His frown deepened. He took a few more steps, bumped into a barrel, circled around it, and kept on going. Scarcely any light came through the partially opened door to the loading platform, and now he moved in almost total darkness.
He decided the door had been unlocked by some gin hound who’d come out of it just long enough to do him a favor, and then had returned to an alcoholic slumber.
His hand came in contact with the edge of a large box. He sat down on the box and wished he had a book of matches and a pack of cigarettes. For a few moments he played with the idea of getting the hell out of here. But the air in the warehouse was warm and somehow comfortable, and a lot drier than the weather outside. He figured he might as well sit here for a while.
But then, he thought, the storm would probably get worse and last for hours, and he was pretty hungry, getting hungrier all the time. And the problem of love had remained.
“The hell with this,” he muttered aloud, and turned his head, looking for the column of gray light that would reveal the exit.
All he saw was blackness, and the dim gray rectangles of the small windows. The windows were high off the floor, and that was one thing. Another thing was the fact that they were made of wired glass and he’d have one mess of a time smashing his way through.
And yet he wasn’t thinking much about that. He was concentrating on the door, telling himself he’d left the door open and now it was closed.
His mouth was set in a thin line as he thought, Whoever let me in here is making sure I don’t get out.
In that same moment, he heard footsteps.
The sounds came from behind him. He knew that if he turned his head, he would see who it was. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and the windows afforded just enough light for recognizing a face. But in the instant that he told himself to turn and look, his instinct contradicted the impulse and commanded him to duck, to dodge, to evade an unseen weapon.