Chapter 7

WE ARRIVED at the party shortly after eight o'clock. This was rather late, however, for the thing had been under way since before two and almost everybody was having a pretty gay ball of it by the time we got there.

Elsa, who knew most of the people, introduced me around. There were several prosperous-appearing manufacturers, a diamond-studded woman who controlled a popular brand lipstick, a few fashion designers and a radio disc jockey whose evening programs Sandy and I had been in the habit of listening to during her long illness. And, of course, there were girls. Lots of girls, all of them pretty, all of them alternately drinking and laughing as the situation might require.

"It just goes on and on until everybody passes out," Elsa told me.

The affair was in a five-room suite on the third floor of the Oxford Hotel. The Oxford, I might point out, is strictly upper bracket sleeping grounds and five rooms on any one of the floors would cost at least two hundred dollars a day. I asked Elsa if our host, Andy Willis, lived in the hotel.

"Oh, no," she assured me. "This is just a front."

Everything, I later decided, was a front. No one was being honest in either their conversations or their actions. The men discussed vague deals that "run way up into the thousands," while the girls criticized Dior for his negative approach to the bustline. It was all, to my way of thinking, quite boring. The buyers and manufacturers present were, in reality, only interested in the girls and what they could get from them. And the girls, aware of this, were playing it very coy, hoping, I assumed, that the eventual rewards for their favors would mount in proportion to their resistance.

Hardly anybody paid any attention to me. Andy Willis, who was quite drunk, shook my hand and, I thought, failed to recognize me. And Gladys Lord merely shrugged my presence aside, as though I were nothing more than a bellhop who had gotten off at the wrong floor. While, to be sure, this attitude was not at all flattering it had, from my point of view, certain advantages. No one seemed to care much about who I was or why I had put in an appearance. At least, I felt quite certain, I would not end this evening with a lump on my skull and an embarrassing trip to night court.

"Have you had a look at those Mother Nature bras, Harriet? God, but they're something! You pump air into the cups and away you go-straight up."

"Dior simply doesn't have it any more, darling. Everybody knows that."

"No, I certainly don't need to go on a diet, Mabel. It's this horrible dress. You wouldn't think they'd...."

"I'll tell you, Charley. Frankly, I'll say it. You put anything on a rack for seven ninety-eight and it'll go. What can they expect for a lousy...."

"You're kidding me, doll. Nobody ever hedges with old Morton Seeley. Why, when I fasten my eyes on something I like...." ' Bantering, idle, unnecessary words. Words that were completely empty.

"Hell," I said to Elsa, about nine-thirty. "What am I hanging around here for, anyway?"

Seyeral men had displayed more than a passing interest in Elsa's obvious charms and, while the probable result was annoying to me, I saw no reason for further jeopardizing her position with the agency. She, on the other hand, was quite insistent that I remain.

"I've just recently found out that I can live on seventy-five a week," she confided between cocktails. "Why should I keep on selling my soul for something that I can do without?"

It was a good question and one which had, off and on, bothered me. I wasn't, I was quite positive, in love with Elsa. After Sandy, I don't believe that love for Elsa's type would have been at all possible I enjoyed her company. And, I must admit, I also enjoyed the charms of her body which she gave to me so freely. Rut that was as far as it went. There wasn't anything more.

At a few minutes before ten he came in. Elsa and I were at the portable bar, having a drink with a buyer from St. Louis, when Elsa suddenly took me by one arm and pulled me aside.

"There he is, Bill. The one in the dark gray suit."

He was of medium height and he had a rather conspicuous red-cheeked, schoolboy-appearing face. I noticed that his hair was black and wavy and that his shoulders, although padded, seemed extremely narrow.

"When you get a chance," I said to Elsa, "ask him if he knows where you can locate Judith."

"All right, Bill." Her eyes were questioning. "But you could ask him yourself."

"No," I said. "Just see what he says."

I remained at the bar, drinking and talking with the buyer from St. Louis. I found him to be a tiresome individual and I was more than pleased when he switched his attention to a tall, leggy blonde in a yellow dress.

"He says he hasn't heard from her," Elsa said upon her return. Her eyes were worried. "Gee, Bill, what do you think could have happened to her?"

This information wasn't totally unexpected.

"I don't know. Ask him for another card."

"I did. But he said he wasn't interested any more."

"I see." I took a long drink of my highball. "Well, thanks."

