To Keep or Kill

Twelve

In four days Charles Horne had noticeably aged.

During that brief but hectic time span he had: (a) been outdoors twice for a walk, (b) patted the watchdog once and rubbed its nose once, (c) gotten drunk on his hostess’ beer in company with his hostess and while in said state searched her person for a key, (d) been knocked down and almost stomped on by an angry Bumble, (e) spent some restless nights trying to sleep on the floor before the fireplace, (f) begun the manufacture of a dubious bomb, and (g) discovered in a book a method to break out of his prison.

These little adventures didn’t come to him in that precise order. The beer affair had been first. That, and the search for the key; for the circumstances of the first as good as dictated the action of the second.

Horne had been sitting on the studio couch in the living room, staring thoughtfully at the newspaper he had just read and waiting for Betty to appear for lunch. He was hungry and happy for he saw, or thought he saw, the breaks beginning to fall for him instead of against him.

The discovery of Robinson in the hotel would start things moving. And Sergeant Wiedenbeck was the kind of a man to keep things moving with a discovery like Robinson.

Doctor Saari, assuming the police had called her in on the case, would have the man awake and talking in no time. Perhaps they already knew the answers — why not? That newspaper had gone to press at three in the morning and Robinson had evidently been found some hours before that. He had been in the hospital several hours by this time; long enough to get a statement from him and begin working on it.

Horne fought back the silly impulse to glance out the front window with the expectation of seeing a swarm of men already approaching the house. It wouldn’t be that fast.

Instead he jumped to his feet and stared at the sight in the bedroom doorway.

Betty stood there, poised, smiling, anxious.

Horne exclaimed, “Ye gods!”

“Thank you, sir.” she curtsied. “That, I take it, is your quaint way of passing a compliment. Do you like me?”

The auburn-haired girl was wearing a two-piece playsuit. The suit was a dark shade of green with a lustre finish. Each of the two pieces was pornographically brief. At least Horne thought so.

“I haven’t,” he declared, “seen so much bare skin on the beach!”

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she flipped. “It’s from France. I like it. Let’s have lunch.” She extended an arm.

He accepted it gingerly and walked with her to the kitchen. Seating her first, he sat down, avoiding direct stares at the playsuit and avoiding the eyes of both Betty and Hilda.

Still lacking a shirt to wear, he felt extremely conscious of the near-nakedness of the two of them. Betty’s mind, he realized for the thousandth time, rattled along in channels one couldn’t fully approve of. She seemed to deliberately practice the disconcerting habit of embarrassing him at every opportunity. And she thoroughly enjoyed it.

He discovered how hard it was to eat with his eyes on his plate for the entire meal.

Sometime after lunch Betty opened two bottles of beer for a refresher. And that was the beginning of it.

She silently handed him that first bottle while he was standing before the garish juke box in the long living room, arranging for it to play the twelve records without stopping. It was with surprise and wonderment that he looked up suddenly from one end of the studio couch to see why the records had ceased. The twelve platters had run their course and settled back into their respective places. He had no idea what had happened to the time needed to play those twelve records.

Betty’s head rested on a pillow lying in his lap. Her great green eyes were looking upward, watching his face in contented contemplation. Her lips were still.

Horne roused himself from his protracted spell of woolgathering and set the empty beer bottle on the floor. It clinked against another. Glancing down, he discovered seven empty bottles standing there, his and hers stacked together.

“I’m one up on you,” he said stupidly. “Or is it the other way around?”

“I don’t know, darling,” she half said, half whispered. “I don’t care.”

Sinking his chin to his chest he found he could stare down directly into her face. He put a long, cold forefinger on the tip of her nose and wobbled it gently from side to side. “That makes you look like a rabbit,” he informed her. “Only rabbits’ noses go up and down, not sideways.”

“I’ll be a sideways rabbit,” she answered dreamily.

“I never seen a red-haired rabbit.”

“I never saw...”

“Huh? Saw what?”

“I never saw a red-haired rabbit.”

“Neither have I.”

He set his empty beer bottle on the floor. It clinked. The clink sounded familiar and he looked to see what caused it. Placing his finger on the rim of each bottle in turn, so as not to count any bottle twice, he tallied up eleven bottles. That couldn’t be right; he must have counted one of them twice. So he turned the first bottle over on its side and counted the evidence again. Correct — there were only ten. Then he discovered that he had forgotten to count the bottle lying on its side.

