A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

This is the real story of what happened the night I went out looking for glamour and met an ice man (who was also a nice man). In fact the whole evening was simply super until everybody started shooting...

I

The whole family jumped on me at once. You’d think I was a mere child or something, instead of sixteen. You’d think a person would have some rights on a Thursday evening. You’d think school-work was the most important thing in the world.

You’d think — well anyway, you’d think!

Father said: “Not with that sore throat you’ve got, young lady! We’ll tell you all about the picture when we come home.”

Mother said “And even if she didn’t have a sore throat she’d stay home tonight! She’s got to study some of the time.”

And of course Fran, my older sister, who wasn’t going with them but was going out with her this-month’s beau, had to put her two cents’ worth in too, like she always did. “When I was your age—” she started to say.

“Oh sure,” I sighed wearily, “back in those Roman times things were different.”

But it didn’t do a bit of good. They all got ready and they all went out, and there I was stuck with a lot of books again. The last thing I got told was, “Now remember, I expect to find you in bed when we come home. None of this running over to Betty Lou’s house!” The front door went bang! and I was Cinderella again.

I gritted my teeth and opened my history book, but I couldn’t see a thing it had in it for a long-time, just waves of red. “Isn’t something exciting or glamorous ever going to happen to me?” I seethed. “Do I have to be about twenty, and all bent over and rheumatic, before I even begin to live at all?”

And then, like it was just waiting for that much encouragement, the phone started to ring. I knew it was probably Fran’s boy-friend calling to find out what was keeping her so long; she was the only one ever got phone calls in our family.

First I wasn’t going to bother about it — let him ring — but it kept on until it got annoying, so I went out to it.

“Hello,” I croaked, and between what the sore throat had done to my voice and what the family had done to my disposition by leaving me home alone like this, I must have sounded like someone sawing wood.

It was a man’s voice, but it wasn’t Fran’s boy-friend. He sounded sort of — I don’t know how to put it — confidential, as if he was talking out of one corner of his mouth and didn’t want anyone but me to hear him. He said, “Hello, is this Chicago Rose?”

For a minute I was so surprised I just blinked, and then before I had a chance to tell him I wasn’t he rushed ahead, as if he was afraid I was going to hang up before lie got through saying what he had to.

“Listen, you don’t know me, Rose,” he said, “but it’s all right; Eddie gave me your number. You know, Eddie Dubois back in Chi. He wrote it down for me before I came away; I mislaid it just now, but it didn’t matter; I had it memorized anyway. He told me you’d sound just like you do, like you just had your tonsils taken out.”

I’d kept trying to tell him, through the whole thing, that he must have the wrong number, but he was talking so fast I couldn’t even get one good-sized word in.

And then it started to sound intriguing, so I changed my mind. I looked at it this way: every added five minutes I spent at the phone meant that much less time I’d have to spend over those poisonous books afterward, so what did I have to lose anyway?

He said: “There’s a bunch of us just in and we got a little job for you. Your kind of job, y’know, Rose? The kind of stuff that made you famous in Chicago.”

“Oh,” I said. Which is a pretty safe word. It was the only one I could think of, anyway.

“You’ll get a cut,” he went on, like he was trying to coax me.

He didn’t say where, but I looked at my arms apprehensively; who likes to have to wear court-plaster? “Well, if it’s all the same to you—” I started to say.

“Oh I see, cash on the line ahead of time. Well, we’ll do it your way then, Rose.” Then he asked, “Are you warm right now?”

I felt my forehead. There was a good deal of heat coming up, Father had shaken up the furnace before he went out. “A little,” I said, “but not enough to bother me.”

“As long as you’re not red-hot it’s okay. Now listen, Rose, I can’t give it to you over the phone, naturally. How’s about coming out to your place?”

I looked around me and I rolled my eyes to myself. I could just imagine their faces if they came home and found—

“No,” I said quickly, “I don’t think you better do that.” Was I having fun by now! This had the dates of the English kings beat all hollow.

“What’s matter?” he said. “Ain’t you paying protection these days? Well all right, make it anywhere you say, Rose.”

I’d never met anyone at all until now, except Betty Lou, and I always met her in Gilman’s Drugstore down on our corner, right by the soda fountain. I couldn’t make it there, because that fresh Willie Smith that tends the fountain knew me awfully well, and besides I owed him thirty cents for back sodas and he might humil’ate me by asking for it.

“You name the place,” I said.

“I’ll park on Main and Center,” he said. “Flow’ll that be? Northwest corner; you can’t miss me.”

That was all the way downtown, and it kind of scared me for a minute; if they ever found out that I went that far downtown at this hour, I’d never hear the end of it. Even in the daytime that was out of bounds for me.

But I remembered I didn’t really have to go; I could just tell him I would and then never show up, so it didn’t matter. “All right,” I said.

“I’ll tell you how you’ll know me,” he said. “I’m wearing a very light lid, almost the lightest in town. I’ll keep turning it around in my hands, like I was looking at the band.”

“Well, uh, did—” I kept trying to remember that name he’d used at the beginning, and couldn’t. “Did he tell you what I look like?”

“Eddie Dubois? Naw, only that you’re red-headed and an eyeful.”

I glanced in the hall-mirror next to me, covered up a snicker with my hand. “Well I changed that a couple weeks ago. I’m blonde now.”

He didn’t seem surprised to hear that, as if all the girls he knew were always doing that to their hair. “Oh sure, I know how it is. You just gimme the business, I’ll know you.”

I could tell he was getting ready to leave the phone, and I knew I ought to tell him that I wasn’t Chicago Rose, he’d been speaking to the wrong party the whole time; but I didn’t have the nerve now any more, after waiting this long.

The last thing he said was, “Make it as soon as you can, huh, Rose; don’t keep me waiting there on the open corner too long, it’s not healthy.” Then he rang off.

I hung up with a sigh, it had been the most interesting conversation I’d ever had, and I hated it to be over. Now I’d have to go back to those hum books waiting there all over the dining-room table.

I sighed again. I was wishing I really was Chicago Rose; I bet she didn’t have to study civics and go to bed at eleven on week-nights.

Then I thought: I could be if I wanted to, just for a few minutes. He doesn’t even know what she looks like himself. Or I could just go down there and take a peek at him from around the corner and then come straight back again. And that wag, my study time would be all used up and it would be too late to bother with these books any more tonight.

And before I knew it I was upstairs in Fran’s room, looking her things over.

I took down one of her old evening dresses and put it on. It didn’t fit so good, so I pinned it tight behind me and that made it fit better. But my face looked too babyish sticking up out of it. So then I opened the bureau drawer and found a black crayon I’d watched her use sometimes and made rings around my eyes.

That helped a little, and then I spread on all the powder and rouge she had there, until hardly any real skin showed through anywhere.

When I got through it didn’t look so awfully good maybe, but at least it didn’t look like me any more.

I found a pair of her shoes and put them on too, because my own all had low heels. We both wore about the same size. They kind of threw me forward, like standing on stilts, until I got the hang of them.

