A Touch of Death

A Touch of Death

Charles Williams

© 1954

Chapter One

It was a fourplex out near the beach. I stopped the car, looked at the ad again, and went up the walk. Only two of the mailboxes had names on them, and neither was the one I wanted.

This was the right address, though, so it had to be one of the others. I picked one at random and pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. I tried again, and could hear it faintly somewhere on the second floor.

I waited a minute or two and tried the other. No one answered. I lit a cigarette and turned to look along the street. It was very quiet in the hot afternoon sun. A few cars went past on the sea wall, and far out in the Gulf a shrimp boat crawled like a fly across a mirror.

I swore under my breath. It had looked like a good lead, and I hated to give up. Maybe one of the other tenants would know where he was. I tried the buzzer marked Sorenson first, and when it came up nothing I leaned on the one that said James.

The whole place was as silent as the grave.

I shrugged and went back down the walk. I was about to get into the car when I saw the patio wall in the rear of the place. A walk ran past the side of the building to a high wooden gate, which was closed. There might be somebody back there. I stepped across the front lawn

and went back to the gate and opened it.

“Oh. Excuse me,” I said.

The girl was a brunette and she was sunbathing in the bottom part of a two-fragment bathing suit. She was lying face down on a long beach towel with a bottle of suntan lotion beside her and a book open in front of her on the grass. She turned her head casually and looked at me through dark glasses.

“Were you looking for someone?” she asked.

“Man named Winlock,” I said. “He gave this address. Do you happen to know if he’s around?”

“I’m new here,” she said. “But I think the people in the other upstairs apartment are named Winlock or Winchester, or something like that. I suppose you tried the buzzer?”

“Yes. No dice.”

She shrugged a satiny shoulder. “They may have gone

out on a boat. I think he fishes.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well. Thanks a lot.”

I started to turn away, and noticed she was staring at

my face. Or at least I felt she was. The glasses were so dark I couldn’t see what her eyes were doing.

“You could leave a note under the door,” she said. “I think it’s the third one from the left.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m probably too late. I mean, since he’s not home. The ad was in yesterday’s paper.”

“Ad?”

“He wanted to buy a late-model car.”

“Oh.”

She lay with her face turned toward me, her cheek down against the towel, very relaxed but still watching me. The brassiere part of the bathing suit was under her, but she had untied the strap across the back. Tall, I thought, if she stood up. Not that she was likely to, with that thing untied.

“It sounds like a funny way to buy a car,” she said.

“Lots of people do it,” I said. “Saves a dealer’s

commission.”

“I see. And you’ve got one for sale?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not a dealer?”

“No,” I said. I wondered what she was driving at. The cigarette in my hand was burning short. I turned and tossed it through the gate onto the walk.

When I looked back she was working the strap of the halter gizmo up between her arm and side. She clamped it there and started to turn on her side, facing me, until it became obvious to both of us that the thing wasn’t big enough to allow any leeway if she didn’t have it straight.

It was missing the mark. And there was quite a bit of it to miss.

“Would you mind?” she asked calmly. “Just for a moment.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.” I turned and stared out the gate, but I could still see her in my mind. I’d called her a girl, but she was probably near thirty.

In a moment she said, “All right,” and I turned around. She was sitting up on the towel with the long legs doubled under her. The halter was tied.

“What kind of car is it?” she asked.

“Fifty-three Pontiac. About fourteen thousand miles on

it.” I wondered again what was on her mind.

“How much do you want for it?”

“Twenty-five hundred,” I said. “Why? You know

somebody in the market for one?”

“Wel-l-l,” she said slowly, “I might be. I’ve been thinking of buying a car.”

“You could go farther and do worse,” I said. “It’s a two-tone job, white sidewalls, radio, seat covers—”

She was studying my face again with that curious intensity. “Is it worth twenty-five hundred dollars, really?”

“Every nickel of it,” I said, ready to go into a sales pitch. Maybe we could make a deal. Then I got the impression that she wasn’t even listening to what I said.

She took off the glasses and stared thoughtfully at me. Her eyes were large and self-possessed, and jet black, like her hair. The hair was long, drawn into a roll at the back of her neck. She looked Spanish, except that even with the faint tan her skin was very fair.

“There’s something about your face,” she said. “I keep thinking I should know who you are.”

So that was it. It still happens once in a while. “Not

unless you’ve got a long memory,” I said.

She shook her head. “Not too long. Four years? Five?”

“Make it six.”

“Yes. That’s about it. I was quite a football fan in those days. Scarborough, wasn’t it? Lee Scarborough? All-Conference left half.”

“You should be a cop,” I said. “No. You were quite famous.” “They get new ones every year.” I wished we could get

back to the car trade. You can’t eat six-year-old football scores.

“Why didn’t you join the pros?” She took a puff on the cigarette she was smoking and tossed it into a flower bed without taking her eyes from my face.

“I did,” I said. “But it didn’t jell.”

“What happened?”

“Bum knee.” I squatted on my heels. “How about the

car? You really want to buy one?”

“I think so. But why do you want to sell it?”

“I need the money.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It’s out front, if you’d like to drive it.”

“All right,” she said. “But I’d have to change. Would

you mind?”

“Not at all. I’ll wait in the car.”

“Oh, come on up. It’s cooler inside.”

“O.K.,” I said. We stood up. She was tall, all right. I

picked up the suntan lotion and the book and towel.

“I’m Diana James,” she said.

She saw me glance down at her left hand, and smiled.

“You’ll only have to make one sales talk. I’m not married.”

“I’d have given you odds the other way.”

“I was, once. But, as you say, it didn’t jell.”

We went up the outside stairs at the rear of the building and in through the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of bourbon out of a cupboard and set it on the drain.

“Mix yourself a drink, and go into the living room. Soda and ice cubes in the refrigerator.”

“I hate to drink alone this early in the day,” I said. “It scares me.”

She smiled. “All right. If you insist.”

I mixed two and handed her one. We went on through to the living room, looking out over the Gulf. She took a sip of her drink and put it on the coffee table.

“Just make yourself at home,” she said. “I think this month’s True is in the rack there. I won’t be long.”

I watched her walk back across the dining room to the short hall that led to the bedroom and bath. It seemed to take her a long time.

The car, I thought. Remember? Don’t louse it up.

I sat down and glanced around the room. It had the anonymous look of any furnished apartment, but it wasn’t cheap. Hundred or a hundred and fifty a week during the season, I thought. It was odd she didn’t already have a car, and that, not having one, she wanted to buy a secondhand one.

Her purse was on the table at the end of the couch. I glanced at it, thinking she must be careless as hell or convinced all ex-football players were honest, and then I shrugged and started to take another sip of my drink. I stopped, and my eyes jerked back to the table.

It wasn’t the purse. It was the alligator key case lying beside it. The zipper was open and the keys dangled loose on the glass. And one of them was that square-shouldered shape you recognize anywhere. It was the ignition key to a General Motors car. Just who was kidding whom?

Well, I thought, she didn’t say she didn’t have one. Maybe she wanted two, or she was selling the other one. It was her business.

When she came out she had on a short-sleeved white summer dress and gilt sandals without stockings. She was tall and cool and very easy on the eye. Taking another sip of the drink she’d left, she gathered up the purse and keys and we went out to the car. She slid in behind the wheel.

I was deliberately slow in handing her the keys to it, and she did just what I thought she’d do. She opened the alligator case and started to stab at the dash with her own. She caught herself, and glanced quickly at me. I didn’t say anything, but I was beginning to wonder. She was trying to cover up the fact that she already had a car. Why?

We cruised to the end of the sea wall and out the beach, not saying much at first. The sand was firm, and

when we began to get clear of the traffic and the suntan crowd she let it out a little, to around fifty-five.

“It handles nicely,” she said.

“You’re a good driver.” I lit two cigarettes and handed her one.

“What do you do, Mr. Scarborough?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the beach ahead.

“This and that,” I said. “I sell things. Or try to. Real estate was the last.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said. “But I take it you’re not doing anything at the moment?”

“That’s right. I’m thinking of going to Arabia with a construction outfit. That’s one reason I want to sell the car.”

“How soon are you going?”

“Probably sometime next month. Why?”

“Oh, I just wondered.” She didn’t say anything more for

a minute or two; then she asked, “Are you married?

“No,” I said.

“Did you ever think of making a lot of money?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“But did you ever actually think of doing anything

about it?”

“Sure. Someday I’m going to invent the incandescent lamp.”

“A little soured, Mr. Scarborough? You surely haven’t run out of dreams already? At—twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-nine. Look, with a dream and ten cents you can buy a cup of coffee. The only thing I was ever any good at was moving a football from one place to another place, with ten guys helping me. And you need two knees for it. Does this car look like twenty-five hundred bucks

to you?”

“A little tough,” she murmured. “That’s nice.”

“Why?”

“I was just thinking again. And I do like the car.”

“Then it’s a deal?”

She turned her head then and smiled at me. “Maybe,” she said. “We might make a deal.” She didn’t say any more. We drove on down the beach.

When we came back and parked in front of the apartment house she turned off the ignition and started to drop the keys in her purse. I held out my hand for them, saying nothing. Our eyes met, and she shrugged. We got out.

I looked back along the curb, and ahead. “Which is it?” I asked. “The Olds, or that Caddy up there?”

She smiled. “Neither. Its in the garage back in the alley. You notice things, don’t you?”

“What’s the gag?”

“What makes you think there is one? Maybe I want two cars.”

“Do you?”

She looked me right in the face. “No,” she said.

I was burning. “What’s the idea of wasting my time?”

“Maybe I wasn’t.”

“No?”

“That’s up to you. I said we might make a deal. Remember?”

She went up the stairs and I followed her, remembering the long, relaxed smoothness of her on that towel. She put her purse on the table and tilted the Venetian blinds a little against the light. It was cooler in the apartment and almost dim after the glare in the street. When she turned back I was standing in front of her. I pulled her to me and kissed her, hard, with my hands digging into her back. But she wasn’t wasting my time then. I was.

It was all nothing. She rolled with it like a passed-out drunk and didn’t even close her eyes. They just watched me coolly. She broke it up with her elbows without seeming to move them, the way they can, and said, “That wasn’t quite the deal I had in mind.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I said.

“Nothing, I suppose, under the right circumstances. But I asked you up here to talk business. Why don’t you sit down? You’d probably be more comfortable.”

I was still angry, but there was no percentage in knocking myself out. I sat down. She went into the kitchen and came back in a minute with two drinks.

She sat down in a big chair on the other side of the coffee table and crossed her legs. She put a cigarette in her mouth and waited for me to leap up and hold the lighter for her.

The hell with her.

She shrugged and reached for the lighter on the coffee

table.

“What is it?” I asked.

She stared thoughtfully at me. “I’ve been trying to size

you up.”

“Why?”

“I’m coming to that. I think I can see you now. A little tough—and, what’s more to the point, a little cynical, as anybody would be who was a hero at eighteen and a has-been at twenty-five. You sold things for a while, but you sold less and less as time went by and the customers had a little trouble remembering who Lee Scarborough was. You can stop me any time you don’t agree with this.”

“Go on,” I said.

“There was another thing I kept trying to remember. I’ve got it now. You got in trouble your last year in college and were almost kicked out and nearly went to

jail.”

“So I smashed up a car,” I said.

“It was somebody else’s car. And the woman who was

smashed up along with it was somebody else’s wife. She was in the hospital a long time.”

“She got over it,” I said. “Without any scars.”

“Yes. I guess you would know that.”

“All right. Look. There’s a type of babe who chases football players. What’re we supposed to do? Scream for help? Or wear chastity girdles?”

She smiled. “You don’t have to defend yourself. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to see how you fit in the picture. And I think you’ll do, on all counts. I want to make you a proposition.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did.”

“You take women pretty casually, don’t you?” she said.

“There’s another way?”

“Never mind. But do you want to hear what I asked you up here for?”

“Shoot.”

“Remember, I asked you how you’d like to make a lot of money? Well, I think I know where there is a lot of it, for anybody with nerve enough to pick it up.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you mean, pick it up? Steal it?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s already been stolen. Maybe twice.”

I put down my cigarette. She was watching me closely.

“Just how much money?” I asked.

“A hundred and twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

Chapter Two

It was very quiet in the room. I whistled softly.

She was still watching me. “How does it sound?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything about it yet.”

“All right,” she said. “I have to take a chance on somebody if I’m ever going to do anything about it, because I can’t do it alone—and I think you’re the one. It’ll take nerve and intelligence, and it has to be somebody without a criminal record, so the police won’t have their eyes on him afterward.”

“O.K., O.K.,” I said. I knew what she meant. Somebody who wasn’t a criminal but who might let a little rub off on him if the price was right. It was a lot of money, but I wanted to hear about it first.

She studied me with speculation in her eyes. “There’s a reward for the return of it.”

She was sharp. I could see the beauty of that. She was showing me how to do it. You thought about the reward, first; when you got used to that you could let your ideas grow a little. You didn’t have to jump in cold. You waded

in.

“Whose money is it?” I asked. “And where is it?”

“It’s just a long guess,” she said. “I didn’t say I knew

where it was. I said I think I know. You add up a lot of things to get to it.”

“Such as?”

She took a sip of the drink and looked at me across the top of the glass. “Did you ever hear of a man named J. N. Butler?”

“I don’t think so. Who is he?”

“Just a minute.”

She got up and went into the bedroom. When she came back she handed me two newspaper clippings. I looked at the first one. It was datelined here in Sanport, June eighth. That was two months ago.

SEARCH WIDENS FOR MISSING BANK OFFICIAL

J. N. Butler, vice-president of the First National Bank of Mount Temple, was the object of a rapidly expanding manhunt today as announcement was made of discovery of a shortage in the bank’s funds estimated at $120,000.

I looked up at her. She smiled. I read on.

Butler, prominent in social and civic activities of the town for over twenty years, has been missing since Saturday, at which time, according to Mrs. Butler, he announced his intention of going to Louisiana for a weekend fishing trip. He did not return Sunday night, as scheduled, but it was not until the bank opened for business this morning that the shortage was discovered.

I read the second one. It was dated three days later, and was a rehash of the previous story, except that the lead paragraph said Butler s car had been found abandoned in Sanport and that police were now looking for him all over the nation.

I handed them back. “That was two months ago,” I said. “What’s the pitch? Have they found him?” “No,” she said. “And I don’t think they will.” “What do you mean?” “I don’t think he ever left his house in Mount Temple. Not alive, anyway.”

I put the drink down very slowly and watched her face. You didn’t have to be a genius to see she knew something about it the police didn’t.

“Why?” I asked. “Interested?” “I might be. Enough to listen, anyway.”

“All right,” she said. “It’s like this: I’m a nurse. And for about eight months I was on a job in Mount Temple, taking care of a woman who’d suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed. Her house was out in the edge of town, across the street from a big place, an enormous old house taking up a whole city block. J. N. Butler’s place.” She stopped.

“All right,” I said. “Keep going.”

“Well, his car, the one they found abandoned here—I saw it leave there that Saturday. Only it wasn’t Saturday afternoon, the way she said; it was Saturday night. And

he wasn’t driving it. She was.”

“His wife?”

“His wife.”

“Hold it,” I said. “You say it was night. How do you

know who was driving?”

“I was out on the front lawn, smoking a cigarette before going to bed. Just as the Butler car came out of their drive onto the street, another car went by and caught it in the headlights. It was Mrs. Butler, all right. Alone.”

“But,” I said, “maybe she was just going to town or something. That doesn’t prove he didn’t leave in the car later.”

She shook her head. “Mrs. Butler never drove his car. She had her own. He didn’t abandon that car in Sanport.

She did. I’d swear it.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you see the possibilities?” she said impatiently. “He almost has to be dead. There’s no other answer. They’d have found him long ago if he were alive. He was a big, good-looking man, the black-Irish type, easy to see and hard to hide. He was six-three and weighed around two-thirty. You think they couldn’t find him? And another thing. When they run like that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred there’s another woman in it. Suppose Mrs. Butler found out about it, before he got away? He was going to have the money and the other woman, while she held still for the disgrace. What would she do? Help him pack his bag, to be sure he had plenty of handkerchiefs?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What about her?”

She shrugged and gestured with the cigarette. “Who knows who’s capable of murder? Maybe anybody is, under the right pressure. But I can tell you a little about her. This is probably an odd thing to say, but she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Brunette, with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of the book. Old-family sort of thing; the house is really hers. She also drinks like a fish.”

“You didn’t miss much while you were up there.”

“You mean the drinking? It was one of those hushed-up secrets everybody knows.”

“Then,” I said, “your idea is she killed Butler? And that

the money’s still there in the house?”

“Right.”

“Didn’t the police shake it down?”

“After a fashion. But why would they make much of a search, when he’d obviously got away to Sanport and then disappeared?”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “But there’s another angle. You say he was a big guy. If she killed him, how did she dispose of his body? She couldn’t very well call the piano movers.”

