“Hello?” It was Martha’s voice, dry, braced.
Before Ellery could answer he heard Dirk explode in the background. “Damn the phone! Hang up, Marty. The hell with whoever it is.”
“But Dirk— Hello?”
“Ellery, Martha.”
“Ellery. Hello, dear.”
He wriggled at the relief in her voice.
“It’s Ellery. How are you? Why haven’t we seen you? Where are you calling from?”
Dirk’s voice made some irritated sounds.
“I don’t want to interrupt whatever you two are doing,” Ellery said. “Is Nikki around?”
“Nikki, it’s for you.”
“I’ll take it in the dressing room, Mar.” Nikki, quick.
“Yes, do that!” Dirk.
“Dirk.” Martha was laughing. “Don’t mind him, Ellery. He’s in one of his dedicated-artist moods. All right, Dirk! Why don’t you drop in later, Ellery? He’s really dying to see you. Me, too.”
“Maybe I will. If I can get away, Martha.”
“Here I am,” panted Nikki. “Hang up, Mar! A girl has to have some privacy.”
“Bye.” Martha laughed; and he heard the click.
“Nikki?”
“Yes.”
“Is it all right?”
“Yes. Dirk’s got her occupied.”
“What happened?”
“You at the—?”
“Yes.”
“And the character—?”
“Still here, waiting. Dirk’s doing?”
“Yes. He picked tonight to want to read his book to Martha as far as he’s got. He’s really terribly enthusiastic about it, so naturally—”
“Say no more. But wasn’t she ready to go out?”
“Uh-huh. An appointment with a set designer... she said. She phoned somebody with her back turned and left a message that Mrs. Lawrence couldn’t make it at the last moment and would call tomorrow about another ‘appointment.’”
“A message he didn’t get. Okay, Nik. I was worried.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Hang around here a while. Maybe I’ll drop in later.”
“Oh, do!”
Ellery went back to his table.
Something new had been added during his absence. A thin small man in a dinner jacket had his palms planted on Van Harrison’s table and was leaning over it, talking. The man had pointed ears and a Hallowe’en smile and whatever he was saying amused him greatly. But it was not amusing Van Harrison. Harrison was looking ugly and old. His long, beautiful hands were clasped about his soup bowl and his knuckles showed pale points. Ellery had the oddest conviction that what Van Harrison wanted to do, more than anything else in the world at that moment, was to pick up the bowl and jam it over the thin man’s face.
Then the man in the dinner jacket turned his head slightly and Ellery recognized him. It was Leon Fields.
Fields’s syndicated column, Low and Inside, was the pièce de résistance of over six hundred daily newspapers serving the appetites for gossip, rumor, and innuendo of unestimated millions of the sensation-hungry. His juiciest paragraphs were headed: LEON FIELDS MEAN TODAY, and these dished out the filets mignons of his nightly shopping excursions in the supermarkets of Broadway and café society. As a famous wit remarked to Ellery one night at the Colony, while they watched Fields tablehopping, “One hint that Leon’s in the neighborhood, and nobody goes to bed.”
Fields had the unadmired reputation of never losing his meat once he got the scent. On the Rialto it was earnestly said that nothing had been surer than death and taxes until Leon Fields came along.
Ellery had followed his career with clinical interest, and it had only recently dawned on him that Fields was a much-maligned character. The evidence was hidden and scattered, but it was there. Viewed without prejudice, Fields’s activities took on an almost moral blush. He never hounded the innocent; his victims were invariably guilty. Unsavory as some of his tidbits were, no one had ever been able to make him swallow his own words. When Fields printed it, there was a fact behind it somewhere. And Ellery had heard of numerous targets of other columnists whom Fields had spared because they were victims of circumstances. He was as quick to defend as to condemn, and some of his most vicious manhunts had been undertaken in the interests of the helpless and the wronged. He had once written in his column: “Last week a Certain Nobody called me a son-of-a-you-know. Thanks, pal. My mother was an underdog. What was yours?”
The possibility that Leon Fields was on the trail of Van Harrison lowered Ellery’s body-temperature with great rapidity.
He watched anxiously.
And suddenly Harrison was on his feet, fists waving. He said something to Fields, and the thin man’s smile vanished. The columnist’s hand reached for the sugar bowl. Harrison began to shove the table aside.
The floor-show was on and all eyes were on the performers. No one seemed to notice what was happening.
Ellery looked around. He could not afford to be seen by Harrison. But unless he could avert a brawl...
“Quick!” He grabbed the sleeve of the passing maître. “Break that up if you don’t want trouble!”
The startled maître got there just as Van Harrison’s arm came up with a fist at the end of it. He caught the fist, stepped between the two men, and said something very quickly. A large man in a tuxedo appeared from nowhere. In a moment the group had left the floor and two waiters were clearing Harrison’s table.
Ellery shoved a ten-dollar bill into his waiter’s hand and hurried after them.
They were in a milling huddle at the checkroom, Harrison being held ungently by the large man in the tuxedo. Ellery walked up behind Harrison and handed the girl his check and a quarter.
“Let go of me,” he heard Harrison say in a strangled baritone. “Take your hands off me.”
“Let him go,” said the columnist. “He’s harmless.”
“Okay if you say so, Mr. Fields,” said the large man.
“Just let me pay my check,” the actor raged. “If you’re not a yellow dog, you’ll be waiting for me outside.”
Fields spun on his heel and walked out.
A crowd was gathering. The large man began to disperse them.
Harrison flung a bill at the headwaiter, jammed his Homburg on his head, and strode out. His cheeks were gray and they were quivering.
Ellery followed.
The sidewalk under the marquees was deserted; plays along 46th Street had just settled down to their second acts. The columnist was waiting under the marquee of a darkened theater ten yards up the street.
Harrison broke into a run. Toward Fields.
Ellery quickened his pace, looking back over his shoulder. A knot of people had formed at the entrance of the Diamond Horseshoe, craning. As he looked, they began to move toward him in a body. Somebody across the street turned to shout something. A man wearing a camera on a leather strap appeared, stared, began to cross on a long diagonal run. A cruising cab shot by, jammed on its brakes, and backed up to the dark theater.
When Ellery turned around, Harrison and Fields had disappeared.
He lowered his head and sprinted.
“They’re in the alley.” The cab driver was leaning out. “What is it, a fight?”
“For God’s sake, don’t go away!” Ellery dashed into the alley.
They were rolling up and down in the darkness. The actor was cursing and sobbing, Fields was silent. He’s slighter and shorter than Harrison, thought Ellery, and thirty pounds lighter. He hasn’t a chance.
Ellery groped toward the commotion, shouting, “Stop it, you fools! Do you want the police in on this?”
A tangle of arms and legs jarred him, and he staggered back to bang his shoulder blades against the brick wall of the theater.