Deadline at Dawn

Chapter 4

They came out into the slumbering early-morning desolation, flitted quickly past the brief bleach of the close-at-hand street-light, and were swallowed up again in the darkness on the other side of it. The street-lights, stretching away into perspective in their impersonal, formalized, zig-zag pattern, only added to the look of void and loneliness. There was not a single one of those other, warmer, personal lights to be seen anywhere about, above or below, denoting human presence behind a window, living occupancy within a doorway.

It was like walking through a massive, monolithic sepulchre. There was no one abroad, nothing that moved. Not even a cat scenting at a garbage-can. The city was a dead thing, over here on its margins, and like a dead thing it was stark and clammy, it frightened them a little. They drew closer in together even as they moved forward; suddenly without noticing she was hanging on his arm and he had drawn his arm protectively closer against his side, pressing her suppliance to him. They were not walking now as they had walked the time before, coming over here; spaced and self-sufficient. They were huddled together shoulder to shoulder as they moved. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the exacerbated stillness, as though the street were one long plank bridging a hollow space beneath them.

He raised his hat in mock leave-taking, which only imperfectly covered up a very real trepidation. “Goodbye, Manhattan.”

She quickly sealed his mouth for a minute with a sort of superstitious intensity. “Sh, not so loud. Don’t tip our hand to it ahead of time. Don’t let on to it. It’ll cross us sure as you know.”

He looked at her and grinned a little. “You really take that halfway serious, don’t you?”

“More than you know,” she said somberly. “And I’m more right than you know, too.”

At the corner he stopped, put down the valise a second. Here along the avenue there was motion, in contrast to the side-street they had just issued from, but it was cold, jewel-like, and it had thinned since before. It was as though the string holding the red and white beads had broken, and the last lingering few were rolling off into the distance.

“You better go down and wait for me at the bus terminal. I’ll go over alone about — the other thing, first, and then I’ll meet you down there.”

She tightened her grip on his arm convulsively, as if afraid of losing him. “No, no. If we separate, we’re licked. The city’ll get its dirty work in. I’ll think, ‘Can I trust him?’ You’ll think, ‘Can I trust her?’ And before you know it— No, no. We’re staying together, every step of the way. I’m going right over there with you. I’ll wait outside the door while you go in.”

“But suppose he’s gotten home by now? You’ll only— They’re likely to pick you up for complicity.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. You’d be taking it even without me, so we’re going to take it together. See if you can see a cab anywhere around; the longer we take getting over there, the more dangerous it’ll be.”

“On your money?”

“This reformation is on me,” she answered.

They got one finally, by a process of walking slowly north, and stopping and throwing up their arms in unison whenever a pair of the lighted beads raced close enough past to seem likely to see them. One pair swerved in as if about to leap the curb and run them down, swelled larger, stopped, and turned into a cab. They ran for it without waiting for it to correct its discrepancy of halting place, and clambered in one at the other’s heels.

“Take us up to the east side Seventies,” he said. “I’ll tell you where to stop when we get there. Go fast. Go up through the park, that’s quicker.”

It raced north with them, and then over through the classic fashionableness of Fifty-seventh, and then in at the Seventh Avenue entrance, stopping only when it had to for the red disks that seemed to multiply perversely so that one leaped up to bar them at every crossing. Then after that it didn’t have to stop any more, though the roadway used up some of the gain by becoming curved and indirect.

Once in the cab they hadn’t spoken until, at one of the halts, he asked her: “What’re you sitting way over in the corner, keeping your head back, like that for?”

“It’s watching us. It’s got a thousand eyes. Every time a street goes by, it’s like there was an eye hidden deep back along it somewhere, an eye that we can’t see, keeping tabs on us, giving itself the wink. We haven’t fooled it any. It knows we’re trying to run out on it. It’s going to trip us yet if it can.”

“Gee, you’re superstitious, aren’t you!” he commented indulgently.

“When you’ve got an enemy, and you’re wise to it, that don’t make you superstitious, that just makes you canny.”

Then later she peered rearward through the edge of the cab-window. Back toward the west side skyline, now that their passage through the park was giving it depth enough of perspective; towers rearing like menacing black cacti against the reflection-lightened sky.

“Look. Don’t it look cruel? Don’t it look sneaky and underhanded, like it was just waiting to pounce and dig its claws into someone, anyone at all—?”

