The Blonde Died Dancing (2 page)

I said, “Must you go out… must you really?”

He wavered. I was making time. I threw back my shoulders, lazily though, and tilted back my head. I lowered my lids another notch. I could hardly see him.

He said, “Yes, I really do have to go. I… I promised Al Finch.”

“Promised him what?”

“His aunt’s coming to town, his only aunt, and he’s tied up. I have to meet her at Pennsylvania Station…”

“Darling.” I swayed toward him. “Darling…”

“Connie, for God’s sake…”

Then he was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak. He choked, he doubled up. Then he staggered to the door and was gone.

I sat down… another Wednesday night and I was alone. I started for the phone to call Paul, demand my money back. But I by-passed the phone. There was still something I could do. I could follow Steve and learn the truth. I could find out what gorgeous, fascinating creature’s eyes needed scratching out.

I gambled
on the direction Steve might have taken, and I won. He was crossing Lexington at Bloomingdale’s, headed for the downtown station of the IRT subway, when I caught sight of him. There were enough people on the platform to screen me from him until a train came in. I got in the car just behind his. I watched him sit down. He was smiling; occasionally his lips would quiver in a chuckle.

At Fifty-first Street an overdone, outlandish blonde of an uncertain age boarded the train and sat opposite Steve. He started laughing out loud, uncontrollably. Everybody in the car looked at him, then looked around to find the joke. Thwarted, they shook their heads and shrugged at one another. One man drew circles on his temple and pointed to Steve. His diagnosis received considerable approval.

Steve got off the train at Grand Central. I followed him up through the teeming depot, across Vanderbilt Avenue, west along Forty-fourth Street. It was quite a chore. Steve was in a hurry, anxious to get where he was going. Bitterly I thought of the times when he came hurrying home to me, even on Wednesday nights.

He turned north on Madison and he was practically galloping. I was about ready to cave in when he ducked into a large office building on a corner. I reached the lobby just in time to see him board an elevator. He was its only passenger. Its doors’ closed; it started up. I watched the indicator; it was at the fourteenth floor that Steve got out.

I took a step toward another elevator, then hesitated. I had a moment of shattering misgivings. Why was I here? Just what did I intend to do? Confront this home-wrecker, plead with her to return what was lawfully mine? No, I could never bring myself to do that. Then I remembered a thing or two… like the first time I met Steve Barton.

After college there was enough of Uncle Willie’s money left for me to study journalism for a year at Columbia. That spring, growing a little worried about my finances, I started looking for a job. I ventured down to one of New York’s largest if not most literate newspapers. But I never did get to see anyone important there. Because this fellow named Steve Barton was trying to make some time with the switchboard girl when I got there. He thought I should let him tell me about this newspaper dodge over a drink, maybe two.

Two weeks later he was still telling me, nightly. He said it would take years for me to forget my education and become a passable reporter. It was different with him. He was only a high school man and the New York City high school had been so overcrowded that he hadn’t learned anything really. He had a chance in this newspaper dodge. He was unsullied by any high ideals of journalism… I didn’t really listen to him much. I sat there nightly in that smoky bar and looked at him. I found myself enjoying that.

In June I was graduated with honors from my school of journalism. Steve got a raise and a promotion from police reporting to the sports department. We got married.

The elevator operator was asking me impatiently, “Going up or not?”

I stepped into the car. I had something to fight for.

“What floor?” the operator asked.

“Fourteenth,” I said.

“Boy, you really mean it, don’t you, lady?”

“Yep,” I said.

The first thing I saw when my feet hit the soft, luxurious carpeting of the fourteenth floor was an incredibly beautiful blonde talking to an incredibly svelte brunette with glamorous eyeglasses. The first thing I heard was muted, dreamy music. It was more than I could stand. I turned back toward the elevator bank and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steve bouncing jubilantly down a corridor. He opened a door and disappeared. A down car stopped beside me and I stepped into it. Then I stepped back out again.

Gritting my teeth, I walked through the room, on into the corridor, on toward the door. I put my hand gently on its knob to ease it open just an inch, and I found myself staring through a square, glassed peephole into the room beyond.