She shook her head. “That I don’t know. I haven’t been able to figure it. But maybe she had a boyfriend. She still had to get back from Sanport, too, after she ditched the car. And, naturally, she couldn’t come on the bus. Somebody’d remember it. A boyfriend fits.”

“I can see Mrs. Butler rates, in your book,” I said. “So far, she’s only a lush, a murderer, and a tramp. What’d she do? Dig up your flower beds?”

“Opinions are beside the point. This is for money. What we’re trying to get at is facts!”

“And all we’ve got is a string of guesses. Anyway, what’s your idea?”

“That we search the house. Tear it apart, if necessary, until we find the money, or some evidence as to what became of Butler, or something.”

“With her in it? Think again.”

“No,” she said. “That’s why it takes two of us. She’s here in town now, attending a meeting of some historical society. I’ll hunt her up, get her plastered, and keep her

that way. For days, if necessary. You’ll have time to dismantle the house and put it back together before she sobers up enough to go home.”

“What you’re really looking for,” I said, “is a patsy. If something goes wrong, you’re all right, but I’m a dead duck.”

“Don’t be silly. The house is in the middle of an estate that’d cover a city block, with big hedges and trees around it. There’s one servant, who goes home as soon as she’s out of sight. You could take an orchestra with you, and nobody’d ever know you were in there. The police may check the place once a night when nobody’s home, but you don’t have to tear off a door and leave it lying on the lawn for them, just to get in. The drapes and curtains will all be drawn. There’ll be food in the kitchen. You could set up housekeeping. How about it?”

“It sounds safe enough, for the price,” I said. I got up and walked across the room. “But I still don’t see it. All that stuff about her leaving there in the car doesn’t prove anything. Hell, maybe she was in it with him, and was just covering for him by ditching the car while he got out of town some other way.”

She shook her head. “No. I tell you he’s dead. And she killed him. That money’s still there.”

“I can’t see why you’re so sure,” I said.

“Then you don’t believe I’m right?” she said. “You don’t want to tackle it?”

I thought about the money. A hundred and twenty thousand. You couldn’t get hold of it all at once. It was too big. It had to grow on you.

I let it grow.

But, hell. She was crazy. In that whole story of hers there wasn’t one shred of evidence that Butler hadn’t got away with it. A lot of good guesses, maybe, but no concrete evidence. And if you were going to take a chance and start breaking laws like that, you had to have something more definite than a guess to lead you on. I

couldn’t see it.

“Well?” she asked. “How about it?”

“The whole thing’s a pipe dream,” I said.

“You’re passing up a fortune.”

I shrugged. “I doubt it.”

I tried another pass but she wasn’t having any, so I said, “See you around,” and shoved off. I punched Winlock’s buzzer on the way downstairs, but he still wasn’t home.

I got in the car and looked at my watch. It was after five. The whole afternoon was shot. I went home, picking up my mail on the way in through the lobby, and wondering how much longer I’d be able to pay the rent. It was more apartment than I needed, or could afford, in a new building with a lot of glass brick and thick carpets, over on Davy Avenue. I’d moved into it when I first went with Wagner Realty and was going to make a thousand a month selling houses in a subdivision. That was in May, and when they dusted off the old wheeze about a reduction in force three days ago, on the first of August, I was still working on the first month’s thousand. Maybe the demand for ten-thousand-dollar apple crates was falling off, or I was no salesman.

I sat down in the living room and looked at the mail. It was all bills except one letter on orchid stationery. I tried to recall who the girl was, but finally gave up and looked at the bills. The tailor called my attention very tactfully to $225 that I had apparently overlooked last month and the month before. There was another note due on the car. I shuffled through the others: two department stores, the utilities, and the kennel that boarded Moxie, the English setter. I checked my bank balance. I had $170.

I went out in the kitchen and tried to convince myself I ought to have a drink. After looking at the bottle, I shoved it back on the shelf, losing interest in it. I never drank much, and I still had the sour taste of those others in my mouth. I thought of her. I thought of her on that towel. The hell with all dizzy women, anyway. The whole afternoon shot, I hadn’t sold the car, and I didn’t even get the consolation prize. No sale, no loving, I thought disgustedly, saying it so it rhymed. The whole afternoon shot to hell. It would probably have been pretty good stuff, too.

That bank balance couldn’t have been right. A hundred and seventy— I checked it again.

It was right.

I thought of Saudi Arabia, of 120-degree heat and sand and the wind blowing for two years, and wondered if I could take it. But before long it wasn’t going to be a question of whether I could stand it or not. I had to do something. I made less money every year.

You got your brains beat out for four years for seventy dollars a month plus your tuition and having some old grad pounding you on the back to get into the pictures after you’d scored from eight yards out in the last three seconds of play in the Homecoming game, and five years later the son-of-a-bitch couldn’t remember your name when you tried to send it in past the arctic blonde in the outer office.

I put a cigarette in my mouth, reaching for the lighter, and then let it hang there, forgotten. Half of $120,000...

I shrugged irritably. Was I going to start that again? Maybe I was going back to believing in Santa Claus. Diana James was just a victim of wishful thinking, trying to build something out of a half-baked theory. But still, she didn’t quite strike me as that kind of featherhead.

Why was she so sure? That was the thing I couldn’t see. It didn’t match up with the flimsy evidence of her story. And why hadn’t the police found him? Something rang there, too. They should have picked him up long ago, a big, good-looking guy like that with no place to hide. I didn’t know much about police work, but it seemed to me embezzlers should be the easiest of all lamsters to collar; the people who were looking for them knew too much about them. They’d have pictures of him, a complete knowledge of all his habits, everything. His car had been abandoned here in a city of four hundred thousand, and then he had vanished like a wisp of smoke. It could happen. But the odds were very long against it.

The whole thing was just crazy enough to make you wonder.

And the amount was too big to get out of your mind.

I cursed, and went back down to the car. I drove over to the library and asked for the back files of the Sanport Citizen. Beginning with the first of August, I worked back toward June. In the fourth paper I found another story on it. It was datelined Sanport, July 27.

NO SOLUTION IN BUTLER DISAPPEARANCE

After nearly two months of a nationwide manhunt, police announced today there has been no new light whatever thrown on the possible whereabouts of the Mount Temple bank official who allegedly absconded with $120,000 of the bank’s funds. Since the discovery on June 11 of Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street near the beach...

Well, there wasn’t anything new in that, except the fact that they definitely hadn’t found him.

I sat suddenly upright in the chair. The thing that had been bothering me all the time was just beyond my reach. I looked back at the story: “...Butler’s car, abandoned on a local street near the beach...” That was it.

That second clipping she had shown me, the one carrying the story about the car, had given the name of the street. It hadn’t sunk in at the time, but it had been bothering my subconscious ever since. I grabbed another bundle of the papers and began flipping hurriedly through them. June 14, June 13, June 11—it should be in this one. I shot my glance up column and down, across the front page. Here it was.

“The late-model automobile of the missing man was discovered early today abandoned near the beach in the 200 block of Duval Boulevard.”

I wondered why I had let it slide off the first time I’d read it. It was given right in Winlock’s ad, the thing that had taken me out there in the first place. The address of that apartment house was 220 Duval Boulevard.

I was beginning to have an idea why she was so sure Butler was dead.

Chapter Three

She came down and let me in when I rang the buzzer. Neither of us said anything until we were back up in the living room. She sat down in the same place she’d been before, across the coffee table, and smiled at me, the eyes cool and a little amused.

“I wondered if you’d be back,” she said. “And how soon.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She lit a cigarette and looked thoughtfully at the smoke. “Let’s put it this way: If you didn’t have sense enough to see it, you wouldn’t be smart enough to be of any help. This is no child’s game, you know. And it could be dangerous as hell.”

“There’s one thing I’m still not too sure of,” I said. “And that’s why you’re so certain she’s the one that killed him and left his car in front of your apartment. Wasn’t there anybody else who could have known he was going to run off with you?”

“It’s not likely. And nobody but that vindictive bitch would have gone to that much trouble and risk of exposure just for the pleasure of letting me know. I mean, leaving the car right out front here. She would do that.”

“How about telling me the whole thing?” I said.

“Suppose you tell me something first,” she said coolly. “Do you want in this, or don’t you?”

“What do you think? I came back, didn’t I?”

“Not worried about breaking the law?”

“Let’s put it this way: Whoever’s got that money is outside the law himself, or herself. So he or she can’t yell cop. And as far as conscience is concerned, you can buy a lot of sleeping pills with sixty thousand dollars.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Who said anything about sixty thousand? I’m offering you a third.”

“And you know what you can do with your third. It’s half or nothing.”

“You’ve got a nerve—”

“What do you mean, nerve? I’m the one that has to go up there and stick his head in the lion’s mouth and search the place. You don’t take any risk.”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Relax. I just thought I’d try. A half it is.”

“That’s better. Now, tell me about it.”

“All right,” she said. “You know now why I’m so certain he’s dead. He has to be, or he’d have shown up here. Butler was no fool. He knew he didn’t have a chance unless he had a place to hide. So he and I worked it out. I got this apartment several months before he pulled it off. When he took the money and made the break he was to come here, hide in this apartment without even going out on the street for at least two months, until some of the uproar had died down and we had changed his appearance as much as possible. Then we were going to get away to the West Coast in a car and trailer, with Butler riding in the trailer. He’d turn up in San Francisco with a whole new identity. It was a fine idea, of course, except that he never did show up here. His car did, but somebody else drove it.”

“That’s right.”

“So you believe me now?” she said.

“Yes. Certainly. That was the thing that made the difference. The other story didn’t make any sense. As soon as it soaked into my head that you were the woman he was running off with— And, of course, if he didn’t show up here, it was because he couldn’t.”

“So the money’s still right there in the house in Mount Temple,” she said.

“That I’m not so sure of. Anybody might have killed him, for that much.”

“No. Nobody else could have known about it. But she did. The last time I saw him he was afraid she’d put detectives on our trail.”

“How long have you known them?” I asked. “Were you actually a nurse there in Mount Temple?”

“Yes. But that was last fall and winter. I’d been back here four months when he actually pulled it off.”

“He was pretty gone on you?”

“Maybe. In a way,” she said.

“You after him? Or the money?”

“Let’s say both. We believed in taking what we needed, and what we needed was each other. What do you want? Tristan and Isolde?”

“And now that he’s dead, you’ll settle for the money?” Then I changed it. “For half the money.”

“That’s right. What should I do? Throw myself off a cliff?”

“We’ll get along,” I said.

She crushed the cigarette out with a savage slash at the ashtray. “There’s another thing, too. She’s not going to get away with it. The drunken bitch.”

Well, I thought, I’ll be a sad...

“Get this through your head,” I said. “Once and for all. This is a business proposition, or I’m out, as of now. There’ll be no wild-haired babes blowing their tops and killing each other in anything I’m mixed up in. I thought you were tough.”

She glared at me. “I am,” she said. “What I mean is

she’s not going to get away with the money.”

“That’s better. Just keep it in mind.”

“Mount Temple’s about two hundred miles away,” I

said. “I can drive it in four hours.”

She shook her head. “You’ll have to go on the bus.”

“What do you mean, go on the bus?”

“Look. You’ll be in that house two days. Maybe three.

Where are you going to leave your car? In the drive?”

“I’ll park it somewhere else in town.”

“No. In that length of time somebody might notice it. The police might impound it. A hundred things could happen.”

I could see she was right. A car with out-of-town tags sitting around that long might attract attention. But the bus idea wasn’t much better.

“I’m supposed to get in there and out without being seen by anybody who could identify me afterward. The bus is no good.”

She nodded. “That’s right, too. We can’t be too careful about that. I think the best thing is for me to drive you up there.”

“Listen,” I said. “Here’s the way we work it. You drive me up there, drop me off in back somewhere where there s no street light, then come back and keep an eye on Mrs. Butler. This is Tuesday night. If the house is as big as you say it is, I’ll want two full days. So at exactly two o’clock Friday morning you ease by in back of the place again and I’ll be out there waiting for you. We’ll either have the money, or we’ll know it’s not there.”

“Right.” She leaned back in her chair and stared at me with her eyes a little cool and hard. “And just in case you haven’t thought of it yet,” she said, “don’t get any brilliant ideas about running out with all of it if you find it, just because I’m not there. You know how far you’d get as soon as the police received an anonymous phone call.”

She had it figured from every angle. “You’re sweet,” I said. “Who’d run off from you?”

“For that much money, you would. But don’t try it.”

“Right,” I said. “And while we’re on the subject, don’t try to double-cross me, either.”

I held my wrist under the dash lights and looked at the watch. It was three-ten.

We had left Sanport at midnight, after I had put my own car in a storage garage and bought a few things I’d need. I checked them off in my mind: flashlight with spare batteries, small screwdriver, Scotch tape, half a dozen packs of cigarettes. It was all there.

She was driving fast, around sixty most of the time. There was very little traffic, and the towns along the highway were asleep. We came into one now, and she slowed to thirty-five as we went through.

“It’s the next one,” she said. “About thirty miles.”

“You won’t get back until after daylight.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nobody knows me there. And Mrs.

Butler probably won’t be up before noon.”

“The police may be tailing her. Just on the chance she might be meeting Butler.”

“I know.” She punched the cigarette lighter and said, “Give me a cigarette, Lee. But what if they are? They don’t know anything.”

When the lighter popped out, I lit the cigarette and handed it to her. We were running through a long river bottom now, with dark walls of trees on both sides. I looked at her. She had put on a long, pleated white skirt and maroon blouse. She was a smooth job, with the glow of the dash highlighting the rounded contours of her face and shining in the big dark eyes.

I lit one for myself. “There’s one thing I still don’t like,” I said. “There may be a lot of that money in negotiable securities instead of cash. I mean, he was a banker and he’d know how to convert ‘em without getting tripped up, but we wouldn’t.”

“No,” she said. “He was going to get it all in cash. He was going to pick the time when he could get it that way.”

“Good,” I said. “God, that’s a wad of dough.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It would be a pretty good-sized briefcaseful, figuring a lot of it would be in tens and twenties. What kind of hiding place would you look for, if you had to stash it around a house?”

“It’s an old house,” she said. “A very old house, and a big one. The only thing to do is start at the attic and work down, taking it a room at a time. Look for places that appear to have been repapered recently or where there’s been some repair work, like around window sills and doorframes. Trap doors above clothes closets, in the floors or walls. And remember, she’s plenty smart. She’s just as likely to wrap it in old paper and throw it in a trunk or a barrel of rubbish. Take your time, and tear the house apart if you have to. She’s in no position to call the police.”

“We hope,” I said.

“We know.”

“All right,” I said. “But I still don’t want her to catch me in there just to see if we’re right. So I’ve been trying to figure out some way you can tip me off if she gets away

from you and you think she’s on her way home. I think I’ve got it. Call the house, long-distance, and—”

“But, my God, you couldn’t answer the phone if it rang. There’s no way you could tell who it was.”

“Wait till I finish,” I said. “Of course I won’t answer until I’m sure it’s you. Here’s the way. Call right on the hour. I won’t answer, so put the call in again at a quarter past, as near as you can make it. I won’t answer then, either, because it still might be a coincidence. But repeat it again, as near half past as you can, and I’ll pick it up. Just ask if Mrs. Butler is better. I’ll say yes, and hang up and get the hell out of there.”

I thought about it again. “No. Wait. There’s no reason I should have to answer at all. Those three calls, fifteen minutes apart, will be the signal. When I hear the third one, I scram.”

“That’s good,” she said, nodding. “You know how to use your head. It’s funny, but in a lot of ways you’re just like Butler.”

“Not too much, I hope.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He’s dead. Remember?”

She fell silent. We came up out of the river country and ran through rolling hills with dark farmhouses here and there along the road. In a few minutes she said, “We’re almost there. It’s on the left as we go into town.”

I looked, but it was too dark to see much. All I got was the shadowy impression of a house set far back from the street among the darker gloom of big trees. There was no light anywhere. We made a gentle turn to the right and then were on the street going into town, with houses and lawns on both sides. About three blocks up a street light hung out over an intersection. She turned left before we got to it, went a block down a side street, and turned left again.

“When I stop,” she said, “we’ll be right behind the place. There’s a big oleander hedge and a woven-wire fence, but the gate probably won’t be locked. Or if it is, you can climb over or go around in front. Good luck.”

“Check,” I said. “Friday morning at two o’clock. Right here.”

She was slowing. The car came to a standstill for not more than two seconds. I slid out and eased the door shut. Her hand lifted and the car slid away. I was on my own.

The red taillights of the car swung left and disappeared. I stepped off the street and stood for a moment while my eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness. There was no moon, and the night was hot and still. Somewhere across town a dog barked. I could see the dark line of the oleanders in front of me now, and started walking toward them, putting out my hand. I touched the fence, and walked parallel to it, looking for the gate and a break in the hedge.

I’d forgotten to look at my watch again before I got out of the car, but I should have nearly two hours until daybreak. It was plenty of time to find a way into the house.

