Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

  “Cut it out!” She began to snicker, through her nose, trying to repress it. “Damn it, if I wet my pants, I’m taking yours!”

  The light still on, Lew shoved up his mask, grinning at her. “Well, we’re in. Good old Harry; he wasn’t taking any chances.”

  Their light on the carpeted stairs, they climbed quickly, feet making only faint muffled sounds. On the top landing Lew switched off the flash: they stood facing a pair of doors paneled with opaque glass, the shape of the panes barely visible against the dark of the other side. These doors opened into the great main room, and Lew slowly eased one open. Staring across the width of the room, they saw the dim silhouette of the big main desk against the lighter shape of the glass door which led onto the outside balcony. No sound, from inside or the street, and they stepped through, Lew noiselessly closing the door behind them. He led the way, half a dozen steps to the desk, a long waist-high counter at which books were checked in and out. Here they turned to face left, looking ahead into the main room of the library. Jo stood close, a shoulder lightly touching Lew’s arm.

  The great hushed room lay in deep shadow along the windowed side, and in almost complete darkness along its center and opposite side. But they knew the room, knew what lay where they could not see. The room occupied the entire width of the library and two thirds of its length; behind them lay the children’s section. Far ahead, the distant back half of the huge room was stacks, shelf after shelf of books rising from floor to as high as could easily be reached. The stacks stood in a row across the width of the library like a dozen parallel walls. All they could see was the ends of the stacks, their lengths dissolving on into not-quite darkness—a huge window of the distant end wall admitted a tinge of light from a street lamp.

  Lew stood studying the front half of the room, lighter than the stacks because the dim illumination from the enormous side windows was uninterrupted. This front area was divided into sections by waist-high standing shelves; the section ahead and to their left was reference. Directly to their left stood the wide glass doors of the main entranceway, clearly defined against the street outside. With Jo close behind, Lew walked over to them.

  His memory was correct: a hinged bar ran across each door at waist level, probably required by fire ordinance. Though the doors must surely be locked on the outside, he knew that if they had to, they could plunge through these doors at a run, the hinged bars unlocking them.

  Taking Jo’s hand, he turned back, leading her into the main room toward the left. Here vaguely defined parallelograms of yellowed light from the street lay distortedly across table tops, chairs, low divider shelves, and along the carpeting. Reaching the reference section, eyes now accustomed to the faint light from the windows, they moved quickly. The section was bounded by waist-high shelves, enclosing a small area of several tables and chairs. These shelves were packed with encyclopedias of various kinds, specialized dictionaries, Who’s Whos of many varieties—references of all sorts, the largest local collection outside the university at Berkeley, larger even than the county’s library. Standing at one of the tables, they set chairs aside, then unfolded and snapped together their two ground cloths to form one sheet. This they draped around the table on the three sides nearest the windows, making sure it touched the carpet all around. The cloth was heavy, rubberized, completely opaque; it came up onto the table top by only six inches, would slide off unless held. Jo stood, arms wide holding the cloth in place as Lew weighted it all around with a stack of books from the new-fiction shelf. He tested, tugging gently, and it held. Handing the flashlight to Jo, he whispered, “Crawl in, and wait till you hear me whistle. Then flick the light on for a second.”

  He walked to the street wall to stand beside a window, facing the draped table. Watching intently, he whistled softly, saw nothing. “Did you hear?” Her voice muffled by the heavy cloth, Jo called yes, and Lew walked to the first reference shelf.

  From the top row, he took the first dozen books, and carried them balanced on his left forearm, right palm pressed to the top of the stack. At the open front of the little hut, he knelt carefully. “Turn on the flash.” Jo pressed the stud, and the inside of the little enclosure lit up, the shadow of Jo’s head and shoulders immense behind her. Lew set his books down, and crawled in. Sitting cross-legged beside Jo, he looked around him appreciatively, sniffing: the rubberized walls had the look and smell of a tent.