“Who’s bringing all that beer in here?” he demanded.

“Bumble is. You asked him to.”

“Bumble can’t hear what I say.”

“But darling, you wave bottles at him.”

“Oh.”

“He brought up another case from the basement.”

“I thought I saw somebody lugging cases around out there.” And then a wonderful idea smote him. “We shouldn’t make Bumble work like that.”

“He doesn’t mind.”

“I do. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to put a tub of ice-cold beer right here by the couch. We’ll fill it up with all the ice cubes in the refrigerator. And then Bumble won’t have to wait on us all the time.”

She sat up. “Wonderful!” Calling Hilda, Betty explained what was wanted. Hilda waddled into the kitchen and shortly Bumble returned lugging a galvanized wash tub containing a dozen bottles of beer and the contents of four trays of ice cubes. He set the tub within easy reach of Horne, and went back to the kitchen.

“Now that,” Horne declared, “is more like it. Bumble won’t have to work so hard.”

“I know what,” Betty said breathlessly, “I’ll give them the afternoon off. I’ll send them to town. And then we can be alone.”

“Give them a quarter,” Horne nodded. “Tell them to take in a double feature.” He reached into the tub and opened a bottle of beer. Looking up, he came face to face with a dog.

“Nice pup,” he said, and gave the dog a friendly pat on the top of the head. The dog backed away, growling. Betty returned to her position in his lap.

“It seems to me,” he opined, “I’ve seen that pup somewhere before. Does he live around here?”

“That’s my dog. He stays in the yard.”

“Then what’s he doing in here?”

“Hilda always lets him in when she and Bumble leave,” Betty explained. “He takes care of me.”

“Safety first,” Horne said wisely. He vaguely felt there was some deep sense to her statement, something more to be read into it than appeared on the surface, but at the moment it escaped him. “Safety first,” he repeated. “Nice pup.”

The dog settled down on the opposite side of the tub, watching them. It seemed to Horne that every time he bent over the tub to get another bottle the dog was staring into his eyes in a most curious manner.

“I can’t see from here,” Betty said as if answering him.

“Can’t see what from there?” he prompted.

“How many empty bottles there are.”

He shrugged. “Who cares?”

“You do. You just asked me to count them.”

“Oh.” He leaned over the arm of the couch to count them aloud. To prevent the kind of mistake that had happened before, he again put a bottle over on its side and counted the remainder. When he got back to the original bottle he found there were two, not one, lying down.

“Oh, hell,” he complained. “I’ve lost count.”

“Never mind. There’s more in the basement.”

“I’m a detective,” he stated for no reason at all. It just seemed a good thing to say, a proud thing.

“I like some detectives,” Betty admitted. “I like you.”

“That’s swell. I like you, too. I like your beer. That’s a swell pup. I’m a pretty good detective.”

“I only like good detectives. I don’t like some of them. The kind that get tough and ask stupid questions.”

“I’d better not catch anybody doing that to you. Who did that, anyway?”

“Oh, that was a detective in California. He was stupid. The old lady bashed his head in when he tried to arrest me. He actually wanted to arrest me!”

“Did it hurt?” Horne inquired.

“Did which hurt?”

“The old lady who bashed his head in?”

“Oh, she didn’t really bash his head in. She just thumped him a little. She slipped up behind him when he was trying to arrest me. I was AWOL and he was going to turn me over to the MP. She thumped kind of soft like. But I didn’t like him.”

“I don’t like him either. She must be a nice mother. Why is she named Bridges? Why doesn’t she have the same name as you and your daddy? What is your name?”

“Her name is Bridges because that was the man she was married to when Papa stole her away. It was very romantic.”

“Oh sure, she’s romantic. I met her. She runs a dog hospital. Like that pup there.” He put the remains of his beer in her hand and got himself a fresh bottle. Then he said to the girl, “Your face is too close. I can’t see you very well.”

“Well, sit up, silly. You’re kissing me.”

“Oh. I thought my lips were wet. Excuse it.” He sat up and opened the fresh bottle. “Seems to me I was going to ask you something. Would you like a drink? That wasn’t it.”

“No thanks. I still have one.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m bleeding... I think.”

