Jail Bait

He stood beside her, his arm under hers, his hand holding hers in a mockery of affection. He tried the door. They went together down the stairs, side by side. As they passed the door to the eleventh floor she wondered if she could twist away from him and get through it. Even as she thought of it and knew she couldn’t, some tension must have warned him. He pressed her hand again.

They started down to ten, circling the shaft, going down from landing to landing. He pushed the door open a few inches and put his eye close to the crack. He pushed it open the rest of the way and walked down the hail with her. A man stood by the elevator. He was tall. The elderly bellhop stood inside the elevator. A short, thick man stood in the hallway and watched them approach.

The short man stepped forward and took her purse. He started to look through it and the tall one took it away from him. They all got into the elevator. The man who held her moved her back against the wall. The tall one went carefully through her purse. The short one had said, “All the way down, pops.”

Jane said, “You can’t—” and stopped and bit her lip as the gentle pressure started again. Evidently they could and they would.

The short, thick one said, “Better-looking than in the papers, eh?”

“Shut up,” the tall one said.

The hand enclosed hers. It was a special indignity, this indignity of pain; peculiar humiliation. She realized that she should be looking at them closely, remembering things about them so she could identify them later if need be — or if she was lucky. But she could see nothing about them to remember. Just their, general sizes and their subdued clothes. They all had hard, closed faces. They could have been, each one of them, twenty-five or forty.

They moved out into the lobby. The tall one turned back to the operator. “Pops, shut yourself in that thing and go up and park it between floors for fifteen minutes. Move!”

“Yes sir,” the old man said. He banged the door shut hurriedly and the arrow pointed steadily upward.

They moved across to the desk. A fourth man was behind the desk, standing next to the old clerk. The clerk’s face was ghastly. It looked like oiled chalk. The man turned the clerk around roughly and shoved him into the small room behind the desk, pulled the door shut and locked it. He came out and the five of them walked the remaining steps to the outside door. Jane walked with two ahead of her, one beside her and one behind her.

“She have it?” asked the one who had been behind the desk.

“Shut up,” the tall one said. “Take a look outside, Boats.” The short, thick one went out first. He looked in each direction up and down the dark road, ducking his head instinctively against the driving rain. He looked back and nodded.

They moved out quickly. The wet sidewalk soaked Jane’s stocking feet. Rain cut at her legs. The car was across the street. They hurried to it. She was as shocked as the ones with her seemed to be when the bright headlights behind them and ahead of them went on suddenly, pinning them there in the glare, and a monstrous and demoralizing voice, boosted by amplification to gigantic authority, said out of the darkness, “Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle.”

The tall one cursed softly and turned and dived toward the protecting darkness. A shot kicked his legs out from under him. Jane heard the sick sound as his head hit the pavement. He lay there on his face, still in the lights, rolling his head back and forth and saying, “Aaaah!” Quite softly.

“Want to try for two?” the great voice roared. “Both ends of this street are blocked and the alleys are blocked and there are twenty-five armed men watching you. Now, hands high, children.”

For a moment the heavy hand still encased hers. Then it relaxed and went away and she stood apart from him. She saw him put his hands up. She felt as if she should, too. There was that much authority in the voice.

“Miss Bayliss, please walk toward the curb and turn to your left on the sidewalk. Thank you.”

She walked as she was told. She felt small, wet-footed and humiliated. She felt as if half a world watched her. She walked into darkness and into arms that were at once familiar, that held her there in the rain in a dear and remembered way, walked into lips that pressed against damp hair and said things she had never listened to closely enough before all this, and would listen to much more closely from now on.

“What are you doing up?” she demanded.

“Hush, honey. Tilt your head up to be kissed. Lord, you’ve shrunk!”

“No shoes,” she sighed happily and presented lips to be kissed, curling her wet toes against the dark sidewalk.

Chapter Six