Up to now I’d been just sort of playacting. You know, like you do when you’re twelve, dress-up in grown-up clothes and make believe you’re going somewhere. I didn’t really think I’d have the nerve to go.

But as long as I was all rigged up like that, it seemed a shame not to go down there and take a peek at him just for fun. Then I could tell Betty Lou all about it tomorrow in class, and we’d have a lot of fun over it.

I knew I’d be back long before they came home from the movie at half past eleven — I’d have to be — but just to be on the safe side, in case Fran had a fight with her boy-friend and came home early, like sometimes happened, I put a laundry bag full of old clothes under the bedcovers to make it look like it was me lying there all cuddled up. With the light out you couldn’t tell the difference.

Then I went downstairs. I fell down the last three or four because I wasn’t so steady on those extra-high heels yet, but what was a little thing like that? I just got right up again and straightened myself out.

I put out all the lights and then I watched carefully from the front door, to make sure none of the neighbors were at their windows or out on the sidewalk just then, to see me come out.

As soon as I was sure the coast was clear, I ducked out. I had my own key, that I used in the daytime to let myself in when I came home from school, so I wasn’t worried about getting in again.

I waited fast until I got away from our house, and then I slowed down a little, so as not to attract attention.

What made me get in the cab was an accident. I mean, I made the first block all right without meeting anybody, and then this cab showed up and started trailing along next to me, on account of how swell I was dressed, I guess.

“Cab, lady?” the driver said. That gave me a thrill; it was the first time anyone had ever called me “lady.” But of course I didn’t need a cab; it was only thirty blocks from our house down to where he’d said he’d be, and that’s not much of a walk. So I just shook my head politely.

Then the very next minute Mr. and Mrs. Jurgens, who lived right next door to us, turned the corner not ten yards ahead and started to come straight toward me. There was no chance to get out of their way. Luckily the cab was still there, right next to me. I gave kind of a sideways jump, and before I knew it I was in it.

The Jurgenses went right by without even looking at me, but before I could get out again, the cab had picked up speed and was on its way, so there didn’t seem to be anything to do but go ahead and tell the driver where I was going.

He kind of looked up sharp when he heard how scrapey my voice was, and then I saw him squinting at all the makeup on my face, in the rear-sight mirror. After a while he asked, kind of friendly and understanding, “How’s business, sister?”

I didn’t know much about business, only what I heard my father say, so I repeated an expression I’d heard him use to my mother lots of times.

“It’s been so long since I made a sale,” I said solemnly, “that I might just as well give my stock away to the Salvation Army!”

He looked kind of surprised at such a thought, but he shook his head sympathetically.

When we got near Main and Center I said, “Stop in the middle of the block, before you get all the way to the corner.” I figured that way I could edge up to it and peak around it without him seeing me.

When he did, I got out and said cordially, “Well, thanks ever so much, it was awful nice of you to bring me all the way down here.”

He said, “Wa-a-ait a minute, what is this?” And he started to climb out after me real slow.

I didn’t like the look on his face, so I started to back away little by little. Then when I saw him spit on his hands and rub them together, I turned and started going real fast.

But I made the mistake of looking back over my shoulder the whole time, and that way I forgot to watch where I was going. He took a jump and started sliding after me, like on an ice-pond. I gave a squeak and turned away too late.

My whole face went spiff into somebody’s chest. It was hard, too, like a barrel; I nearly saw stars for a minute.

I got around behind him, hung onto him, and said: “Make him go ’way! I didn’t ask him to ride in his cab, he asked me if I wanted to.”

II

By the time I saw him stoop over to pick up a very light ice-cream color hat he’d dropped, it was too late. He said, “I guess you’re Rose, by that voice alone.”

Then he laughed and said, “Same old Rose. Eddie told me about that trick of yours of getting out of cabs before they stop, and then when the drivers turn around to collect the fare they find the back seat empty. Only you seem to have gone sort of kitten shh with it.”

He shoved a bill at the driver and growled: “Geddoud there before I wrap the crankshaft around your neck!”

What a growl that was! Like a sea-lion in the zoo.

Then before I knew what was happening, he had me by the arm and I was all the way over at a big black sedan waiting at the opposite curb. “Come on, Rose, I’ll take you around to meet the boys.”

“Y-you been waking long?” I quavered. The only reason that kept it from sounding as frightened as it was, was how inflamed my vocal cords were, I guess.

“Plenty #&!©# long!” he said. I’d heard two of the words before, but the other one was brand-new. Something told me this wasn’t a very good time to tell him I wasn’t Rose, that maybe I better put it off a little while, until a better opportunity came.

There were two other men in the sedan, one at the wheel, one in back. He introduced me, but only after we were already under way and I was firmly wedged on the back seat between him and one of the two others.

“Here she is, boys. Trigger, this is Rose. Rose, meet Oh-Johnny.”

It seemed a worse time than ever to bring up about not being Rose. But compared to what it was going to be like later, if I’d only known it, it was practically ideal.

I said, “I don’t even know your name yet,” to my original acquaintance. There didn’t seem to be any harm in that.

“I’m Blitz Burley,” he said, like he was supposed to be famous or something.

They seemed to do their best to be agreeable to me, as if I was someone who might be valuable to them later on. The one called Trigger said, trying to make polite small-talk, “I b’lieve a moll I used to go around with knew your older sister in the Women’s Reformatory at...”

And the one next to me asked considerately: “Does my shoulder-sling bother you the way we’re sitting? I’ll move it out of the way if it does.”

“Huh,” Blitz sad scornfully before I could answer, “she probably curls her hair with a repeater every night, don’tcha Rose?”

I didn’t exactly know what they were talking about, but the sensible thing to say seemed to be: “I used to, but I found out I wasn’t getting the best results that way.” So I said it.

By this time we’d gotten where they were bringing me, so we all got out.

There was one pressed close on each side of me, and the one called Oh-Johnny was right in back of me. I don’t think they meant anything by it, they were just being sociable, but the only place I could have gotten to by breaking away suddenly from them and running would have been where we were going anyway, so there didn’t seem to be much sense to that.

It was some kind of a hotel, but it wasn’t a very presentable or tidy one. They went in the side way so they wouldn’t have to pass anyone, and up to a door on the third floor. It had an elevator, but they walked up.

Blitz knocked, in a funny way. Two quick ones and two slow ones. The door opened in a funny way too. First just a ribbon of orange showed, as if someone was looking out with just one half of one eye. Then it opened all the way, and we went in one behind the other.

Trigger was going to go first, but Blitz, who had very good manners, knocked him out of the way with his elbow and said, “Ladies first.”

“Why?” Trigger asked.

“I dunno; I suppose so if there’s a rod waiting behind it they get it first and you got time to draw.”

There was another man on the inside of the door just finishing putting something away; I guess it was a handkerchief in his back pocket. There were also two more men in the room, playing cards at a table. I was now surrounded by six of them.

I still thought it could wait a little longer, to tell them I wasn’t Rose but just Penny Richards of Thomas Jefferson High School. Maybe till I got outside again by myself, for instance.

