“I’ll do my best.” She relaxed with her shoulder against Shayne’s, her fingers still clinging to his.
The cab slowed and turned off North Rampart onto Esplanade Avenue with its stately palm trees and live-oaks and magnolias, and with aged, shuttered homes that had once been palatial residences of the socially prominent in the French city.
Now the street was deserted and silent. The cab glided along slowly for more than two blocks, then turned under a grilled iron archway bearing a discreet neon sign, Club Daphne. A gravel drive circled between double rows of palms to the rear courtyard of one of the stately old residences which had been converted into a parking lot. More than a dozen cars were parked in the lot, though no light shone from the shuttered windows of the ancient house and no sound came through the thick walls of stone.
A single ruby light glowed at the end of a vine-covered latticework approach to the rear entrance. The driver stopped and opened the rear door. He said, “The last floor show will just about be starting,” as Shayne and Lucile got out.
Shayne gave him a dollar, took Lucile’s arm, and led her up a flagged walk under the latticework to a heavy oak door reinforced with thick strips of pounded copper.
The door swung open silently as they neared it and a young Negro boy greeted them with a white-toothed smile. “Yas suh,” he intoned, “yo’ jes in time fo’ de las’ flo’ show.”
The rhythmic beat of a boogie-woogie pulsed through a long, dark-paneled hallway leading in from the rear door. Shayne traded his hat for a check from the boy and they went along a strip of heavy carpeting to an arched doorway at the end of the hall.
A bald-headed man in a dinner jacket met them in the doorway. He lifted his brows and said, “Two?” and guided them into a large, dark room.
A raised platform in the center had an orange spotlight beating down upon two Negro girls performing mad gyrations to the beat of a concealed orchestra. The dancers were very young with sinuous yellow bodies which were nude except for loin cloths and a single red rosette for each breast.
Shayne and Lucile followed the guide between close-ranked tables which were occupied by a few indefatigable patrons. He led them to a small table in the second row from the platform and seated them just as the two quadroons finished their mad dance to a mild spattering of applause.