Chapter Nine

DOUGHFACE JACK was thoroughly frightened. He snatched at the girl’s arm and strove to head her around the fountain and across the park. She, too, was infected by his terror and followed blindly.

He brought up short. He had seen bright buttons gleaming across the park and he heard a camion roaring there as it surged to the curb to discharge its men in olive drab.

Doughface took a dozen false steps north and again he heard camions. He whirled in a panic and again skirted the fountain striving to get out of the trap to the south. But there was no exit there. A hundred men in company front were marching across the lawn straight toward them.

Doughface felt sick. He could feel a steel-shod rifle butt clanging down upon his silver skull. His mind, lacking any solution, was, for the moment, completely blank.

The girl shook herself as though she had been drugged and was just coming to life. She took check on the situation. Doughface Jack was patently too much in a funk to meet these soldiers, and the soldiers, just as clearly, were there to shoot Doughface on sight.

But they had only guessed that their quarry was here. Outposts had reported no man passing them. Doughface must then be somewhere within an area a block square and every inch of that area would be covered.

She could save herself. It would be easy to scream for help and thereby avert death by bullets. And life, at last, tasted very sweet to her.

But she didn’t. She grabbed Doughface by the shoulder and yanked him into the shrubbery. Against his amazed face she slapped handfuls of dirt. She roughed up his clothes. She bashed in his hat. Then, on hands and knees, she went back to the bench where she had so lately sat and located the dark glasses, the tin cup, a few nickels and some pencils.

She put the glasses on Doughface.

“Whatcha doin’?” he complained, shivering as he listened to the marching feet which drew nearer and nearer.

She broke a stick from a shrub and pushed it into his hand. “Haven’t you ever panhandled?”

“Yeah,” said Doughface, “but I can’t figure these so’diers would make such hot suckers.”

“Be still and follow me.”

She crawled back to the gravel, Doughface after her. Suddenly she shoved him to earth. “Don’t move. Just moan!”

Doughface got it. He drew himself up in a knot and moaned piteously.

“HELP! HELP!” screamed the girl. “IT'S HIM! IT'S THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE!”

Doughface thought for an instant that he was betrayed but when he glanced up and saw the innocence of her beautiful face his doubts were vanquished.

“help!” screamed the girl. “There he goes! There he goes! Oooooh, Father! Father, speak to me! Oooooh, he’s dead. I know he’s dead!”

Whistles shrilled in the darkness. Boots thudded over the lawns. A young lieutenant, his face white with strain, charged up, automatic in hand to behold a beautiful woman weeping.

“Oooooooh, I know he’s dead,” she moaned. “I know it! He killed him, he killed him!”

“Quick, lady, which way did he go?”

“Oh, he’s dead, I know he’s dead!”

Doughface pushed out a moan and drew up in a tighter knot. The “I am Blind” sign was still on the gravel. The tin cup and pencils and dark glasses told their story well as did the scattered coins which gleamed in the lamplight.

“Quick, damn it,” said the jittery lieutenant, “which way did he go?”

“Oh, my father, my poor, poor father,” moaned the girl.

“For god’s sake!” cried the lieutenant, “are you going to let that murderer get away? Which way did he go?”

The girl pointed with a trembling hand. “That way,” she choked. “That way. The beast! To strike down a poor old blind beggar …”

“We’ll get ’im!” yelped the lieutenant. His whistle shrilled and he signaled with his arm for his men to come up on the double.

The other sides of the square were closing in.

“He’s over there in those shrubs!” cried the lieutenant.

“Clear the way beyond!” bellowed a captain.

“Machine guns!” roared a major. “Rake that shrubbery!”

Machine gunners began to trip their chattering guns. Bullets whipped and sang a deadly chorus through the shrubs.

“Company A,” roared the major. “Into line!”

“Company advance!” cried the captain. “charge!”

They charged the cover and bayonets flicked and stabbed through wood and earth.

“Nothin’ here!” cried a sergeant.

“He’s got to be there!” yelped the lieutenant. “That old man and girl …” He pointed and then stopped, looking foolish.

The old man and the girl were gone.

And they were running with all their might and the shrubs took long strips from their clothing. They were going south back toward Times Square.

“Y’all right?” panted Doughface.

“Never felt this good in my whole life,” said the girl. “If we can get into the thick of it those soldiers won’t dare shoot. Keep hold of that cup and those glasses!”

“I got ’em,” puffed Doughface.

A sentry loomed before them. He saw them and started to raise his rifle and shout at the same time. The sentry went down in a heap.

The driver of a camion saw them coming a hundred feet away and he started to shout. But Doughface had seen him first. He slumped over his wheel, arms loose and dangling.

A taxi was cruising past. The girl was startled by it. She had not thought that a taxi looked this way.

And Doughface stopped it, careful not to knock the driver out. Doughface thrust the girl into the machine.

“Drive,” said Doughface.

“Where?” said the startled cabbie.

“Fifth Avenue,” stated the girl. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

The cabbie gave them a sour look. He could judge people very well by the kind of clothes they wore. “Y’got any money, pal?”

“Sure,” said Doughface, reaching into his pocket.

But he didn’t have any money.

“I thought so,” said the cabbie. “Gwan, scram, y’dead beats!”

Doughface had no time to think about it. The cabbie went sideways into a pile under his meter. Doughface was aghast.

“Can you drive?” he asked the girl.

“Of course not. Can you?”

“I th-think so,” said Doughface. He popped out and then into the driver’s seat. He had seen it done often enough. He crashed the gears into reverse, saw that he was wrong and ground them brutally into high.

His luck held. The car started ahead and Doughface sat up straight and gripped the wheel hard enough to crush the wood.

The girl looked back anxiously. Some soldiers were coming and whether or not they would connect the cab with Doughface was a problem. But Doughface had his hands full already without further worry. The taxi was lurching like a bucking bronc.

They came to a crossing and the light was against them. Doughface was a little slow on finding the brake and through they went. He looked around hopelessly, thinking certain a policeman would see. But none did.

His luck was still holding.

He made it into Fifth Avenue, nursing the throttle to discover what happened where. “Geez,” he called back, “this is the nuts.”

“Don’t go too fast,” begged the girl. “This is the first time I was ever in a car.”

“Don’t worry none,” said Doughface, exuberant in his control of power. “I’ll …”

But he didn’t. A yellow and green bus stopped squarely before him and he missed the brake with his foot. He had barely time to twist the wheel violently to the right. Belatedly he found the brake and tromped on it, coming to an abrupt stop almost up against a parked limousine.

He was bewildered. He knew he couldn’t get out of this without making a scene and if he gathered a crowd that would be a tip-off to the soldiers twenty blocks behind.

For a moment he strove to back up and get out. But it was too much in his excited state.

“We gotta beat it,” said Doughface, leaping out.

The girl was by his side as he raced to the walk. Already an inquiring officer was walking slowly over toward the curiously parked taxi.

Doughface had the glasses on again and the tin cup in his hand. The girl led him.

It gave her a sense of power she had never known to be finding the way for another human being. Always it had been herself that had been led. It was wonderful not to have to stop uncertainly to search for a curb, poking about with a stick, hoping that somebody would take pity.…