"Hey!" he exploded, running forward to the car. His voice startled her
and she partly turned. A hand emerged from within the car and grabbed
the box of papers. Carroll arrived at that instant and grabbed for the
other end. There was a quick struggle and the box opened and a hundred
sheets of notes were strewn on the sidewalk.
* * * * *
The girl stooped and scooped the papers up roughly, shoving them back
in the box helter-skelter and clapping the top back on. Carroll did not
see this, for the occupant of the back seat was coming out angrily at
this instant.
Carroll reached forward and clipped the stranger on the nose, driving
him back into the car. The driver's companion snapped his door open,
grabbed the box, hurled the girl asprawl on the floor of the back seat.
The car leaped away, leaving Carroll standing there in wonder.
That girl--he should know her. Those papers were important to someone.
He stooped and picked one last one up and stared at it. It made no
sense.
He took it home. It pained him to read it but someone was in bad
trouble because of it, and Carroll did not like the idea of a woman
being in trouble over a sheet of paper--or a hundred sheets of paper.
It made no sense, and he gave up, tired.
But he returned to the same corner at dusk the following evening. And
the same girl emerged from the same building with the same box and
hurried along the same walk. The same car came up and she entered it
this time, and it drove slowly off in the direction she wanted to go.
Carroll's instinctive shout died in his throat. The car turned off
about one square further and disappeared. Carroll stood idly on the
corner, wondering what to do next. For fifteen minutes he stood there,
thinking. Then the car returned, turned the corner, and stopped. The
girl emerged and walked up the street for a thousand yards and turned
into a building with her box of papers.
Carroll waited in front of the building for her. As she came out she
saw him and her face lighted up with mingled pleasure and puzzlement.
"Hello, Mr. Carroll," she said brightly.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
"Fine," she said. "And you?"
"I was concerned about you last night," he told her. "What happened?"
"Why--nothing happened to me." Her eyes widened in wonder and in them
he saw some unknown uneasiness. He smiled at her paternally.
"Do this every night?" he asked.
"Uh-huh. You know that I have for years."
Her name was Sally. And Carroll wondered how he should come to know her
name. But--she knew his. Or at least she knew what everybody claimed
was his name, and what was tattooed on his body.
He wondered again, and in wondering, let the opportunity for further
conversation pass. The girl was impatient and said, "You must come back
to us someday."
"That I will," he said--but it was to her retreating back. Sally was
hurrying up the street again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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