"I've got long arms," he told her; "Just room and bath."
"Then I'd better open-the door for you, mister. I saw how you got into the livery. Bad advertising if a man has to break down the door to get in my place."
"You're Miss Ritchie?"
"The one and only. Be right down."
It took longer than that, of course, but Edge waited patiently, sitting in the rocker and smoking a cigarette as he watched and listened to further evidence of Rainbow coming to life. For most of the time his expression was impassive, but he did allow a grin to curl up the corners 'of his mouth as he saw the sheriff emerge from the livery stable and head for his office, carrying a cloth bundle which he was careful to keep away from him.
When the door was finally opened, it was by the Pot of Gold's owner, fully dressed in a low-cut, full-length gown of green trimmed with white. She had made up her face, too, hiding the aging lines. Edge hauled himself out of the chair.
"This town sure takes a long time getting itself up in the morning," he said as he followed the woman into an elaborately furnished and decorated saloon. There was a bar down the length of one wall and the rest of the floor area was taken up with tables and chairs. At the far end was a-raised platform with curtains drawn back to show a stage setting of a metropolitan street that looked foreign. The walls were wood-paneled, hung with studies of voluptuous nudes, and red velvet drapes. Two enormous crystal chandeliers swung from the ceiling on which was a highly colored mural of more nudes. Edge thought the place looked what it was, but that it also looked clean.
"That's because Rainbow takes a long time getting to bed," Miss Ritchie answered, swaying between the tables, leading him toward the foot of a staircase which went up at one side of the stage. Then she glanced back over her shoulder with a leering smile. "To bed to sleep, that is."
She led him up the stairs at the top of which was a desk with a landing beyond. She sat down in a chair behind the desk and opened the register, swinging it around. "Two and a half dollars a day without meals," she said as she delved into a drawer of the desk and came out with pen and ink. "No private arrangements with the girls. All business goes through me and I set the charge."
"Room and bath," Edge said, scrawling his one word name in the register.
Miss Ritchie shrugged. "Suit yourself. Sheriff Beale give you a bad time over at the livery?"
"He started to try," Edge replied, falling in behind her again as she took a key from the desk and began walking along the hallway. "But then he got an attack of stomach cramps."
She stopped in front of a doorway and turned to face him, her eyebrows arched in surprise. "You slugged Beale?"
"Should that bother me?"
"He ain't much, but he's rich. Keep out of dark alleys, Mr. Edge. Life is cheap in Rainbow and Beale gets enough graft to have a hundred men killed every week."
"Obliged," Edge said, turned the key and pushed open the door. The room was neat and clean, cheerful with sunlight from the window overlooking the street, which shone on a bed, polished board floor with two rugs on it, a bureau, tallboy and wardrobe. A door gave on to a tiny bathroom with a fixed tub and piped water. The water was hot. Edge wasted no time, pumping the tub three quarters full with steaming water, then stripping off his boots, socks, pants, shirt and grubby red underwear. He grunted as scalding water engulfed his powerfully lean, olive-brown body and he sat unmoving for more than a minute, simply enjoying the feel of the water. But he was tired; had not realized just how tired until the relaxing balm of the water threatened to lull him into sleep. So he soaped himself vigorously, then watched the water turn black with the dust and sweat of four days' riding. Then he shaved, using soap and the razor from his pouch and thirty minutes after getting into the tub, pulled himself out feeling more relaxed than he could ever remember. He dried himself and then padded, naked, into the bedroom. He looked at the bed and sighed in anticipation, but took time to return to the bathroom and get his gunbelt and the Spencer, recalling Miss Ritchie's warning about Sheriff Beale's hired gunmen. He placed the belt on the bureau top, Colt butt toward the bed and lay the Spencer on the floor. Then he checked that the door was locked, the window securely fastened, and finally stretched out full length on the bed, on top of the covers.
Sleep insinuated itself Into his body like a soothing balm on an ache and it seemed only a few moments later when its pleasure was snatched away by an insistent rapping of knuckles on the door. But when Edge snapped open his eyes it was to see the room lit with the blood red light of the sun almost at the end of its daytime arc. There was a lot of noise as a background to the knocking: a blend of piano playing and singing, laughter and talk, hoofbeats and wagon wheels rolling, glasses clinking and feet stamping which seemed to come from a long way off but which was all just outside the room's window. The noise of Rainbow heading into another night-time orgy that would lead toward, another morning of late waking.
"Who's there?" Edge demanded, snatching up the Spencer and-leveling it at the door.
"Nelson Mortimer, the undertaker, Mr. Edge," the recognizable whine, called through the door. "I've got a problem, sir."
Edge glanced at the foot of the door, saw a strip of light which told of lamps in the hallway outside. He eased himself off the bed and looked along the floor, saw that there were two pairs of boots in the hall. "Just a minute," he called back, going up into a crouch, then moving on tip-toe to the door. The key was still in the lock and he turned it a fraction of an inch at a time, prepared to leap away at the first sound it made. It made no sound. He backed away, still moving silently, until he stood in the doorway of the bathroom. "Okay, Nelson," he called. "It’s open. You can come in now."
The door was opened and showed just the undertaker standing there, looking smaller than ever in his fear.
"Mr. Edge!" he stuttered, taking a step into the room, his eyes searching desperately for an occupant. "It was just that I … Mr. Edge … I think …"
He suddenly shrieked in alarm and went over sideways, knocked out of the way by a hulking, barrel-chested gunman who rushed into the room, a revolver in each hand, covering every inch of space in front of him. Edge allowed the man three seconds to express his astonishment at the empty-room, then stepped out from the doorway.
"You got two," he said and shot the man in the left eye, knocking him around and spraying blood on the wall, "But my one's bigger," he completed as the dead man crumpled.
"Oh, my God," Nelson Mortimer gasped, pressing his trembling body against the wall, as if trying to force his way through.
Edge looked at the terrified man, swinging the rifle around to cover him. "You pose a problem, Nelson," he said softly.
The man swallowed hard as a girl with a startled expression appeared in the doorway. Edge, ignored his nakedness and her presence, "Why … what … what do you mean, Mr. Edge?"
A man appeared in the doorway now and surveyed the scene with cool interest. Edge ignored him, too.
"Who's going to make the arrangements for the undertaker?" Edge asked rhetorically.
Every trace of color left Nelson Mortimer's face and he suddenly clasped his hands in front of his chest and sank to his knees. "Please, Mr. Edge. Beale made me do it. He said he'd run me out of town if I didn't get that man into your room. I didn't know he wanted to kill you. Mr. Beale deputized him. They told me he was just going to arrest you. Honest to God; Mr. Edge. I'm innocent."
"My goodness me, a mortified mortician," the man in the doorway said, in a cultured English accent. "And a wanted man as a deputy. I really don't know what Rainbow is coming to."