The Kubla Khan Caper

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

1

From where I lay in lazy ease on a poolside chaise longue, I could see a gaggle of Bikini-clad Hollywood houris squealing and splashing in the water. On the blue-tiled deck across the pool from me half a dozen bare-midriffed nautch girls wiggled, doing what comes nautchurally.

Flame from burning torches wavered in the soft, warm wind; thin, oddly melodic music swelled from strings and reeds and pipes, filling the desert air with an almost scented sound. It was music to my ears, balm in my eyes, perfume for my nose—something fun for practically all of me.

This, I thought, was how I hoped to live when I died. With luck, however, I wouldn’t get killed tonight. Tomorrow, maybe.

I had been shot at already, earlier this evening, and I had seen sudden, brutally ugly death. But it was difficult to dwell on death in the midst of so much life; and there was really no reason, I told myself, why a man shouldn’t enjoy his work.

This was the pre-opening party, the night before the grand opening of Palm Desert’s newest and most luxurious hotel, the Kubla Khan: staggering millions of bucks’ worth of cabanas, rooms, suites, a grand ballroom and dining rooms and a convention hall, swimming pools, cocktail lounges, domes and minarets and spires. It looked like something from the Arabian Nights, plucked from the East and plunked down in the Southern California desert.

At the moment it had more of a carnival air than it would after this upcoming weekend. Colorful silken streamers were laced overhead, hanging from poles, fluttering in the sage-and-jasmine-scented breeze; and scattered about the lushly landscaped grounds were several booths, in most of which lovely ladies sold souvenirs and goodies, passed out promotional literature, or just looked gorgeous.

Nearly all of the two hundred guests were in costume, most with at least some flavor of the East—saris from India, fezzes from Turkey, robes from Morocco, even one gal wearing a Balinese dancer’s headdress. I looked rather resplendent myself, I thought, with my six feet, two inches and two hundred and six pounds clad in a long scarlet jacket and keen white pants with little red stripes down their sides, on my chest lots of crackerjack medals and hero awards—also rented, of course—and, concealing my short-cropped and springy white hair, a wildly impressive white turban.

The effect of sheer beauty was perhaps marred only by the bent-down-at-the-ends inverted-V eyebrows over my gray eyes, since those brows were also obtrusively white and thus, in a bad light, might give rise to suspicion that part of the turban had fallen off and stuck on my forehead. And naturally, nothing could be done about my twice-broken and still bent nose, the bullet-clipped ear top, the fine scar over my right eye, and the general impression of recent catastrophe I’ve been told I sometimes present. But I felt, nonetheless, that I had done the best I could with myself; and I was enjoying the evening. So far.

Tonight’s festivities were not open to the general public—which, ordinarily, would have left me out—but were exclusively for invited guests. Tomorrow the hoi polloi could get in but only after the official ceremonies and ribbon-cutting at noon—which ceremonies would be attended by Hollywood stars and TV celebrities, political personalities who would probably make speeches, numerous VIP’s and potent people. There would be all kinds of reporters and columnists and such; the Mayor of Palm Springs would be present, and would make a speech; even the Governor of California would be in attendance if he could get here, and would make a speech.

All of that would be followed by booze in the six bars, buffets by the two swimming pools, dancing to three bands, and what might turn out to be the most stupendous beauty contest in the history of voluptuous statistics.

That was where I came in.

I was going to be one of the judges of that stupendous beauty contest.

At least that was my “cover.”

It is known throughout most of Southern California that I am a private detective—the Shell Scott of Sheldon Scott, Investigations—but it is also known that Shell Scott would practically dislocate his jaw saying “Yes!” if asked to judge a stupendous beauty contest. It was thus the sly hope of my client—who was already in jail; I wasn’t doing too well for him yet—that celebrants hereabouts would assume I was merely here for eyeing and not private-eyeing.

Naturally, then, I had to do a lot of eyeing. It was easy.

Most of the lovelies who would display their epidermis, charms and doodads in the contest tomorrow were already displaying not merely the hot hors d’oeuvres but practically the full course, and I’d been having lots of fun. For example, at two adjacent booths were a gal selling kisses and a gal selling cookies, and I wasn’t going to buy any cookies.

If my client could just get sprung from the can before he had the cerebral hemorrhage which had presumably been creeping up on him earlier, and I could keep getting missed when guys shot at me, and solve two murders by noon tomorrow—yeah, I had nearly sixteen hours in which to do all that—I figured I could really enjoy this affair.

For a moment I thought of my client, and wondered if the local law really believed he’d been murdering people. I kind of wondered if he had, myself. It occurred to me that if he had killed two people, or even only one, maybe I shouldn’t have taken the case.

I had taken it, however, so it was up to me to earn my hundred dollars. Or ten thousand dollars. It depended. Part of it depended on my getting up off my behind, leaving this dandy chaise longue, and doing something extremely clever—as soon as I thought of something. Part of it depended on Ormand Monaco.

Ormand Monaco was the owner of the Kubla Khan, the guy responsible for this Oriental saturnalia. He was the guy who very much wanted to be here greeting his guests, beaming upon assorted beauties, drinking his prize brandy and taking well-deserved bows. He was also the guy now languishing in the bastille, my apoplectic client.

He had not been apoplectic when he phoned me this afternoon. Not at all. He had been almost calm. Worried, yes; concerned; but not really in a sweat. Not then. Not when he’d hired me to bring peace and gladness into his life.

He’d called me from Palm Desert at 2 p.m. This afternoon, Friday, a zesty Friday in September. I’d finished reading a book and was intently watching, as is my custom when affairs are not pressing, the fish atop my office bookcase; Fish—guppies. I’m nuts about guppies.

The phone rang. I walked to the big beat-up mahogany desk and grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” I said. “Shell Scott.”

The voice was mellow, pleasant, almost drawling. “Mr. Scott. My name is Ormand Monaco. . . .”

2

I knew the name Ormand Monaco.

Most people in this part of the world knew it. I guess people even in that part of the world knew it. Lately the name—and the name of his new hotel near Palm Springs, the Kubla Kahn—had been much in the news, especially in the society and movie-TV columns.

“How do you do, Mr. Monaco,” I said, wondering what a guy who was supposed to have several million dollars, two Continentals and a Cadillac, three still-friendly ex-wives and numerous possibilities in the running for number four, plus a fantastic hotel in Palm Desert would want with me.

He told me. “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “I presume you know I am about to open the Kubla Khan here in Palm Desert?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen a little more in the news about various wars, but except for—”

“The Khan will open to the public tomorrow, but I have invited approximately two hundred guests to a more intimate frolic tonight.”

I liked that: “more intimate frolic.” The more intimate frolics get, the better I like them. It was going to be quite a bash, undoubtedly. Stupendous beauty contest and everything. I was beginning to hope Mr. Monaco had called to invite me. Could it be?

“These guests will be primarily members of the fourth estate,” he went on. “Newspaper men and women, columnists, television commentators. And personal friends of mine like the Palm Springs Mayor and the Governor of California.”

“That’s nice,” I said glumly.

“And of course Mr. Simon Leaf and members of his entourage.”

Simon Leaf—as all who can read the papers without wiggling their ears knew—was, in his own words, a dynamic, forceful, brilliant genius. He had produced several movies, among them the award-winning Rape!, and was now preparing to take over the television industry. At least he was scheduled to produce—in fact was in the act of producing—a television series already set for prime time later in the silly-Nielsen season. It was tentatively titled “Flesh,” a subject which it was presumed would be of some interest to a number of citizens even though they might be possessed of less dynamism, force, brilliance, and genius than Simon Leaf. Which is not to imply that Simon Leaf was not himself interested in flesh. There had been rumors which I will not repeat, in case the kiddies are listening.

Oddly, I was remembering that the prime reason for the much-heralded Kubla Khan contest was to uncover wildly shapely and luscious tomatoes who would be rewarded with parts in the TV series, while perhaps in return Simon would be rewarded with parts of the wildly shapely and luscious tomatoes, when Mr. Monaco said, “I presume you are familiar with the talent search which will be concluded here tomorrow?”

Talent search, he called it; but I said, “I am indeed.”

“It is to be the culmination of tomorrow’s festivities. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that the proceedings be conducted with dignity and efficiency, with all propriety, and without even the breath of scandal. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. I guess. On the other hand, I’ve seen some of Mr. Leaf’s epics and got the impression he should rename Simon Leaf Productions and call it Fig—”

“Mr. Scott, levity is—”

“Maybe a little scan—”

“Mr. Scott!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Scott, I have been informed of your ability, integrity, courage, and occasionally unorthodox methods of achieving results satisfactory to your clients. I am assured you fear neither God nor Devil, man nor beast. That is why I phoned you. However, I have also been informed that on occasion your tongue runs away with your mouth, and that you have been known to be blunt to the point of producing physical pain in the ears of individuals to whom you were not even speaking. I must, nonetheless, ask you to shut up, since when I speak, I do not enjoy hearing anybody else speaking.”

I had to chuckle. This Monaco could get revved up and stop drawling after all, and I liked him better when he did. “I’ll do my best, sir,” I said.

“Splendid. Now, you can understand that with several score representatives of the press, television commentators, and a number of important personages present, anything untoward which might occur tonight or tomorrow would inevitably receive the widest publicity. Further, adverse publicity of any nature might well be damaging to the success of this enterprise—damaging and possibly fatal.”

He paused.

“Yes,” I said.

“Thirty-six lovely girls arrived here at the Khan Wednesday and yesterday. They are the contestants selected from all over the country to participate in the finals of the talent search tomorrow. One of them seems to be missing.”

He paused again.

“Seems?” I said.

“I spoke to her when she arrived Wednesday morning. She is an extremely beautiful girl. I have as yet found no one who has seen her since Thursday, yesterday. She did not sleep in her bed last night.”

“Well, if she’s such an extremely beautiful tomato, perhaps—”

“Mr. Scott.”

“Yeah.”

“She has apparently not been seen today by anyone here so far as I can discover. Perhaps there is no need for concern. But I have several million dollars invested in the Kubla Khan and therefore am concerned. I want you to find out what has happened to the girl—if anything. Guests are already arriving. The private party begins at eight tonight. Tomorrow at noon the grand-opening ceremonies will be held here. Clearly time is of the essence. Will you come immediately?”

“Immediately.”

“Excellent. It is essential, of course, that there be no scandal or unpleasant publicity which can by any means be avoided, not even the hint of scandal. Therefore I do not wish it known that I have employed you, Mr. Scott—”

“Hey, wait a—”

“Or any other detective. Knowledge that I have employed an investigator would inevitably give rise to the conclusion that I wish something investigated. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

“Thus your alleged purpose in coming to the Kubla Khan will be to participate in the judging of tomorrow’s talent search. Naturally you will thus be free to mingle with—”

“I’m going to be a judge?” I said.

“—all the guests, attend the party, the various ceremonies and functions, and should be able—”

“I’m going to be a judge,” I said.

“—to ask certain questions without appearing to be conducting an inquiry. In your official capacity you would naturally be interested in the whereabouts of Miss Jax.”

“Miss Jax?”

“Jeanne Jax. She is the missing girl”

“I’ll find her.”

“That’s the spirit. I will be in my home, at the end of Yucca Road here in Palm Desert, until 5 p.m. When you arrive I will give you any other information you need, and we will discuss your fee.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“I shall expect you, Mr. Scott?”

“I’ll be there before five, Mr. Monaco.”

He added a few bits, told me to bring a costume for the party tonight, impressed me with the essence of time and such. Then we hung up.

“I’m going to be a judge,” I said.

Palm Desert is only a ninety-minute drive from Los Angeles, but before leaving town I had to stop at home, which is the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore in Hollywood, where I packed some clothes and grabbed needed odds and ends such as razor blades and swim trunks. Then I stopped at a costume-rental shop on Sunset Boulevard, and was on my way.

By 4:30 p.m. I was zooming along Desert View Drive in my robin’s-egg-blue Cadillac, with the top down and a hot wind like a sauna on my face. According to Monaco’s directions, I figured I was six or seven miles from his home, and the Kubla Khan should be only about a mile ahead.

And then there it was.

I’d driven through Palm Springs and veered left, and for several miles had been traveling through a lot of nothing except gently rolling desert, sage and shrubs and sand, but suddenly on my left appeared the Kubla Khan.

First I saw the huge central dome, as smooth and sensually rounded as a woman’s breast, then a few tall and subtly phallic spires almost but not quite like Indian minarets. And green all around it—green of grass, of trees, of feathery palm fronds and large-leafed plants.

It was truly a beautiful sight, but strangely jarring. After the modern streets of Palm Springs, the smart shops and almost futuristic buildings, this looked like something slipped from a warp in time, unreal in the California desert. As I drove past I could see the wide front of the main building facing east, wings at the north and south slanting slightly back toward shadowed mountains behind it. On left and right were a few scattered buildings, separate and small, shaped like little mosques. As that view faded behind me it left strange, exotic words floating in my mind, names like Srinagar, and Samarkand, and Xanadu.

Xanadu . . . I remembered a girl in harlequin glasses, languorous on my living-room divan, quoting something like that to me. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran . . . “

Whoosh! A guy went past me like a bat out of hell, going like sixty—no, more like ninety; I was going about sixty myself. I guess it was a guy. The dark-blue buggy was close on my left and then swinging in ahead, swaying a bit from side to side, so speedily that I didn’t even see who was driving or recognize the make of car. Must have been a brand name, though; it was really going.

Just for the hell of it I shoved the accelerator down, curious to know if the daredevil was really hitting a hundred miles an hour. A mile slipped under the wheels, then two, and I was holding steady a couple of blocks behind him. The speedometer needle wavered from ninety-five to ninety-six. Nope, not quite a hundred, but quite a hurry. I wondered if the rest of the local citizens drove like this on the long, straight desert roads.

There wasn’t much traffic. Me and the car ahead, and one other buggy about a mile farther on. We’d been gaining on that third car steadily, but less rapidly now; I assumed its driver had spotted the maniacs behind him in his rear-view mirror and was trying to get out of the way.

And then I started wondering what the hell.

I knew Monaco lived at the end of Yucca Road, a one-lane road running left off Desert View Drive. It was about two miles up Yucca to his home, and there was only one turnoff, a dirt road swinging left about halfway up Yucca. I was already slowing down so I could turn on Desert View without leaving the road, and possibly the earth, and it was clear the car in front of me had already begun braking. That farthest car ahead had already swung left and was out of sight behind a good-sized hill, the kind of thing we call a mountain in California.

Were we all going to the same place? Must be a real exciting place, we were all in such a hurry to get there.

Yes, that’s where we seemed to be going. I swung into Yucca, last in line. Ahead and on my left the hill—it was called Moss Mountain—blocked out the sinking sun. The road wiggled like a snake, rising slightly but steadily. I never did see both cars again, but caught a glimpse of the nearer one a couple of times. Nearly a mile up Yucca the road straightened for two or three hundred yards, and I gave the Cad more gas, feeling some curiosity about the dark-blue buggy now visible ahead of me.

But then the driver braked suddenly, skidded, slid left and seemed to disappear into the mountain. I slowed, came almost to a stop at the spot where he’d turned. Dust rose and swirled lazily above a dirt road there, which rose toward a depression in Moss Mountain, perhaps the lowest spot along its rim. Near me I saw a weathered sign in the shape of an arrow pointing up the road, and the words harding ranch in black paint on the sign.

Maybe it was Papa Harding racing home to Mama. After a year at sea. Maybe not. I kept going on up Yucca Road. In another minute I caught sight of Monaco’s house, though house doesn’t seem quite the word.

It sat cupped in a hollow on the side of Moss Mountain, almost like a miniaturized—and Westernized—version of the Kubla Khan. There must have been forty rooms inside the place and the entire stock of seventeen nurseries outside it. A big chunk of the house jutted out toward me in apparent defiance of gravity, suspended in air, and beneath it was about an acre of water, either an emperor-size swimming pool or a shallow artificial lake. Tall palms rose near the water and behind the house. A black-topped drive curved past the water and ended in a hundred-foot circle at the base of stone steps leading up to the entrance.

In the circle was parked a three-year-old Buick coupé, its left-hand door open. I drove up near it, parked, and got out of the Cad. Above me, with her back to the big carved-wood doors, a woman stood, staring down at me.

I waved; she didn’t. But, after staring at me for a few seconds longer, she moved from the door and started down the stone steps.

I walked forward to meet her, but she was at the bottom of the steps by the time I reached them—skipping along at a pretty good pace, she was—and the lovely started to skip right on by me without a word.

Lovely she was, too. Tall, maybe five-eight, wearing a pale-blue skirt over flaring hips and a white blouse over raring breasts, a tan leather belt cinched tight around a waist that couldn’t have been more than twenty-one inches around. In one hand she clutched a big leather handbag the same color as the belt. Her big breasts trembled under the white cloth as she hurried past me.

“Hey,” I said, “wait a shake. Where’s the fire? Hello.”

“Hello.”

She stopped briefly, let vivid blue eyes rest on my face, then glanced around, once up toward the house, then back down the road. Her hair was cut short but was thick and full, the color of harvest-time wheat.

“Nobody home?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s funny. Mr. Monaco said he’d be here. Were you supposed to see him, miss?”

She turned and started walking toward her car.

“I’ll be seeing him later,” I said., “If you’ll give me your name I’ll tell him you—”

She’d climbed into the Buick and pulled the door shut.

Great. Luscious gal like that, and she’d said two words to me. “Hello” and “No.” I’d goofed; she’d looked lovely enough to be one of the “talent search” contestants, eager for fame and adoration, and I hadn’t even thought to tell her I was a judge. Of what use is power if you don’t use it? I asked myself.

I went up the stone steps, found a bell button, which looked a bit like a belly button, with a pearl in it, and pushed it tentatively. Somewhere inside the house a gong boomed, sort of a twuuungg, like you’d expect to hear when Fu Manchu glides through the silken curtains.

The fluttering echoes died. Nothing. I started to twungg the button again and noticed one of the big double doors was not completely closed. I pushed it and it swung open. Funny. If Monaco wasn’t home, it seemed odd he’d leave a lavish joint like this unlocked.

Below me tires crunched in bits of loose gravel on the drive. The noncommittal tomato had started her car, was heading down the blacktop toward Yucca. I shrugged, turned back to the door and looked at it, then walked inside.

“Hello!” I yelled. “Anybody home?”

Silence. Heavy silence, that was all. I walked forward over white spongy carpet, my feet barely whispering on the thick nap.

“Hello!”

If there were forty rooms in this place, it would take a while to look through all of them. Be hell if I found a dead body. Like Monaco’s, say. Or any kind of dead body.

I stood still for a moment, listening. Then I sighed, took a step forward—and felt my spine stiffen.

I’d heard a sound. Two sounds, actually. Flat, heavy, one right after the other. Not in the house—outside, down the road.

And I’d heard that sound too many times not to know what it was. Gunshots.

3

The front door was still open behind me. I spun around and jumped to it, through it and down those stone steps three and four at a time. I was in the Cad, jabbing my key at the ignition, when I heard the third shot, louder in my ears now that I was outside the house.

I cramped the wheel, raced down the drive to Yucca and into it, tires skidding. I pushed the gas pedal for half a mile, then hit the brakes. The Buick coupé was off the road on my right, fender crumpled against a huge boulder, the side of Moss Mountain dark in shadow beyond it.

As the Cad slowed I looked toward the car, around it, up the slanting side of the hill. But nothing moved that I could see. I stopped near the Buick, eased my .38 Colt Special from its clamshell holster and got out of the car, keeping low.

Nothing happened and I ran to the Buick, shoved my head past the open window and yanked it back out involuntarily.

It was awful. Half her head was gone. Blood was all over. Above the dashboard, at the base of the window, was a ragged segment of curving bone, and on it a hank of hair the color of harvest-time wheat.

I started back toward my Cadillac, and the radio-phone under its dash. The sudden sight of the girl so messily dead had shocked me, and I guess I let my guard down. The hiss of the slug near my head and the crack of the gun seemed simultaneous.

I hit the dirt and rolled, got my feet under me and stayed crouched for a moment close to the side of my Cad. The shot had come from my left, somewhere up on the hillside. I cocked the .38, then raised up, stood motionless for a second and stepped suddenly to my right.

Whoever was trying to kill me would have missed me even if I hadn’t stepped aside. The bullet was high overhead; he’d probably jerked the trigger convulsively.

But I saw the flash this time.

The rim of the hill was only about two hundred feet away, and the dart of fire blazed briefly below the rim. I had my arm extended, Colt cradled in my fist, and I swung it left a bit and up and squeezed off three shots before ducking down again. There were two more shots and I heard a clunk, but neither slug came close to me. I moved to the Cad’s rear bumper and poked my head up again—and saw him.

Only for a moment. He was high above me, outlined against the still-bright sky, running. It was a man. I snapped another shot at him but knew I missed; the slug kicked up dirt near the hill’s rim, hit a rock and whined away. Then the man was out of sight. But by then I was running myself.

I fell twice going up that damned Moss Mountain, slick leather of my shoes slipping on rocks. But I got to the top bleeding only from the palm of my left hand. And a lot of good that speedy climb did me. The far side of the hill was little different from the first side, slanting down for two or three hundred feet to a dirt road, with dust swirling lazily above it. Far to my left a car raced away, going like sixty; or maybe like ninety.

I swore, wrapped a handkerchief around my left hand, and started down the mountain.

Before the deputies arrived I looked at the dead woman again. And at her car. She’d been hit in the chin with one slug, and there was a bullet hole in the right-hand door of the Buick, opposite where the driver would sit. So that explained the third shot.

Obviously one of those first two bullets had hit the car and the other bad slammed her chin like a club; that would have sent her off the road, probably knocked her unconscious. So the killer had run to the car from wherever he’d been lying in wait and had, in order to be very very sure, carefully fired another slug into her brain. They must have been heavy-caliber bullets, I thought. And for a moment I thought of something else: how lovely that face had been.

Within minutes after I’d used the radio-phone in my Cad to call the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department office in nearby Indio, the first black-and-white sheriff’s car arrived. In it was a tall, burly sergeant named Torgesen, who turned out to be the day-watch commander, still working. Right after him came another car driven by a deputy called Mike.

Torgesen spoke briefly to me and asked a few questions, looked into the Buick, glanced around. Then the sergeant walked over to me, notebook and pencil in his hand.

“You say your name’s Scott?”

“That’s right. Shell Scott.” I showed him my wallet card attesting to the fact that I was a private investigator licensed by the State of California.

He looked at it, rolled his eyes up to my face, then back to the card. “L.A., huh?” he said gently.

“Right.”

“What was your relation with her, Scott?” He moved his head toward the blue Buick.

“No relation. Never saw her before. Sergeant.”

“You know who she is?”

“Nope. I told you, I heard the shots while I was up at Mr. Monaco’s place, got here as fast as I could. As you can see, it wasn’t fast enough.”

The deputy called Mike had walked up to us while I was speaking. When I mentioned again that I’d been at Monaco’s house, he and the sergeant exchanged quick looks.

Mike said, “No registration in the car. Her bag’s open, bunch of junk spilled on the floor mat.”

Torgesen nodded, looking at me. “You touch anything, Scott?”

“Not me. I looked inside the car, that’s all.”

“You saw the man who killed her?”

“I saw a man, and he must have been the killer. He took a bunch of shots at me then scrammed over the hill.”

“What did he look like?”

“Beats me. I got just a glimpse of his back when he took off. Guy in a dark suit, and that’s it.”

“What were you doing at Monaco’s?”

My client—that is, my client then—had stressed his desire that nobody know he was hiring an investigator. But I couldn’t very well hold back that information now. So I said, “Mr. Monaco phoned me earlier this afternoon and asked me to meet him here before five o’clock . . . .” I let it trail off, wondering why Monaco hadn’t been there to greet me.

Torgesen was apparently thinking along the same lines.

He said, “Mr. Monaco told you he’d be at his home until five?”

“That’s what he said.”

“You say the place was empty, right?”

“No. What I told you was that I found the door open and went inside. Before I could look around the place I heard the shots.”

“The woman was at the door when you got there?”

“Yes. But she would hardly have had time to go in. I got there shortly after she did.”

He chewed on his lower lip, jotted a line in his notebook. Torgesen glanced down Yucca Road. A white car was coming toward us. When it got closer I could see it was a new Lincoln Continental.

Still looking at it, Torgesen said to me, “You’ve got no idea where Mr. Monaco was when you were up there, huh?”

“No idea. I suppose he could have been in the house.

That joint’s big enough—”

“No, here he comes now,” Torgesen said. “He always drives that big Connie.”

The Continental slowed, then stopped as it drew abreast of us. I saw a man looking out, an expression that might have been alarm on his narrow tanned face. His eyes fell on me, and the white hair and brows, plus my size, must have told him something, but I couldn’t tell from his expression if it was something he’d been eager to hear. Then he parked, stepped out of the car and walked toward us, and I was getting my first look at Ormand Monaco.

He was tall and had pretty good shoulders, but he looked unusually lean and elongated, as if he was originally half that size and had been stretched. He looked like a man with narrow bones covered by only a little flesh, and thin fat. But he was not a bad-looking man. In fact, he possessed a rather cadaverous handsomeness like a starving Basil Rathbone or one-half of a Vincent Price. He was wearing a pearl-gray suit, beautifully tailored and faintly iridescent, a soft white shirt, and a gray tie with a knot in it the size of a bean.

He stopped before us, glanced at me and then turned to the sergeant. “It’s Torgesen, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the matter here?”

“There’s been a shooting, Mr. Monaco.”

Monaco had slightly wavy gray hair, full at the temples—perhaps to make his head look wider—and delicate brown brows flecked with gray. The brows pulled down over dark, almost black eyes, and without speaking he stepped toward the Buick. Torgesen followed him, and I tagged along.

I watched Monaco’s face when he looked into the car, and his sharp features twisted into angles of shock and dismay. He jerked his head back, just as I had done, but then looked again. After several seconds he swallowed, stepped back and turned away from the car.

“My God,” he said. He started to say something to Torgesen, hesitated, then turned to me.

“Well, you’ve found her, Mr. Scott. That’s Jeanne Jax.”

4

It didn’t really surprise me. Maybe it should have.

Monaco explained briefly to Sergeant Torgesen that he had asked me here from Los Angeles to find the girl now dead in the car, and mentioned that she’d been missing, or at least not in evidence at the Kubla Khan for some time.

So I figured it would be OK for me to ask a question or two. I said to Monaco, “Do you know why she wanted to see you?”

“See me? I don’t understand.” He seemed genuinely surprised. After a moment he glanced toward the car, then up one-lane Yucca Road. “She was coming back from my home, is that it?”

“Uh-huh. I was there, and saw her, but she wasn’t very communicative. I thought maybe you’d know what she wanted.”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Torgesen had been standing silently next to us, rubbing a thick-fingered hand along the side of his chin.

Quietly he asked, “Where were you, Mr. Monaco?”

“Where was I? Why, I merely went for a drive, Sergeant.”

“Weren’t you expecting Mr. Scott?”

Monaco flicked a glance at me. “Yes, I was.”

“But you went for a drive.” There was a little edge to Torgesen’s tone. He sounded sort of respectfully nasty, or perhaps politely disbelieving. Maybe it was just his technique.

Monaco got the point of the needle, however, and thin ridges of muscle bulged at the back of his jaws, and the brows pulled down over his eyes again. It was becoming clear that Monaco did not like to be on that end of the needle.

Slowly he turned to gaze levelly at Torgesen. “Is there something wrong with that. Sergeant?” he said icily. “Does it disturb you?”

“No, sir.”

“I merely wanted to relax a little,” Monaco continued, “from the pressures of the imminent opening of my new hotel. The Kubla Khan opens to the public tomorrow, and I’ve arranged for a little party tonight.”

“I know,” Torgesen said pleasantly. “But I’d still like to know where you were, Mr. Monaco. When you were driving. For relaxation.”

“I fail to see how that can possibly be of interest to you. However, I drove along Desert View, past the Khan, over some of the roads at the base of the mountains. . . . Merely driving and thinking.”

“Would you mind coming down to the office with us, Mr. Monaco? Just to answer a few questions.”

That one stuck me. I’d assumed Sergeant Torgesen was simply laying on the heavy official hand—either out of habit or for some reason I hadn’t been able to guess.

But the blunt “invitation” shocked me.

Monaco pulled in a deep breath and blew the air out his nose. Those little muscles bulged, the eyebrows descended, his lips thinned and he stuck his head forward toward Torgesen. “If you,” he said crisply—and I was reminded of his little speech to me on the phone earlier—”from the depths of your abysmal ignorance of me and my character, have assumed that I had anything to do with the death of Jeanne Jax—”

“I wasn’t thinking about her,” Torgesen interrupted. “I wanted to ask you a couple questions about Sardis.”

I blinked. By now, of course, I was all at sea. I wasn’t even sure what he’d said, but it had sounded like “Sardis.”

Ormand Monaco pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and fumbled for a cigarette—and fumbled is the word. Apparently he intended to light up a smoke, casually draw upon it, and possibly blow smoke at Torgesen. But whatever he intended, I’m sure it wasn’t what he did.

He flipped the pack to lift up a cigarette, but the movement was not very casual or smooth. Two of the weeds fell out and dropped to the ground. Monaco started to grab for them, caught himself. “Ephrim?” he said.

Then he stooped, picked up the cigarettes, getting dirt on his fingers, put one of the smokes back and stuck the other between his lips. “What about Ephrim?” he said.

He wiped his fingers on his trousers, leaving a faint smear on the iridescent gray cloth.

I felt almost sorry for him. I didn’t know what the hell—or who—this Sardis was, or Ephrim, or whatever they were talking about. It was beyond doubt, however, that Monaco not only knew but was very close to emptying his bladder. When he lit the cigarette his hand trembled.

Torgesen didn’t raise his voice or change his tone.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Ephrun Sardis. You drove out to his place, didn’t you, Mr. Monaco?”

“Certainly not!” It was a little too emphatic. “I may have driven by there, but . . . Yes, I believe I did drive along Ocotillo Lane. Yes. But I didn’t call on Ephrim today.” He paused, dragged on his cigarette, getting more of his poise back. “Why do you ask. Sergeant?”

“We got a, well, a report you were there—”

“Sergeant Torgesen, if I have to tell you again—”

For the first time the sergeant backtracked a little. Not much. “That you were in the vicinity,” he said. “You do admit you were there, or near there.”

“Perhaps I did drive by the Sardis estate. What difference does it make? I fail to understand why, when a young girl has just been brutally killed, you insist on talking to me about Ephrim.”

“He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead. Somebody shot him.”

Torgesen’s eyes were on Monaco’s face. His lids drooped, and he looked sleepy, but he wasn’t sleepy. He looked to me like a guy who wasn’t ever sleepy.

Monaco gasped. “Dead? My God! Ephrim? But that’s impossible. How? You say somebody shot him?”

“You didn’t know he’d been killed?”

“Of course not. My God, Ephrim.”

Again he overdid it. It was so bad I wondered for a moment if he was deliberately making himself look like a ham trying out at the community playhouse. But maybe he simply couldn’t pull off the act and pretend to something he didn’t believe. It’s like that sometimes, with men who ordinarily are honest. That I didn’t know about Monaco. But one thing I did know: he was lying.

“Under the circumstances, then, you won’t mind coming downtown?”

“Certainly not. I’ll be glad to. I didn’t understand before, Sergeant.” He dragged on his cigarette, then dropped it and ground it beneath a rubber-soled gray shoe.

He took a while grinding the cigarette out, and when he looked up at Torgesen again he said, “I presume it is all right if I speak to Mr. Scott first.”

“OK.”

Monaco strode across the street to his white sedan. When I stopped near him he looked at me and said, “This is a sonofabitch.”

I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t exactly asking me, anyway.

“Damn it,” he said. “Why—” But he cut it off, and that was the last extraneous remark he made. He took a long, slow breath and started talking, his words crisp and to the point, nothing wasted. And Monaco was practically at the opposite pole now from the man I’d seen fumbling with those cigarettes.

He puzzled me, but intrigued me as well. I could almost feel the power in the man, as if beneath the thin and angular frame were millions of ingeniously constructed little motors whirring, sending out pulses of energy that made the air thicker and heavier where he stood.

Yeah, I was thinking, Ormand Monaco struck me as the kind of man who could build a hotel or a corporation. Or bore a hole through a mountain, or maybe through people if it came to that.

He said, “You know why I phoned you. Forget that. It is now more important that you determine who murdered Jeanne Jax. And Ephrim Sardis. And why. If you agree, go at once to the Kubla Khan and tell Jerry Vail what has happened. He is my assistant, and in my absence will be in charge there. Do not speak of this to anyone else. I’ll pay double your usual fee, and a handsome bonus for results. All right?”

“Easy,” I said. “Hell, I just got here, and bang, all of a sudden—”

“Make up your mind, Mr. Scott.”

He was all charged up for sure. I wondered if he was going to float in the air. “A couple things first, Mr. Monaco. And a question or two. Sergeant Torgesen didn’t actually say this Sardis was murdered.”

“He said he was dead. That he was shot. He did not intimate that Ephrim shot himself.”

