It was awful trying to go to sleep at night. It was awful to wake up in a cold sweat, the spell of those strange dreams still fresh in her mind.
At first she was only faintly puzzled by this reversion to her childhood and scenes of home. She was dreaming of people she hadn’t thought about for a long time. Why? She ought to be having nightmares that showed her Joe’s stricken face at his trial. She ought to be haunted by the dead face of Merton. She ought to be seeing herself as a partner in Hank’s crime, as a partial murderess, going through some awful punishment. Those things were on her mind. She ought to be dreaming of those things.
But she wasn’t. She was dreaming of herself as a little girl, the idol of all the little boys in the one-room country school. For some silly reason, at the moment of the dreaded clammy awakening, she kept seeing a note in a childish scrawl with a dagger dripping blood saying that the sender was going to kill Lois.
It had happened. She’d received a note like that in the fifth grade and terror had caught at her stomach then. The teacher had laughed it off. Children go through that stage, he had said. Pay no attention, Lois. Pay no attention. But she had felt the hatred behind the note and had brooded at home. Grandma, with her second sight, had known it was something unusual and Lois found herself in the bolted bedroom telling about the note.
Grandma hadn’t laughed it off. Grandma had told her a lot of things, but the thing that had been trying to break through Lois’ subconscious was one sentence: If you were going to be killed, my child, you’d know.
People always knew when they were going to die, Grandma believed. Others might laugh at them, but people did get a feeling when the end was near. Maybe they didn’t know what the feeling meant, but they got it just the same.
Grandma had been old and she thought a lot about death. There were some people who thought she didn’t have all her marbles, but on this morning of the fifth day of Joe’s escape Lois began to understand her grandmother for the first time. Maybe there was something to it. Maybe that one little episode which came to nothing was designed to be her warning now.
People got a feeling. Lois had it all right, and now, after five nights of dreaming, she thought she knew what the feeling meant. She had the shivering conviction that death was near, that it was lurking outside, waiting for her.
It wasn’t Joe who frightened her now. It was her own superstitious thinking, her own revealing dreams. Sometimes she awoke with the scent of funeral flowers in her nostrils, with the slick feeling of quilted satin under her cold fingers.
She was going to die and she didn’t want to! She was afraid, and the fear made her feel like a little girl again — a desperate little girl with no one to turn to except Hank Irby. And Hank had been especially busy this last week. They’d had dinner together twice, but both times in her apartment, and she was beginning to hate the place, to feel closed in.
By afternoon, she couldn’t stand it. She called Hank at his office. He had warned her about the switchboard, had told her always to be casual and cold about making an appointment and save what was on her mind until later. Hank was always careful about things like that.
She tried to make it sound like a business call, but her voice quivered and she bit her lips, trying to get it under control.
“What can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly. That meant he wasn’t alone.
“I’ve got to see you!” she blurted. “I’ve simply got to! I can’t help it, Hank. I’m going—”
He cut her off in a crisp voice. She could tell he was angry at her for saying such foolish things, when the switchboard girl might be listening.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can. And thank you for calling it to my attention.”
She banged the receiver on the hook and began to pace the room, crying with jerky sobs of exasperation and self-pity.
It was all Hank’s fault! She wouldn’t be in this terrible state of nerves, afraid of her own shadow, if it hadn’t been for Hank. He had planned Merton’s death, had talked her into using Joe for the sucker. She’d never been afraid of Joe before. It was all Hank’s fault that she was afraid of him now.
And Hank knew what a state she was in. How could he sit there in his safe comfortable office and brush her off that way? Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you for calling it to my attention. Thank you, Miss Zilch. Good-by, Miss Zilch.
She hated Hank! She wouldn’t see him again. She’d die before she’d listen to that smug voice refusing to accept her trouble as his trouble. Big, strong Hank! He’d spent a quarter for a bolt, a quarter for her life.
She began to laugh, to mumble out aloud: “Here she is, folks. Step right up. For a quarter, for one-fourth of a dollar, you may take a look at the corpse of the lovely, of the beautiful Lois Baum, the little lady who knew she was going to die. Just a quarter, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up. Step right up!”
Then she stopped the foolishness. She clamped her teeth together and went into the kitchen with purposeful steps. She poured herself a stiff glass of scotch and made her decision.
She was through with Hank and his endless promises that he’d get rid of Melissa and marry her. She was through listening to him, through letting him laugh at her fears. She’d forget the whole thing. She’d spend the afternoon dressing. She’d give the crowd a treat. She’d dress up for death as she’d never dressed up before!
The idea appealed to her and she sipped at the scotch, planning her outfit. Something gay, she decided. Perhaps the ice-green print, with the full skirt. Something that would billow around her as she fell.
That picture was such a sorrowful one that quiet tears began dropping across her cheeks.
The shrill sound of the telephone bell set her whole body to trembling and when she answered it, the sound was scarcely audible. Hank’s voice now, soft and comforting as a mother’s touch.
“Darling, I ducked right out of the office to call you. I was so worried at the way you sounded! You are all right, sweet? Tell daddy what’s the matter.”
She forgot her anger, forgot the moment when she had been sure that Hank wasn’t interested in her plight. This was comfort; this was something to cling to.
“I’m so frightened, Hank! And I’m driving myself crazy just staying in like this.”
“Sure, baby, I know. Tell you what. I’ll run over for awhile and see what I can do. Just sit tight, honey. I won’t be long.”
She took a shower and slipped into the ice-green print, humming a snatch of a tune. She wasn’t crying now. She wasn’t dressing for death. She was dressing for Hank Irby, the man she loved, the man she intended to marry...
Midnight. The hour when most people decide it’s time to go to bed. Lights in houses begin to wink out and the city gets darker than it was. Halls of apartment houses begin to take on the hush of deep night, and dark shadows fall over gangways and doors.
Hank had left at eleven after spending hours with her, talking, laughing, and calming her fears with his sensible masculine logic.
He had led her about by the hand, pointing out the room’s safety features. She lived on the eighth floor of the building and the windows couldn’t possibly be used for entry. The door into the hall was the only outer door she had; this door was locked and bolted. She had a telephone.
What could happen to her? Granted, she couldn’t stay locked in forever — but Joe couldn’t stay at large forever, either. The police were bound to catch him if he came to the city. Then life would be back to normal again. What does a week or so of caution amount to? Nothing to ruin the whole future, nothing to be so gloomy about!