'She's not up there,' he said, pocketing the bills. 'She's not been in for days.'
Harry took the elevator: his shins were aching, and his back too. He wanted sleep; bourbon, then sleep. There was no reply at the apartment as the doorman had predicted, but he kept knocking, and calling her.
'Miss Bernstein? Are you there?'
There was no sign of life from within; not at least, until he said:
'I want to talk about Swann.'
He heard an intake of breath, close to the door.
'Is somebody there?' he asked. 'Please answer. There's nothing to be afraid of.'
After several seconds a slurred and melancholy voice murmured: 'Swann's dead.'
At least she wasn't, Harry thought. Whatever forces had snatched Valentin away, they had not yet reached this corner of Manhattan. 'May I talk to you?' he requested.
'No,' she replied. Her voice was a candle flame on the verge of extinction.
'Just a few questions, Barbara.'
'I'm in the tiger's belly,' the slow reply came, 'and it doesn't want me to let you in.'
Perhaps they had got here before him.
'Can't you reach the door?' he coaxed her. 'It's not so far. . .'
'But it's eaten me,' she said.
'Try, Barbara. The tiger won't mind. Reach.'
There was silence from the other side of the door, then a shuffling sound. Was she doing as he had requested? It seemed so. He heard her fingers fumbling with the catch.
'That's it,' he encouraged her. 'Can you turn it? Try to turn it.'
At the last instant he thought: suppose she's telling the truth, and there is a tiger in there with her? It was too late for retreat, the door was opening. There was no animal in the hallway. Just a woman, and the smell of dirt. She had clearly neither washed nor changed her clothes since fleeing from the theatre. The evening gown she wore was soiled and torn, her skin was grey with grime. He stepped into the apartment. She moved down the hallway away from him, desperate to avoid his touch.
'It's all right,' he said, 'there's no tiger here.'
Her wide eyes were almost empty; what presence roved there was lost to sanity.
'Oh there is,' she said, Tm in the tiger. I'm in it forever.'
As he had neither the time nor the skill required to dissuade her from this madness, he decided it was wiser to go with it.
'How did you get there?' he asked her. 'Into the tiger? Was it when you were with Swann?'
She nodded.
'You remember that, do you?'
'Oh yes.'
'What do you remember?'
'There was a sword; it fell. He was picking up -' She stopped and frowned.
'Picking up what?'
She seemed suddenly more distracted than ever. 'How can you hear me,' she wondered, 'when I'm in the tiger? Are you in the tiger too?
'Maybe I am,' he said, not wanting to analyse the metaphor too closely.
'We're here forever, you know,' she informed him. 'We'll never be let out.'
'Who told you that?'
She didn't reply, but cocked her head a little.
'Can you hear?' she said.
'Hear?'
She took another step back down the hallway. Harry listened, but he could hear nothing. The growing agitation on Barbara's face was sufficient to send him back to the front door and open it, however. The elevator was in operation. He could hear its soft hum across the landing. Worse: the lights in the hallway and on the stairs were deteriorating; the bulbs losing power with every foot the elevator ascended.
He turned back into the apartment and went to take hold of Barbara's wrist. She made no protest. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway through which she seemed to know her judgement would come.
'We'll take the stairs,' he told her, and led her out on to the landing. The lights were within an ace of failing. He glanced up at the floor numbers being ticked off above the elevator doors. Was this the top floor they were on, or one shy of it? He couldn't remember, and there was no time to think before the lights went out entirely.
He stumbled across the unfamiliar territory of the landing with the girl in tow, hoping to God he'd find the stairs before the elevator reached this floor. Barbara wanted to loiter, but he bullied her to pick up her pace. As his foot found the top stair the elevator finished its ascent.
The doors hissed open, and a cold fluorescence washed the landing. He couldn't see its source, nor did he wish to, but its effect was to reveal to the naked eye every stain and blemish, every sign of decay and creeping rot that the paintwork sought to camouflage. The show stole Harry's attention for a moment only, then he took a firmer hold of the woman's hand and they began their descent. Barbara was not interested in escape however, but in events on the landing. Thus occupied she tripped and fell heavily against Harry. The two would have toppled but that he caught hold of the banister. Angered, he turned to her. They were out of sight of the landing, but the light crept down the stairs and washed over Barbara's face. Beneath its uncharitable scrutiny Harry saw decay busy in her. Saw rot in her teeth, and the death in her skin and hair and nails. No doubt he would have appeared much the same to her, were she to have looked, but she was still staring back over her shoulder and up the stairs. The light-source was on the move. Voices accompanied it.
The door's open,' a woman said.
'What are you waiting for?' a voice replied. It was Butterfield.
Harry held both breath and wrist as the light- source moved again, towards the door presumably, and then was partially eclipsed as it disappeared into the apartment.
'We have to be quick,' he told Barbara. She went with him down three or four steps and then, without warning, her hand leapt for his face, nails opening his cheek. He let go of her hand to protect himself, and in that instant she was away - back up the stairs.
He cursed and stumbled in pursuit of her, but her former sluggishness had lifted; she was startlingly nimble. By the dregs of light from the landing he watched her reach the top of the stairs and disappear from sight.
'Here I am,' she called out as she went.
He stood immobile on the stairway, unable to decide whether to go or stay, and so unable to move at all. Ever since Wyckoff Street he'd hated stairs. Momentarily the light from above flared up, throwing the shadows of the banisters across him; then it died again. He put his hand to his face. She had raised weals, but there was little blood. What could he hope from her if he went to her aid? Only more of the same. She was a lost cause.
Even as he despaired of her he heard a sound from round the corner at the head of the stairs; a soft sound that might have been either a footstep or a sigh. Had she escaped their influence after all? Or perhaps not even reached the apartment door, but thought better of it and about-turned? Even as he was weighing up the odds he heard her say:
'Help me ..." The voice was a ghost of a ghost; but it was indisputably her, and she was in terror.
He reached for his .38, and started up the stairs again. Even before he had turned the corner he felt the nape of his neck itch as his hackles rose.
She was there. But so was the tiger. It stood on the landing, mere feet from Harry, its body humming with latent power. Its eyes were molten; its open maw impossibly large. And there, already in its vast throat, was Barbara. He met her eyes out of the tiger's mouth, and saw a flicker of comprehension in them that was worse than any madness. Then the beast threw its head back and forth to settle its prey in its gut. She had been swallowed whole, apparently. There was no blood on the landing, nor about the tiger's muzzle; only the appalling sight of the girl's face disappearing down the tunnel of the animal's throat.