Red Wind Read Free

“You’re in trouble. If they come to this floor in the elevator, you have just that much time to get off the hall. First take off the hat and jacket—and snap it up!”
    She didn’t move. Her face seemed to whiten a little behind the not-too-heavy make-up.
    “Cops,” I said, “are looking for you. In those clothes. Give me the chance and I’ll tell you why.”
    She turned her head swiftly and looked back along the corridor. With her looks I didn’t blame her for trying one more bluff.
    “You’re impertinent, whoever you are. I’m Mrs. Leroy in Apartment Thirty-one. I can assure you—”
    “That you’re on the wrong floor,” I said. “This is the fourth.” The elevator had stopped down below. The sound of doors being wrenched open came up the shaft.
    “Off!” I rapped. “Now!”
    She switched her hat off and slipped out of the bolero jacket, fast. I grabbed them and wadded them into a mess under my arm. I took her elbow and turned her and we were going down the hall.
    “I live in Forty-two. The front one across from yours, just a floor up. Take your choice. Once again—I’m not on the make.”
    She smoothed her hair with that quick gesture, like a bird preening itself. Ten thousand years of practice behind it.
    “Mine,” she said, and tucked her bag under her arm and strode down the hall fast. The elevator stopped at the floor below. She stopped when it stopped. She turned and faced me.
    “The stairs are back by the elevator shaft,” I said gently.
    “I don’t have an apartment,” she said.
    “I didn’t think you had.”
    “Are they searching for me?”
    “Yes, but they won’t start gouging the block stone by stone before tomorrow. And then only if they don’t make Waldo.”
    She stared at me. “Waldo?”
    “Oh, you don’t know Waldo,” I said.
    She shook her head slowly. The elevator started down in the shaft again. Panic flicked in her blue eyes like a ripple on water.
    “No,” she said breathlessly, “but take me out of this hall.”
    We were almost at my door. I jammed the key in and shook the lock around and heaved the door inward. I reached in far enough to switch lights on. She went in past me like a wave. Sandalwood floated on the air, very faint.
    I shut the door, threw my hat into a chair and watched her stroll over to a card table on which I had a chess problem set out that I couldn’t solve. Once inside, with the door locked, her panic had left her.
    “So you’re a chess-player,” she said, in that guarded tone, as if she had come to look at my etchings. I wished she had.
    We both stood still then and listened to the distant clang of elevator doors and then steps—going the other way.
    I grinned, but with strain, not pleasure, went out into the kitchenette and started to fumble with a couple of glasses and then realized I still had her hat and bolero jacket under my arm. I went into the dressing-room behind the wall bed and stuffed them into a drawer, went back out to the kitchenette, dug out some extra fine Scotch and made a couple of highballs.
    When I went in with the drinks she had a gun in her hand. It was a small automatic with a pearl grip. It jumped up at me and here eyes were full of horror.
    I stopped, with a glass in each hand, and said: “Maybe this hot wind has got you crazy too. I’m a private detective. I’ll prove it if you let me.”
    She nodded slightly and her face was white. I went over slowly and put a glass down beside her, and went back and set mine down and got a card out that had no bent corners. She was sitting down, smoothing one blue knee with her left hand, and holding the gun on the other. I put the card down beside her drink and sat with mine.
    “Never let a guy get that close to you,” I said. “Not if you mean business. And your safety catch is on.”
    She flashed her eyes down, shivered, and put the gun back in her bag. She drank half the drink without stopping, put the glass down hard and picked the card up.
    “I don’t give