There was a clock staring me in the face across the room, and it was already twenty after ten by now. I had less than an hour left, if I wanted to get back home before the family came in from the movies.

And to make matters worse, I’d lost track of just where we were, they’d driven in such a confusing, roundabout way coming over; I didn’t know how long it would take me to get back from here.

I kind of stood there in the middle of them and they all sized me up. This was the first time they’d gotten a good look at me under a real bright light, even Blitz. He slapped his side and said: “I gotta hand it to you dames, I don’t know how you do it these days! If I didn’t know better, I could eat my hat you were only a twenty-year-old chicken just breaking in. Why, the frill I go around with looks older than you, and she’s only nineteen.”

“Yeah,” another one nodded. “Wudje do, Rose, have the old muzzle lifted on you?”

But they didn’t waste any more time over that. They all pulled up chairs and kind of moved in close around me, like they were going to have a conference. Blitz said, “Okay, have a drink, Rose, while we’re giving this to you.”

First I said yes, because a nice cherry phosphate or something would have gone good right then; all that sticky lip stuff of Fran’s had made me feel parched. But what he handed me was tan and tasted like gasoline sprinkled with red pepper. When I got what was left of my blistered tongue safely back inside again I said no, I’d changed my mind, and handed it back.

“She’s right,” somebody spoke up. “Not when she’s on a job.”

“All right, now here it is, Rose,” Blitz said, sitting down and hitching up his trousers at the knees. “We got a guy all nicely fingered-up for rubbing.” I shook my head hopelessly to myself, without letting them see me, before he even went any further. Out of that whole sentence he’d just given me, I only knew what the first four words meant.

Of course, anyone knows what rubbing is, in a way. It’s when you put the wrong end of a pencil down and push. But it didn’t sound like he meant it in that way, somehow.

I suppose I would have known more about it if I’d followed some kinds of movies more closely — they reminded me a lot of some people I’d once seen in a movie — but the kind I went to mostly were Garbo pictures, where they didn’t talk that way much.

“Fie come here from Chicago, and we come here after him,” he went on. “He don’t know we’re here yet, and he thinks he’s pulled a curtain down after him. But even so, he’s cagey, he’s wise as they come. We can’t get him out in the right spot where we can get at him easy. And then there’s another reason why we ain’t dropped him yet.”

I knew what that word meant, at least. It’s when you stop associating with somebody, snub them. Like when I dropped a girl last year in my French class because she always laughed every time I got up to recite.

“Now, he’s getting it because he lammed out with the whole haul instead of splitting the way the agreement was. I was doing a little time right then, and a couple of the other boys had a little heat on them, and I guess he thought it: was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“Well, he’ll find cut his mistake. But that don’t do us no good, see Rose? First we gotta find out what he did with the haul. If we don’ once we dust him off, we can kiss it goodbye, we’ll never see it again. That’s where you come in.”

What good is it when a person keeps talking and you don’t even know what they’re saying at all? I had the hardest time not yawning in their faces; I only kept from it by closing my mouth tight and pushing the yawn back, because I knew it would be bad manners; I’d been scolded enough at home for doing that.

The whole thing wasn’t even particularly glam’rous, just sort of over a person’s head, like some things in civics. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t come. It hadn’t turned out to be as much fun as I thought it would be.

“Now he’s a pushover for a dame. Always has been. But she’s got to be his kind of dame, not just any dime at all. Machine-gun slugs can’t drag a word out of him.

“But give him his head with a dame and he’ll start talking. If she’s the right kind of a dame, and he has confidence in her.

“The only thing which has saved him so far is that he goes for a peculiar, sweet, milk-fed type which have gone completely out of circulation; you can’t find ’em any more. Enough of ’em have tried to be that way with him, but it don’t go over, he can spot a fake a mile away.

“So you can see this ain’t going to be an easy job, Rose. He’s no fool. The minute a girl acts like she’s too wise, he starts putting up his guard. And in a case like this, if he ever tumbles we primed you for this, it’ll be curtains for you!”

I couldn’t see much inducement in that. What’d I need curtains for anyway, we had plenty at home, on every window.

I looked at the clock. It was quarter to eleven now. I didn’t see how I was going to do it, and still get home safely ahead of the family. “About how long will it take?” I asked doubtfully.

“That depends entirely on how good you are yourself, Rose,” Blitz said. “If he falls at all, he falls hard and right away — he’s that kind of a guy. If he once gets his fur up and starts suspectin’ you, you’ll never get anywhere in a week.”

I thought maybe I better just say I would do it, and then go straight home and not pay any more attention to them at all, once I was out of here. I hate arguments, and some of their faces looked kind of mean.

“All right,” I sighed unenthusiastically.

“Now, we know where he’s holed up, and we’ll plant you where he can’t miss you; we got everything worked out.

“The first thing you gotta do, is find out what he done with that haul. Naturally, he ain’t going to spill that easy, not even if he thinks you’re his kind of a dame.

“So here’s how you work it. There was some ice with it. Not much, it was mostly lettuce. But anyway, there was a little ice with it. The idea is, wherever the ice is, the dough ain’t gonna be so far away.

“You tease him for some ice. If you’ve made a dent at all, he’ll come across without thinking twice. That’ll tell us what we want to know. He wouldn’t bank it, accounta it’s hot. It’s a cinch it’s around some place, not very far from him.

“Now the rest of it’s simple. He’ll wanta take you out. You see to it that he makes it the Jingle Club—” He stopped and grinned at me. “D’jever hear of that before?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“No one else ever did either, before tonight. We’re opening it specially for his benefit, just for this one night. It’s a dummy, get it? Everything is all fixed, just waiting for you to show up there with him. The waiters, the couples dancing, even the guys playing in the band are all props, so don’t be surprised when you see them start easing out one by one, leavin’ you all by yourselves.

“It’s your job to keep him from noticing what’s going on around him. You won’t be left uncovered, don’t worry. Every knothole will be plugged up with lead. We’re doing this thing right. Now have you got it all straight, Rose?”

Straight? It was a complete blur as far as I was concerned; as bad as one of Professor Peabody’s dry lectures on a spring day when you’re not paying attention.

Just about three or four words out of the whole thing were floating around loose in my head, without any meaning. Ice. Jingle Club. Rubbing. Curtains. “Um-hum,” I said vaguely.

“Whether you wangle the location of the haul outta him before or after you get to the Jingle Club don’t matter, just so long as you wangle it. You be the best judge of that yourself. Soft music and dim lights sometimes help to loosen a guy up too, y’know.”

I perked up a little at that, for the first time. “Oh, is there going to be music and dancing there?”

“Yeah,” he answered dryly. “First there’ll be music and dancing, for a front. Then as soon as you get up from the table for a tip-off that you’ve got the goods on the haul, there’ll just be music without the dancing.”

They all sort of smiled at that. But what did I care? If there’s one thing I’m crazy about-I started bouncing up and down on my chair. “Oo, I wish I was there already! I can hardly wait!”

