Lowdown on a Casanova
Lurking is something I’m clumsy at. I wouldn’t look right in one of those cloak-and-dagger outfits. Besides I doubt if espionage agents get much dope by sneaking around in the shadows.
So I used my cigarette lighter; it must have showed up about like a firefly against that immense, dark lawn. But they saw it, stopped their intimate chatter, clicked on a light bracketed from a stanchion of the pier.
“Dow? That you?” She had an agreeably soft voice; I couldn’t tell whether the curious breathless quality was her normal way of speaking, or whether she was afraid.
I put an inquiry into my “Mrs. Lanerd?” though of course I’d seen her often in the Calypso Room with Mr. Giveaway.
Glowing — that was the word for Margery Lanerd. Not beautiful. Blue eyes, an electric blue that blazed hotly under the stark brightness of the pier light. A red-and-freckles, tomboyish, sunburnished face with a mobile mouth and expressive eyebrows that seemed to be always in motion. The chestnut mane, caught around her forehead with a blue ribbon, sleeking down to bare shoulders, reminded me of coppery colts in the paddock sunlight at Belmont. She held herself tense; her left hand pressed against her slim, bare midriff. Keeping her emotions under tight control.
“Did you want to see me?” Fear, close to the surface.
I said I’d driven out from New York to see her husband; the servant had told me Mister Lanerd wasn’t home; could she suggest where I might get hold of him?
No. She could not. What was my business with him?
“Saw your husband at the Plaza Royale tonight, Mrs. Lanerd, I’m Gilbert Vine, security chief at the hotel, and a little matter has come up—” I left it vague enough to cover anything.