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he’s upstairs. Might be wise of you to stay inside.”
    Her eyes widened. “What’s on?”
    â€œSpies.”
    â€œRussians?”
    I shrugged.
    â€œBleeding Communists,” she said. She opened her door, ducked inside, then out again. “When you’ve done,” she said, “you might stop in for a cuppa.” Then she mercifully drew her door shut, and I put my passport away.
    I stood there for another five minutes. At one point a midget passed me on his way downstairs. I tried not to guess where he had been or what he had been doing. Then I heard steps approaching Mr. Hyphen’s door. I put both hands in my pockets, drew out both guns, anddecided on the one with the blanks. I stood close to the wall alongside the door.
    There was the sound of the bolt being drawn. Then the knob turned, and he opened the door and held it for Julia. I walked in as she came out, digging the nose of the pistol into his middle.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “Back up now. Close the door, Julia. Now back off, friend, and turn around nice and slow, and keep your hands in the air.”
    He backed off, and he put his hands in the air, but he didn’t turn around. He was my height, eight or ten years younger, and many pounds heavier. I saw at once what Julia meant about his eyes. They were cold, opaque, utterly lacking in depth. In my part of New York boys with eyes like that are very good with knives.
    Slowly, his hands came down again. “Not bloody likely,” he said. “You aren’t about to shoot, are you, china?” Rhyming slang, I thought stupidly; china, china plate, mate. “Not a peeler, and there’s not a pin here for stealing, so just who in bleeding hell are you?” He took a step toward me. “Better let me take that toy before you hurt yourself.”
    So I pointed the gun at his gut and fired.
    It didn’t sound much like a truck backfiring. What it sounded like was a .38-caliber automatic. For an instant it must have felt like that, too, because he fell back as if shot and stared down in horror at the spot in his middle where the bullet would have gone had the gun contained one.
    His face had just begun to register the fact that he hadn’t been shot when I took the other fake pistol, the cast-iron one, and bounced it off the side of his head.
    I turned to Julia. She stood motionless and open-mouthed, a bronze casting entitled “Astonishment.” “Get into the hall,” I said. “You want to know where the shot came from; it sounded as though it came from upstairs. Remember what a fine actress you are. Hurry!”
    Â 
    She did a good job. I locked the door behind her and listened to the hubbub outside while I got Mr. Hyphen properly trussed up. There was a substantial stuffed chair with molded wooden arms. I wrestled him into it and used a roll of picture-hanging wire to fasten him in place, his arms to the chair’s arms, his feet to its legs, and the rest of him to the back and seat of it. I was in a hurry, and that sort of work isn’t my favorite diversion anyway—I can’t wrap a Christmas present properly, let alone a person. So I don’t suppose I did the sort of job that would have left Houdini hamstrung, but that wasn’t the idea. I just wanted this clown to stay in one place while I asked him questions.
    Outside, the turmoil gradually peaked and died down. No police showed up, and the crowd was comprised chiefly of whores and clients, none of whom were too keen on interfering in anything. I heard Suzette say something about filthy bleeding Russians, but I don’t think anyone paid very much attention to her. When it all died down, Julia knocked softly on the door and I let her in.
    â€œThere were blanks in the gun,” she said.
    â€œYou didn’t know?”
    â€œHow would I have known? Lord, that was a wrench, wasn’t it? Has my hair suddenly turned