“OK. How did you know the dead girl was Jeanne Jax?”

He frowned, as if wondering what I meant. Then his face cleared. “I see. Yes, she was disfigured. At first I really wasn’t sure. But I could see her face, her profile and a little more. It was she. Jeanne had a small mole beneath her left ear—which is visible now. There is a large topaz ring on the little finger of the dead girl’s left hand, and I saw a similar—the same ring on Jeanne Jax’s hand. There is no question, that is Jeanne Jax in the car.”

“OK. Who in blazes is Ephrim Sardis?”

“He is—was—one of the wealthiest men in the country. Certainly one of the half-dozen richest men in California. He avoided publicity and notoriety, but was active in a great many endeavors of much value to the state’s economy. He contributed to political campaigns, to at least a hundred charities, and—”

He stopped and the taut flesh of his face seemed to sag a little. “He was a fine man,” Monaco went on more slowly. “A few attacked him, claimed he was unscrupulous, charged him falsely with certain illegalities. But that was inevitable, in view of his great wealth. He was a fine man, and he was my friend.”

Then Monaco pulled his brows down and looked at me. “I haven’t time for a lengthy discussion of Ephrim. Get Jerry Vail—and his wife—to give you what information you need.” He paused, then said, “Well?”

He wasn’t giving me much time to weigh all the pros and cons of the situation, fiddle with the delicate nuances of the problem, and maybe back out. So, after a split second, I took a deep breath and said, “Done.”

“Mr. Scott, please. What is your usual fee?”

“Hundred a day, and I’ll pay my own expenses. Unless there’s something unusual—”

“Unusual?”

“Well, like if I sink a submarine or something—”

“How could you sink—”

“It was merely a figure of speech. But I do remember once when—”

“I’ll pay double your usual fee.” Monaco stopped suddenly, thought a moment. “No. Your usual fee. But I will pay you ten thousand dollars on one condition.”

“Well, that sounds pretty. What condition?”

“That you have clarified this entire situation, removed any ridiculous suspicion from me personally determined who killed Ephrim and Miss Jax—essentially that you have settled and solved everything by noon tomorrow.”

“By noon tomorrow, huh? By—Are you nuts?”

“Twelve noon, tomorrow, Saturday. For ten thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, you’re nuts.”

“Yes or no, Mr. Scott.”

“I’ve got about as much chance—”

“Mr. Scott!”

“Yeah, sure. Why not? You’ve hired a detective. For ten thousand bucks. If I don’t wrap this up before, say, 11 a.m., maybe I can stretch the case out for a hundred days or so—”

“Be sure to tell Jerry Vail to contact our attorneys immediately. I’m well known here and doubt I’ll be held for any length of time, but even ten minutes would be too much. It is important that I be at the Khan before eight tonight. Jerry is not nearly as competent as I would like, but—” He cut it off, shaking his head.

“I’ll tell him.” I pulled out a cigarette, remembering the way Monaco had sprayed his around, and said, “But why noon tomorrow?”

“Several reasons, Mr. Scott, most of which should be obvious to you if you are, as you allege, a detective. I do not enjoy having the Sergeant Torgesens of the world speak to me with sneers in their voices. I cannot afford—I simply cannot allow—any scandal to become associated with me. It will, moreover, be calamitous if, with dozens of reporters and television people even now present at the Khan, they should turn their energies and typewriters and- cameras toward the ugliness of murder and foul deeds rather than the beauty and desirability of my hotel.”

“Understood. But one of the lovelies in your tomato contest just got knocked off, and that isn’t the kind of tidbit reporters overlook. Not to mention whatever happened to Sardis—”

“I have indicated that I am not without some influence, Mr. Scott. There is a very good chance I will be able to arrange that there be no public awareness of these occurrences at least overnight. Possibly until noon tomorrow. But I doubt that even I can expect more than that. Which is why you must mention this—these deaths to no one except Jerry Vail.”

“I see.”

“There is another important factor. The official ceremonies announcing the opening of the Kubla Khan will be held at noon tomorrow, Saturday. In addition to the usual hotel guests, to contestants who will later take part in the talent-search finals and judges of those finals, and to the newsmen and others I have mentioned, there will be present many very important personages whom I personally invited to attend. I should like to be in attendance, at my own hotel, for those ceremonies, myself.” He paused. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Sure,” I said.

He opened the door of his Continental, climbed behind the wheel and waved a hand toward Sergeant Tor-gesen, indicating he was ready any time the sergeant wanted to come along.

I leaned on the door and looked in at Monaco. “Something bothers me,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You were lying to Torgesen.”

He was silent for a few seconds, eyes on my face. “Was I?”

“You sure weren’t telling him all you know.”

“I never tell all I know.”

Then there was more silence. Finally I sighed. “OK.

I’ll give it a hundred percent, Mr. Monaco. Now that I’m in it. But don’t expect miracles.”

“A miracle would be worth ten thousand dollars to you.”

“Hell, a real miracle should be worth at least—”

He started the car.

I said, “Well, I’ll get to work. But all bets, of course, are off if you managed to kill Jeanne somehow. Or Ephrim Sardis.”

He craned his head around and glared at me. “Don’t be an ass,” he snapped.

I shrugged, turned and walked across the street.

Sergeant Torgesen said, “You all through?”

“Yeah. OK if I take off?”

“You’ll have to come down and sign a statement.”

“Now?” I was starting to realize how few hours, even minutes, remained between now and tomorrow noon. I don’t know why I kept thinking about noon, really. Monaco was nuts.

“Should be now,” Torgesen said.

“Look, I’ve got eighteen things to do in the next hour.

I’ve told you everything I know. Can’t the formal bit wait?’

He thought about it. “OK, for a while. But don’t forget about it, Scott. I wouldn’t like it if you forgot.”

I thanked him and said, “About this Ephrim Sardis.

How’d you learn he was dead?”

“Call came in, caller reported hearing a gunshot at the Sardis place. Car checked it and found him.”

“Call anonymous?”

He nodded.

“From a woman?”

“No.”

“You mind telling me what time the call came in?”

He pursed his heavy lips, glanced up the hill near us and then back at me. After a few seconds he said, “Not very long before we got out here, if it interests you. Call was logged at 4:28 p.m.”

“Could Sardis have knocked himself off?”

“Not a chance. He was drilled dead center in the forehead, no powder marks. Somebody just stood across the desk from him and let him have it.”

“Any suspects?”

He smiled without joy. “Just one. So far.”

“Anything you can tell me about him? Sardis, I mean.”

“Not much. Big shot. Very big, loaded, millionaire several times over. Lots of VIP friends. There’ll be plenty of pressure on this one.” Torgesen paused. “Anything else you’d like to know, Scott? Like how much I make a month? Or—”

I grinned. “That’s good enough. For now. And thanks.”

It was good enough. There was more I wanted to ask Torgesen, but I felt lucky he’d told me as much as he had. I started for my Cad and Torgesen said, “You’ve got a flat tire.”

“The hell.”

He smiled again. With more joy this time. “I looked over your car while you were jawing with Mr. Monaco. Somebody shot at you, all right. Hit your right front.”

I looked, swore, then headed for the trunk and my spare.

A few minutes later, sweating, with a sore left hand and two newly skinned knuckles, I leaned against the Cad’s fender, gripping a lug wrench and thinking.

I had a new client, and was on a new case, and so far everything was simply dandy. The gal I’d originally been hired to find was dead, killed virtually in front of my eyes; I’d been shot at; I didn’t have any idea who’d shot at me; some guy named Sardis, whom I’d never heard of before, had been murdered; I’d just had the fun of changing a tire; and my client was headed for the can.

And that was good, I told myself. Because things would have to improve pretty soon.

5

I’d put the tools and ruined tire into the trunk and was about to get behind the Cad’s wheel when I saw Mike sliding down the side of Moss Mountain, holding something in one hand. Monaco was still waiting in his car, but he’d turned the engine off.

Mike walked up to Torgesen, who was standing next to the Buick, so I sauntered over as he said, “Found these on the hillside, Torg. One almost at the top, other two down near here. Nothing else. No cartridge cases or nothing.”

He gave the sergeant three crisp, new-looking hundred-dollar bills.

Torgesen looked at them. “Maybe that’s why her bag was yanked open. Doesn’t smell like a robbery to me, though.”

I said, “Any money left in her bag, Sergeant?”

He looked around. “You still here?” He seemed to be considering whether to answer or not, but finally said, “No, just loose silver. No identification, either. Way you told it, there were two shots, then a third. How much time till that third shot, would you say?”

“Oh, I’d guess a minute, maybe.” I thought I knew what was going through his mind, so I said, “Time enough for the guy to run up, dig inside the bag—and put that third big one into her head.”

He nodded.

I looked inside the Buick, at the bare post of the steering wheel. While waiting for the police, I’d noticed there was no registration slip on the post. I said to Torgesen, “No sign of the registration anyplace?”

He shook his head. “We’ll check out the plates with DMV. Probably her car. I thought you were in a hurry, Scott.”

I grinned. “That I am,” I said, and left.

I parked at the end of the smooth black drive, before the entrance to the Kubla Khan, and a young guy in red trousers and a blue jacket took my bags, gave them to another young guy in white trousers and a gold coat, and drove on with the Cad. I followed the gold-coated bellhop inside.

A dark carpet with a dizzying Oriental design woven into it covered the floor to a depth of what felt like about a foot, and the chairs and divans in the lobby were massive, heavy, made of ornate carved dark wood. Soft music whispered from hidden speakers. On the walls were oil paintings with lots of reds and blues and greens, splashes of plum purple and swirls of lavender. Far across the lobby on my right were huge windows through which I could see the blue sparkle of a swimming pool outside. On my left was a wide doorway with its top curving up to a pointed peak like an Indian temple, and intricately graceful letters which spelled out something very pretty but unintelligible.

In English, below the pretty letters, it said Seraglio.

I knew what that meant. It meant a harem. I’m not so dumb. Not when it comes to harems. But the place looked like a bar, and that struck me as a brilliant idea, combining a bar with a harem.

The refrigerated air in the lobby had helped, but racing over the sands, climbing mountains, and changing a tire in the desert heat had wrung me out a little. I not only wanted a drink, or whatever was available in there, but it was also about time I sat quietly, moving very little, and for a while tried to add two and two. I wanted to pull my thoughts together and try to untie some of the knots in them.

Which was as good an excuse for having a drink as I could think of at the moment.

At the desk I asked for Jerry Vail, but the prince—or possibly Emperor of Asia—behind the counter didn’t know where Mr. Vail was. He would, however, page him, or have a boy scurry about and find him, with all possible speed. I said my name was Shell Scott and I would be in the bar, gave the bellhop a couple bucks and asked him to leave the bags in my room, then walked toward the Seraglio, looking briefly back over my shoulder at the desk man.

He wore a shimmering jacket, approximately the color of electricity, buckled around his neck and buttoned down the front with gold nuggets; his loose trousers were purple; around them was a gold-mesh belt; and on his head was a dinky purple cap. He was absolutely livid.

He wasn’t the only one. Thirty or forty people sat or moved about in the lobby, several of them already in costume, and it was enough to bring sight to the blind. Gals in Persian bloomers, gals in Indian saris, gals with bare midriffs—I counted three navels—and gals in things like wispy pajama bottoms below, and clever thimble-size bras, obviously designed merely for nipples, above. There were several dashingly clad guys, too—but about those women.

The ones present were certainly only a fraction of the total who were now, or soon would be, in attendance for the gaieties here tonight and tomorrow. Nonetheless, I could not recall ever seeing at one time and in one place so many gorgeous tomatoes. Clearly many of them must have been the cream of the crop of the country-wide contests, culminating with the finals tomorrow here at the Kubla Khan.

They were tall and short and medium-rare, all of them smooth as silks and satins, dark-eyed, bright-eyed, red-lipped and pink-lipped, with hair in fluffs and buns and puffs, and hair in ropes and ringlets. They came in all three primary colors, blonde, brunette and redhead, but each and every lovable one came equipped with all the vital equipment, all and a little bit more.

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought I’d been shot and killed, hit in the head and dead. Because this was Heaven. Or Hell. Or wherever I’d gone. If this was death and I’d gone to Heaven, it sure as hell was the way to live. Death, I thought, where is thy stinger? Death, you fraud, you—oof.

Wrapped in thoughts of appetizing deadliness, and eye-balling navels and thimble-size bras and all the rest of that orgy of gorgeousness, I had not been watching where I was going. I’d been headed toward the Seraglio—at least, that’s where my feet were headed, but my head had been swiveling every direction but up. So I ran into somebody.

I swiveled my head around and said, “Excuse me, I’m sssss—”

God in Heaven, I thought. I must be dead. Here’s one of the angels.

I had seen deep purple and swirls of lavender in the lobby of the Kubla Khan. Now I was seeing it again. But different, incredibly different. It was the deep purple of mountain shadows and the lavender of desert blooms, the hush of autumn evenings with the warmth of summer moonlight, and it was all in a woman’s eyes. Enormous, melting eyes, black-fringed, clear and bright. And startled now.

She blinked slowly. Then she smiled and said, “I tried to get out of your way. But . . . there’s a lot of you to get out of the way of.”

“A man could damn near die in your eyes,” I said.

“What?”

“Ah, I’m sorry—that’s not what I meant to say. It’s probably because I was thinking about death a moment ago . . . . Doesn’t sound much fun, does it?”

She shook her head slightly.

“I mean, I was visualizing the lobby filled with lively corpses . . . . That’s not it, either. If you’ll let me keep trying, I’ll come up with something more sensible in a minute.”

Suddenly she laughed. “I hope so.”

“Let’s change the subject. You must be here to win the beauty contest. Well, my name is Shell Scott and I’m a judge. A judge, get it? I’ve got power! Pow—”

“I’m a judge myself.”

“Pow—you’re a judge?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that fixes that. Maybe there’s some other way I can, ah, help you.”

“Shell Scott . . . Of course. I know you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You’re from Los Angeles, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh. L.A—Hollywood.”

“So am I. From Hollywood, I mean.”

“What’s your name?”

“Misty.” It sounded right for her. When she said it her voice was dark and rustled like lace. “Misty Lombard.”

Misty Lombard. I knew the name. Who—hey, boy, I thought. It was only a name known to perhaps half the earth’s population. Misty Lombard, one of Hollywood’s most famous and brilliantly shining lights. Star of films, guest-shotter on television, magazine-cover marvel. I’d heard that the natives even had one of her brassieres nailed to a tree trunk in Benzabiland; they did wild dances around it every full moon.

I simply hadn’t recognized her. Part of the reason undoubtedly was the suddenness, and bumpiness, of our meeting. But much of it had to be that not film, not a magazine cover, and certainly not a TV tube, could begin to capture the radiance and warmth and soft sweetness of the gal. And nothing could ever tell you about those magical eyes unless you stood a foot away and died in them a little.

She wasn’t in costume. She was wearing some kind of simple white-knit suit, but not even a suit could hide the famous curves, the swelling breasts and celebrated hips and ridiculously small waistline. Her hair was thick and dark, the color of roasted chestnuts, and her lips looked sweet, and tender, and moist, and as if they could have roasted the chestnuts.

“Just my luck,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was going to spirit you away from here and lock you in a cave. Or a tower or something—like Rapunzel, say. And visit you every evening, carrying a hairy ladder. But Misty Lombard—it wouldn’t work. Ten thousand guys would kill me.”

“You would probably—” She stopped, rolled her eyes, pursed her lips, as if thinking. It fascinated me. “—take me to your cave,” she finished.

“Think some more.”

“Do what?”

“Never mind. I’m going to go out and find a cave. How about dinner? We’ll start with Martinis in bronto-saurus skulls with wild olives on saber-tooth toothpicks and—”

“I don’t like any of those things.”

“I was afraid of that. Then how about a plain Seraglio Martini?”

“I’m sorry. I’d like to, really I would. But I have to get ready for the party.”

“Party? Oh, yeah.” It was coming back to me. “Maybe later we—”

“Let’s wait and see. I’m going to the party with Mr. Leaf. He may get tied up during the evening. I don’t know. He often does.”

“Simon Leaf?”

She nodded. So she was going to be with the producer. Fooey to him. But that was right; Misty had starred in a couple of his pictures. A couple of his good pictures. Probably the date was just a business arrangement.

“I do have to run,” she said.

“All right. But don’t be surprised if you see me several times. Like, well, every time you look around.”

“ ‘Bye, Mr. Scott. It was nice”—she smiled brilliantly—”running into you.”

“Just in case,” I said, “save me a dance.” I grinned at her and added, “In the moonlight.”

She had started to walk away, but she stopped and turned partway around. Then, surprisingly, she pursed those soft, red, roasty lips and kissed the space between us, her eyes on mine. I felt it like six Alka-Seltzers in my stomach. Then Misty Lombard turned and walked away, and I watched her until she was out of sight.

Then I went into the Seraglio. For a drink.

6

If my eyes hadn’t been in a state of shock from looking at Misty, my first sight of the Seraglio might have sent them into it. The place was beautiful.

I had to part a colorful curtain of hanging glass beads to step inside, and then I stood for a few seconds letting my vision adjust to the dimness. There was some illumination from several big pierced-metal lamps, probably from India or Persia, but the rest came from small lamps on low tables. At first I thought they were candles, but closer inspection showed them to be small oil-burning lamps like some I’d once seen from Bombay.

On my right was a long bar and across the wide room, behind thin and almost transparent draperies, were several softly lighted booths in which I could see the veiled figures of men and women drinking and talking; in the rest of the room were low, massive tables with squat chairs around them. The place was more than half filled, most of the customers in costume, and I could hear the subdued rumble of conversation. In my nostrils was a faint blend of liquor, perfume and powder, the scent of lotions and spices. In the air, too, was quiet music, probably piped in, something with lots of little bells and the sound of tiny cymbals and what might have been flutes.

The Seraglio was not merely beautiful, it was warm, exciting, stimulating—well, let’s say it right out: It was sexy ‘as hell. I liked it a lot.

I walked to the long bar and slid onto the first empty stool I came to.

I thought the bartender was going to dance up to me doing pirouettes, he was so fluttery and peaches-and-creamy, but he merely tripped over and said, “Yay-yus?” I guessed he was from the South. South Mars, judging by his garish costume.

“Bourbon and water.”

“You just bet you.”

“Oh, come on, you-all,” I said. He was laying it on thicker than they made it.

“But wouldn’t you-all rather have one of our speyshuls?” he asked me so cutely it was hard to resist him.

“What in the hell is a speyshul?”

“One of our speyshul drinks.” He flitted away and danced back with a small, brightly colored folder.

It was a drink menu listing maybe fifty concoctions ranging from a Kismet to the Istanbul to the Hooghly River. That last one ought to be a wow, I thought.

“Well . . . “ I said. “Oh, hell. Bring me anything. Just so I can lift it.”

“I’d like to suggest a Cobra’s Kiss,” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“Is that what y’all want?”

“What’s in it?”

“It’s made from a secret Indian formula.”

“OK.” I shrugged. “What the hell. When in India, do as the Hindu. Now, what’s really in a Cobra’s Kiss?”

“Lots and lots of booze.”He gave me a grin and began swiftly mixing the drink—using about nine bottles.

I started eyeing the drink menu, feeling a suspicion.

Whatever he was doing would probably cost me about a pound. There it was. Cobra’s Kiss. It was four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I thought: The goddamn thing had better have lots and lots of booze in it.

The bartender twirled a big, tall, wide, heavy glass, with an orchard growing out of the top of it, down the bar.

“Theyah you-all is,” he said.

“Sho ‘nuff. Do I have to put nickels in you to turn you off?” He waved his head around as if shooing flies with it, and danced away. Boy, I thought, I’m glad he’s not a judge.

Not that it made an enormous amount of difference these days, I thought philosophically. At least not as far as beauty contests were concerned. Of course, it looked as if this one at the Khan was going to be different. And how. But I was philosophically thinking about the rest of them, while guzzling my Cobra’s Kiss—which seemed to have a lot of hollow fangs in it.

I’ll tell you, I was really looking forward to the beauty contest here. And even to the “talent” segment, believe it or not. You want to know why? You don’t, huh? Well, I’ll tell you anyway.

It has just about gotten to the point, friends, where one of these days the emcee of a big beauty contest—one of those guys who smiles and smiles and smiles and waves and sings in a pret-ty voice—is going to win the thing.

Beauty is less and less the prime criterion, or even an essential requirement for participation in a beauty contest. If a gal has two legs and a couple arms and one of everything else, she’s in—if she’s got talent. Can she sing? Can she dance? Can she recite “The Star-Spangled Banner” from memory? If she can, she gets ten points. It takes eleven to win.

Sure, they parade in evening gowns, and in swimsuits, and display their charming charms for the judges, but then what? Why, then each lovely has to play a kazoo, or pluck tunes from her nose, or perform some equally exciting feat of culture, or genius, or acrobatics, before she can be adjudged the fairest of the fair. Why? Because somebody’s nuts, that’s why.

I remember one babe who came in third in the Miss Safety Tire Contest, who was about five-eleven and weighed maybe ninety-seven pounds with her wig on, and looked like the producer’s brother, but who cinched third place by plucking her nose like a harp. She played “Aloha Oi” on it, and to be perfectly fair, it was kind of nice. Pling-pling-plinnnggg-pling! You know how it goes. She’d practiced a lot, you could tell.

But I couldn’t help wondering what the reaction of a red-blooded man—her husband, of course—would be if he leaped into the connubial sack with her and said, “Ba-hayby, this is it!” and she said, “Plinnnggg!” Or even, “Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming” and whatever the rest of it is. And why not? Wasn’t that what she won with?

Well, that’s what has happened to beauty contests in the U.S. of A. today.

Still, I was looking forward to the talent segment of the Kubla Khan’s contest. Even to that part. Because this time there was a sensible reason for it. Since the winner was to be guaranteed a leading role in Simon Leaf’s upcoming TV series and some of the runners-up would probably get minor roles which could be boosts up the showbiz ladder, the talent segment was to be either a reading or some kind of dramatic performance which would allow viewing producers and directors and such to determine if a contestant possessed at least embryo acting ability, which could be nourished, and which might grow. Even so, the prime focus would still be on beauty, bazooms, behinds, and sex appeal, rather than a gal’s unique ability to twirl sixteen times on one toe, barefooted.

So my thoughts went. And in the middle of them I became aware that I’d slid onto a stool next to yet another exceptionally good-looking gal. It was too much. They were all over tile place. It was like tossing a drunk into a vat of Vat 69; a guy couldn’t get away from the intoxication even if he wanted to. This one, though older than the lovelies who would be parading and emoting tomorrow, could hold her own with most of them.

I guessed she was about my age, thirty, with a lot of black hair pulled tightly away from her forehead, and tied with a ribbon at the back of her neck. Her skin was dark, almost olive, and she appeared to have a marvelous profile clear down to her kneecaps. Unusually long lashes fringed her eyes, the nose was straight, cheekbones high and prominent, the mouth sensual and almost cruel.

Also high, prominent and sensual, but exuding an aura of kindness and true compassion rather than cruelty, were her very interesting breasts. I use the word “interesting” rather than something like “restless,” or “apparently gas-filled, and rising” because they were so damned interesting, and part of the reason was that you could tell what they were. In these days of beauty contests with emphasis on kazoos, that’s important; a guy just can’t take anything for granted.

Only a few days ago I’d read an advertisement in a new ladies’ fashion magazine. Modern Eve, which proudly proclaimed, “ . . . and, girls, for the 32 bust the Magicbra is available in sizes 32A–D, 34 A–D, 36 A–D, and 38 A–C (the Magicbra in size 38 D is not made for the 32 bust),” and I had thought glumly, “Not yet, it isn’t.” There’s a magazine called Modern Adam, too, but I’m afraid to read it.

Fortunately, there will always be gals more reminiscent of the old Eve, such as the one on my right.

She was wearing some kind of gypsy outfit, a very loose and low-cut blouse, gold-mesh belt and a colorful skirt. Big brass—or maybe even gold—loops dangled from her ears. A row of bracelets was on her left wrist, and a huge glittery ring, so big I figured it had to be a rhinestone, was on the third finger of her left hand.

She took the last sip of what looked like a champagne cocktail, pushed her empty glass across the bar and waited. Then she got out a cigarette, and quick as a flash I had my lighter out, burning, and all ready for her, like a real jerk. That, at least, was my afterthought.

She turned her head and looked at me from chilly, slanted eyes, ignored my flame, pushed the button on a small gold lighter with more rhinestones on it, and lit her cigarette.

“Hi,” I said. But I put my lighter away. I know when not to overdo a thing. I think.

She let smoke drift out her nose while gazing at me with the warmth of a wounded antelope greeting a pack of hyenas. Finally she said coldly, “What?”

“Just . . . hi. Like in, well, like in, ‘Hi, there!’ Or in ‘Hi-diddle-diddle . . . ‘ Strike that. Well, ah, here in Southern California, friendly Southern California, it means Hello.” I paused. “At least it used to.” I quit.

Well, maybe she was practically deaf and dumb, but she was a good-looking babe, anyhow. That face was striking, exotic, almost unique. With those slanting eyes and high, prominent cheekbones, the dark skin, and black hair pulled smooth over the top of her head, she looked Eurasian, even Asian. Even . . . Then I got it. She looked almost Mongol. The outfit wasn’t a gypsy outfit, but presumably the kind of thing Kubla Khan’s tomatoes might have worn.

Sure, that was it. She really looked at home here, as if this joint might well have been built just for her, her Xanadu—as Shah Jahan had created the Taj for his lost and lovely Mumtaz Mahal. It was easy to imagine her as one of Kubla’s ninety-nine wives. It was also easy to imagine her grabbing Kubla’s big sword and chopping off ninety-eight heads.

She was looking me up and down, wrinkling her nose. Not much. Just enough so I could see it wrinkle.

For the first time I remembered that, after Charging around in the desert and stirring up dust and such and changing a tire, I had come straight to the bar without “freshening up” in my room. Consequently I suppose I did look a little wilted. Still, die didn’t have to wrinkle her sharp old nose like that. Why, I use a deodorant advertised on TV as “Stronger than Sweat.”

“What are you?” she asked when she condescended to speak. “A truck driver? Or are you, perhaps—”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ve heard them all, ma’am. Truck driver, garbage man, hot-dog salesman. We all have our little cross to bear. What are you, the Queen of the May?”

Usually I just let people tear me up without springing cleverly back at them with devastating remarks. Usually that’s because I can’t think of any. Like this very instant. But in part it is simply because that route is all downhill, a losing game. Why should I do that? I lose enough games as it is.

Fooey to her, I thought. Her and her jazzy blouse. Probably she wakes up mooing every morning. Hell, I only wanted to light her cigarette. Well, maybe that’s not quite the whole truth, I told myself. But how could she know? And what if she did know? So why was she dressed like a bridesmaid at a nudist wedding?

I was sitting there as though completely unconcerned, kind of chewing my teeth, when a great big tall handsome guy came in and glided toward us as if walking on water. Golden blond waves on his skull, head held high, profile cleaving the air like the bow of a Viking’s twenty-oared war barge, broad shoulders and narrow waist, looking like a man who had never perspired in his whole life.

He walked straight up to the bosomy Mongol and leaned down, twitching his ruby lips fetchingly, and I thought in some alarm: You’d better not, old buddy; you don’t know her like I do. But he merely pecked her on the cheek.

“Hello, darling,” she said.

Apparently he knew her better than I did.

“ ‘Lo, sweet,” he said.

“What took you so long?”

“I couldn’t find my shorts.”

Apparently he knew her lots better than I did.

“Oh, Jerry,” she said, “they’re right where they always are.”

“Yeah, that’s where I found ‘em.”

Believe me, it was a sickening conversation. And it got more so. A couple seated next to the gal got up and left, and the guy perched on one of the vacated stools. Then he dropped his voice, but not so far down I couldn’t hear him, and said, “I saw you jawing with this big creep next to you. He giving you any trouble, Neyra?”

“Yes,” she said. “And did you notice how dirty his hands are? He must work in a garage.”

“His hands? He—he didn’t put ‘em on you, did he?”

The guy actually leaned over and looked down at her pretties, as though to discover whether my greasy, toil-worn hands had left any grime on them.

“Goodness, no!” she cried. “One thing I do have, darling, is taste.”

“Ah, of course, sweet. Leave it to me. I’ll set the creep straight.”

I was studying my glass—my empty glass—when he stepped over and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around at him. “Yes?”

He had what I imagine he fondly assumed was a scary look on his face. “The lady on your right,” be said grandly, “is my wife.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I feel I should inform you that she finds your attentions unpleasant, and I find them unwarranted.”

“Yeah. OK, sorry. Hell, all I said was ‘Hi.’ Well, that’s practically all—”

“And I insist you stop annoying her,” he continued, peeking to his right to make sure his wife was drinking it all in.

“It’s a deal,” I said.

Big deal, I thought. How was I to know she was his wife. Apparently newlyweds, at that. OK, he’d won the battle.

But he just wouldn’t leave it alone.

“I absolutely insist,”he said sternly, “that you refrain from bothering her further.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’d rather walk barefooted through broken glass.”

“I don’t think I like your attitude,” he said.

This boy was beginning to nettle me a little. “You don’t think so, huh?” I said. “Don’t you know?”

He was actually getting steamed up. In the beginning I figured he was merely kicking sand on the beach, so to speak, but he seemed to be all shook now. I wasn’t mad. Hell, I simply hoped these ethereal beings would leave me alone.

“Why, you big-mouthed baboon,” he said. “You—”

“Hold it, friend. Let’s not start calling each other names.

This whole bit is ridiculous enough already.”

“Ridic—”

“Ridiculous and childish,” I said, getting a little heated myself. “If I must defend my virtue, all I did was try to light your wife’s cigarette, but she acted like I’d set fire to her pants. If you want the truth, I think she’s just mean—”

“OK. Out.” He stuck a hand forward and grabbed my arm.

That did it.

One of my little idiosyncrasies is a large distaste for guys grabbing me and trying to shove me out a door, or in it, or in any direction. I felt the heat rising and tried unsuccessfully to tamp it down, while he tugged at me, finding me perhaps a bit more difficult to tug than he had anticipated.

I pulled his paw off my arm and, hotter than I should have been, said, “OK, since you obviously are hungering not for facts but for the horrible truth, here it is: What happened is, I saw her chest lying on the bar and started to pick it up, thinking it was an angel food cake, made with eight dozen eggs. She said, ‘Will you please—’ “

He didn’t let me finish. He stuck out that paw again and started to grab me, and I flipped a hand up between us and said, “Don’t do it,” and meant it.

Either it was a certain note in my voice or something else, but he fortunately did not grab me. The back of my hand was toward him, about six inches from his chops, and he looked at it for quite a while. It is scarred somewhat, and the knuckles are kind of lumpy—from hitting guys—and he looked at it with some interest.

I said, “There’s one little thing. I heard your wife call you Jerry. Before I pop you, I’d like to be sure your last name isn’t Vail. It wouldn’t be, would it?”

“Vail? Of course. How did you know my name? How . . . Have you and my wife—”

“Oh, knock it off. Jerry Vail. Swell. I’m Shell Scott”—I sighed—”and we’re going to be great friends.”

“You’re Scott?” Suddenly he was all smiles. “Why, hell, Ormand told me to expect you. I just got word you were here, Scott.” He stuck out his hand, but this time to shake mine.

Then he looked at his wife, beaming. “It’s OK, Neyra. This is Mr. Scott. Shell Scott.”

Why, I wondered, was it now OK. And what was OK? Neyra simply couldn’t have cared less. It wasn’t OK with her. Nothing was OK with her. She shrugged and her gypsy blouse almost fell off, and she said, “So?”

I still figured she was just mean. Jerry Vail lowered his voice and said to me, “I’m damn glad you’re here, Scott.

The girl—you know—still hasn’t shown up. You do know what I mean, don’t you? Ormand filled you in?”

“Yeah. Now let me fill you in. The girl isn’t going to show up. And you’ve got to get on your horse—”

“Not going to show up?”

I looked around. The two seats beyond Neyra Vail were still empty, and the guy on my left was leaning way over toward a lass dressed as a harem cutey, either talking to her or about to nibble on her, so nobody was going to overhear us.

I lowered my voice and said, “The most important thing right now is that your boss is in the clink. The law—”

“Clink?”

“Yeah, the sheriff’s slammer in Indio. Jail. Probably not locked up, just being questioned, but very unhappy, I’ll wager—”

“What in God’s name is Ormand doing in jail?”

“Trying to get out, undoubtedly. Which is what you’re supposed to arrange ten minutes ago.”

“But what happened? Why is he—”

“The girl, Jeanne, isn’t going to show up because she’s dead. Somebody shot her.”

Vail gasped and started to let words bubble at me, but I kept going. “I don’t see how the deputies can connect him with the girl’s death—I was near the spot myself when it happened—but they want to talk to him about some guy named Sardis. It seems—”

“Who?”

“Sardis. Ephrim Sardis. It seems somebody killed him, and the sheriff’s boys want to talk—”

“Killed? Somebody killed Ephrim Sardis?”

His jaw was hanging down and his eyes were wide.

