “It's a copy of the shooting script on ‘Girl.'”

“What would Zoe want with the thing?”

She shrugged. “I don't know, Shell. Sometimes she brought work home with her.”

“I don't know the score, but there wouldn't be any work on this, would there? I understand they've been shooting for two weeks or so already, so this must have been finished weeks ago.”

“Maybe she wanted to study it; she did a little writing herself. I don't know.” She shrugged again. I almost spoke to her about that shrugging. Then she added, “But, Shell, whoever was in here wouldn't be looking for this. There are lots of them around the studio.”

“Yeah. Only there doesn't seem to be anything else here anybody would want. Hey, maybe he wanted you.”

She laughed and walked away from me. We spent twenty minutes more looking over the house, then went into the kitchen, where Sherry mixed more drinks.

“I still don't know any more,” I said, “except that the guy was after something. Of course, maybe he got it.”

There was only a little gin left in the bottom of the bottle, so Sherry turned the bottle upside down and split the remaining drops between our two glasses. “That's all she wrote,” she said brightly. “No more.” She smiled at me, her lips curving in that rainbow look I'd first noticed about her.

“Think it's enough,” I said.

Somehow we wound up back in the bedroom. I got into my uncomfortable chair and Sherry sat opposite me on the bed again. “Shell,” she said slowly, not looking at me, “do you think ... anything else will happen tonight? I mean, like that man coming back. I never had anything like that happen to me before.”

It was odd, but the thought hadn't even occurred to me until now. We'd been busy looking around and talking and I just hadn't thought about it. I knew it would have occurred to me eventually, though.

“I don't know,” I said. “There's a chance.” I thought about it. “Yes. Yes, indeed. Look, Sherry, what say I stay here tonight? I could ... sleep on the couch. Or on the lawn or something, ha.”

She looked straight at me. Funny thing, she didn't appear frightened. “I'd feel lots safer,” she said. Her face was solemn at first, but then a slight curve appeared at the corners of her soft mouth. The curve widened perceptibly and soon she was smiling. “You wouldn't mind, would you, Shell?”

I had a gulp of my drink. “No, no. Sure not.” She drank the last of her highball and put the glass on the floor. She straightened up and started to yawn, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. Then, deliberately, she put her arms above her head and stretched.

I sat right there and stared, remembering everything all over again. Old frustrated Shell Scott, that was me. I was an ambulatory emotional shambles, and at the rate I was going, pretty soon I'd be gone. My nerves were about to peel open like artichokes at a free banquet. One more frustration and there'd be no more tomorrow; I'd just die right here, stewed in my own juice. I was glad I'd had that last drink; right now no gin could even trickle down my throat.

Sherry sighed and I echoed her. She stood up. “Then it's all settled?” she asked me softly.

I nodded. She walked over to the door of the closet in the wall I was facing, opened it, and reached overhead for some sheets and blankets on a shelf. She carried them into the lighted front room and I saw her drop them on the couch. She came back into the bedroom.

“Sleepy?” she asked me.

I'd never been so unsleepy in my life. “Not exactly,” I said hoarsely.

“Talk to me a little before we go to bed?” She laughed and said, “I mean before we say good night. Maybe we can forget all this trouble for a little while.”

“Love to.” I finished my drink and placed the empty glass beside hers on the floor. I said, “If I can talk, that is. I think I already mentioned something about your making conversation difficult.”

She stood in front of me and looked at me for a long time. Finally she took my hand and pulled me up out of the chair. “Turn around,” she said.

I was confused. What was going on here? Turn around? I turned and Sherry pushed me back toward the bed till my knees hit it and I sat down, more confused than ever, but not minding a bit.

“Now you sit there, Shell,” she said. “And don't look around. I'll try to make conversation less difficult.”

I had a vague idea what she meant and there was a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a sickness. Like sleeping sickness. “Oh?” I said. “Ha. Ho. O.K.”

She walked around the bed to the closet, which was now at my back. I heard her open the door again, then she said, “And don't look around, Shell. Please, I mean it. Promise?”

“Sure.” Hell, I'd have promised to jump over the house.

I heard her moving around, things rustling, and that I didn't look is a tribute to my will power that will never fade. She said lightly, “A thick, lumpy old bathrobe, I think you said. There's an old one around here somewhere. If I can find it.”

I didn't really care if she never found it. She said, “Oh, here it is. It's certainly old enough.” Then came some more rustling, and finally she said, “There. Now it's safe.”

I took that to mean I could look. At least that would be my excuse. I turned my head and Sherry was walking around the foot of the bed. She was wearing a heavy blue robe that she held together at the waist with her hands. Though the material was thick, I could see the mounds of her breasts moving under the cloth, and I knew she wore nothing underneath it. That cloth was as thick as my tongue.

She stopped six feet away from me. “Is this what you wanted, Shell?” She was smiling easily, and if she was as wound up as I was, she didn't show it. She looked as though she had everything under control. She sure as hell had me under control.

I said, “That's exactly what I had in mind, Sherry, but I've got a feeling it won't help conversation.”

She laughed, throwing back her head, still standing a few feet away and holding the robe loosely, with one hand now. The robe gaped slightly open above her curled fingers and the swell of one heavy breast gleamed whitely from underneath the blue cloth. She looked at me again with her lips parted and her even white teeth pressed together in a tight smile.

“I'll tell you the truth,” she said. “I didn't think it would. But you like it?”

“You need an answer?” I still sat on the edge of the bed, but after several seconds I raised my hands and held them toward her. “Come here, Sherry.”

She didn't move for a moment. Then very softly she said, “I don't want you to leave me tonight, Shell.” She looked down at the hand that held the robe together. “Isn't it silly?” she said in an almost amused tone. “I couldn't find the belt for this.”

Then she let go of the robe, held her hands toward mine, and walked toward me. The cloth fell apart and first one smooth leg and then the other slid out of the robe as she stepped toward me. There was nothing underneath it. She was smiling still, her teeth pressed together. She suddenly looked hot, wild.

I took her hands as she stopped in front of me, held them tightly, then slid my hands inside the robe against the velvety skin of her hips and pulled her toward me.

She resisted, pulling back away from me, teasing me. She laughed softly, and it was obvious that she was enjoying herself. I was enjoying myself right along with her. It was out in the open now and we both knew it.

“All right,” she said. “Wait.”

She shrugged, dropped the robe from her white shoulders to the floor, then shrugged again. For effect, I guess.

No matter why she did it, she got an effect. Never in all my life had I seen an effect like that. I pulled her closer to me again, and this time she flowed smoothly toward me and moved her shoulders slowly from side to side.

It was damn near spontaneous combustion.

As a kid I'd made fire by rubbing two sticks together; I'd never be caught with two sticks in my hands again. I was in the jungle and the savages had me. I was tied to the stake and the flames were licking all over me.

Then Sherry put one hand on each side of my face and bent toward me as I slid one hand up her back to her neck and pulled her head down to mine. I pulled her gently and she moved around me and I felt the bed sink down at my side. I turned toward her, feeling her lips against my mouth, lips that were amazingly soft and smooth, warm and gentle against mine. Our mouths were pressed together as we slid farther onto the bed until our bodies were pressed together too. She pulled slightly away from me, her eyes half opened as were mine, and she looked at me for a moment, then said in a near whisper, “Kiss me, Shell, kiss me. Hold me and touch me.” Her voice wasn't light now, but thick and warm. “Kiss me, Shell. Hold me close. Closer, Shell ... tighter.”

After a minute I left her, turned out the lights, and came back to the bed as she pulled down the bedclothes. In a moment I slipped in next to her, held her tightly and warmly against me, her mouth barely touching my lips as she said again, “Closer, Shell. Hold me...”

Then her words stopped as my mouth found hers again, and her lips and body moved hungrily again with mine, and there was no need for words.

Chapter Twelve

I AWAKENED with yellow sunlight soaking through the window shade and falling on my face. For a moment I was confused, looking around the room and at the gray rug that should have been the black one in my bedroom.

I felt Sherry stirring beside me, warm and soft, the lush, curved length of her yielding against my back. And then I remembered. I turned toward her, raised myself on one elbow, and slipped my arm around her slim waist as she moved restlessly and then slowly opened her eyes. She looked at me blankly for a moment, then she smiled.

“Hello,” she said. She blinked her clear blue eyes a few times. “Why, I know you,” she said. “You're Shell something.” Then she laughed. “Yes, you're something.”

This little lovely felt a lot better than I do in the morning. I said, “If I'm not mistaken, we've met. Morning, Sherry. How do you feel?”

She stretched under the sheet. “Lovely,” she said. “Perfectly lovely.” She put her arm around my bare back and hugged me. “You tell me,” she said. “How do I feel?”

I grinned at her. “Perfectly lovely.”

Later I lit a cigarette, thinking I was unfrustrated enough to last me quite a while. Sherry put her hand on the side of my face. “You need a shave,” she said.

“Imagine I do. You sound domestic.”

“Shell.”

“Yeah?”

“I'm not ... just another woman, am I? Or am I?”

I kissed her lightly on the lips. “No, Sherry. You're not. You're something pretty special”

She smiled brightly. “That's good enough for me. Oh! I must look awful. No make-up or anything.”

I pulled the sheet slowly down almost to the foot of the bed. “No make-up, maybe,” I told her seriously, “but you look marvelous. There are other adjectives.” I considered the problem. “Beautiful, unbelievable, fabulous...”

She blew me a kiss and swung out of bed. “Go on, you. Get dressed. I'll fix breakfast.”

Breakfast sounded dismal. But I needed strength. This might be a big day ahead of me. I groaned, and agreed.

Sherry fixed me much more than I can usually manage that early. Over coffee I said, “You're a pretty bossy little female.”

“I don't want you to go away from here hungry.”

“I don't want to go away from here. And I swear I haven't got any hunger left in me.”

“Are you complimenting my cooking?”

“I'm complimenting you.”

“I'm not hungry either.”

I grinned at her and finished my second cup of coffee. “Much as I hate to, honey, I've got to take off. Working man.” I looked at my watch. “Lord, it's already ten o'clock.” I pretended amazement. “Where does the time go?”

“Silly. You going out to location?”

“Yeah. Where is it exactly?”

She explained where today's shooting was, then said, “I'm supposed to be at the studio.”

“You're not going, I hope. Not after last night. You'd better stay locked inside.”

She nodded. “I believe I will.”

I said, “Try to think of anything else about Zoe that might help us. Look through her stuff again. Maybe you'll find some gizmo that wouldn't mean anything to me, or remember something that's missing. Let your subconscious work for you. Look all the stuff over, think about it, then forget it. Read a book or"—I leered at her—"paint a picture. Maybe something will come to you, bang, like that.”

“I'll do it. Maybe I'll even go to the police again, see if that helps.”

“If you do, have them pick you up here. I'll phone them and explain what happened.” I stopped. “Don't know how I'll explain why I didn't tell them last night.”

She smiled. “You'd better not explain.”

I got up and she walked to the front door with me. I pulled the chair away from the doorknob. “Put this back when I leave,” I said. “And don't leave unless you're with cops.” I thought a minute, then took my gun from its holster. “Here. You know how to use this?”

She took it in her hand and gave it a look of obvious distaste. “Just pull the trigger thing, don't you?”

I groaned. “Yeah, you pull the trigger thing. But you don't have to pull that one very hard, so be damn careful how you handle it. And there's no safety on that gun.” I let her look some more, then I said, “You simply point it at the man and pull the trigger. It makes a noise and he falls down. You don't even have to cock the hammer, but you can if you've got time. It's a little more accurate that way. Incidentally"—I pointed—"that's the hammer.”

