Myra seemed to know her way around. She walked across sawdust-covered floor up to the bar and crooked a finger at one of the barmen.
I stood behind her, waiting for trouble.
Four or five men, as wide as they were tall, who were up at the bar, stopped talking and looked at her.
They looked over their shoulders at me, sneered, turned their attention to Myra again.
‘Hello, girlie,’ one of them said softly.
This, of course, I thought, is where trouble starts. I was a fool to have brought her here. Instead of getting evidence, I was going to get into a fight with a bunch of toughs as big as Carnera.
Myra turned slowly, looked the four men over, said four words with unbelievable viciousness that froze them in their tracks, turned back to the bar again.
Silently, as if they had peeped into a room in which something was going on that shocked even their unshockable minds, they drifted away from the bar and sat at one of the tables.
Myra whispered to the barman, who looked at her narrowly, nodded his head and jerked his thumb to the stairs.
‘Come on,’ she said to me. ‘We can go up.’