I said slowly, “Yeah. I guess it just happened. I don’t know beans—”

I never did finish.

Neyra let out a soft whispering sound, slid off her stool, stood up straight, and screamed like a bird. Her eyes rolled until only the whites showed. Then she fainted, and fell in a heap.

7

Vail wasn’t quick enough to catch her. Neither was I.

It got very quiet in the Seraglio. Everybody in the bar was looking our way.

Vail kneeled by his wife and grabbed her hands. Then he looked back up at me, his face twisted.

“You imbecile,” he said harshly. “My wife is—was—Neyra Sardis. Ephrim’s daughter.”

I opened my mouth, and shut it. What could I say? Maybe if Mrs. Vail had been not quite so uncommunicative she’d have been spared the shock. I also remembered—then—that Ormand Monaco had mentioned I could get whatever information I wanted about Sardis from Jerry Vail, and Vail’s wife. Maybe that should have given me a hint; it hadn’t. But there was no sense stewing about any of it now.

In a minute or two Neyra was sitting up, blinking groggily. Vail and I led her out of the Seraglio between us, across the lobby and into Vail’s large, mahogany-paneled office. He sat beside her on a long red-leather divan, but after a moment got up, found some brandy in a cleverly concealed bar that swung out from the end of his desk, and gave his wife a healthy shot of it. She took the glass and sipped, eyes blank with shock.

Vail spoke to her softly for a while, then stood up and walked across the room to me. “I’ll have to take Neyra home,” he said.

“Of course.”

“It’s a terrible thing.” He looked in almost as bad shape as she. But then he added nervously, “Bad enough as it is, but . . . she’s pregnant,” and I could more easily understand his almost shattered look. The production of babies not only mystifies but sort of terrifies most men—so they tell me. “Four months along,” Vail went on. “I hope this—I hope it doesn’t . . . “ He let it trail off, squeezing the fingers of one hand in the other.

“She’ll be all right,” I said, just as though I knew what I was talking about. Then I lit a cigarette and went on, “Look, Mr. Vail, I don’t like dwelling on this, but I have to mention a couple other things. You’re supposed to call the attorneys in California, if that’s necessary to get Monaco released. And nobody’s supposed to know what I’ve told you, except us. Mr. Monaco stressed I was to tell nobody but you.”

He nodded, then looked at me, blinking. “What happened? How did it happen?”

I told him what little I knew about the two murders.

When I’d finished he said, “Shot. God, who would shoot him?”

“That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you, Mr. Vail. Do you have any idea who might have done it? Anybody with motive to kill him?”

He shook his head. “It’s fantastic. He hardly ever left the house, except on business. He didn’t . . . mingle much.”

“The house is on Ocotillo Lane?”

“Yes. It’s a large estate, he lives in the big house, Neyra and I have one of the cottages.”

“Oh? Were you on the estate this afternoon?”

“I’ve been here at the hotel, of course. Preparing for the party—well, that’s a mess, too.” He bit his lips, then went on, “Neyra spent the afternoon shopping in the Springs, then came straight here. We’ve a cottage here at the Khan, too. I was to meet her in the Seraglio—well, you know that.”

“Just one other thing. Can you think of any connection between Mr. Sardis’ death and the murder of the girl?”

“The girl? Oh, Miss Jax. No . . . there can’t be any. There couldn’t possibly be any connection.”

“You knew Mr. Sardis pretty well, I guess.”

“Yes, of course . . . .” He stopped. “Well, actually, only since Neyra and I were married, early this year. I only met Ephrim a month or so before then. Even so, I swear I don’t know of a single real enemy he had. It’s just fantastic,” he repeated. Then he said, “I do have to go,” and walked to his wife, helped her to her feet.

“Can I give you a hand?” I asked.

“No, we’ll be all right. I’ll be back as soon as I can, Scott. We’ve got to talk some more. I’ll meet you . . . . I suppose you want to get ready for tonight. The party.”

“Yeah, I would like to clean up and change.”

“Say I meet you back in the Seraglio, then. In about half an hour?”

“Fine. I’ll wait for you there.”

I left the office and headed for the desk. It was time I did something constructive, like finding out Where my room was. While I was still at the desk, Jerry Vail and his wife walked from his office and toward one of the exits. She was still a bit unsteady on her pins, but she’d make it.

Twenty minutes later I was in my room—two rooms, actually a small suite—admiring myself in a full-length mirror.

My, I looked splendid, I thought. I was showered and shaved, brilliantly clad in the outfit I’d rented in Hollywood—the well-fitted scarlet jacket that buttoned high around my neck and extended down around my hips, silver buttons on its front inserted in intricately woven loops of glistening silver cord, white trousers with red stripes down the outsides, and the white turban.

The outfit—except for the turban—was a lot like those which Aly Khan used to wear, only I had lots of medals on mine. The costumer had thrown them in for a couple extra bucks, and I looked like a guy who had saved an entire nation.

With the turban topping it all off, I very much resembled a real maharaja, I thought. Except for the face, of course. Not much I could do about that. My Colt Special bulged entirely too much under the jacket, so I left the clamshell holster in a drawer and put the gun in my pants pocket, where the bottom flare of the jacket concealed it well enough. All set.

So I headed for the Seraglio again.

Twenty minutes later I was still waiting for Vail, and sipping my third Cobra’s Kiss of the evening. They seemed to be using king-size cobras in them, and I decided perhaps I’d better go easy on the venom for a while. Besides, I rarely eat much, if any, breakfast and my late lunch had consisted of a sandwich hastily chewed after Monaco’s early-afternoon phone call.

I was, however, feeling fine and didn’t really mind waiting under the pulchritudinous circumstances—though I had not said “Hi” to anybody else. I’d seen plenty of lusciousness, and had even been on the receiving end of a few lingering glances and a smile or two, which smoothed some of the dents out of my Neyra-battered ego, but I had decided to play it smart.

Too many things had gone wrong so far, either a little wrong or a lot. First, my failing to meet Monaco, or vice versa; and then the ugly death of Jeanne. Even Misty, dandy as those few moments with her had been, was unavailable at least for the moment and possibly for the entire night. Neyra, well, that had been reasonably close to catastrophe. Two murders already. It was enough. I’d play it smart from here on in.

Only . . .

Only it seems every time I decide that, I manage to do something stupid.

Sometimes, too, no matter how well laid your plans or firm your resolutions, events seem to proceed along in their own sweet way, inexorably, in defiance of resolution and plan, as though they have their own comfortable destiny and the hell with you.

I had that creepy feeling along my spine, anyhow.

It is a creepy feeling which creeps up on me occasionally, a little nagging twitch prowling among the vertebrae, and up to no good. Who knows? Maybe there are certain days and certain nights when, fee-fi-fo-fum, no matter What you do, something’s going to grab you. And that creepy feeling along your spine is a something giving you warning—if you can hear the whispering in bats’ voices:

“It’s raining, brother; you go outside and you’re gonna get wet.”

I don’t know; maybe there are umbrellas.

At any rate, I had my plan and resolution. I was going to be a good fellow, and thus let trouble pass me by. Except . . .

Except something more than a little annoying was going on. Annoying, and possibly pregnant with disturbance and upheaval. Naturally, here in the Kubla Khan and on this Friday night, another woman was involved.

She was one of the cutest little tomatoes I’d seen in a month of Sundays, too. Black hair cut short, with feathery fringes dangling down in artful disarray on her forehead, big round eyes with a constant look of surprise in them, eyes as dark and sweet as chocolate pudding, and a soft-looking mouth that would attract bees. Also it should by now go without saying that she, like most of the rest around here, was built to the newer and better specifications.

She was sitting alone at a table directly behind me and only a few feet away. I’d glanced at her in the bar mirror a time or two, which is how I happened to note the peculiar circumstance. She was drinking, not smoking, but every once in a while there appeared a lot of smoke around her head. A couple of times I saw her wrinkle her nose—not like Neyra—as if the smoke or its odor was highly distasteful to her.

And no wonder. It was cigar smoke.

Two men sat at a table next to her and one of them, a big, beefy character about forty years old, was the cigar smoker. He was one of the thick boys, heavy in the shoulders and chest, with a barrel-shaped stomach that looked hard. He sat with one leg stuck out and his pants leg was pulled tight around a thigh like a horse’s neck.

He sucked in a big mouthful of smoke, made an O of his lips, and blew more smoke at the little gal.

There wasn’t anything accidental about it. He was deliberately squirting the stuff at her. Maybe he thought he had a reason—she was a colored tomato. It started to burn me more than a little, but I tried to cool off by pouring some more booze down my gullet. It was none of my business.

So, when I needed a refill from the bartender, despite the fact that our last conversation hadn’t been anything to write home about, or even include in a P.S., I bandied a few words with him, by way of distraction. And that’s what I got.

“Quite a blast they’ve got going here, what?” I said. “And it’s certainly a beautiful place.” No sense talking about the gals, I figured.

“Yay-yus,” he said. “Isn’t it

stunning?”

“Yeah. The place is lousy with beauty, and it’s sure pretty.” I just couldn’t quite hold it down with this guy. Or maybe it wasn’t my night to hold it down.

“I just know I’m goin’ to love working heah,” he said, and he was so obviously sincere that I wanted to take back some of the thoughts I’d been having about the character. Of course, once you want to, it’s too late. “I started last night,” he went on exuberantly, “checked the stock and glasses, and all that theah. And after work I walked through the grounds, alone. It was heavenly, like bein’ in a real jungle.”

“Looks like a jungle, all right. What I saw of the grounds. All they need is a few little yowling animals, and a couple elephants—”

“Oh, do you-all like pets?”

Did I like pets? Was he kidding?

“Well,” I said, “not elephants. But pets in reasonable quantities. Like dogs, cats, fish—now, fish, there’s something—”

“I’ve got cats, just all over evahwheah, cats, at my home.”

“Fish, now there’s a real dandy little—”

“Siamese, Persians, alley, all kinds. Big old ones and little bitty ones—”

“You don’t have to housebreak them or anything—”

“I just love them.”

“What?”

“My cats.”

“I thought we were talking about fish.”

“No, I was telling you about all my cats and kittens.”

“OK. OK. You’ve got a lot of them, huh?”

“Oh, yes. I—” He stopped and his eyes seemed to glaze as he thought, then he simpered a bit and said, “I’ve got a whole kitten caboodle.” Then he laughed, la-la-la-la-la.

That did it. I’d had enough distraction.

I just stared past him, letting my lower lip droop. Staring past him like that, I was looking in the mirror when the little gal with the sweet-pudding eyes and the bee-witching mouth waved a hand vigorously in front of her nose, then turned to face the big guy.

I heard her say pleasantly, “I beg your pardon. Would you mind not doing that? It’s starting to—”

Still leaning back in his chair, fat leg stuck out, and holding the glowing cigar between thumb and finger, he said casually, “It bother you, girlie? Well, you don’t like it you can leave. It’s a free country.”

One of those sweeties, huh? I thought. But I told myself to sit tight, not to get involved, not to make an ass of myself—again. I sat quite still while my face got warm and a little perspiration grew on my upper lip. I knew part of the reason for the perhaps overenergetic conniptions of my various glands was undoubtedly due to the contrast between what the beefy slob had said and the way he’d said it, and my just concluded yak with the bartender.

Maybe the chap behind the bar was not the most Herculean and Casanova-ish lad in the whole wide world and perhaps he even struck me as a bit of a cluck, but he was a nice guy and certainly meant nobody any harm. The same could not be said of that other boy. He meant some harm.

But I was, after all, here to do a job, not to wreck the place one room at a time. And my white charger was made into horsemeat a long time ago. That’s what I told myself.

The gal turned around, hitched her chair closer to the table—and, boy, was she burning.

She was wearing a pale-blue cocktail gown instead of a costume, and it was cut low over high breasts, plunging just deep enough into that dark shadowed valley, and as she breathed deeply her breasts rose and fell with a rapid, sensual, rhythmic semibareness that should have had the sound of muted trumpets and a dozen alto saxes behind it. The fingers of one hand drummed the tabletop.

Then she snapped her head around, one way, and the other.

I couldn’t figure what she was looking for. But I did when she found it. She wanted a waitress, and got one—they all wore yellow see-through ankle-length bloomers and metallic bras with golden snakes woven around the cups, probably meant to represent the death of Cleopatra twice—and when the waitress stopped alongside her the little lovely ordered another drink.

I grinned. Apparently She was going to sit right there, smoke and all, even if she choked. It pleased me. Of course, if she’d been here as part of a kookie sit-in in some joint where she wasn’t wanted and didn’t want to be in the first place—like if the cigar-smoker owned the hotel, for example—I might have said, “So choke on it.” But this was a little different; this time it was that big beefy slob, and a private smoke-in.

She got her drink, lifted it to her lips and was just starting to swallow when the slob got another lungful and actually leaned half out of his chair this time, so he could get his mug a foot from her head when he blew. She got a noseful, I guess; something happened. She actually did start to choke for a few seconds, apparently from the combination of liquor in her throat and cigar smoke in her nostrils.

She coughed, lowered her head and put a hand to her mouth, coughed against it again and once again, shoulders shaking, and the guy sucked in another big gob and got ready for the coup de grace, and I told myself weakly, “Don’t do it, Scott,” as I climbed down off my stool and did it.

Three long steps got me there. I put my left hand high on his chest, just under the thick neck, and pushed him back solid in his seat. He was caught by surprise and wasn’t difficult to move, but when his rear end hit the chair he yanked his head up and looked at me and said, “Wha—”

The smoke he’d had ready to go came out in a loose puff and floated around his head, between him and me. This close, I could see that except for the expression of surprise bending his chops he was a very good-looking guy. Younger than I’d thought, too. A bit too thick in the middle and head, I’d have said, but it was the kind of strong, virile face a lot of women would flip for. Deep-set eyes under heavy brows, straight nose, thick and sensual lips, a clean strong jaw. The cigar wai still in his right hand, a half-full glass of beer on the table next to him.

I took the cigar from his fingers, picked up his glass and dunked the cigar in the beer. It went psst and bubbled a little. Then I put the glass back on the table, handed him the cigar and stood there.

“You sonofabitch,” he said.

“Ah-ah, careful. I’m just uneasy now. Don’t get me all unstrung.”

“What—” He stopped and thought about it. Then he started to get up. Then he stopped and thought about that too. Finally he said, “What the hell you do that for?”

I grinned at him. “It’s a free country.”

I waited, but after appearing to chew on something gristly he looked across the table at his companion and said, “All the nuts are out tonight, huh?”

So I turned around and went back to my stool.

A couple minutes later I saw the big guy and his friend go out into the lobby.

A minute after that, while glowering at my drink, not feeling all filled with joy and light, either, I heard a voice near my ear, a voice like the humming of honey, like hot winds in green grass, soft as the flutter of mas-caraed lashes, warm as a Martini in an empty stomach.

And all it said was, “Hi.”

I turned slowly, looked at her and grinned. “What did you say?”

“Just hi.”

Just enough. It sounded the way it used to in Southern California.

8

You think she’d looked good six or eight feet away? Let me tell you, that had been seeing as through a glass darkly.

Up close she was all velvet and fire, skin like silken umber, the eyes still dark and almost brown, but with green in them, a lot of green, the color of wet moss, or the sea, or emeralds in shadow. They were big and round and that look of constant surprise in them gave her an air of virginal innocence—when you looked at her eyes. But a breath below was where the virgin died and a bawd was born.

Those lips were the flesh of a hot, carnivorous blossom, a trap and a snare made for a man’s mouth; wild lips that silently sizzled, that moved a little, kept moving Just a little, as if in memory of long, lusty, lingering kisses; lips that were fine and moist and full, that looked soft and sweet and willing in a face that was wanton and wise. You don’t think so? Friend, you should have been there.

There was with your face about six inches from hers. I’d climbed to my feet and was standing close to the lovely, looking down at her.

I leaned just a little closer and, still grinning, said, “That is hi, I presume, as in hi-diddle-diddle?”

“Like in hi-de-ho, honey.”

“Well, crazy. You have just destroyed three thousand of my corpuscles.”

“That is a bloody shame,” she said.

“Lady,” I said, starting to get the rhythm, “you’re more fun that a hot transfusion, you’re really plasma. I think we could swing—if I knew the music.”

“Easy. I’ll take the offbeat, love, and you just fake it in the middle.”

“Hey-hoo, I think I’ve got the background. Now if I could only find the playground . . . “

“I know where it is.”

“So take me wherever.”

“It’s not far from here, daddy.”

“And that’s where the swing is?”

“That’s where it is, that is where it is at.” She was starting to smile more widely, more hotly, and once or twice she snapped her fingers.

So I snapped a couple myself. “ ‘School days,’ “ I yo-deled, “ ‘school days, dear old golden . . . ‘ It sounds like fun.”

“It is fun. And it’s easy, love. You just give it a little push and it keeps going.”

“I want one of those for my front yard. Lady, you make me feel like a little kid again.”

“You’re a liar, daddy. I mean . . . “ She smiled like Lucrezia Borgia stirring the soup, and said, “I mean, you is a liah, big white daddy,” and this time she lowered her voice and kind of got it squeezed in her throat, and something in the sound as the words rasped softly through her lips sent a charge, a jolt, a kind of three-dimensional electrocution into me about midway of the midsection, and it spread out both ways from there and activated every switch I had in that whole general area.

I gulped and said, “If you say so.”

“What do you say?”

“OK.”

“By the way,” she said. “Thanks. For puttin’ out old Smokey Bear.”

“For nothing. It was a pleasure.”

She looked me up and down, from my gorgeous turban to my marvelous red jacket and hero medals to my dandy striped pants, and said, “My, you’re pretty. What are you, a fireman?”

“Huh,” I said stiffly. “Huh. Any fool can see that I am a maharaja.”

“A what?”

“A maharaja!”

“You’re a Mountie. With a funny hat.”

“So it’s funny. So . . . would you settle for mahaharaja?”

She grinned. “If you say so,” she said.

She leaned forward; her breasts touched my chest. I looked down at them swelling against the neckline of her dress, straining against the blue cloth as if impatient with even that fragile restraint. I hoped she didn’t scratch them. She leaned even closer and those freedom-loving breasts bulged over the blue neckline, quivered, started to spill, and I said, “Baby, you’re melting my medals. Let’s . . . let’s . . . let’s have a drink.”

I spotted the bartender, held up two fingers, pointed at the bar. He nodded, but I thought he looked panicky, as though becoming certain he should never have mentioned Cobra’s Kisses to me in the first place.

When the drinks arrived, my new and zippy companion gazed upon them intently, and those big, round, sur-prised-looking eyes became even bigger and rounder and more surprised-looking, and she said, “Have you been drinking those?”

“Of course. But this is only my fifth.”

“You’ve had five?”

“Well, yes, about a fifth. But don’t worry, I hold my drinks pretty well.” I pressed two fingers against each eye for a moment, adding, “When I’m sober, especially.”

Then I said, “I think I’d better sit down. And get, ah, my wind back. Watch it there. I think we’d better both sit down.”

She moved back a little more, maybe half an inch, and those innocent eyes rolled around. “Only one stool,” she said.

“So it’s yours, all yours. Unless you want to sit on my lap.”

She smiled again, like Lucrezia along about the third course this time. “I might,” she said, “only I’m not wearing a girdle. So I can’t do that.” She slid up onto the stool with a motion as fluid as two ball bearings rubbing together in a quart of peanut oil. “Don’t dare.”

“No girdle?” I said in a voice ringing with joy. “No bachelor-girl’s-best-friend? No enemy of mankind? Hallelujah! If this catches on you might be the savior of civilization.”

“You mean we’re—I mean, you mean we is in accord?”

I got a boot out of the way she switched from the smooth, almost lilting language she ordinarily used into the calculated lingo with a rocking bounce and beat; I would have matched it if I could, but I couldn’t. She probably knew eight languages more than I did.

So I merely said, “We is, for a fact. It so happens I am a charter anti-girdler. If I had my way I’d heist the things out of washing machines, and burn them entirely. So, Sweetpants—say, what the hell is your name?”

She threw back her head and laughed, the smooth brown column of her throat rippling. Then she lowered her head and looked up at me from the chaste, sparkling eyes. “It’s Miss Weldon. And it’s Miss Weldon. And it’s Lyssa. So who am I?”

“You’re Lyssa, what else?”

“And you’re what else?”

“Shell Scott.”

“What are you doing here, Shell Scott? You one of the big important guests?”

“Nope. I’m a dot—” I cut it off just in time. “I’m one of the judges of tomorrow’s beauty contest.”

“Oooh,” she squealed. “Vote for me, vote for me.”

“You’re in the contest?”

“You just bet I am.”

Now that I’d reminded myself I was, after all, a detective; and now that I was actually talking to one of the contestants, I took the opportunity to ask, “You know any of the other girls in the contest, Lyssa?”

“I know them all. Met them all, I mean.”

“How about Jeanne Jax?”

“Sure, she’s a real pretty—” Lyssa stopped suddenly. “Seems funny you’d ask me about her.”

“Why funny?

“She was supposed to be staying with Carol, another of the girls in the contest—Carol Shearing. But Carol says die didn’t come back to their room last night. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yeah.”

“And, besides, she was asking me a lot of questions yesterday. I think she asked some of the other girls, too.”

“Oh? Asked about what?”

“What we knew about this bigshot, Mr. Sardis.”

I felt a little electric current ripple the hairs on my ears. “Sardis?” I said casually. “Ephrim Sardis?”

“Uh-huh. You know him?”

“Never met the man,” I said truthfully. “But I’ve heard of him. What did she want to know about Sardis?”

“Oh, like who he was, where be lived, if he was as rich as everybody said, things like that.”

“So what did you tell her?”

“I told her I didn’t know much about him, but if she was so curious, ask Bull Harper.”

“Who’s Bull Harper?”

She frowned. “What are you so curious about all of a sudden?”

“Curious fellow. So who’s this Bull?”

“He’s a friend of mine, if you want to know. A good friend. He doesn’t ask me all kinds of goofy questions.”

“Why would he know anything about Sardis?”

She frowned more vigorously, and squirted some air out her nose. “He’s Mr. Sardis’ bodyguard,” she said. “Among other things, like driving his car and so on. And if you keep asking things like that, I’m going to get right up and leave.”

Well, it had been a fairly profitable minute of conversation, and I sure didn’t want Lyssa to leave. For lots of reasons. So I grinned at her and said, “Well, then, let’s go back to where we were at. Ah, so you’re Lyssa Weldon? Well, I’m Shell Scott. How about that?”

It was as if she’d never been away. She snapped her fingers and said, “Crazy. And you are the craziest-looking man. You shuah is, you shu-wah is.”

“Ah, but underneath this rough exterior is an interior.”

“I like it all right,” she said casually, “way it is on the outerside.”

“Then we is in accord. Because I have been—in case you’d not noticed—so admiring your outerside that I may soon be offside. And as long as we’ve gone back, to conclude my comments on corsets, allow me to applaud your wisdom, forethought, hindsight, and stupendous anatomy. That is, if you are truly wise enough, and brave enough, not to be wearing a girdle.”

“Feel.”

“Huh?”

She was seated, turned half around on the stool, and I was standing out away from the bar, but not very far away from Lyssa. And I could almost see something move deep in those brown-green eyes, a little flicker like heat lightning, as she said, “Underneath this exterior is no nothin’, just me.”

“No girdle, no noth . . . “ I looked up at the ceiling. “No—”

“Nothin’. You don’t believe me, feel me.”

She reached for my wrist, pulled, put my hand on the curve of her hip, moved it down the smooth roundness of her thigh. She was warm; I could feel the heat of her body, like boiling blood under my fingertips. And she was right, there was nothing under the dress but Lyssa. The thin cloth felt like her skin.

Our faces were only inches apart, but something across the room caught her eye and held it for long seconds, then she looked back at me again.

She ran her tongue over her lips and said, “I thought shu-wah old Smokey Bear was going to hit you down in the ground.”

“I was kind of afraid he might have something like that in mind.”

“Think he could’ve? Could’ve done it?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t likely, but you never know. He might have.”

“You pretty good, like in a real fight?”

“Pretty good. Why, what the hell? What difference does it make to you?”

“Not me,” she said, kind of sadly, I thought. “Might make a difference to you.”

“How’s that?”

She looked once more toward whatever it was that had caught her eye and said, back to the normal language again, “I hope you’re not merely pretty good. Shell. You’d better be better than that.”

Well, I had a feeling.

Yep. I had a feeling something horrible was going to happen.

I knew if I looked something would be over there that I wouldn’t “want to see, but that I should see. And, there in one little convolution of my lamebrain those thoughts I’d earlier had about the sometimes inevitability of self-propelled events wiggled.

I looked around.

The first thing I saw was Jerry Vail, back at last

But that wasn’t it.

There was it, in the doorway.

It was just about the biggest, blackest Negro I’d seen in my life. He was enormous.

I knew Vail was my height, six-two, but this monster was a good three inches taller than Vail and I’d have given splendid odds he weighed not an ounce less than a thousand pounds. Well, a solid two hundred and eighty pounds, at least. Which was a good two hundred pounds more than I felt like tangling with at the moment.

He looked big, he looked tough, he looked menacing, he looked dangerous as hell. But mainly, he looked at me.

And to me it was plain as day, plain as the already broken nose on my face: that he had come to get me.

Maybe it wasn’t what he’d originally intended; perhaps he’d just come here for fun, for a lark, or his girl—with my luck, that was undoubtedly it—or for booze. What difference did it make? Now he was coming to get me.

“Lyssa,” I hissed. “Lyssa doll, honey, Sweetp-p-p—hey. Who—who—what is that?”

“That’s Bull. My boyfriend.”

“You call that a boy?”

The subject of this jollity was staring straight at Lyssa and me, his mouth working a little, and his eyes appearing, at least from my disadvantage point, to be flashing red and pink and blue lights, and it did not help a bit that I, like the number-one champeen sap of all the world, was still standing there clutching Lyssa’s friendly rear end. Well, these friends had come to a parting of the ways.

The big, black, flashing-eyed monster started toward me, as if fully wound up and just turned on. Probably Lyssa had turned him on. She’d turned me on—that was the trouble. Jerry Vail was standing in front of the human tank but the big ape didn’t go around, he just walked straight ahead. His shoulder hit Vail and Jerry simply spun in the air, staggered, and banged into a table to the sound of crashing dinnerware.

Well, I thought, first thing, I’d better let go of Lyssa’s behind. I didn’t seem to be thinking with razor-sharp perspicacity, or even noodles. Bull was getting a lot closer. And bigger.

I had time to speak to Lyssa. “Honey, it was fun,” I said, “while it lasted.”

It wasn’t much of a line, but I put a lot of feeling into it. After all, it was a memorable moment. We’d known each other not long, but lots, and I wanted Lyssa to know, wherever I went, I’d be watching over her.

“He’s mad,” Lyssa said. “Oh, I can tell he’s mad.”

“Yeah? How can you tell?”

No sense talking to her anymore.

I turned back toward Bull. He was practically here now. I planted my feet, faced him squarely. I’d seen Jerry Vail stride across this same floor earlier, same route, same destination. But not a bit the same, really. He’d been like a Viking war barge and all that. This wasn’t. This was an earthquake rolling over the land during some thunderstorms.

Well, I asked myself sourly, what did you expect?

I’d had that creepy feeling. I’d had a hunch it was one of those nights. The bat-voice whispers had been filling the air all around me; I just hadn’t been listening.

I’d gone on ahead, throwing my weight around, yak-king with Lyssa, and now look at me. Babes, I thought, they’ll be the death of me. Babes, I amended, they’ll be the death of me in a minute.

Less than a minute. About a second.

I braced myself. Whatever was going to happen, I suppose I’d asked for it. I’d almost heard the distant fee-fi-fo-fum. But had I played it smart? Not me.

So here I stood—out in the rain, with no umbrella.

9

Bull stopped a foot away and stared at me—down at me—for a second that lasted approximately a minute, then he cranked his big head around toward my new girl.

“Lyssa, baby,” he said. The voice was like rumblings deep in a long-dormant island volcano preparing to sink the island. “Lyssa, baby, make tracks.”

“You just settle right down,Bull Harper. You settle down or I’ll poke you in the eye with a high heel.”

“Lyssa, baby—”

“Don’t you baby me. I know that look on your dumb face. You want to kill somebody, don’t you?”

I groaned.

Bull said, “It’s none of your business.”

“You’re my business, honey.” She paused for a beat and said, “So’s he, you want to know it. He’s a nice man.”

“Yeah?” He stared at her, then leaned over closer to me. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. I seen you feeling her delicate can.”

“Oh?”

Well, here it was. The moment of truth. What could I tell him? What could I tell him that would sidetrack his homicidal mania? My brain wasn’t going clickety-click yet, and I didn’t come up with the just-right answer immediately.

“Well, Mr. Harper,” I said. “Or Bull. Do you mind if I call you Bull? Ah . . . Well, Mr. Harper, the—are you sure that’s what you saw?”

“I seen it with my own eyeballs, and I know what I seen.”

“That makes pretty good sense.”

“Come on, come on. Was you or wasn’t you?”

I sighed. I spread my feet a little wider. “Well, yes,” I said, “I was.”

“Ha! I knew that was what I seen!”

Then he did a very interesting thing. He wound four fingers and a thumb into two big fists. Then he hauled them back with the obvious intent of thundering them down on me. I got ready to duck and try to hit him eight or nine times before he could get all set again.

And, as always at moments of real peril, my brain juice started flowing more speedily. Up there in the labyrinthine paths of my hollow-fang-filled brain, the answer hissed. All became euphorically lucid, clear and shining. What could I say to this guy at the moment of truth? Why, naturally—the truth. With, perhaps, just a little embellishment.

“Hold it,” I said rapidly. “You know what I did, sure. But don’t you want to know why?”

He hesitated. “Not ‘specially,” he said.

“Of course you do. Any normal man would want to know why.”

“I figger I know why. Why else?”

“Well,” I said, thinking rapidly, “that . . . makes pretty good sense, too.”

“Bull Harper, you listen to the man.”

Little Lyssa was still in there trying. She was a doll. I flashed her a grateful look, then said to Bull, “I agree with her.”

“Listen to what?” Bull asked. “What’s to listen to?”

“Well, Bull,” I said, “I’ll tell you. Do you realize Lyssa does not wear a girdle?”

“Hell, yes, I realize.”

“I’m glad of that . . . I think. Now, pay attention. I have long been convinced that girdles are adjustable racks, expandable torture chambers not only for the women they so agonizingly encase but for the men—ah, especially the men—who must endure even greater pains than the wives, lovers, mothers, even little babes, who wear girdles only because they have been brainwashed by a great deal of eyewash. Why, I have seen women forty-five pounds underweight wearing girdles. Would you believe that?”

“No. And the hell with it.”

“Wait a minute. I’m trying to tell you—”

“What’s all this noise got to do with Lyssa?”

“What, indeed? Well, ah, umm . . . Well, I have just begun considering forming an international organization to eliminate this threat to beauty, health and sanity. Would you believe that? It will be called the Society to Abolish Girdles, familiarly known as SAG, and while I had not mentioned this to Lyssa, it is at least possible I would eventually have gotten around to it.”

“It don’t make no—”

“First, of course, it would be necessary to be assured that she was on my side, that she was not some kind of girdle-loving subversive infiltrating my rank—ranks. In other words, that she did not wear a girdle.”

“I plainly don’t understand a word of it,” he said. “And I aim to teach you—”

He was already aiming. He had hauled that big long arm and those fists back again and was just about ready to let it go, but the realization that I’d at least kept him listening instead of hitting for nearly a minute, combined with the nearness of that four-fingers-and-a-thumb disaster, provided sufficient stimulus to my glands, noodles and tonsils to steam me up enough that I kept talking and he kept listening, and I figured if I could just talk fast enough all night I might yet see the dawn.

So as he got all set for the blow and started to grunt, I said rapidly, raising my voice a bit and turning it on like a carnival barker, “Hold it, hold it, friend, now I want you to step right up here and hang onto your earlobes because you are going to hear a tale that will make your ears fly right off your head if you loosen your grip.”

My blood pressure was up about fifty points but, by golly. Bull hadn’t done it yet. He was actually listening. The momentary reprieve gave wings to my tongue and from then on it fairly flew.

“It just so happens,” I continued speedily, “that I am perhaps the number-one girdle-hater west of the Rockies, and when I manage to seize enough power, as president of SAG, I intend to pass laws outlawing them. In the meantime, I hope to work with entomologists to develop a bug which will eat them all up like locusts in the prairies.”

With something of a shock I realized that the clatter and clink of dishes and drink had stopped. The men and women at tables near me were turned toward me, listening with expressions that varied from interest-to astonishment to curdling dismay.

But I couldn’t stop now. Bull had that big hand up by his ear, but he wasn’t yet hanging onto the earlobe, so I didn’t pause or even lower my voice but just kept on going.

“I want you to get this, Bull. I feel that every girdle should be taxed a thousand dollars for every inch of gird. If women must wear the things, it is only justice to make them pay the cost of the multiple frustrations—leading inevitably to wars and holocausts—which they unquestionably cause. Another thing: if instead of destroying them or letting the bugs eat them up we turned them over to the military, somebody in the Pentagon could devise millions of catapults which we could use against the Red Chinese in guerrilla warfare—especially from those real springy ones that never wear out; even when washed in soap.”

