Heller sat down.
And how pleased I was! Miss Simmons had him stalled. What a marvelous, brilliant woman! Her straight hair and glasses hid the fact that she was also quite good looking. And even though she obviously hated men, I felt a great tenderness for her, a longing to hug her and tell her what a truly magnificent person she was!
My ally! At last I had found one to give me hope in my sea of chaos!
Oh, it did me good to see Heller just sitting there, staring at the grass.
The fate of empires lay in the delicate and beautiful hands of a woman. But this was not the first time in the age-long histories of planets. I prayed to the Gods that her grip on fate would remain tenacious and strong.
Chapter 6
Heller glanced at his watch and it winked 3:00 P.M. He glanced at the sky: there was a pattern of cloud to the north and a stir of wind.
He got up and, at a fast trot, began to cover the long blocks home.
Suddenly he stopped. Something had caught his eye up ahead. Miss Simmons was just disappearing down a subway stairs, way up ahead.
Heller glanced up and down the street. It was Sunday afternoon and there wasn’t anyone about. The usual midtown Sunday desertion. He trotted on. He seemed to be heading for the stairs. It came to me in a flash that maybe he was going to murder Miss Simmons! That is the first plan that would have occurred to me. Apparatus training is always uppermost.
But he passed on by the stairs.
A sharp voice from the bowels of the station! “No! Go away!”
Heller sprang over the rail and dropped onto the steps. He went down six at a time. He burst out onto the platform.
Miss Simmons was standing there, on the other side of the turnstile. A ragged wino was reeling back and forth in front of her. “Gimme a buck and I’ll go away!”
She raised her cane to strike at him. He easily grasped it and yanked it out of her hand. He threw it aside.
Heller yelled, “You, there!”
The drunk looked around. He stumbled and scrambled for a more distant exit stair and went through a steel revolving gate.
Heller fished out a token and went through the turnstile. He walked over to the cane and picked it up. He came back and handed it to Miss Simmons.
“Things are pretty deserted on Sunday,” he said. “It isn’t safe for you.”
“Wister,” said Miss Simmons with loathing.
“Maybe I should see you home,” said the insufferably polite and courteous Royal officer.
“I am perfectly safe, Wister,” said Miss Simmons, acidly. “All week I work cooped up. All week I am mobbed with students. Today the class was finished early and it is the first time in MONTHS I have a chance for a quiet walk alone. And who turns up? YOU!”
“I’m sorry,” said Heller. “I just don’t think it’s very safe for a woman to be walking around by herself in this city. Particularly today when there are so few people about. That man just now—”
“I have lived in New York for years, Wister. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Nothing will ever happen to me!”
“You ever walk around alone much?” said Heller.
“I don’t get a chance to, Wister. There are always students. Please leave me alone, Wister. I am going to have my walk in spite of you or anybody else. Go away somewhere and play with your atom bombs!”
A train roared up, the doors opened. She turned her back upon him pointedly and entered a car.
Wister trotted down the train a few cars and, steadying an automatic door before it could close, got aboard. The train sped along.
I was trying to figure out what his angle was. He lived only a couple blocks away from the station they had just left. She was definitely in his road on his way to a diploma. It would be greatly to his benefit if she were disposed of. The Apparatus textbook handling would be to do just that. Had I found a real ally only to lose her?
The shuttle train pulled into Grand Central. Heller had his eye on Miss Simmons, seen through intervening car doors. She got out of the train.
Heller also went out of the door.
Miss Simmons probably did not see him. She was following directions which took her to the Lexington Avenue line. Heller followed at a distance.
She got to the Lexington Avenue IRT uptown platform. Then she walked way on up the platform to where the front end of the train would stop.
She stood there, leaning on her cane, waiting for the next express.
A young man in a red beret walked toward her. Heller started to move forward and then stopped. The young man was a clean-looking youth. He had on a white T-shirt and it said Volunteer Guard Patrol on it.
He spoke to Miss Simmons. “Miss,” he said politely, “you shouldn’t be riding the front cars or the back cars of a train, especially on Sunday. Ride in the center where there are more people. The gangs and muggers are out real heavy today.”
Miss Simmons turned her back on him. “Leave me alone!”
The volunteer guard drifted down the platform. He must have sensed Heller had seen the interplay. He said to Heller as he passed, “Rapes by the trainful and they never learn.”
An express roared in and came to a hissing halt with a roar and clang of doors opening. Miss Simmons got into the first car. Heller stepped in to the middle of the train. The doors slammed shut and they roared away, lurching and banging at high speed.
A tough-looking drunk sized up Heller. Heller took his engineer gloves out of his haversack and put them on. It was an effective gesture. The tough one promptly staggered down the swaying train to the next car back.
White tiles of stations flashed by, one after another. They rode and rode and rode, all at very high speed through the dark tunnels, the sound a pounding roar. At each infrequent stop, Heller would half rise to see if Miss Simmons was alighting, would see that she was not and would then sink back.
After a very long time, the signs on the tunnel poles said:
Miss Simmons got out. Heller waited until the last moment and then got out. Miss Simmons had vanished up a stairs.
Shortly, Heller emerged into daylight. Miss Simmons was striding along northward. He waited a bit. He looked at the sky. It was overcast. Wind was whipping stray bits of paper along roadways.
It was then I realized what he must be doing: he had probably read one of the G-2 manuals, the one about how to tail a Russian spy. He was simply practicing. He had not read any Apparatus manuals and so he would not be well enough trained to know that he should simply murder Miss Simmons. Having accounted for his actions, I felt much easier. Miss Simmons would be quite safe after all and I still had an ally.
Several picnickers were evidently going home, their hair blown about by the wind. Otherwise there was no traffic.
At least two hundred yards behind Miss Simmons, Heller followed along.
She went some distance. A sign pointed:
She turned in that direction, striding along in her heavy laced boots, swinging her cane, the perfect picture of a fashionable hiker in the European style.
She made some more turns. They were well into a kind of wilderness interlaced with infrequent bridle paths.
The wind was rising and trees were bowing. Some belated picnickers fled toward civilization. After that it was a deserted expanse of thickets and trees.
Heller was closer to her now but still thirty yards or more behind. Due to the twists and turns of the trail, he was usually masked from her. She was not looking back.
Ahead was a vale. The path went down into a long hollow and then turned up at the far end. It was a totally hidden area, surrounded by large trees.
Miss Simmons got a third of the way up the far slope. Heller stepped forward to go down the path.