Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,38
sober.
“Brandy,” he said. “Remy Martin, quick as you like.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo started to say, “I’m not supposed to leave the—”
“I’ll look after the goddamn desk,” Mr Nordstrom growled. “Brandy. Now.”
The toes of his shoes were scuffed, and could that possibly be a tooth embedded in the welt between sole and upper? “That’ll be fine,” Theo said. “Won’t be a tick.”
He scampered down the stairs, his mind racing. They’d assume he was on the desk, so they wouldn’t be watching, but they must’ve given up searching and gone to bed by now, because even junior hotel staff don’t have that sort of stamina. The perfect opportunity, therefore, to grab the bottle –
“What are you doing down here?” Matasuntha snapped at him as he walked though the door. “You’re supposed to be on Reception.”
She’d climbed up to the very top row of the tallest rack, apparently without a ladder, and was hanging by one hand and a very precarious foothold. In her other hand was a dusty bottle. “Mr Nordstrom sent me down for a bottle of brandy,” he said. “Are you all right up there?”
“I’m fine.”
“It doesn’t look terribly safe.”
“I’m fine,” she practically shrieked. “Leave me alone.” She was taking enormous pains not to look down, and he couldn’t say he blamed her.
“Right, fine. Oh, the Remy Martin. Any idea?”
“Row C, stack 4, shelf 17.”
Two coincidences. It was the next row along from where Matasuntha was perched, and it happened to be where he’d hidden his bottle. If he’d come along ten minutes later, chances were she’d have found it. A single fat drop of sweat trickled down his forehead and hung in his eyebrow, just inside his field of view.
“Thanks,” he said. “Well, I’ll let you get on.”
He found the brandy easily enough, and, at the end of the row, Pieter’s bottle, which he slipped into his pocket. Then he rolled a couple of bottles along half an inch or so to close up the gap. He looked up, and saw Matasuntha’s three-inch heel pecking wildly at a shelf as she struggled to climb down. “Are you sure you’re—?”
“Go away.”
Fine. He got out of there quickly and sprinted halfway up the stairs. Then he stopped.
No time at all, in this universe. Well, why not? Then he could turn round, nip back, leave the bottle lying around somewhere obvious, where she couldn’t help finding it, and that’d be the end of all that. And what a relief that would be –
Yes. It would. Really.
He put the brandy down carefully, then fished about in his pocket for the manila envelope. A moment later –
“I said,” said the man in the hat, “you calling me a liar?”
It was a big hat; black, with a broad brim, casting a shadow over the man’s face. In doing so it performed a public service. Thanks to the hat, all Theo could definitely make out was the man’s piercingly bright eyes. That was more than enough to be going on with.
“Um,” he said.
As well as the hat, the man was wearing an old-fashioned black suit and a bootlace tie. Oh yes, and a gun belt, in which sat an ivory-handled revolver, over which the man’s gloved hand hovered like a mushroom cloud over a Pacific atoll.
“Say again?”
“Um,” Theo repeated. “I mean, no. Definitely not.”
The hat quivered slightly. “You saying you didn’t call me a liar, son?”
“Absolutely not.” Theo couldn’t quite bring himself to break eye contact, even though he was curious to find out what the heavy weight hanging from his own belt might be. That said, he had a pretty shrewd idea. “Wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing.”
The man under the hat was thinking. “So,” he said, “you’re saying that when I said you called me a liar, I was lying.”
“Yes. I mean—”
“So you’re calling me a liar.”
“Um.”
“Them’s fighting words, stranger.”
“What, um?”
The man under the hat frowned. “Yup.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.”
“And in these parts—”
“What I really meant,” Theo heard himself gabble, “was that when you said I called you a liar, you were quite justifiably mistaken, because I expressed myself so badly, for which I apologise. Really and truly. Really.”
The man frowned, as though he’d taken a wrong turning several blocks ago and was trying to figure out where he was. “So,” he said, “you’re saying you didn’t call me a liar.”
“That’s right, yes.”
“You’re lying.”
Oh for crying out loud. “Well, yes, quite possibly. In fact—”
“I’m calling you a liar.”
An old man who’d dived under a table a moment ago reached out a hand and retrieved his hat. A