I went twenty steps along the fence. Thirty. There had to be a gate somewhere. She’d said there was. I came to a corner. There was no opening. I had gone the wrong way. I turned and went back, touching the fence with my hands. It was six feet high, with steel posts. The oleanders were on the inside, a solid wall of them nearly fifteen feet high.

I found the gate. It rattled a little when I put my hand on it. I felt along one side for the latch and located it. Apparently there was no chain or padlock. I eased it open. A dry hinge squeaked in the silence. I stopped, then pulled it open very slowly.

I could see the dark bulk of the house looming ahead of me now across the expanse of rear lawn. It was enormous, two stories and an attic, probably, with high gables running off into the big overhanging trees at each end. Off to the right was a smaller pile of blackness, which I took to be the garage.

I stepped inside, through the break in the hedge, and studied the blank windows carefully for any sliver of light at all. There was none. The whole place was as dark and deserted and silent as if it had been vacant for twenty years.

I eased across the grass toward the back porch. Then, suddenly, I thought of something we had overlooked. We hadn’t thought of the grounds themselves. There were probably two acres of trees, flower beds, shrubs, and lawns around the place. If the money—or even Butler’s body—had been buried out here somewhere, it would take a gang of men with a bulldozer a week to search it all. We’d been stupid.

But what could we do about it, if we had thought of it? Our only hope was that the stuff was in the house. If I didn’t find it there, we were whipped. The only thing to do was go on.

I came to the corner of the porch and went around it to the rear of the house itself. In the darkness I could just make out the forms of two windows set close to the ground and partially screened by shrubs. They were just what I had been hoping to find—basement windows.

I slipped up to the first and took out the small flashlight. Standing close to shield it with my body, I shot the tiny beam inside. The screen and the window were both dirty, but I could see the latch where the top and bottom sashes met. It was closed. I moved to the other window. It was latched too.

Probably they all are, I thought. I stood back a little and sized them up. This one was better screened behind the shrubs. Getting down on my knees, I turned the light on again and shot it in on the hook at the bottom of the screen. I took out the screwdriver, pushed the blade in through the wire, and pried at the hook. It slid out, and the screen was free. I swung the bottom of it outward against the shrub and got in behind it.

Taking the Scotch tape out of my pocket, I began peeling it off and plastering strips of it across the glass of the upper sash, crisscrossing it in all directions. Then I reversed the screwdriver and rapped smartly with the handle right in front of the latch. The glass cracked, but the tape kept it from falling. I slid the screwdriver blade through against the latch, and pushed. It slid open.

I raised the bottom sash, swung the beam of light down inside, and dropped in. Pulling the screen back in place, I hooked it and closed the window. I took a quick look around the basement. This must be only part of it. It was a big room with a furnace in the center. Against the opposite wall was a coal bin, and beside it were some old trunks and a pile of magazines and newspapers. I saw a door, and went through it. This room held a washing machine and a lot of clotheslines.

There was no use trying to search this now. What I had to do first was take a quick look at the whole house and size up the job—and make certain that maid wasn’t here. Diana James had said she’d be gone, but it wasn’t Diana James that was going to wind up behind the eight ball if she happened to be wrong.

I went back in the first room and started swinging the light around, looking for the stairway. I’d just spotted it, over against the rear wall, when I stopped dead still and cut the light. I held my breath, listening. I could hear my heart beating in the dead, oppressive silence, and the hair along the back of my neck was still prickling. The place was making me jumpy.

What I’d thought I heard was music.

Music at four o’clock in the morning in an empty house? Nuts. I listened for another full minute and then flicked the light on again. I went up the stairs. There was a door at the top of them. I opened it softly and went through. I was in the kitchen.

There was a window over the sink, but the curtains were drawn. That was something I had to check in all the rooms, so I could move around freely during the day. I examined the rest of the room. The door by the sink must be the one going out onto the back porch. The one on this side, beyond the stove, apparently led into the dining room and the front of the house. This left one more, besides the cellar door I’d just come through. It was at the end of the kitchen, and it was closed. I had to see in there. It should be the maid’s room.

I eased over to it, got my hand on the knob, and cut the light. I turned it slowly, very slowly, and pushed. It swung open into more of the same impenetrable darkness. I stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of breathing. It was the maid’s room, all right.

The room was full of her, but that didn’t mean she was here now. What I was smelling was the place she lived in. But I had to know, and know now, before it was daylight and too late to get out. I flicked the light on, pointed straight down, my nerves tightened up for the scream that would split the night. Or the gun blast that’ll blow my stupid head off, I thought, if she’s here and she’s got company. I was sweating. I eased the beam forward. It hit the end of a bed, climbed it. The bed was empty. I breathed again.

I closed the door and walked back through the kitchen. The drapes were drawn in the dining room. The table and sideboards were old, massive, and very dark. One of the sideboards was covered with an ornate old silver service that had probably cost somebody’s ancestor a young fortune.

I walked on into the living room and inspected it in the beam of light. No wonder Mrs. Butler’s a lush, I thought. Living in a mausoleum like this would make anybody take to the juice. It was an enormous room, furnished the same way the dining room was. The woodwork was all mahogany and walnut, and dark with age. The drapes, which were drawn, looked like wine-colored velvet, and the sofas and chairs were upholstered in maroon plush— the ones that weren’t black leather. One whole wall was covered with books.

I stopped the light suddenly, staring at the rows of books. I backed it up a little. Then I brought it ahead, very slowly, watching. It was odd. The volumes of the encyclopedia were all jumbled, in no order at all, and there were other books sandwiched in between them.

I began to have an odd hunch then. I threw the light around over the rest of the room again. Everything else seemed to be in order and in its place. I got down on my hands and knees beside one of the sofas and looked at the dents in the rug where the feet rested. It had been moved recently, all right. But that didn’t mean anything. The maid had probably done it, cleaning.

Picking up one end of the sofa, I swung it away from the wall and looked at the back of it. I saw it then. It was a long slash in the cloth, made by a sharp knife or razor blade. I began snatching up the cushions. They were all slashed on the undersides. So were the ones in the chairs.

For an instant I wanted to throw the flashlight through the window. Then I settled down a little, and squatted on my heels to light a cigarette. Who was it? No, the question was: Had he found what he was looking for? There was a chance he hadn’t.

But, if not, why wasn’t he still here, looking for it? That was the one you couldn’t get around.

Was there a chance it was just the search the police had given the place, two months ago? No. They wouldn’t have cut things up that way. And Mrs. Butler or the maid would have put the books back in some sort of order by this time. This had been done recently.

But there was one thing about it. The fact that somebody else had been searching the place proved we were right. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who had reason to believe Mrs. Butler had killed her husband before he could get away.

And I was here, wasn’t I? And I was going to be here until Friday morning. What did I want to do— quit before I’d even got started? What the hell. Go ahead and search the place. That was what I’d come for. Maybe the other people hadn’t found it. I located an ashtray and crushed out the cigarette. The thought of the money was making me itchy again.

I went out through an archway at the end of the living room. There was a short hall here, or entry, with the front door at one end and the stairs at the other. I started up the stairs.

The steps were carpeted, but halfway up one pf them creaked under my weight. I stopped, cursing silently; then I shook off the jumpiness. What was I worried about? I had the whole place to myself, didn’t I? The maid was gone.

I reached the top. I started to turn, sweeping the flashlight beam ahead of me. Then I froze dead and snapped it off, staring down the hallway. A door was open on one side of it, and I could see a very faint glow of light spilling out into the hall. I put my other foot down silently and eased the awkward position I was in. I wanted to turn and run, but something about the light fascinated me. I remained motionless, hardly breathing.

It was too dim to be an electric light of any kind, and it seemed to flicker. Was it a match? Maybe whoever it was was setting fire to the place. But no, it didn’t seem to grow, as a fire would. I waited. It remained the same. Then I knew what it was. It was a candle.

That didn’t make any sense. Who’d be wandering around with a candle, with flashlights selling for forty-nine cents? But before I could even start to think about it, I became conscious of something new. It was a sound. It was a faint hissing noise, coming from the room.

Then, at almost the same time I guessed what it was, the music started. It had been the needle riding in the groove, of a phonograph record. The music was turned down very low, and it was something long-hair I didn’t recognize.

I knew I should run, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to look in there. It was only three or four steps down the hall. There was a carpet to muffle the sound of my steps.

I stopped just short of the door. This was the dangerous part of it. Whoever was in there would be able to see me when I looked in if he happened to be facing the door. The music went on very softly, but there was no other sound. I put my face against the doorframe and peered around it.

It was a strange sight. At first there was an odd feeling about it, as if I had wandered into some kind of religious ceremony. Then I began to get it sorted out. It was a bedroom. The candle was burning on the floor in a little silver dish, and beside it was the record player. Phonograph records were scattered around on the rug, and in the middle of them, alongside a low couch, a girl in a long blue robe sat on the floor and swayed gently back and forth as she listened to the music.

I saw her in profile with the candlelight softly touching her face and the cloud of dark hair that swirled about it. She was almost unbelievably beautiful, and she was drunk as a lord.

I remained very still outside the door, thinking coldly of Diana James. Mrs. Butler was like hell in Sanport.

Chapter Four

Had she thrown that curve deliberately, or had it just been a mix-up? She’d lied right at the beginning, because she didn’t want to tell me any more about the thing than she had to. Maybe she’d lied again.

But maybe it had just been an accident. Mrs. Butler must have come back from Sanport unexpectedly, without her hearing about it. It made sense that way. We wanted the money. To find it, we had to search the house. So there was nothing she stood to gain by getting me to come up here to try to shake it down with Mrs. Butler in it.

Was there?

I couldn’t see anything. But the next time I took anybody’s word… I was still burning.

Well, we could kiss off any chance of finding it now. The thing I had to do was get out of there as fast as I could, before daylight. If I waited too long, somebody might spot me leaving. Once I got off the grounds I’d be all right. I could walk into town and hang around until there was a bus leaving for Sanport. And when I got back there I’d break the news to Diana James as to what I thought of her and her information.

I remained standing there, sick with rage at the idea of having to give up. Somehow it seemed I had already come to consider the money as mine, as already found and safe in my pocket, and now that it was snatched away I was wild with a sense of loss, as if somebody had robbed me. Why didn’t I lock her in a closet and go on with the search as soon as it was light?

No. That would be too dangerous. Discovery was almost certain. The maid would come back. She might have visitors. I’d be caught. I discarded the idea, but I did not leave.

There was no danger. Not from her. She was too plastered to notice anything, or to do anything about it if she did see me. If I walked in and started talking to her, she’d probably just think I was another form of the jimjams. I could see the half-empty bottle, and the glass that had fallen over on its side. She wasn’t a noisy drunk, or a sloppy one. It was just the opposite. The thing that tipped you off was the exaggerated dignity, and the slow, deliberate way she moved, as if she were made of eggshells.

The record ran out to the end and ground to a stop as the machine shut itself off. It was deadly silent with the music gone. She made no attempt to put on another record. She was still swaying a little, and I could see her lips moving as if she were singing to herself or praying, but no sound came out. Then, very slowly, she turned the upper part of her body a little and collapsed against the low divan beside her. Her face was pressed into the covering, the dark hair aswirl, and one arm stretched out across it.

I started to turn away. It was time to get out of there. Then I stopped suddenly and swung my head around, listening. What I’d heard wasn’t repeated. It didn’t have to be; I knew what it was. It was that step, the same one that had creaked under me. Somebody was coming up the stairs.

There was another room opening off the hall, but the door was closed. He’d hear me open it. I didn’t have all night to make up my mind. I slid inside, leaned over Mrs. Butler, and blew out the candle. I’d already seen the closet door partly open beyond her.

When the blackness closed in I kept the picture of the room in my mind long enough to turn ninety degrees to the right, slip past the end of the divan, and grope for the door of the closet. I touched it, eased it open, and stepped inside. Clothes brushed against my back. They smelled faintly of perfume in the hot, dead air.

There was no sound. But the hallway was carpeted. Whoever it was could be anywhere out there. I waited, keeping an eye to the crack in the door. A beam of light appeared in the doorway of the room and swung around the walls. It hit a mirror and splashed, then swept on. It dipped, catching the pile of phonograph records and the whisky bottle, and came to rest at last on the sprawled figure of the girl. It remained fixed, like a big eye, while whoever was holding the flashlight walked on into the room. It was so still I tried to quiet the sound of my breathing.

He was squatting down now, and seemed to be changing hands with the light. Then I saw why. Just for a second the gun passed through the beam, steadying up against her temple. The cold-blooded brutality of it made me come out of the closet without even stopping to think.

I was driving, the way they teach you to get up a head of steam in the first three strides. But I forgot the end of the divan. My legs hit it, and I went the rest of the way in by air. He was under me and trying to turn when I sifted down on him, and from then on it was confused, and rough. When nothing crunched, I knew he was no flyweight himself, and as we rolled across and demolished the record player I could feel the tremendous surge of power in the arm about my neck. The light had gone out when it hit the floor, so we were in absolute darkness, and I didn’t know what had become of the gun.

The arm was pulling my head off. I broke it up by getting a knee into his belly and starting to move it down to where he didn’t like it. He scuttled away from it and landed a big fist on the side of my face. It rocked me. I could feel it going all the way down to my toes and back up again like a shock wave. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and swung blindly in the dark. I missed. I heard him scrambling away. He was on his feet. He crashed into the doorframe, and then he was gone down the hall.

I sat up dizzily and dug my own flashlight out of my pocket. He might or might not leave the house, and it made a lot of difference now who had the gun. I held the light out from my side and snapped it on, shooting it around the floor. The gun was lying in a hash of broken phonograph records, and his light was on the floor the other side of what was left of the player. I picked up the gun, checked the safety, and put it in my pocket, conscious of the heavy way I was breathing. It had been short, but it had been rugged.

I squatted on the floor to get my breath. Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. I had the gun, so it wasn’t likely he’d tackle me again. I could leave, provided, of course, I didn’t run into half a dozen more on the way out.

I thought of Diana James. She was cute. She just needed somebody to search this old vacant house. There was nothing to it. And if the first sucker she sent got killed, she could always find more. Well, she was going to get a sucker’s full report when I got back to Sanport.

I stood up. I’d better get started. Flicking on the light again, I looked down at the girl. Her shoulders had fallen off the divan and she was lying on the floor beside it with her head on an outstretched arm. She was going to have an awful headache in the morning, I thought, when she tried to figure out how she could have wrecked the room this way. It would be a rough way to wake up.

I got it then. If I left, she wasn’t going to wake up.

That guy had come here to kill her. He’d wait around until he saw me shove off, then he’d finish the job I had interrupted. He didn’t need the gun. She was asleep; he could kill her with anything. He was good when they were asleep. You could see that.

Well, what was I supposed to do? So I didn’t have the stomach to sit there and see her butchered in cold blood; so now I was the protector of the poor? The hell with it. If I hung around here until she sobered up, she’d probably have me arrested for burglary. And I could just tell the cops how it happened, couldn’t I? They didn’t get many laughs in their work. Housebreaker saves woman’s life. Hey, Joe, come listen to this one.

Then a very chilling thought caught up with me. Suppose they found her in here murdered, tomorrow or the next day? Maybe nobody on earth knew that other guy was here. But there was one person who knew damn well I’d been here, because she’d brought me here. And if she ever leaked, I’d be in the worst jam I’d ever heard of.

I had to do something. Time was running out. I squatted there in the dark, thinking swiftly. I began to

see it then. It was the answer to everything.

Here was where I went in business for myself.

All I’d accomplished in this thing so far was to get shoved around. I’d been played for a sucker by a smooth operator who’d told me about 10 percent of the whole story, but now the program was going to change.

We were all looking for that money. And the only person that really knew whether or not it was in this house was Mrs. Butler. She was the key to the whole thing. I didn’t believe now that it was here, but she knew where it was, or where it was last seen. So what I wanted was Mrs. Butler. If I left her here she’d be killed, but if I took her with me I’d have the exact thing I needed: information.

And I knew just where to take her where we wouldn’t be interrupted. I could sober her up, and maybe if I kept asking the right questions long enough, I might find out a little about this. Of course, if she didn’t have anything to do with killing Butler, I was laying myself wide open to arrest for kidnapping, but I could see the way out of that. I tried to visualize the road map in my mind. It couldn’t be much over fifty miles…

It collapsed on me then. Take her? How? I didn’t have my car. Load her on my shoulder like a sack of oats, and walk through town with her? I cursed under my breath. I was right back where I’d started. But wait. She had a car, didn’t she? She must have come back from Sanport in it.

I’d have to leave her while I went out to the garage to look. But that joker probably wouldn’t try to ease back until he was sure I was gone. I went out and down the stairs, hurrying. I unlocked the kitchen door leading onto the back porch, cut the light, and went out. It was a few seconds before I could see anything in the dark. It’d be a nice time, I thought, for the gruesome bastard to try to clobber me with an ax.

