“You’ve got a point there, Madge,” Poppa decided. “But not the one you think.”
“Enough talk.” Mama pronounced judgment. “Richie, call the manager. Have this woman removed from here.”
“To where?” Poppa and Cliff spoke with one voice.
“Clifford!” Richie said warningly.
“George!” Mama said warningly.
“Judas!” Llona said wearily.
“I don’t think we should call the manager,” Cliff said reasonably. “Think of the scandal. It could hurt my career. And Richie’s career, too.”
“Are you kidding?” Richie protested. “In our business?”
“Now wait a minute,” Poppa said. “The boy may have a point there. Maybe it would be best if I just quietly escorted the young lady back to her room.”
“Over my dead body,” Mama told him emphatically.
“I’ll take her,” Cliff offered. “I don’t mind.”
“Clifford!”
“Look,” Llona interrupted, “while you’re making up your minds, do you mind if I use your johnny? My front teeth are beginning to float.”
“Be our guest,” Cliff told her politely.
Llona went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She stood there for a moment, listening through the door.
“My poor boy,” Mama was saying. “To get into such a mess through no fault of your own. Just because some shameless hussy takes a fancy to you.”
“How can a woman delude herself like that?” Poppa wondered aloud.
“We’ve got to get rid of her!” Richie said, casting a sidelong glance at Cliff.
“Why don’t you let me take care of it?” Cliff asked. “I really don’t mind.”
Llona had heard enough. She had no room to go back to, so even if they worked that out she’d still be up the creek. And the only alternative they seemed to be considering was ringing in the management on the problem. That could be disastrous. So Llona looked for her own way out.
She crossed to the other door leading from the bathroom. It was unlocked. She opened it and slipped into the next room. The window blind was up, and the light from outside clearly illuminated her naked figure as it tiptoed toward the door leading to the hallway.
A moment after she’d stepped through that door, the light beside the bed was turned on. A shaking hand reached out for the telephone and dialed a number.
“Hello, Dr. Hertzheimer? I’ve got to see you as soon, as possible. It’s imperative. I’ve started to hallucinate again!”
Chapter Eight
ONE NIGHT a week Nick Dawes had a poker game in his room at the Marlowe Hotel. It was strictly stud, table stakes, and the players varied. Tonight there were four, three others besides Nick himself. They were Manny Warden, Irv Jones and Elmer Pframmis.
Elmer Pframmis was one of those unfortunately endowed little men spawned by the Fates in a moment of malicious humor. Physically, he was fat in the hips, thin in the chest and spindly in the legs. His rear end was fleshy and floppy, his tummy the same, and he had a neck like an ostrich.
On top of the neck was something that might have passed for the bottom of the ostrich. Not that Elmer was a Cyclops. He had two eyes, the same as everybody else. Only they were so close together that from a distance they really did seem to have merged into one. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if the one had been directly above his nose, but it wasn’t. The nose was somewhere to the left, lost and drooping with despair, hiding its nostrilly head in the upper part of Elmer’s thick lips. It might be said that his chin was his best feature for the simple reason that he didn’t have any. None at all. His face simply came to an abrupt end at the base of his dentures.
It figures that with such an appearance for openers, Elmer would have lost his hair early in life. Now he was completely bald. Baldness may give some men character, but not Elmer. It merely made him look even more like a gnome rejected halfway down the assembly line.
Naturally, his unfortunate appearance had its effect on Elmer’s personality. When a man looks like Elmer, it’s only to be expected that crankiness will become an integral part of his nature. And with so much to whine about, Elmer certainly couldn’t be blamed for turning into an expert and constant whiner. Add that he lacked patience and was quite high-strung, and it’s easy to see why Elmer repelled people.
And so his life was marked with loneliness. The more people shunned him, the more Elmer yearned to be a part of the crowd. This made him fawn on people. But a cranky, whining, impatient, nervous fawner is not calculated to inspire people to want to help him overcome his loneliness. Thus Elmer’s social life was nil and his spare time was spent for the most part as a loner.
The important exception to him was the poker game to which he was occasionally invited in Nick Dawes’ room. The game. provided him with a fleeting sense of being one of the boys. The clack of chips and the snarls of bets and raises were to him one of his few tenuous contacts with the rest of the human race.
It wasn’t that Dawes and the other players liked Elmer Pframmis any better than most people did. It was just that they had more tolerance for him. And their tolerance stemmed from certain qualities that Elmer had.
For one thing, with little else to spend his money on, Elmer always came to the poker table well-heeled. The poker player’s philosophy being that anybody’s money is good, they would never have thought of turning up their noses at Elmer’s wad of green cabbage. For another thing, Elmer was a lousy poker player. He was a steady loser who could be depended upon to drop a sizeable bundle. It was this about him which aroused in the other players an emotion toward Elmer which was the closest he’d ever come to fondness. And the money he lost was a small price to pay for even so slight an approach to a relationship.
Elmer had been losing steadily all night when he was dealt the four consecutively numbered cards. The fifth didn’t match, of course; with Elmer’s luck, that figured. Elmer didn’t hesitate for a moment to draw to the outside straight. He did, however, hesitate to turn the card over once he’d been dealt it. He’d lived too long with his misshapen body and scrambled-egg face not to know that guys who looked like he did never filled a straight. Still, hope springs eternal in even so sub-human a breast as Elmer’s.
He flicked at the new card with his thumbnail, revealing it painstakingly, thousandth of an inch by thousandth of an inch. Finally his squinting eyes slanted down his nose -- which was touching the cards he held—and made out the number in the corner of the new pasteboard. It was a seven. He’d filled out the straight.
Elmer snuffled. He was moved. Emotionally moved. Such gifts from the gods were rare in his wretched life. He was genuinely touched that they should have remembered him at all.
“I’ll bet fifty.” The depth of his feelings made Elmer’s voice quaver.
Nick Dawes face didn’t reveal that he’d noticed the quaver, but he had. It wasn’t important. Nick didn’t need that to tell him that Elmer had a good hand. He’d known it before Elmer spoke. He’d known it because he’d dealt it to Elmer. He’d dealt it deliberately—-from a stacked deck. The last card, filling out the straight, Nick had dealt Elmer right off the bottom.
“See you and raise you fifty,” Nick said in a flat, monotonous voice.
Nick had also dealt himself a hand. He’d dealt himself the four-seven-nine of hearts, a club and a spade on the opening deal. He’d thrown away the club and the spade and drawn two other cards. He hadn’t even bothered to look at them—a point which Elmer had jubilantly noted. But then he hadn’t had to because Nick knew what they were—the deuce and jack of hearts.
Elmer thought about the raise a minute. He figured Nick for three of a kind. Maybe a pair and a kicker, but more likely three of a kind. Either way, Elmer thought to himself, Nick had to be figuring him for two pair. Well, he was going to be in for a long overdue surprise. He saw Nick’s raise. “And right back at you,” he said, tossing still another fifty into the pot.