Free Oddments by Bill Pronzini Page B

by the time he had gone two blocks.
    He was halfway through the third block when he heard the muffled explosions.
    He stopped, the hairs on his neck prickling, a tremor of fear coursing through him. There was an alley on his left; the reports had come from that direction. Gunshots? He was certain that was what they'd been—and even more certain that they meant danger, sudden death. Run! he thought. And yet, though he was poised for flight, he did not run. He peered into the alley, saw a thin light at its far end.
    Run, run! But instead he entered the alley, moving slowly, feeling his way along. What am I doing? I shouldn't be here! But still he continued forward, approaching the narrow funnel of light. It came from inside a partly open door to the building on his right. Mr. Conway put out a hand and eased the door open wider, peered into what looked to be a warehouse. The thudding of his heart seemed as loud as a drum roll as he stepped over the threshold.
    The source of the light was a glassed-in cubicle toward the middle of the warehouse. Shadowy shapes—crates of some kind—loomed toward the ceiling on either side. He advanced in hesitant, wary steps, seeing no sign of movement in the gloom around him. At last he reached the cubicle, stood in the light. A watchman's office. He stepped up close to look through the glass.
    A cry rose in his throat when he saw the man lying motionless on the floor inside; he managed to stifle it. Blood stained the front of the man's khaki uniform jacket. He had been shot twice.
    Dead, murdered! Get out of here, call the police!
    Mr. Conway turned—and froze.
    A hulking figure stood not three feet away, looking straight at him.
    Mr. Conway's knees buckled; he had to put a hand against the glass to keep from collapsing. The murderer! His mind once again compelled him to run, run, but his legs would not obey. He could only stare back in horror at the hulking figure—at the pinched white face beneath a low-brimmed cloth cap, at rodentlike eyes and a cruel mouth, at the yawning muzzle of a revolver in one fist.
    "No!" Mr. Conway cried then. "No, please, don't shoot!" The man dropped into a furtive crouch, extending the pistol in front of him.
    "Don't shoot!" Mr. Conway said again, putting up his hands.
    Surprise, bewilderment, and a sudden trapped fear made a twisted mask of the man's face. "Who's that? Who's there?"
    Mr. Conway opened his mouth, then closed it again. He could scarcely believe his ears. The man was standing not three feet away, looking right at him!
    "I don't understand," Mr. Conway said before he could stop the words.
    The murderer fired. The sudden report caused Mr. Conway to jump convulsively aside; the bullet came nowhere near him. He saw the gunman looking desperately from side to side, everywhere but at him—and in that instant he did understand, he knew.
    "You can't see me," he said.
    The gun discharged a second bullet, but Mr. Conway had already moved again. Far to one side of him a spider-webbed hole appeared in the glass wall of the cubicle. "Damn you!" the murderer screamed. "Where are you? Where are you?"
    Mr. Conway remained standing there, clearly outlined in the light, for a moment longer; then he stepped to where a board lay on the floor nearby, picked it up. Without hesitation, he advanced on the terrified man and then struck him on the side of the head; watched dispassionately as the other dropped unconscious to the floor.
    Mr. Conway kicked the revolver away and stood over him. The police would have to be summoned, of course, but there was plenty of time for that now. A slow, grim smile stretched the corners of his mouth. Could it be that the remarkable collecting feat he had performed, his devotion and his passion, had stirred some supernatural force into granting him the Power that he now possessed? Well, no matter. His was not to question why; his was but to heed the plaintive cries of a world ridden with lawlessness.
    A deep, chilling