The apartment house lobby was empty this time. No gunman waiting under the potted palm to give me orders. I took the automatic elevator up to my floor and walked along the hallway to the tune of a muted radio behind a door. I needed a drink and was in a hurry to get one. I didn't switch the light on inside the door. I made straight for the kitchenette and brought up short in three or four feet. Something was wrong. Something on the air, a scent. The shades were down at the windows and the street light leaking in at the sides made a dim light in the room. I stood still and listened. The scent on the air was a perfume, a heavy cloying perfume. There was no sound, no sound at all. Then my eyes adjusted themselves more to the darkness and I saw there was something across the floor in front of me that shouldn't have been there. I backed, reached the wall switch with my thumb and flicked the light on. The bed was down. Something in it giggled. A blonde head was pressed into my pillow. Two bare arms curved up and the hands belonging to them were clasped on top of the blond head. Carmen Sternwood on her back, in my bed, giggling at me. The tawny wave of her hair was spread out on the pillow as if by careful and artificial hand. Her slaty eyes peered me and had the effect, as usual, of peering from behind a barrel. She smiled. Her small sharp teeth glinted. "Cute, aren't I?" she said. I said harshly: "Cute as a Filipino on Saturday night." I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight, then pulled my hat and coat off and threw them somewhere. All this time the soft giggling went on from the bed, that sound that made me think of rats behind a wainscoting in an old house. "I bet you can't even guess how I got in." I dug a cigarette out and looked at her with bleak eyes. "I bet I can. You came through the keyhole, just like Peter Pan." "Who's he?" "Oh, a fellow I used to know around the poolroom." She giggled. "You're cute, aren't you?" she said. I began to say: "About that thumb--" but she was ahead of me. I didn't have to remind her. She took herright hand from behind her head and started sucking the thumb and eyeing me with very round and naughty eyes. "I'm all undressed," she said, after I had smoked and stared at her for a minute. "By God," I said, "it was right at the back of my mind. I was groping for it. I almost had it, when you spoke. In another minute I'd have said 'I bet you're all undressed.' I always wear my rubbers in bed myself in case I wake up with a bad conscience and have to sneak away from it." "You're cute." She rolled her head a little, kittenishly. Then she took her left hand from under her head and took hold of the covers, paused dramatically, and swept them aside. She was undressed all right. She lay there on the bed in the lamplight, as naked and glistening as a pearl. The Sternwood girls were giving me both barrels that night. I pulled a shred of tobacco off the edge of my lower lip. "That's nice," I said. "But I've already seen it all. Remember? I'm the guy that keeps finding you without any clothes on." She giggled some more and covered herself up again. "Well, how did you get in?" I asked her. "The manager let me in. I showed him your card. I'd stolen it from Vivian. I told him you told me to come here and wait for you. I was--I was mysterious." She glowed with delight. "Neat," I said. "Managers are like that. Now I know how you got in, tell me how you're going to go out." She giggled. "Not going--not for a long time. . . . I like it here. You're cute." "Listen," I pointed my cigarette at her. "Don't make me dress you again. I'm tired. I appreciate all you're offering me. It's just more than I could possibly take. Doghouse Reilly never let a pal down that way. I'm your friend. I won't let you down--in spite of yourself. You and I have to keep on being friends, and this isn't the way to do it. Now will you dress like a nice little girl?" She shook her head from side to side. "Listen," I plowed on, "you don't really care anything about me. You're just showing how naughty you can be. But you don't have to show me. I knew it already. I'm the guy that found--" "Put the light out," she giggled. I threw my cigarette on the floor and stamped on it. I took a handkerchief out and wiped the palms of my hands. I tried it once more. "It isn't on account ............