Black Curtain (4 page)

Night. That meant night, that little brush stroke of black lying there athwart the ground. Night, the time of fear, the enemy.

He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to put walls around himself, light lights, shut doors. In palpitant awareness of the unseen he got up and moved along the winding path through the twilight. Only the slow dignity of his outer step was adult; inside he was a lost child moving through a scary array of goblin trees. with a lighted cigarette for protective talisman instead of crossed fingers.

4

He didn't like having to fool Virginia like this. He wanted to tell her. Several times he almost did, but then he checked himself each time, He hated to dump this on her, particularly because it was such a sketchy, formless danger. She'd had so much trouble already. Three years of it. Across the dinner table he could still see the traces of what she'd been through. Her eyes were sad. And she still didn't laugh as she had before he went away. You couldn't go through anything like that and not have it do something to you.

So he didn't tell her. Let her enjoy her peace while she had it.

Then, with a soundless flash that should have lighted up the silverware and dishes around him, came a sudden realization of renewed danger that bad escaped him until now for some strange reason. His address here, his name, and all other pertinent information about him were on file down where he had worked, accessible to the most casual inquiry.

All through those vacant, staring hours in the park, that had never occurred to him. He had been an ostrich, burying its head while its tail plumes flaunted in the breeze.

It was the inevitable next step, too. Agate Eyes had found the building he worked in; that was today. By tomorrow he would find the exact floor. Then the right door on that floor. And once he had found that, he would painlessly extract the information of where Townsend lived. The pursuit would suddenly overleap the distance he had imposed on it, strike home here. And from here there was no easy retreat possible. Here there was Virginia. Here he was rooted fast.

He had just postponed the inevitable, gained a day or two at the most.

There might still be time. Time, that ally of all frightened things, ever since there first was fear. Maybe they could be persuaded to withhold his address, shield him.

He would have given anything to be able to get in touch with them then and there, get it over with; he would have felt that much safer before he went to bed and tried to sleep. This way he'd have an uneasy feeling that the wheels of pursuit were still grinding, somewhere unseen, all night long, while he lay in false security. He'd have to wait until the morning to reach them; there wasn't anyone down there after six. If he'd only thought of it in time, he'd had all afternoon long in which to do it, while he sat there idling in the park. He paced back and forth, as though trying to wear the night away, like a carpet is worn away by walking on it. But the evening's quarter hours went by no more quickly than if he'd been sitting patiently in a chair, and he saw that he was only making Virginia uneasy by his restlessness.

There was one hope: if he couldn't reach them during the night to protect himself, neither could his nemesis reach them during the night to extract any information out of them.

In the morning it was the first thing on his mind as his eyes opened--a held-back injunction from last consciousness, that flashed its way in like a ray of light when a door is first opened into a dark room. "Phone them fast, get to them before he does!"

He could hardly wait to gulp his coffee, grab his hat, and get out.

"But you're not late," Virginia tried to reassure him. "You're even five or ten minutes ahead of your usual time today."

He threw her a half-truth across his shoulder, "I know, but there's a call I've got to make the very first thing!"

He did it from the corner below. And, ironically, he was too early the first time. There was no answer.

He stayed by the instrument, palpitating, drumming his fingers. Then he swung the dial wheel around again and this time was answered by the familiar voice of the telephone girl.

There was a slight stiffness to her tone. Not of manner, but of posture, if such a thing can be visualized. As though she hadn't had time to take off her hat yet, and was leaning over the switchboard from the outside of the rail, rather than sitting before it at ease.

"Hello. That you, Beverly? This is Frank Townsend."

Her accents thawed to the proper intimate plane reserved for a fellow worker. "Oh, hello. What happened to you yesterday, Frank? You stayed out, I noticed. Weren't sick, I hope?"

"I'm not coming in any more, Bev," he said.

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear that, Frank," she lamented. "We'll all miss you. Boss know about it yet?"

"I'm mailing him a letter," he improvised.

"Well, lots of luck, Frank. And any time you're in the neighborhood, drop in and say hello. You know we'll always be glad to see you."

He said, "Look, Beverly, I want you to do something for me, will you?"

"Sure, Frank."

"Please, under no circumstances, give out my home address. I mean, just in case anyone should happen to inquire. I don't say anyone would--" He threw that in just to make it sound more plausible. "But just in case they should. You don't know my whereabouts, you haven't got any record of them, see?"

She wasn't curious enough to ask any questions. "I understand, Frank. You can rely on it. I'll tell Gert the same thing. We're the only two that know where to look for it in the files, anyway. Wait a minute, I'll make a note of it just to make sure." He could tell by a change in her voice that she was jotting down something as she spoke. "In future don't give out Townsend's address if you are asked for it."

Something like a cold spray buffeted him for a second. He didn't like that -in future-. "No one's asked -already-, have they?" he said, gripping the receiver.

She was blithely unaware of the catastrophe implicit in her answer. "Yeah, there -was- somebody in here yesterday afternoon, a little before closing time, but I'II make sure that from now on--"

The world--and the booth with it--went plunging into darkness, as though it were on a train passing through a tunnel.

She was saying, "Wait a minute, here's Gert now, I'll ask her.- She was the one at the board at the time." A period of indistinct offside murmuring took place. Then her voice was centered forward again. "He came in at the very last moment, we were all getting ready to go home, and she couldn't lay her hands on it at the moment; you know five o'clock down here. So she gave it to him from memory; she doesn't know whether she got it right or not."

