He nodded.
“Of all the miserable times for Yat T’oy to come in and interrupt us... Tell me, Owl, what were you going to say — or were you going to say anything? Was it just a biological spasm, or did you... No, don’t. Skip it. Trying to recapture a moment like that is like trying to warm up cold biscuits. It’s better to throw them out and perhaps mix up another batch some time.”
Her eyes stared at him wistfully. “We will mix up another batch some time, won’t we, Owl?” And then, as he started to say something, she pointed a rigid forefinger at him and said, “No, stop right there! Don’t answer that question.”
She regarded her extended forefinger, grinning, and said, “What do you think of that trick, Owl? It’s one I learned from C. Renmore Howland — you know, Renny for short — it’s a swell trick. It pushed the words right back down your throat. I know just how it feels, because Renny pulled it on me this afternoon. You see, Owl, I don’t want you to answer the question because even that is like trying to warm up the biscuits. We’ll just have to...” Her voice choked. She helped herself to a cigarette and smoked in silence. Terry Clane, watching her, said nothing.
Yat T’oy opened the door, bearing glasses on a tray.
She mechanically took the glass nearest to her, as Yat T’oy extended the tray.
“The Chinese,” Terry said, “have a custom with their last drink of making an ‘umbrella’ glass. Not so, Yat T’oy?”
Yat T’oy beamed upon them, the benign smile of a convivial spirit. Never by any chance would one have suspected him of having expertly drugged Cynthia Renton’s drink. “Yes,” he said, “Chinese say ‘gahn bie, gahn bie,’ and then turn bottom
of glass towards ceiling, make wineglass all same like umbrella. You savvy?”
Terry said, “gahn bie, gahn bie,” and drained his glass. Cynthia sighed, said, “Not to be outdone in Chinese etiquette, Owl, ‘gahn bie, gahn bie.’ ” She took a deep breath, drained her glass and returned it to the tray. Yat T’oy gravely bore the empty glasses from the room.
“That’s the last one, Owl,” Cynthia announced. “You know, it’s funny the way people look at things. Alma would say I was just a heedless little windbag; Stubby Nash would say I was making a spectacle of myself; C. Renmore Howland — damn it, why can’t I remember to call him Renny? — would say I was talking too damn much; but you... Well, Owl, you understand. That’s why I can let myself go with you.
“When a girl’s been all bottled up with emotion, she either has to cry, or talk, or throw things, and you’d prefer to have me talk rather than cry or throw things, wouldn’t you, Owl?”
He nodded.
She grinned at him. “Good old Owl,” she said. “You know, I can always count on you for the most precious thing in life: understanding. Owl, I’m frightfully low to-night, and most awfully tired of holding my chin up — no, I mean out. I want a masculine arm around me and a shoulder to snuggle up against... Owl, damn it, I want to try warming over those biscuits.”
She sighed tremulously, smiled at him and then suddenly ceased smiling. Her eyes grew wide. “Owl!” she exclaimed, “you’re drifting away from me. I can’t seem to get my eyes focused. Good Lord, Owl, I’m not tight! I’ve taken twice that much without feeling like this... Owl, don’t go away... I need you. I...”
He crossed to her, picked her up from the chair and held her in his arms as though she had been a child overcome by fatigue.
Her arm twisted around his neck. He felt her lips as a hot circle on his cheek, the warmth of her breath on his neck.
“Oh, Owl,” she whispered, “I’m so warm... and cuddly... and happy...”
Yat Toy opened the door from the bedroom.
“Bed all ready,” he said.
Terry carried Cynthia into the bedroom, covered her with a light blanket, turned to Yat T’oy and said, “Under no circumstances, Yat T’oy, is she to know that I have gone out.”
The Chinese servant nodded gravely.
“Maybeso,” he said in the pidgin English of a servant, “she sleep one hour, no can wake up. After one hour keep on sleep but can wake up. You wake her up you come back. She not know you been gone.”
Terry nodded, stood over the bed, staring tenderly down at the sleeping figure, a figure which suddenly seemed too small and frail to maintain an armor of facetious levity against the sledge-hammer blows of fate.
He heard a slight noise behind him and turned to see Yat T’oy’s expressionless countenance staring inscrutably above the collar of an extended overcoat. “Your coat, your hat,” Yat T’oy said. “Velly foggy, you no get wet.”
Terry slid into his coat, pulled a dark green felt hat low on his forehead. There was something almost savage in his voice as he said to Yat T’oy, “Take care of her, Yat T’oy, until I come back.”
Yat T’oy said, “Plenty heap savvy. Maybeso you like to catchum good luck, maybeso better you go out back way, catchum cab, leave your car stand in front.”
10
The mournful blasts of fog signals booming from the misty darkness of the Bay were as eerie as the sound of hooting owls in midnight woods.
Terry Clane turned up the collar of his overcoat, and gazed upward at the wall of the apartment house, its grim darkness broken at intervals by the orange oblongs of lighted windows. In the pauses between fog signals, he could hear the steady drip-drip of fog-bred moisture from the eaves.
It was a night of no wind. The white fog seemed to generate as spontaneously as foam on freshly drawn beer.
Terry stepped into the dark doorway. The outer door was unlocked. He pushed it open and entered the lower corridor. He noticed a ribbon of light showing from under a door marked Manager. He tiptoed past this door and climbed the stairs.
After the misty freshness of the outer night, the odors of stale cooking assailed his nostrils with increased potency. To his ears, attuned by the spice of danger to the faintest of sounds, came the various night noises of human tenancy. From an apartment on his left sounded the shrill cachinnation of a young woman who had been drinking. A man was snoring loudly in the apartment on his right. Terry climbed the second flight of stairs. A man and a woman were quarreling in one of the front apartments. He heard the faint creak of springs as a restless sleeper stirred uneasily. The doors and partitions, he realized, were hardly thicker than paper.
Terry walked swiftly down the upper corridor, using the beam of his flashlight to guide him. Juanita Mandra’s apartment was dark. No light seeped from beneath its door. Terry didn’t knock. The skeleton keys, tribute to the ingenuity of Yat T’oy upon an occasion when Terry, suddenly called from Hong Kong, had neglected to leave his servant the keys to his rather extensive domicile, made swift sesame of the door.
Clane had learned in the Orient that the secret of nocturnal silence lies in the exercise of infinite patience. Keying his senses to react to the faintest sound of stirring life from the interior of the apartment, he slowly twisted the knob of the door, and spent some fifteen seconds in the tedious process of discounting a squeaking hinge.
A bedroom opened to the left. He could see it but indistinctly. He used his flashlight now only to point straight down at the carpet, and kept the bulb shielded by his cupped hands.
Crouching forward so that the distance between the flashlight and the floor would be as short as possible, he moved upon noiseless feet towards the table in the corner.