bottom row. Miss Clara Stoper. Apartment 26.
There were four apartments to a floor, so 26 would be on the seventh floor. The elevator was to the right of the mailboxes. Parker got out at the seventh floor. Apartment 26 was to the left. Parker moved down that way and listened to the door, but could hear nothing. There was a thin crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, but no light showed through.
Parker rang the bell. There was no peephole in the door, so he waited where he was, in front of the door. Nothing happened for a while, so he rang the bell again. Then he saw light under the door, and a bolt clicked.
He frowned, trying to remember the name Handy was using with her. Pete Castle, that was it.
The door opened a few inches, held by a chain from opening any farther. A chain like that can’t keep anyone out; it only serves as an irritation. Beyond was a sleepy-eyed girl’s face. She was sleepy-eyed and holding a robe closed at her throat, but her hairdo was in perfect shape without a net.
“Who is it? What do you want?” she said, the voice a good imitation of sleepy blurriness.
But the hairdo had given it away. Parker didn’t have to ask any questions after all. His right foot went out and wedged in the doorway, so the door couldn’t be closed. His right hand reached through and grabbed a handful of hair on the top of her head. He slammed her forehead against the edge of the door. Her hands started to come up towards his wrist, and her mouth was opening wide to shout, so he did it again. The third time, she became a dead weight and collapsed straight downward, leaving several strands of hair in his fist.
It took two high, flat kicks with his heel to pop the chain loose from the doorpost. The door swung open, and beyond the lighted foyer and the dark living-room was a bright doorway. The silhouette of a fat man appeared in it and Parker dove for the rug, stabbing into his pocket for the Terrier. The fat man fired over his head. Parker rolled into a wall and came up with the Terrier in his hand. The bright doorway was empty. Parker moved quickly, slamming the hall door and flicking off the foyer light.
The fat man had the same idea. There wasn’t any bright doorway any more. The whole apartment was dark.
The fat man knew this place, and Parker didn’t. The fat man could sit and wait, and Parker couldn’t take the time. The fat man could stay where he was and listen, shoot at the first sound, or just wait for Parker to go away.
In the dark, Parker found the unconscious girl. He dragged her into the living-room and knelt beside her on one knee. In a conversational voice he said, “Fat man. Listen to me, fat man. You fired one shot. The light sleepers around here are awake now; they think it was a truck making a backfire. You turn on a light, fat man, and you come out here where I can see you, or I make more noises. I can scream like a woman, fat man. I can scream like a woman, and then very slow I can empty this pistol into your girl. Too many backfires, fat man. Somebody will call the police. Before I’m finished, somebody will call the police. Then I wipe the gun clean and put it down on the floor and beat it. No fingerprints of mine here, fat man. Nothing to connect me. But your fingerprints are everywhere. And somebody’ll connect you up with this woman.”
Silence.
“Now, fat man. The next thing I do is scream like a woman.”
“Wait.”
It was a soft voice, and from the left somewhere. Not in the room.
“Hurry.”
“I will not turn on the lights,” said the voice. It had a faint accent, something Middle European. “But it is possible we can talk.”
“Not in the dark.”
“You must be reasonable. We will effect a compromise.”
“Name it.”
“You want something here, quite obviously, else you wouldn’t have come. Yet I don’t know you. I cannot imagine what it is you want. Your reactions and movements are hardly those of a burglar or a rapist. Either you have come to murder me, at the behest of the opposition, or you are here seeking information of some sort. If murder is your purpose, it would hardly be sensible for me to show myself. If what you want is information, we can discuss it just as profitably in the dark.”
While the fat man was talking, Parker was crawling towards the sound of his voice, moving cautiously across the carpet on hands and knees. When the voice stopped, Parker stopped. He turned his head away, so he wouldn’t sound any closer. “I’m here for information. Where’s Pete Castle?”
“Ah!” The fat man seemed pleased to have the mystery cleared up. “He didhave associates.”
“Where is he?”
“Reposing in a safe place, I assure you. And relatively unharmed. I would suggest, by the way, that you come no closer. You are now nearly to the doorway, and I pride myself on my shooting. If you clear that doorway, and then are foolish enough to speak, it will take me no more than one backfire to dispose of you.”
“Why warn me?”
“Curiosity, just curiosity. The same motive that impelled me to have your friend taken away to where he could be questioned at leisure. Our operation is of a complexity and a delicacy. Your friend’s presence became quite naturally, of concern to us. We had to know whether his goal coincided with our own. Now I discover that there are two of you, perhaps more. You might tell me just what it is you want with Kapor. If our purposes are the same, it is possible we could come to an agreement.”
“All I want is Pete Castle. You’ll tell me where to find him, or I’ll start making that noise”
A body suddenly fell on him, grappling with him, and the girl’s voice shrilled in his ear, “I’ve got him, Mr Menlo! I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”
Parker struggled with her, hampered by the darkness, and over her shouting he heard the pounding of running feet. He flung her off at last in time to catch a glimpse of the hall door opening, and the back of the fat man. Parker headed that way, but the girl got him around the ankles, dropping him again. He kicked free, made it to the hallway,
