Five minutes later she was back, bending over the table, her tray, with its assortment of cigars and cigarettes, held temptingly close, so that the aroma of tobacco drifted to Paul Pry’s nostrils. Her smile was disarming, cordial, and impersonal.
“Cigars?” she asked. “Cigarettes?”
Paul Pry gravely indicated a package of cigarettes, and took a wallet from his pocket.
She tore open the cigarette package, and, as Paul Pry took a cigarette, bent close to hold a lighted match.
“You’re hooked,” she said, as Paul Pry inhaled the first, deep drag from the cigarette. “She’s calling a guy she calls Soup, and says she’s all set to take you to the cleaners. That you’re not to be rubbed out right away, because you’re going to pull a chestnut out of the fire first.”
Paul Pry said, “Thanks,” and handed her a twenty-dollar bill.
“Just a moment and I’ll get you your change.”
He shook his head. “My compliments,” he said.
She smiled down at him. “Sorry that the rose you picked was so full of thorns,” she said. “Try me some night. I haven’t any husband,” and she was gone, moving along the table repeating in a voice of cultivated sweetness: “Cigars? Cigarettes?”
It was ten minutes before Merva Bond returned. She had removed every trace of make-up from her face. Her lips were no longer a vivid splash of crimson. Her cheeks had ceased to glow with orange rouge. She looked ghastly white, and the quivering pallor of her lips would have aroused masculine sympathy in the breast of any man who had not made an intensive study of feminine facial embellishments.
“I’m afraid,” she said, putting a quivering hand on Paul Pry’s arm, “this spell isn’t going to go away. I think I’d better go lie down, if you don’t mind. Will you take me home, please?”
Paul Pry responded at once with the swift action of a born executive. He sent waiters scurrying to find his waiter and bring the check. The hat-check girl came to the dining-room to bring Merva Bond’s wraps, and the doorman had a taxicab drawn up at the curb, waiting.
Merva Bond smiled her gratitude with pale lips as Paul Pry handed her into the cab.
Directly behind the cab was a black sedan with four men seated in it. These men had their chins lowered into their coat collars, wide-brimmed hats pulled low over their foreheads, shading their faces. They sat grim, tense, purposeful.
Merva Bond raised her eyes, caught the gaze of the driver, and gently shook her head.
The driver turned and said something to the men in the rear seat. Then the touring car turned from the curb and vanished into the traffic.
Chapter Five
The Rajah of Rajore
Paul Pry tapped at the door of Suite A on the twenty-fourth floor of the Altamont Hotel. A beautiful young woman, with just the suggestion of dusky olive coloring to her skin, opened the door to survey him with dark, smoky eyes. “Yes?” she asked.
“Tell the Rajah of Rajore that Paul Pry is here.”
“Are you with the newspapers?”
“No, I have an appointment.”
“The newspaper men all make stalls like that,” she said. “The rajah said that the next one that fooled me was going to cost me my job.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Paul Pry asked. “Just to relieve you of responsibility, I, myself, will walk in and tell the rajah that I’m here.”
He started to push past her.
A burly individual with a thick cane materialized from the shadows to bar his progress. “No, you don’t, buddy,” he said, lowering the cane so that the head was pointed toward the pit of Paul Pry’s stomach.
Paul Pry laughed. “I’m afraid the rajah is getting an imperial complex,” he said.
“The rajah isn’t to be disturbed.”
Paul Pry said: “I’d hate to get you fired, my man.”
“You won’t get me fired for obeying orders,” the man told him, grimly.
“Think not?” Paul Pry remarked, putting a cigarette into his mouth and raising his hand to light it.
“I know it,” the man said.
Paul Pry brought his hands down slowly, casually, until they were just over the poised club. Then his left hand pushed the cane down and to one side. His right heel came down hard against the big man’s instep. Paul Pry’s educated shoulder, with just the right leverage behind it, sent the big man spinning back against the chair. Paul Pry walked rapidly through the rooms of the palatial suite.
The Rajah of Rajore sat in the front room upon a pile of sofa cushions. The entire corner behind him was a bank of cushions. The rajah’s shoes were off, and his legs were crossed. His face held an expression of calm tranquility. The white turban, which was wound up across his forehead, held a vivid pool of crimson light. A huge oval the size of a man’s palm was a crimson magnet, drawing the eyes. A narghile was on the floor in front of him, and the long tube stretched to Mugs Magoo’s thick lips, lips which puffed appreciatively from time to time, drawing clouds of smoke bubbling through the water.
Out in the middle of the floor, a dusky octoroon was swaying in the rhythm of a harem dance, while music was furnished by a phonograph which filled the suite with strains from an Oriental orchestra record.
Over in the corner, somewhat dazed, a newspaperman was taking rapid notes. In front of the rajah were two empty whiskey bottles. Mugs was just starting on a third bottle, when he looked up and saw Paul Pry.
He turned to the newspaper reporter. “It is my imperial will,” he said, “that the interview terminate forthwith. I am now busy with an important matter which Christian infidels must not hear, as it concerns the sanctity of my harem.”
It spoke volumes for the impressive manner in which Mugs Magoo had handled the situation that the hard-boiled, metropolitan newspaperman arose as though taking leave of a royal personage, and tiptoed from the room.
Mugs Magoo, puffing away at the water pipe, said to Paul Pry: “Shut off that damn phonograph. Kick this slave out of here.”
The woman stopped her dancing to say: “I ain’t no slave, and don’t go calling me one.”
Mugs Magoo raised his heavy, filmed eyes. “Come here,” he said.
The woman hesitated a moment, then sullenly walked over toward the pile of sofa cushions on which the Rajah of Rajore sat cross-legged.
“Ever hear of what happens to rebellious wives in my country?” Mugs asked.
“I’m not in your country,” she said. “I’m here.”
“They’re sewed in sacks,” Mugs Magoo went on, “and dropped into the Bosporus.”
“You ain’ goin’ sew me in no sack, mister.”
Mugs Magoo met her flaming eyes. “I didn’t say I was,” he said. “I was just explaining why I have no civilized manners as far as women are concerned.”
“Well, I’ll civilize you,” she said. “In case you don’t know it, Mistah Rajah, that was a damn good dance, an’ I ain’t accustomed to bein’ called no slave.”
Paul Pry fought back amusement from his eyes.
“I think,” Mugs Magoo said, “that you’d make an excellent queen of my harem. When I go back, I think I’ll take you back with me. How’d you like to be the queen boss of the outfit, have about twenty-five women to wait on you, and have your word law?”
She tilted her chin scornfully. “Humph,” she said, as she started for the door. “Get sewed in a sack and dropped in the phosphorous!”
When she had closed the door, Paul Pry roared with laughter. “Mugs, you’re getting your geography mixed. You’re a rajah from India. The Bosporus is where they drop the recalcitrant wives of the sultans. And where the hell did you get that water pipe?”