Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

She gave a couple of half turns before the glass, studying herself. Would Death know her, when he saw her? “The mind remembers,” Terry’s voice came back to her again. She shivered slightly, then hastily opened a drawer and ferreted out a small scrap of paper which had lain there in readiness with a name and address penciled on it. She hurried from the room.

She ran down the stairs, flashing past the dining room. The quick hum of conversation made her hasty departure unnoticed. A moment later she was in the car and Edwards, the chauffeur, had taken his place in the driver’s seat.

As they glided into motion she reached over his shoulder and handed him the penciled scrap of paper she’d brought with her.

He looked at it, and touched his cap without saying anything.

It was only later, when they were waiting for a light, that he looked up and sought her eyes questioningly in his rear-sight mirror. “Are you sure you want to go there unescorted, miss? It’s one of the cheapest dance halls in the whole city.”

“I’m not only sure I want to go there,” she answered firmly, “but I want to be inside the place by nine at the latest. Please be sure to get me there in time!”

Her chair at the dinner-table had remained vacant, with her unfinished glass of wine still standing before it.

The butler stepped forward and leaned over confidentially at the older Mrs. Trowbridge’s belated inquiry. “She’s gone out, madam,” he reported, “without saying where.” Then he withdrew from the room.

“Why do you keep that man?” one of the guests asked, glancing curiously after him. “I should think you would find him depressing.”

“He is quite cadaverous, isn’t he?” Mrs. Trowbridge agreed cheerfully. “They’re very hard to obtain now. Besides, we’ve grown rather used to him so that we don’t mind any more. It’s his night off, later on tonight, and he always looks particularly gruesome on his night off.”

She laughed a little and idly fingered one of the tightly furled white rosebuds she had ordered for the dinner-table decorations.

“Are you here with anyone?”

The figure standing alongside her had edged up by imperceptible degrees, pretending to watch the dancers with a sort of evasive vacancy. Every few bars of music he was closer than he had been before, and yet she could never catch him actually moving.

She shook her ahead. Something caught in her throat and prevented her from answering more fully.

“I didn’t figure you were. I’ve been watching you the whole time you were standing here like this.”

She’d been watching him too, but she didn’t say so.

His face was weatherbeaten and shrewd. He was of medium height and stocky build. He wasn’t actually ominous-looking, but neither was he the type to inspire confidence. She didn’t like his hands. Whatever purpose had brought him up here, she was certain it was more than just the sheer love of dancing. He didn’t have the limberness of the typical dancing fanatic, nor the nattiness of dress that so often accompanies that quality.

“I haven’t seen you dance with anybody yet,” he offered.

“I don’t know anyone here.”

He hitched up his head. “How about me, then?”

She could feel a curious, numbing little shock run through her body as her fingers touched the coarse cloth of his sleeve. “Terry would kill me for this, if he knew,” she shivered.

They moved around the glistening floor in silence, very slowly.

“How am I going to know? What way is there?” she kept thinking. “I should have been prepared...”

“Do you come here often?” she asked.

“I never go to the same place twice.”

Why not, she wondered — is he afraid?

They came back to the spot from where they’d started. The music stopped, and his hand dropped from hers. Nothing had happened. She glanced over at the large, circular wall clock above the entrance. Nine more minutes.

Others kept applauding. The music started once more. His hand came up again, this time without asking. Again in stony silence they went through the motions of their strange death dance. Occasionally a green spotlight from above would flicker across their faces, giving them the appearance of ghouls.

Suddenly he spoke. “You know, you kind of remind me of someone I once knew. I’m trying to think who.”

She missed a step, got back in time again. “I do?”

She waited, but he said nothing more.

Again they were coming back toward their starting place. It took about two minutes to go all the way around. In six minutes, now.

“I like the dance halls here better than over in London, don’t you?” she blurted out. She hadn’t known she was going to say it herself. She would have been afraid to, if she had.

This time he lost a step. “How did you know I’d been to London?”

She had to think quickly. “I can tell by your shoes. Only the English make those heavy, thick, hand-sewn brogues.”

He looked down at them, but he didn’t contradict her. It was a shot in the dark, but it must have hit the mark.

Five minutes now. It was an eerie feeling, to be the only one in all that crowd who knew that at a given moment all this brightness would be blotted out.

He’d caught her that time. She was becoming careless, giving herself away. “Why do you keep looking at the clock?” he asked.

“I only — I want to see what time it is, that’s all.”

“Are you expecting anyone?”

Death, she thought, but she didn’t tell him.

It was twenty-six minutes past nine. Four more minutes.

The blaring music stopped and an odd silence hung over the place. This time the applause couldn’t get the musicians to begin again. They wanted to rest. The dancers separated, drifting off the center of the floor toward the sidelines, trailing their inverted reflections along its shiny surface like ghosts.

They stayed together, walking around the floor. They came around to the rear of the bandstand, where there was a lane and a counter where they sold soft drinks. And on the other...

“Look, they sell flowers here, too,” she said, her voice steady.

“Yeah, not a bad idea.”

She couldn’t see the clock from here. The lights were burning brighter — as if they knew that in three more minutes they were going to die, and were having a last fling. All the others were fanning themselves, but her hands felt cold.

“Can I get you some kind of refreshment?”

“I’d rather have a flower. Just one.”

“Sure. What kind would you like?” He turned aside and led her to the counter.

“You pick it out,” she said and hoped he didn’t notice the tremor in her voice.

He put his hand out. Then he stopped and looked at her face several times, and back at the flowers again. “There’s something kind of innocent and young about you, different from most of the girls who come up here. I think this kind would go good on you.”

He was holding a white rosebud in his hand.

Terry’s phrase for it sounded in her mind like a warning bell. The death rose! Her eyes brew bigger and her breath came faster. She tried to hide her excitement — and her fear.

“You dropped it,” he said. He picked it up and put it back in her hand a second time. Then he added, “Why is your hand shaking like that? You can hardly hold it.”

“The stem is a little wet. I’m doing that to dry it.”

They came back in sight of the clock again. Two minutes.

The music began, and they went out on the floor. She said to herself. “It’ll happen while this one is going on. Before we come all the way around again.”

She’d pinned the flower to her dress. She looked at the clock again, slyly so that he wouldn’t notice. The minute hand was straightening itself out. Darkness was on its way.