The Early Ayn Rand (14 page)

“You heard me! And the letter orders him to deliver the money tonight!”

Laury saw stars swimming between him and Mr. Scraggs. He seized the extra, almost tearing it in half; and he read the great news. Mr. Winford had received this morning a second message from Damned Dan, fixing the time and place for the ransom money to be delivered. Mr. Winford had decided to obey, for, he had declared: “I would rather search for my money than for my daughter.” Therefore, he had refused to make public all of the letter and the place appointed for the meeting. The
Globe
’s reporter was only able to state that the kidnapper’s letter was written with a pencil on a piece of brown wrapping paper; and that it started with:

Laury swayed on his feet, and Mr. Scraggs wondered at the color of his face.

“It’s . . . it’s impossible!” he muttered hoarsely. “It’s impossible!”

“What’s impossible? The
Globe
getting it first and you asleep on your job?”

“But . . . but it can’t be, Mr. Scraggs! Oh, God! It can’t be!”

“Just why can’t it be?”

Laury straightened himself slowly, straight and tense like a piano string.

“There’s something happening somewhere, Mr. Scraggs!” he said, white as a sheet. “Something horrible!”

“There sure is,” answered Mr. Scraggs, “and it’s right here, in my city room, from which you’re going to be kicked out, head first, if you ever miss a piece of news like this again!”

Eight hours passed after this conversation; eight desperate hours that Laury spent ransacking the town in search of some clue to that inexplicable development. He was too astounded to be quite conscious of what he was doing. He wondered if he was not going insane—the thing seemed so ridiculously incredible. He was searching frantically for something that would give him the faintest suspicion of an explanation.

He interviewed Mr. Winford and saw the first half of the letter on brown wrapping paper; he interviewed the police; he went around town actually hunting for news on the Winford case, looking for—Damned Dan! The idea made him laugh—with a gnashing of teeth.

And when he dragged himself back towards the
Dawn
building at six-thirty P.M., he had discovered nothing. The sun was setting far at the end of Main Street and red fires blazed on the windshields of cars rolling west. The peaceful traffic streamed by as usual and the shop awnings were being pulled up over darkened windows, locked for the night, as usual; but it seemed to Laury that somewhere behind these quiet houses, somewhere in this peaceful town, an invisible, frightful doom was silently awaiting him. . . .

“No,” said Mr. Scraggs, when Laury reached the city room, “you can’t go home tonight. You’ll be needed here. Grave developments are coming, I feel. Take an hour off for dinner and then be back on the job. Hang around Winford, be the first to learn the results of the ransom meeting this evening. And be sure to get here before the deadline!”

Laury walked home, his hands deep in his pockets and his thoughts deep in misery. What was he to do now? He could not let Mr. Winford be robbed of that huge sum, robbed and cheated, for he knew that the second “Dammd Dan” could not deliver Jinx to her father. He must warn him. But how? He did not dare to act, now that he felt himself watched and had not the slightest idea of the enemy he was dealing with.

Just the same, he jerked his head up proudly and muttered behind a firmly set mouth:

“But if that lousy bum, whoever he is, thinks he can scare me, he has a surprise coming that he’ll long remember! I’ll learn what his game is and damn soon!”

“Congratulations, buddy!” said a thick voice above his ear.

He stopped short and wheeled around. A tall, huge shadow towered above him in the coming darkness. That shadow had a crumpled little cap, too small for its big head, and greasy clothes that smelled of whiskey. It had a flat face, heavy eyes, and a broken, prizefighter’s nose. Laury recognized it at once: it was Pug-Nose Thomson.

“Sir?” Laury asked indignantly, backing away from the man’s strange, significant grin.

“Yeah, buddy, yeah, I says it was a slick one!” answered the man with a slow chuckle.

“What are you talking about? I don’t know you! Whom do you think you’re talking to?” Laury threw sharply.

“I’m talkin’ to Damned Dan hisself!” the man answered happily.

Laury wanted to make a reply and couldn’t.

“I says, yuh pulled the best job any guy ever tried in this burg,” the man went on. “For an amatcher it was pretty slick, I’ll say!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Laury pronounced with a tremendous effort, wondering himself at the calm of his voice. “Leave me alone! You’ve been drinking!”

