Deadline at Dawn

She wouldn’t give ground, nor even pay him the homage of trying to step around him at the side. “Heavy spender,” she said evenly. “Shot sixty cents to pieces in one night, and now you’re trying to collect a bonus on it down here on the sidewalk.”

A cab had sidled up on the outside, drawn by some unobtrusive signal on his part that she had missed, its door dangling encouragingly open.

“All right, you’re hard to get; you’ve played your act. I believe you. Come on, I’ve got a taxi waiting.”

“I wouldn’t even get in a five-cent trolley-car with you, let alone a taxi.”

He tried to turn her aside toward it, partly by indirection, partly by main force.

She managed to slam the door closed behind her, and then it acted as a bulwark as he crowded her back against it.

A man had stopped opposite the two of them. That other one, who’d been in the upstairs foyer when she came out. She caught sight of him over this one’s shoulder. She didn’t appeal to him, ask him for help in any way. She’d never asked anyone for help yet in one of these passages. That way you were sure of never being disappointed. This wasn’t anything, anyway; it would be over in a minute.

He came in closer, said to her uncertainly: “Do you want me to do anything, miss?”

“Well, don’t just stand there. What do you think this is, an audition for the Good Will Hour? If you’re musclebound yourself, call a cop.”

“Oh, I don’t have to do that, miss,” he answered with a curious disclaiming sort of modesty, totally unsuitable to the circumstances.

He pulled the other man around toward him, and she heard the blow instead of seeing it. It made a taut impact against thinly-cushioned bone, so it must have been the side of his jaw. The recipient went floundering back against the rear fender of the cab, and overbalanced down the curve of that to the ground, half-prostrate and half-upright on one elbow.

None of the three moved for a minute.

Then the recumbent member of the small group scrambled to his feet with a curious recessive movement, pushing backward with his legs along the ground until he could be sure of rising at a safe distance from further blows. When he had risen, he turned, with neither threat nor sign of animosity, as one who is too practical to waste time on such heroics, and scuttled from their ken, dusting himself down the leg as he went.

The cab withdrew second, its driver deciding there was nothing further for him in this after a briefly questioning look to see whether she intended making use of it with her new partner.

Her thanks were scarcely overwhelming. “Do you always wait that long?”

“I didn’t know but what he was some special friend of yours,” he murmured deprecatingly.

“According to you, special friends have a right to hijack you on your way home. Is that what you do yourself?”

He smiled a little. “I don’t have any special friends.”

“You can double that,” she said crisply. “And you can stick in for me I don’t want any.” And she shot him a look that added personal point to the remark.

He saw that she was about to turn and continue on her way without further parley. “My name’s Quinn Williams,” he blurted out, as if seeking by that means automatically to detain her a moment longer.

“Pleased to meet you.” It didn’t sound as pleasant as the word-arrangement presupposed it to. It sounded like a lead quarter bouncing against a zinc counter.

She resumed her withdrawal, or rather continued it without having interrupted it at all.

He turned and looked behind him, in the direction in which her recent annoyer had disappeared. “Think maybe I should walk with you a block or two?” he suggested.

She neither acceded nor openly forbade him to. “He won’t come back again,” was all she said. He translated her indecisive answer into full consent, fell into step beside her, though at a formal distance of several feet.

They walked an entire block-length from the dance-hall entrance in mutual silence; she because she was determined not to make the effort to say anything, he — judging by several false starts he made that died stillborn — because he was unequal to it, was self-conscious, didn’t know what to say now that he had gained his point of accompanying her.

They crossed an intersection, and she saw him look back. She made no comment.

The second block passed in the same stony silence. She looked straight ahead, as though she were alone. She owed him nothing, she hadn’t asked him to come with her.

They reached the second and last intersection. “I go west here,” she said briefly, and turned aside, as if taking leave of him without further ado.

He didn’t take the hint. He belatedly turned after her and came abreast again, murmuring something indistinct about: “May as well go the rest of the way, now that I came this far.”

She’d seen him glance back again, though, a moment before he did so. “Don’t let him worry you,” she said caustically. “He’s gone for good.”

“Who?” he asked blankly. And then, as if remembering whom she meant, “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about him.”