When I could make out the squat shadow of the garage off beyond the corner of the house, I groped my way over to it. The big overhead door was locked. I went around to the side. There was a small door there. I tried the knob. It was unlocked. I went in and closed it. When I switched on the flashlight I was standing beside a ‘53 Cadillac. I poked the beam in on the dash. The keys weren’t in it. All I had to do now was find them. In a house of about twenty rooms. I looked at my watch. It was four-twenty. Maybe I couldn’t make it now, even if I already had the keys.

I’d never pretended to be able to think like a woman, but I knew a little about drunks. It paid off. I covered the area between the front door, where she would come in, and the kitchen, where the bottle would be, and I found the purse on a table by the dining room door. Her key case was in it.

I left it where it was and went back upstairs. I had picked her up and started out of the room when ] thought of something else. Putting her down on the divan, I flashed the light around on the floor, looking for the bottle. It had been knocked over during the fight, but it was corked and none of it had spilled. It was a fifth, a little over half full. I shoved it in my coat pocket and picked her up again. She was still out like a hung jury, and I knew she would be for hours. As I went out through the kitchen I grabbed up the purse.

I put her on the back seat of the car and switched on the flashlight long enough to take a look at the keys. I sorted out a couple that looked promising, cut the light, and went back outside, feeling for the lock of the overhead door. The first key did the trick. I boosted the door up slowly and got back in the car. Picking out the ignition key by feel, I started the Caddy and backed it out onto the driveway. The drive was white gravel and I could see it all right, all the way out to the big gates in front. I swung out onto the street and felt my way very slowly for another hundred yards. Then I switched on the headlights and goosed the two hundred horses.

Housebreaking, I thought. Auto theft. Abduction. What was next? Blackmail? Extortion? But I had it all figured now, I was still within jumping distance of solid ground in every direction, and I wasn’t in much danger if I played it right. Somebody was going to come home first in that $120,000 sweepstakes, and as of now I looked like the favorite.

We were headed south, on the highway we’d come in on. I rolled it up to seventy and tried to remember where the turnoff was. It should be somewhere around ten miles beyond that next town. I’d just have to watch for it, because I wasn’t too sure, approaching it from this direction. I’d been there plenty of times, but had always come up from the south.

The headlights of a car behind us hit the rear-view mirror. I watched them for a minute. It probably didn’t mean anything; there were always a few cars on the road, even at four-thirty in the morning. They continued to hang in about the same place, not gaining or falling back.

Maybe the joker’d had a car there and was trying to find out where we went. We were dipping down toward that long piece of tangent across the river bottom now. We’ll see, chum, I thought. I flipped the lights on high beam and gunned it.

I flattened it out at ninety-five and the swamp and timber flashed past and disappeared behind us in the night with just the long sucking sound of the wind. I couldn’t watch him now because I couldn’t take my eyes off the road, but when we came out onto the winding grade at the other end I eased it down and looked. He’d dropped back, but only a little.

That was dumb, I thought. Suppose it was a highway cop pacing us? But it wasn’t; he made no attempt to haul us down. He was just hanging there. I was still worrying about the turnoff. There was still only a slight chance he was following us, but I didn’t want him to see where we left the highway.

We blasted through the little town and I began counting off the miles on the speedometer. The road was winding now, and he was out of sight most of the time. But I had to ease it, looking for the place. We’d come nine miles. Ten. Eleven. Had I passed it?

Then we careened around a long curve and I saw the huddled dark buildings of the country store and filling station. I rode it down and made the turn, throwing gravel as we left the pavement. The county road ran straight ahead through dark walls of pine. I stepped on the brakes again and snapped off the lights as we slid to a stop. In a minute I saw his lights as he went rocketing past on the highway. I sighed with relief. It was probably some guy named Joe, in the wholesale grocery business.

I cut the lights back on and before we started up I looked at my watch. It was a little after five. We still had about twenty miles to go, and I wanted to get past the last houses on the way before daybreak. We could make it if we kept moving.

Two miles ahead I turned right and followed a county road going south through scrub pine. I knew the way all right now. I’d been up here a dozen times or more with Bill Livingston, and sometimes alone, or with a girl. It was his camp I was headed for.

We’d been friends in college. His family had left him a lot of money and five or ten thousand acres of land back in here, including the lake where the camp was and a bunch of sloughs and river bottom. He was in Europe for the summer, but I knew where he left the key to the place.

I slowed, watching for the wire gate on the left side of the road. We came to it in a few minutes, went through, and I closed it again. It was eight miles of rough private road now, up over a series of sand hills and then dropping down toward the lake. The last time I’d been in they were cutting timber back in here somewhere and logging trucks were using the first three or four miles of the road. I could see the tread marks of their big tires in the ruts now. There was no way to tell whether any other cars had been in or not.

I pushed it hard. In about ten minutes we came to the fork where the logging trucks swung off to the right. I went left. As soon as we were around the next bend I stopped and got out and looked at the ruts in the headlights. There hadn’t been a car through since the last time it had rained, probably weeks ago. We had it all to ourselves.

Dawn was breaking as we came down the last grade. I caught glimpses of the arm of the lake ahead, dark and oily smooth, like blued steel, with patches of mist rising here and there in the timber. It was intensely quiet, and beautiful. For a minute I wished I were only going fishing. Then I brushed it off.

We went through the meadow and crossed a wooden culvert at the edge of the trees along the lake shore. I stopped and got out. The key was hanging on a nail just inside one end of the culvert.

The cabin faced the meadow rather than the lake. It was large for a fishing or duck-hunting camp, more like a deserted old farmhouse backed up among the big trees at the lake’s edge. It was still half dark back in here, and I left the lights on as I stopped by the overhang of the front porch.

The lock grated in the early-morning hush. I pushed the door open and went in. Striking a match, I located one of the kerosene lamps and lit it. This was the main room, with a wood-burning kitchen stove and some cupboards in the rear and a cot and some chairs and a table up front. The door on the right led into a storeroom that was cluttered with a hundred or so old beat-up duck decoys, parts of outboard motors, some oars, and a welter of fishing tackle.

The other one, on the left, was closed. I pushed it open and carried the lamp in. It was the bedroom. It held two built-in bunks, one above the other, and a double bed against the front wall. The bed was spread with an Army blanket. I put the lamp down on a small table and went back out to the car.

I carried her in and put her on the bed. Her face was waxen white in the lamplight and her hair was a dark mist across the pillow. She must have been at least thirty, she was a passed-out drunk, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I stood looking down at her for a minute. The whole thing was a lousy mess. Then I shrugged and picked up the lamp. I wasn’t her mother. And it was a rough world, any way you looked at it.

I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the car into the old shed on the far side of the house and closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned stuff in the storeroom and some flour and miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.

I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but when the beard comes out it’s ginger-colored and dirty.

I rooted around in the storeroom until I found somebody’s duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.

The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.

I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.

It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.

And I had Mrs. Butler.

It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.

I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a glass, and went in.

Chapter Five

She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.

She stared at me.

“Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the glass.

“Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around the

room. “And what am I doing in this place?”

“Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.

She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room with it. When I came back I had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel, and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved the table over where she could reach it. She ignored the whole thing.

“Will you answer my question?” she said. “What am I doing in this revolting shanty?”

“Oh,” I said. “Then you don’t remember?”

“Certainly not. And I never saw you before.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Right now I just want you to feel better.”

I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn’t quite black

in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.

“How about some coffee?” I said.

She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I nodded

toward the door and followed her into the other room.

She sat down in the chair I pulled out for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her, straddling a chair with my arms across the back.

She ignored the coffee. “Perhaps you can explain this,” she said.

I frowned. “Don’t you remember anything at all?”

“No.”

“I was hoping you would,” I said. “Especially what happened before I got there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “And will you, for the love of the merciful God, tell me who you are?”

“Barton,” I said. “John Barton, of Globe Surety. Remember? I’m from the Kansas City office, but they put me on it because I used to work oult of Sanport and know this country.”

I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but she still might be sharp enough to want to see something that said Barton, of Globe Surety Company. The thing was to give her the impression I’d already shown her my credentials but that she’d been drunk when she’d seen them. We wouldn’t mention that. It would be embarrassing.

But she didn’t go for the fake hand-off. She came right in and smeared me. “I’ve never heard of a company by that name,” she said. “And I never saw you before in my life. How do I know who you are?”

It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled in my life, and if I didn’t make it stick I was penitentiary bait. I felt empty all the way down to my legs.

“Oh, sure,” I said. I reached back for the wallet in my hip pocket and started flipping through the leaves of identification stuff. I made a show of finding the one I wanted, and just as I started to pass her the whole thing, I said, “Can you remember anything at all about what he looked like? Even his general build would help.”

She took her eyes off the wallet and looked at me. “Who looked like?” she asked blankly.

“The man you said tried to kill you. Just before I got there.”

That did it.

She gasped. And just for an instant I saw fear in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Tried to kill me?”

“Yes,” I said, still crowding her. “I realize it was dark, of course. But did he say anything when he lunged at you? I mean, would you recognize his voice?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I was just up in my room—”

“That’s right,” I interrupted. I put the wallet back in my pocket while I went on talking. “You were playing the phonograph, you said. And when I found you out there on the lawn you had a record in your hand. I don’t think you even knew you were carrying it, but I couldn’t get it away from you. You had a death grip on it. At first I couldn’t make any sense at all out of what you were trying to say.”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of it,” she said. “Maybe you’d better tell me what happened.”

“Sure.” I lit a cigarette for myself. “I had to talk to you. We’re trying to run down a lead our Sanport office dug up—but I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, I got into Mount Temple last night after midnight, and when I’d checked into the hotel I tried to call you. The line was busy. I tried again later, and it was the same thing, so I got a cab and went out to your house.

“And just as I was coming up the drive in the cab I saw you in the headlights. You had run out the front door and were going around toward the garage. When I got over to where you were, you had fallen on the lawn. You had this phonograph record in one hand and your purse in the other. You were in a panic, and practically hysterical. I couldn’t make out what you were trying to say at first. It was something about listening to the music in your room by candlelight, and that you had looked around over your shoulder and there was a man standing behind you. I tried to calm you down and get the story straightened out, but you just kept saying the same thing over and over—that the man had lunged at you with something in his hand.

“You didn’t seem to know how you’d got away from him, but when I suggested we go inside you started to go to pieces. Nothing could make you go back inside the house. All you wanted to do was get in the car and get away. I was afraid we’d wake the neighbors, so I went along with it. I drove, and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn’t take you to the hotel or a tourist court there in town, of course, because you’d be known everywhere. You went to sleep, and I finally thought of this place. It’s a duck club I belonged to when I was in Sanport and I knew there wouldn’t, be anybody out here this time of year. Maybe you could get some rest, and we could talk it over when you woke up. That’s about it.

“I wish you could remember something about that man, though. If he was trying to kill you, he may get you next time.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her eyes were thoughtful.

“Do you have any idea who he could have been?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Do you really think I saw anybody?”

“Yes,” I said. Baby, I thought, if you only knew. “Yes. I think you did. You were under a terrible strain.”

“I must have been.” She stared moodily down at her hands. When she looked back up at me she said, “You said you came to talk to me. What about?”

“Your husband.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “I suppose you want to ask some more questions. Or the same ones over again. I’ve told it so many times...”

“Yes,” I said. I felt good. I’d put it over. “It’s been rough on you, and we hate to be the pests we are, but we’ve got a job to do. However, mine isn’t quite the same

as the police’s. They’re looking for your husband.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

I studied the end of the cigarette. “Only incidentally.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Butler. My orders, first and last, are to find that money. Any way I can. We have to pick up the tab for it if it’s not recovered, so you can see where our interest is.”

“I wish I could help you. You can see that, can’t you? But there isn’t anything I can tell you that hasn’t already been told.”

I waited, not saying anything.

She sighed again. “All right. He came home from the bank at noon that Saturday, said he was going to some lake in Louisiana, fishing, and that he’d be home Sunday night. I didn’t see any money, or anything that could have held that much money, but maybe it was in the car, if he had it. He didn’t take any clothes except fishing clothes, as far as I could tell afterward. I know he didn’t take a bag. Just the fishing tackle. I was a little worried when he didn’t return Sunday night, but I thought perhaps he had merely decided to stay over another day. And then, Monday morning, Mr. Matthews, the president of the bank, came out and told me—” She quit talking and just stared down at her hands.

“You don’t have any idea why he would do a thing like that?” I asked.

The hesitation was hardly noticeable. “No,” she said.

I frowned at the cigarette in my hand, and then looked squarely at her. “Well, I’m afraid we do now,” I said. “It’s unpleasant, and I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was running off with another woman.”

“No!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But that’s the lead I mentioned, the thing our Sanport office found out. The girl’s name is Diana James, or at least that’s what she calls herself. She had an apartment in Sanport, and that’s where he was headed. She was going to hide him there.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Unfortunately, it’s true.”

“Then,” she said, “under the circumstances, don’t you think you’re just wasting your time talking to me? Apparently this James person is the only one who really knows anything about my husband.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not quite as simple as that. You see, he never did get to her apartment. And the only answer to that is a very ugly one.”

She was watching me narrowly. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Buder. But he’s dead, and has been ever since that Saturday.”

She tried to get up from the chair, but her legs wouldn’t hold her and she slumped onto the table. I carried her into the other room and put her on the bed. In a moment her eyes opened. She just lay there looking up at the rafters. She didn’t cry.

I went out to the other room and got the bottle. It had gone all right so far. She knew now that at least one outfit was wise to the fact that Butler had never reached the James girl’s apartment, and had guessed why he hadn’t. Maybe not the police, but the insurance company was working with them, wasn’t it?

“I’m sorry,” I said. I held out the drink. “This will make you feel better.”

She sat up and brushed the dark hair back from her face with her hand. She drank the whisky and shuddered.

“You must have suspected it,” I said. “After all, it’s been over two months, with the police in twenty states looking for him.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Maybe I just didn’t want to admit it.”

I sat down in the chair and lit her a cigarette. She took it between listless fingers and forgot it.

“You see how that changes the picture, don’t you?” I said. “We’re not looking for your husband any more. We’re looking for whoever killed him. That is, the police are, or will be as soon as they get the word about the James girl. What I’m looking for is the money. And that brings us to why I wanted to talk to you. You might be able to add something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you might think of something that didn’t seem important before, but that might be significant now in view of this. Was there somebody who could have found out he was going to do it? Was there somebody who knew about Diana James? You see the jealousy angle, don’t you? I mean—he had one girlfriend that we know of, so there might have been another.”

“I understand he was also married,” she said. “But go on.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Butler, I don’t enjoy this either.

But my orders are to find that money. The police are

going to have their hands full trying to find a murderer, and building a case that’ll stand up in court.” I paused just a second; then I added, “I’m not interested in that angle of it.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Let’s look at it objectively. Up to the point of recovering the money and prosecuting the man who stole it, our jobs overlap. But if the man is dead, he’s beyond the reach of prosecution, so when we get the money back we’re out of it. That may sound callous to you, but it’s only sound business. The police are paid to solve

murders; we’re not.”

I stopped. It was very quiet in the room.

“You see what I mean, don’t you?” I said.

She nodded slowly. “Yes. I understand perfectly.” She paused, and then added, “They must pay you well.”

“Well enough. But, again, it’s strictly business, if you look at it in the right way. I don’t think your husband was killed for that money. The motive was jealousy, and the money didn’t have anything to do with it. That being the case, we’re not involved. We get back what belongs to us.

We drop it. You see?”

“And if you don’t get it back?”

“Then it’s a different story. People’s emotional explosions don’t interest us until they start costing us a hundred and twenty thousand dollars an explosion. Then we’re in it up to the neck, and we get rough about it.”

She nodded again. “Yes. I can see you would feel quite unclean if you ever became contaminated with an emotion.”

“It’s a job. Like pumping gas, or being vice-president of a bank. If I want to be emotional, I do it on my own time.”

She said nothing. She just continued to watch me.

I leaned forward a little and tapped her on the wrist, “But let’s get back to what we were talking about. Catching your husband would have been easy, if somebody hadn’t killed him. We’d have had that money back by now except that a clear-cut case of embezzlement got loused up with some jealous woman blowing her stack. She’s just making it tough for me— and for no reason at all, because she didn’t want the money in the first place. And when I find out who she is I

can make it tough for her. Or she can get off the hook by being sensible. You see how simple it is?”

“Yes,” she said. “It is very simple. Isn’t it?”

She smiled. And then she hit me as hard as she could across the mouth.

Chapter Six

“Now that I’ve answered your question,” she said coolly, “perhaps you’ll answer one for me. What were you doing in my house?”

It had been too sudden. Even without having your mouth bounced off your teeth, it was a little hard to keep up. “I just told you.”

The big smoke-blue eyes were perfectly self-possessed now. “I know. You said I was wandering around on the lawn with a phonograph record in my hand, which isn’t a bad extension of the actual truth. So you must have been up there in my room when I was listening to the phonograph.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Certainly not. I know what I did. I went to sleep. And just in case you think I’m bluffing, I can even tell you the last recording I played before I dropped off. It was

Handel’s Water Music Suite. Wasn’t it?”

