NO BUSINESS OF MINE
COPYRIGHT © 1947
This book is for, my friend, Philip Lukulay,
who always cheated me in hand-tennis, and I
was always forgiving . . .
I would personally like to thank Mr. Cliff from London
who sent me a copy of this novel and “More Deadly
Than The Male.”
Thank You very much . . .
NO BUSINESS OF MINE
By
JAMES HADLEY CHASE
ROBERT HALE LIMITED
63 Old Brompton Road London S.W.7
Chapter I
MY name is Steve Harmas and I am a Foreign Correspondent of
the New York Clarion. During the years 1940-45 I lived in the Savoy
Hotel with a number of my colleagues and told the people of America
the story of Britain at war. I gave up the cocktail bar and the comfort
of the Savoy when the Allied Armies invaded Europe. To get me to go
was like peeling a clam off a wall, but my editor kept after me, and
finally I went. He told me the experience would give me character. It
gave me a pain you-know-where, but it didn’t give me character.
After the collapse of Germany, I felt I had had enough of war and
hardship, and I changed places with a colleague without him knowing
anything about it, and returned to America and two-pound steaks on
his ticket.
Several months later I was offered an assignment to write a series
of articles on post-war Britain. I didn’t particularly want the job: there
was a whisky shortage in England at the time, but there was a girl
named Netta Scott who used to live in London when last I was there,
and I did want to see her again.
I don’t want you to get me wrong about Netta Scott. I wasn’t in
love with her, but I did feel I owed her a great deal for giving me such
a swell time while I was a stranger in a strange country, and quite
unexpectedly I found myself in the position to do so.
It happened like this: I was reading the sporting sheet on my way
to the office, still in two minds about going to England, when I noticed
that one of the horses running in the afternoon’s race was named
Netta. The horse was a ten to one outsider, but I had a hunch and
decided to back it. I laid out five hundred dollars, and sat by the radio
with butterflies in my stomach, awaiting the result.
The horse won by a nose, and there and then I decided to split the
five-thousand-dollar winnings with Netta: I caught the first available
plane to England.
I got a big bang out of imagining Netta’s reaction when I walked in
on her and planked down before her five hundred crisp, new one
pound notes. She had always liked money, always grumbled about
being hard up, although she would never let me help her once we got
to know each other. It would be a great moment in her life, and it
would square my debt at the same time.
I first met Netta in 1942 at a luxury night club in Mayfair’s Bruton
Mews. She worked there as a dance hostess, and don’t let anyone kid
you dance hostesses don’t work. They develop more muscles than
Strangler Lewis ever had by warding off tired business men who are
not as tired as all that. Her job was to persuade suckers like me to buy
lousy champagne at five pounds a bottle, and to pay her ten shillings
for the privilege of dancing her around a floor the size of a pocket
handkerchief.
The Blue Club, as it was called, was run by a guy named Jack
Bradley. I had seen him once or twice, and I thought then he looked a
doubtful customer. The only girl working in the club who wasn’t
scared of him was Netta: but Netta wasn’t scared of any man.
The story goes that all the girls had to do a night shift with Bradley
before they could qualify for the job of hostess. They told me that
Netta and Bradley spent the night reading the illustrated papers when
she qualified, but that was only after she had blunted his glands by
wrapping a valuable oil painting around his thick neck. I don’t know
whether the yarn was true: Netta wouldn’t talk about it, but knowing
her, I’d say it was.
Bradley must have made a packet out of the club. It was
patronized almost entirely by American officers and newspaper men
who had money to burn. They burned it all right in the Blue Club. The
band was first class, the girls beautiful and willing, and the food
excellent; but the cost was so high you had to put on an oxygen mask
before you looked at the bill.
Netta was one of twelve girls, and I picked her out the moment I
saw her.
She was a cute trick: a red head with skin like peaches and cream.
Her curves attracted my attention: curves always do. They were a blue
print for original sin. I’ve seen some female hairpin bends in my time,
but nothing quite in Netta’s class. As my companion, Harry Bix, a hard-
bitten bomber pilot, put it, “A mouse fitted with skis would have a
grand run down her, and would I like to be that mouse!”
Yes, Netta was a cute trick. She was really lovely in a hard,
sophisticated way. You could tell right off that she knew her way
around, and if you hoped to get places with her it was gloves off and
no holds barred; even at that she’d probably lick you.
It took some time before Netta thawed out with me. At first she
considered me just another customer, then she regarded me with
suspicion, thinking I was on the make, but finally she accepted the
idea that I was a lonely guy in a strange city who wanted to make
friends with her.
I used to go to the Blue Club every evening. After a month or so
she wouldn’t let me buy champagne, and I knew I was making
progress. One night she suggested we might go together to Kew
Gardens on the following Sunday and see the bluebells. Then I knew
I’d got somewhere with her.
It finally worked out that I saw a lot of Netta. I’d call for her at her
little flat off the Cromwell Road and drive her to the Blue Club.
Sometimes we’d have supper together at the Vanity Fair; sometimes
she’d come along to the Savoy and we’d dine in the grill-room. She
was a good companion, ready to laugh or talk sense depending on my
mood, and she could drink a lot of liquor without getting tight.
Netta was my safety-valve. She bridged all the dreary boredom
which is inevitable at times when one is not always working to
capacity. She made my stay in London worth remembering. We finally
got around to sleeping together once or twice a month, but as in
everything we did, it was impersonal and didn’t mean a great deal to
either of us. Neither she nor I were in love with each other. She never
let our association get personal, although it was intimate enough.
That is she never asked me about my home, whether I was married,
what I intended to do when the war was over; never hinted she would
like to return to the States with me. I did try to find out something
about her background, but she wouldn’t talk. Her attitude was that
we were living in the present, any moment a bomb or rocket might
drop on us, and it was up to us to be as happy as we could while the