That determination toughened him, his despair past, and wrestling with the problem he came upon its solution and with it his punishment.
He would tell the man, give him warning and let him go. There was plenty of time; the authorities were not yet informed; no one was on the watch. Mayer could leave the city that morning and make the Mexican border by night. It was the only way out and it dragged his penance with it—Pancha unavenged, the enemy rewarded, the prison doors set wide for the flight of their mutual despoiler.
Three strokes chimed out and he rose, trying to step lightly with feet that felt heavy as lead. It was very silent, as if the night and the brooding city were at one in that conspiracy to impress him with a sense of their hostility. The houses were still malignly watchful, again took up and tossed about his footsteps, echoed them from wall to wall till he wondered doors did not open, people did not come. On the main street he shrank by shop window and closed doorway, gliding blackly across a gush of light, slipping, a moving darkness, against the deeper darkness of shuttered lower stories. He had it almost to himself—a policeman lounging on a corner, a reveler reeling by with indignant mutterings, one or two night workers footing it homeward to rest and bed.
At the door of a drugstore he stopped and looked in. A frowsy woman was talking across the counter to a clerk whose bald head shone, glossy as ivory, above the gray fatigue of his face. In a corner was a telephone booth. Garland opened the door, then started as a bell jangled stridently and the bald-headed man craned his neck and the woman whisked round.
"Telephone," he muttered, tentative on the sill.
The clerk, too listless for words, jerked his head toward the booth and then handed the woman a package. As Garland entered the booth he heard her dragging step cross the floor and the bell jangle on her exit.
While he waited he struggled for a closer control on the rage that possessed him. He had decided what he would say and he cleared his throat for a free passage of the words that were to carry deliverance to one he longed to kill. He had expected a wait—the man, confidant in his security, would be sleeping—but almost on top of his request for Mr. Mayer came a voice, wide-awake and incisive:
"Hello, who is it?"
His answer was very low, the deep tones hoarse despite his effort.
"Is this Mr. Boyé Mayer?"