He was on his way down the steps when he hit the girl.
The mutual collision was not catastrophic. On the other hand, it was not exactly minor. It fell somewhere between the two, as an uncla.s.sifiable phenomenon of undoubted potency. Malone said, "Oog,"
with, some fervor as the girl collided with his chest and rebounded like a handball striking a wall. Something was happening to her, but Malone had no time to spare to notice just what. He was falling through s.p.a.ce, touching a concrete step once in a while, but not long enough to make any real acquaintance with it. It seemed to take him a long time to touch bottom, and when he had, he wondered if _touch_ was quite the word.
_Bottom_ certainly was. He had fallen backward and landed directly on his _glutei maximi_, obeying the law regarding equal and opposite reaction and several other laws involving falling bodies.
His first thought was that he was now neatly balanced. His tail had received the same treatment as his head. He wondered if a person could get concussion of the tail bones, and had reached no definite conclusion when, unexpectedly, his eyes focused again.
He was looking at a girl. That was all he saw at first. She had apparently fallen just as he had, bounced once and sat down rather hard. She was now lying flat on her back, making a sound like "rrr"
between her teeth.
Malone discovered that he was sitting undignifiedly on the steps. He opened his mouth to say something objectionable, took another look at the girl, and shut it with a snap. This was no ordinary girl.
He smiled at her. She shook her head and sat up, still going "rrr."
Then she stopped and said instead, "What do you think--"
"I"m sorry," Malone said in what he hoped was a charming, debonair, and apologetic voice. It was quite a lot to get into one voice, but he tried his very hardest. "I just didn"t see--"
"You didn"t?" the girl said. She took a long, slow look at him, shook her head again, and then pulled her skirt down carefully. "If you didn"t, you must be blind," she said.
Malone noticed with hope that there was no anger in her voice. The last thing in the world he wanted was to get this girl angry at him.
"Oh, no," Malone said. "I"m not blind. Not blind at all." He smiled at her and stood up. His tail throbbed a little, but it didn"t seem to be anything really serious. "I"m just polite," he said, and smiled again.
His face was beginning to get a little tired, but he retained his last smile as he went over to her, extended a hand and pulled her to her feet.
She was something special. Her hair was long and dark, and fell in soft waves to her shoulders. The shoulders were something all by themselves, but Malone postponed consideration of them for a minute to take a look at her face.
It was heart-shaped and rather thin. She had large brown liquid eyes that could look, Malone imagined, appealing, loving, worshiping--or, like a minute ago, downright furious. Below these features she had a straight lovely nose and a pair of lips which Malone immediately cla.s.sified as kissable.
Her figure, including the shoulders, was on the slim side, but she was very definitely all there. Malone couldn"t think of any parts the Creator had left out, and if there were any he didn"t want to hear about them. In an instant, Malone knew that he had met the only great love of his life.
Again.
His mind was whirling, and for a second he didn"t know what to do. And then he remembered the Queen"s Own FBI. Phrases flowered forth in his mind as if it were a garden packed corner to corner with the most exquisite varieties of blooming idiots.
"My deepest apologies, my dear," Sir Kenneth Malone said gallantly, even managing a small display bow for the occasion. "May I be of any a.s.sistance?"
The girl smiled up at him as she came to her feet. The smile was radiant and beautiful and almost loving. Malone felt as if he couldn"t stand it. Tingles of the most wonderful kind ran through him, reached his toes and then back the other way, meeting a whole new set going forward.
"You"re very nice," the girl said, and the tingles became positive waves of sensation. "Actually, it was all my fault. Please don"t apologize, Mr.--" She paused expectantly.
"Me?" Malone said, his gallantry deserting him for the second. But it returned full force before he expected it. "I"m Malone," he said.
"Kenneth Joseph Malone." He had always liked the middle name he had inherited from his father, but he never had much opportunity to use it. He made the most of it now, rolling it out with all sorts of subsidiary flourishes. As a matter of fact, he barely restrained himself from putting a "Sir" before his name.
The girl"s brown eyes widened just a trifle. Malone felt as if he could have fallen into them and drowned. "Oh, my," she said. "You must be a detective." And then, like the merest afterthought, "My name"s Dorothy."
_Dorothy._ It was a beautiful name. It made Malone feel all choked up inside. He blinked at the girl and tried to look manly and wonderful.
It was an effort, but he nearly carried it off.
After a second or two he realized that she had asked him a question.
He didn"t want to disillusion her in any way, and, after all, an FBI agent was a kind of detective, but he thought it was only fair that she should know the whole truth about him right from the start.
"Not exactly a detective," he said.
"Not exactly?" she said, looking puzzled. She looked positively glorious when puzzled, Malone decided at once.
"That is," he said carefully, "I do detect, but not for the city of New York."
"Oh," she said. "A private eye. Is that right?"
"Well," Malone said, "no." She looked even more puzzled.
Malone hastened to explain before he got to the point where conversation was impossible.
"Federal Bureau of Investigation," he said. After a second he thought of a clarification and added, "FBI."
"Oh," the girl said. _"Oh."_
"But you can call me Ken," Malone said.
"All right--Ken," she said. "And you call me Dorothy."
"Sure," he said. He tried it out. "Dorothy." It felt swell.
"Well," she said after a second.
"Oh," Malone said. "Were you looking for a detective? Because if I can help in any way--"
"Not exactly," Dorothy said. "Just a little routine business. I"ll go on in and--"
Malone suddenly found himself talking without having any idea why he"d started, or what he was going to say. At first he said, "Urr," as if the machine were warming up, and this stopped Dorothy and caused her to give him a rather sharp, baffled stare. Then he found some words and used them hurriedly, before they got away.
"Dorothy," he said, "would you like to take in a show this evening? I think I can get tickets to--well, I guess I could get tickets to almost anything, if I really tried." His expression attempted to leave no doubt that he would really try.
Dorothy appeared to consider for a moment. "Well," she said at last, "how about _The Hot Seat_?"
Malone felt just the way he had several years before when he had bluffed his way into a gigantic pot during a Washington poker game, with only a pair of fours to work with. At the last moment, his bluff had been called.
It had, he realized, been called again. _The Hot Seat_ had set some sort of record, not only for Broadway longevity, but for audience frenzy. Getting tickets for it was about the same kind of proposition as buying gra.s.s on the moon, and getting them with absolutely no prior notice would require all the wire-pulling Malone could manage. He thought about _The Hot Seat_ and wished Dorothy had picked something easy, like arranging for her to meet the Senate.
But he swallowed bravely. "I"ll do my best," he said. "Got any second choice?"
"Sure," she said, and laughed. "Pick any one you want. I haven"t seen them all, and the ones I have seen are worth seeing again."
"Oh," Malone said.
"I really didn"t expect you to get tickets for _The Hot Seat_," she said.