“How would I know?” I said.

“You probably wouldn’t, at that. But just who are you?

And what is your business, besides extortion?”

I was catching up a little. “Don’t throw your weight around too much,” I said. “Suppose the police started wondering just why his car showed up right in front of

Diana James’s apartment.”

‘Did it?” she asked.

“You know damned well it did.”

She shook her head. “No. But it does have a certain

element of poetic justice, doesn’t it?”

It was odd, but I believed her. About that part of it, anyway.

“I’m beginning to understand now,” she said, studying me thoughtfully through the cigarette smoke. “How is the accessible Miss James? As bountiful as ever, I hope?”

“She likes you too,” I said.

She smiled. “We adore each other. But I do wish she would stop sending people up here to tear my house

apart.”

I remembered the slashed cushions. “So that’s who—”

“You didn’t think there was anything original about it, did you? I can assure you that in almost nothing connected with Miss James are you likely to be the first.”

I said nothing. I was busy with a lot of things. She knew the house had been searched before, but still she hadn’t reported it to the police. That meant she couldn’t, and that I was still right. She was in whatever it was right up to her neck. She couldn’t report me either.

Her eyes were slightly mocking. “But I see you admit you had started to search the place. What changed your mind? I was asleep and wouldn’t bother you.”

“It got a little crowded,” I said. “With three of us.”

“Three?”

“The other one was the man who tried to kill you.”

“Oh, we’re going back to that again?”

“Listen,” I said. I told her what had happened.

“You don’t expect me to believe that?” she asked when

I had finished.

“When you go back to the house, take a look at what’s left of your records and the player. We rolled on ‘em. The other guy was a heavyweight, too.”

“He was?” she asked. She was thinking about it. Then

she shrugged it off. “I don’t believe you.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

Then I stopped. We had both heard it. It was a car crossing that wooden culvert at the edge of the meadow. It came on, and pulled to a stop right in front of the porch. I could hear the brakes squeak.

I shook my head savagely and motioned for her to stay where she was. She couldn’t be seen through the front window. I stepped out into the other room. The coat, with the gun in it, was on the back of a chair against the other wall. As I started across I could look out the front door and see the car. There was only one person in it, and it was a girl. I could hear the radio, crooning softly.

I went out and walked around the car to the driver’s side. She smiled. She was an ash blonde with an angelic face and a cool pair of eyes, and you knew she could turn on the honey-chile like throwing a switch at Boulder Dam. She turned it on.

“Good moarornin’,” she said. It came out slowly and kept falling on you like honey dripping out of a spoon. “It’s absolutely the silliest thing, but I think I’m lost.”

“Yes?” I said. She was eight miles from a county road and twenty from the highway. And she didn’t look much like a bird watcher. “What are you looking for?”

She poured another jug of it over me. “A farmhouse. It’s a man named Mr. Gillespie. They said to go out this road, and take that road, and turn over here, and go down that way, you know how people tell you to go somewhere, they just get you all mixed up, it’s the silliest thing. Actually. All these roads with no names on them, how do you know which one they mean?”

Maybe I imagined it, but the patter and the eyes didn’t seem to match. And the eyes were looking around.

The radio had quit crooning and was talking. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Not then.

“Did they tell you to go through a gate?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, definitely a gate. Mr. Cramer, he’s the manager of the store, he was the one that found out Mr. Gillespie had forgotten to sign one of the time-payment papers when he bought the cookstove and took it home in his truck. Anyway, he definitely said a gate, and then about a mile after the gate you turn— I know you’re not Mr. Gillespie, are you? You don’t look a bit like him.”

“No,” I said. “My name’s Graves. I’m on a fishing trip.”

“My,” she said admiringly, looking at the white shirt and the tie, “you go fishing all dressed up, don’t you? My brother, when he goes fishing, he’s the messiest thing,

actually, you should see him.”

“I just got here,” I said. “A few minutes ago.”

Her story was plausible enough. She might be looking

for somebody named Gillespie. God knows, she sounded as if she could get lost. She could get lost in a telephone booth, or a double bed. But still...

An icicle walked slowly up my spine and sat down between my shoulder blades.

It was the radio. It was what the radio was saying.

“...Butler...”

“Are you fishing all alone?” Dreamboat asked.

All I had to do was stand there in the sunlight beside the car and try to hear what the radio was saying, and remember it, and listen to this pink-and-silver idiot, and answer in the right places, and at the same time try to figure out whether she was an idiot or not and what she was really up to, and keep her from noticing I was paying any attention to the radio.

“Mrs. Madelon Butler, thirty-three, lovely brunette widow of the missing bank official sought since last June eighth...”

Widow. So they’d found his body.

“Mrs. Butler is believed to have fled in a blue 1953 Cadillac.”

“I don’t see any car,” she said, looking around. “How did you get here?”

“...sought in connection with the murder. Police in neighboring states have been alerted, and a description

of Mrs. Butler and the license number of the car...”

“Pickup truck,” I said. “Its in the shed.”

“...since the discovery of the body late yesterday, but no trace of the missing money has been found. Police are positive, however, that the apprehension of Mrs. Butler will clear up...”

The man had known the body’d been found, and that they were going to arrest her. He didn’t want her arrested. He still didn’t. Maybe this lost blonde wasn’t lost.

“Malenkov,” the radio said.

But she was going to get lost, and damned fast.

“—drink of water,” she was saying. She was smiling at me. She wanted to come into the house. She wanted to look around.

I smiled at her. “Sure, baby. But water? Look, I got bourbon.”

I was leaning in the window a little. I slid her skirt up.

“Thought I saw an ant on your stocking,” I said. I patted a handful of bare, pink-candy thigh. “Come on in, Blondie.”

The “You—” was as cold and deadly as a rifle shot. Then she got back into character. “Well! I must say!”

But the only thing she could do, under the circumstances, was go. She went.

I took a deep breath and watched the car go across the meadow and into the timber, and then I could hear it climbing the hill in second gear. It didn’t stop. I heard it die away in the distance.

He might be out there in the timber somewhere with his gun, or he might be still in town. Maybe he’d just sent her scouting. If that had been his car following us last night, he had finally figured out where we’d turned off, and he knew we had to be back in this country somewhere.

Well, there was a lot of it. They had plenty of places to look.

Unless, I thought coldly...Maybe she had seen through that old varsity fumble and knew I was just trying to get rid of her. Maybe she knew she had already found what she was looking for.

There was one way to find out. That was to stand out here in the open like a goof until he got back with the gun and shot a hole in my head. I went inside.

Madelon Butler had come out of the bedroom and was standing by the table where the bottle was. She turned and watched me.

“Could you hear the radio?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Why?”

“You’d better sit down. There at the end of the table,

where you can’t be seen from outside. And take a drink. You’re going to need it.”

She sat down. “What is it now?”

“They’ve found your husband’s body. And the police are looking for you.”

She poured the drink and smiled at me. “You do have a flair for melodrama, don’t you?”

“You think I’m lying?”

“Certainly. And who was this timely courier, bringing the news? An accomplice?”

I sat down where I could see out the door and across the meadow. “Look. See if you can get this through your supercilious head. You’re in a jam. One hell of a jam. Nobody brought any news. It was on the radio, in that car. The police are looking for you, for murder. And not only that, but the girl in the car was looking for you too.”

I told her about it.

She listened boredly until I had finished; then all she did was reach for her purse and take out a mirror and some make-up stuff. She splashed crimson onto her mouth. In spite of myself, I watched her. She was arrogant and conceited as hell, but when you looked away from her for a moment and then looked back you went through it all over again. You didn’t believe anybody

could be that beautiful.

“I’m ready to go back to town,” she said, “if you are.”

“Don’t you want to hear me waste my breath any more?”

“Frankly, no. I should think we’d about run through your repertoire.”

“You don’t believe any of it at all?” She put the finishing touches on the lips, pressed them together, looked in the mirror once more, and then across at me. She smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous. By your own admission, you’re a housebreaker, liar, and impostor. And attempted extortionist. Quite an array of talent, I’ll admit; but to ask me to believe you is a little insulting, wouldn’t you say?”

I leaned across the table and caught her wrist. “And don’t forget abduction, while you’re adding it up. So why don’t you have me arrested, if you don’t believe any of

it?”

“And add to the burden of the taxpayers?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll tell you why. You can’t.”

“Don’t paw me,” she said.

I reached over and took the other wrist. I slid my hands

up inside the wide sleeves of the robe and held her arms above the elbows. “I want that money. And I’m going to get it. Why don’t you use your head? Alone, you haven’t got a chance, and the money’s no good to you if you’re dead. Maybe I can save you.”

“Save me from what?” she asked coldly.

I shook my head and took my hands off her arms to

light a cigarette. “Has your car got a radio in it?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’ll tell you the easy way to find out if I’m telling the truth. Trying to go back to town is the hard way, and there’s only one to a customer. In about an hour there should be some more news. We’ll listen to it.”

“Maybe there’s some on now,” she said. She picked up her purse and started toward the door. She had a good start before I realized what she was up to.

I jumped after her. By the time I reached the door she had run down off the porch and was standing in the open, fumbling in the purse for her keys and looking around for the car.

“Wait!” I yelled. She paid no attention.

She swung her face around and saw the shed at the side of the house. The car had to be in there. She whirled, ran one step toward it, and then it happened.

The purse sailed out of her hands as if a hurricane had grabbed it. She stopped abruptly and stared as it flopped crazily and landed six feet away from her on the edge of the porch, and we both heard the deadly whuppp! as something slammed into the front wall of the house.

She was frozen there. I was down off the porch and running toward her before I heard the sound of the gun. Without even thinking about it, I knew it was a rifle and that he was shooting from somewhere beyond the meadow, over two hundred yards away She started to run now. I grabbed her. It was four long strides back to the front step. I dug in, feeling my whole back draw up into one icy knot. I was a hundred yards wide, and all target.

I leaped onto the porch. I stumbled, and slammed in through the open doorway, trying to keep from falling on her. And just as we hit the floor I saw a coffee cup on the table ahead of us explode into nothing, like a soap bubble. The pieces rained onto the floor.

I rolled her over me to get us out of the doorway, and reached back with one foot to kick the door shut. He put another one through it just as it closed. A golden splinter tore off the wood on the inside, and on the back wall a frying pan hanging on a nail bounced and clanged to the floor.

It was silent now except for the quick sob of her breath. We lay on the floor with our faces only inches apart. The fright was leaving her eyes now, and I could see comprehension in them, and a growing coldness.

“Maybe you’d like an affidavit with that,” I said.

I pushed myself up from the floor. She was trying to sit up. One side of her face was covered with dust, and a trickle of blood from a splinter scratch was almost black against the pale column of her throat.

“Stay where you are,” I said. I scooted over and stood up beside the front window. Peering out one corner of it, I could see the meadow. It was completely deserted and peaceful in the sunlight. Somewhere beyond, in the dark line of timber at the foot of the hill, he lay with his rifle and waited for something to move.

He probably wouldn’t try to come any closer. Not until tonight. But in the meantime nobody would go out that road.

Chapter Seven

“The stupid idiot,” she said. I looked around. She was standing up, squarely in line between the front and rear windows. I didn’t say anything. I dived.

I hit her just at the waist and took her down with me, turning a little to land on my shoulder. Splinters raked through my shirt. Panes in the front and rear windows blew up at the same time and glass tinkled on the floor.

“What’s the matter with you?” she spat at me. “Are you crazy?”

She lay beside me, caught in my arms like a beautiful and enraged wildcat. I disengaged an arm, picked a sliver of windowpane off the front of her robe, held it up so she could see it, and tossed it toward the front window. Her eyes followed it.

“Oh,” she said.

“If you feel like silhouetting yourself again,” I said, “tell

me where that money is first. You won’t need it.”

“What can we do?” she asked.

“Several things, I suppose, if I didn’t have to spend all

my time knocking you down. Do you think you can stay here this time?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

I crawled over her. When I was away from the windows I stood up and ran into the bedroom. Grabbing a couple of blankets off one of the bunks, I draped one across the bedroom window and brought the other out.

I stood beside the rear window. “Cover your face,” I said. “We’re going to have more glass.”

She put an arm over her face. I flipped the blanket. It caught over the old curtain rod. Glass smashed in the

front window again and the blanket jerked, but remained on the rod. It had a hole in it.

I looked swiftly around. The back door was locked, the window covered now. The storeroom had no outside door, no window. He could sneak around to the sides or back, but he couldn’t see in anywhere to shoot. And he knew I had his gun.

From that distance he probably couldn’t see in the front window now, with no light behind it. Maybe he couldn’t, I thought. I could put another blanket over it, but I wanted to be able to see out on one side, at least. The thought of being sealed up in there with no way to guess where he was didn’t appeal to me.

“Is it all right now?” she asked.

“No. Stay down.”

I looked at her again, and thought of something.

“Take off that robe,” I said.

She sat on the floor and stared coldly at me. “Don’t we

have anything better to do?”

“You have got something on under it, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Pajamas.”

“Well, shut up and toss it here.”

She shrugged and slid out of it, turning a little to get it out from under her. The pajamas were blue and wide-sleeved, the lounging type. She tossed the robe. I crawled over and stood up beside the front window and flipped it over the curtain rod. It slid off. I picked it up and tried again. This time I got more of it over the rod and it stuck. There was no shot.

I stepped back. It was fine. It was just sheer enough to be transparent with the light on the other side. I could see the meadow. Nothing stirred.

“All right,” I said. “He can’t see in.”

She stood up. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

I went over and got the gun out of my coat. I slid the

clip out and looked at it. There was one cartridge in it. Two, I thought, with the one in the chamber.

“We can’t just stay here,” she said.

“You got a better idea?” I checked the safety again and shoved the gun in my belt.

I fished in my pocket for a cigarette. The pack was empty. I went over to the coat and got another. I opened it, and gave her one. We sat down at the table. I could see out across the meadow without being directly behind the window.

“Couldn’t we sneak out the back door and get to the car?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “You might even get it out of the shed before he killed you. You’ve seen him shoot that rifle.”

She said nothing.

“And,” I went on, “suppose you did get out to the highway? What then? Every cop in the state has the description and license number of that Cadillac.”

She stared thoughtfully at me through the smoke. “Afoot? Out the back door?”

“It’s twenty miles to the nearest place you could catch a bus. You’re a dish everybody looks at. And you’re wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers. Any more ideas?”

“Charming thug, aren’t you? Shall I cheer you up for a while now?”

“Why? I’m all right. Nobody knows me; I can still run.”

“Well? Why don’t you?”

“You don’t scare much, do you?”

“Would being scared do any good?”

“You’re about the hardest citizen I’ve ever run into,” I said. “Did you kill Butler alone, or did that guy out there help you? Is that how he got in the act?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Which one of you has the money?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Who was that girl in the car? Angel-faced ash blonde,

with a hush-puppy accent.”

“Why didn’t you ask her?”

“I don’t think she liked me.”

“I can understand that,” she said.

“Well, you’re popular,” I said. “You’re in great

demand.”

She put the cigarette in the ashtray and leaned back in the chair with her hands clasped behind her head. The pajama sleeves slid down her arms. They were lovely arms.

I watched her, thinking swiftly. We were both in one hell of a jam, but I was beginning to get the glimmerings of an idea. It all depended on whether she had the money or not, and I still believed she had it.

There was no use even trying to guess whether she had killed Butler, or whether that man out there had, or both of them; but I was beginning to respect the cool and deadly intelligence behind that lovely face, and I was growing more convinced of one thing all the time: that no matter who had killed him, unless that guy out there was a lot smarter than I thought he was, she was the one that had the money. It figured that way.

“You’re the Homecoming Queen,” I said. “Everybody wants you.”

“I really don’t see what you’re waiting around for,” she said. “You have pointed out that there is no possibility of escape. I agree with you. Any further discussion of it is superfluous; and you should realize, if it’s entertainment you’re after, that taunting me with it is futile.”

I leaned back in the chair and blew a smoke ring. “I was going to make you an offer.”

“What kind of offer?”

“It doesn’t matter. If you haven’t got that money, I’d just be wasting my breath.”

She smiled. “You know,” she said, “there is a touching sort of simplicity about you I almost admire. Anyone with a less comprehensive stupidity might get sidetracked once in a while and wander off the main objective, but you never do. You started out to get that money, and by God, you’re going to get it. I almost regret that you won’t.”

“Well, if you haven’t got it, what’s the use talking about it?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t a question of whether I have it or not. The real point—as anyone but a thickheaded mastodon would have figured out hours ago— is that if I did have it I’d willingly go to hell before I’d see Diana James get a nickel of it.”

I put down the cigarette and stared at her. So that was what had been holding up the negotiations. You never knew. They didn’t make sense; they never did, not even the smart ones. Not even to save her own skin...