He chuckled a little, but only with moderate conviction. “All cities look like that at night, kind of shady and dim, tricky and not very friendly—”

“I hate it,” she said with whispered vehemence. “It’s bad. And it’s alive, it’s got will-power of its own, no one can tell me different.”

“It’s never done me any favors,” he admitted. “I feel about like you do, I guess. Except I never thought of it as just one person, like you do; I thought of it more as — conditions, breaks.”

Ahead of them a new skyline was looming, to take the place of the one that had dropped down out of sight behind them by now. The great gap in the middle of the city made by Central Park closed up again and they entered the East Side. New York, from Fifty-ninth Street to One Hundred and Tenth, is not one city but two; everyone knows that but few stop to think of it. Two widely-separated cities, more far-apart from one another than St. Paul is from Minneapolis or Kansas City, Missouri, from Kansas City, Kansas.

The famous East Side, the Gold Coast, the Butterfield-8 Exchange, that thin veneer of what the Victorians used to call elegance, and what moderns call smartness, spread very thin, not more than three blocks deep anywhere along its entire extent, Fifth to Park or so, and then behind that all the rest of the way to the river, pretty much the same drab huddle as anywhere else in the town.

The driver brought them out at Seventy-second, tacked to correct the unavoidable discrepancy the park-outlet had imposed, and went down Fifth a couple of blocks. Quinn stopped him at Sixty-ninth, a block past, so that he wouldn’t be able to identify their destination too exactly. “We’ll take it from here,” he said to him clippedly.

They got out and paid him and put the little valise down between them, like a sort of dry-land anchor, and then just stood waiting for him to get out of the way. He stepped on the gas and went down Fifth again, toward where there was more life and better chances.

As soon as he was safely gone they walked as far as the next corner, Seventieth, and turned it, but no more. Then as soon as they were safely within the sheltering shadows of the side-street just beyond the corner, they stopped again briefly and made their arrangements to separate.

It was their first separation since they’d been one in purpose. She didn’t like it. She would have rather there weren’t to be any at all, not even such a brief one as this. But she didn’t urge him to let her go right in with him, because she knew he wouldn’t have heard of it. It would make the attempt more of a blind risk, at that. This way she could serve as a sort of look-out. But she didn’t like it; still and all, she didn’t like it.

“You can see it from here. It’s on this side, on the even-numbered side, just past the second street-light down there,” he said guardedly, looking all around to make sure they weren’t observed. “Don’t come any nearer than this, just in case. Wait here with your valise. I’ll be back in no time. Don’t be frightened. Take it easy.”

She was already, but she would have died rather than let him know. It wasn’t in the way he meant, anyway. He meant: don’t be frightened for yourself. She wasn’t. She was something she’d never been before. She was frightened for someone else. She was frightened for him.

“Don’t take any chances. If you see any lights, if it looks like he’s gotten back already, don’t go all the way in — just drop the money inside the door. Let him pick it up from there in the morning. It doesn’t have to go right smack back in the safe. And be careful — he may even be in bed already, with the lights out, and you won’t know it.”

He gave his hat brim a determined tug, moved away from her down the silent street. She watched him go. Watched his figure getting smaller all around the edges, shrinking down to half-size and even less. She didn’t move a muscle; she was like some sort of pointer, except that she had no paw raised from the ground. Her heart was putting on more steam than it needed just for her to stand still like that.

The second light hit him a glancing blow, just on one side of him, then he darkened up again. She saw him glance cautiously around, and she knew he was up to it. It was just a skinny slice of stone from here, sandwiched in among the rest, with a stoop running down from it. He turned aside, went up that to the entrance. A pair of swinging, glass outer doors flicked out, then flattened back again.

He went in.

The act of restitution was under way.

The moment he had entered, she picked up her valise and started moving slowly down that way after him, in spite of his cautioning her to stay where she was. She wanted to be as near him as she could. She kept rooting for him as she edged along.

Her lips moved soundlessly, like a Sicilian warding off the evil eye. “If it catches on it’ll do something to interfere, do something to throw a hitch in it; try to keep him the crook it just about had him ready to turn into.”

It was always the same “it” with her, the same enemy. The city.

She looked down at the fingers of her free hand, and without her knowing it two of them had crossed themselves rigidly, held themselves pressed that way into her flank.

She addressed a sultry warning to “it” through baleful, half-parted lips, meant to frighten it off as she frightened too-intrusive customers at the mill. “Let him alone now, hear me? You keep out of it. Let him go through with it.”

