Then the ringing stopped. A key tickled at the door and Carmen jumped away from it and stood frozen.
The door swung open.
A man stepped through it briskly and stopped dead, staring at us quietly, with complete composure.
13
He was a gray man, an gray, except for his polished black shoes and two scarlet diamonds in his gray satin tie that looked like the diamonds on roulette layouts.
His shirt was gray and his double-breasted suit of soft, beautifully cut flannel.
Seeing Carmen he took a gray hat off and his hair underneath it was gray and as fine as if it had been sifted through gauze.
His thick gray eyebrows had that indefinably sporty look.
He had a long chin, a nose with a hook to it, thoughtful gray eyes that had a slanted look because the fold of skin over his upper lid came down over the corner of the lid itself.
He stood there politely, one hand touching the door at his back, the other holding the gray hat and flapping it gently against his thigh.
He looked hard, not the hardness of the tough guy.
More like the hardness of a well-weathered horseman.
But he was no horseman.
He was Eddie Mars.
He pushed the door shut behind him and put that hand in the lap-seamed pocket of his coat and left the thumb outside to glisten in the rather dim light of the room.
He smiled at Carmen.
He had a nice easy smile.
She licked her lips and stared at him.
The fear went out of her face. She smiled back.
"Excuse the casual entrance," he said. "The bell didn't seem to rouse anybody.
Is Mr. Geiger around?"
I said: "No. We don't know just where he is.
We found the door a little open. We stepped inside."
He nodded and touched his long chin with the brim of his hat.
"You're friends of his, of course?"
"Just business acquaintances.
We dropped by for a book."
"A book, eh?" He said that quickly and brightly and, I thought, a little slyly, as if he knew all about Geiger's books.
Then he looked at Carmen again and shrugged.
I moved towards the door.
"We'll trot along now," I said. I took hold of her arm. She was staring at Eddie Mars.
She liked him.
"Any message — if Geiger comes back?" Eddie Mars asked gently.
"We won't bother you."
"That's too bad," he said, with too much meaning.
His gray eyes twinkled and then hardened as I went past him to open the door. He added in a casual tone: "The girl can dust. I'd like to talk to you a little, soldier."
I let go of her arm. I gave him a blank stare.
"Kidder, eh?" he said nicely. "Don't waste it.
I've got two boys outside in a car that always do just what I want them to."
Carmen made a sound at my side and bolted through the door.
Her steps faded rapidly down hill.
I hadn't seen her car, so she must have left it down below.
I started to say: "What the hell — !"
"Oh, skip it," Eddie Mars sighed. "There's something wrong around here.
I'm going to find out what it is.
If you want to pick lead out of your belly, get in my way."
"Well, well," I said, "a tough guy."
"Only when necessary, soldier." He wasn't looking at me any more.
He was walking around the room, frowning, not paying any attention to me.
I looked out above the broken pane of the front window.