He looked encouragingly at the others. “See? She’s rehearsing already. Only, don’t overdo it, Rose. You almost act too young, you almost act like you was on’y about sixteen. Don’t let him spot you for a phoney or—”

I remembered that from the time before. “Curtains,” I said placidly.

He rested his hand on my shoulder for a minute. “Babe, you got guts all right.”

They all started to shove their chairs back, like it was over. For my part I was glad; it hadn’t been a bit interesting.

The last thing Blitz warned me was, “And for Pete’s sake, Rose, when you do get up — to go back and powder your nose or whatever the stall is — stand good and clear of that table, or Heaven help you. It’ll be wood one minute, Swiss cheese the next.”

That was childish, talking that way; how can a table be wood one minute and cheese the next? You’d think a person believed in witches casting spells, like in those children’s stories.

They were all kind of waiting, watching me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next, so I didn’t do anything, just sat on there without moving. A look of enlightenment crossed Blitz’ face, “Oh, I get it!” he said, and reached in his pocket and took out a bunch of bills. Before I knew it, they were in my folded hands.

“What do I do with this?” I asked, puzzled.

“Okay, Rose, okay,” he said soothingly, like he didn’t want any argument, and took out some more and added them to what I was holding already. “That ought to hold you. And you can keep whatever ice he gives you.”

Now I ask you, what good is keeping ice? In half an hour, all you’ve got is water.

III

They stood me up and looked me over, turning me around like a top. “Maybe she ought to scrape off a little of that plaster of Paris,” one suggested. “She looks kind of weird, like a house-painter’s assistant.”

“Naw,” Blitz interposed hurriedly, “if she takes any of that off, her real age’ll probably show through. This way she’s just about right; she’ll get under his skin. She gives the impression, kind of, of a school kid trying to act grown up.”

With that, they all started to get ready to go out Only instead of straightening their coats around their necks, like most people do, they all started smoothing and patting them down under their arms, like they had on woollen underwear that scratches.

Blitz gave them their final orders. “Okay, boys. Now Trigger and me are going over with her. The rest of you go to the Jingle and get in position. You all know your places.

“Al, you take the pantry doors. Biff, you’re in the dummy phone booth, down out of sight. Oh-Johnny, you’re down behind the bar. Spike, you take it from above, through the ceiling; we got a sight-hole bored through. Me and Trigger’ll seal up the front, once the stooges are out of the way.

“We’re gonna have a truck outside dumping coal down a tin chute; you know how much noise that makes. There won’t be a sound heard.”

Meanwhile I was still clutching this bunch of bills in my hand. I thought it would be a good opportunity to get rid of it someplace around the room while their attention was all taken up listening to him; I mayn’t know lots of things, but I know enough not to take money from strangers.

I noticed a box with cigarettes in it on a table near the door, so I slipped it in there and closed the lid, when no one was watching.

But after they already had the door open, and half of them were already outside in the hall, the last one to leave must have reached into the box for a cigarette. He suddenly said: “Hey!” and stood there pointing down to the money.

They all moved so swiftly and so silently, like big cats, you could hardly follow them with your eyes. Before I knew it, I was back inside the doorway again, and they were all around me in a ring, squinting hard and holding their hands under their arms, as if they had started to scratch themselves and then forgot to go ahead.

“Y’weren’t going to double-iggy us, were you, Rose? Is that why you left this behind?” Blitz asked. His lips had turned sort of white, I don’t know why.

I seemed to be the only person in the whole room who wasn’t all excited and shaking. “I was going to come back for it later,” I explained coolly. If they were going to get that worked-up about my refusing it, I supposed I’d have to pretend to accept it.

They all took deep breaths and kind of relaxed. “Oh,” Blitz explained, relieved, “she don’t want Brennan to catch her with that much dough on her while she’s around him, that’s all it is, fellas. He might smell a rat.”

We all went down the stairs and out the side way again, me in the middle of the six of them. I kept thinking: “I’ve got to get away from them soon, I can’t stay much longer; I’ll just get in ahead of the family by the skin of my teeth as it is.”

Anyway, I didn’t like them much any more. The novelty had worn off. They were too quarrelsome and touchy, and I only understood about one word out of every three they said to me. I hadn’t had a good time at all, the whole time I was up there with them.

Outside the hotel four of them left us, went down to another car standing waiting further down the dark street, and Blitz and myself and Trigger got in the first car.

I had made up my mind that the quickest and easiest way of getting away from them, instead of going into a lot of wrangling and explaining, was to let them take me over to this other man they’d been talking about all evening, whoever he was. It wouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes longer, and that way I’d get rid of them, first of all.

Then instead of having two people to get away from, I’d only have one, and it would be a lot simpler. I hadn’t pretended to him I was Chicago Rose in the first place, so I wouldn’t have to go ahead doing it.

I’d just say, “I’m Penny Richards from Jefferson High School and I was sent here to take you to the Jingle Club so you could get curtains, but you can just go over and get your own curtains, I’m going home!”

And if he didn’t like it, he could lump it!

So I just sat still between them on the front seat and bided my time. If Betty Lou could make any sense out of this whole thing, when I told her about it tomorrow, she was better than I was, that was all.

On the way Blitz said, “Y’nervous?”

I thought of how late it was getting to be and what a calling down I was going to get if I ever got caught sneaking in at this hour, so I admitted: “A little bit, not very much.”

“Who wouldn’t he?” Trigger said. “Until she gets him into the Jingle she’s outtalking a thirty-eight every inch of the way, with no one to back her up. He’ll drop her in a minute if he wises onto her. It’s him or us, and he knows it.”

Being dropped by someone I hadn’t even taken up with yet wasn’t going to worry me any. But like everything else they said, there wasn’t any sense to that.

They stopped finally around at the side of a great big building with a lighted glass shed over its entrance. I guess it was another hotel; none of these people seemed to have any homes of their own.

“We’re just in time,” Trigger said. “That’s his car waiting there, he’ll be coming out in a minute.”

Blitz said to me: “Y’know how y’gonna connect with him, don’tcha?” He sounded like I was a telephone wire. “Shoot out around the corner and let his fender throw you as soon as he turns on the ignition. You know how to work it so you won’t get hurt, y’used to be in the fake-accident racket in Chi.”

“No, I—” I quailed.

Trigger made that pawing gesture under his coat again.

“Just stage-fright,” Blitz assured him tolerantly. “She’ll be over it in a minute. All right, get out and get ready for your dive, Rose.”

They stood me up between them against the building-wall, just back of the corner. Trigger kept watching around it. Blitz kept hold of me by the arms. It was dark around there where we were.

Trigger gave a sudden cut of his hand. “Here he comes now.”

Blitz tightened his grip, turned me around and pointed me out toward the gutter that fronted the hotel. “No,” I whined, trying to squirm away.

“He’s in,” Trigger whispered. There was the sound of a motor turning over, out of sight around the corner. Wheels started to slither.

