Free Live Free

From The High Country

Stubb reached for the telephone. The witch said, “This is my room. You may hand it to me.” He nodded.

Candy nudged Barnes. “You think it’s him calling us?”

“Yes,” the witch said into the receiver. “This is she.” Then, “Of course you are. I knew your voice at once. What is it you want?”

There was a long pause while the witch listened.

“No, I did not. I will not say I never call invisible powers, but I have done nothing to him … . Everything affecting human lives involves spirits. That is nothing. There are many other explanations … . I would suggest that you go home. It is very late—if this were summer, you would see dawn at the windows.” She hung up.

Stubb was leaning back in his chair. The light from the weak hotel bulb above the table showed how waxen his skin was under a dark stubble. “You going to tell us?” he asked casually.

Ignoring the cigarette that smouldered on her plate, the witch got out another and her gold lighter. The flame trembled ever so slightly.

“Later, maybe,” Stubb said.

“I will tell you now, if you wish. It was the girl who just left. She was curious about the policeman and went past his room after all. She said he came out and tried to question her, but she would tell him nothing; when she threatened to scream, he released her. She asked if I had laid a curse on him.”

“And you said you hadn’t. Why’d she ask?”

“I assume because he looked or acted like one who had been cursed. She was prolix, but she really told me very little. I gathered she thought him irrational.”

“Did she tell you what he asked her?”

“Only that he wanted to know if we were all here, and that he seemed to expect her to know who he meant by all. She described us, and he asked who else was here.”

“Swell.” Stubb sounded bitter.

Candy asked, “What’s the matter, Jim?”

“Well, for one thing, I didn’t want her to talk to him. She has, and she’s sure as hell told him something. You can’t describe four people without telling an investigator who’s listening a lot, just to start with, and who knows what else she told him? For another thing, now I’ve got some idea of what he’s looking for.”

“And what’s that?” Barnes asked. “Or is it a big secret?” He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt.

“It’s no secret and it’s just a guess. But I think it’s a good guess. Who’s not here, Ozzie? Which of us isn’t here?”

Barnes’s eyes rolled as he looked about the room,the glass eye not quite tracking with his real one. “Why, we’re all here,” he said. “Everybody’s here.”

Stubb shook his head.

Candy asked, “You don’t mean Mrs. Baker?”

“Close, but no cigar. Who was she looking for? Who were the women who came and talked to her looking for? Last night, folks—just last night—there were five of us living together in the same house. Who’s missing?”

Barnes nodded. “Free, of course. I guess I didn’t think about him because we’d already talked about him when Mrs. Baker was here.”

“We’re going to talk about him some more. I didn’t want to do it then because that Duck girl was in the bathroom and so forth. But that’s why we’re here.” Stubb walked across the room to the television set and switched it on. “I don’t like talking against noise any more than the rest of you—maybe less. If anybody can guarantee no one’s listening in, I’ll turn it off. Anybody want to try?”

No one spoke.

“It stays on, then. The last we heard, Proudy was a couple of rooms away, but he may have got closer by now. There’s half a dozen tricks for listening through a hotel wall, and all of them work pretty good.”

Candy blurted, “All right, Mr. Free’s not here—and I don’t give a damn about the God-damned TV. If you knew how much talking I’ve done against rock tapes and radios and everything else—What I want to know is why are we here. If the crystal gazer wants to put me up for the night, fine. I could have found some other place, but this is as good as any. Only if you’re going to tell me it’s out of the goodness of her heart, forget it. In the first place, I don’t think she’s got one. In the second place, if she does there’s no goodness in it.”

“Thank you,” the witch said. “I am delighted by your gracious acceptance of my hospitality.”

“Knock it off,” Stubb told Candy. “What the hell do you think the rest of us are—a choir? This is a business meeting. You and Ozzie might as well know right now that before you came up Madame S. and I formed a little partnership. We’re going to help each other instead of fighting each other, and we’re going to split whatever we make right down the middle. She didn’t get you up here, I did—the room is just in her name, that’s all. And I didn’t get you up out of the goodness of my heart either. I did it because we want to invite you in. You get to hear our offer, and if you don’t take it you can split.”

Barnes was suddenly alert. “All right,” he said. “What’s the offer?”

“Let me ask you something first. Did Free ever say anything to you that made you think he had something valuable hidden?”

Barnes shut his eyes as he cast his mind back. “Suppose he did. Why?”

“We think he did. I’ll give you this just to show we’re dealing off the top. One time Free told me he came from what he called ‘the High Country.’ He said he had a ticket hidden away that would take him back there if he wanted to go, but it was too late to use it. What do you think of that?”

Barnes shrugged. “What do you think of it? That’s what seems important to me. You were there and you heard him, and now you say you’re going to make me an offer. What do you think?”

“I haven’t got anything but guesses,” Stubb said, “but I’ll let you have them—I’ve given them to Madame S. here already.” He took off his glasses, inspected their lenses and put them on again. “Ever since I talked to him, I’ve been wondering what the High Country might mean, because if I knew that, I’d have a pretty good idea what kind of a ticket it would take to get you there. Madame S. has her own ideas, but I’ll lay off them—she can tell you herself if she wants to. In the first place, the High Country could really be another country—Switzerland, maybe, or someplace else that’s got a lot of high ground; maybe the highlands of Scotland. In that case, the ticket’s probably his passport. Anybody buy that?”

He looked at Barnes and Candy, but there was no reply.

“Me neither. Here’s another guess. Free could be a hillbilly—he talked like one. Maybe he was from someplace in the Smokies. Anybody like it?”

Candy said, “Jim, I think he talked different depending on who he was with.”

“You sure of that?”

