At the fourth look, the fourth I gave him, I mean, he tried to cover up. He was looking at the ceiling. Only there was nothing up there to see. And the first three looks had told the story. I said, trying to laugh it off: “Let’s go some place else, that guy’s getting on my nerves.”
They didn’t have a brain between the two of them. “Maybe he knows you, why don’t you ask him over?” one of them giggled.
I said: “Quit staring at him. Start putting your faces on. I’ll be right with you, I’m going out back.”
I went back toward the men’s room. Fortunately it was in the other direction, away from the front. There was an attendant there in a white jacket. I let him give me the works, brush-off, shoe-dusting, hair-tonic, talcum, anything to stay in there.
Then when he was all through, I eased the door a fingers width open and squinted out. By standing there in a certain position I could look straight out across the club proper, over to the entrance where he was. He hadn’t stirred. His whole attitude expressed that terrible lethal patience that never tires, never gives up. I could see where he was looking now, too. It wasn’t at the table any more. It was straight over at this very door, waiting for me to show up again.
“Is there any other way out of here?” I asked the attendant.
“No suh, this a one-way place.”
I peered out again, and he had started to move. Time was up. I was taking too long to come back. He was coming in after me. There was no mistaking that. You could tell by the way he cut through the dancers, elbowed aside waiters and whoever happened to get into his way, eyes fixed straight ahead — at the door behind which I was standing. He meant business.
Conscience makes cowards of us all. There was no reason why I shouldn’t stand there, find out what he wanted with me. But I couldn’t — because I already knew, or at least had a pretty good idea. I wasn’t entitled to this money I was throwing around right and left, it belonged to someone else. These spiffy clothes I was standing in, they weren’t mine either. Every stitch I had on, from head to foot, from my underwear on out — belonged to somebody else.
I pointed to a narrow door right beside the main one. “What’s that?”
“Closet where I keep my supplies, boss.”
I peeled off another ten. It was always tens these days. “What would you do for one of these?”
“Practickly anything,” was his frank answer.
I only had seconds. I hoisted up first one foot, then the other, wrenched off my patent dress-oxfords, handed them to him. “Put these on the floor in that cabinet over there. Side by side, where they can be seen from outside, as though there was somebody in them. Here’s a jit to open it up with. There’s a man on his way in — this $10 is for you to do something — anything — so I can get from the closet out that door without him seeing me.”
I backed into it, drew the door after me. It was lined with shelves, but there was enough space between them and the door for me to sandwich myself upright in; one week’s high living hadn’t been enough to put any paunch on me yet. I left the closet-door open by a hair’s breadth, to be able to breathe and also so I could watch for a chance to slip out.
The other door winged inward, blocking the one I was behind. Then it receded again, and he was standing there. Motionless for a moment, like he had been outside against the wall. There were two things I didn’t like about him. One was the look on his face, even though it was held profile ward to me. It was bloodless and yet glowing, as if with the imminent infliction of death — on someone, by him — right in here, right now, no matter who was around, no matter where he happened to be. And the second thing I didn’t like was the stance his right arm had fallen into. It was right-angled to the rear of him, elbow sharp in air, forearm slanted clown under the tail of his coat, as if ready to bring out something. It was held still, frozen, like the rest of him.
To the attendant facing him from the line of gleaming washstands opposite, it might have seemed only as if he was fumbling for a handkerchief. But I was behind him, and I could see the wedge-shaped bottom of the hip-holster peering from under his coat.
The attendant was engaged in dumping talcum from a big square canister into a round glass bowl, to be set out on the shelf for the convenience of customers whose beards grew in too fast while they were patronizing the club. But he managed to get too much in, it piled up higher than the rim in a mound.
The man in the doorway look a slow step forward. He started, “Hey, you—” and backed up his thumb. I suppose he was going to tell him to clear out.
The attendant said, “Yessuh, gen’-man, whut’ll it be?” but in his anxiety to please, he stepped out without watching where he put his foot, and it landed on the floor-pedal of a hot-air drier. The blast caught the cone of dumped talcum in the bowl he was holding head-on. There was suddenly a swirling blizzard over there, veiling the two of them as though they were in a fog. It was worth more than $10, it was worth $100.
The man facing him sneezed violently, so violently he floundered with it, staggered with it. A whole series of sneezes exploded from him, bending him over, blinding him, rendering him as helpless for those few minutes as a third-degree drunk.
Two quick, quiet steps in my bare socks took me from the closet to the outer door. I pared it open, sidled around the edge of it, and was outside.
I passed through the club a moment later in my bare socks, without stopping. I flung down a pair of lens at the table with the redhead and the blonde, said, “Sorry, girls, see you around,” and was gone before their heads had even had time to turn around toward me. I knew the type, they wouldn’t grieve long.
I hobbled painfully out across the hard cold sidewalk and jumped into a cab. I gave him the address of my hotel, and spent the first few blocks of the ride dusting off the soles of my feet between both hands. I’d have to change quarters right away, as soon as I got back. He’d be able to pick up the trail too easily, from back there at the club, now that he was once on it. Too many of those little numbers who frequented the place knew where I was stopping, had called me up now and then.
Just before we made the turn around the corner into the block the hotel fronted on, a light held us up. I swore softly; every minute counted. But I should have blessed it instead of cursing it out. In the minutes that we were standing there motionless, there was a street light shining into the cab from almost directly overhead, and a figure suddenly launched itself out at us from the enshrouding gloom of the building-line, where it must have been lurking unseen. The driver had already thrown his brakes and begun to swing around by that time.
The human projectile caught onto the door-handle, was carried around the corner with us, managed to get it open and flounder in against me. I shied away instinctively along the seat before I saw who it was. It was my living talisman, the shoelace peddler. He’d made the immediate vicinity of the hotel his beat, ever since that first day. There wasn’t one night, since then, that I’d failed, on coming home, to stop a minute by him and slip him another one of those tens.
I reached for my wallet to do it again right now. “Hullo, Limpy. You seem mighty spry tonight. Sorry I couldn’t stop, I’m in kind of a rush—” He motioned the offered money away. “That ain’t why I stopped you, Mr. Nugent!” he said breathlessly. Meanwhile he was tugging at me by the shoulders, trying to draw me off the scat. “Get down! Get down low, where you can’t be seen! And tell him not to stop, don’t leave him stop in front of the hotel. Quick, tell him to keep on going straight through and turn the next corner. I’ll tell you why after we get around there. Hurry up, Mr. Nugent, we’re nearly there!”