Death on the Aisle (25 page)

At Sixth Avenue, the Buick skidded in a right turn and headed downtown. The siren screamed ahead of them through the night.

Weigand went fast, and Mullins looked at him. The Loot was in a hurry, all right. It had been a long time since he had seen the Loot in such a hurry.

“You turn right here,” the voice said. They were below Fourth Street on Sixth Avenue—several blocks below. Mrs. North slowed the car—Sixth Avenue was broad and lighted; the little street which opened to the right was narrow and dark. All the broad, bright world I'm leaving, Mrs. North thought—all the beautiful world. I never knew Sixth Avenue was beautiful.

“Turn right,” the voice repeated, harder now. The hard point against Mrs. North's side pressed, warningly, calling attention to the alternative. Mrs. North swung the car right. “Stop at the fourth house down,” the voice said. “This is it.”

Mrs. North stopped the car against the curb. Her hands fell from the wheel. This was the end of it. Blackness closed in around her; she felt herself in a narrowing circle of light with darkness pushing in. I'm fainting, Mrs. North thought—this is it—this is it—!

“Sit up, Mrs. North,” the voice said. “You've got to get out here.” A hand was on her shoulder, pulling her up. The blackness began to recede, leaving a kind of hopelessness. Dully, automatically, Mrs. North reached for the handle which would unlatch the door. And as she felt it, a new hope came through the dullness.

When she got out, Mrs. North realized, the car would be between her and the other, who would get out of the car on the opposite side. And then she would have a moment—a moment to scream—or to run. There were shadows among buildings, and doorways, and for an instant or two the car itself would be a barricade between her and the revolver. It was a desperate chance, but it was a chance.

“No,” the voice said. “Do you think I'm a fool, Mrs. North? Slide this way!”

It would have been too easy; murderers don't let you have it that easy. A kind of numbness crept back as Mrs. North slid, still obedient to the command of the revolver, across the seat to the righthand door. The other backed out, keeping the weapon trained—Mrs. North could see it now, in the faint light from the instrument panel. It was short and dark and ugly.

Mrs. North stood on the sidewalk, with the other close against her, with the hard nose of the revolver boring into her side. She heard the tinkle of keys on a ring; the door they faced swung open into a dark hall. There were no words, now; the cold silence of the weapon was command enough. Mrs. North went ahead into the dark corridor. At the right a stairway rose—rose to somewhere that men and women slept innocently and secure.

The hall ended in another door and again the two stood side by side, with the revolver unwavering against Pam North's side. This other door swung inward in turn and Mrs. North went on at the gun's command. The room was dimly lighted from the end—beyond the far end of the room there was faint light shining in. And then there was a click behind her and she was stepping slowly into a low, spreading room, lighted now by lamps on tables and beside a chair. Mrs. North looked at the room and thought: I am looking at the room I'm going to die in.

But perhaps it was not this room. In the end of the room opposite that into which light had seeped, there was a door and the opening of an inner hall. Somewhere down that hall—or behind that door?—was the kitchen, and the table and in the drawer of the table such a knife as one might use to pare potatoes. The kitchen would be the room—the last room. She would walk through that door—or down that hall?—and still walk because she was alive and the revolver commanded. And then … But now the revolver did not command, and Mrs. North, with the other behind her, stood for a moment. Mrs. North stared down the room.

She was staring, almost unseeingly, at French doors which opened onto a garden. They were closed, but beyond them, now that the light fell from the room outward, she could see the green of bushes. It's late for green, Mrs. North thought; they must be evergreen. She looked on green things for the last time, she thought, and waited—only it was as if some one else were waiting in her place—for the command to go toward the little knife.

“
Turn around, Mrs. North!
” the voice behind her, and a little to the right, said suddenly, harshly. Mrs. North started to turn and, as her eyes swung faster, saw the hand go up with the revolver, held by the barrel now, in it. And now the revolver was coming down, like a club, aimed at the right temple which Mrs. North's half-turn had brought within reach. And then, miraculously, the numbness vanished. There was no sound, except of her breath coming in a little sob, as Mrs. North twisted and threw herself away from the clubbing hand. The weapon grazed her shoulder.

