Sooner or later, Cates reflected, the gangster would pull a fast one. Cates wanted to be at hand when that happened.
Now and then hard-faced men strolled through the grounds, but they gave not a second glance to the small, inoffensive young man who stood looking through the big windows.
Young men like that were common outside the Salon Quintesse, drawn there by a wistful desire to listen to the smashing jazz and enviously to watch the dancers.
The music stopped. Cates could see the dancers going to their tables. A hum of conversation sounded. A woman’s silvery laugh rose above the tuning of a soprano saxophone. No one seemed to know that the life of a radio cop had been threatened. Had they known they would not have cared. Things are that way in places like the Salon Quintesse.
The music started up again with a preliminary tinkle of a piano. Now some one had appeared from the entertainer’s room and was dancing. It was a girl, small and exquisite.
Dave Cates edged nearer the window, and started violently as he saw her face. Smiling radiantly, dipping, whirling, gliding, the dancer was none other than the girl who had kissed him.
“Well, I’ll be a seagoing brook trout!” murmured Cates.
His first thought was that she was connected with Big Ed Margolo’s gang. Paid entertainers and gangsters frequently run together. Then he dismissed the thought as unworthy. Had she been connected in any way with Margolo she would not have risked her life to save some one she didn’t know.
On the other hand, how had she known about the “ride”? And why hadn’t Fiske shot? Doubts beset the radio cop; doubts that increased when he realized it was not a certainty that Margolo had ordered his death.
Frowning, Cates watched the girl float about the room as effortlessly as a bit of down caught up by a vagrant breeze. Lovely, fascinating!