No Business Of Mine Read online

  No Business Of Mine

  James Hadley Chase

  NO BUSINESS OF MINE

  COPYRIGHT © 1947

  This book is for, my friend, Philip Lukulay,

  who always cheated me in hand-tennis, and I

  was always forgiving . . .

  I would personally like to thank Mr. Cliff from London

  who sent me a copy of this novel and “More Deadly

  Than The Male.”

  Thank You very much . . .

  NO BUSINESS OF MINE

  By

  JAMES HADLEY CHASE

  ROBERT HALE LIMITED

  63 Old Brompton Road London S.W.7

  Chapter I

  MY name is Steve Harmas and I am a Foreign Correspondent of

  the New York Clarion. During the years 1940-45 I lived in the Savoy

  Hotel with a number of my colleagues and told the people of America

  the story of Britain at war. I gave up the cocktail bar and the comfort

  of the Savoy when the Allied Armies invaded Europe. To get me to go

  was like peeling a clam off a wall, but my editor kept after me, and

  finally I went. He told me the experience would give me character. It

  gave me a pain you-know-where, but it didn’t give me character.

  After the collapse of Germany, I felt I had had enough of war and

  hardship, and I changed places with a colleague without him knowing

  anything about it, and returned to America and two-pound steaks on

  his ticket.

  Several months later I was offered an assignment to write a series

  of articles on post-war Britain. I didn’t particularly want the job: there

  was a whisky shortage in England at the time, but there was a girl

  named Netta Scott who used to live in London when last I was there,

  and I did want to see her again.

  I don’t want you to get me wrong about Netta Scott. I wasn’t in

  love with her, but I did feel I owed her a great deal for giving me such

  a swell time while I was a stranger in a strange country, and quite

  unexpectedly I found myself in the position to do so.

  It happened like this: I was reading the sporting sheet on my way

  to the office, still in two minds about going to England, when I noticed

  that one of the horses running in the afternoon’s race was named

  Netta. The horse was a ten to one outsider, but I had a hunch and

  decided to back it. I laid out five hundred dollars, and sat by the radio

  with butterflies in my stomach, awaiting the result.

  The horse won by a nose, and there and then I decided to split the

  five-thousand-dollar winnings with Netta: I caught the first available

  plane to England.

  I got a big bang out of imagining Netta’s reaction when I walked in

  on her and planked down before her five hundred crisp, new one

  pound notes. She had always liked money, always grumbled about

  being hard up, although she would never let me help her once we got

  to know each other. It would be a great moment in her life, and it

  would square my debt at the same time.

  I first met Netta in 1942 at a luxury night club in Mayfair’s Bruton

  Mews. She worked there as a dance hostess, and don’t let anyone kid

  you dance hostesses don’t work. They develop more muscles than

  Strangler Lewis ever had by warding off tired business men who are

  not as tired as all that. Her job was to persuade suckers like me to buy

  lousy champagne at five pounds a bottle, and to pay her ten shillings

  for the privilege of dancing her around a floor the size of a pocket

  handkerchief.

  The Blue Club, as it was called, was run by a guy named Jack

  Bradley. I had seen him once or twice, and I thought then he looked a

  doubtful customer. The only girl working in the club who wasn’t

  scared of him was Netta: but Netta wasn’t scared of any man.

  The story goes that all the girls had to do a night shift with Bradley

  before they could qualify for the job of hostess. They told me that

  Netta and Bradley spent the night reading the illustrated papers when

  she qualified, but that was only after she had blunted his glands by

  wrapping a valuable oil painting around his thick neck. I don’t know

  whether the yarn was true: Netta wouldn’t talk about it, but knowing

  her, I’d say it was.

  Bradley must have made a packet out of the club. It was

  patronized almost entirely by American officers and newspaper men

  who had money to burn. They burned it all right in the Blue Club. The

  band was first class, the girls beautiful and willing, and the food

  excellent; but the cost was so high you had to put on an oxygen mask

  before you looked at the bill.

  Netta was one of twelve girls, and I picked her out the moment I

  saw her.

  She was a cute trick: a red head with skin like peaches and cream.

  Her curves attracted my attention: curves always do. They were a blue

  print for original sin. I’ve seen some female hairpin bends in my time,

  but nothing quite in Netta’s class. As my companion, Harry Bix, a hard-

  bitten bomber pilot, put it, “A mouse fitted with skis would have a

  grand run down her, and would I like to be that mouse!”

  Yes, Netta was a cute trick. She was really lovely in a hard,

  sophisticated way. You could tell right off that she knew her way

  around, and if you hoped to get places with her it was gloves off and

  no holds barred; even at that she’d probably lick you.