It leered somnolently back at her down the long tunnel-like vista of sooty gray and dark-blue and out-and-out pitch-black that were the colors of the night palette.

She’d reached the house now herself. She continued on past it, in order not to attract attention by stopping in front of it. The entryway, the vestibule between the outer glass doors and the inner one, the one that was the real bulwark, showed empty by the reflected street-light as she glanced in with elaborate dissimulation on her way by. He’d gone all the way in, into the depths of it, closed the door after him.

But suppose that one particular member of the family who was known to have stayed behind was upstairs asleep in there right now? Suppose Quinn didn’t catch on in time? He’d cut off his own retreat, closing the door after him like that. Suppose the inmate woke up, discovered him—

She tried to shut the terrifying thought away. Nothing had gone wrong the first time, when he entered on a dishonest errand. Why should anything go wrong this time, when he entered on an honest one?

The city. That would be just like the city, though.

“Let him alone now, hear? Now let him alone, do you get me?”

She was well past it now, in the other direction. She stole a look back. Nothing had happened yet; no outcries, no sudden brightening of upper-story windows, so he hadn’t been discovered yet.

Her fingers were lame, they were so tired from being crossed so tight. She was like some sort of a slow-motion sentry posted out here to protect him. Like a picket, keeping the city out. Staunch, defiant, with no weapon but a lightweight valise swinging at her side. And after awhile she needed the courage for herself as well.

She was trying her best to be calm, but there was a tumult going on all around her heart as she sauntered along so dilatorily, so aimlessly. He was taking longer than he should, wasn’t he? Even without using light, it shouldn’t be taking him that long just to get upstairs to the second floor of a house and down again. He should have been out again by now. He should have been out before now.

It was still breaking and entering, even to return the money. And if he was caught returning it, how could he prove he was returning it, and not just removing it for the first time? He had to get out of there and in the clear, before the restoration held any virtue in it. Maybe Quinn should have mailed it back, instead of coming back in person with it. He and she hadn’t thought of that; she wished now they had.

A figure suddenly materialized at the lower corner ahead, on the opposite side from her. It didn’t move out very far, just detached itself slightly and then stood still. It was just barely visible beyond the building-line, standing with its back to her. A patrolman on his tour of duty. She whisked herself quickly down into the shelter of one of the shadowed areaways at hand, valise and all. It would have looked too suspicious to be seen loitering about there on the sidewalk at such an hour, with a piece of luggage in her hand.

If he came up this way— If Quinn should happen to come out while he was still down there at the corner— Her heart wasn’t just beating, it was swinging from side to side and looping around in a complete circle like a pendulum gone crazy.

Metal clinked faintly as he opened a call-box to report in. That’s what he was doing, standing there like that with his back to her. Even the blurred sound of his voice reached her in the stillness of the night air. She caught: “Larsen reporting in, two fifty-five,” something like that. The box clashed shut again. She shrank back against the sheltering base of the stoop that walled one side of the little quadrangular hollow she was in. She was afraid to look to see which way he’d go now, afraid he’d come up this way, past her. She heard the very faint scrape his footsteps made, crossing over the mouth of the street down there, to this same side she was on. Then it faded, slight as it had been, and wasn’t any more.

She peered infinitesimally out, and he wasn’t in sight, he’d gone on past along the avenue. She let her breath out slowly, stepped up onto sidewalk-level again. Now she knew what it meant, what he’d felt, Quinn, when he kept looking behind him on the way over to her place from the mill earlier tonight; insecurity was awfully contagious.

She drifted back the other way, eying the inscrutable house-front apprehensively as she neared it. What had happened to him in there? What had gone wrong, to hold him so long? He should have been out ages ago.

Just as she came abreast of the near end of the house, the vestibule-doors up above parted noiselessly and he appeared between them. They fell to again behind him but he didn’t move at once. He stood there looking down at her as though he didn’t see her. Or as though he did see her but didn’t know her.

Then he moved to the rim of the steps and started down.

But there was something the matter with the way he was coming out of there. It wasn’t fast enough. It was both too slow and something else besides; stupid, that was it. He was coming out too slow and stupid. As though he didn’t know where he was. No, that wasn’t it. As though — this was it — as though it didn’t matter whether he came out or stayed inside.

Twice he broke his uncertain descent to stop and look behind him up at the doorway he’d just come through. He was almost staggering with a sort of lassitude.

