Harry looked at it with the horror he normally reserved for spiders, draught beer, and the amorous advances of women.
"It's a twenty-dollar bill," said Craig. "Don't tell me you don't take American money. That's not what I heard."
"What did you hear, sir?" asked Harry.
"You'll take anything," said Craig. "Including rubles."
"Just a moment, sir," said Harry.
He left the bar, taking the note with him, and was back almost at once.
"Mr. Brodski would like a word with you," he said. "His office is just next to the auditorium."
"Who's Brodski?" asked Craig. "The feller who makes your whisky?"
Harry looked shocked.
"He's the proprietor, sir," he said.
"I don't want to see him," said Craig. "Give me my bill back. I'll pay in pounds."
"Mr. Brodski's got it," said Harry.
Craig leaned over the bar, and the new customers listened avidly. Craig looked a little drunk, but he also looked very dangerous.
"I'm going off you, Harry," he said. "You shouldn't give my money away. Now I'm going to see Brodski—and if he isn't nice to me I'm going to come back here and thread you through your earring."
He walked out of the bar and into the auditorium. He knew that every man in the place was watching him, and that was what he wanted: the threat of a scene, a violent scene, in a place where even the tiniest tantrum was bad for business. He reached the door, and hesitated for a moment. Something was wrong. There was somebody in the audience he had seen before. But there was no time to look back now. He walked on into the corridor. Mr. Brodski was waiting for him, his office door open. And Mr. Brodski also looked as if the last thing he wanted was a scene.
"Please come in, Mr.—"
"Reynolds," said Craig. "John Reynolds."
"How do you do? It's nice of you to spare me some of your time."
Brodski's voice was soft, low-pitched, with very little accent. He held the door open invitingly, and stood to one side. Craig went up to him, and his arm came round the Pole's shoulders.
"That's all right, old friend," he said. "I feel like a chat anyway."
His arm pushed suddenly, and Brodski lurched forward. They went into the room together.
Inside the room the fat woman stood. What Craig had thought to be a black dress turned out to be a smock. Beneath it she wore the most enormous pair of trousers Craig had ever seen. She was standing feet apart, her hands by her sides.
"I see you've called in your financial adviser," said Craig. It was quite incredible and all that, but the woman was standing like a fighter. He released Brodski, and stood just out of range of her short, thick arms. At once Brodski walked over behind his desk and picked up the twenty-dollar bill.
"I can't accept this," he said.
"Why not? It's a good one," said Craig.
"Is it?" Brodski asked. "I am not a naive person, Mr. Reynolds. Look here, for instance, and here."
It was very nicely done. Brodski held up the bill, and pointed to it, then held it out to Craig. If he had reached for it, the woman would have got him. Instead, he merely looked, and for a split second only. In that split second she aimed a blow at his face, an old-fashioned roundhouse swing that was meant for his chin. He ducked, and a fist like a ball of rock cracked into his shoulder where Calvet had hit him. Craig gasped, then flung himself sideways to avoid a kick from a steel-tipped shoe. She moved into him then, and he backed off. He was giving away weight and she had bigger shoulders, but she was a woman.
"Now look, lady," he began. He had never felt more foolish.
She aimed another blow, and he warded it off with the edge of his hand on her forearm. At once she grabbed his wrist and threw him—a perfect hip throw that was supposed to send him crashing into the wall. But Craig had learned how to fall from Hakagawa, a black-belt seventh dan. He floated to the ground like a leaf, and waited for the kick to the groin that was bound to follow. When it came, he pushed up on his forearms, hooked her foot between his and threw his weight to one side. She went down like the Titanic. Craig got up, brushed dust from his coat, and waited. The woman came up slowly, gasping, then shuffled forward once more.
"Please, love," said Craig, trying to keep the hysteria out of his voice. "Please, love, don't make me do it."
She feinted with a left, then her right moved across his ribs in a blur of pain. Craig gasped, and ·;ae drew back her left again. As she did so, he aimed for her solar plexus in a three-finger strike.
The blow sank into her vast stomach, and her eyes went glassy. Her squat, massive weight was still evenly planted on her steel-shod feet, but there wasn't any more fight in her. Craig pushed her into a chair and she sat there unblinking. When he turned around, Brodski had produced a revolver from the drawer in his desk. It was a Webley 455, the type used by army officers in World War II. It was wildly inaccurate but it could blow holes in brick walls. Brodski handled it with a confidence that made Craig more wary than ever. He straightened up behind the chair.
"Oh no," he said. "Not the gun bit."
"I know how to use it," said Brodski.
"I can see that," said Craig. "On the other hand, are you prepared to?"
"Yes," said Brodski.
"For a twenty-dollar bill?"
The woman in the chair moaned.
"You hurt her," Brodski said.
"She didn't leave me much choice," said Craig. "And you shouldn't employ a lady bouncer."
"Jennifer's very good," said Brodski.
"Who?"
"You find the name incongruous? I did also, at one time. I thought Butch perhaps, or Spike, or even Rocky. But she insists on Jennifer. Men go out more easily when it is a woman who throws them. Particularly this woman." He nodded at Jennifer, now blowing like a beached porpoise.
"Put the gun down. We can talk," said Craig.
"Can we? I'm not nearly as strong as Jennifer. And look what you did to her—with three fingers."
"She shouldn't eat so much starch," said Craig.
"Give me my money back."
"No," said Brodski. "When Jennifer has recovered you must learn a lesson, Reynolds. People don't come into my place and pass forged money."
Jennifer groaned again, and began to rub her stomach; her hard, stubby fingers for once solicitous and tender.
"She will hold you," said Brodski, "and I will beat you. With this." He waved the Webley, very slightly.
"That bill isn't snide," said Craig.
"You are the second one. Did Driver send you?" Brodski asked.
"I don't know any Driver. That's good money," said Craig.
Brodski stood up.
"Ready, Jennifer?" he asked.
Craig said quickly: "You better be, love. Because I'm not taking a gun-whipping. Not even to oblige a lady." Jennifer groaned for the third time and sat where she was. "Maybe you'd better shoot me," said Craig.
Brodski said something emphatic in what Craig took to be Polish, and sat looking puzzled. He didn't seem the sort of man who looked puzzled often. He resented it. At last he put the revolver back into the drawer.
"I run a quiet place," he said. "None of the girls on the batter, no hustling drinks, no reefers, no brasses, nothing." In his soft, slightly accented voice the vocabulary of Soho was as strange as Jennifer. "Just women with no clothes on."
"The show's lousy," said Craig.
"Oh, I agree," said Brodski. "But you are the one customer in ten thousand who notices this. And I take 62 £ lOs.od. five times a day, six days a week. The amount of profit I show is almost embarrassing. What do I need with crime? The keynote of my place is discretion, Mr. Reynolds. A discreet promise of bliss, without the tiresome athletics of fulfillment. And then Driver came in. He ordered champagne for Karen, Tempest, and Max-ine. He himself drank whisky. He paid his bill with a forged American note. A week later you come in. You order champagne for Karen, Tempest, and Maxine. You drink whisky. You pay with a forged American note."