The door revealed nothing, so I walked toward the street and stood on the sidewalk. I walked slowly to the doorway. Now what if Johnny had a warning, a premonition something wasn't right? Perhaps a flutter of motion in an upstairs window? Maybe the dogs began their low growling as they came up the walk? I went over and looked down at the porch steps and floor. There was no hiding place I could see or feel. There was not even a crack in the boards through which a photo negative could be dropped or slipped.
Returning to the enclosed side stairway, I opened the bottom door and went back inside. Behind me the street was empty and the birds chirped; the leaves hissed and whispered in the breeze. The sun came out. I closed the door softly and stared up the dark stairway.
I crept up, step by step, searching the walls and wood every inch of the way. I took out my penlight and swept it everywhere. I grabbed the stair tread boards by their lips and tried to raise them. I kicked at the risers to see if they were loose. No dice. The stairwell walls were painted a flat yellow. No cracks. Lightswitch plate was firm, ceiling fixture too high to reach. Up at the top I examined the outside door frame with eyes, light, and fingers. Nothing there. The door was left ajar; I pushed it open and re-entered, standing near the living-room door. I examined the walls, the chair rails, the small table under which the lethal bomb had been placed, the rug runner, everything. No dice.
I reached my hand up and swept it all around the walls. Same result.
'Johnny, damn you," I whispered aloud in exasperation, "what the hell did you do with it?"
I trudged back to the living room and stared out the windows. The faint happy noises of springtime wafted through to me. I was a fool to suppose that I could uncover the object if the determined efforts of the professionals, whose handiwork I had seen firsthand in my own house, had not. I decided I had overstayed my luck; it was time to depart. But first I went into the john a final time to take a leak. Had he flushed it down the toilet? I asked myself. No; the thugs had him in their sight the entire time. I decided to ask Joe to let me look at Johnny's clothes. Though they had been gone over by the killers and the cops with a fine-tooth comb, they seemed the one possibility remaining out of reach of the competition.
I washed my hands. The water seemed to be making a rather strange noise: a faint thumping and grating. I thought the pipes needed fixing; they had water hammer. Put dead-end air-capped pipe on the feeder line to soak up that water shock and- I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn't like the look on the face that stared back; it was afraid. I turned the water off. The grating and thumping were still there. They were coming from beneath me. When I got out to the hall I was sure what the noise was.
Somebody was coming up the stairs.
Cops or crooks- either way, Adams was cooked. Luckily, like any decent burglar, I had an alternate exit route chosen. I was going to leave via the back window. And quickly.
But it was no go; when I got there and reached down to pull up the intact pane I saw a rough-looking character standing in the small back yard. He wasn't looking up at me; he was glancing sideways, back and forth. He had seen the fallen ladder too. He was no cop. I went back into the hallway; I heard the double scrape of feet- faint yet clear, which told me the stairs had been climbed. My visitor had reached the top landing.
As I ducked into the john again I looked back. The door was open a crack; a gloved hand crept around it and pushed. The door swung open.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The footsteps stopped in the hall, although for a second I could not tell them from the beating of my heart. They paused there. No doubt the intruder was on the same errand I was. He was studying the hall and the small table. Then they commenced again, going away into the living room. Again silence. I crept from behind the door into the tiny shower stall, letting the curtain fall behind me. If I squatted over the drain and tilted my head down I could see about four feet out below the edge of the curtain. What did I have to defend myself with? Not a damn thing. I took out my briar pipe and my Zippo lighter, the only objects of hardness and substance I had on me. Pretty poor equipment against a hoodlum. I held the lighter in my left fist; I grasped the pipe by the bowl so that the stem stuck out straight ahead, like a pistol barrel. It was the best I could do.
The footfalls came again, louder now,. and stopped right outside the bathroom door. I heard the door creak a bit, then stop. The footsteps continued down the hall to the kitchen, then over to the bedroom. Was the guy going to search there? If so, he'd find the broken windowpane and the big screwdriver I'd been stupid enough to leave there. And he'd know, as if the open front door hadn't already told him. Real smart, Adams. I knew there was more than a good chance that I could be killed in a few minutes. I tried to make myself accept this by arguing that anyone so stupid deserved to die, as part of the Divine Plan, in much the same way that those who are stupid enough to explore underwater caves deserve to drown.
This was supposed to make me feel better, but it wasn't working.
Faint voices came to me in the shower stall. It was probably the two men talking. From everything I had heard, it seemed that they did not suspect I was in the apartment now; they probably had surmised that the entry had been made earlier. If I could only get out…
I pushed the curtain aside and slipped out of the stall, heading for the door. I had the door partly opened when I heard the footsteps returning. I jumped back into the stall and noticed that the curtain now was not back straight. There was an inch-wide gap along one side, through which I could peer. The footsteps passed back down the hall and stopped near the front door again. I was beginning to know this little apartment like the back of my hand. The intruder was again studying the hall. No doubt now about what he was after. I began to breathe easier; it was pretty clear he was on his way out, They had not seen my car, and both would depart soon, leaving me to creep down the stairs again and leave.
I heard the footsteps again, finally. But they were getting louder; he was coming back.
I saw the same glove slide around the side of the door like a moray eel slithering out of its lair, and swing it open. The quick glance I got through the tiny slit was enough to see the trenchcoat, the hat, and the glasses of our old friend the wall-smasher from the mill building scarcely a mile distant. And almost instantly a change came over me; all the fear turned to anger. I remembered Mary unconscious in the mill yard. I remembered the way he'd shot at us. I didn't like the skulker in the raincoat, hat, and glasses. I didn't like him at all…
As the gloved hand appeared at the curtain's top I drew back my left foot as far as possible and steadied myself by pushing my hands (both of which held objects) lightly against the metal sides of the narrow stall.
The curtain was drawn back. A face stared at me from two feet away. I realized just before I began my kick that the man wore very thick glasses.
My foot shot upward toward his groin as fast and hard as I could make it travel. I connected, and saw his mouth widen. He had begun to scream from fright when he saw me, but it turned to agony half a second later. I thrust my right arm forward in a short, snappy punch. I was aiming for anywhere on his face, but as it happened I drove the pipestem smack into his open mouth and halfway down his throat. Before he could recover from this unpleasant duo, I stepped out of the stall and swung my left hand around in a hook to the side of his head. The rectangular steel lighter helped give the punch more authority, and I had enough adrenalin going to. give it some oomph, but I don't think I hurt him much. I just can't throw a punch worth a damn.
He bent over double, shuffling backward in very short dance steps, and let out a gurgling bellow that was half the dry heaves. Old Four-Eyes wasn't having much fun, and I was glad. I cocked my right forearm tight and came down with the point of my elbow on the nape of his neck, and that finished him.