around a wreck.»
«Things run in cycles,» said Morgan.
«Let me tell you about my accident.»
«I've heard it. Heard it all.»
«But it was funny, you must admit.»
«I must admit. Now how about a drink?»
They talked on for half an hour or more. All the while they talked, at the back of Spallner's brain a small watch ticked, a watch that never needed winding. It was the memory of a few little things. Wheels and faces.
At about five-thirty there was a hard metal noise in the street. Morgan nodded and looked out and down. «What'd I tell you? Cycles. A truck and a cream-colored Cadillac. Yes, yes.»
Spailner walked to the window. He was very cold and as he stood there, he looked at his watch, at the small minute hand. One two three four five seconds_people running-eight nine ten eleven twelve-from all over, people came running-fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen seconds-more people, more cars, more horns blowing. Curiously distant, Spallner looked upon the scene as an explosion in reverse, the fragments of the detonation sucked back to the point of impulsion. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one seconds and the crowd was there. Spallner made a gesture down at them, wordless.
The crowd had gathered so fast.
He saw a woman's body a moment before the crowd swallowed it up.
Morgan said. «You look lousy. Here. Finish your drink.»
«I'm all right, I'm all right. Let me alone. I'm all right. Can you see those people? Can you see any of them? I wish we could see them closer.»
Morgan cried out, «Where in hell are you going?»
Spallner was out the door, Morgan after him, and down the stairs, as rapidly as possible. «Come along, and hurry.»
«Take it easy, you're not a well man!»
They walked out on to the street. Spaliner pushed his way forward. He thought he saw a red-haired woman with too much red color on her cheeks and lips.
«There!» He turned wildly to Morgan. «Did you see her?»
«See _who?_»
«Damn it; she's gone. The crowd closed in!»
The crowd was all around, breathing and looking and shuffling and mixing and mumbling and getting in the way when he tried to shove through. Evidently the red-haired woman had seen him coming and run off.
He saw another familiar face! A little freckled boy. But there are many freckled boys in the world. And, anyway, it was no use, before Spallner reached him, this little boy ran away and vanished among the people.
«Is she dead?» a voice asked. «Is she dead?»
«She's dying,» someone else replied. «She'll be dead before the ambulance arrives. They shouldn't have moved her. They shouldn't have moved her.»
All the crowd faces-familiar, yet unfamiliar, bending over, looking down, looking down.
«Hey, mister, stop pushing.»
«Who you shovin', buddy?»
Spailner came back out, and Morgan caught hold of him before he fell. «You damned fool. You're still sick. Why in hell'd you have to come down here?» Morgan demanded.
«I don't know, I really don't. They moved her, Morgan, someone moved her. You should never move a traffic victim. It kills them. It kills them.»
«Yeah. That's the way with people. The idiots.»
Spallner arranged the newspaper clippings carefully.
Morgan looked at them. «What's the idea? Ever since your accident you think every traffic scramble is part of you. What are these?»
«Clippings of motor-car crackups, and photos. Look at them. Not at the cars,» said Spallner, «but at the crowds around the cars.» He pointed. «Here. Compare this photo of a wreck in the Wilshire District with one in Westwood. No resemblance. But now take this Westwood picture and align it with one taken in the Westwood District ten years ago.» Again he motioned. «This woman is in both pictures.»
«Coincidence. The woman happened to be there once in 1936, again in 1946.»
«A coincidence once, maybe. But twelve times over a period of ten years, when the accidents occurred as much as three miles from one another, no. Here.» He dealt out a dozen photographs. «She's in _all_ of these!»
«Maybe she's perverted.»
«She's more than that. How does she _happen_ to be there so quickly after each accident? And why does she wear the same clothes in pictures taken over a period of a decade?»
«I'll be damned, so she does.»
«And, last of all, why was she standing over me the night of my accident, two weeks ago?»
They had a drink. Morgan went over the files. «What'd you do, hire a clipping service while you were in the hospital to go back through the newspapers for you?» Spallner nodded. Morgan sipped his drink. It was getting late.The street lights were coming on in the streets below the office. «What does all this add up to?»
«I don't know,» said Spailner, «except that there's a universal law about accidents. _Crowds gather_. They always gather. And like you and me, people have wondered year after year, why they gathered so quickly, and how? I know the answer. Here it is!»
He flung the clippings down. «It frightens me.»
«These people?mightn't they be thrill-hunters, perverted sensationalists with a carnal lust for blood and morbidity?»
Spallner shrugged. «Does that explain their being at all the accidents? Notice, they stick to certain territories. A Brentwood accident will bring out one group. A Huntington Park another. But there's a norm for faces, a certain percentage appear at each wreck.»
Morgan said, «They're not _all_ the same faces, are they?»
«Naturally not. Accidents draw normal people, too, in the course of time. But these, I find, are always the _first_ ones there.»
«Who are they? What do they want? You keep hinting and never telling. Good Lord, you must have some idea. You've scared yourself and now you've got me jumping.»
«I've tried getting to them, but someone always trips me up, I'm always too late. They slip into the crowd and vanish. The crowd seems to offer protection to some of its members. They see me coming.»
«Sounds like some sort of clique.»
«They have one thing in common, they always show up together. At a fire or an explosion or on the sidelines of a war, at any public demonstration of this thing called death. Vultures, hyenas or saints, I don't know which they are, I just don't know. But I'm going to the police with it, this evening. It's gone on long enough. One of them shifted that woman's body today. They shouldn't have touched her. It killed her.»
He placed the clippings in a briefcase. Morgan got up and slipped into his coat. Spailner clicked the briefcase shut. «Or, I just happened to think…»
«What?»
«Maybe they _wanted_ her dead.»
«Why?»
«Who knows. Come along?»
«Sorry. It's late. See you tomorrow. Luck.» They went out together. «Give my regards to the cops. Think they'll believe you?»
«Oh, they'll believe me all right. Good night.»
Spallner took it slow driving downtown.
«I want to get there,» he told himself, «alive.»
