The Guilty Are Afraid

The room was around fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. On each side were long low counters which held more specimens of pottery. Girls, wearing white coats with the fish symbols on the pockets, stood behind the counters. They watched the bunch come in with bored eyes. I found myself thinking that Thelma Cousins had probably stood behind one of these counters and had probably watched a similar bunch of tourists with the same bored look only a few days ago.

There were about twenty girls in the big room, all dressed alike, all shapes and sizes, all ready to sell something the moment anyone paused or was unwise enough to handle the ugly specimens of pottery on show.

At the far end of the room was an open doorway across which hung a wine-red curtain. A hard-faced blonde sat on the chair by the curtain, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap. She looked as if she had been sitting like that for a long time.

I tagged along in the rear of the tourists, pausing when they paused, shuffling on when they shuffled on. It surprised me the amount of stuff they bought: the prices were high and the stuff was pure junk.

I kept my eye on the curtained doorway. I had an idea that it was beyond that curtain the real business was done. A fat old woman, her wrinkled fingers loaded with diamond rings, carrying a wheezing Pekinese, suddenly came out from behind the curtain. She nodded to the hard-faced blonde, who gave her an indifferent stare. The old woman walked down the centre aisle and went out. Through one of the big windows I saw her heading for a Cadillac where a chauffeur was waiting.

I caught the eye of one of the girls behind one of the long counters: a pretty little thing with a pert nose and a cheeky expression.

“Haven’t you anything better than this junk?” I asked.

“I’m looking for a wedding present.”

“Isn’t there anything you like here?” she asked, and tried to look surprised.

“Take a look yourself,” I said. “Is there anything here you’d want as a wedding present?”

She cast her eye around the room, then she pulled a little face.

“You could be right. Will you wait a moment?”

She left the counter and went over to the hard-faced blonde and spoke to her. The blonde looked me over. She didn’t appear to be impressed. I had no diamond rings, nor a Pekinese. I was just another jerk on vacation.

The girl I had spoken to came over to me.

“Miss Maddox will look after you,” she said, and indicated the hard-faced blonde.

As I moved over to her, she stood up. She had one of those hippy, bosomy figures you see in the nylon ads, but rarely in real life.

“Was there something?” she asked in a bored voice, her eyes running over me and not thinking much of what they saw.

“I’m looking for a wedding present,” I said. “You don’t call this muck a treasure house of original design, do you?”

She lifted her plucked eyebrows.

“We have other designs, but they come a little pricey.”

“They do? Well, you only get married once in a while. Let me see them.”

She drew aside the curtain.

“Please go in.”

I moved past her, through the doorway into a slightly smaller room. There were only about sixty specimens of Mr. Hahn’s art on show there; each had its own stand and was shown off to its best advantage. A quick look told me that this must be the stuff Margot had raved about. It was unlike the junk in the other room as crystal is unlike a diamond.

Miss Maddox flicked long fingers at the exhibits.

“Perhaps something like these?”

“Better,” I said, looking around. There was another curtain covering another doorway at the far end of the room with a redhead guarding it. “Can I wander around?”

Miss Maddox took a few steps away from me and rested her elegant hips against one of the counters. Her bored eyes told me I wasn’t kidding her for one moment. The exhibits in this room were certainly good. A bronze statue of a naked girl about ten inches high, with her hands covering her breasts, held me entranced. I could feel life flowing out of her. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had suddenly jumped off the pedestal on which she stood and had run out of the room.

“That’s nice,” I said to Miss Maddox. “What’s it worth?”

“Two thousand dollars,” she told me in that indifferent voice a car salesman will tell you the price of a Rolls.

“As much as that? It’s a little high for me.”

A small sneer came and went, and she moved a few more paces away from me.

The curtain of the doorway through which I had come moved aside and a fat, white-faced man came sliding in. He was wearing white flannel trousers, a natty blazer with an elaborate crest on its pocket and a six-inch cigar between his fat, white fingers.

I immediately recognized him.

It was the man Cordez had called Donaghue: the man who had handed over a thousand dollars for two match-folders the previous night when I had been looking through Cordez’s window.

Chapter 10

I