Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

She's stalling, he thought instantly. Her hands were motionless on the desk top. Buzzer under her foot, probably. Act II was due to be coming up any second now. He moved a casual step closer to her desk. “Worked? Hell, I worked at everything. I was rollin' furniture vans over the mountains between L.A. an' Houston before I was eighteen. Jimmy-diesels. Monsters. Load a mansion in one. We did, many a time. Like the time I moved the whorehouse into Silver City. Rainin' like the sun 'd gone out of style, an'-”

The door behind Gloria Philips was flung open, and a big man charged through it with so much energy that Johnny wondered why he had bothered to turn the knob. “What is it, Gloria?” the man demanded. He had a heavy, good-looking head set squarely on solid shoulders.

The redhead released a spatter of rapid-fire French. “This maniac speaks of blackmail, Jules. He was here with another whom he said was of the police and who has now gone to telephone. I don't understand the relationship; they were unfriendly, but the other truly looked of the police. This one works at the hotel where Claude died. Perhaps there is-”

Johnny leaned down over her desk again and knuckle-rapped it sharply for attention. “Un de ces jours tu prendras mon cul pour une tasse du cafe,” he said energetically. “Maybe today, eh? Why guess, when I'd be happy to tell you?”

Jules Tremaine flexed his arms and advanced deliberately from his open doorway around the end of the girl's desk. “Jules,” Gloria Philips said quietly. “Look at the neck.”

The big man looked. He didn't appear alarmed, but he halted, a thoughtful look on his handsome face.

“Thank the lady for doin' you a big favor, Jules,” Johnny said softly, coming down off the balls of his feet.

Jules Tremaine looked him up and down impersonally, then jerked his head at the doorway behind him. “Inside,” he said curtly. “We can talk in there.”

“That's the specific idea,” Johnny told him. He looked down at Gloria Philips. “You, too, little sister. I like you near me.”

He followed them into the inner office.

Jules Tremaine pushed a stack of papers from a corner of his high-piled desk and settled himself upon it, a leg swinging negligently and the big body at ease. “Sit there,” he directed, and nodded at a chair that would have placed him between Johnny and the door. He paid no attention at all to Gloria Philips, who had seated herself unobtrusively in the farthest corner.

“I'm doin' fine right here,” Johnny returned equably from where he stood, just inside the door.

Dark, wide-spaced eyes beneath heavy lids examined Johnny carefully. The jet black hair had a thick wave in it, and the smooth, olive features tapered to a square jaw. This man must have broken a thousand hearts, Johnny decided, but he was no pretty-boy. Tremaine's manner, as well as the blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands, contributed to an overall impression of rugged competence.

“Now let's get-” Tremaine checked himself. “Who are you?”

“The name's Killain. Johnny.” He nodded at the redhead in her corner. “Shouldn't we stuff little sister's ears before we begin? I wanted her here to keep her off the phone.”

“You can talk.”

“Suit yourself,” Johnny shrugged. “I got something to sell, Tremaine. It takes a bankroll to buy. Dechant furnished the merchandise. You interested?”

Heavy-lidded eyes, beneath straight black brows, stared unwinkingly into Johnny's. “In the first place, I don't believe you.”

Johnny swept a hand in a leisurely semicircle around the disorder of the shabby office. “You don't look to me like you got enough firepower financially, what I see here,” he said critically. “I need a real money tree. If you can't weigh in heavy enough, it'd be real cozy if you'd steer me to whichever of the others figured to shower down the most. I wouldn't forget it.”

“The others?” Tremaine's tone was sharp.

“Sure. Max, maybe. Jack, or Harry. Madeleine, even. For the right steer I could make you a deal.”

“Send him to Stitt,” the redhead said rapidly in Italian from her corner. “With the trouble over the symbols-”

“Shut up!” Jules Tremaine's hard voice rapped tightly on the heels of hers, but he didn't turn to look at her. “He speaks French. Why not Italian?” The heavy-lidded eyes measured Johnny. “I think he knows nothing. He fishes in troubled waters.”

“Trouble's the word, chum,” Johnny said in his most reasonable tone. “Since we know there's goin' to be some, I'm in favor of makin' a dollar on the prospect. Whose side are you on? The people with the money, or Tremaine's?” He reached behind him for the doorknob at the other's silence. “The hell with it. I don't like doin' business with people who can't make up their mind. I'll go it alone.”

“Jules!” Gloria Philips exclaimed as Johnny opened the door.

“Shut up,” the big man repeated, but not as positively as before. Johnny closed the door from the other side and walked through the outer office. He was surprised that he hadn't been called back by the time the elevator he had summoned stopped at the eighteenth floor. Tremaine either had good nerves or was slow on the uptake. Not that it mattered-there was an easy way to copper the bet.

In the lobby he went straight to the phone booth. He found fourteen Stitts in the directory. One John, who could be Jack, and one Max. Johnny scribbled phone numbers and addresses on the back of a matchbook cover. On second thought, he went back to the directory and tried Stit, with one “t.” Only three, and no Jack, John or Max.

He referred to the directory for the third time, fished a dime from the change in his pocket and dialed the number of the Spandau Watch Co. He listened appreciatively to Gloria Philips' cool voice at the other end of the line. “'Bout time for your coffee break, isn't it, little sister?” he asked her in Italian.

He could hear the perceptible intake of her breath. “I'm sorry I'm late. We've been busy. I'll be right down.”

Nice to find someone with a normal quota of curiosity, Johnny thought. He strolled back to the bank of elevators to wait for her. He had a smile on his face for Gloria Philips when she stepped out into the lobby. She looked at him, a long, speculative look, and then without a word steered him to the coffee-shop door on the left and on through the cafeteria-style aisle.

En route to a corner table behind her, with their coffees on a tray, he noted that her suit-blue, today-enhanced her ripened curves commendably. Even in daylight, the rich auburn hair had a remarkable sheen.

“I can't understand why I feel you're not a fool,” she commented at the table as he unloaded the tray. Her glance ranged over him guardedly. “The way you blundered in upstairs was nothing short of idiotic, but-”

Her eyes at close range were a chameleonlike blue-gray, Johnny decided, and the tiny freckles even more attractive than he had remembered. “No sugar, thanks,” she said. She picked up her cup and sipped at it, her eyes still upon him above the rim. “You could be a fool, I suppose,” she remarked as she set the cup down. “But I think I like you, anyway.” She smiled at him.

Johnny felt his interest rising by the moment. When this girl smiled, the lights dimmed. “What's a looker like you doin' workin' for Tremaine?” he asked her bluntly.

The smile was as cool as the voice. “I could find you a thousand girls-” she glanced at the square-cut watch on her plump wrist-“between now and lunch time who'd love to work for Jules.”

“So he's a doll. You're not moonstruck. You reacted upstairs faster than he did.” He reached across the table to take her wrist in his hand for a better look at the watch, and small diamonds winked in the light. “About fifteen, eighteen hundred,” Johnny estimated. “If these go with the job, I take back what I said.” He released her wrist, although she had made no move to withdraw it. He must be getting old, he decided. He hadn't felt skin like that in years. “You think I should see Stitt?”