extraordinarily and nakedly handsome, with eyes as real and dark as any night.
`Come in, Lew. It's nice to see you, Stella. I'm Susanna. I have a bed made up for you upstairs.'
She indicated the indoor balcony which hung halfway up the wall of the big central studio, and on which an upstairs room opened. `Do you want something to eat?'
`No, thank you,' Stella said. `I had a hamburger at the bus station.'
`I'll be glad to make you a sandwich.'
`No. Really. I'm not hungry.'
The girl looked pale and a little sick.
`Would you like to go to bed then?'
`I have no choice.'
Stella heard herself, and added: `That was rude, wasn't it? I didn't mean it to be. It's awfully kind of you to take me in. It was Mr. Archer who gave me no choice.'
`I had no choice, either,' I said. `What would you do if you had one?'
`I'd be with Tommy, wherever he is.'
Her mouth began to work, and so did the delicate flesh around her eyes and mouth. The mask of a crying child seemed to be struggling for possession of her face. She ran away from it, or from our eyes, up the circular stairs to the balcony.
Susanna called after her before she closed the door. `Pajamas on the bed, new toothbrush in the bathroom.'
`You're an efficient hostess,' I said.
`Thank you. Have a drink before you go.'
`It wouldn't do anything for me.'
`Do you want to go into where you're going and what you have to do?'
`I'm on my way to the Barcelona Hotel, but I keep running into detours.'
She reacted more sharply than she had any apparent reason to. `Is that what I am, a detour?'
'Stella was the detour. You're the United States Cavalry.'
`I love your imagery.'
She made a face. `What on earth are you planning to do at the old Barcelona? Isn't it closed down?'
`There's at least one man living there, a watchman who used to be the hotel detective, named Otto Sipe.'
`Good Lord, I think I know him. Is he a big red-faced character with a whisky breath?'
`That's probably the man. How do you happen to know him?'
She hesitated before she answered, in a careful voice: `I sort of frequented the Barcelona at one time, way back at the end of the war. That was where I met Carol.'
`And Mr. Sipe.'
`And Mr. Sipe.'
She wouldn't tell me any more.
`You have no right to cross-question me,' she said finally. `Leave me alone.'
`I'll be glad to.'
She followed me to the door. `Don't leave on that note. Please.
I'm not holding back for the fun of it. Why do you think I've been lying awake all night?'
`Guilt?'
`Nonsense. I'm not ashamed of anything.'
But there was shame in her eyes, deeper than her knowledge of herself. `Anyway, the little I know can't be of any importance.'
`You're not being fair. You're trying to use my personal feeling for you-' `I didn't know it existed. If it does, I ought to have a right to use it any way I need to.'
`You don't have that right, though. My privacy is a very precious thing to me, and you have no right to violate it.'
`Even to save a life?'
Stella opened her door and came out on the balcony. She looked like a young, pajamaed saint in a very large niche.
`If you adults,' she said, `will lower your voices a few decibels, it might be possible to get a little sleep.'
`Sorry,' I said to both of them.
Stella retreated. Susanna said: `Whose life is in danger, Lew?'
