Black Curtain (9 page)

"Well, what about it? You want to turn it in or not?" the pawnbroker called after him sharply, as he made for the door.

"Be back later," he said, and gave the half doors a fling that must have kept them banging in and out for minutes as accompaniment to his footsteps racing away.

He hustled up Monmouth Street toward the seven-hundred sector. 700. Pretty soon now. One of those just ahead.

He came to a spasmodic halt, went on a few faltering steps farther, as if by reflex momentum, then stopped for good. There wasn't any 705. The one before it was 703. The one after it was707. It was a public bathhouse.

The door had slammed shut. The room was dark again.

9

Three dollars and seventy cents later, toward five in the afternoon, he was coursing his beat again when Tillary Street suddenly started to drain of people around him. He didn't count time by days and hours any more, but by the pennies that controlled his purpose. He was within thirty cents of destitution again, and nothing further left to pawn. One more day's subsistence, even by his own frugal standards.

He was halfway down his beat, on the Watt-to-Jordan Street strip, when the usual afternoon crush on the sidewalk started to siphon off around the corner ahead and into Watt Street. There had been the jangle of fire apparatus a moment or two earlier, coming from up that way, and there were.jntermittent wailing additions to it from time to time after the exodus had got well under way. Kids started it first, darting off with whoops from under people's legs. Then their elders all started to converge after them, at gaits varying from lopes to waddles. It caught on like a panic, though it was for this neighborhood a joyous event, a means of self-expression, almost a social occasion. Suddenly the whole population was streaming en masse toward that one point of the compass. Only the pushcarts and their duty-bound guardians remained, the former looking strangely naked on the asphalt solitude.

Townsend wasn't going to allow himself to deviate at first. What was a fire to him, or any other outside interruption that had no direct bearing on his trancelike purpose? But then, because the very emptiness of the street before him robbed his further progress of any usefulness, at least for the time being, he turned and followed slowly in the wake of the rear guard. But at a detached, unhurrying stroll.

There was a haze of bluish-gray smoke visible in the middle distance, about two blocks up Watt Street. You couldn't get any nearer than a block away from the actual site. The overflow, from Tillary and all the other streets around, evidently held back by ropes near the point itself, had dammed up and jelled into a solid mass of humanity stretched across the street from side to side, with little shifting fringes.

He came up behind this, but stopped a few feet off, still in the clear, remained there on the outskirts. The only concession he made to curiosity was to crane his neck to try and see over the heads of those in front of him.

He had come to a halt before a house front. There was nothing remarkable in that. There would have been a given house flanking him at any point along the street. Every one of the windows, in that and every other house, was brimming with hopeful onlookers. Only in this one there was a kid mangling an orange in one of the top-floor line of windows. Someone happened to jostle the kid, and something viscous jarred Townsend's shoulder, glanced off, landed with a soggy spat on the ground before his feet.

He shied skittishly back, turned to look up and identify the culprit. His face looked steadfastly upward with resentful intensity for a long minute. A face upturned like that attracts the eye from above, even the eye fixed elsewhere, out into the distance.

A voice suddenly keened out from somewhere along the building front, thin against all that street hubbub and commotion but flutily audible just the same, "-Dan!-"

And the past had opened to admit him at last.

10

At first, as he quickly corrected his angle of vision, brought it down window tier by window tier, all he found was a sudden blank spot, where a face had been amidst all the other faces. The center window, on the second tier, was where the hole was. But the face itself had gone before he could locate it; it was only its absence that registered. The surrounding ones quickly pressed in to fill the gap and then even that was gone.

He knew the cry had been meant for him, but that was by sheer instinct alone. It had been "thrown" directly at him, not to the right and not to the left; the intensity of vibration caught by his eardrum somehow told him that. Whoever bad emitted it was probably on the stairs inside the house, on her way down to him, at that very moment.

He stayed there where he was, rooted there, rigid there. Afraid to think that this again might be a blind alley. A crushing sense of irony had overcome him. Whether false or true, this was undeniably recognition, and recognition had lurked -one block off- Tillary Street all this time, while he paced back and forth there endlessly, in sight of this very house each time he spanned the open width of Watt Street, just up there at the next corner.

Seconds had never seemed to last so long before. He was palpitating from head to foot, inside, just below the skin. Who was this going to be? What was it going to be? And if he were accosted, as he almost certainly was about to be, would it be by friend or enemy?

What was he to say? How was he to find out what he might be expected to say? A warning inner voice kept adjuring him: Keep cool now. Don't lose your head, whatever you do. Keep your self-control, because every gesture, every syllable, will count for something; make sure you don't miss anything. Say very little yourself. Say as little as possible. Rather too little than too much. Rather nothing than the wrong thing. -Feel- your way, like a blindfolded man walking a tightrope.

Maybe a minute had gone by. Maybe ninety seconds at the most. It seemed like hours ago that that despairing cry had winged down to him. He had put his hand to the worn iron doorstep rail that led outward to him, and it vibrated ceaselessly even on that; he couldn't hold it still.

Suddenly the house entrance discharged a careening figure like a shot out of a sling, and she was up to him eye to eye before he could even take her in in any kind of decent perspective. His visualization of her had to spread outward in concentric, radiating circles from those eyes, staring into his at such close range.

    Brown eyes.

    Bright brown eyes.

    Tearfully bright brown eyes.

Overflowingly tearful bright brown eyes.

Suddenly a handkerchief had come up to shut them off from him for a moment, and he was able, to steal a full-length snapshot of her. Not much more.

