The police! thought Montag. They see me. Careful man, careful.
The car was coming at a terrific speed. A good one hundred miles an hour, if anything. Its horn was blaring. Its lights flushed the concrete and the heat of them, it seemed, burned his cheeks and eyelids and brought the sweat coursing from his body.
He began to shuffle and then run. The horn hooted. The sound of the motor went higher, higher. He ran. He dropped a book, hesitated, let it lie, and plunged on, babbling to himself, he was in the middle of the street, the car was a hundred yards away, closer, closer, hooting, pushing, rolling, screeching, the horn frozen, him running, his legs up and down, his eyes blind in the flashing hot light, the horn nearer, upon him.
They’re going to run me down, they know who I am, it’s all over, it’s all done! said Mr. Montag. But he held to the books and kept racing.
He stumbled and fell.
That saved him. Just an instant before reaching him the wild, hysterical car swerved to one side, went around him and was gone like a bullet away. Mr. Montag lay where he had fallen. Wisps of laughter trailed back with the blue exhaust.
That wasn’t the police, thought Mr. Montag.
It was a carful of high school children, yelling, whistling, hurrahing, laughing. And they had seen a man, a pedestrian, a rarity, and they had said to themselves, Let’s get him! They didn’t know he was wanted, that he was Montag, they were out for a night of howling and roaring here and there covering five hundred miles in a few moonlit hours, their faces icy with the wind, their hair flowing.
“They would have killed me,” thought Montag, lying there. “For no reason. They would have killed me.”
He got up and walked unsteadily to the far curb. Somehow he had remembered to pick up the spilled books. He looked at them, oddly, in his hands.
“I wonder,” he said, “If they were the ones who killed Clarisse.” His eyes watered, standing there. The thing that had saved him was self-preservation. If he had remained upright, they’d have hit him, like a domino, sent him spinning. But the fact that he was prone had caused the driver to consider the possibility that running over a body at one hundred miles an hour might turn the car over and spill them all out to their deaths.
Montag glanced down the avenue. A half mile away, the car full of kids had turned and was coming back, picking up speed.
Montag hurried into an alley and was gone long before the car returned.
The house was silent.
Mr. Montag approached it from the back, creeping through the scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass. He touched the screen door, found it open, slipped in, tiptoed across the porch, and, behind the ice-box, beyond another door, in the kitchen, deposited five of the books. He waited, listening to the house.
“Billett, are you asleep up there?” he asked of the second floor in a whisper. “I hate to do this to you, but you did it to others, never asking, never wondering, never worrying. Now it’s your house, and you in jail awhile, all the houses you’ve burned and people you’ve killed.”
The ceiling did not reply.
Quietly, Montag slipped from the house and returned to the alley. The house was still dark, no one had heard him come or go.
He walked casually down the alley, around a block to an all night druggist’s, where he closed himself in a booth and dialed a number.
“Hello?”
“I want to report an illegal ownership of books,” he said.
The voice sharpened on the other end. “The address?”
“11 South Grove Glade.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend, no name. Better get there before he burns them.”
“We’ll get there, thanks.” Click.
Montag stepped out and walked down the street. Far away, he heard sirens coming, coming to burn Mr. Billett’s house, and him upstairs, not knowing, deep in sleep.
“Good night, Mr. Billett,” said Montag.
A RAP AT THE DOOR.
“Professor Faber!”
Another rap and a long silence. And then, from within, the lights flickering on as the Professor sat up in bed, cutting the selenium rays in his room, all about the house the lights winked on, like eyes opening up.
Professor Faber opened the door. “Who is it?” he said, for the man who catered was scarcely recognizable. “Oh, Montag!”
“I’m going away,” said Montag, stumbling to a chair. “I’ve been a fool.”
Professor Faber stood at the door half a minute, listening to the distant sirens wailing off like animals in the morning. “Someone’s been busy.”
“It worked.”
“At least you were a fool about the right things.” Faber shut the door, came back, and poured a drink for each of them. “I wondered what had happened to you.”
“I was delayed. But the money is here.” He took it from his pocket and laid it on the desk, then sat there and tiredly sipped his drink. “How do you feel?”
“This is the first night I’ve fallen right to sleep in years,” said Faber. “That must mean I’m doing the correct thing. I think we can trust me, now. I didn’t.”
“People never trust themselves, but they never let others know. I suppose that’s why we do rash things, to expose ourselves in such a position we do not dare retreat. Unconsciously, we fear that we may give in, quit the fight, and so we do a foolish thing, like read poetry to women.” He laughed at himself. “So I guess I’ll be on the run now. It’s up to you to keep things moving.”
“I’ll do my damndest,” Faber sat down. “Tell me about it. What you did just now, I mean.”
“I hid the books in three houses, in different places in each house so it would not look planned. Then I telephoned the firemen.”
Faber shook his head. “God, I’d like to have been there. Did the places burn!”
“Yes, they burned very well.”
“Where are you going now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll keep in touch with you. You can leave some books for me to use, from time to time, in vacant lots. I’ll call you.”
“Of course. Do you want to sleep here for a while?”
“I’d better get going, I wouldn’t want you to be held responsible for my being here.”
“Just a moment. Let’s listen.” Faber waved his hand three times at the radio and it came on, with a voice talking rapidly.
“—this evening. Montag has escaped but will be found. Citizens are alerted to watch for this man. Five foot ten, 170 pounds, blond-brown hair, blue eyes, healthy complexion. Here’s a bulletin. The Electric Dog is being transported here from Albany.”
Montag and Faber glanced at each other, eyebrows up.
“—you may recall the stories recently of this new invention, a machine so delicate that it can follow a trail, much in the way bloodhounds have done for centuries. But this machine always finds its quarry, without fail!”
Montag put his drink down and he was cold.
“The machine is self-operating, on a miniature cell motor, weighs about sixty pounds, and is propelled on a series of seven rubber wheels. The front part of this machine is a nose which, in reality, is a thousand noses, so sensitive they can distinguish ten thousand foods, five thousand flower smells, and remember the identity index odors of 15,000 men without resetting.”
Faber began to tremble. He looked at his house, at the door, the floor, the chair in which Montag sat. Montag interpreted this look. They both looked together at the invisible trail of footprints leading to this house, coming across this room, the fingerprints on the door knob, and the smell of his body in the air and on this chair.
“The Electric Hound is now landing, by helicopter, at the burned Montag house, we take you there by TV control!”
And there was the burned house, the crowd, and something with a sheet over it, Mr. Leahy, yes, Mr. Leahy, and out of the sky, fluttering, came the red helicopter, landing like a grotesque flower while the police pushed back the crowd and the wind blew the women’s dresses.
Mr. Montag watched the scene with a solid fascination, not wanting to move, ever. If he wished, he could sit here, in comfort, and follow the entire hunt on through its phases, down alleys, up streets, across empty running avenues, with the sky lightening to dawn, up other alleys to burned houses, so on to this place here, this house, with Faber and himself seated here at their leisure, smoking idly, drinking good wine, while the Electric Hound sniffed down the paths, wailing, and stopped outside that door right there, and then, if he wished, Montag could rise, go to the door, keeping one eye on the television screen, open the door, and look out, and look back, and see himself standing there, limned in the bright screen, from outside, a drama to be watched objectively, and he would watch himself, for an instant before oblivion, being killed for the benefit of a TV audience that was thousands bigger now, for the TV stations across the country were probably beeping-beeping to waken the viewer to a Scoop!
“There it is,” said Faber.
Out of the helicopter came something that was not a machine, not an animal, not dead, not alive, just moving. It glowed with a green light, like phosphorescence from the sea, and
