Free The Sinful Ones by Fritz Leiber Page A

figure, faultless blonde hair, and challenging lips, she might be a model for billboard advertisements. Even the slight out-of-focus look of her eyes didn’t spoil her attractiveness. And her gray sports outfit looked like a high-class hundred dollar or so.
    Yet there was something off-key, unpleasantly exaggerated, overripe about even her good looks and get-up. She carried the lush figure with a blank animal assurance’ there was unhidden cruelty in the challenging lips, there was an unashamed barbarousness in the two big silver pins piercing her mannish gray sports hat. She seemed utterly unconcerned with and contemptuous of the people around her. She glanced through Carr’s folders with the cold detachment of a biologist examining cancer slides. If ever there was a woman who gave the impression of simply using people, of using the world, this was she. Carr felt strangely cowed.
    But the situation was getting impossible, he told himself. Tom, apparently busy with some papers at the next desk, must be wondering what had happened to him and what the devil woman was up to.
    Just then the blonde dropped back a folder, shut a drawer, and stood up. Carr faded back into the men’s room. He waited perhaps fifteen seconds, then cautiously stepped out. The woman was no longer in sight. He looked into the outside corridor. It was empty. He hadn’t heard the elevator for the last few seconds. He ran to the head of the stairs. He spotted the gray sports coat going though the revolving door. He hurried down the stairs, hesitated a moment, then darted through the lobby entrance into the small tobacco and magazine store adjoining. He could probably still catch a glimpse of her through the store’s show window. In any case, it would be less conspicuous than dashing right out on the sidewalk.
    The store was empty except for a middle-aged man who, in the proprietor’s absence, was coolly leaning across the counter and helping himself to a package of cigarettes. Carr ignored this slightly startling scene and moved quietly toward the window. With commendable nerve—or perhaps he was a bit deaf—the middle-aged man tore open the filched pack without looking around. He was well-dressed and inclined to portliness.
    Just then Carr glimpsed a patch of familiar gray approaching and realized that the blonde woman was coming into the tobacco shop from the street.
    The lobby door was too far away. Carr sidled behind a magazine rack.
    The first voice he heard was the woman’s. It was as disagreeable as her manner.
    “I searched his desk. There wasn’t anything suspicious.”
    “And of course you did a good job?” The portly man’s voice was quite jolly. “Took your time? Didn’t miss anything?”
    “Of course.”
    “Hm.” Carr heard a match struck and the faint crackle of a cigarette igniting. His face was inches away from a line of luridly covered magazines.
    “What are you so worried about?” The woman sounded quarrelsome. “Can’t you take my word for it? Remember, I checked on them yesterday.”
    “Worry pays, Miss Hackman, as you’ll discover when you’ve been in the situation a bit longer.” The portly man sounded pleasanter than ever. “We have strong reason to suspect the girl. I respect your intelligence, but I’m not completely satisfied. We’ll do another check on the girl tonight.”
    “Another? Aren’t we supposed to have any time for fun?”
    “Fun must be insured, Miss Hackman. Hardly be fun at all, would it, if you felt someone might spoil it? And then if some other crowd should catch on…No, we’ll do another check.
    “Oh, all right.” The woman’s voice expressed disgusted resignation. “Though I suppose it’ll mean prowling around for hours with the beast.”
    “Hm. No, I hardly think the beast will be necessary, Miss Hackman.”
    Carr, staring sightlessly at the pulp and astrology magazines, felt his flesh crawl. It wasn’t so much the murky import as the utter matter-of-factness of the