  He positioned the light, balancing it on its end between them. The strong beam, striking the underside of the light-wood table, reflected downward, illuminating the floor before them, and when Lew took the first book from his stack, and riffled through it, it was well-enough lighted for their purpose.

  Within minutes they had searched through two thirds of the stack, riffling through each book, then shaking it. As one of them finished with a book, Lew set it beside him on a new pile, carefully restacking them in the order he’d brought them in. Jo leaned toward him. “This is fun,” she whispered. “Ridiculous but fun. It’s so cozy!”

  “Makes me think of camping out in Wisconsin when I was a kid. Listen: find the stupid poster quick, and there’ll still be time for me to have carnal knowledge of you right here on the main floor of the library. A first, no doubt.”

  “First, nothing: you just haven’t noticed some of the kids in here.”

  Leaving Jo to search the remaining few books, Lew crept out, carried those they had searched back to the shelf where he’d found them, and returned with a new load. For twenty minutes then, Lew returning searched books and bringing back others, they riffled through and shook out book after book; finding a canceled envelope addressed to V. Banheim at a Mill Valley address, and a claim check for The Clock Shop.

  “How many have we done?” Jo said. They were no longer quite whispering.

  “Oh . . . a hundred or so.”

  She thought for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Lew: they’ve got over three thousand reference books; I’ve heard them say it! We’ll never finish!”

  He frowned, then shrugged. “Probably won’t have to; it could be in that one.” He nodded at the book Jo had just taken from the pile.

  But it wasn’t, and presently Jo changed position, getting to her knees to lean forward over the book on the carpet before her. Again and again Lew crawled out with a load of searched books, and returned with a new load. Then, returning once more, careless now in the repeated action, he bumped hard against a corner of the table with his hip, and a side of the tarpaulin and a few inches along the back dropped loose, the light inside beaming across to and reflecting on the window behind them. Instantly Lew set down his books, plucked up the tarp, pulling it snugly around the table again, and blocked off the spill of light. Weighting it down again, he glanced over into the open front of the enclosure, and looked down onto Jo’s bowed neck, her hair hanging forward over her face as she knelt riffling through the pages of the last book before her.

  She hadn’t even known that the tarp had slipped; but Lew knew that for two seconds a light clearly visible outside had shown from inside the library where no light should be. He set the new stack down before Jo, and took the others. These he replaced on their shelf, then walked on to the great window, and—invisible in the darkness—stood searching all he could see of the street through the intervening trees. Nothing moved that he could see. No light had come on in the windows he could glimpse across the street. He walked on to the next window for a view from a new angle, but saw no sign that their light had been seen.

  A small rectangle hung in space before him at waist level an inch or two in from the window panes; he touched it, felt cold metal, and remembered what this was. In daylight he had read the block letters, invisible now, enameled across the face of this panel: PUSH TO OPEN AND SOUND ALARM. The panel was attached to a short rod which would unlock the lower hinged half of the big window, allowing it to swing outward as an escape from fire. Fingering it now, Lew smiled at the thought of pushing it: in his mind he could see Harry in the car somewhere ahead whirl in
his seat as the gong ripped through the quiet of the street, could see Harry’s face as he and Jo ran laughing down the walk toward him.

  “Lew, what’re you doing?” He turned to see the blur of Jo’s face at the corner of the draped table.

  “Just checking.” He walked back, and saw that she had nearly finished with the new stack.

  She knelt looking up at him. “Lew, we have to face it: we’ll never finish at this rate.”

  “I know, I know.” He frowned, squatting down to face her. “Each load I keep hoping we’ll find it.”

  “I’ve been thinking: would Harry really put it in just any old book? That doesn’t sound like him. He’d look at titles to find one he liked.”

  “You could be right”—Lew nodded. “I can see him; it would appeal to him. But what book?”

  “Encyclopaedia Britannica?”

