Sturgess poised his own two hands downward across the edge of the door, and gratitude was somehow expressed even in the gesture itself. But the man inside grated impatiently, “Well, whaddye want?”
It was hard to put into words, especially when it wasn’t welcome. All Sturgess could say was, “You don’t know what this means—”
The man said with a jeer, a jeer for himself, “I don’t know how I come to do it. I never done a thing like that before.”
“But isn’t there anything I can do? Won’t you at least let me have your name?”
The answer was almost venomous. “What d’you care what my name is? I don’t go around giving people my name!”
Sturgess would have taken a kick in the teeth from him. His balked gratitude had to find some means of expression, so he gave the man his own name instead.
The stranger just looked at him stolidly. Sturgess couldn’t tell if he was bored, or contemptuous. His eyes flicked to Sturgess’ fingers, which were folded across the rim of the car door. The meaning was plain: Take your hands off; get away from me.
The car inched away, and Sturgess dropped his hands defeatedly.
“If there’s ever anything I can do—” he called out helplessly.
His benefactor stayed in character to the end. A cynical “That’s what they all say!” came floating back above the dwindling tail-light.
The reports on the Torrington murder were coming in faster and more promising by the hour. There had been a lull of half a week first, that preliminary lull that the outside world always mistakes for inactivity, even defeat. But they hadn’t been idle. They’d been working behind the scenes, in the laboratory, in the Bertillon files, on the weapon-testing range, in the world of the exact sciences. They had built up their man from nothing, with the aid of nap from his suit, body oil from his fingertips, a hundred and one other microscopic things. At the end of half a week they had him, although they had never seen him. They had his height, his weight, his habits, almost the way he walked, and what his blood count was. Now came the time to get him, to pull him out of thin air, the way a magician makes a rabbit appear out of a hat — to match him in the flesh to his preconceived identity.
The murderer had had plenty of time to leave the city during those three and a half days. He had left. They’d expected him to, they’d counted on his doing just that. They cast their net in a great wide loop first, overreaching the farthest possible limits of his flight; for in his own mind he was still safely anonymous. They began to draw the net in by telegraph, by radio, by all the means they had. Too late by a matter of hours he tried to break through. He was recognized, the alarm sent out, the highways blocked off. He turned and fled back again; the chase went into reverse. He plunged back into the sanctuary of the city. The net was drawn in slowly but surely.
Yesterday his car had been found, abandoned just inside the city limits, and by that they got his name. It was Murray Forman — there were infinite variations to it, but none of them was of paramount importance. He was guilty of cold-blooded murder, and that was.
Tighter and tighter the noose was pulled. From city wide it narrowed to a single neighborhood, from an entire neighborhood down to a single street. And presently they would have the very house, and then the exact room inside that house and then they’d have him. It was a matter of hours only, fractions of hours. They were old in guile, and remorseless, and their combined intelligences never slept. But singly they were only human beings.
First-Grader Sturgess, of the Homicide Squad, was relieved temporarily at 2 that morning, almost at the zero hour, and sent home subject to immediate recall. He had slept only in snatches for a week past, his reflexes were no longer dependable, and much as he rebelled against it, he recognized the advisability of the respite. The climax might not occur until dawn, in which case he could still be in time for it on his return to duty.
He put his key to the door and let himself into the empty house. The wife and kid were away in the country with relatives for two weeks, and the summer mustiness of rooms that have been shut up tight all day clung to die air. He put on the lights and saw halos around them, from his fatigue.
The image of his girl leaped out at him from the green-gold easel on the radio, and already he was less weary. Just the sight of her likeness was restful. She was still on loan; and now, at twelve, more than a hint of the way she was going to be was apparent. And she was going to be the tops.
He said, “Hello, honey,” to her. He said it every time he got back, just as though she were here.
“Your old man’s all in,” he mourned to her under his breath. He opened the windows first of all, to freshen up the place a little. Then he took off the things that bothered him most, in order — his tie and then his shoes and then his coat. He said to himself, “I’m getting old,” but with the complacency that only a man who knows he really isn’t can bring to bear on the thought.
He puttered around in his socks a minute or two. He thought, “Where did she keep the cans of salmon, now?” He thought, “I’m too tired to bother.” He went in and stood over the bed, sketchily straightened since the last time he’d been in it. He looked at it questioningly. It was too much trouble to pull down that spread. It would take too long — he couldn’t wait another minute. He turned slightly, let himself fall back on the bed in a straight line from shoulders to heels, so that his feet kicked up slightly with the fall. The bed sang out threateningly under the impact but held, and before the springs had stopped jarring he was already out of the world.
The tapping alone would never have roused him. It was too low, too furtive. It was the sharper note of the bell that brought him up through layers of oblivion into the shallows of awareness. He raised his head from the neck alone, held it erect, let it drop back again of its own weight.
The ring came again, cut short as though no more than a peck had been given the button. The tapping was blurred, like hail or gravel striking on wood. He got up, wavered through the two rooms toward the front door, said sharply, “Who’s there?”
The tapping broke off short.
He opened the door and a man was standing there in the dim light. The man acknowledged the opening with a peculiar, warning gesture, a diagonal cut of his hand that held a plea for caution in it.
He seemed to take his right of admission for granted. His hat was low, and Sturgess didn’t know him, didn’t know why he should. The visitor inserted himself obliquely between Sturgess and the door frame, and then as Sturgess gave ground before him, the man closed the door and sealed it with his own body, pressing himself against the knob.
He pushed his hat higher, but inadvertently, by backing a hand to his forehead as though in unutterable relief. “I thought you’d never open the door,” he said. “I saw you come in before.”
Sturgess said on a rising inflection that held no anger, yet led the way toward it, “Who are you?”
The man leaning dejectedly against the door — he was starting to sag a little now as if some long-sustained tension had relaxed — sneered: “You don’t know me?”
There was memory in that sneer alone, in that characteristic tone that never gave the benefit of the doubt. The man’s shoulder blades went a notch lower on the door-seam. “You better know me,” he said. And then he jeered, “Or don’t you want to?”
His eyes found the picture, rested on it, guessed, came back again with a mocking gleam. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Sturgess knew by now.