“No. I can’t really put my finger on it. Maybe it was something I just imagined. Only that’s the way it seemed to me. I don’t have a hell of a lot of education, Jim. I dropped out of high school. And I don’t think you do either. So I think maybe when he was around us he talked a little simple, so we’d relax.”

“Fine. That’s a good point, and I want to come back to it in a minute. For now, let’s hold it and clear the decks a little. Anybody go for the hillbilly idea?”

“No,” Barnes said. “Go on.”

“Then where are we?” Stubb paused and looked at each of them in turn. A televised war crashed to a close, and an announcer began to speak earnestly about soft drinks. “If he wasn’t from someplace that’s really high up—here or in some other country—what’s left?”

“Craziness,” Candy said.

Barnes swiveled to look at her.

She said, “You ever talk to those old bag ladies in the street? I have, when I’ve had a fifty or hundred-dollar trick and three or four shots afterwards. I’ll be floating along, and I’ll sit down beside one someplace, or one will sit by me. One I met was a princess. One was the bastard of some President. All of them have some crazy story, and if I ever hear one that makes the bag lady not so important as she looks instead of the other way, I’ll give her a five if I’ve got one. But I don’t think I’ll ever need to.”

“You really think Free was crazy?”

Candy thrust her chins forward as she considered. “I’ll have to think it over. But right now, yes, I think maybe he was. He let us into his house, didn’t he?”

The witch said, “And described us to his neighbor long before he did so, or so it sounded when she spoke of it. Was it only I who heard her? Whatever else may be true, Free was not mad.”

Stubb nodded. “I don’t think so either. Of course, Candy, what you think is up to you. For me, as far as I can see, if the guy wasn’t really from the mountains someplace, and he wasn’t nuts, there’s only one thing left. He told me he came from the High Country, and he came for adventure, and other people did the same thing, and he had his ticket—that was what he called it—hidden away, but it was too late for him to use it.”

Barnes said, “Then we look for it. It’s probably in the house someplace.”

“We will. Or rather, I will, tomorrow when it’s light; and if it’s in the house, I’ll probably find it. But suppose I don’t? Suppose it isn’t in the house at all? He told me one time that everything valuable had been stolen from his bedroom one time when he was away. It would be a lot easier to find the ticket if we could find Free.”

Candy put in, “You said there was only one thing left, Jim. Lay it on us.”

Stubb smiled and leaned back. “He called it the High Country. Maybe we’d call it high finance, high society, or the high life. I think Free, and that name’s a ringer if I ever heard one, came from a wealthy old family, that kind that’s been playing ambassador and governor and maybe even President for so long they’ve forgotten who great granddaddy stole the money from in the first place. I think when he got out of Harvard, or maybe even before he got out, he went to the Good Will store and bought some old clothes and went on the bum. A lot of them do. Just for an adventure, like he said. And I think that whatever the reason was, he stayed a whole lot longer than most of them do. Maybe he got mixed up with some woman. Maybe he was dodging something up there where he came from; maybe he didn’t want to spend his life running Amalgamated Copper or whatever it was. Then they decided he was dead, and he was ashamed to go home.”

He took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve; when he looked up for a moment, his eyes seemed grotesquely small. “But before he started his little adventure, I think he left himself an out—something that would bring him back to Harvard and Newport and all that if he ever wanted to go. Something that would make him rich, really rich, no matter what his family did while he was gone. Even if he was declared legally dead, for example.

“I’m not going to ask if anybody buys that idea. Somebody does—me. I’ve talked it over a little with Madame S. here, and although she doesn’t see it my way, she agrees that Free wasn’t nuts, and he really did have something very valuable salted away.” The thick lenses back in place, Stubb looked toward the witch. “Right?”

Her nod was guarded, but unmistakably a nod.

“So I talked to her. I said, listen here, whatever it was, I’m going after it and you’re going after it too. You’ve got your way of operating and I’ve got mine, and it’s even money we’ll just screw each other up so somebody else gets it or nobody gets it at all. I’ve never doublecrossed a client, and I never will. Let’s join and split it down the middle. She’s a smart lady; she agreed. Now we’re making the same offer to you two. You lived with him just like we did. It’s likely one of you—maybe both of you—heard something we didn’t, something that might be important. Throw in with us, and you’re each in for ten percent of whatever we find. But it’s got to be now, and you’ve got to be willing to work for the partnership as well as talk. Do you want in?”

“We get ten percent,” Barnes said.

“Right.”

“You said you were giving us the same deal you made with Madame Serpentina, and you said the two of you were going to divide it equally.”

“Divide what?” Stubb snorted. “We don’t even know if anything’s really there. If it is, ten percent could be a fortune.”

Candy yawned. “Jim, if it was just you, I’d be in. You know that. The way it is …”

Barnes said, “And I’d be delighted to assist Madame Serpentina; but that would be—uh—a matter of gallantry. This is business, and not very good business, not very profitable business.”

“Candy said she thought Free was crazy. Do you think so too, Ozzie?”

Slowly, Barnes shook his head.

“What do you think?”

“I’m going to reserve that,” Barnes said. “I’ll tell you in the morning. Maybe.”

“In the morning?”

Barnes shrugged. “You’re going to have to let Candy and me stay here. As Madame Serpentina said a few minutes ago, it’s already so late that if it were summer it would be getting light out.”

Candy said, “That’s right. Dibs on the bathroom.”

“If you two stay here, you’re going to be sleeping on the floor,” Stubb told them. “I should have said we will—all three of us. Let’s get that straight right now.”

“What the hell!” The fat girl stared at him openmouthed. “There’s two double beds.”

“Right. And if more than one person uses them, the maid will report it, and the hotel will know there’s been more than one person staying in the room. We can’t afford that. It’s Madame S.’s room, so she gets a bed. The rest of us bunk on the floor or in chairs—or not at all.”