Brett Halliday: The Homicidal Virgin

The trace of a foreign accent persisted in her voice. Slavic, Shayne guessed. Or possibly Hungarian.

He sensed movement beside him, and looked up to see the young girl standing very close to his table. She leaned forward from the hips slightly, and her dark, humid eyes were fixed on his face in a sort of desperate appeal. Her voice was light and fluttery and frightened:

“Pardon me, but aren’t you… I think I recognize you… aren’t you Mike Wayne?”

“Sure,” he said heartily, pushing back his chair and standing up, extending his hand to take her hot fingers in his. “I thought I recognized you, too, Jane, when you first walked in, but it’s been so long that I wasn’t sure. I was just sitting here waiting…”

Harlequin stood up with her stinger in her hand and said composedly, “You will pardon me for intruding. Now that you are no longer alone I will go back to my corner. I thank you for the drink.”

Shayne said, “It was a pleasure,” and she turned away and the girl slid into the chair she had vacated with a little frightened exhalation of relief.

“I didn’t know what to do when I saw her come over and sit down. I knew it was you and that if I didn’t break it up you’d most likely think she was me. And I didn’t know what you might say to her.”

She was trembling, and Shayne reassured her gently, “I didn’t give anything away. What will you drink?”

“Nothing. That is… well, nothing really. I hardly ever drink.” She fluttered incredibly long and incredibly black lashes over violet eyes, and asked in a small voice, “What are you drinking?”

“Cognac.” Shayne lifted his glass and swallowed half of it.

“That’s a kind of brandy, isn’t it? Imported from France?”

Shayne said, “That’s right,” with amusement in his voice.

“Well, wouldn’t you… wouldn’t it be more private up in my suite? I’m sure I can order a bottle of whatever you want from Room Service.”

“I think that’s an extremely good idea.” Shayne finished off his drink and took a sip of ice water. He looked around for the waiter and crooked a bony finger at him, got out his wallet and extracted a bill.

The waiter brought a bar-check face down on a silver dish and Shayne laid the bill on top of it without looking at the amount.

He left fifty cents when the waiter brought his change, then got up and moved behind the girl to draw her chair back. She stood beside him, the top of her glistening black hair barely coming above his shoulder, and Shayne tucked her arm in his and led her past the end of the bar, nodding politely to the woman with the tinted glasses who had resumed her contemplative posture at the bar with chin supported by the backs of her hands.

Jane Smith unlocked a door on the fourth floor and stood aside to allow Shayne to enter a pleasant sitting room that showed no sign whatsoever of human occupancy. Two floor lamps were lighted at opposite ends of the room, and two closed doors led off to what Shayne assumed would be bedroom and bath.

The girl closed the door tightly behind her while Shayne strolled across the room, and asked in a controlled voice, “Cognac, you said? Any particular brand?”

He stopped at curtained windows and turned with a reassuring smile. “I don’t really need a drink, Jane.”

“But I want you to have one,” she told him with quiet dignity, crossing to the telephone and putting her hand on it. “Please tell me what to order.”

“Just ask for a double shot of Monnet cognac… with a pitcher of ice. And whatever you want.”

She lifted the instrument and tilted her chin determinedly, said, “Room Service, please,” into the mouthpiece, and then: “This is number four twenty-six. Miss Smith speaking. I’d like a double cognac… Monnet, please. Yes, a double,” she repeated firmly. “And some ice if you don’t mind. And could you send a limeade or lemonade with it?” She paused, listening carefully, then nodded and said, “That’s correct. Room four twenty-six.”

She replaced the receiver and told Shayne, “It will be right up.”

He moved away from the window to a deep chair at the end of the room, and sank into it, stretched his long legs out in front of him and advised her, “Sit down and relax. You’re wound up as tight as a violin string. Smoke?” He got out a pack of cigarettes and started to get up.

She shook her head, crossed to the sofa close to him and dropped into it, curling her feet up under her. “I don’t really like to smoke. If I inhale it makes me dizzy… and it seems silly to smoke if you don’t.”

Shayne said gravely, “I guess that’s right. A waste of time and money.” He lit his own cigarette and inhaled blissfully. “Was it you tailing me tonight?”

“Yes. All the way from your hotel in Miami.” She drooped her lashes and caught her underlip between her teeth. “Who else do you think I could trust?”

Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know very much about anything. Except here we are… and I’m willing to listen.”

“You don’t know how awful I felt,” she burst out, “when the News didn’t run my advertisement in the Personal Column. I just felt like it was the end of the world. I had considered the possibility that they might refuse it,” she added honestly. “But I tried so darned hard to make it sound innocent and innocuous. I guess I didn’t succeed, did

“Not quite. If you hadn’t underlined ‘anything’ that second time…”

“But it seemed to me that if I didn’t, there wasn’t much point in the whole thing,” she pointed out defensively. “And I did so hope the right sort of man would see it and be intrigued.”

“Someone like me?”

“I… think so. That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? When your reply did come, I just felt as though God had planned it that way. Instead of having to sift through dozens of answers, there was only yours. And it sounded, well… mature and serious.”

There was a knock on her door. She uncurled her legs and got up to admit a bellboy with a tray. He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the sofa and offered her a check and a pencil to sign it with.

Shayne got up lazily from his chair while she signed Jane Smith in round, schoolgirlish script, got a dollar from his wallet and dropped it on top of the signed slip when she put it down.

The boy thanked them both and went out, and she told Shayne defensively, “You didn’t have to pay the tip. I fully intended…”

Shayne grinned and waved a big hand. “That’s cheap for a double cognac.”

He dipped ice cubes into a water glass and turned to the two closed doors. “Which is the bathroom?”

“On your left.”

He went through a door into a bathroom as antiseptically neat and uncluttered as the living room, ran water on top of the ice and returned. She was curled up on the sofa again with a tall glass of yellowish liquid and ice cubes out of which she was sucking from two straws.

Shayne got his double cognac from the tray and carried it with the glass of ice water to his chair. He sank back and took a meditative sip, and then asked bluntly, “What’s all the cloak and dagger stuff about, Jane? Supposing the price is right… exactly what do you want from me?”

She said firmly, “I think I should know a great deal more about you before I go into that.” She hesitated, then asked timidly, “Are you a professional gunsel?”

Shayne grinned. “You’ve been reading imitators of Dashiell Hammett. They completely misinterpreted that word.”

“Well then, a hood? A… a trigger-man? Because you don’t act or sound like one,” she went on with painful honesty. “Or at least the way I always thought one would be.”