The Blackbirder Read Free

again quickly. He was dead.
    She had known that he would be dead. He wouldn't have lain face down on the sidewalk in his new coat if he weren't dead. She must run, now, quickly; not return to the dingy room. Fortunately, she hadn't removed her wraps or laid down her purse. Run, run fast. But before she ran she had to get that little black morocco book from his inner pocket. Because her name was in it. When the police found Maxl, found that book, they would come for her. He lay on the sidewalk in front of her apartment house, and in his book was the address of her apartment house right under her name.
    When the police came for her, they would interrogate her. Why was she in this country? There was no reason she dared give. Had she friends, family? None. How was she here? She had no passport for Juliet Marlebone. Senora Eloyso Vigil y de Vaca's passport had been returned to Havana long ago. She could be locked up. Terror beat her hands together. She could be deported to Paris. Terror shook every fiber of her body.
    Run, run fast. Even now the police might be on the way. Someone behind one of those blank brick walls might have heard a shot. She hadn't heard a shot. Someone might have seen Maxl fall, might have given the alarm. She scooped down swiftly over him.
    She had to lift him to reach that pocket. He was dead weight. She couldn't budge him. Frantically she rammed her arm between the unyielding sidewalk and his hulk; she snaked her gloved fingers within the greatcoat, into the inner pocket. It took so long. She closed on the book, painfully edged it up and out. The killer hadn't taken it. He hadn't taken it. He hadn't known it was there. Or he didn't want it. It was nothing but a little book with names and addresses in it. She didn't look at it, she only felt it, thrust it down into her bag. She rose up quickly and plunged, half running, half stumbling toward the Drive. She didn't look back. She was afraid to look back.

    * * * *
    The sound was her breath. It was coming and going fast, an animal sound. She turned the corner of the Drive into the snagged teeth of the wind. She put her head down into it and forced her way on to 79th Street. She turned sharp there and started back up the hill toward Broadway. The hill held her back, the wind had followed her. It was like trying to hasten in a dream. She could hear the hunted sound of her breath. The lights of a cab were approaching and she shrank close to the dark hull of the buildings. But she didn't stop walking. She kept on, slowly as in a nightmare, with her heart pumping faster, faster. The cab didn't stop. It rolled down the street, turning north at the Drive.
    She crossed West End without looking. right or left, particularly not looking right. Someone might be on the corner of 78th Street. Her legs ached pushing them up the hill. The crosstown blocks were always long, now they were endless. She might have been on a squirrel tread, moving but not advancing. And then she reached the crest, Broadway.
    There were lights here, not as many as once there had been, the street lamps dimmed, the store windows darkened by war conditions. But more light than on the side ways. She slid her left arm out of the coat sleeve, looked down at her wristwatch. Ten minutes to two o'clock. It had been after one when Maxl left her at the door. The hours since hadn't added to one hour.
    She stood there under the dull street light not looking at the watch. The palms of her gloves were dark; she touched them together, dark, sticky darkness. She had held them tensed, palm to palm, while she braced the wind and the hill and night shadow. She rubbed them frantically; the stain matted. On the right sleeve of her brown coat the dark stuff had crawled like a monstrous spider. It seemed to be crawling still. She was shaking so much that she couldn't move, but she did, darting across the half street, cowering into the downtown subway entrance. On the damp stairs she pulled the gloves from her hands inside