him. One-three-five-seven-two.
That took all he had for the time being. He let the receiver fall and bang against the wall and he sat down on the floor beside it. He put it to his ear and growled at the wall: “Lemme talk to the Doc.” I listened silently.
“Vince! The Doc!” he shouted angrily. He shook the receiver and threw it away from him. He put his hands down on the floor and started to crawl in a circle. When he saw me he looked surprised and annoyed. He got shakily to his feet again and held his hand out. “Gimme a drink.”
I retrieved the fallen glass and milked the gin bottle into it. He accepted it with the dignity of an intoxicated dowager, drank it down with an airy flourish, walked calmly over to the couch and lay down, putting the glass under his head for a pillow. He went to sleep instantly.
I put the telephone receiver back on its hook, glanced out in the kitchen again, felt the man on the couch over and dug some keys out of his pocket. One of them was a passkey. The door to the hallway had a spring lock and I fixed it so that I could come in again and started up the stairs. I paused on the way to write “Doc—Vince, 13572” on an envelope. Maybe it was a clue.
The house was quite silent as I went on up.
4
The manager’s much filed passkey turned the lock of Room 214 without noise. I pushed the door open. The room was not empty. A chunky, strongly built man was bending over a suitcase on the bed, with his back to the door. Shirts and socks and underwear were laid out on the bed cover, and he was packing them leisurely and carefully, whistling between his teeth in a low monotone.
He stiffened as the door hinge creaked. His hand moved fast for the pillow on the bed.
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “The manager told me this room was vacant.”
He was as bald as a grapefruit. He wore dark gray flannel slacks and transparent plastic suspenders over a blue shirt. His hands came up from the pillow, went to his head, and down again. He turned and he had hair.
It looked as natural as hair ever looked, smooth, brown, not parted. He glared at me from under it.
“You can always try knocking,” he said.
He had a thick voice and a broad careful face that had been around.
“Why would I? If the manager said the room was empty?”
He nodded, satisfied. The glare went out of his eyes.
I came further into the room without invitation. An open love-pulp magazine lay face down on the bed near the suitcase. A cigar smoked in a green glass ashtray. The room was careful and orderly, and, for that house, clean.
“He must have thought you had already moved out,” I said, trying to look like a well-meaning party with some talent for the truth.
“Have it in half an hour,” the man said.
“O.K. if I look around?”
He smiled mirthlessly. “Ain’t been in town long, have you?”
“Why?”
“New around here, ain’t you?”
“Why?”
“Like the house and the neighborhood?”
“Not much,” I said. “The room looks all right.”
He grinned, showing a porcelain jacket crown that was too white for his other teeth. “How long you been looking?”
“Just started,” I said. “Why all the questions?”
“You make me laugh,” the man said, not laughing. “You don’t look at rooms in this town. You grab them sight unseen. This burg’s so jam-packed even now that I could get ten bucks just for telling there’s a vacancy here.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “A man named Orrin P. Quest told me about the room. So there’s one sawbuck you don’t get to spend.”
“That so?” Not a flicker of an eye. Not a movement of a muscle. I might as well have been talking to a turtle.
“Don’t get tough with me,” the man said. “I’m a bad man to get tough with.”
He picked his cigar out of the green glass ashtray and blew a little smoke. Through it he gave me the cold gray eye. I got a cigarette out and scratched my chin with it.
“What happens to people that get tough with you?” I asked him. “You make them hold your toupee?”
“You lay off my toupee,” he said savagely.
“So sorry,” I said.
“There’s a ‘No Vacancy’ sign on the house,” the man said. “So what makes you come here and find one?”
“You didn’t catch the name,” I said. “Orrin P. Quest.” I spelled it for him. Even that didn’t make him happy. There was a dead-air pause.
He turned abruptly and put a pile of handkerchiefs into his suitcase. I moved a little closer to him. When he turned back there was what might have been a watchful look on his face. But it had been a watchful face to start
