EARTH AUTHORITIES ALERTED. (Full description of escapee on page two.) THIS MAN IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. CHAPTER X Herb hunched his shoulders as if to ward off a suspected blow. Norma's eyes mirrored fright and uncertainty, and she moved half a step from him. Grasping her arm at the elbow, he said, "We have to get off the streets." Norma wanted to twist away from him and run. "You've got to help me hide!" The pressure seemed threatening. "Let me go!" He dropped his hand instantly. "You've got to help me." From the expression on his face, she knew that she had nothing to fear. She felt ashamed of herself. "We can go to my hotel," she said. Once in the hotel, Herb's eyes darted around the four walls of the living room. "There are no microphones," Norma said. They stood just inside the door. Norma turned and walked decisively to the divan. She sat down. "I think you'd better explain." "I ... I need some money," Herb said. "There's something I have to get." "What is it?" "I.... Please trust me, _please_," he said. She hesitated; then: "How much do you need?" "A ... hundred dollars. Could you let me have--loan me--that much?" Norma knew he was not insane; there was something here that she did not understand, but it was not insanity. Her emotions went out to him. She saw the present situation only in personal terms, their own relationship. She saw no wider implications. Intuition, she would have called it. Decisively, she phoned for the bellboy and when he came, gave him a check for the management to cash. While they were waiting for the money, she said, "Won't you tell me--?" "I can't. I can't. I wish I could. Please, if you'll--" he hesitated, and then, with sickness and loathing, said, "trust me...." The money came. "I'll try to pay you back; make it up to you some way...." "That's all right. Where are you going? What are you going to buy?" Perhaps it was the desire to shock her, to destroy her faith in him, perhaps and more probably, it was the need to confess (and hope for absolution) that he said: "I want to buy a gun." "Why do you want a gun?" Herb, still standing, tried to memorize her face. He was acutely aware of his isolation. He wanted to go to her side, to talk rapidly, to reveal the cruel and horrible compulsion that was driving him--and most of all, to enlist her aid and her understanding. He needed to know that one single individual in the whole Universe could appreciate his attempt to meet his own standard of truth and morality. "Tell me. Maybe Bud will be able to help you out of your trouble.... He's my brother...." The complexity of emotions that burst upon him was almost impossible to understand. He had thought of her--if he had actually thought of the connection at all--as an employee of Bud's, perhaps, but no more than that. He asked incredulously: "Frank was your brother?" "You mean ... is my brother?" "Yes ... I, yes, of course."