Mignon by James M. Cain Read Free Book Online

this place to get something to please a girl. I asked myself what Landry had done for me that I had to risk my life, perhaps, doing this for him. I reminded myself of Pierre and that strange remark, “he’d do anything, anything , I tell’m” to do. Coupled with the word bodyguard it meant armed thug, one I dared not disregard. I told myself to wake up and get back to the original problem, which was to raise twenty-five thousand bucks. I told myself all kinds of things and seemed to be making some progress, at least to the extent that I took out her list and began checking stores. At the first one I went to, Wagener’s in Camp Street, just up the street from the City, I hit pay dirt. Yes, said the clerk, he remembered the Irish customer and thought it an odd kind of purchase for a person of such obvious elegance. I took his name, Bob Raney, and went up to the St. Charles, where I had some lunch in the bar. I told myself that did it: there was no need any more, now that I had the proof of who had bought the paper, to take any chance on a search. And yet all the time it gnawed at me that since rooms are done once a day, those scraps would probably stay there until the maid came in next morning, and with Burke dated up for the evening, Pierre was all there was between me and what I needed more than anything. And then, all of a sudden, unexpectedly and by accident, a way suggested itself whereby I could get rid of Pierre. Two men at the next table were having a growling match about a woman named Marie Tremaine for her greedy, grasping habits. One of them said: “All she wants is your money, and that ends it with me. I’ll never go in her house again, from now to the end of my life. Do you hear me, fellow? I’m through.”
    It came to me I’d heard of that house before, sitting around this bar. As soon as I’d finished I went out and said to a hacker: “Have you heard of Marie Tremaine’s?”
    “Well, Mister, I hope so.”
    “Take me there.”

Chapter 6
    I T WAS A HOUSE ON BIENVILLE , in the Quarter, with two bay windows; a colored maid let me in. She started for a double door on the left of the hall. When I asked for Miss Tremaine she seemed surprised and opened the door on the right. I went into a red-plush parlor and sat down, first taking off my oilskin, which I folded beside my chair, putting my hat on top of it. I waited, and felt my stomach flutter when the door across the hall opened and a man came out with a girl, who whispered with him before he left. She was trim, neat, and shapely, and wore a red baize apron. What upset me was wondering what I would do if she came in where I was and sat in my lap, as I’d heard was the custom. She didn’t, but went back through the door she had come out of and closed it. I was just drawing a breath of relief when a woman came in, stood in front of me, and looked me over. She was small, with blonde ringlets beside her face, and quite pretty. I took her to be in her thirties, and she had blue eyes and strawberry-and-cream complexion, but all she had on was a robe, a white satin thing that she wore, with a gold fillet on her hair and gold slippers on her feet, but nothing underneath—as she carelessly, maybe not so carelessly, let me see. I said: “Miss Tremaine? Crandall’s my name”—giving the name I’d signed on the register of the City Hotel last night. I went on: “My carte de visite ,” and pressed a twenty-dollar bill in her hand.
    She blinked, but I kept right on, determined to hit the thing on the nose, no matter how nervous I was. I said: “I’ve come on a matter of business, to ask some help that I need, for which I’m willing to pay.”
    “ Alors? What help, please?”
    She had a small voice, French accent, and cute way of talking. I asked: “Miss Tremaine, could you hire me a girl? For a little job tonight at the City Hotel? I kind of need a decoy, to entice someone out of his room——”
    “La-la. La-la.”
    “Oh, I assure you there’s