I didn't really know why I was telling her all this. She'd have been almost as well off with a rolling pin. It's almost a foregone conclusion that if two people who don't know how to shoot well or pull a trigger stand twenty yards apart and blaze away at each other, they can blaze for half a day and nobody will get hurt except bystanders. But she'd feel safer, and probably be safer, with it. I took off my coat, dropped the holster on the chair, and shrugged my coat back on.

“All right,” she said, then placed the gun on the chair. “But won't you need it, Shell?”

“I'll be around a crowd of people out at the location, Sherry. I'll get the gun from you tonight, or when I get back. And look, don't let anybody in here, even though you've got the gun. Not till this mess is settled, anyway.”

She smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“I wasn't ordering you around, honey. But pretend I was. Well, so long.”

There hadn't been much point in her getting dressed, so she'd slipped into the blue robe when she got up. Now she put her hands behind her, squeezed her eyes shut, and bent forward with her head raised and lips pouting for a kiss. I sure surprised her. She squealed, then opened her eyes, threw her arms around me, and kissed me with everything she had behind it. And that was something, indeed.

“There,” she said finally. “To remember me by.”

I didn't like the sound of the words and a small chill crawled along my spine. “Don't put it like that, honey. I'll see you later. And I've got plenty to remember you by. O.K., stick the chair under the door. If you think of anything, can you call me at location?”

“There's a little diner a block or so from there. They'll take any calls up. ‘By, Shell. You be careful.”

She wasn't being very careful with that blue robe, and I almost went back in. But I managed to tell her good-by again and get out to the Cad. I waited till she shut the door, then drove away.

It was nearly eleven o'clock before I really got started toward location. I stopped and phoned Samson so he could have a radio car buzz by Sherry's once in a while. He said he'd fix it, then told me there was little new except obvious eliminations. It was looking more and more definite that one of those at the Thursday night party had killed Zoe, though which one was still a mystery. After talking to Sam I had a shave, then headed for the “Jungle Girl” company.

Sherry had told me how to get there: out Cypress, the street she lived on, to Royal Road, then left for another seven or eight miles. A dirt road led the last half mile or so up to the location, which was part of the old Andersen Ranch. There was a lot of trees and brush in that area, and the Genova crew had fixed up a large section of it to represent African jungle. I doubted that Louis Genova would be overly pleased when I drove up, but I wanted to talk to Swallow some more. And I had a few words coming up with Raul and King.

I drove out Royal Road to the railroad tracks at Aldous Street, by the old packing houses there, and stopped. One of the long, slow-moving freight trains that rumble through at eleven A.M. and at three and six P.M. was chugging past behind black-and-white striped wooden bars that blocked the highway, while the electric semaphore signal clanged and flashed red. I cut the motor and had a smoke, glad I wasn't in a hurry.

It was a beautiful day, the brown earth and green trees sun-splashed, and puffy white clouds in the blue sky. I stretched, feeling good, ready for anything; and never having visited a movie location, I was expecting almost anything. I've learned that's a good attitude to have in Hollywood, no matter what job I'm on. Relaxed, and in a reflective mood, I listened to the rumble of the train and thought about that angle a little bit.

It seems that about half the cases I get in Hollywood are so screwy they cold have happened in no other city in the world. There's a reason for that, though: Hollywood is a lovely place, but it's insane; if cities were locked up like people, Hollywood would be the first to go. Maybe that's why I like working here: The cases are screwy because the town's screwy. Maybe I'm screwy.

But no matter what they tell you, this town isn't normal. If you want to lamp a whole city that's off its rocker, come on out and look at this burg. It runs a perpetual fever, and the citizens grow frantically through all the ages of man from infancy to adultery. The place is crammed with abnormal people, subnormal people, and even people—everything from genius to idiot, with genius running a limping last. The place is crazy, all right, but the main reason is that Hollywood is primarily the Studio—and that includes both the major studios and the little independents like Genova's. There is the crux. The Studio: a never-never land where down is up and glamour comes off in the shower, and where there are more falsies per square inch than inches; the home of the option clause and the crisis, the Breen Office and the Code, the shooting script and the shot script; the place where hosts of story doctors almost invariably kill the patients, and where it seems logical that cancer specialists be hired to cure pneumonia; where if a thing is large it's gigantic, and if it's small it's invisible. Hollywood would be the first to deny that it's insane—thus evincing one more symptom of the disorder—but if it isn't, Webster was kidding us. In a place like that, as I said, anything can happen.

I finished my cigarette and the diagnosis of my home town simultaneously with the departure of the last car of the train, then gunned the Cad toward Genova's jungle. The last half mile was over dirt road leading off the highway, and when I got to the end of it there was a space where several cars were parked. I locked the Cad and headed toward activity I could see fifty yards away. As I walked closer I could see a little clearing on the edge of the trees and half surrounded by them, with the cameras, lights, reflectors, and the rest of the paraphernalia set up for a scene in progress.

I stopped fifty feet away from the action so I wouldn't stir up any dust, thus causing Genova to have a foaming fit, and waited till the scene was wrapped up. Half a dozen shapely women cavorted around clad in outfits similar to the one Helen had been wearing at the studio yesterday. A little grass hut had been built next to the trees, and people roamed in and out of it, one of them looking a great deal like a witch doctor. He had something that looked like a dragon's head stuck over his own head. He jumped up and down waving some kind of wand and chanting something that sounded like “Zoombala magga hotchahotcha. Zoombala.” Finally he finished, and the religious ritual was over.

I spotted Raul when the scene ended. The native priest took off his mask and scratched his head, all through saving souls for now. I walked up to Raul and patted him on the shoulder.

“Well, hi there, Shell,” he said cheerfully. “The glamour of Genova Productions got you? Wish you'd been here for the last scene, pal. You could have substituted for the pitcher. Wouldn't have had to use the mask.”

“The hell you say. You seem in high spirits. Drunk?”

He chuckled. “Nope. But may I be struck dead if Evelyn isn't back. She's back, Shell.” He was beaming at me. “Would you believe it? Came back last night. Don't know if she'll stay, but she says she'll stick around till this—you know, till it's cleared up. She heard about it on the radio. Waiting for me when I got home last night. Man, I am in high spirits. Blame me?”

“I'm damned glad to hear it, chum. No kidding. Hope it's O.K. from now on.”

He sobered a little. “It will be if there's anything I can do now to make it that way. Believe me, I'm reformed.”

I grinned at him. “I will when I see it.”

“You'll see it.” He was serious, and I almost believed he meant it.

“You!”

I didn't have to look; I knew who that was: Louis-the-fit-thrower Genova. I didn't even glance at him. He walked up beside me, then waltzed around in front of me and looked up. “What the hell are you doing here, Scott?”

I was getting awfully tired of this little man. I said, “You want me up here, or the cops, Genova? It's pretty damn obvious to everybody that Zoe was killed by somebody in your little group Thursday night. I mean to nose around some more.”

His voice seemed to get deeper. “I wasn't the only one there. Why do you keep following me?”

“I know you weren't. You got a persecution complex? I know who was there—including Raul here.”

“Well, you can leave right now,” he said. “Immediately.”

“You know,” I said, “you irritate me. And why the hell shouldn't I be here? I'm even a stockholder.”

The damn thing slipped out. I'd decided, knowing how little love was flowering between Genova and me, not to mention that Bondhelm had paid me in shares instead of money. But it was too late now.

Genova's black eyebrows went soaring upward, then descended farther down than they'd been before. “You're a what? A stockholder? Ah! A stockholder. You got it from Bondhelm. I knew it; I knew it.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

That started him. He glared at me and I dropped my gaze to his necktie. He saw me looking at it with a peculiar fixity of expression and he wet his lips. He looked around him at several of the cast and crew, and evidently decided he didn't want to dance with me in front of all these people.

He looked back at me and said loudly, “All right, Scott. But mark what I said: Keep away from the shooting.”

That was the voice of infinite authority. “All right,” I said. “I've got no intention of even breathing loud while you're working.”

“See that you don't,” he said. He nodded curtly and stalked away.

I turned to Raul. “Where's Swallow? He here? Or at the studio?”

“Studio, probably. But I know he intended to come out sometime today. We haven't been on location up to now and he wanted to take a look.”

“Good enough. Say, there's something else. Tell me this, Raul. Any reason why Zoe should or shouldn't have had a ‘Jungle Girl’ shooting script in with the rest of her things?”

He shrugged his thin shoulders. “No reason why not. There's a mess of them around. She might even have typed the first ones up, I don't know. She typed all Swallow's dictation. And some of the other stuff. Why? What's with the script?”

“Probably nothing. Exactly what is the thing, anyway? That's what you make the movie from, isn't it?”

He nodded. “It starts out, usually, with a treatment, then maybe some more treatments, then a first draft and maybe a second and third draft and so on. Finally you get the screen play, or shooting script. Usually there's quite a bit of change in the script as it goes along, for one reason or another.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, Genova wants a special scene in the thing. Or doesn't like something that is in. I even suggested some changes myself.” He grinned. “Not bad, if I do say so.”

I thought about my talk with Archer Block. “The script isn't just Swallow's brain child, then?”

“Lord, no. For a stockholder you show a remarkable ignorance of scripting. Two other writers besides Swallow worked on the thing one time or another.” He shrugged again. “Oh, primarily it's his baby, but there are the things I mentioned. Then like King wanting his part fattened.”

“So you gave him some more grunts, huh?”

He laughed. “That's about the size of it. Come on, I'll show you one of the things.”

I followed him to a little gal sitting in a canvas chair with a bulky script in her hands. Raul took it from her and flipped the pages. “This what you mean, Shell?”

“Uh-huh. What's all the red pencil?”

He fanned the pages and found one with red lines forming a big X clear across it. “Those are some changes made even after the final script was ready. We've had to work on it quite a bit, more than usual on account of the damn budget. Had to cut out some entire scenes and change others.”

“How is the budget?”

He nibbled at his thick mustache. “We're O.K., I think.” He handed the script back to the girl. “We're damn close to that three per cent, but we'll make it with a hair to spare.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “I guess you know about that, huh?”

“And how. If I hadn't, Genova would have informed me.”

He grinned, then looked toward the grass hut. “About ready over there,” he said. “Back to work. See you later?”

“Sure. And, Raul, I feel almost as good about Evelyn as you do.”

He smiled so big his homely face damn near got handsome. “Thanks. I figured you would.” He walked off, already starting to shout.

I felt a touch on my arm and turned. Helen stood beside me, her hair bright in the hot sun. “Hello,” she said. “Remember me?”

She seemed a little more subdued than usual, and there was a look very much like reproof in her dark brown eyes. I said, “How could I forget? And, Helen, it's a good thing I did leave last night.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know what happened when I phoned. I practically flew over to Sherry's, and she was in trouble, all right. Somebody sapped her.”

“What? Sapped? You mean hit her?”

“That's right. She was out cold. And somebody took a shot at me. But nobody got seriously hurt.” I reached under my coat to pat my gun, then realized I didn't have the thing. I looked around, feeling a little creepy, but there were all kinds of people nearby. It seemed unlikely that anything could happen to me in this mess of people. Then I remembered my reflections on Hollywood. No telling; maybe a rocket ship would land on me. I almost looked up.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Helen was saying fervently. Then she added, “But in a way I'm glad, Shell. Shell? Look at me.”

I'd been looking around and watching the final preparations for the next scene. I looked back at Helen. She was smiling a little bit again. “Then you really did have to leave, didn't you?” she asked me. “I thought about it till I'd almost decided you just didn't want—to stay.”

“For Pete's sake, Helen. How silly can you get? I thought it was pretty obvious I wanted to stay. Very damned obvious, if you ask me.”

