The wind whistled as it slipped about the door, and even with my jacket on I felt chilly. So ten or fifteen minutes later when I’d finished the beer, I went looking for a warmer bar. That was what I told myself, though from some more primitive level the flight impulse still operated, assisting in the decision.
I hit three more bars in the next hour, drinking one beer per and moving on. Along the way, I stopped in a package store and picked up a bottle, as it was late and I was loath to go too blotto in public. I began thinking about where I would spend the night. I’d get a taxi by and by, I decided, let the driver find me a hotel and complete the intoxication business there. No sense in speculating what the results would be and no need to hurry things along. At the moment I wanted people about me, their voices, walls that echoed a tinny music. While my last memories of Australia were messy and blurred, I had been bright-eyed and strung tight as a tennis racket on departing the hall. I could still hear the snap and the brittle notes of the glass. It is not good to think about having been shot at.
The fifth bar that I hit was a happy find. Three or four steps below street level, warm, pleasantly dim, it contained sufficient patrons to satisfy my need for social noises but not so many that anyone begrudged my taking up a table against the far wall. I took off my jacket and lit a cigarette. I would stay awhile.
So it was there that he found me, half an hour or so later. I had succeeded in relaxing considerably, forgetting a bit and achieving a state of warmth and comfort, let the wind go whistle, when a passing figure halted, turned and settled onto the seat across from me.
I did not even look up. My peripheral vision told me it was not a cop and I did not feel like acknowledging an unsolicited presence, especially the likely weirdo.
We sat that way-unmoving-for almost half a barbed minute. Then something flashed on the tabletop and I looked down, automatically.
Three totally explicit photos lay before me: two brunettes and a blonde.
“How’d you like to warm up with something like that on a cold night like this?” came a voice that snapped my mind through years to alertness and my eyes forty-five degrees upward.
“Doctor Merimee!” I said.
“Ssh!” he hissed. “Pretend you’re looking at the pictures!”
The same old trench coat, silk scarf and beret … The same long cigarette holder … Eyes of unbelievable magnitude behind glasses that still gave me the impression of peering into an aquarium. How many years had it been?
“What the devil are you doing here?” I said.
“Gathering material for a book, of course. Dammit! Look at the pictures, Fred! Pretend to study them. Really. Trouble afoot. Yours, I think.”
So I looked back at the glossy ladies.
“What kind of trouble?” I said.
“There’s a fellow seems to be following you.”
“Where is he now?”
“Across the street. In a doorway last I saw him.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Couldn’t really tell. He’s dressed for the weather. Bulky coat. Hat pulled down. Head bent forward. Average height or a bit less. Possibly kind of husky.”
I chuckled.
“Sounds like anybody. How do you know he’s following me?”
“I caught sight of you over an hour ago, several bars back. That one was fairly crowded, though. Just as I’d started toward you, you got up to leave. I called out, but you didn’t hear me over the noise. By the time I’d paid up and gotten out myself you were part way up the street. I started after you and saw this fellow come out of a doorway and do the same. I thought nothing of it at first, but you did wander awhile and he was making all the same turns. Then when you found another bar, he just stopped and stared at it. Then he went into a doorway, lit a cigar, coughed several times and waited there, watching the place. So I walked on by as far as the corner. There was a phone booth, and I got inside and watched him while I pretended to make a call. You didn’t stay in that place very long, and when you came out and moved on, he did the same. I held off approaching you for two more bars, just to be positive. But I am convinced now. You are being followed.”