“Naturally I’m here by invitation.” He kept his face toward the corridor door. “What right have you to force your way in here, Mister—”
“Vine. Gilbert Vine. All the right in the world. If we learned that some unauthorized individual was prowling your suite, you’d expect us to investigate. Why object to letting a house officer in here?”
“Didn’t believe you were — an officer.” He sauntered to the coffee table, waited a second to find out if I’d say, ‘Mustn’t touch!’ When I didn’t, he picked up the automatic, slid it in his pocket, kept his hand there. But he wasn’t watching me; whatever danger he anticipated would evidently come from the corridor.
“Realize you have a job to do, Vine. Only I’m not exactly unauthorized. I’m registered here. My rooms happen to be just across the corridor — and since I had business to discuss with Miss Marino, I came across for a chat. Then she had to leave, asked me to wait until she returned.”
I let him see I didn’t buy it. “Didn’t look to me as if you were waiting for a lady.”
He gave out with one of the famed Lanerd boyish grins — a small-boy grin, partly sheepish, partly mischievous. Hard to dislike a man with a grin like that. “What’d be your reaction, if you’d been in a pretty girl’s apartment, suddenly a gruff voice demanded immediate entrance?”
“Worried about her husband?” I knew it hadn’t been that. If he’d feared what the tabs call a Jealous Mate, he’d have done what any other man would do — scramoose through one of the bedrooms, out to the corridor.
“She’s not married.” He approached the door, hesitated, peered down the corridor toward the elevators, twisted around to look in the opposite direction, came back in, shut the door. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if she had some close friend. Be easy to misconstrue the reason for my being here.”
“It certainly would have. When’ll Miss Marino be back?”
“Can’t tell you.”