She was young. She was slim, a little better than medium height for a girl. The clean, whitelooking side part of her hair came up to the lobe of his ear. Her hair was brown, without any blonde in it, without any red in it, with a bronze shimmer to it. She wore it down the nape of her neck in a waterfall. She was bareheaded, for she had come running down from upstairs just as she was. She wasn't pretty but she was anything but plain. Her face was vibrant with animation and warmth, to take the place of conventional beauty.

She was-- But that was it, who?

The handkerchief had come down again, and inventory was over. He had to be satisfied with what he'd got, there was no chance for any more right then.

Her first words were, "Danny! I never thought I'd see you again!" She was as close to him as she could possibly be, so this was no mistake. He was Danny, Danny to stay, that was his name in the living past, the -present- past. He thought irrationally that he'd always hated that name.

"Oh you fool! You crazy fool! What are you doing out on the open street like this! Have you lost your mind?"

He spoke for the first time. He began life all over again with her--whoever she was. "Watch. ing the fire," he said 'quietly. Not too much, not too little.

She looked up one way, she looked down the other. She looked around on the outside of them, in a sweeping half circle. She was plainly worried--for him. "What's the matter with you? Don't you know crowds are the worst place for you? You never can tell when one of -them's- likely to be in them, looking around for just such people as you!"

-One of them. Just such people as you-. She must know about it. Something about it, anyway. How much did she know about it? The whole thing? Part of it? How? Directly? Indirectly?

Something neutral. Find something neutral to say, because he couldn't just stand there dumb, that would be dangerous too. He let his eyes flick upward toward the window from which her voice had come, then brought them down to her again. "You've sure got good eyesight."

"I ought to know you by now, from any distance." She said it in a scathing, depreciating sort of way. The lantern of her face glowed dark for a minute, as if with remembered hurt.

Townsend was afraid to risk a question. "Yes, I guess you ought to," he said evenly.

"Well, what are you going to do, stand out here in full sight, in the broad daylight, until someone comes along and picks you up?" In her concern, she began to pull him by the sleeve, inward toward the doorway. Her voice sharpened with resentful anxiety. "What are you trying to do, throw yourself away? Come in! Come in the hallway, at least!"

He followed her into the narrow passage leading back to the stairs, and the glare of the afternoon toned down to twilight. They stopped halfway back along it, both against the same wall, faces toward one another. His back was to the street.

He took a chance, slithered a foot out along the tightrope to see if he couldn't make a little headway. "You--you seem kind of worried about me."

Her hand switched up and slapped him across the mouth. That question, evidently, was inflaming to the hurt and grievance he thought he'd detected before. Even that didn't seem to be enough of an outlet. She suddenly clenched both hands and pummeled him on the chest. She couldn't hit very hard. Or maybe her resentment wasn't unmixed enough to allow her to. "You devil! Oh you lowdown devil! Why do I love you like I do?"

Suddenly, in place of one of the battering fists, her head had come forlornly to rest against him. Just for a brief moment. Then she raised it again. "Oh, Danny, why'd I ever meet you? Why'd I ever have to know you at all?"

What is this I've run into? Townsend wondered, appalled. What have I been doing to this girl?

"You're no good," she said. "You never will be any good--" And then, without a change of inflection, at the sound of a descending step on the stairs, "Quick! Come back here underneath the stairs, where everyone coming in and going out doesn't bump into you!"

She came with him and they cowered there, in still closer, dimmer confinement. They waited in silence until the tread had gone out into the open. She looked out to make sure, then turned back to him again, in heightened solicitude. "Where are you now, Danny?"

There seemed to be a good deal of passive, intimate reproach latent in her, where he was concerned, but no really objective hostility. He took a chance and told her. "I've got a furnished room around the corner from here, on Tillary Street."

"Well, get back there, for heaven's sake! Look, the crowd's starting to break up. Mingle in with them and you can make it. I'll go up and get my things, and then I'll slip over there after you."

"I'll wait for you right here," he suggested.

She wouldn't hear of it. "No! No, Danny, I'm afraid! Please get back where you belong. It's just begging for something to happen to you if you hang around like this."

He gave a hitch of his head toward the underside of the staircase. "Who's up there?" he said. Even if he was supposed to know what the place was, whom it belonged to, and what she was doing Up there, the question was still valid. Maybe she lived up there herself. In that case there was a short cut to finding out--no, on second thought, he'd found time to notice that there weren't even any downstairs doorbells out at the entrance there, much less names of tenants listed, so that wouldn't give him any clue to her identity.

Her answer wasn't particularly enlightening, except that it indicated he was supposed to know what the place was. "The whole darn bunch, and the family cat thrown in! It'll take me a few minutes to break away; I don't want them to tumble to anything. I'll tell them I'm taking an earlier train. You -can't- wait down here all that time."

Just the same, if there was going to be treachery, he was giving her a big, wide opening to get it in. There was no way of avoiding that, under the circumstances, he supposed. It would simply have to be risked. "All right," he agreed. "It's Number Fifteen, the second-floor front."

"Danny, -be- there now. Don't run out on me again." She half tilted her face with an air of expectancy. He brushed his lips past hers, rather than be guilty of an overt omission.

There had evidently been more wholeheart kisses exchanged between them in the past. "Don't overtax your strength," she commented sulkily. And then with more immediate urgency, as he drew away, "Danny, be careful getting back." She detained him a moment longer. "Keep your bat down more in front." Gave the brim a protective tug. Then let him go.

He went down the passage toward the street door. Behind him he heard the light tap of her climb on the stairs.

Who was she? What was she? She was obviously aware of his crime, but did she have any direct connection with it herself, or had she simply learned of it through his telling her?