Part 6 (1/2)

”So you sell three cars, and now you're going to tell me how to run the place?”

”I don't care what you do with it,” I said, and walked out of the office. I had to relax. At this rate I'd blow my top before noon. A Negro boy came in and stood around with his hands in his pockets looking at the cars the way they always do. You get the impression they're waiting for some thing, but you don't know what-maybe for prices to come down or cotton to go up.

Suppose I lost my head? I thought.

I went over and gave him sales talk you'd use on an oil man looking for Cadillacs for three of his girl friends. Or at least I think it was all right. He seemed to like it. I didn't hear a word I was saying.

You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you.

”How much the down payment?” he asked. That was all they ever wanted to know. You could sell Fords for eight thousand dollars if you'd let them go for five dollars down.

Somehow ten o'clock came and went. I walked over to the restaurant and had a cup of coffee. It was hard to sit still now, or stand still, or think straight about anything. At 11:45 Gulick went to get his lunch. Suppose he didn't get back in time? Harshaw would leave anyway. It would look funny if I ran off and left the place completely unattended. I prowled around the lot, trying not to look at my watch. At 12:20 he came back and Harshaw left. Then it was 12:25.1 stood behind a car, looking at the watch, waiting. It was 12:30.

And nothing happened. There was no noise, no siren, nothing. The streets were as quiet as any weekday noon. It was 12:35, 12:40. It hadn't gone off. Somebody had found it. The whole thing had failed. And I couldn't try it again, if somebody had found that one. Was I glad, now that the pressure was off? I didn't know.

Then it came. The siren tore its way up through the noonday hush, growing louder and higher, screaming. The firehouse was only two blocks away, and in a minute or so the fire engine came lumbering past the lot, headed down Main, with the cars beginning to fall in behind it. Gulick and I ran to the sidewalk, both of us looking wildly around for the smoke.

”It's down there, in front of the bank somewhere!” he said, pointing. People afoot were running now, and cars were beginning to jam up down at the other end of the street.

”Stick around, and I'll go take a look,” I said. Before he could answer I jumped in the car and shot out into the street. Most of the traffic and the people afoot were at least a block ahead of me. People were pouring out of stores and the restaurant, yelling at each other and running. And in the midst of all the uproar I discovered I was cold as ice and clear-headed, without any panic at all. A block before I got to the bank I turned left and pulled the car to the curb near the mouth of the alley in the side street. Two or three other cars were parked along here, so it didn't look conspicuous. Two people went past, running, not even seeing me.

The side street was empty now. A few people still ran by on Main, but they looked straight ahead, their eyes on the smoke. I reached into the back seat. The blanket and piece of line were carefully folded up inside the coat to the seersucker suit I had put on this morning. I picked it all up, put the coat over my arm, and went down the alley, running fast. When I got to the end of it I slowed a little. A man came running past, but didn't see me, and went on up past the side door of the bank. There was n.o.body else in sight except the stragglers going by on Main. I went up alongside the bank building to the side door, stopped, and looked in. This was where it had to be right.

It was just the way I'd figured it. The only person in the place was the old man, and he was standing in the front door with his back to me, watching the black column of smoke boiling into the sky two blocks away. I eased inside the door, turned, and started back to the washroom, watching him with quick glances over my shoulder. The rubber-soled shoes I had on made no sound at all, and he was intent on the uproar down the street.

I made it, and slipped inside the little room, praying the door didn't squeak. I pushed it carefully until it was nearly closed, and I was out of sight. I took a deep breath. There was a half part.i.tion, presumably with a toilet behind it, and on this side were the usual wash-basin and mirror. The mirror didn't face the door. I'd already checked on that.

I put the plug in the wash-basin and turned on the water, then stepped back against the wall where I would be behind the door as he pushed it open. I hung the coat on a hook, held the blanket in my hands, and waited, hardly breathing now. It was deathly quiet. The basin filled, then started spilling over on to the floor. Suppose he was hard of hearing and didn't notice it? I cursed myself. I was doing too much supposing. A minute dragged by, and then another. Water was beginning to run out into the bank now. I turned my head and looked out the crack at the back of the door. I could see the front of the bank, only a narrow strip between here and there. He was nowhere in sight.

