The Girl with the Frightened Eyes Read online

  “Keye. Jeff Keye. But you can call me Jeff, honey.”

  She liked the honey. She lowered her eyes and smiled at the red bows on her shoes. Then she looked up. “Ever since you spoke to me about Paula I’ve been thinking back, trying to remember things about her.”

  “That’s fine, Lucy. But first, tell me, did a telegram come for Paula not long ago?”

  Her brow wrinkled and cleared. “Sure. That’s another thing I forgot about. The boy came with a telegram and I told him she wasn’t living here anymore and he asked me for a forwarding address. I called up to Mrs. Preston, but Mrs. Preston didn’t know any address.”

  That took care of the telegram. “What else do you remember, Lucy?”

  “Not much,” she said. “It may be nothing at all, but I can’t forget about it because it happened so funny. This was a little while before I went back to Pennsylvania to my mother.”

  “May?”

  “About then, I guess. Anyhow, I remembered it because I got to thinking how nice Paula used to be to me. Every once in a while I’d be cleaning her room and she’d show me some of her pictures. She had some funny pictures up there, but I always told her I liked them fine because I liked Paula so much I didn’t want her to feel bad.”

  “What kind of pictures? Funny peculiar, or funny ha-ha?”

  She smiled at me impishly. “I guess they were what you might call funny peculiar.” She thought a moment. “They were like designs—but I can’t say the colors were funny. The colors were beautiful. She called them by a crazy name—”

  “Abstractions?”

  “That’s it, abstractions… What I wanted to tell you really wasn’t about her pictures. It was about the man I met with her. I thought maybe if you could find that man he would know where Paula is.”

  “What’s his name?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I just can’t think of it. That’s what’s driving me crazy. He was about your size, but he spoke kind of funny and he had a mustache. His name was kind of foreign, like it might be Spanish or French.”

  I said, “Which name would you remember?”

  “The first one.”

  I ran the gamut of Spanish names quickly because I couldn’t think of many. I did better in France, starting with André and going through the alphabet. She stopped me at Pierre.

  “That’s his name—Pierre!”

  I said, “Fine. So his name was Pierre. Where did you meet him?”

  “On Fifth Avenue. It was my night off and I was standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, sort of making up my mind where I’d go. Then, all of a sudden, I saw Paula walking over to me with this Pierre fellow. Paula stopped and introduced me to the man but he acted sort of stuck up and not friendly at all. Paula asked me where I was going and I told her and she said why not come with them for a cocktail. That’s the part I’ll never forget—the name of the place where she wanted to take me—it was called The Frog.”

  “The Frog? A night club?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t go with them, after all. When Paula invited me the man—Pierre—looked at her sort of queer as if he thought she was crazy to invite me. I would have gone except I felt funny about having a drink with that man. It would have been all right with Paula, all alone. But the way he looked at me I knew I wasn’t wanted.” She threw out her hands and stared at me. “That’s all of it. Do you think it will help?”

  I took her hand and patted it. “I hope so, Lucy. Maybe I can locate this Pierre man and he can tell me something. I’ll let you know.”

  She said, “Yes. I’m sure Mrs. Preston would like to know, too.”

  I watched her run across the street and disappear into 17 Quaker Lane. I took out a scrap of paper and wrote the names Pierre and Frog and drew a quick sketch of a man with a mustache and after it all, I placed a big question mark.

  CHAPTER 3

  I walked up Fifth Avenue slowly, enjoying the bite of the fall air. All this was new to me again—the taxicabs, the darkened store fronts, the erratic pedestrian tide.

  I headed in the general direction of Hank MacAndrews’ place, wondering whether he could help me. The business of finding Paula Smith was beginning to load my head. It was the idea that Kip’s sister might be somewhere near me that bothered me. It annoyed me to admit that I couldn’t seek her out easily, meet her and get to know her personally—and soon. I wanted to know her as well as I had known Kip. She was a great part of our friendship because Kip loved her so.