She grinned. “It was. I'm foolish. But, Shell, why didn't you come back?”

Well, damn this woman to pieces. She was still built like something a sex fiend had fashioned, and she had all her beauty and glamour and polish, but she could sure back me into some peculiar corners. She noted my momentary hesitation and, more power to her, kept talking.

“Well, I'm glad nothing serious happened. Oh, how do I look?”

She was in brown slacks and a white blouse, shorter than usual in low-heeled shoes, and she looked very good.

“You look like the star that you are,” I said. “But that's not a ‘Jungle Gal’ costume, is it?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I don't have anything to do until the big scene late today. King jumps out of a tree and rescues me.”

“If he carries you off over his shoulder again, I want to be present.”

She smiled, her lips thinning and getting that smooth, bloodstained look. “He doesn't, but if you'd like to...” She didn't finish it.

“Like to what?”

She'd stopped smiling. “Never mind,” she said shortly.

We talked casually for a while as the next scene was set up, then kept quiet while it was shot. After that the whole kit and caboodle started picking up the equipment and moving off.

“What happens now?” I asked Helen.

“They move around to the right about fifty yards. Farther in the trees, too. Some more scenes there, then the big one.”

“The one you're in?”

“Uh-huh. That probably won't be till almost four, though.” She started to say something else and stopped. She was quiet for a few seconds, then said lightly, without looking at me, “I'll probably go out to the little lake till then. It's so pretty out there.”

“Where's this?”

“Maybe half a mile through the woods.” She told me how to get there, giving rather explicit directions, I thought, then said, “It's such a pretty spot I'm surprised they aren't using it in the picture. But they aren't. They don't even go near it.”

“Oh? Well, how do you like that? Pretty, huh?”

“And quiet. Well, let's follow the crowd. O.K.?”

We walked after the others and around to another clearing farther into the woods while the workers started setting up again. It was cooler in here, and the sunlight filtered down through the trees, thick branches interlacing over our heads. In all the time I'd lived in L.A. I hadn't known of this spot. It was cool and green, and ordinarily would have been peaceful. I could have spent a month here.

Suddenly I thought of something that should have entered my mind sooner. I asked Helen, “You see a copy of this morning's Crier?”

She shook her head and the long silver hair whipped around her face. “Nope. Want me to hunt one up?”

“Let's hunt one up together.”

“No, you wait here,” she said. “I'll bring you one.” She skipped away, merry as a kid on vacation.

In a minute or two she was back with a Crier. “Here you are, sir,” she said brightly.

“Thank you, ma'am.” I flipped the paper open and found “The Eye at the Keyhole.” There was nothing about me in the “Can You Guess?” part, and I skimmed over the rest of the column. Ah, there the little thing was. Fanny Hillman had printed a lovely retraction. Yes, she had. The old hag.

Shell Scott, one of the myriad local detectives, yesterday visited me in my office! The police will be happy to know that Mr. Scott intends to bring the murderer of Zoe Townsend, whom I told you all about yesterday, into my office today! At least, so he told me! Chiefie, look to your laurels!!!

“Why, that slap-happy old bitch,” I muttered.

“What?” Helen said abruptly. Apparently I'd muttered louder than I thought.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking out loud.” I handed her the paper and pointed to the item. Helen read it through and then looked at me.

“Did you? I mean, did you tell her that?”

“Take it from me, Helen, if you read anything in that old goat's hysterical column, your best bet is to forget it.” I frowned. “As a matter of fact, I did and I didn't. She gets just enough truth in her stuff so it's not an out-and-out lie—but there's no truth in it either. If that's possible.” Even from miles away, Fanny Hillman could reach me.

I ground my teeth together, entertaining pleasant visions of Fanny getting hit by a train or run over by wild horses. Then Helen patted my arm.

“Well, I'll see you later, Shell. If ... if you get bored, come out and look at the little lake. But make a lot of noise if you come up. I might be swimming.”

“Oh, sure. Fine, honey. Maybe I'll see you.”

She stood by me for a moment longer, then wandered off. I decided to get away from the spot I was on. I wanted to be at least fifty feet behind the cameras when they started rolling. I spotted King talking to Raul; King was in his leopard creation again. Then, beyond them, I saw Oscar Swallow. He had on a cream-colored casual jacket today, with a maroon shirt buttoned at the throat, and light green slacks. He was talking to a couple of cute jungle girls in animal skins and their own. I walked toward them.

Swallow spotted me when I was ten feet away. “Ah, there, Scott, old man,” he bellowed heartily. “You're getting to be quite a fixture, what?”

“What, indeed,” I said. “Tally-ho, you old rotter, you.” Some perverse impulse had up and grabbed me. I even surprised myself. Swallow's face slid around like underdone Jello for maybe half a second, then it sort of congealed with a slightly sour expression.

He searched for a couple of words, examined them, then let them out like pearls before swine: “The detective.”

I had never before heard the words sound quite so nauseous. Then he added, “What brings you here, Scott?” He paused. “Old boy.”

“You, for one, Swallow. I'd like a word with you.”

“Certainly, certainly. You may have all my words; all my lovely words.”

I'd had very nearly all his lovely words I could stand without becoming ill. I said, “Let's find a place not so crowded, shall we?”

The two cuties had been watching this exchange in silence, swinging their little heads from Swallow to me to Swallow. He reached over and patted the nearest one gently on her behind and whispered something to her. She smiled and nodded. Swallow turned and we walked off a little way from the others.

He leaned back against a tree trunk, one rubber-soled suede shoe drawn up under him against the bark. “Now,” he said, “what is your pleasure, Mr. Scott?”

I didn't expect to learn anything important; primarily I wanted to see if he had any trouble with his expression while I talked to him. I said, “For one thing, I'd like to know where you were last night, Swallow. About eight o'clock.”

He lifted his left eyebrow half an inch over the right one. That was all. He'd probably have done the same thing if I'd asked him what day it was. “That's odd,” he said slowly. “I was home. Watching television, if you must know. Is it important?”

“I thought maybe you took a shot at me.”

He didn't answer for a moment, but his expression lost some of its usual striving for an effect of lofty cynicism. Then he said, “Shot at you? Why, great Scott, why would I do that?”

I didn't much like the way he said “great Scott.” I let it ride. “I'm not sure,” I told him. “But I thought I'd ask. There was a chance it could have something to do with Zoe Townsend.”

His lips curled slightly. “I thought we had eliminated me from your ... examination.”

“That was before I learned from the police that she was pregnant.”

“Oh.” He nibbled at his upper lip for a moment. “And what does that have to do with me?” He wasn't quite so poised now.

“Oh, come off it, Swallow. You know damn well what it has to do with you. I don't give a damn about your morals, but I am interested in the fact that Zoe was pregnant by you. Considering the further fact that she's dead.”

“Now hold on,” he said, and he drew in his breath for a little speech. “I deny categorically that there is any truth in your statement. There is obviously no proof. If Zoe was pregnant, that was certainly as much her doing as anyone else's—wouldn't you agree? And while I quite frankly admit, Mr. Scott, that the thought of my dandling a drooling monster on my knee is utterly repugnant, had I been responsible for what is euphemistically referred to as Zoe's ‘condition,’ I should have done what is rather laughably called the ‘honorable’ thing. I should have made a dishonest woman of her.” He paused as if expecting applause.

Nicely phrased, I was thinking, but none of it very new. I waited for him. He said, “And it really makes little difference whether or not you believe me, Mr. Scott. As for last night—” He went ahead and described in detail the television show he had watched, explaining that even if he couldn't prove his statements, because he was alone, neither could it be shown he was anywhere else. Precisely, he pointed out, because he was home. He finished, “And finally, you must have forgotten that I could not possibly have killed Zoe.” He shrugged. “And as for shooting at you—great Scott, I've never shot at a thing.”

I'd have liked it better if he'd said he had never shot at anybody. But he had, it would seem, spoken freely enough. I told him, “O.K., Swallow. I'm naturally anxious to learn who shot at me. So I can shoot him.”

He grinned agreeably. “I hope you find him, Scott.”

“I probably will. Oh, something else I've been meaning to ask you. You know, naturally, that Zoe headed for Raul's Thursday night.” He nodded and I said, “What's this about her intention to run you out of town? Doesn't that—”

I stopped. Swallow had, momentarily, lost some more of his poise. At least he looked much less agreeable for a brief moment, but he recovered quickly and smiled. “Run me out of town? I've never heard anything so idiotic. What on earth would give her that idea?”

“That's what I was wondering.”

He didn't say anything. I asked him, “And speaking of shooting, since you're the screen writer, maybe you'd know why Zoe had a ‘Jungle Girl’ shooting script in her things.”

He shrugged and said loftily, “Why shouldn't she have a copy? They're free.” He chuckled but it didn't quite come off.

I didn't say any more, hoping he'd go on, but he merely waited for more questions, if any. We spent a few more minutes talking, but nothing important developed. Finally I left him, to watch the shooting, and Swallow went back to his pouting brunette. The other one was with a bunch in front of the cameras by now.

I waited while the scene was shot, then hunted up Raul again. King was with him, still looking surly.

“How's it going?” I asked Raul.

“Hi, Shell. Smooth enough. Just going over a scene with Doug. Come along if you want.”

King gave me a look that was apparently intended to scare hell out of me, so I said, “Sure, thanks.” I grinned at Raul. “Got to learn more about the business I'm in.”

King spoke for the first time. Obviously referring to my detective business, he said, “It's about time, Scott.”

I ignored him and walked on the other side of Raul as the three of us started walking deeper into what everybody called the jungle. Quite a jungle it was, too. The prop men, carpenters, gardeners, and others of Genova's crew had labored long over one area here, adding trailing vines and brush and clearing “animal” paths through one section. We walked along one of the paths, and as we passed a tall, sturdy tree Raul jerked a thumb at it and said to King, “That's the second tree. There's the rope you'll use, right off that platform.”

I looked up as we went by. Boards had been nailed together to form a platform about twenty feet up in the tree, a bit like tree platforms I'd built when I was a kid. We walked on without speaking until Raul stopped at the base of another huge tree with a wooden ladder leaning against one side of the trunk.

He grinned at me as I stopped beside him. “Your education commences, Shell.”

Then he turned to King and I listened, fascinated, as he talked. “O.K.,” Raul said, “you're getting away from the great apes, see? They're mad at you. You leap up into this tree here and let out one of those aaah-eee-aaah noises.”

So King was going to leap into the tree. I counted the rungs in the ladder: twelve of them. Nice leaping.

Raul continued, “You hear them coming. There's ten of them, too many for you to handle, and besides, you know the cannibals are burning the women at the stake up ahead of you. And you've got to save your mother before her turn to get toasted. You're really in a spot.”

Mentally, I agreed. It would seem that Bruta was going to have a lot on his hands.

“We'll cut in a shot of the women here—they hear you yelling and know they're practically saved, see? Then your mother clasps her hands and sobs, ‘Bruta!’ Then we shoot you"—I was thinking that here was an excellent idea—"and you grab the rope and swing over to that other tree, grab the rope there, and swing off. That takes you right out into the clearing and you let go and drop down by the stake where the doll is burning. OK?”

“O.K.,” said Bruta.

“Now,” Raul said, “we've got it all cleared away through here"—he pointed down the line from this tree to the other one—"and we'll shoot from an angle so it looks like you're brushing limbs and having a hell of a time. But there's nothing to it: Just swing, swing, plop, and she's all over.”

“Nothing to it,” said Bruta.