Standing in the center of the room was Steve. His back was to me and he was facing a tall, willowy, ravishing female. Her wide blue eyes were flattering Steve with a heated welcome. Her luscious bright red mouth was not only generous, it was inviting. Her figure couldn’t have been real, but I was afraid it was… and she was blonde! Very blonde, very, very. But not as blonde as I! My woman’s intuition had led me to victory on that point. Otherwise, I could see, I was not doing well at all.

Steve moved closer to her, put his arms around her. She shook her flamboyant head at him and he held her tighter. She freed herself and stepped back; she spoke to him with her lips and with her eyes. He held out his arms and she moved expertly into them. They swayed together and Steve stepped on her foot.

I almost cried aloud. I shut my eyes and leaned my forehead against the door. Steve Barton was taking a dancing lesson.

He was doing this for me. He was learning to dance for me. When he took me to the Rosewood Room for our anniversary party we wouldn’t sit out the evening like a pair of bumps on a log. We would dance!

I opened my eyes and looked again. Steve and the sensational young lady were gliding around the room. His jaw was set with a fierce determination, his forehead was wrinkled in a scowl. He wasn’t having fun; he wasn’t even enjoying being in the arms of a female like that. He was having a lousy time, he was having a dancing lesson… because of me.

He loved me.

I watched the two figures whirl across the floor, and then my heart sank. Steve was waltzing, he was learning to waltz… and perhaps that was all he was learning. Perhaps he had insisted on that, not realizing that the number of waltzes a dance band played was next to nil. As a favor to him I would stick around and speak to his teacher after school. I wanted his surprise for me to be perfect.

And then, it wouldn’t hurt to let this blonde know that Steve had a wife, also blonde. Just in case she was getting any ideas about him, I’d let her see what long fingernails I had.

I went back to the reception room and sat quietly in a corner. I didn’t want the receptionist to notice me and make it necessary for me to explain why I was here. She had enough to do without listening to a lengthy, embarrassed explanation from a suspicious wife. I lit a cigarette and watched this smoothie with the hopped-up spectacles go about her business. She assigned studios to teachers and pupils, directed new students to the head of the school, answered the phone and made entries in the appointment book on her desk.

The girl was not only the most efficient receptionist in town, but it was a good bet she was the most charming. She was a big sister to all the women, but she wasn’t that to any of the men. I could see that she made each man feel that this business was being run solely for him. She had a touch, a very personal touch. She made me wonder if I, in spite of my 20-20 vision, shouldn’t invest in a pair of those gold-bedecked, odd-shaped glasses. Looking at her, thinking of Steve’s teacher and the other gorgeous faculty members I had spied upon, I realized that my husband certainly knew how to pick a dancing school.

The pupils for the eight o’clock classes were beginning to swarm in now. They were young and old, fat and lean, tall and short. Dancing, it seemed, was here to stay. Suddenly there was nothing in the world I wanted to do as much as dance. Steve was still that way about me.

It was just about eight. I put down the elaborate brochure that made it quite clear that the Crescent School of Dancing was something terrific and watched the reception room fill up with the next period’s pupils. I watched a shy, awkward newcomer taken in tow by the receptionist. She led him down one of the three corridors that spoked from the waiting room, led him toward the processing that would make him, too, socially acceptable. And then it was eight o’clock.

In a moment I saw Steve come out of his room and hurry up the corridor. I lost sight of him as he moved into the crowd headed for the elevators. I kept my eye on the door of his studio; I didn’t want his teacher to elude me. I waited until I was sure Steve had left the reception room before I started on my errand. I opened the door marked Studio K and went in.

The room was filled with music, a gay, lilting waltz. It was old Vienna, bright uniforms and flashing sabers, long swirling dresses and arch smiles. Steve’s teacher had neglected to turn off the music. She lay still, as still as death, sprawling grotesquely on the smooth, shining floor. In her back, just below her left shoulder, was a small round hole. Her white blouse was slowly turning crimson.

