Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

The woman acted as though she had heard that siren for the first time, and her reactions were characteristically swift. She floorboarded the throttle, and the car leaped forward like a startled deer.

Paul Pry noticed that she was an expert driver as the car swung into the side street, tilted, skidded, straightened as the whirling rubber bit into the pavement, and then they went places in a hurry.

By the time the woman took her foot off the throttle for a moment, and pressed hard on the brake as a bit of traffic loomed ahead, the sound of the siren had become inaudible to Paul Pry’s ears. The police car had probably gone first to the scene of the shooting.

Paul Pry grinned at the girl as the traffic signal straightened out enough to give a way through, and the young woman sent the car through that hole in the traffic like a skimming trout, snaking through an opening in some submerged logs to head for the shady shelter under an overhanging bank.

“Can I be of any assistance?” he asked.

She shook her head, and, unlike many drivers of her sex, did not turn her head as she addressed him, but kept her eyes glued to the road.

“I guess not. But you can come with me while I pour a jolt of gin into my system. God knows I need it!”

Paul Pry settled back on the cushions.

“O.K. by me,” he murmured.

The car made several corners. The woman started glancing about her, swung the car in a figure eight around a space of four blocks, making certain that no one was following. Then she slammed on the brakes, switched off the lights, twisted the steering wheel, and sent the car slamming up a private driveway, midway in the block. The open doors of a narrow garage yawned ahead. The woman sent the car through those doors, skidded the tyres on the floor of the garage just when it seemed she would crash out the rear end of the structure, and jumped to the floor, heedless of the expensive fur coat which flapped against greasy objects, scraped dusty wheel hubs.

She was tugging at the door of the garage, getting it closed, and she apparently had no idea that Paul Pry would help her. Evidently she had been trained in self-sufficiency and did not expect those little masculine courtesies which are so priceless to most women of youth, beauty and expensive clothes.

Paul Pry gave her a hand. The door slammed into place, and a spring lock clicked.

“We go out the other way,” said the woman.

She crossed the garage, groped for a door, opened it, and stood for a moment outlined against the illumination of a courtyard, listening, peering.

Then she nodded, beckoned, and stepped out upon the cement. There was a flight of stairs, a door.

Paul Pry followed her through that door and found himself in the carpeted corridor of an apartment house. They went up a flight of stairs to a second corridor, then up another flight to the third floor. The stairs were broad and carpeted with a thickness of cushioned cloth which made them absolutely silent. The illumination was not too brilliant.

The front of the apartment showed at the end of the corridor, opening upon another street, well lit. The woman’s room was at the back, near those broad, well-carpeted stairs.

She paused, fitted a latchkey to the lock, then stepped back. Her keys clinked in the pocket of the coat. The right hand was concealed beneath the glistening fur of the garment. She turned the knob with her left hand, flung open the door, waited a moment, then switched on the light.

Paul Pry noticed that she had retrieved the gun from the back seat of her car, and he had no doubt as to what her right hand held beneath the concealment of the fur coat. But the woman made no effort to draw back out of the line of possible fire, or to have Paul Pry enter the apartment first. She was self-reliant, and she had been trained in the hard school of life that teaches its pupils to take things as they come.

The lights showed an apartment, well furnished, luxurious. The soft lighting glowed invitingly upon deep chairs, upon massive tables, soft couches and rich tapestries. There was an odour of stale incense in the air, and the ashtrays which were on the table were filled with cigarette ashes and cigarette butts. Aside from that, the place was an example of neat housekeeping.

She walked, cat-footed, into the apartment.

“Close the door,” she said to Paul Pry, flinging the words over her shoulder without turning her head, and walking toward a door which evidently opened into a bedroom.

Here she did the same thing she had done at the door of the apartment — flinging open the door with her left hand, the right still being concealed beneath the fur coat. The bedroom was not as neat as the parlour had been. Paul Pry caught glimpses of sheer silks strewn over the bed, pink fluffy garments that were on chairs.

The woman entered the room, pulled open the door of the closet, looked in it, looked under the bed. Then she walked out, went to the kitchen, kicked open the swinging door and stepped into the room. She clicked on the light switch and thrust the gun which her right hand had held, into some receptacle which had been tailored for it in the front of her dress, well out of sight. Then she sighed — turned to Paul Pry.

“Open the ice box and get some ice and a lemon. I’ve got some gin, and I’ll get some glasses. I’m all in. How do you feel?”

“Like a million,” said Paul Pry.

She nodded casually.

“You would,” she said, and took some glasses from the little cupboard over the sink, sat them on the tiled drain board. Paul Pry opened the ice box, took out a tray of ice. He noticed that the ice box was filled with bottled goods, but that there was no trace of food in it. Evidently this woman was not strong on cooking.

The drink was mixed. They clinked glasses.

“I haven’t thanked you for stopping that swing that was headed for my head — not yet,” she said.

Paul Pry touched his lips to the glass.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

She drained her drink in three throaty gulps, tilting back her neck, drinking with a frankness that discounted all ladylike sips of the beverage, in favour of getting it down where it would do the most good.

She sighed and reached for the bottle.

“Don’t be polite,” she said. “I’ll be one up on you in a minute.”

She fixed herself a second drink. Paul Pry’s glass was still half-filled as she inclined her glass to touch the brim of his for the second time.

“Here’s how,” she said.

She disposed of this drink more slowly.

“Well,” she observed, “let’s have another one and go into the other room, and have a cigarette with it.”

Paul Pry held the bottom of his glass up and drained the last of the drink.

“O.K.,” he observed.

She mixed the third, and then led the way into the living-room, dropped in a chair. Her fur coat was open, hanging down on either side. She propped her feet up on a vacant chair.

“Happy days,” said Paul Pry.

“Here’s mud in your eye. Got a match?”

Paul Pry lit her cigarette, stared pensively for a moment, and sighed again.

“I love my friends, and hate my enemies,” she said.

“Meaning?” asked Paul Pry.

She turned glitteringly dangerous eyes on him.

“Meaning that I hate a snivelling hypocrite,” she said, “and meaning that you’re a total stranger to me.”

“I don’t get the connection,” said Paul Pry.

Her cheeks had colour now, and the eyes held a moist glitter which came from the alcohol of the first two drinks.

“Meaning that if anything happened and I had to choose between a friend and a total stranger, I’d stick by the friend!” she snapped.

Paul Pry nodded. “You can’t be blamed for that.”

“Don’t blame me, then.”