Below Suspicion (16 page)

Butler strode up to her. He threw his wrapped hat and coat under the table. All his theatricalism went into a great Gallic bow.

"Mademoiselle," he intoned, "]e vous ai remarquee. Votre heaut6, c'est comme un fleur dans un puisard. Vous permettez?"

Without further ceremony he took her hand, yanked her to her feet, and whirled the startled woman out into the throng of dancers.

(Where is Gold-teeth now? Where is he?)

Yet Patrick Butler could not be unconscious, in any sense whatever, of the woman he held in his arms.

"Your beauty," he continued in the same fluent French, "intoxicates and maddens me. Your breasts burn. Your body is a. . . ."

"Patrick," murmured the hesitant voice of Lucia Renshaw, "I don't think that's very nice."

Butler's step stumbled on the music-beat, so that he almost fell over her feet.

"Good God! You're not—"

"Of course!" The blue eyes regarded him strangely through the eyeholes of the mask. "Didn't you know who I was?"

"Good God, no!" said Butler, hastily relaxing his tight hold. "I apologize! I thought. . . ."

"Oh!" Lucia was silent for a moment, while the music throbbed and the blank mask-faces leered in changing lights. "Is that how you treat any woman," she asked sharply, "when you think she isn't—quite nice?"

"Frankly, yes."

For a moment, if he had noticed it, the blue eyes were furious. But their expression changed.

"It's all right, isn't it," asked Lucia in an indifferent voice, "if you tell me those things in French? That's not the same as in English, is it? And, even if you wanted to tell me those things in. . . ."

This was the point at which Gold-teeth appeared in the doorway, now with half a dozen ugly-tempered friends spreading out on either side.

It was the same doorway through which Butler had entered, though he and Lucia were now at the far end of the room. Yet—and this was what startled Butler—he saw Gold-teeth in a new guise.

There would be no mistaking the bony face with its detached sneer. But gone was the eyeshade of the billiard-saloon. Whatever Gold-teeth had been wearing downstairs, Butler could swear he had not been wearing the suit of soiled evening clothes which adorned him now.

And—there were no gold teeth.

As the misty beam of light melted from violet into yellow, the man's

face sprang out. He smiled, like the proprietor of this club—which he probably was, too,—and his front teeth were ordinary teeth.

He did not move. Neither did his companions. Their eyes moved slowly, carefully, patiently round the room. They carried moleys full of razor-blades. Butler thought of Lucia's face. Instinctively he pressed her closer again.

"That's better," Lucia murmured in the same casual voice, "As I was saying a moment ago—"

"Lucia!" He spoke sharply. "Why did you want to come to this club?"

"But I told you! Sometimes I—I just want to go to some disreputable place. Not to do anything I shouldn't, of course," Lucia added hastily, "but just to be there and watch. I expect most women do. But it's really awfully dull, isn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Butler, with his eye on Gold-teeth.

Gold-teeth, now without his dental gold, had moved forward and was walking among the dancers like a good host, examining each in turn.

"Why didn't you tell me," Butler whispered, "that the entrance to this place wasn't through that billiard-room?"

Lucia's eyes widened behind the mask. "But you didn't go. . . . My dear! There are two entrances here, without going through that billiard-room!"

"Two entrances? Where?"

"One is over there." Lucia nodded towards the well-guarded doorway he knew only too well. "There's a flight of steps that goes down to a passage."

"Yes, I've seen that one. Where's the other?"

"Just like the first. Only. . . ."

Again Lucia nodded. The second doorway was in the same wall as the first, but at the opposite end of the wall. Butler saw it clearly: two staircases descending parallel, but with a twenty-foot breadth of wall (as well as the orchestra platform) between them. All guards were concentrated near the first door^vay. At the second doorway. . . .

"Lucia, who's at that second doorway usually?" he whispered. "Another Spanish-looking ticket-seller?"

"Yes. Look! You can see him now."

"For God's sake don't point!"

He felt the sudden twitch of nervousness which ran through her.

"Pat, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just follow my lead."

Gold-teeth, slowly, was coming straight towards them.

Butler did not abruptly swing his partner and press through the crush in another direction. That was what Gold-teeth was looking for. That was what all enemy eyes, carefully alert, were looking for: some betraying sign of panic. Butler steered Lucia straight towards Gold-teeth.

