She quickened her own steps, almost breaking into a run. She heard him draw in his breath sharply, but she forced herself not to think, to keep her eyes fastened on the lighted pane until she was at the door of the restaurant and pressing against the heavy plate glass with all her strength. The door opened inward—slowly, too slowly—and then she was inside, safe for the moment, with light streaming down and two rough-looking men at the counter and a waitress writing out a check and a big, heavyset man with steel-hard eyes at the cashier's desk who glanced at her quickly and then seemed to lose interest in her.
She wasn't disappointed or irritated or even slightly piqued by his lack of interest—not at all. She wanted to throw her arms around him and say: "Thank you. Thank you for just being here."
She went quickly to a table and sat down, not trusting herself to sit at the counter, unable to control the trembling of her hands. Not just her hands—her shoulders were shaking too, and she would have been embarrassed and ashamed if one of the two men at the counter had turned to her and asked, "What's wrong, lady?" and looked at her the way such men usually do when they see a chance to ingratiate themselves with a young and attractive woman in distress—thinking perhaps that she'd had a little too much to drink and they might stand a chance with her if they went about it in just the right way.
She couldn't parry that sort of thing now—even though it was comparatively harmless if you knew how to look after yourself and there was often a real solicitude mixed up with the amorous, slightly smirking part of it.
She saw him then—saw him for the first time. A tall, very thin young man, not more than twenty-four at the most, hatless and a bit unkempt-looking with burning dark eyes that seemed to dissolve the glass barrier between them as he stared in at her through the window.
Only for an instant—and then he was gone. He moved quickly back from the window and his form became vague, half-swallowed up in the twilight outside. Whether he'd crossed the street or continued on down the street she had no way of knowing. He was simply not there any more.
A sudden tightness gripped her throat and a chill blew up her spine. How completely not there? Would he be waiting for her when she left the restaurant, standing perhaps in the doorway of another building, and falling into step behind her again the instant she passed?
She refused to let herself think about that. There was no real need for her to think about it, for she could phone for a cab from the restaurant—there was a phone booth near the door—and when it came she could dash across the pavement, climb in and tell the driver that she was late for an appointment uptown and would he please ... please ... not waste a second getting started.
But what if he actually was the murderer and still had the gun he'd killed Lathrup with? Why, he could have shot her through the window, could have whipped out the weapon and shot her right through the glass. Or come into the restaurant after her. The cashier, despite his strength and his hardness, would have been powerless to interfere, to protect her in any way. If he even started to come to her aid, he'd be dead himself.
Nothing could save her—if he actually was the murderer and was determined to take her life.