Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

A little better than average height she was wearing jodhpurs and a black, turtle neck sweater. Her hair hung long and shimmering blonde and ended up around her shoulder blades in loosely rolled scrolls of gold. She had her back to me and I couldn’t see her face and something had to be done about that.

The piano player looked up and I recognized him, then. It was Willis Marlow, who had recently opened up a record and music shop in Wildwood. I’d seen him around town and heard about him, but I had never met him. Word had gotten around that up until recently, he’d played piano with just about every name band in the country.

The girl turned, then and I had never seen her before. I wondered who she was and where she’d been hiding. If somebody had kept her under lock and key, I wouldn’t have been surprised. She was treasure enough to do that. She wasn’t just pretty. The nose and the mouth were a trifle on the large side and her forehead was too high and broad but on her those faults looked good. It gave a certain character to her features that mere prettiness couldn’t touch.

It was the eyes that really got me, though. They were wide-set and hazel brown, deep and soft. The lashes were like the long, spiked, sticky jobs that chorus girls affect. Only these were real and they hadn’t been doctored up. She gave me a wisp of a smile and took a sip of a very weak looking highball.

Marlow lifted his fingers from the keys and glanced up at me. “Hi,” I said. “Don’t let me interrupt. That was swell stuff. You don’t know me but my name’s Hoyle. Matty Hoyle. I work for the Wildwood Press.”

He stuck out a soft white hand with long, agile looking fingers. “Pleasure,” he said. “I’m Willis Marlow. Run the new music shop. Been meaning to run over to your place to see about some advertising.”

“Didn’t Sam Walterman get around to see you, yet? He’s our huckster. Must be slipping.”

“No.” Marlow reached for a shot glass of whiskey set on top of the piano next to a chaser of water. He put it down neat and didn’t bother with the water. I saw his eyes, then and they were a squinty, watery blue. They were red veined. There was a slight tic to one corner of his mouth.

He weaved momentarily on the piano stool and caught himself, rigidly. He was quite drunk but in the quiet way that a life-time drinker, an alcoholic, often gets. He gestured toward the girl.

“Matty, meet my daughter, Lee. Fine girl. Been away to school. Reason we’re here, Harry Wenzel stopped in the shop last week for some recordings. Got to chinning and he found out I’m a fishing bug and so’s Lee. He invited us up.”

I saw some fishing gear on top of the piano and ducked my head toward it. “Who owns the spinning outfit?” I said.

Lee Marlow said, “I do.” She made an impatient gesture. “I wish I’d brought my regular casting rod and reel along, though. I can’t get used to that one. I’ll probably make a fool of myself, tomorrow. So you’re Matty Hoyle. I’ve heard that you’re the fishing champ around here.”

I shrugged and shifted my feet awkwardly. Her smile was making me feel like a schoolboy. “I keep my line wet and try hard and sometimes I have some luck.”

“Like landing the biggest bass and pickerel to come out of Loon Lake, on the same day. That isn’t luck. That’s genius.”

I felt the blush rising from my collar and wondered what was the matter with me. I reached to the top of the piano and took hold of the whip-like spinning rod and reel. “This thing shouldn’t bother you too much,” I told her. “You’ll get used to it after the first dozen casts tomorrow. I like these outfits. Got one myself.”

“How about a demonstration?” she said. “Show me what can be done with one of those things by an expert.”

“Here?” I said. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you, maybe. Not here.”

“Please,” she said, softly and if she’d asked me to flap my arms and fly, I’d have done it.

I folded up a matchbook cover and tied it on the end. It was a little light and with a regular casting rod it would have been tough going, but I thought I could handle it with this outfit. An impulse to show off, like a kid riding a bicycle no-hands past his girl’s house, came over me and I’m not apologizing. That’s just the way it was. That’s the way Lee Marlow was hitting me. I took a round, cardboard beer glass coaster from the top of the piano and scaled it across the room. It rolled near the far wall, about twenty-five feet away.

“Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

I whipped an easy side-arm cast and the nylon line unfurled from the spinning reel silently and smoothly. The matchbook cover at the end of it, dropped an inch away from the coaster on the floor.

“Wonderful!” she said. “Will I ever learn to do that? If that coaster was a bass, you’d have hit him right on the nose with the plug. You—”