The car reached the top of the driveway, turned, stopped before a blank white wall in which there was a black door. The Indian got out, glared at me. I got out, nudging the gun against my side with the inside of my left arm.
The black door in the white wall opened slowly, untouched from outside, and showed a narrow passage ending far back. A bulb glowed in the ceiling.
The Indian said: «Huh. Go in, big shot.»
«After you, Mr. Harvest.»
He went in scowling and I followed him and the black door closed noiselessly of itself behind us. A bit of mumbo-jumbo for the customers, At the end of the narrow passage there was an elevator, I had to get into it with the Indian. We went up slowly, with a gentle purring sound, the faint hum of a small motor. The elevator stopped, its door opened without a whisper and there was daylight.
I got out of the elevator. It dropped down again behind me with the Indian still in it. I was in a turret room that was almost all windows, some of them close-draped against the afternoon glare. The rugs on the floor had the soft colors of old Persians, and there was a desk made of carved panels that probably came out of a church. And behind the desk there was a woman smiling at me, a dry, tight, withered smile that would turn to powder if you touched it.
She had sleek, black, coiled hair, a dark Asiatic face. There were pearls in her ears and rings on her fingers, large, rather cheap rings, including a moonstone and a square-cut emerald that looked as phony as a ten-cent-store slave bracelet. Her hands were little and dark and not young and not fit for rings.
«Ah, Meester Dalmas, so ver-ry good of you to come. Soukesian he weel be so pleased.»
«Thanks,» I said. I took the new hundred-dollar bill out of my wallet and laid it on her desk, in front of her dark, glittering hands. She didn’t touch it or look at it. «My party,» I said. «But thanks for the thought.»
She got up slowly, without moving the smile, swished around the desk in a tight dress that fitted her like a mermaid’s skin, and showed that she had a good figure, if you liked them four sizes bigger below the waist than above it.
«I weel conduct you,» she said.
She moved before me to a narrow panelled wall, all there was of the room besides the windows and the tiny elevator shaft. She opened a narrow door beyond which there was a silky glow that didn’t seem to be daylight. Her smile was older than Egypt now. I nudged my gun holster again and went in.
The door shut silently behind me. The room was octagonal, draped in black velvet, windowless, with a remote black ceiling. In the middle of the black rug there stood a white octagonal table, and on either side of that a stool that was a smaller edition of the table. Over against the black drapes there was one more such stool. There was a large milky ball on a black stand on the white table. The light came from this. There was nothing else in the room.
I stood there for perhaps fifteen seconds, with that obscure feeling of being watched. Then the velvet drapes parted and a man came into the room and walked straight over to the other side of the table and sat down. Only then did he look at me.
He said: «Be seated opposite me, please. Do not smoke and do not move around or fidget, if you can avoid it. How may I serve you?»
FIVE
SOUKESIAN THE PSYCHIC
He was a tall man, straight as steel, with the blackest eyes I had ever seen and the palest and finest blond hair I had ever seen. He might have been thirty or sixty. He didn’t look any more like an Armenian than I did. His hair was brushed straight back from as good a profile as John Barrymore had at twenty-eight. A matinee idol, and I expected something furtive and dark and greasy that rubbed its hands.
He wore a black double-breasted business suit cut like nobody’s business, a white shirt, a black tie. He was as neat as a gift book.
I gulped and said: «I don’t want a reading. I know all about this stuff.»
«Yes?» he said delicately. «And what do you know about it?»
«Let it pass,» I said. «I can figure the secretary because she’s a sweet buildup for the shock people get when they see you. The Indian stumps me a bit, but it’s none of my business anyhow. I’m not a bunko squad cop. What I came about is a murder.»
«The Indian happens to be a natural medium,» Soukesian said mildly. «They are much rarer than diamonds and, like diamonds, they are sometimes found in dirty places. That might not interest you either. As to the murder you may inform me. I never read the papers.»
«Come, come,» I said. «Not even to see who’s pulling the big checks at the front office? Oke, here it is.»
And I laid it in front of him, the whole damn story, and about his cards and where they had been found.
He didn’t move a muscle. I don’t mean that he didn’t scream or wave his arms or stamp on the floor or bite his nails. I mean he simply didn’t move at all, not even an eyelid, not even an eye. He just sat there and looked at me, like a stone lion outside the Public Library.
When I was all done he put his finger right down on the spot. «You kept those cards from the police? Why?»
«You tell me. I just did.»
«Obviously the hundred dollars I sent you was not nearly enough.»
«That’s an idea too,» I said. «But I hadn’t really got around to playing with it.»
He moved enough to fold his arms. His black eyes were as shallow as a cafeteria tray or as deep as a hole to China — whichever you like. They didn’t say anything, either way.
He said: «You wouldn’t believe me if I said I only knew this man in the most casual manner — professionally?»
«I’d take it under advisement,» I said.
«I take it you haven’t much faith in me. Perhaps Mr. Paul had. Was anything on those cards besides my name?»
«Yeah,» I said. «And you wouldn’t like it.» This was kindergarten stuff, the kind the cops pull on radio crime dramatizations. He let it go without even looking at it.
«I’m in a sensitive profession,» he said. «Even in this paradise of fakers. Let me see one of those cards.»
«I was kidding you,» I said. «There’s nothing on them but your name.» I got my wallet out and withdrew one card and laid it in front of him. I put the wallet away. He turned the card over with a fingernail.
«You know what I figure?» I said heartily. «I figure Lindley Paul thought you would be able to find out who did him in, even if the police couldn’t. Which means he was afraid of somebody.»
Soukesian unfolded his arms and folded them the other way. With him that was probably equivalent to climbing up the light fixture and biting off a bulb.
«You don’t think anything of the sort,» he said. «How much — quickly — for the three cards and a signed statement that you searched the body before you notified the police?»
«Not bad,» I said, «for a guy whose brother is a rug peddler.»
He smiled, very gently. There was something almost nice about his smile. «There are honest rug dealers,» he said. «But Arizmian Soukesian is not my brother. Ours is a common name in Armenia.»
I nodded.
«You think I’m just another faker, of course,» he added.
«Go ahead and prove you’re not.»
«Perhaps it is not money you want after all,» he said carefully.
«Perhaps it isn’t.»
I didn’t see him move his foot, but he must have touched a floor button. The black velvet drapes parted.and the Indian came into the room. He didn’t look dirty or funny any more.