Then suddenly I heard the faint scuff of a shoe, just outside. He had already pa.s.sed the area I was watching, was almost to the door. I wheeled around just as he stepped inside the washroom, pus.h.i.+ng the door back towards me. He was clear of it and starting to bend over the wash-basin to turn the water off.

I hit the door with my elbow and slammed it shut at the same time I threw the blanket over him. He straightened, tried to turn, and screamed. There was no chance he had seen me. He fought the blanket wildly, trying to get his arms up. I pulled them down, took two turns around him with the line, and tied it off, then pulled his feet from under him and set him on the floor and threw two half-hitches around his ankles. He was still yelling, the sound m.u.f.fled inside the blanket.

I had the knife out. I pulled the blanket away from his lower face and quickly cut a hole in it around his mouth. Grabbing a paper towel out of the container on the wall, I rolled it into a tight ball and the next time he opened his mouth to scream I shoved it inside, hard, and plastered a strip of adhesive tape across it. I straightened, and wiped the sweat off my face. It had taken a month.

He could breathe all right, but he couldn't yell. It was a lot of trouble, but if I'd tried slugging him I might have killed him. He was too old.

I opened the door a crack and peered out. It was clear. No one was in sight anywhere. I grabbed the coat and stepped out and closed the door. I was in plain sight of the street now. It was like being naked in a dream. I made it to the gate in the railing, and then I was in the vault.

Maybe I'd expected it to be full of currency stacked everywhere on the floor like cordwood. It threw me for a second. I didn't see anything except ledgers, papers, filing cabinets, and drawers. I started yanking the drawers open. Some of them were locked. I got one open at last that was full of currency in bundles, fastened with paper bands. I didn't look at the denominations. Time was running; I could feel it going past me like the tide. I jerked the unders.h.i.+rt out of my coat pocket; it had been tied off with a cord to form a bag, and I started cramming in the bundles.

I came out of the vault and ran up in back of the tellers' cages, bent over and hidden from the street by the ground gla.s.s screen and the counter. In another thirty seconds I'd be out of here. It was beginning to get me now. I cleaned out the first one, and moved to the other. It was just a few seconds now. Then I stopped dead still and listened, feeling the pulse jump in my throat. There was somebody on the sidewalk outside.

I dropped, squatting below the counter, trying to listen above the roaring of blood in my ears. The footsteps were going on past. Would whoever it was look inside and wonder why no one was in sight? Then I froze. I could feel the icy wind blowing right up my spine. The shuffling footsteps hadn't gone past. They had come in. Somebody was inside the bank, right on the other side of the counter.

I tried to stop the sound of my breathing. And then, in an agonizing flashback of memory, I thought of the thing I had done that day when I hadn't seen anybody here. I had looked down inside the cages.

He hadn't said anything. Why didn't something happen? I fought desperately to hold myself still, not give way to the awful compulsion to break and run for it. Then he moved again. And now I began to get it. There was another sound beside the sc.r.a.pe of his shoes. It was the tap, tap, tap of a cane.

”Mister Julian? You theah, Mr. Julian? Wheahbouts the fiah?”

I could feel myself weaken all over and the sigh coming up out of my lungs like a balloon collapsing. I throttled it and tried to hold my breath as I came slowly to my feet.

It was awful. It could break your nerve. We were facing each other across the counter and I was looking right into the dark gla.s.ses three feet in front of my eyes. I was robbing a bank with a witness standing there so near he could reach out and touch me, a witness who could send me to the penitentiary for practically the rest of my life except for the fact that he was blind.

”That you, Mister Julian?” he asked.

How did he know somebody was here? Did he know it? I didn't dare move. And I couldn't speak. That was the way he identified people, by their voices. And I couldn't stand there forever. He was reaching out an arm, groping for me. I leaned back, not moving my feet, and the fingers pa.s.sed an inch away from my tie.

”Ain't like you, Mister Julian, makin' fun of ol' Mort.” I had to get out. I couldn't stand it. I moved one foot back, picking it up and lowering it carefully and utterly without sound, crepe rubber against tile. Then I moved the other one. I repeated it. I was out of the cage. I held the bag out from my legs so I wouldn't brush against it. I was past the other cage now, in the railed-off area where the desk was.