“That’s my lipstick.”

“Well, look now, I don’t want to be wearing your lipstick. I’ll put it back.” He bent over her face.

“What happened in chapter two?” he asked next.

“What? Well, what happened in chapter one?”

“The old lady bashed his head in and you was AWOL,” he reminded her,

“Oh, that. Just like a story. In chapter two she sent me here to live. That fat man — what was his name? Oh yes, Channy. Thank you, darling. Channy was here. He bought this house for me to live in and gave me the money. I’ve got lots of money, darling. You can have it all, if you like.”

“You’re my pal. I can always use money. Where does Channy get it? Does he print it?”

“Oh, no, silly! That would be dishonest. He goes to Chicago after it. Every month.” Her voice grew weaker.

Horne looked down at her. She was almost asleep. He changed position ever so slowly, jostling her into wakefulness. “Where does he get it in Chicago? That’s a pretty big town. Is Papa in Chicago?”

Betty didn’t answer. Betty was sound asleep.

Easing himself out from under her, he gently let the pillow and her head down on the couch. She didn’t wake up. He stared at her thoughtfully a few moments, rubbed the back of his head, and grinned.

“Any time you think you can drink me under the table, baby,” he muttered half aloud, “you’ve got another guess coming.”

He strode to the kitchen, followed by the dog.

Horne stopped. “I don’t like your face,” he said.

The animal looked up at him with an expression Horne could have sworn was a friendly grin.

“I dislike your face as much as I do like that other face in there. Too bad it isn’t the other way around. I don’t mind putting the screws on a face I don’t like.

“But then I don’t suppose you make mistakes. You have a different kind of intelligence, maybe. Too bad your mistress isn’t as smart as you. She makes mistakes — she made a lot of them. She talks too much. She told me her Papa can get his hands on beneficiary checks as soon as the company mails them. And she doesn’t know where her Papa is now. Take a tip from me, dog face: don’t talk so much!”

The dog responded with a gentle wagging of his tail.

Horne watched it with growing wonder. Experimentally, he addressed a few soft-spoken words to the animal. The tail wagged furiously. Cautiously putting out a hand, he rubbed the wet nose turned up to him. The dog sidled up close and nuzzled his leg. Horne laughed. He found a can of dog food in a cupboard, opened it, and dumped half the contents on the floor. Then he stalked out of the kitchen, leaving the animal gulping down the unexpected meal.

Betty hadn’t moved. She was beginning to snore lightly. He looked at the two brief pieces of the playsuit and wondered if he had best wrap a blanket around her.

“Red-on-the-head,” he said quietly, aloud, “you certainly ruined a good watchdog with that love scene.” Briskly then, he dropped to his knees beside her to search for the key to the locked room.

She didn’t have it.

Puzzled, he sat down beside the beer tub to think it out. Minutes later, when the dog wandered in from the kitchen to have a look at the state of things, Horne had toppled over on the floor asleep. The animal lay down beside him and put their noses together.

“I’ve got a mouthful of buzzing flies,” Horne grumbled. “And some of them sneaked up into my skull.”

Betty laughed gleefully. “You’re getting old, old man. You can’t take it.”

Horne strode back and forth across the green yard, sucking in the fresh, smoke-free air. The new morning’s sun was climbing high in the sky, already sending the heat that would shortly drive them to the shade. Knots of muscles in his arms and legs ached, punishing him for having slept in a twisted position on the floor all night.

The freshly bedecked, fresh-looking girl skipped along beside him, solicitous and derogatory by turns. The dog whose unfaithfulness she had not yet discovered trotted along at her heels. Betty felt wonderful and said so, although there was still a trace of sleep in her eyes.

Seeing the expression on his face, she said she was very sorry about last night.

“But I’ve never had a hang-over in my life,” he complained. “And on beer!”

“You’ve never drunk my beer before,” she taunted.

“Hell, its all beer—” he closed his mouth and stopped dead in his tracks, suspicion striking him. “Now, see here, redhead...”

“Betty,” she corrected.

“Listen, I never in my life got so woozy so fast on beer. And I’ve never had a hang-over. Was there anything wrong with that stuff?”

“I drank it!” She laughed in his face and darted around the corner of the house. He said to hell with her and sat down in the shade. Had she doped the stuff for his benefit? And then fallen into her own trap? She had slept quickly.

