Fred decided to lunch at Hjul's. During the short walk to his destination he dismissed everything from his mind except the anticipation of food. He discovered he was very hungry and it struck him that he had forgotten to breakfast. He had come away from the house with the idea of getting a cup of coffee in a waffle kitchen on Kearny Street and his preoccupation had routed this vague plan. He was chuckling over his lapse when he swung into Hjul's and took a seat near the window. He ordered a hot roast-beef sandwich and coffee as he shared his joke with the waitress. She brushed some crumbs from the table with a napkin, laughed, and went scampering for the order. Fred's eyes followed her retreat and fell sharply upon the line of men drifting in the narrow entrance. At the tag end loomed the figure of the man who had followed him down the stairs from his office. Fred picked up a newspaper. The man sat down at a table in a far corner. Over the edge of the newspaper Fred stole a furtive glance. The man was of slippery slenderness, with a rather round, expressionless face. His eyes were beady and shifting, and his lips thin and pale and cruel. The waitress came tripping back with Starratt's order. Fred fell to.
Presently Fred finished. He rose deliberately, taking time to brush every crumb from his lap. At the door he reached for a whisk broom and wielded it conspicuously. He could not have said whether bravado or contempt was moving him to such flamboyant dawdling. Or was he merely trying to persuade himself that he had nothing to fear in any case? He stepped out into a shower of noonday sunshine flooding through a rift in the high fog of a July morning in San Francisco. A delicious thrill from open spaces communicated itself to him. No, he would not go back to the office—it was Saturday, anyway, and, besides, he felt a vague desire for freedom and the tang of wind-clean air. He would ride out to Golden Gate Park and stroll leisurely through its length to the ocean… He walked briskly down Montgomery Street to Market, waited a few seconds at a safety station, and finally swung on a car… He was standing before a tiny lake at the Haight Street entrance to the Park, watching a black swan ruffling its feathers, when he felt a presence near him. He did not lift his eyes for some moments, but when he did look up it was to see his shifty friend of the morning pretending to be amused at a group of noisy sparrows quarreling over a windfall of crumbs… Fred Starratt moved on.
All afternoon Fred Starratt wandered about—sometimes dawdling defiantly, sometimes dropping into a brisk pace, but at every turn his new-found shadow followed at an inconspicuous distance. The afternoon sun was gracious, tinged with a pleasant coolness, and far to the west a blue-gray fog bank waited for evening to let down the day's warm barriers. Fred Starratt's thoughts were abrupt and purposeless, like the unsustained flights of wing-clipped birds. He knew that he was being followed, and he had a confused sense of something impending, and yet he was unable or unwilling to face the issue honestly. There were moments when he glimpsed the truth, but he seemed unmoved by these truant realizations. Was he too tired to care? He used to wonder, when he read in the newspapers of some man overtaken by an overwhelming disgrace, how it was possible to go on living under such circumstances. Was his indifference of this afternoon the preliminary move in a long series of heartbreaking compromises and retreats? he asked himself. But he did not attempt to answer any of these darting questions. After all, the sun was shining and about him the world seemed to be swinging on with disarming normality. Upon the trimmed lawns peacocks strutted and shrieked and from remoter distances the soft call of the quail echoed caressingly. It was good to be alive, with one's feet firmly planted on the earth. To be alive and free!
He passed the conservatory and the sunken gardens, flamboyant with purple-and-gold pansies; he dawdled over the aviary and the bear cages. He even stopped for tea at the Japanese garden, throwing bits of sweetened rice-flour cakes to the goldfishes in their chocolate-colored pond near the tea pavilion. He found himself later skirting Stow Lake, pursued by flocks of ubiquitous coots, bent upon any stray crumbs flung in their direction. Finally he dipped suddenly down into the wilder reaches of the Park, taking aimless trails that wandered off into sandy wastes or fetched up quite suddenly upon the trimly bordered main driveway. He always had preferred the untamed stretches that lay beyond Stow Lake. Here, as a young boy, he had organized scouting parties when it was still a remote, almost an unforested sand pile. Later, when the trees had conquered its bleakness, Helen and he had spent many a Saturday afternoon tramping briskly through the pines to the ocean. How long ago that seemed, and yet how very near! Not long in point of time, somehow, but long in point of accessibility. He seemed to be standing, as it were, upon the threshold of a past that he could glimpse, but not re-enter. Even Helen seemed remote—a part of the background that had been, instead of an equal spectator with him in a review of these dead events.
It was nearly five o'clock when he drew near the first wind-stunted pine trees heralding the ocean. He quickened his step. Already the breeze was tearing across the unscreened spaces and carrying damp wisps of fog with it. As he found his steps swinging into the ocean highway he turned and looked back. His discreet pursuer had disappeared. There was not a soul in sight!
His heart gave a sudden leap. He hurried forward. A street car was rounding the terminal loop on its return to town. He clattered aboard. He felt suddenly free and light hearted, almost gay. What would he do now? Look up Helen at Hilmer's and persuade her to dine with him somewhere downtown?… He remembered that he had not even telephoned her for two days. The conviction that had settled upon him during his walk through the Park woods descended again. Helen seemed impersonal and unapproachable… He felt a desire for noise and conviviality and laughter. He decided to look in at the St. Francis bar and see if he could chance upon a hilarious friend or two.
Starratt had overlooked the fact of war-time prohibition when he picked the St. Francis bar as a place of genial fellowship. The memory of its old-time six-o'clock gayety was still fresh enough to trick him. He swung into its screened entrance to find it practically deserted. The old bustle and hoarse conversation and hearty laughter were replaced by dreary silence. The provocative rattle of ice in the highball glass, the appetizing smell of baked ham from the free-lunch counter, the thick, pungent clouds of tobacco smoke—all had been routed by chill, hypocritical virtue. One or two of the tables were surrounded by solemn circles of males getting speedily drunk in an effort to finish up the melancholy remains filched from some private stock, but their attempts at light-heartedness were very sad and maudlin. Fred was moving away when he heard his name called. He turned to find a group of business associates from California Street sitting before two bottles of Scotch, which were ministering to their rather dour conviviality. Starratt started to wave a mingled greeting and farewell when his raised hand fell heavily against his side—in the polished depths of the bar's flawless mirror loomed the unwelcome figure that had pursued him all day!… He went over and joined his friends.
He had one drink … two … another. Then he lost count … but the supply seemed inexhaustible. A sudden rush of high spirits keyed him tensely. He talked and laughed and waved his arms about, calling upon everybody to witness his light-heartedness. Through the confused blur of faces surrounding him he caught an occasional glimpse of the thin, cruel lips and the shifting, beady eyes of his pursuer sitting over a flat drink which he left untouched.
Presently somebody in the party suggested a round of the bohemian joints. The motion was noisily seconded… Fred staggered to his feet. They began with the uptown tenderloin, drifting in due time through the Greek cafes on Third Street. Finally they crossed Market Street and began to chatter into the tawdry dance halls of upper Kearny. Everywhere the drinks flowed in covert streams, growing viler and more nauseous as the pilgrimage advanced. Near Jackson Street they came upon a bedraggled pavilion of dubious gayety which lured them downstairs with its ear-splitting jazz orchestra. A horde of rapacious females descended upon them like starving locusts. Suddenly everybody in the party seemed moved with a desire for dancing—except Fred. While the others whirled away he sank into a seat, staring vacantly ahead. He had reached the extreme point of his drunkenness and he was pulling toward sobriety again… He came out of his tentative stupor with the realization that a woman was seating herself opposite him.
"What's your name?" he demanded, thickly.