The tall, whitefaced, somehow handsome and somehow not handsome man backed slowly into the room. It was a large room with a low balcony around two sides of it. French doors opened out on the little private open-air balcony that each of the tower rooms had. There was a grate set for a log fire behind a paneled screen in front of a cheerful davenport. A tall misted glass stood on a hotel tray beside a deep, cozy chair. The man backed toward this and stood in front of it. The large, glistening gun drooped and pointed at the floor.
“It slays me,” he said. “I’m in the dump an hour and the house copper gives me the bus. Okey, sweetheart, look in the closet and bathroom. But she just left.”
“You didn’t see her yet,” Tony said.
The man’s bleached face filled with unexpected lines. His thickened voice edged toward a snarl. “Yeah? Who didn’t I see yet?”
“A girl named Eve Cressy.”
The man swallowed. He put his gun down on the table beside the tray. He let himself down into the chair backwards, stiffly, like a man with a touch of lumbago. Then he leaned forward and put his hands on his kneecaps and smiled brightly between his teeth. “So she got here, huh? I didn’t ask about her yet. I’m a careful guy. I didn’t ask yet.”
“She’s been here five days,” Tony said. “Waiting for you. She hasn’t left the hotel a minute.”
The man’s mouth worked a little. His smile had a knowing tilt to it. “I got delayed a little up north,” he said smoothly. “You know how it is. Visiting old friends. You seem to know a lot about my business, copper.”
“That’s right, Mr. Rails.”
The man lunged to his feet and his hand snapped at the gun. He stood leaning over, holding it on the table, staring. “Dames talk too much,” he said with a muffled sound in his voice as though he held something soft between his teeth and talked through it.
“Not dames, Mr. Ralls.”
“Huh?” The gun slithered on the hard wood of the table. “Talk it up, copper. My mind reader just quit.”
“Not dames, guys. Guys with guns.”
The glacier silence fell between them again. The man straightened his body out slowly. His face was washed clean of expression, but his eyes were haunted. Tony leaned in front of him, a shortish plump man with a quiet, pale, friendly face and eyes as simple as forest water.
“They never run out of gas—those boys,” Johnny Rails said, and licked at his lip. “Early and late, they work. The old firm never sleeps.”
“You know who they are?” Tony said softly.
“I could maybe give nine guesses. And twelve of them would be right.”
“The trouble boys,” Tony said, and smiled a brittle smile.
“Where is she?” Johnny Ralls asked harshly.
“Right next door to you.”
The man walked to the wall and left his gun lying on the table. He stood in front of the wall, studying it. He reached up and gripped the grillwork of the balcony railing. When he dropped his hand and turned, his face had lost some of its lines. His eyes had a quieter glint. He moved back to Tony and stood over him.
“I’ve got a stake,” he said. “Eve sent me some dough and I built it up with a touch I made up north. Case dough, what I mean. The trouble boys talk about twentyfive grand.” He smiled crookedly. “Five C’s I can count. I’d have a lot of fun making them believe that, I would.”
“What did you do with it?” Tony asked indifferently.
“I never had it, copper. Leave that lay. I’m the only guy in the world that believes it. It was a little deal that I got suckered on.”
“I’ll believe it,” Tony said.
“They don’t kill often. But they can be awful tough.”
“Mugs,” Tony said with a sudden bitter contempt. “Guys with guns. Just mugs.”
Johnny Rails reached for his glass and drained it empty. The ice cubes tinkled softly as he put it down. He picked his gun up, danced it on his palm, then tucked it, nose down, into an inner breast pocket. He stared at the carpet.
“How come you’re telling me this, copper?”
“I thought maybe you’d give her a break.”
“And if I wouldn’t?”
“I kind of think you will,” Tony said.
Johnny Rails nodded quietly. “Can I get out of here?”
“You could take the service elevator to the garage. You could rent a car. I can give you a card to the garage man.”
“You’re a funny little guy,” Johnny Ralls said.
Tony took out a worn ostrich-skin billfold and scribbled on a printed card. Johnny Rails read it, and stood holding it, tapping it against a thumbnail.
