Free A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson Page A

trying this in the wrong place and on the wrong guy… And doubtless she would have been grateful. Very grateful.
    As things stood now – well, just where did things stand now? Covertly, he glanced down the long aisle toward Bascom, hesitated, then sighed again. The clerk was already suspicious. Aside from that, a call or a visit to her room was out of the question. She'd be frightened and angry, afraid of and ready to repel any overtures he might make. Also, Tug might still be with her… and so occupied as to make him resent an intrusion. That would be like Tug. She had made trouble for the big man; in a word, she owed him something. And he would collect as a matter of course.
    Dusty wished he could get her out of his mind. He wished he could feel more relieved, grateful, for escaping from what had seemed an inescapable mess. But as the long night drew to a close, he felt only one thing: a sense of irreplaceable loss. He had lost her again. For the second time, he had lost the only woman in the world.
    The vanguard of the day shift began \o arrive. The first elevator boy want to work, the first mezzanine maid, the first lobby attendant. The head baggage-porter retrieved the checkroom key, unlocked it under the drowsy gaze of a black-shined subordinate. As dawn spread into daylight, Dusty was forced out of his reverie. With the calls piling on top of each other he was kept too busy to think about her.
    He raced up and down on the service elevator, de rigueur, when in use, for the hotel's employees. He raced up and down the long, deeply carpeted hallways. Tapping on doors. Delivering cigarettes and morning papers and toilet articles and a dozen-odd things. Everything moved in' a blur of automatic action. There were no people, only room numbers. And the numbers themselves soon lost meaning. They were connected with the transitory moment's errand, and beyond that they had no existence.
    … He said, "Thank you, very much, sir," and pocketed a quarter tip. He rounded the corner of the corridor, moving at a fast trot. He looked up, just in time to keep from piling into them.
    The baggage porter was in the lead, her overnight case under one arm, her hatbox and suitcase in his hands. Sauntering along behind him was one of Tug's men, and at the rear of the procession was another. She was walking between the two. Knotted at the back of her head were the cords of a heavy black veil.
    Dusty gulped. He turned and darted back around the corner. He couldn't say why the scene was such a shock to him, why it sent waves of sickness through his brain. Because, naturally, he should have expected something like this. Tug would feel that he had to get her out of the hotel. Nothing less would be safe – absolutely safe – and Tug was not the kind to take unnecessary chances. So… so there was nothing wrong. Tug, or, rather, Tug's boys would see that she checked out. They'd slip her a little money and load her on a train, and – and that was all they would do. Just enough to insure Tug's safety and his, Dusty's, own.
    Everything was as it should be, then. As he should have expect it to be. But still he was sick, and getting sicker by the moment was as though he'd witnessed a death procession, a criminal being sent to the execution chamber.
    He ran down the service stairs to the next landing. He raced dm that corridor, and around to the service elevator. Why, he could have said, because certainly he couldn't interfere. It would be his own neck if he did, and… and why should he, anyway?
    Why, he demanded furiously. She tried to get me, didn't she? They won't do anything to her, but why should I care if they did?
    The sickness mounted. It disintegrated suddenly, still in him spread through his body, no longer a compact, centralized force mixing with it, adulterating it, was a strange feeling of pride Tug Trowbridge. He and Tug. She'd stepped on Dusty's toes, and now by God, she was learning a lesson. They were showing her, her and the Manton