“My name is Peter Dickens,” said the man on Mrs. Balsam’s patio, “and I live—” he cocked his head at a far twinkle of lights “—over there. I don’t know whether you’ve been listening to the radio, but I thought the lady who lives here ought to know that a man’s been seen in the neighborhood who they think—”
He’s here in this house, in the cellar,” blurted Amanda uncontrollably, because—open-featured, clean-shaven, reliably clad in a fawn raincoat over a dark blue blazer and slacks—this was exactly the kind of neighbor who would stop by with a friendly warning. “I don’t know how he got in, but I saw him not ten minutes ago and I’m on my way home to call the police. Thank you anyway. Apple—”
“We can save time by calling the police from here,” interrupted the man. He had very clear candid blue eyes, and in some way, without actually brushing past her, he was starting to enter the house.
“No, thanks,” said Amanda sharply and with feeling. “I’m not staying here a second longer.”
She stepped forward, forcing him back, pressing in the lock button on the knob so that she could close the door safely behind her. She was unprepared for the gloved finger that came up to tickle Rosie under the chin. “Cute,” said the man. “Is she yours?”
There was something very wrong about this swift transition from the courteously helpful to the personal. There was also something wrong about the glove, skin-fitting and semitransparent. “Good night,” said Amanda, cool with a tremendous effort; she was just beginning to realize what she had done by her impetuosity. This was a menace related to the one inside, because no well-intentioned stranger would come to the side door of a house which looked from the road as if its occupant had retired for the night. Would he have forced his way in if she hadn’t obligingly turned the knob for him?
And the Afghan, she thought, stomach tightening with fear, had all the protection value of a canary. She said, “Excuse me,” attempting again to get by him, and his teeth flashed whitely at her.
“Excuse me, ”he said, and like lightning, before there could be any question of a struggle, he had taken Rosie from her and walked into the house.
Because no voices had been raised, Rosie, handed frequently about from nurses to doctors in her short life, simply peered back with wildly questioning eyes. “It’s all right, Rosie,” Amanda managed, and followed, closing the door.
She had turned out the hall light earlier, and something warned her hand away from the switch. In the faint reflected glow from the patio it was still an astonishment to her that this safe-looking man was actually holding Rosie. She said in a steady voice, preserving the strange calm, “If that—the other one has to get away, he can have my car keys and what cash there is in the house.”
She suspected as she spoke that the offer was useless, but it had to be made. “Get me a scarf,” said the man unheedingly.
And now there was no doubt about it: His was the voice which had been surprised at hers on the telephone. Amanda, going instantly into her aunt’s bedroom because as long as he had possession of Rosie she would have to do as she was told, thought she knew what the scarf was for. “I saw him,” she had said in that first disastrous impulse, but from the panic in her manner and the fact that she was there at all, clearly poised for flight, it had been a fast glimpse, unreciprocated. She wasn’t to be allowed another look at the man in the cellar. Rosie, of course, did not count as a witness at all.
Still, how did he dare let her out from under his eye, even with a child as hostage? Many Southwesterners— Amanda guessed a predominance—kept a firearm in the house, for hunting or target practice or self-defense. She did not, out of a fell conviction that before she could bring herself to squeeze the trigger the weapon would have been snatched away and turned against her, and neither did Mrs. Balsam, but how could he be sure that she would not emerge from the bedroom with a revolver or a rifle?
He knew the house, or Mrs. Balsam, or both.
He knew the house very well indeed. He had been able to put his hand on the key to the bedroom door almost without pausing, because the lock had just clicked decisively.
Amanda, at the bureau, dropped folds of navy chiffon back and ran to the door, recognizing belatedly the peculiarly unburdened feeling of her left wrist. The handbag she had slung there after picking up Rosie had been dislodged by that swift maneuver over the child.
She wrenched at the doorknob in spite of the evidence of her ears. Mouth against the crack, she called, “Please, won’t you at least let her in here with me?”
Silence; Rosie must still be too bewildered, or by now too frightened, to cry. She was to be the guarantee of good behavior on Amanda’s part while the man in the cellar was spirited out of the house. They wouldn’t, would they, take her with them as a continuing safeguard?
Remembered television and newspaper scenes shot dementedly through Amanda’s head, of babies being used as living shields; with guns at their heads; being held threateningly over the edges of rooftops. Her hands were gripped together so fiercely that they hurt. She relaxed them, drew a few deep shaky breaths, left the door briefly to turn on the bedside clock radio to a thread of sound.
By this time the police would have done a thorough canvassing of the remaining escapee’s relatives and friends; mightn’t that have led them to the man who called himself Peter Dickens? But how could they ever connect him to Mrs. Balsam’s house? (And if only she had said to him, at the patio door, “Thank you,