I hung around with Elsa for a while, having a few more drinks and talking to some people. When I noticed that she had become involved in a long discussion with a maker of suits and coats I interrupted to say that I didn't feel well and that I was leaving. She appeared to be surprised and unhappy at this development but I assured her that it was nothing serious, just a minor weakness left over from my army career, and that I would be all right in the morning. When I left the suite I noted that the man in the gray suit was busily engaged in a conversation with an invited model from the Towne Agency. I lingered at the door for a moment, long enough to see him hand the smiling girl a small white card.

I hailed a cab as soon as I reached the street, but told the driver that I didn't want to go anywhere just then, that I was waiting for somebody to emerge from the hotel. I had him park at the curb.

"It's going to cost you," he said after half an hour. "Plenty."

I gave him ten dollars, as a token of good faith, and he became more friendly. We talked about baseball, football and the Thursday night wrestling matches which were televised from Capitol Arena in Washington. We were deep in a heated debate as to the respective merits of Verne Gagne and Argentina Rocco when the man I was waiting for came out into the street and climbed into a year-old Caddy convertible parked halfway down the block.

It was quite easy for my driver to follow him. The Caddy moved crosstown to the Parkway and then turned right, heading north. Four or five miles upriver we crossed the Twin Cities Bridge and about a mile past that we swung down off the three lanes of concrete and continued along a narrow macadam road that curled like a snake's track up into the hills.

"Nothing but rich people up in this Panther Ridge section," the driver told me. "You know many of them?"

"No."

"What are we following this guy for, then?"

"I just want to see where he goes."

A couple of miles further on, I found out. The Caddy, which had been traveling at a moderate rate of speed, stopped in front of a very large colonial type house. The driver got out and hurried up the walk toward the front door. I noticed, as we passed, that much of the adjoining yard was concealed by a high, split-pole fence.

"Looks like one of them forts you see in those old pictures," my driver said. "Creepy."

At the next driveway, which was fully half a mile distant, I told the cab driver to, turn around. The Caddy, I discovered upon our return, was still parked in front of the house.

"You want to go in, mister?" . I told him I didn't but that I would like to stop at the gasoline station located near the quickway. I hoped that we wouldn't find it closed. It wasn't.

At first the young kid in the greasy overalls seemed unhappy about my visit so near to closing time but the dollar I gave him and my explanation of being desirous of obtaining some nearby property apparently met with his approval.

As far as he knew, the estate with the high picket fence wasn't for sale. At least, no one had ever mentioned it to him and he had gone up there several times, during the past summer, to pick up the Chrysler Imperial for grease and wash jobs. The woman-he thought she lived alone, though he wasn't sure-was named Eudora Channing and he had found her to be exceedingly generous.

"She always gives me a five-dollar tip," he said pride-fully.

I thanked the boy for this information and returned to the cab. Now that I knew the name of the woman I began to speculate as to what possible good it would do me. That, I felt sure, was most difficult to determine at the moment.

When we arrived back in the city I had the cab driver drop me off at my address. It wasn't until after I had been in the apartment five or ten minutes that I noticed the envelope which had been slipped beneath my door during my absence.

It was, in brief, a warning. The note, which was typewritten, advised me to terminate whatever work I was engaged in at the earliest possible moment.

The note, of course, was unsigned. Thoughtfully, while I lit a cigarette, I considered the contents with greater concern. Obviously, the note had not been written by the man I had met in Sibyl's Cafeteria. And, just as obviously, it had been written by someone who was well acquainted with my recent difficulties with the police. The two occurrences, I felt sure, were inseparable. The man with whom I had spoken at the cafeteria had, without question, arranged for my slugging and had called the police. My fine, and the confiscation of my briefcase, had been intended as a further warning. Now, for some reason, I had received a third, and more definite, threat.

In a way, I guess you could say that I was scared. Yet, even greater than my fear, was the anger I felt rising up inside. I thought of Elsa Lang and how she was being pushed around like an apple cart at a county fair and I reflected, for a long time, on the possible fate of Judith Call. I thought, too, and somewhat selfishly, about myself. Hell, I had a good thing writing automotive articles. I hadn't had any trouble until I'd met the Reverend Doctor Call and accepted his unusual offer. There was nothing to prevent me from giving up the whole thing and returning to the quiet life. Nothing, that is, except whatever conscience I might possess.

An hour later, having made my choice, I was packed and on my way out of the apartment.

I wondered if I would ever be sorry.