Surrounded

stairs.
        

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        The apartment house on Seventy-ninth Street was not yet unfit enough to be slated for demolition, but it was getting there. The front steps were badly cracked and hoved up, the concrete eroding away as if it were not much sturdier than loose sand. Scarred, badly weathered, the outer foyer door was centered with a sheet of heavy, cracked, grime-smeared glass. The foyer itself, dirty and dimly lighted, boasted a rather complex mosaic floor, but more than a hundred of the tiny tiles were missing.
        Tucker checked the mailboxes against the address that Clitus Felton had given him: Meyers, 3C. He did not have to ring Meyers to get inside the building because the security lock on the inner door was broken. Anyone could walk in and out as he pleased. Tucker went in and climbed the steps to the third floor.
        The man who answered the door of 3C looked more like cheap muscle than an idea man. He was about six feet, weighed maybe two-twenty, giving him three inches and sixty pounds on Tucker. His face was square and hard, framed by short yellow hair and enlivened by a pair of intensely blue eyes.
        "Meyers?" Tucker asked.
        "Yeah?" His voice was low and rough. Tucker knew the sound of it and what it meant. Someone had once stomped on the big man's throat, giving him an Andy Devine imitation for a voice. His neck was not inflamed or swollen, which meant it had happened a long time ago.
        "I'm Tucker."
        Meyers blinked, surprised. He wiped one hand across his face, trying to pull off his confusion as if it were a mask. His bright blue eyes seemed slightly unfocused. "But… You just called a couple of minutes ago."
        "I used the telephone booth on the corner."
        "Oh."
        Standing there in the shabby hallway where he might be seen by anyone entering or leaving another apartment, Tucker was getting impatient with Meyers. "Do I have to say a secret password or something?"
        "What?" Meyers asked.
        "To get in. I need a secret word?"
        "Oh, no. Sorry," the big man said, stepping back out of the way. "Didn't expect you so soon, that's all. You caught me off guard."
        Tucker was uncomfortably certain that it did not take much to catch Frank Meyers off guard. How in the hell had a sound head like Clitus Felton become involved with an ox like this?
        He entered the apartment, sidled past Meyers, and went on through the dingy little reception area. The living room measured ten by twenty feet and had four large windows, yet it seemed like a closet. The walls had once been clean and white but had since yellowed and now were gradually turning brown at the edges as if subjected to a great and relentless heat. Like lumps of charred matter, the furniture was all dark and heavy and ugly. Everything was overstuffed, shapeless. And there was too much of it: a pair of squat gray sofas, three unmatched easy chairs, a low-slung coffee table, end tables, pole lamps, table lamps, a desk, a hutch, a television set… Tucker thought the place must have come furnished and that Meyers had added considerable belongings of his own to what the landlord provided.
        "Sit down, sit down!" the big man said, motioning to the easy chairs. Tucker sat on one of the sofas. "Can I get you something to drink?"
        "No, thanks," Tucker said.
        "A beer? I've got Scotch, vodka, rum… How about a rum and Coke?" He rubbed his hands together incessantly. They were calloused and made a soft hissing noise.
        He could see that Meyers was nervous-rather, curiously agitated. Though he did not want a drink at eleven-thirty in the morning, he was willing to take one if it would help to relax the other man. "Vodka and ice. But a small one."
        "Sure," Meyers said. "Back in a second." He went out to the kitchen, where he started rattling bottles and glasses.
        Tucker studied the room more closely than he had been able to do when Meyers was there. He saw that the place was not only overcrowded with furniture but cluttered as well with dirty whiskey glasses, week-old newspapers, empty and crumpled cigarette packages… The worn maroon carpet had not been swept for weeks, perhaps not for months. The end tables, television, and coffee tables were sheathed in jackets of gray dust.
        Could Frank Meyers possibly be an idea man, a group leader? The concept was ludicrous as far as Tucker was concerned. How could Meyers