But now Mrs. North was running—with no plan and no hope, but running. She was running down the room toward the French doors and the garden beyond them; toward French doors that would be locked against her, and hold her while … Mrs. North did not check her flight when she came to the doors. Desperately she threw herself at them. They slapped at her and then it was a miracle. The doors parted, opening outward. Mrs. North, half falling, half on her feet, was in the garden. She was running with twigs of evergreen tearing harshly at her clothes. And running still with no hope beyond the next sobbingly drawn breath, because now it would be a bullet coming after her, mocking her speed with its own.

But instead of the revolver, Mrs. North, as she herself ran desperately toward the shadowy world outside, heard heavy running steps behind her. And hope surged up, brightly, blindingly. It wasn't to be the revolver then—because of the noise. The noise couldn't be chanced. And then, darting through a narrow aperture between bushes, Mrs. North saw why. The doors which had opened so miraculously as she rushed against them opened onto a small, hedged garden. But beyond there was a much larger garden, walled by four-story buildings, filled with trees and benches and paved paths. Running to her right along one of the paths, with the sound of running feet behind her, Mrs. North saw what it was.

Property owners with houses fronting on four streets had thrown the back yards together, creating a long, rectangular garden space, which had been developed as a unit. The buildings enclosed a small, green park, around the sides of which ground floor tenants had tiny, individual gardens, hedged off, like booths.

It was another miracle. Running from death in the low, spreading room, Pam North had run the only way there was to run. She had run toward what would have been, a thousand times to one, a boarded cul-de-sac—a tight, paved yard, made safe for privacy by twelve-foot fences. But this was that other time. She had run into a park. She could keep on running.

Her breath was coming fast, now. She couldn't run around and round the rectangle. She must find a way out. Perhaps there's a passage somewhere, she thought—perhaps—

The garden was dimly lighted. There was faint moonlight, from half a moon; there were four lights on tall poles, masked to throw light only inward, away from the houses. But behind squat evergreens, among ornamental shrubs, the shadows were black. And as she saw that, Pam North threw herself sideways from the path, and into the darkest of the nearby shadows. Once there, and seeing more shadow ahead, she started desperately to crawl on hands and knees.

Thank God my dress is dark, Pam thought, burrowing like some frightened animal into shadow. Off to her right she heard the pursuing steps. But now they slowed to a walk.

It will be easy to tell about where I am, Pam thought. But about isn't good enough—maybe it isn't good enough. She crept more slowly, now, trying to make no noise, trying to find the darkest place.

The police Buick shot down Sixth Avenue, the siren screaming at the almost empty street. It passed Fourteenth Street and, to Mr. North, fled through scenes suddenly, almost unearthly poignant with memories—there was Charles, where he and Pam ate so often; there the stores and little shops they had been going in and out of for almost a dozen years. Just there, once, he had walked by Pam, who was walking the other way, without seeing her, and was startled and embarrassed and very glad when he heard “Hey, you!” in a familiar voice and turned to find her smiling at him—laughing, almost, and very amused. It was right there, he thought—there by the subway station below Eighth Street. Looking out of the car, racing south, he could almost feel that he saw her standing there.

And then, a little way below Fourth Street, Weigand whirled the Buick toward the curb, braking hard and speaking tersely back over his shoulder.

“Kent Street,” he said, demandingly. “Twenty-two Kent Street. It's here somewhere—hereabouts. Where, Jerry?”

It was Jerry North's part of town—Kent Street. Kent Street. It was a name he knew; people he knew had lived on Kent Street. But in the maze of little streets which cross preposterously and dwindle and go out, and then in some other place as unexpectedly resume, and lie below Fourteenth Street and west of Sixth Avenue few residents are always certain. And now, desperately searching his mind, Jerry was not sure.

“Kent Street, Jerry!” Weigand repeated, as if by effort of will he could snap directions out of his friend. “Is it farther down? Have we passed it? Mullins?”