I looked at him, and that was when I began to go to pieces. It wasn't human. He had moved. He had walked along the front of the counter and now he had stopped beside the railing, and he was tracking me. He couldn't see me, and no pair of ears on earth could have detected any sound, but he was following me as unerringly as radar. I moved, and the gaunt black face and sightless eyes moved with me. ”You got no business in heah!” he said. I ran.

8

The street was clear, and there was no one in the alley. I got the trunk of the car open, threw in the bag, tossed the coat on the back seat, and made a U turn, throwing gravel, and shot across Main Street. This way I'd come in behind the Taylor building. They'd have the other street blocked by now, and I had to get into the thick of it without anyone's seeing me drive up. I slammed ahead two blocks and turned left.

Smoke was pouring into the sky. I hit a jam of abandoned cars, pulled over to the curb, and got out. The crowds were all ahead of me in the street and beginning to push on to the vacant lots around the rear of the building. The fire engine was around in front, in the middle of the worse jam. I circled, keeping to the rear of the crowd. n.o.body paid any attention to me. The whole second floor of the building was roaring now, throwing flames into the air. I shoved my way into the knot of people pressed around the fire engine. They had a hose run out, playing a stream on the roof on the other side, and now they were trying to get one on this side. Everybody was yelling and getting in the way. I saw the chance I was looking for and latched on to the hose, up near the nozzle, as they fought to get it strung out through the crowd.

They gave us the pressure before we got set. The hose stiffened, bucked, and threw the man who was carrying the nozzle. The man next in line went for it, got his hands on it, but he was too light and it slapped him off. Two more lunged for it. I piled into them.

”Look out!” I yelled. ”Let me at the d.a.m.ned thing!”

I collided with one of the men, knocked him off his feet, and then fell over him on to the hose. I was soaked, drowned, covered with churned-up mud. It was perfect. It was just what I wanted. I got both hands on the nozzle, dug my feet in, and got up. I held it, and started going forward. I could hear the crowd yell.

We had two streams on the fire now, but we might as well have been squirting a burning oil well with water pistols. The whole thing was going up like a Roman candle. A big section of the roof caved in and sparks and embers went exploding upwards in the smoke. The crowd was pus.h.i.+ng in across the vacant lot all around us. I swung my head and through all the confusion I could see the deputy sheriff and two more men running along the line trying to force them back. I jerked my head at the two men behind me.

”Slide up here and take this!” I yelled. They clamped their hands on it and I let go, ducked back, and made for the deputy. I got him by the arm and yelled in his ear.

”That wall's coming down any minute! We got to get 'em out of here.”

”What you think I'm trying to do?” he roared back.

”Look! Go tell 'em to cut the water on this hose. Then get as many men on it as you can. Pick it up. We'll shove 'em back.”

He got what I meant, and ran towards the fire engine. I turned and plowed my way back to the nozzle. Just as I got my hands on it the hose went limp. I started running, dragging it, down alongside the wall and out into the vacant lot at the rear, as far as it would reach. Men were falling in behind me now, picking it up. I started swinging it out and away, like hauling a fish seine. The deputy was yelling and motioning backwards with his arms. They began to back up, and every time they gave a step we dragged the hose against them. In a couple of minutes we had the whole crowd shoved back across the street.

The wall didn't fall outwards after all. It sagged a little and went on burning. But I had accomplished the thing I wanted. That deputy, and at least a half dozen others, would remember me all right. My clothes were a mess; I looked as if I'd been fighting fire for a week. There wasn't much to do now except to keep it from spreading to the houses along the street. We put out fires in the weeds and sprayed water on some of the nearer shacks. And all the time I was waiting. It would break any minute now.

Then I heard a siren, pitched low and merely growling. Another highway patrol car was inching its way through the crowd jammed in the street. The driver got out and waved his arm towards the deputy sheriff. The deputy went over, while people pressed around them. Then I saw some of them break away and start running towards Main.

I shoved into the knot of men. The word was traveling faster than another fire. ”What's up?” I yelled at a man squeezing his way out.

”Bunch of men held up the bank! While everybody was over here at the fire they stuck it up and got away with ten thousand dollars!”