CHAPTER V
I caught the five A.M. train for another big city—never mind which. I had about two hundred dollars in my wallet, a fair selection of clothes and essentials in my Gladstone, and the portable typewriter in its beat-up case. For a while I was well enough provided for. I settled back in the reclining chair, watched the dawn come up beyond the windows of the train, and listened with half an ear to the whispering voice that was calling to me from the unknown.
An hour passed. I was drowsing, comfortably, my eyes shut. Then in an instant I was wide awake. Someone was watching me. I felt their gaze through my eyelids. As though moving in my sleep I turned myself around, opened my eyes the merest slit. It was the girl across the aisle. I observed her carefully. She was a pretty blonde, and yesterday's Bill Cuff would have been flattered to find her regarding him. Not I! A steady regard was a menacing thing.
I made sure she was alone. Then I opened my eyes wide and said, "Do I know you?" It flustered her. She turned pink and said confusedly, "I—I don't think so!"
I had one of those singular picture-thoughts, that seemed to come and go unbidden in my mind. I saw another female of this girl's race, whom I had taken from her people. I had desired her deeply, and later had trusted her more than I should.
She had betrayed me to her kin, and I had died.
For a moment I considered killing this woman. There were too many men all about us; I should have to flee instead. I stood up, gathered my Gladstone and typewriter, gave her a long hard look, and went forward to the next coach. She must have been completely baffled.
After a few minutes I grew restless. I was enclosed by the walls of this conveyance, and vulnerable to attack. We came into a small city. The train left it, moving slowly. I suppose it was waiting for another train some distance ahead to be shunted off its track. I could stand the confinement no longer. I put my machine under my left arm, took the Gladstone in my left hand. (Always leave one hand free for emergencies.) I went out to the platform between the cars. A conductor was standing there counting tickets.
"Shouldn't change cars with all that luggage, sir," he said. "Train rocks a good deal and it's dangerous."
He took a step toward me. I put up my hand to tear out his throat and realized that he was simply going to pass by. I pressed against the wall. He went into the next car. I would have to watch myself. Needless killing at this stage of my flight would only complicate matters. I swung down to the last step, waited for a level stretch of cindery earth, and dropped off. The train was going perhaps twenty-five miles an hour. I lit as easily, as safely as a leopard bounding from a tree. I began to think there was nothing I could not accomplish in the way of strength and agility.
I walked back into the small city. Instinctively I sought the lower districts—not Skid Row, but the tenements and cheap hotels of the poor. I took a room in one of the latter. I barricaded the door and put up a makeshift burglar alarm on the window sill: a couple of glasses, a water pitcher, other objects, all perched precariously on the edge so that nothing could come in without knocking them off and rousing me. Then I crawled into bed and slept for twelve hours.
In the evening I had a meal and the papers sent up to me. I read them while I chewed on leathery steak coated with half-congealed grease, and tiny potatoes as appetizing as the boiled eyes of iguanas.
The papers had it all. My name, life story, photos, even a list of the magazines for which I had written. Brutal Slayings ... Writer on Rampage ... Have You Seen This Man ... all the rest of the trite screamers.
Then I came to the local paper. It was thought I might be here. It was thought that the man who acted so strangely on the west-bound train that morning, and who vanished at a point several miles out of town, might have been Cuff the Murderer. Descriptions tallied. Tentative identification had been made from telephotos. My lip lifted in a silent snarl. The hounds were baying close.
I dressed and shaved off my mustache. I put on dark glasses and went out to a bar. The liquor tasted like water from a goldfish bowl. I walked the streets. About midnight a policeman gave me a second look, then called questioningly. I waited until he came to me, and then with savage glee I put him across my knee and broke his back.
I went to the hotel and stored up some more sleep, like an animal, preparing for the time when I should be fleeing or fighting around the clock.