  It took some time before Netta thawed out with me. At first she

  considered me just another customer, then she regarded me with

  suspicion, thinking I was on the make, but finally she accepted the

  idea that I was a lonely guy in a strange city who wanted to make

  friends with her.

  I used to go to the Blue Club every evening. After a month or so

  she wouldn’t let me buy champagne, and I knew I was making

  progress. One night she suggested we might go together to Kew

  Gardens on the following Sunday and see the bluebells. Then I knew

  I’d got somewhere with her.

  It finally worked out that I saw a lot of Netta. I’d call for her at her

  little flat off the Cromwell Road and drive her to the Blue Club.

  Sometimes we’d have supper together at the Vanity Fair; sometimes

  she’d come along to the Savoy and we’d dine in the grill-room. She

  was a good companion, ready to laugh or talk sense depending on my

  mood, and she could drink a lot of liquor without getting tight.

  Netta was my safety-valve. She bridged all the dreary boredom

  which is inevitable at times when one is not always working to

  capacity. She made my stay in London worth remembering. We finally

  got around to sleeping together once or twice a month, but as in

  everything we did, it was impersonal and didn’t mean a great deal to

  either of us. Neither she nor I were in love with each other. She never

  let our association get personal, although it was intimate enough.

  That is she never asked me about my home, whether I was married,

  what I i
ntended to do when the war was over; never hinted she would

  like to return to the States with me. I did try to find out something

  about her background, but she wouldn’t talk. Her attitude was that

  we were living in the present, any moment a bomb or rocket might

  drop on us, and it was up to us to be as happy as we could while the

  hour lasted. She lived in a wrapping of cellophane. I could see and

  touch her, but I couldn’t get at her. Oddly enough this attitude suited

  me. I didn’t want to know who her father was, whether she had a

  husband serving overseas, whether she had any sisters or brothers. All

  I wanted was a gay companion: that was what I got.

  We kept up this association for two years, then when I received

  orders to sail with the invading armies we said good-bye.

  We said good-bye as if we would meet again the next evening,

  although I knew I wouldn’t see her for at least a year, perhaps never

  see her again: she knew it too.

  “So long, Steve,” she said when I dropped her outside her flat.

  “And don’t come in. Let’s say good-bye here, and let’s make it quick.

  Maybe I’ll see you again before long.”

  “Sure, you’ll see me again,” I said.

  We kissed. Nothing special: no tears. She went up the steps, shut

  the door without looking back.

  I had planned to write to her, but I never did. We moved so fast

  into France and things were so hectic that I didn’t have the chance to

  write for the first month, and after that I decided it was best to forget

  her. I did forget her until I returned to America. Then I began to think

  of her again. I hadn’t seen her for nearly two years, but I found I could

  remember every detail of her face and body as clearly as if we had

  parted only a few hours ago. I tried to push her out of my mind, went

  around with other girls, but Netta stuck: she wouldn’t be driven away.

  So when I spotted that horse, backed it and won, I knew I was going to

  see her again, and I was glad.

  I arrived in London on a hot August evening after a long,

  depressing trip down from Prestwick. I went immediately to the Savoy

  Hotel where I had booked a reservation, had a word with the

  reception clerk who seemed pleased to see me again, and went up to

  my room, overlooking the Thames. After a shower and a couple of

  drinks I went down to the office and asked them to let me have five

  hundred one pound notes. I could see this request gave them a jar,

  but they knew me well enough by now to help me if they could. After

  a few minutes delay they handed over the money with no more of a

  flourish than if it had been a package of bus tickets.

  It was now half-past six, and I knew Netta would be home at that

  hour. She always prepared for the evening’s work around seven

  o’clock, and her preparations usually took the best part of an hour.

  As I was waiting in a small but select queue for a taxi, I asked the

  hall porter if he knew whether the Blue Club still existed. He said it

  did, and that it had now acquired an unsavoury reputation as it had

  installed a couple of doubtful roulette tables since my time.

  Apparently it had been raided twice during the past six months, but

  had escaped being closed down through lack of evidence. It seemed

  Jack Bradley managed to keep one jump ahead of the police.

  I eventually got a taxi, and after a slight haggle, the hall porter

  persuaded the driver to take me to Cromwell Road.

  I arrived outside Netta’s flat at ten minutes past seven. I paid off

  the driver, stood back, and looked up at her windows on the top floor.

  The house was one of those dreary buildings that grace the back

  streets off Cromwell Road. It was tall, dirty, and the lace curtains at

  the windows were on their last legs. Netta’s flat, one of three, still had

  the familiar bright orange curtains at the windows. I wondered if I was

  going to walk in on a new lover, decided I’d chance it. I opened the

  front door, began the walk up the three flights of coco-nut-matted

  stairs.

