The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,29

couldn’t tell much about a voice from one or two words, anyway. I glanced down at his shoes. They were black, size ten or eleven, but I was a little to the left and couldn’t see the outside of the right one. I returned to my paper, pretending to read. In a moment he turned away from the counter. I looked at him in the unseeing, incurious way your eyes go across anyone in a crowd.

Aside from an impression of almost brutal strength about the shoulders and arms, he could have been anybody—line coach of a professional football team, or the boss of a heavy construction outfit. He wore a soft straw hat, white shirt, and blue tie, and the coat he carried over his arm and the trousers were the matching components of a conservative blue suit. He was somewhere around forty, about five-nine, and well over two hundred pounds, but he walked as lightly as a big cat. His eyes met mine for an instant with the chill, impersonal blankness of outer space, and moved on. He sat down on the bench over to my left. I looked back at my paper. How did you know? What did appearances mean? He could be a goon with the accomplished deadliness of a cobra, or he might be wondering at the moment whether to buy his five-year-old daughter a stuffed bear or one of the Dr. Seuss books for a coming-home present. I glanced at his feet again, and this time I could see it. The right shoe had been slit along the welt for about an inch just under the little toe.

I folded the paper, slapped it idly against my hand, and got up and walked past him. He paid no attention. I strolled over and looked out the long glass wall in front at the runways and dead grass and the bright metal skin of a DC-7 shattering the rays of morning sunlight. It was a weird sensation, and a scary one, being hunted. And in broad daylight, in a busy, peaceful airport. It was unreal. But what was even more unreal was the fact that there was nothing I could do about it. Suppose I called the police. Arrest that man; he’s got a cut place in his shoe.

I wondered if he had a gun. There didn’t seem to be any place he could be carrying one unless he had it in the pocket of the coat slung over his arm. If he held it just right, nobody could tell. He had no luggage. And the chances were he was alone. With the flight sold out there wasn’t much percentage in more than one of them bucking the stand-by list. If he got aboard, he could keep me in sight until the others caught up. Well, he wasn’t aboard yet. Maybe he wouldn’t make it. They announced the flight. I walked out Concourse B, feeling his eyes in the middle of my back in spite of the fact that I knew he probably wasn’t even looking at me. Why should he? He knew where I was going.

Number 302 was a continuing flight, so there were only nine or ten people at Gate 7 waiting to go aboard. Some through passengers who had deplaned to stretch their legs were allowed to go through first. Boarding passengers went through single file while the gate attendant checked our tickets. I was last. As I went up the steps I resisted an impulse to look back. He would be watching from somewhere to be sure I went aboard. There were still four or five empty seats, but that meant nothing. Two would be for the stewardesses, and some of the through passengers might still be in the terminal. I took one on the aisle, aft of the door. There might even be people ahead of him on stand-by. I waited. I was on the wrong side to see the gate, even if I’d had a window seat. It was stifling with the plane on the ground. Sweat gathered on my face. Another passenger came aboard, a woman. Then one in uniform, an Air Force major. I began to hope. The captain and first officer came through the doorway and went forward. The door to the flight compartment closed. Then two minutes before they took away the ramp Bonner came through the door. He took the last empty seat.

We were down in the steamy heat of New Orleans at 8:05 for a