I grabbed up my hat and made for the door.
II
247 Jefferson Avenue was an apartment house at the Fairview end of the avenue: a big, square shaped concrete building with green shutters at the windows and a gaudy canopy over the main entrance.
The lobby of the apartment house was dim and soothing. There were no murals or statues or violent colours to give the homecoming drunks a fright. The carpet was laid over rubber blocks and gave under my feet as I crossed to the automatic elevator.
Hidden behind a screen of tropical palms in brass pots were the desk and switchboard. A girl with a telephone harness hitched to her chest was reading the funnies. She was cither too bored to bother or didn't hear me come in, for she didn't look up, and that's unusual in a joint like this. As a rule they head you off from the elevator until they have called whoever you're visiting to make sure you're wanted.
But as I slid back the elevator door, a man in a shabby dark suit and a bowler hat set straight and square on his head appeared from behind a pillar and plodded over to me.
'Going some place or just taking the ride for the hell of it?' he growled.
His face was round and fat, and covered with a web of fine veins. His eyes were deep-set and cold. His moustache hid a mouth that was probably thin and unpleasant. He looked what he was: a retired cop, supplementing his pension by bouncing the unwanteds.
'I'm making a call,' I said, and gave him a smile; but he 'didn't seem impressed by my charms.
'We like callers to check in at the desk. Who do you want to see?' He sounded no tougher than any other cop in Orchid City, but tough enough to have hair on his chest.
I didn't want Barratt to know I was about to call on him. It would be quite bad enough without him being on his guard. I took out my bill-fold and hoisted up a five-dollar bill. The fat bouncer's eyes fastened on it, and a tongue like the toe of on old boot searched amongst the jungle of his moustache. I pushed the bill at him.
Fat, nicotine-stained fingers closed over it: a reflex action born of years of experience.
'I'll just take the ride,' I said, and showed him more of my teeth: those capped in gold.
'Don't take too long about it,' he growled, 'and don't think this buys you anything. I just haven't seen you."
He plodded back to his pillar again, then paused to scowl at the girl behind the desk, who had stopped reading the funnies and was watching him with a set smile on her foxy little face. As I closed the elevator door he was on his way over to her, probably to share the swag.
I rode up to the fourth floor and walked down a long passage studded with doors. Barratt's apartment was No. 4BI5. I found it around the corner: an isolated door at the end of a dim culde-sac. The radio was blaring, and as I raised my hand to ring the bell, there came a sudden crash of breaking glass.
I dug my thumb into the bell push and waited. Strident jazz howled at me through the door panels, but no one bothered to answer the door. I sank my thumb into the bell-push again and leaned my weight against it. I could hear the bell ringing above the shrill notes of a clarinet. Then suddenly someone snapped off the radio and jerked open the door.
A tall, blond man in a scarlet dressing-room stood in the doorway, smiling at me. His lean, white face was handsome if you like the profile type. A moustache, the size of a well-fed caterpillar, graced his upper lip. The pupils of his amber-coloured eyes were as big as dimes.
'Hello,' he said in a low, drawling voice, 'was that you ringing?'
'If it wasn't me, then the place is haunted,' I said, watching him. From the look of his eyes, he was full of reefer smoke, and I had an idea he needed watching.
'I can be funny too,' he said mildly. His hand flashed up, and the broken bottle he had been concealing behind his back whizzed towards my face
I managed to get my face out of the way more by luck than judgment. The impetus of his lunge brought him forward very conveniently for the right-hand punch I hung on his jaw. The smack of bone against bone, and the click of his teeth made a satisfying sound in my ears.
He spread out on the floor, the bottle still clutched in his fingers. 1 paused long enough to take the bottle from him, and then edged into the room. The air smelt of whisky fumes and marijuana smoke: the kind of smell you would expect to run into in any hole occupied by a man like Barratt, Several broken bottles of whisky lay in a heap in the fireplace. The all-steelfurniture was scattered around the room as if two husky stevedores had been having a fight. The ten-foot polished-steel table lay on its side against a window that had a cracked pane.
Apart from the smell and the furniture, the room was empty. I moved silently over the bloodred carpet to a half-open door, and looked into a room that had the curtains drawn and the electric light on.
