Fat, nicotine-stained fingers closed over it: a reflex action born of years of experience.
‘I’ll just take the ride,’ I said, and showed him more of my teeth: those capped in gold.
‘Don’t take too long about it,’ he growled, ‘and don’t think this buys you anything. I just haven’t seen you.'
He plodded back to his pillar again, then paused to scowl at the girl behind the desk, who had stopped reading the funnies and was watching him with a set smile on her foxy little face. As I closed the elevator door he was on his way over to her, probably to share the swag.
I rode up to the fourth floor and walked down a long passage studded with doors. Barratt’s apartment was No. 4BI5. I found it around the corner: an isolated door at the end of a dim culde-sac. The radio was blaring, and as I raised my hand to ring the bell, there came a sudden crash of breaking glass.
I dug my thumb into the bell push and waited. Strident jazz howled at me through the door panels, but no one bothered to answer the door. I sank my thumb into the bell-push again and leaned my weight against it. I could hear the bell ringing above the shrill notes of a clarinet. Then suddenly someone snapped off the radio and jerked open the door.
A tall, blond man in a scarlet dressing-room stood in the doorway, smiling at me. His lean, white face was handsome if you like the profile type. A moustache, the size of a well-fed caterpillar, graced his upper lip. The pupils of his amber-coloured eyes were as big as dimes.
‘Hello,’ he said in a low, drawling voice, ‘was that you ringing?’
‘If it wasn’t me, then the place is haunted,’ I said, watching him. From the look of his eyes, he was full of reefer smoke, and I had an idea he needed watching.
‘I can be funny too,’ he said mildly. His hand flashed up, and the broken bottle he had been concealing behind his back whizzed towards my face
I managed to get my face out of the way more by luck than judgment. The impetus of his lunge brought him forward very conveniently for the right-hand punch I hung on his jaw. The smack of bone against bone, and the click of his teeth made a satisfying sound in my ears.
He spread out on the floor, the bottle still clutched in his fingers. I paused long enough to take the bottle from him, and then edged into the room. The air smelt of whisky fumes and marijuana smoke: the kind of smell you would expect to run into in any hole occupied by a man like Barratt, Several broken bottles of whisky lay in a heap in the fireplace. The all-steelfurniture was scattered around the room as if two husky stevedores had been having a fight. The ten-foot polished-steel table lay on its side against a window that had a cracked pane.
Apart from the smell and the furniture, the room was empty. I moved silently over the bloodred carpet to a half-open door, and looked into a room that had the curtains drawn and the electric light on.
An ash-blonde girl lay on the bed. She had on a necklace of ivory beads, a thin gold chain around her left ankle, and nothing else. She was young and reasonably put together, but she didn’t make a pretty picture as she lay on the crumpled sheet. Her mouth was puffed up as if someone had hit her recently, and there were several ugly- looking green-and-blue bruises on her arms and chest.
We looked at each other. She didn’t move, nor did she seem surprised to see me. She gave me that silly, meaningless smile reefer-smokers hand out when they suspect they should be sociable, and the effort is too much for them.
She wasn’t in any state to listen to a sales talk. I had to decide whether I should leave her there or take her home. Although her father wasn’t anything a Boy Scout would want to hang on his totem pole, at least he wouldn’t feed her hasheesh, I decided to take her home.
‘Hello, Miss Wingrove. How about you and me going home?’
She didn’t say anything. The smile remained fixed on the shiny red mouth. I doubted if she heard what I said, let alone understood what was happening.
I didn’t like the idea of touching her, but it was pretty obvious she wasn’t going to leave the apartment on her feet. She would have to be carried. I wondered what the bowler-hatted bouncer would say when he saw me manhandling her through the lobby.
There was another bed by the window. I stripped a blanket from it and dropped the blanket over the corrupt little body.
‘Say so if you’d rather walk. If you don’t feel up to it, I’ll carry you.’
She stared blankly at me, her smile slipped, and she had to make a conscious effort to hitch it into place again. She hadn’t any comments to make.
I bent over her and slid my hands under her knees and shoulders. As I lifted her she suddenly came alive. She grabbed me around the neck and flung herself back on to the bed, throwing me off balance so I fell on top of her. She was all arms and legs now, and I couldn’t get away from her.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but there was something pretty horrible in the way she was holding me, and I hated the feel of her hot, soft body. She was giggling in an insane way, and clung to me, her legs round my back and her finger-nails digging into my neck.
I seized her wrists and tried to break her hold, but she was surprisingly strong and I couldn’t get enough leverage to free myself. We rolled off the bed on to the floor and she butted me with her head and tried to bite me in the face.
We wrestled around on the floor, knocking the furniture over, and after I had taken a couple of socks in the face that hurt I sank one into her midriff and winded her. She rolled away from me, gasping, and I got to my feet. I had lost my collar; one of my coot lapels had been ripped, and I was bleeding from a long scratch down the side of my face.
There was still plenty of fight left in her. She was squirming around on the floor, trying to get her breath back and trying to get at me when Barratt came into the room.
He came in quietly and cautiously, and there was a faded, fixed smile on his white face. In his right hand he carried a long-bladed knife that could be and probably was a carving knife.
The enlarged pupils of his eyes gave him a blind look, but he could see me all right, and he was looking and moving towards me.
The sight of those sightless eyes, the fixed smile and the carving knife brought me out in a cold sweat
‘Drop that knife, Barratt!’ I rapped out, and began to back away in search of a weapon.
He came on, slowly, rather like a sleep-walker, and I knew I should have to stop him before he cornered me. I made a sudden dive for the bed, grabbed up a pillow and flung it at him. It hit him in the face, sending him staggering, and I jumped for a chair, snatched it up as he came charging at me.
He ran slap on to the legs of the chair as I poked it at him. The collision sent both of us staggering, and as I recovered my balance and lifted the chair to hit him over the head, the girl jumped on my back, twining her arms round my throat, choking me.
I was getting rattled now and slammed against the wall with her as Barratt stabbed at me. I saw the flash of the knife and let out a yell, throwing myself sideways,
I and the girl sprawled on the floor. She was still clinging to me and her grip round my throat was making the blood hammer in my head.
I tore her hands away as Barratt bent over me. I thought I was a goner. I kicked out wildly, missed him, saw the blade flash up. I tried to roll clear, but knew it couldn’t be done. The girl under me was holding me. I couldn’t get my arms free; I couldn’t turn. The blade was aimed for my belly when there was a rush of feet; Barratt half turned, the knife thudded down into the floor an inch from my body; a short, square-shouldered man who had appeared from nowhere hit Barratt savagely on the head with what looked like a sandbag.
Barratt arched his back, shot away from me and dropped down on hands and knees. He tried to rise, flattened out, dragged himself to a half-sitting position as the square-shouldered man sprang at him and hit him again.
All this took about five seconds. The girl was still trying to strangle me and now she started to scream. I rolled over on my face, bringing her uppermost. I felt her being wrenched away and I staggered to my feet, as, screaming wildly, she flew at the square-shouldered man, her fingers clawing at his face.
He stood his ground, swept her hands away and hit her very hard on the temple with the sandbag. She dropped at his feet as if she had been pole-axed
He bent over her, lifted an eyelid, straightened and grinned at me.
‘Hello. You seem to be having quite a time. I heard you yell. Was he going to knife you or were you two