“Look,” I said. “The hell with Diana James. Haven’t you heard? She’s been scratched.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. She double-crossed me before we even started. She told me you were in Sanport, to get me to come up here and shake down the house. What did she care if I got caught?”

“And that isn’t quite all,” she said. “Think again.”

“How’s that?”

“You still haven’t seen the full beauty of it. Suppose I had surprised you and you’d got rattled and killed me? Wouldn’t that have been tragic?”

I thought about it. The fact that I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to do a crazy thing like that was beside the point. Diana James could easily have been counting on the possibility.

“Well,” I said. “That’s how it is with you friend Miss James. She’s been dropped from the rolls.”

“I see,” she said coolly. “And now you’re ready to transfer your great-hearted devotion?”

I walked over and took a good look out the window. The meadow was empty of life. I came back and sat down.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m flattered.”

“Never mind you’re flattered. Have you got the money?”

“I might have,” she said.

“Where is it?”

“I said I might have.”

“It’ll take more than that, honey,” I said. “Let’s get it on the line.”

“Why?”

“You haven’t got a chance. You’re cold meat. As soon as it’s dark and I can get out of here, I’m going to shove. I can get away. And you’ll be a dead woman with a

hundred and twenty thousand dollars as soon as your friend out there moves in on you.”

She stared thoughtfully. “And what is this proposition of yours?”

“The geetus, baby.”

“I have it.”

“You know about not trying to kid me, don’t you?”

Her eyes were cold. “I said I had it.”

I took another drag on the cigarette and looked at her a long time. There was no hurry. Keep the pressure on her. “Let’s put it this way,” I said at last. “You’re dead. We both know that. You’re dead twice. If that character out there doesn’t clobber you with his rifle, you’ll be caught by the police and go on trial for murder. With your looks and a good sob story you might beat the chair and get off with life, but it’s a sad outlook either way.

“Alone, you haven’t got a prayer. No car, no clothes, no place to hide. You’re naked, with the light shining on you. With me helping, you might have a chance. A slim one. Say one in a thousand.

My deal is the same one Diana James and your husband cooked up. I’ll try to get you out of here, hide you until some of the pressure is off and we can redecorate you as a blonde or redhead, and deliver you to the West Coast or somewhere. I don’t say I can do it. You can see the odds yourself. But I’ll try.”

She nodded slowlv. “I see. And for how much?”

“Make it a round number. Say a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

She continued to stare at me. “You know, when you said I was hard, I didn’t realize what an authority I was listening to.”

“You didn’t think I was going to do it for nothing? Look at the risk. The minute I start to help you, I’m committing a crime myself. And when I lose my amateur standing it’s

going to be for big money.”

“So you’d just take all of it?”

“That’s right. Of course, if you get a better offer in the

next hour or so...”

“And what would I live on if I did get to the Coast?”

“What does anybody live on? Go to work.”

“At what? I never did any work in my life.”

“How do I know what? I’m not an employment counselor. Is it a deal, or isn’t it?”

She thought about it for a minute. Then she shrugged. “All right. But suppose you get the money? What guarantee do I have that you’ll carry out your end of it?

Just your innate sense of honor?”

“That’s right.”

“Enchanting prospect, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now, where’s the money?”

She smiled. “That’s the only thing I have in my favor.

You’ll have to go through with at least part of your bargain before you even get it.”

“Why?’

“It’s in three safe-deposit boxes in Sanport.”

“Safe-deposit boxes!” I stared at her. “Well, how in the name of God are you going to get at it? With every cop in the state looking for you!”

“Well, naturally, they’re not rented under my right name.”

“Oh,” I said. “And where are the keys?”

“At home.”

“In your house?”

She nodded, her eyes a little mocking.

“But that means that even if we can find some way to get out of here, we’ve still got to go right back in the lion’s mouth.”

“Umh-humh,” she said. “It isn’t easy, is it? But that’s the reason I engaged such high-priced talent. It’s no job for the inept. Let me know when you think of something.”

The sun climbed higher. It was hot in the cabin. I tried to make myself sit still and think, but then I’d be up and pacing the floor again. I watched the window constantly.

There was a way out of it. There had to be. All I had to do was find it. We had to have a car. We couldn’t use her Caddy, but there was another car down there somewhere. He had one. But he also had a rifle, and he knew how to use it.

“Do you suppose he’s gone?” she asked. She was still sitting at the table, finishing another drink.

“Of course not,” I said. “He’s just waiting. We have to move sometime, and when we move he lets us have it.”

“How does he know we haven’t sneaked out the back door and left on foot?”

“Because,” I explained curtly, “he knows how you’re dressed. He knows you’re not going anywhere without a car. And we can’t use the Cadillac, even if he wasn’t watching it with a gun.”

She poured another drink. The bottle was nearly empty. She held up the glass and looked at it. “Well, you’re the high-priced expert.”

She was chromium-plated and solid ice both ways from the middle. From her attitude you’d think she was merely a spectator at all this. It was something she was watching from the first row balcony and finding a little tiresome.

The air was clammy with heat. My shirt stuck to me. I looked at her and the bottle with irritation. “Look. You can lay off that sauce.”

She glanced briefly up at me. “And you can mind your own business.”

I sat down across from her. I caught the front of her pajamas and pulled her up straight in the chair. “Let s get this straight. Right now. If we get out of here, for about the next two months I’m going to have the job of trying to hide you from the police. It’s going to be rough, believe me. And if you get caught I’m in the bucket too. So I don’t intend to make the job any harder by having to watch out for a blabber-mouthed lush wandering around in a fog. You’ll stay sober.”

There was only faint interest in her face, as if she were just waiting for me to crawl back under a rock. “If you’re certain you’ve finished,” she said, “you might take your hands off my clothing.”

“Yes, Empress,” I said. I shoved her back in the chair. “But keep it in mind.”

“Do you intend doing anything about getting us out of here?”

“I’m working on it, Your Highness. But we can’t go anywhere until after dark, anyway. So keep your pants on.”

“Barbarian.” “Who is that guy out there?” “How would I know? He hasn’t sent in his card.” “Cut it out. Who is he?” “I fail to see where it concerns you. You’re being paid

to neutralize him, not identify him.”

“Boyfriend?”

“As you wish,” she said boredly

“Who killed Butler? Both of you?”

She made no answer. She merely stared at the empty

space where I would have been sitting if I hadn’t already crawled back under the rock.

Even if we got out of here, I thought...

Living with her for two months was going to be fun. Which one of us would start to come unglued first?

Chapter Eight

I stood with my back against the rear window and stared out the front. As nearly as I could, I lined up the broken panes front and rear, and sighted. He’d be right in there somewhere. There was no reason for him to move, if he could see everything from where he was. He could watch the house there, and he could cover the road.

There was nothing to mark his spot, however. One area in the timber was just like any other. I looked farther up the hill. On the skyline and a little to the right I saw a tall tree that had apparently been struck by lightning. That would serve as a reference point.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting ready to call a cab,” I said.

I took off the white shirt. It could be seen too easily in the timber. I found an old blue one in the storeroom and put it on, and shoved the gun back in my belt.

She was still watching me. I went over to the table, picked up the bottle of whisky, and poured what was left on the floor.

“You’re going to have to be at least partly sober for this,” I said. “Now. The only reason he hasn’t walked in here and shot you is that he knows I’m here and that I’ve got a gun. It’s his gun. You still following me?”

She nodded, saying nothing.

“Well, I’m going out there. I’m going to try to get behind him. I hope I can get out the back without being seen. But the gimmick is that he might not shoot if he did see me. It’s you he wants. So he may pretend he doesn’t see me, and let me go. And when I’m out there on the wide part of the swing he may come in for you.

“The front door is locked. After I go out, bolt the back one. Sit in the storeroom, because it hasn’t got any windows. And if you hear him on the porch or if he starts

to kick in one of these other windows, scream. And keep screaming. Close the door to the storeroom and pile everything in there against it. And if you smell smoke, scream twice as loud.”

“Smoke?”

“That’s right. It’s one way.”

She got it, but it didn’t scare her much. “All right,” she

said. “And thank you for your solicitude. It’s touching.”

“Isn’t it,” I said.

I opened the back door and stepped out. Nothing happened.

I dropped off the porch and ran bent over toward the bushes at the edge of the water, the muscles bunched up and icy in the middle of my back. Guessing where he was and what he’d do was fine on paper, but out here in the open I could feel the cross hairs of a telescope sight crawling all over me like long-legged spiders. It was the dead silence all around and not ever knowing that made it bad.

I hit the bushes and dropped into them. A mosquito buzzed around my face and got in my nose. I stifled the impulse to sneeze, and searched the timber along the lake shore in both directions, turning my head very slowly. Nothing moved. I looked behind me, out across the lake, just for the sheer relief of seeing one place he couldn’t be. It was glassy under the sun. Out in the middle a mud hen swam, jerking its head, and left a V-shaped ripple on the surface. The trees were dark green along the other shore. It looked like the picture on a sporting-goods calendar.

I started crawling to the right, between the screen of bushes and the water’s edge. I had to slide under the little dock where the two skiffs were tied up. I was behind the shed now. A down log blocked my way. I crawled over it. A limb broke, snapping loudly in the hush. I fell to the ground and waited. Nothing happened. Three minutes went by. Four. I started again.

Mud sucked at my hands and knees. Sweat ran down my face. I kept watching for snakes. I looked back. The house and shed were lost in the trees, but I could see the dock. I had come over a hundred yards. A little more would do it. Wherever he was, he’d still be near enough to the edge of the timber to see the whole meadow.

I had to be behind him now. I stood up, wiped some of the mud off my hands, and began slipping through the timber, circling and heading away from the lake. Here in the low ground, underbrush was heavy, but ahead I could see it thinning out as I approached the foot of the hill. I stopped in a minute and held my breath to listen. If he had seen me leave, he’d be closing in now. I’d have to get there fast if she screamed. It was silent except for a squirrel chattering up on the hillside.

The grade began to pitch upward into the pines and stunted post oak. The soil was sandy here and matted in places with pine needles. My feet made no sound at all. I could see the meadow now and then through the trees, two or three hundred yards off to my left and a little below. I went straight up toward the crest of the ridge. In a few minutes I came out on level ground, turned sharp left, and began searching for the tall pine with the dead top. After another hundred yards I found it and faced down toward the lake for a glimpse of the house to orient myself. Through a small opening in the trees I could see part of the roof. I turned ninety degrees and went straight ahead for a hundred and fifty steps, going very slowly now and taking advantage of all the cover I could.

I stopped and squatted down at the foot of a pine. I should be directly above him. Somewhere in the trees below he was lying with his rifle beside him, watching the house. Moving nothing but my eyes, I began covering it foot by foot, every tree trunk, log, bush, every patch of mottled sunlight and shadow. As my eyes probed, I rubbed my hands in the sand and then together, to get the rest of the mud off. I checked the gun in my belt, to be sure it would come free when I needed it.

I could see nothing. No movement, no bit of color that could be clothing. He was farther down. I picked out a clump of bushes ten yards ahead and crept toward it, moving noiselessly on the sand. Crawling up beside it, I lay flat on my stomach and studied the hillside below me for five minutes. There was no sign of him.

I moved again. I could see the edge of the meadow in places below me now and knew this was as far as I could go. If I missed him and got in front of him I was dead. I stopped, lay still, and searched the hillside on both sides and ahead. My eyes made the slow, complete swing from right to left, stopped, and went back again.

I saw him.

I saw a shoe. It grew into a leg and then into two legs half screened by the low-hanging branches of a dogwood twenty yards straight down the hill from where I was. The underbrush was heavier here than it had been on top of the hill, but by moving a little to the right I could see him clearly.

I took a deep breath, feeling tight across the chest. One of us might be dead in the next minute or two. I could try to bluff him with the gun, but suppose he didn’t bluff? He

was desperate; he had nothing to lose.

I could still go back.

I thought of those three safe-deposit boxes in Sanport and knew there was never any going back now. I started crawling down the hill.

I watched his legs. There was no movement. I could see his whole body now. The rifle, with its telescope sight, lay across a small log in front of him while he watched the clearing and the house. I searched the ground ahead for any leaf or twig that would make the slightest sound if I stepped on it.

Ten feet behind him I straightened up on my knees, pulled the gun out of my belt, leveled it at the back of his head, and said, “All right, Mac. Turn around. Without the gun.”

His face jerked around. He started to lift the rifle.

“You’ll never make it,” I said.

His eyes were a little crazy, but he knew I was right.

He didn’t have a chance, lying down that way and facing in the other direction.

“Slide the bolt out,” I said. “All the way. And throw it —”

I was careless. I’d been intent on him to the exclusion of everything else. It was almost too late when I heard the sound behind me. I started to turn, and the club missed my head just far enough to land on my arm, numbing it out to the fingertips.

He was scrambling to his knees, trying to get the rifle swung around. I clawed at the tree limb with the sick arm and reached back with the other and found her. I put the hand against her belly and threw her at him like a bag of laundry. She took a long step backward and crashed down on top of him and the two of them rolled across the rifle. I reached down for the gun I had dropped.

It was the blonde, but she’d turned off the Southern belle. Her eyes were hot with fury as she untangled her long legs and arms and tried to sit up. She had pine needles in her hair, and a scratch on her knee oozed blood over the ruin of a nylon stocking.

She didn’t like me. And you could see the cords in her throat while she was telling me about it.

“Shut up,” I said.

I walked over to them. They were both sitting up. The rifle was under her legs in the sand. I pushed them out of the way and dragged it from under her with my foot. She liked me even less. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me with his crazy eyes.

I shoved the rifle backward, stepped back to it, and squatted down. I took the bolt out and threw it twenty yards down the hill into the underbrush. Then I swung the rest of it against a tree. The stock splintered, and broken glass trickled out the end of the scope.

“Where’s the car?” I said.

Something had been eating him away inside for a long time. You could see it in the hot, crazy eyes, and in the way his hands twitched as he rubbed them across his mouth. “Who are you?” he asked. His voice was ragged.

“What do you want?”

“A car,” I said. “I thought I mentioned that.”

There was something odd about them, and I saw what it was now that I had time to take a good look. They were brother and sister. He was big, and a lot younger, probably not over twenty-one or twenty-two, but it was unmistakable. Maybe it was the identical ash blondness and the well-formed bone structure of their faces. They were good-looking as hell. And full of it.

“You’ll never take her out of here,” he said. “You’ll never take her out of here alive. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill you.”

I gestured with the gun. “On your feet.”

He hesitated a moment, watching me; then he got up. She continued to sit there

I caught her by the arm and hauled her up. Red fingernails slashed toward my face. I brushed her hand away and shoved her. She bounced against him and he

caught her to keep her from falling.

“If she won’t walk,” I said, “carry her.”

He stared hungrily at the gun. “Where?”

“Out to the road. We’re looking for a car, remember?”

She looked at him with contempt. “Are you afraid of

this miserable thug?” “What do you want me to do?” he said. “He’s got the

gun.”

“So you’re going to let her get away?”

“She hasn’t got away yet.”

“All right, break it up,” I said. “You can yak some other

time.” “What are you going to do with Mrs. Butler?” she

asked.

“I’m going to adopt her. I think she’s cute.”

“Maybe you don’t know what you’re getting mixed up

in. The police want her for murder. She killed her husband.”

“I don’t care if she killed Cock Robin,” I said. “I just work here. Now shut up and start walking.”

They started out toward the road. I kept about six feet behind them. When we struck it we were near the edge of the meadow. I didn’t see the car anywhere. It had to be above.

“Turn right,” I said. “Up the hill. And stay in the road.”

We went silendy uphill through the sand.

“You could tell me where it is,” I said. “But that would

be the easy way. So we’ll just walk. It’s only eight miles out to the road, and eight miles back.”

They made no answer. They walked side by side in icy silence, not looking back.

“If we pass it,” I said, “don’t bother to say anything. We’ve got all the rest of the day to walk around.”

I watched the ruts, fairly sure I’d see where they had pulled it off the road even if they had it hidden. And just before we reached the crest of the ridge I did. It was pulled off in a clump of dogwood. It was the same car the girl had driven up in.

“Who’s got the keys?” I asked.

They stared at me in silent hatred.

It was obvious she didn’t have them, because she didn’t

have a purse. I looked at him. “All right, Blondy. How’d you like one through the leg?”

He took the keys out of his pocket.

“You drive,” I said. “And Toots will sit in the middle.”

We got in. He backed it out on the road. “Downhill,” I said. “To the camp. And don’t get any funny ideas about giving it the gun and crashing into a tree. I might walk away from it, but you wouldn’t.”

We were jammed in together, but I held the gun in my right hand over against the door, where she couldn’t grab for it.

She turned her face and stared into mine from a distance of three inches. She was lovely. “You son-of-abitch,” she said.

I patted her on the leg. “Did you ever find Gillespie, honey?”

Chapter Nine

We stopped in front of the cabin.

I got out. “Inside,” I said.

