The door wasn’t open.
I tapped on the panels.
Nothing happened.
I tried the knob and went in.
It was an ordinary furnished apartment, the kind that used to be medium-priced. It was an old building with something of rambling incoherency about its design, and the apartments had been figured out, not on a basis of the greatest efficiency, but on a sort of hit-or-miss basis. I gathered perhaps the building had at one time consisted of flats or larger apartments, and had been cut up.
There was water running in the bathroom, and as I closed the door behind me, a woman’s voice called out. “It’s a wonder you didn’t show up with the car earlier. It’s a nice day outside and…”
I walked over to a chair by the window and sat down.
When I didn’t say anything, the voice from the bathroom quieted down, and then the water shut off and a door opened.
Claire Bushnell, wearing a bath-robe and slippers, her eyes wide with startled curiosity, came shuffling into the room.
“Well, I like that!” she exclaimed.