Man On The Run by Charles Williams

girl at the counter was a dishwater blonde. There were two girls in one of the booths, and a girl and a man in another, but nobody was anywhere near the description Red had given me. I unclipped the fountain pen and started making some notes on the bottom of the letter. The two girls I’d seen leaving the Comet office came in. Five or ten minutes went by, and the place was filling up. I ate some of the roll, sweated out the coffee as long as I could, and ordered some more.
    They came in by twos and threes, mostly girls talking and laughing. From where I was sitting I could watch the door without appearing to. I glanced at my watch. It was ten-thirty-five. The whole thing was a pipe dream, I thought. The screen door opened again. I glanced up, and I was looking right at her.
    There was no doubt of it at all. And no doubt that Red really had an eye. She was with two other girls that nobody would ever see unless they took their clothes off or dyed themselves purple. They sat down at a booth near the door and ordered coffee. I went on making notes on the back of the letter, carefully concealing my excitement.
    In a moment I shot another glance at her. She was sitting alone on one side of the booth with the other two facing her and was in left profile. There was no ring on her hand. She had on a brown tailored suit, white blouse, nylons, and high-heeled alligator shoes, and carried a very large alligator purse. The hair was midnight black, turned under on the ends and bouncing off her shoulders. She was about five-five or five-six, not over twenty-five years old, and built like a dream. The skin was slightly olive and the lips full and red with a stunning shade of lipstick. She turned then, glancing around the place, and her eyes swept over me.
    She’d caught me looking at her, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that would ever strike her as unusual would be discovering a man who wasn’t looking at her. The eyes were dark brown, and you could see the smoldering Latin fire in them. She paid no attention to me. I returned to my scribbling on the back of the letter and didn’t look at her again. In about ten minutes they paid their checks and went out.
    I put the papers back in the briefcase, lighted a cigarette, and sauntered out. They had turned to the left, and were about half a block away, going up the sidewalk on this side. They were already past the entrance to the plumbing supply company. They stopped at the corner, waited for the light to change, and crossed Denton. I walked slowly up to the corner. They crossed the intersecting street. In the middle of the next block they turned in. It was the entrance to the Shiloh Machine Tool Company.
    Lathes and Milling Machines, the sign said. The plant was enclosed by a steel mesh fence and took up most of the block. There was an office building in front, at the entrance, and in back of it a larger building of dark red brick. I went on up the street on this side. Two blocks away I found a beer joint that had a phone booth and called Suzy.
    “I found her,” I said excitedly. “She works for that Shiloh outfit.”
    “Good,” she replied. “Can I come and pick you up?”
    “No. The next step is to find out where she lives. I’m going to try to follow her home tonight.”
    “It’s only eleven now. You’ll have six hours to kill.”
    “I know,” I said. “But I’ll be safe in a movie.”
    I caught a bus and rode to the downtown area. I didn’t feel so naked and exposed in the large crowds of shoppers. Half a dozen times I passed uniformed policemen, and after awhile I stopped cringing inside my clothes when I saw one. The motion picture theaters were open now. I picked one showing a double feature and went inside.
    At four-thirty I went out, bought an afternoon paper, and boarded a bus that would take me back to Denton Street. I unfolded the paper, SEAMAN SOUGHT IN POLICE MURDER STILL AT LARGE, a front-page headline said. A Lt. Brannan of Homicide was quoted as saying