The long days were fairly tolerable, do-nothing days. He read, he explored and re-explored the house. He took apart the mechanism of the oil burner and put it back together. He examined the caps of every bottle of beer stored in the basement and found some evidence of tampering. He fixed an ironing cord which had become frayed on the end, causing sparks. He developed a silent comradeship with the giant Negro.

He got along extremely well with his attractive captor only while he was under the influence of her beer, he soon found, and after that memorable afternoon and night he had refused to touch the stuff. So the long period of time they were together was often strained and difficult. She would spend much of the day in town and he liked that best for then he had the house to himself — except for Hilda, Bumble, and Winken, Blinken and Nod. But with the girl gone the remaining three were so unobtrusive it was like having the house all to himself.

The evenings were different and somewhat of a problem to him. In the evening she invariably turned on the heat and usually in some enticing, eye-knocking dress or slacks job. She made futile attempts to start something. He played cards with her (and discovered she cheated by sleight-of-hand), now and then danced with her (but not often because her idea of dancing wasn’t permitted on a dance floor), and once again (but in a very sober state) allowed her to lie on a pillow in his lap.

Such heating attempts ended in a slow burn. With herself as the victim.

Horne frankly asked himself how long he could take it without giving in. She was very feminine, very desirable, and delectable to kiss, as he had discovered. And he was very male and very human. He realized that neither of them would go on making dry runs for any length of time. His conscience held him back: the knowledge that their chosen professions dug a wide, deep gulf between them. For the time being, at least, he couldn’t bring himself to make love to a girl he would throw into jail at the earliest opportunity. The big question mark in his mind was: how long would “the time being” last? He tried hard to confine himself to pecks on the cheek when she demanded good-night kisses.

She was patient; extremely, cleverly patient. She took the attitude that he could get away with it this week, and perhaps next week, but there were months and years to come. He would unbend. She knew men; she knew the power of her body and her clothes. He would unbend.

Horne discovered the dog was let in each night before Hilda and Bumble retired. Horne’s hopes of sleeping on the studio couch were quickly dashed. On his third night in the house, the one following the beer party, he picked up a pillow and blanket from Betty’s bed, stalked past the astonished Betty, and made a bed before the fireplace. The dog flopped in the exact center of the studio couch, eying him.

He put a book beside his pillow, kicked off his slippers and lay down. Betty stood in the bedroom door, dressed in something a brash manufacturer had placed on the market as a sleeping garment, eying him in some consternation.

“Are you going to sleep there?” she demanded.

“I’m going to try. I didn’t have much luck last night.”

“But why don’t you come to bed?” she insisted.

“Because I want to sleep.”

When she slammed the door the vibrations shook the house. He grinned and picked up the book. It was Bumble’s picture book, the anthology of Ripley’s Believe It or Not cartoons. He leafed through it, idly courting sleep. Almost asleep, he turned over a final page and read how a convict had made a bomb by stuffing wet, mashed playing cards into a lead pipe. The convict had blown his way to freedom.

Betty drove away immediately after breakfast and Horne descended to the basement to search for a piece of lead pipe. A wise Bumble — or a wise Betty — had left nothing like a bit of pipe in the way of weapons lying around. So Horne, under the guise of something to do, took apart the oil burner’s innards. He timed it so that Hilda called lunch in the middle of the job. The two of them climbed the stairs, leaving the scattered pieces behind them on the basement floor.

Eating, Horne wondered if it would work. Cellulose was used in the manufacture of playing cards, he knew, and cellulose under the tightly-packed condition mentioned, was probably combustible. What about a fuse? A pipe cleaner might serve. Did he have a pipe cleaner? He did not. Perhaps Betty had thoughtfully provided him with some. If she had, they would be in the dresser drawer she had set aside for his use. But there remained the problem of plugging up the ends. Offhand he’d not seen a sack of cement lying around, and he doubted if a cap from a gas pipe would fit his bit of pipe, even though there were some way he could plug up the gas pipe after stealing two caps.

How about a beer bottle, he said to himself? Or a glass fruit jar with a tight fitting lid? Well — it would require a hell of a lot of mashed, sodden cards to fill a beer bottle or a fruit jar.

