We walked on back.
“Mr. Milton, this is Angel Face,” the manager said. “She won’t give us her right name, just walked in off 52nd Street last Tuesday.”
“And I waited until tonight to drop around here!” he laughed. “What you paying her, Berger?” Then before the other guy could get a word out, “Triple it! And now get out of here.”
The night ticked on. He’d look at me and then he’d suddenly throw up his hands as though to ward off a dazzling glare. “Turn it off, it hurts my eyes.” I smiled a little and took out my mirror. I saw my eyes in it, and in each iris there was a little electric chair with Chick sitting strapped in it. Three weeks from now, sometime during that week. Boy, how they were rushing him! It made it a lot easier to go ahead.
I went back to what we’d been talking about — and what are any two people talking about, more or less, in a nightclub at four in the morning? “Maybe,” I said, “who can tell? Some night I might just feel like changing the scenery around me, but I couldn’t tell you about it, I’m not that kind.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” he said. He fooled with something below table-level, then passed his hand to me. I took it and knotted my handkerchief around the latch-key he’d left in it. Burns had been right, it was a dangerous game, and bridges were blazing and collapsing behind me.
The doorman covered a yawn with a white kid glove, said, “Who shall I announce?”
“That’s all been taken care of,” I said, “so you can go back to your beauty sleep.”
He caught on, said insinuatingly, “It’s Mr. Milton, isn’t it? He’s out of town tonight.”
“You’re telling me!” I thought. I’d sent him the wire that fixed that, signed the name of the manager of his Philly club. “You’ve been reading my mail,” I said, and closed the elevator in his face.
The key worked, and the light-switch worked, and his Filipino had the night off, so the rest was up to me. The clock in his two-story living-room said four fifteen. I went to the second floor of his penthouse and started in on the bedroom. He was using the jewel-case, Ruby Rose Reading’s, to hold his collar buttons in, hadn’t thrown it out. I opened the fake bottom to see if he’d found what he was after, and the letters were gone, probably burned.
I located his wall safe but couldn’t crack it. While I was still working at it, the phone downstairs started to ring. I jumped as though a pin had been stuck into me, and started shaking like I was still doing one of my routines at the club. He had two phones, one downstairs, one in the bedroom, which was an unlisted number. I snapped out the lights, ran downstairs, picked it up. I didn’t answer, just held it.
Burns’ voice said, “Angel Face?” in my ear.
“Gee, you sure frightened me!” I exhaled.
“Better get out of there. He just came back, must have tumbled to the wire. A spotter at Hell’s Bells tipped me off he was just there asking for you.”
“I can’t, now,” I wailed. “I woke his damn doorman up getting in just now, and I’m in that silver dress I do my numbers in! He’ll tell him I was here. I’ll have to play it dumb.”
“D’ja get anything?”
“Nothing, only that jewel case! I couldn’t get the safe open but he’s probably burned everything connecting him to her long ago.”
“Please get out of there, kid,” he pleaded. “You don’t know that guy. He’s going to pin you down on the mat if he finds you there.”
“I’m staying,” I said. “I’ve got to break him down tonight, it’s my last chance. Chick eats chicken and ice-cream tomorrow night at six. Oh, Burns, pray for me, will you?”
“I’m going to do more than that,” he growled. “I’m going to give a wrong-number call there in half an hour. It’s four-thirty now. Five that’ll be. If you’re doing all right, I’ll lie low. If not, I’m not going to wait, I’ll break in with some of the guys, and we’ll use the little we have, the photostats of the letters, and the jewel case. I think Schlesinger can at least get Chick a reprieve on them, if not a new trial. If we can’t get Milton, we can’t get him, that’s all.”
“We’ve got to get him,” I said, “and we’re going to! He’s even been close to breaking down and admitting it to me, at times, when we’re alone together. Then at the last minute he gets leery. I’m convinced in my own mind he’s guilty. So help me, if I lose Chick tomorrow night, I’m going to shoot Mil-ton with my own hands!”
“You won’t have to,” he said grimly. “I’ll have him beaten to death for you in some basement, habeas corpus or no habeas corpus.”
“His private elevator-light’s flashing on in the foyer, he must be on his way up!” I said frantically. “I’ll have to sign off.”
“Remember, half an hour. If everything’s under control, cough. If you can get anywhere near the phone, cough! If I don’t hear you cough, I’m pulling the place.”
I hung up, ran up the stairs tearing at the silver cloth. I jerked open a closet door, found the cobwebby negligee he’d always told me was waiting for me there whenever I felt like breaking it in. I chased downstairs again in it, more like Godiva than anyone else, grabbed up a cigarette, flopped back full length on the handiest divan, and did a Cleopatra — just as the outside door opened and he and two other guys came in.
Milton had a face full of storm-clouds — until he saw me. Then it cleared, the sun came up in it. “Finally!” he crooned. “Finally you wanted a change of scenery! And just tonight somebody had to play a practical joke on me, start me on a fool’s errand to Philly! Have you been here long?”
I couldn’t answer right away, because I was still trying to get my breath back after the quick-change act I’d just pulled. I managed a vampish smile.
He turned to the two guys. “Get out, you two. Can’t you see I have company?”
I’d recognized the one who’d contacted me for the jewel case, and knew what was coming. I figured I could handle it. “Why, that’s the dame I told you about, Milt,” he blurted out, “that walked off with that little box the other day!”
“Oh, hello,” I sang out innocently. “I didn’t know that you knew Mr. Milton.”
Milton flared, “You, Rocco! Don’t call my lady friends dames!” and slapped him backhand across the mouth. “Now scar-ram! You think we need four for bridge?”
“All right, boss, all right,” he said soothingly. But he went over to a framed “still” of me, that Milton had brought home from Hell’s Bells, and stood, thoughtfully in front of it for a minute. Then he and the other guy left. It was only after the elevator-light had flashed out that I looked over and saw the frame was empty.
“Hey!” I complained, “That Rocco swiped my picture, right under your nose!”
He thought he saw a bowl of cream in front of him; nothing could get his back up. “Who can blame him? You’re so lovely to look at.”
He spent some time working on the theory that I’d finally found him irresistible. After what seemed years of that, I sidestepped him neatly, got off the divan just in time.
He got good and peeved finally. “Are you giving me the run-around? What did you come here for, anyway?”
“Because she’s double-crossing you!” a voice said from the foyer. “Because she came here to frame you, chief, and I know it!”
The other two had come back! Rocco pulled my picture out of his pocket. “I traced that dummy wire you got, sending you to Philly. The clerk at the telegraph office identified her as the sender, from this picture. Ask her why she wanted to get you out of town, and then come up here and case your lay-out! Ask her why she was willing to pay thirty bucks for a little wood box, when she was living in a seven-buck furnished room! Ask her who she is! You weren’t at the Reading trial, were you? Well, I was! You’re riding for a fall, chief, by having her around you. She’s a stoolie!”