“Why, no, I just got here. I like this place. I’ve heard about it for years. When I left New York the Count said to me — my friend, Count Felix Rosoff, you know — he said to me, ‘Oliver, when you get to Hollywood you must see the Sunset Club.’ And Tommy, old man, he was right. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Clevenger?”
“I’m not an authority on night clubs,” Clevenger replied stiffly. “I’ve only been to New York twice in my life. This is the first time I’ve been in Hollywood.”
Quade chuckled, pushed back his chair. “Excuse me a moment, Miss Wentworth? A business associate has just come in. I must tell him something.”
“Goodbye, Quade,” Slocum said bluntly.
Quade smiled pleasantly at him and bowed to Miss Wentworth.
Boston followed him. “Buck,” he said. “In soup and fish! What a man!”
Christopher Buck’s face showed relief when he saw Quade and Boston. “Sit down, Quade,” he invited. “And tell me what’s new.”
“You damn well know because your shadow followed me all afternoon,” Quade said.
Buck’s face was blank. “Why?”
“That was my question,” Quade retorted. “Why? Anyway, I let him tag along. I could have lost him easy enough. Did once. He tell you that?”
Buck glowered at the table across the room. “Is she paying you, Quade?”
“She is not. And don’t go getting ideas, Christopher. You might get burned.”
“One of the biggest society women ever heard of, back East, shot a guy once,” said Buck. “Any woman’s a potential murderess. This Wentworth—”
“Is the second most important actress in Hollywood,” Quade said. “And Hollywood protects its own. Get what I mean, Buck?”
“A client is paying me money,” Buck said doggedly. “I’ve never let down a client.”
A stocky man with sleek black hair and a shaggy tweed suit was standing behind Tommy Slocum’s chair, patting the producer’s shoulder and talking over his head to Thelma Wentworth. He turned and showed Quade a mouthful of gleaming teeth.
He left the table, came toward Quade. He stuck out a fleshy hand. “Howdy, Mr. Quade. I’m Lou Gould. Like to talk to you a minute.”
Buck cut in: “You’re Lou Gould, the actor’s agent. I tried to get you at Consolidated this afternoon.”
Quade clung to Gould’s hand and started pulling him away. Buck shot up to his tremendous height and pushed his long, lean arm in between.
“I’m Christopher Buck,” he said.
Gould gave Buck his ten per cent personality. “Yeah, sure. We’ll have to get together. Give me a jingle at the office sometime.”
“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Quade said. “Thanks for the drink, Christopher. Good-night, Mr. Gould.”
Lou Gould was quite willing to be rescued from Christopher Buck, but Quade knew that that would be an impossibility. When Buck got his teeth into someone, fire or water wouldn’t make him let go.
“I’m going to slug Buck some day,” Boston said as they left the Sunset Club.
“Some day I’m going to let you slug him,” Quade retorted.
They got their bright yellow car from the nearby parking lot and drove to the hotel, where they turned it over to the doorman. “Don’t get the paint scratched,” Boston cautioned the man.
The lights were on in their suite when Quade unlocked the door.
The shadow who had followed Quade all afternoon was sitting in the most comfortable armchair. He was a rather slight fellow with an unhealthy complexion.
Quade said, “Are we intruding?”
“Not at all,” the man replied. “This is your room. And my name’s Higgins.”
Charlie Boston went back a step. “Willie Higgins!”
“You know,” said Quade, “I just guessed that out a little while ago. I couldn’t figure out why the real estate fellow got so scared when he got a glimpse of you through the window. I thought at the time you were one of Christopher Buck’s ops.”
Higgins nodded thoughtfully. “Understand you been looking for me.”
Quade sat down across the room from Higgins. Charlie Boston remained standing near the door, decidedly uncomfortable.
Quade said, “Tommy Slocum wants to see you.”
Higgins shrugged. “So?”
“That’s all. Tommy Slocum asked me to bring you to him. He didn’t tell me why.”
Higgins regarded Quade thoughtfully. “How much will he pay?”
Quade became suddenly annoyed. Ever since morning people had been giving him hints of things, had taken for granted he knew what they were talking about. He had played up to them, fishing out scraps of information. But as far as knowing anything definite was concerned, he was completely at sea. In a dead calm that seemed to presage the coming of a hurricane.
He said testily, “I don’t know a damn thing. Tommy Slocum seemed to think I did: so did Christopher Buck and Thel — and someone else. I don’t know anything.”
“From the way you talked this morning, you knew everything,” Willie Higgins said. “You said you were a human encyclopedia, or something, didn’t you?”
“But I’m not a mind reader! All I know is that you’ve got something or know something, that Tommy Slocum wants. And it has some bearing on Stanley Maynard’s murder.” He shot a speculative look at Higgins. “Would you be knowing anything about that?”
“I would not. The only thing I know, Quade, is that you’re a damn liar.”
Charlie Boston growled deep in his throat. Higgins glanced at him and Boston became quiet. Higgins went on:
“Not that it’ll do you any good, but I was down at the Slocum Studios this morning. I saw you come up with a rattletrap flivver. And now you’re driving a big yellow bus that cost. So…”
“So why does Tommy Slocum want you?” Quade snapped.
“Maybe because he killed Stanley Maynard.”
“I don’t think he did,” Quade said slowly.
“I think he did.”
Quade sawed the air impatiently. “All right, how much do you want for — it? I’ll tell Slocum your proposition; that is, if you won’t go and talk to him yourself.”
“I won’t,” said Higgins. “At least, not in his place. But you can tell him the price is a half million.”
He got up and grinned crookedly. Charlie, seeing him approach, stepped hastily away from the door. With his hand on the knob, Higgins turned. “And if you’re figuring on putting me at the studio when that business happened, don’t waste your time. I’ve got four different alibis.” He went out.
Charlie Boston shivered. “I could hear wings flapping!”
“Oh,” said Quade, “he didn’t look so tough.”
“No? What was that bulge under his coat? You suppose that was a ham sandwich?”
“A half million,” Quade said thoughtfully. “And Maynard was going to sue for a million.”
“For what?”
“That’s one of two things I don’t know. The other thing is — who killed Stanley Maynard?”
Slocum Studios’ gateman was so impressed by Quade’s yellow car that he permitted him to walk through the gates without a pass. Boston went to park the car somewhere on the street.
Quade sauntered into Miss Hendricks’ office. “Morning,” he said pleasantly. “Can you tell me where the sound room is? I believe they’re waiting there for me.”
“Studio Twelve, on the second floor,” replied Miss Hendricks.
Quade nodded. “Say, if my secretary, Charlie Boston, the big lug who looks like a heavy-weight wrestler, comes looking for me, keep him here.”
He went out and climbed a flight of stairs. Studio Twelve was a large room, soundproofed.
“I’m the new voice of Desmond Dogg,” Quade said to a young fellow.
“It’s about time you got here,” the fellow snapped. “We were just getting ready to go out and find another sap.”