“Adventure,” she said sourly. “Romance, excitement, suspense. Phooey!”
Just before climbing into bed, she went over to the front windows. She pulled the edge of the drapery away from the window frame and looked down at the street. A taxi, roof light glowing, hurried by and turned down the next street with the faint complaint of tires. She looked up. She could see stars beyond the city mist. She looked down again, ready to shrug off her fears.
And felt as if she were about to scream.
It was a darkness across the way, a pocket in the night; you could not see into it. But something moved. A tiny red coal that came up in a slow arc and stopped, flared brighter for a moment, and descended in the same slow arc. It was a cigarette held in someone’s hand, lifted slowly to unknown lips.
She worked in darkness. She built a high precarious tower of most of the pots and pans from the kitchen. She built it in the sweating darkness, built it so that it touched the front door. If the front door should open, even an inch, the tower would fall thunderously into the dishpan. Someone had once brought her a Samoan war club. She found it in the back of the closet and took it to bed with her. She lay and strained her ears for an interminable time before exhaustion overtook her.
A great banging, clattering, tinny sound brought her out of her sleep. She jumped from the bed, blinking at the morning sunlight, clutching the war club.
“Who is it?”
“Me, Dolan,” came the answer. “For God’s sake, what’s going on in there?”
“Just a minute.”
She got her robe and put it on, and released the chain and opened the door.
Dolan looked at the litter of pots and pans. “Got something cooking?”
She knew she was blushing. “I got nervous in the night. I made a pile of them. So they’d fall over if anybody tried to come in.”
“I didn’t even try. I just knocked. A thing like that can upset a man.”
“I’m sorry, but there was someone standing across the street last night, watching this place.”
Dolan stared at the object on the bed. “What’s that thing?”
“It’s a Samoan war club. What are you doing here, Mr. Dolan?”
“Thought I’d check up on you on my way to the mines. And show you a copy of this morning’s Journal.”
She gave a quick look and sat down hurriedly. “But this is awful. He gave it back.”
“And kept the negative.”
“That’s stealing!”
“I like the caption: ‘Beauty sought by killer. Apartment rifled. Boy friend struck down. Today the slayer of Walter Fredmans, international jewel thief, roams the streets of—’ ”
“I’d really like to get dressed, if you don’t mind,” she said frigidly, and he left, grinning.
She was at the hospital early, to see Howard. He was in a six-bed ward on the second floor in the east wing. Two of the beds were empty. The head of his bed was cranked high and he was reading a magazine. He put it aside and grinned at her as she appeared.
“Howard, what a little bit of a bandage thing that is! I thought you would be swathed in stuff. Like a fortune teller.”
“I know it’s there, all right.”
She pulled the chair closer to his bed so she could hold his hand. “What happened?”
“There isn’t much to tell, really. You sounded sore over the phone when I called you yesterday morning. I wanted to be sure you’d wait for me, so I phoned again later. They told me you had left for the day. I was upset. All I could think of was somebody phoning you and pretending to be somebody else, just to get you out of there.”
“But I didn’t leave! I had to tell the switchboard to say that because I couldn’t get any work done.”
“I worried about you.”
“You remember everything now?”
“Oh, sure. I went to your place and got there a little after two. I pushed your button but I didn’t get any answer. I hung around, wondering what to do. I pushed a bunch of other buttons and pretty soon the door buzzed and I went on in. I took the elevator up and went down to your door and knocked on it. The second time I knocked, the door swung open. That puzzled me, so I walked right in. Then I was looking up at you. No memory of being hit or of falling. That’s still gone. I just remember walking through that door.”
“When can you leave here, Howard, and go back to work?”
“I can leave tomorrow and go to work Thursday if I feel okay.”
The nurse came rustling up. “You’re Miss Bayliss?”
“Yes, I am,” said Jane.
“There’s a phone call for you in the phone booth in the lobby, Miss Bayliss.”
“Thanks. Howard, I’ll be back this evening. Okay?”
“You don’t have to. Suppose I give you a ring when I’m ready to leave. Maybe you could bring my car around. I put it in that lot around the corner from your place. The claim check is here in this drawer.”
“All right. See you later, Howard.”
She hurried down the corridor, down the wide stairs and along the main-floor corridor to the lobby. There were two booths. In the second one the receiver stood on the little shelf by the phone. She closed herself inside the booth.
“Hello. This is Jane Bayliss... Hello?... Hello?”
A silence, yet somehow not the silence there is when someone has hung up. It was a listening silence. She could hear no breathing. The impression was vivid. Her hand felt cold and shaky as she hung up. She looked across the tan tile of the lobby and saw a familiar figure standing at the desk, porkpie hat at the remembered jaunty angle. She turned and took the receiver from the hook and dialed without putting a coin in the slot, pretended to carry on a conversation. When she risked another glance, Locatta was no longer at the desk. She saw him go through the far archway that divided the lobby from the main-floor corridor.
Jane walked in the other direction, out the main doors and into an afternoon that was turning colder. She kept thinking about the phone call. If it was not her imagination, then it meant that someone knew she had come to the hospital.
She wondered if she should go into a drugstore and phone Dolan and tell him. She remembered his skeptical attitude, his comment about its being some kind of burglar who slugged Howard. She was a girl with a strong will, well accustomed to taking care of herself, with no inclination to yell for help or have attacks of the vapors.
She began to window-shop. She made no effort to look behind her, or find a window that would reflect what was in back of her. After she passed West Adams Street, she walked more slowly, spending more time on each window, trying to remember the exact location of the shoe shop she liked over on Walden, the avenue that paralleled the boulevard. It was very close to the middle of the block. Clarissa’s was the name of the shop. She found a small dress store on the boulevard which, she hoped, was practically back to back with Clarissa’s. She studied the window for some time and then went in slowly.
The clerk came from the rear of the store. “May I help you?”
“I thought Clarissa’s shoe store was right along here somewhere.”
“Oh, no, miss. That’s right over on West Adams, just about opposite here,” the clerk told her.
Jane made a rueful face. “All the way around the block. I don’t suppose there’s any way I could cut through, is there?”
“You could go out through our rear door and across the alley and in through their rear door, but—”
“Oh, thank you so much. Right out through here?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The rear entrance to Clarissa’s was a narrow door that opened into a passageway piled high with cartons and littered with scraps of paper. She passed a storeroom and pushed open a swinging door and went into the shop proper. The clerk she liked saw her and said, “Hi, Miss Bayliss! New way to come in. Say, you’ve really been in the papers, haven’t you?”