Some nut yelled, “Hear, hear!” and there was even a scattering of applause. Damn, I thought, they may ruin my concentration. So I went on helter-skelter.

“And now hear this: With a return to anatomical sanity, women will automatically become wiser. At first, of course, they may become dizzier, for when they remove the tourniquets which for so long have strangled their arteries, veins, livers, kidneys, bladders and yoohoos, there will be a great rush of blood to their brains and they may faint and fall down like stones. But in the end they will become wiser, through providing nourishment to their noodles. Right now, they are very dull in the end, as anyone can tell you who has grabbed a handful of machinery, all unsuspecting.”

Damned if there wasn’t a great rattle of applause. From the corners of my eyes I could see guys—yeah, all of them were guys—clapping, and a couple even whistled, and one middle-aged character yelled, “You hear that, Sarah?”

I didn’t let it bother me but continued, not merely to Bull but now to everybody else in the Seraglio. “Friends, it has happened to me, and it is like walking into a door in the darkness. Believe me, once people really get this message, it will spread from city to city, from settlement to hamlet to town to—In time it will ungirdle the earth.

“Now, think what this means! Think of it, friends! Babes all over the place, looking real, and smiling, the lines of self-inflicted strangulation gone from their faces, rich red blood circulating and singing in the veins, not just lying there and going plop. Husbands home from a hard day at the office will find their wives springing at them from the middle of the living room. Millions of women all at once taking deep breaths for the first time in scores of bitter years may stir up enough wind to blow all the smog away! Men, are you with me?”

That just popped out, but by golly they were—twenty or thirty voices boomed, “Yes!” From spots in the room came cries of “You know it!” and “Say it again!”

I was really charged up now. Or crocked.

“Men,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “I can see the sunrise! I can see a brighter day ahead! I can see millions of men banding together in SAG—under my leadership, of course—to demand then: God-given rights! And, at last, the butt of many jokes will be enshrined, will take its proper and fitting place in our culture. Statues to old-fashioned derrieres will be erected in the halls of Congress, in major cities, even in county seats. I can see them now: Great, granite busts of fannies all over the landscape, rising like mating half-moons to the north, the south, the east, west, everywhere you look—fannies.

“The mind goggles—boggles. Men, the certainties are immense, and the possibilities endless. In one swoop—sweep—we can eliminate girdles, wipe out aggression and guerrilla warfare, restore the health of inhibited womanhood, raise taxes, beautify the landscape, and bring back the light of radiant joy to the eyes of all mankind. So, men, I say to you: Down with Girdles! Back to Nature! Upward and Onward! And—Forward to Victory!”

Well, all hell busted loose. Applause and shouts bounced from the rafters. Boy, they were really drunk. A dozen or more men got to their feet and beat their hands and stomped their shoes on the floor, and three women got up and walked stiffly out. They did not, of course, jiggle when they walked, which is why they walked stiffly.

Bull was looking at me with a very intent expression on his chops. Finally he said, “Yeah. Forget all that. What about I seen you feeling her delicate fanny.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. “Go ahead and hit me.”

“Bull Harper!” That was Lyssa. “I’ll kick you in the eyes with my heels, I swear, you ever-lovin’—”

“Wait a minute!” I yelled at Bull in sudden inspiration. I had to yell in order to be heard above the still continuing pandemonium. “Wait a minute!”

He’d been looking at Lyssa and now he cranked his head back toward me. “Bull,” I said. “don’t you realize? You can’t hit me. Not now.”

“I can’t?”

“Of course not. Not if you value your life. Look around us, Bull. Can’t you see? These are my—my people. They’re with me. I’m their—their leader now. See?”

“Not yet.”

“If you fait me they’ll assume it’s because you didn’t like what I said. They’ll think you disagree with me. That you’re a girdle-lover. Do you want that?”

“I guess not. But—”

“Don’t stop to think—ah, I mean, think about it. Bull. They’d tear you to bits and pieces. They’re not individual men anymore. They’re animals, they’re an avenging mob. They’re all charged up, lusting to go out and grab girdles. If you aren’t careful, they’ll leap on you all at once, pound you, massacre you. No, Bull, the moment is past It’s too late.”

He stared at me. Then he looked at Lyssa. “Lyssa, baby, what you think?”

“Oh, he’s right, Bull,” she said. “No question, he’s right.”

He shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe so.” He shook his head some more. “But, I . . . got a feeling . . . “

The shouting had died down now, and a little old man stopped next to me on his way out. He put a thin, trembling hand on my shoulder and looked up at me from sorrowful eyes. “I could have wept,” he said. He was about ninety years old—too late for him.

I looked at Bull. “You see?”

“Huh,” he said. Then, “Come on, Lyssa baby, let’s make tracks.”

And make tracks they did. But when only a few feet away, Lyssa turned her head and, with heat lightning flickering in those innocent round eyes, winked.

“You quit that,” I said.

And then they were gone.

10

I just stood there, silently saying, “Glory be,” over and over, until suddenly Jerry Vail was standing next to me.

He didn’t speak. He beckoned with a trembling finger, turned, and stalked out of the lounge, across the lobby and into his office. I followed him inside and shut the door.

He looked at me for a while, shaking his head. Then he said slowly and deliberately, “Will you tell me what the hell was the meaning of that ridiculous exhibition?”

“Well, for one thing, I just don’t like girdles,” I said.

He started to say something else, stopped, did that again and once again, looking very much like a man chewing a sticky cud, and finally he said, “That’s all you’ve got to say, Scott?”

“Hell, didn’t I say enough?”

“I suppose you’re not interested in what is happening to Mr. Monaco.”

“Sure I am. Indeed I am. The things I’ve gone through for that man. Well, how is he?”

“He is, as you might be able to guess, not happy. One could even say his agitation has reached remarkable proportions. However, I am assured he will be released within the hour, possibly in the next few minutes. He will, of course, be interested in knowing how you are progressing with the case. How are you?”

“Fine, how are you?”

“You imbecile, you know what I meant. I meant, how are you progressing with the case?”

“Yeah. I knew it. I’m not quite back to normal yet. Well, you know how it is. A little here, a little there . . . “

“In other words, you’ve actually nothing valid to report.”

“Well, you could say that. But, Mr. Vail, it’s often that way in my cases. I go along picking up a clue here and a clue there, and half the time I don’t even know I’ve got clues. Really, it happens. Why, I’ll bet I’ve already got three or four important clues I don’t even know about. But as soon as the old subconscious—”

“Please spare me the details.”

He mumbled something else, but I was thinking of what I’d just told him. Come to think of it, I’d been right. I was sure I’d already learned quite a number of things of real importance, even though some of them might have bypassed my brain. Temporarily, of course. For example, there was—yeah. Those bits from Lyssa. Jeanne wanting to talk to Ephrim Sardis’ bodyguard. A guy named—uh-huh. Bull Harper. I knew I’d heard that name somewhere before.

Well, it was a shuddering thought: I was going to have to hunt up Bull Harper and talk to him again.

Perhaps to drive that thought out of my mind, and with the rest of what Lyssa had told me still in it, I said to Vail, “Did Jeanne talk to you or your wife about Mr. Sardis?”

“Jeanne?”

“Jeanne Jax. The dead girl.”

“Her? Why in hell would she talk to us about Ephrim?”

“Beats me. I merely wondered if she asked either of you any questions about him.”

He stared at me for quite a while, a peculiarly intent expression on his face. Finally he said deliberately, “She did not. And I feel certain she did not ever talk to my wife. But I fail to grasp the relevance. Are you sure, Scott, that you know what you’re doing?”

“As sure as I ever am.”

He ran a hand through his wavy golden hair, mussing it up a lot. Then, briskly, he told me what he’d been doing. He had phoned Monaco’s attorneys, talked to the police, done all he could. His wife was home, under sedation. He’d been going crazy trying to accomplish all that and still stay on top of arrangements for the party. He intimated that my activities were not helping him to hang onto his remaining shreds of sanity. I had to admit that he did look pretty well shot.

“The reason I arrived here later than I expected,” he went on, “is because two sheriff’s deputies called at the estate and talked to Neyra and me. It was inevitable, I suppose, and justifiable. But it would have to be tonight, of all nights.”

“Inevitable is the word,” I agreed. “The law was certain to talk with you and Mrs. Vail, and anybody else close to Mr. Sardis—anybody very chummy with Jeanne Jax, for that matter. Which is something Mr. Monaco doesn’t seem to have considered closely. How he expects to keep the mess quiet even overnight is beyond me.”

Vail cocked his head on one side. “The officers did ask me and Neyra not to mention their visit—not to mention her father’s death to anyone, for that matter. Ormand does know a few strings to pull, and I presume he’s been pulling them.”

Then he looked at his watch and said, with some agitation, “The party’s starting right now. I have to check the kitchen. And I suppose you’d like to get something to eat.”

“Yeah, it’s probably time I put something solid in my stomach.”

“I’ll see you later, then,” he said, thus dismissing me.

I was hungry, at that. So out I went, headed for tile food—and the action.

There was sure plenty of both.

One of three huge buffet tables was set up at an end of the pool—which I’d seen sparkling outside when I was first in the Kubla Khan’s lobby—and that’s where I went. There were about two dozen kinds of salads, a lot of cold cuts and fish, beans and garbanzos and olives and such. Plus a dozen steaming hot dishes—lobsters and oysters, steaks, prime ribs, ham, chops, casseroles.

After gorging myself on tossed green salad and rare prime ribs, I looked over the area, beginning to realize that preparations for this weekend had been no less than Herculean. Monaco had obviously spared no expense, and the total effect approached the fantastic. In addition to silken streamers in every color of the rainbow rippling in a crosshatch pattern overhead and fluttering from tall poles, red and blue and green and yellow lights bathing the palms and shrubbery, and brilliantly costumed guests and waiters and attendants in abundance, there was also what amounted to a zoo.

Yeah, a zoo—animals. And I mean animals.

In cages placed about the grounds were three Bengal tigers; between the pool and a small tent, in which a band played and where some of the guests were dancing on a temporary hardwood floor, was a magnificent cheetah on a leash—held by his trainer, I presumed and hoped; there were two screened cages filled with colorful and rather raucous birds, a cage occupied by suspicious-looking monkeys, and one lone zebra tied to a stake. There were also, and I kid you not, two elephants in a grassy clearing. A big elephant and a little one, though the little one was not so little I would not have noticed had he stepped on me.

This place was the Kubla Khan and a carnival, Xanadu and Barnum and Bailey, a Mardi Gras and cocktail party and a seminudist camp and a good chunk of Hollywood Boulevard rolled into one. All that was needed was Pan playing his pipes and this could turn into the Thousand and Second Night.

As I strolled around I saw several familiar faces, some of them familiar not only to me but to much of the planet’s population. Movie stars and TV personalities, a few politicians, a couple of reporters I recognized from L.A., the polished and witty host of a late-night TV talkathon, a magazine writer or two. There were also numerous photographers—one from Playboy, though he was not costumed as a bunny—and at intervals flashbulbs flared brilliantly, and ladies squealed in feigned dismay.

I wandered back to the main swimming pool, which was the center of much of the most interesting activity, and spotting an unoccupied chaise longue, occupied it. After five minutes of relaxation I figured I’d get busy and solve the case, maybe. Or at least hunt up Bull Harper and Lyssa again. Or at least Lyssa. And I wanted to find Carol Shearing, the late Jeanne Jax’s roommate for a night, too.

There was lots I wanted to do. But for five minutes I was simply going to let some of my tossed green salad and prime ribs digest—shouldn’t work immediately after eating—and gaze upon sights I might not in this lifetime see again.

The snake-charmer band was still playing, flaming torches flickered in the warm wind, and I could smell the scent of sage and jasmine. Several couples were dancing near the band, lovely tomatoes jumped and bobbed and swam in the briefest of brief bikinis, and across the pool from me, on the blue-tiled deck, several superbly stacked nautch girls wiggled, doing what comes nautch-urally . . . .

11

It was just 8:30 p.m. when I managed to run down Carol Shearing.

Lyssa had told me she was the gal with whom it had been intended that Jeanne Jax share a room, but Lyssa hadn’t told me what she looked like. However—only a few minutes after somewhat reluctantly forcing myself from my poolside chaise longue—I learned from an Amazonian lovely dressed in very little, whom I encountered staring at an elephant and saying “Ohmigawd,” not only that Carol was present but where she was.

The lovely pointed her out, merely by facing in the general direction of a curvy blonde wearing one of the nautch-girl or temple-dancer costumes, which apparently were the official garb of the beauty contestants. “That’s Carol,” she said. Then she turned to point at the elephant. “What is that gross thing?” she asked, in a tone full of wonder.

“That is an elephant.”

“I thought they were extink.”

“No. At least that one isn’t. Large beast, isn’t he?”

She nodded and looked me up and down. “So are you. What are you, his trainer?”

Caveman, truck driver, elephant trainer—what would be next? “You,” I said with dignity, “are several sheets to the wind, aren’t you?”

She smiled ecstatically, and I stalked away.

Carol Shearing was talking to a heavy-set hulk, rather broad of beam, and as I walked toward them I heard him say, “Well, thanks, doll. See you around.”

He’d been facing away from me, but as he turned and walked toward the hotel he glanced at me from deep-set eyes under tangled, heavy brows. I’d seen the guy someplace, but at first couldn’t remember where.

The girl turned and headed toward the swimming pool. I fell into step beside her and said, “Hello; you’re Carol Shearing, aren’t you?”

She smiled automatically. “Yes. Yes. Hello.” She seemed to be quite keyed up, her pretty face flushed and glowing.

“I’m Shell Scott. Have you got a minute?”

“Just about. I have to go fall in the pool. You can walk with me, though.”

“You have to what?”

“Fall in the pool. It’s my publicity man’s idea. He’s a genius.”

“Must be. Well, I won’t keep you from the works of genius, Miss Shearing. Just wanted to ask if you’ve any idea where Jeanne Jax is.”

She frowned a mite. “Why’s everybody so interested in Jeanne?”

“Everybody?”

“Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But the fellow I was just talking to, and now you.”

“Oh? What did he want to know about her?”

“Just where she was. I’m supposed to be her roomie, but I don’t even know where she is. That’s what I told him.”

“Who was—” Then I remembered.

I guess I hadn’t recognized him without his cigar. It was the beefy character who’d been blowing smoke in the Seraglio. I looked around but he was already out of sight, swallowed up somewhere in the crowd. I was tempted to chase after him, but I didn’t want to chop off the conversation with Carol now I’d found her. Besides, if the guy had known Jeanne was dead, he would hardly have been asking where she was. Of course, that’s what I had just asked Carol.

She was saying, “He didn’t tell me his name or anything. Just asked about Jeanne, and when I told him I hadn’t seen her, be left.”

“You hadn’t seen the man around before?”

“No.”

“Uh-huh. You say Jeanne’s your—your roomie?”

“Supposed to be. Most of us got here Wednesday, you know, and Jeanne and I were roomies that night. But I didn’t even see her yesterday, except once, and she never did show up last night.” She rolled her eyes as if doing exercises to strengthen the little muscles, and added, “So I had to sleep all alone.”

“A fate worse than insomnia,” I said. It was a bit difficult to get teeth into the conversation, because we were still walking, and Carol was stepping along at a very speedy clip. Anxious to fall into the pool, I guessed. Unless I was far, far off the mark, her publicity man and nine or ten photographers would just happen to be present when she rose, dripping, from the clear waters.

It was going to be something to see, undoubtedly. Merely looking down at Carol alongside me was itself something to see, for the gauzy outfit offered very little either of concealment or restraint when not even damp. The bloomer affair was completely transparent, and bystanders were spared being spun into shock merely by a wisp of opaque underthing under the thing, while the top was no more than a sort of half-blouse made of thin cheesecloth over a brassiere woven, presumably, from seamless sixty-gauge nylon. Since the bra was not nearly sturdy enough to hold down a tent in a gale, and fine print could have been read through that blouse if the moon was full, speedily moving Carol provided nearly as much activity and excitement as cavalry attacking the Indians.

“Uh, what say we slow down?” I said to her.

“Golly, I don’t have time,” she said. “Oh—here, hold my watch, will you?”

She slipped a little dinky gadget off her arm and handed it to me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I peered at the watch and said, “You’re late, huh? How can you tell?”

She just kept tripping along.

“Carol, what did you mean, you didn’t see Jeanne yesterday except once. What was the once?”

We had reached a wide cement apron around the swimming pool’s tiled deck and Carol angled left to get around a group of men and women. There was some kind of musical group playing on a raised platform near the pool now, and she had to raise her voice a bit to compete with the oddly melodic and almost dysrhythmic music. It sounded like something to charm cobras with, and a couple of other nautch girls on the blue tiles were making some very snakelike and charming movements.

Carol stopped and looked around, apparently caught her publicity man’s eye and nodded. Then she said to me, “Oh, that was yesterday afternoon sometime. I was over by Misty’s suite, big movie star—she gets a suite, not a two-to-a-room like us. Of course, she’s lovely, and awfully nice.” Carol looked at the pool’s waters and, after thinking briefly, went on, “Of course, a movie star deserves a suite.”

“Misty?”

Carol continued, rattling on breathlessly, “Misty opened the door for somebody and I looked inside to see what the suite was like, and Jeanne was in there.”

“Misty Lombard?” I said.

Carol blinked up at me. “Of course. Misty Lombard. Oh, well, that Jeanne was stuck up, anyway, if you ask me. Pretty enough, but not very friendly—” She broke off, having apparently caught a secret signal. “Oh, here I go!”

“Hey, wait a minute—”

Not a chance. Not when this was Carol Shearing’s first step on her Stairway to the Stars.

She walked over by the pool, then turned and sort of strutted along near its edge, turning to wave and laugh and blow a kiss at somebody in my general area who had clearly amused her a great deal. Clearly it wasn’t me. And then—tragedy.

Somehow one of her high heels—upon which she had recently been racing like a mountain goat at approximately twenty miles an hour—got twisted beneath her and she started to fall backward, plummeting toward the water—at the shallow end of the pool, I noted—screaming very piercingly.

It wasn’t really an unpleasant sound. About like a trained soprano’s A below high C, I guessed. But it was piercing enough to attract plenty of attention.

The dunking of lovely hippily-hipped and bosomy-busted Carol Shearing—soon to be known to millions of fans as Sherry Carroll—was a triumph of drama, feminine art and ballistics. She lit just right and sank just deep enough and hit a clear sweet A nuzzling high C, and bounced up very bouncily with the water streaming from her and churning passionately midway of the curving hips, and didn’t even get her hair wet.

“Oh!” she cried in pretty embarrassment.

Hell, it wasn’t pretty; it was gorgeous.

It was as though water was a magic elixir which dissolved the half-blouse and bloomers entirely, and I knew as I watched her climb gracefully from the drink after one more lilting cry of frustration—a rising “Oh, oh, oh!” this time—that I had seen TV and cinema history in the making.

Carol Shearing, costumed like all the other beauties as a slightly naughty nautch girl, fell into the pool; but from it, her sensational nudity concealed only by what appeared to be the cellophane from three cigarette packs, rose Sherry Carroll.

I had to wait while maybe a hundred flashbulbs flashed and for the conclusion of at least one brief interview, but finally I was not only at Sherry’s side but had one-tenth of her attention.

“Miss Shearing, please.” Yakketa-yakketa-yakketa. “Miss Shearing! Carol. Hey, you’re going to be a star.” That got her. She looked at me, still hiding both beautiful breasts behind her little fingers, and cried, “I’m so ashamed!”

“Yeah. Baby, I’m the guy holding your watch.”

“What? Oh. Oh, good grief.” She looked all around and hissed at me, “Look, keep your mouth shut, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Please?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll do anything.”

“Sure. I mean, don’t worry.”

“I was so excited, I guess I didn’t know what I was saying to you. You will—”

“Yeah, just give me one minute from your crowded schedule, OK?”

“Of course, honey. Just keep your mouth shut and I’ll do any—Say, you’re not in pictures, are you?”

“No,” I said, a little sadly.

We found a spot momentarily free of people who might overhear us and I said, “If I heard you correctly, you told me you saw Jeanne Jax in Misty Lombard’s suite yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes. She was sitting in there smoking a cigarette. Why are you so interested?”

“Just believe I’m interested. And I’ve got nearly a minute left.”

“Take all the time you want, honey.”

“When was this, exactly?”

“After dinner, I think. Oh, sure, that’s how it was. Misty opened the door for a boy from room service. At least, he was carrying a tray, I remember. I thought probably it was from the dining room.”

“You mean Misty’s been eating in her suite?”

“Oh, she ate in the Mandarin Room. I saw her there when I had dinner.”

“No kidding. Interesting.”

12

It was a kissing booth, all right.

The thing was merely an open-to-the-air frame structure built on the order of a temporary fireworks stand—which struck me as rather appropriate—and at its top was a sign—kisses for sale!—in lipstick-red letters on a creamy background, the exclamation point followed by the figure one and two zeros.

Gad, I thought, only a buck? Hardly seems enough. Not with all these rich guys around. The poor girls could wear out their chops, lose all their pucker, get limp like old bicycle tires. Ah, but there were two booths, I noticed.

In one of them, however, a flaming redhead was selling little Eastern pastries, like paclava, or Balaclava, or whatever they call those thin-dough and sprinkled-nuts and cooked-honey cookies, but I sprang right on by that booth and stopped at the second one.

A sweet-lipped brunette stood inside the booth, just beyond a four-foot-high wall of pink-painted boards—pretty thick boards, too—and on this side of the wall—my side—stood luscious Misty Lombard.

When we’d first bumped into each other I had been so magnetized by her eyes, and lips, by the scent of her and the sweet sound of her voice, I had barely seen the rest of her, noting only that she was wearing something white and exceptionally shapely. But now I noticed the rest of her, and how I noticed the rest of her.

She wore a shimmering gold-lame brassiere, in approximately the size not made by Magicbra for the 32 bust, and it was much more opaque than several thicknesses of air, but not too much, and it was cut at the top down into an incurving V which revealed a searing vista of that which some Mohammedans expect to find in their heaven and for which they thus sometimes willingly, happily, even hurriedy die.

Beneath the narrow waist and smooth bare midriff, low on her splendidly swelling hips, a tight gold band two inches wide held loose and billowing folds of more gold lame which formed harem-type pants a little like, but only a little like, those worn by numerous other lovelies here at the Khan. These fastened tightly above brightly colored shoes with long pointed toes which curled up into the air and back toward her slim ankles. From top to bottom, and even farther than that, this gal had everything.

The fact that she was not inside the booth didn’t quite penetrate at first; all I knew for sure was that there she was, with those magnificent eyes and lips and all those other things, and I cried, “Misty! I’ll take—a dozen!”

She turned her head, saw me and smiled. “Oh, Shell, hello . . . . A dozen what?”

“What have you got?”

She glanced at a sign over our heads. kisses for sale! “You must mean kisses,” she said. Then she laughed. “They’re a hundred dollars, you know.”

“Each?” I said, taken aback. “Well, hummm. Hundred smackers a smack, hey? Let me count my change . . . . I’ve got a Diner’s Club card, would that—Ah, make that a Carte Blanche—”

“But you’ll have to talk to Lenore.”

“Who?”

“Lenore.”

“Who in hell’s Lenore?”

“She’s the girl in the kissing booth.”

I looked into the booth. “Hi, Lenore,” I said, and she dimpled and smiled. She wasn’t half bad, but she wasn’t Misty, so I turned back to Misty.

“Why aren’t you in the booth?”

“I’m not working the booth. Shell.”

“You mean your shift’s over already? Ah, do you girls ever put in any overtime?”

She laughed. “Overtime—you make it sound like the girls have to belong to a union. They don’t.”

“Thank Heaven. Be a terrible thing if they did. Right in the middle of a pucker and the boss says. ‘That’s it, kids. I’m pulling your lips out on strike. Either we get a guaranteed lifetime wage or nobody kisses.’ Why, I can see—”

“I’m not working the booth at all. I was just talking to Lenore.”

“Oh? Oh. Well . . . well, instead, then, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“What kind of questions?” Her soft lips curved a little and those eyes, the shade of mountain shadows, rested on mine.

“Well, like where’s Mr. Leaf? Is be dead? I can think of no other reason why he’d fail to be at your side.”

“Oh, Simon got involved in a talk with a couple of other producers. And he’s supposed to join a group in the Sabre Room soon. So I’ve just been entertaining myself.”

“And lots of other people, I’ll wager.”

“Any more questions?”

“Just a couple little ones.” I lowered my voice and added, “About Jeanne Jax.”

No reaction.

“Jeanne?” she said. “What do you want to know about her?”

I took her elbow and led her a few feet away. When we were comparatively alone I said, “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“She’s not at the party,” I said. “Did you see her at any time today?”

Misty was quiet for quite a while. Then she asked, “She’s not here?”

“No.”

“I hadn’t seen her, either. I was wondering where she could be.”

“When was the last time you saw her. Misty?”

Another silence. Those enormous lavender-shaded eyes stayed steady on my own, and finally she said, “I know you’re a detective. Shell. Is that why you’re asking these questions? Is Jeanne in trouble?”

“We won’t get anyplace this way.” I grinned. “I’m asking the questions.”

She knew I was avoiding a reply, and a little of the surface amusement left her face. In fact, all of it did. But she said, “I saw Jeanne early this morning, when I got up. She stayed in my suite last night.”

I don’t know why I was surprised to hear her come right out with it. No reason she shouldn’t have, unless she had something to conceal; and I knew of no reason for her to be concealing anything.

I said, “How come she stayed with you, Misty? I heard she was supposed to room with a girl named Carol Shearing.”

“She was. But I knew Jeanne slightly before coming here—she sang with a group in one of the lounges in Las Vegas for a while, and I met her a couple of months ago.”

“Just ran into her?”

“Not exactly. I was with Simon and some other people from the studio. Simon asked her to our table for a drink after her act. He thought she was a remarkably attractive girl. Which she is.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, that’s how we met. Well, Jeanne knew I had a suite here, and she simply asked me yesterday if she could spend the night with me. I saw no reason to refuse.”

“She say why she didn’t want to stay with Carol?”

“Yes, naturally I asked her that. There wasn’t any secret about what rooms the girls were staying in, or with whom, and because of that Jeanne was afraid her husband might find her. She’d seen him here, and didn’t want him to see her, she said.”

“Husband? She’s married?”

“She said she was married, but, well, sort of separated.”

“How do you get sort of separated?”

Misty smiled slightly. “Jeanne didn’t tell me that.”

“Let me get this straight. She didn’t want hubby to find her? Why not?”

“I gathered she was afraid he’d beat her up or something. Jeanne didn’t say that in so many words, but she did seem afraid—awfully nervous, at least.” Misty paused. “Jeanne told me her husband hated the idea of her being in the beauty contest. Didn’t want her parading around”—she smiled again—”half naked, as he put it.”

“He sounds like a stick. Who’s the hubby?”

“I don’t think she mentioned his name. If she did, I don’t remember it.”

“But she saw the guy? Here at the Khan?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t know. She first spoke to me yesterday afternoon, an hour or two after lunch. So it must have been before then.”

“Sound deduction. She tell you any more about her husband? Or of anything else that might have been worrying her?”

“No, not really. We spent quite a bit of time together, and talked till about ten last night. Just girl talk, you know. But she did act rather strangely, I thought. Even stayed in the room alone while I had dinner.” Misty added, as if it were an afterthought, “I had room service bring her a tray so she wouldn’t go hungry.”

“I already knew about.that. Somebody saw a tray delivered to your room.”

“Oh?” Her voice was a little cooler. “You’ve been checking up on me?”

“Not you. Jeanne Jax.”

“Well, hard at work, I see. Risking mayhem, overcoming impossible obstacles. Splendid!”

That wasn’t Misty. And it sure wasn’t me. I looked around to the turgid spot from which the words had come. They had come, not surprisingly, from Ormand Monaco. He and Jerry Vail had walked up together and now stood a couple of feet from us.

On Monaco’s thin, tanned face was an expression I’d seen there briefly before, something like that of a man with one leg caught in a bear trap. He looked even thinner than usual, as if in the last couple of hours he’d lost an ounce. His clothes still fit him beautifully, though. This time he wore shiny black shoes, black trousers, and a pearl-gray dinner jacket with sporty gray-silk lapels which matched the variegated pattern of his narrow bow tie.

Monaco looked from me to Misty, back at me. Then at the nearby kisses-for-sale booth. Then he fixed the sharp, dark eyes on me again. “Splendid,” he repeated. “At this rate, Mr. Scott, all my worries should be over within not less than ten years. I am well aware you have an eye for beauty, but I did not employ you to investigate the beauties of all womankind—”

“Watch that ‘investigate’ bit, Mr. Monaco. You’re damn close to blowing my cover.”

“I am damn close to firing you.”

Hell, fire, I thought. If he canned me I’d have to leave this grand party. “Now, hold your horses, old bean,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I am tossing clues around like crazy, and—”

“Mr. Vail has informed me of your sickening exhibition in the Seraglio. Girdles, indeed.”

“Well, it was time somebody said it. Besides, a very large and maniacal individual was about to—”

“I think, perhaps, employing you at all was a mistake. I think perhaps it was a cataclysm.”

Misty didn’t look so sober any longer. In fact she appeared somewhat amused, and a soft smile rested on her lips.

I thought: Maybe . . . And then I thought: Why not?

Monaco was saying, “Mr. Scott, ever since we met I have suffered indescribable—”

So I held up a hand and cut him off. “Please, Mr. Monaco. Can’t you see I’m working?”

Then I turned to Misty, fixed her with a stern glance which I hoped she would not misinterpret, and said, “Now, Miss Lombard. To return to the brutal interrogation I was conducting. Do you or do you not deny that a tray from room service was delivered to your suite last night? I warn you, I have a witness.”

She blinked those magical eyes, but then her expression smoothed and she came right in—on my side. I could have kissed her. I could have kissed her anyway, but it helped more than a little that she immediately got at least half an idea of what I was trying to do.

“Why—well, yes,” she said, in fluttering confusion. “I mean, I don’t deny it.”

“A tray of food, surely.”

“Surely. Yes, food.”

“And do you or do you not deny that you have just eaten copiously in the Mandarin Room?”

“No. Yes. I mean—oh, you’ve got me so confused, Mr. Scott! I ate. Yes, I ate, and ate, a salad, and steak, and potatoes, and carrots cooked with honey, and—”

“Don’t confuse me with the menu.”

Mr. Monaco’s mouth was open about half an inch, and I could see a little of his tongue sticking out. I continued to bore in. “So. You ate enough food for two large men, then had a tray of food sent to your room? Are you in the habit of eating meals for dessert?”

“No, of course—”

“Then it is logical to presume, I presume, that you were not yourself going to eat the tray of food?”

“Yes, I wasn’t—”

“Aha. Then the tray must have been for somebody else. For who? Whom? What was it for. Miss Lombard?”

“For Jeanne.”

“For Jeanne . . . Come on, out with it.”

“Jeanne Jax.”

Pretty quick I’d dragged all the rest of it from her. Jeanne had stayed in Misty’s rooms overnight, they talked girl talk, Jeanne was married but had seen her husband, from whom she was sort of separated, she didn’t want him to find her and sock her in the jaw, and such.

I wound it up, “Then she did not describe or identify her husband, nor did she indicate fear of anyone else?”

“No. But she certainly wanted to stay out of sight. And she did seem terribly nervous. Maybe she was just that way all the time, I don’t know. But she was certainly on edge and disturbed last night.”

“And you’ve not seen her since early this morning?”

“No. She was in the room when I left for breakfast, but when I went back later she was gone. She’d taken her few things with her.”

“All right. Thank you. Miss Lombard. Sorry I had to be so rough on you, but a job’s a job.” I paused, and winked at her—with the eye not visible to Monaco and Vail. “I’ll probably want to talk to you later, so get some funny ideas—I mean, don’t get any—keep yourself available.”

“Oh, I will,” she promised.

Then I turned to Ormand Monaco and said, “If that’s all, sir, I’ll be packing my things.”

“Hmm,” he said. Then he put a hand on my shoulder and steered me away from Misty. He gazed at me curiously, and Vail scowled at me, then Monaco said, “That was very interesting. It explains, at least, where Miss Jax was yesterday afternoon and evening. I, ah, commend you, Mr. Scott.”

“Well, it helps when you know what you’re after,” I said truthfully.

“Have you found her husband yet?”

“No, but I saw a guy talking to one of the contestants, who just might be the fellow in question, and whom I shall attempt to find—if, that is, I’m not fired.”

“Fired? Oh, forget that. Just, ah, keep me informed.”

“Of course, Mr. Monaco.”

We talked for a few more minutes, and he told me of his “appalling” experience at the Sheriff’s Department. Actually, he’d been treated very politely and well, but had over and over been asked questions about Ephrim Sardis, where he’d been driving this afternoon, and if he knew of any enemies Sardis had. It had not been necessary for his lawyers to swing into vigorous action, since the sheriff and some deputies merely questioned him closely and then let him go free as a bird—but he nonetheless had the feeling they were right behind him with birdshot.

