He picked up the case again and walked on. The only sound was the squeak of his shoes on the snow. The big thermometer over the door of the Granite State Savings Bank stood at 3 degrees, and the air had that feeling of total silent inertia that belongs exclusively to cold New Hampshire mornings. Nothing moved. The roadway was empty. The windshields of the parked cars were blinded with cataracts of frost. Dark windows, drawn shades. To Johnny it all seemed somehow dreadful and at the same time holy. He fought the feeling. This was no holy business he was on.
He crossed Jasper Street and there was the town hall, standing white and austerely elegant behind its plowed banks of twinkling snow.
What are you going to do if the front door's locked? Smart guy?
Well, he would find a way to cross that bridge if he had to. Johnny looked around, but there was no one to see him. If this had been the president coming for one of his famous town meetings, everything would have been different, of course. The place would have been blocked off since the night before, and men would be stationed inside already. But this was only a U. S. representative, one of over four hundred, no big deal. No big deal yet.
Johnny went up the steps and tried the door. The knob turned easily and he stepped into the cold entryway and pulled the door shut behind him. Now the headache was coming back, pulsing along with the steady thick beat of his heart. He set his case down and massaged his temples with his gloved fingers.
There was a sudden low scream. The coat-closet door was opening, very slowly, and then something white was falling out of the shadows toward him.
Johnny barely held back a cry. For one moment he thought it was a body, falling out of the closet like some-thing from a spook movie. But it was only a heavy cardboard sign that read PLEASE HAVE PAPERS IN ORDER BEFORE APPEARING FOR EXAMINATION.
He set it back in place and then turned to the doorway giving upon the stairs.
This door was now locked.
He leaned down to get a better look at it in the dim white glow of the streetlight that filtered in the one window. It was a spring lock, and he thought he might be able to open it with a coat hanger. He found one in the coat closet and hooked the neck of it into the crack between the door and the jamb. He worked it down to the lock and began to fumble around. His head was thudding fiercely now. At last he heard the bolt snap back as the wire caught it. He pulled the door open. He picked up his attache case and went through, still holding the coat hanger. He pulled the door closed behind him and heard it lock again. He went up the narrow stairs, which creaked and groaned under his weight.
At the top of the stairs there was a short hallway with several doors on either side. He walked down the hall, past TOWN MANAGER and TOWN SELECTMEN, past TAX ASSESSOR and MEN'S and O'SEER OF THE POOR and LADIES”.
There was an unmarked door at the end. It was unlocked and he came out onto the gallery above the rear of the meeting hall, which was spread out below him in a crazy quilt of shadows. He closed the door behind him and shivered a little at the soft stir of echoes in the empty hall. His footfalls also echoed back as he walked to the right along the rear gallery, then turned left. Now he was walking along the right-hand side of the hall, about twenty-five feet above the floor. He stopped at a point above the woodstove and directly across from the podium where Stillson would be standing in about five-and-a-half hours.
He sat down cros-legged and rested for a while. Tried to get in control of the headache with some deep breathing. The woodstove wasn't operating and he felt the cold settling steadily against him-and then into him. Previews of the winding shroud.
When he had begun to feel a little better, he thumbed the catches on the attache case. The double dick echoed back as his footfalls had done, and this time it was the sound of cocking pistols.
Western justice, he thought, for no reason at all. That was what the prosecutor had said when the jury found Claudine Longet guilty of shooting her lover. She's found out what western justice means.
Johnny looked down into the case and rubbed his eyes. His vision doubled briefly and then things came together again. He was getting an impression from the very wood he was sitting on. A very old impression; if it had been a photograph, it would have been sepia-toned. Men standing here and smoking cigars, talking and laughing and waiting for town meeting to begin. Had it been 1920? 1902? There was something ghostly about it that made him feel uneasy. One of them had been talking about the price of whiskey and cleaning his nose with a silver toothpick and
(and two years before he had poisoned his wife)
Johnny shivered. Whatever the impression was, it didn't matter. It was an impression of a man who was long dead now.
The rifle gleamed up at him.
When men do it in wartime, they give them medals, he thought.
He began to assemble the rifle. Each click I echoed back, just once, solemnly, the sound of a cocking pistol.
He loaded the Remington with five bullets.
He placed it across his knees.
And waited
Dawn came slowly. Johnny dozed a little, but he was too cold now to do more than doze. Thin, sketchy dreams haunted what sleep he did get.
He came fully awake at a little past seven. The door below was thrown open with a crash, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out, Who's there?
It was the custodian. Johnny put his eye to one of the diamond shapes cut into the balustrade and saw a burly man who was bundled up in a thick Navy pea coat. He was coming up the center aisle with an armload of firewood. He was humming “Red River Valley”. He dropped the armload of wood into the woodbox with a crash and then disappeared below Johnny. A second later he heard the thin screcing noise of the stove's firebox door being swung open.
Johnny suddenly thought of the plume of vapor be was producing every time he exhaled. Suppose the custodian looked up? Would he be able to see that?
He tried to slow the rate of his breathing, but that made his head ache worse and his vision doubled alarmingly.
Now there was the crackle of paper being crumpled, then the scratch of a match. A faint whiff of sulphur in the cold air. The custodian went on humming “Red River Valley”, and then broke into loud and tuneless song: “From this valley they say you are going… we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smiiiiile…”
Now a different crackling sound. Fire.
“That's got it, you sucker,” the custodian said from directly below Johnny, and then there was the sound of the firebox door being slammed shut again. Johnny pressed both hands over his mouth like a bandage, suddenly afflicted with suicidal amusement. He saw himself rising up from the floor of the gallery, as thin and white as any self-respecting ghost. He saw himself spreading his arms like wings and his fingers like talons and calling down in hollow tones: “That's got you, you sucker.”
He held the laughter behind his hands. His head throbbed like a tomato full of hot, expanding blood. His vision jittered and blurred crazily. Suddenly he wanted very badly to move away from the impression of the man who had been cleaning his nose with the silver toothpick, but he didn't dare make a sound. Dear Jesus, what if he had to sneeze?
Suddenly, with no warning, a terrible wavering shriek filled the hall, drilling into Johnny's ears like thin silver nails, climbing, making his head vibrate. He opened his mouth to scream. -It cut off.
“Oh, you whore,” the custodian said conversationally.
Johnny looked through the diamond and saw the custodian standing behind the podium and fiddling with a microphone. The mike cord snaked down to a small portable amp. The custodian went down the few steps from the podium to the floor and pulled the amplifier farther from the mike, then fooled with the dials on top of it. He went back to the mike and turned it on again. There was another feedback whine, this one lower and then tapering away entirely. Johnny pressed his hands tight against his forehead and rubbed them back and forth.