Deadline at Dawn

“That may make it all the easier for us, instead of making it harder. If it was a little place, if it was a village, like back home, they’d know the risk of discovery was so much greater they’d lie low, they’d take precautions, we’d never be able to— Here it’s so big they may feel safe, it may give them a sense of false security, they mayn’t bother even to hide or keep out of the way—” She stopped and eyed the expression on his face. “Well, that’s one way of looking at it, isn’t it? That’s one way.”

“Ah, it’s no use, Bricky,” he moaned. “What’s the use of kidding ourselves? It’s like one of these fairy-tales for kids, where a magic spell would have to be used to make it come true—”

“Don’t,” she said in a choked voice. “Don’t, please. Don’t make me do all the work for the two of us—” Her head went down.

“I’m yellow,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not yellow, or I wouldn’t be here in this room with you.”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock—

“I’m going to turn and look at it in a minute, and so are you,” she said. “And it may take real guts then, once we do. But before we do, let’s get the thing lined up. There are two people. Two shadows, but still and all they’re real. One of them, but not both, killed him. We’ve got to find the one that did, we’ve got to know, or that’ll make it you—”

He started to say something.

“No, let me finish, Quinn. I’m lining it up like this as much for myself as for you. In other words, we have to go out of here and track them down, find out where they went to, and go there after them, and break them down in some way, shake it out of them. That’s the job. That’s the job we’ve got facing us. And all the time we’ve got is, while it still stays dark in New York tonight. At daylight, at six, there’s the bus that leaves for home. The last bus, Quinn, remember that, the last bus. I don’t care what the schedule says, for us it’s the last bus there is, the last in the world.”

“I get you. They’ll keep running — but not for us. We’ve got to be out of here by daybreak.”

“Now, the job,” she nodded. “We can’t both take both of them.”

He got what she was driving at. He looked aghast. “I thought you said we should stick together in this? That was the whole reason you came over with me, instead of going down to the term—”

“There isn’t time now any more! We have to split it two ways, whether we like to or not. Look, here’s how it is. We have these two possibilities now, a man and a woman who both came here tonight at separate times. One of them’s innocent, one of them killed him. The thing is which? We haven’t time for hit or miss stuff; we can’t follow them up one at a time. We have to follow them both up at the same time. That gives us our only chance. We can only be wrong once, and if we’re both wrong together, we’re cooked, we’re finished. If we separate, and one goes after one, and the other goes after the other, that gives us our fifty-fifty chance. One of us is sure to be on a wild-goose chase, but the other one won’t be. That’s where our hope lies, right there. You take the man. I’ll take the woman.

“Now listen close, because we haven’t darned much to go by, and we have to make the most of what we’ve got. You have to look for a man in a brown or off-brown suit, with one button on his cuff broken, who maybe is left-handed or maybe is not. And that’s about all you’ve got. I have to look for a woman, who is left-handed for sure, and who uses a kind of heavy perfume. I don’t know what it is now, but I’ll know it when I get it again.”

“You haven’t even got as much as I have,” he protested. “You haven’t got anything.”

“I know, but I’m a girl, and that evens it up. I don’t need as much, our minds can do more with less.”

“But how can you do anything, even if you do track her down? An unarmed girl like you, with nothing but your bare hands? You don’t know what you’re likely to come up against!”

“We haven’t time enough left to be afraid. We only have time enough to wade in and go through with it, right or wrong. Now here’s how we’ll work it. We’ll meet back here — yes here in this house where he’s lying — no later than a quarter to six, with them or without them, empty-handed or successful. We’ll have to, if we want to make that bus at six.” She moved over toward the body, stooped for something, came back again. “I’ll use this latchkey, that was in his pocket, to get in with. You keep the first one.”

She took a deep breath. “Now turn, and let’s look—”

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock—

“Oh, God,” she grimaced whimperingly. “Three hours—!”

“Bricky!” he said hoarsely, his courage recoiling for a minute.

But she was already out at the head of the darkened stairs.

He went out after her.

She was already halfway down them.

“Bricky—”

Her voice came up softly. “Put out the lights.”

He went back and put out the lights.

He went down after her.

She was already at the street-door. She had it open, waiting for him. She was standing there by it.

“Bricky—”