The kitchen was beside the apartment door. Beyond it was the dining alcove and the living room, and beyond that were two bedrooms opening on a hall that ran the remainder of the apartment’s length. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, its door facing the apartment entrance. The man could have fired from either bedroom, or from the bathroom itself.
Where was the man—and where was Margaret? Garvin’s knuckles cracked as his hand tightened on the gun’s butt, and his face became almost stuporous in its lack of overt expression.
Keeping his gun ready, Garvin moved forward until he was barely hidden inside the kitchen doorway. His mind was busy searching out and separating the remembered impressions of the attack.
The shot had been fired in the hall. It was impossible to decide how far back. Had the man moved after firing? He tried to remember if there had been any other sound. No, he decided. Wherever the shot had come from, there the man still was.
What had happened to Margaret? His jaw tightened as he considered the possibilities.
If she had seen the man come in, she might have tried to shoot him—if she had been near her gun. If not, she might still be hiding somewhere in the apartment, waiting for Garvin to come home. If the man had gotten in without her knowing it…
The possibilities were indeterminate, he told himself savagely. Whatever had happened, in any case, there was nothing he could do about it now. If she were still hidden, it was up to her to handle that part of the situation as her judgment dictated. There was still no sound in the apartment.
How long had the man been here? If Margaret was still alive and undiscovered, would the hidden man stumble on her if he was forced to move on to another room? Her gun was probably in the larger bedroom. Was she there, waiting for a chance to get a shot in?
He could count on nothing to help him. He and Margaret had both learned all the tricks that life in New York demanded. He would have to act as though he could be sure that she would know how to take care of herself. But he was not sure.
The silence continued. He had to get the man moving; had to get some idea of his location. And he needed freedom of movement. He unstrapped his magnum and carefully set it aside.
Backing up noiselessly, Garvin reached behind him and opened the casement window, pushing the panel slowly. The guide rod slid in its track with a muted sound.
“Please!”
The voice, distorted by the echoes of the hallway, was frightened and anxious. Garvin snatched his hand away from the window.
It was quiet again. The man had stopped. but the quavering print of his voice was still playing back in Garvin’s mind.
And suddenly he understood how he would feel, unexpectedly trapped in a strange apartment. Every corner would have its concealed death, each step its possible drastic consequence. Was the pitiful hope of whatever goods could be brought away worth the stark terror of unknown deadliness?
He opened the window a bit farther.
“Please! No! I…” The words rushed out of the shadowed hallway. “I’m—I’m sorry! I was frightened…”
Garvin’s lips stretched in a reflex grin. If the man actually thought Garvin was somehow going to cross from window ledge to window ledge along the building’s sheer outside wall, he had to be in a room where he was open to such an attack.
He couldn’t be in the bathroom. The large bedroom was in the corner of the apartment. By the time a man inching along the building’s face could possibly reach it, it would be easy to take any number of steps to handle the situation. The man had to be in the smaller bedroom, the one nearest the living room. And he had to be standing at the door.
The door to the small bedroom was set flush with the wall, and opened to the left. In order to defend the room or fire down the hallway, the door would have to be completely open. Therefore, the man’s hand and arm were exposed, and, most probably, his face as well.
The man had to maintain his position in command of the hall. If Garvin could once get a clear lane of fire down the hallway, it was the other man who was trapped in an exitless room.
But the hall was dark, while the living room had a large window, the light of which would have made it suicidal for Garvin to step out.
Once again, he thought of Margaret. He fought down the urgency of the impulse to cry out for her. If the other man didn’t know about her, it was so much more advantage on Garvin’s side.
Grimly, Garvin worked the mechanism of the Glock as noisily as possible. The sound, like the slip of the window’s guide rod, was designed only to make his unknown adversary go into a deeper panic. There had already been a bullet in the chamber. He ejected it carefully into his palm and put it in his pocket. He pushed the window completely open, thudding the guide-rod home against its stop.
“Please! Listen to me!” The panicked voice began again. “I want to be friends.”
Garvin stopped.
“Are you listening?” the man asked hesitatingly.
There was no accompanying sound of movement from the bedroom. The man was maintaining his position at the door. Garvin cursed silently and did not answer.
“I haven’t talked to anybody for years. Not even shouted at them, or cursed. All I’ve done for six years is fight other people. Shooting, running. I didn’t dare show myself in daylight.
“It isn’t worth it. Staying alive isn’t worth it. Grubbing through stores for food at night. Like an animal in a garbage can!” The trembling voice was filled with desperate disgust.
“Are you listening?”
Unseen, Garvin’s eyes grew bleak, and he nodded. He remembered the odd touch of kinship he had felt with the man who had killed the stalker at the subway entrance. The mirror at the turn of the steps had been an attempt to make at least that small part of his environment a bit less dangerous. When the stalker smashed it, it meant that there were still men who would kill for the sake of a knapsack that might or might not contain food.
“Please,” the man in the bedroom said. “You’ve got to understand why I—I came in here. I had to find some people I could talk to. I knew there were people in this building. I got a passkey out of the Stuyvesant Town offices. I wanted to find an apartment for myself. I was going to try to make friends with my neighbors.”
Garvin twitched a corner of his mouth. He could picture an attempt at communication with the deadly silence and armed withdrawal that lurked through the apartments beyond his own walls.
“Can’t you say something?” the panic-stricken man demanded.
Garvin scraped the Glock’s barrel against the window frame, as though an armed man were beginning to clamber out on one of the nonexistent window ledges.
“No! Think! How much food can there be left, where we can get to it? There are whole gangs in the warehouses, and they won’t let anybody near them. The rifle ammunition’s getting low already. How long can we go on this way—fighting over every can of peas, killing each other over a new shirt? We’ve got to organize ourselves— get a system set up, try to establish some kind of government. It’s been six years since the plague, and nothing’s been done.”
The man stopped for a moment, and Garvin listened for the sound of motion, but there was nothing.
“I—I’m sorry I shot at you. I was frightened. Everybody’s frightened. They don’t trust anybody. How can they?”
Talk, talk, talk! What have you done with Margaret, damn you?
“But please—please trust me.” The unsteady voice was on the point of breaking. “I want to be friends.”
Despite his fear, the man obviously wasn’t going to move from his position until he was absolutely sure that Garvin was out on the window ledges. Even then… Garvin pictured the man, trembling against the door, not sure whether to run or stay, keeping watch on the hallway, ready to spin around at the sound of breaking glass behind him.
He was frightened, now. But had he been? Was it only after that one shot had missed, and the self-made trap had snapped home, that the terror had begun to tremble in his throat?
What had happened to Margaret?
Garvin moved back to the kitchen doorway.
“Come out,” he said.