“You did drive along Ocotillo Lane this afternoon,” I said.

“Yes.” He nodded absently. “It’s only a few miles from here. I went right by the Sardis estate, I’m sure, though I was hardly aware of it at the time. That must be when the deputy, in his car, saw me. I was returning home by then—to meet you, Mr. Scott.”

“Uh-huh. Is that all the law had on you? That a man in one of their cars spotted you near the scene?”

“Yes. He saw me”—Monaco hesitated briefly—”near the entrance, that is, the road in front of the estate. As he arrived, that is. But before he went inside and found Ephrim dead. The deputy recognized my car, presumably.”

“I understand somebody phoned in and reported hearing a gunshot. Did they tell you anything more about that?”

“No. They didn’t tell me anything. Just asked their infernal questions.” Monaco looked at his watch. “I must see some of my guests. By the way, Mr. Scott, you will be free to pursue whatever course you feel is necessary, but tomorrow morning at eleven you will have to meet with the other judges. You are, after all, supposed to be here solely as a judge of the talent search.”

“Eleven in the morning, huh? What’s the meeting about?”

“It’s in preparation for the contest tomorrow evening. You’ll all be supplied with literature, rules for judging, schedules showing the times of various events. The meeting is merely to help assure that everything goes smoothly, and with dignity.”

Yeah, that was important. “OK. I’ll be there.” It was going to cut into the time I had left between now and noon tomorrow, I thought. And ha-ha, I thought.

Monaco turned to Jerry Vail and said, “Jerry, my guests are still in the Sabre Room. Will you tell them I shall Join them in a very few minutes?”

“Certainly, Mr. Monaco.” Vail nodded at me, started to turn.

I said, “Mr. Vail.”

He stopped. “Yes?”

“I mentioned this earlier, but are you sure Jeanne—Miss Jax—didn’t talk to you after arriving at the hotel?”

“No, she didn’t.” He shook his head, frowning a little. “In fact, I guess she’s the only one of the contestants I failed to meet. I didn’t get to talk to her at all. But of course she, well, disappeared.” Still looking puzzled, he said to me, “Why do you ask?”

“Apparently she was kind of curious about Mr. Sardis. I thought, since he was your father-in-law, she might have quizzed you about him?”

“How very strange,” he said.

Maybe not so strange, I was thinking, at least not if her interest in Sardis was the interest I was beginning to suspect. “Do you know for sure if she said anything to your wife?”

“Well . . . I’m not absolutely certain. Such a thing never entered my mind.” He paused, still with that frown on his handsome face. “I could ask her.”

“I’d appreciate it if you would. Just one other thing. Do you know where Bull Harper was when your fatherin-law was killed?”

“I believe Ephrim gave him the afternoon off today. Because of the party tonight. Ephrim knew he wanted to arrange for a costume, things like that.” He paused again. “Exactly where Mr. Harper was, I’ve no idea.”

“OK. Thanks, Mr. Vail.”

He nodded, started to turn and then stopped. Finally the frown left his face and he flashed me a quick smile. “For Pete’s sake,” he said, “call me Jerry.”

I grinned at him and he left.

Monaco looked after him, then spotted somebody he knew and waved. In a moment a muscular man of medium height, wearing a black dinner jacket and tie, strolled over to us. Simon Leaf.

I’d never met him but I’d seen him before and recognized him. He was a worried-looking man, his forehead creased with deep wrinkles though he was not yet forty. He wore his black hair in a brushlike crewcut that resembled the beginning of a beard, and there was a sort of sickly gray cast to his cheeks that spoke of healthy whiskers.

He and Monaco greeted each other cordially and chatted for a few seconds. They were, I gathered, about to meet with some VIPs for highballs and jolly conversation.

Monaco introduced us and we shook hands, and I said I’d heard of him, and he told me he’d heard of me, too, though from his tone I got the impression he hadn’t heard of me as often as I must have heard of him. I commented blandly on his films and he told me I must lead an “amusing” life and I laughed lightly and said sometimes it almost tickled me to death. The usual nothing. It was pleasant enough, but we didn’t kiss each other on both cheeks.

Monaco glanced at his watch again, then said to me, “What did you mean, Mr. Scott, when you mentioned Miss Jax being curious about Ephrim Sardis?”

“Well . . . “ I glanced at Simon Leaf.

Monaco said, “Oh, it’s all right. It was necessary for me to tell Mr. Leaf why I asked you to come here. In order that you could be accredited as a judge of the talent search.”

“I see. Well, OK. I was just curious about why she was curious, that’s all. It seems she asked a few people a bunch of questions about Mr. Sardis. And about Neyra, Mrs. Vail, too, apparently.”

He cocked his head on one side, ran a lean finger along the angular line of his jaw. “That is odd,” he said in a quiet voice. “She asked me about Neyra, too. When she first arrived here at the Khan.”

“Oh? How’d that happen?”

“I met the girls when some of them arrived Wednesday

morning, of course. I was alone with Miss Jax for a few minutes, in the main lobby. Jerry and Neyra were standing talking near the entrance to the Seraglio. Miss Jax was looking at them and asked me who Neyra was—that is, who the lovely black-haired woman was. I told her she was Neyra Vail, Ephrim Sardis’ daughter, and that her husband was standing there with her. Miss Jax seemed quite taken aback, and said, ‘She’s his wife?’ Much like that, with that emphasis. I told her she was, and Miss Jax then asked me who Ephrim Sardis was.”

“What did you tell her about Sardis?”

“Merely what I’ve already told you, Mr. Scott. That he was a friend of mine, a wealthy and highly respected member of the community, active in the background of many civic affairs and such.”

“She seemed pretty interested, huh?”

“Well . . . looking back on it, I suppose she did. I thought little of it at the time.”

“I wonder who she was so interested in. Neyra, or Jerry Vail, or Mr. Sardis?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it until now.”

“One other thing, Mr. Monaco. If I’m going to ask sensible questions about Sardis and Miss Jax, I’ll damn near have to tell a few people why I’m asking. At least, tell those persons who’ve probably already been approached by the law, or who may be.”

He frowned. “Well, only those. And don’t tell anyone I’ve employed you. We must be as discreet as it is possible to be.”

“I’ll keep it to a minimum.”

“Fine.” He glanced at his watch again. “I regret that I haven’t more time to spend with you, Mr. Scott. But I could hardly have anticipated these peculiar drains on my time and energy. Have you anything else to report?”

“Nothing important at the moment.”

“All right, then. I’ll be with Mr. Leaf, and a small party, in the Sabre Room for the next half hour or so. After that I’m not sure, but I’ll be somewhere in the hotel or on the grounds. You can page me if I’m not immediately available.”

“Right. I’ve some things to do myself.”

Looking over his shoulder, I saw a compact and shapely lass with a mobile walk and fluid curves, with dark velvety skin and midnight-black hair—Lyssa Weldon, strolling away from the swimming pool where I had lately been lolling, and wherein Carol Shearing had so recently splashed.

Lyssa, strolling—alone.

No great big Bull steaming at her side.

“And I’d better get busy,” I added, “while the time’s ripe.”

13

Lyssa was in costume now, and looked even better than she had in the Seraglio. It was the standard costume—the same one Carol Shearing and other contestants were wearing—but it sure didn’t look standard on Lyssa.

She heard my feet thumping on the grass when I was a few feet away, and turned.

Smiling brightly, she said, in apparent pleasure, “Well, Shell, love. I wondered when I’d see you again.”

“Bet you knew it wouldn’t be long, I’ll bet. Well, I can see you’re still not wearing a gir—”

“Lyssa, baby.”

That wasn’t me. I pushed my head around until I was staring straight at Bull Harper’s nose. It was a pretty tough-looking organ, too. I would hate, I thought, even to get hit with that nose. It was big and black and muscular and, right now, possessed of flaring nostrils. No doubt about it, that was a dangerous nose.

“You again, huh?” he rumbled. “What you after this time?”

Bull was holding a highball glass in each hand—which probably explained where he’d been—and he was in a costume which almost certainly would have damaged a weak-eyed viewer’s retinas.

He wore a brief jacket which exposed most of his chest and corded stomach and left his huge arms bare, the kind of thing which is open in the middle and curves down toward the sides, and which looks even better on women. It was, I assumed, the approximate shade of visual purple, though I found it difficult to gaze directly upon it; and he also wore voluminous and baggy pink-velvet pants which delivered a vaguely Oriental wallop. Around his waist was a wide leather belt from which descended an enormous, curved and thick-bladed scimitar, the blade inserted into a flashing jeweled sheath. Bull wore a turban, too, but it was green with a red jewel in it, and not nearly so dashing as mine. He looked no larger than those guys whose faces are carved on mountains, and no less resplendent than the treasure hoard of the Incas.

“Waow,” I said involuntarily. “You stand by the tracks, you’ll stop trains.”

“What you after this time?” he repeated menacingly. “Same thing, prob’ly.”

I stepped back a pace, then stuck out my hand. “Well, Bull Harper,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. We didn’t really meet, you know. No, nobody introduced us. I’m Shell Scott, and—”

“Yeah. Lyssa told me who you are. But I still don’t know.”

“Why, I’m a—one of the judges of the beauty contest—”

“Ho-ho!” he said. “She didn’t tell me that.”

“You two stop it,” Lyssa said. She moved up closer to us and went on, “I’m going to properly introduce you. Bull, this is my friend Shell Scott. Shell, this is Bull Harper, a real good friend.”

He was “real good” and I was just a friend. Well, he’d known her longer than I had. Anyhow, it was a start. Bull kind of reluctantly stuck out his big paw. Mine was already stuck out there. We shook hands.

“Hey,” I said, “that hurt!”

“Bull, I’ll kick you in the eyes!”

“Lyssa—”

Then to me she said, “Don’t mind Bull, Shell. He’s really not as dumb as he acts. He just doesn’t make a very good first impression. Not with men. But he hasn’t got a mean bone in his head.”

“Lyssa, I told you,” Bull said with an injured air. “I told you, quit saying that about bones in my head.”

They went at it for a little while. It seemed to be a beautiful relationship. When there was a lull in the stormy dialogue I said, “Bull, I suppose the police have told you about Mr. Sardis.”

He lost interest in arguing with Lyssa, turned his attention to me. “Told me what about him?”

I shrugged. “Well, if you don’t know, then they must not have told you.” I turned casually and took a step away from them, but Bull was now interested. He was so interested he grabbed my arm and apparently tried to squeeze all the juice out of it, after the fashion of a guy squashing the insides from a grapefruit.

“Peel your paw off my arm,” I said.

He didn’t peel it off.

“OK,” I said, and planted my feet, dropped my other arm. And then relaxed. He’d unwound his fingers and let go just before I got set to pop him.

“Bull,” I told him sincerely, “I’ve no desire for us to massacre each other. But if you latch onto me again I’ll have to pop you.”

“Yeah,” he said, not overly concerned. “What about the boss? Told me what?”

“I thought by now the police would have told you Mr. Sardis is dead.”

His black eyes didn’t even blink. “So they told me. What got you so interested?”

It was a good question. But I said, “He was a good friend of Mr. Monaco’s.”

“So?”

“So Monaco would like to know if the sheriff has any suspects. Does he?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, as agreeably as I could, “You killed him, huh?”

“No.”

He was not a very long-winded character. I said, “Any idea who might have?”

“No.”

“I heard one of the contestants, a gal named Jeanne Jax, was asking a lot of questions about Mr. Sardis, among others. She get to you?”

“I don’t think it’s none of your business. No, I don’t think it’s none of your business at all.”

I liked him better short-winded. Well, I was thinking, if I was going to get lots of information from this character, it could be I’d have to try a different tack.

But right then Lyssa cried softly, “Oh!” and dropped her drink.

She bent down and grabbed it right away, then looked at the empty glass and said, “Well, dam. Bull, be a sweetie and get me another drink.”

“Huh,” he said. He wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about leaving her there alone with me, me and a couple hundred other people in the area, but after a moment’s hesitation he took the glass and loped off.

“Was that an accident?” I asked Lyssa.

“No. I could tell you were getting Bull mad. And he’s no fun at all when he gets mad.”

“No kidding.”

“You want to know something from Bull, you’d better ask me, Shell. And let me ask Bull.”

“You make a lot of sense.”

“Why are you so interested, anyway?”

“Do you mind if we don’t go into that, Lyssa? Just say I’m plenty interested—and Bull is probably on his way back here already.”

“Probably. What do you want to know?”

“Well, earlier, you said that you told Jeanne Jax if She wanted info about Sardis to ask Bull Harper. Did she talk to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you find out?”

She nodded.

“Find out what she asked him, also what he told her, OK?”

“All right.” She paused, looking up at me from the hot-chocolate eyes. “I can understand the questions about Mr. Sardis. But why all the concentration on Jeanne?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow morning sometime. OK?”

“Sure. Are you afraid of Bull, Shell?”

“Not really.”

She looked at me, wondering. So I added, “I’m not afraid of noon traffic on the Hollywood freeway, either. But I would prefer not to jaywalk through it unless I had to get to the other side.”

She might-have started to smile. I would never know, because Bull Harper skidded up and she said to him, “Oh, Bull, you’ve spilled half the drink already,” and he bellowed, “So what? You spilled the whole damn thing, didn’t you?” and she said, “Don’t you yell at me. Bull Harper,” and then they yelled at each other for a while, as I quietly stole away.

They sure had lots of fun, I thought. Maybe they were nuts about each other. Maybe they were nuts. And maybe, if things went on the way they were going, Bull and I were going to kill each other.

By 10 p.m. three other girls and one inebriated photographer had fallen into the swimming pool. Nobody took photos of the photographer. By then I had talked to another dozen of the beauty contestants, and found that Jeanne Jax had talked to four of them herself.

One of them she’d asked, Thursday morning after breakfast, about Neyra Vail. The others she’d spoken to later that morning, and had asked them questions about the now-late Ephrim. There hadn’t been anything incriminating in the questions themselves. The first gal told Jeanne that all she knew about Neyra was that she was Sardis’ daughter, and she didn’t know anything about Sar-dis himself except he was some kind of local bigshot with lots of loot. Two of the other girls hadn’t known what Jeanne was talking about, but the third one had seen Ephrim Sardis once and gave Jeanne a little more info. None of it struck me as exceptionally important, however. Not for a while.

That last gal was a short, shapely, cheer-leader type named Lula, a soft-eyed little sweetie possibly twenty years old, and by the time I got around to her she’d put away, I guessed, about a full pint of something pretty illegal. After the preliminaries, when she figured out what it was I’d been asking, she said, “No, all Jeanne says to me is do I know this Sardis. This Ephrim Sardis. Like I said, I’d seen the fat old grampaw once, so I told her.”

“Told her what?”

“He was an old grampaw, fat, like two or three hundred pounds, and he looked like he was from Tibet or someplace way out, and he was rich as hell. Rich as hell. I should be so rich. A guy that rich, I could almost get married to a guy that rich.”

“That’s what you told Miss Jax?”

“Well, like that. I didn’t say to her I’d marry a guy that rich. I said to her, a guy that rich, even if he did weigh two or three hundred pounds, he—”

“She ask you anything else—”

“—looked like he was stuffed with money—”

“What else did Miss Jax ask you about him?”

“Oh, practically anything. Where he lived, what he did, if he was in business with anybody, like that—things I didn’t know, so naturally I couldn’t tell her.”

“Where’d you meet Mr. Sardis, Lula?”

“Didn’t actually meet him. It was at a party in Hollywood last month. Some of us girls who’d already become finalers—finalists in contests around, we were there. And I saw this fat old money man with his daughter and her guy, her husband.”

“Jerry Vail?”

“Him, and the swell owns this place, the thin one.”

“Ormand Monaco.”

“Ormand Monaco. Yes. Wouldn’t that name crack you? Ormand. And Monaco on top of it. Boy, it cracks me, like—”

“They were all together?”

“That’s what I said. Isn’t that what I said?”

“Ephrim Sardis, his daughter Neyra, and Neyra’s husband, Jerry Vail. And Ormand Monaco.”

“Yes, yes, yes—”

“I’m glad we got that straight. Who else was there?”

“Just lots of other girls. And some Hollywood people. Mostly movie people. They were all going to give us screen tests, and like that—”

“Simon Leaf?”

“Him, yes. And some other producers, and movie people. Movie people. And television. And Tibby Mannly, the big movie star. Boy is he cute, he cracks me, he’s cuter than pink stretch pants, I could bite his earlobes off—”

“What were they all doing there?”

“I don’t know. How would I know? It was just a party. Who asks?”

“Was Miss Jax at the party?”

“No, not her.”

“When was she talking to you yesterday?”

“That was around noon. A little before.”

“During lunch?”

“I didn’t see her when we all ate lunch. It was before that. She came to my room.”

“Uh-huh. Did she ask you about anybody else? Neyra, Jerry Vail, Ormand—”

“Just him. Sardis.”

“That was the only one?”

“That was the only one.”

I got away from her with my earlobes intact; actually, they were never in any real danger. For good or ill, I don’t look the least little bit like Tibby Mannly. Then, still sort of smiling, and musing about the enthusiasms of extreme youth, and the extremely puky appearance of Tibby Mannly, I headed back toward the pool area.

It was a pretty good walk from where I’d found Lula, since she’d been in the company of a gangling youth with thin eyebrows and a hairdo even prettier than Lula’s, behind a cage of parakeets, macaws, parrots and various noisy fowl, which cage was approximately a hundred yards from the hotel. Since there were all kinds of shaded nooks and creepy paths and bosky lanes on the approximately one hundred acres of the Kubla Khan’s grounds, I asked them why they had chosen a spot behind the bird cage. Believe it or not, they couldn’t tell me.

At any rate, I took the shortest route toward the hotel, that route being along one of the creepy paths and amid the bosky lanes and such. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken that route. I should have gone along the most brightly lighted stretch of grass jumping up and down and yelling. But it had been literally hours since I’d been shot at, and I wasn’t even sure the guy had especially wanted to kill me, that is to kill me, Shell Scott; I’d been thinking the guy could have been merely a killer trying to get away from the scene of his kill; and I, being on the scene, merely happened to be a natural target.

So I was wrong about everything.

I think I almost knew what was going to happen five seconds before it happened.

But “almost” is one of those sad words. “Almost” is never good enough.

I’d noted earlier that much of the Khan’s landscaping was borrowed from a jungle. There were plenty of bushy trees, and bordering the path I walked upon were big and little shrubs, plenty of lush green cover. A few palms rose high into the night sky, and every once in a while the leaf of a banana tree or the thicker leaf of a bird of paradise brushed my trousers leg or arm.

I’d covered about half the distance to the hotel, and if it hadn’t been for the noise and my memory, I could have felt I was alone in a well-watered desert oasis. It was barely possible to see light from the swimming pool ahead, but I could still hear that gang of birds behind me going scrawwck, and creeawwch, and peep, and I heard something else, too. Maybe it was because of all the Jungle noises, but to me it sounded like the soft pad of a jungle cat slinking along behind me.

But it was just before that, five seconds before that sound, when I “almost” knew what was going to happen. I didn’t see anything, or hear anything except the nutty birds, but I sure as hell felt something. Maybe it was thought; maybe it was sound perceptible only beneath my level of consciousness; maybe it was the tiniest stirring of air nearby.

Whatever it was, a faint chill, faint but suddenly there, raced over my skin. Hairs moved like spiders’ legs on the back of my neck. There was a slight quick tightening of my solar plexus. I wasn’t alarmed; whatever I felt wasn’t enough to cause alarm. But I reached for my gun, just to feel it, the way a man will unconsciously reach out and pat his dog.

With my hand halfway to my shoulder holster I remembered: I wasn’t wearing the clamshell holster tonight. And I dropped my arm, reached into my trousers pocket and let my fingers close around the hard, reassuring butt of the Colt Special.

Then, that soft padding sound behind me.

I remember thinking, very much like an idiot, “Tiger? Hell, it can’t be a tiger, but it sure can’t be a bird, either,” and that was all.

The soft padding stopped and there was the obvious solid thump of a foot slapping the ground behind me and that grunt—that grunt, the small half-swallowed sound a man makes when he gathers his muscles and his mental strength to swing a sap or club or gun and hit you as hard as possible on the head.

Somewhere between the thump and that grunt I started to duck, and I almost made it. I was yanking the Colt from my pocket, and starting to drop a shoulder and turn—then, splendor, pain, the stunning shock, the sudden grinding agony and incredible sound like no other sound, and I was falling.

I not only knew I’d been hit, I knew as well as I’d ever known anything that unless I could stop it I was going to be hit again, and again if necessary until my skull was smashed or split open and I was dead—and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t get a message to arms or legs, couldn’t turn or roll. I’d felt my knees hit earth and then my right shoulder slam the ground, but I was stuck there like a man fixed in time. My right arm lay almost full length, flat along the ground, gun still gripped in the fingers. But I couldn’t raise the gun. The arm was dead.

It seemed that I lay like that not merely for swift moments but for long, lazy seconds. The seconds stretched like taffy—a mental tick and a thousand thoughts and feel of earth beneath me and slow blossoming of pain and then finally another tick again—but it wasn’t that kind of time only for me, but for him, too. For him, because I saw from the corner of my eye his foot suspended in air, slowly descending, moving with the unnatural deliberation and grace of a feather in water, until it came to rest with infinite delicacy inches from my face.

I knew that above me he held over his head the club, the weapon, and that it too in another of those stretching other-dimensional seconds would descend toward me. I was trying to move arms, legs, fingers, everything, but at that moment I stopped. With as great an effort of will as I had ever been capable of, I made myself stop those movements, or rather attempts at movement, and put all my power and all my thought into moving one finger.

There was time, that kind of crazy time, to think, and I knew I couldn’t hit anything but earth even if I managed to pull the Colt’s trigger; but I also knew the sound of the gunshot at his feet was the only hope I had of stopping the man even briefly, of slowing him down. It was a man, all right.

I didn’t even know I’d managed to pull the trigger. But I heard the blast of the gun and felt the .38 kick in my hand. And I saw the foot near me move, twist in the soft earth of the path.

And finally I could move something besides a finger. Not much, and not fast, but I started to roll off my shoulder onto my back—and then the shadowy figure looming over me was gone. Feet thumped on the path. I tried to turn toward him, lift my gun toward him, and couldn’t do it. In fact, it took quite a while simply to push myself into a sitting position. And then I just sat there.

Maybe I could have gotten to my feet sooner, I don’t know. I just didn’t much care about doing it. I felt sick. I wondered if I was going to lose my marvelous dinner, and all that splendid booze. I didn’t much care about that, either. I discovered my white turban lying on the path beside me, and realized it must have softened the blow. Because of that, I hadn’t been knocked out, not all the way, but far enough to suit me. And unless you have been slammed on the head with real, with determined vigor, you cannot possibly understand how remote from pleasure is the experience.

So I sat there for quite a while, decided I wasnt going to lose my dinner, and possibly the preceding lunch and breakfast, and then with much care got to my feet. My assailant was long gone, had been gone for at least five normal minutes, I knew, but nobody had come tripping up this creepy lane to investigate the gunshot. Maybe only a few had heard it, and it could be those few had thought it was a champagne cork popping out ahead of the bubbles.

No matter. My bubbling head was what mattered. While sitting on my behind, I had probed with gentle fingers and learned that my scalp, but not my skull, was split; and I had held a handkerchief on the raw spot until the blood stopped oozing. If I hadn’t been so filled with great and burning Desire, I wouldn’t have minded just sitting there till a large scab formed and fell off, but I now nurtured, almost cherished, that Desire: to get my hands on the guy who’d slugged me.

And there were three people, at least three, I wanted to find and talk to in a hurry.

So I turned around and around, like a dog preparing to go to sleep, got my bearings, and started walking toward the Kubla Khan.

14

If I could have sprung to my feet ten seconds after getting my brains beaten in, and raced like a deer about the grounds and through the hotel and in and out of rooms, I might have been able to discover who’d sapped me. But when I finally managed to totter to the Kubla Khan and start checking up on people, it was too late for anything but three aspirins, which I took.

There was another thing, too. I was addled. My brain was bubbling. It was fizzing like a giant Alka-Seltzer. Consequently I felt like a mental giant, perhaps because I was for a change so exceptionally aware of my brain, as a man sitting in a fire is aware of his butt. That’s the ‘trouble with being out of your skull: to the addled, stupidity often appears disguised as brilliance, an epic truism which unfortunately did not then occur to me.

My first investigative triumph soared to its dizzying shambles in the Sabre Room, which I found after some difficulty. I remembered Ormand Monaco had said he was going to be with a party in that room—though at first I got it a bit muddled in memory and barged into the Scimitar Room. Sabre, Scimitar, what’s the difference?

But at last I found the Sabre Room and, pouncing inside, spotted Ormand Monaco. He was at a table with about a dozen men and women, some in costume and others in semiformal evening dress. But at first I saw lean, sharp-featured Monaco with only blurs around him. Monaco, in that pearl-gray dinner jacket with its zippy foulard lapels matching the gray in the hair bulging over his temples, like the head bulging at the back of my head.

I thumped up, stopped by him, pierced him with a stern look. “So, there you are,” I said. “So, where were you?”

All the heads at the table had snapped around to aim at me, but none more speedily than Ormand Monaco’s. “What?” he said. “What’s this?”

“Don’t what’s-this me,” I said. “You’re not going to wraggle out of it. Wirgle ... Wroogle? Listen, I saw you.”

There was a look of consternation on his face. That was good; I had him on the run. He looked around the table. “Governor,” he said. “Mr. Mayor. Mr. Leaf. I must apologize for Mr. Scott. I’m sorry, Mrs. Schmock,” he added, or something like that. “Mrs. Fleeb.” The names weren’t getting through to me loud and clear. “General Stonk.” Boy, my head hurt. Maybe three aspirins weren’t enough.

Monaco was looking up at me. “Mr. Scorb,” he said in a soothing voice, the way animal trainers talk to new and toothy lions, “you have been drinking a bit, haven’t you? Your eyes are quite pink.”

“Pink, schmink,” I said. “And pardon me if I used anybody’s name here. I’m just making a point. A point about . . . huh. I had it here a minute ago.”

Monaco stood up and led me away from the table. “I think you should allow me and my guests to complete our discussion in private,” he said.

“Have you left this room in the last ten minutes? Or so? Roughly. Say an hour either way.”

He squinted at me, glanced toward the table, back at me. He looked worried, all right. “I did leave once, to look for Mr. Vail,” he said guiltily. “In fact, I returned only a few minutes ago. Though I fail to understand what concern—”

“Didn’t find him, did you?”

“No, as a matter of fact I did not,” Monaco admitted. “However—”

“What about Bull Harper?”

“What about Bull Harper?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, what about him?”

“You didn’t see him either, did you?”

“No, but why I should—”

“It’s pretty suspicious to me, wouldn’t you say?”

“Mr. Scott, I do not—repeat, do not—know what you are talking about.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Neither do I,” I said.

“I suggest we continue this discussion at a later date.”

“Yeah,” I said—I guess those aspirins were taking hold—”like next November.”

And I left.

I never did find Bull Harper. I knocked once on the door of Lyssa’s darkened room, number 218 at the end of the Khan’s north wing, but either nobody was home or nobody was answering the door. I did find Jerry Vail, but that also was a big nothing.

All I knew was that somebody had clubbed me, and the clubber had intended to kill me. But by midnight I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere the way things were going. So I decided to have a drink in one of the bars.

I was by then feeling reasonably normal except for the dull throbbing in my skull. At least the fizzing and bubbling had stopped and it occurred to me that a cool drink and a little quiet thought might prove more productive of results fhan had my recent activity. So I headed for the Seraglio.

And ran into Misty Lombard.

I didn’t run into her physically this time, just spotted her walking toward the hotel as I started to enter the lobby.

So I waited for her and said, “Hello, hello. You were coming to see me. You missed me, so you started looking—”

“I was going into the Seraglio for a cocktail.”

“Where’s Mr. Leaf?”

“Still in conference.”

“Fool that he is.”

“He talked to me and said it would probably go on most of the night. So I decided to get away from the crowd—it’s getting a little wild out there, isn’t it?”

“You can say that again.”

“I thought I’d enjoy a quiet drink before going to bed.”

“Well, that is precisely what I had in mind, Misty. How about joining me? For the drink.”

She bit a corner of her lip gently, cocked her head on one side, letting the heavy lids droop over her big eyes. And then she smiled and said, “Why not?”

We sat at the bar and had a couple drinks, but I remember little of what we talked about. I know I told her of getting hit on the head, and she was marvelously sympathetic; and I asked her to tell me in more detail of her conversation with Jeanne Jax, and she did, but there was little if anything of importance that I didn’t already know. So, mainly I just sat and yakked with her, and listened to her soft, sweet voice, and looked at her, and looked.

Finally she said, “Well, I’ve got to get some sleep. Have to be bright-eyed tomorrow.”

“You’ll be bright-eyed every tomorrow. I’ll walk you home, that is to your suite, OK? It’s dangerous for you to be out there alone, you know.”

“With two hundred other people around?”

“Sure. Some of them are men.”

“And you’ll protect me from the men, is that it?”

“All but one,” I said.

So we strolled from the Khan, through the lobby and out the main entrance, then over a graveled path nearly to the end of the south wing, where her suite was. At the door she turned, started to say something and stopped.

Then she asked me, “Would you like to come in for a nightcap. Shell? If you’re not too tired—”

“Sure. One more can’t hurt.”

“Can’t hurt much.” She smiled. “We’ll just have one. I do have to get some sleep.”

We went inside. The living room was small but sumptuously furnished with thick blue carpet and lighter blue draperies over the front windows, a low blue-green divan, bright oil paintings on the walls. Soft light flowed from a massive lamp with its base on the carpet at one end of the divan.

On the right was a kitchenette and bar with two stools in front of it, and through a half-open door on my left I could see the dimly lighted bedroom, sheet and blanket already folded back by the maid, and ready tor occupancy.

Ready for occupancy, I was thinking mysteriously, when Misty said from the kitchenette, “Bourbon and water, that’s all there is. Except for my sherry.”

“Bourbon and water’s all I need.”

In a minute she came back with the drinks and joined me on the low divan. While in the kitchenette she must have poked a button or turned a dial because now there was music, something pleasantly unobtrusive, with strings and muted brass and the quivering softness of vibes.

Misty kicked off her pointy-toed shoes and said, “Oh, boy, does that feel good. Do you mind?”

“Are you kidding? It even feels good way over here.”

I was at least a foot from her on the divan. She laughed and took a sip of her sherry, and said, “Don’t tell me you have telepathic feelings.”

“I’ve got something better than that.”

She laughed, stretched out her legs and rested her jazzy feet on the antique mirrored top of a coffee table before the divan, and I leaned toward her, put my arm behind her shoulders and kissed her.

I was probably as surprised as she was.

It had not been a premeditated movement. Not that the thought had been at any moment far from my mind; it was just that I didn’t think at all about what I was doing. One moment I was looking at her move with a kind of fluid and animal grace, and listening to her free and throaty laugh; the next moment I was near her and her lips were beneath mine.

She stiffened, started to pull away. But only started. Then her body relaxed and her lips became soft and moist and warm. I put my hands behind her back and pressed her close and she crumpled against me, and her arms went around my back and pulled.

When our lips parted I said, “Misty—” and she opened her eyes wide and said, “Don’t say anything. Shell. Don’t say anything.”

Those enormous, wonderful eyes were close to mine. I looked at them, into them, into them as her smooth lids slowly closed over their shadowed darkness. And then I found her mouth with mine again.

Only one drink, she’d said. Actually, we never finished that first one . . .

In the morning, after a breakfast of coffee—my usual day-starter—I drove out Desert View Drive with the Cad’s top down, sun just beginning to get warm on my still turbaned sore head.

Still turbaned, because nearly all of last night’s party-goers would still be present at the Kubla Khan today—for the exciting ribbon-cutting at noon—and were expected to be in costume till then, to add color and magnificence to the ceremonies. Consequently, I was again in my ma-haraja outfit. Besides, I liked wearing it. Made me feel like a fireman. There was another remote possibility, too.

Wise old doctors say alcohol doesn’t leave the drunk—or, rather, alcohol drinker—until twenty-four hours after his last belt. And it hadn’t been nearly that long since my Last Rattlesnake Bite, or whatever had been eating me last night. So, conceivably, there were still a few little asps slithering around in the vicnity of my duodenum. Whatever that is. And wherever that is.

At any rate, I felt grand.

It was a beautiful morning. If it had been raining and hailing it would have been a beautiful morning. For, despite getting bashed on the skull last night, after Misty and murmured words and soft lips, I felt energetic and positively euphoric.

This was the same route I’d traveled yesterday afternoon, only a few hours ago, and as I drove I wondered again why Jeanne Jax had been on her way to Monaco’s, and who it was that had been tearing after her at ninety miles an hour. Or, rather, if the driver of that other car had in fact been racing after Jeanne.

Clearly somebody had either been following her—or else had known in advance that she would be on the road to Monaco’s. Killers don’t just hide off the road and shoot whoever happens by. I slowed and turned off Desert View into Yucca, kept going to the tumoff up which that other car had gone yesterday, turned left there at the sign harding ranch.

