Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

She sipped her drink. “It shows, doesn’t it — my jealousy? You noticed it.”

“Nothing shows that shouldn’t,” I assured her. “But wishing her dead — that’s a little rough, don’t you think? Why don’t you just wish she would fall in love with someone else?”

“Love?” she said, as though it were a foreign word. “Love? She’s not in love with him. She’s played him for a sucker ever since she started to work here.”

“And him? He’s in love with her, isn’t he?”

“Hmmm. He could be. He wants her badly enough. I... it’s hard to think of him in love with anything but money or power. If you know what I mean?”

“Just vaguely,” I said. Her glass was now empty. “Could I buy you another drink?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It would bring me dawn a grade. My drinks are all free. If customers start buying them for me, well, you know—”

I ordered another Scotch, and she a rye. The violin had stopped and somebody was getting hot with a piano. Eight out of the jungle, this piano, all left hand.

“What is she like?” I asked Judy.

“Flame? Like her name, sort of. I mean, there was fire there, there was a burning. Maybe it was just ambition, maybe it was just-greed.”

“And maybe you’re prejudiced.”

“That could be.” She looked at my glass. “You’re a slow drinker.”

I finished it in a swallow. “I think I’ll have rye, too, this time.”

The bartender filled mine up without comment. But he said to Judy: “Mr. Every isn’t going to like this, Miss Meredith. You remember last time—”

“To hell with Mr. Every,” Judy said. “If I can’t get it here, I’ll go somewhere else. Mr. Jones will take me, won’t you, Mr. Jones?”

“Gladly,” I said, and meant it. She was a comfortable girl to be with. Not quieting, but comfortable.

The bartender shrugged, and poured out the Whiskey.

There was a silence, and then she looked over at me. “You know where she is, don’t you? That’s what you came to tell Val.”

“I don’t know where she is. I’m looking for her.”

“You’re working for Val, aren’t you? He’d be afraid to have one of his own boys look for her.” She stopped then, and I looked over to find the bartender glaring at her.

“I’m not working for Val,” I said. “The guy who was is dead. He was killed in his office, this afternoon.”

I scarcely heard the guarded intake of her breath. Her face was set rigidly, her eyes were blank, staring at the backbar but not seeing it. “Dead,” she said in a whisper. “That fat man is dead?”

“That’s right.” I moved my glass around the circle of moisture on the bar. I kept my eyes from her stricken face.

Her voice was just above a whisper, now. “That’s what will happen to Val. He’s just like her — ambition is eating him up. He’ll get in over his head on this.”

“You love him, don’t you?” I said, looking at her.

She met my gaze blankly. “Is that bad, Mr. Jones?”

“Maybe, for you,” I said. “I don’t know him very well.”

The bartender was back, the man called Jim. He said firmly: “You’ll get one of your headaches if you have any more, Miss Meredith.”

She smiled at him. “One more headache won’t even be noticed, Jim. Another rye, please.”

He looked doubtful.

“Or I’ll take Mr. Jones away. And you know how Mr. Every will feel about that. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Mr. Every, would you, Jim?”

His face colored. No man, I thought, should ever need to be humiliated like that.

I said quietly: “I’ll be responsible, Jim. Don’t worry about your job.”

“O.K.,” he said, and thanked me with his eyes. It wasn’t, I knew, his job he was worrying about. But I had let him think it was.

I said to Judy: “That rye’s a man’s drink. You should treat it with more respect.”

I never heard her answer, if there was one. At that moment, a quiet voice at my side said: “You were looking for Mr. Every?”

The man who spoke was short and round, dressed in beautifully-tailored dinner clothes. His face was round. It would have been a jovial face, excepting that his eyes were stone, just gray stone.

“I’ve been waiting for him,” I admitted, “for some time. Though it has passed very pleasantly.”

No expression in the gray eyes. “He’s here, now. He’ll see you. If you’ll follow me?”

I followed him. Along the bar, and through a hall, past the lounges. A door at the end of a short hall, here, and we went through it.

It was a big room. There was a mammoth desk in it, and one file cabinet, but it wasn’t properly an office. There was a fireplace, with a long, low coffee table perpendicular to that, and davenports, a pair of them, flanking the coffee table. Heavy burgundy drapes and a wine-ish rug. Some leather overstuffed chairs.

This Val Every I had seen before. I tried to remember where. He was fairly tall, and immensely wide across the shoulders. He had a square, masculine face which contrasted with his black, curly hair and the soft brown eyes.

He was sitting behind his desk, and he didn’t rise when I entered.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said.