He couldn't have been anyone else but the spy. The gun, in the first
place. The fact that he looked harried and upset and terribly nervous,
in the second place. And, of course, the fact that he came from the
elevator shaft.
Looking back, I think he must have been just as startled as I when we
came face to face like that. We formed a brief tableau, both of us
open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
Unfortunately, he recovered first.
He closed the emergency door behind him, quickly but quietly. His gun
stopped waving around and instead pointed directly at my middle. "Don't
move!" he whispered harshly. "Don't make a sound!"
I did exactly as I was told. I didn't move and I didn't make a sound.
Which left me quite free to study him.
He was rather short, perhaps three inches shorter than me, with a bony
high-cheekboned face featuring deepset eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. He
wore gray slacks and shirt, with brown slippers on his feet. He looked
exactly like a spy ... which is to say that he _didn't_ look like a
spy, he looked overpoweringly ordinary. More than anything else, he
reminded me of a rather taciturn milkman who used to make deliveries to
my parents' apartment.
His gaze darted this way and that. Then he motioned with his free hand
at the descending stairs and whispered, "Where do they go?"
I had to clear my throat before I could speak. "All the way down," I
said.
"Good," he said--just as we both heard a sudden raucous squealing from
perhaps four flights down, a squealing which could be nothing but the
opening of a hall door. It was followed by the heavy thud of ascending
boots. The Army!
But if I had any visions of imminent rescue, the spy dashed them. He
said, "Where do you live?"
"One fifty-three," I said. This was a desperate and dangerous man.
I knew my only slim chance of safety lay in answering his questions
promptly, cooperating with him until and unless I saw a chance to
either escape or capture him.
"All right," he whispered. "Go on." He prodded me with the gun.
And so we went back up the stairs to one fifty-three, and stopped at
the door. He stood close behind me, the gun pressed against my back,
and grated in my ear, "I'll have this gun in my pocket. If you make one
false move I'll kill you. Now, we're going to your apartment. We're
friends, just strolling along together. You got that?"