Deadline at Dawn

Her lips moved soundlessly, like a Sicilian warding off the evil eye. “If it catches on it’ll do something to interfere, do something to throw a hitch in it; try to keep him the crook it just about had him ready to turn into.”

It was always the same “it” with her, the same enemy. The city.

She looked down at the fingers of her free hand, and without her knowing it two of them had crossed themselves rigidly, held themselves pressed that way into her flank.

She addressed a sultry warning to “it” through baleful, half-parted lips, meant to frighten it off as she frightened too-intrusive customers at the mill. “Let him alone now, hear me? You keep out of it. Let him go through with it.”

It leered somnolently back at her down the long tunnel-like vista of sooty gray and dark-blue and out-and-out pitch-black that were the colors of the night palette.

She’d reached the house now herself. She continued on past it, in order not to attract attention by stopping in front of it. The entryway, the vestibule between the outer glass doors and the inner one, the one that was the real bulwark, showed empty by the reflected street-light as she glanced in with elaborate dissimulation on her way by. He’d gone all the way in, into the depths of it, closed the door after him.

But suppose that one particular member of the family who was known to have stayed behind was upstairs asleep in there right now? Suppose Quinn didn’t catch on in time? He’d cut off his own retreat, closing the door after him like that. Suppose the inmate woke up, discovered him—

She tried to shut the terrifying thought away. Nothing had gone wrong the first time, when he entered on a dishonest errand. Why should anything go wrong this time, when he entered on an honest one?

The city. That would be just like the city, though.

“Let him alone now, hear? Now let him alone, do you get me?”

She was well past it now, in the other direction. She stole a look back. Nothing had happened yet; no outcries, no sudden brightening of upper-story windows, so he hadn’t been discovered yet.

Her fingers were lame, they were so tired from being crossed so tight. She was like some sort of a slow-motion sentry posted out here to protect him. Like a picket, keeping the city out. Staunch, defiant, with no weapon but a lightweight valise swinging at her side. And after awhile she needed the courage for herself as well.

She was trying her best to be calm, but there was a tumult going on all around her heart as she sauntered along so dilatorily, so aimlessly. He was taking longer than he should, wasn’t he? Even without using light, it shouldn’t be taking him that long just to get upstairs to the second floor of a house and down again. He should have been out again by now. He should have been out before now.

It was still breaking and entering, even to return the money. And if he was caught returning it, how could he prove he was returning it, and not just removing it for the first time? He had to get out of there and in the clear, before the restoration held any virtue in it. Maybe Quinn should have mailed it back, instead of coming back in person with it. He and she hadn’t thought of that; she wished now they had.

A figure suddenly materialized at the lower corner ahead, on the opposite side from her. It didn’t move out very far, just detached itself slightly and then stood still. It was just barely visible beyond the building-line, standing with its back to her. A patrolman on his tour of duty. She whisked herself quickly down into the shelter of one of the shadowed areaways at hand, valise and all. It would have looked too suspicious to be seen loitering about there on the sidewalk at such an hour, with a piece of luggage in her hand.

If he came up this way— If Quinn should happen to come out while he was still down there at the corner— Her heart wasn’t just beating, it was swinging from side to side and looping around in a complete circle like a pendulum gone crazy.

Metal clinked faintly as he opened a call-box to report in. That’s what he was doing, standing there like that with his back to her. Even the blurred sound of his voice reached her in the stillness of the night air. She caught: “Larsen reporting in, two fifty-five,” something like that. The box clashed shut again. She shrank back against the sheltering base of the stoop that walled one side of the little quadrangular hollow she was in. She was afraid to look to see which way he’d go now, afraid he’d come up this way, past her. She heard the very faint scrape his footsteps made, crossing over the mouth of the street down there, to this same side she was on. Then it faded, slight as it had been, and wasn’t any more.