When the narrow road crested Moss Mountain I could see below and ahead for miles. There was only one place that could be the Harding Ranch, and there was simply no place else to which anybody could have been driving last night, unless out for a lark. A couple of miles or more away was a low gray-painted building, undoubtedly the Harding home or ranch house, and beyond it a circular dirt track enclosed by a white fence, and nearby what I guessed was a stable. At least there were a couple of horses standing near it in apparent boredom.

At the base of Moss Mountain, running left and right, were two shallow ruts in the earth where a few cars had passed from time to time. Hunters, probably. Kids after rabbits, guys with rifles. And yesterday, perhaps, a man with a heavy-caliber pistol. Half a mile to the right, up over the hill and down, and he’d been ready and waiting for whoever came back along Yucca Road.

I didn’t drive down that way—the police would have covered all this area thoroughly by now—but kept on going toward the ranch house. It was low and sturdy, built from cement blocks painted gray, and there was a big cement-floored patio in front just off the drive.

I climbed out of the Cad and started across the patio, but before I reached the front door it opened and a tall, slim, middle-aged woman stepped out.

“Hello,” she said, and looked at me with some amusement.

“Good morning. This the Harding Ranch?”

“Yes. I’m Mrs. Harding.”

“Is your husband home?”

“No, he’s in Los Angeles. Been there for the last four days.”

“Have any sheriff’s deputies been here to talk with you?”

“Yes, last night. A Sergeant Torgesen was one of the men.”

I winced. I had suddenly realized I’d not yet been in to see the sergeant. As I recalled, he’d told me not to forget, adding, “I wouldn’t like it if you forgot,” or something menacing like that.

It required only a few questions of Mrs. Harding for me to get the answers I was after, since she’d already gone over the same ground with Torgesen. She’d been alone all day yesterday, and nobody had visited her; her husband naturally hadn’t driven here, since he was in Los Angeles. He didn’t drive a dark-blue sedan anyway, but a black Imperial.

I asked her, “Did you hear any gunshots?”

“I did hear some—I thought they were shots. Someone hunting, I supposed. I looked outside, but I didn’t see anything. Or anybody.”

That was about it. Mainly I’d wanted to be sure nobody had been zooming at ninety miles an hour to the Harding Ranch, and to find out if my friend in the blue sedan had been seen in the area. So I thanked Mrs. Harding and drove back toward the Kubla Khan, filing this small bit where I thought it belonged, together, I was almost surprised to note, with quite a number of other bits.

Adding it all up, I was actually starting to make a little progress—I thought. But then I picked up the radiophone and put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department in Indio.

It took a minute or two for me to get Sergeant Torge-sen, and when I told him it was Shell Scott calling, he said icily, “Good of you. Where in hell you been?”

“Why at the Kubla Khan, where else? But I think I’m right now on my way down to see you, as agreed. Of course, I should probably change my clothes first—”

“I didn’t mean you should come in any day you felt there was nothing else to do, Scott. I ought to—Skip it. No sense your coming downtown now; I won’t be here. On my way to the Khan.”

“Well, I can see you there if that suits you.”

“You’ll still have to come in and sign your statement, but the Khan would suit me. I want to talk to you.”

“Something up?”

“Yeah, something’s up, all right.” He paused. “It’s a little after nine-thirty now. I’ll be out before ten. Meet me at the entrance.”

“Ill be there.”

I hung up, wondering what was cooking. The way Torgesen had sounded, maybe it was my goose. Well, I’d soon know. At the Khan I parked the Cad myself and stood outside the entrance long enough to smoke two cigarettes, then the black-and-white car pulled up and Torgesen climbed out.

He led me aside to a spot where we were alone and said, “Consider this official, Scott. Friendly, but official.”

“OK.”

“When I talked with Mr. Monaco last night, he said he’d hired you to do a job for him, but he didn’t go into detail. You want to fill me in? Not only what you’re doing, but what you’ve found out.”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ll naturally inform Monaco, but I don’t see how he could object to my cooperating with the law. If he’s got nothing to hide.”

A quick quirk moved Torgesen’s lips, but I couldn’t tell if it was the start of a smile or a frown. “What did he hire you for?”

“Originally, to find Jeanne Jax, who was then missing.”

“Yeah. But what’s he paying you to do now?”

“Well, for one thing, to judge a beauty contest—”

Torgesen laughed. He could laugh pretty good when he wanted to. “And for another,” I went on, “to find out who killed Miss Jax, and Sardis; wrap everything up.” I paused and added glumly, “Preferably by noon.”

“Noon when?”

“Noon today.”

Yeah, he could laugh real good. When tears started rolling out of his eyes and he appeared to be on the verge of a crippling attack, I said, “All right. Look, I think it’s funny, too. Will you shut up?”

“Whoo,” he yodeled. “That’s a real knee-slapper. Well, hell, I’ll go on home—”

“Sergeant—”

“Whoo—”

“Look, you want to hear what I’ve got to say or don’t you?”

“OK, OK,” he said. “Sure. Hell, I nee—nee—” He was off again. At length he finished it. “—need all the help I can get.”

“Funny.”

I told him what I’d been doing and also what I’d learned, or thought I’d learned, hitting the high spots. But I was kind of mildly burning, and Torgesen almost but not quite snickered a time or two, so I hit it pretty fast.

When I finished he was quiet for several seconds, and his heavy face got sober. And when he spoke there was no amusement at all in his voice.

“I suppose you know about the Sardis money in this joint, in the Kubla Khan?”

“Sardis money? Ephrim Sardis?”

“Yes, Ephrim Sardis. Don’t play dumb with me.”

I squinted at him. “It’s news to me. Sergeant.”

“Scott, if you’re lying to me I’ll take you apart—”

“Hold it. If I knew what the hell you were talking about I’d tell you. Or, if I didn’t want to spill I’d just clam or tell you to shove it. So what are you yakking about? You mean Sardis had some money in this place?”

He glowered at me for several seconds, then made up his mind. “If you don’t know, you will soon enough. Your client put three or four hundred thousand in, but that’s a drop in a big bucket. The real money was put up by Sardis.”

I blinked at him. “You mean Monaco doesn’t own the Kubla Khan?”

“Own it?” Torgesen grinned, muscles bunching at the corners of his mouth. “Hell, all he’s ever been is a front for Ephrim Sardis.” He paused and added, with emphasis, but still grinning, “The dead guy.”

15

I rolled that around in my head for a while trying to digest the news, but it nearly gave me indigestion.

It seemed Ormand Monaco was something of a fraud. At least he was taking bows that should have been somebody else’s. And I had not forgotten Jeanne’s trip to his home; the fact that hed not been there to meet me last night; the further fact that he’d been seen near the Sar-dis estate at, or very near, the time of the murder; his phony reaction when told of Sardis’ death. Among other things.

My client. That was nice.

“How’d you find that out?” I asked Torgesen.

“We went through ithe papers in Sardis’ safe looking for something that might turn up a motive for the homicide. Found an agreement between Sardis and Monaco, signed by both of them and witnessed by their attorneys. All it really means, so far, is that Sardis put up the millions but stayed in the background—he never did like personal publicity—and Monaco would be the front man, known to the public as the owner.” He paused. “You sure you didn’t know about this, Scott?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m not going to tell you again, Torge-sen.” He grinned and I asked him, “Anybody else with money in the Khan?”

“Not so far as we know.”

“Well, now Sardis is dead, who becomes the owner?”

“We’re not sure of that yet. Ordinarily it would be his daughter, although Sardis’ parents are still living, and there’s an ex-wife back East somewhere. We haven’t tamed up the will yet—seems he had a New York firm handle that for him But we should have a copy this afternoon.”

“Any kind of partnership insurance between him and Monaco? You know, if one dies the other takes over, or winds up with a fat chunk of cash?”

“Not so far as we know. We’re still checking, and going through the papers Sardis had in his safe—you should see the tons of junk. Not to mention thirty thousand bucks. I should have a safe like that.”

“Thirty G’s? In cash?”

“Yeah. Funny thing, though. Supposed to be fifty thousand. Mr. Vail told us about that while we were out there. Also, his wife corroborated it, said her father always had fifty thousand in the safe, for emergencies. Pocket money for a guy like him, I suppose.”

“What happened to the other twenty thousand?”

He pursed his heavy lips. “Nobody’s been able to tell us that.”

I said slowly, “This thirty thousand clams. Was it by any chance in C-notes?”

He smiled without joy. “All in hundred-dollar bills. You’ll make an investigator yet, Scott.”

I thought about what he’d told me, then I said, “I suppose you’re here to have a chat with Monaco?”

“That’s right.”

“Mind if I sit in?”

He pursed his lips, finally said, “OK.”

“Incidentally, since Monaco is paying me to find out who knocked off Sardis—money, naturally, which should go to the Sergeant Torgesen Memorial Fund—it seems highly unlikely that he plugged Sardis himself.”

“Unlikely, maybe. Not highly. Well, let’s see what the man has to say.”

We found Monaco in his office, which was much like Jerry Vail’s but twice as big; after all, Monaco was the multimillionaire owner of the Kubla Khan. The sergeant and I sat near his desk and Torgesen simply told Monaco what he knew, what he’d just been telling me. He didn’t fancy it up, or start in with sly questions, just laid it out and then said, “What about it?”

Monaco had been studying the top of his desk while listening, and it was a few more seconds before he raised his head. He glanced at me, then looked at Sergeant Torgesen.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s all true, of course. Naturally I realized, as soon as I heard of Ephrim’s death, that this would have to come out. It’s unfortunate—though I suppose it doesn’t really make much difference now. Ephrim was a very close friend, and that makes a difference.”

He was cool as a cucumber. Cooler. But undoubtedly, as he had just indicated, he’d been expecting something like this.

“Is that all you want to say, Mr. Monaco?”

“Yes, Sergeant. I see no reason for amplification. I have committed no crime.”

Torgesen looked deliberately at me, then leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “Now that your—your partner is dead, who owns the Kubla Khan?”

“Neyra, I presume. My interest is protected; that is, I shall suffer no financial loss. As for Ephrim’s investment, its disposal was entirely up to him.”

“In other words, you don’t benefit at all by his death.”

“Not at all. On the contrary, I’ve lost a friend.”

“You still maintain you were just driving around out at the Sardis estate?”

“Not at the Sardis estate. Past it. Yes, just driving; we’ve been through this many times already, Sergeant.”

“You didn’t go into the house. You didn’t know Mr. Sardis was dead until I personally informed you. Is that right?”

“That is correct.” Monaco didn’t fumble around with a pack of cigarettes this time, but I was no less convinced fhat he was still lying.

Apparently Torgesen was thinking along the same lines, because he said, “Frankly, Mr. Monaco, when I informed you of Mr. Sardis’ death, I wasn’t completely satisfied that the information was a surprise to you.”

“Your complete satisfaction is not my primary concern, Sergeant.” Monaco’s tone was chillier than a fan in the freezer, but then he seemed to relax somewhat and went on, “I might say that not only was news of Ephrim’s death a shock, but I could not help being reminded at the same time of—well, of the agreement between us which you’ve mentioned. It was immediately clear to me that, should the text of that document become public knowledge, not only might there descend some onus upon me, but it could have a most adverse effect upon the success of the grand opening of the hotel, even on the survival of the Kubla Khan.”

“Uh-huh.”

Monaco was quiet for a few moments, then went on. “In fact, when I employed Mr. Scott I offered him a substantial consideration should he be able satisfactorily to conclude his investigation before—within a very short time.” He looked at me and continued, “My motive should be more clear to you now, Mr. Scott. It was my . . . rather forlorn hope that this matter could be laid to rest, and any possible onus removed from me personally, before discovery of the agreement between Ephrim and me.” He shrugged. “I knew it would be found within a few hours, a day at the most.”

I wasn’t able to concentrate on his words much, because Sergeant Torgesen was making faint strangled noises, and his fat face was getting a little red.

There was silence for a few seconds, then Monaco said, “Are you all right. Sergeant?”

“Yes, I’m—whee—oh—I’m all right.” He got himself under control and said abruptly, “What about Jeanne Jax?”

“I don’t understand.”

“When did you meet her?”

“I’ve told you that. Here at the hotel Wednesday morning.”

“Not before then?”

“Not before then.”

“Never saw her before?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Now that you’ve had time to think about it, can you name anyone who might have wished Mr. Sardis dead?”

Monaco shook his head. “I can add nothing to what I’ve already said.”

“All right. Thank you, Mr. Monaco.”

The interrogation was over, just like that. I wondered if Torgesen knew something I didn’t know. It was quite likely. He stood up, nodded at me, then went out.

“Be nice if you’d told me,” I said to Monaco.

“Don’t lecture me, Mr. Scott.”

“Who’s lecturing? I repeat, if would be nice if you’d told me about the setup between you and Sardis. The more I know, the more chance I have of getting lucky. Sometime this year.”

He brushed a hand along the thick gray hair over his temple. “Do you think Sergeant Torgesen actually suspects me of murder?”

“Hell, I suspect you. He’d be a fool if he didn’t.”

“Mr. Scott,” he flared up, “you speak entirely—”

“Relax. You asked me. Tell me, was it really a big surprised to you to learn Sardis had been shot?”

“You heard what I told the sergeant.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll give you ten to one he didn’t believe you—either.”

“Don’t you have anything else to do, Mr. Scott?”

“Lots of things. I’m doing some of them right now. Like I wanted to ask you about a party you attended a few weeks ago. At the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of the talent-search finalists, the ones already chosen, were there. You were with Sardis and the Vails, I believe.”

“That is correct. What do you want to know?”

“Why were you all there? Just for fun?”

“Parties are no longer much fun for me, Mr. Scott. They are part of my business. Specifically, to reach agreement with Mr. Leaf on final details of the contest to be held here. The amount of moneys and other considerations, and especially the role or roles in his television series which would be awarded, and to whom they would be awarded.”

“You mean which of the girls present would get the goodies?”

“You are a cynic, aren’t you? The specific individuals were not then and are not yet known, since the contest here has not been judged. I meant it was necessary to decide whether only the first-place finisher would be awarded a role, or if some of the runners-up might also expect similar though less promising opportunities.” He sighed. “The information was necessary not only that we might advise the contestants themselves, but for our advertising and publicity. Does that meet with your approval?”

I ignored the barb. “Would you mind telling me why Mr. Sardis didn’t want it known he was the real owner of the Kubla Khan?”

“Yes. But I shall tell you anyhow. There really should be little mystery about it. For a number of years, as you may know, I lived and worked in Hollywood. I’m well known there, have many contacts, many friends. I am fairly intimate with numerous individuals, some wealthy, many of considerable influence, not only in Hollywood but in Washington, D.C., New York, Florida, Europe—much of the world. As the apparent owner of the Kubla Khan, I could expect a friendly and effective press, many famous guests, an enormous amount of free publicity. Does that not impress you as sensible?”

“I guess so. A little crooked, but sensible enough,,I suppose.”

He flushed a little. But he merely said, “Perhaps there is a slight deception involved, but nothing for which either Ephrim or I should be executed. And nothing which should occupy such an inordinate amount of your attention, Mr. Scott.”

I shrugged. Maybe; maybe not.

Monaco went on, “There was also this—perhaps even more important—motive. Ephrim was actually quite a shy man. He had a genius for making money, in varied fields, but he did not enjoy meeting people. I do.” He stopped, scowled and added, “Usually.”

I grinned and stood up. “OK. I’ll get to work and crack this dizzy case. At least, I’ll get cracking—”

“Mr. Scott . . . “ He let it die, and looked sadly at the distant wall.

I got up and, in silence, went out.

Sergeant Torgesen was nearby in the lobby. He spotted me and walked over. “Hey, Scott.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s a onus?”

I grinned, remembering that several times Monaco had stressed his desire to have it removed from him. “Probably not what you’re thinking,” I said. “I imagine Monaco meant it in the sense of a burden, something else that would be a bother to him—oddly, it’s a milder word than I’d expect a guilty man to use. On the other hand, it just might mean guilty as hell.”

“You’re a big help.”

“Well, this probably won’t be any help, either, but there’s something I forgot to tell you.”

“Oh?” He looked suspicious.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I said. “I just forgot. And you were doing most of the talking—and laughing—when we met here, anyway. The thing is, last night I saw a guy chinning with one of the beauty-contest gals, name of Carol Shearing, and when I talked to her she said he was asking her about Jeanne Jax.”

“So?”

“So that’s all. I figured you’d want to hear about anyone checking on the late Jeanne.”

“You figured right. Nothing else about him?”

“I don’t know his name. Saw nun in the Seraglio last night. Had a few words with him, but I don’t know who he is. Haven’t seen him since.”

“Let me know if you find out anything else.”

“Sure thing.”

Torgesen looked at his watch, then away and back at it again in a very hammy double-take. “Goodness,” he said, “it’s after ten-thirty in the morning. Hadn’t you better get busy?”

“Not yet eleven-thirty?” I said soberly. “Then there’s no hurry.”

He said a short, highly expressive word, and it is a good thing he said it softly because there were ladies in the lobby. After a short silence he looked at me specula-tively as though wondering if I’d forgotten anything else he should know.

Then he said, “See you around, Scott,” and walked off.

I strolled through the lobby and outside, and blinked.

Not from the sudden brightness of sunlight. But because the man I’d just been talking to Torgesen about was not ten yards away.

The big beefy character I’d shoved back into his chair last night in the Seraglio, and later spotted talking to Carol Shearing, stood with his thick legs spread, hands in his hip pockets and his coat pulled back over that beer-barrel-size belly, talking to another man. The other man was Jerry Vail.

16

I walked over to them and said, “Hi, Jerry.”

He glanced around. “ ‘Lo, Shell.”

“Want to introduce me to your friend?”

Maybe he was Jerry’s friend but he was sure no friend of mine. Not if I could read between the lines of his expression.

“Who?” Jerry said. “Oh, this is Warren Phelps. We just met.” He performed the introduction, anyway.

“Mr. Phelps and I met last night,” I said. “Sort of.” Neither of us offered to shake hands.

“He’s anxious to get in touch with Miss Jeanne Jax,” Vail said, and added with a glance at me, “I told him I hadn’t seen her but would, ah, let him know if I did.”

“Uh-huh. Seems reasonable,” I said.

Jerry glanced at his watch and shrugged. “Meantime, the work goes on.” He nodded at Warren Phelps and me. “I’ll be in my office most of the day. Except for the ribbon-cutting at noon. You’ll be there, of course, Shell?”

“I imagine so.”

“You really should be. Don’t you have a meeting pretty quick?” He looked at his watch again. “Nearly eleven now.”

“Meeting? Oh, yeah.” The meeting of contest Judges, I remembered. Instructions, clarification of judging method and such. A girl gets demerits if she bakes a cake. I wasn’t wild about going to the meeting, but Monaco had instructed me to go. I kind of begrudged the time it would take—not that it really made any difference at this point.

Jerry nodded again and strolled away.

Phelps started to walk off, too, but I said, “Just a minute.”

So far he hadn’t said boo to me, hadn’t opened his mouth. I stepped up by him again and said, “Mind telling me why you’re so anxious to see Miss Jax?”

“Yeah, I mind.”

“OK. You can tell the fuzz, then.”

He didn’t have any difficulty understanding who I meant by the fuzz. The brows pulled down over his eyes. “Why would cops be interested?”

I shrugged. “As Mr. Vail just indicated, Miss Jax doesn’t seem to be around. They’ll be interested in that. In fact, I’ll have to. tell Sergeant Torgesen you were asking Mr. Vail about her. Asking Carol Shearing last night. And a flock of others, for all I know.”

He was quiet for several seconds, looking past my shoulder. Then he decided, apparently, to become somewhat. more communicative. “Hell,” he said, “it’s natural enough I’m interested in where she is. I was supposed to see Jeanne last night. At least she was supposed to call me. Today, too.”

He stopped. I didn’t say anything, just waited. Finally he went on, “We’re supposed to get married. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Well, if she ever gets unhitched.”

“Yeah. I thought I heard she was already married.”

“She was. Still is, I guess. Sonofabitch took off, left her.”

“When was this?”

“Year or more back. What’s it to you?”

“Let’s say I’m a friend of Sergeant Torgesen’s.”

He scowled again. Mr. Phelps didn’t seem to be in love with the fuzz. I said, “What’s her husband’s name?”

I thought be wasn’t going to answer, but finally he said, “Maurice. Maurice Boutelle.”

“You know where they were married? And when?”

“San Jose, she told me. Maybe a couple of years ago. She was Jeanne Curtis then.”

“So why didn’t she call herself Jeanne Boutelle? Or even Curtis?”

“Ah, she had stars in her eyes. Some press agent sold her on the Jax handle. Better screen name, more punch, that kind of line.”

“Married in San Jose, huh? In Northern California?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“He took a powder? Ran out on her?”

Phelps nodded slowly. “With about seven thousand bucks she’d made, at that. From modeling, mostly.” He paused. “We were getting along real good. I’d sure like to know . . . You got any idea where she’s at?”

“Afraid I can’t help you there. But I might want to talk to you again. You staying here at the Khan?”

He shook his head, gave me the name of another local hotel.

I said, “Incidentally, I saw you talking to Carol Shearing last night. What did you do after that? Stay around for the party?”

“Maybe another fifteen minutes. I was just trying to find Jeanne. Fact is, I wasn’t supposed to be here at all. So I just crashed for half an hour.”

If true, he couldn’t have been the man who’d cracked me on the head. But I hadn’t supposed he was, anyway. Even if he had been, he sure wouldn’t tell me.

When I left Phelps I looked for Torgesen, but he’d gone, so I called his office in Indio—twice. The first time I didn’t get him, but he’d arrived by the time I completed the second call.

I passed on what I’d learned from Phelps and he said, “Thanks for the information, Scott. I already knew she was Jeanne Boutelle—info from DMV. The missing registration slip slowed us down, but not much. It was her own car she was driving. Didn’t know the husband’s name, though.”

“I suppose you’ll check with San Jose?”

“Right away. Jeanne Curtis and Maurice Boutelle; married about two years ago, you said?”

“Roughly. Phelps couldn’t pin it down any closer. Sergeant, when you get word back, I’d much appreciate anything available on the husband. Age, description, you know. The works.”

“We’ll see,” he said. “I’ll be in touch with you later today, anyhow.”

“Right. I don’t suppose you could get the information in the next half hour.”

It was a joke, of course. He thought it very funny.

I hung up on him.

Between the two calls to Torgesen I’d phoned Lyssa’s room, but there hadn’t been any answer. I tried again, once more without success, then dialed Misty Lombard’s number.

She answered with a soft, sweet, hot hello that went into my marrow, and cooked it, and there ensued a little jolly dialogue which need not be here reported.

Then I said, “Honey, I hear they cut the big ribbon and make some smashing speeches at noon. How about going to the ceremonies with me, to relieve their inevitable dullness?”

“I’d like to. Shell. But I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“I’m going with somebody else.”

“Somebody else? But you—I—we—I thought—”

“He called only a few minutes ago. If you’d phoned me ten minutes sooner I’d have said yes. You shouldn’t have neglected me all morning.”

“Neglected you? Dear, I thought—Who you going with?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Not supposed to say? What does that mean?”

“He asked me not to say anything about it, that’s all. He’s going to pick me up just before noon and he’ll explain everything then—some kind of special ceremony, I gathered. And I’m to be part of it.”

“Listen, if he tries to talk you into leaping out of a big firecracker—”

“Don’t worry.”

“You-can’t trust these men.”

“I know,” she laughed.

And there was some more jolly dialogue, which need not be here reported. After a few moments Misty said, “I’ve got to hang up. I’ll see you at the meeting, anyway. I’m just leaving.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll save you a seat.”

“I’ll be sitting with Mr. Leaf.”

“Are you trying to avoid me?’

She laughed again. “Not really. I’ll see you later, Shell.” She added something dandy, and I hung up still smiling—but wondering, too, with whom she was going to the ribbon-cutting. And why she was supposed to say nothing about it.

But the time was ticking close to eleven, so I headed for the Executive Room, where what I expected would be a hugely dull meeting was about to start. I was right; it was about to start, and it was hugely dull.

I did meet some of the other judges, including a New York fashion designer with a toothbrush mustache which looked as if it had been used to clean too many teeth, and his most celebrated high-fashion model, who was not quite as tall as I, and weighed nearly as much as my left leg. I figured she wore a brassiere primarily for warmth, like Band-Aids for goose bumps, and I couldn’t imagine how either of them was going to vote for any of the contestants. But there were eight other judges, including Misty and Simon Leaf and me, so perhaps it would still be an exciting contest.

Misty came in—with Simon Leaf. She gave me a smile but no words, and he gave me a nod and a curt “Morning, Scott,” then they proceeded, still talking animatedly, to their seats.

I said “Psst” at Misty a couple of times, but it didn’t do any good, so I found my own seat. It was a good ten feet from Misty’s. Things weren’t working out so well. I wondered if it was an omen.

Somebody passed out little folders with rules for judging various portions of female anatomy. Interesting enough, I thought, but I had my own ideas about that. Then Onnand Monaco came in, rapped for order and gave us a little speech. He was delighted we could all be here to help in this great enterprise; he knew we would, each of us, do all in our power to make the Khan’s grand opening, succeeding festivities, and the conclusion of the talent search a joy and a delight and practically heaven on earth. Then he introduced Mr. Leaf, who would say a few words, and left to continue preparations for the grand-opening ceremonies.

Simon Leaf stepped to the front of the Executive Room, stood behind a small lectern and gazed upon us with the air of the first man to espy, through shrouds and mists, the shores of North America. “Dignity,” he said.

He continued to gaze upon the foaming surf, spreading lands, rising mountains. “Dignity,” he said again.

Well, this wasn’t much so far, I thought. I leaned over and tried to catch Misty’s eye. “Psst,” I said. Didn’t work this time. either.

“Dignity!” cried Simon Leaf.

Shee, I thought. Some speech. Maybe he was following the old advice to “Tell ‘em what you’re going to say, then tell ‘em-what you’re saying, then tell ‘em what you said.” OK, I’d got it. We’d all got it.

“That is my message to you this morning,” said Simon Leaf. “My entire message is contained in that one word.”

Those three words, I mentally amended.

“All preparations have been carefully made,” he went on, “to ensure that from the opening ceremonies at noon through the afternoon’s events to the conclusion of the contest this evening, the proceedings not only go forward with professional smoothness and dispatch, but that there may reside in all our activities an air of complete propriety, an aura of good taste, a suffusion of that dignified élan to which none, even the most censorious, could even minimally object.”

He should have quit when he was even, I thought. I’d pegged Leaf as one of those guys to whom the sound of his own voice was sweeter than harps in heaven. But, perhaps, I was a mite prejudiced against him.

“The eyes of the world are upon us!” he sang. “What we say here may not be long remembered, but what we do here . . . ah.” He’d lost his place. “Ah, uh.” He rolled his eyes around. Maybe from where he stood he could see not merely the coast of California, but clear to South America. Clearly he was a man with vision.

“What we do here will echo to every cran and nook—nook and cranny—all over the world. A great responsibility lies upon us. Each of us, individually and collectively, represents the Kubla Khan, the flower of youthful, vital, shapely sex—ah, uh—youthful, innocent womanhood. And”—his eyes rolled again—”and . . . Simon Leaf Productions!”

Ah, there it was. But I wondered how each of us collectively could do something which would echo. I was really getting interested now.

He went on for another minute, stressing that there be no jollity among the judges—and certainly no drinking, at least until after the judging was completed, and that we should appear before the “eyes of the world” as though clad in the raiment and wisdom and nobility of monks and hermits and saints and angels, to the end that all the world would know the Kubla Khan, the flower of womanhood and Simon Leaf Productions stood foursquare near, at, around and even smack-dab on . . . He took a deep breath, rolled his eyes, shook a little:

“Dignity!”

Well, of course, that was the high point of the meeting. After Simon Leaf, the other specific instructions—time and place where we’d meet before the contest began, résumé of awards to be presented and such—was terribly anticlimactic. But it was ended before eleven-thirty, and after failing to disengage Misty from Simon Leaf, boy Demosthenes, I left.

Lyssa Weldon’s room was an outside room in the Khan’s north wing, and this time instead of phoning I walked over there, filling my lungs with clean desert air on the way, and pressed the button at 218 and rang her bell.

She was in this time.

And though she did not press my button, she also rang my bell.

17

The door cracked and one of those big eyes, dark and brown but with a flicker of hot green in it, peeked around its edge at me.

Then the eye widened further and took on even more of that look of constant surprise and she opened the door wide saying, “Shell, love. I thought maybe it was Bull. But it’s too early for Bull.”

“Maybe it’s too early for me.”

I guessed she was fresh from the shower, for there were tiny sparkling diamonds of wetness in her short black hair, and moistness glistened faintly on the silken brown skin of her shoulders and throat and upper part of her chest—and very nearly the under part of her chest, since she was clutching a fluffy white towel to her breasts and had apparently clutched it in a hurry.

Lyssa corroborated at least one of my deductions by saying, “I just jumped out of the shower. Getting ready for when they cut the ribbon thing. Come on in.”

“In the shower?”

She laughed. “You can shower if you want. But I’m all through.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’m all washed up myself. But I don’t mind coming in, don’t mind if I do.”

And in I went. “Close the door quick,” I said, “so we don’t get trampled in the rush.”

“Rush?”

“There may be guys out there watching. Lock and bar the door, shove the bed against it. I’ll shoot the first six guys inside.”

“Oh, not the bed, love,” she said. “Shut your eyes.”

“What for? They just got here.”

“So I can fix my towel.”

I did it, and did not even peek, until she said, “OK, now I’m all covered,” and I took a good look and said, “That is a matter of opinion.”

The towel went under her arms and concealed the vital third of her splendidly shapely body from the swell of her breasts to about halfway or maybe merely quarterway down her sleek thighs, but left all the sizzling rest, including her rounded shoulders and upper bulge of bosom bare as a baby’s bottom and in fact much barer than that.

“I’ll get dressed in a minute,” she said. “I suppose you want to know if I talked to Bull Harper.”

“Yeah, that was it.’

“I did. He said Jeanne saw him, and told him she’d tried to see Mr. Sardis but couldn’t get an appointment with him. She asked Bull to fix it for her.”

“Did he fix it?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He’s funny—if he gets tired of talking about anything, he’s tired. You can’t budge him at all.”

“I had a hunch he was like that. When did Jeanne talk to Bull?”

“It was late on Thursday. She went out to the place to see him.”

“The Sardis estate, you mean?”

“Yes, that’s where Bull was then; it was a little before 4 p.m. You want a Martini?”

“What?”

“You want a Martini? I made some just before I jumped in the shower. Thought I’d need something to last me through the noon thing. When they do all the speeches and talk about how wonderful everybody is.”

“Well, I don’t usually drink Martinis at noon. But . . . yeah, maybe I’d better. Just one.”

“Whoever heard of Just one?” she said, and heat lightning flickered in those almost virginal eyes. “I made a whole pitcher.”

“So start pitching.”

While she poured to the clink of ice in the pitcher—wrong way to make Martinis, by the way; you should never leave the ice in the pitcher—I said, “Did Jeanne tell Bull why she wanted to see Sardis?”

“No. He asked her about that, but she didn’t say exactly why. You’ll have to drink from this big old glass, don’t have any of the cute little ones. Sit down and rest your bones, we’ve got a couple minutes.”

Couple minutes for what? I wondered. But I sat on the edge of the bed after taking the nearly full water glass she’d handed me.

It was a small room, the neatly made bed in one corner, low dresser of dark carved wood against a wall, little stained-bamboo bar in the corner on my right, and straight ahead the half-open door of the bath. I could see a dark-red bath mat on the floor and an edge of the shower stall.

I swallowed about a half-ounce of the Martini and went up an inch off the bed. Maybe you should leave the ice in.

“Glaa,” I said, involuntarily.

“They all right?” Lyssa asked me. “Maybe I made them too strong.”

“Fine,” I said. “Glaa, fine. Just don’t rub two of them together.”

“I can’t remember if I put the vermouth in. Does it taste like it?”

“How can you tell? Beats me. In a minute, though, it won’t make much difference.”

“You don’t like it.”

“Sure I do.”

“But you keep making that noise like a billy goat.”

“What do you mean? Glaa. It’s—it’s swell.”

“It’s some gin I never heard of.”

“Huh.”

“Sure warms your stomach, though.”

“Well, that’s where it starts.” I’d had another half-ounce by this time. “Bet this would cure ulcers. They’d close right up like dying sea anemones.”

We yacked about nothing much for a bit. I asked her where her roommate was, if she had one. She had one—a Chinese girl named Wong—but she’d left the room hours before. When I couldn’t resist commenting that I was glad her roommate was Wong gone, I shut up for a bit, wondering if I should drink the rest of the Martini. The hell of it was, by then I’d drunk the rest of the Martini. Well, practically.

It seemed to be down there attacking all the junk I’d drunk last night. Those little grabbers down around my duodenum. I still didn’t know what a duodenum was, but I was getting a pretty good idea where it was. I really shouldn’t have had a Martini, I thought. Probably I should have had a Mongoose.

