Deadline at Dawn

He turned his head and looked up the other way. Still along the street-level, but westward now, toward Tenth and beyond. It was just an intermission, a respite, in the steadiness with which he’d maintained his gaze in the first direction. And then suddenly she saw him give a half-crouched, abortive start, though she could still see nothing from where she was, within the window-pane.

An instant longer, no more, he waited to confirm the first glimpse of whatever it was, and then he darted aside, bolted from view somewhere directly underneath her vantage-point. Obviously, judging by his direction, he’d sought refuge in the doorway of this same building she was in.

For a moment there was no sign of what had caused his hasty retreat. The street stretched lifeless under her, gunmetal-dark save where the forlorn halo of the lamppost down there whitened it a little.

She stayed there, face pressed to the window, waiting, watching. Then suddenly, without any warning sound, something white, shaped like an inverted boat, came drifting past on the dark tide of the night. It took her a moment to understand what it was, it was coursing along so insidiously. It was a small patrol-car, making its routine rounds late at night. Approaching without lights or clamor, to catch malefactors off-guard.

It had no objective, it was not stalking anyone, least of all him; she could tell that by its lackadaisical gait. It was just cruising, it had turned in through here at random.

It had already gone on past now. For a moment she toyed with the idea of throwing open the window after all, as she had first intended, and hailing it to stop; of telling them: “There’s a man lurking in the doorway underneath here. Ask him what he’s up to.” She didn’t. Why should she, she asked herself? He hadn’t done anything overt against her, or anything wrong to her knowledge. She held no brief for him, but neither did she for them. He wasn’t her brother, but neither was she his keeper.

It had gone too far by now, anyway. Its occupants hadn’t even glanced over this way, at the door of this house. It coasted on down to the next corner, more boat-like than ever on the invisible current of its own motion, shrinking to the size of a pod, and then it turned to the right and was gone.

She waited a moment or two to see if he would come out again. He didn’t. The street before the house remained as barren as though he’d never been there. He stayed out of sight inside somewhere, wherever it was he’d gone, his courage all spent.

She drew the shade down at last, as she’d originally intended to before it all happened. She turned away, but she didn’t begin her delayed undressing. She crossed the room to the door and stood there by it listening. Then she opened it slowly, quieting it with a hand to its edge as she did so. She advanced out into the barren hall beyond, tread muted in her soft-soled foot-gear.

There was no sound to show that anyone was astir but herself, that anyone was in the building, up or down, who did not belong there. She moved back to where the railed gap surrounding the stairs began, leaned cautiously over it and looked down their dimly-lighted well, all three rungs of it, to the very bottom.

She couldn’t see anything from her first stance, they intercrossed too much. She shifted on a little further, and there got a diagonal insight at their bottom reaches.

She saw him down there. He was sitting huddled on the first flight, disconsolately up against the rail, about halfway between the last landing going down and the bottom. His legs were tucked up to within a step below his body. He’d taken his hat off; it must be resting on the step beside him, but she couldn’t see over that far. The only thing that moved about him were his hands, otherwise he was sitting quite still. She could see the one on the outside ploughing endlessly through his hair, over and over, as though some deep-seated predicament were gnawing at him.

He couldn’t stay there like that. He couldn’t stay there in the hall all night. Yet, when she made her unguessed presence known to him, as she did a moment later, it wasn’t as she had originally intended to, through the window before, by means of a strident tirade. Something had happened to change her mind. Perhaps it was the hopeless, helpless way he was sitting bunched there. Who knew; she didn’t know herself. She revealed herself to him without at the same time betraying his presence to others. She gave him that much of a break, at least. And it was a long time since she’d given anyone a break. Almost as long as since she’d last had one herself.

She hissed down, forcefully but surreptitiously, to attract his attention, gave him a sort of sibilant signal.

He turned and looked up, startled, ready to jump until he’d located the segment of her face far up the canal of opening between them.