The young man smiled up at the rectangular section of blue sky and white cloud that was visible from the street. “They got a nice week end coming up,” he said. “They going sailing?”
“I presume so,” Mrs. Jarrod said.
“That’s the life.” He sighed. “When I make my pile, that’s for me. The blue sea, the bounding main, a bottle of beer — living, eh?”
Mrs. Jarrod stiffened. Gray-haired, stout and conventional, she brooked no nonsense from the world; and this struck her as nonsense. “You won’t make your pile, as you put it, wasting time chattering with me,” she said.
The young man laughed and trotted down the steps to the sidewalk. He headed toward Third Avenue, swinging his arms briskly, obviously savoring the clean feeling of the spring air.
From his room across the street Howard Creasy watched the scene. He stood in darkness, peering through the heavy curtains that covered his windows. The room behind him was close and warm, smelling faintly of the liver-sausage sandwich and coffee he had brought in for his supper. Creasy’s body was motionless, almost inert, and his face was impassive. Only his eyes seemed alive; behind rimless glasses they burned now with a curious intensity.
When the door opened and the Bradleys appeared, Creasy felt the sudden nervous stroke of his heart. He moved closer to the window and a shaft of sunlight touched the beads of perspiration on his forehead.
Dick Bradley, a dark-haired young man in his middle thirties, took the luggage down to the car. Two pigskin bags, a leather cosmetics case, luxuriously thick car robe — Creasy made a bitter and envious inventory. No stickers on the suitcases, he noticed with a stab of anger; they’d been around the world more than likely but they wouldn’t use labels for fear people would take them for common tourists. They were the Bradleys, so naturally they stopped at all the fine places — no need to paste up the itinerary for fools to stare at.
Creasy was enjoying his anger; it quickened his pulse and respiration, and suffused his body with a sense of power and urgency that was almost unendurably exhilarating.
Mrs. Bradley (who was called Ellie, he knew) was having a last word with the housekeeper while her husband stowed their things away in the back of the car. Final orders, Creasy thought sullenly. “Do this, do that,” he said aloud, and his voice was a mincing little snarl. “Use up the meat loaf and left-overs. And don’t be hanging on the telephone.”
Creasy knew all about people with money, people like Ellie Bradley. And he hated them with all the power and strength of his small body and soul. She had the stamp of money on her, he saw. It was something they couldn’t camouflage. She was beautiful and correct, of course, in a great gray tweed topcoat that went perfectly with her ash-blonde hair and cool, stylish manners. Anointed and perfumed and pampered, he thought, with alligator pumps and matching handbag, and the bright yellow cashmere scarf blazing at her slim throat. But it wasn’t only the clothes that marked her in his eyes; he saw the arrogance in the turn of her narrow elegant head, the contempt in every studied line of her tall graceful body. That’s what they couldn’t hide, he thought, watching them with cold, cunning eyes. Their merciless disdain for the poor and the weak...
He felt his heart lurch with fury as he stared at them; they were so fabulously equipped, so sure of themselves, so casual and secure in their acceptance of privilege. They wouldn’t notice him if he were lying in the gutter at their feet with a broken back. Oh, but if he didn’t leap to open a door, or bow and smile to her — yes, that would be different. They only noticed you if you inconvenienced them, intruded on their serene pleasure. There was only one way to gain their attention — by hurting them.
“Enjoy yourselves, my chickies,” he murmured into the silence of his room. He thought with bitter relish of their week end — of tennis and golf and sailing, of the salty wind whipping ruddiness and health into their clean-limbed handsome bodies. And then the long nights, reveling in pleasure, creating more of their own to enjoy the blessings of the rich. “Enjoy yourselves,” he said, and his voice was suddenly harsh and ugly in the dark room.
Dick Bradley called to his wife, smiling up at her, and she said a last good-by to Mrs. Jarrod and came quickly down the stairs, her slim legs flashing in the sunlight. They climbed into the car, waved to Mrs. Jarrod and drove off. She watched them for a second or two, then went inside, closing the door against Creasy.
He walked across the room and picked up the telephone. Enjoy yourself, he thought, smiling faintly. When you come home life will be very different.
Grant answered and Creasy said, “They’ve just gone.”
“Good. Call me when the housekeeper leaves.”
“Of course,” Creasy said.
The receiver clicked in his ear.
Three
At midnight a black sedan pulled up and parked on the east side of Second Avenue, a few doors below Thirty-first. Grant was at the wheel, hat brim low across his forehead, a cigarette gleaming in the dark triangle of his face. Belle huddled close to him, the collar of her bulky opossum coat turned up about her throat; the night was cold and a sharp wind churned through the empty, silent streets.
Duke sat behind them, leaning forward, and only the sharp glint of his eyes was visible in the darkness.
“I got a minute after twelve,” he said quietly. “How about you?”
Grant raised an arm and looked at his watch. “That’s it. We’ll be around front in just ten minutes.”
They had timed this operation as carefully as possible, estimating to the half-minute how long it would take Duke to reach the nursery in the Bradleys’ home, to bring the child down to the sidewalk on Thirty-first Street. It was necessary to rendezvous on Thirty-first Street; the lane that ran behind the Bradleys’ brownstone was not wide enough to admit a car.
Grant shifted and stared at Duke. “You all set?”
“I’ll see you in ten minutes,” Duke said. His smile was a vivid slash in the darkness. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Sure, sure,” Grant said in a light sharp voice. “Get started.”
Duke left the car and walked rapidly toward the narrow lane that passed behind the Bradleys’ home. He wore a black leather windbreaker and a black scarf wrapped tightly about his throat. In spite of his limp he moved swiftly and silently, and only the white flash of his face was visible in the dark stretches between the yellow street lamps...
In the car Belle lit a cigarette and Grant looked at her and swore under his breath. “You have to smoke now?” he said. “You can’t wait till we’re on our way?”
“What’s the matter, Eddie?”
“I asked you a question. Can’t you wait till we—” Grant wet his lips and stared through the windshield at the wide dark emptiness of Second Avenue. Only an occasional truck rumbled past them, and the sidewalks were deserted. “You’ll have your hands full with that baby pretty soon,” he said.
“I’ll be through with this cigarette by then,” she said.
“Okay, okay.” He wished she wouldn’t quibble about things; he wished she would do as he told her and shut up; and he wished his nerves were in steadier shape. It had come as a surprise, this sudden jittery conviction that something was going to slip. There was no reason for fear; the plan was sound, its details had been checked painstakingly and he had no serious doubts about Duke or Creasy. So why was he worried?
She laughed softly. “Eddie, you’re a funny guy. Until tonight I’d of sworn you didn’t have a nerve in your body.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It happened right after supper, didn’t it? I saw you get a funny look on your face. It came real suddenly, as if you’d just woke up in a strange place and didn’t know where you were. And were afraid to turn your head to see what was behind you.”