“I think I spotted it back here in the Foreign Restaurants section... Yes, here, page eighty-six. Red ring around ‘Chinese Rathskeller’ and ‘45 Mott.’ Thorough performer, isn’t he? If he hadn’t ringed the Chinatown address, too, she might have gone kiting off to the uptown branch on West 51st.”
“Red,” said Nikki. “Everything in red. I keep thinking of that darned scarlet letter.”
“I’m tempted to say it’s a manifestation of Harrison’s sense of humor, but who knows? It may have a much simpler explanation. Tell you what you do, Nikki. Get over to the machine and type out this list as I give it to you. We’ll forget A, B, and C — that’s history. Make it D for whatever-it-is, and so on. I’ll give you the page numbers, too. I may want to get a copy of the book for possible future developments.”
“Carbon?”
“No. And I’ll take the original with me. It’s safer out of the apartment.”
Ellery read the ringed items off as he came to them, page by page. When he had finished, Nikki made a second list, rearranging the items on the first sheet in alphabetical order. The original draft Ellery tore to shreds and flushed down the toilet.
“Now let’s see what we have. Read them off, Nikki.”
The list Nikki read contained twenty-three items, from D through Z:
“He’s certainly playful,” said Nikki wearily. “His mother must have been frightened by a sightseeing bus.”
“It’s probably a line he’s worked out,” said Ellery. “These great lovers are like the people who hang around the casinos. They’ve always got a system to beat the wheel. You can’t deny it has its charm, Nikki.”
“It escapes me.”
“Well, it’s apparently working on Martha. It adds a note of dash to the affair, no doubt. It’s lucky he didn’t have a copy of The Third Man; he’d have had her meeting him in a sewer.” Ellery studied the list again. “I’m a lot more puzzled by something else.”
“What now?” Nikki put her arms on the desk and her head on her arms.
“Well, their next meeting, for instance.” Ellery glanced at her, but he went on as if he were concentrating on his thought. “D. Up to now they’ve met in pretty safe places-Chinatown, The Bowery; even their meeting at the A — wasn’t dangerous the way they handled it. But the Diamond Horseshoe — a nightclub — in the heart of the theatrical district where they’re both so well-known... It seems downright careless of Mr. Harrison. Any one of five hundred people might spot them there, and if it got back to Dirk... Are you all right, Nikki?”
“What?” Nikki looked up blearily.
Ellery went around the desk, put his hands under her arms, and lifted. “The meeting,” he said firmly, “is adjourned.”
“I’m all right, Ellery—”
“You’re in the last stage of exhaustion. No, I’ll put the book back before I leave.” He carried her to her room, kicked the door open, and deposited her on the floor. “Get undressed.”
“It’s not even ten o’clock—”
“Do you undress yourself, or do I do it for you?”
Nikki sank wanly onto her makeshift bed. “You would pick a time when I’m half-dead.” She yawned and shivered, hugging herself. “I suppose the next item on the agenda is to watch for the date and time of the Diamond Horseshoe meeting.”
“Never mind that. I’m going to make you some hot milk, and then you’re going to bed.”
And the Diamond Horseshoe meeting was an interesting meeting, one point of interest being that it never took place.
Nikki phoned on Sunday morning to say that Martha and Dirk had come in at five A.M. from their Scarsdale party, making so much noise that the neighbors banged shoes on the walls. Nikki, lying awake in the dark, had heard Dirk yelling drunkenly in the kitchen that he would kill with his bare hands the next man she allowed to paw her, and Martha shrieking back that she couldn’t stand it any more, nothing had happened in the world that any sane man could take exception to, and if he didn’t stop assaulting men who danced with her and turning perfectly nice house parties into waterfront free-for-alls, with the police having to be called and everything — and a lucky thing for him Hal Boyland knew that state trooper personally! — why, so help her God, she would have him committed to a mental hospital; and so on, far into the morning. They had wound up hurling crockery at each other, which terminated hostilities, since an egg cup caught Dirk on the temple and opened a streaming cut over an inch long, at which Martha fainted and Nikki crawled out of bed to tend the wounded and clean the battlefield.
“I just looked in to see if they were dead or alive,” sighed Nikki, “and Dirk’s sleeping on the floor to one side of the bed and Martha’s sleeping on the floor on the other side. I guess they had a last-gasp fight as to who would not sleep in the bed with whom, and couldn’t settle even that. If it weren’t so tragic it would be hilarious.”
Sunday was passed in a truce of silence, with Nikki the desperate mediator. On Sunday night Dirk apologized, and Martha accepted his apology; and on Monday and Tuesday Dirk resumed his old, almost obsolete, canine habits and followed her wherever she went with humility and adoration. Martha was cool, but she stuck to home, and toward evening on Tuesday she thawed.
But on Wednesday morning the next letter came. D was the code designation, and the date and time were Friday at eight-fifteen P.M.
Ellery was at one of Mr. Rose’s lonelier tables by seven-forty-five, hoping for an even break in the odds on Harrison’s table being within range. He was studying the menu with both elbows elevated when Van Harrison walked in at seven-fifty-eight and was ushered to a reserved table of even lonelier location, with the odds going crazy. Harrison sat down not a dozen feet away. Fortunately again he was in profile to Ellery, and Ellery could watch him and the approach from the entrance at the same time.
Harrison ordered a cocktail.
Women were turning to look at him. He was dressed in a suede cream-gray suit with a white carnation in the lapel; diamonds glittered at his cuffs, and he raised and lowered his cocktail glass with a ceremoniousness that did his cufflinks full justice. His tempered profile he used like a rapier, keeping it carefully poised, or flicking it this way or that ever so slightly, with a half-smile on his lips, at once kind and masterful.
Didn’t he know they were bound to be seen? Or didn’t he care?
Ellery watched the women. They were impressed and delighted. He shook his head.
Then he realized that it was eight-twenty. Martha had not yet come.
He wondered if his watch was right.
But he saw Harrison glancing at his wristwatch, too, with a frown.
Probably she was held up in traffic.
At eight-thirty-five Ellery began to doubt his traffic theory.
At eight-fifty he abandoned it.
At nine o’clock he knew Martha wasn’t coming, and that was when he began to get the uneasy feeling that perhaps Dirk was.
Harrison was annoyed. Harrison was more than annoyed — he was livid. The table was set for two, and it was apparent to his public that the empty chair was going to remain empty. Some of the women were tittering.
At nine-five the actor summoned the maître and imperiously waved away the second chair and place-setting. His gestures and expression said that a stupid mistake had been made by the management. And a waiter ran up to take his food order.
He ordered coldly, in a loud voice.
Ellery rose and sought a phone.
The receiver at the other end was snatched up halfway through the first ring.