I Want to Go Home Page 14

  But it was faith, not proof. And it was more hope than faith.

  New York was tremendous, coming back to it. This gateway, this station, was an almost overwhelming augury of his task. It was almost ten o’clock, but still the station swarmed with late commuters. The Century poured a trickle into this torrent and the trickle vanished. The city swept individuals into itself, its negated individuality. Sometime that day, if his faith was sound, his hope came true, one slim blond girl, in a powder-blue suit, would come into the city. For an instant she would stand at a gate, then she would step forward and be absorbed. He did not know what gate, nor when, nor even if she would come at all. And if he did not find her—well, things were shot. Things were washed up. The British had a phrase for it; over and over he’d heard that phrase in England and in France. It covered everything, everything from a missed meal to a missed life. “You’ve had it. You’ve had it, chum.” If he didn’t find Jane, he’d had it.

  He crossed the station, wondering how much he remembered from the years before, finding he remembered everything. He found the nearest bank of telephone booths almost automatically. After a little while—it was early for the office—he got the studio’s eastern branch. He got the man he wanted—and he got nothing. No word from Kansas City, no word from anywhere. “I’ll keep calling,” he said. “Watch it for me, Jimmy. It means a lot.”

  He came out of the booth, walked back to the information desk, got time-tables, New York Central, Pennsylvania. Now, again, he had to put his money up and watch the wheel spin.

  He could do so much, watch so many gates. He could, he hoped, watch the Grand Central gate and the Pennsylvania gate. There were others. There was no way of watching the spreading gate—the delta of a gate—provided by the bus service of the Baltimore and Ohio. And, more importantly, there was no way of watching LaGuardia. He wondered if he could get help; if Jimmy could help him. He went back to a telephone booth, dialed and, while he waited, jotted arrival times on the back of an envelope. Jimmy came on and he talked, urgently. “Good,” he said. “That’s swell.” Then he tried to describe Jane; he made a picture of her in his mind and described her from the picture. The words were not adequate, did not fit. Verbal descriptions were always meaningless; out of all the picture he tried to make with words only the powder-blue suit was adequate. A slim girl with blue eyes, maybe five feet five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, certainly with blond hair hanging loosely but not long—that wasn’t Jane. That was any among a hundred thousand. Jimmy indicated as much, but said they’d try. That took care, perhaps, of LaGuardia. In any event, she wouldn’t fly if she could avoid it.

  He went back to putting down his times, in two columns marked “Grand Central” and “Pennsylvania,” with “S” for St. Louis after some of the times. That was a complication. From Kansas City, if she could get out of Kansas City, she had two routes, about equal in distance and in time. There was no way knowing which she would take, because there was no way of guessing circumstances. She could cross Missouri to St. Louis, take either the Pennsy or the Central from there. (Or the B. & O.) She could go on to Chicago, as he had done, and take the Central or the Pennsy from Chicago. (Or the B. & O.) Damn the B. & O., Ray Forrest thought. Damn its bus system. He looked at his lists, the times written in the twenty-four hour notation, so useful on paper, so improbable on the tongue. He turned the envelope over and combined the lists. He had this:

  0930 P (C)

  0950 P (S)

  1025 P (S)

  1055 G (S)

  1155 P (C)

  1159 G (S)

  1230 P (C)

  1415 G (C)

  1545 G (C)

  1615 P (S)

  1700 G (S)

  1715 P (C)

  1745 G (C)

  1810 P (C)

  He looked at it and scratched off the first two notations. If she had, somehow, got to Chicago in time to catch the Broadway and had got in at nine-thirty, there was nothing he could do about it. If she had caught the Spirit of St. Louis out of St. Louis and got in at the Pennsylvania Station at nine-fifty, there was nothing he could do about that, either. She could have got the train from St. Louis; he had to face that. But he doubted if she had. She would have to fight or run, apparently—or both. Momentarily he grew cold, thinking that. What chance would she have had, if—if somebody had got her? What could she fight with, how get a chance to run? Probably now she was somewhere in Kansas City, locked up somewhere, or—He wouldn’t think of the anything after the “or.” He would think that the things which had happened in Los Angeles had been oddly tentative, had stopped oddly short of coming to grips. Perhaps that had been true, also, in Kansas City. So—you had to put your money somewhere, bet on the red or the black.

  He had time to check his bag, and a taxi got him to Penn Station just in time to meet, on a confusing island between two upswelling streams of men and women, the ten-twenty-five from St. Louis. You needed to be two people at the Penn Station to meet anyone. You were never sure you had not missed. But, when the last passengers came up to his right, he knew Jane was not on the train—or that he had missed. It was ten-forty, then. He just made it back to the Grand Central for the ten-fifty-five New York Central from St. Louis. He was hopeful about that, for some reason. He stood close to the rope and once he was sure he saw her, far down the ramp, and began to press forward. But he was wrong.

