Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

It changed abruptly to a group of prison officials, posing with a convict in their midst, seemingly in the greatest of friendliness. The picture was a “still,” snapped by a newspaper photographer nearly two years before, incorporated now in the newsreel because of its timeliness. That convict standing there beside that numskull warden had escaped since then, had made a name for himself by his later exploits that topped Jesse James’, and was the object of the biggest man-hunt in the history of the country. Nobody in that theater needed the voice of the announcer to tell them who that was, but he did anyway. A sort of shudder passed through the audience at the sound of the name; it had become a household word all over America.

“Take a good look at this man, ladies and gentlemen,” the sound track pattered. “You’ve been hearing a lot about him lately, and you don’t need to be told who he is. Chink-eyes Harriman — and they’re still out looking for him!”

“Harriman,” sounded in suppressed whispers from all parts of the house. “Harriman — see him?” The audience rustled like a flock of uneasy doves.

Merrill became cold and tense all at once, every nerve taut as piano wiring. The hand that suddenly gripped the wrist with which Betty was replacing her mirror in her handbag was like an iron clamp. She gave a nervous start, but had presence of mind enough not to cry out. He was beckoning for the glass with his other hand, but keeping it close to his body. The little quick-silvered oblong passed between them unobtrusively. She still didn’t know what it was all about; glanced at him inquiringly, but remained still as a mouse.

“Keep looking straight ahead,” he breathed out of the corner of his mouth. “Sit back a little in your seat.” She closed the inch gap between her shoulders and the back of the seat, so he knew she’d heard him.

He palmed the glass with his right hand, the hand that dangled out over the aisle; it just fitted between second-joints and heel. Then he brought it up sidewise, unobtrusively, to the level of his face, and turned his eyes toward it. He was looking out toward the aisle. The glass was turned inward toward the row of seats. Betty’s little nose intruded on the edge of the reflection for a second, then almost instinctively her head retreated still further and carried it back out of the way. The profile of the man next to her had the glass to itself.

He was still squinting, and he’d been in ten minutes now, so the squint was habitual and not because of the darkness of the theater. It gave his face a Mongolian cast.

Merrill shifted his eyes to the screen for purposes of comparison, then back to the mirror again. One was full-face, the other a profile, and so identification couldn’t be established instantly, not even by a trained eye like Merrill’s. But the eyes, the squinting, slitted, malicious eyes, were the connecting link. They were a perfect match to those on the screen. That was Chink-eyes Harriman sitting two seats away, staring with perfect composure at his own picture! In fact, he was even enjoying himself a little, to judge by the canine curl of his upper lip.

Just as the “still” on the screen dissolved, but while it was still printed impalpably on Merrill’s retinas, he seemed to feel the latter’s indirect gaze on him via the mirror, because he turned inquiringly that way for an unguarded moment and presented himself full-face. Nose, mouth, chin, cheekbones, width of brows and facial oval all clicked simultaneously, reproducing what had just been on the screen like a positive matching a negative. So, in spite of the stories going around, he hadn’t gone in for facial surgery.

He must have seen the mirror. Merrill just had time to grimace hideously and pretend to be digging between his teeth for a morsel of food. It was a bad slip, and a question of who had beaten the other to it: Harriman’s glance over or his own pantomime. The killer turned his head incuriously front again, so that seemed to answer it. He stirred a little in his seat, the better to enjoy a row of half-clad bathing girls parading up and down a Florida beach.

Merrill could hear Betty breathing a little faster, as though she knew something was up but couldn’t figure out what it was. He saw her shut her eyes for a minute, then open them again.

He slipped the mirror back to her under her arm, and her handbag swallowed it. Then he plucked at her sleeve and jerked his thumb at the aisle. The first step was to get her out of there and to the back of the theater. The guy was probably loaded down with equalizers, while he himself didn’t have a thing on him — which was what you got for thinking you were ever really off duty in his racket.

He had no idea of jumping on him where he sat. There’d be pandemonium in the middle of all these people, and the dump was lousy with unguarded exits. The thing to do was to phone in, have the place surrounded, and pick him up as he came out. Merrill planned even to come back and sit down again where he was so he could keep his eye on the guy until the pay-off.

Betty sat staring straight ahead with a face like marble. Merrill wondered what was the matter with her — she was usually very quick on the pick-up. He tugged at her again and thumbed the aisle. Her eyes flicked toward him but she didn’t turn her head. You couldn’t hear her breathing any more. She sat deathly still.

They had, fortunately, come in ahead of the desperado, so he had no way of checking on them. Merrill found her small foot with his, prodded it, then said audibly: “This is where we came in, isn’t it?”

All she did was shake her head, but without looking at him.

He had to get word out without another minute’s delay; the show wouldn’t break for another forty minutes or so, but that couldn’t be taken into consideration in this case. Harriman wasn’t just an ordinary movie patron, staying to the end. He might get restive any minute. Something might arouse his suspicions. He might light out before a cordon had been thrown around the building.

“I’m dying for a smoke,” Merrill said. “I’m going back and grab one off. Be right with you again.” Now he’d have to clear her out after he’d lit the fuse.

She sat there like a statue, rigid, without answering. But suddenly, as he braced his legs under him to get up, she clawed at his coat sleeve with her hand, between their two bodies. She twisted the goods around, caught up all the slack there was, until the sleeve was almost as tight as a tourniquet. It was as though she wanted desperately to tell him something, without being able to.

He tensed at that. A momentary sense of immediate danger swept over him. But when he thrust his head slightly back across her shoulders, Harriman seemed lost to the world, devouring the screen with vacant, moronic enjoyment, mouth idiotically ajar, beady eyes shining. He was a million miles from nowhere!

“Bill—” She spoke in a furred voice, kneading his sleeve frantically, but stopped abruptly. He could hear her give a sudden intake of breath. She didn’t go ahead. He waited. When it came, the rest of it, it was flat, toneless. “I’m thirsty. Bring me a drink of water from the cooler when you come back—”

It was just the way anybody would ask for a drink of water, casually, off-hand. But when that “Bill—” and that stranglehold on his coat sleeve didn’t match the rest of it; it was as though the request had been improvised, to cover up what she had originally started to say. When he glanced at her, she kept staring at the screen, eyes slightly dilated; wouldn’t look at him.

He got up and left the seat without another word, made his way soundlessly up the thick-carpeted aisle, not walking too fast lest the man in the seat next to her turn around and look after him. He turned and looked back at the two of them from the head of the aisle. Their heads were there side by side, amidst all the other heads. Everything was still under control. Harriman had made no move following his own departure; seemed not to have even noticed it. He’d have to get back there quick, though, and get her out of the way. He cursed the sudden stubborn streak that had cropped out in her just now; she’d hear plenty from him when this was over! She ought to know by now that everything he did, he knew just what he was doing!