We went up on the porch. I heard Madelon Butler unlocking the door, and knew she had watched us from the window. The door opened and the blonde went in, followed by her brother. I was in the rear, not expecting it, and they almost pulled it off.

He jumped inside, making some kind of hoarse roaring sound in his throat, and the blonde tried to slam and bolt the door ahead of me. I got a foot in it just before it closed, and leaned on it. She shot back into the room and sat down. I almost fell over her.

He was on the floor, with Madelon Butler under him, groping wildly to get both hands on her throat. She was kicking and beating at his arms, but uttering no sound, while that insane racket kept coming from his open mouth.

I shoved the gun in my belt and hauled him up. He wouldn’t turn her loose, and tried to bring her with him. I hit him. He turned his face a little, and finally let her go and looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. I hit him again and felt the pain go up my arm. He was standing there rubber-legged as if he couldn’t fall until somebody told him where, so I put my hand in his face and pushed. He stretched out alongside the blonde on the floor. I felt of my hand. It hurt and it had blood on it, but I couldn’t feel any broken bones.

Madelon Butler stood up. The dark hair was wild and her eyes were like winter smoke as she came toward me. I didn’t know what she was trying to do until I felt the gun sliding out of my belt. I grabbed her wrist, broke her grip on it, and shook her hand off.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Sit down.”

She didn’t seem to hear me, so I shoved her down in the chair at one end of the table. The other two were getting off the floor, and now they both looked crazy. He was crying, and her face was white and her eyes blazed.

I pointed to the chairs at the other end of the table. “You’d better sit down,” I said. “I’m tired of wrecking my hands. From now on I use the gun.”

His mouth was working. Tears ran down his face. “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I’ll kill you.”

“Quiet,” I said. I pointed at the chairs again.

They sat down.

I pulled a chair up to the table, halfway between them and Madelon Butler, and sat down myself. I tilted back in the chair a little, put the gun in my lap, and took a cigarette out and lit it.

After all the violence it was suddenly quiet in the room, so still I could hear the sound of my own heavy breathing. Then the blonde’s voice came up through it.

Her hands grasped the edge of the table so tightly her fingers were white around the nails. I could see the cords standing out in her throat. Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper that sounded as if it were being pressed out of her by a heavy weight on her chest, but some of the things she said I’d never heard before myself.

It went on and on. Madelon Butler watched her curiously, the way she might study something brought up by a deep-sea trawl. When the blonde finally stopped for breath, she said, “You are a vulgar little gutter rat, aren’t you?”

But the blonde was finished. She could only stare silently. She drew her hands across her face and shuddered, and at last she turned to me.

“What are you going to do with her?” she asked.

“Never mind,” Isaid.

“Let me have the gun,” she begged. “Just let me have it for five seconds. Let me kill her. I’ll give it back to you. You can kill me, or turn me over to the police, but just let me have it.”

“Relax,” I said. “You’ll get ulcers.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

Madelon Butler lit a cigarette and watched us through the smoke. The man sat hunched over the other end of the table, holding the edges of it with his hands and saying nothing.

“We’re going to take your car and go for a little ride as soon as it’s dark. If you don’t mind.”

“How much is she paying you?”

“Who said she was?” I asked.

“Of course she is. Why else would you do it?”

“I’m her mother.”

“How much?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t think you could meet the price.”

She turned her face then and looked at the man. “Didn’t you hear him, Jack? You see? The dear, sweet thing couldn’t find it. She didn’t even know what we were talking about.”

“Stop it!” he said.

“She not only double-crossed you then, to get it, but she’s using it now to double-cross you again and get

away and leave you holding the bag.”

“Shut up!”

There was no stopping her. “Why didn’t you have sense enough to look? Just look? Did you trust her, or something? Didn’t you know what she was? Didn’t the other one teach you anything?”

His eyes were terrible. He hit her across the mouth with his open hand. She stopped then, and it became suddenly and almost breathlessly silent in the room. I could even hear the squirrel chattering again, up on the hill.

I looked at my watch. It was only a little after one. We couldn’t leave until it was dark. That meant for at least six more hours I had to sit here and keep them sorted out and untangled and away from each other’s throats. I had thought that if I got them in here I could turn the gun over to Madelon Butler and let her watch them while I got a little sleep, but I could see that was out. They’d rush her the minute I dropped off. They were crazy enough. Or if they weren’t, she’d taunt them into it with that arrogant contempt of hers.

I’d given up trying to figure it out. And there was no use asking any questions. I’d just be wasting my breath. They were all too hell-bent on killing each other to bother with outsiders trying to make sense out of it.

I was tired. It had been thirty hours since I’d had any sleep, and we had a long afternoon and another whole night ahead of us. I wondered what our chances were of getting back to Mount Temple and into that house without being caught. In the dark, and with another car, we shouldn’t be stopped on the highway, but the house was another matter. They’d be watching it.

I stood up and motioned toward the storeroom. “In there,” I said.

They went by, watching me like a couple of big cats, and walked in. They sat down on some boxes. I stood in the doorway and looked at them.

“You won’t get hurt if you stay in there,” I said. “And when we leave here you’ll be turned loose. But if you try to come back through this door or jump Mrs. Butler again while we’re here, you’ve had it.”

“Aren’t you brave, with a gun in your hand?” the blonde said.

“Don’t keep crowding your luck. Just because I haven’t shot you already doesn’t mean I won’t if I have to. I’m strictly a money player, and there’s a lot of it tied up in this. Too much to let a couple of hotheads like you louse it up. Keep it in mind, Blondie.”

“I wouldn’t count on that money too much,” she said.

“You wouldn’t? Why?”

“You’ll never get it.”

“I’ll worry about that.”

Her eyes had grown thoughtful, and now she actually smiled. It was a very cold smile. “Yes. You’ll worry about it, before you get through. You haven’t found out yet who you’re dealing with. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but it makes me feel a lot better.”

“What does?”

“The fact that even if you get away from here, it really doesn’t matter. One of you will kill the other before it’s all over. Isn’t it nice?”

“Isn’t it?” I said. “Unsaddle your broom and stay a while.”

I closed the door and walked back to the table.

Madelon Butler was still sitting in the chair at the end of it. I sat down and lit another cigarette.

“You’d better go in and get some sleep,” I said. “You’ll need it.”

“It’s too hot,” she said.

“Suit yourself,” I said. “But it may be a little hot tonight, too.”

She gave me that supercilious smile of hers again. “Not afraid to go back there, are you?”

“No,” I said. “We’re going back.”

“You’re rather fond of money, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never had any.”

“I hope you’ll be very happy with it.”

“I like your friends,” I said, nodding toward the storeroom. “Why don’t all of you rent yourselves out to curdle milk?”

“You’re not becoming squeamish, are you?” she asked mockingly. “Where’s your fine, professional attitude? Surely the detached and unemotional Mr. Barton wouldn’t let a little display of petulance like that upset him.” She broke off. “By the way, you never did tell me what your name really is.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I didn’t, did I?”

She shrugged.

Time dragged. The cabin was stifling.

I dozed off once, propped up in the chair. When my eyes flew open I saw the storeroom door being pulled gently back. The blonde was looking at me. “Back,” I said. It shut again.

They’d be watching the house. They might catch us.

Or if we tried to run, it could be worse. They might kill

us.

All right. Either I wanted that money, or I didn’t.

And if I wanted it, I had to have the keys.

Somehow, the sun went down.

It was dusk out across the clearing. I stood up. Madelon Butler killed another cigarette in the mountain of butts on the tray and looked at me. “Put on your robe,” I said. “Its time to go.”

“Very well,” she said.

I thought of something. “Would that blonde s dress fit you?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’d die before I’d touch it.”

“All right,” I said. “Don’t strip your gears. It doesn’t matter. You can change into something else when we get in the house. If we do.”

I went over and opened the storeroom door. “All right,” I said.

They came out. I motioned for them to go out the front door. I followed them. Madelon Buder came out, and I handed her the key. “Lock it,” I said. She locked the door. I put the key in my pocket.

I nodded to the blonde and Jack. “Just stand right where you are. When we’re gone you can start walking. Or you can have that Cadillac if you know how to start it

without the keys and don’t mind that it’s a little hot.”

“I’ll find you someday,” Jack said. “I’ll find you.”

“I’m in the book,” I said. I motioned for Madelon Butler

to get into the car.

As we crossed the culvert at the edge of the meadow I tossed the key out at the end of it without slowing down. I looked in the rear-view mirror, but I couldn’t see them. It was already too dark under the trees.

I flicked on the headlights and we went up the hill through the timber.

The lights of the country store and filling station were ahead of us. “Here’s where we hit the highway,” I said. “We’ll see a police car once in a while, but they won’t be looking for this car. Don’t pay any attention to them. They can’t see you in here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said.

I sailed the keys to the Cadillac into the roadside bushes, and in another minute or two we pulled onto the

pavement. In spite of what I’d told her, it was like walking into a cold shower.

I drove carefully, holding it down to forty or forty-five. Just a simple accident or being stopped for a traffic violation of some kind was all it would take to ruin us. I thought of how invisible a car was among all the hundreds of others until something happened to it, or the driver did something wrong, and then it was in the center of the stage with all the spotlights on it. When we came into the first town I turned over one street to keep out of the lights, and went through as if we were driving on eggshells.

I turned twice more, and we were back on the highway again. It was only thirty miles now.

It had been over twelve hours since she was supposed to have fled. They might not actually expect her to be stupid enough to come back, but they’d have at least one man covering the place as a matter of routine. Maybe there’d be more. The money still hadn’t been found. They wouldn’t be taking any chances.

Would he be in front? Or in back? Inside the house itself?

We had to park the car far enough away so they wouldn’t hear it or see the headlights. And still we couldn’t walk around on the streets.

“Is there another street or road in back of that one directly behind the house?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll show you where to turn. There are no street lights there, and it’s mostly vacant lots.”

She’d grown up in that house. I wondered how she felt about going back to it for the last time and knowing she’d never see it again if we got away. But whatever she felt, she kept it to herself. Then it occurred to me she had never seemed particularly bothered by the fact that her husband wasn’t around any more, either, or why he wasn’t. She wasn’t exactly the gushy type.

“Where did they find him?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she said.

“You don’t know?” I asked unbelievingly.

“That’s right.” She appeared completely unconcerned. “You were the one who heard the news report. Remember?”

It just didn’t add up. I had to believe her. She sounded as if she were telling the truth, and she had no reason to lie about it now. And she hadn’t known that his car had been abandoned right in front of the James girl’s apartment, either. An odd thought struck me then. Had she really killed him? But that was stupid. She’d as much as admitted it. She was paying me $120,000 to get her out of there and hide her from the police. For what—a parking ticket?

“You don’t make much sense to me,” I said.

“Really?” She lit a cigarette, and for an instant the flame of the match lit up the still, intensely beautiful face.

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.”

“Did you kill Butler?” I asked.

“Perhaps you should read the terms of our contract

again. I recall nothing in it about submitting to an inquisition.”

“Have it your way,” I said. “I just work here.”

“An excellent appraisal of your status. Incidentally, I might say that you have done very well so far, with only one or two exceptions.”

“What exceptions?”

“In the first place, you should have killed them instead of turning them loose. They can describe you; And in the second place, you have thrown away the only key I have to the house. It was attached to the car keys.”

“We don’t need a house key,” I said. “We go in through one of the basement windows. And as far as their describing me, you know as well as I do they’re not going to the police. They can’t.”

“Yes. But has it occurred to you they might be captured

by the police?”

“Sure,” I said. “But it’s just a chance we have to take.”

“Needlessly.”

“All right. Needlessly. But I’m doing the job, and I’ll do

it my own way.”

She said nothing. We came up the grade out of the river bottom.

I’d had plenty of warning about her. But I didn’t realize it in time.

Chapter Ten

We were nearly there. I could see the glow of lights against the sky.

“Slowly,” she said. “We pass a cemetery on the right. And just beyond it there’s a road on the left. Turn there.”

In a moment I could see the evergreen hedge of the cemetery. Two cars were coming up behind us. I slowed and let them go by.

“Now,” she said. “On the left.”

I made the turn. It was a gravel road with a field off to the left beyond a fence. We passed a lighted house. A dog ran out and chased us, barking furiously. I cursed, feeling the tension build up inside me.

Coming back here like this with the police after her was insane, and I knew it. Suppose we ran into them? We might get away from them in the dark, but that wasn’t the thing. They’d know where we were, and all the roads in this end of the state would be bottled up before we could get out.

But there was nothing else to do. We had to have the keys to get into those boxes. Maybe, under ordinary circumstances, you could have them opened without the keys if you had plenty of time and absolutely foolproof identification. In her case it was utterly impossible. She’d rented them under a phony name, she was a fugitive, and the slightest irregularity or one suspicious move would

bring the whole thing down on top of us.

While I was on the subject, I thought of something else.

“Have you got any cash with you?” I asked. “Or at the

house, where you can get it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have nearly a thousand dollars in my handbag.”

“Good,” I said. I didn’t ask why she was carrying around that much. It was obvious. She’d known she

might have to make a run for it someday, and she was ready.

We turned right and went up a slight grade with trees on both sides of the road. I was driving slowly, drawing a map of it in my mind. We might be in trouble when we came out. There were no houses, no lights. A cat ran across the road, its eyes shining.

“In the next block, where that power line crosses the road,” she said.

“Right.” I swung the car sharply around, facing back the way we had come, and backed off the road under the overhanging trees. I cut the motor and lights, and we sat still for a moment, letting our eyes become accustomed to the darkness.

We got out, and I gently closed the door. I was conscious of my shallow breathing and the fluttering in my stomach, the way it always was just before the opening kickoff of a football game. The night was overcast and still, the air thick with heat and the smell of dust.

I had changed into the white shirt again back at the camp, but I had on the coat to cover it. I turned the collar up to hide any gleam of white. The gun and flashlight were in the pockets. I looked at her. She was all right, except for her feet. I could see the faint blur of that white trim around her slippers. It couldn’t be helped.

I held her arm for another minute while we listened. There was no sound. “All right,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

We cut across the lot, following the dark shafts of the power-line poles. There was a path of sorts, and we made no sound. In a minute or two we came out onto the next street, the one directly behind the house. I felt a sidewalk under my feet. There were no cars in sight.

She tugged at my arm. “This way,” she whispered. We hurried along the sidewalk, and then cut diagonally across the street. I knew where we were then. I could see the high, shadowy pile of the oleanders. Out the gate, cut left diagonally, half a block, I thought, writing it down in my mind in reverse, the way it would be coming back. I might be in a hurry. And I might be alone.

I eased the gate open, an inch at a time. We slipped through and stood in the dense shadow of the oleanders. I put my lips down next to her ear and whispered.

“Wait here. I want to see if there’s a car around anywhere.”

She nodded. I could see the faint blur of her face as it moved.

I slipped off across the lawn toward the dark mass of the house, cutting a little to the right to pass around the south side near the garage. Stopping beside the shrubs near the corner, I searched the driveway. It showed faintly white in the gloom. I could see no car.

Keeping on the grass to muffle any sound, I eased around the side of the house until I could see the front. There was no car here. The night was empty and silent except for the faint sound of music coming from somewhere across the huge expanse of front lawn and the street beyond it. It was a radio in some house on the other side of the street.

I remained motionless for a minute, thinking. They might be parked out on the street, sitting in a car and watching the drive. Or they still might have a man inside. We just had to chance it.

I started back. I came around the rear corner and past the back porch by the kitchen, moving silently on the grass. As I neared the break in the shadowy mass of the oleander hedge where the gate was, I could just make out the little blur of white at her feet. She was moving. She was coming slowly toward the house. I turned a little to meet her, watching the small bits of white fur move across the formless darkness of the lawn. Then they disappeared. They winked off, like a light going out.

I stopped, feeling my heart pound in my throat. She had passed behind something. But there wasn’t anything there. There couldn’t be. Now I could see them again. She had stopped too. I strained my eyes into the night. I could see nothing at all. Then the blur of white at her feet winked off again. Something was between us, and it was moving.

There was no way to warn her. I wanted to cry out to her to run, but I knew the stupidity of it. The man knew she was there; he could see her feet. But he didn’t know I was behind him. I was tense. My mouth was dry.

I could run. I could circle them, get behind them, and make it to the gate and the car.

I didn’t run. I couldn’t quit now. I started moving toward them, keyed up and scarcely breathing.

Then it happened. She had seen him, or heard him, or somehow sensed that he was there, and thought I was coming back. She whispered, “Here I am.” It was like a shout.

Light burst over her face and the upper part of her body. She wasn’t twelve feet away, exposed in the glare of the man’s flashlight like a floodlighted statue. I was coming up behind him, very fast and as silently as I could, pulling the gun from my pocket, when I heard her gasp. I could see him quite plainly, silhouetted against his own light. I raised the gun and swung.

“All right, Mrs. Butler,” he said. “Stand right where you are. You’re under ar—”

He grunted, and his arms jerked. The light fell out of his hand as he buckled back against me and then slid to the grass. I lunged for it and snapped it off. Night closed around us again, black as the bottom of a coal mine.