Finally I said, “Lyssa.”

“Yes, Shell?”

“What else did Bull tell you?”

“Only what I said. Jeanne wanted to see Mr. Sardis pretty bad, and asked Bull to arrange it if he could. Told him Mr. Sardis would really want to talk to her. She told him another thing, I remember. Said it was about his daughter, and that’s why he’d want to talk to her.”

“Sardis’ daughter? Neyra?”

“I guess it must’ve been. Bull told me she just said it was about his daughter. And for Bull to tell him that.”

“Interesting. Look, when you see Bull again, do try to find out if he arranged for Jeanne to see Sardis, will you?”

“Sure. I’ll see him pretty quick. And I’d better get some clothes on, too.” She tilted her make do Martini glass and said, “That’s very, very good.”

“Get’s better the farther you go, all right.” It was true. By now it was tasting like Novocain. I was beginning to think the stuff had bypassed my stomach and gone directly into my auricle and ventricle. Ah, that was right; I hadn’t had lunch yet. Hadn’t had breakfast, for that matter. In fact, I hadn’t eaten anything since about eight o’clock last night. Good thing I ate last night, I thought.

“Is it really important?” Lyssa asked. “About Jeanne and Mr. Sardis, I mean?”

“Real important. And the sooner you can find out and let me know, the better.”

“I’ll ask him the first thing, then. The very, very first thing.”

“Splendid. That’s very, very splendid.”

“Like another?”

“I’ve still got a little. Not much, but—”

“Let me fill it up. Before the ice melts.”

“Yeah. You know, you’re supposed to take the ice out. According, at least, to the experts. And, I sometimes like to think, I am an ex—”

“There’s not as much left as I thought. But there’s enough.”

“Oh, there’s enough, all right.”

She was standing before me, pitcher in hand, leaning over, starting to pour. She’d tied the towel behind her in a knot which must have been loose to begin with, and which unless my eyes were deceiving me was getting looser. She’d been moving around, getting and pouring Martinis, and—there was no doubt about it. She was coming undone.

The towel drooped a little more, started to slide down over those big smooth breasts, and I said, “Lyssa!” and she, becoming suddenly aware, cried, “Oh!” and grabbed for the towel.

Well, it was a mess.

She’d been pouring those horrible Martinis, and I’d been holding my glass out there, and when she yelled and grabbed for the towel, the pitcher in her hand clunked the glass in mine and in an instant it was raining gin, it was a Martini-burst, and Lyssa was crying “Oh!” for the second time, and grabbing—and missing.

Suddenly it was over, but it had been a hell of a two seconds. Pitcher and glass lay on the floor. Near the crumpled white towel. Lyssa was still reaching for the towel, which of course was not where she was reaching. And I was partway up onto my feet, leaning forward and kind of clutching, in what remained of my effort to help Lyssa.

For a few more seconds we stayed in that rather shocking position. Part of the reason for my temporary paralysis was the suddenness of the spilled Martinis. But most of it was caused by the sight of Lyssa, nude, a foot from me, bending toward me and, now, slowly straightening up.

She looked like the Eve of night, like a newer and more magnificent Circe, and the slow rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed, the slight movement of those sensual lips in her wise and wanton face, was a siren song old when the world was young.

I don’t know what would have happened right then—though I’ve a pretty damn good idea—because at that instant something strange began seeping into my consciousness. Strange, and wet. As though something strange and wet was seeping into my pants. I didn’t want to look away from Lyssa, but that strange and seeping wetness became more and more insistent and at last I looked.

So, I thought, that’s where the Martinis went.

The Martinis . . . or whatever they’d been.

I wasn’t very happy about that noxious, poisonous, possibly fatal brand of Novocain to begin with. There had clearly been something subversive, sneaky, even diabolical about it. That stuff, strangely seeping insistently, might even do something horrible to a guy.

I wouldn’t have been so—increasingly—concerned if it had fallen all over, say, my feet. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t going to damage my running apparatus. Feet were OK. Hardly wet at all. It was my duodenum I was worried about.

While I was staring, and wondering, wondering, Lyssa bent swiftly and picked up her towel. At any other time I’d have felt a pang of regret, but now it didn’t matter; more important things were afoot. Well, not exactly a-foot.

“Lyssa,” I said in wondering tone, “that gin bottle . . . “

“Yes?”

“It didn’t have a skull-and-crossbones or anything like that on it, did it?”

“No, Just a picture of a girl.”

“That’s goo—A girl?”

“Yes, a pretty girl—”

“What difference does it make? A girl’s a girl—”

“With a rose in her teeth—”

“A rose in her—”

“And it’s called gin. Just gin.”

“It figures. Probably hand-written. Well, that settles it. Oh, Lyssa, we’ve got to do something—”

“You’d better take your pants off.”

“We’ve got to do—What?”

“You’d better take your pants off.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

“Take them off and I’ll iron it out for you.”

“You must be kidding.”

“It’ll only take a minute. I’ll just steam it out for you.”

“Will that help?”

“Shell, don’t act so frightened.”

“Baby, fright is not my problem.”

She stamped her foot. “Take off your pants!”

“Say it again!”I cried.

“Shell. I’ll kick you in the eyes . . . “

“Well, hell,” I said, and started taking my pants off, “if you’re for it, I’m for it. Blimy, I guess we’re for it.”

Lyssa grabbed my pants and walked away. After a while I said, “Is that all?”

She didn’t answer me.

During our just concluded dialogue Lyssa had been moving around in the room, but I hadn’t paid real attention to what she was doing, since my mind had been entirely occupied with my own problems. But now I noted that she’d set up a little portable ironing board and had a steam iron resting on it. She draped my keen pants with their little red stripes over an end of the ironing board.

“You’re going to press my pants, aren’t you?” I said.

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Lots, I guess.”

“Have to get that wet Martini stain out. You can’t leave here like that.”

“It’s a dry Martini stain. But you’re right. I’m supposed to go to the ribbon-cutting, and I sure can’t go like this. It wouldn’t be—well, it wouldn’t be dignified.”

Lyssa had, of course, refixed her towel, but she’d been moving around so much it was getting loose again. She’d tied it in front this time, or rather sort of at the shoulder, so it appeared she was wearing a short, low-cut, fuzzy white dress slit at the side up to her ear. It was lovely.

“Lyssa,” I said, “you’re lovely. Especially in that get-out. Getup.”

She smiled and her eyes flashed. “It is rather chic, isn’t it?”

“Baby, it is the chic of Araby. You know, with you in that outfit and me in my mahaharaja suit, we make quite a blinding couple, what?”

“Especially right now, love,” she said.

Lyssa turned to face me, moistening her lush red lips with the tip of her tongue, and I almost imagined I heard a little spat like when a woman wets a finger and taps it on an iron. There was something in the air, something different; it seemed suddenly more dense, more still. We looked at each other for several seconds, in silence.

I guess something was bound to happen. It did. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what I thought might happen, but something sure as hell happened.

I took one short step toward her, as she came toward me slowly and stopped half a step away; as she moved the loose knot at her shoulder sagged, the towel drooped down to the jutting point of one fine breast, clung for long electric seconds, rising and falling with her breath. She didn’t reach for the knot to tighten it.

I looked at her eyes, and there seemed more green than ever now in their smoky darkness. Her full lips, moistened by the quick caress of her tongue, moved almost imperceptibly.

The towel fell.

Then she moved that last half-step toward me—and there was an astounding noise at the door.

At least, it was a very large and clattering noise, and I guessed it was at the door. I had kind of lost my bearings, so to speak, but I had not lost my ears, and I knew that, wherever it had come from, it had been an exceptionally disturbing noise.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Lyssa. In a whisper.

It was easy to note every nuance of her changing expression, of which there were plenty. “Did I hear it?” she whispered.

“I don’t suppose you did it,” I whispered sadly. “No such luck, huh?”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll bet it’s the man from Porlock.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

It happened at the door again.

“Sounds like something wild trying to break in, doesn’t it?” I said.

“He never rings the bell.”

“He . . . Who? As if I didn’t know.”

“I think you’d better do . . . something. Shell.”

“Yeah. Good thinking. Should have thought of that myself. But . . . like what?”

She stepped back and turned away from me, then stood in the middle of the room kind of half on tiptoe, leaning toward the door, and called, “Just a minute. Who is it?”

Ah, it was a lovely sight. But I could not give it the undivided attention which such a splendidly alive vista of velvet nudity normally would have demanded, because, from the other side of the door, came: “Who you suppose?”

Just that, in a voice like thunder in a tunnel, and then: “Who you expecting, the King of Siam?”

18

“Oh, that’s a good idea, shell,” Lyssa whispered.

“Get under the bed.”

I figured she didn’t have to do all the thinking.

“Wait a second, Bull,” she called. “I just got out of the shower.”

“Hoo,” he said.

Then she opened the door.

“Hoo-hoo,” he said.

I could see the back of Lyssa’s legs about up to the calves; her pretty feet; and see the door open; and see, clumping inside, two other feet, which weren’t pretty. They were sure big, though. I could also see some of his pinkish costume trousers and part of a big jeweled scabbard for his big sharp scimitar.

“Come on in, Bull,” Lyssa was saying. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

“You supposed to be ready. I told you I’d be here quarter of noon.”

“I forgot.”

“That’s a hell of—Why’d you forget?”

“I . . . forget.” She paused, then said, “You’d better wait outside for me, Bull, honey. While I get into costume.”

“OK, Lyssa, baby.”

I started to heave a big sigh of relief.

It was going to be simple after all. He’d step outside, Lyssa would dress and leave, and after a suitable interval I would get the hell out myself.

It wasn’t that I was afraid that if Bull and I got into a real knockdown-and-dragout he’d kill me. I’ve tangled with a lot of the good ones—and big ones, a couple of whom were even bigger than Bull Harper. It was merely that it would, like most such primitive solutions, solve nothing; it would place Lyssa in a tricky pickle; it would be highly embarrassing—to me; it would undoubtedly be painful as hell for both Bull and me; and he would probably kill me.

So I started to sigh my big sigh. But only started.

Because Bull said, “You better shake a leg. I’ll wait—Hey.”

“What?”

“Hey! What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

That’s what I was wondering—what’s what.

“What’s that I see?”

Yeah, what could he have seen which would put that savage bestial note into his voice? That growling, animal murderous note?

“Is them pants?” he said.

I felt faint. How could I have forgotten my pants? “What in hell you doin’,” Bull said, “pressin’ a man’s pants?”

“Yes.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Pressing a man’s pants.”

“Whose pants?”

“A . . . friend’s.”

“I didn’t think it was a enemy.”

“Bull, you’re not jealous!”

“Ha! Hoo! If you think I ain’t, you ain’t thinkin’. Where is he at? I’ll kill him. I’ll fix him so he wears skirts. I’ll pull his limb off his limbs. I’ll—”

“Bull, there’s nobody here but you and me,” she lied smoothly. It was what I think of as a little white lie. Even if you think of it as a little colored lie, what’s the difference? It was to save me and this entire area from becoming a total shambles. It was a good lie.

“Those are my brother’s pants,” Lyssa went on smoothly. “I’m doing his laundry.”

“No kidding.”

“See? There’s nothing to get excited about.”

“So why am I so excited?”

“That’s what I mean. Why are you?”

“You don’t got a brother.”

“Oh, Bull, I do, too. I just never told you about him.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked suspiciously.

He was sure a suspicious fellow. Actually, I couldn’t blame him. I’d be suspicious myself if I saw a guy’s pants on my girl’s ironing board. Especially if they were my pants.

It was getting pretty thick out there, but then Lyssa had an inspiration. At least she changed the subject.

“Bull, honey,” she said smoothly. “You remember I asked you about that girl, Jeanne? Jeanne Jax.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You listen to me. You said she wanted you to arrange for her to meet Mr. Sardis. Did you?”

“What’s so—”

“Bull, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. It is! And I’ll never speak to you again, I’ll never—”

“OK, OK, don’t flip. Yeah, I talked to him and he said he’d like to see her. So I told her.”

“When was that?”

“What’s so damn . . . It was Thursday, late, when she asked me, like I told you before. Mr. Sardis set it up for her to come in and see him at half past three Friday. Yesterday. She called out in the morning yesterday and talked to me, I was on the gate then, and I told her it was OK.” He was quiet for a few moments. “I had to go back at three-thirty and let her in—you can’t open the gate, except from inside, without the key—which is why I couldn’t pick you up till right after then.”

“All right, Bull. If you’ll wait—”

“Shh.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Be quiet, I’m thinkin’. Yeah. I got it. He was asking me all them questions. About her, and Mr. Sardis. Him! Him! That big white-haired monkey. Shell Scott! HIM!”

“Bull, please—”

“The monkey I caught bare-handed, squeezin’ your—”

“Bull! If you don’t quit it, I’ll never speak to you again—”

“So clam up, Lyssa, baby. Hmm . . . “

Well, she’d almost done it. But only almost.

My shorts were never going to dry out at this rate. I was sweating something unbelievable. I have been in steam baths, in saunas, clunked on the head in the middle of the desert, but never before had I become so well acquainted with sweat. But I’m no quitter. I’d get out of this somehow. Or die trying.

“Hmmm . . . There is something about those pants there.”

Silence.

Thump of big feet as Bull stepped toward the ironing board, over on my right.

“There is something familiar about those pants.”

He stopped suddenly. His ugly feet were approximately a yard from my head. “What’s all this on the floor?” he said. “That pitcher, and ice . . . and a glass. Two glasses. Two glasses?”

Blimy, I thought, now we’re in for it. I should never have had a Martini with Lyssa. I should never have had anything with Lyssa. I should have given up girls a long time ago. No, I amended, not that; I’d rather die; which is probably how it’s going to work out.

“And there’s that bottle of gin I gave you. Empty. You drank it? You drank it all?”

Presumably you weren’t supposed to drink it. Most likely you weren’t supposed to smell it. Even from a distance. It was a decoration, like a vase. And Bull himself was responsible. He’d bought it. Or won it. Or made it. You cheapskate, I thought. You mad poisoner, you.

I balled up a fist and looked at it. Not as big as Bull’s but a reasonably lethal instrument nonetheless. And I had two of them to his four. Practically even. I was at a disadvantage under the bed, of course. Not to mention the fact that I’d feel a bit sheepish if—when—he peeked under here and spotted me.

Probably I should roll out from under the bed and spring quickly to my feet behind him and hit him. He might even turn around and see me and say, “Where’d you come from?” and never know for sure.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Lyssa’s voice. It was kind of different this time.

She said, “Bull, I’m not going to argue with you. If you want to be a stupid jealous old—Oh!” And then, “Oh!”

I knew that “Oh!”

Lyssa had once again become inspired. This time it truly was inspiration. And this time it did, indeed and at last, change the subject.

I saw the fuzzy white towel fall and crumple on the floor. That made once accidentally and twice on purpose. Or maybe, I mused, three times on purpose. Whichever, Bull Harper knew when to quit arguing.

“Lyssa, bab-bb-by,” he yowled.

“Bull!”

“Lyssa!”

Thumping footsteps again, muffled snorting, yowls, and “Bull!” and “Lyssa!” and a couple of thumps, and a creak. A huge scabbarded scimitar sailed across the room and clunked on the carpet. Then some other things. Oh, no, you don’t, I thought. But I was wrong about practically everything these days.

OK, I told myself, let’s go over it again. Let’s go over this here case from the beginning. Must be several clues just waiting to be grabbed and put into the right places, maybe enough to complete the puzzle. Besides, there wasn’t much else for me to do.

I drew a little line on the damp carpet under my nose, and watched as a drop of moisture fell from my nose onto the mark. Probably couldn’t do that again if I tried.

“Bull,” Lyssa said—I could hear her quite clearly—”it must be almost noon. I’ve got to get ready for the ceremonies.”

“In a minute.”

Yes, it must be nearly noon, I thought. But when I looked at my watch, it was with some surprise that I noted it was only eleven-fifty-four. Six minutes yet. In six minutes I could say good-bye forever to nine thousand, nine hundred dollars. Of course, I’d never really expected to get that whole ten G’s. I’m not a nut.

I suppose I should be more—oh, more orthodox. Nose to the old grindstone, up at the croak of dawn, charge around with an expression of severe pain on my face. Like right now, for example. But that wouldn’t be me, and if I lost me, where would I be?

That one was too deep for me to figure out with my brains in the mess they were in. All I knew was, that wouldn’t be smart; that wasn’t my way to go. No, I’d rather lie under a bed, cursing under my breath, and drown in my own sweat. That was smart.

Six minutes to go. Five minutes now. Something . . . Something about the time, just before noon, wiggled a little tendril in my brain. It was a worrying little wiggle, but I couldn’t figure out what had caused it.

Well, I thought, let’s go over it again.

There’s the Jeanne Jax bit. On arriving, she had first talked to Ormand Monaco—assuming, always, that Monaco hadn’t been lying to me with deliberation and expertness, which was more than possible—and had noted Neyra Vail and Jerry, had later asked some of the girls about Neyra Vail and Sardis, and had as the day progressed confined her questions, so far as I’d been able to determine, to Sardis, Ephrim Sardis. At the end, by the time she got to Bull Harper, she’d asked Bull to arrange a meeting for her with Mr. Sardis—and, according to what Lyssa had just wangled from Bull, had actually shown up for that meeting yesterday at 3:30 p.m. What had occurred then I couldn’t know, but maybe I could guess.

Sardis had been shot and killed around 4:30 p.m.—at least that was when the call to the sheriff had been logged, the call reporting the sound of a gunshot; 4:28 P.M., I recalled.

Unless Jeanne’s killer—and Sardis’ murderer, too—was somebody I didn’t know or hadn’t met, the people closest to the case were Ormand Monaco, Jerry Vail, Warren Phelps and Bull Harper. Bull was out. He hadn’t killed anybody. Not with a gun. In the first place, I believed he had met Lyssa yesterday shortly after 3:30 p.m., at least well before the sound of that gunshot had been reported; further, I thought if it had been Bull running up over Moss Mountain late Friday, I’d have been impressed by the size and bulk of him. No, for my money, Bull was out.

Which left Jerry and Ormand and Warren. And, conceivably, Neyra Vail herself, though that wasn’t likely. I’d have to talk to Neyra, when I got a chance.

Back to Jeanne, the crux of it.

She’d been married, saw her estranged hubby here at the Khan. According to Phelps, the hubby had left her, taken a powder—with some of her loot, at that. But according to Misty, Jeanne had said, at least at first, that they were merely estranged.

Misty . . . That wiggle in my skull again. And the worry, growing.

I shook it off, tried to concentrate. I remembered my first “interrogation” of Misty, here on the Khan’s grounds last night. And then the repeat of it, while Ormand Monaco and Jerry Vail listened . . . .

Then through the convolutions of my brain like a small bright worm wriggled the thought: If either Vail or Monaco happened to be the murderer, and had listened to Misty answering my questions about Jeanne in that ersatz interrogation . . .

I almost had it.

I wish to hell these people would shut up, I thought. How’s a mart supposed to concentrate? I looked at my watch. Four minutes till noon. Pretty quick everybody, simply everybody, was going to be out in front of the hotel entrance for the grand, impressive, dignified ceremonies, the speeches and ribbon-cutting. The grand opening of the fabulous Kubla Khan. Even going to have a band, I’d been told. A band playing, politicians and celebrities making speeches and having their pictures taken. Probably even the Governor of the state would consent to make a few thousand remarks. It was going to be something to see, all right. And everybody would be there. Except Bull and Lyssa. And, of course, me.

Back to Vail and Monaco, I told myself. OK, assume one of them was the murderer—and sapped me, tried to kill me last night. Would there have been any reason, any motive, for that same man to try to kill Misty? And, if so, wouldn’t he have tried to kill her later that same night? It was possible, and if what was beginning to go through my mind now made sense, it was even probable. Except . . . Of course. Except that I had been with Misty last night.

I couldn’t keep my thoughts from Misty. The worry about her was growing, starting to chill my guts. I still didn’t know why, hadn’t pinned it down, but I had sense enough to know if that chill fear was growing, then there was a reason for it. Buried somewhere in memory of my subconscious, maybe, or even pushed aside by the events of these last minutes; but there, and real.

Wait a second. Go at it another way. Suppose, just suppose there is one person with reason, with motive—now—not only to kill me but to kill Misty as well. Who would that person have to be; and why the need to get rid of us both? I was getting closer to the answer, and then I thought of something else.

Last night would surely have been the time for the murder of Misty Lombard—if I’d not been with her. Everything dark, nobody around. And then came another worm of thought, an ugly one this time: it wouldn’t have to be dark.

Half a dozen other thoughts came then, all the other ones, or at least most of them, and it suddenly felt as if the sweat on my body had frozen. My breath stopped. Fear for Misty was a solid block in my throat. I knew. It was knowledge, it was certainty: it was happening. If she wasn’t already dead, it was happening.

That last worm of thought stayed in my mind: it wouldn’t have to be dark. Just a time when nobody was around. A time when all the guests and most of the help were gathered before the wide entrance of the Kubla Khan. A time when somebody was going to meet Misty at her suite, “just before noon.”

A time like—right now.

19

I was staring at the second hand of my watch.

I didn’t even know what time it was, only that the little hand was moving like death, inexorably—and fast, too fast.

I started to roll from under the bed, then stopped.

Every second was important, every second might mean the difference between one more breath for Misty and none again, none ever again. But I couldn’t take a chance that—

I stopped, shook my head. I wasn’t thinking straight enough. If I messed this up I’d never get to Misty. There might still be time, but I had to force my thought from her, away from my fear, and make certain I did everything right—and at the right moment.

Think of this second, and the next ones. Out the door, to the hotel running, through it. I edged over the carpet, under the bed to its edge. I could see my damned trousers dangling from the ironing board. The hell with them, too.

No time to grab them, no time even for that. The really big mess would explode if Bull Harper lamped me. Uh-huh, there was the thought which had slowed me down a moment ago. And a good thing, too. Because if Bull did lamp me, he would of a certainty become instantly filled with ravenous desire to get his hands on me. Even if he didn’t render me unconscious for several hours, there would sure as hell be no reasoning with him. There’d be no chance to explain—anything.

It was a good thing I hadn’t followed my first impulse and scrambled out, noisily, startling Bull more than just a little. The startle would put even more adrenalin into his veins, and there was, I felt certain, more than enough there already. No, I had to be very cagey, move quietly even at first with agonizing slowness, but only until I could be sure of getting to the door unobserved and making a break for it.

So, slowly, like a lone guerrilla crawling through regiments of the enemy, I moved out from under the bed. I was aimed toward the door and I crept another foot toward it before rising slowly, noiselessly to my knees. And my knee popped.

Pop.

Well, I thought, that tore it.

And right after that there was a queer gobbling sound, like a turkey when you hit him with a bamboo stick.

I hadn’t looked behind me yet. I hadn’t really wanted to look behind me. But what the hell, you can’t always do what you want to do. I looked behind me.

Miraculously it was not Bull Harper making that strained and strangled sound. He hadn’t even seen me yet. Not that it made any real difference, because his big head was moving and in a very, very short time he was going to see me.

The sound, however, was issuing from Lyssa, who upon spotting me in my rather awkward position, had apparently become possessed of an insane joy. Or at least some kind of entirely inappropriate merriment. She was laughing. Or, if not yet actually laughing wildly, was unsuccessfully suppressing her attack of acute imbecility.

She pressed her teeth together, then they opened as if prized apart by an irresistible force, and she squeaked; “Yeeee—oooee—oooee,” which—at another time—I might have thought much resembled a teeny-weeny bird calling to its mate, and which she finally choked off with a sound like a parrot being strangled in the middle of a squawk.

Things were never going to be the same between us again. It was a sickening thought. But that was the only kind of thought I was having right then. There wasn’t even time for very many sickening thoughts.

For Bull, big old Bull, had got that great head of his cranked around all the way and his wide and staring eyes were full upon me.

Well, words cannot tell it.

Music could not have told it.

Not even ten thousand senators orating while geniuses conducted symphonies and madmen beat hell out of kettledrums could have told it.

I can’t even begin to describe Bull Harper, and his weirdly flickering expression at that moment, because part of it was in the fourth dimension. But if you have ever seen a guy get hit on the head with a truck, you’ve an idea of what happened to his eyeballs, in which little veins appeared to be preparing to pop.

He was staring at me, with his head cocked way over on one side, practically looking at me upside down, and his glistening black chops bore the strangest and most memorable expression imaginable. It was—as close as I’ll ever be able to get it—an inscrutable blend of unbelieving comprehension rising reluctantly over denied belief, plus stunned dollops of wistful sorrow and sheer agony.

He seemed to be in some kind of trauma, which I hoped was irreversible, but I, too, felt as though my nerves had all been plucked like pinfeathers from a Christmas goose and it was totally impossible for me to move. I wanted to move. I knew I should move—for lots of reasons, none of which at that moment were crystal clear to me. But I had to wait till my pinfeathers came back.

So I watched it all.

At first he was simply frozen there. Rigid. Unmoving. Addled. But then he moved, just a little. Slowly his expression changed a trifle. The eyes got smaller; narrowed; squinted. His lips came together and pooched out. He got a strained look. And I was able to detect the exact moment when he knew, knew for sure, the what and how: what was going on; what it was out there on the carpet, eyeballing him in transfixed nausea; how I’d gotten into my awkward position; how those keen pants had gotten onto Lyssa’s ironing board. It was when his eyes sort of emptied out, like when you dump used coffee grounds in the sink.

But that was only the beginning.

It went on forever.

It was much the same as when I got clunked on the head and time became as taffy. It was another very sticky moment right then. And in that strange world I go to at moments of great peril, I watched Bull’s lips and eyes and nostrils and teeth and hair and hairline and eyebrows and chin and you name it go this way and that way and form snorts and silent curses and homicidal conniptions. It was as though for eons I watched, as over his contorted features marched the whole parade of evolution. History was born and died there—earthquake, storm, fire and flood and I don’t know what all.

Boy, something had to be done.

“Bull,” I said, very friendly, “don’t jump to conclusions.”

His lips went way out, way out, and he said, “Shhhh—” like a storm blowing up off Cape Hatteras.

“Bull,” I said, “this isn’t what you think. No, it’s not. Not really. Are . . . you thinking? Bull . . . can you hear me?”

“Shhhhhh—”

“Don’t you understand? I didn’t do anything. Not really. I didn’t have time—”

“shhhhhh—”

Getting louder and louder. He was starting to sound like gas leaking out of a dirigible.

“shhhhhhhh—”

What’s he trying to say? I wondered. Shucks? No, that wouldn’t be it. Not Sherlock Holmes, either, I’d have bet a million.

“shhhheeeellllll—”

There it was!

“scott!”

Yep, there it was. And it was as though finally getting it out freed Bull for wild, horrendous and unbelievably speedy movement. Of a sudden he was flying through the air toward me, leaping at me, hurtling upon me like a herd of stampeding elephants. It was—ack, I just hope I never see anything like it again.

What had gone before had then been extraordinarily unpleasant to behold; but compared to this, to the sight of Bull Harper spread out in the atmosphere, hands clutching, teeth gnashing, eyes bugging and flaming, everything in awesome activity, that had been as nothing.

Not since the eruption of Krakatau, not since the sinking of Atlantis and Mu, had there been a more fearsome sight. Never on land or sea or—like Bull—in the air had human orbs beheld so horrifying a conglomeration of galloping fury, creeping agony, shock, consternation, sex appeal, thundering stupefaction and murderous abandon. Never had there been a sight more fiendishly designed to glaze over eyeballs, to make the brain go, faintly, pfft, like cigarettes dropped into the toilet.

Hoo-boy, I thought. I’m going to get killed. At least.

20

The only thing that saved me was the fact that no matter what had galvanized Bull into action, his movement sent me into pretty zippy movement, too.

I flipped over and yanked my legs up and slammed them into his midsection before he landed on me, and he sailed over my head. I didn’t see him hit the floor, but there was a hell of a thump as he landed, then another as he crashed enormously into the wall.

That should have fixed him, I thought, and rolled over, and spock!

It hadn’t fixed him.

But the foot he kicked me with damn near fixed me. Actually, it must have been his fist; he would have needed both feet to get back from the wall so speedily. But it felt like a foot with a gob of lead on it.

The blow caught me on the side of the head and when I stopped rolling I couldn’t for a moment remember where I was at. I was pretty sure, though, it was not some place I wanted to be. So I started getting out of there. I got my feet under me, straightened up—and ducked.

Ducked just in time. My eyes had focused on the big form of Bull Harper swinging a huge fist at me and I got my head down just enough so that his arm bounced off my short-cropped hair.

He kept turning from the force of the blow and I slammed a right hand up into his iron-hard belly and then, as he turned and tried to grab me, got my feet set and hammered the side of his chin with a solid left hand, arm and shoulder and thrust of straightening leg behind it.

It was a good one.

It was the kind of blow that would end ninety-nine out of a hundred fights. It had all my steam plus a little extra tonnage born of desperation in it, and it sent Bull to one knee. He wasn’t out; he wasn’t even all the way down; but he was a yard from me and not on his way back yet—and it was my chance to go. I went.

I leaped to the door and through it and skidded on grass as I turned right, but kept my feet and then really got them going, moving like little five-toed dynamos, and as I ran those earlier ugly thoughts came back to me—Misty, and murder. I was moving about as fast as it’s possible for me to move, but the thoughts seemed to add even more power to my legs and feet and by the time I reached the hotel’s front edge I was flying like a startled bird. I’d been thinking too. Maybe not enough, but thinking.

I’d been thinking time was so short that the only hope was for me to get from Lyssa’s room to Misty’s suite in the shortest, most direct and fastest way. Both were outside rooms, not among those that overlooked the inner court and pool, and they were in opposite wings of the Kubla Khan, Lyssa’s almost at the end of the north wing and Misty’s clear over in the south wing of the hotel.

The shortest, fastest way then was, logically, along the slanting outer edge of the north wing, then to my right and across in front of the hotel, right again and down the south wing to Misty’s suite, and Misty. And whoever else was there.

So—naturally—I ran around the corner and headed lickety-split toward the entrance of the Kubla Khan. I’d only run about fifty yards so far, less than half the distance, but already my lungs were laboring and my throat seemed torn, because I was moving like a demon—arms churning, legs swinging, head bobbing. There were even noises in my ears: slam of my heartbeat, sound of my feet thudding, blood-curdling yells from behind me.

Yells from behind me? There seemed to be some kind of yelling going on ahead of me, too, but I whipped my head around first toward those blood-curdling ones.

Bull.

Of course.

Yeah, I remembered him.

He was tearing along after me with his mouth wide open and from it was issuing such a horrendous cacophony, you’d think it would have required at least a quartet being boiled in oil to equal its magnificence. But, more important, he carried in his left hand, fluttering from his fist like the banner of a maniacal nudist leaping joyously into battle, my keen pants with their little red stripes; and in his other hand, high overhead and glittering in the sunlight, the now unsheathed blade of that hideous scimitar which was part of his costume, or rather part of what had until very recently been his costume. It was clear as could be that Bull Harper intended to catch up with me and cut me in two or perhaps several.

I didn’t want to shoot Bull unless I had to, but I grabbed for the .38 Colt Special in my shoulder holster. No shoulder holster. No gun. Ah, of course, my gun was in my pants. And you know where my pants were, don’t you?

I knew. And that knowledge gave me a little more energy. Not that I really needed it. I didn’t feel pooped, but I must have been very poopily pooped, because by now there were all sorts of weird sounds in my ears. In addition to the ones I’d already become familiar with there were queer whistlings and tootlings, what sounded like lots of dandy screams, and even something almost like music. In fact, there was a tune to it, a melody, it was music. There was a whole band playing up there in my head.

How could it be? How could there be a band playing music in my head? The thought stuck in my head with the band: music? Then I had another thought. Like, why music?

I slipped my head back around so it was headed in the direction toward which my feet were running. Then I knew why music. I knew a hell of a lot more than why music. For example, I realized I’d heard those lots of dandy screams because about, oh, maybe ten yards away were lots of dandy people screaming from their briskly moving toes clear up to their bugging eyeballs.

People—thousands of them. At least it looked like thousands, but I knew there were at least a couple hundred.

As I dug in my heels and started skidding to a stop, the band faltered to a stop, there was an “oom-pah” and a cymbal clang and a “boom!” and then a “boom” and a “pah . . . “ and silence. Except, of course, for the screaming. There was plenty of that.

It probably appeared to me that more people were present than truly there were, because so many of them were moving. Jumping, running, spinning about, clapping their eyes, and such. I could see people in costumes, men in business suits, gals in bikinis. I got a glimpse of several contestants I’d met, lots of strangers, the Mayor, appearing to be preparing to puke, several other familiar and unfamiliar and wretched-looking faces.

Including—yes, on the steps before the Kubla Khan, clutching a microphone, looking as if he had just lost by one vote—the Governor of the sunny state of California.

