«How’d you know I wasn’t a Nighter?»
«You kidding? How could one guy be a Nighter, when they go in armlock gangs and you can hear ’em tapping. We’re fools to be out in this, mister. You and me, both of us. If I wasn’t drunk—say, got a match?»
«Sure,» Keith said. «Here’s a box of them. Can you—?»
«I got the shakes, mister. Would you light one for me? And then, when I get a fag going, sure, I’ll tell you a safe place we can hide out in for the rest of the night.»
Keith scraped a match along the side of the box and struck it. The sudden flame made gray dimness out of the black mist for a radius of about a yard.
It revealed a hideous, leering, scarred face—and above it a club raised to strike. The club started to come down the instant the match flared.
There wasn’t time to duck that blow. Keith stayed alive in that instant by reacting quickly, instantaneously. He stepped in under the blow, thrusting the flaming match into that ugly face. The man’s forearm, not the club, struck Keith’s head a glancing blow. The club dropped and struck the sidewalk.
Then they were struggling, wrestling in the dark, with strong hands trying for Keith’s throat, foul breath in his face and fouler words in his ears. He managed to avoid those strangling hands. He stepped back and struck. His fist connected solidly in the dark.
He heard his assailant fall—not knocked out, for he was still cursing. Under cover of that sound, Keith took three light, quick steps backward, away from the wall, out into the open blackness, and stood there quietly, not making a sound.
He heard his attacker scramble to his feet, breathing hard. For half a minute, perhaps, that breathing was the only sound in the world. Then there was another sound, a new one. It was a distant, soft tapping, like the tapping of a blind man’s cane, but faster and manifold—as though a company of blind men were coming tapping through the dark, fast. The sound came from the direction he had been going—from the direction of Broadway and Times Square.
He heard a subdued mutter, «Nighters!» and the quick shuffle of footsteps as his former assailant started off. His voice, no longer cursing or even belligerent, came back: «Run, pal. Nighters!»
And the shuffle and scuffle of his footsteps died away as the tapping got louder and nearer. It was getting nearer incredibly fast.
What were Nighters? Human beings? He tried to piece together the few things he’d heard about them. What had the man with the scarred face said about them? «When they go in armlock gangs and you can hear ’em tapping.»
A gang of murderous («Them? Mister, I’m alive, ain’t I? Would I be if the Nighters had got me? I ask you?») desperadoes organized to prey in the superblackness of the mist-out?
Armlock? A row of them with locked arms, perhaps, from one side of the street to the other, so their prey couldn’t escape?
The tappings was close now, only yards away. Coming faster than men can walk in the dark, almost at a run. They had a system, somehow, that gave them speed.
Keith turned and ran, diagonally toward the line of the building fronts until his hand, outthrust, made scraping contact, and then along the buildings. Despite the risk of falling over some obstacle he couldn’t see, he ran.
The danger behind seemed greater. The fear that had been in the voice of the man with the scarred face was contagious. That man—and he was no coward, however foul he was—had known what Nighters were, and he’d been afraid, plenty afraid.
Keith ran thirty or forty paces, then stopped to listen again. He’d gained. The tapping was farther off, maybe twenty yards away instead of five or ten. He could outdistance them then, as long as he dared to run. He went forward again, this time at a rapid walk for a counted twenty steps, and stopped again to listen. Yes, he’d held his distance even at that pace.
He started again, a little faster. He wanted to gain, not to stay even. Another twenty steps, again a pause to listen.
Tapping—from the opposite direction, ahead of him.
Quite a way ahead—he must be halfway down the block now. And that other sound could come from near the far corner—but definitely it was the same kind of sound as behind him, only more distant.
Two lines of them, coming from opposite directions, and he was in between. He stopped, his heart beating wildly now. He knew now what fear was. He could taste it in his throat.
The Nighters—whatever Nighters were—had him in the middle.
He stood there, hesitating, until the tappings behind him were so close he had to start running again—running toward the more distant danger to escape the closer one. Again, this time, he ran, blindly except for a hand trailing along the building fronts.
He ran about fifty paces before he stopped again to listen. There was the tapping from both directions now—and about equally distant either way. No use to run farther!
He crouched back into a doorway, caught. They’d have him within a minute now. Unless—
He groped for the handle of the door he leaned against, and tried to turn it. It was locked, of course. His frantic hands ran over the front of the door, felt the glass panel.
In desperation he swung his fist at the bottom corner of the glass and it shattered.
He should have cut his fist badly, but he didn’t. As though luck had decided to give him a break at last, a small area of glass fell neatly inward. He had a glimpse of light inside as a thick curtain drawn down over the pane swung inward. He reached through the opening, turned the knob from the inside, and stumbled through the door.
The light inside almost blinded him as he slammed the door shut behind him.
A voice said, «Stop or I’ll shoot.»
Keith stopped, partly raising his hands. He blinked and could see again. He was in the lobby of a small hotel. Across the desk, a dozen feet from him, leaned a white-faced, very frightened looking clerk, holding a repeating shotgun whose muzzle looked as big as a cannon and was aimed straight at Keith’s chest.
He said, «Don’t come a step closer. Get back out. I don’t want to shoot you, but—»
Without lowering his half-raised arms, Keith said, «I can’t. Nighters. They’re—»
The clerk’s face got whiter. They could both hear the sounds of tapping.
The clerk’s voice was just above a whisper, and it trembled. «Back up against that door. Hold the curtain fast against the break, so no light shows.»
Keith took a step backward and leaned against the door.
He and the clerk were both very silent. Would they see—or, groping, feel—that hole he had made in the glass? Was a knife or a bullet or something going to come through that hole and into his back. His skin crawled.
But nothing came through the hole. For a minute there was tapping, muffled voices. Human voices? Keith thought so. Then the sounds outside died away.
Neither of them spoke for almost three minutes. Then the clerk said, «Now get out. They’ve gone.»
Keith kept his voice pitched as low as he could and still make it audible to the clerk. He said, «They’re still nearby; they’ll get me if I go out again. I’m not a robber. I’m not armed. And I’ve got money. I’d like to pay for that window I broke—and I’d like to rent a room if you’ve got one. If you haven’t a room, I’ll even pay to sit in your lobby all night.»
The clerk studied him uncertainly, without lowering the gun. Then he asked, «What were you doing—out there?»
«I came in from Greeneville—last train into Grand Central. I’d had word my brother was seriously sick and I took a chance on getting home—a dozen blocks. Hadn’t realized quite how bad it was out there.»