Then a lock jiggled a little. Out there, in the room past this one. You could hardly hear it, but it gave off little soft turning sounds. The outside door started to open guardedly. Buddy 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 toward his door. Somebody was in the next room. Maybe just one. Maybe both of them together.
They didn’t put on the lights. They were afraid of being seen from the outside. They were up to his door now. He almost thought he could hear their breathing, but he wasn’t sure—his own breathing drummed so loudly in his ears.
The knob started to turn. Then it slowly whirled back into place. They were trying the door. If only they didn’t see the key that was 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—with the pencil stub that he’d used to force out the original key. He dredged it up from his pocket. Too fast, too nervously. 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 doorseam 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 shore 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 windowpane with the chair. The glass spilled outward with a torrential crash just as the door broke away from its frame and buckled 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. 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 so many times in the past. But he was afraid if he stayed they’d come right down after him and trap him, cut off his escape.
Eventually they would ferret him out, and dispose of him 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 the basement without stopping, and rushed up the janitor’s steps at the front to the sidewalk. Just as he gained the street 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 to try to cut Buddy 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 windpower, and it was only a matter of minutes before the unequal pursuit would end.
Buddy made the corner 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 about ten yards or so in length. He knew he couldn’t get past them, for the man was within two outstretched arms’ length of him now, and already had one arm out to bridge half that span.
In desperation Buddy sprinted to the end of the row of ashcans, caught the rim of the last one to swing himself around on—its fill held it down fast—and suddenly doubled back along the far side of them. It was a feat the man couldn’t hope to match as quickly or as deftly, because of his greater bulk. He went flying out too far on a wasteful ellipse, had to swing in close again.
Buddy was able to keep their strung-out length between the two of them from now on. The man couldn’t touch him. All Buddy 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 gritty ash, left them that way for an instant, buried up to the wrist. The man dove for him.
Buddy’s hands shot up. A land mine of stuff exploded full into the man’s face, He reeled backward, clawing at his eyes.
Buddy shot diagonally into the open, heading for the other side of the street. 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, tore down a new street. But it was just a postponement, not a clean-cut getaway. The man came pounding into sight again behind him after a brief time-lag. 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 abreast of 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 exactly 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 in the direction it was going, let it rumble by full length, took a short spurt after it, jumped, and hitched 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, wind power with electricity. But the man wouldn’t give up. He kept on running just the same, shrinking in stature now each time Buddy darted a look 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 o
f 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 the track side, waiting to board it. Buddy, agonized, tried to gauge the distance between pursuer, trolley, and intended passengers. He 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 it 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 three figures huddled there went into a hubbub. Two helped the third aboard. Then they handed up several baskets and parcels after her. Then she leaned down from the top of the step and kissed them each, in turn.
“Good-by. Get home all right, Aunt Tilly.”
“Thank you for a lovely time.”
“Give my love to Sam.”
“Wait a minute! Aunt Tilly! Here’s your umbrella!”
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 the traffic light changed. A red glow suffused the darkness. Like blood, like fiery death. The death of a little boy.
The car fell obediently motionless again. In the silence you could hear the steady, rapid pounding of footsteps coming along the pavement.
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.
“Now I’ve got you,” his captor hissed grimly in his ear.
The treacherous trolley, now that 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 tracks.
* * *
—
Buddy was too exhausted to struggle; 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.
The woman came up presently. There was a cold businesslike quality to her undertone. It was 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 pinwheel, 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 Buddy between them. Sandwiched between them, very close between them, so that from the front you couldn’t tell he was being strong-armed. 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 meet somebody.
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 Buddy’s 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 sidestepped quickly, jammed the heel of one shoe against his captor’s unprotected shinbone. The man heaved from the pavement, released his arm by reflex.
Buddy flung himself almost in a football tackle against the nearest of the two passersby, 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 Buddy. He didn’t show violence or even anger. There was a sudden change in 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 lineup had turned into one of age-groups before he knew how it had happened—a kid against four grown-ups. Grown-ups 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 had a handkerchief out, was applying it effectively to her eyes.
“They’re not!” Buddy howled. “They’re not!”
The woman turned her back and her shoulders shook.
“He doesn’t mean to lie,” Joe said with paternal indulgence. “He makes these things up, and then he believes it himself. His imagination is overactive.”
“They’re not my parents!” 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 answered quickly.
Joe whipped out a billfold, held it open for the men to see some sort of corroboratory identification.
“For once he admits he lives with us,” he said ruefully. “Usually he won’t.”
“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. “It was no good.”
The woman crouched 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 Buddy. The woman’s tears and Joe’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 man bent over and detached Buddy none too gently.
“Let go,” 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. Then he and his companion went on about their business, down the street.
The tableau remained unaltered behind them for as long as they were 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 Buddy’s 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 Buddy 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 Buddy’s 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 as Joe waved vigorously, 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 and see that you behave yourself!”
They wrestled Buddy into the cab between them, the woman holding his flailing legs, the man his head and shoulders while his body sagged 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. His knuckles slammed against Buddy’s jaw and he toppled backward against the seat. 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. Buddy swerved his head, sank his teeth into her finger. She recoiled with a stifled exclamation, whipped her hand away.
He tore loose with the loudest scream he could summon. It almost pulled the lining of his throat inside out.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 26