'You'll come back, won't you?' This in a fierce whisper.
'Yes, indeed I will,' he assured her. 'I'll send a message. But understand — I never came back here. And don't let on to them where I've gone.'
'How can I when I don't know?'
'Indeed you can't — that's why I didn't tell you.' He turned to me. I could see his eyes in the dim light. 'Open the door and see if there's any one about.'
I pulled the door open. The street was deserted. The rain came down in a steady stream. In the light of the street lamp it slanted in thin steel rods to dance on the roadway and run gurgling down the gutters. I looked back into the hallway. The girl was clinging to Dave, her body pressed to his in a primitive declaration of passion that stripped her bare. Dave was looking past her to the open doorway, the cigarette still in his mouth.
When he saw me nod he detached himself from the girl and came towards me. The girl started to follow him. He turned to her. 'See that you get those things burned,' he said. Then he kissed her quickly and we left Number Two, Harbour Terrace. As I shut the door I saw the girl standing alone at the bottom of the stairs. She was staring straight at me, but she didn't see me. The skin was tight and drawn on her face and I had the impression that she was crying, though there were no tears in her eyes.
It's a strange thing but it never seemed to occur to me to leave Dave to fend for himself. I didn't know what had happened. But a man doesn't get a bullet wound in his arm for nothing. Nor does he abandon his girl and his lodgings, with instructions for his blood-stained clothes to be burned, unless he's been mixed up in something pretty shady. For all I knew he might be involved in murder. But I was swept up in the thing now and, as I say, it never occurred to me to leave him. Probably it was the company and the fact that he was an outcast, like myself. There is nothing to my mind so terrible as loneliness — not the loneliness that comes to a man in a town when he is afraid of his fellow creatures.
We kept to mean, badly lit streets as we threaded our way out of Penzance. We didn't talk. Yet I found immeasurable comfort in the presence of that small figure limping along beside me.
We came out at last on to a main road and as we climbed a short hill through the rain we left the lights of Penzance behind us. At the top I paused and looked back. The town was just a ragged huddle of lights, faintly visible through the driving rain.
'Come on, man,' Dave said impatiently. And I knew he was afraid of those lights.