They stood facing back toward the set and talked some more. I wandered off a few feet to their left, looking the place over. I noticed a thinning of the brush ahead of me and my eyes caught a hand-painted sign just as Raul yelled, “Hey, Shell, watch your step. Hell of a drop there.”

I told him thanks and examined the sign, which was a warning to anybody who might trot carelessly through the brush. I went through, carefully, and took a look. Raul hadn't been kidding. There was a natural open space here, and about fifteen feet from the sudden edge of the thick brush the ground dropped down in a sheer, dizzying fall to sharp rocks below. The cavity was no more than twenty-five or thirty feet across, but it was twice as deep, as if the earth had split at this point and been pulled apart. I edged closer to the brink of the cliff and peered over, and the sudden dropping off of solid ground made me feel lightheaded and dizzy.

I looked down to the rocks below, thinking that here was a made-to-order spot for somebody to have an accident. Me, maybe. An unreasoning fear swelled in my throat as I remembered I wasn't armed and that both Raul and King were somewhere behind me. I swung around, staring, but nothing was near me except the edge of brush a few feet away. I could hear the two men talking industriously. I walked back to them feeling silly, but still a little weak in the knees.

When I came up, King looked at me and said, “For God's sake, shamus. You still around? Why don't you crawl off in the bushes? Go fall off a cliff.”

“Why don't you shut your face, King?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “if that don't beat all.” He was starting to grin at me. “I guess we can't be friends.”

He turned and faced me, squaring his shoulders. I stepped up in front of him and looked down at his eyes, an inch or two below mine, and much closer together.

“Listen, friend,” I said quietly, “it's time I squared you away on something. The only reason I didn't mess up your stupid face yesterday is because Genova thinks I'm trying to ruin his goddamn movie. I'd love to put you in a plaster cast, and the only reason I don't do it right now is because I don't want to disappoint your public. Even idiots deserve a break.”

He blinked at me, surprised at my sudden outburst, then he grew his sneer again. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Well, how about right now, us two—”

“Doug,” Raul said beside us, “for God's sake forget it, will you? You too, Shell, how about it? Have a goddamned duel if you want to, but do it next week. God knows we got enough trouble.”

I turned away from King and stepped back. “Sure, Raul. Sorry I popped.”

“You back down goddamn easy,” King said.

I said an unclean word. The main trouble with this boy was simply that he was a boy; he'd never grown up. If he had a problem, he hit it. “O.K., King,” I said. “You got me scared. I'm in a purple funk. Now beat it before I get over it.” I was right on the edge of forgetting all my fine resolutions.

Raul took King's arm and tugged at him. “Come on, Doug. They must be about set up by now. Come on, let's get back there.”

King slowly cleared his throat and looked all around, looked at me, looked around some more, then he spat at his feet. He turned and stalked away, King of the Jungle.

I watched them till they got out of sight, then turned my hands over and looked at them. They were wet, shining with perspiration. The muscles in my face felt tight and drawn.

I turned around and walked in the opposite direction from them, away from the cameras and crew and Genova and King and all the rest of them. I was getting pretty sick of the whole mess; the case, the people, all of it. I walked aimlessly for a while, then suddenly realized where I was headed. I was almost to the lake, the little quiet lake that Helen had mentioned.

I stopped for a moment, then kept on walking, knowing now where I was going.

Chapter Thirteen

I DIDN'T see Helen. Not right at first, that is. What she had referred to as a lake was an oval body of water about fifty yards across and twice as long, and it had another body in it that I didn't spot immediately: Helen's. The lake was surrounded by trees that blocked the water from sight until you were almost on its edge, and this was a cool, quiet spot, as Helen had described it. I walked to a big boulder near the edge of the water and sat down on it, the sun pleasantly warm on my face.

“Hello-o-o! I wondered if you'd come.”

I didn't locate the source of the voice right away, but I knew it was Helen. I looked around the lake, then spotted some ripples almost at the far edge opposite me, nearly fifty yards distant. Right in the center of the ripples was Helen's head, but she had her silver-blonde hair tucked into a white bathing cap.

She laughed and the happy sound floated across the water. “Come on in,” she called. “This is wonderful!”

“I can't, Helen. No suit.”

She laughed delightedly. “You're one of Raul's prudes,” she shouted, then turned and began swimming toward me, her arms flashing in a smooth, strong crawl. As she drew near I could see that she was wearing a brief, white, two-piece suit that gleamed through the water. When she got closer I could see that it was skin-tight. I remembered Helen's saying something at our first meeting about being darkly tanned except for “two white strips; little narrow white strips.” I took a good look. No wonder it was skin-tight: it was skin.

She stopped swimming about ten yards out in the water, then came in another yard or two till her feet touched the lake's bottom. “Hi,” she said. “Neither do I. Have a suit, I mean.”

“You know,” I said, “I think I find that interesting. I had almost guessed.” I could see the pale gleam of her flesh under the water, distorted by the refraction of light. Not too distorted.

“You coming in?” she asked me. She chuckled. “You don't know how good it feels. You'll like it, Shell.”

“Bet I would. Uh, I dunno.”

“I've been all alone here. Not a soul but me—and you, now. It's like being cut off from the rest of the world. Come on in, I'll race you across.”

I didn't say anything, just looked at her as she smiled at me. She gave a little push with her feet and floated toward me, almost up to the very shallow water extending a few feet inward from the lake's edge. Then she curled around and floated on her back, kicking her feet and pulling her arms slowly through the clear water as she moved away from me again and stopped about where she'd been before. If that was a suit, it was the goddamnedest suit I'd ever seen.

“I hoped you'd come, Shell. Hurry up.” She paused for a long moment. “Hurry up and get undressed. You can't swim in all that. Well? Last chance, Shell. Better hurry.”

She turned and began swimming lazily toward the center of the lake. I thought about all this for a minute. Come to think of it, I'd given this lovely little doll a pretty bad time. I hadn't meant to, but if I ran away again she'd think I didn't like her, that something was horribly wrong with her. She'd start wondering what she'd done to deserve this. She might start thinking she had no sex appeal. She might lose her grip on reality, that was what. Yes, sir, she'd go mad. I certainly couldn't let her go mad.

The water sure did look good. I got up and went over behind my boulder and took off my clothes. I had it figured out now: I owed it to Helen. Hell, I owed it to me.

I was all ready to go, but I still stood behind the boulder. Right then I thought of Sherry, but it seemed a little late to back out now. To be perfectly frank, I didn't intend to back out. Still, I wanted to be sure I had this all figured out logically. I was sure I did, but I was convincing myself. From about twenty yards out Helen called, “Hurry up!" and that finished convincing me.

I ran pell-mell around the boulder and my feet splashed in the water. Helen squealed. I let out some sort of squeal myself. Then I dived in and started swimming toward her.

She waited for me, not swimming away, not racing me across. Five yards from her I stopped swimming and looked at her. She was moving her arms easily, holding herself afloat.

“That's better,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming in. Doesn't it feel good?”

“It does.” I paddled slowly toward her.

“Shell,” she said. “I'll meet you halfway.”

The few feet between us melted until we were two feet apart, one foot, and then nothing was between us. Helen's skin was incredibly smooth in the water as it touched against me and flowed liquidly against my hand. She smiled, close to me, holding her head above the water as I reached for her and stroked her skin with one hand, then had to sweep both hands through the water to keep from going under.

Helen laughed and swam backward a few feet from me, then forward again. “I told you it was nice in the water, Shell. Doesn't it feel good?” She laughed again and repeated, “Shell, doesn't it feel good?”

“Wonderful,” I said, then added, perhaps a bit ungraciously, “A guy could drown.”

She spun around in the water, still laughing, and swirled in a complete circle, as happy and abandoned and unself-conscious as if she were a child who had never learned one mustn't do this or do that, had never heard which moral or religious taboos were momentarily being observed. It occurred to me that, in her own way, Helen was just as honest as my friend Captain Samson.

She swam up to me again. “A guy could,” she said. “Shell, hold your breath. And then hold me.”

I took a deep breath and held it as her arms went around me and then I pulled her smooth body close against mine and felt her squirming against me, her flesh gliding smoothly against my skin as the water closed over our heads. Under the surface of the water there was shimmering light, and looking through it I could see Helen lean slightly back from me, her eyes open.

Her fingers caressed my back, touched my arms, swept over my body, then she pushed her hands against my chest and wriggled away underwater, swimming rapidly till she arched her body and shot upward. Looking after her I could see the sun-bright ripples spread where she broke the surface and filled her lungs with air, her body seeming suspended from the surface of the lake, and then she curled over and swam downward again, her arms sweeping smoothly ahead of her and then gracefully back to her sides. She was a naked nymph or naiad, lovely and almost unreal, and more graceful here than she had ever seemed before, almost as if this were her natural element, as if she were actually one of those mythical goddesses who lived in fabled waters.

I surfaced and gulped at the air, then dived and swam to Helen again as she watched me and moved her arms only enough to keep her submerged beneath me. It was as though she lay on her back a few yards from me, suspended on an invisible cushion underneath her, her long, curving legs stretching downward toward the bed of the lake. She seemed to hang there in watery dimness as I drew nearer, as if we were swimming in a fluid space that half supported us, and then I felt the touch of her hands again and her yielding flesh against my fingers. Her touch was sometimes light and gentle, almost indistinguishable from the cool caress of the water, and again it was heavy and demanding, and once I felt the sting of her nails.

She swam away from me, surfaced, and stroked for the far shore as I followed her. She reached the edge and walked out of the water until she stood on green grass, then turned and waited with her arms at her sides as I felt the soft earth beneath my feet. She waited for me as I walked toward her, the sun behind her outlining her body and glinting from the bright droplets that clothed her. I reached her and our arms went around each other and finally our lips came together in the culmination of all our play and caresses. For immeasurable time we stood there, pressed close together, and I could feel the red beat of the sun against my closed eyelids, feel the pulse of Helen's heart mingling with mine, and then slowly, with our lips still tightly joined, we sank to the grass at the lake's edge to lie there full length beneath the sun as it moved across the sky and edged closer to the horizon.

We had been talking for quite a while. I had told Helen of my growing up in L.A., going to war, and then settled all the problems of the universe, as men will. She'd told me of her childhood in a small town in Colorado, high-school dramatics, jobs, the movie talent scout. She shifted on the grass and continued talking. “So I made a test and got the part. Had a few supporting roles at Paramount, but then they forgot to pick up my option. After that Genova gave me the starring roles in ‘Jungle Woman’ and ‘Jungle Girl.'”

“You can star in my movie when I make one.”

“Oh? You going to make one?”

“No.”

“Well, it was a nice thought,” she said. She looked down the length of her body. “I'd better be careful. I'll get sunburned.”

“Go get some clothes on and you won't. But on the other hand, what's a little sunburn? I'll probably peel all over.” I grinned at her. “I think my back is peeling already.”

She laughed. “Your back? You know, I thought you didn't like me. I thought something was wrong with me.”

“You know better now?”

“Uh-huh. Glad you ... came swimming?”

“That's obviously a rhetorical question.”

“If you ask me,” she said seriously, “I think we're pretty good swimmers.”

“Agreed. And if you don't get dressed I'll take you swimming again.”

She laughed, got up, and ran into the water. I got to my feet, a bit unsteadily, perhaps, but she shouted, “You stay there. I'm all grassy.” She swam out a few yards, then back, and stood at the edge of the water again. “Look, Shell. September Morn.”

“September Morn was more modest. But, then, I never much cared for September Morn.”

She walked out of the water. “Keep away from me,” she said. “I've got to get back to the set.”

“Where's your stuff? Your clothes, I mean.”

“Over there.” She grinned. “In the bushes. I'm getting dressed.”

