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

Everyone was annoyed by Buddy’s daydreaming. But only the killers thought it a crime for such a brave little boy to stay alive!

I

The kid was twelve, and his name was Buddy. His real name wasn’t that, it was Charlie, but they called him Buddy.

He was small for his age. The world he lived in was small too. Or rather, one of them was. He lived in two worlds at once. One of them was a small, drab, confined world; just two squalid rooms, in the rear of a six-story tenement, 20 Holt Street; stifling in summer, freezing in winter. Just two grownups in it, Mom and Pop. And a handful of other kids like himself, that he knew from school and from playing on the streets.

The other world had no boundaries, no limits. You could do anything in it. You could go anywhere. All you had to do was just sit still and think hard. Make it up as you went along. The world of imagination. He did a lot of that.

But he was learning to keep it to himself. They told him he was getting too big now for that stuff. They swatted him, and called it lies. The last time he’d tried telling them about it, Pop had threatened.

“I’m going to wallop you good next time you make up any more of them fancy lies of yours!” Pop had said.

“It comes from them Sa’day afternoon movies he’s been seeing,” Mom said. “I told him he can’t go any more.”

And then this night came along.

It felt as if it were made of boiling tar, poured all over you. July was hot everywhere, but on Holt Street it was hell. He kept trying and he kept trying, and it wouldn’t work. The bedding on his cot got all soggy and streaked with damp. Pop wasn’t home; he worked nights.

The two rooms were like the chambers of an oven, with all the gas burners left on full tilt. Buddy took his pillow with him finally and climbed out the window onto the fire-escape landing just outside, and tried it out there. It wasn’t the first time; he’d done it lots before. You couldn’t fall off, the landing was railed around. Well, you could if you were unlucky, but it hadn’t happened yet. He sort of locked his arm through the rail uprights, and that kept him from rolling in his sleep.

It wouldn’t work, it was just as bad out there. It was still like an oven, only now with the burners out maybe. He decided maybe it would be better if he tried it a little higher up. Sometimes there was a faint stirring of breeze skimming along at roof level. It couldn’t bend and get down in here behind the tenements. He picked up the pillow and went up the iron slats one flight, to the sixth-floor landing, and tried it there.

It wasn’t very much better. But it had to do, you couldn’t go up any higher than that. He’d learned by experience you couldn’t sleep on the roof itself, because it was covered with gravel, and that got into you and hurt. And underneath it was tar-surfaced, and in the hot weather that got soft and stuck to you all over.

He wriggled around a little on the hard-bitten iron slats, with empty spaces in-between, that were like sleeping on a grill, and then finally he dozed off. The way you can even on a fire escape, when you’re only twelve.

Morning came awfully fast. It seemed to get light only about a minute later. The shine tickled his eyelids and he opened them. Then he saw that it wasn’t coming down from above, from the sky, the way light should. It was still dark, it was still night up there. It was coming in a thin bar, down low, even with his eyes, running along the bottom of the window he was lying outside of, on a level with the fire-escape landing he was lying on.

If he’d been standing up instead of stretched out flat, it would have been over his feet instead of across his eyes. It was only about an inch high. A dark shade unrolled nearly to the bottom, but that had slipped back maybe a half turn on its roller, cut the rest of it off. But with his eyes up close against it like they were, it was nearly as good as the whole window being lit up. He could see the whole inside of the room.

There were two people in it, a man and a woman. He would have closed his eyes again and gone right back to sleep — what did he care about watching grownups? — except for the funny, sneaky way they were both acting. That made him keep on watching, wondering what they were up to.

The man was asleep on a chair, by a table. He’d been drinking or something. There was a bottle and two glasses on the table in front of him. His head was down on the table, and his hand was in front of his eyes, to protect them from the light.

The woman was moving around on tiptoes, trying not to make any noise. She was carrying the man’s coat in her hands, like she’d just taken it off the back of the chair, where he’d hung it before he fell asleep. She had on a lot of red and white stuff all over her face; but Buddy didn’t think she looked very pretty.

When she got around the other side of the table from him, she stopped, and started to dip her hand in and out of all the pockets of the coat She kept her back to him while she was doing it. But Buddy could see her good from the side, he was looking right in at her.

That was the first sneaky thing he saw that made him keep on watching them. And the second was, he saw the fingers of the man’s hand, the one that was lying in front of his eyes, split open, and the man stole a look through them at what she was doing.

Then when she turned her head, to make sure he was asleep, he quickly closed his fingers together again, just in time.

She turned her head the other way again and went ahead doing what she was doing.

She came up with a big fat roll of money from the coat all rolled up tight, and she threw the coat aside, and bent her head close, and started to count it over. Her eyes got all bright, and Buddy could see her licking her lips while she was doing it.

All of a sudden Buddy held his breath. The man’s arm was starting to crawl along the top of the table toward her, to reach for her and grab her. It moved very slow and quiet, like a big thick snake inching along after somebody, and she never noticed it. Then when it was out straight and nearly touching her, the man started to come up off his chair after it and crouch over toward her, and she never heard that either. He was smiling, but it wasn’t a very good kind of a smile — not at all.

Buddy’s heart was pounding. He thought, “You better look around, lady, you better look around!” But she didn’t. She was too busy counting the money.

All of a sudden the man jumped and grabbed her. His chair went over flat, and the table nearly did too, but it recovered and stayed up. His big hand, the one that had been reaching out all along, caught her around the back of the neck, and held on tight, and he started to shake her from head to foot.

His other hand grabbed the wrist that was holding the money. She tried to jam it down the front of her dress, but she wasn’t quick enough. He twisted her wrist slowly around, to make her let go of it.

She gave a funny little squeak like a mouse, but not very loud. At least it didn’t come out the window very loud, where Buddy was.

“No you don’t!” Buddy heard the man growl. “I figured something like this was coming! You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to put anything like that over on me!”

“Take your hands off me!” she panted. “Let go of me!”

He started to swing her around from side to side. “You won’t ever try anything like this again, by the time I get through with you!” Buddy heard the man grunt.

All of a sudden she screamed, “Joe! Hurry up in here! I can’t handle him any longer by myself!” But she didn’t scream it out real loud, just in a sort of a smothered way, as if she didn’t want it to carry too far.

The door flew open, and a second man showed up. He must have been standing right outside it waiting the whole time, to come in that fast. He ran up behind the man who was being robbed. She held on tight and kept him from turning around to meet him.

The second man waited until his head was in the right position, and then he locked both his own hands together in a double fist, and smashed them down with all his might on the back of the other man’s neck.

The other man dropped to the floor like a stone and lay there quiet for a minute.

The woman scrambled down and started to pick up all the money that was lying around on the floor.

“Here!” she said, handing it to the man.

“Hurry up, let’s get out of here!” he snarled. “What’d you have to bungle it up like that for? Why didn’t you fix his drink right?”

“I did, but it didn’t work on him. He musta seen me do it.”

“Come on!” he said, and started for the door. “When he comes to, he’ll bring the cops down on us.”

All of a sudden the man lying on the floor wrapped his arm tight around both legs of the second man, pinning them together. The second man tripped and fell down flat, full length. The other man scrambled on top of him before he could get up, held him that way, and it started in all over again.

The man they were robbing was the better fighter of the two. He swung punches at the second man’s head, while he had him under him like that. In another minute he would have punched him cold, even Buddy could tell that. His arms spread out limp on the floor, and his fists started to open up lazy.

But the woman went running all around the place hunting for something to help with. All of a sudden she threw open a drawer in a bureau and took out something that flashed in the light. Buddy couldn’t see what it was for a minute, she was so fast with it. She darted in close to them and put it in the outstretched hand of the man who was lying underneath, being knocked silly.

Then when it swept up high over both their heads a second later, Buddy could see what it was by that time all right! It was a short, sharp knife. Buddy’s eyes nearly came out of his head.

The man swung it and buried it in the other’s back. Right up to the hilt; yon couldn’t see the blade any more.

The fight stopped cold on the instant, but not the stabbing. He wrenched it out with a sawing motion from side to side, and swung it again, and buried it again, in a different place this time. The other man wasn’t moving any more, just sort of recoiling with the stab itself.

He wasn’t satisfied even yet. He freed it a third time, with a lot of trouble, and it came up and went back in again. Then they both lay there still, one of them getting his breath, the other not breathing any more.

Finally he rolled the crumpled weight off him, and picked himself up, and felt his jaw. Then they both stood looking down at what lay there, he and the woman.

“Is he dead?” Buddy heard her ask in a scared voice.

“Wait a minute, I’ll see.” He got down by him, and put his hand underneath him, where his heart was. Then he pulled it out. Then he pulled the knife out of his back. Then he stood up.

He looked at her and shook his head a little.

“Holy Smoke!” she gasped. “We’ve killed him! Joe what’ll we do?” She didn’t say it very loud, but it was so quiet in the room now, Buddy could hear everything they said just as if he were in there too.

The man grabbed her arm and squeezed it tight. “Take it easy. There’s plenty of people killed, that they never find out who done it. Just don’t lose your head, that’s all. We’ll get by with it.”

He held her until he was sure she was steady, then he let go of her again. He looked all around the room. “Gimme some newspapers. I want to keep this stuff from getting on the floor.”