  He had time to call the eastern office, then, and there was nothing. Now he had to choose between the New York Central’s Knicker-bocker from St. Louis, due at eleven-fifty-nine and the Pennsylvanian from Chicago, due at the other station four minutes earlier. It was a toss-up. He bet on the Central—and lost. There was no way of knowing whether he would have won on the Pennsylvanian and there wouldn’t be. There was that flaw in it, and the flaw was inescapable. He shuttled back to Penn Station and met the twelve-thirty from Chicago, and met on it a great many people he had never seen before, and no one he had. He told himself that she was unlikely to have caught any of these trains; he tried to press down the feeling of desperation which seemed to be rising in him—the feeling of dreadful, almost unbearable impatience, and fear. He had now to say her name over and over under his breath, as if he were calling her, as if she could hear him and come.

  There was a lull after the twelve-thirty and again he called the office. Nothing from Kansas City. There was a report from LaGuardia, and it was nothing too. No girl—slim and blond with blue eyes, in a powder-blue suit—had got off a plane from the West. Or, none recognized as Jane Phillips. (There had been one; she had been approached, she had threatened to call the police.)

  That missed eleven-fifty-five began to seem more and more important. And then he realized what he should have done long before, and armed himself with coins and found another booth. It took minutes, through information, through long distance, to get the Meredith house near Somers. He heard the telephone ringing and then he heard a voice. It was not the voice he had heard from Los Angeles. It was a male voice, without expression, and it said, “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Phillips, please,” Ray said. “Jane Phillips.”

  “Nope,” the man said. “Not here.”

  “Is she expected?”

  There was a pause.

  “She could be,” the man said. “Who wants her?”

  Ray gave his name.

  “Where are you?” the man said. “She could call you back, maybe.”

  The last seemed oddly like an after-thought. There was something wrong with the whole conversation. It was not what was to be expected. The man’s voice was wrong. His attitude was—inappropriate. But Ray gave the telephone number of the eastern office.

  “I wonder if I could speak to Mrs. Meredith?” he said then. “Mrs. Susan Meredith?”

  “Nope,” the man said. “It wouldn’t be easy.”

  “Then—some other member of the family? Unless you’re—”

  “Not me,” the man said. “I’m just—” He did not finish. “Everybody’s sort of tied up,” he sai
d, then. “We’ll tell Mrs. Phillips you called. If she shows up.”

  That seemed to end it. It was unsatisfactory. It was puzzling and, in some fashion, disquieting. But there was, for the moment, no way to get around it.

  Ray went back to the Grand Central, in too much time for the two-fifteen, the 1415, from Chicago. He tried to eat a lunch he didn’t want. He stood at the rope and saw people come up the ramp again—come up, scatter out, lose themselves in the city. He turned away. He called the eastern office and talked to Jimmy, and, there wasn’t anything. There wasn’t anything from anywhere. He walked through hot streets, under a beating sun, and he looked with a kind of anxiety into the faces of people, asking a miracle. He was early for the three-forty-five Pennsylvania from Chicago. He might as well have been late for it.

  The St. Louisan ran east from Philadelphia as if it were rolling down hill; with the end in sight, the road broad and straight, it took off for home with a kind of impatience. All the good Pennsy trains did that, somehow, Jane thought. And after Trenton it was like a toboggan slide until the merging, sprawling cities of the metropolitan area tangled the free train, made it pick its way. There was a stir in the train; the porter began to bump along the corridor with bags, piling them in the vestibule. The train ran slowly, now, as if it were approaching a trap.

  Now she would have to be careful. She would have to be sure, and quick and careful. If she weren’t—if she were too soon or too late—her plan would fail. They would get her again. They would keep her from getting home.

  The train slowed for Newark, and Jane opened her door. It was a help, to have nothing to carry, except her purse and coat. She stood in the corridor, looking out; to her right, only a third of the car separated her from the door to the vestibule. But the porter was at the other end, bringing out the bags from a room far down to her left and carrying them to the door at that end of the train. A woman came out after him and followed him through the door. That was the end he was opening, then; that, if anywhere, was where they would be.

  The train went slower and slower. The porter put his head back in the door and looked along the car and, seeing her, shook his head. “Just Newark, miss,” he said and she nodded and smiled at him. And then, when he turned back, she moved.

  She moved at first without haste, because there was a chance that they were watching her. She reached the door and opened it, and then she moved quickly—through the narrow passage between the cars, into the vestibule beyond and—this would decide it! If it was the door at the other end of this car she was—it wasn’t! The door to her right was open, and the porter of this other car was standing on the platform outside, holding the handbar beside it.

  She was through the door, on the platform and the porter was looking at her with surprise, and then without surprise. She went across the platform, not hurrying, forcing herself not to look around her, and into the electric train waiting there. And then she moved through the car, to the far end, and found a seat. And then she could watch the other doors—watch them, and wait for them to close, for the train to move. The train she had left began to glide away and still the doors did not close and then, quite suddenly, they did and almost at once the train started. It veered away to the right from the other tracks and began to run across the meadows.

  There was no way of knowing, yet, whether it had worked. If it had, they were going to be surprised, perhaps even confused for a few minutes, when the St. Louisan pulled into the Pennsylvania Station at four-fifteen.

