He jumped back again into the booth he’d just been in, struck a match, floated it all around just over the surface of the floor. Nothing, just the usual debris of phone-booths. Tinfoil from chewing-gum, the masticated end-product of the same, a cigarette-husk or two. They all came floating into the matchlight, floating out again, as he circled it.
He whipped it out, turned, jumped into the second booth, the one he hadn’t been in until now. He struck another match and paid that around, turning the floor tawny-pale.
There it was. A gorgeous blob of clue. Right there in front of his eyes. Four big dark glistening polka-dots on the floor, close together, making almost a four-leaf clover pattern the way they had dropped. And there, in the corner, was what he’d been using to staunch it. A wad of ordinary paper facial tissue, two or three ply thick in this case, crumpled tight and thrown away. It was clotted, mired with blood. Only one edge of it still showed white.
He’d probably replaced it with a fresh one while he was in here, and it was during the process that those four drops had escaped.
So that was why he’d hugged his coat tight over his chest. And that was why the tell-tale glass stood atop the hospital-page of the classified directory. That was the type of post-murder call he’d made. He’d killed Graves, but not before Graves had—
It couldn’t have been a very large wound, for him to remain on his feet like that. But the one on the side of Graves’ head hadn’t been either, and it was probably the same gun. Maybe just a flesh-wound or a nick.
He straightened, went back to it again. This time he lifted the glass, set it aside. It had served its purpose well, it had betrayed him. He was at some hospital in the city at this very moment, getting treatment. They had to report gunshot wounds. Would he be willing to run that risk? He must be, or he wouldn’t have telephoned in ahead of going there. No doubt he had some trumped-up story he’d give them, to account for it. It mightn’t be a gunshot wound at that, there was no absolute certainty that it was; Graves might have inflicted some gash on him, struck at him with something, even though there had been no evidences of a struggle visible up there. In which case he’d be that much safer in presenting himself for emergency-treatment.
The thing was, which? Which one had he called? Which one had he gone to? There were so many, from A to Y. The position of the glass meant nothing; he must have set that down at random, to rid his hand of it, after having already ascertained the number of his choice.
But then, why phone ahead? Why not just go there? That part he couldn’t understand. But again — there was no actual proof that he had phoned. True, the bloodied waste was in one of the phone-booths, but he might simply have gone in there to change improvised dressings and not touched the instrument itself. Simply looked up the address that he wanted in the book, opened his coat a minute to apply fresh staunching-tissue, and then gone on outside again.
The glass? Should he make use of that, concentrate on the ones that had appeared through its bottom? But that was childish, that was sheer mumbo-jumbo. Why not go by accessibility, then, nearness to this immediate neighborhood? There was no time to go through the entire list, he had to have some short-cut.
He chose that one. He ripped the entire page bodily out of the directory, folded it and stuffed it into his pocket, for quick reference. Then he strode on out.
The prescriptionist looked up, from a small supply-room at the back of the counter to which he had retired, as he heard him pass. “Steadier now?” he called after him.
Quinn couldn’t integrate the remark for a minute; he’d forgotten his own invention on entering a few moments before.
“A lot steadier,” he replied across his shoulder.
He went up the entrance-steps with the leg-spread of a runner taking a hurdle-jump. The ground-floor corridor was coolly dim and the flooring shiny. He went over to the receptionist seated within a lighted alcove at one side, only her head and shoulders visible.
“Did a man come in here for treatment, within the past couple of hours?”
“An ambulance case?”
“No, walking in by himself.”
“No, there hasn’t been anyone like that all night.”
“Wearing a brown suit. Holding himself like this.” He gripped his coat together to show her.
“No—” she started to say.
He turned away, reached for the torn page from the directory within his pocket.
“Oh, wait a minute—” she called after him abruptly.
He turned and went back again, so swiftly he nearly skidded on the floor.
“I think I know who you mean.” She gave him a weazened smile. “You’ll find him on the fourth floor. He’s waiting up there to get in—” Then she called after him: “To your right as you get off the elevator. Turn this way.”
He went over to the car and got in.
He got out at the fourth and turned this way, the way she’d said. Another of those long coolly dim corridors stretched before him. No one in sight along it. He passed doors, but kept going. He followed it to the end, and then made still another turn, that she hadn’t told him about. It broadened into a sort of waiting-room, or at least a place with a couple of benches, and he didn’t have to go any further. There he was.
He saw him from the distance, and he knew him right away, before he’d even come up to him. He hadn’t been admitted yet. He must have just gotten here after all, to be still outside like that.
He was huddled there on a bench against the wall, disconsolate and in distress. He was still holding himself there where he’d been shot. Or at least holding his coat convulsively clenched over it. It must be hurting him a lot. His head was way over, tilted back against the wall, as if he were staring straight up at the ceiling. But he had his free hand pasted over his face, hiding his eyes. Or holding them or something.
His mouth was a little open, and he was doing his breathing through that.
There was room on the bench for two, and Quinn sat down next to him. There was silence for a moment, just the heavy sound of Quinn’s own breathing after his fast hike along the corridor.
The man beside him didn’t look at him right away. Too much pain or too much misery or something. He didn’t care who it was next to him, didn’t even want to know.
Quinn reached for a cigarette and took one out and lit it. Then he blew the smoke straight at the side of his face, to attract his attention. Straight into his ear almost. It was calloused in a way, that occurred to him even at the moment of doing it. But he wanted him to know he was there. He said to himself: That’ll get him. That’ll make him turn. Watch.
The hand came down off his face, and then the face itself came down to a level, and he turned around and looked at Quinn.
Quinn thought he’d never seen such hopeless misery in his life. A sort of shock went through him. But not on that account. Some strange feeling of kinship got to him, and he couldn’t understand why, at such a moment. He didn’t look like a murderer. He looked like — just anyone at all you sat down next to. Quinn thought: Why, he looks like me, almost. At least, he looks like I feel I look like. Sort of harmless, and helpless, and he’s no older than me. Why, it might be me sitting there, looking back here at where I am, with a bullet in my chest.
He looked down and he saw a paper tissue there on the floor, bloodied up. Like the one in the booth.
He spoke first. He said to Quinn: “Can I have one of those?”
Quinn let him have one. He said drily, “Yes, I guess a guy like you, he needs a smoke pretty bad.”