Black Curtain (13 page)

She knew him instantly (proving what a waste of time and effort the fur-bearing eyebrows had been). Her eyes dilated with horror, then quickly contracted again--not because horror was any the less but because they dare not betray themselves by protracted staring.

Luckily he'd fallen motionless in mid-footfall, the aisle door just newly closed at his back. She had time to do only two things, and they were so slight that the very act of continuing motion might. have lost them to his sight. She made a fleeting, warding-off gesture with her palms that for him could have only one meaning: "Don't come in here. Don't come near me." Then she deflected her eyes toward the aisle, swiftly, urgently. To Townsend the message was clear. She was trying to say, "Look behind me. Look up the aisle."

He did. Two seats past her, on the opposite side, was that same outline of side face and shoulder, under the same gray hat, that had hunted him in another life. A tensing of the man's neck cords indicated that his head was about to swing around. Either to make sure Ruth was still safely where his last look had placed her, or because the opening and closing of the car door just now was about to draw a belated glance from him.

A pace farther forward into the car and Townsend couldn't have made it. Even so, with the door at his very back, he couldn't get out again. The upper half was glass and the oncoming look would have skewered him through it before he could move out of the way. He shouldered open the panel beside him and was gone. The closing of the washroom door must have synchronized with the completion of that head turn. It left nothing to see but vacant space.

He rode the rest of the way, out of one state and into the next, in uncomfortable perpendicular confinement, back to door, one leg up against the opposite wall to brace himself. He counted five stops and three unsuccessful door tries. The ease with which they were discouraged showed, at least, that they weren't made by his nemesis in the gray suit out there. But the mere fact that a number of people were denied admittance might bring about a shattering investigation.

He perspired profusely in there. For the first time he had completely lost all freedom of movement. He hadn't even been this closely trapped the night they had broken into the Anderson Avenue flat; at least there had been a dumbwaiter and a basement there. He wouldn't know which stop it was now, either. Certainly not in time to get off. The sliver of window was slightly open at the top, but it was fixed fast and the glass was opaque. The strangled station calls of the conductor, behind him in the car, didn't penetrate here at all. And if he rode too far past the mileage value of his ticket, he was running the risk of detention by the trainmen, when he came out, on charges of trying to beat his way, with all the attendant consequences of revelation of identity. The whole thing depended on whether that professionally alert individual out there happened to notice, after a while, that a usually accessible door. had suddenly closed for business for the entire duration of the trip.

The sudden motionlessness of the sixth stop was followed, after the briefest of intervals, by a glancing impact, a sort of scuff, down near the bottom of the door. Its repetition, in a matter of seconds, showed it to be a signal, no carelessness of tread on the part of someone going by. She must have found time to do it on her way past, perhaps backwards, with the heel of her shoe.

He opened instantly. She had lingered there, back to him, pretending to powder her nose. She didn't turn, spoke to him into the pocket mirror she was using. "Ames," she breathed hurriedly. "He got off at the other end of the car just now, to try to keep out of my sight. He's out there on the station some place. Count ten, slowly, from the time I leave the bottom step--then swing off yourself. Now listen closely. We only have about a minute and a half. There's a baggage truck piled up with trunks standing over there against the station wall, right near us, just a little way down that way. I can see it from here through the car window. Get over to it, and get behind it, and don't move. I think I can work it. If I can't come near you right away, I'll come back for you later, as soon as I'm sure I've shaken him off. Wait for me there, don't go away. Remember, ten, slowly."

He came out into the aisle just as her figure disappeared around the turn of the vestibule. He heard the click of her descending heels on the steel-rimmed car steps. He started the count she'd arranged with him. One... two... three...

"'Boooard!" echoed dismally outside on the platform.

The train was moving by the time he hit ten. He'd have to go -back- now, to get in behind the hand truck, not forward; it had already slipped past to the other side of the door. Just as he broke shelter past the car door a wailing scream wrenched from her, somewhere farther back toward the passenger exit. It was a slick piece of timing.

He had sense enough to keep going straight for the shelter with a grim economy of direction, but he couldn't help glimpsing the vignette she had artfully produced down there.

Every head along the platform had turned her way. A pretty girl turning her foot like that and floundering down on one hand and knee, with a scream to advertise it, couldn't help but monopolize every eye--even a detective's. From behind the backed-up truck Townsend could see a small knot of people gather around her, help her up, dust her off, and sympathize with her. Then they straggled off at one end while the hum of the train receded at the other. The long concrete platform fell silent and empty under its piebald black and white markings of wide-spaced arclights and intervening shadow troughs.

The six-eight time of her heel taps, coming back again a good quarter of an hour later, was the first sound to break it in all that time. Local stations like this were lifeless except at the actual moments of train arrival.

He looked out from his niche as she reached him. "All right now?"

"All right now. I stopped in at Jordan's drugstore across the square and had a spot of iodine put on the palm of my hand. I had to have an excuse to hang around, so I had a soda at the counter. He went straight into the constable's office; I saw him through the drugstore window. That's one good thing about these hick towns that have just one main street; you can spot everything that's going on."

"How do you know he's gone off duty? Isn't he liable to be still watching you?"

"Not once I'm back here any more. He's not interested in me out here, where I work and sleep seven days a week. It was only in the city that he kept breathing down the back of my neck. Probably the only reason he got on the same train coming back was there isn't any other until 6 A.M. What a day he gave me, though! And talk about close shaves! I just about avoided giving myself away by the skin of my teeth. Another minute and I wouldn't have known he was tailing me and would have led him straight down into your lap! I'm telling you, Dan, I already had one foot raised to the bus step, to take me down to Tillary Street, when I saw him." She sighed with remembered fright. "Lucky he didn't catch on that I saw him. Well, I went ahead and got right on that same bus, as though I hadn't seen a thing. But was I icicles in the feet!"