A shaft of silver pierced the leaden pall around him. Very slender, very fragile, but struggling through. "Find out if she remembers now just what it was."

He could hear a clicking sound made by cogitating gum, in the background at the other end of the line, as the nonparticipating Gert brought her head down within range. His vis-à-vis resumed with a laugh: "She can't even remember that much now. You know Gert."

"Well, look it up and ask her if it's the same as the one she gave out."

"Wait'll I find it," she said. "It's around here some place." It took quite some finding, apparently, judging by the length of time he was kept waiting.

Then she came back again. "I've got it, Frank. Here it is here. Eight-twenty Rutherford Street, North. Is that right?"

His old address. The place Virginia had moved from during his absence. Through an oversight they'd never changed it when he came back to work again. He was safe; he was out of reach. Relief shot through him in an exquisite flood.

Meanwhile, a shriek of delighted contrition sounded in his ears as they compared notes at the other end. "That wasn't the one she gave him at all! She gave him Tom Ewing's by mistake, got it mixed with yours, sent him all the way out to-- He'll have a fit when he gets out there! Who was he anyway?"

He said, with utter truthfulness, "I haven't any idea."

"Have we the right one down, Frank?" she went on, trying to be helpful. "Because they'll probably be sending you out a pay check for a half week on Sat'day and you want to make sure of getting it."

"Yes," he said firmly, "it's right." He'd stop by and pick it up at their old place. Mrs. Fromm would hold it and turn it over to him.

As he hung up the receiver he felt free, for the first time since he'd begun his flight from the menacing stranger.

An unfastened shoelace had saved him the first time. A pack of cigarettes had saved him the second time. A gum-chewing, addle-pated switchboard girl in a hurry to get home had saved him the third time.

He went back to the park again. A different bench, a different path, but the same peaceful, sun gilded panorama around him. All he had to do was eye the distant skyline of serried building tops peering above the trees on three sides of him and his sense of immunity immediately contracted by that much It extended only as far as the green oasis of the park did, with danger still over there somewhere, down in the chinks between those buildings.

He took off his hat, whipped it impatiently against the shanks of his legs as though there were gnats about him. "Danger! I keep saying danger! Danger of what? From what? What've I ever done to be endangered by?"

And, of course, there came the immediate answer again, inevitably, that was the crux of his whole reaction to the situation: "Three years is a long time. In three years you can do lots of things that bring danger in their train." And he knew that his subconscious, his innermost instinct, call it what you will, was more to be relied on in this case than all the logic his intelligence could bring to bear. This wasn't just surface fear; there -was- something to cringe from, to shrink away from.

His mind couldn't recognize it. Well, his mind had been dormant for three years. His subconicious was doing its level best to warn him. The only unfortunate part of it was his subconscious wasn't articulate, couldn't put it into thought phrases, couldn't tell him what it was.

Yes, he thought moodily, somewhere in that city, around the four sides of this park, there's a man whose only thought is me. Who is looking for me, up one street and down another, around this corner and beyond that, minute by minute, hour by hour. And sooner or later, since I am a more or less fixed object and he is in constant motion, he is going to find me.

Then why not go away to some other city? Why just change from one flat to another, and remain all the time in the same danger zone? Why not move out of it entirely?

They couldn't. All the reasons why people don't at their age entered into it. They didn't have very much money put aside, not enough to allow for a move like that.

And even if it could have been done successfully, it still wouldn't spell immunity, only postponement. -It- would always be here, waiting to pounce. -It- would always bar him from coming back here. Some day, eventually, -it- might even trace him from here reach out after him to the new city

The only thing to do was lick it on the spot. And how are you going to lick a thing when you don't know what it is? The circle of his meditations bad completed itself; he was back where he had started.

Their old flat was still tenantless, he noticed, when he went there the following Saturday to pick up his pay check. The ghosts of their younger, happier selves, his and Virginia's, must still be lurking there in those empty rooms, they'd spent so much time in them.

He rang for Mrs. Fromm, stood waiting in the street entrance for her to come up from below. Someone else looked out at him inquiringly. Some other woman. "Did you ring?" she demanded.

"Yes, but I was looking for Mrs. Fromm. Isn't she here?"

"She doesn't work here any more."

For a minute he didn't recognize the fact for what it was worth. Then realization flooded in on him. This meant that, without his having to say a word, lift a finger, he was safe, immune, at this end. This newcomer, whoever she was, did not know their new address. She couldn't pass it on to anyone even if she wanted to.

His relief knew no bounds. It wasn't just a matter of hair's-breadth avoidance any more; he was cut off, beyond reach for good now. Well, always barring mishaps.

His homeward tread, retrieved pay check in pocket, had a lilt to it that had been missing since the shadowy nebulae had first descended. Fear was gone. Self-confidence was back. He even caught himself humming a little under his breath. It became a full-pitched whistle. He hadn't whistled since before the great blank. He didn't even know any of the new things to whistle. He had to whistle an old one. It didn't matter; it was good.

A man in a gray suit, with a gray hat aslant over his eyes, went by, almost grazed him, and he hadn't even remembered to be wary. He threw out his chest, widened his shoulders, resumed his whistling, and went on.

He passed a little bakeshop window and caught sight of a tray of cream puffs in it. Virginia had always had a weakness for them. He felt so good he stopped in and bought two of them, to take home to her. You have to be feeling good to buy things like cream puffs; they go with a carefree state of mind.

Maybe it was over now. Maybe he'd worked himself free from the pursuing shadows at last, put himself beyond their reach. Maybe he was safe, out in the sunlight from now on, to stay.