He got down and stuffed them underneath the body on all sides. Then he said, “Case the door, see if there’s anyone out there that heard us. Open it slow and careful, now.”

She went over to it on tiptoe, and moved it open just on a crack, and looked out with one eye. Then she made it a little wider, and stuck her whole head out, and turned it both ways. Then she pulled it in again, and closed up, and came back to him.

“Not a soul around,” she whispered.

“All right. Now case the window. See if it’s all right out in the back there. Don’t pull up the shade, just take a squint out the side of it.”

II

She started to come over to where Buddy’s eyes were staring in, and she got bigger and bigger every minute, the closer she got. Her head went way up high out of sight, and her waist blotted out the whole room. He couldn’t move, he was like paralyzed. The little gap under the shade must have been awfully skinny for her not to see it, but he knew in another minute she was going to look right out on top of him, from higher up — and see him. Buddy rolled over flat on his back, it was only a half-roll because he’d been lying on his side until now, and that was about all the moving there was time for him to do. There was an old blanket over the fire-escape rail, hung out to air. He clawed at it and pulled it down on top of him. He only hoped it covered all of him, but there wasn’t time to tuck it around evenly. About all he could do was hunch himself up and make himself as small as possible, and pray none of him stuck out.

A minute later, even with his head covered, he could tell, by a splash of light that fell across the blanket, like a sort of stripe, that she’d tipped the shade back and was staring out the side of it.

“There’s something white down here,” Buddy heard her say, and he froze all over. He even stopped breathing, for fear his breath would show up against the blanket, make it ripple.

“Oh, I know!” she explained, is relief. “It’s that blanket I left out there yesterday. It must haw I fallen down. Gee, for a minute I thought it was somebody lyin’ there!”

“Don’t stand there all night,” the man growled.

The stripe of light went out, and Buddy knew she’d let the shade go back in place.

He was still afraid to move for a minute, even after that. Then he worked his head clear of the blanket, and looked again.

Even the gap was gone now. She must have pulled the shade down even, before she turned away. He couldn’t see them any more, but he could still hear them.

But he didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was get down off there!

He knew, though, that if he could hear them, they could hear him just as easy. He had to do it slow. The fire escape was old and rickety, it might creak. He started to stretch out his legs, backward, toward the ladder steps going down. Then when he had them oat straight, he started to palm himself along backward on the flats of his hands, keeping his head and shoulders down. It was a little bit like swimming the breast stroke on dry land. Or rather on iron slats, which was worse still.

But he could still keep on hearing them the whole time he was doing it.

“Here’s his identification papers,” the man said. “Cliff Bristol. Mate on a merchant ship. That’s good. Them guys disappear awfully easy. Not too many questions asked. We want to make sure of getting everything out of his pockets, so they won’t be able to race who he was.”

The woman said, like she was almost crying, “Oh, what do we care what his name is. We’ve done it, that’s all that matters.

Come on, Joe, for God’s sake let’s get out of here!”

“We don’t have to get out now,” the man said. “Why should we? All we have to do is get him out. Nobody seen him come up here with you. Nobody knows it happened. If we lam out now and leave him here, they’ll be after us in five seconds. If we just stay here like we are, nobody’ll be any the wiser.”

“But how you going to do it, Joe? How you going to get him out?”

“I’ll show you. Bring out them two valises of yours, and empty the stuff out of them.”

Buddy was worming his way down the fire-escape steps backward now, but his face and chin were still balanced above the landing.

“But he won’t go into one of them, a great big guy like him,” the woman protested.

“He will the way I’ll do it,” the man answered. And then he said, “Go in the bathroom and get me my razor.”

Buddy’s chin went down flat on the landing for a minute, and he felt like he wanted to throw up. The fire escape creaked a little, but the woman had groaned just then, and that covered it up.

“You don’t have to watch,” the man said. “You go outside the door and wait, if you feel that way about it. Come in again if you hear anyone coming.”

Buddy began to move again, spilling salt water from his mouth.

“Hand me all the rest of the newspapers we got in here, before you go,” he heard the man say. “And bring in that blanket you said was outside the window, that’ll come in handy too. I’m going to need it for a lining.”

Buddy wriggled the rest of the way down, like a snake in reverse. He felt his feet touch bottom of his own landing, outside his own windows, and he was safe! But there was something soft clinging to them. He looked, and it was the blanket. It had gotten tangled around his foot while he was still up above there, and he’d trailed it down with him without noticing in his excitement.

He kicked it clear of himself, but there was no time to do anything else with it. He squirmed across the sill and toppled back into his own flat, and left it lying there. An instant later a shot of light doused the fire escape and he heard the window above go up, as she reached out for it.

Then he heard her whisper in a frightened, bated voice: “It blew down! I see it, there it is down below. It was right out here a minute ago, and now it’s down below!”

The man must have told her to go after it and bring it up. The light went out. He must have put the light out in the room, so she’d have a chance to climb down and get it without being Buddy could hear the wooden window frame ease the rest of the way up in the dark then a stealthy scrape on the iron ladder stairs.

He pressed himself up flat against the wall, under his own sill. He was small enough to fit in there. He saw the white of the blanket flick upward and disappear from sight.

Then he heard her whisper, just as she went in her own window again, “That’s funny; and there’s not a breath of air stirring either. How did it come to get blown down there?”

Then the window rustled closed and it was over.

Buddy didn’t get up and walk to his own bed. He couldn’t lift himself that high. He crawled to it on his hands and knees.

He pulled the covers all over him, even past the top of his head, and as hot as the night that seemed only a little while ago, he shook as if it were the middle of December and goose-pimple came out all over him.

He was still shaking for a long time after. He could hear some one moving around right over hit once in a while, even with the covers over his head. And just picturing what was going on up there, that would start him in t shaking all over again.

It took a long time. Then everything got quiet. No more creaks on the ceiling, like some body was rocking back and forth sawing away at something. He was all covered with sweat now, and the sheets were damp.

Then he heard a door open, and someone moved softly down the stairs outside. Past his own door and down to the bottom. Once something scraped a little against the wall, like a valise. He started in shaking again, worse than ever.

He didn’t sleep all the rest of the night. Hours later, after it was already light, he heard someone coming quietly up the stairs. This time nothing scraped against the walls. Then the door closed above, and after that there was no more sound of anything.

Then in a little while his mother got up in the next room and got breakfast started and called in to him.

He got dressed and dragged himself in to her, and when she turned around and saw him she said, “You don’t look well, Buddy. You feel sick?”

He didn’t want to tell her, he wanted to tell his father.

His father came home from work a few minutes after that, and they sat down to the table together like they did every morning, Buddy to his breakfast and his father to his before-bedtime supper.

He waited till his mother was out of the room, then he whispered: “Pop, I want to tell you something.”

“Okay, shoot,” his father grinned.

“Pop, there’s a man and woman livin’ over us.”

“Sure, I know that,” his father said, helping himself to some bacon. “That’s no news to me. I’ve seen them, coming and going. I think the name’s Scanlon or Hanlon, something like that.”

Buddy shifted his chair closer and leaned nearer his father’s ear, “But Pop,” he breathed, “last night they killed a man up there, and they cut up his body into small pieces, and stuck it into two valises.”

His father stopped chewing. Then he put down his knife and fork. Then he turned around slowly in his chair and looked at him hard. For a minute Buddy thought he felt sick and scared about it, like he had himself. But then he saw that he was only sore. Sore at Buddy himself.

“Mary, come in here,” he called out grimly.

Buddy’s mother came to the door and looked in at them.

“He’s at it again,” his father said. “I thought I told you not to let him go to any more of them Sat’day movies.”

She gnawed her lip worriedly. “Making things up again?”

“I didn’t make—” Buddy started to protest.

“I wouldn’t even repeat to you the filthy trash he’s just been telling me. It would turn your blood cold.” His father whacked him across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Shut up,” he said. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a liar. One of them congenial liars.”

“What’d he say?” his mother asked troubledly.

“It’s not fit for you to hear,” his father said indignantly. But then he went ahead and told her anyway. “He said they done someone in up there, over us, and then chopped him up into small pieces and carried him off in two valises.”

His mother touched her apron to her mouth nauseatedly. “The Kellermans?” she gasped in horrified disbelief. “Oh Buddy, when are you going to stop that? Why, they’re the last people in the world. She seems like a very nice woman. Why she was right down here at the door only the other day, to borrow a cup of sugar from me. She always has a smile and a nice word, whenever you pass her on the stairs. Why, they’re the last ones—!”

“Well, he’ll grow up fine,” his father said darkly. “There’s something wrong with a boy like that. This had to happen to me! I don’t know where he gets it from. I wasn’t that way, in my whole life. My brother Ed, rest his soul, wasn’t that way. You were never that way, nor anyone on your side of the family. But I’m going to take it out of him if it’s the last thing I do.”

He started to roll up his shirt sleeve. He pushed his chair back. “You come in here with me.”

Then at the door he gave him one more chance. “Are you going to say it’s not true?”

“But I saw them. I watched through the window and saw them,” Buddy wailed helplessly.

His father’s jaw set tight. “All right, come in here.” He closed the door after the two of them.