  I crossed Fifth Avenue and steered my course directly toward Hank MacAndrews’ place. I walked with an infantryman’s step, fast and with the swinging rhythm the army develops in all foot soldiers.

  Something in the air, or in my pace, or in the gentle slope of buildings on the quiet street ahead of me reminded me of Kip Smith and London. You see a building with a funny roof and the funny roof suggests another building on another street, in another town. Your mind slips back to that other town and for a while you relive the past.

  Kip and I were walking down just such a quiet street not too long ago. We were walking slowly, enjoying the coolness of the London night and building a memory of it.

  I looked up over my shoulder at Kip. He was worrying about Paula, I knew. Paula’s letter was bothering him again.

  I said, “Don’t go pulling that Gary Cooper strong and silent stuff on me, Kip. You’ve got the same expression on your pan that you use when you drink British coffee. You’re either thinking of the coffee spigot at Horn and Hardart’s, or worrying about that letter from Paula.”

  He smiled slightly. “Let’s talk about the coffee. I could go for a couple of buckets of that Automat variety. Paula can take care of herself.”

  “So Paula can take care of herself,’ I said. “She’s probably got herself a mural to do, or maybe a commission from some fat-tailed society dame from the art belt on West End Avenue. Absolutely nothing to ever worry about in the art business when you’re a doll, except a certain type of art instructor who insists on demonstrating certain complex techniques with his hands.”

  Kip laughed. “You really ought to know my kid sister, Jeff. You and she would have a swell time together. She’d go for your corny gag routine.”

  He was trying to be off-hand about her but his eyes were a dead giveaway. I said, “You look terrible.”

  “It’s just that Paula’s all alone, Jeff. She’s got nobody to go to if something’s gone wrong. Not that Paula would want to share any of her troubles with anybody but me. You’d have to know Paula to understand what I’m getting at. She’s a bright kid, wide awake and alive. Didn’t you get that impression from all her other letters?”

  “I know her well,” I said. “I can tell you plenty about how she thinks, but I can’t for the life of me guess at her profile or the lilt of her girlish laughter.”

  “She’s pretty,” said Kip.

  “Is she Hedy Lamarr or Joan Blondell?”

  “Neither. Paula is sweet and simple. She’s sort of a redheaded Joan Fontaine.”

  “Short or tall?”

  “Medium.”

  “What a picture,” I groaned. “I was ready to fall in love with her soul, but how can I dream about a soul?”

  “That’s your worry, soldier,” said Kip.

  Well, the worry was still mine, with variations. A worry that stayed with me, loaded with mystery. After checking with the telephone company I had gone to the post office. Paula Smith left no forwarding address. There were no letters for her in the Dead Letter Department. Had I seen the Missing Persons Bureau? Weren’t there any relatives? Friends?

  I paused before Hank MacAndrews’ familiar door.

  Hank welcomed me with more than his usual enthusiasm. He was a tall man, broad in the shoulders and big in the hands. He had a heavy head, small featured and ruddy.

  The studio was full of old friends and swing music a
nd a bucketful of mixed cocktails. Hank held me in the doorway and put an arm around my shoulder. He lifted his glass and shouted: “Hail the conquering hero, cruds!”

  They hailed me and crowded around.

  Hank held up a hand. “Our guest of honor, the mighty Corporal Keyes, the warrior who single handed turned the tide of history in Normandy!”

  I said, “I did it with both hands.”

  It was good to hear their voices again. All the old faces were there and several new ones who were women. This was the small group of friends from the world of cartooning.

  You come home from a war and suddenly people are out of drawing. You are the center of their attention and curiosity. There are so many questions and answers and more questions. But after a while the questions die away and you are home at last, a normal man with a cocktail glass in his hand talking to another normal man.

  The other man was Hank.

  I said, “Are you still Homer Bull’s white haired lad?”

  “The hair is still white,” laughed Hank, “and the old belly is still full.”