  Those stairs brought back a lot of pleasant memories. I

  remembered the nights we used to sneak up them, holding our shoes

  in our hands lest Mrs. Crockett, the landlady who lurked in the

  basement, should hear us. I remembered too, the night I had flown

  over Berlin with a R.A.F. crew and had arrived at Netta’s flat at five

  o’clock in the morning, too excited to sleep and wanting to tell her of

  the experience, only to find she hadn’t come home that night. I had

  sat on the top of those stairs waiting for her, and had final y dozed off,

  to be discovered by Mrs. Crockett, who had threatened to call the

  police.

  I passed the doors of the other two flats. I had never discovered

  who lived in them. During the whole time I had visited Netta I hadn’t

  once seen the occupiers. I arrived, a little breathless, outside Netta’s

  front door, and paused before I rang the bell.

  Everything was exactly the same. There was her card in a tiny

  brass frame screwed to the panel of the door. There was the long

  scratch on the paint-work which I had made when slightly drunk with

  the latchkey. There was the thick wool mat before the door. I found

  my heart was beating a shade quicker, and my hands were a little

  damp. It seemed to me all of a sudden that Netta had become

  important to me: I’d been away too long.

  I punched the bell, waited, heard nothing, punched the bell again.

  No one answered the door. I continued to wait, wondering if Netta

  was in her bath. I gave her a few more seconds, punched the bell

  again.

  “There’s no one there,” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned, looked down the short flight of stairs. A man was

  standing in the doorway of the lower flat, looking up at me. He was a

  big strapping fellow around thirty, broad and well-built but far from

  muscular. With a frame like a hammer-thrower, he was yet soft, just

  this side of fat. He stood looking up at me with a half-smile on his

  face, and the impression he gave me was that of an enormous sleepy

  tom-cat, indifferent, self-sufficient, pleased with himself. The waning

  sunlight coming through the grimy window caught the gold in his

  mouth, making his teeth come alive.

  “Hello, baby,” he said. “You one of her boy friends?” He had a

  faint lisp, and his corn-coloured hair was cut close. He was wearing a

  yellow and black silk dressing-gown, fastened at his throat; his pyjama

  legs were electric blue, his sandals scarlet. He was quite a picture.

  “Go jump into a lake,” I said. “Jump into two if one won’t hold

  you,” and I turned back to Netta’s door.

  The man giggled. It was an unpleasant hissing sound and for no

  reason at all it set my nerves jumping.

  “There’s no one there, baby,” he repeated, then added in an

  undertone, “she’s dead.”

  I stopped ringing the bell, turned, looked at him. He raised his

  eyebrows, and his head waggled from side to side ever so slightly.

  “Did you hear?” he asked, and smiled as if he were privately amused

  at some s
ecret joke of his own.

  “Dead?” I repeated, moving away from the door.

  “That’s right, baby,” he said, leaning against the door-post, giving

  me an arch look. “She died yesterday. You can still smell the gas if you

  sniff hard enough.” He touched his throat, flinched. “I had a bad day

  with it yesterday.”

  I walked down the stairs, stood in front of him. He was an inch

  taller than I and a lot broader, but I knew he hadn’t any iron in his

  bones.

  “Calm down, Fatso,” I said, “and give it to me straight. What gas?

  What are you raving about?”

  “Come inside, baby,” he said, smirking. “I’ll tell you about it.”

  Before I could refuse, he had sauntered into a large room which

  stank of stale scent and was full of old, dusty furniture.

  He dropped into a big easy chair. As his great body dented the

  cushions a fine cloud of dust arose.

  “Excuse the hovel,” he said, looking around the room with an

  expression of disgust on his face. “Mrs. Crockett’s a slut. She never

  cleans the place and I can’t be expected to do it, can I, baby? Life’s too

  short to waste time cleaning when one has my abilities.”

  “Never mind the Oscar Wilde act,” I said impatiently. “Are you

  telling me Netta Scott’s dead?”

  He nodded, smiled up at me. “Sad, isn’t it? Such a delightful girl;

  beautiful, lovely little body; so ful of vigour — now, just meal for the

  worms.” He sighed. “Death is a great level er, isn’t it?”

  “How did it happen?” I asked, wanting to take him by his fat

  throat and shake the daylights out of him.

  “By her own hand,” he said mournfully. “Shocking business. Police

  rushing up and down stairs . . . the ambulance . . . doctors . . . Mrs.

  Crockett screaming . . . that fat bitch in the lower flat gloating . . . a

  crowd in the street, hoping to see the remains quite, quite ghastly.

  Then the smell of gas — couldn’t get it out of the house all day.

  Shocking business, baby, really most, most shocking.”

  “You mean she gassed herself?” I asked, going cold.

  “That’s right, the poor lamb. The room was sealed with adhesive

  tape . . . roll upon roll of adhesive tape, and the gas oven going full