I looked far across the lake to a little pebble behind which were my clothes. I wondered if I could swim all that way.

Helen saw where I was looking and said, “I'll meet you over there, Shell.”

“O.K.” She disappeared into the brush. I looked out across Lake Michigan. I looked a while longer and waded into the Atlantic. I was going to have to stop smoking. I was sure going to have to stop something or other.

I swam about thirty yards and stopped and dog-paddled. Be sad if I got stuck here and drowned. Be like they say, though, if a bit indirect: Be a wonderful way to die.

At last I kicked out with my feet and got ready to have at it again, and almost simultaneously with my movement a little waterspout kicked up in front of my nose and I heard a loud bang. That was odd, I thought. That bang had sounded like a gun going off. And that little waterspout was like a bullet might make plowing into the water. It was odd. Hunters? What the hell were they hunting for, fish? I looked to my right and suddenly realized it was open season on Shell Scott. That's what they were hunting.

“They” consisted of two guys at the edge of the lake on my right, maybe forty yards from me. It looked as if one of them had a pistol in his hand, but from forty yards away it didn't worry me much. The guy with the rifle worried me, though. I saw him snap the gun to his shoulder and point the damned thing at me and I started swimming like a fiend. I must have leaped halfway out of the water and my arms started whirling like propellers.

Even with all the noise I was making I heard the sharp crack of the rifle and felt something burn across my back. I nearly fainted. I tell you something in all sincerity: There is almost nothing as disheartening as somebody shooting bullets at you. Those things can kill you.

I was closer to shore now, but the two men were running around the edge of the lake to cut me off. For a moment I didn't know what to do, and the thought flashed through my mind that first it had been the little guy with the bald spot and now it was two gunmen; somebody was working hard at killing me. And unless I did something quick, this time he'd make the grade.

For a long second my thoughts were confused, and then out of nowhere the picture of Helen's shapely body twisting and arching underwater came to me and I saw the obvious way to get away from these guys. Deep underwater they couldn't see me, but I had to come up sometime for sure. If I came up near them, I'd come up with a hole in my skull.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two men running on my right, then one of them stopped and dropped to one knee, and I knew he was aiming at me. I didn't dive right then; I just had to hope, if I was going to get out of this at all, that the guy would miss this once more. I swung my body around to my left and took three hard strokes toward the far bank away from the men, angling in toward the shore I'd started for originally, feeling a dozen times in those short two seconds the thud of a metal-jacketed slug plowing into my back. But the thud didn't come, though somewhere in there I heard the rifle crack, and the zing of the bullet ricocheting from the flat surface of the water. I sucked in all the air I could hold and dived. Deep under the water I doubled back and started swimming as fast as I could toward the spot where I'd last seen the two men. If they ran on down toward the far bank I'd be O.K.—if I could last to the lake's edge. But there was no if about it; I had to last.

I swam with my eyes open, forcing myself to stay down beneath the surface, pressure already building up in my eardrums and the ringing starting inside my head. I swept my arms back with all my strength and kept my feet churning frantically—and I still hadn't felt the lake bottom under my fingers. I could feel the pressure swelling at the back of my fingers, getting stronger and almost painful as my blood ate the oxygen out of my lungs. I couldn't last much longer, I knew, but the bank couldn't be far away now.

Then my fingers scraped the lake bottom and I could see, as if through a haze, the surface of the water only four or five feet above me. I gave one more lunge, kicking hard with my legs, then got my feet in the ooze beneath me and straightened up as I thrust myself forward.

There was going to be no looking around and trying this a second time. Wherever I came up I had to start running—either away from those two bastards or straight toward them. I couldn't give them time to set up on opposite sides of the lake and make bets on which one would get to shoot me.

My head burst from the water as I straightened up, the water still waist-deep, but I plowed forward through it, forcing my tired muscles and looking sharply around to find the men.

I saw them thirty yards on my left, still looking out toward the middle of the lake. The resisting water dragged against my hips, holding me back, slowing me down as I slashed through it toward solid ground. I heard one of the men yell and then there was the heavy cough of a big handgun and a slug split the air alongside me. As my feet splashed clear of the water I heard another shot and from the corner of my eye saw the two goons start running toward me. I put my head down and sprinted with all my strength toward the protective covering of brush a few feet ahead, then crashed through it and into the gray shadows of the trees.

I ran at top speed for another twenty or thirty strides, then had to slow down. I'd had to hold my breath too long underwater and I was faint and dizzy. Spots swarmed in front of my eyes and my heart slammed solidly inside my chest. I kept running, hardly more than trotting, trying to suck in enough air through my open mouth to clear the fuzziness from my mind. At least I was leading these goons away from Helen. Sure, that's what I was doing: I was running away to protect her. Finally I stopped for a few seconds and listened.

I could hear them charging along behind me, getting closer, and finally I spotted a flash of green from one man's shirt. It was the guy with the pistol and he blazed away at me again.

What the hell; I started running some more.

Even those few seconds of rest had helped, and though I didn't think I could run to L.A. at this pace, I could keep on a while. And I guess I must have gotten a second wind, or a third one or something, because my breathing came a little easier and pretty soon I was flying through the jungle like crazy. Now I was really moving. The two who had chosen me were right behind, though, and I couldn't tell if they were gaining or not; it didn't seem possible. They were still shooting at me, too, and you know how I feel about bullets.

I was scared, all right. I was so scared that if I'd had time I'd have stopped right there in the bushes. But I sure didn't have the time. And, man, I was running. I was running so fast I thought my legs were just going to rip away from me and go chattering through the woods. I only hoped no tree showed up smack in front of me, because it would have been me or the tree. I was on a 180-degree kick, and I couldn't even veer without busting something.

I was stepping on thorns and pebbles and brambles but I kept on going. Feet, I said, you don't feel nothin'; but finally I started slowing down more and more; I wanted to keep running, I wanted to very badly, but I was wearing down to a nub. I was working just as hard at it, but I wasn't going very fast any longer. The men behind me sounded closer now, though there hadn't been any shots for a while. Then, suddenly and frighteningly, I burst into a familiar spot and knew I'd have to change course.

The cliff I'd looked over earlier this morning was dead ahead now; I was back where I'd started. And I didn't think I could make it more than ten feet farther. I was dizzy, and as tired as I'd ever been in my life, and I was damn near ready to stop and let the boys shoot me. I couldn't have slugged either one of them hard enough to bend one of their whiskers. I was pooped.

But I managed to keep my feet moving, as behind me the crashing sounds got closer and louder. I saw the tree Raul and King had been discussing this morning, and I looked at the little ladder up its side—with no amusement this time. I started to trot right on by, and then I stopped. If I could get up those silly steps into the tree, maybe those bastards chasing me would run right on by and over the cliff, and I'd stand on my platform and listen to them thud, and laugh and laugh and fall out of the tree. It seemed entirely logical, so up I went.

I made it, somehow, and while I crouched in my tree the goons burst out of the brush and went charging around thirty feet below me. They didn't run over the cliff, worse luck, but one of them burst through the brush before it and let out a huge squawk, then came back and babbled something to his partner. They both went out and looked over the cliff's edge, but I knew they didn't see me down there. Then they came back through the brush, saying something I couldn't hear, and standing still while they listened to see if they could hear me.

I was standing up there shaking like a snapped rubber band, and then the guy with the revolver in his hand pointed to the ladder against the tree. My tree.

He started to look up. Well, I'd made a nice try, but I'd sure got myself into the damnedest position now. If they shot holes in me, I hoped I leaked all over them. I turned and looked longingly toward where I knew about a hundred people were, all unaware of this matter of life and death—my life and death—and there dangling in front of my nose was the rope.

Rope? What rope? And then I remembered. Hell, yes, Bruta's rope. It disappeared high over my head, attached to something up there, but I didn't care if an angel was holding it just so it was tied to something. I grabbed it, made sure it was free at my end, and then froze.

“There's the bastard. Good God, there he is!”

I looked down and to my left and the little man with the revolver was pointing at me. He was pointing at me with the revolver. There was no help for it; Hollywood had a new ape man. I grabbed tight onto a knot in the rope, shoved off into space as the gun cracked behind me, and then I went flying through the air like a bird.

Chapter Fourteen

I HEARD another shot crack out, but it was far behind me now. It had to be; I was going about five hundred miles an hour. Everything was a blur of green and brown and confused colors, and trees and limbs whipped backward past me. Right square ahead of me was a gigantic tree, and it was coming at me like a monster. I swooped through the air in a long arc, swinging almost to the ground, and then I was zooming up at that gigantic tree, hanging for dear life onto the knot in the rope. I was very nearly a gibbering wreck, as I had never conditioned myself to face this particular situation. And I couldn't help thinking what would happen if I let go. I'd simply sail along in a sort of free fall till I hit something and mashed. At the end of the giant swing I felt myself starting to slow down, and there was the platform in the tree ahead of me. I was headed for it, and I'd better reach it or I'd go swinging right back to my two buddies.

There was a convenient handle already nailed on a limb to facilitate Bruta's big scene, and I latched onto it and clung there desperately, then hauled myself onto the platform. I'd made it this far, and I had more respect for King, who, in referring to this horror, had said, “Nothing to it.” But probably he hadn't yet tried it.

The other rope was there ready for me. I didn't wait for another bullet to swish past me or into me; I grabbed the rope and took off again. I was almost starting to enjoy it. I was even looking ahead now, wind whistling in my ears as I tried to pick out my next tree.

Then, too late, I recalled that there wasn't any next tree. With a great sadness I remembered where this scene was supposed to end. Too late, all right; I couldn't go back now.

So I went piling out between a couple of trees and a mess of bushes, slowing down now at the end of the swing, and as I busted out into the open, lo and behold, there they were: a whole passel of people dancing around a stake. There just wasn't anything I could do about it, and I let go. I had reached the end of my rope.

I went sailing down through the air, catching a blurred glimpse of cameras and people and what looked like confusion, but if it was confusion right then, it was wild pandemonium when I landed. I hit the dirt and rolled and skinned myself and wound up sitting on my aching posterior staring square at a lady tied to a stake with what looked like solid ropes.

They weren't solid ropes, though, because she eyeballed me and let out a great big “Aaaahhhhh!” and busted loose with no trouble at all. She went racing away, still screaming. All hell seemed to break loose and I saw another gal screaming, and a man yelled something horrible, and another man yelled, “Cut!” and the script girl started flipping pages frantically.

I didn't sit there very long. I spotted a rifle near me, right alongside a guy in boots and heavy trousers and a pith helmet, and I got up and grabbed the rifle and went flying back into the jungle.

I was so mad I was burning to kill somebody, and I was pretty embarrassed, too. Yes, indeed, I was mightily embarrassed. It isn't every day you drop naked out of the sky in front of a hundred people.

I cradled the rifle in my arm and ran back toward the two men who were, as far as I was concerned, responsible for all my troubles. I was so mad that the first thing I saw that moved I was going to shoot at till it stopped moving. The men hadn't busted out of the trees into the clearing after I had, so I figured they must have heard all the screeching and uproar that had arisen when I dropped in. There was a chance they'd taken a powder; if they had, I'd chase them for a change.

I paused for a moment and hurriedly checked the rifle before I went any farther. It was a sleek Winchester bolt-action job, the Model 70, with a recoil pad instead of the usual steel butt plate. I could operate the safety lock, so I knew the firing pin was cocked, but I slid the bolt back till I caught the gleam of a brass cartridge case in the breech, then shoved the bolt forward and down and pushed the safety to its intermediate position. I started trotting again, the gun cocked and a cartridge in the barrel; I was ready for an elephant if I saw one.

