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of his hand allowed.
                      25There was  no good time to do business like this:
    the present would have to suffice. He walked back to Lexington and caught a cab to the address on the paper.
    He got no response from the bell marked Bernstein, but roused the doorman, and engaged in a frustrating debate with him through the glass door. The man was angry to have been raised at such an hour; Miss Bernstein was not in her apartment, he insisted, and remained untouched even when Harry intimated that there might be some life-or-death urgency in the matter. It was only when he produced  his wallet that the fellow displayed the least flicker of concern. Finally, he let Harry in.
    'She's not up there,' he said, pocketing the bills. 'She's not been in for days.'
    Harry  took the elevator: his shins were aching, and his back too. He wanted sleep; bourbon, then sleep.
    There was no reply at the apartment as the doorman had  predicted, but he  kept knocking,  and calling her.
    'Miss Bernstein? Are you there?'
    There was no sign of life from within; not at least, until he said:
    'I want to talk about Swann.'
    He  heard an intake of breath, close to the door.
    'Is somebody there?' he asked. 'Please answer. There's nothing to be afraid of.'
    After several seconds a slurred and melancholy voice murmured: 'Swann's dead.'
    At least she wasn't, Harry thought. Whatever forces had snatched Valentin away, they had not yet reached this corner of Manhattan. 'May I talk to you?' he requested.
    'No,' she replied. Her voice was a candle flame on the verge of extinction.
    'Just a few questions, Barbara.'
                       26'I'm in the tiger's belly,' the slow reply came, 'and it doesn't want me to let you in.'
    Perhaps they had got here before him.
    'Can't you reach the door?' he coaxed her. 'It's not so far.  . .'
    'But it's eaten me,' she said.
    'Try, Barbara. The tiger won't mind. Reach.'
    There was silence from the other side of the door, then a shuffling sound. Was she doing as he had requested?
    It seemed so. He heard her fingers fumbling with the catch.
    'That's it,' he encouraged her. 'Can you turn it? Try to turn it.'
    At the last instant he thought: suppose she's telling the truth, and there is a tiger in there with her? It was too late for retreat, the door was opening. There was no animal in the hallway. Just a woman, and the smell of dirt. She had clearly neither washed nor changed her clothes since fleeing from the theatre. The evening gown she wore was soiled and torn, her skin was  grey with grime.
    He stepped into the apartment. She moved down the hallway away from him, desperate to avoid his touch.
    'It's all right,' he said, 'there's no tiger here.'
    Her wide eyes were almost empty; what presence roved there was lost to sanity.
    'Oh  there is,' she said, Tm  in the tiger. I'm in it forever.'
    As he had neither the time nor the skill required to dissuade her from this madness, he decided it was wiser to go with it.
    'How did you get there?' he asked her. 'Into the tiger?
    Was it when you were with Swann?'
    She nodded.
    'You remember that, do you?'
    'Oh yes.'
                       27'What do you remember?'
    'There was a sword; it fell. He was picking up -' She stopped and frowned.
    'Picking up what?'
    She seemed suddenly more distracted than ever. 'How can you hear me,' she wondered, 'when I'm in the tiger?
    Are you in the tiger too?
    'Maybe I am,' he said, not wanting to analyse the metaphor too closely.
    'We're here forever, you know,' she informed him.
    'We'll never be let out.'
    'Who  told you that?'
    She didn't reply, but cocked her head a little.
    'Can you hear?' she said.
    'Hear?'
    She took another step back down the hallway. Harry listened, but he could hear nothing. The  growing agitation on Barbara's face was sufficient to send him back to the front door and open it, however. The elevator was in operation. He could hear its soft hum across the landing.