It didn’t hurt very much. Well, it did, but just for a minute; it didn’t last. His father wasn’t a man with a vicious temper. He was just a man with a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong. His father just used half-strength on him; just enough to make him holler out satisfactorily, not enough to really bruise him badly.

Then when he got through, he rolled down his shirt sleeves and said to the sniffling Buddy: “Now are you going to make up any more of them fancy lies of yours?”

There was an out there, and Buddy was smart enough to grab it. “No, sir,” he said submissively. “I’m not going to make up any lies.” And he started for the door.

But his father added quickly too quickly, “Then you’re read to admit now that wasn’t true what you told me in there at the table?”

Buddy swallowed hard ant stood still, with freedom just with in reach. He didn’t answer.

“Answer me,” his father said severely. “Was it or wasn’t it?”

There was a dilemma here, and Buddy couldn’t handle it. He’d been walloped for telling what they thought was a lie. Now they wanted him to do the very thing they’d punished him for doing in the first place. If he told the truth it would be called a lie, and if he told a lie he’d be repeating what he knew they were walloping him for.

He tried to side-step it by asking a question of his own. “When you — when you see a thing yourself, with your own eves, is it true then?” he faltered.

“Sure,” his father said impatiently. “You’re old enough to know that! You’re not two years old.”

“Then I saw it, and it has to be true.”

This time his father got real sore. He hauled him back from the door by the scuff of his neck, and for a minute he acted as, if he were going to give him another walloping, all over again. But he didn’t.

Instead he took the key out of the door, opened it, and put the key in the front. “You’re going to stay in here until you’re ready to admit that whole thing was a dirty, rotten lie!” he said wrathfully, “You’ll stay in here all day, if you have to! It’s what you deserve, all right.”

He went out, slammed the door after him, and locked Buddy in from the outside. Then he took the key out of the lock, so Buddy’s mother wouldn’t weaken while he was asleep.

III

Buddy went over and slumped down gloomily onto a chair, and hung his head, and tried to puzzle it out. He was being punished for doing the very thing they were trying to lace into him: sticking to the truth.

He heard his father moving around out there getting ready for bed; heard his shoes drop heavily one after the other, then the bedsprings creak. Then after that nothing. He’d sleep all day now, until dark. But maybe his mother would let him out, before she went to work for the day.

He went over to the door and started to jiggle the knob back and forth, to try and attract her attention wife as little noise as he could.

“Mom,” he whispered close to the keyhole, “Hey, mom.”

After a while be heard her tiptoe up on the other side, “Mom, are you there? Let me out”

“It’s for your own good, Buddy,” she whispered back. “I can’t do it unless you take back that sinful lie you told. He told me not to.” She waited patiently. “Do you take it back, Buddy? Do you?”

“No,” he sighed. He went back to the chair and disheartenedly sat down once more.

What was a fellow to do, when even his own people wouldn’t believe him? Who was he to turn to? You had to tell somebody about a thing like that. If you didn’t, it was just as bad as — just as bad as if you were one of the ones that did it. He wasn’t scared any more as he’d been last night, because it was daylight now, but he still felt a little sick at his stomach whenever he thought of it. You had to tell somebody.

Suddenly he turned his head and looked at the window. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Not about getting out through the window; he’d known he could all along, it was latched on the inside. But he hadn’t tried to get out that way until now, because he wanted to stay here and get them to believe him here, where he was. As long as they wouldn’t believe him here, there was another place where maybe they would believe him.

That’s what grownups did the first thing, whenever they were in his predicament. Why shouldn’t a kid do it? The police. They were the ones had to be told. They were the ones you were supposed to tell, anyway. Even his father, if he’d only believed him, was supposed to tell them. Well, if his father wouldn’t, then he’d tell them himself.

He got up and softshoed over to the window and eased it up. He slung himself over onto the fire escape. It was easy, of course; nothing to it. At his age it was just as easy as going out a door. Then he eased it down again. But not all the way, he left just a little crack open underneath, so he could get his fingers in and get it up again when he came back.

He’d tell the police, and then he’d come back and sneak in again through the window, and be there when his father woke up and unlocked the door. That would get it off his mind; then he wouldn’t have to worry any more.

He went down the fire escape, dropped off where the last section of ladder was hoisted clear of the ground, went in through the basement, and came out the front, up the janitor’s steps without meeting anybody. He beat it away from in front of the house fast, so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone who knew him, any of the neighbors for instance, who might later accidentally tell on him. Then as soon as he was safely around the corner he slowed up and tried to figure out how you went about it.

Telling the police!

It was better to go to a station house, for anything as important as this, instead of just telling a stray neighborhood cop you met on the sidewalk. He was a little bit in awe of station houses, but as long as you hadn’t done anything yourself it was probably safe enough to go into one.

He didn’t know where one was exactly, but he knew there must be one somewhere close around, there had to be. He saw a storekeeper sweeping the sidewalk, and he got up his courage and went up to him.

“Where’s the station house, mister?” he asked.

“How should I know?” said the man gruffly. “What am I, a telephone book? Look out with your feet, can’t you see I’m busy?”

Buddy backed away. That gave him an idea. He turned and went looking for a drugstore, and when he found one, he went in and looked in the telephone books they had in the back, chained to the wall-

He picked the nearest one to where he was, and he headed for it. When he got there, all his instinctive fear of that kind of place, left over from when he was a kid of six or eight and cops were the natural enemies of small boys, came back again for a minute. He hung around outside for a short while, and then finally he saw the station house cat go in, and that gave him courage, and he went in himself.

The man at the desk didn’t pay any attention to him for a long time. He was looking over some papers or something. Buddy just stood there and waited, afraid to speak first.

Finally he said, kindly, “What is it, son? Lost your dog or something?”

“No, sir,” Buddy said spasmodically. “I–I got something I want to tell someone.”

The desk sergeant grinned absently, continuing to look at what he was looking at. “And what would that be, now?”

Buddy glanced apprehensively behind him, at the street outside, as though fearful of being overheard from there. “Well, it’s pretty serious,” he gulped. “It’s about a man that was killed.”

The sergeant gave him his full attention for the first time. “You know something about a man that was killed?”

“Yessir,” said Buddy breathlessly. “Last night. And I thought I better tell you.” He wondered if that was enough, and he could go now. No, they had to have the name and address; they couldn’t just guess.

The sergeant clawed his chin. “You’re not trying to be a smart aleck, now, or anything like that?” he asked warningly. One look at Buddy’s face, however, seemed to reassure him on that point.

“No sir,” Buddy said strenuously.

“Well, I’ll tell you. That’s not my department, exactly. You see that hall there, over next to the clock? You go down that to the second door you come to. There’s a man in there, you tell him about it. Don’t go in the first door, now, or he’ll have your life; he eats kids your age for breakfast.” Buddy went over to the mouth of the corridor, looked back from there for reassurance.

“Second door,” the sergeant reassured him.

He went on. He made a wide loop around the dread first door, pressing himself flat against the opposite wall to get safely by it. Then he knocked on the one after that, and felt as scared as if it were the principal’s office at school. Even more scared, in fact.

“ ’M’in,” a voice said.

He couldn’t move for a minute.

“Well?” the voice repeated with a touch of annoyance.

To stay out, now, was worse than to go in. Buddy took a deep breath, held it, caving in his middle, and went in. Then he remembered to close the door after him. When you didn’t close the door after you in the principal’s office, you had to go outside and come in all over again.

There was another man, at another desk. His eyes had been fixed in readiness at a point about six feet up the door. When it opened and closed, and they still met nothing, they dropped down to Buddy’s four-foot level.

“What is this?” he growled. “How’d you get in here?” The first part of the question didn’t seem to be addressed to Buddy himself, but to the ceiling light or something like that.

Buddy had to go through the thing a second time, and repetition didn’t make it come any easier than the first.

The man just looked at him. In his imagination, Buddy had pictured a general rising-up and an excited, pell-mell rushing out on the part of everyone in the station house, when he delivered his news; patrol cars wailing into high gear and orders being barked around. That was what always happened in pictures. Everyone always jumped up and rushed out, whenever somebody came in and told them something like this. But now, in real life: the man just looked at him.

He said, “What’s your name, son?” He said, “What’s your address?”

Buddy told him.

He said, “D’y’ever have a nightmare, son? You know, a pretty bad dream that scares the life out of you?”

“Oh, sure,” Buddy said incautiously. “I’ve had ’em, lots of times.”

The man said, into a boxlike thing on his desk, “Ross, come in here.”

Another man came in. He didn’t have on a uniform either; neither of them did. Which made them a little declassé in Buddy’s esteem. They conferred in Ion voices; he couldn’t hear a word they said. He knew it was about himself, though. He could tell by the way they’d look over at him every now and then.

They didn’t look in the right way. They should have looked sort of — well, sort of concerned worried about what he’d told them, or something. Instead, they looked sort of amused; like men who are trying to keep straight faces.

Then the first one spoke up again. “So you saw them cut him up and—”

This was a distortion, and Buddy scotched it quick. He wasn’t here to make things up, although only a few short weeks ago, he would have grabbed at the chance this gave him, it was a wonderful opening.

“No, sir,” he said, “I didn’t see that part of it. I just heard them say they were going to do it. But—”

But then before he could reaffirm that he had seen the man fall and the knife go home three times, as he was about to, the detective cut in with another question, without waiting. So he was left with the appearance of having made a whole retraction, instead of just a partial one.

