Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

The moderate up-grade walk changed to a quick lope as he crossed the inner foyer behind the orchestra pit, buttonholed the usher on duty. “The telephones — where are they, quick!”

“Downstairs in the smoking lounge.”

A small electric sign pointed the way through the gloom. He streaked down the stair-well to sub-basement-level, came out into a room crammed with modernistic furniture and stuffy. It was somebody’s idea of luxury, at four jits a throw. A vintage of flapper was sitting there puffing, using the place as an up-to-date club room.

There was only one phone, but the fact that it was already in use didn’t deter him for a minute. He sandwiched in between this second flapper and the wall, said something about police business, took the receiver away from her, and got rid of her party by sinking the hook. He cut her cheeps short by unslinging the glass panel between them, scraping about an inch of talcum off her.

“I’m at the Cortelyou Theatre, on the North Side,” he told headquarters, “and Chink-eyes Harriman is here in the audience. Am I sure?” he echoed caustically. “I’m sitting two seats away from him, and he lounged all over my dogs just now getting in! Of course, if you want me to ask him, I’ll hear what he has to say!”

“Don’t get wise,” he was told dryly. “No one said they’re not taking your word for it. Now get this, Merrill.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll have a dragnet thrown around the whole block in less than five minutes. In the meantime, these are your instructions and see that you follow them: keep your eye on him, but don’t give yourself away — not even if he gets up to leave before we’ve closed in. Just tail him if he does. Don’t try to take him on single-handed, you understand? We’ll only lose him again, and the whole damn thing’ll start over—”

“I’m not in a fix to dispute that with you,” Merrill said, coloring. “I’m here unheeled.”

A low whistle sounded at the other end. Then the voice became impersonal again. “We’ll get him when he comes out. If he stays till the end, do what you can to protect the audience. We’re taking him dead, of course. Now get back and don’t lose sight of him for a minute. You can consider yourself personally responsible if there’s a slip-up!”

“I’m right on his neck!” Merrill broke the connection, came out to find one flapper yanking the other bodily toward the stairs by one arm. She had evidently been eavesdropping. “Harriman’s in the audience! Hurry up!”

Merrill beat them to the foot of the stairs, blocked the way. “No y’ don’t! Go up there and start a riot, wouldje? You’re staying until it’s over now. You know too much, both of you!” He motioned toward a door. “G’wan, get in there — nothing’ll happen to you!”

He pushed the pair of them toward it and through it, and closed it on them. He knew they’d slip out again the minute the coast was clear, but he slid one of the bulky modernistic divans over in front of the door to block it from the outside and hold them as long as possible. He rocketed up to the top of the stairs, flagged the usher, palmed his badge.

“You go down there, son, and sit on that divan you’ll see in front of the ladies’ door. Don’t let anybody out until I tell you to,” he whispered. “I’m holding a couple of janes in there. Don’t listen to what they’ll try to tell you — they’re dips, pickpockets. You’re my deputy — I’ll square it with the manager for you!”

The boy gave him a thrilled look, disappeared below.

He filled a paper cup at one of the filters, took out a pencil stub and scrawled on the outside of it: “Get the hell out of here and home, explain later,” in an annoyed scowl.

He started down the aisle none too slowly, splashing a little water as he went. Instantly, the moment the slight dip of the orchestra floor set in and long before he came abreast of the row he had left them in, he knew something was wrong. There was a double gap there in the ranks of heads — two were missing. And the vacant aisle seat that had been his own told which two it was.

He squeezed the paper cup flat. Water spurted out of both ends, and he ran the rest of the way.

Her coat was still draped across the back of the seat she’d been in. Like a mute distress signal. There was no sign that Harriman had ever sat there beside her. His seat was folded up flat.

Merrill nearly threw himself on top of the spectacled matron occupying the fourth seat in from the aisle, shaking her by the shoulder. “The two people next to you — how long ago — did they get up together?”

“Just now,” she said stupidly. “Just before you got here. They’ll be back. She left her coat—”

He knew better. He knew they wouldn’t. He knew a lot of things all at once — and too late. Why she’d sat there so rigid, refusing to budge, afraid to turn and look at him. Harriman had caught onto the mirror stunt at a glance; must have been sitting there with his gun digging into her from that moment on.

He knew what that despairing clutch at his sleeve meant now, and that quickly stifled “Bill—” that had ended so lamely in a request for a drink of water. And he, like a fool, had thought he was putting one over on the sleepy-eyed menace beside her. Now Harriman had taken her with him as a hostage; was using her as a living safe-conduct to see him out of the theater.

He fled up the aisle to the rear of the house again, like someone pursued by devils. One usher he’d sent downstairs, but there was another one on duty inside the main door. Merrill grabbed at him like a drowning man at a straw. “A man and a girl — man with sleepy eyes and a gray coat turned up in back — did they go out this way? Have you seen them?”

“Yeah, just couple minutes ago.”

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned, and cracked open one of the opaque swinging doors that gave onto the outer lobby. In the instant that it swayed open he had a bird’s-eye view of the vestibule and the street beyond. The light had gone out in the ticket seller’s kiosk and her blond head was missing, yet it was not empty. He saw a form silhouetted through it against the marquee lights beyond. And on each side of the entrance, where there were tinselled sandwich boards advertising coming attractions, idle individuals stood killing time, as if reading the display copy over and over. He recognized both of them. The cordon surrounding the place had already been formed.

The usher was saying behind him, “But they didn’t go out. They came as far as here and I opened the door for them, then they changed their minds and went upstairs to the balcony—”

So the cordon had just beaten him to it. But he’d seen them before they saw him, and had doubled back in again — with her! Merrill didn’t feel any relief at the knowledge that he was still in the theater with her. Quite the opposite. She was almost certainly a goner, now that the man was trapped!

“I think she’d been taken sick,” the usher was babbling unasked. “She looked pretty white, and she kept sort of leaning against him wherever they went. I tried to ask her if she wanted a doctor, but they’d gone upstairs before I had a chance—”

Merrill wasn’t listening. “The roof — he can get up there from the balcony, can’t he? There must be some way up!”

He gave a short, surreptitious whistle through the crack of the door, and one of the rubbernecks down by the display boards was suddenly vis-a-vis to him, as though he moved on invisible wires.

“He’s hep,” Merrill breathed through the slit. “The roof — tell them to throw men into the adjoining buildings quick and head him off. The roof is only two stories high and he can get out that way! I think that’s where he’s heading for—” And then a sort of choked cry broke from him against his will. “And if they see somebody with him up there in the dark, tell them — it’s my girl — will ya?” Instantly he pulled himself together again. “Lend me a gun, will you? I’m clean in here. I’m going after him inside!”