But even over the sound of yells and movement I could hear the thudding of big ugly feet behind me. When I took a very speedy look, Bull was damn near close enough to reach out and grab me—and I got moving again much faster than I’d skidded to a stop. I just plowed through the crowd; no detours; no pausing to say, “Excuse me”; just straight ahead going from low to super-high without touching second gear on the way, but not fast enough that I failed to hear Bull’s feet right behind me and to imagine I could hear the hiss of that keen—that sharp bare blade hissing through the air at my fat head. Boy, it would slice through that fat like a branding iron through butter.

Run, you idiot! I yelled inside my noisy head. Go, you legs! Move, you feet! They heard, and obeyed—but not rapidly enough.

Talk about screams. They’d screamed plenty at just me, but now Bull was here to scream at. Even a couple of men screamed. Bull was, believe me, something to scream at. Especially with that big scimitar waggling around and glittering in the sunlight. It was as though I ran through a solid wall of “Gaaahhh!” and “Bluuurrp” and “Yeeah#*@@!” very much resembling what Hell must sound like to new and reluctant arrivals from Alaska.

But then I was through them, turning the corner, racing toward Misty’s suite. And just when I was convinced that good old idiot and those legs and those feet were moving fast enough to outdistance anything on two ordinary legs, a big, black, painful hand clamped itself on my shoulder and gave it a terrible yank.

No doubt about it. Bull was the speediest creature outside of a zoo.

I went clear off my feet, hit the ground and skidded, rolled with great presence of mind onto my neck, ear, head, side, hind end, ear again, then knees and feet. Bull had run past me, slowing, got stopped and jumped at me. I just happened to be facing him—finally—twanging like all the strings on an exploding bull fiddle, and I threw back my right arm, shot it forward forming a fist, pivoted and caught his chin just as it came within range.

If it had hurt his chin as much as it hurt my hand and arm, it would have just about killed him. At least it knocked him down, and he went down a little loose this time. The big curved sword flipped from his grasp and skidded a few feet away. He was on his knees and one hand—in which he still clutched my keen pants—and reaching for me with the other hand when I went by him, bent and scooped up the scimitar and kept running.

Fourteen, twelve, ten—Suite Eight. Misty’s suite.

I didn’t slow down to find out if the door was locked. I knew if I hit it solidly with a shoulder it would open, and I hit it hard. There was a sharp grating and cracking noise and the door simply flew inward, and I stumbled inside, falling.

But even as I fell I saw the man’s back, his extended arms, his fingers buried in the soft, white throat; saw the squeezing hands and, hanging limply from them, Misty.

21

I hit the floor on my side, skidded, stopped with the hand holding Bull’s sword pressed against the carpet I started trying to scramble to my feet as he turned, not very gracefully this time, not like a man walking on water but one struggling to get out of quicksand.

He was still tall and handsome, but some of the golden blond waves on his head were in disarray, and his face wore the twisted stamp of great shock—and fright.

As he turned he released Misty and she fell like a rag to the divan over which he’d been holding her. I couldn’t tell if she moved. I had all I could do to watch him because he was jumping toward the door—I thought.

But he merely leaped across the room, getting farther from me, thrusting one hand into a pocket. Thrusting it there for a gun, because as I scrambled to my feet and started toward him, he turned and stood with his back to the wall, and light pouring through the open door glanced from the heavy .45-caliber revolver in his fist, probably the same gun he’d used to split my scalp last night.

He flipped the gun’s muzzle at me, but I was moving toward him fast and couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to. I didn’t want to. The gun roared and the sound was so loud it felt as if the slug hit my ears, and I felt a shock rip through my body, but I was moving forward and I thrust hard with my arm as I shoved my right leg back as if trying to break through the floor with it, and the point of the scimitar entered Jerry Vail’s gut down low and the curved blade sliced into him and up through him and slammed into the plastered wall behind him.

The wall hardly slowed it down. Every ounce of my strength was in the blow. I’d slammed the sword’s point at him as if trying to break him in two with my fist, and the steel went right into the wall behind him and didn’t stop until the metal guard above my hand thumped against Vail’s belly.

His eyes and mouth snapped open and he made a high faint squeaking noise that sounded like a woman screaming ten blocks away. Then his knees bent and buckled; he sagged; and his body’s weight pressed down on the blade, and the flesh of his gut parted and spilled blood as he drooped lower until the blade’s curved top hit bone and stopped.

He hung there, tilted slowly to his left, head dropping toward his shoulder and then down. He hung there, like a bug on a pin.

I turned toward the divan, and Misty.

She was lying still. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. It felt as if my throat was stuck together. I stepped toward the divan—but then there was that familiar thumping and clatter behind me and I heard the big feet crash against the floor and I swung around fast, balling up my right fist and—

Spock!

Right in the middle of the forehead.

All I saw was something like a black meteorite looming before my eyes and then it suddenly turned into a comet with colorful satellites swirling around it an instant before some other flying object out here in darkest space hit me on the behind. Then another one got the back of my head. My vision wobbled, settled down, and I could see Bull Harper looming over me and realized the last two blows had been my seat hitting the floor and my head clunking back against the wall.

I gave my head a little rattle and yelled, “Bull, you damned idiot—” but he was bending down, reaching for me.

I rolled to my right, hooked my heel behind his ankle and kicked the inside of his kneecap with my left foot. His leg twisted, bent. Down he went with an impact that made the floor and walls shiver. I jumped to my feet, tried to sidestep him as he came up off the carpet, but I wasn’t fast enough. He charged into me, shoulder slamming my side and his thick arms going around my waist.

We sailed across the room, my back hit the side of the open door and we fell outside, rolling, swinging, pushing, trying to use knees, elbows, anything handy. I got a thumb in the corner of his nose and a finger in his eye and tried to push his head off, and finally his hold broke and he rolled away from me.

I scrambled back, away from him, got to my knees as he turned his head to face me.

“Bull, you damned fool,” I yelled. “Listen to me. I just shoved that damned shiv of yours through Jerry Vail and he’s hanging inside Suite Eight like a coat back from the cleaners. He was choking hell out of Misty Lombard.”

Bull climbed to his feet as I got up off my knees. As he started toward me again, I bent my legs and stretched both hands open, ready to ruin him permanently if I had to.

But I kept yelling. “Damn it, Jerry Vail’s the guy who killed your boss, killed Sardis! And Jeanne Jax, too—that’s what started it all, when Jeanne showed up here and spotted—”

He just wasn’t listening. He didn’t come in like a boxer. He dived at me like a pro tackle and I could feel the wind go out of me as though headed for the far horizon. Before we broke free of each other I’d hit him or whacked him with the edge of my palm half a dozen times and he hadn’t clubbed me more than twice as often.

We were standing four or five feet apart. I could feel warm blood streaming from my nose. My lower lip was split and it felt as if my head was puffing. But Bull’s brow over one eye was laid open and bloody, and the rest of his face did not look like sculptured perfection. He didn’t appear tired, however, and he was edging toward me, fists held ready before him.

“Will you for Pete’s sake listen to me?” I yelled. “And forget about Lyssa. I didn’t do anything. Well . . . not much. Look, the only way this mess makes sense is that Jeanne was married to Jerry Vail—only he didn’t use that name then. He called himself Maurice Boutelle, and maybe something else before that. But when Jeanne saw him here, supposedly married to Neyra Vail, she knew—”

It was no use. Bull was in close and feinted with a left and started to thunder that big right hand at me, but he was a fraction too slow this time. I took a chance the left was just a feint, had time to set myself and gave him everything I could put into a straight, jolting right.

It caught him on the point of the chin and snapped his head back. He swayed off balance, leaned, then toppled like a big tree. He shook his head for a moment, started snarling, his face took on some of those expressions which were still living in my memory, and he pressed both hands against the ground, starting to push himself up.

I was next to him by that time and I shoved down on his shoulder with one hand and said, “Bull, will you please, will you please, put your—my—pants on?”

“Hoo-hoo,” he yodeled, “so you admits they is your pants.”

“My pants, your pants—who cares whose pants? Put them on, will you?”

I was starting to get darting reflections of color from all over the area. I’d noticed it moments before, but had figured it must be blood. But now I realized it was people. People all over the place, all around us. The crowd—not unnaturally, at that—had followed the commotion, followed Bull and me here.

Bull was beginning to get it, too. Slowly it seeped in, all the way in. He looked around, down at himself, blinked in peculiar fashion at me, looked around again, all the way around.

Then he put on a shy, an almost winsome smile, which was actually about all he could put on at the moment, raised his head high and said something marvelous. At least I thought it was marvelous.

“Folks,” he said seriously, “I hope you don’t believe this.”

Then he cocked his head on one side, as though thinking maybe that hadn’t been the precise phrase he was after. Then, zip, he was gone.

Not far. Just into Suite Eight. But gone. The door slammed, started creaking open on bent hinges. I went in right after him.

And straight to the divan.

One of Misty’s hands trembled. Her breasts rose and fell; she was breathing. Her long lashes began quivering. Thank God, I thought; she’s alive, still alive.

So, incredibly, was Jerry Vail.

He wasn’t moving—wasn’t even conscious—but froth bubbled on his lips. There was still some breath in him. The scimitar’s top edge was pressed against ribs at the right side of his stomach; it hadn’t torn open his heart, but enough of his insides were sliced open that I couldn’t imagine him living more than minutes longer. I was surprised he wasn’t dead already.

Ormand Monaco stepped inside the room. He looked pale, disheveled, but in control.

I didn’t say anything, just pointed to the bed, then at Jerry Vail stuck on the wall. “He’s not dead yet,” I said. “Is there a doctor in that bunch out there?” I sighed. “I guess we’ll need a few sheriffs, too.”

Monaco stepped to the doorway and called something, barked an order or two, then stepped back inside. He shut the door, put a chair against it to keep it closed, then said, “Is there anything you would like to add, Mr. Scott?”

“Add? To what?”

“To what you said outside. To Mr. Harper.”

“Oh. You heard that, huh?”

A bleak, somewhat sad, sort of the-hell-wifh-it expression flickered over his thin-featured face. “I imagine, he said dully, “they heard it on top of the mountains. Perhaps it escaped your attention, but you were not speaking in a normal speaking voice. You were not, for that matter, shouting in a normal shout—”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember now. Well, it seems logical enough to me that—to continue what I was shouting—when Jeanne saw Jerry Vail here she must have recognized him as her husband. Not ex-husband, since they never got divorced. He merely skipped out on her. You told me yourself she asked about Neyra when she first got here and seemed quite taken aback when you told her Neyra was with her husband. If I recall what you told me, she said, ‘She’s his wife?’ Which would have been natural enough if Jeanne knew she was his wife.”

Monaco nodded, pressed a thin hand against the gray hair swelling at his temple. “So the rest of Miss Jax’s questions were to gain further information and, eventually, to learn what she could about Ephrim.”

“Exactly. When she found out he was loaded with dough, she started thinking she might unload some. If Jeanne was married to Jerry—who thus, of course, was not legally married to Sardis’ daughter—she was on top of a situation she could use to build up her bank account. Through a little blackmail. Especially since Neyra Vail was going to have Jerry’s baby.”

“I’ll accept that as logical enough, Mr. Scott. But have you any proof, any physical evidence—”

“Yeah. I pinned it to the wall over there.”

Monaco glanced “over there” and grimaced, then turned back to me.

I went on, “There’ll be plenty more, like the information from a marriage certificate, tracing both Vail and Jeanne back a few years, pinning down where Vail was at the time of the murders—when I first arrived at the Khan he wasn’t around, and he didn’t show up in the Seraglio for a while. We’ll also see what Misty has to tell us, when she can talk. So now it’s your turn.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. If Jeanne approached Sardis with her story—she did see him yesterday afternoon—and told him she was still married to his daughter’s presumed hubby, the first thing Sardis would have done after that would be to call in his daughter’s hubby.”

“So?”

“Well, unless you knocked off your old buddy Ephrim yourself, it almost had to be Jerry. It isn’t likely Jeanne did it. First, she apparently was paid off by Sardis with crisp hundred-dollar bills, so she got what she was after. Second, the call to the sheriff reporting a gunshot at the Sardis estate was from a man. But mainly, from Vail’s point of view, once Sardis told him what he’d learned, Jerry had to suffer the consequences—kaput with Neyra, loss of some of the Sardis millions, possibly including the Kubla Khan, not to mention scandal and prison—or else kill Sardis. So, Mr. Monaco, what were you doing out at the Sardis estate? You’ll never convince me you didn’t know he was dead. It’s my guess Vail phoned you—”

“No,” he interrupted. “It was Ephrim.”

“Sardis phoned you himself?”

“Yes.”

I could hear a siren. And there were voices close outside the door.

“What time was that?” I asked Monaco.

“About a quarter after four.”

“Uh-huh. How long did it take you to get to the Sardis estate? You did go?”

“Yes, of course. Ephrim said it was of the utmost importance that I come immediately. It took me twenty minutes to get there. He was dead. Shot, slumped over on his desk. At first I didn’t know what to do, then I left and drove back home . . . . Well, drove at least to Yucca Road.”

“Where Jeanne was already dead. Why was she going to see you?”

“I have no idea.”

“She didn’t phone you, contact you in any way?”

Monaco shook his head. “Not unless she called my home after I’d left to see Ephrim. I was hoping you might be able to tell me why she was calling on me.”

“We can’t ask Jeanne,” I said, “so we can only guess now. Maybe she’d spotted Jerry behind her and was just running away from him, but I doubt that. I think she was on her way to see you, and it’s my guess she was going to put the bite on you, too, before she skipped. Grab all she could and blow.”

“You mean she might have thought I’d pay to avoid—well, difficulties, scandal, with the opening of the Kubla Khan imminent?”

“Something like that. Remember, she probably thought you had nearly as much money as Ephrim Sardis. What else did he tell you on the phone?”

Two men came inside. One of them carried a doctor’s black bag and, looking around, didn’t have to be told what to do. He merely glanced at Misty, briefly felt her wrist and lifted an eyelid, then walked to what was left of Jerry Vail. I saw him shake his head slightly, then put his bag down and open it.

Monaco said in a quieter tone, “He told me it had to do with his son-in-law, and with the Kubla Khan. It was something I, as the person publicly identified with the Khan, should know before the opening. That was all, but he did stress the urgency and importance of what he had to tell me.”

“OK. He phoned you at four-fifteen and it took you twenty minutes to get there, which means you would have arrived about four-fhirty-five. The law got their call at four-twenty-eight. Pretty close. Jerry must have called them. He should have waited a little longer but it almost worked.”

“What almost worked?”

“Well, you’d been inside and were already out of the Sardis house, on your way home, before the sheriff’s car arrived and the deputy spotted you. A little later and he would have caught you in there, or leaving, and your goose would have been cooked. Jerry must have known approximately how long it would take the radio car to get there, so he reported hearing a shot at a time he figured would bring the law to the house while you were in it. Obviously he wouldn’t have wanted them to get there before you drove up. But he couldn’t calculate it close enough, or maybe was just unlucky.”

“I see.” He paused, delicate gray-flecked brows knit in thought. “You’re saying, then, that Jerry shot Ephrim—ah, you mean Jerry must have been present when Ephrim phoned me. He heard Ephrim speak to me on the phone.”

“Of course. And therefore knew you were on your way out to see Sardis.”

“So Jerry shot Ephrim, waited, then phoned the police at what he hoped was the appropriate moment . . . .”

“Yeah, only he didn’t stick around by the dead body while waiting to place his call. You can bet he skipped in a hurry and phoned from someplace else.”

Misty moved on the divan.’

Monaco and I both stepped over by her. She sighed, blinked her eyes. She moistened her lips, then slowly her eyes opened. She looked first at Monaco, then at me. Terror and pain were still in those violet-shadowed eyes, and it was at least a minute before that nearness-to-death look faded from them. She felt her throat, swallowed a little water, and finally could speak to us in a quiet voice which trembled a little.

We talked for a few moments, and I stood so she couldn’t see Jerry Vail—he was flat on the floor now, though it had taken two men to pull the scimitar from the wall, and from him.

When she seemed pretty well in control, I said, “Misty, what happened before he—got violent?”

“When he came in he wanted to talk a little. I thought . . . it was about whatever it was he’d mentioned on the phone, the special performance, whatever it—There wasn’t any, of course.” She stopped, sipped some more water. “He started asking me about Jeanne, the night she spent with me. After quite a lot of other questions, he finally asked if Jeanne had mentioned her husband’s name. Then I remembered.” She rubbed her throat gently.

“Remembered what. Misty?”

“That she had told me, only I guess it didn’t make much impression at the time. I couldn’t think of it when I talked to you about Jeanne last night. I told Mr. Vail—” Her eyes widened again. “Where is he?”

“Relax. He’s . . . in good hands. Nothing to worry about. Go on.”

“I told him I did remember her telling me. I’d heard the name but couldn’t recall it right then.”

“Sure, but if you’d heard it he knew you’d probably be able to remember if anybody asked you the right way.”

“Well, he asked me himself. Or told me.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, he asked me if I’d heard the name Maurice Boutelle. That was it. I remembered then. So of course I told him that was the name Jeanne had mentioned. She’d said her husband, the man she was trying to make sure didn’t see her here, was Maurice Boutelle. I even remembered she laughed, as if there were something funny about it. And . . . “ Misty’s eyes darkened again, became puzzled. “All of a sudden Mr. Vail started to choke me. Why? Why did he try to kill me?”

“Because Jerry was Maurice Boutelle,” I said. “It’s a long story. But it’s over now.”

I got out my pack of cigarettes and lit one. “He was fighting a losing battle, anyway,” I said to Monaco. “He was already lost whether he knew it or not. He’d have had to kill two or three other people to have any hope of staying clear. Maybe Warren Phelps, for one—and me. Of course, he did try to kill me. Twice.”

I reached up and felt the back of my head again. The bump was still there. It was a dandy—and my scalp had done some more bleeding. I’d naturally lost my turban somewhere in the last few minutes. I was feeling the sticky, already coagulating blood—fortunately, I heal fast, I heal like crazy—when Misty cried, “Shell, you’re bleeding—”

“Yeah, I was just patting—”

“Your leg’s all bloody . . . . Where are your trousers?”

“Trousers?”

Oh, boy, I thought. I’d forgotten about that. Just too damn many things to keep track of.

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said to Misty, “you missed all the . . . uh.”

About then it penetrated that she’d not said my head, but my leg, was all bloody. I looked at it. Bloody? Yuck, it was a gory-looking limb if ever there’d been one. I bent over and examined it the best I could. That one shot Vail took at me had knocked a chunk from the outside of my thigh. It wasn’t a sensational wound, but it had bled quite a lot, since I have so much blood it always seems eager to spring out of me, and then rolling around and fighting with Bull had spread the redness more than a little. It started hurting like hell as I looked at it, so I stopped looking at it.

I wasn’t going to lose the leg—no more of it than I’d already lost—but I was sure going to have to wash it off, and put lots of iodine on it.

“Shell, where are your trousers?”

“Misty, don’t ask so damn—don’t talk so—you really should rest your throat, dear.”

Then I looked at Ormand Monaco, feeling a little heat rising in me. “Well, friend,” I said, in what was not my most amiable voice, “didn’t you notice me bleeding to death? Didn’t it occur to you that perhaps some amateur surgeon had bungled the amputation of my leg? Was it not worth mentioning that my life’s blood was dripping, dripping—”

“Why, I thought,” he said soberly, “that Mr. Harper must have bitten your leg. While you were gouging out his eyes. And tearing his nose off—”

“You’re a scream. OK. There seems very little more joy I can scatter here—but I’ve done what you hired me to do, Monaco. I told you something unusual might happen . . . . The hell with it. Give me my C-note and I shall remove myself from your spendid presence.”

“C-note?”

“Perhaps I should explain for you cultured chaps that a C-note is gutter argot for a hundred fish, ten sawbucks—my hundred dollars, which believe it or not I have earned—”

“You have earned ten G’s, Mr. Scott,” he said quietly.

“G’s? Where did you learn—” I stopped. “Hold it. Thanks, but no thanks. I made a deal with you, remember? The whole ball of wax by noon, and ten G’s. If not by then, a C-note a day. And the hundred fish,” I added stuffily, “should just about cover the expense of my transfusions, but I assured you I’d tap you only for unusual expenses—”

“I made the deal, Mr. Scott. You merely agreed to it. And I assure you, sir, had you concluded this—this—this madness one second after the hour of twelve I would die . . . I would die before I would pay you one nickel more than a hundred dollars. But since you did, in good faith, if in—ah—oh—in—since you did successfully conclude the requirements for earning the ten thousand dollars, that is precisely what I intend to pay you.”

“You off your nut?” I said. I looked at my watch. “It is now sixteen minutes after noon. If my clock hasn’t stopped. No, the little beggar’s still tick—”

“Of course it is now well after noon. You have been standing there, in your shorts, bleeding like an oaf, for at least a quarter of an hour.”

“Watch this oaf business, old buddy. And I shall kindly ask you to leave my shorts out of this.”

“Will you shut up?” That look of one getting his foot caught in a bear trap, which I had spied on Monaco’s chops a time or two before, was spreading over his face.

He went on, his tone heavy and sharp-edged, like the chopper descending in a guillotine. “When you stated that you had . . . pierced Mr. Vail with the scimitar, and that he was the guilty person, that he had killed Ephrim and the girl as well, I—unfortunately—looked at my watch. It was then just twenty seconds of noon.”

“Twenty seconds? Of?”

“To be precise, twenty-one seconds. Since that is the truth, the tragic truth, I must in honesty pay you the agreed sum of ten thousand dollars.”

“Glory be,” I said. “Let’s check our watches.”

He said, “It is twelve-seventeen and . . . ten seconds now.”

“You’re four seconds slow. But we won’t quibble about—”

From the doorway, a word. One word, which I had heard delivered in the same voice but not quite with the same resonance, earlier today in the lobby of the Kubla Khan.

I looked around at Sergeant Torgesen filling the doorway; and, filling his broad face, the expression of a man with both legs caught in a bear trap.

I grinned at him, but there was no opportunity for jolly conversation with the sergeant because I heard Monaco saying, in words as dry and cold as frozen carbon dioxide, “I do not have time at the moment, Mr. Harper, but be assured I shall have much to say to you very soon.”

Harper? Bull Harper? Ye gods, was he still hanging around here? I had assumed he’d be a dwindling dot on the horizon by now. But—still here?

“Misty,” I cried. “Shut your eyes! Turn away. Don’t look—get away, run, run—”

But Monaco was continuing, those icy tones cutting through my babble. “I am delighted,” he said, “simply delighted to see that you have descended so far into stultifying convention that you are once again wearing trousers. I can think of nothing, out of literally millions of possibilities, for which at the moment I could possibly be more grateful. I congratulate you, Mr. Harper, on your hindsight. I extend to you in all sincerity the fervent thanks of the management, the staff, and notable celebrities and guests . . . of the Kubla . . . “

He couldn’t go on. Ormand Monaco reached up and patted his face rapidly from both sides with his hands, in what I supposed was a nervous gesture. He was pulling on his cheeks now, getting them out pretty far and then letting them snap in.

Bull was, in fact, wearing my keen trousers. They didn’t look so keen to me anymore. I walked over to him.

“Well, you’re a real idiot,” I said cheerfully.

He grinned. Now that I took a good look at him, it was clear he must be quite a handsome man when he wasn’t all beat up. “Your damn pants are too tight,” he rumbled.

“The pants are perfect. You’re just too damn big.”

“Big enough to take you. I’ll knock your head outside your ears next time.”

“Hoo-hoo,” I laughed. “You couldn’t take me even when I was all shot to hell, weak from . . . well, from lots of things.”

“You’re not bad,” he admitted. “For a little guy.”

“Look, what say we call a truce? Even a temporary truce. Neither of us is going to get anything done if we keep hitting each other. Right?”

“Well, there is some sense in what you say. But it might get over with quicker if you didn’t run so fast.”

“Bull, there are some areas where I will not even try to compete with you, and one of them is running. I know you must have taken a shortcut, but if we must battle again, let’s agree on a time and place, and walk there.”

He grinned again. His teeth were all red. I’d got a lip or two of his pretty good, too. Boy, my head was beginning to hurt like fury. And my leg was already starting to feel shorter than the other one. And there were great throbbing places just about every place there was a place.

“OK. Truce. But we gonna have to talk pretty quick.”

“Bull, I’ll talk to you any old time.”

He looked at Ormand Monaco, the other people in the room, then strode out. I walked to the door. He strode along, almost bounced along, with a spring step. On his way back, I presumed, to Room 218.

He started to turn his head and I ducked back out of sight, then in a few seconds poked an eye past the door frame. And grinned. Painfully, of course; for quite a while I would grin painfully. But I managed a pretty good one. Because Bull, having satisfied himself that I wasn’t watching, had put one big hand over a kidney and was walking on, bent over a bit, and lamping.

I turned and went back by Misty. She looked better. There was color in her lovely face and her eyes once more were sprinkled with magic.

She even managed a slow, sweet smile when I asked, “How are you. Misty? You feeling any better?”

“Oh, I’m fine, Shell. I really am, now.”

And—then—so was I.

22

It was 8:46 p.m. and 22 seconds—I had begun checking the time pretty closely lately—and I was seated on a rather rigid wooden chair in the Grand Ballroom of the Kubla Khan.

I was showered, scrubbed, shaved, bandaged, iodined and physically enormously uncomfortable. But mentally I was in about as good shape as I get, which is pretty good.

The ten of us—the ten judges—sat in cushioned wooden chairs along one side of the elevated runway extending among cloth-covered dining tables in the middle of the ballroom. At the dining tables, having already dined sufficiently, sat the two hundred or so guests from last night’s party, plus perhaps another three hundred who had checked in during the afternoon for the Kubla Khan’s grand-opening day.

The beauty contest, which Ormand Monaco referred to as the “talent search,” was well under way. Opening music and songs and an en-masse parade of the lovelies had used up half an hour delightfully, and now the individual contestants were displaying their physical and dramatic assets, which was fun, since even their physical assets were immensely dramatic.

It took about five minutes for each girl to go through her solo parade and dramatic routine, and the third contestant, a tall, pale-skinned platinum blonde, had just completed a monologue based on Of Human Bondage—and very good she’d been, too.

As she walked, or rather commenced slinking from the stage, Misty said to me, “Then Jeanne really was still married to Jerry Vail? So he was never Neyra’s husband at all?”

“Well, that’s partly right, honey—he was never Neyra’s husband. But he’d never really been legally married to Jeanne, either. He’d pulled the same love-’em-and-leave-’em trick two or three times even before meeting Jeanne. With him, bigamy was a combination of fun and business, but of course Jeanne didn’t know that—she thought she actually was still married to Jerry. Or Maurice. Or whoever it turns out he really was.”

The late Jerry Vail had surprisingly hung on to life for nearly an hour, and for ten of the last minutes he’d been conscious. Conscious enough to talk for four or five of those minutes. Enough; more than enough.

“When Jeanne finally got to see Sardis yesterday,” I went on, “she told him she’d been working in Vegas for three months—which she had—and could get a divorce from Jerry right away. Which she was willing to do, for twenty thousand clams. No noise, no scandal, all smooth as silk. Sardis didn’t like it, but the money didn’t matter much to him, especially with the Khan on the verge of opening, so he gave her the twenty G’s. But that, not surprisingly, soured him on Jerry, so he called him in and laid down the law. When Jeanne got the divorce, Jerry and Neyra would quietly be married—legally this time, Sardis assumed. They’d remain married until the baby was born, but then there’d be a speedy divorce, so insisted Papa. Maybe Papa shouldn’t have insisted—not with a guy like Jerry Vail.”

Misty squeezed my hand. She could squeeze it because she was seated close on my left.

It had to be my left. I was occupying the last seat on the right, next to a square of emptiness. Not that I was an outcast, not exactly. It was just that most of the other judges didn’t want to get too close to me.

A couple of them had dug me in the ribs with sly—and stupid—elbows; four were sort of cautiously genial; the New York haute couture lad—who designed dashing things from black leather, pieces of tin and, I suspected, hangmen’s nooses—had looked upon me with sheer loathing; and his celebrated model had slapped my face for no good reason, at least none that I could readily understand. I suppose maybe she felt I’d lowered the Dignity Quotient of the entire judges’ panel.

Simon Leaf, of course, was not speaking to me at all. When I’d approached him he’d started quivering. So I left him alone.

Only Misty, grand and gorgeous and marvelous Misty, had truly stood by me—and, now, sat by me. Of course, while the events which had precipitated the others’ reactions had been unfolding, or unrolling, or coming undone, Misty had been getting strangled, which I suppose made a difference.

The orchestra struck up the intro for the next contestant as Misty said, “And Jerry shot at you, right after he’d killed Jeanne?”

“Yeah. He plugged Sardis, scooted to the Khan and was in a pay phone booth waiting for the right time to call the sheriff when he saw Jeanne buzz out of the hotel and into her car, taking a powder. Well, he had to kill her. As long as she was alive she could not only still prove he wasn’t married to Neyra but also—since he’d already knocked off Sardis—reveal his motive for the murder.

“He shot her, gave her another in the head for his peace of mind, and then, to make it look, perhaps, like a strong-arm job, a robbery—since Sardis had told him about giving Jeanne the twenty thousand—grabbed the bills in her purse and took off up Moss Mountain. Dropping a few C-notes on the way so the deputies couldn’t possibly miss the assumption of theft—Jerry had already made sure Sergeant Torgesen knew of the fifty thousand Sardis kept in his safe. It wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t such a bad idea at that, even though Vail was already getting twitchy, starting to realize what he’d gotten himself into. Getting very twitchy. For example, not long after killing Jeanne, he saw me sitting next to Neyra in the Seraglio. He didn’t want me to think he’d recognized me—havifg in his own mind the guilty knowledge that he’d just taken a bunch of shots at me—but he kind of overdid the ever-lovin’ tough-man bit, too. Well, they all make mistakes. And eurder’s the big one.”

The fourth contestant of the evening, now striding with ball-bearing fluidity onto the stage, was as dark as the last beauty had been light. Dark skin, black hair, hot-chocolate eyes. Lyssa.

I hadn’t seen her since—well, since around noon. So I didn’t have the faintest idea how she might react to my presence, and therefore did not howl, or holler at her, or even wave.

She walked up the runway, head back slightly, fine breasts leading the way and beckoning a little, firm—and ungirdled—hips moving with the same swinging rhythm she could put into her voice, or eyes, or lips.

Past us she went. Not a look, not a glance._

“You never did tell me exactly what happened, Shell,” Misty wispered. “About your trousers and all.”

“Who do you think’s going to win?” I said. “I mean, so far. Of course, there’s lots to go yet—”

“Shell—”

“Shh.” I sounded like Bull, I thought, only a thousand times less gassy.

Misty sniffed. But in a moment she said, “You’re going to have to tell me. If you don’t, I’ll find somebody who will.”

“You mean you haven’t found anybody yet?”

“Maybe Simon knows—”

“OK. Just shh, will you? I’ll tell you. Later.”

“All right. Shell, I’m broad-minded. It’s just that I want to know.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re broad-minded. I just don’t know if you’re . . . broad-minded enough.”

“But you will tell me?”

“I’ll, ah, do my best.”

“After the contest, then. We’ll have a drink in my suite, all right?”

I smiled. “I’ll buy that.”

Lyssa was coming back by us now, almost level with Misty and me, and above us on the elevated runway.

Misty said, “Just one, of course.”

“Of course, just one,” I said.

Lyssa glanced out over the audience, down at Misty, then her eyes caught mine. She didn’t smile, her lips didn’t move, or wiggle, or sizzle; but quick as a wink—she winked.

“You quit that,” I said.

“What?” That was Misty.

“I was . . . ah, just talking to myself. I guess.” Then I squeezed Misty’s hand and said, “Shh. Later, dear. Later, we’ll talk.”

She smiled.

And I leaned back in my chair, watching Lyssa, wondering what she’d do for her dramatic bit. And, if she became one of the finalists—since the top five came back for a different routine—what she’d do for an encore.

I relaxed on some of my sore spots, and gazed contentedly at Lyssa, feeling Misty’s soft, warm hand in my own, and wondered about Lyssa, Bull, Misty, Monaco, Simon Leaf, lots of people, wondered how the contest would turn out—and what would happen then. Then, tonight, tomorrow and in the days ahead.

But soon I let it all drift out of my mind and simply sat, enjoying myself. No sense pushing it around, or worrying it to death, or even wondering. Let it happen if it was going to happen, and look on the bright side—if you can find it. That’s the ticket. And there always is a bright side, somewhere. At least, that’s what I think. Of course, I sometimes suspect perhaps I’m not really cut out for thinking.

But what the hell, let it happen, I told myself, as lovely, and ugly, fragments from these last twenty-four hours and then some drifted through my mind; just wait and see.

Sure, there are nights, I suppose, when no matter what you do there’s fee-fi-fo-fum in the darkness. Maybe something’s gonna reach out and grab you. But light’s just around the edge of that darkness; it’s only shadow. And things will, and do, work out OK if you let them, if you give them a chance. Enough of the time, anyway; most of the time.

At least, that’s what I think.

So I sat and waited, and squeezed Misty’s hand, and caught Lyssa’s eye, and winked.

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 © 1966 by Richard S. Prather

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN 978-1-4804-9871-6

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22