“You’re a funny girl: too good for this racket.”
She shook her head.
“I wish I was. It just happens, Buster, there’s something about you that’s made me soft tonight.” She laughed. “We’ll be letting our hair down in a moment and sobbing over each other. Well, here we are.”
Ken paid off the taxi, and together they walked up the steps and opened the front door.
They began the long climb to the top floor.
It was probably because she had underlined the risk he was running; something he knew for himself, but something he had dismissed because it had suited him to dismiss it, that, as he climbed the stairs, he was suddenly apprehensive. He should have dropped her at her apartment block and taken the taxi back to his own home, he told himself. He had had a swell evening. There was no point in continuing this escapade any further.
A tiger by the tail, she had said. Suppose now the tiger suddenly awoke?
But in spite of his uneasiness, he continued to climb the stairs after her, until they reached the fourth landing.
Facing them as they mounted the last few stairs, stood the fawn Pekinese. Its bulging bloodshot eyes surveyed them stonily, and it gave a sudden shrill yap that made Ken’s heart skip a beat.
As if waiting for the signal, the fourth-floor front door opened quickly, and Raphael Sweeting appeared.