“Okay, you’re on the air, Rose,” Blitz grunted. He gave me a sudden shove out away from him, like I was a volley-ball. I went staggering out across the sidewalk trying to keep from falling flat on my face, and the big headlights of a car were coming to meet me from the side.

I couldn’t stop short of the gutter; the sidewalk was too narrow; and the car and I both got there at the same time.

I remembered something he’d said about grabbing the fender, and as I went down I caught at it with both hands and lay flat on top of it instead of going under it.

The car stopped short — it had hardly begun to pick up speed yet anyway — and I rolled off the fender and sat down on the ground in front of it.

A man with a leathery tan face and silver hair jumped out and came running around to me. “Are you hurt, miss?” he asked, picking me up. Then when he saw I was all right, he got kind of sore. “You should look where you’re going; you could have been killed.”

“Somebody pushed me,” I insisted tearfully. I looked over where Trigger and Blitz had been, but there wasn’t anyone there any more.

The doorman, who had come over to us, growled: “Ah, they always say that, Mr. Brennan.”

Brennan looked around, said: “Help me take her into the lobby a minute, Joe, before there’s cops around asking a lot of questions. I don’t want the papers mentioning my name and address.”

They helped me in between them. I looked around over my shoulder just before we stepped through the revolving door. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could make out a slice of ice-cream-color hat-brim sticking out around the corner down there.

I sat down and rested in the lobby for a minute and the doorman brought me a glass of water. Then Brennan stood up, said: “Wait a minute, let’s see if I can’t square this with you.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t care.

He sat down over in the corner and wrote something, then came back with a scrap of light-blue paper and tried to give it to me. “Will fifty be all right, just so there’s no hard feelings?”

“Fifty what?” I said. Then when I saw that it was a check, like my father brings home sometimes, I pushed it back at him, told him politely but firmly that I wasn’t allowed to take money from strangers.

He acted for a minute like he couldn’t believe his ears. “How old are you?” he asked.

I was kind of tired pretending I was Chicago Rose by now; I hadn’t pretended I was to him, anyway, so I didn’t have to go ahead. “Sixteen and two months,” I said defiantly.

He nodded to himself and murmured: “You’d have to be, to turn down money like you just did.” Then he looked at me kind of skeptically. “You dress kind of old for your age. Well, if you won’t take this, can I offer you a drink?”

“Yes,” I said eagerly. I almost never seem to get enough refreshments.

He frowned a little and his eyes got squinty. “Come on in the bar,” he said shortly.

I’d never been in one before. It was just like a soda fountain, only it didn’t have faucets. He whispered something to the man behind it and then he left me sitting there.

“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”

The man brought two of those rotten tan things like I’d already made the mistake of tasting over at their place. And then he brought the most irresistible pink malted you ever saw, and left it standing by itself a couple of chairs away from me, like it didn’t belong to anyone. So of course I moved off down there where it was and started in on it.

Just when I got down to where the straw was gurgling at the bottom, I turned around and Mr. Brennan was standing there without a sound watching me. “That’s another way of telling,” he said.

We went back in the lounge and sat down again. He asked me how I happened to be going around, at my age, all dressed up like that and with all those crayon-marks on my face.

“Well, they all went out to the movies and wouldn’t take me with them,” I started to explain, “so I got sore and went up to my sister’s room—”

“I understand,” he smiled, “just making believe, like little girls do.”

I was going ahead and tell him the rest of it, how Blitz had called our house by mistake and everything, but just then I happened to get a look at a clock across the way and it said 11:25. That drove everything else out of my hand.

I jumped up and started edging away from him. “I’ll have to go now, they’ll be back any minute.”

“Won’t you stay just five minutes longer?” he urged. “I always wanted to have a little daughter of my own, to take her around and show her the sights. We could go some place where there’s music and dancing—”

But I started to run without waiting to hear any more. Was I going to get it when I got home! I pushed out through the revolving door and then I stopped short.

Blitz was standing there down by the corner, leaning back against the wall waiting, with his hat pulled down over his face and smoking a cigarette.

I looked up the other way and Trigger was standing up there, waiting the same way.

They both saw me, and they both started to take a slow step toward me. But they didn’t have time to finish it; I turned around and went in again as fast as I’d come out.

Mr. Brennan was still sitting there, sort of day-dreaming about having a little girl like me, I guess. I went back to him and said: “I guess I will stay a little while, after all.”

The damage was done now anyway, the family was almost certainly home by this time. The only thing left to do was wait a little longer, until they were safely in bed and had the lights out, and then go back.

He brightened right up and said: “Swell! Now, it’s no fun here. Let me take you some place where you’ll enjoy yourself.”

Then he looked at me sort of helplessly. “I don’t know much about showing a little girl your age a good time. It’s kind of late for amusement like parks or movies. Where would you like to go? I’ll take you any place you say.”

I remembered that place they’d spoken of, the “Jingle.” I wouldn’t have suggested it if I could have thought of any other, but I couldn’t, and he kept waiting to hear me say where I wanted to go, so finally in order not to seem a complete fool who didn’t even know where she wanted to go herself, I mentioned it.

His eyes got that narrow look again for a minute and he said: “Have you ever been there before?”

“No,” I said, “I just happened to hear somebody speak of it.”

His face cleared again and he smiled. “Oh, I see, Cinderella wants to pretend she’s grown up just for one night, is that it? All right, we’ll see if we can find it and we’ll go there.”

IV

We went out and got in his car.

This time you couldn’t see a sign of Blitz or Trigger around, but when we flashed past the corner I could see that car they’d brought me in still standing there in the gloom, so I knew they weren’t very far away.

I was going to tell him all about them — I really liked him much better than them by now — but he seemed so happy to be taking me out as if I was really his daughter, that I hated to spoil his evening for him, so I decided not to. The best way to treat mean people is to ignore them, not mention them at all.

He had a little trouble finding the “Jingle,” because no one seemed to have heard of it before tonight, but finally a taxi driver told us where there was a new club being opened, and when we finally found it it turned out to be the one, all right.

It was in a creepy sort of dead-end street, up against the river, and there was a coal truck standing there backed up against a sidewalk grate, but it hadn’t dumped its load yet, was just waiting.

We drew up outside and a man with a lot of brass buttons came over and opened the car door. Brennan said, “Haven’t I seen your face somewhere before?” and the man got kind of confused, but told him he must be mistaken.

Then Mr. Brennan turned and looked at me, and asked: “Are you still sure you want to go in?” I could hear music coming out, and the colored lights looked so cozy, I couldn’t resist. I told him yes, I’d love to.

“Well, I couldn’t be wrong about you,” he said to himself; but out loud: “If you’ve got me fooled, I’m sure slipping and I deserve to be bagged’.” So we got out and went in.

It was small, but it had the prettiest colored bulbs strung all around, like a Christmas tree, and one or two people sitting at tables all dressed up pretty, and one or two dancing.

It was the first really glam’rous place I’d been in all evening, and when he saw how my eyes were shining and how thrilled I was, he sort of relaxed.

“Why does it have to be that table?” he asked, when the waiter tried to take us over to a certain one against the wall.