“Did you tell your parents about this?”

This was a bad one, and nobody knew it better than Buddy.

“Yes,” he mumbled unwillingly.

“Then why didn’t they come and tell us about it, why’d they send you instead?”

He tried to duck that by not answering.

“Speak up, son.”

You had to tell the truth to cops; that was serious, not telling the truth to cops. Even civilian cops, like these.

“They didn’t believe me,” he breathed.

“Why didn’t they believe you?”

“They — they think I’m always making up things.”

He saw the look they gave one another, and he knew what it meant. He’d already lost the battle. They were already on his father’s side.

“Oh, they do, hunh? Well, do you make up things?”

You had to tell the truth to cops. “I used to. I used to a lot. But not any more. Not this time. This time I’m not making it up.”

He saw one of them tap a finger to his forehead, just once. He wasn’t meant to see it, it was done very quickly, but he saw it.

“Well, do you know for sure when you are and when you’re not making things up, son?”

“I do, honest!” he protested. “I know I’m not this time! I know I’m not!”

But it wasn’t a very good answer, he knew that. It was the only one he had, though. They got you in corners where you hardly knew what you were saying any more.

“We’ll send somebody around, son, and check up,” the first man reassured him. He turned to the other man.

“Ross, go over there and take a look around. Don’t put your foot down too hard, it’s not official. Sell them a magazine subscription or something. No, an electric razor, that’ll tie in with the story. There’s one in my locker, you can take that with you for a sample. It’s the—” He glanced at Buddy inquiringly.

“The sixth floor, right over us.”

“That’s all I’ve got to do,” Ross said disgruntledly. But he went out.

“You wait out in the hall, son,” the first man said to Buddy. “Sit down on the bench out there.”

IV

Buddy went out and sat.

About half an hour went by, not much more. Then he saw Ross come back and go in again. He waited hopefully for the rushing out and shouting of orders to come. Nothing happened. Nobody stirred. All he could hear was Ross swearing and complaining in a low voice, through the frosted glass inset of the door, and the other man laughing, like you do when there’s a joke at somebody’s expense. Then they sent for him to come in again.

Ross gave Buddy a dirty look. The other man tried to straighten his face. He passed his hand slowly in front of his mouth, and it came out serious at the other side of it.

“Son,” he said, “you can hear things quite easily through that ceiling of yours, can’t you? The one between you and them. Pretty thin?”

“Y’yes,” Buddy faltered, wondering what was coming next.

“Well, what you heard was a program on their radio.”

“There wasn’t any. They didn’t have a radio in the apartment. Ross gave him quite an unfriendly look. “Yes, they do,” he said sourly. “I was just over there, and I saw it myself. You could hear it all the way down the stairs to the third floor, when I came away. I been on the force fourteen years, and this kid’s going to tell me what is in a room I case and what isn’t!”

“All right, Ross,” the other man tried to soothe him.

“But I saw it through the window!” Buddy wailed.

“It could have still been the radio, son,” he explained pacifyingly. “Remember, you can’t see something that’s said, you can only hear it. You could have been looking square at them, and still hearing what the radio was saying.”

“What time was it you were out there?” Ross growled at Buddy.

“I don’t know. Just — just nighttime. We only got an alarm clock and you can’t see it in the dark.”

Ross shrugged angrily at the other man, as if to say: See what I mean? “It was the Crime-Smashers Program,” he said bitterly. “It’s on from eleven to twelve. And last night was Wednesday. Or don’t you know that either?” he flared in an aside to Buddy.

“She told me herself it was a partic’ly gruesome one this time. Said her husband wouldn’t talk to her for an hour afterward, because he can’t stand hearing that kind a stuff and she dotes on it. She admits she had it on too loud, just to spite him. Fair enough?”

The other man just looked at Buddy, quizzically. Buddy just looked at the floor.

Ross finished rubbing it in, with vengeful relish. “And her husband uses a safety razor. She brought it out and showed it to me herself when I tried to peddle the prop to her. Did you ever try cutting up anybody with one of them? And there are two valises still right there in the room with them. I saw them when I pretended to fumble my pencil and stooped down to pick it up from the floor. With their lids left ajar and nothing worse in them than a mess of shirts and women’s undies.

“And not brand-new replacements, either; plenty grubby and battered from years of knocking around with them. Even papered all over with faded hotel labels. I don’t think cheapskates like them would be apt to own four valises, two apiece. And if they did, I don’t think they’d pack the stiff in the two best ones and keep the two worst ones for themselves. It would most likely be the other way around.

“And, finally, they’ve got newspapers still kicking around from two weeks back. I spotted the date-lines on a few of them myself. What were they supposed to have used to clean up the mess, kleenex?”

And he backed his arm toward

Buddy, as if to let one fly at him across the ear. The other man, laughing, had to reach over quickly and hold him back. “A little practice work won’t hurt you.”

“On level ground maybe; not up six flights of stairs.” Ross stalked out and gave the door a clout behind him.

The other man sent for a cop; this time one of the kind in uniform. For a minute Buddy thought he was going to be arrested then and there, and his stomach went down to about his feet, nearly.

“Where do you live, son? You better take him back with you, Lyons.”

“Not the front way,” Buddy pleaded, aghast. “I can get in like I got out.”

“Just to make sure you get safely back, son. You’ve done enough damage for one day.” And the man at the desk waved him, and the whole matter he’d tried to tell them about, out the door.

He knew better than to fight a policeman. That was about the worst thing you could do, fight back at a policeman. He went along with him tractably, his head hanging down in shame.

They went inside and up the stairs. The Carmody kid on the second floor peeked out the door and shrieked to her sister, “Ooh, they’ve arrested Buddy!”

“They have not,” he denied indignantly. “They’re just bringing me home special!”

They stopped in front of his own door.

“Here, son?”

Buddy quailed. Now he was going to get it!

The policeman tapped, and his mother, not his father opened the door. She must have been late leaving for work today, to still be there. Her face got white for a minute.

The policeman winked at her to reassure her. “Nothing to get frightened about, lady. He just came over and gave us a little story, and we thought we better bring him back here where he belongs.”

“Buddy!” she said, horrified. “You went and told them?”

“Does he do it very often?” the policeman asked.

“All the time. All the time. But never anything as bad as this.”

“Getting worse, hunh? Well, you ought to talk to the principal of his school, or maybe a doctor.”

There was a. stealthy creak on the stairs, and the Kellerman woman had paused on her way down, was standing looking at them. Curiously, but with cold composure.

The cop didn’t even turn his head. “Well, I gotta be getting back,” he said, and touched the visor of his cap to Buddy’s mother and left.

Buddy got panicky. “Come in, quick!” he whispered frantically. “Come in quick, before she sees us” And tried to drag his mother in out of the doorway.

She resisted, held him there in full view. “There she is now. You apologize. You say you’re sorry, hear me?”

The woman came the rest of the way down. She smiled affably, in neighborly greeting. Buddy’s mother smiled in answering affability.

“Nothing wrong, is there?”

“No, nothing wrong,” Buddy’s mother murmured deprecatingly.

“I thought I saw a policeman at the door here, as I was coming down.”

“Buddy did something he shouldn’t.” Without taking her eyes off the woman, she shook Buddy in an aside. Meantime, pantoinimically, “Apologize.”

He hung back, tried to efface himself behind her.

“He looks like a good little boy,” the woman said patronizingly. “What’d he do?”

“He’s not a good boy,” Buddy’s mother said firmly. “He makes things up. He tells things on people. Horrible things. Things that aren’t so. It can cause a lot of trouble, especially when the people are living in the same house with us—” She didn’t finish it.

The woman’s eyes rested speculatively on Buddy for a long cool moment. Speculation ended and conviction entered them. They never wavered. She might have been thinking of a blanket that suddenly fell down the fire escape from one floor to the next when there was no wind. She might have been thinking of a razor salesman that asked too many questions.

Something about that look, it went right through you. It crinkled you all up. It was like death itself looking at you. Buddy’d never met a look like that before. It was so still, so deep, so cold, so dangerous.

Then she smiled. The look in her eyes didn’t go out, but her mouth smiled. “Boys will be boys,” she said sweetly. She reached out to try and playfully pull his hair or something like that, but he swerved his head violently aside, with something akin to horror, and she failed to reach him.

She turned away and left them. But she went up, not down. She had been coming from above just now, now she went back that way again. “I’m always forgetting something,” she murmured as if to herself. “That letter I wanted to mail.”

Buddy knew, with an awful certainty. She wanted to tell him. That man. She wanted to tell him right away, without losing a minute.

The politeness forced on her by the spectator at an end, Buddy’s mother resumed her flurried handling of him where she had left off. She wrestled him violently into their flat and closed the door. But he wasn’t aware of anything that she said to him. He could only think of one thing.

“Now you told her!” he sobbed in mortal anguish. “Now they know! Now they know who!”

His mother misunderstood, beautifully and completely. “Oh, now you’re ashamed of yourself, is that it? I should think you would be!” She retrieved the key from his sleeping father’s pillow, unlocked the door, thrust him in, and relocked it. “I was going to let you out, but now you’ll stay in there the rest of the day!”