“I could take her with me,” he said, his eyes narrow. “You could take a ride in a basket too,” Tony said. “She’s been here five days, I told you. She’s been spotted. A guy I know called me up and told me to get her out of here. Told me what it was all about. So I’m getting you out instead.”
“They’ll love that,” Johnny Rails said. “They’ll send you violets.”
“I’ll weep about it on my day off.”
Johnny Rails turned his hand over and stared at the palm. “I could see her, anyway. Before I blow. Next door to here, you said?”
Tony turned on his heel and started for the door. He said over his shoulder, “Don’t waste a lot of time, handsome. I might change my mind.”
The man said, almost gently: “You might be spotting me right now, for all I know.”
Tony didn’t turn his head. “That’s a chance you have to take.”
He went on to the door and passed out of the room. He shut it carefully, silently, looked once at the door of 14A and got into his dark elevator. He rode it down to the linen-room floor and got out to remove the basket that held the service elevator open at that floor. The door slid quietly shut. He held it so that it made no noise. Down the corridor, light came from the open door of the housekeeper’s office. Tony got back into his elevator and went on down to the lobby.
The little clerk was out of sight behind his pebbled-glass screen, auditing accounts. Tony went through the main lobby and turned into the radio room. The radio was on again, soft. She was there, curled on the davenport again. The speaker hummed to her, a vague sound so low that what it said was as wordless as the murmur of trees. She turned her head slowly and smiled at him.
“Finished palming doorknobs? I couldn’t sleep worth a nickel. So I came down again. Okey?”
He smiled and nodded. He sat down in a green chair and patted the plump brocade arms of it. “Sure, Miss Cressy.”
“Waiting is the hardest kind of work, isn’t it? I wish you’d talk to that radio. It sounds like a pretzel being bent.”
Tony fiddled with it, got nothing he liked, set it back where it had been.
“Beer-parlor drunks are all the customers now.”
She smiled at him again.
“I don’t bother you being here, Miss Cressy?”
“I like it. You’re a sweet little guy, Tony.”
He looked stiffly at the floor and a ripple touched his spine. He waited for it to go away. It went slowly. Then he sat back, relaxed again, his neat fingers clasped on his elk’s tooth. He listened. Not to the radio—to far-off, uncertain things, menacing things. And perhaps to just the safe whir of wheels going away into a strange night.
“Nobody’s all bad,” he said out loud.
The girl looked at him lazily. “I’ve met two or three I was wrong on, then.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he admitted judiciously. “I guess there’s some that are.”
The girl yawned and her deep violet eyes half closed. She nestled back into the cushions. “Sit there for a while, Tony. Maybe I could nap.”
“Sure. Not a thing for me to do. Don’t know why they pay me.”
She slept quickly and with complete stillness, like a child. Tony hardly breathed for ten minutes. He just watched her, his mouth a little open. There was a quiet fascination in his limpid eyes, as if he was looking at an altar.
Then he stood up with infinite care and padded away under the arch to the entrance lobby and the desk. He stood at the desk listening for a little while. He heard a pen rustling out of sight. He went around the corner to the row of house phones in little glass cubbyholes. He lifted one and asked the night operator for the garage.
It rang three or four times and then a boyish voice answered: “Windermere Hotel. Garage speaking.”
“This is Tony Reseck. That guy Watterson I gave a card to. He leave?”
“Sure, Tony. Half an hour almost. Is it your charge?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “My party. Thanks. Be seem’ you.”
He hung up and scratched his neck. He went back to the desk and slapped a hand on it. The clerk wafted himself around the screen with his greeter’s smile in place. It dropped when he saw Tony.
“Can’t a guy catch up on his work?” he grumbled.
“What’s the professional rate on FourteenB?”
The clerk stared morosely. “There’s no professional rate in the tower.”
“Make one. The fellow left already. Was there only an hour.”
“Well, well,” the clerk said airily. “So the personality didn’t click tonight. We get a skip-out.”
“Will five bucks satisfy you?
“Friend of yours?”
“No. Just a drunk with delusions of grandeur and no dough.”
“Guess we’ll have to let it ride, Tony. How did he get out?”
“I took him down the service elevator. You was asleep. Will five bucks satisfy you?”
“Why?”