77 Sunset Strip Read online

  “Pretty quick,” I said.

  The maid mumbled something under her breath and went away. I waited till I was sure Quint was gone, then walked to the door and out.

  It was six-thirty by the time I got back to the office. The place was already dark, filled with the sound of homeward traffic on the Strip. Some mail had accumulated under the slot, but I left it there and sat back with my feet on the desk and tried a fantasy or two about a world without passion or violence. Well, without violence, anyway.

  By seven o’clock the traffic sounds were quieter and so was I. I gathered up the mail and looked it over: nothing of interest but a letter from a girl I’d helped send to the Tehachapi Prison for Women. She was getting out next week and wondered if I’d like to take her dancing.

  The restful quiet was broken by the ringing of the phone. The voice at the other end was deep, throaty, provocative and feminine.

  “Mr. Bailey?” she asked. The voice was vaguely familiar.

  “Yes?”

  “I need help, and you’ve been recommended as just the man for me.”

  I’d heard the words before, too. “I need help myself,” I answered, “shall we get together and draw straws?”

  Betty Callister laughed delightedly and let her voice come back to the proper register as she said, “If you opened your window we wouldn’t need these telephones.”

  “You’re at Dino’s?”

  “They tell me I have the booth usually reserved for a man named Bailey. That’ll make it easier for you to recognize me—alter all, we’re practically strangers.”

  “ ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,’ ” I answered happily, “ ‘for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ Hebrews, thirteen, two.”

  I hung up and headed for Dino’s as fast as my gumshoe feet would carry me. As I crossed the breezeway I heard the phone begin to ring in my office.

  I let it ring.