  I had noticed that. He was getting a bit paunchy, but you didn’t mind it on MacAndrews. “Even when you didn’t have the Doctor Ohm strip you ate like a fiend, Hank.”

  “But not caviar,” he winked and slapped his beltline. “Doctor Ohm is now a classic, Jeff. It’s outselling Superman and Batman. The green stuff is pouring in from over five hundred newspapers from here to Sheboygan. Since Homer worked on the Lumpy Nose case last year his stock has boomed beyond our wildest hopes. Of course, Homer was always a great writer, but the public likes to feel that a good mystery writer could be a great detective. Now the public knows all about him. His name was sold on every front page in the country when he stepped in to help McElmore round up that gang of Nazis and throw Lincoln Winters back to his ancestral Fascist fathers.”

  I knew part of the story. We had read about it in England, in detail. Homer Bull, the writer of Doctor Ohm, a comic strip, had been responsible for the finale. They trapped Lincoln Winters in his midtown studio and finally killed him in a gun fight. Winters was the head of a group of Nazi agents in New York. He was a cartoonist, a man who drew comics for the nation’s biggest magazines. He had murdered an editor and several other assorted characters. Bull tracked him down, finally, by one of the cleverest pieces of deduction I’d ever read about.

  I said, “Where can I reach Bull?”

  He eyed me curiously, “Why the sudden interest in the fat man?”

  “I’ve always wanted to meet a fat man with brains.”

  “Bull would be flattered. He’s always wanted to meet a cartoonist with ditto.”

  “We’re not moving in any direction, Hank. How do I get to see Bull?”

  Hank sobered. “Bull gets ideas every once in a while. Temperament. Now he wants to be alone, and all of a sudden, nobody sees him but poor little me—and that’s only because he needs me for the damned comic strip. I haven’t seen the great man for over a week, because this time he really went hermit on me. He’s out on Long Island in some swampy cove, maneuvering his friendship sloop to where the fish might bite. He’ll probably pull into a dock one of these fine days and give me a buzz, order me to board the Long Island Railroad and proceed to a spot six points off the starboard beam where we can pick up where we left off with the strip.” He gave me another drink and another cigarette. “Anything I can do for you?”

  I said, “What I need, you can’t give me.”

  “I know something about the way Bull operates. Try me.”

  I tried him. I told him the story, starting with Kip Smith and then following through to Paula Smith and my experience at Mrs. Preston’s. I brought it right up to date and Hank thought about it, sipping his drink.

  He said, “I know this Mrs. Preston; seen her around down in the Village. She’s a big-boned art phony; the way I remember her. She hangs out where she can dip her ear into fine arts talk, mostly in the bars and grills where the alcoholic artisans promote their theories after a quart of bub. She can carry a mean load herself, that babe. Aside from all that, she’s a reputable character, collects her rents, badgers her tenants and serves the best corned beef hash this side of Canarsie Bay. Her story is probably straight about the Smith dame. A lot of these cute dolls who paint are a little loose in the brain basket, sort of whacky in a nice artistic way.”

  “Paula Smith isn’t whacky,” I said, angrily. “She’s perfectly normal.”

  He held up his hands. “All right, so she’s perfectly normal, Commander. We’ll start from there and see what we’ve got—good looking young dame leaves boarding house suddenly and disappears—no forwarding address—no relatives—”

  I stopped him there. “There is a relative, but we won’t be able to find her. Paula has a sister, name of Jenny Smith.”

  Hank moaned. “Gad—another Smith?”

  “She’s not a Smith anymore. She’s married, used to work in burlesque. She married a big-time gangster and retired from the stage. I don’t know anything more about her.”

  Hank came alive. “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. Bull would never accept a statement like your last, General. Think back—do you know whether this sister lives in New York?”

  I shook my head. “Could be. Then again, it could be Chicago. Gangsters don’t all live in New York.”

  “How about her looks?”

  “Never met her. But wouldn’t you take for granted the fact that the little lady had something on the face as well as the hips?”

