shred of caution started him toward the sane and safe shelter of his room.
5
DEATH WALKS A WINDOW LEDGE
Quinn slipped into his darkened room and stood quietly just within the door for a long moment, ears, eyes, and nose alert. It was the latter which served him best now. He did not smoke. But on the somewhat musty air of the room there was the scent of tobacco — strong and stale as if from the clothes of a chain smoker. Quinn's fingers found the switch, and the light went on. But the room was empty.
However, it had been searched again. And this time by someone who did not care if that occupation was betrayed. The contents of Quinn's suitcase had been dumped out in the middle of the bed. There were scratches around the lock of the briefcase. The window he had left closed was open.
Quinn found his flashlight, then snapped off the room light. With the beam of the flash he sorted out underwear, a shirt, his traveling kit, the first aid box, and forced them all into the briefcase. If he did have to flit he would travel light.
Then his hands and body froze. There was a sound outside that window. He dropped the briefcase beside the door and flattened himself against the wall, creeping along it behind the chair and round the lamp toward the oblong of pale light.
The pane was being forced up higher, the rasp of sound thundered in the silent room. And now the misshapen shadow of the intruder was a black blot which almost filled the whole sash space. But how had he reached there? There was no fire escape — he couldn't have walked that extremely narrow ledge which ran around the building a few feet below!
Quinn attempted to control his breathing, making his way around the room by inches. Just let that fellow get one leg over the sill and he could jump him! Surely the police wouldn't make that sort of an entrance.
The shadow in the window eased in. This must be a game at which he had had much practice. Quinn hurtled forward in a football tackle. But he had miscalculated. His fingers only tore at rough cloth while the body it clothed wriggled free. The man in the window heaved himself back to escape Quinn's clutch.
There could not have been more than a second before that searing scream of terror came. Quinn's full weight ripped down the window draperies before he could check himself.
He swallowed, fighting down sour nausea, and swayed forward toward the window, still holding tight to the splitting fabric.
In the narrow street below, figures were gathering about a flattened thing. Quinn saw the bright beam of a light catch and hold on it. And the man who held that lamp was in uniform! The police! If they weren't already on his tail they would be now.
Quinn pulled himself erect by will power alone. He even summoned enough control to close the window.
There was that back staircase he had noticed earlier this evening —
He piled guilder pieces on the desk — enough to pay his bill. Then somehow he was out of the room. Under his feet the hall carpet was thick enough to deaden the sound of his running. And the back stairs were close, dark too, as if they had been planned for the aid and comfort of fugitives.
Three flights down there was another hall. Here were two half-open doors with light and the sound of voices behind them. But no one looked out as he fled past. He eased the bolt on the door at the far end. Luckily there was no other lock on it. Then he was in a paved court — the delivery entrance for the hotel.
The rain had stopped, but there were still clouds across the moon. Quinn walked with increasing assurance out into a narrow street, between rows of unlighted houses. There were no electric signs to break the dark, nothing but widely separated street lights. He reached the corner of the block without seeing another person and ducked into a doorway to think.
He was a foreigner in a strange city, with the police on his trail and perhaps others looking for him too. This was a problem to be faced by an
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