Fifty yards farther in the trees I heard the two men. I walked slowly forward until I spotted the guy in the green shirt, facing me and saying something to the other man, whom I couldn't see. I leaned against a tree trunk to steady myself, raised the gun to my shoulder. I thumbed the safety off and curled my forefinger around the trigger, sighted down the barrel, and centered the sights, the dull gold bead of the front sight on the left pocket of the green shirt, squarely over his heart. I took a shallow breath and held it, and started slowly to squeeze the trigger.

I was tired and a little shaky, and the rifle barrel wavered, the front sight dancing off to the left, then back to the middle of that pocket again, and suddenly the violent anger went out of me, the fury lessened, and I eased the tension on the trigger. I couldn't murder the guy in cold blood. But I could shoot him. I shifted my aim to his shoulder, steadied the gun, held my breath again, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle butt kicked against my shoulder and the surprisingly loud blast echoed among the trees as I rolled my head a little to the left and slapped the bolt up and then forward and down again, my finger finding the trigger, the rifle still solidly against my shoulder. For a moment nothing happened. Then Green Shirt swung around, yanking his revolver up. I stepped away from the tree, sighted and fired and worked the bolt again in almost one motion as he spotted me and returned my fire. Then he let out a yell, turned, and started running away from me, followed by the other man. Now I could kill the sonofabitch. I took my time, planted my feet firmly, sighted carefully at the green back, squeezed off a perfect shot, and waited. By God, that one got him square between the shoulder blades. He ran merrily away.

I let him run. It had dawned on me that something was sure as hell peculiar about this elephant gun of mine. I jacked another shell into the barrel, stood three feet away from the wide trunk of the tree on my left, and shot at it. Then I carefully inspected the tree trunk for the hole. No hole.

Naturally there's no hole, Scott, you fool. The hole's in your head. Be careful or all the rocks will fall out. Those bullets were as blank as my future. But at least the sound of two brave men up ahead was growing fainter. They wanted nothing to do with me now that I was armed. Hell, I was even out of blanks. I cradled my cannon in the crook of my elbow and headed back for the lake.

Before I got there I'd had time to inspect myself, and I was going to be quite a while healing. I'd been cut and scratched and I was bruised and pretty well bent. The rope burns on my hands were starting to hurt now, too, but that was the least of my worries.

At the lake I looked carefully around without seeing anything moving, then got my clothes from behind the boulder. It seemed that my luck had changed: No one had tied knots in my clothes. I went back into the woods and dressed. It was, I decided, about time. I started back toward the set, filled with an almost overpowering desire to go in the opposite direction, maybe as far as the Pole, but I'd done every last bit of running I intended to do. Even so, each step that took me closer to the recent pandemonium was harder to take than the last.

I circled around and came out of the trees more than a hundred yards from the cameras and activity. I'd ruined one scene; I wasn't about to stroll into another one. I waited till it appeared that the action had momentarily stopped, then walked up to the crowd from the rear. I headed for Raul. He might be the only friend I had left in this gathering—and possibly even his affection was wearing a bit thin.

A take had just been finished and I got almost up to the crowd before anybody spotted me. As luck would have it, the first jaundiced eye that raked over me was Louis Genova's. He looked ready to burst out crying at this crisis. That is, until he saw me. He came charging at me, his fists doubled up, and I thought he was going to jump up into the air and clout me one. Frankly, I wouldn't have blamed him, and I don't think I'd even have stopped him.

He came to a military halt in front of me and shouted, “I'm going to put you in jail! I'll put Bondhelm in jail!” He went on until it seemed clear he was going to put everything but the jail in jail. He told me what he thought of me, my ancestors, and any future offspring I might have. I was the first glaring example of the reversed trend of evolution, and all by myself I was leading the human race downhill. He kept on and on and finally petered out.

Ordinarily during such a tirade I'd have spun his head on his neck like a merry-go-round, but this time I didn't even get mad. I just stood there, and I was as nearly at a loss for words as I had ever been. I didn't know quite how to start an explanation; there seemed such a lot to explain. And, too, I'd noticed Helen, in a “Jungle Girl” outfit now, standing a few feet away and giving me a friendly I'm-on-your-side smile.

At last Genova stopped ranting. “Well?” he asked with comparative calm. “Well? Well? Hah? Well?”

The rifle I'd borrowed was still in the crook of my arm. I said lamely, “I, uh, brought your gun back.”

I thought foam was going to spurt out of his mouth, but he didn't speak. I said, “Listen, Genova, I'm sorry about the trouble. But if I'd wanted to mess up the take I could have thought of several simpler ways.”

“Sorry! He's sorry!” Genova's face was getting redder. Then he wheeled quickly around and left.

Raul had stepped up alongside me by now, and he put a hand on my arm. “Shell,” he said, “what happened, anyway? If that wasn't the goddamnedest thing—what did happen?”

I told him, “Believe it or not, Raul, a couple of guys were trying to shoot me.”

He broke in. “I heard some shooting. Hell, we all heard it. Stopped things for a minute, but we started in again.”

“Two guys,” I said. “They chased me from—for about half a mile and I climbed that damn tree we were at this morning.” He nodded, listening avidly, and I continued. “Well, they spotted me and I took off. Hell, there wasn't anything else I could do. I can't fly.”

He grinned widely. “Well, you sure tried, pal. You played hell. King won't ever make the impression you did.”

I looked around. I'd made an impression, all right. If there were a hundred people here, a hundred people were staring at me. One little blonde sweetheart saw me looking at her, put both hands over her mouth, and giggled behind them, going up the scale like Margaret Truman. I believe I blushed. Hell, I know I blushed.

I said to Raul, “Tell me, how badly did I louse everything up?”

“Not too much,” he reassured me. “L.G. had a fit, but that's not unusual. We'll still make out O.K. Actually, we can still use the footage we shot.” He chuckled. “Most of it, I mean.”

He chuckled some more at me, and it's a sad commentary on my mental state at that moment that it wouldn't be until much later that I would realize exactly what he was chuckling about. “Something else, Raul. You see two gorillas around? A couple of strangers? Anybody drive up in a car in the last hour or so?”

He shook his head. “Nobody. No car, no nothing.”

It was the answer I'd expected. Two torpedoes would hardly advertise their presence, and they were undoubtedly long gone now. I wondered how they'd known I was here. I hadn't been tailed from town, I knew. The logical answer was that somebody here had phoned from the diner after I showed up. Things seemed to be coming to a head.

“Raul, anybody make a phone call from the diner since—in the last few hours?”

“God knows.” His brow furrowed as he got what I was driving at. “You mean—”

“Yeah. Scott's here; come shoot him.”

He nibbled at his mustache. “Could have been anybody, Shell. Everybody's been wandering around part of the time. Most of us had lunch at the diner. Tell you one thing: I didn't phone anybody.” He paused and asked, still frowning, “You really had some shots taken at you?”

“Any number. I got one slice across the back, but otherwise I was lucky. I guess I was lucky. Well, it appears I've done all I can for one afternoon.” I looked at my watch. It was already after four P.M. “Think I'll take off, Raul.”

He grinned. “We're almost finished for the day. Be through before long. You ought to stick around. Next take is the big one where King swings through the trees. That's the last, and then we knock off.”

I winced. “I don't think I could bear to watch. But thanks. You can tell me how it comes out.”

I turned and walked back to my car, a mass of scratches and welts and bruises, some of them mental. The worst spot was where the bullet had burned across my back, but it wasn't bleeding any more and I figured it would wait till I could have a doc pretty it up at my leisure. I started the motor and drove to the diner. The phone booth was outside, and the people inside didn't even know what was on the menu.

I headed back toward town, but I wasn't even in good shape for driving, and I had a hunger that was kin to starvation. So I stopped at the first clean-looking restaurant and tore into a rare sirloin steak. Over coffee I thought about the case from its beginning until now. I'd talked to everyone who seemed important in the case—though I hadn't chatted very freely with King—and I had quite a bit of miscellaneous information even if I didn't know what to do with it.

I lit a cigarette and smoked it, frowning. I hadn't checked in with my client, Bondhelm, today, and I thought about him for a few minutes. He was going to be pleased with his choice of a detective when the latest news reached him. I'd considered almost everybody I'd run across in the case as conceivably being the murderer; how about the slimy Bondhelm? He stood to gain one hell of a lot from monkey-wrenching the movie, but I failed to see how strangling Zoe would help him. Furthermore, Bondhelm hadn't even been at Raul's that night. If it wasn't somebody at the Thursday night party, it could have been almost anybody.

Now I was cooking: It was Zoe's childhood sweetheart from Podunk; he'd followed her to Raul's and strangled her when she didn't recognize him wearing a mustache. I jabbed at my cigarette and scowled at it. Everything pointed to one of the people at Raul's as the murderer, but I couldn't entirely eliminate somebody from the outside. Oh, this was great; I was a Jim-dandy detective. Now I had it narrowed down to the world.

I sat at the table for a while longer, getting more and more depressed. If I kept going down at this rate I'd wind up psychotic. I didn't have one solid lead I could single out to put my finger on, but that was only half of it. I'd apparently done my best to sabotage “Jungle Girl,” nothing was settled between King and me, Fanny the Fat Girl was roasting me to a crisp brown, Genova was ready to clap me in jail, people were still trying hard to kill me, probably nine-tenths of the “Jungle Girl” people figured I was not off my trolley but clear off the tracks, and both mentally and physically I felt like garbage. I was searching for one tiny ray of light when I remembered I was, at least, a stockholder in “Jungle Girl.” At least I had that.

And that was the one that just about finished me. Finally the full significance of the pandemonium I'd caused on location hit me, and Raul's chuckling about salvaging most of the footage became horribly apparent. I wasn't only a stockholder in “Jungle Girl"; I was in the damn picture.

I groaned, sagged a little lower in my seat, and groaned some more. Well, I could always tear up my license and go to Sherry's for consolation. That perked me up enough to get up from the table and pay my check. Then I remembered I hadn't left a tip. The hell with it; let the waiter be sore at me, too. I stopped at a phone booth on the way out, dialed City Hall and asked for Captain Samson in Homicide. There, at least, was one constant factor: While I was getting shot at and running through jungles, the efficient organization of the Los Angeles Police Department—one of the most efficient in the United States—was inexorably sifting a mass of details about Zoe and everybody even remotely connected with the case. Names, dates, backgrounds, records, the works. Might be Samson would have something he could pass on to me. Maybe the case was closed and I could buy a bottle of gin and a sack of oranges and head for Sherry's.

When Samson came on I said, “This is Shell. How's it going?”

“So-so. Is that you? You sound sick.”

“I'm O.K. Must have been something I drank.”

“Or read.” He laughed uproariously. “I see you got your name in the paper again. One of the myriad local—”

“Lay off, Sam. You should know that lousy Fanny has eggs for brains.”

Sam could always sense my mood pretty well. “O.K., genius. What you want? Bail money?”

“Not yet, but soon, maybe. Frankly, Sam, you've seen me in some pretty screwy situations in the last few years, but I don't think I've ever been screwed up like now.” I briefed him on this lovely day and answered his questions. Finally I asked him, “You getting any dope on the Zoe business? I could use something.”

“Just odds and ends, Shell.” He rumbled on, his voice slightly muffled by the cigar undoubtedly in his kisser, telling me a few things the routine had come up with: Zoe was born in Kansas City—that let out the suitor from Podunk—and King didn't have a chance now in his custody case. That didn't bring tears to my eyes. Sam went on, saying that Sherry had worked for an advertising executive before starting with Louis Genova Productions about a year back. He kept talking while I listened with about half my mind, which under the circumstances was not much mind at all, and then something he'd said roused me a little bit, started me working my way back up from bottom again.

