"You do ask that rather nicely. Concern, anxiety. As far as I know, she is perfectly all right."

"Where is she?"

"In due time, Mr. Winter. I have been wondering about you. We are all terribly fond of Bonny Lee. A limited background of course, but marvelous instincts. Sometimes her instincts fail her, though, and she does become involved with some horrid sod. Then we do what we can, you see."

"I would like to know where, "

"Are you quite certain you are good for her, Mr. Winter? You do seem to have involved her in some sort of stickiness. And you're even more of a fugitive than she at the moment. I can't pretend to know much about it, but haven't you made off with rather a lot of money? Don't look so alarmed, love. I trust her completely, and she trusts me. I wouldn't turn you in."

"I didn't mean to get her into any trouble or danger."

"You certainly seem harmless enough. You have quite an earnest look. You see, I was just getting up when she rang me up, and I had to scurry over to the Beach and pick her up. She'd cadged a dime to phone me, and she was in a drugstore, absolutely sopping wet, terribly busy fending off a randy little clerk. But she would not take time to change. She was frantic with worry about you. I couldn't even drive fast enough to suit her. We went to the health school and picked up three of my friends. I have this ridiculous letch for horribly muscular men. They're invariably dumb as oxen and s.e.xually not very enterprising, but sometimes they are useful if one antic.i.p.ates a brawl. So then we went scooting to Hallandale, with Bonny Lee on the edge of the seat using rather bad language, but the place was crawling with police officers. We parked a block away and I sent my brightest oaf to go find out what was up. No sign of you, he said, or of some girl Bonny Lee was asking about. Just two rather bitter and surly fellows, low types apparently, being led into a police vehicle. So then we took my fellows back to their muscle flexing. Bonny Lee was wondering what she should do about her poor little abandoned car. She had stopped fretting about you. In fact she seemed awfully amused about something, but wouldn't give me a clue. I took her to that horrid nest amongst those squadrons of tireless old ladies, but quite suddenly she scrooched down and hissed at me to go right on by. It seems two unsavory types were parked on her street, the two she had apparently eluded by plunging into a ca.n.a.l. She was all for our gathering up my friends once more and returning to give them a bashing about, but I must say I had begun to have quite enough of this darting about, and I became a bit cross, so I took her back to my place where at last she had a chance to get out of that dank clothing and rinse the salt out of her hair."

"Is she there now?"

"You are an impatient fellow. She was going to come to work until we heard over the radio that the police wanted a chat with her. She had a perfectly reasonable impulse to turn herself in and explain, but the more she thought about how she would explain things, the less she wanted to try. And she thought that if they did happen to hold her for questioning, you might hear about it and do some utterly idiotic thing like dashing to her rescue. She seemed to a.s.sume you would be searching for her, and when I expressed small reasonable doubt, she became quite ugly about it. She was afraid you might go to her place, and there was no way to warn you. We made arrangements about how I might contact you and identify you should you come here."

There was a m.u.f.fled roar, a concerted shout. Miss O'Shaugnessy tilted her head. "Dear Perry. She always gets that same response to that part of her act. The child is incredibly flexible."

"I'm anxious to see Bonny Lee."

"Of course you are, and I would have sent you dashing to my place if you'd arrived earlier. But it is after eleven, you know. And I had a dear friend arriving at my place at eleven to nap and wait for me, an absolute bronzed giant of an airlines pilot, with the most astonishing external voluntary muscle structure I've ever seen. The deltoideus, triceps brachia, latissimus dorsi and trapezius are like great marvelous wads of brown weathered stone. The poor lamb has just enough awareness to push all his little b.u.t.tons and levers to get his aircraft from here to there and back, and he crinkles charmingly when he smiles, but it would be too confusing to him to find Bonny Lee at my place. He wouldn't know how to react, and it would upset him. So it was arranged that she would leave before eleven. She has my little car and she is wearing some of my clothing, and she will be at Bernie Sabbith's apartment at midnight. She hopes you will meet her there, but in the event you don't, she'd planned to enlist the help of Bernie and his friends in whatever gruesome difficulties you two seem to have gotten into. Actually, I think all Bernie can contribute to any situation is additional confusion, but perhaps some use can be made of that. So, you see, you have time to spare. And you've been watching every morsel of this sandwich, you know."

She went to the kitchen. A few minutes after she returned, a sandwich and coffee was brought to her little dressing room.

"Does, uh, Bonny Lee do the same sort of act you do, Miss O'Shaugnessy?"

"My name is Lizbeth, love. Lizbeth Perkins, actually. You are a rather stuffy fellow, aren't you? What if she did exactly the same routines? Would it make her unworthy of you?"

"I just wondered," he said, miserably.

"Have no fear, love. The degree one is required to strip is in inverse ratio to one's other talents. Your darling has a lovely voice, and she's getting better all the time with those bongos. And she moves about well. I suspect the pictures outside upset you? Bonny Lee was upset too, and if you look closely, you'll see that though Perry and I are as nature made us, some clever wretch with an airbrush removed Bonny Lee's little frivolous bandeau. But she wasn't agitated about the exposure, love. She was jealous of her category, entertainer rather than stripper. You men are such dismal creatures, really, beset with Edwardian scruples. I can't sing a note, and as a child I trained for ballet, but whoever heard of a prima ballerina measuring forty-one, twenty-five, thirty-seven? What those slack-jawed idiots out there fail to realize is how many hundreds and hundreds of sweaty hours of brute labor it has taken for me to develop the skill to flex all the muscles of my body, singly or in any desired sequence. It's not what one could call a skill of any historic significance, Mr. Winter, but it pleases the fools, supports me well, and keeps me in a condition of astonishing health. Is it somehow more reprehensible than being able to bash a small ball a long distance with a club? Dear me, I do hope Bonny Lee hasn't become emotionally involved with a dingy little moralist."

"I didn't mean to, "

"Hush, love. I'm merely educating you to a proper level to appreciate Bonny Lee. She is a dear child, loving and honest and gay. And you must enjoy her for exactly what she is, the way one enjoys sunshine and gardens. If you try to confine her or restrict her or change her into what you think is a more suitable image, she will very probably break your heart. She's terribly young, you know. Old in some ways, young in others. In time she might well become very famous, if clods like you can keep from making her feel coa.r.s.e and insecure."

"I think I see what you mean."

"I hope you do, love. If I didn't suspect you have possibilities, I wouldn't have wasted the time and the words."

"I'm not very, deft about girls, Lizbeth."

"So much the better. Deft men fall into dim patterns. And the dreadful clue to all of them is that they seem to feel they are doing the girl some enormous favor. I like a man to feel grateful, and b.l.o.o.d.y few of them do. And the worldly ones seem to feel obligated to prove their skill by showing off a whole a.r.s.enal of nasty little tricks which they seem to feel should induce an absolute frenzy. My word, I've had it up to here with being compared to a cello or a sports car. I'm a rather direct woman, Mr. Winter, and I like love to be direct and pleasant and on the cozy side, and as comfortable as one can make it. So don't fret about being unaccustomed to girls. I suspect Bonny Lee finds it all rather sweet. And don't you dare brood about her other affairs. You'll merely poison your own mind and spoil it for both of you. She will be totally, absolutely faithful to you for as long as the game will last, and that is all you can expect or should hope for."

He finished the last of the coffee and put the cup aside. "This is all very interesting, and I suppose you are an unusual woman, and maybe you can't help being so d.a.m.ned defensive, but I am getting G.o.dd.a.m.ned well tired of listening to a lot of little lectures from women. I am tired of having my head patted, and I am sick of a lot of over-simplified little bite-sized pieces of philosophy about life and love. I just happen to think the world is a little more complex than that. And with your kind indulgence, Lizbeth, I shall go right on making my own stuffy and sentimental and unreasonable mistakes in my own way. I have had a very long day, Lizbeth. The mind of man cannot comprehend the kind of a day I have had. Mentally and emotionally, I am right at the frayed end of the last bit of string there is. I do not defend or attack your right to flex muscles I never heard of. I make no attempt to typecast you, so please do me the same favor. I appreciate your a.s.sistance to Bonny Lee, and your concern for her. But my att.i.tudes and responses, are, I am afraid, my personal business. If I have annoyed you, I'm sorry. But I do have to be leaving."

She looked at him very thoughtfully. She nodded. "Now didn't she just come up with something! Possibly the hat and the cane and the badge warped my judgment, love. You might come back one day, Mr. Winter. If you're free. But spend some time on the weights and bars first. No more lectures. Not a word of advice. You do seem quite able to cope. All I can do is wish you luck."

She put out her hand. It was a small hand, rather plump, but implicit in the quick squeeze she gave him was the warning that with an effortless twist she could probably sail him over her shoulder like a quoit.

Chapter Thirteen.

Some very freehand parking had occurred in the alley by Bernie Sabbith's apartment. As Kirby climbed the outside staircase he heard guffaws and breaking gla.s.s. The door was open a few inches. He knocked, but after he realized no one could hear him, he pushed the door open and went in.

All the tricky lights were on, and the big music system was throwing a mighty wattage into all the built-in speakers. A table bar had been set up and a man in a white jacket was mixing drinks as fast as he could. At first glance there seemed to be fifty people in the apartment, but he soon realized the mirrors had doubled the apparent number.

There seemed to be a group of curiously identical young men, all dark, all spankingly clean, all wearing dark narrow suits, knit ties, white b.u.t.ton down shirts, all smiling with a certain ironic tilt to one eyebrow, all holding chunky gla.s.ses containing ice and dark whisky. The rest of the young men seemed as young, but they looked as if they cut each other's hair, got their clothes out of mission barrels and bathed on bank holidays.

The girls seemed divided into two groups, too, a pack of languid starved ones in high fashion clothes, and a bouncy, racy, noisy batch in odds and ends of this and that. A fat little girl in a ratty red leotard came bounding toward him with yelps of delight lost in the general confusion.

"Let me guess!" she yelled. "You are a conventioneer! Your name is, uh, Eddie Beeler! You heard the sounds of action, O Conventioneer, and you have traced it with incredible instinct to the very fount of all action! I, Gretchen Firethorn myself, shall be your guide and mentor, O Eddie."

"Which one is Bernie Sabbith, please?"

"Oh shoot!" she said. "You spoil everything. Couldn't you have just wandered in, for G.o.d's sake? That's Bernie, over there in the khakis and the white jacket, not the little one making drinks. Further. The one plastering the blonde against that mirror."

As Kirby hesitated, the fat girl took the funny hat, the cane and the badge, in what seemed to be one swift motion and bounded off, whooping. He worked his way between the twisters to where Sabbith was mumbling to the semi-smothered blonde. Bernie was a tall and angular man, seemingly constructed entirely of elbows and knuckles.

When Kirby finally got the man's attention, he swung around and stuck his hand out and said, "Glad you could make it, pal. The bar's right over there. Glad you could show." He turned back to the blonde.

"Have you seen Bonny Lee Beaumont?"

Bernie turned around again. "Bonny Lee! Where is she? You bring her, pal?"

"No. I'm looking for her."

"She isn't here tonight, pal. There's the bar. Get yourself a, "

"She's supposed to arrive at midnight." The blonde started to slide sideways. Bernie grabbed her and straightened her up again. "Pal, some day I'd like to have a nice long chat, but right now you're a drag. Noonan!" One of the dark-suited ones presented himself. "Noonan, get this conversationalist out of my hair, like a pal."

Noonan gently led Kirby away. "Mr. Sabbith seems to be busy at the moment. What is the angle of impact, sir? Chamber of Commerce? Press, radio, television, talent?" "I'm supposed to meet a girl here." "Sir, if that was the guarantee, that you shall have. With a few spoken-for exceptions, I can offer you your choice of any member of our happy crew, our tight little ship. I would suggest one of the ragam.u.f.fin types, one of our off-camera laborers in the vineyard. If, on the other hand, you want the model type, I suggest you take two. Their energy level is so low, sir, they save their tiny sparkle for the deathless moment when they hold up the product."

"I'm supposed to meet a specific girl here!" Kirby shouted over the music. "I know her." As he made a helpless gesture, somebody put a drink in his hand. "Can't you remember her name?"

"I know her name!"

"But you don't know what she looks like?"

"She's going to arrive! I want to wait for her!"

"Sir, you seem too solemn about all this. This is an epocal night in the short brilliant history of Parmalon."

"Of what?"

Noonan staggered and clutched his heart. "Don't do that to me, fellow. Parmalon! Seven shades, seven lotions, seven secret ingredients, the seven lovely lives of a beautiful woman. And we are down here, sir, bankrolled to do ten tropical commercials which will tear the living hearts right out of all the frump housewives in America." He tapped Kirby solidly on the chest. "Do you know who Bernie Sabbith is?"