“So I have. Which don’t make no difference,” answered Pug-Nose Thomson quietly. “An’ yuh better don’t pull that line on me, kiddo, ’cause I know what I know, an’ yuh know it, too. . . . But I don’t mean no offense to yuh, on the conterry, I mean to pay my compliments. If that’s yer begginin’, yuh’ll go far, young fella, yuh’ll go far!”

“I don’t understand you!” Laury insisted. “You’re taking me for somebody else!”

“No, I ain’t! Now, lissen here, I’ve got a offer fer yuh: Let’s be partners on this job!”

“You crazy fool! If you think . . .”

“Aw, cut that out, I’m talkin’ bizness! I know pretty damn well that yuh’re the guy what writes all them stories in the poipers an’ what’s got the Winford dame locked up in his own joint! Which’s pretty darn smart, I agrees!”

“But . . .”

“An’ if yuh wanna know how I knows it, it’s right simple: I read the poipers an’ I noticed as how yuh was gettin’ all them news on this bizness first. ‘That’s funny,’ I thought to myself, ‘nobody never heard of this guy before.’ An’ then I watched yuh, an’ I saw yuh buy all them Jane’s duds an’ yuh ain’t never got a sweetie, so there! An’ I watched yer joint from acrost the street an’ sure thing, there was the Winford gal at yer winder!

“Now keep yer mouth shut!” he went on, without giving Laury time to reply. “No use tryin’ to fool me! Here’s the main thing: I wrote that second letter to the Winford gent an’ he’s bringin’ the dough over tonight, in an hour. Yuh bring the gal an’ we go fifty-fifty on it!

“That’s still plenty fer yuh,” he added, as Laury remained silent and immobile. “No one ever got fifty grand fer his first job!”

Laury looked calmly, steadily into the man’s eyes.

“All right, then, if you are so well informed,” he said coldly, narrowing his eyes. “Now, suppose I refuse your offer?”

“Yuh won’t,” Pug-Nose declared with conviction, “ ’cause then I go an’ tell the bulls what I know on this case. An’ I get the five grand of reward. So yuh better accept my offer!”

“Well,” said Laury, “I accept it!”

“Great, buddy! Now . . .”

“I accept it on one condition: you give me twenty-four hours. We’ll meet Winford at the same time tomorrow!”

“Why should I?” Pug-Nose protested. “I don’t wanna wait!”

“Then go to the police at once, and denounce me, and get your five thousand, instead of the fifty you’ll get tomorrow! I won’t bring the girl tonight, and that’s final!”

“Well, okay,” said Pug-Nose slowly, after some deliberation. “We’ll make it tomorrow. Yuh meet me here, same time, with the gal.”

“Yes!” said Laury. “Goodnight, partner!”

“Goodnight!”

The darkness was gathering and Pug-Nose Thomson disappeared behind a corner so swiftly that Laury hardly heard his footsteps. There was no one around that could have witnessed their meeting. Lonely streetlamps flared up feebly in the deserted street with two rows of silent, drooping houses, in the brown shadows of a rusty sunset. A woman was gathering the wash from a clothesline in a backyard, and a car rattled through the silence, somewhere in the distance.

Cold sweat was rolling down Laury’s face. He hurried home. But his mind was made up when he entered his apartment.

“Take your things and come on,” he said to Jinx sternly.

“Where?” she asked.

“I’ve decided to take you back to your parents tonight!”

“That’s too bad,” she said sweetly, with a smile of compassion for him. “I won’t go!”

He stepped back and stared at her, wide-eyed.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Just that I won’t go,” she repeated calmly, “that’s all!”

“How . . . how am I to understand that?”

“Oh, any way you please! Just any way!”

“You mean, you don’t want to be free?”

“No! . . . I enjoy being a prisoner . . . your prisoner!”

There was only one shaded little lamp lighted in the room. She was wearing her electric-blue silk dress, tight, luminous, glittering faintly, and in the half-darkness she looked like a phosphorescent little firefly.

“Danny,” she said softly, “you aren’t going to send me away like that, are you?”

