When he roused again he forced himself to his knees and reached for the front doorknob. He fell down again before he could get hold of it. He tried to figure out another way to open the door without reaching the knob, and failed. Then he remembered seeing a telephone inside the door of the parlor. He turned and crawled toward the open door across the hall.

There was enough light; he could see the phone on its little spindling table, a doily under it, lace hanging down around the rim of the table. The doily pulled off with the phone, fell on his face. It smelled of ironed starch and dust. It seemed an eternity while he fought to lift his hand, to get it away from his mouth and nose so that he could breathe again.

When he had dialed, when the phone at the other end of the wire had rung six or seven times, Harry answered. Harry sounded cross and sleepy. “Yeah? Yeah?”

“Say . . . Harry.”

“Who is it?” Harry yawned. “Speak up. Say something.”

“Tom. This is Tom.”

“Oh.” Harry seemed to withdraw slightly from the receiver. “Well, where are you? What’s cooking?”

“Need . . . help.”

Harry took even longer to think about this. “You calling from a public phone, huh? A bar or someplace?”

“Hav . . .” Big Tom had to stop, to catch himself against the little table. He was only half propped up; now he lay flat on the floor, the phone on the floor beside him. “Havermann house. My car’s on the boulevard, near a dru . . . a drugstore.” Each word involved the effort of thinking about it, forming it with his lips, summoning the breath to speak. He lost all sense of what he had said; the present word was the aim, the hope, the hurdle.

“You sound sick,” Harry said. “Something happen t’ you?”

“Shot.”

“Man, oh man. You better get out of that house.”

“Going to try.” Big Tom’s senses faded; fear that he would black out again, lose the phone connection, lose Harry, washed through him like an icy pulse. “Can you meet me? Drive . . . car?”

Harry wasn’t willing; the silence, the waiting told Big Tom that. But finally Harry said grudgingly, “Now where did you say the car is?”

Big Tom tried to think of the name of the big boulevard. He grappled with his memory. It supplied names, other streets, other towns. Now this one—— Suddenly he had it, he said it into the phone, and Harry, still unwilling, promised to meet him at the car.

No use asking Harry to come here to help him. Harry wouldn’t do it. And the refusal would harden him and then he’d refuse to wait at the car. I’ll make it alone, that far, Big Tom promised himself. He dragged his drained, burning body back to the front door and tried again for the knob. He passed out there, still trying.