This became more evident when he arrived at Scollay Square.
He stopped at the corner opposite Epstein’s, stood still for what might have been three or four minutes, his hands deep in his pockets, the tweed hat turning first right and then left, but clearly not with any regard to the question of crossing the traffic lines. No, it was obvious that he simply hadn’t made up his mind where he was going: or perhaps at any rate that he wasn’t anxious to get there. For a moment, he half turned towards the right, and seemed to be looking fixedly down Court Street: but then he reversed his direction and began to ascend the slight hill to the Court House. It was all very peculiar: but the oddity of it was in a sense its most interesting and exciting feature. That he should be unpredictable, as much in behavior as in appearance, was of course of the very essence of the stranger: but while it was to be expected in outline, or expected in its unexpectedness, the details must naturally, like this, be surprising. No less odd was again the curious recapitulation of the events of last night. To come again past the Temple, and now to proceed by exactly the path which must have been taken by Sandbach and Breault and Mrs. Taber, to be moving as if by conscious design towards the C Bookshop, toward Sandbach’s room — all this fitted beautifully, it was his own thought made manifest, it was once more — and the vision sharpened almost painfully — as if his own awareness had been simply externalized like a life-size model of the city itself. It was like a repeated dream, but with a difference, — for it was under control, it was being directed. The whole thing was simply his own chess game, projected: it advanced or developed before him exactly as he wished, just as helplessly as the smoke which he now blew from the pipe which he paused to light, all the while watching the tweed hat above his sheltering hand. Let him go as far as he liked; let him even round the corner at the top of the Square, turn towards Ashburton Place: let him, in fact, go where he liked: he was now under control, he would never escape. He was now — and the feeling was positively physical in its sureness and power — fastened. What was even surer than that he would turn to the right or left was that whichever direction he chose he was walking deliberately towards death. He was in the act of finding his grave.
At the back entrance of Houghton and Dutton’s, a truck was being unloaded. A heavy crate fell from the tailboard to the sidewalk with a sharp clap, a pistol shot of sound, and the sound was at once echoed by the simultaneous slapping of a hundred pigeon wings as the startled birds took whistling flight from the sooty window ledges of the Court House. Round the Square they circled, and vanished northward at the far end of the Court House, his eye following them out of sight; and in that instant the tweed hat had vanished also, turning to the left at the top of the hill. No need to worry — he would still be there — but he quickened his pace, glanced hurriedly over the crowded array of second-hand books in the window of the Rebuilt Bookshop, noting one title, Erring Yet Noble, and presently, keeping close to the window of the Waldorf, turned the corner and looked down toward Beacon Street. The little man had disappeared: he was not there.
Impossible!
But yes, of course, possible.
He must be either in the Waldorf, at his left elbow, or in the shoe-shine parlor beyond: the Waldorf, at this hour, seemed improbable, but to inspect the interior through the large windows was simplicity itself. And sure enough, the tweed hat was standing at the counter, was in the act of receiving a heavy china mug of coffee, came forward with it, stepping cautiously, sat down at a table without once having raised his eyes, dipped sugar from the sugar bowl and began stirring the cup with a spoon.
A retreat, and a wait, becoming necessary, Ammen bought an American from the newsboy at the corner, crossed the street, stood with lifted paper by the door of the Newsboy Foundation. PICKETERS HELD IN CONTEMPT. Holy Year O. K.’d by Pope. NAZI SPY GANG IS UNCOVERED. Bootleggers, dope peddlers, and other racketeers, driven into temporary retirement by repeal and other causes, are back of the Boston welfare swindle, it was charged today. Mother Faber, a tiny slip of a woman, today stood in humbled pride on the witness stand.… The question now is whether the state trial should have proceeded, with habeas corpus proceedings pending in federal court. Fliers Hop for Rome Tomorrow.
The wind whirled the pages, the paper flapped against his arm in its effort to escape, a tall spiral of dust went spinning past the City Club. For a moment the sun flashed downward, filled the dull streets, sparkled on the cars, then was again dimmed by heavy clouds. He looked upward, watched the clouds in swift procession, ragged and gray, but not rain clouds, it would not rain. From Park Street Church came, with clamorous loudness, immediate and strange, the eight bells of the half hour, windborne and irregular. Half past nine.
The whole thing was peculiar: he had started a good fox, and no mistake. Perhaps he had no job at all, was going nowhere. Either out of work, or of independent means. But surely not the latter?
Picketers and racketeers.
Or of course he might be an “outside man” for some firm or other, whose hours were more or less his own—
This time, when the little man reappeared, it was with a new air of purpose and a noticeable quickening of pace. In a few minutes he had reached Beacon Street, Ammen keeping fifty feet behind; and then suddenly the hat had turned left into a narrow doorway which appeared to lead into a barbershop. Hurrying forward, Ammen found that it was not in fact the barbershop, but the entrance to a flight of shabby marble stairs which led to the upper floors: business offices of the humbler sort. Listening, he could hear the footsteps climbing above, and at once, taking three steps at a time, and without making a sound, he followed. The hall on the second floor was vacant: ground glass doors of an insurance office, a dealer in real estate: the footsteps were again ascending, and as he reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs he saw the feet just arriving at the floor above. They disappeared, he could hear them slowing, then a jingle of keys, the turning of a lock, the opening of a door. The door must be the one immediately opposite the stairhead. He waited a moment, listened, heard the door close, and mounted swiftly. Behind the gray glass he could see the moving shadow of a man in the act of removing his coat, very close at hand. The stenciled letters on the door said: Acme Advertising Agency. K. N. Jones and T. Farrow.
Jones! If only it was Jones!
And why not?
He knocked his pipe softly against the yellow-plaster wall, dislodged the light crust of ash, began to laugh. That it should turn out to be a Jones would be almost too good to be true. The anonymous one, the abstract one, the mere Specimen Man — it would be perfect! But even if it turned out to be Farrow—
Walking forward to the front window, he looked down into School Street, ticked the black pipestem against his teeth, reflected with narrowed and unseeing eyes. The thing was beginning; he was in the presence of it; his shadow was already falling upon the tree, like an immense frost of peril; and even as he stood here, in the shabby hallway, unknown to the tweed hat which now hung on its peg, his powerful influence was beginning to expand and penetrate. He had entered the stranger’s little world, he was here inside it, learning its shape and size, taking possession of it. This worn wooden floor, the scarred plaster of the walls, the ground glass of the old-fashioned doors, the gas bracket in the corner — this was the stranger’s domain, known to his feet and hands and eyes, returned to day after day, dreamed about, hated, loved. The whole little life was beginning to lie open, like a familiar book.