He didn’t hear her, didn’t know what she was saying at all.

“Now you told her!” he said over and over. “Now they’ll get me for it!”

He heard her leave for work. He was left alone there, in the stifling flat, with just his father’s heavy breathing in the outside room to keep him company.

Fear didn’t come right away. He knew he was safe while his father was out there. They couldn’t get at him. That’s why he didn’t mind being in there, he didn’t even try to get out through the window a second time. He was all right as long as he stayed where he was. It was tonight he was worried about, when his father was away at work and just his mother was asleep in the flat with him.

V

The long hot day burned itself out. The sun started to go down, and premonitory fear came with the creeping, deepening blue shadows. He’d never felt this way before. The night was going to be bad, the night was going to be his enemy, and he didn’t have anyone he could tell it to, so they’d help him. Not his father, not his mother, not even the police.

And if you didn’t have the police on your side, you might as well give up, there was no hope for you. They were on the side of everyone in the whole world, who wasn’t a crook or murderer. Everyone.

But not him. He was left out.

His mother came back from work. He heard her start to get supper ready, then call to his father, to wake him. He heard his father moving around getting dressed. Then the key was inserted, the door unlocked. He jumped up from the chair he’d been huddled on. His father motioned him to come out.

“Now you going to behave yourself?” he asked gruffly. “You going to cut that stuff out?”

“Yes sir,” Buddy said docilely. “Yes sir.”

‘Nit down and have your supper.”

They sat down to eat.

His mother didn’t mean to give way on him, he could tell that. It came out accidentally, toward the end of the meal. She incautiously said something about her employer having called her down.

“Why?” Buddy’s father asked. “Oh, because I was five to ten minutes late.”

“How’d you happen to be late? You seemed to be ready on time.”

“I was ready, but by the time I got through talking to that policeman that came to the do—” she stopped short, but the damage was already done.

“What policeman came to the door?”

She didn’t want to, but he finally made her tell him. “Buddy sneaked out. One of them brought him back here with him. Now, Charlie, don’t, you just finished eating.”

Buddy’s father hauled him off his chair by the shoulder. “I belted you once today. How many times am I going to have to—” There was a knock at the door, and that saved Buddy for a minute. His father let go of him, went over and opened it. He stood out there a minute with someone, then he closed it, came back, and said in surprise: “It’s a telegram. And for you, Mary.”

“Who on earth—?” She tore it open tremulously. Then she gave him a stricken look. “It’s from Emma. She must be in some kind of trouble. She says to come out there at once, she needs me. ‘Please come without delay as soon as you get this.’ ”

Emma was Buddy’s aunt, his mother’s sister. She lived all the way out on Staten Island.

“It must be the children,” his mother said. “They must be both taken sick at once or something.”

“Maybe it’s her herself,” his father said. “That would be even worse.”

“If I could only reach her! That’s what comes of not having telephones.”

She started to get her things together. Buddy pleaded, terrified, “Don’t go. Mom! It’s a trick. It’s from them. They want you out of the way. They want to get me.”

“Still at it,” his father said, giving him a push. “Get inside there. Go ahead, Mary. You’ll be half the night getting there as it is. I’ll take care of him. Gimme a hammer and a couple of long nails,” he added grimly. “He’ll stay put, I’ll see to that.”

He drove them through the two sash joints of the window in there, riveting it inextricably closed. “That oughta keep you. Now you can tell your stories to the four walls, to your heart’s content!”

His mother patted his head tearfully, “Please be a good boy, listen to your father,” and was gone.

He only had one protector left now. And a protector who had turned against him. He tried to reason with him, win him over.

“Pop, don’t leave me here alone. They’re going to come down and get me. Pop, take me with you to the plant. I won’t get in your way. Honest, I won’t.”

His father eyed him balefully.

“Keep it up. Just keep it up. You’re going to a doctor tomorrow. I’m going to take you to one myself and find out what’s the matter with you.”

“Pop, don’t lock the door. Don’t. Don’t. At least give me a chance so I can get out.” He tried to hang on to the knob with both hands, but his father’s greater strength dragged it slowly around in a closing arc.

“So you can run around to the police again and disgrace us? Well, if you’re so afraid of them, whoever they are, then you ought to be glad I’m locking the door, that’ll keep you safe from them. You confounded little liar!” Cluck! went the key in the lock.

He pressed his face close to the door seam and pleaded agonizedly.

“Pop, don’t leave the key in. If you gotta lock me up, at least take the key with you.”

“The key stays in. I ain’t taking a chance on dropping it somewhere and losing it.”

He began to pound with his fists, frantic now and beyond all control. “Pop, come back! Take me with you! Don’t leave me here alone! Pop, I take it back. It wasn’t so.”

His father was thoroughly exasperated by now, nothing could have made him relent. “I’ll see you when I come back from work, young fellow!” he rasped. “You’ve got something coming to you!” The outer door slammed, and he was gone away beyond recall.

He was alone now. Alone with crafty enemies, alone with imminent death.

He stopped his outcries at once. Now they were risky. Now they could no longer help him, now they might even bring on the danger all the quicker.

He put out the light. It made it more scary without it, but he knew it was safer to be in the dark than in the light. Maybe he could fool them into thinking nobody was there, if he stayed in the dark like this. Maybe, but he didn’t have much hope. They must have watched down the stairs, seen his father go alone.

Silence, then. Not a sound. Not a sound of menace, at least; from overhead, or from the outside room. Plenty of sounds outside in the back; the blurred harmless sounds of a summer night. Radios, and dishes being washed, and a baby crying somewhere, then going off to sleep.

Too early yet, he had a little time yet. That almost made it worse, to have to sit and wait for it to come.

A church bell began to toll. St. Agnes’, the little neighborhood church a couple of blocks over. You could always hear it from here. He counted the strokes. Nine. No, there was another one. Ten already. Gee, time had gone fast. In the dark you couldn’t keep track of it very easy.

It would take Mom a full hour and a half to get over to Aunt Emma’s even if she made good connections. She’d have to cross over to lower Manhattan first, and then go by ferry down the bay, and then take the bus out to where the place was. And another hour and a half to get back, even if she left right away.

But she wouldn’t leave right away. She’d stay on there for a while, even after she found out the message was a fake. She wouldn’t think there was any danger, she trusted everyone so. She always saw the good in everyone. She’d think it was just a harmless joke.

He’d be alone here until at least one, and maybe even after. They knew that. That’s why they were taking their time. That’s why they were waiting. They wanted things to quiet down, they wanted other people to be asleep.

He got up every once in a while and went over to the door and listened. Nothing. The ticking of the clock in the other room was all he could hear.

Maybe if he could push the key out, and it fell close to the door, he could pull it through to his side underneath the door. It was an old, warped door, and the crack seemed pretty wide along the floor.

It was easy to push it out. Pie did that with a pencil stub he had in his pocket. He heard it fall. Then he got a rusty old wire coat hanger that was in the room, and pushed that through the crack on its flat side and started to fish round with it, hoping the flat hook at the top of it would snag the key and scoop it through to him.

He could hear himself hitting it, but each time he’d ease the hanger through, the hook would come back empty. Finally he couldn’t hit it any more at all, and he knew what had happened. He’d pushed it farther away, it was out of reach now entirely. He’d lost it.

The church bell sounded again. Again he counted. Eleven. Had a whole hour passed, just doing that?

Most of the lights in the back windows were out now. The last radio had stopped.

If he could last through the next hour, maybe he’d be all right. From twelve on time would be working in his favor. Mom would be on her way back, and—

He stiffened. There was a single creak, from directly overhead. From them. The first sound they’d made. Trying not to be heard. You could tell the person was going on tiptoe by the slow way it sounded. Cree-eak. It took about a whole half-minute to finish itself.

Then nothing more for a long time. He was afraid to move, he was afraid to breathe. Then another kind of a sound, from a different place. Not wood, but shaky iron. Not overhead, but outside. Not a creak, but a kind of a soft clank.

His eyes flew to the window.

The shade. He should have thought about that sooner. But if there was no light on, nobody could see into the room anyway, even with it up.

He could see out a little. Not much, but just a sort of sooty dark gray color, a little bit lighter than the room itself, that was all. And now this was getting darker, right while he watched it. It was sort of blotting out, as if something was coming down from above, out there in front of the window.

He crouched back against the wall, hunched his head low between his shoulders, like a turtle trying to draw its head into its shell.

The looming shape was up close now, it covered the whole pane, like a black feather bolster. He could see something pale in the middle of it, though, like a face.

Suddenly the middle of it lit up bright silver, in a disk about the size of an egg, and a long spoke of light shot through the glass and into the room.

It started to swing around slowly, following the walls from one side all the way around to the other. It traced a white paper hoop as it went. Maybe if he got down low he could duck under it, it would miss him. He bunched himself up into a ball, head below knees now.

It arrived right over him, on the wall, and there was nothing he could push in front of him, nothing he could get behind. Suddenly it dropped. It flashed square into his squinting face, blinding him.

Then it went out, as suddenly as it had gone on. It wasn’t needed any more. It had told them what they wanted to know. They knew he was in there now. They knew he was alone in there.

