I shook my head again, unwillingly, and blinked hard at the dark. There was another knock at the door, and I heard a half-whispered voice.
'Who is it?' I said, reaching for the bedside light, and then my watch. The name made no impression on me as I swung my legs out of bed and went into the sitting-room.
I was still swearing as I opened the door a little wider than was safe. Lotte Hartmann stood in the corridor, in the glistening black evening dress and astrakhan jacket I remembered her wearing from our last evening together. She had a questioning, impertinent sort of look in her eye.
'Yes?' I said. 'What is it? What do you want?'
She sniffed with cool contempt and pushed the door lightly with her gloved hand, so I stepped back into the room. She came in, closed the door behind her and, leaning on it, looked around while my nostrils got a little exercise thanks to the smell of smoke, alcohol and perfume she carried on her venal body. 'I'm sorry if I woke you up,' she said. She didn't look at me so much as the room.
'No you're not,' I said.
Now she took a little trip around the floor, peering into the bedroom and then the bathroom. She moved with an easy grace and as confidently as any woman who is used to the constant sensation of having a man's eyes fixed on her behind.
'You're right,' she grinned, 'I'm not sorry at all. You know, this place isn't as bad as I thought it would be.'
'Do you know what time it is?'
'Very late.' She giggled. 'Your landlady wasn't impressed with me at all. So I had to tell her I was your sister and that I had come all the way from Berlin to give you some bad news.' She giggled again.
'And you're it?'
She pouted for a moment. But it was just an act. She was still too amused with herself to take much umbrage. 'When she asked me if I had any luggage I said that the Russians had stolen it on the train. She was extremely sympathetic, and really rather sweet. I hope you're not going to be different.'
'Oh? I thought that's why you were here. Or are the vice squad giving you problems again?'
She ignored the insult, always supposing she had even bothered to notice it.
'Well, I was just on my way home from the Flottenbar that's on Mariahilferstrasse, do you know it?'
I didn't say anything. I lit a cigarette and fixed it in a corner of my mouth to stop me snarling something at her.
'Anyway, it's not far from here. And I thought that I'd just drop by. You know ' her tone grew softer and more seductive ' I haven't had a chance to thank you properly,' she let that one hang in the air for a second, and I suddenly wished that I was wearing a dressing-gown, 'for getting me out of that little spot of bother with the Ivans.' She untied the ribbon of her jacket and let it slip to the floor. 'Aren't you even going to offer me a drink?'
'I'd say you've had enough.' But I went ahead and found a couple of glasses anyway.
'Don't you think you'd like to find that out for yourself?' She laughed easily and sat down without any hint of unsteadiness. She looked like the type who could take the stuff through the vein and still walk a chalk line without so much as a hiccup.
'Do you want anything in it?' I held a glass of vodka up as I asked the question.
'Perhaps,' she said ruminatively, 'after I've had my drink.'
I handed her the drink and put one quickly down into the pit of my stomach to hold the fort. I took another drag on my cigarette and hoped that it might fill me up enough to kick her out.
'What's the matter?' she said, almost triumphantly. 'Do I make you nervous or something?'
I guessed it was probably the something. 'Not me,' I said, 'just my pyjamas.
They're not used to mixed company.'
'From the look of them I'd say they were more used to mixing concrete.' She helped herself to one of my cigarettes and blew a cord of smoke straight at my groin.
'I could get rid of them if they bothered you,' I said, stupidly. My lips were dry when they sucked at my cigarette again. Did I want her to leave or not? I wasn't making a very good job of throwing her out on her perfect little ear.
'Let's talk a little first. Why don't you sit down?'
I sat down, relieved that I could still fold in the middle.
'All right,' I said, 'how about you tell me where your boyfriend is tonight?'
She grimaced. 'Not a good subject, Perseus. Pick another.'
'You two have a rattle?'
She groaned. 'Do we have to?'
I shrugged. 'It doesn't make me itch a lot.'
'The man's a bastard,' she said, 'but I still don't want to talk about it.
Especially today.'
'What's so special about today?'
'I got a part in a movie.'
'Congratulations. What's the role?'
'It's an English film. Not a very big part, you understand. But there are going to be some big stars in it. I play the role of a girl at a nightclub.'
'Well, that sounds simple enough.'
'Isn't it exciting?' she squealed. 'Me acting with Orson Welles.'
'The War of the Worlds fellow?'
She shrugged blankly. 'I never saw that film.'
'Forget it.'
'Of course they're not actually sure about Welles. But they think there's a good chance they can persuade him to come to Vienna.'
'That all sounds very familiar to me.'
'What's that?'
'I didn't even know you were an actress.'
'You mean I didn't tell you? Listen, that job at the Oriental is just temporary.'
'You seem pretty good at it.'
'Oh, I've always been good with numbers and money. I used to work in the local tax department.' She leaned forward and her expression became just a little too quizzical, as if she meant to question me about my year-end business expenses.
'I've been meaning to ask you,' she said, 'that night when you dropped all that mouse. What were you trying to prove?'
'Prove? I'm not sure I follow you.'
'No?' She turned her smile up a couple of stops to shoot me a knowing, conspiratorial sort of look. 'I see a lot of quirks, mister. I get to recognize the types. One day I'm even going to write a book about it. Like Franz Josef Gall. Ever hear of him?'
'I can't say that I have.'
'He was an Austrian doctor who founded the science of phrenology. Now you've heard of that, haven't you?'
'Sure,' I said. 'And what can you tell from the bumps I'm wearing on my head?'
'I can tell you're not the kind to drop that sort of money without a good reason.' She stretched an eyebrow of draughts-man's quality up her smooth forehead. 'I've got an idea about that too.'
'Let's hear it,' I urged, and poured myself another drink. 'Maybe you'll make a better go of reading my mind than you did of reading my cranium.'
'Don't act so hard to get,' she told me. 'We both know you're the kind of man that likes to make an impression.'
'And did I? Make an impression?'
'I'm here, aren't I? What do you want Tristan and Isolde?'
So that was it. She thought that I had lost the money for her benefit. To look like a big-shot.
