Steve grinned sourly, stopped at the coffee shop for a goodnight cup of coffee and then went up to his room. It was a few minutes to eleven o’clock. As he unlocked his door the telephone started to ring.
He shut the door and stood in the darkness remembering where the phone was. Then he walked straight to it, catlike in the dark room, sat in an easy chair and reached the phone up from the lower shelf of a small table. He held the one-piece to his ear and said: «Hello.»
«Is this Steve?» It was a rich, husky voice, low, vibrant. It held a note of strain.
«Yeah, this is Steve. I can hear you. I know who you are.»
There was a faint dry laugh. «You’ll make a detective after all. And it seems I’m to give you your first case. Will you come over to my place at once? It’s Twenty-four-twelve Renfrew — North, there isn’t any South — just half a block below Fountain. It’s a sort of bungalow court. My house is the last in line, at the back.»
Steve said: «Yes. Sure. What’s the matter?»
There was a pause. A horn blared in the street outside the hotel. A wave of white light went across the ceiling from some car rounding the corner uphill. The low voice said very slowly: «Leopardi. I can’t get rid of him. He’s — he’s passed out in my bedroom.» Then a tinny laugh that didn’t go with the voice at all.
Steve held the phone so tight his hand ached. His teeth clicked in the darkness. He said flatly, in a dull, brittle voice: «Yeah. It’ll cost you twenty bucks.»
«Of course. Hurry, please.»
He hung up, sat there in the dark room breathing hard. He pushed his hat back on his head, then yanked it forward again with a vicious jerk and laughed out loud. «Hell,» he said, «That kind of a dame.»
Twenty-four-twelve Renfrew was not strictly a bungalow court. It was a staggered row of six bungalows, all facing the same way, but so arranged that no two of their front entrances overlooked each other. There was a brick wall at the back and beyond the brick wall a church. There was a long smooth lawn, moon-silvered.
The door was up two steps, with lanterns on each side and an iron-work grill over the peep hole. This opened to his knock and a girl’s face looked out, a small oval face with a Cupid’s bow mouth, arched and plucked eyebrows, wavy brown hair. The eyes were like two fresh and shiny chestnuts.
Steve dropped a cigarette and put his foot on it. «Miss Chiozza. She’s expecting me. Steve Grayce.»
«Miss Chiozza has retired, sir,» the girl said with a half-insolent twist to her lips.
«Break it up, kid. You heard me, I’m expected.»
The wicket slammed shut. He waited, scowling back along the narrow moonlit lawn towards the street. O.K. So it was like that — well, twenty bucks was worth a ride in the moonlight anyway.
The lock clicked and the door opened wide. Steve went past the maid into a warm cheerful room, old-fashioned with chintz. The lamps were neither old nor new and there were enough of them — in the right places. There was a hearth behind a paneled copper screen, a davenport close to it, a bar-top radio in the corner.
The maid said stiffly: «I’m sorry, sir. Miss Chiozza forgot to tell me. Please have a chair.» The voice was soft, and it might be cagey. The girl went off down the room — short skirts, sheer silk stockings, and four-inch spike heels.
Steve sat down and held his hat on his knee and scowled at the wall. A swing door creaked shut. He got a cigarette out and rolled it between his fingers and then deliberately squeezed it to a shapeless flatness of white paper and ragged tobacco. He threw it away from him, at the fire screen.
Dolores Chiozza came towards him. She wore green velvet lounging pajamas with a long gold-fringed sash. She spun the end of the sash as if she might be going to throw a loop with it. She smiled a slight artificial smile. Her face had a clean scrubbed look and her eyelids were bluish and they twitched.
Steve stood up and watched the green morocco slippers peep out under the pajamas as she walked. When she was close to him he lifted his eyes to her face and said dully: «Hello.»
She looked at him very steadily, then spoke in a high, carrying voice. «I know it’s late, but I knew you were used to being up all night. So I thought what we had to talk over — Won’t you sit down?»
She turned her head very slightly, seemed to be listening for something.
Steve said: «I never go to bed before two. Quite all right.»
She went over and pushed a bell beside the hearth. After a moment the maid came through the arch.
«Bring some ice cubes, Agatha. Then go along home. It’s getting pretty late.»
«Yes’m.» The girl disappeared.
There was a silence then that almost howled till the tall girl took a cigarette absently out of a box, put it between her lips and Steve struck a match clumsily on his shoe. She pushed the end of the cigarette into the flame and her smoke-blue eyes were very steady on his black ones. She shook her head very slightly.
The maid came back with a copper ice bucket. She pulled a low Indian-brass tray-table between them before the davenport, put the ice bucket on it, then a siphon, glasses and spoons, and a triangular bottle that looked like good Scotch had come in it except that it was covered with silver filigree work and fitted with a stopper.
Dolores Chiozza said, «Will you mix a drink?» in a formal voice.
He mixed two drinks, stirred them, handed her one. She sipped it, shook her head. «Too light,» she said. He put more whiskey in it and handed it back. She said, «Better,» and leaned back against the corner of the davenport.
The maid came into the room again. She had a small rakish red hat on her wavy brown hair and was wearing a gray coat trimmed with nice fur. She carried a black brocade bag that could have cleaned out a fair-sized icebox. She said: «Good night, Miss Dolores.»
«Good night, Agatha.»
The girl went out the front door, closed it softly. Her heels clicked down the walk. A car door opened and shut distantly and a motor started. Its sound soon dwindled away. It was a very quiet neighborhood.
Steve put his drink down on the brass tray and looked levelly at the tall girl, said harshly: «That means she’s out of the way?»
«Yes. She goes home in her own car. She drives me home from the studio in mine — when I go to the studio, which I did tonight. I don’t like to drive a car myself.»
«Well, what are you waiting for?»
The red-haired girl looked steadily at the paneled fire screen and the unlit log fire behind it. A muscle twitched in her cheek.
After a moment she said: «Funny that I called you instead of Walters. He’d have protected me better than you can. Only he wouldn’t have believed me. I thought perhaps you would. I didn’t invite Leopardi here. So far as I know — we two are the only people in the world who know he’s here.»
Something in her voice jerked Steve upright.
She took a small crisp handkerchief from the breast pocket of the green velvet pajama-suit, dropped it on the floor, picked it up swiftly and pressed it against her mouth. Suddenly, without making a sound, she began to shake like a leaf.
Steve said swiftly: «What the hell — I can handle that heel in my hip pocket. I did last night — and last night he had a gun and took a shot at me.»
Her head turned. Her eyes were very wide and staring. «But it couldn’t have been my gun,» she said in a dead voice.
«Huh? Of course not — what — ?»
«It’s my gun tonight,» she said and stared at him. «You said a woman could get to him with a gun very easily.»
He just stared at her. His face was white now and he made a vague sound in his throat.
«He’s not drunk, Steve,» she said gently. «He’s dead. In yellow pajamas — in my bed. With my gun in his hand. You didn’t think he was just drunk — did you, Steve?»