He could hear fingers fumbling about the woodwork, trying the window. It wouldn’t move, the nails held it tight.

The looming black blur slowly rose upward, out of sight. The fire escape cleared. There was another creak overhead, on the ceiling. Not so slow or stealthy any more; the need for concealment was past now.

What would they do next? Would they try to get in the other way, down the front stairs? Would they give up? He knew they wouldn’t. They’d gone to too much trouble, sending that phony telegram. It was now or never, they’d never have such an opportunity again.

St. Agnes’ chimed the half-hour. His heart was going so fast, it was just as though he’d run a mile race top speed.

VI

Silence for minutes. Like before thunder, like before something happens. Silence for the last time. Buddy was breathing with his mouth open, that was the only way he could get enough air in. Even that way he couldn’t, he felt as if he were going to choke.

Then a lock jigged a little. Out there, in the room past this. You could hardly hear it, but it gave off little soft turning sounds. The outside door started to open gradually. He could hear one of the hinges whine a little as it turned. Then it closed again.

A skeleton key. They’d used a skeleton key.

The floor softly complained, here, there, the next place, coming straight over toward the door he was behind, the final door. Somebody was in there. Maybe just one. Maybe the both of them together.

They didn’t put on the lights. They were afraid, maybe they’d be seen from outside. They were up to it now, the door to where he was. He almost thought he could hear their breathing, but he wasn’t sure; his own made enough noise for two.

The knob started to turn. Then it went back again to where it had been. They were trying the door. If only they didn’t see the key lying there— But then he realized they didn’t need that one anyway. The same skeleton key that had opened the outside door would work on this.

Maybe he could jam the lock; the pencil stub that he’d used the first time, to force the original key out. He dredged it up from his pocket. Too fast, too hurriedly. He dropped it, and he had to go feeling all over the floor for it, with slapping hands.

He found it again, floundered toward the door. The door seam had gleamed a little, for a moment, as if a light were licking along it, to place the keyhole. Just as he got there, the keyhole sounded off, the key rammed into it.

Too late; the key was in, he was gone.

He looked around for something to shove up against the door, to buy a minute more. Nothing heavy enough. Only that chair he’d been sitting on, and that was no good.

The key was squirming around, catching onto the lock.

He hoisted the chair and he swung it. But the other way, away from the door. He swatted the window pane with all his might. It went out with a torrential crash just as the door broke away from its frame and bucked inward.

He got out through the jagged opening; so fast that his very speed was a factor in saving him. He felt his clothing catch in a couple of places, but the glass didn’t touch his skin.

Heavy running steps hammered across the wooden floor in there behind him. An arm reached through and just missed him. The splintered glass kept the man back, he was too big to chance it as Buddy had.

Buddy scuttled down the fire escape for all his life. And around the turn, and down, and around another turn, and down, like a corkscrew. Then he jumped down to the ground, and ran into the basement.

It was plenty dark down there, and he knew every inch of it by heart from being in there a lot at other times. But he was afraid if he stayed in there they’d come right down after him and trap him, cut off his escape. Then eventually ferret him out, and do it down there instead, in the dark. He wanted the open, he wanted the safety of the streets, where they wouldn’t dare try anything. Where there would be people around who could interfere, come to his rescue.

So he plunged straight through without stopping, and up the janitor’s steps at the front to sidewalk level. Just as he gained the street, panting, the oncoming rush of his pursuer sounded warningly from the cavernous building entrance alongside him, and a moment later the man came careening out after him. He’d come down the front stairs in an attempt to try to cut him off.

Buddy turned and sped away toward the corner, racing as only the very small and the very light in weight can race. But the man had longer legs and greater wind-power, and it was only a matter of minutes before the unequal pursuit would end.

Buddy made the comer and scuffed around it on the sides of his shoes. No one in sight, no one around that offered any chance of protection. The man was closing in on him remorselessly now, every long step swallowing three of Buddy’s. Buddy would have had to be running three times as fast even to break even with him, and he wasn’t even matching his speed. The woman had joined in the chase too, but she was far behind, unimportant to the immediate crisis.

He spotted a row of ashcans just ahead, lined up along the curb. All filled and set out waiting to be emptied. About six, making a bulwark of them about ten yards or so in length. He knew he couldn’t get past them, the man was within about two outstretched arm’s length of him now, and already had one arm out to bridge half the span.

So he ran to the end of them, caught the rim of the last one to swing himself around on — its fill held it down fast — and suddenly doubled back along the other side of them. A feat the man couldn’t hope to match as quickly, as deftly, because of his greater bulk. He went flying out too far on a wasteful ellipse, had to come in again from out there.

Buddy was able to keep their strung-out length between the two of them from now on. The man couldn’t reach across them the short way, all he had to do was swerve back a little out of his reach. The man couldn’t overthrow them either, they were too hefty with coke and ash.

But Buddy knew he couldn’t stay there long, the woman was coming up rapidly and they’d sew him up between the two of them. He stopped short and crouched warily over one of the bins. He gouged both hands into the powdery gritty ash, left them that way for an instant, buried up to the wrists. The man dove for him.

Buddy’s hands shot up. A landmine of the stuff exploded full into the man’s face. He got more of it that way than by throwing it. The whole top layer erupted.

Buddy shot diagonally into the open for the other side, left the readymade barricade behind. The man couldn’t follow him for a minute, he was too busy staggering coughing, pawing, trying to get his eyesight back.

Buddy made the most of it He gained another corner, tors down a new street. But it was just a postponement, not a clear getaway. The man came pounding into sight again behind him after a brief time-lag, murderous now with added intensity. Again those longer legs, the deeper chest, started to get in their work.

Buddy saw a moving figure ahead, the first person he’d seen on the streets since the chase had begun. He raced up abreast a him, started to tug at his arm, too breathless to be able to do anything but pant for a minute. Pant, and point behind him, and keep jerking at his arm.

“Geddada here,” the man said thickly, half-alarmed himself by the frenzied incoherent symptoms. “Warrya doing?”

“Mister, that man’s trying to get me! Mister, don’t let him!”

The man swayed unpredictably to one of Buddy’s tugs, and the two of them nearly went down together in a heap.

A look of idiotic fatuousness overspread his face. “Warrsh matter kid? Somebody trying to getcha?”

A drunk. No good to him. Hardly able to understand what he was saying to him at all.

Buddy suddenly pushed him in the path of the oncoming nemesis. He went down, and the other one sprawled over his legs. Another minute or two gained.

At the upper end of the street Buddy turned off again, into an avenue. This one had tracks, and a lighted trolley was bearing down on him just as he came around the corner. That miracle after dark, a trolley just when it was needed. Its half-hourly passing just coinciding with his arrival at the corner.

He was an old hand at cadging free rides on the backs of them; that was the way he did all his traveling back and forth. He knew just where to put his feet, he knew just where to take hold with his hands.

He turned to face the direction it was going, let it rumble by full length, took a short spurt after it, jumped, and latched on.

The man came around into view too late, saw him being borne triumphantly away. The distance began to widen, slowly but surely; legs couldn’t keep up with a motor, windpower with electricity. But he wouldn’t give up, he kept on running just the same, shrinking in stature now each time Buddy looked back.

“Stop that car!” he shouted faintly from the rear.

The conductor must have thought he merely wanted to board it himself as a fare. Buddy, peering over the rim of the rear window, saw him fling a derisive arm out in answer.

Suddenly the car started to slacken, taper off for an approaching stop. There was a huddle of figures ahead at trackside, waiting to board it. Buddy agonizedly tried to gauge the distance between pursuer, trolley, and intended passengers.

The man was still about twice as far away from it, in the one direction, as they were in the other. If they’d get on quick, if he started right off again, Buddy could still make it, he’d still get away from him, even if only by the skin of his teeth.

The car ground to a stop. A friendly green light was shining offside, at the crossing. The figures, there were three, went into a hubbub. Two helped the third aboard. Then they handed several baskets and parcels after her. Then she leaned down from the top of the step and kissed them severally.

“Goodbye. Get home all right, Aunt Tilly.”

“Thank you for a lovely time.”

“Give my love to Sam.”

“Wait a minute! Aunt Tilly! Your umbrella! Here’s your umbrella!”

The motorman went ding! impatiently, with his foot.

The green light was gone now. There was nothing there in its place, just an eclipse, blackness.

The car gave a nervous little start, about to go forward.

Suddenly red glowered balefully up there. Like blood, like fiery death. The death of a little boy.

The car fell obediently motionless again, static. In the silence you could hear wap-whup, wap-whup, wap-whup, coming up fast from behind.

Buddy dropped down to the ground, too late. The man’s forked hand caught him at the back of the neck like a vise, pinned him flat and squirming against the rear end of the car.

The chase was over. The prey was caught.

“Now I’ve got you,” his captor hissed grimly in his ear.

The treacherous trolley, now Shat it had undone him, withdrew, taking the shine of its lights with it, leaving the two of them alone in the middle of the darkened trackway.

Buddy was too exhausted to struggle much, the man was too winded to do much more than just hold him fast. That was all he needed to do. They stood there together, strangely passive, almost limp, for a few moments. As if taking time out, waiting for a signal to begin their struggle anew.

VII

The woman came up presently. There was a cold business-like quality to her undertone worse than any imprecations could have been. She spoke as though she were referring to a basket of produce.

