“Mr. Rhodenbarr?”
I took the coffee from her. She’d served it in a chunky earthenware mug ornamented with a geometric design. I sniffed at the coffee and allowed that it smelled good.
“I hope you like it,” she said. “It’s a Louisiana blend I’ve been using lately. It has chicory in it.”
“I like chicory.”
“Oh, so do I,” she said. She made it sound as though our mutual enthusiasm could be the start of something big. The woodwind quintet ended-it was Vivaldi, according to the announcer-and a Haydn symphony replaced it.
I took a sip of my coffee. She asked if it was all right and I assured her that it was wonderful, although it really wasn’t. There was a slight off-taste discernible beneath the cream and sugar, and I decided that chicory was one of those things I don’t really like but just think I do.
“Ruddy said you were bringing him something, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
“Yes.”
“He seemed very anxious about it. You have it with you, of course?”
I drank more coffee and decided that it wasn’t really all that bad. The Haydn symphony rolled in waves, echoing within the little room.
“Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
“Nice music,” I said.
“Do you have the book, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”
I was smiling. I had the feeling it was a sort of dopey smile but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
“Mr. Rhodenbarr?”
“You’re very pretty.”
“The book, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
“I know you from somewhere. You look familiar.” I was spilling coffee on myself, for some reason, and I felt deeply embarrassed. I shouldn’t have had that Rob Roy, I decided, and then Madeleine Porlock was taking the cup away from me and placing it carefully on the glass-topped coffee table.
“I always walk into those things,” I confided. “Glass tables. Don’t see them. Walk right into them. You have orange hair.”
“Close your eyes, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
My eyes slammed shut. I pried them open and looked at her. She had a mop of curly orange hair, and as I stared at her it disappeared and her hair was short and dark again. I blinked, trying to make it orange, but it stayed as it was.
“The coffee,” I said, brilliantly. “Something in the coffee.”
“Sit back and relax, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
“You drugged me.” I braced my hands on the arms of the chair and tried to stand. I couldn’t even get my behind off the chair. My arms had no strength in them and my legs didn’t even appear to exist anymore.
“Orange hair,” I said.
“Close your eyes, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”
“Have to get up-”
“Sit back and rest. You’re very tired.”
God, that was the truth. I gulped air, shook my head furiously in an attempt to shake some of the cobwebs loose. That was a mistake-the motion set off a string of tiny firecrackers somewhere in the back of my skull. Haydn dipped and soared. My eyes closed again, and I strained to get them open and saw her leaning over me, telling me how sleepy I was.
I kept my eyes open. Even so, my field of vision began to darken along its edges. Then patches of black appeared here and there, and they grew together until it was all black, everywhere, and I gave up and let go and fell all the way down to the bottom.
I was dreaming something about an earthquake in Turkey, houses crumbling around me, boulders rolling down the sides of mountains. I fought my way out of the dream like an underwater swimmer struggling to reach the water’s surface. The Turkish earthquake was part of the hourly newscast on the radio. The Social Democrats had scored substantial gains in parliamentary elections in Belgium. A Hollywood actor had died of an overdose of sleeping pills. The President was expected to veto something or other.
A buzzer was sounding nearby, interrupting the monotony of the newscast. I managed to open my eyes. My head ached and my mouth tasted as though I’d fallen asleep sucking the wad of cotton from the vitamin jar. The buzzer buzzed again and I wondered why nobody was answering it.
I opened my eyes again. Evidently they had closed without my knowing it. The radio announcer was inviting me to subscribe to Back-packer Magazine. I didn’t want to but wasn’t sure I had the strength to refuse. The buzzer was still buzzing. I wished Madeleine Porlock would get up from the Victorian love seat and answer it, or make them stop buzzing, or something.
The radio switched to music. Something with violins. Soothing. I opened my eyes again. The buzzing had stopped and there was the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.
I was still in the tub chair. My left hand lay in my lap like a small dead animal. My right arm was draped over the side of the chair, and there was something in my right hand.
I opened my eyes again, gave my head a shake. Something loose rattled around inside it. Someone was knocking on the door. I wished the Porlock woman would answer it, but she was in no better shape than I was.
They banged harder on the door and I opened my eyes again, and this time I managed to straighten up in the chair and kick through to something resembling actual consciousness. I gulped air and blinked rapidly and remembered where I was and what I was doing there.
I moved my left hand, reached around and felt the small of my back. The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow was gone.
Well, that figured.
“Open up in there!”
Knock, knock, knock, and I felt like the drunken porter in Macbeth. I called out for them to wait a minute and reached to check my hip pocket for the Sikh’s five hundred dollars. I couldn’t reach that pocket with my left hand. And why was I using my left, anyway? Oh, sure. Because there was something heavy in my right hand.
“Police! Open up in there!”
More furious pounding on the door. I raised my right hand. There was a gun in it. I stared stupidly at it, then raised it to my face and sniffed its muzzle. I smelled that particular mix of gun oil and gunpowder and burnt odor characteristic of a recently fired weapon.
I looked at the love seat again, hoping to find it empty, wishing what I’d seen earlier had been a mirage. But Madeleine Porlock was still there, and she hadn’t moved, and I could see now that she wasn’t likely to, not without more help than I could give her.
She’d been shot in the middle of the forehead, right where the horrid little girl had a little curl, and I had a fairly good idea what gun had done the deed.
CHAPTER Eight
I got up quickly-too quickly-the blood rushed to my feet, or wherever it goes under such circumstances, and I very nearly fell back down again. But I stayed on my feet and fought to clear my head a little.
The radio was still playing. I wanted to turn it off but left it alone. The cops had left off knocking on the door and were slamming into it every few seconds. Any moment now the door would give and they’d come stumbling into the room.
I decided I didn’t want to be there when that happened.
I was still holding the damned gun. I dropped it, and then I picked it up and wiped my prints off it, and then I dropped it again and made my way past the radio and through a short hallway with a bathroom and closet on one side and a pullman kitchen on the other. At the end of the hallway a door opened into a fair-sized bedroom furnished with a four-poster spool bed and a Pennsylvania Dutch blanket chest. There was a window on the far wall over the bed, and it opened onto a fire escape, and I damn well opened it.
Fresh air, cold fresh air. I filled both lungs and felt some of the cobwebs leave my brain. I climbed out onto the fire escape and closed the window after me. With it shut I could just barely hear the sounds of police officers caroming off the apartment door.
Now what?
I looked down and a wave of vertigo hit me. I thought of all the drug labels with their warnings about driving or operating machinery. If drowsiness occurs, stay off rickety fire escapes.