A gun was not the only weapon ever created, though, and Frank searched
the store and found a line of pocket knives still in neat boxes near the
perfume counter.
He picked four of the largest and found, also, a wooden-handled,
lead-tipped bludgeon, used evidently for cracking ice.
Thus armed, he went out through the revolving door. He walked through
streets that were like death under the climbing sun. Through streets and
canyons of dead buildings upon which the new daylight had failed to shed
life or diminish the terror of the night past.
At Dearborn he found the door to the Tribune Public Service Building
locked. He used the ice breaker to smash a glass door panel. The crash
of the glass on the cement was an explosion in the screaming silence. He
went inside. Here the sense of desolation was complete; brought sharply
to focus, probably, by the pigeon holes filled with letters behind the
want-ad counter. Answers to a thousand and one queries, waiting
patiently for someone to come after them.
Before going to the basement and the back files of the Chicago Tribune,
Frank climbed to the second floor and found what he thought might be
there--a row of teletype machines with a file-board hooked to the side
of each machine.
Swiftly, he stripped the copy sheets off each board, made a bundle of
them and went back downstairs. He covered the block back to the hotel at
a dog-trot, filled with a sudden urge to get back to the fourth floor as
soon as possible.
[Illustration]
He stopped in the drugstore and filled his pockets with soap, a razor,
shaving cream and face lotion. As an afterthought, he picked up a lavish
cosmetic kit that retailed, according to the price tag, for thirty-eight
dollars plus tax.
He let himself back into the room and closed the door softly. Nora
rolled over, exposing a shoulder and one breast. The breast held his
gaze for a full minute. Then a feeling of guilt swept him and he went
into the bathroom and closed the door.
Luckily, a supply tank on the roof still contained water and Frank was
able to shower and shave. Dressed again, he felt like a new man. But he
regretted not hunting up a haberdashery shop and getting himself a clean
shirt.
Nora had still not awakened when he came out of the bathroom. He went to
the bed and stood looking down at her for some time. Then he touched her
shoulder.
"Wake up. It's morning."
Nora stirred. Her eyes opened, but Frank got the impression she did not
really awaken for several seconds. Her eyes went to his face, to the
window, back to his face.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know. I think it's around eight o'clock."
Nora stretched both arms luxuriously. As she sat up, her slip fell back
into place and Frank got the impression she hadn't even been aware of
her partial nudity.
She stared up at him, clarity dawning in her eyes, "You're all cleaned
up."
"I went downstairs and got some things."
"You went out--alone?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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