“No.”
“Right,” I said, and slid him the five spot. He snapped it up the way a lizard nails a fly.
I was moving away when he leaned forward and whispered, “Here they come now.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw them. Being interested in women, I looked first at Miss Spence. She had on a pair of long-waisted, rust-coloured slacks, Bata shoes, a brown and white print shirt and an orange scarf. Apart from being a trifle heavy in the beam, she had a longlimbed languorous figure. Her red hair was as artificial as her long-spiked eye-lashes. Her mouth was wide and glistening, and her eyes were the colour of forget-me-nots, and as expressionless. She wore Revlon’s “Fatal Apple” make-up (the most tempting new colour since Eve winked at Adam). As she wafted past me on a cloud of No. 5 Chanel, I observed the utterly disdainful expression on her face and the strange sins that lurked in her eyes.
I decided it’d be interesting to have a session with her, providing two strong men were outside the door to rescue me if the going got too tough, and if she left me enough strength to scream for help.
The Basque was a turn on his own. He was tall and broad and unpleasantly strong looking, and as lithe as a jungle cat and twice as dangerous. His brown, lean face was coldly savage, and there was a chilled expression in his eyes that didn’t make you feel you wanted to slap him on the back.
Miss Spence handed over the keys to the hall porter as if he was the invisible man, and then strolled across the lobby, with Gomez tailing her.
As she walked, she managed to make her hips quiver, and all the men in the lobby, including me, peeped at them.
Half way across, she paused to ask her boy friend for a cigarette. He was lighting it for her when a loudspeaker extension crackled into life.
“Paradise Palms Police Department,” said a tinny voice. The loudspeaker hummed slowly, then spluttered to sound: “Repeat as of nine fifteen on Herrick killing. Wanted: Chester Cain. Description: six foot one—a hundred and ninety pounds —about thirty-five—dark hair—sallow complexion—wearing grey suit, grey soft hat. Probably trying to get out of town… don’t take any chances—he’s dangerous. Anyone recognizing the wanted man should report at once by telephone to the Police Department. No attempt should be made to apprehend this man unless you are armed. That is all.”