She’d reached him with a quick questioning step or two. She got to him just as he got to the bottom.

She stood a smattering of inches from him now. Even in the gloom, she thought, his face looked white and taut.

“What’s the matter? What’re you looking so frightened about?” she whispered hoarsely.

He kept staring blankly at her in a sort of dazed incomprehension. She couldn’t get it right out of him. Whatever it was had log-jammed in him. She put down the valise and shook him slightly by both shoulders.

“You’ve got to tell me. Don’t stand there looking like that. What happened in there?”

It had a hard time coming, but it came. Her slight shake had dislodged it.

“He’s been killed in there. He’s dead. He’s lying in there — dead.”

She gave a shuddering intake of breath. “Who, the... the man that lives there?”

“I guess so. The man I saw going out early this evening, the one I told you about.” He passed his hand across his brow, under his hat brim.

For a moment, of the two, she was the more stricken one, the more frustrated at any rate, for she knew who their adversary was, he didn’t.

She leaned against the stone side-arm of the stoop, wilted. “It did it,” she said dully, her eyes sightless over the top of his head. “I knew it would. I knew it wouldn’t let us square it. It never does. It’s got us now good, better than before. It’s got us just where it wants us.”

Apathy only lasted a moment. It teaches you how to fight, too. It teaches you a lot of bad things, but it teaches you one good thing. It teaches you how to fight. It’s always trying to kill you, so you learn to fight just to live at all.

She made a move, a sudden turn, as if to go on up the steps.

He reached out and caught her, held her tightly gripped, tried to turn her around again the way she’d been. “No, don’t you go in there! Stay out of there!” He tried to pull her down to the sidewalk, from the step or two she’d gained above it. “Hurry up, get out of here! Get away from in front of this house! I shouldn’t have let you come over here with me in the first place. Go down there, get your own ticket, climb on the bus, and forget you ever ran into me at all tonight.” She struggled passively against his hold. “Bricky, will you listen to me? Get out of here, beat it, before they—”

He tried to push her before him a step or two along the sidewalk to start her on her way. She only swerved around in a loop and came back to him again, in closer than before. “I only want to know one thing. I only want you to tell me one thing. It wasn’t you, was it — the first time you were in there? You didn’t, did you?”

“No! I only took the money, that was all. He wasn’t there. I didn’t see him at all. He must have come back since. Bricky, you’ve got to believe me.”

She smiled sadly at him in the semi-darkness. “It’s all right, Quinn. I know you didn’t. I know. I should have known even without asking. The boy next door, he’d never kill anyone.”

“I can’t go back now,” he murmured. “I’m finished. Cooked. They’ll think I did it. It knits in too close with what I did do. They’d only be waiting to get me at the other end, when I got there. And if it has to happen, I’d rather have it happen here, than there where everyone knows me. I’m staying, now. No use bucking it. Let it happen. I’ll wait. But you—” And again he tried to jostle her on her way. “Please go. Will you, Bricky? Please.”

This time she was immovable, he couldn’t even budge her. “You didn’t do it, right? Then let me alone, don’t push me any more, Quinn. I’m going in with you.”

She drew herself up defiantly beside him. But her defiance wasn’t of him; she looked out, and around them, at it. “The city, the city,” she breathed vindictively. “We’ll show it. We’re not licked yet. The deadline is still good. We still have until daylight. No one knows yet, they haven’t found him, or the place’d be full of policemen by this time. No one knows; only us — and whoever did it. We’ve still got time. Somewhere in this town there’s a clock that’s a friend of mine. I know that it’s saying right now, even if we can’t see it from where we are, that we’ve still got a little time. Not as much as we had before, but some. Don’t quit, Quinn, don’t quit. It’s never too late, until the last second of the last minute of the last hour.”

She was shaking him again, by the arms, imploringly. But this time to put something into him, not to drag something out of him.

“Come on, we’re going back in there and see if we can figure this thing out. We’ve got to. It’s our only hope. We want to go home; you know we do. We’re fighting for our happiness, Quinn; we’re fighting for our lives. And we have until six o’clock to win our fight.”

She could hardly hear him. But he’d turned toward the flight of steps, leading up, leading in. “Come on, battler,” he said softly. “Come on, champ.”

Her arm unconsciously slipped through his going up the steps, both to lend courage and to borrow; it was a case of mutual support. Strangely formal promenade, slow and frightened and very brave, into the place where death was.