"Oh, thank goodness." Weak with relief, Phyllis leans against a shelf full of glass jam jars that clink together as she jostles them. "Yes, I know Calvin. Her Ladyship and I both do. Is he all right?"
"Hang on." Ruthie puts her head out of the window and speaks quietly again, then pulls back. "He says yeah. Got a big goose egg and a cut on his head, though. Henry must've clocked him a good one. He says he can help us get out this way."
"How far is it to the ground?" Cora asks.
"Not that far. Me and Frankie hang on the bottom of the fire escape and jump off sometimes, and it's not any higher than that. Lower, probably." Ruthie pushes her uneven fringe out of her eyes. "Only there ain't room to turn around up here, so you can't hang off by your hands and drop. You gotta go out headfirst and let him grab you under the armpits and lift you down."
The picture this conjures up is both undignified and embarrassing, but Phyllis doesn't see what other choice they have. "All right. You go first, but be careful. I don't want to see you hurt."
"Don't worry, I done lots more dangerous stuff than this," Ruthie says—a statement that Phyllis finds less than reassuring—and looks out the window again. "You ready to catch me? Okay, here I come." She wriggles out through the opening, vanishing into the crisp, damp night air, and Phyllis hears a grunt from Calvin as he takes her weight into his arms.
"Now you, milady," Phyllis says, but Cora shakes her head.
"I'm not going to fit through that window, Baxter. You might be able to, but I'll never make it, and even if I could, I wouldn't leave the house while my mother is still here. I want you to go with Ruthie and Calvin and get help."
"No!" Phyllis is utterly horrified by the idea of leaving Cora behind. "I can't leave you here on your own. What if they hurt you when they find out we've gone?"
"Yes, well, I'm not too pleased about that possibility either, so be quick, won't you?" Cora says with a half smile that Phyllis can just see in the light from the window.
"But milady—"
"Go on, Baxter. I'm giving you an order. Either do as you're told or resign your position right now."
"She ain't gonna come, Miss Baxter. Quit arguing and get up to to the damn window," Ruthie's small voice hisses from outside, and Phyllis winces at the language, but admits defeat and clambers up onto the water tank with some not-very-effective help from Cora. She's smaller than her Ladyship, but much bigger than Ruthie, and she has to contort herself awkwardly to fit into the space between the tank and the ceiling, but she manages to squash herself in somehow and grip the sill to look through the window. The hard surface of the side yard seems miles below, as do Calvin and Ruthie's anxious, upturned faces, and she has a wrenching moment of vertigo that makes her cling tighter to the wooden frame.
"What're you waiting for?" Ruthie is jittering about with impatience, her bare feet pattering on the paving stones. "It's not far. You can do it."
"I'm coming." Phyllis swallows hard and leans out as much as she can, reaching down until Calvin, who is well over six feet tall, can grab her upper arms with a sturdy, reassuring grip that gives her the courage to keep going. She nearly gets stuck at the hips, but squirms free and slithers through to be caught completely and lowered to the ground. Once there, she sees that Calvin is looking more than a bit the worse for wear: even in the shadows, the wound just above his temple, black with clotted blood, is clearly visible.
"Oh, your poor head," she says softly. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Well, I can't say I've never had a better night, but yeah, more or less." He touches the injury with delicate, probing fingers, and grimaces. "That guy in the brown jacket hit me—didn't knock me out, quite, but it was a while before I could get up. I looked through the front windows and saw him inside with another guy and a lady, so I went down to the next corner to see if I could find a cop, even though Lord knows they'd probably have arrested me too just for the look of it. But there wasn't anyone around, so I came back 'cause I didn't want to leave you alone here with them for too long. They did something to the car so it won't start."
"Henry said he pulled the fuses," Phyllis says, remembering.
"Who's Henry?"
"Pal of Mickey's," Ruthie says. "Jim too. He's the one went upstairs to watch the old lady."
Calvin looks from Ruthie to Phyllis, still feeling gently of his head. "I guess this must be your Ruthie, huh?"
