wore a flannel dress as brilliantly green as her eyes, a dress whose high neckline only emphasized two very full breasts and each ripe curve of her body. She was my most beautiful girl in the world. That’s all it takes, ever. When she is you know it in ten seconds. And from then on you hate every other man in the world who wants her.
“You’re going to be hearing a lot about Kyle,” Archie St. George was saying and I looked at him. But he hadn’t been reading my mind. He was using his agent’s voice, Archie St. George, Artist’s Representative. He was giving me the buildup for her benefit.
He might have been wasting his time. Kyle Shannon sat rigidly in the chair, as though she wanted to get out of it and away from here. Her eyes, after their brief, cool glance at me, were now directed beyond me, toward the door.
He was still talking. “Kyle’s just come back from the coast,” he said. “Her first picture.”
That made more sense than most things they do out there. Our glances met again and I began to wonder why she disliked me so much. But she did.
“. . . I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with the industry, Barney . . .”
“None.”
He nodded. “A first picture is a very delicate thing,” he told me. “Especially now. Every studio is desperate for a new face, a new star. They have to have another Clark Gable, another Jean Harlow.” He paused and his hands cupped her shoulders and tightened familiarly. “Some very important people,” he said, “think they have one. The screenings of Kyle’s picture are exciting, Barney. Very exciting.”
I was watching his fingers. They were probing, probing, dissolving the material of the dress and I could see her nakedness flowing up into them, into his own body.
“. . . of course,” he was telling me, “the only payoff is the public itself. All a producer can do is put a girl in a picture. The people have to make her a star.”
She had not moved for some time. Now, negligently, she raised her arms and lifted his hands from her shoulders.
“Can’t we get to the point?” she asked. It was the first time I’d heard her voice. It was a vibrant sound, low register, coming not from her throat but from some musical box deep inside her chest.
I found him looking down at the top of her head with a face gone suddenly tough. He said, “I want Barney to have the picture, honey. The whole picture. He’s a very particular guy.”
His voice seemed to affect her. She lowered her head and began staring at her hands in her lap.
“Like I say,” St. George went on, “a first picture is a very delicate thing. It’s got to be handled. The publicity story on Kyle, the angle, is the Cinderella thing. Kyle,” he said, “was a fashion model. Lingerie, stockings, nightgowns, bathing suits—you know the stuff. The story on Kyle is that a producer happened to be leafing through Vogue and came across this nylon ad. Just a leg against a background of black velvet. He immediately sent a wire to the New York office to track that model down. The ad was traced to Kyle and a dozen pictures of her were rushed to the coast.” He took a breath. “As the story will read in the magazines and the columns, this producer was even more impressed with the face than he was with the legs. He sent for her and signed her to a contract immediately. That’s the story.”
If what he was saying was a little rough it didn’t seem to bother her. Her face was expressionless.
“The trouble is,” said Archie, “Miss Shannon is not quite Cinderella.”
“Can’t we skip that?” she asked.
That made him laugh. “Not with Barney Glines,” he told her, unasked for. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He smiled across the room at me. “Miss Shannon has the tough luck of being a very, very rich girl. How much did your father leave you, honey?”
She said nothing.
“Kyle’s father,” he said to me, “was W. R. Shannon. If you’re behind on your history, W. R. Shannon discovered how to separate aluminum from rocks. It pays better than getting gold out of rocks.”
I was getting as fed up with Archie St George as she was. “So what?” I asked.
“So that Kyle might not appeal to the public if she’s already filthy with the stuff. The public reserves the right to make movie stars rich. It’s bad form for Cinderella or Horatio Alger to start off with more in the bank than they could possibly earn.”
“So what?” I asked again and I found her looking me over. Not a thaw, understand. But some of the ice had chipped off.
“The cat might be getting out of the bag,” the agent said. “Kyle checked into the Park East Hotel last Saturday. Last night her rooms were robbed.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, but I might just as well have said nothing.
“It’s very bad,” St. George said. “They took a jewel case full of diamonds. A hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
He was looking at me. I was looking at her. She was studying the tips of her fingers. “Who’s the insurance company?”
St. George left his place behind her chair and walked slowly to the gaudy desk he kept. He lowered himself into an over-stuffed, mohair-covered swivel. “That’s the problem, Barney. Kyle has the stuff insured, naturally. But she feels she doesn’t want to file a claim.”
“She does?”
“A claim,” he said, fingering a cigarette lighter, “means police. Police mean newspapers. I think you can imagine how the News would love to have Kyle on their front page. Along with the lush details of her suite at the hotel and the sables and minks. Somebody,” he said, “might even connect her with the Shannons. And all those stories her studio has carefully planted will look a little ridiculous. The bubble will burst and Kyle will be in the middle.”
“Oh,” I said and turned to her. “And the idea is to have somebody get your stuff back without any excitement.”
“Yes,” she said dully. “That’s the idea.”
“Well,” said Archie, his voice bright, “what do you say, Barney?”
“I’ll give it a whirl. The insurance company won’t like it, neither will the police. But I’ll try it.”
I don’t know what it was, but the more I said to this girl the less progress I made. The green eyes that raked my face were sarcastic now—if that’s the word.
“Fine,” St. George said. “I knew we could count on you, kid . . .”
“Don’t expect a miracle,” I said. “And don’t expect anything overnight.”
Archie St. George was smiling at me. “As a matter of fact, Barney, it’s going to be a lot simpler than most of your jobs.”
“In what way?”
“Kyle’s been in contact with the thieves,” he said.
“When?” I asked her.
“At