“That’s the only one left; all the others are reserved, only the people are late getting here,” the waiter said.

So we went over and sat down. The waiter asked us what we’d like to have. “Double choc’late soda,” I said instantly.

Mr. Brennan sighed, “Ah, Cinderella, Cinderella, everything seems magic to your eyes.”

After I’d finished my soda and we’d been sitting there a while, one of those disconnected words they’d used came back to my mind. “Ice.” But I didn’t ask him for some because they’d told me to, but because I really was kind of dry and sticky. It certainly was close in there.

For a minute his face changed and he gave me that same squinty look again, and his hand even went in toward his coat, like those other people’s had all the time. Then he said very quietly, “Sure, you can have some ice.” When the waiter brought it, he kept watching my face very closely, like he wanted to see what I’d say about it. Well, all I said was “Thank you,” because it was just like any other ice I’d ever had. I looked at it kind of satisfied and started to crunch a piece between my teeth.

He dropped his hand down again and gave me a funny kind of a smile. “I thought you meant the other kind,” he said. “I’m so used to—”

“What other kind is there?” I asked him. He seemed kind of silly.

“You wouldn’t know about those things, Cinderella. But there is another kind. I’ve got some of it, and I’ve got a lot of green money, and there’s some men I left behind me in Chicago would give their right arms to know where I’ve got it. I’m going to let you in on my secret, Cinderella, because I know it’s safe with you.”

He smiled some more. “We came here on it.”

“How could we? It isn’t snowy on the streets or anything.”

He laughed, chucked me under the chin. “It’s in the tires of the car, all packed in cotton wool.”

That wasn’t so terribly interesting; I couldn’t see why they’d wanted to find out so bad. I was going to tell him about them, that they weren’t in Chicago at all but right here, and that I’d been with them myself just before I met him; but he went ahead talking and I didn’t have the chance.

I’ve been brought up never to interrupt people until they get through. When we first came in there’d been two couples dancing on the floor. Then after a while there was only one. Then there weren’t any, but the music kept on playing.

There wasn’t anyone sitting at the tables now any more either, and I hadn’t even seen them get up to go. But the colored lights shone down mostly in the middle of the room, so you couldn’t tell so easily what was going on around the sides.

The music kept sounding thinner and thinner, as if each time there was one less instrument, and then finally there was just one man left, picking away at the piano soft and low. Then before you knew it, he must have strolled outside to rest a while; there was silence. The waiters had disappeared too. We were the only ones left in the place. There was a lull, like when something is going to happen I couldn’t tell, because I’d never been in a lull before.

And Mr. Brennan was so taken up talking to me, he didn’t seem to notice anything going on around him. I seemed to have gotten him into a sentimental, reminiscent mood. He was giving me his life story.

“I’m sorry now for all the laws I’ve broken and all the things I’ve done, but it’s too late. If I’d married and settled down and had a sweet little girl like you for a daughter in the beginning, instead of going after the quick money—”

Then he stopped and looked at me and asked, “Am I rubbing you the wrong way, by telling you all these things about my past?”

“No—” I started to say. But that expression reminded me of something from earlier in the evening. “Mr. Brennan,” I asked curiously, “excuse me for interrupting, but what does it mean when they speak about rubbing a person?”

“It means to kill someone. But the way I used it just now—”

My mouth opened wider than it ever had before, made a great big round O, and I put both hands at once over it.

He saw something was the matter. “Ah, I’ve frightened you,” he said penitently. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Curtains,” I whispered hoarsely through my hands; “what do curtains mean?”

“Curtains mean a person’s end.”

“Mr. Brennan, you’ve got to listen to me!” I breathed, aghast. And I told him the whole thing;, everything that had happened from the time Blitz first rang our house by mistake at nine o’clock, until they’d pushed me in front of his car. Or at least as much of it as I could remember.

“I didn’t mean to do it!” I whimpered. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what they meant, until you told me just now!”

For a minute he was altogether different than he’d been until now. He was like they were, mouth all twisted and white, eyes hard as buttons.

“So they’ve got me sewed up, have they, thanks to you?” His hand went in under his coat. “Well, I’ll go — but I’m gonna take you with me.”

“Where to?” I asked wonderingly. “We can’t get out—”

He sighed, and little by little his face went back to what it had been like before. He shook his bead a little sadly.

“No, I guess you didn’t know,” he said. “Such thickness couldn’t be faked; it must be the McCoy.

“Listen, Cinderella, I’ve got to go anyway; but they’ll let you through. You get up and slowly walk away from the table, like you hadn’t just told me.

“I won’t give you away, I’ll act like nothing was the matter. They might get tired waiting and give it to you with me, if you sit here much longer.”

“But that’s the signal, it’ll begin the minute I do that.” I swallowed hard, but I wouldn’t budge. “No,” I said, “I didn’t mean to, but I brought you in here. I’m not going to get up and walk away. I’m going to stay here at the table with you. They’ll — they’ll have to rub us both, I guess.”

“But aren’t you scared?”

“Oh, awfully,” I whispered.

His hand dropped back to his lap again. “You saved yourself that time,” he said. “I would have dropped you before you got a foot away, if you’d taken me up on it. But now I see that you’re on the level. That’s the last time tonight I doubt you. I guess it’s the last time tonight for anything.”

We didn’t say anything for a minute or two. It was awfully quiet in there; you could hear a pin drop. I had a creepy feeling like eyes were watching me, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. After a while I asked, “Will it hurt much? I never was shot before.”

“We’re probably good for another few minutes sitting here,” he said, “so let’s think this out. Don’t look around, Cinderella, just bend your head like you were listening, and I was talking to you like I was before.”

“And don’t talk too loud,” I warned him under my breath. “Another thing I forgot to tell you, there’s a hole right over us in the ceiling and one of them’s up there.”

His eyes didn’t go up at all. He just took out a very shiny cigarette case and looked at the inside of the lid while he helped himself to one, then he put it away again.

“Yeah, there is,” he said quietly. “I can see the rim of a gat-muzzle pointing down through it, right into the middle of my brain.”

He took a careless puff and tasted it with his tongue, and went on: “Now Cinderella, the lights are our only chance. This place was rigged up in a hurry, just for tonight. The wiring is all strung around on the outside of the walls, not covered up; see it? It must be plugged into a master outlet at one certain place, this whole circuit of colored bulbs. Let me see if I can find where that is first of all.”

His eyes roamed around indifferently like he didn’t have a thought on his mind. “Talk to me,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Three times three is nine,” I pattered desperately, “four times three is twelve, five times three—”

Right while he went on looking he found time to say to me, “Your lips are shaking, kid. Steady them.”

The family didn’t seem so awful to me right then; I was wishing I was back with them. But I couldn’t get up and go. They’d shoot him.

“I’ve found it,” he said. “Porcelain too, like I hoped. Now I’ve got to hit it squarely with just one shot, and blow the whole place to darkness. I’ve got to have a chance to draw and sight. Are you afraid of the noise of a gun, right up against your face?”

“I never heard one before.”