"Yes," Phyllis says. "Her aunt is the woman you saw inside. Mickey is her—her fancy man, I suppose. They brought Ruthie along, but she didn't want to come, did you, Ruthie?"
"Hell no," Ruthie says staunchly. "And I don't want to hang around either. We oughtta go, Miss Baxter, before one of 'em comes outside and sees us. We gotta get to a police station or a phone booth or something."
"I know." Phyllis looks up at the open hole of the window and bites her lip, thinking of Cora inside, alone in the dark. "I hate leaving her Ladyship. If something should happen to her..."
Ruthie comes up beside her and slips a small, hot hand into hers. "She'll be fine. Mickey and Jess ain't gonna hurt her as long as they think they can get money and stuff from her, so let's go quick and get the cops. Me and Calvin need you to make 'em listen. They won't wanna pay attention to either of us."
The idea of speaking to the police for any reason at all makes Phyllis ill with fright, but she squeezes Ruthie's hand. "All right, let's go. Which way?"
Ruthie looks embarrassed. "I don't really know this part of town so good. I just came up to look for people to dip, before."
"Calvin?" Phyllis turns back to the chauffeur and is alarmed to see him sagging against the iron fence that surrounds the side yard, clutching its bars as if he might fall down without support. "Oh my Lord, what is it?"
"Just got dizzy for a second," Calvin says gruffly. "I'm okay now. I think if we just keep going down Fifth, we'll find a cop sooner or later. We can't go to any of the houses right around here. Mrs Levinson wasn't kidding when she said she and the neighbours don't like each other."
"Can you walk that far? Let me see your head." Phyllis brushes aside his attempt to fend her off and leans in to inspect the injury as best she can. "It looks terrible. If we could put some cold water on it..." She reaches into her pocket, remembers that she used her clean handkerchief to mop up Ruthie's runny nose, and pulls her prized silk scarf from round her neck instead. "Isn't there a tap out here?"
"Farther down that way," Calvin says, pointing. "You sure you want to wreck your nice scarf, though?"
"I can get another one. Wait right there."
Silently, she slips along the side of the house, fumbles for the tap in the dark, and opens it just a fraction, holding her breath for fear the pipes will make a noise that brings Mickey and his gang running. There's a fine spray of air and water droplets, and then a thin trickle that Phyllis uses to soak the scarf through. It hurts her a little—she isn't a saint, after all, and it took months of careful saving before she could afford to buy this piece of lovely, flimsy material on a shopping expedition to York—but if she did it once, she can do it again, and if Mickey kills them, it will hardly do her any good to have a silk scarf to wear at her own funeral. Shutting off the tap, she folds the wet, clinging fabric into a neat square and returns to to Calvin, who presses it to his head and draws in a sharp breath of pain.
"I'm all right," he says in response to her worried look. "Just stings at first, kinda. Come on. I can make it now."
Ruthie is too short to reach the latch on the gate, and Calvin is occupied with holding the compress to his head, so Phyllis is the one to reach up, unhook the latch, and ease the gate open for them to walk through one by one. Here in the crowded city, the house has nothing like the sprawling grounds of Mrs Levinson's Newport home, but it is set a little way back from the street with a severely trimmed box hedge running round it, and they have to creep as quietly as they can for several more yards before they reach the pavement. It's late enough in the evening for the endless parade of automobile traffic along Fifth Avenue to have slowed down, but as Phyllis knows from earlier in the summer, there is never a time in New York when it stops altogether. Perhaps, she thinks, they can simply wave down a police car, if they can pick one out from the glare of oncoming headlamps.
"I think we ought to cross the road, don't you?" she says to Calvin, who has come around her and is standing a little distance away on her left. "We don't want them seeing us as we pass the front of the house."
"Pretty sure it's too late for that, Miss Baxter," Calvin says. His voice is oddly tight, as if he's squeezing each word out with an effort, and Phyllis is confused both by his tone and his words until he moves aside enough for her to see Henry's slight shape behind him, gun out and pressed hard into the side of his uniform jacket.
"Oh shit," Ruthie says, disgusted, and for once Phyllis can't bring herself to disapprove of the crude word. It sums up her own feelings exactly.