Then he knew she was here. The little creature hadn’t moved nor made a sound. He must have been watching while I laid her in the chair—
“The kid’s little,” he said agreeably. “I could choke her with one hand, and hold the gun on you with the other. Then, even if you knew I was going to be caught, what good would it do you? You’d die knowing that her death was your fault. Okay, you can save her if you mind what I say.”
There were no dissentient voices in my brain now. At last it was integrated, and it told me clearly that he was right, that a child’s life was the greater, more immediate stake. If only I could stall him a little longer! The men might come from upstairs at any minute—
But he had foreseen that, too. “Pick her up,” he said, “and take her with you. You think I want her found here? You can lay her down outside. Don’t get excited, you’re not going to be saved, you’ll be too close to the point of my gun.”
I thought, “Barney!” and though it did not sound aloud this time, in the intensity of that call my lips must have moved.
Bassett made a slight motion with the revolver. “You’d better hurry up.” As I moved dumbly to the chair, and once more gathered up the limp, sodden bundle, he showed his teeth in a fleeting grin.
“It won’t do you any good to yell for help. If that fancy man of yours turns up, he won’t have time to do anything. I’ll see him coming. I’ll pull this trigger before he can shoot me, and if I have to die you’ll go first.”
So that was it. No matter how it turned out, I was to be liquidated—because I knew his identity. How queer to think that if he had waited only a few minutes he would have heard me denouncing another person! But he didn’t know that, and since he had now given himself away beyond any doubt, I had about five minutes to live.
It seems so wasteful, I thought, and automatically glanced around me.
The ugly, vulgar room was brightly lighted still. No doubt he had left it just as it was when he had made his ill-advised pilgrimage to my apartment; it would look the same if Bassett managed to escape detection and return to the closet. How on earth did he think he could do it? A shot anywhere would give the alarm.
But of course. The gun was only a threat. There would be one more blow on the head, silent and sure, and marked with the signature of the Cork; and the men who found my body would be forced to believe that the Cork was someone they had never seen—because Mr. Bassett, whom they had suspected, could not possibly have struck that blow.
Well, at that it might be better than a bullet, plowing and tearing through one’s flesh, to be felt for an agonizing moment before one felt no more. Rigid with impotent anger, I stepped ahead of him into the dark rear entry.
For one moment a surge of incredulous hope lifted my heart, for I could have sworn that through the glass top of the rear door I had seen a shadowy figure that disappeared even as I glimpsed it. Then I felt the hard pressure of Bassett’s gun against my shoulder blade.
No matter who came, no matter if Barney himself had miraculously turned up outside the apartment and heard what Bassett threatened, no matter if he should in answer to my silent cry be here at this moment, near to me, wanting to help—it would be of no use.
I caught my breath. After all, I had no particular desire to die.
“Turn to the left,” said the soft whisper in my ear. I’d forgotten I was in stockinged feet, until the slimy cold of the alley paving struck them. Die with your boots on in everything but literal fact, I thought wearily, stepping painfully over the rough edges of cement blocks. The alley skirted the rear and north sides of the building, and mentally I picked out the place where the blow would fall: at the turn, some twenty feet ahead, where the angle of the passage bent toward the street. He would not let me get as far as the sidewalk. Out there a hint of dawn seeped through the blackness; but here, in the deep canyon between the buildings, night was still thick and solid.
“You can put down the kid here.” The command was scarcely more than breathed. I stopped obediently, feeling for a nook that was comparatively sheltered. The rain pelted down mercilessly. When at last they found Melissa, would she be already too far gone, from drugs and exposure?
Why, I thought, this can’t be happening. I’ll wake up—
But I had thought that once already this evening.
Bassett, I knew, covered me with the gun even as I bent over. The sense of self-preservation was still working in my thoughts, icily clear. What if, after we’d gone a few yards more down the black cleft of the alley, I should pretend to faint? No, that would do me no good. Even if I knew that help was there, a helper could not be quick enough to take advantage of my momentary safety. How would the rescuer know when I planned to drop out of range?
“Go ahead,” came the hot breath in my ear. We were eight feet from the corner; five feet—
If there’s any chance, I thought, if I see the slightest loophole, I must try somehow to dodge, or run. A gamble’s better than sure death, but I’ll have to keep poised on this hair-trigger expectancy, not let down for a moment.
We took another step—two more, three more.
I believe I knew it when Bassett raised his arm to strike. There was an almost impalpable sweep of air across my back, and I remember thinking, “Here it comes.”
From around the corner of the building a hand shot out and tapped me on the shoulder: the mental hair trigger clicked, and I fell flat on my face.
And hell broke loose above me as, instinctively, I flung myself aside, rolling and scrambling on the wet pavement. Bassett’s gun spat viciously, once, and as the echoes crashed back from the walls that enclosed us, I heard the impact of the bullet on stone. In the next second something leaped like a panther at the man beside me.
The clawing, twisting mass on the ground thrashed toward me so that I could only shield my head and crowd my body into the angle of the wall. The crack of another shot seemed to pierce the eardrums.
