Johnson waited there in Hatcher's apartment.
He tried to get in touch with the lawyer, but that seemed impossible. No one knew where Hatcher was. But Johnson knew the police were shadowing him, hoping he would lead them to where Zeke was hiding.
He had to get over there to that park where Zeke might be hiding, waiting for him, without being trailed there. That wouldn't be easy. It was out of Johnson's line.
The newscast said that Zeke had blundered into someone's estate near the UN grounds and had had a couple of big dogs sent after him. In protecting himself, Zeke had killed the dogs. It would seem that killing the two dogs was worse in some ways than if Zeke had killed two more human beings.
No one, of course, even remembered ever having laughed at Zeke. He had become the typical alien Martian menace, a Welles and Wells character. A monster from another world, a bogey Martian, a menace, a stalking terror, an inhuman monster.
"They'll kill him," Johnson whispered. He got up and got Hatcher's topcoat out of the closet and put on Hatcher's hat. "They'll kill him and he won't have any idea what's happened or why." That's the worst part of it, he thought. Somewhere in the rainy dark was Zeke, feeling terribly the hostility of his human surroundings. Confused, desperate, panic-stricken. Not understanding any of it.
Johnson went out into the hall of the apartment-hotel. Empty. The police would be guarding the front entrance certainly, maybe the back. But there was another exit out of the basement into the vacant lot, and maybe they wouldn't know about that.
He went down into the basement, went out that entrance and into the vacant lot among the dripping trees. He stood there, listening, watching. He put his hands in Hatcher's topcoat pocket and felt the small snub-nosed revolver there. He jerked his hand out.
He heard nothing but the rain on the palm fronds and the tires humming on wet pavement. Above him, the gray night's hand cupped over the city, reflecting its neon life through misty rain.
He went cautiously through the trees, through a pit being excavated for building, and emerged onto the street a block and a half away. And still no one.