“And you’ve certainly been wonderful to me. I don’t know whether I can ever tell you what it’s meant to me to have someone act — well, decent. You’ve given me back a lot of faith in human nature. The reason I disappeared that first time was — oh, it was mixed up in something sordid and brutal and frightful. I can’t even tell you about it. I don’t want you to know what it was, but it ruined my faith in human nature. I came to the conclusion that people, particularly men, were—” The doorknob rattled into a quick turn. Someone lunged against the door.
Roberta looked at me in startled surprise. “Police?” she whispered.
I motioned toward the connecting room.
She took two steps toward the door of her room, then glided back. I felt her hand on my cheek, under my chin, lifting my head. Before I realized what she was doing, her lips were clinging to mine.
Knuckles banged angrily on the door.
Roberta whispered, “If this should be it — that’s thanks, and good-by.”
She moved across the room like the shadow of a bird floating across a meadow. The door gently closed.
Knuckles banging again at my door, and then Bertha Cool’s angry voice, “Donald, open that door!”
I crossed the room and opened the door. “What the hell do you think you’re trying to do?”
“Sit down, Bertha. Take this chair. You’ve seen the papers, I take it? You must have done a nice job tracing my call to this hotel. Probably cost you a good tip.”