  “Maybe; if there’s a Joliffe listed.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know, but I think now we’ve got to take some chances. Turn off the flash, bring it along.” He gathered up the books in the enclosure, and, Jo following, returned them to their shelf. “Turn sideways,” he said. “With your back to the windows. Facing me. Press tight up against the shelves to shield the light.” Jo did this, and the light snapped on, her hand cupped around the lens, narrowing the beam. She held it to the book spines on the top shelf where Lew had just replaced the last books, her body keeping all or most of the light from the windows behind her. As she walked slowly backward, Lew followed, scanning titles. They found the lineup of Britannica volumes, then the moving blot of light touched Jerez-Liberty, Vol. 13, and Lew pulled it down. Jo holding the light, Lew flipped pages, then looked up. “Nothing here. No Joliffe ever made it; typical.” He replaced the book.

  “Try Who’s Who.”

  He thought he remembered where these were; on the other side of the section. They found them, and searched: first through the current Who’s Who; then the volume for the past decade; finally through Who Was Who, which sounded promising to Lew, but found nothing; no Joliffes. “Is there one called Who Ain’t Nobody?” he said, replacing the last book, then saw the title of the book beside it, and yanked it out. “This is it: I know it!”

  “What?”

  “Who’s . . . Turn off the flash!” Her light vanishing instantly, they froze. He’d been waiting for this sound ever since they’d come in, knowing it could happen. Yet now he could hardly believe he had actually heard the small preliminary snick of key against lock plate at the front doors. But he had, and now distantly but distinctively they heard the small whoosh of air pushed inward by the opening front doors. Lew tugged Jo’s arm, silently laid his book on top of the shelves, and they sank soundlessly to the floor in a squat, heads ducked below the level of the waist-high shelves surrounding the reference section.

  Silence; not a sound; it was as it had been. But this was illusion now: someone had come in . . . was up there now at the main desk where they had stood, staring ahead into the gloom hoping to catch them unaware. They didn’t move. Squatting low, Lew’s hand gripping Jo’s wrist, both aware of their heartbeats, they breathed shallowly through their mouths, listening for the listeners.

  Two brilliant beams of solid white light shot the length of the library, crisscrossing it fast, searching for a body moving through the dark. “All right, we see you!”—it was a cop-voice, astonishingly loud in here. “Step out with your hands up, or we’ll shoot!”

  “They don’t see us,” Lew whispered, lips at Jo’s ear. “Down on your knees now. Keep low. Crawl over toward the windows, then back into the stacks.”

  “Where the fuck is a light switch?” a voice up front said.

  “I don’t know,” said a second voice. “The office maybe. How should I know?” Again the pair of lights swiftly swept the library wall to wall, crisscrossing over their heads. Moving fast and silently on hands and knees, Jo, with Lew following, crept along the side wall toward the blackness of the stacks. “Last chance! Stand up now, and you’re okay; if you don’t, we shoot on sight!”

  Would they? Were their guns actually out? Maybe he should call to them: warn them he wasn’t armed, and that he would stand up slowly. He could say he was alone, and let Jo hide. But she had reached the stacks, Lew right behind her, and now one of the cops betrayed his mind by using the past tense. “Hey, somebody was here! Look at this.”

  In the almost pitch-dark of the stacks, they crawled on, down a narrow aisle toward the far end.

  “What the hell is it for? Some hippie sleepin’ under that?”

  “Nah, for crysake. Why would he sleep under something indoors?”

  Silence. They reached the far back end of the stacks. The stacks paralleled the length of the big room, and very likely the cops would look down the length of each of them now, searching the aisles with their flashlights. But a back aisle ran across the width of the building here, along the ends of the stacks, and Lew rose to stand hidden behind the end of one stack; at the end of the next Jo stood facing him. Now a beam searching the lengths of the aisles wouldn’t find them, and the cops might not—they just might not—come back here.