And then there were feet, running, slipping in the dark, and the two beside me lay ominously still. Presently, part of the inert mass detached itself, slowly, and rose into the dimness. There was a sound of panting, heavy, slow breaths. The other shadowy forms were closing in.
“Got him,” the standing figure said; and for the second time that night I almost fainted at the sound of Barney’s voice. “Got him with a dirty tackle; his head—cracked on the pavement. Only hope—didn’t kill him. Want him to get—what’s coming to him.”
Someone was helping me up, solicitously inquiring if I were hurt. The voice was strange. “Come along,” it said soothingly, “we’ll get you in.”
“The baby,” I croaked, and started at a tottering run toward the place where I had laid her down.
“Now, take it easy,” the voice said. “We’ll get her. There’s no danger now.”
No danger. It was over, then? That hideous moment I had just lived through, in the blackness and pouring rain, had marked the end?—But it must be all right, I thought dully. Barney wasn’t shot after all. That sunken-eyed creature who, a minute since, was urging me to my death, is lying back there on the broken pavement. They’ve caught him. I don’t have to die—
All of life was miraculously given back to me, and I couldn’t take in the idea.
“It happened so fast,” I said helplessly to the stranger whose hand supported my arm.
“Sure it did. That was the only way it could happen,” said his soothing tone.
We must have stopped, I must have groped in the mud for the baby or shown him where it was, for he was carrying it as we went through the entry into the landlord’s apartment. It seemed a matter of great wonder that the entry should smell exactly the same, and that the beaded lamp should burn undisturbed, casting a calm light on Mrs. Ulrichson’s tidies. It was perhaps ten minutes since I had left this little cave of brightness; but who could measure the extent of the journey I had taken, believing I should not return?
“Now, that’s right,” the man said. “You sit down and rest.” I sa
nk into the cushions of the chesterfield, and sat gazing stupidly into space.
There had been no one in the room a minute since, and now there were men, talking, moving about. Were there three of them, or a dozen? Without moving I turned my eyes toward the door and saw Garwood; at least, it must have been he, for I thought the hooked nose was familiar. I had seen it silhouetted against a car window, hours ago, a lifetime ago. Some recollection stirred in me and I looked at his overcoat pockets. The folded paper was gone.
Time began to open and shut like a concertina. Now the room filled and emptied in a second, as if a film were being run too fast; now a great breathless pause seemed to hang between one word of a sentence and the next. Men spoke and were silent, and I tried dimly to understand what they had said and found they might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
There was a tall man in a shabby trench coat, who had not been here before. Heavy eyelids drooped over his dark eyes, and he looked at me under their lashes. I didn’t remember anyone’s taking the baby away from me, but someone must have done. He was holding her closely in his arms.
The word “Cleveland” came out of the buzzing of voices, and struck my ears and somehow found its way to my brain. That must be the baby’s father, Melissa’s father who had been looking for her—Mr. Cleveland was saying something to me. Of all things, he was kissing my hand.
“I don’t believe she gets you, Chief,” said Garwood’s voice. I could hear that, as if muffling fog had lifted. “She’s been through plenty. My Lord, when we found that ladder contraption and traced her through the next apartment and down the fire escape and in the window on the landing, I thought Barney’d go nuts. And then he was just about to walk in this door when he heard her talking, and knew—”
The fog came down again. Walter Cleveland had gone away and returned, and this time he didn’t have the baby. I sat there, weaker than a yard of kittens, my head resting against the back of the sofa. There seemed no reason why I should ever get up, or move a hand, or think.
But that was it. I was trying not to think. Something was coming, something that would have to be dealt with, and I must ask a question whose answer I had no real desire to know.
It was coming now. In the knot of men by the door I saw one who towered half a head above the rest, the spread of whose shoulders I knew. Garwood was speaking to me, but I kept my eyes on that averted figure.
“All he could think of,” Garwood said, “was that thousand-to-one chance, waiting for ’em at the corner. I don’t know what made him believe it would work. I was afraid—but you sure caught on fast, Miss Ferris.”
Then the broad shoulders swung toward me, and I met the light blue eyes. They seemed to hold no expression whatsoever.
It was a surprise to find that my voice still functioned. I said, “Barney. Thanks.”
“Why,” he said easily, moving nearer, “you needn’t thank me. Anyone would have done the same. You’re the one who deserves the gratitude.”
“No,” I said violently, turning my head aside.
“Oh, yes. You saved the baby, and through your mistake about Bassett, your stumbling into danger, we got him cold. We have proof now, even though we might not have chosen to get it in quite that way.”
I said, “That’s good.”
He came up beside the sofa, and spoke in a low tone so that none of the men by the door could hear him. “It was you, I suppose, who let him out?”
With a last remnant of self-respect I forced my head around and my eyes up to his. “Yes,” I said, “I let him out.”
Then, as he said nothing, I brought out the question. Find out now, and have it over with.
“How did you know—to come? Did you know all the time he was—at large, or—”
It didn’t seem to mean much, but he understood. Keeping his eyes on mine, he reached into his pocket and brought out a fold of newspaper.
“Garwood—found it?” I whispered.
Barney shook his head. “Nobody saw it but me,” he said remotely, and spread out the folds.
