He stalked off to his room. Later I heard the car roar down the road. I let myself laugh then.
I went back to New York and was there a week when my contacts told me of Walter’s fruitless search. He used every means at his disposal, but he couldn’t locate the girl. I gave him seven days, exactly seven days. You see, that seventh day was the anniversary of the date I introduced him to Adrianne. I’ll never forget it. Wherever Walter is now, neither will he.
When I called him I was amazed at the change in his voice. He sounded weak and lost. We exchanged the usual formalities; then I said, “Walter, have you found Evelyn yet?”
He took a long time to answer. “No, she’s disappeared completely.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said.
He didn’t get it at first. It was almost too much to hope for. “You . . . mean you know where she is?”
“Exactly.”
“Where? Please, Dunc . . . where is she?” In a split second he became a vital being again. He was bursting with life and energy, demanding that I tell him.
I laughed and told him to let me get a word in and I would. The silence was ominous then. “She’s not very far from here, Walter, in a small hotel right off Fifth Avenue.” I gave him the address and had hardly finished when I heard his phone slam against the desk. He was in such a hurry he hadn’t bothered to hang up . . .”
Duncan stopped and drained his glass, then stared at it remorsefully. The Inspector coughed lightly to attract his attention, his curiosity prompting him to speak. “He found her?” he asked eagerly.
“Oh yes, he found her. He burst right in over all protests, expecting to sweep her off her feet.”
This time the inspector fidgeted nervously. “Well, go on.”
Duncan motioned for the waiter and lifted a fresh glass in a toast. The inspector did the same. Duncan smiled gently. “When she saw him she laughed and waved. Walter Harrison died an hour later . . . from a window in the same hotel.”
It was too much for the inspector. He leaned forward in his chair, his forehead knotted in a frown. “But what happened? Who was she? Damn it, Duncan . . .”
Duncan took a deep breath, then gulped the drink down.
“Evelyn Vaughn was a hopeless imbecile,” he said.
“She had the beauty of a goddess and the mentality of a two-year-old. They kept her well tended and dressed so she wouldn’t be an object of curiosity. But the only habit she ever learned was to wave bye-bye . . .”
ONE ESCORT – MISSING OR DEAD
Roger Torrey
The ad was so screwy I didn’t want anything to do with it. But Miss Bryce was both worried and willing to pay me for the trip. Once more I looked over the unusual advertisement.
WILL THE LADY WHO LEFT THE YALE MAN CALL FOR HIM AT DARNELL’S TAVERN ON THE SAWMILL RIVER PARKWAY.
We left the car in the parking lot, and on my way to the door I said:
“This is a gag, Miss Bryce – and it didn’t miss. You’re falling for it.”
She was getting her own way and so she was feeling a little happier.
“You wait and see,” she told me. “There’s something wrong. You just wait and hear what they say.”
With that we went into the place.
It was very nice and the girl pointed this out to me with: “D’ya think I’d made a mistake about being here? I know what you’re thinking – that I was drunk and got mixed up. But I’ll even show you the booth we were in. It’s this way.”
She took my arm and led me to a booth about halfway down the dance floor. A waiter broke away from the bar and headed down our way. The floor was bigger than most places like that have, and the bar was at the end of the place. Booths all around the floor, with tables for two spotted out in front of them. And even as far away from the bar as we were I could see it was stocked with good liquor and a lot of it.
In other words the place had class.
The waiter came up and the girl leaned across and whispered: “That’s one of them! One of those I talked with.”
He was a tough-looking mug, and he came up as though he grudged having to give us the service. He was looking at me and paying no attention to the girl. I told him I wanted straight rye and water, and Miss Bryce said: “A Martini, please.”
He looked at her then – one of those so-here-you-are-again looks.
“That’s right, friend,” I told him. “It’s the same lady! How about the drinks?”
I watched him talking to the barman then, while the Martini was being mixed and when the order was being put on a tray.
The girl was speaking again: “You see? He knew me.”
“Well, why shouldn’t he? You told me you’d been talking to him about this missing man. He’d hardly forget a thing like that.”
“I should have gone to the police,” Miss Bryce said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well – well, because.”
“That’s a swell reason,” I began, and stopped because the waiter was back with the tray and with a check for the drinks already on it. He stood there, and when I didn’t do anything about it he said: “There’s the check.”
I told him I saw it.
“I just got told not to serve this lady any more drinks,” the waiter explained.
“Who told you?” I asked.
He jerked his head toward the barman and didn’t answer.
I said: “If there’s one thing I love it’s a snooty waiter. This is a public place, isn’t it? The lady isn’t drunk, is she? So you’ll serve us drinks and like it or I’ll find out the reason why.”
“I just do what I’m told,” he said to that. And I retorted: “That’s what I want, so where’s the argument? If I tell you we want a drink you get it.”
He turned his head then and beckoned for the barman, who came out from around his plank with one hand under his apron. He was as hard-looking as the waiter, but he had a nice soft voice. He used it, saying: “Trouble, Luigi?”
The waiter said: “The guy’s giving me an argument. I told him no more drinks for the gal and he gives me an argument.”
The barman said to me: “Look, Mister! I don’t know you and I don’t want any trouble. But I’m running this place and I’ll not serve that girl another drink.”
“Why not?”
He came up right to the edge of the booth table and said: “Well, I’ll tell you. She came up here just after I went on shift, and she gives us a story about leaving her boyfriend here. She claims she was in here night before last with him. She also claims that I was on the bar and that Luigi was, the one that served them. Now I was working that night. And so was Luigi.
“We just changed to day shift today. She wasn’t in here or we’d have seen her. We haven’t got any missing boys around here. The girl’s maybe a friend of yours, but she can’t come in here with a screwy story like that and get drinks served her. She made a scene, Mister. She called me a liar and she called Luigi a liar. So no drinks. Is that plain?”
Luigi said: “She’s just nuts, is all.”
I said to the barman: “You all through with the speech?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because, if you are, get back to that bar and make us another drink. One for me and one for the lady. Now move!”
He did. Faster than I thought he would and entirely in the wrong direction. Toward me instead of toward the bar. I saw the light shine on the brass on his hand as he took it out from under his apron and rolled away from it, but I didn’t have a chance. I was sitting down and cooped, with that booth table catching me at the knees.
The barman caught me on the cheek with the first lick. I didn’t know where the second one landed until I woke up sitting in the seat of my own car with the Bryce girl alongside me. She had as nice a set of hysterics as I ever saw in my life. And it took me about a minute to decide my jaw wasn’t fractured, and to find that my gun had been slipped out of its clip and hadn’t been put back.