Deadline at Dawn

It took him some time. He’d had them evenly inserted all around the hem of his coat, so that their bulk wouldn’t betray itself in any one particular place. He’d had others in his various pockets. He’d even had one fastened at the side of his leg, under the garter. When he was done there were six of the banded sheaves arrayed there on the tabletop, and the debris of a seventh that had already been sundered and partly dissipated.

Her face was expressionless. “How much is it?” she asked tonelessly.

“I’m not sure now any more. It must still be over twenty-four hundred. It started out to be an even twenty-five.”

Her face still showed nothing. “Where’d you get it?”

“Some place I had no right to.”

After that, neither of them said anything more for a few minutes. It was as though the money weren’t in sight there between the two of them.

Then finally, without any further urging, he began to talk about it. Maybe because she was from his own home town, and he had to tell someone. She was the girl next door, the one he would have told his troubles to, if they were both still back there. He wouldn’t have had anything like this to tell her, back there, but he had it here, so he told it here.

“I had a job as an electrician’s helper until just a short while ago. Sort of an apprentice or assistant, whatever you’d want to call it. It wasn’t much, but it was something. We did a little of everything, repairing radios, converting them from one current to another, electric flatirons, vacuum cleaners, putting in new wall-outlets or extra lengths of wiring in people’s homes, fixing doorbells — you know, all that sort of thing.

“It wasn’t what I’d come here for, but it was a darned sight better than the first few weeks had been, when I’d slept out on park benches. So I wasn’t complaining.

“Then about a month ago, I lost it. I wasn’t fired, it just folded up under me. The old guy got a heart-attack and was told to take it easy, so he quit business. He had no one to take over for him, I was no kin of his, so he just closed up shop. I was left high and dry again, like I’d been before. I tramped around by the hour, and I couldn’t get myself anything else. Nothing that was halfway permanent, anyway. Either in that line or any other. Stints at washing dishes in greasy-vest joints, or busman in one-arm hash-houses — Things are tight in this town, and nothing else was open. 1939’s a tough year, you know that yourself. When I saw that I was heading for the ash-heap again, I should have gone back home while I still had the price of the fare on me. Or written the family for money; they’d have sent it. But it was like with you, I guess. I hated to admit I was licked. I’d come here on my own, and I wanted to make good on my own. Smart guy, me.”

He was pacing slowly back and forth now, while he spoke to her; hands shoved deep into his pockets in dejection, head bent, looking down at his own feet as he moved them.

She just sat there, listening intently, sideward on the chair, hugging her own waist.

“Now I’ve got to go back and mention an incident that happened last winter, several months before I lost my job. This is the part that’s going to sound shady, that you won’t want to believe, but it happened, just the way I’m telling you. We got one of these custom-made jobs, that came our way once in awhile. The shop was on Third, but it was right on the edges of the Gold Coast; you know, the swanky zone, the east side Seventies. My boss had been in business there a long time, and he had a good reputation for thorough, methodical work, and you’d be surprised how often these people would call him in for something in their homes. We got to see the insides of lots of the swellest homes in the city.

“Well anyway, this particular call was from a swanky private home over on East Seventieth. The guy had bought an ultra-violet ray sunlamp, to keep himself fit through the winter instead of going to Florida, and it needed a special outlet rigged up for it on the bathroom wall so it could be plugged in.

“The name was Graves. Mean anything to you?”

She shook her head.

“It didn’t to me either. It still don’t, as far as that goes. My boss claimed they were in the society columns a lot, very old and well-known family. Not that he read the society columns himself, but he seemed to know all about them. The job itself was easy enough. It took us three days, but that was because we only worked at it for an hour or so at a time each day, in order not to inconvenience them too much.