Oh, yes, it was legible; it was all too legible. The sprawling letters of rose-red paste cut boldly across gray newsprint. “Barney is the Cork.”
I tried to say, “I’m sorry,” but before the words were shaped he was speaking again. There was nothing but curiosity in his eyes, but his voice was deadly cold, with that same paralyzing quality he had used on Colly O’Shea.
“You’d make a good poker player,” he said. “You certainly put it over on me, from beginning to end.”
I could only sit there limply, keeping my eyes on his by a violent effort of will.
“What I want to know is—” he said presently—and was interrupted by a hail from the door.
“Barney, here a minute? They want you to give—”
“Coming,” Barney said, and turned on his heel and left.
There was another blank space after that. Between fatigue and pain and mortification, I was about down to rock bottom. Maybe I answered questions when they were asked me; I don’t know. The thing I remember came at the very end of my sojourn in the landlady’s apartment.
Mr. Cleveland, mysteriously reappeared, was sitting beside me, and Garwood stood by, writing something with an air of furious concentration. “I know it’s too much to ask of you,” Mr. Cleveland said. “The reporters are out there—”
I came to life with a jerk. “Please,” I said wildly, “oh, please—not the papers. Couldn’t you leave me out altogether? I was in it only by accident.”
The editor gave me a singularly charming smile. “We can’t leave you out,” he said. “Not possible, I’m afraid.”
“But I can’t—I couldn’t talk to anyone—oh, not now. Please.”
Garwood cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on the paper in his hand. “Chief,” he said in a low voice, “I know you promised the other papers a beat on this, for their help; but couldn’t we save just a small part of it—?”
The heavy dark eyes turned to him, and then back to me. “It would be scarcely fair,” Mr. Cleveland said in a voice torn by longing.
“Sure it’s fair. Just this one angle for our first edition—we needn’t mention her name till then. They’ve got the rest of the story.”
“Miss Ferris does need a rest,” the editor said. “And if she asks it as a favor—there’s so little we can do to thank her—”
So that was why I didn’t appear in the morning papers.
* * *
They helped me up after a few minutes, and I refused more help to get me to my apartment. No need now to race breathlessly up the three flights, nor to cower behind doors with a thumping heart. It was all over.
My door stood ajar. I went in, slow-footed with weariness, and surveyed the wreckage. The living room was in a stupendous clutter of ashes, newspapers, scattered sand and displaced furniture, and a chilly half-light crept around the edges of the drawn blind. It was drearier than campaign headquarters the morning after a lost election—and grotesque as the fancy of Salvador Dali, for someone had brought in the ladder and the ironing board and left them lolling drunkenly against the chesterfield.
I stared at the two wooden objects and saw them once more precariously balanced on wet windowsills. I measured with a horrified eye the space between the treads of the ladder, and remembered the sheer drop of four stories to the bottom of the light well; and I was shaken with a chill of mortal sickness.
All that’s needed to complete this picture, I thought, is me in a dead faint in the middle of it.
The clock said half-past six. I turned my back on the desolation, packed a toothbrush and a change of clothing, and went downstairs to find a taxi that would take me to a hotel.
“Where’d I get those extra two dollars?” I thought, paying the cabman out of my sixty-seven cents: and then remembered that Barney had given me the money, nine hours ago, for this very purpose of going to a hotel. Maybe I could keep it for a souvenir; that, and a host of disturbing thoughts, would be about all I’
d got out of my night’s adventure.
I had to break into the two dollars, though, for breakfast. The meal wasn’t worth it, seeming to be compounded of dust, ashes, and dead sea fruit under glass. No use sitting around bemoaning my lot. I went to the office, hearing as if from a long way off the shouts of newsboys along the road.
It was early, the office hadn’t opened yet, but a number of my fellow-workers were gathered in the big outside room producing a deafening babble. “Right here in town—” “—even before the police so much as—” “—True after all, there was a Cork, and do you remember how everyone—” “—can’t make out who this—”
Someone on the outskirts of the group waved a paper at me. “Did you see this, Miss Ferris?” The headlines read, in immense letters, “Kidnap, defense plot foiled.”
It was cowardly, of course, but I felt in no condition to reveal my knowledge as yet. I’d put off the moment as long as possible. “Let’s see,” I cried, and snatched a section of the newspaper. It bore only the end of the story, afterthoughts of news to elaborate what had been described under the main heading. —The baby under a doctor’s care, she was ill but would recover. —The police were to investigate the beating administered to the kidnappers; no one seemed to know who had done it. (You gathered that no one regretted it, and the police wouldn’t look very long.) Tenants of “El Central” had been interviewed; Mrs. Ellaline Pitman, on the same floor as the kidnap hideout, had heard nothing during the night, but reported that her apartment had been mysteriously ransacked. The inexplicable part was that nothing was missing, though several valuable pieces of jewelry were in plain sight—
I looked up and met the hazel eyes of Roger Tripp, filled with excitement and awe. He brandished a paper of his own, and I followed his pointing finger to an address.
“Isn’t that somewhere near your apartment house, Miss Ferris?”
The 9 Dark Hours Page 17