“Another block,” Mullins said. “Or—maybe we've passed it. I don't know, Loot.”

Mullins fumbled with the door.

“Ask somebody,” he said. “I'll find—”

He looked at the dark storefronts, at the deserted sidewalks.

“It's on down, I think,” Jerry said. “Beyond Charlton—oh, damn it to hell!”

It was futile, preposterous; something they might laugh about some day. But now, with a desperate urgency driving them, they were lost on the outskirts of a maze—a maze in which they might wander for an hour, and in which speed would only defeat them.

There was nothing for it, Weigand told them.

“We'll have to find somebody who knows.”

He leaned from the car and stared up the avenue. Then, as Mullins slammed the door shut again, Weigand whirled the car in Sixth Avenue and raced it back toward Eighth Street. It was agonizing to turn their backs. But it was better than groping through criss-crossing streets. And on the Jefferson Market courthouse tower the illuminated clock mocked at them.

Weigand swooped down on a taxicab standing at the curb just beyond Eighth Street. It was empty. But Mullins, knowing the ways of cab drivers, was out of the car before it stopped and running heavily up Eighth Street, running toward the lighted windows of an all-night lunch room. The hack driver was there, his elbows on the counter, a mug of yellow-brown coffee in his two hands. He looked up as Mullins banged the door behind him.

“Yeh,” the hack driver said. “Sure—I—”

He was astonished to be jerked from his seat, to find himself running with Mullins back toward the corner. He was relieved to see red lights on the front of the throbbing Buick. So it was the cops! Well, they didn't have anything on him—or nothing he could think of, off hand. Kent Street, now—let's see. That was the little one off to the right, a couple or three blocks down. That was—

He was astonished to find himself in the police car, swooping dizzily in a u-turn. Kent Street—sure, he knew it. Jeez, he thought, I'd better know it.

The steps had slowed to a walk now. Pamela North crouched motionless in the deepest shadows. The steps were on the walk a dozen feet away—no, now they had stopped! Pam twisted her head to look back—now there was a moving shadow. It was coming toward her, slowly.

The tumult of the hunted filled Pam North's mind, and the frantic indecision. If she stayed—if, crouched thus, she were overtaken—she would have no chance. And search could not miss her for long—at most, hiding here, she had a breathing spell, but the end was certain.

It was a nightmare after that, for how long Pam North never knew—a strange, grotesque nightmare of dimly lighted walks and feet running on them; of shadows sought for safety and abandoned; of constant, despairing search for the way out that must be somewhere—somewhere! Once she crouched beside a stone bench, with the stiff twigs of a hedge tearing at her clothes, scratching harshly through thin silk. Then she was running straight along one of the walks, trying to scream, with the other running after her.

She could not understand why she could not scream, except that it is hard to run and scream, and it was not for a long time that she realized she had been wise. Because only silence gave her respite. That was tacit in the nightmare. If she screamed it was all over—if she screamed the gun screamed, because then there would be no longer a reason for silence. And so, bewildered, caught but not quite caught in a walled, rectangular prison, Pam North ran and hid, and ran again. But the other was tireless.

And then during one of the times she crouched in the shadows, and listened for the stalking steps, and was about to run again because she could not hear them, which meant the pursuing feet were falling quietly on grass—and that meant the feet were coming nearer—she saw the light!

There had been, in all the nightmare, only one light showing in any of the apartments which made a wall around the garden. And that was an evil light, shining from the room out of which Pam had fled, with her pursuer running heavily after her. And now, also in a ground level apartment, there was another light. Pam's breath caught in her throat as she saw there were two lights. Some one had come home late, or got up in the night, or heard the running feet—somebody had turned on another light, and it was a light which marked a haven. If she could reach it—

Slowly, as much in the shadow as possible, Pam stood up. There were two lights, and one meant safety and one meant death and—and then the numbness caught again at Pam's throat.

“I don't know which is which,” Pam said to herself. “I don't know which is which!”