He did not answer. He was surprised to feel his heart beating furiously somewhere in his throat. She smiled scornfully:

“Why, there’s no fun in being kidnapped if that’s all there is to it!”

“But, Miss Winford . . .”

“Do you realize that I’m your prisoner and you can do with me anything you want?”

He was silent.

“Oh, Damned Dan!” she threw at him. “Aren’t you going to take advantage of a girl who is in your power?”

He turned to her sharply and looked at her with half-closed eyes, curious, a little mocking, unexpectedly masterful, a dangerous look. And she felt that look like a hand squeezing her heart with delightful pain.

She stood straight, immobile, from the tips of her feet to her wide, sparkling eyes—waiting. “You have no right! You have no right! What are you thinking about?” he cried soundlessly to himself.

He turned away. “Come on, you’re going home!” he ordered sharply.

“I’m not!” she answered.

“You’re not, eh?” He turned to her fiercely. “You terrible little thing! You’re the worst little creature I ever saw! I’m glad to get rid of you! You’ll go now, do you hear me?”

He seized her wrist with a bruising grip. She whirled around and threw her body close against his.

“Oh, Danny! I don’t want to go away!” She breathed so softly and she was so close that he heard it with his lips rather than his ears.

And then he closed his eyes, and crushed his lips against hers, and thought, when his arms clasped her, that he was going to break her in two. . . .

“Jinx . . . darling . . . darling!”

“Danny, you wonderful thing! You most adorable of all.”

They seemed to be cut away from the whole world by the little tent over the sofa, and not by the little tent only. His arms closed around her, like the gates of a kingdom that no more than two can ever enter. Their eyes were laughing soundlessly at each other. And he was saying to her the most eloquent things which a man’s lips can say and for which no words are needed.

And Laury forgot all about having ever been a reporter. . . .

It was ten minutes to nine when he remembered.

“Oh, my goodness!” he cried, jumping up. “The deadline!”

“The dead who?”

“The deadline! I must run now! Dearest, I’ll be back soon!”

“Oh! Do you have to go? Well, hurry back then—you know how I’ll miss you, darling!”

Laury threw his old sports car as fast as it could go, flying towards the
Dawn
building. He was too happy to think much about anything else. His soul was dancing, and so was his sports car. The old machine went zigzagging to right and left, jumping buoyantly and senselessly, like a young calf turned loose for the first time in a green, sunny meadow. The drivers around him swore frantically; Laury laughed joyously, his head thrown back.

Then he remembered that he had no story for Mr. Scraggs. He seized his notebook and jotted words down hurriedly. It was a miracle that he reached the
Dawn
building without an accident, driving as he was with his one hand on the wheel, his other on the notebook, and his mind on a pair of slanting, sparkling eyes and soft, laughing lips, back home.

“Ah, so here you are!” Mr. Scraggs exclaimed ominously, when Laury whirled into the city room.

Laury was too far away in his overflowing happiness to notice the storm on Mr. Scraggs’ face.

“Yes! I’m on time, am I not?” he cried gaily.

“You are? And what about the news?”

“The news? Oh, sure, the news! . . . I got it! Most sensational news, Mr. Scraggs! Winford came to the meeting place and—Damned Dan was not there to meet him!”

Such a dead silence fell over the city room that Laury looked around, surprised.

“I’d like to know,” Mr. Scraggs said slowly with the tense, shivering calm of a fury hard to restrain, “I’d like to know where the hell you are getting your news from!”

“Why . . . why, what’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? You blockheaded, half-witted, confounded idiot! Nothing’s the matter, except that the
Globe
came out half an hour ago with the news and . . .”

“Oh, well . . .”

“. . . and Damned Dan
did
come to the meeting, you skunk of a reporter!”

“He . . .
came
?”

“Where have you been all that time, you lazy cub? Sure, he came, but he didn’t bring the girl, so he got one grand in advance and promised to bring her later!”

Laury had no strength to make a comment or an answer; he stood, his eyes closed, his arms drooping helplessly.

“In fact,” Mr. Scraggs added, “he promised to bring her in an hour!”

“What?” Laury jumped forward as though he was going to choke Mr. Scraggs.