It was his turn to grab me. His fat little hand closed on my arm with more power than I’d given him credit for.
“I’ve been telling you what will happen—unless you act at once to avert it!”
“Aha. That’s where that big future you mentioned comes in.”
“Mr. Ravel—you must leave here at once.” He fumbled in a pocket of his coat, brought out a card with an address printed on it: 356 Colvin Court.
“It’s an old building, very stable, quite near here. There’s an exterior wooden staircase, quite safe. Go to the third floor. A room marked with the numeral 9 is at the back. Enter the room and wait.”
“Why should I do all that?” I asked him, and pried his fingers loose from my sleeve.
“In order to save your life!” He sounded a little wild now, as if things weren’t working out quite right for him. That suited me fine. I had a distinct feeling that what was right for him might not be best for me and my big future.
“Where’d you get my name?” I asked him.
“Please—time is short. Won’t you simply trust me?”
“The name’s a phony,” I said. “I gave it to a Bible salesman yesterday. Made it up on the spot. You’re not in the book-peddling racket, are you, Mr. Ah?”
“Does that matter more than your life?”
“You’re mixed up, pal. It’s not my life we’re dickering for. It’s yours.”
His earnest look went all to pieces. He was still trying to reassemble it when the street door opened and a man in a black overcoat, black velvet collar, black homburg, and carrying a black swagger stick walked in.
“You see?” My new chum slid the whisper across the table like a dirty picture. “Just as I said. You’ll have to act swiftly now, Mr. Ravel, before he sees you—”
“Your technique is slipping,” I said. “He had me pat right down to my shoe size before he was halfway through the door.” I brushed his hand away and slid out of the booth. The man in black had gone across to the bar and taken the fourth stool, without looking my way. I picked my way between the tables and took the stool on his left.
He didn’t look at me, not even when my elbow brushed his side a little harder than strict etiquette allowed. If there was a gun in his pocket, I couldn’t feel it. He had propped the cane against his knees, the big silver head an inch or two from his hand. I leaned a little toward him.
“Watch it, the caper’s blown,” I said about eight inches from his ear.
He took it calmly. His head turned slowly until it was facing me. He had a high, narrow forehead, hollow cheeks, white lines around his nostrils against gray skin. His eyes looked like little black stones.
“Are you addressing me?” he said in a voice with a chill like Scott’s last camp on the icecap.
“Who is he?” I said in a tone that suggested that a couple of smart boys ought to be able to get together and swap confidences.
“Who?” No thaw yet.
“The haberdasher’s delight with the hands you hate to touch,” I said. “The little guy I was sitting with. He’s waiting over in the booth to see how it turns out.” I let him have a sample of my frank and open smile.
“You’ve made an error,” Blackie said, and turned away.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Nobody’s perfect. The way I see it—why don’t we get together and talk it over—the three of us?”
That got to him; his head jerked—about a millionth of an inch. He slid off his stool, picked up his hat. My foot touched the cane as he reached for it; it fell with a lot of clatter. I accidentally put a foot on it while picking it up for him. Something made a small crunching sound.
“Oops,” I said, “sorry and all that,” and handed it over. He grabbed it and headed for the men’s room. I almost watched him too long; from the corner of my eye I saw my drinking buddy sliding toward the street exit. I caught him a few yards along the avenue, eased him over against the wall. He fought as well as you can fight when you don’t want to attract the attention of the passersby.
“Tell me things,” I said. “After I bought the mindreading act, what was next?”
“You fool—you’re not out of danger yet! I’m trying to save your life—have you no sense of gratitude?”
“If you only knew, chum. What makes it worth the trouble? My suit wouldn’t fit you—and the cash in my pockets wouldn’t pay cab fare over to Colvin Court and back. But I guess I wouldn’t have been coming back.”
“Let me go! We must get off the street!” He tried to kick my ankle, and I socked him under the ribs hard enough to fold him against me wheezing like a bagpipe. The weight made me take a quick step back and I heard a flat whup! like a silenced pistol and heard the whicker that a bullet makes when it passes an inch from your ear. There was a deep doorway a few feet away. We made it in one jump. My little pal tried to wreck my knee, and I had to bruise his shins a little.
“Take it easy,” I said. “That slug changes things. Quiet down and I’ll let go your neck.”
He nodded as well as he could with my thumb where it was, and I let up on him. He did some hard breathing and tugged at his collar. His round face looked a bit lopsided now, and the China-blue eyes had lost their baby stare. I made a little production of levering back the hammer of my Mauser, waiting for what came next.
Two or three minutes went past like geologic ages.
“He’s gone,” the little man said in a flat voice. “They’ll chalk this up as an abort and try again. You’ve escaped nothing, merely postponed it.”
“Sufficient unto the day and all that sort of thing,” I said. “Let’s test the water. You first.” I nudged him forward with the gun. Nobody shot at him. I risked a look. No black overcoats in sight.
“Where’s your car?” I asked. He nodded toward a black Marmon parked across the street. I walked him across and waited while he slid in under the wheel, then I got in the back. There were other parked cars, and plenty of dark windows for a sniper to work from, but nobody did.
“Any booze at your place?” I said.
“Why—yes—of course.” He tried not to look pleased.
He drove badly, like a middle-aged widow after six lessons. We clashed gears and ran stoplights across town to the street he had named. It was a poorly lit macadam dead end that rose steeply toward a tangle of telephone poles at the top. The house was tall and narrow, slanted against the sky, the windows black and empty. He pulled into a drive that was two strips of cracked concrete with weeds in the middle, led the way back along the side of the house past the wooden steps he’d mentioned, used a key on a side door. It resisted a little, then swung in on warped linoleum and the smell of last week’s cabbage soup. I followed him in and stopped to listen to some dense silence.
“Don’t be concerned,” the little man said. “There’s no one here.” He led me along a passage a little wider than my elbows, past a tarnished mirror, a stand full of furled umbrellas, and a hat tree with no hats, up steep steps with black rubber matting held in place by tarnished brass rods. The flooring creaked on the landing. A tall clock was stopped with the hands at ten past three. We came out in a low-ceilinged hall with flowery brown wallpaper and dark-painted doors made visible by the pale light coming through a curtained window at the end.
He found number 9, put an ear against it, opened up and ushered me in.
It was a small bedroom with a hard-looking double bed under a chenille spread, a brown wooden dresser with a string doily, a straight chair with wire to hold the legs together, a rocker that didn’t match, an oval hooked rug in various shades of dried mud, a hanging fixture in the center of the ceiling with three small bulbs, one of which worked.
“Some class,” I said. “You must have come into dough.”
“Just temporary quarters,” he said off-handedly. He placed the chairs in a cozy tête-à-tête arrangement under the light, offered me the rocker, and perched on the edge of the other.
“Now,” he said, and put his fingertips together comfortably, like a pawnbroker getting ready to bid low on distress merchandise, “I suppose you want to hear all about the man in black, how I knew just when he’d appear, and so on.”