I reached the elevators, and set the body down in front of the door of the unused one. Panting, I pressed the signal button. My car was parked two blocks away. I needed a total of at least five minutes. Two minutes to get there. A minute to get the car off the lot. Two minutes to get back.
Just five minutes.
I heard the elevator door clang at the bottom of the shaft. Cables whined. I flattened myself against the wall and waited.
Light bobbled on the corridor as the elevator moved past and then came back to the landing. The door rattled and banged open.
'Going down,' came a sullen snarl.
I held my breath, clenched my fist into a hard, leather-covered ball.
'Going'-he stuck his head out -'
My fist came up hammer-like beneath his chin. His head went back, and then he toppled straight forward. I caught him, stretched him out on the floor of the car and felt his heart. The beat was fast but steady. Aside from a cut lip, where his teeth had snapped into it, he wasn't hurt.
The door had closed automatically. I opened it again, holding it with my foot while I reached out and dragged Eggleston inside. A moment later, having worked out the simple controls of the elevator, I brought it to a stop between two floors.
I sank down on the stool, brushing the sweat from my eyes. Almost instantly, the memory of that automatic door brought me back to my feet.
I couldn't prop the door open while I went after my car. Not with a dead man in one corner and a senseless one in another. There might not be much traffic in the building at night, but obviously there was some. Otherwise an elevator wouldn't be in operation.
Feeling through the operator's pockets, I found what I was looking for, something I'd seen used at various times. It was a short thin piece of metal rod. An elevator 'key.' Thrust through two small overlapping holes in the elevator doors, it permitted them to be opened from the outside.
I dropped it into my pocket, shut off the lights and slowly lowered the car to the first floor. Looking through the small glass door panel, I saw that the lobby was empty. I stepped out and the door snapped shut, and I hurried away.
When I got back, I made a careful left turn and drew up just short of the building entrance. The street was unlighted. The only illumination came from the dimmed lights of the lobby.
I set the throttle so that the motor was barely turning over. Then, easing the left door off the catch, I slid out the right one, leaving it open behind me.
I stepped toward the entrance-and I stopped. My heart stopped for a moment. Someone was in there. Pounding on the elevator door. Pounding and, now, shouting.
I forced myself to walk on. I walked on, slowly, glancing inside as I passed. I couldn't get a good look at him, and he didn't look in my direction at all. He was too busy with his angry pounding and kicking on the elevator door.
I waited a moment at the alley, and turned and walked back again, Time! I'd run over my margin of safety minutes ago. Even without that pounding, the elevator operator was due to come to his senses any moment. And if it kept on, if I couldn't get in there-
The racket rose to a thunderous crescendo. Then it stopped, and footsteps crossed the lobby, and there was another sound: The slamming of the door to the stairs. He'd given up. He'd decided to walk.
I ran for the entrance, glancing up and down the street. All clear. Thank God this building was where it was, that this was a side street. Racing through the lobby, I yanked the elevator key from my pocket and jammed it through the overlapping holes in the door.
From inside the car came a steady rattling buzz. Signal buttons. Someone wanted to come down. Several people from the sound of things. Probably some of them had already started to walk down. Were already on the stairs. And I couldn't wait. There'd be more. What if I was penned up there with a dead man, and-
Something was holding the door of the car, pressing against it. It wouldn't open. It opened a few inches, but-but-
The clatter of the signals was growing louder. And above it, from somewhere upstairs, I heard the vicious slamming of a door. Then another. Then voices calling to each other, and the hollow echo of footsteps coming downward.
The door slid open another agonizing inch. I dropped the key, got both hands into the opening and threw everything I had into one gigantic tug.
It grated and groaned-and then it shot open. And the elevator operator sagged through it. He'd revived partly. He'd been leaning against the door, holding it with his weight.
He fell forward, knees limp, head down. I gave him a swinging right. He shot backward into the car, struck the back wall, and fell face-forward to the floor.
Too hard. I hadn't meant to hit him so hard. But no time to think of that, now. No time to look at him.
I lifted Eggleston's body. I clawed the door open with one hand, and staggered outside. Only seconds, now. Only a few seconds to get the body into the car and get away. The steps on. the stairs were rushing downward. They'd passed the second floor. Any moment the lobby door would open, and-.
I ran toward the entrance. Only a few feet to go. Out of the lobby and across the walk into the car. Only a few feet and-and I couldn't make them. I couldn't go back and I couldn't go forward. Someone had stepped into the entrance.
A blue-uniformed cop.
22
He had been looking at something down the street as he stepped into the entrance, and his head was still turned now. I stopped dead in my tracks, paralyzed for the moment with shock and fear. Then, as his head started to turn toward me, I acted. I did the only thing there was to do.
I ran forward and hurled the body at him.
It struck him high in the chest, obstructing his vision-I hoped-and bowling him over backwards. He yelled and grappled with it blindly, and I darted around to one side and sprang for the car.
I brought my foot down on the accelerator, grabbing at the doors. They banged shut and the motor stuttered and roared and the car leaped ahead.
As I shot past the entrance, I caught a confused picture of two figures rolling on the sidewalk and another running toward them from the lobby. Then, I was out of that block and in the middle of the next one, nearing the second intersection, and the speed indicator read seventy miles an hour.
Somehow I got control of myself. I brought my foot down on the brake, and the car skidded perilously. I eased up on it for a split second, then brought it down again. At something near the legal speed limit, I swept through the intersection.
Fortunately, there were no traffic lights this far down and very little traffic. At least it was fortunate at that particular moment. In the long run, I knew, safety would lie where the traffic was thickest. I rolled on, slower and slower, breathing heavily, nervous sweat rolling down into my eyes.
I turned left at the next corner, entering an arterial street which led through the center of the downtown district. Not until then did I hear, far to the rear of me, the shrill clatter of a police whistle.
Moving automatically with the traffic, I drove through town. I was safe, but for how long? And who could I turn to for help, if I needed it-if that cop had spotted my license plates or if the elevator operator could describe me?
Wrapped in thought, driving blindly, I came out on the other side of the business district. I passed an apartment house, and suddenly I thought of Hardesty. He lived in this neighborhood, and he wanted something from me. The man who wants something is a good man to drive a trade with.
I found his address, an apartment hotel near the park, and parked my car across the street from it.
