It was curious how he had always assumed that it would be Varetti and Walsh. Even when he spoke to Fernack on the telephone. He had left them locked up in Barbara Sinclair's closet intending to have been back there by that time and busy with the job of advancing their acquaintance on his own terms; but all that had been changed for quite a while. He wasn't quite sure how long ago he had been sure that they were no longer waiting where he had left them, but it seemed now that he had always been sure that they wouldn't be there. It was one of those fourth-dimensional elisions that saw an end before it could pin down all the steps and stages through which the end would come about.
He knew that Varetti and Walsh were out again, because only since they were out again could certain other things have happened. Or, conversely, because other things had happened, they must be out again.
And the rawhide suitcase was standing beside the sofa and someone would come to get it.
It wouldn't take much shopping around to settle on one of the suites directly above the one he was in. And from any such starting point a fire escape that ran down through a gloomy inside courtyard that nobody would ever want to look out at anyway would present virtually no problems at all…
He could really have enjoyed that cigarette.
But how long could he afford to wait, backing his hunch, while he might always be wrong, and the fox might be away in another spinney?
The radio next door was blatting forth some emetic commercial about the perils of fungoid feet or some such attractive ailmen He could hear every word as if he were in the room with it. wondered if it would be loud enough to drown one of the sounds he was listening for.
But it wasn't.
He heard it.
It was the slow cautious rasp of a window-sash being eased quietly upwards. And, after that, the subdued rattle of the slats of the Venetian blind being lifted from below.