He gave her a questioning look.

"I had to. I couldn't have backed out, once he'd seen me on the point of getting in the first time. He would have caught on in a minute I was trying to throw him off the scent, and that was the one thing I didn't want him to think. Don't you see, you take the same bus line for WTatt Street that you would for Tillary Street, what's the difference? But what counted was I knew now that every move I made was being watched. So I got off at my sister's and spent the afternoon there and had supper with them. I made my brother-in-law a present of the things in the bag, told him I'd brought them in specially for him. That covered that. And d'you know where I was all evening, until half an hour before traintime? At Loew's. I had to go -somewhere-, and keep as far away from you as possible. I knew I daren't even try to go near you any more for the rest of the day or night. I couldn't take the chance."

Townsend said, "That was smart work, Ruth."

She flushed at his tribute, went on. "You can imagine how I felt; I had to sit looking at Cesar Romero, and all I could see was your face in front of me the whole time, waiting down there. Ames was probably somewhere in the audience through the whole show, but he didn't slip up a second time. I never saw him again after that, from the time I got on the bus, until I came through the cars looking for a seat on the train coming home. That's harder even than to follow someone: to -let- yourself be followed without letting on you know it's being done."

Townsend said, "What does he want with you?"

"It's on account of you, of course. He must have a hunch I've been seeing you. God knows why! Don't let anyone tell you they're not -good-. They're -good- all right. They're mind readers and magicians all rolled up in one."

"No they're not," he scoffed. "They're just plain this." He snapped his fingernail at the back of his own hand, made the skin quiver. "They can be wrong, too. They think I killed Diedrich. I say I didn't."

"And if you say that, I say that, too. Now the thing is, how're we going to get you away from here and out there?"

"How do you usually go yourself?"

"I take the bus from the square here, it brings me right out to the door. But that's out, for you." She looked around, in search of inspiration. "Wait a minute, I just happened to notice something when I came back for you. There's a truck standing out front, the other side of the station; The drivers must be in Joe's Lunch getting a meal. If I can find out whether it's going the right way for us, we wouldn't have to be afraid to ask them to give us a lift. They wouldn't know us. They're not from around here, just passing through. Come on around the outside of the station, don't pass through the waiting room. The agent's gone off duty, but there's still a porter somewhere around."

He followed her around the upper end of the neat little one-story concrete building. She stopped and pointed. "See it? Just down there? That's the one I meant."

He squeezed her arm admiringly. "You see everything."

"You have to, when you're looking out for someone you love." She said it with the utmost simplicity. "There they are, coming Out now. Stay here close under the shed until I find out. If it's O.K. I'll wave you on. Cut straight over to it fast, don't stay out in the open any longer than you have to. Ames will probably still be in there half the night making out his report, but still you never know--"

He watched her go over, stand there a moment talking to one of the two drivers. He saw the fellow touch his cap to her. Then he saw one white-gloved hand go up, in an overhand signal, through the intervening gloom.

He broke out, walked fast across the considerable exposed space behind the station, talcumed with arclight, and got in again behind the welcome shadow cast by the bulky aluminum-faced truck.

"It's all right, -Jimmy-," she shrieked above the din of its warming-up motor. "These boys said they'll give us a lift out to where we work. I told them what happened to your wallet. You'll have to climb up into the back, there's only room for three on the front seat."

He pantomimed his thanks to their hosts by saluting toward one of the shadowy, aproned figures visible beside her, up there at the other end, without approaching any closer.

The rear apron had been left conveniently down; they were evidently making the return trip empty. He scrambled up onto it, shifted a little farther in, to where the body of the truck itself began, and propped himself up there with a neat triangle of shadow catching him protectively from the knees up.

They rumbled off and New Jericho village, hardly seen as yet, receded behind him in a blurred checkerboard of arclights and black squares. Then a long, tapelike country highway started to unroll behind him, with black tracery on both sides of it that were roadside trees, an occasional house, and pollen of stars up above.

A good thirty to forty minutes of that, without a break. Or so it seemed, though it may have been less. Once a passenger car, coming up from behind and overtaking them, gave him a few bad moments. Its heads hit a big yellow sphere against the inner wall of the truck opposite to where he was. The light started to creep over to his side, as the machine behind them shifted to go past on the outside. His legs were bathed in it, and it started to climb up him. He cocked his knees, thrust his head down between them, and wrapped his arms over it, as though he'd fallen asleep in a sitting position. The car swerved out and went past and he reared up again.

About five minutes after that the truck shuddered to a throbbing halt and Ruth's piercing tones filtered back to him above the engine drumbeat. "Thanks a lot, boys. You're lifesavers. -Jimmy-, you clear?"

He vaulted down off the apron, and a moment later he and she were standing all alone by the roadside in a little haze of gasoline exhaust. She pressed her hip joint, where it evidently ached from cramped sitting.

"My heart was in my mouth. Did you recognize who that was went by, awhile back?"

"I ducked my head."

"Bill and Alma Diedrich! I recognized the car. So that's what they've been doing, whenever I have a night off and they're supposed to stay home and keep an eye on the old man! Why, that's criminal, Dan! D'you know that there's not another living soul in the house with that helpless old man, except the crazy sister, Adela, and if she ever got out of her room there's no telling what she'd do to him. Anything could happen; a shortcircuit could start a fire or--"