I dropped to my knees beside her, reaching for her wrist. The fingers of her hand were curled around a small, curiously shaped piece of heavy black paper. Her arm was extended almost as if she were handing the paper to me. I took it from her.

It was a cut-out, a silhouette of a beautiful girl’s pro-file… and her head was twice pierced by a large, big-eyed darning needle. The needle gleamed wickedly against the black of the silhouette. There was no mistaking the macabre artist’s subject. It was the girl who lay sprawled on the floor, her eyes glassy with the horror of sudden death.

I stumbled to my feet and started out of the room. Her murderer was somewhere near, very near. There had only been a minute’s time since Steve had left this studio and I had entered it. There had been only a minute for the murderer to slip in through the door and…

My legs stopped moving and I stood facing the door, afraid to open it, afraid to turn from it. I had watched that door from the reception room. I had seen Steve come through it, close it behind him. It had not been opened or closed again until I had turned the knob.

I forced myself to turn around, to find the other entrance through which the killer had come, through which he had made his escape. Four mirrored walls, shining, solid, met my eyes. There was only one means of entrance to this room… the door behind me, the door that Steve had used.

I had seen Steve with this girl, and she had been alive. No one but Steve had been in this room with her… and now she was dead, murdered.

Then I was standing in the still crowded reception room, grasping at the edge of the desk for support. The waltzing music was still ringing in my ears, the dead girl’s eyes still staring into mine. Beneath me the big desk seemed to roll, the telephones, the stacks of papers, the open register.

It was seeing the name in black and white that snapped me out of it. The letters swam, then straightened themselves. Stephen Barton, they said, 7:00-8:00, Anita Farrell, Studio R. It was there in front of me, on the records… the name of Anita Farrell’s last pupil, the name of Anita Farrell’s murderer.

I glanced around. No one was paying me any attention. I reached for the book. My fingers still clutched the cardboard silhouette that I had taken from the teacher’s hand. I tucked it between two pages and closed the book. I slipped it under my coat and folded my arms across it. I moved away from the desk and, being carefully unobtrusive, got into an elevator that was headed down.

It was nearly eight-thirty
when I reached home. The apartment was empty, but Steve had been there. He had changed into an old pair of more comfortable shoes and gone out again, possibly to look for me. I slid the register under a love seat cushion in the living room and started out to look for him.

He wasn’t at Hamburger Heaven or the Skipper. He wasn’t at Corwin’s or Charley’s or O’Malley’s. He wasn’t at any of our favorite Third Avenue saloons. He wasn’t, or hadn’t been, at any of the places where we ate and drank.

At nine-thirty I phoned home. There was no answer. By ten-thirty I had been in every bar and restaurant in our neighborhood at least once. I had phoned all of Steve’s better friends; I had done everything I could think of to find him. At ten I saw the headlines on the tabloids.

dancing teacher slain

police seek waltzer

By the light of a street lamp I read the story. The body of beautiful Anita Farrell had been discovered a minute or two after eight o’clock by her eight o’clock pupil at the Crescent School of Dancing. The music for the victim’s last lesson, a waltz, was still playing.

The engagement book was missing, but it would only be a question of time before the murderer’s identity was discovered. The fact that he had stolen the book proved conclusively that Miss Farrell’s killer was her last pupil, the Waltzer.

I tucked the newspaper under my arm and started slowly for Lexington Avenue and home, I unlocked the door and went into the living room. Folded up on the love seat lay the Waltzer. He was sound asleep.

I shook him.

“Steve,” I said, “Steve, wake up!”

Without opening his eyes he smiled at me. “Hiya, Blondie, where you been? When you weren’t home I went to a movie.”

“Steve,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “Steve, you’re in trouble… terrible trouble.”

He opened one eye. “Huh?”

“Your dancing teacher… Anita Farrell… the Crescent School, Steve…”

“Oh.” He was still smiling sleepily at me, amused by my new color scheme. “You know about me dancing. Well, I’ll tell you, I can explain everything…”

“Steve, wake up! There’s been a murder! And the police are looking for you!”