(We can't get out that second doorway. One man might do it, but not with Lucia. Those bruisers would run across too quickly and intercept. Got to heat the heetle-wits some other way. Got to.. . .)

Butler, surging with his partner in erratic steps, bent close to the ear of a man in a black mask.

"Cops," he muttered, with a slight movement of his head towards the men in the first doorway. "Better clear out."

Nothing happened. The black mask merely stared at him and drifted past. Butler did not expect him to make a bee-line for that second doorway. But the seed was being sown, in a place full of wide-boys with hair-trigger consciences. The word would whisper and ripple and spread

"Cops," muttered Butler to another, always indicating the first doorway. "Better clear out."

Gold-teeth was now ten feet away.

Bang went the cymbals in the orchestra. The four-piece dance band crept their way into a famous song whose heavy beat and macabre power pluck at the nerves and heighten the senses. The piano player, bending close to a microphone, sang with hollow softness:

Through the smoke and flame I've got to go where you are . . .

A new intimacy shivered through the masked dancers. One man and his partner, a girl of about sixteen, bumped past oblivious, their mouths locked together. Yet the whisper and rustle, "Cops, better clear out," crept like the snake-shuffle of feet.

"It's—it's rather warm in here," Lucia murmured. "Don't you think we'd better leave?"

"We're going to," said Butler. "Cops. Better clear out."

"Pat, what is wrong?"

"In a minute or so I'm going to do some damned queer dance-steps," he whispered. "Will you follow me even if I have to drag you by the hair?"

"Yes!" whispered Lucia. He could feel her breathe. "Yes, yes, yes!" They were now beside Gold-teeth, just behind him.

Ain't no chains can bind you. It you live I'll find you ...

With infinite joy, in the dim crimson light, Butler launched a vicious kick at Gold-teeth's shins; then he and Lucia, dodging, melted behind two other pairs of dancers as the light changed.

Gold-teeth's cry of pain and rage, uncontrollable, shrilled up like the effect of a dentist's needle under a tooth. At the same moment Butler swept close to another black-masked man.

"Cops," he muttered, with a same nod. "Better clear out."

And something snapped like a fiddle-string.

Black-mask, whoever he was, stopped dead and dropped his hands from his girl. He whispered something to her. He whipped round and hurried for that second doorway with such quickness and fluent movement that he had a long start before anybody noticed him.

Gold-teeth, his hand raised above the crowd, was pointing frantically. There was a sort of silent explosion among the watchers near the first doorway. Unobtrusively but swiftly they moved out and along the wall, past the Httle orchestra platform, towards the second doorway. . . .

"Now!" said Butler.

Gold-teeth's men wouldn't nab the fleeing black-mask on the dance floor, and risk starting a riot. They would nab him about half-way down the stairs—and discover they had got the wrong man.

For about twenty seconds, now, that first doorway would be unguarded.

12

UT not entirely unguarded.

Gold-teeth, who was seldom at a loss and never missed a trick, instantly was elbowing his way back to the first doorwav—just in case.

Butler, sweeping Lucia in front of him and using his right hand as a stiff-arm in case someone cannoned into her, followed Gold-teeth in a fast, crazy zig-zag. Imprecations rose behind him.

"Pat, what are you doing.^" demanded a now-frightened Lucia.

"We're clearing out ourselves. Just as you suggested."

"But my coat! My handbag!"

"Not your mink coat?"

"No. An old one. But my handbag's got—got a key in it. For the real adventure."

"Real adventure?"

"You promised me," Lucia's eyes were appealing, "that after we went to this place you'd go with me on a real adventure!"

"All right; but never mind the key. Keep quiet, now!"

Gold-teeth, reaching the first doorway, had whipped round. His little eyes were eager. Two fingers of his right hand touched the end of a closed straight-bladed razor in his left sleeve.

Butler and Lucia, the former abruptly altering the pace to normal, danced straight up and to the side of Gold-teeth, while Butler spoke softly but passionately in French.

"—et je t'adore," he concluded; and deliberately stumbled all over Lucia's feet. Lucia gave an involuntary exclamation. Butler pushed her away from him, slightly jostling Gold-teeth as he stepped back.

