“You want to make it up and she won’t,” the PBX girl said quietly.
“Yes.”
“I’m sympathetic,” the young guy said. “But you know how it is, Mr. Marlowe. A hotel has to be very careful. These situations can lead to anything—even shootings.”
“Shootings?” I looked at him with wonder. “Good God, what sort of people do that?”
He leaned both arms on the desk. “Just what would you like to do, Mr. Marlowe?”
“I’d like to be near her—in case she needs me. I wouldn’t speak to her. I wouldn’t even knock at her door. But she would know I was there and she’d know why. I’d be waiting. I’ll always be waiting.”
The girl loved it now. I was up to my neck in the soft corn. I took a deep slow breath and shot for the grand prize. “And I don’t somehow like the look of the guy who brought her here,” I said.
“Nobody brought her here—except a cabdriver,” the clerk said.
But he knew what I meant all right.
The PBX girl half smiled. “He doesn’t mean that, Jack. He means the reservation.”
Jack said, “I kind of gathered as much, Lucille. I’m not so dumb.” Suddenly he brought a card out from the desk and put it down in front of me. A registration card. Across the corner diagonally was written the name Larry Mitchell. In a very different writing in the proper places: (Miss) Betty Mayfield, West Chatham, New York. Then in the top left-hand corner in the same writing as Larry Mitchell a date, a time, a price, a number.
“You’re very kind,” I said. “So she’s gone back to her maiden name. It’s legal, of course.”
“Any name is legal, if there’s no intent to defraud. You would like to be next door to her?”
I widened my eyes. Maybe they glistened a little. Nobody ever tried harder to make them glisten.
“Look,” I said, “it’s damn nice of you. But you can’t do it. I’m not going to make any trouble, but you can’t be sure. It’s your job if I pulled anything.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got to learn some day. You look all right to me. Just don’t tell anybody.” He took the pen from its cup and held it out. I signed my name with an address on East Sixty-first Street, New York City.
Jack looked at it. “That’s near Central Park, isn’t it?” he asked idly.
“Three blocks and a bit,” I said. “Between Lexington and Third Avenue.”
He nodded. He knew where it was. I was in. He reached for a key.
“I’d like to leave my suitcase here,” I said, “and go get something to eat and maybe rent a car, if I can. You could have it put in the room for me?”
Sure. He could do that for me easy. He took me outside and pointed up through a grove of saplings. The cottages were all-over shingled, white with green roofs. They had porches with railings. He showed me mine through the trees. I thanked him. He started back in and I said, “Look, there’s one thing. She may check out when she knows.”
He smiled. “Of course. Nothing we can do about that, Mr. Marlowe. Lots of guests only stay a night or two—except in summer. We don’t expect to be filled up this time of year.”
He went on into the office cottage and I heard the girl say to him: “He’s kind of cute, Jack—but you shouldn’t have done it.”
I heard his answer too. “I hate that guy Mitchell—even if he is a pal of the owner.”
4
The room was bearable. It had the usual concrete couch, chairs without cushions, a small desk against the front wall, a walk-in closet with a built-in chest, a bathroom with a Hollywood bath and neon shaving lights beside the mirror over the basin, a small kitchenette with a refrigerator and a white stove, a three-burner electric. In a wall cupboard over the sink enough dishes and stuff. I got some ice cubes and made myself a drink with the bottle from my suitcase, sipped it and sat in a chair listening, leaving the windows shut and the venetian blinds dark. I heard nothing next door, then I heard the toilet flush. Subject was in residence. I finished the drink, killed a cigarette and studied the wall heater on the party wall. It consisted of two long frosted bulbs in a metal box. It didn’t look as if it would throw out much heat, but in the closet there was a plug-in fan heater with a thermostat and a three-way plug, which made it 220 volts. I slipped off the chromium grill guard of the wall heater and twisted out the frosted bulbs. I got a doctor’s stethoscope out of my suitcase and held it against the metal backing and listened. If there was another similar heater back against it in the next room, and there almost certainly would be, all I had between the two rooms was a metal panel and some insulation, probably a bare minimum of that.
I heard nothing for a few minutes, then I heard a telephone being dialed. The reception was perfect. A woman’s voice said: “Esmeralda 4-1499, please.”
It was a cool contained voice, medium pitch, very little expression in it except that it sounded tired. It was the first time I had heard her voice in all the hours I had been following her.
There was a longish pause, then she said: “Mr. Larry Mitchell, please.”
Another pause, but shorter. Then: “This is Betty Mayfield, at the Rancho Descansado.” She pronounced the “a” in Descansado wrong. Then: “Betty Mayfield, I said. Please don’t be stupid. Do you want me to spell it for you?”
The other end had things to say. She listened. After a while she said: “Apartment 12C. You ought to know. You made the reservation… Oh. I see… Well, all right. I’ll be here.”
She hung up. Silence. Complete silence. Then the voice in there said slowly and emptily: “Betty Mayfield, Betty Mayfield, Betty Mayfield. Poor Betty. You were a nice girl once—long ago.”
I was sitting on the floor on one of the striped cushions with my back to the wall. I got up carefully, laid the stethoscope down on the cushion and went to lie on the day bed. After a while he would arrive. She was in there waiting for him, because she had to. She’d had to come there for the same reason. I wanted to know what it was.
He must have been wearing crepe soles because I didn’t hear anything until the buzzer sounded next door. Also, he hadn’t driven his car up to the cottage. I got down on the floor and went to work with the stethoscope.
She opened the door, he came in and I could imagine the smile on his face as he said: “Hello, Betty. Betty Mayfield is the name, I believe. I like it.”
“It was my name originally.” She closed the door.
He chuckled. “I suppose you were wise to change it. But how about the initials on your luggage?”
I didn’t like his voice any better than his smile. It was high and cheerful, almost bubbly with sly good humor. There was not quite a sneer in it, but close enough. It made me clamp my teeth.
“I suppose,” she said dryly, “that was the first thing you noticed.”
“No, baby. You were the first thing I noticed. The mark of a wedding ring but no wedding ring was the second. The initials were only the third.”
“Don’t call me ‘baby’, you cheap blackmailer,” she said with a sudden muted fury.
It didn’t faze him in the least. “I may be a blackmailer, honey, but”—another conceited chuckle—”I’m certainly not cheap.”
She walked, probably away from him. “Do you want a drink? I see you have a bottle with you.”
“It might make me lascivious.”
“There’s only one thing about you I’m afraid of, Mr. Mitchell,” the girl said coolly. “Your big loose mouth. You talk too much and you like yourself too well. We’d better understand each other. I like Esmeralda. I’ve been here before and I always wanted to come back. It’s nothing but sheer bad luck that you live here and that you were on the train that was taking me here. It was the worst kind of luck that you should have recognized me. But that’s all it is—bad luck.”
“Good luck for me, honey,” he drawled.
“Perhaps,” she said, “if you don’t put too much pressure on it.