After lunch he returned to the basement. With his eye he chose the length of pipe he wanted, felt his pockets for his pipe and tobacco, and a match. He discovered he had no matches and looked expectantly at Bumble. Bumble turned, ran up the stairs and into the kitchen, got a box of matches, and carried them back to Horne. Horne thanked him, lit his pipe, pocketed the matches and slowly put the oil burner together again.

There would be hell to pay if he didn’t find a way to make the bomb work before cold weather set in.

Betty returned from Boone with an earful of news and a paper. She deemed it prudent to remain away from the town for a while inasmuch as almost every good-looking girl on the street was the subject of suspicion. Two men whom the city police had brought in from Chicago to investigate the explosion, she said, had returned home, apparently empty-handed.

Horne looked at her sharply but said nothing.

She went on to describe how plainclothes detectives were watching his office building and particularly his office from across the street. The detectives were stationed in a second-story room and equipped with binoculars. Another was secreted in the basement of the building, watching the tunnel which she had used to tap his telephone wire. She knew that because she had entered the basement of another building a block away and crawled up the tunnel to his building. She also decided not to risk getting his mail from the office. He had some, because she could see it on the desk with her binoculars from the roof of the building across the street.

Horne shook his head in admiration and envy.

“What about me,” he asked. “Surely I’m missed.”

“You certainly are, darling. The police no longer think you just walked away from them — they’re pretty certain I have you. I made a slip.”

“Another slip, you mean. What was it?”

“I left the imprint of my shoe in a patch of dust. Just across the street from your house. The night I collected you I had to knock out a man who was watching your house. He was hiding under a protruding window across the street from you. The rain washed away my footprints in the yard, but I forgot about the dry dust under that window. They found it.”

“I wondered what had happened to that guy. How is Eliz — Doctor Saari taking it?”

“Oh, that woman. She doesn’t seem to be crying about it. She was riding around with a cop this noon.”

When he failed to rise to the bait she informed him that his continued absence was being kept secret from press and public alike, that the police investigation into his whereabouts was strictly off the record. Do you know why, she asked him savagely? He replied that he did not.

“Because those damn fools think they’re fooling me, that’s why! They believe that as long as they can pretend they don’t know you are gone, I’ll fall into their way of thinking and come out in the open. Stupid idiots!”

“What about the old lady? The animal hospital?”

“All’s quiet. Your company hasn’t paid the money yet and the old lady is furious. She demanded I produce the balance — quick. That phony file card didn’t cause the trouble we expected. The police haven’t been back.”

The police won’t go back, Horne thought happily, until Wiedenbeck has a warrant in his hand and evidence in his pocket. Wiedenbeck was no fool. Wouldn’t it be funny, he added to himself as an afterthought, if Wiedenbeck had had the foresight to tap the hospital’s phone?

“How are you going to get the rest of her money?”

The face beneath the attractive red hair turned to look at him. “That’s what the old bitch asked me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I pointed out,” Betty said evenly, “that if the worst came to the worst, you were insured for about twenty thousand.”

Startled, shocked, Horne jumped to his feet.

“Oh, sit down,” the girl said crossly. “Forget it.”

“Forget it?” But he did sit down. “Forget it, the devil! Do you think I want to wake up some morning with my throat cut? Or maybe poison in my coffee — I haven’t forgotten your beer.”

“Stupid. You’re not using your head.”

He ceased talking to use it. “Well, I’m not leaving my money to your dog hospital.”

She spat out a single, foul word. It was aimed at him and was supposed to describe his habits. He looked at her.

“Jack, I sometimes think you’re one of the dumbest clucks alive. How in the hell you ever managed to make a living as a detective is beyond me. Who you named beneficiary in your policy doesn’t mean a damned thing. We could get the check as soon as the company issued it. But as old lady Bridges pointed out, we couldn’t hope to collect from the same company at almost the same time death benefits on both you and Channy!”

Horne said, oh sure, and wondered where his mind was.

In the next second he knew where it was. It was chasing along the girl’s back trail of conversation, all her conversation since he had first come to know her, and it was picking out unintentional little words and phrases she had said, but should have left unsaid. When his mind stopped its lightning-like chasing from one revealed word to another, he sat up straight and stared at her. The answer startled him.

She had noticed something.

“What’s the matter, Jack?”

