Free 1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid by James Hadley Chase

match-folder: one of those things restaurants and night clubs give away as an advertisement. This was something special. It was covered with dark red water-silk and across the outside in gold letters was the legend: The Musketeer Club and a telephone number.
    I turned the folder over between my fingers, remembering that Greaves, the hotel detective, had said that the Musketeer Club was the most exclusive, apart from being the most expensive club in town. How had Jack got hold of the folder? Had he gone to the club? Knowing him, I was sure he wouldn’t go to a de luxe night spot like that unless it was for business reasons. He was far too careful with his money to take any girl to a place that expensive.
    Still holding the folder, I got to my feet, thought for a moment, then, leaving my room, I took the elevator down to the lobby.
    I asked the reception clerk if Greaves was around.
    “He’ll be in his office right now,” the clerk said, staring at my swollen eye. “Downstairs and to the right. Did you have an accident, Mr. Brandon?”
    “This eye? Why, no. I ordered some sandwiches to be sent up and the waiter threw them at me. Think nothing of it. I go for that kind of service.”
    I left him with his mouth hanging open and his second chin quivering and went down the stairs to Greaves’s office.
    It was more of a cupboard than a room. I found him sitting at a small table, laying out a hand of patience. He looked up as I came to rest in the open doorway.
    “Someone take a dislike to your face?” he asked, without much show of interest.
    “Yeah,” I said and, leaning forward, I dropped the match-folder on the table.
    He looked at it, frowned, looked up at me and raised his eyebrows.
    “How come?”
    “I found it in Sheppey’s suitcase.”
    “I’m willing to bet a buck he never went there. He hadn’t the class, the money nor the influence to get past the bouncers.”
    “No chance?”
    “Not a chance in ten million.”
    “Maybe someone took him in. That possible?”
    Greaves nodded.
    “Maybe. A member can take in who he likes, but if the other snobs don’t like who he brings in, he could lose his membership. That’s how it works.”
    “He could have picked it up somewhere.”
    Greaves shrugged.
    “First one I’ve seen. The guys and dolls who go to the Musketeer Club wouldn’t soil their lily white fingers touching a thing like that. They’d be afraid it’d give them a germ. I’d say someone took him in and he brought this away with him to prove he had been there. It’s something to brag about if you’re the bragging kind.”
    “Know where I can get hold of a members’ list?”
    He smiled sourly, got up, edged around his table and went to a cupboard. After rummaging around for a few moments, he offered me a small book, bound in faded red water-silk with the same gold lettering on it as the match-folder.
    “I found it in one of the rooms at the Ritz-Plaza and thought it might come in useful one day. It’s two years out of date.”
    “I’ll let you have it back,” I said, retrieving the match-folder from the table and putting it and the members’ book in my pocket. “Thanks.”
    “Who gave you the shiner?”
    “Nobody you’d want to know,” I said, and went out and up to the lounge. I found an armchair away from the old ladies and gentlemen and read through the names in the book. There were about five hundred names to wade through. Four hundred and ninety-seven of them meant nothing to me: the other three did: Mrs. Bridgette Creedy, Mr. Jacques Thrisby and Miss Margot Creedy.
    I closed the book and slapped it gently against my hand.
    I sat for some minutes thinking. Then out of the blue came an idea. I considered it, decided after a moment or so that it wasn’t perhaps a brilliant idea, but at least it wasn’t a bad one, and I got to my feet.
    I went over to the hall porter and asked him where Franklyn Avenue was.
    He told me to take the second on the right, then the first on the left by