“Is it you, Rico? I’ve been waiting for you.”

He turned catlike from the door, shifting his gun from me to the darkness behind me. “Who is it?” His voice was jangled.

I leaned on the balls of my feet, ready to move. The gun came back to me. The key-ring forgotten in the lock.

“It’s me, Rico,” the voice from the shadows said. “Mavis.”

“Mrs. Kilbourne!” Amazement raked his face, and his voice choked. “What are you doing here?”

“Mavis to you, tall and handsome. I haven’t been out by myself for a long time. But I haven’t forgotten how you looked at me.”

She moved out of the shadows past me as if I wasn’t there, immaculate in a high-shouldered ermine jacket. Her left hand was behind her with the forefinger extended. It curled and straightened, pointed at the floor.

“Be careful, Mrs. Kilbourne.” The man’s voice was wretched, straining to repress an impossible hope. “Please go home, Mrs. Kilbourne.”

“Won’t you call me Mavis?” She brushed the side of his face with a white-gloved hand. “I call you Rico. I think of you when I’m lying in bed at night. Aren’t you ever going to give me a break?”

“Sure I will, baby, only be careful. I’m holding a gun—”

“Well, put it away,” she said with coy petulance. She pushed the gun to one side and leaned heavily on him, her arms around his shoulders, mouth on mouth.

For an instant the gun wavered. He was still, enclosed by her in a white and perfumed dream. I raised my doubled fists and brought them down. Something snapped in his hand. The gun rattled on the floor. The woman went down after it, scurrying on her knees, and Rico went after her. My arms looped over his head, hugged him and lifted him. I held him suspended by the neck until his hands stopped scratching at me and dragged on the floor. Then I let him fall on his face.

Chapter 12

The woman stood up with the gun. She held it in a gingerly way, as if it were a reptile. “You catch on quickly, Archer. That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Unknown admirer,” I said. “I didn’t realize I had this fantastic power over women.”

“Didn’t you? I knew when I saw you you were for me. Then I heard my husband telling them to bring you here. I came. What else could I do?” Her hands made a pretty gesture, spoilt by the gun.

“Unlike Rico,” I said, “I’m allergic to ham.” I looked down at the man at my feet. His toupee was twisted sideways, so that the straight white line of the part ran from ear to ear. It was funny, and I laughed.

She thought I was laughing at her. “Don’t you dare to laugh at me,” she said in a blind white rage. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

“Not if you hold the gun that way. You’ll sprain your wrist and shoot a hole in the roof. Now put it away and kiss your boyfriend goodnight and I’ll take you home. I suppose I should thank you, too? Mavis.”

“You’ll do as I say,” but her heart wasn’t in what she said.

“I’ll do as I think best. You hadn’t the guts to tackle Rico alone, and I’m a tougher proposition than Rico.”

She dropped the gun in her coat pocket and clasped her white silk hands below her bosom. “You’re right. I need your help. How did you know?”

“You didn’t go to all this trouble for fun. Unwire my hands.”

She slipped off the gloves. Her fingers unwound the thin steel wire. The man on the floor rolled onto his side, the breath whistling tinnily in his throat. “What can we do with him?” she said.

“What do you want to do with him? Keep him out of mischief, or get him into mischief?”

A smile brushed her lips. “Keep him out, of course.”

“Give me the wire.” My fingers were nearly numb, pierced by shooting pains from returning circulation, but they worked. I turned the tall man onto his back, doubled up his knees, and wired his wrists together behind his thighs.

The girl opened the door, and I dragged him over the threshold by the shoulders. “Now what?”

“There’s a closet here.” She closed the front door and switched on the light.

“Is that safe?”

“He lives here by himself.”

“You seem to have cased the joint.”

She touched a finger to her mouth and glanced at the man on the floor. His eyes were open, glaring up at her. Their whites were suffused with blood. His hair had fallen off entirely, so that his skull looked naked. The toupee lay on the floor like a small black animal, an infant skunk. Its master’s voice came thin between purplish lips:

“I’m going to make bad trouble for you, lady.”

“You’re in it now.” To me: “Put Tall and Handsome in the closet, will you?”

I put him in under a dirty raincoat, with a muddy pair of rubbers under his head. “Make a noise and I’ll plug the cracks around the door.” He was still.

I shut the closet door and looked around me. The lofty hallway belonged to an old house which had been converted into an office. The parquetry floor was covered with rubber matting, except at the edges where the pattern showed. The walls had been painted grey over the wallpaper. A carved staircase loomed at the rear of the hall like the spine of an extinct saurian. To my left, the frosted glass pane of a door bore a sign in neat black lettering: HENRY MURAT, ELECTRONICS AND PLASTICS LABORATORY.

The woman was bent over the lock of this door, trying one key after another from the keyring. It opened with a click. She stepped through and pressed a wall-switch. Fluorescent lights blinked on. I followed her into a small office furnished in green metal and chrome. A bare desk, some chairs, a filing cabinet, a small safe with a phony dial that opened with a key. A framed diploma on the wall above the desk announced that Henry Murat had been awarded the degree of Master of Electronic Science. I had never heard of the school.

She knelt in front of the safe, fumbling with the keys. After a few attempts she looked around at me. Her face was bloodless in the cruel light, almost as white as her coat. “I can’t, my hands are shaky. Will you open it?”

“This is burglary. I hate to commit two burglaries in one night.”

She rose and came towards me, holding out the keys. “Please. You must. There’s something of mine in there. I’ll do anything.”

“That shouldn’t be necessary: I told you I’m not Rico. But I like to know what I’m doing. What’s in there?”

“My life,” she said.

“More histrionics, Mavis?”

“Please. It’s true. I’ll never have another chance.”

“At what?”

“Pictures of me.” She forced the words out. “I never authorized them. They were taken without my knowledge.”

“Blackmail.”

“Call it that, but it’s worse. I can’t even kill myself, Archer.”

She looked half dead at the moment. I took the keys with one hand and patted her arm with the other. “Why should you think of it, kid? You have everything.”

“Nothing,” she said.

The key to the safe was easy to pick out. It was made of brass, cut long and flat. I turned it in the keyhole under the dial, pressed the chrome handle, and pulled the heavy door open. I opened a couple of drawers filled with bills, old letters, invoices. “What am I looking for?”

“A roll of film. I think it’s in a can.”

There was a flat aluminum can on the upper shelf, the kind that was sometimes used for 16 mm. movies. I peeled off the tape that sealed the edges, and pulled off the lid. It contained a few hundred feet of film rolled in a flat cylinder. I held the end frame up to the light: it was Mavis flat on her back in a brilliant sun, with a towel over her hips.

“No. You wouldn’t dare.” She snatched the film from my hands and hugged it to her.

“Don’t get excited,” I said. “I’ve seen a human body before.”

She didn’t hear me. She threw the film on the linoleum floor and huddle over it. For a moment I didn’t know what she was doing. Then I saw the gold lighter in her hand. It flicked open and made sparks, but didn’t light.