“Thanks,” I said, hanging up.
“Not bad,” I told her. “We’ll have him out this afternoon.”
She wasn’t looking at me. She was gazing at the open door and as she rose from her chair again I assumed she was going to continue our little I’ll-close-it-you-open-it game.
And then the explosion came.
There was a tremendous flash just outside the open door and a tremendous noise which thundered back and forth between the walls of the small office, knocking down my framed bondsman’s certificate, blowing a stack of receipts off the bookcase and making my eardrums vibrate like organ pipes.
Ti-lo screamed once. She reached out for the chair to support herself, missed by a yard and toppled.
She landed smack on her little taffeta-covered posterior, rolled over once and lay still.
I sprang around the desk, stepped over her and looked out through the clouds of blue smoke which were billowing around the doorway. I saw a heliotrope-colored car, it looked like a new Buick. It was going like hell, and was much too far away for me to read the license number.
I knelt down beside Ti-lo, but I couldn’t see a mark on her.
CHAPTER II
SHE WAS COVERED with tiny, ragged bits of paper. More of the little fragments were floating through the office, settling on me and the furnishings. I sniffed at the antiseptic sulphurous odor hanging in the air. It was familiar. I picked up some of the bits of paper. Then I strode outside and examined a black, flash-burned area on the moss-green stucco wall near the doorway and my suspicions were confirmed.
A giant firecracker had caused the uproar, not a bomb.
I picked Ti-lo up and it was a pleasure. It was indeed a pleasure to slide one arm beneath her bare, warm knees and the other across her dainty shoulder blades. She weighed about as much as a piece of Melba toast. As I carried her to the divan, her face was quite near to mine. And if it does nothing else, a close-up like that will prove a lady’s age once and for all. I decided Ti-lo couldn’t be a day over twenty. She wore no make-up except claret-colored lipstick. She would never need make-up, simply because her skin was as fine-textured as a baby’s.
I placed her on the divan, propping her feet up on the armrest to get the blood flowing back to her head. I removed her spike-heeled shoes and began to gently massage her feet. Then I brushed the bits of firecracker paper from her hair and off her skirt. I would like to say that my gentlemanly instincts prevented me from brushing off the lovely front of her sky-blue nylon sweater but this would not be exactly true. I was prevented from doing so by the fact that she was beginning to wake up.
She didn’t say anything foolish like “What happened?” or “Where am I?”
The first thing she noticed were her bare feet. She took a swing at me and began shrieking at the top of her lungs. “Where are my shoes! My beautiful blue shoes!”
She jumped off the divan and began shagging me around the office, pummeling my back.
And at that moment in came half a dozen uniformed gentlemen from the cop shop across the street. I don’t blame them for standing there gawking at what certainly was a ridiculous scene. Without her spike heels, Ti-lo was a pint-sized four-feet-eleven and I’m a gallon-sized five-feet-eleven with a chest like a butane tank.
She finally spied the cops, pointed a claret fingernail at me and yelped: “Arrest this man! He stole my shoes!”
One of the John Laws advanced toward me with a grim I’m-bucking-for-sergeant expression on his face.
“Relax,” I said.
I found her shoes at the side of the divan and handed them to her.
I turned back to the Johns. “She fainted when the firecracker went off. All I did was massage her tootsies to bring her out of it.”
Ti-lo abruptly said: “Oh!”
She plopped down on the divan, her face pale, her shoulders shaking, and I could see that she was remembering the shock of the explosion and how she had keeled over like a broken sunflower.
It took her a minute to get her breath and composure back. Then she slipped on her blue shoes and smiled up at the half-circle of Johns.
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I guess I—”
“Sure, one of the boys said. “It was quite a bang and we ain’t blaming you for losing your temper.”
He turned to me and his tone became gruff again. “Any idea who done it? Some pal of yours, maybe, joking around?”
I shook my head. “No pal of mine. I think it was tossed from a heliotrope Buick.”
“A heliotrope Buick?” He wrote it down in his notebook, and then led his gang outside. They milled around on the sidewalk for another minute, studied the flash-burn on the wall and then they trotted two-by-two back to the cop shop.
I sat down behind the desk. “Well, Miss Sullivan,” I said, “shall we go on? Or would you rather try one of my competitors down the street?”
“No, thanks, Mr. Pool.” She produced the friendliest smile she’d given me all morning. “I’m sorry about the way I acted. And I’m grateful for the way you picked me up from the floor.”
“Don’t be so formal,” I said. “Call me Lew. And any time you want to faint, you go right ahead. I’ll be there to pick you up.”
“I’m sure you’ve had lots of practice.” She said it a little more sweetly than necessary.
I let it pass and I saw that I would have to keep alert around her because she was plenty sharp.
“What about that Buick?” I said. “You know anybody who owns a lavender one?”
“No.”
“You sure you didn’t expect something to happen?”
“No.”
“Why did you keep closing the door?”
“It was drafty.”
They were all logical answers. I knew if I were to press the point further and ask her why she was now willing to let the door remain open, she would undoubtedly have a ready answer for that one, too.
I dialed Winebrenner, the booking sergeant, and asked him if he’s seen Billy.
“He’s standing right here,” Winebrenner said. “He’s checking out in a few minutes.”
“Put him on, will you?”
There was a brief delay and then I heard Billy’s cheerful, beer-soaked baritone.
“Top o’ the mawrnin’ to ye, Lew.”
“You’re late,” I said, “and you’re keeping a client waiting.”
“I’m
