You're All Alone (illustrated) (16 page)

blockqDarling,

Don’t be angry with me. I’m going out for a while, but when I come back all our problems may be solved. My friend just called me—thank goodness the phones are dial here
—
and. told me he’s discovered a very important secret, something that will give us complete protection from Hackman and Wilson and Dris. I’m to meet him early in the evening. I’m leaving now, because I have certain preparations to make
—
and it’s best that you don’t come.

I should be back by midnight, with wonderful news!

Lovingly,

Jane

CARR GRABBED the small dark man by the throat and shook him until his glasses fell off and he blinked up at Carr in purblind terror, pawing ineffectually at the choking hands.

“The truth!” Carr snarled. “Every bit of it!” And he stopped shaking him and slacked his grip a little.

For a moment only spittle and throaty babble came out of the small dark man’s mouth. All at once he began to talk very rapidly.

“They made me do it, I swear! Hackman and the others caught me late last night when I was drunk, and they told me that if I didn’t tell them where Jane was they’d give me to the hound. When I hesitated they forced me out onto the Boulevard, Hackman and the hound on one side of the street, Wilson and Dris on the other, and made me stay there, dodging the cars, until I’d promised. Even so I lied and told them I didn’t know Jane’s address, only a phone number she’d given me, and that it might scare her off if I asked her to meet me earlier than this evening. See, I did everything I dared to delay things! They made me phone her and told me what to tell her and listened while I made the date. Then they left me in an empty apartment with the hound guarding me, but he likes to snap things out of the air, so I tossed him sleeping pills until he went under. Then I hurried here to warn Jane, but she’d already gone. I didn’t notice the note then, I was too frightened. And because I knew that with Jane gone you’d be happier dead, I turned on the gas. And now if you’re going to kill me, please don’t hurt me!”

“I can’t promise that,” Carr said, tightening his grip a little. “Where were you to meet?”

“On the corner of State and Harrison.”

“Why Skid Row?”

“That’s where they told me to tell her. That’s where they have their fun these days.”

“And when?” Carr demanded.

“At eight o’clock tonight.”

Carr looked at the clock. It was seven-forty. He pushed the small dark man aside and began to throw on his clothes.

“Don’t hurt me when you kill me,” the small dark man begged with covered eyes from where he’d fallen across the bed. “Let me cut my wrists under warm water.”

“Give me the keys to your roadster,” Carr said, pulling on his shoes.

The small dark man sprang across the room, fell on his knees in front of Carr, and held out a small leather key-case. Carr took it.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Parked right out in front,” the small dark man told him. “Only now it’s a maroon roadster. I wrecked the other last night when they caught me. You’re not going to kill me?”

Carr caught up his coat and went out, shouldered into it while he was hurrying down the stairs. But fast as he went, he found when he got to the bottom that the small dark man was just behind him—and had found time to pick up the whiskey bottle on the way.

“You’re going after Jane,” he said, talking between swigs. “Don’t. You haven’t a chance. You don’t realize their power and cunning, all the most horrible tricks of history passed down from wakened mind to mind since the days of Borgias and the Caesars. You don’t know all the traps they’re holding in reserve. Wait. Listen to me. There’s an easier way, a safer way, a surer way . . .”

At the front door Carr whirled on him. “Don’t follow me!” He ordered, grabbing the small dark man by the coat. “And remember, if you haven’t told me the strictest truth, you’ll wish the four men with black hats had got you!”

If the mean guys spot you walking around alive, you’d better think fast, brother . . .

CARR HAD, never sweat so driving.

It wasn’t that the Loop traffic was thick, but the knowledge that there was no place for the roadster in the pattern. If he stopped, the auto behind him might keep on coming. He couldn’t let himself get in any lines of vehicles. Mostly he drove on the wrong side of the street.