“All right, get him out of the middle of the street, Joe. Don’t leave him out here.”

Buddy went into a flurry of useless struggling, like a snagged pin-wheel, that ended almost as soon as it began. The man twisted his arm around behind his back and held it that way, using it as a lever to force submission. The pain was too excruciating to disobey.

They remounted the sidewalk and walked along with him between them. Sandwiched between them, very close between them, so that from the front you couldn’t tell he was being strongarmed. The pressure of their two bodies forced him along as well as the compulsion of his disjointed arm.

Wouldn’t they meet anybody, anybody at all? Was the whole town off the streets, just tonight? Suddenly they did.

There were two men this time. Not swaying, walking straight and steady, cold sober. Men you could reason with. They’d help him, they’d have to. They were coming toward him and his captors. Otherwise the latter would have tried to avoid them. They couldn’t; the men had turned the corner just before them too abruptly, catching them in full view.

A retreat would have aroused suspicion.

The man Joe took a merciless extra half-turn in his already fiery arm just as a precaution. “One word out of you,” he gritted, “and I’ll yank it off by the roots!”

Buddy waited until the two parties were abreast of one another, mustering up strength against the pain; both present pain and the pain to come.

Then he sideswept one foot, bit its heel savagely into his captor’s unprotected shin bone. The man heaved from the pavement, released Buddy’s arm by reflex.

Buddy flung himself almost in a football tackle against the nearest of the two passers-by, wrapped both arms about his leg, and held on like a barnacle.

“Mister, help me! Mister, don’t let ’em!”

The man, hobbled, was unable to move another step. His companion halted likewise. “What the—!”

“Y’gotta listen! Y’gotta believe—!” Buddy sputtered, to get his lick in first. “They killed a man last night. Now they’re gonna do the same thing to me!”

Joe didn’t do what he’d expected. He didn’t grab for him, he didn’t show violence, even anger. There was a sudden change of attitude that threw Buddy off key, put him at a disadvantage. The thing had become psychological instead of physical. And he wasn’t so good psychologically.

The line-up had turned into one of age groups before he knew how it had happened; a kid against four grownups. Grownups that gave each other the benefit of the doubt sooner than they would give it to a kid.

“His own mother and father,” Joe murmured with mournful resignation. The woman turned her back and her shoulders shook.

“He doesn’t mean to lie,” Joe said with parental indulgence. “He makes these things up, and he believes it himself. His imagination is over-active.”

“They’re not my parents, they’re not!” Buddy groaned abysmally.

“Well, tell them where you live, then,” Joe said suavely.

“Yeah, kid, give us your address,” one of the two strangers put in.

“Twenty Holt Street!” Buddy rushed in incautiously.

Joe had suddenly whipped out a billfold, held it open for the men to see some sort of corroboratory identification. “Tor once he admits he lives with us,” he said ruefully. “Usually—”

“He stole five dollars out of my pocketbook,” the woman chimed in tearfully, “My gas bill money for this month. Then he went to the movies. He’s been gone since three this afternoon, we only found him just now. This has been going on all the way home.”

“They killed a man,” Buddy screeched. “They cut him up with a razor.”

“That was in the picture he just saw,” Joe said with a disheartened shake of his head.

The woman was crouched supplicatingly before Buddy now, dabbing her handkerchief at his face in maternal solicitude, trying to clean it “Won’t you behave now? Won’t you come home like a good boy?”

The two strangers had turned definitely against him. The woman’s tears, the man’s sorrowful forbearance, were having an effect One man looked at the other. “Gee, I’m sure glad I never married, Mike, if this is what you get.”

The other one bent over and detached Buddy none too gently, “C’mon, leggo of me,” he said gruffly. “Listen to your parents, do like they tell you.”

He dusted off his trouser leg where Buddy had manhandled it, in eloquent indication of having nothing more to do with the matter. They went on about their business, down the street

The tableau remained unaltered behind them for as long as they were still within call. The woman crouched before Buddy, but her unseen hand had a vicious death grip on the front of his shirt.

Joe was bending over him from behind, as if gently reasoning with him. But he had his arm out of kilter again, holding it coiled up behind his back like a mainspring.

“You — little devil!” he exhaled through tightly clenched teeth.

“Get him in a taxi, Joe. We can’t keep parading him on the open street like this.”

They said something between them that he didn’t quite catch. “—that boarded-up place. Kids play around there a lot” Then they both nodded in malignant understanding.

A cold ripple went up his back. He didn’t know what they meant, but it was something bad. They even had to whisper it to each other, it was so bad. That boarded-up place. A place for dark, secret deeds that would never come to light again; not for years, anyway.

A cab glided up at the man’s up-chopping arm, and they went into character again, “It’s the last time I ever take you out with me!” the woman scolded, with one eye on the driver. “Now you get in there!”

They wrestled him into it between them, feet clear of the ground; the woman holding his flailing legs, the man his head and shoulders; his body sagging in the middle like a sack of potatoes. They dumped him on the seat, and then held him down fast between them.

“Corner of Amherst and Twenty-second,” the man said. Then as the machine glided off, he murmured out of the corner of his mouth to the woman, “Lean over a little, get in front of us.” Her body blocked Buddy from the oblivious driver’s sight for a moment.

The man pulled a short, wicked punch with a foreshortened arm, straight up from below, and Buddy saw stars and his ears rang. He didn’t lose his senses, but he was dazed to a passive acquiescence for a few minutes. Little gritty pieces of tooth enamel tickled his tongue, and his eyes ran water without actually crying.

The cab stopped for a light, while he was slowly getting over the effects of the blow. Metal clashed, and a figure on the opposite side of the street closed a call box and leisurely sauntered on.

A policeman, at last! What he’d been hoping for, what he’d been praying for.

The woman’s hand, handkerchief-lined, guessed his intent too late, tried to find his mouth and clamp itself tight over it. He swerved his head, sank his teeth into her fingers. She recoiled with a stifled exclamation, whipped her hand away.

Buddy tore loose with the loudest scream he could summon; it almost pulled the lining of his throat inside out “Mr. Officer! Mr. Pleeeceman! Help me, will ya? Help me!”

The policeman turned on his course, came toward them slowly. A kid’s cry for help, that wasn’t the same as a grownup’s cry for help, that wasn’t as immediate, as crucial.

He looked in the cab window at the three of them. He even rested his forearm negligently along the rim as he did so. He wasn’t on the alert; it couldn’t be anything much, a kid squawking in a taxicab.

“What’s up?” he said friendlily. “What’s the hollering for?”

“He knows what he’s going to get when we get home with him, that’s what’s up!” the woman said primly. “And you can holler at all the policemen you want to, young man, that won’t save you!”

“ ’Fraid of a licking, hunh?” the cop grinned understandingly. “A good licking never hurt any kid. My old man useta gimme enough of ’em when I was—” He chuckled appreciatively. “But that’s a new one, calling the cops on your old man and lady to keep from getting a licking! I tell you, these kids nowadays are bad—

“He turned in a false alarm one time,” the “father” complained virtuously, “to try to keep me from shellacking him!”

The cop whistled.

The cab driver turned his head and butt in, unasked. “I got two of my own, home. And if they gave me half as much trouble as this young pup’s been giving these folks here since they first hailed me, I’d knock their blocks off, I’m telling you.”

“They m-m-murdered a man last night, with a knife, and then they cut him up in pieces and—” Buddy sobbed incoherently.

“What a dirty mind he’s got,” the cop commented disapprovingly. He took a closer look at Buddy’s contorted face. “Wait a minute, don’t I know you, kid?”

There was a breathless silence. Buddy’s heart soared like a balloon. At last, at last—

“Sure, I remember you now. You come over with that same story and made a lot of trouble for us at the station house this morning. Wasting everybody’s time. Brundage even sent somebody over to investigate, like a fool. And was his face red afterwards! A lot of hot air. You’re the very one. I seen you there myself. Then one of the guys had to take you home afterwards to get rid of you. Are you the parents?”

“Do you think we’d be going through this if we weren’t?” Joe demanded bitterly.

“Well, you’ve sure got my sympathy.” He waved them on disgustedly. “Take him away. You can have him!”

The cab glided into lethal motion again. Buddy’s heart went over supinely, in ultimate despair. Wasn’t there anyone in the whole grownup world believed you? Did you have to be a grownup yourself before anyone would believe you, stop you from being murdered?

He didn’t try to holler out the window any more at the occasional chance passers-by he glimpsed flitting by. What was the use? They wouldn’t help him. He was licked. Salty water coursed from his eyes, but he didn’t make a sound.

“Any p’tickler number?” the driver asked.

“The corner’ll do,” Joe said plausibly. “We live just a couple doors up the street.” He paid off before they got out, in order to have both hands free for Buddy once they alighted.

The cab slowed, and they emerged with him, started walking hurriedly away. Buddy’s feet slithered along the ground more than they actually lifted themselves. The cab wheeled and went back the way it had come.

“Think he’ll remember our faces later?” the woman breathed worriedly.

“It’s not our faces that count, it’s the kid’s face,” Joe answered her. “And nobody’ll ever see that again.”

As soon as the cab was safely gone, they reversed directions and went up another street entirely.