“What was that one, Sam? About Oscar Swallow?”

“Huh? Oh, he didn't write that book of his, that ‘Savage Christian’ thing. Like I said, we talked to this Paul Jarvis that wrote it for him—ghosted it, he said. That happened over two years ago. Jarvis got practically nothing out of it; wasn't too happy. But we had to talk to him quite a spell to get it all out; seems it was a point of honor with him to keep it under his hat. Not cricket to talk about it, he said.”

“He ghosted the book for Swallow? Well...” I let it trail off, wondering about this new angle. I'd never cottoned to Swallow and his fake British accent, his borrowed witticisms, his studied and almost artistic dress, and now it appeared that in addition to everything else he was one of what I've always thought of as “The Brain Pickers.” The sonofabitch.

Sam was saying, “That little gal with the shape was down here earlier. The one you phoned me about.”

“Sherry? Lola Sherrard?”

“Yeah. Told her the same thing, Shell. She seemed as interested as you. What's the angle?”

“I'm not sure yet. Sam, you bring her down? She didn't come by herself, did she?”

“We picked her up. Took her home, too. She seems to think you've got something I never been able to see in you.”

“How long ago was that, Sam? When did she leave?”

“I dunno. Maybe half an hour.” He talked about the case a little longer, then I thanked him, told him I'd be down to make the crime report, and hung up. My depression was rapidly leaving me now, and the more I thought about what Sam had told me, the more ideas crowded into my brain. An idea, a hunch, almost a hope swelled inside me as I put this with what I already knew about Swallow: the kind of guy he was, Zoe working for him at the studio, her pregnancy, Swallow's crying that Zoe had killed herself. I fished another coin from my pocket and dialed Sherry's number, my brain starting to click.

The phone buzzed while I tried to reconcile Swallow's apparently perfect alibi for Zoe's murder with what looked like a beautiful motive. A double motive, at that.

The phone buzzed again and for a moment fear started building in me again as I remembered the last time I'd called Sherry only to receive no answer.

Then the phone was lifted and her soft voice said, “Hello?”

“Sherry? This is Shell. I've got something. Maybe.”

“Oh, Shell. I've been trying to reach you, but I didn't know where you were. I was just leaving.”

“Leaving? What—”

“Shell, I know who killed Zoe. I know!”

"Yeah, well, I—”

“It was Oscar Swallow. Just like I told you right at first. Shell, he didn't write ‘The Savage Christian.’ I haven't time to explain it all, but I figured the rest out after I got home. He hasn't written anything—not even the scripts for ‘Jungle Woman’ or ‘Jungle Girl.’ Don't you see what that means?”

“Yeah, I think so. What do you mean you haven't time to explain?” Something was screwy; something I couldn't pin down was bothering me.

Sherry went rattling on, breathless and excited, spilling the words out in a rush. “Shell, Swallow stole both the stories for both his screen plays. That's why Zoe had a ‘Jungle Girl’ shooting script here. I got to wondering why Zoe would have those old pulp magazines in the house—you know, the one with the cover—and that's where Swallow stole his stories. He just stole them; lifted them right out of the magazines. He changed them a little, and by the time they were in shooting script they were practically different stories. Don't you see? That's what Zoe was going to tell everybody at the party. That's why he killed her.”

She stopped, presumably for a breath, and I said, “This is coming at me pretty fast. It makes sense, but—”

She interrupted me. “Shell, I've got to run. I tried to reach you, but when I couldn't I phoned location and told Genova about Swallow, and why Oscar had killed Zoe.”

“You what?”

“He was awfully nice to me. He complimented me and told me to come up to location and bring the magazines and everything. He's called the police already and said he was setting a trap for Swallow. Shell, isn't it wonderful?”

“I guess. I don't know for sure. You're a little ahead of me.” I was trying to digest all this. It would appear that while I was narrowing the suspects down to the world, little Sherry had been wrapping up the case. Possibly it was time I got another job. Maybe I'd go to Mexico and raise opium. I could smoke it and dream I was a detective.

I said, “Slow down a minute, honey. What if Swallow should try something? It might not be healthy for you.”

“Silly,” she said, “the police will be there. Now I've got to run. I should have left ten minutes ago. You come over here and wait for me, Shell.”

“Now, wait a minute, sweetness. You positive it was Genova you talked to? You sit—Hey, Sherry!”

She'd hung up. Damn it, I hadn't got this squared away yet. And that something I hadn't pinned down was still bothering me. I hung up, went out to the Cad, and started driving slowly toward Sherry's. It was ten minutes till six P.M.

When I turned into Cypress Avenue I still hadn't figured out how the hell Swallow could have killed Zoe. I'd checked him up and down, and he was the only one at the party who couldn't have done it. I could see how he might conceivably have lifted a couple of plots from an old, folded magazine, changed Martian greebles to African apes and switched them around a little, then put them through the idiotic Hollywood mill that twisted them inside out before they became sneak previews. And, remembering the red-penciled script I'd examined at location, I could see how he might even have got away with it. But if the guy had any sense at all, he must have known he couldn't go on like that indefinitely, that he'd have to expect trouble someday.

I was a couple of blocks from Sherry's house when I tried to picture what might have gone on last Thursday night at Raul's. Zoe had headed for there, ready to “run Swallow out of town,” but she'd never got inside. Obviously she'd met somebody before she got into the house, spilled some of her story, and been strangled for it, hastily weighted and dropped into the nearest hiding place: the pool. It had been sudden and savage.

The only people, really, who'd have stopped her from spilling would have been Swallow himself and maybe Genova. Besides that, King and Helen alibied each other—supported by little Dot—and if Raul had killed Zoe he'd certainly have had all the opportunity in the world to move the body away in the days and nights that followed. Nor would he have called a party knowing the body was in the pool.

I couldn't help imagining what would have happened to Genova, though, if Zoe had spilled to him—and it did seem likely that she might have spilled to the big boss. He'd have known immediately that there'd be a mess of scenes to reshoot, or at least the chance of a costly civil suit because of Swallow's plagiarism. Even if Swallow was liable, the mess would play bloody hell with the budget and foam would sure have spurted out of Genova's mouth when that idea hit him. He'd lose not only the hundred grand he had invested, but potential profits of several times that amount ... That idea hung on the edge of my mind as I suddenly remembered that of all the people present at Raul's Sunday party, Louis Genova was the only uninvited guest.

Just as easily and gently as that it slipped into my mind, in a kind of idle and half-amused train of thought, and even as I realized with a quick, cold, choking panic that there was no doubt now that Genova had strangled Zoe, I realized, too, that at this very minute he might be murdering Sherry.

Chapter Fifteen

FOR A moment the realization stunned me. Everything literally seemed to stop inside my body; I stopped thinking, stopped breathing, it seemed that my heart stopped beating as my skin got cold and my hands tightened on the steering wheel. Then I slammed my foot down on the accelerator and the Cad jumped forward the last half block to Sherry's home.

Maybe she was still there; maybe she hadn't left yet.

If I could only catch her, stop her. I skidded to a stop in front of the house and sprinted to the unlocked door and inside, shouting her name. There was no answer, nothing. In the bedroom I looked frantically around the empty room, then whirled and started to leave just as my eye fell on the .38 Colt on the dresser. Good God, she hadn't even taken the gun! I scooped it up, checked the five loads, and dropped the gun into my coat pocket as I raced back to the still idling Cad, jumped in, and ground gears away from the curb.

My heart was pounding rapidly and hard, and the muscles were knotted in my stomach as I raced down Cypress and headed for Royal Road. How much time had she been gone? Five minutes? Ten? How much of a start did she have? I knew there were no police at location, no Swallow, just Genova—and maybe Sherry by now. Genova was the bastard who'd sicked the baldheaded character on my tail and just today phoned the two torpedoes from location. He was the guy who'd busted into Sherry's looking for Zoe's evidence against Swallow, and taken a couple of shots at me.

My foot was pressed to the floor boards and the Cad was still accelerating. I gunned straight ahead through intersections, one hand pressed on the blaring horn. At Royal Road I jammed on the brakes and the tires screamed and slipped as I skidded in a wild left turn through a red light, my eye spotting a black police radio car facing the opposite direction on Royal.

I sure couldn't stop, but I wanted the police along if I could get them. I pulled the .38 from my pocket, stuck it out the open window, and fired a shot into the air. Come on, boys, get with it, get after me. I didn't look to see if they followed, but bent over the wheel, still shoving on the horn.

The siren started wailing behind me and I glanced at the rear-view mirror. I saw what I thought was the squad car swerving around a red sedan and racing down the street after me. Let them come; I wanted an army along.

The police car helped another way, too. The siren screamed, the sound carrying for miles ahead, and cars pulled to the side of the road clearing a path for the police—and for me. If we made it in time, the sound of the siren getting louder might stop Genova before he ... finished with Sherry.

I heard a faint crack and something snapped past the car and whirled away through the air. It didn't take much imagination to guess it was a bullet. I should have known. I was having enough trouble keeping this strange buggy on the road. I sure as hell couldn't slow down, much less stop and explain. I had to keep going, as fast as I could without turning over and ending everything for both Sherry and me. Up ahead was Genova waiting to kill Sherry, or killing her now, and behind were cops shooting at me.

I pressed harder on the accelerator as I neared the train crossing ahead, hoping that hitting the tracks at this speed wouldn't throw the Cad clear off the road. I could see the packing houses at the side of the road now, and even the black-and-white bars down across the highway as they had been this morning.

For a moment I didn't get the significance of the striped wooden bars, then over the wail of the police siren I heard the deeper sound of a train whistle and remembered it had been nearly six P.M. when I'd phoned Sherry, and the late train came through here at six. If it blocked the highway, if I had to stop now, I could take my time going to Sherry; there would be no reason for hurrying. I couldn't stop; I couldn't even hesitate and think about the risk.

I glanced to my left, then back to the road ahead of me, but I'd seen the train. I couldn't tell how fast it was moving, but it was close, nearly up to the crossing, and the flashing red semaphore signal was clanging a hundred yards ahead. I had never slacked off on the accelerator, but I hung onto the wheel with sweaty hands and shoved my foot even harder against the unyielding floor boards, scared silly. It was almost like being in shock, dazed and unthinking; like watching another car swinging out of traffic and lunging toward you, collision inevitable even as you stared unbelieving. As the whole picture rushed toward me with frightening velocity, I heard the swelling whistle of the train, then the roar and clatter of the tons of metal grinding over steel rails.

I was right on the damn tracks; they were only ten yards ahead and the train engine was already starting across the road. There wasn't a thing I could do about it now. I was either going to make it or I'd never know I hadn't. I yelled at the top of my lungs and swerved my hurtling Cad to the right as much as I dared. The wooden guard rails crashed and splintered across the front of the Cad and cracks shivered in the windshield as the rumble and piercing whistle screeched in my ears and the train, then the roar and clatter of the tons of metal grinding down on me.

The impact with the guard rails and tracks threw me forward to the steering wheel and there was a strange, detached moment when there seemed nothing in the world but the bedlam of noise and crashing sounds and blurred black-and-white pictures. Nothing seemed to have color or reality; everything seemed to have stopped for a fragmentary moment, become suspended in the world of screeching clamor that enveloped me. There was no thought or logic or time, nothing except the reception of violent sensations, all of them blurred and unreal as they washed over me.

It lasted for a moment that was stretched in time, then suddenly the Cad was bouncing and swerving and I thought I'd been hit. I didn't know what had happened until I saw that the car was still racing ahead, right tires skidding in the dirt at the edge of the asphalt pavement. The car swerved, the wheel almost wrenched itself from my hands as I fought it, jerked at it as the car slued crazily and then steadied again far over on the left side of the highway.

