Ponds hadn’t been seen, nor even heard from, since the visit of the two men.
Noon came, and there was a general sortie for lunch.
On his way out Marshall took the trouble of accosting Helen Strom, as she was preparing to leave the reception desk.
As if on the spur of the moment, as if it only occurred to him now that he happened to encounter her, he asked: “Say, who were those two men who came in here about an hour ago?”
She immediately became animated, dropped her voice to an excited whisper; as if delighted at discovering there was still someone left to whom she had not yet related the incident. Inadvertently, of course.
“Oh, what do you think? They showed me some kind of a badge — quick, like this, you know—” She planed her hand edgewise. “I really didn’t have time to see what it was, but isn’t that the police, when they use a badge like that?”
“What would they want here?” He shrugged elaborately. He glanced around over his shoulder, as if just then discovering Wise’s vacant desk. “I wonder what happened to Wise today; he didn’t show up.”
“He must be sick, after last night. Oh, wait a minute, there’s Frances...” She had just then sighted someone more to her interest, of her own sex and occupational status, passing streetward along the hall, and left him without further ado.
He went on out to the street, behind the two.
He ate no lunch. He took a walk instead. A fairly lengthy, yet a rigidly circumscribed, walk.
He boxed the railroad station.
Suddenly, as if noticing this for the first time, he looked at it. Then went in.
He didn’t go up to any of the various ticket windows, as you do when sure of your destination and the train you are to take. He didn’t go over to the information desk, as you do when sure of your destination but unsure of the train you are to take. He went instead to the waiting room, as you do when sure only that you are going away. He sat down idly, as if choosing this place simply to rest himself awhile, simply to make the rest of his lunchtime hour pass more quickly.
Now and then the sepulchral-sounding voice of the announcer would blare out dismally, as if chanting a dirge for someone that was dead. Chanting a dirge in a vast hoilowed-out catacomb.
“Train for Ogden, Salt Lake City, San Francisco.”
He didn’t skulk or hide. He sat there, rather, in an attitude of morose pensiveness, arms folded across his chest, head inclined to contemplate the floor, littered with peanut shells and scallops of orange rind and the glistening foil wrappings that had originally encased sticks of chewing gum.
“—Salt Lake City, San Francisco.”
Arms folded across his chest, in an attitude of morose pensiveness, contemplating the floor before him, not seeming to hear anything, not seeming to be aware of anything that was going on around him.
“—San Francisco.”
He got up suddenly, as if tired of loitering any longer. No more than that. Went to the ticket window now. As you do when sure of your destination and the train you are to take.
“Two for San Francisco.”
“Pullman or day coach?”
“Day coach.”
“Round trip or single?”
“Just there. Not back.”
“That’s thirteen... Twenty — six sixty.”
“Thirty dollars.”
“Seventy, seventy-five, twenty-seven, and three makes thirty. Better get a move on. It’s pulling out in five more minutes.”
“I’m not taking the one going out now. This is for tomorrow’s train. Or maybe the day after. The tickets are good, aren’t they?”
“Sure, any time within thirty days.”
“Well, that’ll cover it,” Marshall said. “Any time within the next thirty days.” And even after he’d turned from the window, he softly repeated it once more, as if for his own benefit: “Any time within the next thirty days.”
He went back to the office.
There were people standing around the building doorway, on the sidewalk. Not just going in and coming out, but standing there at full halt, in a straggling crescent drawn around the outer side of the doorway. And all facing toward the doorway, as if waiting for it to give some sign. Beside its lintel stood a policeman, idle. And when their eyes sought him out, his eyes went up over their heads in a sort of vacant superiority.
Marshall quailed, and he wanted to turn and flee back toward where he’d just come from. But somehow he didn’t. He only slowed gingerly, before he’d quite come up to them, and went over closer beside the wall, and lingered along there for a moment or two, body half turned so that you couldn’t tell in which direction he actually intended going next, whether forward or backward.
Nothing happened. The doorway stayed as it was. The people stayed as they were, with only an occasional shifting along their outside perimeter, when someone shorter than the rest tried to see over someone taller than he was.
Little by little Marshall drew nearer again, until finally the crescent had taken him into itself, he was one of them.
The policeman spoke abruptly, as if repeating something by rote that he knew was expected of him at fixed intervals, but without much hope of its being heeded.
“All right, now. There’s nothing to see. Keep moving. Don’t just stand here.”
The crescent fluctuated a little, but remained intact, which was apparently all he’d expected of it anyway. His eyes went up overhead again, vacantly superior, as if preferring not to see this implicit disobedience.
“What is it?” Marshall ventured, of the anonymous shoulder beside him. “What happened inside?”
“I don’t know. I heard somebody say there was an accident in the building. I saw them all standing here, so I stood too.”
Nothing happened. The doorway remained as it was, the people remained as they were, the policeman remained as he was. The terrible hypnotic patience of mass-curiosity; that wears out the very stones of the street.
Marshall, after a courage-garnering moment or two, broke ranks, stepped up to the doorway.
“Where you going?” the policeman said gruffly.
“I work in there.”
“All right, go ahead,” the policeman said.
There was another policeman standing at the back of the entrance hall, beside the elevator grate.
The elevator came down.
A man in a white jacket got out. Then a stretcher with something covered lying on it. Then a second man in white behind it. They made an awkward turn with it, and the elevator was left clear.
Marshall got on. The attendant turned around and looked directly at him, for some reason. With some sort of curiosity or appraisal, he couldn’t tell what it was. He could feel himself paling, all over again, and for a moment wished he hadn’t come into the building and hadn’t got on the car. He looked down at the floor and, if the attendant had intended saying something to him, that seemed to ward it off.
Marshall’s body continued trembling slightly even after the pulsation of the car had stopped.
There were people in the hall, up there on his floor. Some of them from the other offices, a few, whom he didn’t recognize, perhaps from other floors of the building. They were standing about in desultory twos and three, low-voiced, crestfallen in bearing. It was like the dregs of an audience left about after a play has ended.