In Dubious Battle Read Online Free PDF Page B

room?”
    “No. I’ve got to go away for good. I got a letter telling me.”
    “You didn’t get no letters here,” said the woman suspiciously.
    “No, where I work. I won’t be back. I’m paid a week in advance.”
    Her smile faded slowly. Her expression seemed to slip toward anger without any great change. “You should of give me a week’s notice,” she said sharply. “That’s the rule. I got to keep that advance because you didn’t give me no notice.”
    “I know,” Jim said. “That’s all right. I didn’t know how long I could stay.”
    The smile was back on the landlady’s face. “You been a good quiet roomer,” she said, “even if you ain’t been here long. If you’re ever around again, come right straight here. I’ll find a place for you. I got sailors that come to me every time they’re in port. And I find room for them. They wouldn’t go no place else.”
    “I’ll remember, Mrs. Meer. I left the key in the door.”
    “Light turned out?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I won’t go up till tomorrow morning. Will you come in and have a little nip?”
    “No, thank you. I’ve got to be going.”
    Her eyes narrowed wisely. “You ain’t in trouble? I could maybe help you.”
    “No,” Jim said. “Nobody’s after me. I’m just taking a new job. Well, good night, Mrs. Meer.”
    She held out a powdered hand. Jim shifted his paper bag and took her hand for a moment, and felt the soft flesh give under his fingers.
    “Don’t forget,” she said. “I can always find room. People come back to me year after year, sailors and drummers.”
    “I’ll remember. Good night.”
    She looked after him until he was out the front door and down the cement steps to the sidewalk.
    He walked to the corner and looked at the clock in a jeweller’s window—seven-thirty. He set out walking rapidly eastward, through a district of department stores and specialty shops, and then through the wholesale produce district, quiet now in the evening, the narrow streets deserted, the depot entrances closed with wooden bars and wire netting. He came at last to an old street of three-storey brick buildings. Pawn-shops and second-hand tool dealers occupied the ground floors, while failing dentists and lawyers had offices in the upper two flights. Jim looked at each doorway until he found the number he wanted. He went in a dark entrance and climbed the narrow stairs, rubber-treaded, the edges guarded with strips of brass. A little night light burned at the head of the steps, but only one door in the long hall showed a light through its frostedglass. Jim walked to it, looked at the “Sixteen” on the glass, and knocked.
    A sharp voice called, “Come in.”
    Jim opened the door and stepped into a small, bare office containing a desk, a metal filing cabinet, an army cot and two straight chairs. On the desk sat an electric cooking plate, on which a little tin coffee-pot bubbled and steamed. A man looked solemnly over the desk at Jim. He glanced at a card in front of him. “Jim Nolan?” he asked.
    “Yes.” Jim looked closely at him, a small man, neatly dressed in a dark suit. His thick hair was combed straight down on each side from the top in a vain attempt to cover a white scar half an inch wide that lay horizontally over the right ear. The eyes were sharp and black, quick nervous eyes that moved constantly about—from Jim to the card, and up to a wall calendar, and to an alarm clock, and back to Jim. The nose was large, thick at the bridge and narrow at the point. The mouth might at one time have been full and soft, but habitual muscular tension had drawn it close and made a deep line on each lip. Although the man could not have been over forty, his face bore heavy parenthetical lines of resistance to attack. His hands were as nervous as his eyes, large hands, almost too big for his body, long fingers with spatulate ends and flat, thick nails. The hands moved about on the desk like the exploring hands of a blind man,