“Nothing,” he said evasively, “nothing at all.”

She misread his thoughts. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t intend to frighten you — honestly I didn’t. I couldn’t really kill you for money, no more now than before. I love you too much.”

She walked over to him and pulled his head onto her breast. Running her fingers lightly through his hair, she suggested, “Let’s have a party.”

He pulled away to stare into her face, suspiciously.

Betty laughed tenderly. “Oh, no, baby doll. We’ll send to town for something nice. What do you like? Bourbon?”

He said yes, bourbon. And how about a shirt?

“Then we shall have bourbon. Hilda is going into town this afternoon for supplies. We’ll send Bumble with her. Would you like that?”

“That’ll be absolutely swell,” he replied dryly.

Within an hour Hilda and Bumble had departed in the car. And within twenty minutes of their departure, Betty appeared in the bedroom door dressed for the afternoon. Betty knew men quite well and proved it to her own satisfaction once again when Horne’s jaw dropped at her appearance.

She was wearing full cut, dark blue slacks and a light blue turtleneck sweater. There was so much of her covered up that Horne couldn’t help but make the intended comparison with the girl who had been scantily dressed for the past several days. The hide and seek game.

For a second time her head lay on a pillow in his lap.

“Happy?” she asked him.

“I suppose so. Sometimes.”

He caught himself absently tracing with his finger the cut of a previous dress she had worn. He put his hand in his pocket quickly but the mark his finger had made across the face of the sweater remained for several seconds.

Betty smiled tantalizingly into his face.

Charles Horne awoke to someone pounding on a door.

He raised his head groggily, not quite awake. Darkness had fallen outside. Betty was walking across the room towards the kitchen. The dog was trotting along behind her, tail wagging. Horne shook his head to clear away the cobwebs and sat up.

The pounding on the kitchen door continued.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It must be Hilda and Bumble.”

Abruptly then, Horne was on his feet, following the girl. Hilda and Bumble had keys, they didn’t need to knock. But the dog was showing no alarm. Horne stopped in the kitchen to watch Betty unlock the door. The dog sat down beside her.

Bumble rushed past Betty when the door swung open, almost stumbled over the dog in his eagerness to get in. Hate and savage intentness were stamped on the giant’s face. He ran at Horne.

Betty screamed and caught at Bumble’s back-thrust arm. She missed. Horne dodged the blow and tried to run.

A second blow caught him on the side of the head.

Betty hit Bumble on the chest as the enraged Negro was preparing to jump on the body he had knocked to the floor.

“Bumble! Stop it!” Her doubled-up fists beat on his chest. “Stop it.” He backed across the floor, sweating and shivering under the excitement. Betty’s hands pushed him against a kitchen wall. “Now what’s this all about?” she demanded.

Bumble looked at her mutely.

She held her hands out towards him, cupped palms upward. “Explain. Give.”

Bumble pointed at his shirt and at the body of Horne on the floor. He shook his fists wildly, grimacing. One bronzed finger leaped to his heart and he traced the outline of a five-pointed star, and then swung an imaginary nightstick. Reaching into his rear pocket, he pretended he brought out something, and seizing Betty’s wrists, made a show of clamping handcuffs on her. He pointed at the room he and Hilda had occupied, at his own shirt, and at Horne’s bare chest. He fairly danced with seething excitement.

Betty exploded. “They arrested Hilda — arrested her when she tried to buy a shirt for — for that sonofabitch!” She rammed a stiff little finger into Bumble’s shoulder. “How did you get away?”

He stared at her, unspeaking. She lifted her hands and grasped an imaginary steering wheel, watching him.

He nodded and ran to the door. The Buick coupe was in the drive. He reached into his pocket, took out a nickel, pretended he was inserting it in a slot and turning a handle. Then he folded his arms, waiting. In a few seconds he again made a star on his chest and started through the whole routine again.

“Never mind that — come on.” She grabbed the Negro’s hand and started for the door. In the opening she paused, turned to stare at Horne’s outstretched form, and suddenly snapped her fingers at the dog. His ears perked up.

“Watch him!” she commanded.

The dog took a position at Horne’s feet. Betty motioned Bumble outside. She slammed the door behind her. In short seconds the Buick’s motor gunned and the car leaped away.

The dog lay down on the floor, his nose across one trousered leg.