“Open the ice box and get some ice and a lemon. I’ve got some gin, and I’ll get some glasses. I’m all in. How do you feel?”
“Like a million,” said Paul Pry.
She nodded casually.
“You would,” she said, and took some glasses from the little cupboard over the sink, sat them on the tiled drain board. Paul Pry opened the ice box, took out a tray of ice. He noticed that the ice box was filled with bottled goods, but that there was no trace of food in it. Evidently this woman was not strong on cooking.
The drink was mixed. They clinked glasses.
“I haven’t thanked you for stopping that swing that was headed for my head — not yet,” she said.
Paul Pry touched his lips to the glass.
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
She drained her drink in three throaty gulps, tilting back her neck, drinking with a frankness that discounted all ladylike sips of the beverage, in favour of getting it down where it would do the most good.
She sighed and reached for the bottle.
“Don’t be polite,” she said. “I’ll be one up on you in a minute.”
She fixed herself a second drink. Paul Pry’s glass was still half-filled as she inclined her glass to touch the brim of his for the second time.
“Here’s how,” she said.
She disposed of this drink more slowly.
“Well,” she observed, “let’s have another one and go into the other room, and have a cigarette with it.”
Paul Pry held the bottom of his glass up and drained the last of the drink.
“O.K.,” he observed.
She mixed the third, and then led the way into the living-room, dropped in a chair. Her fur coat was open, hanging down on either side. She propped her feet up on a vacant chair.
“Happy days,” said Paul Pry.
“Here’s mud in your eye. Got a match?”
Paul Pry lit her cigarette, stared pensively for a moment, and sighed again.
“I love my friends, and hate my enemies,” she said.
“Meaning?” asked Paul Pry.
She turned glitteringly dangerous eyes on him.
“Meaning that I hate a snivelling hypocrite,” she said, “and meaning that you’re a total stranger to me.”
“I don’t get the connection,” said Paul Pry.
Her cheeks had colour now, and the eyes held a moist glitter which came from the alcohol of the first two drinks.
“Meaning that if anything happened and I had to choose between a friend and a total stranger, I’d stick by the friend!” she snapped.
Paul Pry nodded. “You can’t be blamed for that.”
“Don’t blame me, then.”
“I’m not.”
“Maybe you will.”
“Perhaps.”
There was silence for a moment.
“But,” said Paul Pry, his eyes lazily regarding the smoke which curled upward from his cigarette, “it must be quite a privilege to be a friend of yours.”
“It is,” she agreed. There was a dreamy, reminiscent light in her eyes, as she added softly, after a moment, “And how!”
Paul Pry grinned.
“And highly inconvenient to be an enemy of yours.”
The lips straightened.
“You said something!” she replied, and her words were as close-clipped as bullets.
“How does one get to be your friend? Would saving your life do the trick?”
She regarded him with sober, appraising eyes.
“Well—” she hesitated.
“Well what?”
“I’m not ungrateful,” she said, slowly, “but I’m just telling you, no matter what happens, a total stranger don’t stack with an old friend. You remember that, no matter what else comes up between us, and then I won’t feel like a damned hypocrite if I should have to sacrifice you for a friend.”
Paul Pry laughed lightly.
“Baby,” he said, “I like your style.”
The remark added nothing to the colour of her cheeks or to the warmth of her eyes.
“Most men do,” she agreed.
“Now,” said Paul Pry, “tell me what it was all about.”
She drew a deep breath, drained off the last of the drink in the glass, and muttered something that might have been a single explosive epithet.
“You would have to ask that,” she observed, and it was as though she had picked up a switch to punish a friendly dog for some infraction of discipline, so far as her manner and tone were concerned.
Paul Pry’s own eyes became just a trifle diamond hard but they remained appreciative.
“The man that was with me,” she said, slowly, “was my brother.”
Paul Pry nodded, and there was approval in his nod.
“I thought he would be,” he said tonelessly.
The young woman snapped him a suddenly questing look, but Paul Pry’s face was a mask.
“Yes,” she said, “an only brother.”
“What did they want him for?”
“God knows. They tried to grab him off earlier in the evening. They smashed his nose. There was a doctor where we stopped the car. He was a friend of ours. They evidently figured we’d be coming there for medical attention, and they got there first and stuck around in the shadows, waiting for us to show up.
“I rather had a hunch there might be some trouble there, which is why I got out and looked things over. I s’pose you noticed me giving you the once-over.”
Paul Pry nodded.
“And what will they do with him? Take him for a ride?”
She winced at that, kicked her feet down from the chair without answering the question. She went to the door of the kitchen.
“I’m going to have another drink.”
“Count me out,” said Paul Pry.
She stared moodily at him, regarding the hand that held the smoking cigarette between the fingers, noticing the steady wisps of smoke which went spiralling upward. There was no sign of tremor in the hand.
“You sure got nerves!” she said, and there was genuine admiration in her tone. “I wish,” she went on, “that you wasn’t—”
“Wasn’t what?” asked Paul Pry.
“A total stranger,” she said.
“Oh, well, it’s not a permanent relationship,” he observed.
She nodded gloomily.
“I’ve just got a hunch,” she said, and stopped to regard him with pursed lips and meditative eyes. “Did you see the faces of any of those men?”
Paul Pry saw no particular reason for being truthful.
“No,” he observed. “As one total stranger to another, I can tell you that I did not. I was too excited.”
She laughed, a harsh, bitter laugh.
“You’ve been places!” she said. And then she added an afterthought. “Let’s hope you don’t have things done to you,” she observed, and went into the kitchen to mix the other drink.
3
There sounded a whirring of an electric door device. The girl came out of the kitchen in two swift strides. Her skin matched her fur coat in colour. Her right hand was once more beneath the folds of the garment.
“Got a gun?” she asked of Paul Pry, and her tone while taut with emotion, was as casual as when she had asked him if he had a match.
“I could find one if I had to,” said Paul Pry.
“You may have to,” she said and strode to the door.
She flung it open.
“I’ll take it standing up, whatever it is,” she said, before she had seen what was in the corridor.
A young boy came forward. He was in the uniform of a messenger service, and he held forward an addressed envelope.