“Then lean over me, from across the table, and pretend to be taking a cinder out of my eye. I’m gonna try to aim and fire with your body covering me, so they won’t see me unlimber.

“Now listen close, Cinderella. I don’t think we can make it, but at least we’ll take a try. Throw yourself flat on the floor and crawl along it the minute the lights go. Don’t lift your head an inch, but swim for it. You’re young and supple, you ought to be able to move fast even that way.

“There’s no use trying to get out the front way, into the street. That’s where they’ll expect us tc head for and that’s where they’ll point: their fire. I’ll hold mine after that first shot, to keep from showing them where we are.

“We’ll make for the back. There must be stairs back there some place, leading up into the building over us. We’ll try to get up through it and over the roof.

“Turn your head slow and place the direction you’re going in, for yourself, while you still can see. It’s that middle opening in the shadows back there, between the dummy phone booth and the pantry swinging door; see it?

“And if you once get out past it okay, don’t wait for me. Hotfoot it all the way up, as high as you can go.”

Then he said, “Are you ready, Cinderella?”

“I’m ready,” I said, clenching my two hands down at my sides.

“Are you frightened, Cinderella?”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll let you know after it’s over.”

He smiled to give me courage. “Then here we go, Cinderella.”

He blinked his eye and pretended he’d gotten something in it. I leaned over him, pretending to help him get it out. Once I happened to glance down, and he had a big monster of a black gun out in his hand, wedged between the two of us, right under my chin. It was turned out, toward where that china light-plug was.

The last thing he said was, “In closer, Cinderella; there’s someone over us too, don’t forget.”

So I leaned as close to him as I could, and by then I was nearly crying.

Something went boom right under my face like a lot of dynamite, and all the lights went out. I didn’t have to drop like he told me to. I got such a fright when the thing went off right under me. I fell all the way over backwards, flat on the floor.

So then I just rolled over and started wriggling fast toward where I’d last seen that middle back door.

I heard the table we’d been at go over with a crash, and one of the little pieces of ice that had been on it hit me on the back of the neck and made me go even faster.

Meanwhile, the whole place was full of starry flashes, like there was a terrific lightning storm going on.

They came from all over — from behind the bar, from the telephone booth, from the front door, the pantry door, and even from the ceiling.

I heard Blitz’ voice suddenly yell in from somewhere outside: “Get her too, you guys, she’s ratted on us!”

I was nearly over at the back door by now. I was glad that dress of Fran’s I’d borrowed was black and didn’t show up in the flashes that kept streaking around me. I couldn’t tell what had happened to Mr. Brennan, whether he was down on the floor like I was, or flat up against the wall somewhere.

And then suddenly my head and shoulders wedged in between somebody’s straddled legs. He was standing there with his feet spread out, firing over me toward the front doorway.

I was so scared I didn’t know what I was doing. I grabbed hold of a leg with both hands, pushed with all my might to try to shove it cut of the way. It kicked up in the air, somebody yelled and fell over on the floor right next to me with his whole weight.

Then I stood up, ran into the door with my hands out in front of me to guide me, flung it open and ran out into a back hall. It wasn’t much lighter than in there where we’d been, except for a tiny point of flickering flame over a wall gas-jet.

But at the end of it I saw a flight of stairs and I ran toward them for all I was worth and started up them without waiting for him, like he’d told me to.

I went up one whole flight, and around the landing, and half-way up the next flight; and then I stopped and stood there in the gloom, listening and leaning over to see if he was coming. My heart was going so fast it nearly made as much noise as all that shooting down there.

Suddenly he came out, backwards and crouched over low, and just before he backed away from the door he fired once into the dark, smoking room behind it.

Then he turned and sprinted as far as the foot of the stairs, and there he turned and crouched and fired again, to keep them back, because they’d seen him go and were trying to come out after him.

While he was standing there like that, with his back to the stairs, a shadow suddenly came out onto the landing between him and me — I guess the one that had been planted at the hole in the ceiling over us — and I caught the glint of a gun, raised and all ready in his hand. He pointed it square down at Brennan, at the back of his bead.

There wasn’t even time to yell a warning to Brennan, because by the time he turned to look up at me, it would have been too late.

Somebody had left a pailful of garbage standing there on the step below me. I grabbed it up with both hands and flung it down there at the landing where he was with all my might.

I didn’t even aim it, I was just lucky

I guess. It hit him right in the side of the head and keeled him over sideways, and the gun went off into the ceiling, and eggshells and dirty vegetables poured all over him.

Brennan turned and looked up. “Good work, Cinderella!” he yelled. Then he came running up, and stooped and snatched the gun up without stopping as he went by. He caught up with me, grabbed me by the hand, and started to tow me along with him.

They kept firing as they came up after us, but they couldn’t get us in a straight line, because the stairs broke direction every flight and turned back on themselves.

When he’d finished using all the shots in his own gun, he threw it down at their heads and used the one he’d taken from the other man.

We got up to the roof door finally.

It was locked, but he fired a shot at it and blew it open, and then we were out on the roof, running across it, scattering particles of gravel as we went.

Once a loose clothesline nearly tripped me, but he had my hand and I managed to stay up.

We skimmed over a low partition ridge between the two buildings and got to the skylight hutch of the other house. They’d come out after us by now and were firing at us from the first roof door. You could hear little things like wasps go humming by your ears.

The hutch here was locked like the other, but this time he couldn’t blow it open because the padlock was on the inside.

“I’ll get it,” he panted, “the wood’s rotten. Grab me by the coat if it caves in.”

He backed up and took a run at the door, and crashed his whole shoulder into it. It shot in, and if I hadn’t grabbed him by tie tail of the coat like he’d said, he would have gone down the whole flight of stairs inside head first.

He swung around and hit the side of the framework. Then he righted himself and we started down through the new house. A lock of my hair fell off, like something had snipped it loose.

A minute later they got to the roof door we’d just come in by, and started firing down at us from up there. But again the zig-zagging of the stairs saved us.

And then, just a; we’d gotten halfway down through the house and it looked like we’d be out in the street in another minute, a shot came up at us from below.

We both staggered to a stop and looked over the rail. Faces were grinning up at us from below, more of their faces. Some of them had been told by the others what we were trying to do, and had come in from the street to head us off. They had us blocked.

Another shot came up through the little sliver of opening, and we both snatched our heads back.

“A whole army,” he said bitterly, “just to get one man and a girl!”

“Everyone in there was in on it,” I told him. “I heard them say so; waiters and musicians and all.”

We couldn’t go back either; the others were coming down behind us from the roof.

“Quick!” he said. “See if they’ll let us in one of these flats here; it’s our only chance.”

I turned away from the stairs and ran down the long hall pounding at door after door with the flat of my hands.

“Open! Help us! Let us in — oh please let us in!”

He stayed behind there on the landing to keep them tack a little longer.

I could hear people behind some of die doors, but they were too scared to open up, on account of all the firing that had been going on for the past ten minutes or more.

