The Mike Hammer Collection

“Not a thing. Where’s Miss Malcom?”

“Upstairs, I believe. She took Master Ruston to his room a little while ago. Shall I call her for you?”

“Never mind, I’ll go up myself.”

I rapped lightly and opened the door at the same time. Roxy took a quick breath, grabbed the negligee off the bed and held it in front of her. That split second of visioning nudity that was classic beauty made the blood pound in my ears. I shut my eyes against it. “Easy, Roxy,” I said, “I can’t see so don’t scream and don’t throw things. I didn’t mean it.”

She laughed lightly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, open them up. You’ve seen me like this before.” I looked just as she tied the wrapper around her. That kind of stuff could drive a guy bats.

“Don’t tempt me. I thought you’d changed?”

“Mike . . . don’t say it that way. Maybe I have gone modest, but I like it better. In your rough way you respected it too, but I can’t very well heave things at you for seeing again what you saw so many times before.”

“The kid asleep?”

“I think so.” The door was open a few inches, the other room dark. I closed it softly, then went back and sat on the edge of the bed. Roxy dragged the chair from in front of her vanity and set it down before me.

“Do I get sworn in first?” she asked with a fake pout.

“This is serious.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m going to mention a name to you. Don’t answer me right away. Let it sink in, think about it, think of any time since you’ve been here that you might have heard it, no matter when. Roll it around on your tongue a few times until it becomes familiar, then if you recognize it tell me where or when you heard it and who said it . . . if you can.”

“I see. Who is it?”

I handed her a cigarette and plucked one myself. “Mallory,” I said as I lit it for her. I hooked my hands around my knee and waited. Roxy blew smoke at the floor. She looked up at me a couple of times, her eyes vacant with thought, mouthing the name to herself. I watched her chew on her lip and suck in a lungful of smoke.

Finally she rubbed her hand across her forehead and grimaced. “I can’t remember ever having heard it,” she told me. “Is it very important?”

“I think it might be. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.” She leaned forward and patted my knee.

“Hell, don’t take it to heart. He’s just a name to me. Do you think any of the characters might know anything?”

“That I couldn’t say. York was a quiet one, you know.”

“I didn’t know. Did he seem to favor any of them?”

She stood up and stretched on her toes. Under the sheer fabric little muscles played in her body. “As far as I could see, he had an evident distaste for the lot of them. When I first came here he apparently liked his niece, Rhoda. He remembered her with gifts upon the slightest provocation. Expensive ones, too. I know, I bought them for him.”

I snubbed my butt. “Uh-huh. Did he turn to someone else?”

“Why, yes.” She looked at me in faint surprise. “The other niece, Alice Nichols.”

“I would have looked at her first to begin with.”

“Yes, you would,” she grinned. “Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

“For quite a while she got all the attention, which threw the Ghents into an uproar. I imagine they saw Rhoda being his heir and didn’t like the switch. Mr. York’s partiality to Alice continued for several months then fell off somewhat. He paid little attention to her after that, but never forgot her on birthdays or holidays. His gifts were as great as ever. And that,” she concluded, “is the only unusual situation that ever existed as far as I know.”

“Alice and York, huh? How far did the relationship go?”

“Not that far. His feelings were paternal, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. Mr. York was long past his prime. If sex meant anything to him it was no more than a biological difference between the species.”

“It might mean something to Alice.”

“Of that I’m sure. She likes anything with muscles, but with Mr. York she didn’t need it. She did all right without it. I noticed that she cast a hook in your direction.”

“She didn’t use the right bait,” I stated briefly. “She showed up in my room with nothing on but a prayer and wanted to play. I like to be teased a little. Besides, I was tired. Did York know she acted that way?”

Roxy plugged in a tiny radio set and fiddled with the dial. “If he did he didn’t care.”

“Kitten, did York ever mention a will?”

An old Benny Goodman tune came on. She brought it in clearer and turned around with a dance step. “Yes, he had one. He kept the family on the verge of a nervous breakdown every time he alluded to it, but he never came right out and said where his money would go.”

She began to spin with the music. “Hold still a second, will you? Didn’t he hand out any hints at all?”

The hem of her negligee brushed past my face, higher than any hem had a right to be. “None at all, except that it would go where it was most deserving.”

Her legs flashed in the light. My heart began beating faster again. They were lovely legs, long, firm. “Did Grange ever hear that statement?”