Even then it was difficult to realize that I'd made it, slipped past the onrushing train, and that the danger of sudden, horrible collision was over. I didn't glance at the rear-view mirror. I was hunched over, squinting through a relatively clear space in the cracked windshield. I was almost at the location now, and for the first time it occurred to me that the police car couldn't possibly have followed. I was alone, and if there was anything yet to be done up ahead of me, I was the only one who could do it. There wasn't even the wail of the siren carrying ahead to stop Genova now.

I hit the dirt road and swung into it as I let up on the accelerator, then shoved it down again. At the clearing I saw Sherry's new Ford, the door standing open, the car empty. There was nobody in sight. Obviously Genova would have sent all the others away. I skidded to a stop, got out, and glanced around; then with my gun in my hand I ran into the trees, their shadows lengthened now into almost solid pools of darkness as the sun slipped nearly out of sight behind the horizon. It would soon be night.

I stopped and listened. There wasn't a sound except unfamiliar insect noises and the chirp of crickets. The heavy quietness here in the murky shadows seemed almost to throb against my ears after the noise and rumble and shrill protest of skidding tires of a moment ago. I was still so unnerved and shocked by what had just happened that it was difficult for me to think clearly. I moved farther into the trees with a pulse ticking suddenly in my throat, trying to reason, wondering where Genova was with Sherry. There was the lake—any place in the heavy brush, for that matter. A body could lie here undiscovered forever until it crumbled into dust.

Then, with the clammy surge of new panic over my flesh, I suddenly knew where Genova would take her. The cliff where I'd stood this morning, dizzy, looking down the sheer face to the rocks below. The sickening picture flashed through my mind of Sherry wavering on the cliff's edge. Genova hurling her body forward, and the terrified scream bursting from her soft lips as she plummeted downward.

And then she screamed.

The scream split the silence, tore it apart with a cry of infinite teror that seared itself into my brain even as I ran toward it, ran toward the cliff. I ripped through the brush shouting, yelling Genova's name, and roaring curses and obscenities as I reached the last fringe of brush and burst through.

Genova stood on my left, fifteen feet away from me on the cliffs edge, looking in the gathering darkness more like a silhouette than a man. Sherry was another silhouette crumpled at his feet on her hands and knees, shaking her head slowly back and forth.

He had heard me shouting and crashing through the brush toward him and had turned to face me. As he saw me he raised the gun in his hand and fired. Red flame spat toward me and I felt the slap of the bullet as it raked my side. I flipped up my Colt as Genova fired hastily again and missed, then he whirled toward Sherry as she tried to rise to her feet.

I snapped a shot at him, triggered the gun again as I saw his body jerk. I fired twice more and saw the black splash of bone and blood from his skull as he half lifted his hands and then fell forward like a rag man. He brushed the cliff's edge and then fell over it, falling voiceless and with no sound until his body thudded into the rocks below.

I jumped toward Sherry, pain tearing at my side as I moved, and then I grabbed her, pulled her to me as her eyes rolled back in her head and she went completely limp in my arms

Minutes later her eyes opened and went wide, then closed again for long seconds. Finally she opened them again and I said, “You're all right, honey. Say hello to me.”

She let out a long quavering breath. “Oh, golly,” she said. “Oh, golly. I didn't guess until he brought me—” she looked around at the cliffs edge a few feet away—"brought me here. I started to run and he grabbed me and I screamed. He hit me.” She put a hand to her dark hair. I put my hand there and could feel the dampness where the skin had been gashed. “I didn't go out,” she said, “but my legs just went from under me. I thought I was...” She shuddered.

“Forget about it for now, Sherry. It's all over.” I looked at her huddled in my arms, her blouse torn half off, a small scratch on her smooth skin.

“Honey,” I said, “you look like the gal who was chased by the greeble.”

She looked up at me and finally a small, soft smile curved on her lips. “That's me,” she said. “Betty Greeble.”

It was pretty horrible. As a matter of fact, it was almost disgusting. But I didn't care; I knew now that Sherry was all right.

The sirens shrilled and came closer as the last faint glow seemed to fade from the sky. Now they came. I waited till they stopped out where our cars were, then I lifted my gun in the air and pulled the trigger. It went click a couple of times on empty cartridges. Well, the hell with it; the police would find us eventually. I pulled Sherry closer to me. I didn't care if it took them a little while.

Chapter Sixteen

I RANG the doorbell at the Fanny Hillman residence and waited for Fanny to answer it. I'd spent almost three hours downtown at Homicide, and when I left Oscar Swallow was still talking, his accent getting a mite blurred after admitting his literary piracy and explaining that, months before, Zoe had seen the old copy of Fanta Science on his desk one noon while he was brushing up on his brain picking, flipped through it and commented on his taste in reading, then tossed it back to him. Swallow had hoped she'd forgotten about it, but obviously she hadn't, and had later realized its significance when she became suspicious of him. Also at Homicide I'd found the pictures of my two torpedoes from the jungle, and a call was out on them now.

I heard footsteps thumping toward the door. I was anxious to get this interview over with and out of the way: Sherry was waiting for me at her house, busily squeezing oranges. Also, this was the last item on my schedule. I'd phoned Bondhelm to inform him that the case was concluded, and further to inform him somewhat gleefully that even though “Jungle Girl” wasn't yet past the 3-per-cent mark, he had a movie on his hands that was going to require the extraction of healthy sums from his pocket. I knew he'd extract them, however grudgingly, to protect his already large investment, and I was gleeful because this meant, in a way, that Bondhelm was now working for me. Then I called Raul. He was so pleased to learn the mess was cleared up that he chortled happily that he and Evelyn were moving to a smaller house out in the valley—with no pool. Oh, yeah. I made him promise faithfully that he would personally recover the celluloid record of my movie debut, and hand it to me.

There had been one previous phone call, too, made shortly after the police, one of whom was a friend of mine, found Sherry and me in the jungle. And I was itching to tell Fanny about that one.

The door opened and Fanny hung her unbelievable puss outside. I hadn't noticed before, but her complexion looked as if the moths had been at it.

“Why, hi there, Fanny,” I said brightly. “What's new?”

She let out a sort of bleat and then said, “What do you want?” She made even that sound nasty.

“Sorry I couldn't get up to your office like I promised,” I said. “But I didn't want to bring a dead man to see you.”

She blinked at me, closing her eyes and then opening them slowly. It was very much like two moles coming out of their holes. “Dead man?” she said. Apparently she was thinking.

“Uh-huh. I came over to tell you about it. O.K.?”

She looked puzzled, but she opened the door and I went inside. She sat down and I noticed that she was still fully dressed except for slippers on her feet. She looked at me, trying to smile, but it was difficult for her because she wasn't used to it. I think she sensed a story. That's what I hoped she sensed.

“Well, Mr. Scott,” she said, sickening-sweet now. “Dead man? Then you did know who it was?”

“I found out. I thought you'd be interested since you made such a to-do about it in your column. Such a pleasant to-do.”

One corner of her halfhearted smile slipped nearly to her double chin, but she kept trying. “Tell me about it, Mr. Scott. Shell. Who was it? Was it Raul Evans?”

“Why him?” I didn't wait for an answer but said, “Oh, I'll tell you about it. After you tell me a couple of things. Who tipped you about the beef King and I had? And after I first talked to you, didn't you phone Genova?”

This matter of who phoned whom in the Hollywood gossip garble was almost squared away in my mind now, since I'd learned in talking both to Samson and to Bondhelm that my client's advance info had come from a little lovely whom he'd helped to get a part in the film: bouncing Dot English, who appreciated favors. And repaid them one way or another, or both ways. But I still wanted to clear up that first shot at me and what followed it. I said, “That's all I want, then I'll give you the gory details.”

She thought about it for almost a minute. Then she said, “King phoned me himself after the party—actors die without publicity, you know.” I didn't mention that it was lying publicity. “About my phoning Genova—well, yes, I did phone him. Just to see if he had anything for my column.”

This old blabbermouth had almost been the death of me. I said sweetly, “And did you by any chance just happen to mention that I had the case all wrapped up and was speeding merrily to the D.A.'s?”

“Oh, Mr. Scott. Of course not. How silly. Now tell me, who was it? What happened?”

I wiggled a finger at her. “First, what did you say to Genova, dear?”

She frowned. “Well, I did mention that you seemed very confident. And of course I told him what you'd said to me. Naturally he'd be interested, since it might affect his movie so profoundly.”

“Naturally,” I said. “He was so naturally interested that he sent a little man out to shoot me. A little man he already had tailing me. Almost got me, too. Isn't that nice?” I managed to laugh, ha-ha. “Yes, indeed. You almost got me killed, dearie. Isn't this fun?”

Her face sagged. “You ... you mean he—”

“That's what I mean. And—this will kill you Fanny—a little while after I left you and got shot at, I walked into Genova's office. Probably his little man had already phoned in to say he'd missed me, and I started right in asking Genova embarrassing questions—embarrassing because he'd murdered Zoe Townsend. He was so disappointed to see me still alive that he called in his little man and had him try again at the studio. Isn't this a scream?” She didn't think it was a scream. I wasn't laughing ha-ha any more, either. I said, “Genova's all mashed up now, lady, and he's got some bullet holes in him that I put there.” I talked a little longer. I'd made a deal with this gal, so I gave her the important parts of the story, then turned and went to the door and opened it.

“There it is,” I said. “Biggest story Hollywood's had for quite a spell.”

She shut her mouth, opened it, her brain cell busy. “Mr. Scott,” she called, rising out of her chair. “Is this ... I mean, could it be—exclusive?”

“Exclusive? The story?” I yanked out the knife she'd left in my back and handed it to her. “Hell, no, lady. If it hadn't been for King's giving you a bunch of wrong dope, and your swallowing it, the little talk might have been exclusive.” I shook my head. “You know, if I were you I'd be very angry with Douglas King. Mainly because of him you'll be able to read the exclusive Shell Scott story in the Times. I phoned it all in, in detail, several hours ago. To Hedda Hopper.”

She just plain fell back in her chair.

Maybe King and I weren't through yet, but I was dying to read what Fanny would have to say about him in tomorrow's Crier. I went out. Well, that was off my mind. Now I could concentrate on Sherry.

Sherry opened the door and beamed at me. “All through, darling?”

“All through.” She had one of those orange concoctions in her hand. “Where's my drink?” I asked her.

She waved her hand toward the bedroom. “In there.”

I followed her into the bedroom and picked up my glass. It was on a little table beside the bed, along with a pitcher of orange juice and a quart of gin. And me a bourbon-and-water man. Oh, well.

I pointed toward the table and grinned at Sherry. “We both need this awful stuff, I think. I'm pretty well banged up, myself, but you're the one who got knocked on the head. Usually it's me.” Both of us were doctored, professionally bandaged, and somewhat creaky.

She didn't say anything. She smiled, soft lips sweetly curving, clear blue eyes half closed but merry.

I cleared my throat. Didn't know when I'd been so tired. Really couldn't remember when I'd been so tired. Seemed like I hurt all over. “Yes, sirree,” I said. “We're sure banged up, I guess. Practically cripples. Neither of us can move, hardly.”

Sherry stepped slowly toward me, put her glass on the little table. I almost forgot to mention it, but she looked wonderful in that old blue robe.

“Oh, I don't know, Shell,” she said, smiling. She sighed and put her arms around my neck. Just before her parted lips touched mine she added sweetly, “I'll bet we can.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1980 by Richard S. Prather

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN 978-1-4804-9818-1

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen