Find This Woman by Richard S. Prather Read Free Book Online

crackly voice that would take the sting out of anything and that went with the face, "Darn you, mister, you're making me nervous." But she didn't mean it, because her misty brown eyes didn't mean it and her lips were smiling, and because she took a deep breath and held it. It was just a sentence, a conversational gambit, and I said, "Hello, you're wonderful," and hoped that if I got killed on this trip it would wait at least till this night was over, wait at least till tomorrow, because she wasn't getting away from me, not this one.
    I'd forgotten about Freddy, but then he yelped, "Shell!! Why, you old satyr, you. When'd you get in?"
    I didn't look at him right away because I winced a little and kept watching the girl's face to see what that "satyr" would do to it. It didn't do anything. She didn't seem to have noticed.
    Then I turned and grinned at Freddy. "Hello, you bum. Watch your language." I stuck out my hand and he grabbed it and pumped it up and down while I said I'd just got into town, and how's it going?
    He shook his head. "The town's starting to roar. They been keeping me busy." Then he frowned. "Shell, I couldn't get a place for you. The whole Strip's jammed."
    "It's O.K. Uh, learn anything else?"
    "That Carter guy? Nothing. Blank. I guess I didn't do you much good, huh?"
    I winced again, but this time because I wasn't anxious tohave the name Carter bandied around too freely till I knew for sure what had happened to him. But I said, "Hell, it's good just to see you. You can make us even. Introduce me."
    "Huh?" He tried to look puzzled. With that happy face he didn't make it. I didn't add anything.
    So he frowned and looked at me and then at the lovely and then back at me. "I'm damned if I will," he said, and he grinned all over his face.
    I looked at the girl again. "You're Irish," I said. "Eight to five you're Irish."
    She smiled, and that all by itself made me feel good. She said, "You win. I'm Colleen Shawn. Pay me."
    That little crackle in her voice made it sound almost as if she were catching a cold, but it wasn't at all unpleasant to my ears. It was fun to listen to her speak, but it didn't make you want to laugh at her; it was just attractive.
    Colleen looked across the bar. "Freddy, do what the horrible man says. Introduce us."
    He said frantically, "You don't know him. He's got a diseased mind. He's got a club brain. He's demented. He's a Communist. He's a super-spy. No! He's just an old spy failure. He sits in attics and eats cobwebs and thinks evil, evil—"
    She was laughing with that same crackle in her laughter, but she waved her hand at him and said, "Oh, stop it. Come on, Freddy. Be sweet."
    He said, "As you know, old pal, this is Mrs. Colleen Shawn. Mrs. Shawn, this ugly, broken-nosed neurotic is Shell Scott. He is a private detective and will probably lock you up."
    I choked, because for a moment there I'd misunderstood him. "I'd like to," I told her. Then I asked, "Mrs.?"
    "Not any more," she said, and damned if she didn't lift up her hand and dangle it before me like in days of old when people went around grabbing hands and kissing them. I'd be happy to kiss her hand, I'd be happy indeed, but I knew what I wished she'd dangled before me.
    I took her hand in mine and said elaborately, "Mrs. Shawn," and feeling quite silly, I put her hand against my mouth and kissed the backs of her fingers.
    She kept looking at me and said softly, "Mr. Satyr."
    I twitched involuntarily, and she pressed her cool fingers tighter against my lips, and with her thumb and index finger she gently squeezed the corner of my mouth. And what happened to that wide-eyed innocent face was like eight ounces of adrenalin squirted into my blood stream. Her lips moved only slightly, and her eyes narrowed just a trifle, and she raised an eyebrow no more than a fraction of an inch, but I thought my vertebrae were going to go clickety-clack like thirty-three castanets and shiver into little pieces.
    Then she took her hand away