a continuation of the alley in the next block. Just before I came out of it, I looked back again. He was no longer in sight. I emerged on the sidewalk. The street was deserted. But I could hear sirens. They were converging now from every direction.
My legs were weak and shaky now, and my side hurt badly. I fought to get my breath. It was useless; why not give myself up? They had me. They’d throw a ring of cars and men around an area eight or ten blocks square and search it inch-by-inch. They wanted me so badly now they could taste it. I’d been eluding them for a week, and now I’d killed a girl. Nothing could ever save me from that one. I’d gone to Randall Street looking for her. And when they finally found me I was in her apartment and she’d just been murdered.
I quit trying to think and started running again, operating on pure instinct. I turned left. In the next block there was another alley. I ducked into it. Rubber screamed behind me as a car made a turn into the street I’d just left. Up ahead there were more sirens. It was shadowy in the alley, with lights only at the ends, but there was no place to hide. I stopped and collapsed beside some garbage cans, sobbing for breath.
I was behind a two-story commercial building of some kind. Directly above me was a fire escape ladder that terminated about eight or nine feet from the ground. I stood up and leaped for it, and caught the bottom rung. I held on for a second, heaved up, and caught the next one. In a minute I was far enough up to get my feet on the lower rungs. I went on up, slid over the wall, and dropped onto the roof. I looked back. No one had come into the alley yet. I could stay out of sight up here until they gave up, until tomorrow night if necessary, and then get out. Then I looked around, and my heart sank.
Adjoining the building on the left was an apartment house some two stories higher, and there were windows on this side. When daybreak came, somebody would see me down here. I looked the other way. The building on the right was also two stories higher than this one, and going up the side of it near the front was a steel ladder. I pushed myself up and went over to it, took one more deep breath, and started to climb. When I was halfway up I looked down and saw that anyone in the street could see me if he happened to look up. A police car was stopped at the corner and two men in uniform were getting out. I tried to run up the ladder. My knees were shaky, and my arms felt like lead. I almost missed a rung with one hand, and held on, sobbing for breath. Then I was at the top. I tumbled over the wall and fell onto the gravel of the roof. I lay there, too spent even to move, and listened to the baffled snarls of sirens in the street four stories down.
Then a voice said, right above me, “Hey, move your head, will you? You’re on my ephemeris.”
Maybe I was beginning to crack up. It was very dark, because of the four-foot wall around the edge of the roof that shut out the light from the streets. Then a flashlight came on, squarely in front of my face. It had red paper tied across the lens and made nothing but a faint glow. A hand came down and pushed my head a little to one side and slid something from under it. It seemed to be a pamphlet of some kind.
I drew in another shaky breath. “I’ve got a gun,” I said harshly. “You make one sound, and I’ll shoot!”
“Good,” the voice muttered absently. “That’s fine. Hmmm—here we are. Declination thirty-two forty-seven.” The light went out.
I rolled over and managed to push myself to a sitting position with my back against the wall. Then I could make out the three shadowy legs of a tripod. Above it was something like a section of stovepipe, slanted at an angle toward the sky, and sitting on a little bench to one side of it was the dark figure of a man. He was bundled up in a lot of clothes against the cold