The portrait of Jacob Mandra was just as he had seen it earlier in the day. Despite his shielded flashlight, there was enough light to show him the sombre canvas with the cynical, silver-green eyes of the dead man apparently watching him in sardonic appraisal.
Terry realized he must either move the table or reach across it and raise the portrait far enough to clear the littered ornaments on the table top, where a cloisonné vase hobnobbed with an ornamental tree composed of cemented seashells.
He doubted that Juanita would have retired, yet his every motion must necessarily be predicated upon the assumption that the bedroom contained her sleeping form. He heard an automobile grind slowly up the steep street, to come to a pulsing stop in front of the apartment house.
Terry leaned across the cluttered table, grasped the portrait of Mandra firmly at the top, and with infinite care raised it until it cleared the last clutching arm of the seashell tree. His flashlight, reposing on the table top, gave a faint illumination sufficient to show him the obstacles which he must avoid.
Holding the portrait in both hands, he stepped back from the table and slowly lowered it until its lower edge rested on the floor. A few seconds later he became conscious of pounding feet in the passage. He grabbed frantically at the flashlight, switched it off and stood motionless.
The steps came nearer, two men, walking down the corridor.
Terry looked about for some means of escape and could find none. The steps approached the door, ceased. Heavy knuckles sent a loud knock reverberating through the room.
Terry, nerves tense, listened for the sound of creaking bed springs. The heavy knock was repeated and then the voice of Inspector Malloy said, “Open up, this is the law.”
Terry’s straining ears heard no sound from the bedroom. He stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe, awaiting the next move which would tell him whether Inspector Malloy had followed him to the apartment or was merely searching for Juanita.
He heard Inspector Malloy’s voice say, in a rumbling monotone, “Okay, Dave. She isn’t here. We’ll park the car across the street and wait. You’re certain you can spot her?”
A higher pitched voice said, “Of course I can spot her. I’ve seen her fifty times. She’s dark, a swell figure, not over twenty-four or twenty-five...”
“And she’s the one you saw with Mandra?” Inspector Malloy interrupted.
“Sure she is.”
“Okay, we’ll wait until she shows. I want to get in here before she has a chance to change her things around any. We wait where we can spot her the minute she turns into the street. Then brace her, tell her we’re the law, and that we want the low-down. We start talking on the street and rush her up the stairs and into this place. Get it?”
“Sure, I get it. But we’ll have to work fast to surprise anything out of her...”
The men turned away from the door, started towards the stairs.
Terry, standing in the dark apartment, took stock of the situation. Inspector Malloy and some other man were going to be waiting where they could see everyone who entered or left the apartment house. If Terry tried to leave before Juanita arrived, Malloy would promptly collar him. If he waited for Juanita, he would be discovered in her apartment. If he took Mandra’s portrait with him, Malloy would confiscate it and demand an explanation. If he left it where it was, Malloy would find it when he came in with Juanita.
Terry waited until the steps had receded in the distance. Propping the portrait against the side of the wall, he tiptoed cautiously into the bedroom. He sent the beam of his flashlight about in a questing circle, then stepped to the bedroom window, opened it, and leaned out.
What he saw was not reassuring. Enough illumination was diffused by the thick fog to show a sheer drop stretching down farther than Terry dared to jump. The side of the building was unrelieved by fire-escape, porch, or staircase, and, moreover, Terry realized that it had no back yard and no back entrance. Stepping into the living-room, he confirmed his first impressions by peering down from those windows.
He was trapped.
Standing in front of the portrait, the attempted theft of which threatened to prove so disastrous, Terry tried to find some way out of his predicament.
He could hear the blast of fog signals, the muffled clang of a gong marking the location of a ferry pier, the noise made by distant traffic, the dripping of fog from the eaves. His racing mind took note of the smell of stale tobacco in the apartment, and, more than all, sensed the mocking stare of the painted eyes of the dead bail-bond broker.
Terry sought to exclude these things from his mind. In China he had been taught that thought has the speed of light, that it requires complete concentration for less than a second to grasp any problem of environment with which the mind can be confronted. He remembered the mental exercises of the cowled monks who were accustomed to sit on sharp stones by a roaring waterfall to practice the exclusion of marginal thoughts.
Yet here was something which was no abstract problem, but a predicament from which there seemed no way out, a predicament which involved not only Terry, but Cynthia. Staring into the mocking eyes of the portrait, Terry concentrated.
Abruptly he pocketed his flashlight, twisted the spring lock on the door, stepped out into the corridor, and gently pulled the door shut behind him. He walked boldly down the two flights of stairs, pulled his hat down low on his forehead and knocked on the door marked Manager. A moment later the door opened to disclose a man in slippers and shirt sleeves, who breathed garlic into the corridor and surveyed Clane with glittering, hostile eyes.
“I’m looking for a room,” Clane said, “either a single or a double.”
“A helluva time to look for rooms,” the man said, but continued to hold the door open.
“I’m sorry. I’m working, and the only time I have is during the evening. I didn’t realize it was so late...”
A woman’s voice said: “Tony, get away from that door.” And the shirt-sleeved figure was jerked out of sight as though it had been a puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show.
While Terry was still marveling at the silent celerity with which the belligerent figure had been whisked into oblivion, its place at the door was taken by a thin woman, whose hatchet face, dark, swarthy skin, long, bony nose, and alert black eyes seemed appropriately framed in the six-inch opening.
“Hello,” she said, “what’s your name and what do you want?”
“I want an apartment.”
“I’ve got two vacant.”
“Something on the top floor?” Terry ventured.
“Top floor back, on the right, a big single, twenty-five dollars. That includes light and water. You pay for the gas.”
“I’d like to look at it,” he told her.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a salesman, on a commission basis.”
“One month’s rent in advance.”
“That’ll be all right,” he agreed, “if I like the apartment.”
Without a word she turned away from the door. Terry heard the jangle of keys. A moment later she walked out into the corridor, a tall, bony woman, who took long, flat-footed strides towards the stairs.
Beneath the billowy folds of her skirt, her feet took the treads two at a time. Terry was hard put to it to keep up with her. As she reached the upper corridor, she strode down towards Juanita Mandra’s apartment, paused at the adjoining apartment, unlocked and flung open the door, and switched on lights.
Terry saw a gloomy, single apartment, the decorations a monotone of drab cheerlessness. A musty smell clung to the place, but the room was scrupulously clean.
Terry gathered that the apartment was thoroughly cleaned only during the periods when it was unoccupied.
He voiced his thought: “Like a freshly bathed kid who’s putting in an uncomfortable Sunday waiting for Monday to come so he can get dirty.”