A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The girl didn’t smile or react in any way. They weren’t paying compliments, they were just stating facts.

“Careful, now—” Terry warned her.

“I’m always careful,” the girl said, with a touch of feminine disdain.

“One wrong move, and you’re liable to tip the whole thing off—”

"I never make a wrong move — where a man is involved.”

“—you’re not up against just some ordinary john. This man is educated, he’s stacked with enough money to make the hotel think twice before they’ll let us remove him by force from their premises, in order to avoid risking a big, hefty damage-suit. They’re a forty-million-dollar chain, and they can’t take the chance. The bad publicity alone would hurt their public relations. So he lives on here in a kind of immunity, always barring some infraction. And that’s where the whole problem comes in. He don’t infract. Three-and-a-half years of walking a tightrope have taught him that.”

“I was watching him from an unmarked car once,” Mike put in rancorously, “when he still used to go around outside the hotel sometimes, and I saw him cross the whole width of the sidewalk just to drop a tiny rolled-up ball of foil from his cigarette-pack into a litter-basket, instead of letting it fall on the ground.”

“We have a complete dossier on him, starting with the original charge that triggered the whole case—”

“Why couldn’t you use that?”

“Lack of corroboration and too circumstantial. Like I said, we have it all down in the dossier, that and lots more, but what good is a dossier without an act? We need an act. A clear-cut, definite, exposed act, punishable by statute. It doesn’t have to be sex, it can be anything. Just so we can get our hands on him, and hold onto him, nail him clown once and for all and give him the business.” The sound of Mike’s teeth grinding together could be heard clearly all around the room.

“The way it stands now, he can’t get out and away, and we can’t get in and at him. It’s a stalemate. The way it stands now, we’re on one side of the door, he’s on the other. We have to get somebody inside it with him on his side, but working for us. That’s the only thing that’ll break up the deadlock. Follow?”

“I follow,” the girl said quietly.

“So now you have an idea what you’ll be up against. An intelligent mind — very wary, very alert, very cagey — but an unbalanced one, all the signs point to that.”

Mike roared angrily. “Why beat around the bush? He’s criminally insane!”

“I didn’t want to frighten her too much,” Terry temporized.

“She may have to tangle with a guy who’s nuts with fear, and she better know about it!” Mike lashed out relentlessly.

The girl widened her eyes momentarily. That was the only sign of fear she gave. Then she dropped her lids over them calmingly. “All men are nuts, more or less — when you get too close to them,” she said thoughtfully.

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll be covering you. We’ll be all around. Just a call-for-help away.”

“That can be awfully far sometimes,” she said reflectively.

“He’s committed acts that would have gotten him stoned to death in the old Bible days,” Mike snarled.

“Don’t take her nerve away,” Terry pleaded with him.

“I’ll be all right,” the girl said. “And if I do get into the room with him?”

“You’ll have to play it by ear. The main thing is to win his confidence. Then it’ll unroll by itself.”

“Oh, my darlin’,” Mike mourned with typical Gaelic sentimentality, “I’ll give you a bonus out of my own pocket. I’ll buy you a string of pearls.”

“I don’t use jewelry,” the girl said gravely. “The life I lead, it’s only a hazard.”

She opened the door. “I better get under way,” she said briskly. Then she turned to them. “Pray for me,” she said, and closed it and went out.

She said it with a smile, but she wasn’t joking.

She came up to the door with a free-swinging stride, and rapped loosely and almost casually on it, just as you would when you drop in on a friend informally.

The man who opened it wasn’t old, but he looked it. His hair was cut short to the point of travesty, about the height of worn-down toothbrush-bristles. The deep circles of sleepless nights were under his eyes. He looked strained and haggard. Not just at the moment, permanently so.

“Yes?” was all he said. And even that one short word managed to crowd uneasiness into it.

From that point on the thing moved fast, staccato. Like the quick-beats of a drum climbing up to a climax and a crash.

“Had a hard time finding your room—” she tossed off, and swung the door back before the man could catch it and hold onto it, and somehow side-stepped past him and was already in the room before the man could grasp the fact of what had happened.

The man had to turn his head now, because she was behind him.

“You must have the wrong—”

“Don’t you remember? Down in the bar a little while ago? You said, “Come on up have a drink, let’s get better acquainted—’ ” “Pour something,” she encouraged. “Let’s make it friendly.”