I didn’t hear the door open: the door at the far end of the room. I didn’t hear anyone come in. But I caught a movement reflected in the big mirror in the wardrobe and I turned slowly.
Ralph Bannister stood in the doorway, his hand holding the doorknob: a man of middle height, square, broad shoulders, in a well-fitting tuxedo. He had a lot of grey-black hair taken straight back off a wide, high forehead. His eyes were small and deep set, and there were heavy dark bags under them which gave him a permanently tired look; as if he got very little sleep. His mouth was pale and thin, and his skin was without colour. I had seen him a few times in the better restaurants downtown, but I had never spoken to him, and I didn’t think he had ever noticed me. He wasn’t the kind of man to notice people, nor could you imagine him to be the owner of a gaudy nighterie like L’Etoile. He looked more like a successful criminal lawyer or maybe a specialist in some obscure disease.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anita’s head turn slowly until she was looking at Bannister, and I saw her fists clench and her knuckles turn white.
He paid her no attention. His small, expressionless eyes ran over me, and his stillness managed to create a sharp atmosphere of menace.
‘What do you know about the necklace?’ he asked. His voice subdued and quiet, like a churchwarden apologizing for giving you a draughty pew.
‘You want to keep out of this,’ I said. ‘Unless you’re interested in murder.’
‘Where is the necklace?’ he asked.
‘Under lock and key. Did she tell you she’s mixed up in murder? Keeping her here makes you an accessory. But maybe a little thing like that doesn’t bother you.’
He turned his expressionless eyes to Anita.
‘Is this the man you were telling me about?’
She nodded, rigid with terror. The veins in her neck stood out like knotted cords.
He turned back to me.
‘How did you get in here?’
I wasn’t going to get Gail Bolus into trouble if I could help it, so I said, ‘I walked in — what’s to stop me?’
His small dark eyes examined my face, shifted away. His pale mouth tightened as he moved across the room. All his movements were leisurely, like the movements of a man with a bad heart. He touched the bellpush in the wall, then moved away to take up a position in the middle of the room.
I thought of the .25 under the bed. I felt a sudden need for it, but unless I went down on hands and knees and crawled half under the bed there was no way of getting it. I didn’t think Bannister, for all his languid airs, would stand by passively while I was crawling under the bed. I decided regretfully to wait and see what happened. I didn’t have to wait long. The door jerked open and Gates came in. He took one look at me and a gun jumped into his hand.
Bannister said, ‘How did he get in here?’
Gates moved into the room. There was a ferocious look of rage on his thin, bony face.
‘Gail Bolus brought him.’ Rage made his voice unsteady.
Flat feet came thumping along the corridor and Shannon appeared in the doorway. His eyes jumped from Bannister to me and back to Bannister again. I could see the great lumpy muscles in his shoulders suddenly form into knots under his ill-fitting tuxedo.
‘Get her,’ Bannister said.
Shannon went quickly away down the corridor, making a thudding noise like a man walking on stilts.
Bannister waved a hand at Anita.
‘Go into the other room.’
She got off the bed.
‘I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ she said in a cold, tight voice. ‘lie’s lying. He’s trying to get me into trouble.’
Bannister looked at her the way you might look at a dead cat you’ve found lying in the gutter.
‘Go into the other room,’ he said in his churchwarden voice.
She went.
As the door clicked shut Bannister went on to Gates. ‘I said no one was to come up here. One more slip like this and you’re through. You and Shannon.’
Gates didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at Bannister. His beady, black eyes were fixed on me, and he looked as if he could eat me.
‘Why don’t you use your head and keep out of this?’ I said to Bannister. ‘Turn Mrs. Cerf over to me and you’ll hear no more about it.’
He eyed me over and sat down in the only armchair in the room. His movements were like those of an old man who is stiff in the joints and very tired.
‘It’s not going to be as easy as that,’ he said.
Shannon’s flat feet came thumping along the corridor. The door swung open and Miss Bolus came in. Shannon followed her in, pushed the door shut and set his back against it.
Miss Bolus looked calm and indifferent. Her chinky eyes took in the scene. They shifted from Gates and his gun to me, to Bannister and to me again.
‘Hello,’ she said, brightly. ‘How did you get up here, and what’s the idea of the gun?’
Bannister pointed a long white finger at me.
‘Did you bring him here?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, and her eyebrows went up. ‘Don’t you want custom?’
‘Not his, nor yours. I always thought you’d turn out to be a trouble maker.’
‘How nice!’ She laughed. ‘I’m so glad you’re not disappointed. But do stop acting like Adolphe Menjou and tell your cheap bouncer to put away his gun.’ She looked over at me. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. They can’t stop us.’
It was a brave little speech, but it didn’t inspire me with a lot of confidence. Up to now I hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch. I didn’t like the hungry, ferocious expression in Gates’s eyes. I had a feeling that if I gave him the slightest opportunity he would start spraying lead.
‘Shoot if he moves,’ Bannister said to Gates, and made a sign to Shannon: a flicking movement with his wrist.
Shannon sidled up to Miss Bolus, tapped her on her bare shoulder. As she jerked away and turned angrily, he hit her on the side of the jaw. It was a punch that would have put Joe Louis on his back. Miss Bolus went across the room as if she had been caught up by the blast of an exploding bomb. She smashed into the dressing table. One limp arm scattered the bottles and powders with a crash of glass to the floor. The dressing table rocked and shot away from her, leaving her lying amid broken bottles; a trickle of blood ran down her face from a cut above her eye. She lay still, her eyes half-open, motionless.
All this happened in a second or so. Gates, who hadn’t seen Bannister’s signal, was startled and shifted his eyes from me to Miss Bolus.
I sprang at him, my right hand smashing down on his wrist. The gun jumped out of his hand and went sliding across the carpet to land up at Bannister’s feet.
Gates let out a startled oath, clutched at his wrist and staggered forward. I socked him in the face and sent him reeling across the room as Shannon closed in on me. He hit me in the body with his left. It was like being hit with the buffer of a train. I ducked under the right cross that came whistling through the air and slammed a couple of quick ones into a body that felt like a sack of concrete. Shannon grunted and gave ground. I jumped out of range as Gates came staggering across the room at me. I tapped him on the bridge of his nose and then sank a hard one into his midriff-lie went down on hands and knees. Shannon came charging in and I spun round a fraction late. I managed to duck under his left, but walked into a right hook that came up from the floor. A blinding flash of light exploded before my eyes and I went down into a pit that had no bottom.
II