I was down in the den lying on the couch with a cigarette thirty minutes later when I heard her car pull into the garage. In a moment there was the clicking of high heels on the basement stairs. She appeared in the doorway. She had a new hair-do, new shoes, and a new dress that was loaded with the same old magic in the same old places.
I grinned at her. “You look wonderful.”
“You look pretty wonderful yourself,” she said.
She walked over by the sofa and stood looking down at me with eyes that were faintly misted. I made no move to get up.
“How was Sanport?” I asked.
“It was fine, I guess.”
Nobody said anything for a minute.
“Did you miss me?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
She slid to her knees beside the sofa, and then sat down on the floor. Her face was on her arms very near to mine and her eyes were brimming with tears.
”Barney,” she said, “you’re not helping me very much.”
“What are you trying to do, baby? I’ll help you if I can.”
“I’m trying to tell you that I love you more than anything in the world. It’s all I thought about all the time I was in Sanport and all the way home. . . .”
She went on talking, and I listened to her, reflecting that I was probably in love with her, which was an asinine situation when you thought of it. You couldn’t operate that way; you began to flub your lines and get awkward and emotional, like a teen-ager. It had ruined everything. Well, it was ruined anyway, so what difference did it make?
Above the sound of her voice I heard the car stop outside. They were about on schedule, I thought. Nunn had no doubt finally become too impatient and suggested they search the station wagon. I saw a pair of feet go by the basement window toward the kitchen porch. The doorbell began to chime in front.
“There’s somebody at the door,” I said. “I’ll go.”
“It’s probably just some pedlar,” she protested. “He’ll go away.”
The doorbell chimed again.
“I’ll tell him to go away,” I said. I got up.
She caught my hand. “Don’t be gone long, Barney.”
“Not any longer than necessary,” I said.
I went up the stairs and through the kitchen. Ramsey would have looked in the station wagon, I thought, even if Nunn hadn’t suggested it.
Porphyry, I thought. That was it. That detective’s name was Porfiry Petrovitch.
I opened the front door. It was Ramsey and Grady Collins. Ramsey was just about to ring the bell again.