5
Simon did as he was told, while he turned to locate the welcoming committee. He realised that he had been quite conspicuously careless: because there had been no answer to the bell, he had assumed that there was nobody home. Which seemed to have been an egregiously rash assumption.
He found himself considering two separately unreliable trigger fingers.
One of them, which had appeared from behind the door, belonged to the thin blue-chinned specimen who had had such an unfortunate collision with a slab of functional timber the night before. He wore a broad patch of adhesive tape across his brow as a souvenir of the occasion, and if there was any spirit of Christian forgiveness and loving-kindness in his secret soul it had. not yet had time to dig its way out into his sunken eyes.
The other man, who must have been the owner of the grenadine voice, stood in the doorway of the bedroom. A glimpse of the room behind him formed a sudden sensuous woodcut of black painted floor and white snow leopard rugs, black marble fireplace and white leather paneled walls, ebony and white corduroy furniture — the sort of room from which a man like that would most naturally seem to emerge. For aside from the plated automatic in his hand, he was outwardly a very boudoir type. In contrast with the hapless butter of doors, whose clothes hung on his skinny frame like washing on a line, this exhibit was tailored to the point of being almost zoot-suited. He had glossy black hair with three beautiful regular waves in it, and the adenoidal type of Latin countenance which belongs with the male half of a ballroom dance team. He smiled steadily, showing teeth that were very white and slightly buck.
"So you walked into the parlor, Mr Templar," he said.
"You have the advantage of me," Simon said genially. "Would you like to introduce yourself, or are you the man of mystery?"
The wavy head bowed.
"Ricco Varetti — at your service. And on your left is Cokey Walsh, who will now proceed to search you."
Simon nodded.