Frightened voices jabbered back at me, “Go away! Help! Leave us alone!” And I heard one woman saying frantically — I guess she bad a phone in there with her — “Quick, send over all the men you have. There’s something terrible going on out here — two people being murdered up and down the halls.”

“Shoot in one of the locks — make them—” I pleaded distractedly to Brennan.

Something made a clicking sound in his hand. “I have no more left,” he said, and he aimed at someone’s head coming up, but with the back part of his gun, and then pitched it like a baseball.

There was only one more door left and then the hall ended, and then they’d just come into that corner-pocket after us and shoot us down, slow, over and over and over.

I rained slaps all up and down this door, and all of a sudden it swung in loose; the flat behind it must have been vacant.

“Brennan!” I squealed, “Here!”

And I jumped in there, into the dark. A minute later he scuffed down the hall, turned in after me, and got the door closed oil the two of us.

The shooting out on the stairs stopped, and you could hear feet slithering along the hall toward where we were. And in the sudden stillness I heard Blitz’ voice said “It’s all right, take y’time, boys. We’ve got them now, he’s out of slugs.”

V

Brennan said: “See if there’s a fire escape outside any of those windows behind us. I’ll hold the door against them until you get down.” I ran from one to the other, flattening my nose against the grimy panes, swallowing dust and cobwebs, peering down. I didn’t find one until I’d gone two empty rooms away.

I tugged at the warped window until I’d gotten it up. A shot thudded in there where he was, sounding like it came through wood or something.

I turned away from the window and ran back to him through the dark. “Flurry up, I’ve found one!”

“Too late, Cinderella,” he grunted. He was still holding the door, but he was sagging lower on it now. “Quick, get down it, I still can hold this—”

“I’m not going to leave you up here,” I said. “I like you too much for that.”

“Game little Cinderella,” he coughed. Then the door swept back, carrying him with it, and about five or six of them walked in, one behind the other. They were just black silhouettes first, against the hall light. Awful things, like goblins in a dream, throwing long shadows before them.

Blitz’ voice said, “Bring a light.” Someone turned on a flashlight and shone it on Brennan, making a big moon against the wall for him to die in. Blitz looked down at him where he was lying against the baseboard, and he took careful, slow aim and he fired.

Brennan jolted against the baseboard as if a nail had gone into him. I screamed and ran at Blitz, but they caught me and threw me back.

“That’s for dishing us out of our share of the Chicago racket money. Now, where is it?”

Brennan just smiled sleepily.

“All right, you Rose, did he tell you where it is?” They pulled me forward again and threw me at him, and switched the light on me.

“I’m not Rose and I never was!”

“We know that now and it’s your tough luck. But did he tell you where the haul is?”

Brennan’s voice said brokenly from somewhere in the dark: “Tell them I did, Cinderella.”

“Yes,” I said into the dazzling torchlight.

“Out with it then, hurry up! Where is it?”

I waited, listening. Brennan’s weak gasp came again. “Don’t tell them yet — hear me? Hold out as long as you can, they won’t touch you as long as—”

He was trying to save my life, I guess.

Blitz snarled, “We’ll see how long she can hold out!”

He grabbed my arm, wrenched it up behind my back until I thought I’d nearly faint. I went crashing down on my knees, pinned to him backwards.

Brennan’s voice pleaded, “Don’t — don’t — promise to let the kid go and I’ll tell you—”

One of them warned Blitz excitedly, “Come on, we gotta get outta here, don’t you realize that?”

“Not until I put one into this interfering brat!” he raged. He let go of me and I tumbled forward on my face and rocked there on the floor, rubbing at my shoulder, looking around at him.

I saw his arm stretch out toward me, and the torch caught the gun at the end of it and made it shine.

I could hear Brennan trying to reason with them, but I was listening for the sound of the shot, not his voice any more.

The flash came from too far back behind Blitz, way back in the hallway. Blitz went up on his toes first and seemed to get twice as tall as he was, then he started to come down on me, leaning over more and more, and finally he fell flat right on top of me and pinned me there.

For a minute a puff of hot breath stirred my hair, and then it stopped and didn’t come again.

They must have made the mistake, Blitz’ gang, of all crowding into the room around us to watch and hear what went on, and left the street doorway and the stairs unguarded.

For a minute or two the whole thing started over again, just like before; flashes everywhere and thunder and feet running in all directions trying to get out. I wound my arms tight around my head and buried my face in them.

It didn’t last as long as the first time; it ended right away. Lights came in, and there were heavy thuds as guns dropped to the floor here and there.

I raised my head and saw some of them standing with their hands up. Some more came in that way from the other room, wish policemen behind them.

Someone was lying still on the floor in there; I could see his feet sticking out.

A policeman’s face bent down close and peered at me. “She’s just a kid!” he gasped in surprise.

“Mister,” I begged weakly, “will you please get this man off me so I can get up?”

“Didje get them all?” somebody asked. “How about them two that got down the fire escape?”

“They’re both lying down there in the back yard, now. The first one missed his footing and pulled down a whole section of the rusty thing with him. The second ore just went down clean—”

They were bending over Brennan, and I heard him whispering: “—it’s all in the tires of my car, just slit them. I know I got no right to ask you boys favors, but let the kid go home, she’s just a little school kid.”

Then they told me he wanted to say something to me. I bent down close by him. I could hardly hear him, he whispered so low.

“—always wanted to have a little girl of my own like you—”

Then his face sort of turned empty. I looked at them, not understanding, and one of them said quietly, “He’s gone, Cinderella.”

I started to cry. I’d only known him a little while, but I’d liked him a lot and it felt like I’d known him a long time.

They didn’t let me go straight home, though, even after Brennan had asked them to. First they took me down town with them some place, and I had to answer a lot of questions.

Even then they weren’t sure whether they ought to let me go home or not, until one of them, who seemed to be the boss of all the others, happened to hear me say I went to Thomas Jefferson High School.

“I got a daughter goes there too,” he said.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

He told me, and then he wanted to know, “Know her?”

Did I? “She sits right next to me in French class!” I gasped.

“I don’t suppose your family would like it if they heard about you getting mixed up in a thing like this,” he murmured thoughtfully.

“I’ll probably never hear the end of it,” I admitted.

“Will you promise me you’ll never dress up like this again and go roaming around?” he warned to know.

“Will I!” I exclaimed fervently.

He turned to the others around him, and I heard him say under his breath, “Let’s send the kid home and keep her name out of it. Her deposition is just as valid if presented by proxy, and we’ve got the rest of those guys to sweat it out of. I know I wouldn’t like it if it was my own kid.”

So they called a motorcycle policeman up to the front don;-, and I told him where I lived and climbed on behind him, and we went skittering away.

When we got out to the house, I climbed down and hobbled across the sidewalk to our front door. “What’s the matter with your foot?” the policeman wanted to know.

“I lost one of my slippers on those tenement stairs, but I never noticed it until now.”

“If that don’t beat everything!” he said, slapping his handlebar. “Just like she did in the story book!”

Cinderella eased her front door open; Cinderella sure was glad to be home.