  Waiting for the four-fifteen from St. Louis, Ray Forrest felt more hopeful than he had felt all day. The train had started its way across the Mississippi, across Illinois and Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and New Jersey, at six o’clock the evening before. If Jane managed to come that way—if she managed to come at all—the hour of departure was good. She would have had all day to cross Missouri; she could have done it by car, or bus, if she had missed one of the morning trains. It was a coach and Pullman train, so that she would have had no trouble about reservations.

  Ray built these things up—these fragile, little things—and made them a foundation for his hope. But his hope seemed to build up more solidly than the foundation justified. It was a hunch, he realized; it was a time to keep fingers crossed. The wheel was going around and around, the little ball was bouncing—come red, come black, come red—

  He was at the place he had chosen, the place which had proved best from which to watch both stairways, at four o’clock. This was absurd; the train was only now leaving Newark. But being there, and now more than ever before, made him feel closer to Jane. In fifteen minutes—now ten—now five—she’ll be coming up those stairs. The stairs to the right, the stairs to the left. By God, he thought, I believe she will!

  The train stopped somewhere underneath, and then there was that time—that long, stretched-out time—before the first of the passengers reached the top of the stairs. A Red Cap, followed by a tall man, moving fast, hurrying—that was from the left. Two young men, coming up two steps at a time—that was from the right. And then the two streams swelled; then, in the area between them, people met and there was a tangle of the two streams, and it was hard to watch—desperately hard to watch.

  But he knew he had not missed her. His hope, his confidence, his feeling that this time was real—these had made him so alert it was impossible he had missed her. He knew that. He could not fool himself about that, even when the upward moving streams began to thin, to dry up. He had not missed her—and she had not come.

  He found he was swearing, in his mind, when the movement up the stairs ended, when she had not come. He crossed to the stairway at the right and looked down it, and there was no one on the stairs and no one on what he could see of the platform. Then he felt that she had come up the stairway which was now behind him and turned quickly and crossed to it. And there was no one.

  That was it. That was all of it. There was no use standing there, no use willing her to come. She wasn’t coming; she hadn’t been on the train.

  The area which had been crowded a few minutes before was abandoned, now. Almost abandoned. There was one man, a rather portly, substantial-looking man, still there. He had been there before the train came in, Ray remembered dully. He had obviously planned to meet someone on the train. And, obviously, he had been disappointed too. You could tell it by his face. There was an expression of disappointment, almost of chagrin, on his face. Well, it was tough. He’d had it too, apparently.

  Well, there was the five o’clock New York Central from St. Louis. It, too, had left St. Louis at six o’clock the evening before. If she could have made it, she could have made the St. Louisan and saved forty-five minutes. This time, riding back to the Grand Central by cab, he was not hopeful.

  The train went underground suddenly and, after a little time, there was pressure on the eardrums which swallowing relieved. Then it went more slowly, making a circle which seemed too tight for it. Then it stopped and the guard said, “Hudson Terminal.”

  There had been no one in the car who seemed to pay any particular attention to her and she became more confident that they were waiting at Penn Station, that she had thrown them off. Probably, she thought, there had been no one on the train from St. Louis, since they had not expected that she would be on that train—had planned that she wouldn’t be. When their plans failed, it was too late for one of them to get aboard.

  She went out on a concrete platform, one among many. She climbed stairs and became one among thousands, most of whom were swarming in, not out. The home-bound swing had begun already. She was surprised for a moment, and then she realized New York would be on Daylight Saving Time, and that it was, by that time, after five. She followed signs and found the Eighth Avenue Subway. She went upstream against an increasing current, but it did not matter. Going with the crowd, going against it, still she was lost in it.

  Part of the Eighth Avenue Subway seemed to stop there, at the Station marked “Chambers Street.” She had forgotten that, or never known it.
She got into a train, hurrying for it, and it stood with doors open, as if it had been placed there and forgotten. This frightened her. She wanted the doors closed, the car in motion. Each person who came into the car might be one of them. This fear was without reason, and she knew it was without reason. But the fear persisted. There was nothing they could do, she told herself. They had done what they could. But she did not believe this.

  The doors closed and then the train started. It was in no hurry, running on the local tracks. It went deeper underground somewhere, or seemed to, and then she knew where she was—at West Fourth Street, on one of the Sixth Avenue trains. She had not noticed before, but she had been lucky. She would be closer than she had expected to where she was going.

  The train reached Forty-second Street and she got out. She threaded her way through the station and went up stairs which brought her onto the Avenue of the Americas near Forty-third. She hesitated, unconsciously, before she came out onto the street and looked around, and knew there was no point in looking around, since they had no faces. She walked through Forty-third, and across Fifth toward the Grand Central. She had almost reached the station when she realized she was making a mistake.

  This was what they expected her to do. By now, since she had not come in at the Pennsylvania Station, where they were waiting for her, they would know that she had changed trains at Newark and reached the Hudson Terminal down-town. And they would have changed their plans, because there were entrance gates and gates for exit from the city and they could catch her at either. There had been two gates coming in, and they had guarded the wrong one. But there was only one gate going out, and she was looking at it—looking down Forty-third, seeing taxicabs curving in from Vanderbilt to stop at the Station’s platform. The Grand Central was the only gate which, for her, swung outward. All the trains which would take her to Somers left from the Grand Central.