The verse and one chorus ran a minute and ten seconds, he knew; at the end of the chorus he looked at Helen as if to see whether she found it as entrancing as he did. She had slumped down in the chair, apparently ready to see it through. He realized that he had lost; he sat back in the seat, trying to think of some way to get her to stay for part of the newsreel.
Mary Hart danced the next chorus. One minute forty-five seconds, he thought. His mind was ticking like a taximeter. Then the number began to get really spectacular, as a host of girls appeared from nowhere and took up the song. After no more than eight bars, Helen leaned toward him.
“I’m leaving,” she said. She stood up. Conway looked at her, momentarily speechless.
“I’m leaving, and you’d better come, too.” She didn’t whisper, but her voice was low. He didn’t think anyone could hear. He left his seat and went up the aisle ahead of her. It was two minutes and five seconds after the start of the number; with luck he would have four minutes and fifty-five seconds without interruption.
He looked around the lobby at a scene of complete inactivity — no one either leaving or coming in. There was an added break he hadn’t counted on: the doorman was over talking to the girl behind the candy and popcorn counter, so they left without having come face to face with anyone.
He let Helen get a couple of steps ahead, thinking she might walk a little more rapidly than if she thought he was trying to hurry her. As she started to cross the street, she turned and spoke over her shoulder.
“What you can see in that—” She didn’t finish, for Conway had leaped forward, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back to the curb. A jalopy, filled with five or six adolescents, whizzed past, missing her by inches.
“Thanks,” she said, and she was breathing rapidly. “You surprise me.”
His own pulse was pounding. He didn’t know why he had done it: it had been an instinctive reaction. Maybe they’d have missed her, perhaps only injured her. But they had been going at least forty-five, and in the quick glance he’d had of them, the driver seemed to have his arm around the girl at his side; he probably could not have avoided hitting Helen. It might all have been taken care of for him, Conway thought bitterly. Fate had tried to give him an assist, and he had been too stupid to take advantage of it.
They crossed the street. His stomach was queasy, and his pulse seemed to be pounding like a riveting machine. For the past two hours there had been but one thought in his mind: how to get her out of the theatre at the proper time. His only fear had been that he might fail in that vitally important preliminary. He hadn’t failed, but now the new fear that consumed him was almost paralyzing. He felt no pity, no qualms of conscience over this thing which had to be done; only a horrible doubt of himself, of whether he could, physically, go through with it. There, only a few steps ahead, was the car. Only seconds in the future, lay murder.