The doorbell rang out sharply. The man had come. In less than ten minutes after their phone talk he had reached the house. Stapp’s chest started rising and falling with renewed hope. Now his chances were good again. Twice as good as before, with two people in the house instead of only one. Four ears instead of two, to hear whatever slight sound he might manage to make. And he must, he must find a way of making one.
He gave the stranger his benediction while he stood there waiting to be admitted. Thank God for this admirer or whatever he was, thank God for their rendezvous! He’d give them his blessing if they wanted it, all his worldly goods; anything, anything, if they’d only find him, free him.
She came quickly down the stairs a second time and her footfalls hurried across the hall. The front door opened. “Hello, Dave,” she said, and he heard the sound of a kiss quite clearly. One of those loud unabashed ones that bespeak cordiality rather than intrigue.
A man’s voice, deep, resonant, asked: “Well, did it turn up yet?”
“No, and I’ve looked high and low,” he heard her say. “I tried to get Paul after I spoke to you, and he was out to lunch.”
“Well, you can’t just let seventeen dollars walk out the door without lifting your finger.”
For seventeen dollars they were standing there frittering his life away — and their own too, for that matter, the fools!
“They’ll think I did it, I suppose,” he heard the man say with a note of bitterness.
“Don’t say things like that,” she reproved. “Come in the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
Her quick brittle step went first, and his heavier, slower one followed. There was the sound of a couple of chairs being drawn out, and the man’s footfalls died out entirely. Hers continued busily back and forth for awhile, on a short orbit between stove and table.
What were they going to do, sit up there for the next half-hour? Couldn’t he make them hear in some way? He tried clearing his throat, coughing. It hurt furiously, because the lining of it was all raw from long strain. But the gag muffled even the cough to a blurred purring sort of sound.
V
Twenty-six to three. Only minutes left now, minutes; not even a full half-hour any more.
Her footsteps stopped finally and a chair shifted slightly as she joined him at the table. There was linoleum around the stove and sink that deadened sounds, but the middle part of the room where the table stood was ordinary pine-board flooring. It let things through with crystalline accuracy.
He heard her say, “Don’t you think we ought to tell Paul about — us?”
The man didn’t answer for a moment. Maybe he was spooning sugar, or thinking about what she’d said. Finally he asked, “What kind of a guy is he?”
“Paul’s not narrow-minded,” she said. “He’s very fair and broad.”
Even in his agony, Stapp was dimly aware of one thing: that didn’t sound a bit like her. Not her speaking well of him, but that she could calmly, detachedly contemplate broaching such a topic to him. She had always seemed so proper and slightly prudish. This argued a sophistication that he hadn’t known she’d had.
The man was evidently dubious about taking Paul into their confidence, at least he had nothing further to say. She went on, as though trying to convince him: “You have nothing to be afraid of on Paul’s account, Dave, I know him too well. And don’t you see, we can’t keep on like this? It’s better to go to him ourselves and tell him about you, than wait until he finds out. He’s liable to think something else entirely, and keep it to himself, brood, hold it against me, unless we explain. I know that he didn’t believe me that night when I helped you find a furnished room, and told him I’d been to a movie. And I’m so nervous and upset each time he comes home in the evening it’s a wonder he hasn’t noticed it before now. Why I feel as guilty as if — as if I were one of these disloyal waves or something.” She laughed embarrassedly, as if apologizing to him for even bringing such a comparison up.
What did she mean by that?
“Didn’t you ever tell him about me at all?”
“You mean in the beginning? Oh, I told him you’d been in one or two scrapes, but like a little fool I let him think I’d lost track of you.”
Why, that was her brother she’d said that about!
The man sitting up there with her confirmed it right as the thought burst in his mind. “I know it’s tough on you, sis. You’re happily married and all that. I’ve got no right to come around and gum things up for you. No one’s proud of a jailbird, an escaped convict, for a brother—”
“David,” he heard her say, and even through the flooring there was such a ring of earnestness in her voice Stapp could almost visualize her reaching across the table and putting her hand reassuringly on his, “there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, and you should know that by now. Circumstances have been against you, that’s all. You shouldn’t have done what you did, but that’s spilt milk and there’s no use going back over it now.”
“I suppose I’ll have to go back and finish it out. Seven years, though, Fran, seven years out of a man’s life—”
“But this way you have no life at all.”
Were they going to keep on talking his life away? Nineteen to three. One quarter of an hour, and four minutes over!
“Before you do anything, let’s go downtown and talk it over with Paul, hear what he says.” One chair jarred back, then the other. He could hear dishes clatter, as though they’d all been lumped together in one stack. “I’ll do these when I come back,” she remarked.
Were they going to leave again? Were they going to leave him behind here, alone, with only minutes to spare?
Their footsteps had come out into the hall now, halted a moment undecidedly. “I don’t like the idea of you being seen with me on the streets in broad daylight, you could get in trouble yourself, you know. Why don’t you phone him to come out here instead?”
Yes, yes, Stapp wailed. Stay with me! Stay!
“I’m not afraid,” she said gallantly. “I don’t like to ask him to leave his work at this hour, and I can’t tell him over the phone. Wait a minute, I’ll get my hat.” Her footsteps diverged momentarily from his, rejoined them again.
Panic-stricken, Stapp did the only thing he could think of. Struck the back of his own head violently against the thick pipe he was attached to.
A sheet of blue flame darted before his eyes. He must have hit one of the welts where he had already been struck once by the burglars. The pain was so excruciating he knew he couldn’t repeat the attempt. But they must have heard something, some dull thud or reverberation must have carried up along the pipe. He heard her stop short for a minute and say, “What was that?”
And the man, duller-sensed than she and killing him all unknowingly, “What? I didn’t hear anything.”
She took his word for it, went on again, to the hall-closet to get her coat. Then her footsteps retraced themselves all the way back through the dining room to the kitchen. “Wait a minute, I want to make sure this back door’s shut tight. Locking the stable after the horse is gone.”
She went forward again through the house for the last time, there was the sound of the front door opening, she passed through it, the man passed through it, it closed, and they were gone. There was the faint whirr of a car starting up outside in open.
And now he was left alone with his self-fashioned doom a second time, and the first seemed a paradise in retrospect, compared to this; for then he had a full hour to spare, he had been rich in time, and now he only had fifteen minutes, one miserly quarter-hour.