"MademoiseiJe," he bleated in an agony of apology, "/e vous de-mande pardon/ Mille pardons, /e vous en prie.'" In the same humility and tenderness he turned to Gold-teeth. "Et vous, monsieur, sale chameau et fiis de putain. . . ."

With his left hand, in a noble Gallic gesture, he removed his mask. With his right he hit Gold-teeth full in the mouth.

Somewhere far behind him, a woman screamed.

Whether this was due to his own action or—as was more probable— to a violent commotion at the opposite doorway, Butler could not tell. He was far too much occupied.

The razor, snakelike, had been open in Gold-teeth's hand an instant before Butler hit him. Gold-teeth, staggering backwards across a narrow landing, turned his heel on the topmost step. He pitched backwards, with a face of ludicrous surprise above the blood, and rolled down the stairs like a wooden doll.

The Spanish ticket-seller, jumping to his feet behind the table, suddenly decided he had no interest in this matter. He sat back again.

"Hitch up your skirt," Butler said to Lucia, "and run down like hell after me. If they've had the sense to send men outside and cover this front door "

They hadn't.

Stepping over Gold-teeth, who lay momentarily stunned at the foot of the stairs, they raced towards the street door. It was unlocked, as usual for the club upstairs. Outside Dean Street lay in chill and half-mist, with not even a noise of commotion from the other entrance beyond the billiard-saloon.

They had discarded their masks. A shivering woman in thin evening clothes, a disreputably clad man without hat or overcoat, hurried in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue.

"You needn't look for a taxi," Lucia told him, trying in vain to keep up with his long steps despite her good height. "Your car's parked very close to here."

"My car?"

"Yes. I decided, for the real adventure," Lucia hesitated, "we'd better have a car. Just after you'd left home I 'phoned your chauffeur. . . ."

"Where's the car now?"

"Just off Cambridge Circus. Behind the Palace Theatre."

"God bless you!" Butler's nerves were still twitching. "But I've got to find a telephone."

"What for?"

"To ring—preferably Superintendent Hadley, but anybody will do."

They found a public telephone-box only a few yards from where

Johnson, Butler's chauSeur, stood beside the long limousine. Butler sent Lucia ahead to the car. As usual nowadays, the glass-panelled telephone-box had no light; and, also as usual, its 'phone directories were ripped to rags. But it required little light and no directory to dial Whitehall 1212.

Butler returned to the car in three minutes. He found Lucia in warm grey-upholstered gloom, sitting back in a comer and smoothing back her yellow hair. Butler got into the car, and Johnson slammed the door. Butler and Lucia looked at each other.

The hot, fuggy atmosphere of the dance-club still enclosed them. Its images were there. Butler, not yet feeling any let-down, was as nervously alert and strung-up as though he could never sleep again.

"Feeling—safer?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" Lucia's smile was broad enough to show fine teeth. But she hesitated again. "It was awful, I suppose. But there was a kind of horrible fascination about it. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds!"

"Ch6he, je—" Butler stopped, his throat choked up, in sheer admiration and strength of sympathy. It was exactly what he felt himself.

"Tu dis?" inquired Lucia, lowering her eyes.

"What's that?"

"I noticed," said Lucia, "that once or twice you used the familiar tu instead of the formal vous. In speaking to me, I mean."

"Which would you rather have me use?"

"Oh, the familiar. Of course."

Patrick Butler moved sideways, put his arm round Lucia, and kissed her mouth for so long that he lost count of time. It was obvious, from answering gestures of the mouth, that Lucia shared his own sentiments.

He did not now think about any spiritual quality, on which he had commented so forcibly and lyrically last night. He was entirely concerned, and very eager, about other aspects of Lucia. For, if this sort of thing went on very long, it was clear that. . . .

"No! Don't!" said Lucia. She began to struggle, and pushed him away. "I mean, not here! Not now! And, since they're going to arrest me. . . ."

"They're not going to arrest you," said Butler, trying to control his breathing. "By the way, have I neglected to mention that I'm in love with you?"

"You did rather neglect it, yes." Lucia, whose white scarf round the

neck had become disarranged, tucked its ends back into the low-cut bosom of her gown. "Still, there's heaps of time to. . . ."