“There it is, over there,” Joe said guardedly.

VIII

It was a derelict tenement, boarded up, condemned, but not demolished. It cast a pall of shadow, so that even while they were still outside in front of it, they could scarcely be seen. It sent forth an odor of decay. It was, Buddy knew, the place where death was.

They stopped short. “Anyone around?” Joe said watchfully.

Then suddenly he embraced the boy; a grim sort of embrace if there ever was one, without love in it. He wrapped his arms around his head and clutched him to him tight, so that his hand sealed Buddy’s mouth. Buddy had no chance to bite him as he had the woman. The pressure against his jaws was too great, he couldn’t even open them.

He carried him that way, riding on his own hip so to speak, over to the seemingly secure boarded-up doorway. He spaded his free hand under this, tilted it out, wormed his way through, and whisked Buddy after him. The woman followed and replaced it. A pall of complete darkness descended on the three of them. The stench was terrific in here. It wasn’t just the death of a building; it was — some other kind of death as well. Death in two suitcases, perhaps.

“How’d you know that was open?” the woman whispered in surprise.

“How do you suppose?” he answered with grisly meaning.

“This where?” was all she said.

The man had taken his torch out. It snapped whitely at a skeleton stair, went right out again; instantaneously as the lens of a camera.

“Wait here where you are; don’t smoke,” he warned her. “I’m going up aways.”

Buddy could guess that he didn’t knock him completely out because that would have made him too heavy to handle. He wanted him to get up there on his own two feet, if possible. They started to climb, draggingly. The soundtrack went: crunch, crunch, skfff. That was Buddy’s feet trailing passively over the lips of the steps.

He was too numbed with terror now to struggle much any more. It was no use anyway. No one anywhere around outside to hear him through the thick mouldering walls. If they hadn’t helped him outside on the street, they were never going to help him in here.

Joe used his torch sparingly, only a wink at a time. Only when one flight had ended and they were beginning another. He wasn’t taking any chances using it too freely. It was like a white Morse Code on black paper. Dot, dot, dot. Spelling out one word: death.

They halted at last. They must have reached the top now. There was a busted skylight somewhere just over them. It was just as black as ever, but a couple of low-wattage stars could be made out.

Joe pressed Buddy back flat against the wall, held him that way with one hand at his throat. Then he clipped his light on, left it that way this time. He wanted to see what he was doing. He set it down on the floor, left it that way, alight, trained on Buddy.

Then his other hand closed in to finish the job.

A minute, maybe a minute and a half, would be all he needed. Life goes out awfully quick; even manually, which is one of the slowest ways.

“Say goodbye, kid,” he murmured ironically.

You fight when you die, because — that’s what everything alive does, that’s what being alive is.

Buddy couldn’t fight off the man’s arms. But his legs were free. The man had left them free, so he could die standing up. Buddy knew a man’s stomach is soft, the softest part of him. He couldn’t kick it free-swinging, because the man was in too close. He kicked upward with his knee, rammed it home. He could feel it pillow itself into something rubbery. A flame of hot body breath was expelled against him, like those pressure things you dry yourself with.

The death collar opened and the man’s hand went to his middle. Buddy knew that one such punch wasn’t enough. This was death and you gave no quarter. The man had given him the space he needed. He shot his whole foot out this time, sole flat. There was almost a sucking noise, as if it had gone into a waterlogged sponge.

The man went all the way back. He must have trodden on the cylindrical light. It spun crazily around. Off Buddy, onto the man for an instant. Then off the man, onto somewhere else. You couldn’t follow it with your eyes, it jittered too quick.

There was a splintering of wood. There was a strange sagging feeling, that made everything shake. Then a roaring sound, like a lot of heavy stuff going down a chute. The light flashed across the space once, and showed nothing: no Joe, no rail, no anything.

Then it pitched down into nothingness itself.

There was a curious sort of playback, that came seconds late, from somewhere far below. Like an echo, only it wasn’t. Of something heavy and firm, something with bones in it, bones and a skull, smacking like a gunshot report. A woman’s voice screamed “Joe!” hollowly.

Then a lot of loose planks went clat-clat, clat, clattity, bang! The woman’s voice just groaned after that, didn’t scream any more. Then the groans stopped too. A lot of plaster dust came up and tickled Buddy’s nose and smarted his eyes.

It was very still, and he was alone in the dark. Something told him not to move. He just stood there, pressed himself flat and stood there. Something kept telling him not to move, not to move a finger. He didn’t know what it was, maybe the way his hair stood up on the back of his neck. As if his hair could see in the dark better than he could, knew something that he didn’t.

It didn’t last long. There were suddenly a lot of voices down there, as if people had come running in from the street. And lights winking around. Then a stronger one than the rest, a sort of thick searchlight beam, shot all the way up, and jockeyed around, and finally found him.

The whole stair structure was gone. A single plank, or maybe two, had held fast against the wall, and he was standing on them. Like on a shelf. A shelf that ended at his toes. Five floors up.

A voice came up to him through a megaphone, trying to be very calm, very friendly; shaking a little around the edges, though.

“Close your eyes, kid. We’ll get you down. Just don’t look, keep your eyes closed. Think hard of something else. Do you know your multiplication tables?”

Buddy nodded cautiously, afraid to move his head too much.

“Start saying them. Two times two, two times three. Keep your eyes closed. You’re in school and the teacher’s right in front of you. But don’t change your position. He was in Six-A, didn’t they know that? You got multiplication in the first grade. But he did it anyway. He finished the two, he finished the threes. He stopped.

“Mister,” he called down in a thin but clear voice. “How much longer do I have to hold out? I’m getting pins and needles in my legs, and I’m stuck at four times twenty-three.”

“Do you want it fast and just a little risky, kid, or do you want it slow and safe?”

“Fast and a little risky,” he answered. “I’m getting kind of dizzy.”

“All right, son,” the voice boomed back. “We’ve got a net spread out down here. We can’t show it to you, you’ll have to take our word for it.”

“There may be loose planks sticking out on the way down, another voice objected, in an undertone that somehow reached him.

“It’ll take hours the other way, and he’s been through enough already.” The voice directed itself upward to him again. “Keep your arms close to your sides, keep your feet close together, open your eyes, and when I count three, jump.

“—three!”

He was never going to get there. Then he did, and he bounced, and it was over, he was safe.

He cried for a minute or two, and he didn’t know why himself; it must have been left over from before, when Joe was trying to kill him. Then he got over it.

He hoped they hadn’t seen him. “I wasn’t crying,” he said. “All that stuff got in my eyes, and stung them.”

“Same here,” Detective Ross, his one-time enemy, said gravely. And the funny part of it was, his eyes were kind of shiny too.

Joe was lying there dead, his head sticking out between two planks. They’d carried the woman out on a stretcher.

Somebody came up and joined them with a sick look on his face. “We’ve pulled two valises out from under what’s left of those stairs back there.”

“Better not look in them just yet,” Ross warned.

“I already did,” he gulped, and he bolted out into the street, holding his hand clapped to his mouth.

They rode Buddy back in state, in a departmental car. In the middle of all of them, like a — like a mascot.

“Gee, thanks for saving me,” he said gratefully.

“We didn’t save you, son. You saved yourself. We’re a great bunch. We were just a couple minutes too late. We would have caught them, all right, but we wouldn’t have saved you.”

“How’d you know where to come, though?”

“Picking up the trail was easy, once we got started. A cop back there remembered you, a cab driver showed where he let you out. It was just that we started so late.”

“But what made you believe it now all of a sudden, when you wouldn’t believe it this morning?”

“A couple little things came up,” Ross said. “Little, but they counted. The Kellerman woman mentioned the exact program you were supposed to have overheard last night, by name. It sounded better that way, more plausible. It’s the exact time, the exact type: it fitted in too good to waste. But by doing that she saved your life tonight. Because I happened to tune in myself tonight. Not out of suspicion, just for my own entertainment. If it was that good, I wanted to hear it myself.

“And it was that good, and even better. It’s a serial, it’s continued every night. Only at the end, the announcer apologized to the listeners for not being on the air at all last night. Tuesday’s election, and the program gave up its time to one of the candidates. And what you’d said you heard was sure no campaign speech!

“That was one thing. Then I went straight over to their flat. Pretty late, and almost as bad as never. They must have already been on the way with you. Everything in order, just like I’d seen it the first time. Only, a towel fell down from in back of the bathroom door, as I brushed past. And under it, where nobody could be blamed for overlooking it, not even the two of them themselves, there was a well-worn razor strop. The kind you use for an open blade, never a safety. With a fleck of fairly fresh soap still on it. Just a couple of things like that, they came awfully late, but that counted!

“Come on, Buddy, here’s your home. I’ll go with you.”

It was already getting light out, and when they knocked, Buddy said in a scared whisper, “Gee, now I’m going to get it for sure! I been out the whole night long!”

“Detectives have to be sometimes, didn’t you know that?” And Ross took his own badge off and pinned it on him.

The door opened, and his father was standing there. Without a word, he swung his arm back.

Ross reached up and held it where it was.

“Now, now, just be careful who you raise the back of your hand to around here. It’s a serious matter to swat a member of the Detective Bureau, you know. Even if he happens to be an auxiliary, junior grade.”