“Yes, yes, of course,” Oliphant Bradley said sharply.
“The next point is a little more difficult,” Crowley said. “I want you to be alert for anything that strikes you as odd or unusual... no matter how trivial or inconsequential it may seem. For years you’ve been soaking up unconscious impressions of this street. You know how it looks normally, you know the feel of it. If anything strikes you as off key — I want to know about it. I can’t give you an example. I wouldn’t if I could. I don’t want you looking for peculiarities. And I don’t want to suggest what you should look for. It won’t work that way. Something may jar your unconscious picture of this street. That’s what I want to know about. I’m putting this badly, I think. But do you have an idea of what I mean?” He glanced from face to face and they all nodded solemnly — like children in a classroom, he thought.
“All right, let’s go,” he said, flicking a switch.
The film began to run...
For the first half-hour there was hardly a stir in the room; their mood was expectant and tense as the life of the street moved before their eyes. Cars, trucks and cabs rolled by and people of every kind and type filled the screen; delivery boys, postmen, pedestrians of all ages, smartly dressed girls, an occasional soldier, a few drunks, a construction worker in a metal helmet biting into a long Italian sandwich — the group could have been duplicated on a thousand of the city’s streets. Crowley stopped the camera several times to study specific faces, freezing the flowing scene into a grotesque and unnatural immobility. Oliphant Bradley stood up once and said, “Wait! Look there!” in high, excited voice, but when Crowley stopped the scene the old man sat down shaking his head slowly. “No, it’s not the same chap. It was someone who’d worked for my father, I thought. But that could hardly be, eh?” He asked the question in a confused voice.
When the rain began the people thinned out, and there followed seemingly interminable stretches of building fronts and wet sidewalks.
“This doesn’t seen to be getting us anywhere,” Dick Bradley said, taking out his cigarettes. “Smoke, Ellie?”
“No, please keep watching.”
The atmosphere in the room had changed; hope was dying. There would be no miracles; only a conjurer’s trick... Crowley sensed this in the flurries of talk, the restless shiftings of positions.
Finally it was over and the screen gleamed white and blank at the end of the room. Crowley turned off the projector and snapped on the overhead lights. “The footage we’ve just seen was shot from a house on this side of the street. The film from the church steeple is next. But first: did you notice anything unusual?”
“Two more hours of film,” Oliphant Bradley said wearily, “I — it seems a waste of time.”
“Did you see anything odd or curious?” Crowley said, watching them alertly. He had seen something near the end of the film. “Anything at all?” he said, and his voice was sharper now, prodding their memories.
Ellie was sitting forward on the edge of the chair, a faint frown shadowing her smooth forehead. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “It’s probably silly. I know it can’t mean—”
“What was it?” Crowley said quickly. “Come on.”
“The little man,” Ellie said, watching him with a frown. “That seemed strange, didn’t it? I mean, about the cab.”
“Exactly,” Crowley said, slapping the table.
“What’s all this?” Dick Bradley said, staring at his wife.
“We’ll take another look,” Crowley said. He ran the film back for a few minutes, then snapped off the overhead lights. “Now watch...”
They saw the front of a brownstone, the rain slanting against its brick façade and darkening the old-fashioned wooden doorway. A few seconds later the door opened and a small neatly dressed man started cautiously down the stone steps, one hand clinging to the iron railing. He was obviously repelled by the weather; his distaste was evident as he picked his way down to the sidewalk.
“Who’s that chap?” Oliphant Bradley said.
No one answered him. The little man waved his umbrella to catch the eye of a cab driver who had stopped before him to let out a fare. Later, when the passenger had hurried past him, the little man stepped carefully down from the curb and approached the open door of the cab. Then he hesitated, staring up and down the street. Finally he raised his eyes and looked full into the camera; they could see his small, commonplace face, the mirrorlike flash of his glasses, the mark of caution in his hunched shoulders and slowly turning body.
The driver spoke to him apparently, and he took another step toward the cab. But again he hesitated, and finally he shook his head quickly and walked toward Third Avenue.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oliphant Bradley said.
“Keep watching!” Crowley said.
A few minutes later a cab came down the street and they were able to see the passenger clearly; he was sitting forward and peering out the window. “It’s the same man,” Dick Bradley said, in a surprised voice.
Crowley turned on the lights and switched off the machine. “It struck you as odd, eh?”
“Well, yes — but there’s probably a simple explanation for it.”
“Of course,” his father said. “The man hailed a cab and decided not to take it after all. I daresay every one of us has done the same thing on occasion. You remember another appointment, you’ve forgotten something — it’s a commonplace sort of thing.”
“This is a bit different,” Crowley said. “Our friend turned down a cab in the rain, and then walked a block and got another cab going in the same direction — that doesn’t strike me as normal. There may be an explanation for it. Frankly, I’d be surprised if there weren’t. But it’s odd enough to interest me.” He glanced at Ellie. “Have you ever seen this chap before?”
“No — I don’t think so.”
Crowley rubbed a hand along his jaw. A man had turned down a cab under curious circumstances — that’s what it amounted to. Ostensibly at least. A freakish bit of behavior, nothing more. But the man had come out of a building directly opposite the Bradleys’. That put another twist to it.
“Just wait here,” he said. “I’m going to back this hunch of mine a little but further.”
Crowley stepped into the study and opened the suitcase he had brought in with him Sunday night. He picked up his binoculars and then walked through the darkened living room to the windows. Stooping a bit, he sighted through the slats of the Venetian blinds, focusing his glasses on the all brownstone that faced the Bradleys’. In spite of the evening’s dusky gloom, the powerful lenses pulled the building right up to his eyes.
He saw nothing significant until he lowered the glasses to the first floor windows — and then a sudden shock of excitement ran through him. Someone was standing behind those curtained windows, looking out toward the Bradleys’ house. He couldn’t tell whether the shadowy outline was that of a man or woman, but he knew which way the person was facing; he could see the tiny orange glow of a cigarette, flaring and fading rhythmically through the curtains.
Crowley backed slowly away from the windows, keeping his glasses trained on the watching figure across the street. He knew he couldn’t be seen, but he was taking no chances; this was fitting together too neatly for coincidence.
Halfway across the room he realized that Ellie and Dick Bradley had joined him. “What is it?” Ellie whispered. “What do you see?”
Crowley brought the binoculars down and let out his breath slowly. She was staring at him, and in the faint light he saw the fear in her eyes, and the deep weary lines in her face. “Someone is watching this house from across the street,” he said. “It may mean nothing. But we’ll find out, don’t worry. I’ll call the Inspector. Then we’ll look at the rest of the film.”