Her legs seemed to be completely limp.
“Lady,” I said, “you’ve sure got a load on.”
I picked her up and carried her out of the elevator and down the carpeted hall. The first door I tried was a linen closet. The second was a lavatory, and the third was an empty bedroom. It was a very cheery bedroom. A log fire burned in a handsome marble fireplace. I put her down on the bed, went back to close the door and decided to lock it. My last conversation with Miss Dahl had been interrupted by an unlocked door. I wanted this one to be private.
I went to the window and opened it wide. She looked like a little cold air might revive her.
Then I went back to the bed.
Jean Dahl was lying very still. She was very pale. I didn’t like the way she looked at all.
I shook her, but she was completely limp.
I slapped her. I talked to her, softly at first. “Hey, come on,” I said, “Snap out of it, lady.”
Then I started to panic.
I slapped her twice more. She made a gasping sound.
I looked around. The bedroom we were in had an adjoining bathroom. I went into the bathroom and filled a glass with cold water. I carried it back and splashed a little on her temples and cheeks.
I picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. Supporting her body against the wall with one hand, I turned the cold water in the shower all the way on. Then I took off my coat.
I struggled with the zipper on her dress. It zipped down the back from neck to waist. I was able to work her arms and shoulders out of it, and it dropped to the floor as I lifted her to her feet. Holding her from behind, under her armpits, I eased her under the shower. She was dead weight, and to hold her under the shower I had to get under it with her.
She coughed and gasped as the cold water hit her. After a second or two I was as wet as she was. I stood holding her under the shower, slapping her face as gently as possible and talking to her. We were both gasping and once I lost my footing and fell heavily, pulling her down on top of me on the wet tile floor.
When I let her out of the shower her breath was coming in short heavy gasps. Her knees buckled and I let her sink to the floor. I held her there with her head between her knees.
I went to the medicine cabinet and found, among the aspirin and toothpaste, a tin of bicarbonate. I dumped some into a glass and filled the glass with warm water.
I got down on the floor beside her, cradled her head in my left arm, and forced about two swallows of the warm soda water down her throat. When she began to gag I leaned her head into the tub and held it there. After it was over I got her back under the shower again.
When she finally spoke her first words were, “My hair’s all wet.” She ran her hand weakly through her wet, matted hair. Then she swore, gasped and was sick again.
This time I left her alone.
In the bedroom I went through her purse. I wasn’t looking for anything but cigarettes.
I hate a man who snoops but I couldn’t help noticing that she had acquired a new automatic.
I took the gun and the cigarettes and matches out of her purse. I put the gun in my pocket and lit two cigarettes. Then I went back into the bathroom.
She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub drying herself with a towel. She had taken off her wet underwear. She spread the towel across her lap and said, “What the hell happened, baby?”
“I think maybe you got yourself plastered, baby,” I said. “I think maybe you kind of passed out.”
I handed her the other cigarette. She took it, inhaled deeply, coughed, then recovered and inhaled again.
“Thanks, baby,” she said.
I realized suddenly that I was staring at her body, at her slim shoulders and firm, full breasts.
I picked up my coat and handed it to her. She put it on.
“Listen,” I said, “what were you drinking, anyway?”
“Drinking?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m trying to think,” she said.
I helped her up and guided her back to the bed. She stretched out and I spread a towel under her still wet hair.
“I feel awful,” she said. “Let me have my lipstick.”
I rummaged around in her purse looking for her lipstick. I found it and handed it to her. She started to use it but she couldn’t make it. She dropped it into the pocket of my coat. “I feel awful,” she said.
“What were you drinking?”
“I had one drink,” she said. “Just one drink.”
I laughed. “In that case, lady, somebody fed you a mickey.”
Jean Dahl gasped sharply and sat up on the bed. It seemed as if her head had suddenly cleared. “My God,” she said hoarsely, “they tried to kill me.”
Then she began to sob hysterically.
I didn’t touch her. I sat in a chair across from the bed and let her cry it out. After a while her sobs stopped. She lay with her head on the towel, her eyes closed, her breathing gradually becoming regular.
“Jean,” I called. “Jean!”
But she was asleep.
My clothes were wet. I went back into the bathroom and got dried up as well as I could. I combed my hair. I had another one of her cigarettes. Then I took her gun out of my pants pocket and dried it off.
It was a dainty and feminine kind of gun. I didn’t know enough about firearms to tell if it was a. 22, a six- shooter, or some new kind of cigarette lighter. But it smelled like a gun. Oily.
I held it gingerly with two fingers, and tried to think of some place to put it.
I didn’t want to give it back to her. But I didn’t want to carry it around in my pocket, either.
Finally I took it into the bathroom and put it in the medicine cabinet. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it.
I went back into the bedroom. Jean Dahl, I decided, had slept long enough. I reached down to shake her and as I did so, the telephone beside the bed began to ring.
I froze.
Walter’s house is hooked up with phone extensions in every room.
I knew from the first sound of the phone that it wasn’t someone calling Walter. And it wasn’t a wrong extension. It was someone calling me.
I let the phone ring three times before I decided to pick it up.
I lifted the receiver very gently and held it to my ear. I didn’t say anything. I just lifted the phone and waited.
The man’s voice on the other end of the phone was cold, harsh, and derisive.
“Eagle Scout,” it said. “Hero. Why don’t you mind your own business?”
“Who is this?” I said. “Whom do you want to speak to?”
“You, Lone Ranger. I want to talk to you.”
“Who is this?” I said.
“You got your dry clothes on. You can come over now. I want to talk to you.”
My heart began to beat rapidly.
“Where are you calling from? What do you want? Tell me or I’ll hang up.”
“Across the hall, Simon Templar,” he said. “The Saint. I’m calling you from across the hall.”
“What?”
“Falcon,” he said. “I’m right across from you. I think maybe we should talk. What kind of manners-to take a lady up to a bedroom in the middle of a party-”
I felt angry and frightened and vulnerable.
“Who is this?” I said. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you. Come over.”
“If you have anything to say to me, say it.”
