Could he recommend a restaurant near by? Sure, San Francisco had plenty of restaurants in almost any street. Did she like sea-food? Italian restaurants were down on the wharves, right on the water with the fishing boats moored in hundreds beside them. Pity he was on duty or he could show her the way there. Or what about a Chinese restaurant? You just walked up California, then you’d see the dragon lamp-posts, and the statue of Sun Yat-Sen, couldn’t miss them, and Grant Street that stretched along to your right was full of eating places and tourists. He gave her the name of his favourite restaurant there, and seemed pleased when she memorised it.
“Thank you,” Sylvia said at last, breaking away as he came to the end of a paragraph describing the best things to order, “thank you very much.” She gave him a last smile and walked briskly out of the hotel.
“Helpful Harry,” the telephone operator said, watching him bitterly. “What about giving me some help for a change?” As if he would!
“Keep your eyes on that switchboard,” he told her sharply, frowning to restore order and his normal expression.
“And all I wanted was a cup of coffee.”
“Get Western Union and send this telegram.” He looked with distaste at the girl’s mocking eyes. Some people make you feel good, he thought; just to talk to them for a moment, just to listen to their voice and watch their face makes you feel good. And some people make you feel you’d like to kick them. Not that you could kick a woman. Still, with all this talk of equal rights, why not? Just once in a while to keep things good and even?
“Certainly,” she said, imitating his voice. “Certainly, I’ll attend to that right away, madam. Any airmail stamps I can lick for you?”
“Drop dead.” The trouble was, she wouldn’t. She’d live to ninety, spreading frustration around her. And she knew it, too. She was smiling as she plugged in the telephone wire. Her voice became sweet as syrup dosed with saccharine. “Hallo, Patty. Still on duty? How’s the new perm? Uh uh... If you hear any growls over my right shoulder pay no attention to Mr. Waldorf Astoria. His draft board caught up with him this morning. Uh uh... Well, here’s a telegram you’re to send out. To Santa Rosita.”
* * *
Outside, the sky was dark and heavy with low clouds that had swept suddenly in from the Pacific. There was white mist in the streets, a fine mist that dampened her coat and fell coldly on her face. Underfoot, the steep sidewalk was wet and slippery. The lights overhead were dimmed and softened. It seemed a different city from the one she had reached in the golden hours of early sunset, with its bright blue sky and clearly etched buildings. Now it was grey and shadowed, vaguely retreating. Its hills had disappeared into the clouds, taking with them the houses and all the people who lived there. Telegraph Hill and its tall thin tower was blotted out of existence. Russian Hill with its tiers of apartment buildings had vanished. And even as Sylvia stood on California, looking up to Nob Hill, the mist thickened there too into a cloud, and the lights and the tall hotels were drawn into a world of their own, a world of silence and mystery.
She turned away, down towards the street that skirted the bottom of the hill, walking quickly, almost eagerly.
There, the sidewalks were crowded, the movie houses and stores were brightly lit, the heavy traffic hissed over the damp pavement. In a few moments she halted again, watching the cable car swinging on a turntable to face its journey back uphill. Then she walked on, slowly now, noticing the buses, the stream of automobiles, the quickly darting taxicabs winding their way impatiently through the traffic. And as she watched them, the fine damp mist turned to a soft white veil bringing its world of half light and half shapes, threatening obliteration for the whole street.
She came to a corner where two narrow streets merged like two streams plunging downhill before they emptied into the broad river of traffic. Here was a bus coming down, heavily loaded, large, red, powerful, confident in its right of way.
“Wait!” someone called sharply beside her as she stepped off the sidewalk. A hand went out to seize her arm, and missed.
* * *
She lay still on the wet pavement, her eyes closed against the hideous pain and the worried faces. A man had wrapped his coat around her, a policeman had rolled up a jacket to put under her head. The noise of traffic had faded to the distance. Voices swept over her, ebbing, flowing, like a restless sea.
“It was an accident.”
“I yelled ‘wait!’ But she—”
“What happened?”
“—never heard me.”
“She stepped off the sidewalk right into—”
“You can’t blame the driver.”
She opened her eyes. The faces had gone, someone had pushed them away. Only the policeman, the bus driver, the man who had taken off his coat, were still there. Looking at her.
She tried to speak.
“That’s all right now,” the policeman said and kept hold of her hand. His eyes left the bruised and bloodstained face, and searched angrily for the ambulance.
The bus driver stared down at her. He said nothing at all. He kept shaking his head. His face was twisted with worry. He seemed to be asking, “Lady, why did you have to pick on me?”
So he knew, she thought slowly, painfully. He had seen her face in that last moment. When she had turned suddenly. To look up at him in the driver’s seat. In that last moment when she could have jumped back. And didn’t. In that last moment when she had wanted to jump back and wouldn’t. That last moment of fear, of controllable fear as the bus smashed its weight down on her.
She tried to speak. “It was an accident,” she wanted to tell them.
“Lie still, now,” someone said gently, his voice fading.
She gathered her strength and spoke through its pain. “Accident,” she whispered. “It was an...” She watched the driver’s face pleadingly. He turned away, into the mist that had thickened around them. She stared at the shadow, and when it came back again it was Jan standing there, Jan watching her, Jan listening to her.
“An accident,” she repeated.
“Yes,” someone said from a great distance, “yes. He knows that.”
Then she could close her eyes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen MacInnes, whom the Sunday Express called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.
Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.
Since her first novel Above Suspicion was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers; The Salzburg Connection was also a major film.
Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
HELEN MacINNES
A series of slick espionage thrillers from The New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While We Still Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
Ride a Pale Horse
Prelude to Terror
The Hidden Target
Cloak of Darkness (November 2013)
Rest and Be Thankful (December 2013)
Friends and Lovers (January 2014)
Home is the Hunter (February 2014)
PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES
“The queen of spy writers.” Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.” Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel o
f suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.” The New York Times
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.” Times Literary Supplement
“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.” Observer
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.” Newsweek
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.” The New Yorker
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE MATT HELM SERIES
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
The Silencers (June 2013)
Murderers’ Row (August 2013)
The Ambushers (October 2013)
The Shadowers (December 2013)
The Ravagers (February 2014)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.” Anthony Boucher, The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.” Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.” The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...” Milwaukee Journal
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