  Standing very straight, Lew watched down the aisle along a ragged line of protruding book spines: at the ground-cloth-covered table the cops stood dimly visible behind the brilliance of their two beams held on the little hut. “Beats me,” one of them said finally. “Kids maybe,” and the pair of lights lifted to search the room again; but perfunctorily now, randomly. Lew watched a chair back become momentarily visible, then slide into darkness again as the hooded microfilm viewer appeared and vanished, then the arm of a chesterfield at the fireplace on the other wall. For an instant a flashlight beam slid across a blue-shirted chest, a silver star winking into visibility, and in that instant Lew saw the face above the star, under a peaked cap: it was the dull and hostile wedge-shaped face of Pearley, the cop they’d encountered at the Strawberry shopping center. Lew glanced at Jo, but her face only a white smudge in the semidarkness, he couldn’t tell what she’d seen.

  Suddenly he was scared. The possibility that even if they were caught nothing much would happen—that they might explain, and be let off with a warning since they’d caused no actual harm—that possibility was gone: the man out there was an enemy. He was mean, was probably scared, almost surely vindictive, and would certainly remember them—with pleasure. And he was a cop, and a cop willing to use it had enormous power to hurt with impunity.

  Lew felt certain now they’d be arrested if caught, and driven to the county jail a dozen miles north up 101; very possibly to be locked up for the night, if Floyd Pearley had anything to say about that. What if he drove them up alone! Lew stood suddenly remembering what had happened in Marin County, not to an unknown like Jo and himself but to an important, powerful man, a member of the State Public Utility Commission, and well known throughout the state. He’d come out of a Sausalito restaurant to the parking lot with friends, at night, had an argument with a cop there, been arrested, handcuffed, and driven to the county jail—alone in the car with the cop. On the way, he charged, the cop had alternately driven at high speed, then hit the brakes, over and again, causing him to fly helplessly off the rear seat smashing his face against the steel screen between him and the cop. He arrived battered and bleeding—caused by a fall in entering the car, the cop asserted. That kind of explanation, Lew knew, was always accepted; and remembering the anger last week of the man out there in the library now, Lew knew they mustn’t be found. Yet they stood trapped in a cul-de-sac, no way out except past the cops who stood between them and the only exits.

  The searching flashlights had steadied, oval splotches of light momentarily motionless on the carpet before the covered table. “Well? You think he’s still here?” Pearley’s voice said.

  “Don’t look like it. Hey, you! You still here?” A silence. “Don’t answer; must be gone.” The other voice laughed, the beams lingering indecisively on the carpet. “Well, what do you think?”
r />   “Could be in them bookshelves.”

  A considering pause. “Okay, let’s search them.”

  Sweeping up off the rug, the beams sliced ahead through the dark, bobbing gently as the cops walked toward the stacks: Lew stood holding his breath, then had to force himself to exhale and resume breathing. “Okay,” said the other cop, and his beam swung to point off toward the park side of the room, “go walk up the first aisle with your flash. Walk around the far end, and come back down the second aisle. Keep on like that. Search every aisle, up and down. I’ll stand out here, and see he don’t try to come sneaking out.”

  Lew reached over, took Jo’s wrist, and—there was nothing else left to do—led her around the end of the stack, and into the aisle along the street side of the library. Here they stood between building wall and the final stack. For the moment now, the entire row of stacks stood between them and the searching cop. The shelves were backless, and not solidly filled. Between books of one category and the next there was often empty shelf space, sometimes as much as several feet without books. Through these gaps, and across the tops of shelved books, they caught glimpses, looking through the dozen intervening stacks, of the searching cop’s flashlight bobbing rhythmically up the first aisle across the room from where they stood watching.

  The beam reached the end of the distant first aisle, then swung to shoot across the back aisle, searching it, touching and brightening the wall not a yard from where they stood. It swung away then, the cop started down the second aisle, and just as Lew thought of the possibility so did the cop on guard out front. “Hey, Floyd! Walk backwards coming out! So he can’t sneak along the back aisle, and get past you!” Through the shelves Lew and Jo saw the light swing around to shine back along the aisle, lighting up the end wall. Then, the beam holding the end wall, it steadily lengthened as the man moved backward down the second aisle.