  “You don’t take things for granted, Jeff.” Hank stubbed his cigarette out. “How about her age?”

  I said, “You’re off the beam, Hank. All I know is that her original name was Smith—she married a gangster—and then retired from the runways.”

  “Maybe that’ll do,” said Hank and reached for the telephone. “I’ve got a little guy who might be able to put two and two together and get your Smith dame. You know Zimmy Zimmerman on The Star?”

  “The camera fiend?”

  “He’s got more than a camera, Zimmy has. He’s been taking pictures of theatrical dames for the past twenty years. But Zimmy has a brain for the business. He knows every hip shaker on any burlesque wheel that ever amounted to anything at all in the runway racket. He can recognize them from a three quarter rear view to a close-up of their eyelashes.”

  Hank dialed a number and spoke with hearty good humor to his friend Zimmy. He listened to Zimmy, then threw him a few gags and hung up. “Zimmy will try to track down all the Smiths on all the wheels. If he gets any leads he’ll let us know.”

  “How soon?”

  Hank shrugged. “He says the gangster tip may lead him to her because it’d be almost hopeless working only on the Jenny Smith angle. All those hip heavers change their names as soon as they strip and some of them enter the ranks deliberately using names like Smith and Jones and Brown to hide their identities. What happens is this—you get a dolly named Gladys Zybisco. She goes to the booking agent, and gets a job. Name? Gladys remembers that Mamma Zybisco always told her that to dance in burlesque would bring disgrace to the Zybisco name. So she tells the booking agent her name is Gladys Smith, or Gladys Jones. Whereupon the booking gent immediately changes her name to Bubbles Lavere, or Peaches Divine or other such classic monikers.”

  I said, “We’re probably wasting our time with all this. It isn’t likely that Paula went to her sister—she hadn’t seen her in years, and with that name routine she couldn’t have found her even if she had wanted to.”

  Thurston Wilkinson, the cartoonist, ambled over and cut short our dialogue.

  I said, “You’re a bit of a long hair, Thurston. Where would I go to meet somebody who’d know the current crop of painters?”

  “You’re looking at him,” said Thurston. “Which crew do you want, moderns or jerks?”

  “Moderns.”

 
“That lets me out then,” Thurston chortled. “I thought you were after the uptown academy boys. The man you want to see for the modern is Boucher. Down in the Village. There isn’t a modern painter from here to the backhouse school that he doesn’t know. He’s an expert on all the schools, especially the French. Who do you want to meet?”

  “Boucher?” I said. “Is his name Pierre Boucher?”

  “George Boucher. Who do you want to meet?” Thurston repeated.

  “Paula Smith.”

  “An artist?” He screwed his face. “It’s a familiar name. How does she paint?”

  “Modern, I guess.”

  “Modern Paula Smith.” Thurston rolled the name around on his tongue. “Familiar, but I just can’t place her.”

  I turned to Hank. “All this reminds me of Lucy down at Mrs. Preston’s. She told me a little story I forgot to mention. What is The Frog Club? A night club?”

  “Not quite. It’s a combination intellectual cave and sightseeing dump and winery.”

  “It sounds like something out of Billy Rose.”

  Hank frowned. “Maybe it is. I haven’t been down there in some time. The dump started as a hangout for French stumblebums who called themselves modern painters.”

  “Any particular school?”

  He laughed. “For my money they all came from the Bowery school. They wore un-pressed pants and dirty shirts and crazy neckerchiefs out of the sewers of Paris. They covered the walls with surrealism and Dadaism and all the other isms in the book. They got a lot of publicity because of these cockeyed paintings and after a while they began to draw the long-nosed uptown crowd with heavy dough and light morals. Of course, as soon as Park Avenue seeped in the bums were forced out of the place and the prices jacked up above your ears. The joint changed hands several times and finally went to a gent named Lecotte—”

  I held him there. “Pierre Lecotte?”

  “You guessed it.”