Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

His indecision didn’t last long. There wasn’t time. The oncoming shuffle of feet had stopped right next door. Hollinger grabbed up the geisha’s discarded robe. “Get into that kimono quick. They’ll be here in a second — maybe we can swing it.” He jumped back to where he’d been sitting originally, collapsed cross-legged on the floor. When she’d wrapped the garment around her, he pulled her down beside him, snatched off his white cap, poked it inside-out and jammed it down over her telltale golden hair.

He pulled her against him. “Pardon me,” he said with a tight grin. “It’s our only chance. Keep your face turned over my shoulder. Don’t let that dress show through the kimono.”

“What’ll I do if they talk Japanese to me?”

“I’ll do the talking. You just giggle the way all these gals do.” His arm tightened around. “Okay, lady. This is it. Here they are!”

The slide hissed back. Three bandy-legged little policemen stood squinting into the lantern-light at them. Behind them was a fourth little yellow man in plain clothes. And in back of him, huddled a group of customers, craning and goggling.

Hollinger put down one of the saki-cups, and wiped his mouth with his free hand. “Well,” he said slowly, “where’s the fire? What’s the attraction? We’re not giving any show in here.” No one budged. “Scram!”

“You see gal?” the detective demanded. “You see yellow-hair gal run by here — ’Merican gal like you?”

“Haven’t you got eyes?” Hollinger growled. “This is the only gal in here — Mitsu-san. Go away, won’t you?”

The plainclothesman snapped something in Japanese at the huddled figure. Hollinger’s growl turned nasty. “Skip it!” The girl, quaking against him, managed to produce a high-pitched giggle. Hollinger warmed inside. A good girl that. Scared, sure. But nervy. A fine girl...

“Fool gal,” the detective snapped contemptuously. His gaze rested on the saki-cups. He smiled drily, made a sign of wheels going around close to his head, bowed elaborately. “So sorry to disturb. Pliss overlook.” The three policemen bowed likewise, like stooges.

“Sayonara,” said Hollinger pointedly. “Goodbye.”

The screen slammed shut again. Someone barked a curt order, and the trampling feet moved on. The crowd continued to stop every few yards, looking into the other cubicles.

“Don’t move yet a while,” Hollinger said out of the corner of his mouth, close to her ear. “Wait’ll they get further away.” Just as she was about to straighten up, he caught her quickly, held her fast. “Darn it, stay put!”

The screen eased back again, with less noise than before, and one of the geishas peered in. “I bring saki you order—” She glanced in slant-eyed surprise at the form nestled against him. “You find other girl?” She set the tray down on the floor. There was suspicion peering through the thick orange, green and purple make-up that masked her face.

“Yeah. I found new girl. I like better than girl I had before. So long.” He jabbed his thumb at the screen.

The geisha backed out submissively, still peering curiously at the other girl.

The slide closed again. Hollinger let his arms fall. “All right now.” The girl straightened and her fingertips pressed tight against her mouth.

“Come on. We’ve got to step on it. I think she’s on to us. She’s going to give us away. He jumped to his feet, took a quick look out, then motioned to her to follow. She obeyed, holding herself very stiff and straight.”

The clamor at the front hadn’t abated any. Through a gap in the partitions he caught a glimpse of two white-garbed internes bringing in a stretcher. There was no out that way.

The girl looked at him in terror. “We’re trapped back here. We’ll never be able to get through all these people. I’m sorry I ever got you into this.”

“There’s got to be a back way out.” He threw an arm protectively about her. “Lean up against me, like you were dizzy. We’re going out for a breath of air, if they ask us. Take little pigeon-toed steps like you were going to fall flat on your face any minute. Buckle your knees a little, you’re too tall. Keep your head down—”

They wavered through the maze of paper-walled passageways, sometimes in darkness, sometimes in reflected lantern-light. The place was a labyrinth; all you had to do to make new walls was push a little. The only permanent structure was the four corner-posts and the topheavy tile roof.

They managed to side-step the police who were returning from the back, by detouring around one of the slides, and waiting until they’d gone by. A hurrying geisha or two, carrying refreshment-trays, brushed against them, apologized.

“Don’t weaken,” he kept whispering. “We’ll make it yet.” The stampeding suddenly started back again behind them. Evidently the geisha had voiced her suspicions. They went a little faster. The wavering gait became a run, the run became tearing, headlong flight. He slashed one more of the never-ending screens back into its socket, and they were looking out on a rear garden.

Apple-green and vermilion lanterns bobbed in the breeze; a little hump-backed bridge crossing a midget brook; dwarf fir-trees made showy splashes of deeper darkness. It all looked unreal and very pretty — all but the policeman posted there to see that no one left. He turned to face them. They’d come to a dead stop. The policeman was swinging a short, wicked-looking little club on a leather strap.

Hollinger said into her car: “I’ll handle him. Don’t wait — just keep going across that bridge. There must be a way of getting through to the next street over. Be right with you—”

The cop said something that sounded like, “Boydao, boydao!” and motioned them back with his club.

“Take it!” Hollinger snapped at the girl and gave her a scooting shove that sent her up one side of the sharply-tilted bridge and down the other. She almost tumbled off into the water.

Hollinger and the Japanese policeman were locked and struggling, silent but for the crunching of their feet on the fine sand that surfaced the garden path. The sailor had a sort of awkward headlock on the Jap, left hand clamped across his mouth to keep him quiet. His right fist was pounding the bristle-haired skull, while the policeman’s club was spattering him all over with dull, brutal thuds. The cop bit Hollinger’s muffling hand. Hollinger threw his head back in the lantern-light, opened his mouth like the entrance to the Mammoth Caves — but did not yell.

The girl hovered there across the bridge, her hand held against lips once more, her body bent forward in the darkness. Hollinger knew that every minute counted. Lanterns were wavering nearer in the interior of the house, filtering through the paper like blurred, interlocked moons. Their flight had been discovered.

Hollinger sucked a deep breath into his toiling lungs, lifted the squirming cop up bodily off the ground and tossed him like a sack into the stream. The bulge of his chest and the sudden strain of his back and shoulder muscles split the tight middy from throat to waist. There was a petal-shaped splash and the little brown man swiveled there in the sanded hollow, half stunned by the impact, water coursing shallowly across his abdomen and cutting him in half.

Hollinger vaulted across to the girl with a single stretch of his long legs, caught at her as he went by, and pulled her after him. “I told you not to hang around— Come on, willya?” He glared at her fiercely. She was a fine girl, all right. Scared to death and sticking around that way anyhow...

They found the mouth of an alley giving onto the rear of the garden behind a clump of dwarf firs that were streaked single-file along its narrow black length between the walls. Hollinger pushed the hobbling girl in front of him. They came out at the other end into the brazierlike brightness of one of the Yoshiwara streets.