Man On The Run by Charles Williams Page B

myself. She ordered a sandwich and coffee and looked at the magazine while she was eating. The corner where I was standing was a bus stop. In about twenty minutes she paid her check and came out I moved back, and she came over and stood on the curb where I had been. I sighed. Maybe she was going home at last.
    She boarded a Montlake bus, the number seven line. Two more passengers got on after her, and then I climbed aboard. She had found a seat and opened the magazine and didn’t look up as I went past. I went on to the rear and sat down.
    I opened the paper and pretended to read, keeping my face down. The bus turned north along a heavily traveled arterial. We passed a district of apartment houses. Several passengers got off. She went on reading. After awhile the bus swung off onto quieter streets and we went past a large housing development. At every stop one or two passengers debarked. Soon there were only five of us left. I wondered why she lived so far out; we must be miles from downtown. Then she put the magazine away and started watching the stops.
    “Stevens,” the driver called out. She gathered up her things and came back to the rear door. The bus stopped and she got down. The door closed, but just before we got under way again I glanced up suddenly from my paper and asked, “This Stevens?”
    “That’s right,” the driver said. I grabbed the briefcase and got off. The bus went on. I took out a cigarette and stood momentarily on the corner as I lighted it. It was a run-down district of older frame houses. Diagonally across the intersection a service station was a glaring oasis of light, but there were few cars on the street. She crossed the intersection and turned right opposite the service station, going up the sidewalk under the trees on the far side. As well as I could tell, she never had looked back, but I hoped we didn’t have far to go. In this lonely and outlying district she’d be almost certain to spot me before long. When she was about halfway up the block, I crossed the street and fell in behind her.
    It was shadowy under the trees, and there were street lights only at the intersections. She crossed the next street, still going straight ahead. It was very quiet, even this early in the evening, and I could hear her heels tapping on the walk. There were fewer houses in this block. One car went past, splashing us with its headlights, but she didn’t look around.
    There were no houses at all in the third block. It was a playground or park, enclosed in a high wire fence. The sidewalk was in heavy shadow from the eucalyptus trees along the curb. Across the street was a dark building that appeared to be a school. She went on at the same unhurried pace, about fifty yards ahead of me. Somewhere near the middle of the block I made out the dark bulk of a car parked at the curb. She passed it. I tensed up, suddenly wary, but I was too late. A massive shadow detached itself from the bole of one of the trees and stepped right in front of me. I tried to duck to one side, but the gun crashed at point-blank range, the little tongue of flame licking at the sleeve of my topcoat.
    Something slammed into me just below my ribs. It was like being hit in the belly with a baseball bat. I rocked backward and spun halfway around and my knees caved under me and I fell. I tried to cry out, but I couldn’t even breathe. Cold pavement was against my face, and I could feel it grinding under my cheek and the side of my jaw as I kept opening and closing my mouth in a silent and futile spasm as if I were trying to bite loose some air and swallow it. I could hear. Her heels were clicking on the walk as she ran, coming nearer, and his shoes scraped as he took two steps and squatted beside me. A hand touched my arm, and groped its way across my chest.
    She ran up. “Hurry!” she gasped. “What are you doing? Let’s get out of here.”
    “He’s just gut-shot. You want him talking when they find him?”
    The hand moved again and