visit the bar and the restaurants and spend their dough.”
The drive suddenly opened on to a vast stretch of lawn, and; facing us was the brilliantly lit
casino. It was the most impressive and ornate building I have ever seen, like something out of
the Arabian Nights: a huge, white building of Moorish architecture^ its six domed towers and
bulbous minarets piercing the night sky.
Amber, white, green and red lights, controlled by automatic time switches, played
alternately on the front of the building.
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“You have nothing like this in Los Angeles, have you, Ricca?” Reisner said. “We spent ten
grand lighting this joint.”
He continued to drive along the broad carriageway, past the casino and on through the
pleasure gardens, past the floodlit swimming-pool where a number of men and women were
still swimming or lounging in hammocks in spite of the late hour through another double
gate, also guarded by two stiff-necked men in uniform, pait a pitch-and-putt course to a
colony of beach cabins built in a semicircle a hundred yards or so from the ocean, each
screened from the other by palms and tropical flowering shrubs.
He pulled up outside one of the cabins.
“Here we are. Everything’s ready for you, Mrs. Wertham,” he said, twisting around in the
driver’s seat to look at Della. “Your usual cabin. Where do you want me to put Ricca?”
“He can have the cabin next to mine: the one Paul has,” she said, and got out of the car.
“Want me to get the doc down to look at him?” Reisner asked, not moving from behind the
wheel.
“I’m okay,” I said, joining Della. “Nothing that a good sleep won’t put right.”
“Suit yourself,” he returned, making no attempt to conceal his indifference.
“Don’t wait, Nick,” Della said. “We’ll have a talk in the morning. Thanks for picking us
up.”
Reisner smiled. His eyes went from Della to me, and back to Della again.
“Well, so long. Call up at the office around noon. We’ll have a drink and a get-together.”
The big car moved off. Della and I stood watching its bright twin rear lights until they had
disappeared, then she drew in a deep breath.
“Well, that’s Reisner,” she said. “What do you think of him?”
“Tricky.”
“Yes. Well, come in. I could do with a drink.”
She led me into the cabin and switched on the lights. The place consisted of one large room
that served as a sitting-room by day and a bedroom by night, a bathroom and a kitchenette.
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No expense had been spared to make it luxurious and comfortable. It was unbelievably lavish
with its press-button gadgets that operated the windows, the curtains and let down the wall-bed and opened the built-in cupboards. Everything in the place seemed to be worked by
pressing buttons.
“Like it?” she asked, flopping on the bed. “Paul had a flair for this kind of thing. There are
thirty other cabins on the estate, each with its own special decor, but I like this one best. Get
me a drink, Johnny. You’ll find whisky in that cabinet over there.”
“I’ll say I like it,” I said as I mixed a whisky and soda. “And the casino! He must have
spent millions on it.”
“He did.” She leaned back on her elbows and looked fixedly at me. The white silk blouse
pulled hard across her breasts, and her thick, dark hair fell away from her face and neck,
showing the white column of her throat. “All this could be mine if it wasn’t for Reisner.”
“Would you know what to do with it if you had it?” I said, not paying much attention to
what I was saying. The sight of her like that had got me going again.
She took the whisky.
“Wouldn’t you, Johnny?”
“I don’t know.” I went over to a panel in the wall on which were a number of ivory buttons.
I pressed one of them marked curtains, and watched the dark-green plastic curtains swing
smoothly across the big double windows. “Can you imagine Reisner parting with half a
million? I can’t.”
“He will if we handle him right.” She looked down and noticed the rip in her skirt. From
where I was standing I could see, through the tear, the white line of her flesh above the top of
her stocking. “I must look a wreck,” she went on, got to her feet and stared at herself in the
mirror that concealed the door to the bathroom.
I came up behind her and we stared at our reflections in the mirror.
Apart from her dishevelled hair, the little cut on the side of her nose, and her ripped skirt,
she still looked good - too good for my present mood.
Our eyes met in the mirror. She looked fixedly at me, her dark, glittering eyes suddenly
tense.
“Better go to your cabin now, Johnny.”
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“No.”
My hands were shaking, and I was suddenly short of breath.
“It’ll happen sooner or later if we’re going to work together,” she said, “but I don’t want it
to happen now. Please go, Johnny. Not now. It’s not safe.”
My hands closed over her shoulders. I felt a shiver run through her. I turned her, pulling her
against me.
“You’ve had your say ever since we met,” I said. “You’ve dictated the terms and I’ve
jumped through the hoop. It’s going to be different now. I’m having the say and you’re
jumping through the hoop.”
Her arms came up and slid around my neck.
“I like you when you talk like that, Johnny.”
V
I had finished a regal breakfast served by a Sphinx-faced Filipino, and had wandered out on
to the verandah to smoke a cigarette in the sunshine when I saw Della coming from her cabin
towards me.
The sight of her in a sky-blue, off-the-shoulder linen dress, a big picture hat and a pair of
sun-glasses the size of doughnuts started my heart thumping. I ran down the steps to meet
her.
“Hi, Johnny,” she said, smiling up at me.
“You look good enough to eat.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself.” Her blue eyes approved the white slacks and the sweat-shirt the Filipino had laid out for me. “And they fit, too.”
“They sure do. Where did they come from?”
“I fixed it. I’ve been busy fixing all kinds of things this morning. We’ll go down to the
tailor’s shop some time and get you properly fitted out. You have to dress the part here.”
“I can’t believe this is happening to me. I expect to wake up and find myself in a truck
heading for Miami.”
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She laughed.
“It’s happening all right. Come and look at the place before we talk to Nick.”
We spent an hour wandering around the vast estate. There wasn’t a trick Wertham had
missed. There were acres of pleasure gardens, an aquarium and sunken lily ponds. Not far
from the casino was an arcade of shops where you could buy anything from a diamond
necklace to an aspirin tablet. An artificial waterway surrounding the estate, screened by oak
trees, hung with Spanish moss, offered a fine hiding-place for you and your girl if you wanted
to go for a tour in an electrically driven canoe. There was even a zoo at the back of the casino
where peacocks, flamingoes and ibis strutted on the vast stretches of lawn.
“Come and look at the lion pit,” Della said. “This is Reisner’s pet idea. He’s crazy about
lions. You’d be surprised how many people come here just to gape at them.”
We stood side by side, our arms touching, and looked down into the deep pit, guarded by
steel railings where six full-grown lions sprawled lazily in the sunshine.
“I can gape at them, too,” I said. “There’s something about a lion …”
“Reisner feeds them himself. He gives up all his spare time to them.” She turned away.