Finally he came to a place where the signs glared over low doorways, where their chief message was always “Girls and More Girls!” where dance music sobbed and moaned with dead passion, where only shabby and bleary-eyed automaton-men slouched through the dirty shadows. He passed State and Harrison twice without catching sight of Jane. The second time he parked the roadster in a noparking stretch of curb just short of the black veil of the railway yards and left it with the motor running, hoping it wouldn’t be hit. Then he started back, walking slowly.

He passed a tiny theater fronted by huge, grainy photographs of women in brassieres and pants painted bright orange. A sign screamed, “TWENTY NEW GIRLS!”

He passed a ragged old drunk sitting on the curb and muttering, “Kill ’em. That’s what I’d do. Kill ’em.”

He passed a slot-like store that said TATTOOING, then a jumbled window overhung by three dingy gilt balls.

He passed a woman. Her face was shadowed by an awning, but he could see the shoulder-length blonde hair, the glossy black dress tight over hips and thighs, and the long bare legs.

He passed a sign that read: IDENTIFICATION PHOTOS AT ALL HOURS. He passed a black-windowed bar that said: CONTINUOUS ENTERTAINMENT.

He stopped.

He turned around.

No, it couldn’t be, he thought. This one’s hair is blonde, and the hips swing commonly in the tight black dress.

But if you disregarded those two things . . .

Jane had shown him a blonde wig at the library.

She had written about making “preparations.”

The walk could be assumed.

Just then his glance flickered beyond the shoulder-brushing blonde hair.

A long black convertible drew up to the curb, parking the wrong way. Out of it stepped the handless man.

On the other side of the street, just opposite the girl in black, stood Hackman. She was wearing a green sports suit and hat. She glanced quickly both ways, then started across.

Halfway between Carr and the girl in black, Wilson stepped out of a dark doorway.

Carr felt his heart being squeezed. This was the finish, he thought, the kill. The final blow.

Unless . . .

The three pursuers closed in slowly, confidently. The girl in black didn’t turn or stop, but she seemed to slow down just a trifle.

. . . unless something happened to convince them that he and Jane were automatons like the rest.

The three figures continued to close in. Hackman was smiling.

Carr wet his lips and whistled twice, with an appreciative chromatic descent at the end of each blast.

The girl in black stopped. Carr slouched toward her swiftly.

The girl in black turned around. He saw Jane’s white face, framed by the ridiculous hair.

“Hello kid,” he called, saluting her with a wave of his fingers.

“Hello.” she replied. Her heavily lipsticked mouth smiled. She still swayed a little as she waited for him.

PASSING Wilson, Carr reached her a moment before the others did. He did not look at them, but he could sense them closing in behind, forming a dark semicircle.

“Doing anything tonight?” he asked Jane.

Her chin described a little movement, not quite a nod. She studied him up and down. “Maybe.”

“They’re faking!” Hackman’s whisper seemed to detach itself from her lips and glide toward his ear like an insect.

“I’m not so sure,” he heard Wilson whisper in reply. “Might be an ordinary pickup.”

Cold prickles rose on Carr’s scalp. But he remembered to ask Jane, “That ‘maybe’ you’re thinking of doing—how about us doing it together?”

She seemed to complete a calculation. “Sure,” she said, looking up at him with a suddenly unambiguous smile.

“Pickup!” Hackman’s whisper was scornful. “I never saw anything so amateurish. It’s like a highschool play.”

Carr slid his arm around Jane’s, took her hand. He turned and started back toward the roadster. The others moved back to let them through, but then he could hear their footsteps behind them, keeping pace.

“But it’s obviously the girl!” Hackman’s whisper was a trifle louder. “She’s just bleached her hair and is trying to pass for a street walker.”

As if she feared Carr might turn, Jane’s hand tightened spasmodically on his.

“You can’t be sure,” Wilson replied. “Lots of people look alike. We’ve been fooled before, and we’ve got to be careful with those others around. What do you say, Dris?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s the girl.”

