Pardon My Body by Dale Bogard Page A

headquarters and tell him where I am and that I need his help. Got that?”
    Bella’s grey eyes opened wide. She nodded.
    â€œYou…you aren’t running into trouble, are you Mr. Bogard?”
    â€œI think the chances are about even,” I said. “Don’t forget that message. The health of your favourite paying guest may hang on it.”
    I could feel her stare boring into the back of my neck as I went out to get the car.

CHAPTER SIX
    H IGH C ORNERS WAS THE newest thing in architecture in the Riverside Drive country. It appeared to combine in fairly equal proportions the more striking phenomena of phoney Tudor, crypto-Chinese and American functional design. The final result of the marriage was strictly illegitimate—although the word that sprang to mind began earlier in the alphabet.
    There was a paved driveway. I pulled into it and parked outside the main entrance. A whiskered commissionaire dressed in the uniform of an admiral of the fleet held open the door while I stepped out under a long striped awning. I could feel carpet under my feet—and I wasn’t inside the place yet.
    I hesitated. Something seemed to be missing. Then I knew what it was. They hadn’t got a band playing.
    â€œMr. Lucius Canting’s suite,” I said.
    â€œMr. Canting,” said the aged bell-hop, “has a top-floor penthouse covering the entire area of thepremises. The express elevator will take you there direct. Please follow me.”
    He tucked me into the elevator and sped me skywards with a look in which it was hard to tell whether contempt or pity predominated. Either way it put me among the lesser breeds.
    The sliding doors of the elevator parted automatically at the ninth storey and I stepped straight out on to an inch-deep pile. I seemed to be walking up to my knees in carpet and all of it was jet black. It was the first hint I got that Mr. Canting might be an unusual character.
    I was in a wide hall with doors leading off on either side and there wasn’t a handle on one of them. The elevator had gone down and the shaft doors merged and vanished in the rose-colored panelling. The silence was like a clamor. A curious sickly scent hung heavily in the artificially-heated air. For a moment I couldn’t identify it. Then I got it. Incense. A tiny alarm bell started jangling way down in my subconscious. I shoved off the panic and walked boldly up to the biggest of the double-doors. I was about a foot away when it slid noiselessly inwards and I found myself walking into a massive room with a domed glass roof under which was strung tiny lights to resemble starlight. This time the carpet wasdeep purple. The walls had been painted cream and at intervals were hung with jade green drapes.
    The interior lighting came from fixtures of Lalique glass and the furniture was built entirely of glass: red glass sideboards, a blue glass cocktail cabinet, a glass bookcase in shimmering amber, occasional chairs of shining steel and dull, black glass—and at the far end of the room the biggest table in the world, carved in a single massive piece from pure transparent glass.
    Mr. Lucius Canting sat behind it wearing a suit of sky-blue linen, a beige silk shirt, a bloodred tie and glass sandals. His beautiful oval toenails bore a high-gloss silver lacquer, and a beaten-gold bracelet graced his left ankle.
    â€œGood evening, Mr. Bogard—so glad you were able to come.” It was the same warm, sticky voice. At first hand even warmer and sticker.
    I sat on the edge of the glass wasteland and studied Mr. Lucius Canting. He wore a Palm Beach tan which was so nearly genuine you had to admire its artistry. He was maybe fifty years old and graying but he still had plenty of hair. The face was heavy, with a million little lines spreading out to his temples from the puffy skin which lidded two of the coldest eyes I had seen since Dillinger.
    The beautifully-shaven mouth was wide and the lips were too