Eve by James Hadley Chase Page A

quarter of an hour I had completely forgotten that she was anyone’s woman and that remark jarred me badly. “Well, I’m sorry. After all, it is my name. What do you suggest?”
    She sensed my irritation and looked a little sullen. “I like to know who’s coming,” she said.
    “Of course,” I said sarcastically. “How about Clarence, or Lancelot or Archibald?”
    She giggled and looked at me searchingly. “It’s all right I’ll recognize your voice. Good-bye, Clive.”
    “Fine. I’ll come and see you again soon.”
    “Marty . . .” she called.
    The big, angular woman came from an adjoining room. She stood waiting, her hands clasped, a faint smirk in her eyes.
    “I’ll call you before long,” I said and followed the woman down the passage.
    “Good evening, sir,” she said politely at the door.
    I nodded and walked up the path to the white wooden gate. When I reached my car, I paused and looked back at the house. There were no lights to be seen. In the dusk of the evening, it looked just like any other of the little houses that dotted the side streets of Hollywood.
    I started the engine and drove to a bar off Vine Street, within sight of the Brown Derby. I felt suddenly deflated and I needed a drink.
    The Negro bartender grinned cheerfully at me, his teeth glistening like the keys of a piano in the hard electric light.
    “ ‘Evening’, sir,” he said, spreading his big hands on the bar. “What’ll it be tonight?”
    I ordered a straight Scotch and carried it to a table away from the bar. There were only a few men in the place, none of them I knew. I was glad of that because I wanted to think. I relaxed in the easy chair, drank a little of the whisky and lit a cigarette.
    I decided, after brooding for a while, that it had been an interesting, if expensive, quarter of an hour. The first opening move in the game had been mine. Eve had been puzzled and I felt pretty sure, interested. I should have liked to have heard what she had said to Marty about me after I had left. She was smart enough to guess that I was playing some kind of a game, but I had given her no clue as to what it was.
    I had made her curious. I had talked about her and not about myself; that must have been a change for her. The type of man she would mix with was certain to talk continuously about himself. Her inferiority complex was interesting. Possibly it was due to a fear of the future. She wanted to be reassured about herself. If she relied on her trade for money that would explain her anxiety about her looks. She wasn’t young. She wasn’t old, of course, but even if she were thirty-three, and I guessed she would be older than that, in her game that was the age when a woman did get anxious.
    I finished my whisky and lit a cigarette. In doing so I broke the chain of my thoughts and began, almost against my will, to examine my own conscience.
    Obviously something had happened to me. A few days ago, the idea of my associating with a prostitute would have been unthinkable. I have always despised men who go with such women. Everything they stood for was repugnant to me. And yet, I had spent a quarter of an hour with one of these women, treating her as I treated my other women friends. I had actually left my car outside her house, which must be notorious in the neighbourhood, for anyone to identify and I had paid for the privilege of having a completely futile conversation.
    It was my misfortune to associate with brilliant and talented people. I knew I was dross compared with them. But Eve had never known success. She had no talents and she was a social outcast. She was the only woman I knew whom I could genuinely patronize. In spite of her power over men, her strength of will and her cold indifference, she was for sale. As long as I had money I was her master. I realized now that it was essential for me to have such a companion, who was morally and socially my inferior, if I were not to lose all confidence in myself.
    The more I thought