Carr felt the whispers falling around them like the folds of a spiderweb. He said loudly to Jane, “You look swell, kid.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she replied.

Carr shifted his arm around her waist, brushing her hips as he did. The maroon roadster still seemed miles away. Fringing his field of vision to either side were blurred bobbing segments of Wilson’s panama hat and pinstriped paunch and Hackman’s green gabardine skirt and nyloned legs.

“Pretty sure, Dris?” Wilson asked doubtfully. “Well, in that case—-”

Hackman leapt at the opportunity. “Let me test them,” she urged.

Through the skimpy dress Carr felt Jane shaking.

“Put that away!” Wilson whispered sharply.

“I won’t!” Hackman replied.

A BLEARY-EYED man in a faded blue shirt lurched up onto the curb and came weaving across the sidewalk. Carr steered Jane out of his way.

“Disgusting,” Jane said.

“I’d have taken a crack at him if he’d bumped you,” Carr boasted.

“Oh, he’s drunk,” Jane said.

“I’d have taken a crack at him anyway,” Carr asserted, but he was no longer looking at her. They had almost reached the roadster.

“Come on, kid,” Carr said suddenly, stepping ahead and pulling Jane after him. “Here’s where we start to travel fast.”

“Oh swell,” breathed Jane, her eyes going wide as she saw the chugging roadster.

“They’re getting away,” Hackman almost wailed. “You’ve got to let me test them.”

Carr swiftly reached for the door.

“It might be better . . .” came Dris’s voice.

Carr held the door for Jane. From the corner of his eye he saw Hackman’s hand. In it was one of the stiff, daggerlike pins from her hat.

“Well . . .” Wilson began. Then, in an altogether different voice, tense with agitation and surprise, “No! Look! Across the street, half a block behind us! Quick, you fools, we’ve got to get out of here.”

Carr ran around the roadster, jumped in, and pulled away from the curb. He started to give it the gun, but Jane touched his hand. “Not fast,” she warned. “We’re still playing a part.”

He risked a quick look back. Hackman, Wilson, and Dris were piling into the black convertible. On the other side of the street, drawn together into a peering knot, were the four men with black hats.

That was all he had time for. He swung the roadster slowly around the next corner, squeezing it by a high-walled truck that spilled trickles of coal dust.

They hadn’t gone a half block when they heard a souped-up motor roar past the intersection behind them without turning. Another half block and they heard another roar behind them that likewise passed on. They slumped with relief.

“Where’ll we go?” Carr asked. “There’s a lot to talk about, but I can’t stand much more of this driving.”

Jane said, “There’s one place they don’t know about, where we can hide out perfectly. The old Beddoes house. There are things I’ve never told you about it.”

Carr said, “Right. On the way I’ll tell you what happened to me.”

Maybe some day the whole engine’ll wake. Maybe some day the meanness’ll be washed, or burned, out of us. And maybe not . . .

THE ORNATELY-carved nine-foot door was of golden oak grimed with the years and it was bordered, Carr noticed, with a ridged blackness that once had been a rainbow frame of stained glass. It scuffed complainingly across humped-up rug, as the gate had across gravel. He followed Jane inside and pushed it shut behind them.

“I still don’t like leaving the roadster that way,” he said.

“We didn’t want it too near here,” she told him.

“But it’s such a big thing to have displaced in the pattern.”

She shrugged. “It was probably a display model, if I know my . . . friend. And I think the big machine has an automatic way of correcting large displacements like that. But look.”

The circle of her flashlight’s beam traveled over walls cobwebbed with soot, picked up here and there dull glints of a figured gold paper and huge pale rectangles where pictures had once hung. It jumped to two shapeless bulks of sheet-covered chairs, hesitated at a similarly shrouded chandelier looming overhead, finally came to rest on a curving stairway with a keg-thick newel post carved in the form of a stern angel with folded wings. Jane took Carr’s hand and led him toward it.