Again they looked at one another, the young fellow in his early twenties, the man in his late forties or perhaps even fifties. Holmes was older, more experienced. It showed itself almost at once. He was more in command of the situation; even this situation, which should have been to his disadvantage. Not even virtue, being on the right side, can make up for lack of experience.
“There’s a drink for you,” he said. “I had to order ahead, so I’d be allowed to stay in here. It’s past closing time.”
Quinn thought, but without putting much stock into it: Be funny if he’d slipped something into this. That was 1910 stuff, though. He didn’t take it seriously.
Holmes almost seemed to have read his thoughts. “Take mine instead, then,” he said. “I haven’t put it to my mouth yet.” He drew the other glass away from in front of Quinn, tilted it to his lips, drank deeply.
“Whenever you say,” he said ironically.
Quinn looked around him surreptitiously, thinking: This is no place to browbeat it out of him. I can’t do much with him here. I shouldn’t have let him pick the background.
Again Holmes seemed to read his mind. “Do you want to come out to the car instead?”
“I didn’t know you had one. Why didn’t you pick me up with it in the first place, instead of letting me do all this chasing back and forth?”
“I wanted to get a line on you first. I didn’t know what I was up against.”
You still don’t, thought Quinn bitterly.
Holmes drained his drink to the bottom, stood up, took down the light-gray hat and fitted it on his head with as much painstaking care and precision of adjustment as though he were leaving a business luncheon at high noon instead of an extorted rendezvous around crack of dawn. He looked a degree less sedate with his hat on, but only a degree; he was still every inch the dignified, austere, pontifical business-man. He started for the entrance, the invisible reins of the situation tight in his hand.
Quinn rose and took a step or two in his wake, leaving his drink untouched. Then he glanced back at it. I might need that for what’s coming, he thought, I feel sort of saggy inside. He dropped back to the table a moment, drank it down in two or three long gulps, and then went out after Holmes. In no time he already felt better, more able to handle the situation that he was about to plunge into.
The car was a few doors down. Holmes was already standing waiting beside it, to show him.
“I didn’t mean to rush you,” he said urbanely, and motioned him in.
Quinn let him sidle it into motion. Then he said tersely, “Where y’heading?”
“Just coast around a little, I thought. We can’t sit talking in it at the curb at this hour, we’ll get a cop down on us, sticking his nose into the car.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Quinn chopped out.
Holmes said suavely, “I don’t know. Do you?”
“I was asking you,” Quinn said.
Holmes smiled at the asphalt surfacing out ahead of their oncoming bumper, as though he had discovered something amusing about it. There wasn’t anything; it was like all other asphalt surfacing.
The car dawdled westward; it had to, Fifty-first was a westbound street. Neither of them said anything. Quinn thought: I’ll let him begin; why should I make it any easier for him? He has to begin sooner or later. The play is with him; I’m carrying around his ticket of imprisonment and execution on me — supposedly. Whatever Holmes thought he kept locked up inside his head; it didn’t come through to his face.
He wheeled them around northward into Sixth. They went up that, then at random they turned east again through one of the even-numbered streets. It was impromptu, Quinn could tell that by the abrupt swing he gave the wheel at the last moment. They went straight through over to about First Avenue, and then went north some more. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. He turned off at a street that became a ramp, dipping under the East River Drive, and ended up against the water’s edge with no bulkhead of any sort to protect it, in a sort of landing stage or apron just above the heaving gemmed blackness of the river.
He stopped only after their front tires were already tight against the low stone curbing that rimmed it.
Quinn held his peace. He thought, Two can play at your game.
Holmes shut off the engine and killed the front lights.
All the filigree coruscation went out of the water, but it was still there. They could smell it at every breath, and sometimes hear it. It made a little chuckling sound every now and then, like a very small infant.
“You’re pretty close to the edge, aren’t you?” Quinn remarked.
“The wheels’re blocked. You’re not nervous, are you?”
“I’m not nervous,” Quinn said flatly. “Should I be?”
Holmes turned his head slightly aside.
“What’re you looking at your watch for?”
“I was trying to figure how long ago you met me at Owen’s.”
“Twenty minutes,” Quinn said, “and this should have been all over with by now.”
“It’s going to be. Have you got the check? How much do you want for it?”
