Black Curtain Read Free Page A

shorter step. He forgot to take the next one altogether, held his foot poised toe to ground. He had faltered almost to a full stop by now.
     
    The lens of Townsend's mind snapped, developed, and printed him--all in one instantaneous process. He was sturdily built, a little below medium height but not short. The brim of his hat cut off his hair--except at the sides, where it was sheared too close to show any distinctive color--but his eyes were gray and agatelike under thick, dark brows. Hard eyes, seldom softened. The kind that don't laugh. It was hard to tell who or what he was just by looking at him. He could have been anything. He was a face in the crowd, and Townsend didn't know him, had never seen him before in his life.
     
    But the face didn't go on; held back, like a white rock peering steadily through rippling, coursing water. Something made an alarm bell of danger start ringing in Townsend's heart. People don't stop and scan you exhaustively on the street for no reason. This man recognized him or thought he recognized him but wasn't altogether sure yet. Whatever it was, there was no innocent social acquaintanceship at the root of it. The man's own actions showed that. Still uncertain in his own mind, he realized belatedly that he was attracting attention to himself, putting Townsend on his guard, by staring so overtly. He tried to undo the damage by continuing on his way-- rather too abruptly for it to be plausible--and seeming to recede into the distance along the bustling sidewalk, in the direction he had originally been following.
     
    But not for very far. Some show-window display not far ahead seemed to attract his interest, and he veered inward toward it, on a long diagonal--that began a considerable distance before he could possibly have seen just what it was he was being drawn to with any degree of accuracy. He came to a halt before it, back to sidewalk and peered absorbedly in. Show windows make good reflecting surfaces, Townsend knew.
     
    The alarm bell within was a din by now. "I'm going to get out of here!" he assured himself grimly.
     
    He kept his head inscrutably motionless while be weighed possibilities. The bus would be simply a four-wheeled trap, if this unknown chose to follow him aboard. Once the two of them were inside it, he'd never be able to get out again undetected.
     
    If he returned inside his own place of work and waited a few minutes for a later bus, the stalker might still be lurking around when he came out again--and he would then know where Townsend came from every day at this hour, which he didn't as yet.
     
    If he simply took a walk around the block, in hopes of throwing him off, and then came back here to his original starting point--well, two could walk around the block as well as one, at a spaced distance.
     
    The hunted or troubled thing, whether two legged or four, instinctively seeks a hole in the ground. There is no cover like a hole in the ground. The next street over there was a subway. He'd never used it before, because it diverged a great deal further than just one street at the other end, where his destination was. It was not the straightest line between here and his home.
     
    But some action was better than the threat latent in this veiled surveillance and the acute uneasiness it was instilling in him. He decided to try to gain the subway, if it could be managed.
     
    He edged the tip of his nose around a little, without staring over his shoulder full face. That show case was holding the stranger a long time, back there. Too long a time. Townsend, who worked in the immediate vicinity, knew which one it was. It was a shop displaying surgical belts and trusses. Whatever else he lacked, the window shopper didn't need any corrective aids for posture. His back was ruler straight and his waist was spare and flexible.
     
    Townsend readied himself by surreptitiously telescoping his newspaper's width. He waited for the light to change, and then he made a break for it.