I was scared as I felt for him. Maybe I’d hit him too hard. I located an arm and fumbled at his wrist, trying to feel the pulse, but my hands were shaky and numb and I couldn’t tell. I put a hand on his chest. He was breathing normally. The fright began to leave me.

She was leaning over me in the darkness. “I thought it was you,” she whispered.

I didn’t answer. I was too busy thinking. What did we do with him? He was merely knocked out, and might come around at any time. To go on in the house and leave him lying here would be suicide. She’d have to go alone; I could stay here and watch him. But suppose there was another one inside?

We didn’t have all night. Every minute we stayed here made it more dangerous. I had to do something, and fast.

I reached down, took the gun out of his holster, and threw it over into the oleanders. As I did so I heard something rattle. It was metallic, something fastened to his belt. I had the answer then. Running a hand along the belt, I located them and took them off. They were handcuffs.

“Stay where you are,” I whispered to her.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, I dragged him across the grass into the deeper shadows under the hedge. I rolled him up against the bottom of a clump of oleanders, pulled his hands behind him, and shackled them together around a couple of the big stems. Then I took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wadded it into his mouth, took off his tie, and made it fast around his head to hold the handkerchief in. He was still out, as limp as a wet shirt. I knelt and listened to his breathing. He was all right.

I hurried back. Leaning close to her, I whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here fast. You won’t have time to change. So just throw some clothes in a bag when we get

inside.”

She nodded.

I led the way to the window where I’d gone in before. Pulling the screen back, I raised the sash and dropped in; then I helped her. We stood in darkness in the basement, listening. There was no sound except that of our own breathing in the hot, dead air.

“Where are those keys?” I whispered.

“In the kitchen.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

I flicked on the small flashlight and we went up the stairs. I was tense again, and wanting to get out. I felt like a wild animal reaching for the bait in a trap. We stepped into the kitchen. I cut the light, and we listened. There was dead silence. I tiptoed over to the other door and stared through the darkness of the dining room toward the front of the house. I could see only more empty blackness.

I switched on the light again. “Where?” I whispered.

She took my hand and directed the beam. It splashed against one of the white cupboards at the end of the sink, moved slightly again, and came to rest on the end of it. I saw it then. A big ring hung from a nail driven into the wood, a ring filled with a dozen or more of the old, unmarked, and useless keys that a house accumulates in its lifetime—extra car keys, cellar-door keys, trunk keys, front-door keys, and keys to nothing at all. While I stared, she lifted it down.

I held the light for her while she snapped the ring open, slid off three of the keys, and put the others back on the nail. She held the three in the palm of her hand for a moment, looked up at me in the reflected glow of the light with that cool, serene smile of hers, and dropped them into her handbag. I thought of $120,000 hanging there in plain sight among a bunch of discarded and useless junk. She was a smart baby.

The urge to hurry was getting to me again. There could have been two of them out there. One would miss the other, and start looking. Or he might work the gag out of his mouth.

I grabbed her arm and went through the dining room. In the short hallway that led to the stairs I gave her the flashlight. “Make it as fast as you can,” I said. “Throw some shoes and a dress in a bag or grab ‘em under your arm. Lets get out of here.”

I watched her go up the stairs. She turned at the top, and the light was gone. I tried to stand still in the darkness so I could listen, but my feet kept moving. I had the cop’s flashlight in my pocket, but didn’t take it out. I didn’t need a light; all I wanted to do was get out of there.

Why didn’t she hurry? She’d been gone a week. What was she doing? Standing in front of a closet full of clothes trying to make up her mind what to wear? Did she think she was going to a dance? I cut it off coldly, forcing myself to realize she’d hardly had time to walk down the hall to her bedroom yet. I waited, shifting from one foot to the other.

Minutes dragged by. At last I saw the beam of light cut through the darkness above me and turn at the head of the stairs. She was coming down. She had a small overnight bag in her hand and had on shoes instead of the fur-trimmed slippers. I grabbed the bag and fell in behind her, hustling her along.

We hurried back through the kitchen and down the stairs. The heels of her shoes clicked on the concrete floor of the basement. We turned and started toward the window. In another minute we’d be in the open and on our way.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and went prickling cold all over. In one motion I grabbed her arm, snatched the flashlight out of her hand, and shut it off. I jammed it in my pocket and put my hand over her mouth before she could even cry out or gasp at the suddenness of it. We remained locked together and suspended in the darkness and I felt her turn her head and look toward the windows. She saw it too. She stiffened.

It was another flashlight, outside. The beam hit the first window. It probed through dirty glass and screen and cobwebs to spatter weakly against the basement wall behind us. She moved a little, and I realized I still had my hand over her mouth. I took it away. The light dropped a little. It hit the floor not five feet away. Then it went out.

I breathed again. Pulling her by the arm, I began backing up. After two or three steps I turned and cut toward where the furnace should be. We had to get behind something. I felt the solid metal of it against my side just as the light snapped on again in front of the second window, the one I had broken. I pulled her quickly after me and we were behind the furnace.

I looked around the edge. Light splashed against the window, steadying up on the place where I had broken the glass. I was squeezing her arm. If it was another cop, he might come in. He’d see the tape and broken glass and realize someone had forced a way in there.

The screen was being drawn back. The window rose.

We couldn’t get out. The light was swinging across the basement now, and if we tried to run back he’d see us. Our only chance was to sweat it out, trying to keep the furnace between us and him. The light was pointed down. He dropped in on the concrete floor. He lost his balance and fell. The light dropped and rolled, coming to rest with its beam reflected off the whitewashed wall. I stared. I was looking at high-heeled shoes and a pair of nylon-clad legs that had never belonged to any cop in the world.

She reached for the light and for an instant I saw her face. It was Diana James.

I felt Mrs. Butler start beside me. Then, strangely, she pushed up against me, as if she were scared. She clung to me, gripping my arm. I was too busy to think about it. I didn’t know what it was until it was too late.

Diana James was straightening up, reaching for the flashlight. Then, abruptly, Madelon Butler pushed away

from me and walked out into the open. I tried to grab her, but it was too unexpected. She picked up the light and shot it right into the other’s face.

“Really, Cynthia,” she said, “I would have thought you’d have better sense than to come here yourself.”

Cynthia? But there wasn’t time to wonder about that. The whole thing was like trying to watch the separate stages of an explosion and knowing all you were ever going to see was the end result and that all in one piece. Diana James straightened in the merciless glare of the light, her eyes going bigger and bigger in terror. Her mouth tried to form something, but just opened and stayed there.

It was at exactly this moment that I felt the lightened weight of my coat and knew why she had pressed up against me in the dark. I lunged for her, still knowing there was nothing I could do, that I was just trying to catch pieces of something that was happening all at once.

She shot. The gun crashed. It roared and reverberated back and forth across the concrete-walled sound chamber of a basement where I’d been afraid of the tapping of her heels against the floor. Before I could grab her, she shot again, the sound swelling and exploding against my eardrums with almost physical pain. In all this madness of noise I saw Diana James jerk around, one hand going up to her chest, and then spill forward onto the floor like a collapsing column of children’s blocks. Just as I reached Madelon Butler and got my hands on her, the light tilted downward and splashed across the fallen dark head and the grotesque swirl of skirt and long legs and arms already still.

Silence rolled back and fell in on us. It was like a vacuum. I could hear it roaring in my ears. I grabbed her. “You—” I said. But there were no words. Nothing would come out. I had an odd feeling I was merely standing there to one side watching myself go crazy. I tried to shove her toward the window.

“Here’s your gun,” she said calmly.

I didn’t even know why I took it. I threw it, and heard the clatter as it hit a wall and fell to the floor.

“Get out that window!”

But she was gone. The flashlight snapped off and I was in total darkness, alone. I swept my arms around madly and felt nothing. Somehow I remembered the other flashlights in my pocket. I clawed one out and started to switch it on, but some remnant of sanity stopped me just in time. We had less than one chance in a thousand of getting out of there now before the whole town fell in on us, and we wouldn’t have that if we showed any light.

I started groping toward where the window should be. Maybe she was already there. Light flared behind me. I whirled. “Turn that out!” I lashed at her. Then I saw what she was doing. It was the ultimate madness.

It wasn’t the flashlight. She had struck a match and was setting fire to the mountainous pile of old papers and magazines beside the coal bin. An unfolded paper burst into flame. I leaped toward her. She grabbed up another and spread it open with a swing of her arm, dropping it on the first. I slammed into her and beat at the flames. It was hopeless.

Another caught. The fire mounted, throwing flickering light back into the corners of the basement and beginning to curl around the wooden beams above us. I fell back from it.

“Run!” I shouted.

She went toward the window. I pounded after her. I stumbled over something. It was the small traveling case I had set down. Without knowing why, I grabbed it up as I bounced back to my feet and lunged after her. I boosted her out the window. I threw the bag out. Then I knelt beside Diana James. I touched her throat, and knew it made no difference now whether we left her there or not. She was dead.

We ran across the black gulf of the lawn. The night was still silent, as if the peace of it had never been broken by the sound of shots. At the gate I looked back once. The basement windows were beginning to glow In a few minutes the house would be a red mountain of flame.

Chapter Eleven

We shot out the gate and across the pavement. As we plunged into the path by the power line I heard a siren behind us, somewhere in town. Somebody had reported the shots.

I could hear her laboring for breath, trying to keep up. She stumbled in the dark and I yanked her up savagely by her arm. I wished she were dead. I wished she’d never been born, or that I had never heard of her. She had wrecked it all. I didn’t even know any more why I was dragging her with me. Maybe it was pure reflex.

I had the keys out of my pocket before we reached the dense shadow under the trees where we’d left the car. I threw the bag in and began to punch the starter while she was running around to the other side and climbing in. The ceiling light flicked on and then off again as both doors closed, and in that short instant of time and in all the madness some part of my mind was still clear enough to grasp the awful thing I hadn’t noticed until now, until it was too late.

She didn’t have her purse.

Her hands were empty. She had left the purse back there in the house. Tires screamed as we shot ahead down the hill. I ground on the throttle, peering ahead into the lights for the turn that would come flying back at us. She didn’t have the purse. I saw the turn just in time. We slammed into it and threw gravel over into the field as we skidded around, and then we were straightened out again.

The highway was coming up now. No cars were in sight. We hurtled onto it, headed south. I was raging.

She’d killed Diana James and brought the cops down on us. All the roads would be blocked inside of an hour. And the big, final, most horrible joke of all was that the thing I had been after all the time, the thing that had got me

into this, was gone. I thought of those three keys fire-blackened and lost forever in the ashes of the house. Even the thousand dollars in cash was gone. We had nothing. We were wanted by all the police in the country, and didn’t have enough money to hide ourselves for a week.

She took a cigarette out of the breast pocket of the robe and lit it, and leaned back in the seat. “You appear to be unhappy about something,” she said.

“You little fool!”

“Didn’t you appreciate the funeral pyre for your charming friend?” she asked calmly. “I thought it rather

a nice touch. Something Wagnerian about it.”

“You stupid—”

I choked. It was no use. It was beyond me. I could only watch the highway flying back at us in the night. And watch the rear-view mirror for cars behind us. Where would they try to block us? Beyond that next town? Or before?

“You are provoked, aren’t you?”

I found the words at last. “Don’t you realize yet what you’ve done?” I raged at her. “You might as well have called them on the phone and told ‘em where we were. We’ve got about a chance in a million of getting away. And on top of that, you went off and left the thing we came back for.”

“Oh,” she said easily. “I see now what’s bothering you. You mean the keys?”

“Where did you leave the purse? Not that it matters

now.”

“I didn’t leave it,” she said. “It’s in that bag.”

I felt suddenly weak. Then I remembered that the only reason I had picked the bag up back there in the basement in all that confusion had been the fact that I’d stumbled over it. I felt even weaker. It was nearly a minute before I could even talk.

“All right. But look. By this time your whole lawn is full of cops. They’ve got radio cars. And there are only four highways out of Mount Temple. They’re all going to be plugged. We may not get past the next town.”

“Quite right,” she said. “We don’t even go to the next town. About six miles ahead, just before you go down into that river bottom, a dirt road turns off to the right. It runs west about ten miles and crosses another country road going south.”

“How far south can we get on it?”

“I’m not sure. But there are a number of them, and by switching back and forth we should be able to go over a hundred miles before we have to come back on a highway. And they can’t watch them all.”

It was our only chance, and it might work. I could feel the beginnings of hope. And at the same time I was conscious of a terrible yearning to get off that highway before it was too late. The six miles were a thousand. I rode on the throttle. We blasted on into the tunnel the lights made. We came around a long curve and I saw the taillights of a car far ahead. I slowed a little, hating it. We couldn’t pass anybody at that speed. It might be a cruising cop.

Minutes dragged by while we crawled along at fifty-five. “We’re getting near,” she said. I slowed, watching the mirror. Another car was behind us, but it was far back. We swung around another curve, and I saw the signboard. Nobody was in sight when we made the turn. I sighed with relief. The tension was off, for a while, anyway.

Then it rolled up from behind and caught me, the instant I relaxed. The tension wasn’t off. And maybe it never would be.

She had pulled the trigger, but I was in as deep as she was. I’d been there, it was the gun I was carrying, and I had helped her to escape. And if they ever caught us, it’d just be my word against hers. That was nice, wasn’t it? A jury would take one look at the two of us, and hang me without going out of the room. I felt sick.

It was a narrow gravel road, very rough and full of right-angled turns going around cotton fields. After a mile or two we went up over a slight rise and plunged into a dense forest of pine. There were no houses, no lights anywhere. I stopped.

“You drive,” I said. I got out and went around to the other side while she slid under the wheel.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Look at the map. If I can find one.” She started up. I took the flashlight out of my pocket

and pawed through the usual collection of junk in the glove compartment. Down at the bottom I found a state highway map. I unfolded it.

Here was Mount Temple. Two hundred miles south, on the Gulf, was Sanport. I ran my finger along the main north-south highway and found the faint line that was the unnumbered secondary road we were on. It went on and came out on another north-south highway about forty miles west. But I could see, just ahead of where we should be now, the intersecting road she had mentioned. It ran south for about thirty miles before it ended on another east-west secondary road. We could shift west on that one for about fifteen miles and we’d hit another going south. I traced on through the maze of faint lines. It could be done. We could get down through that back country for nearly 150 miles before coming back on a main highway again, and when we did, we’d have a choice of at least three roads converging on the city. They couldn’t cover all of them.

Gasoline?

I shot a glance at the gauge. It was a little over half full. It might be enough. But this would be poor country to try to cut it fine. I looked back at the map. About seventy-five miles south we’d go through a small town. We could fill up there.

I lit a cigarette and glanced around at her. The soft glow of the dash lights was on her face. I studied it for a moment while she rammed the car ahead between the dark walls of pine. What kind of woman was this, anyway? It hadn’t been thirty minutes since she had killed another woman, she had probably murdered her husband, she had burned down that enormous house she had lived in all her life, she was running from the police, and yet she could have been merely driving over to a neighbor’s to play bridge for all the emotion she showed.

But still it wasn’t in any way an expressionless doll’s face. It was just intensely proud and self-contained. Maybe she felt things and maybe she didn’t; but win, lose, or draw, it was her business. She didn’t advertise. There was a cool and disdainful sort of arrogance about it

that didn’t give a damn for what anybody thought—or for anybody, for that matter.

At least that made us even on that. I didn’t care much for her either.

“Not so worried now?” she asked. I could hear the faint undertone of contempt.

“Look, Hard Stuff,” I said. “I’ll make out all right. Don’t fret about it. It’s just that if you’re trying to hide from the police, I don’t see any sense in telling them where you are by killing people just for laughs. Or starting a bonfire to attract attention. So let’s don’t try it again. You might get hurt yourself.”

“Careful,” she said mockingly. “Remember how much I’m worth to you alive.”

“What do you think I’ve been remembering? The touch of your hand?”

“Quite proud of your tough attitude, aren’t you?”

“It’s a tough world.”

She said nothing. In a few minutes we hit the crossroad. She turned left. The road began to drop a little toward the river country. It was wild and sparsely settled, and we met no cars.

“See if you can find a place to get off the road,” I said. “You’ve got to change those clothes.”

“All right.”

She slowed. In a few minutes we saw a pair of ruts leading off into the timber. She pulled off far enough to be out of sight of the road, and stopped in a small open space where there was room to turn around.

I got out, but before I did I lifted the keys out of the ignition. She saw it. She smiled. “Trust me, don’t you?”

“You think I’m stupid?” I gestured toward the traveling bag. “Change in the car. And let me know when you’re ready to go.”

I walked back a short distance toward the road and lit a cigarette. The sky was still overcast, and night pressed down over the river bottom with an impenetrable blackness and a silence that seemed to ring in my ears. Nothing moved here. We were alone.

Alone?

They were drawing circles around us on the map. The radio was snapping orders, efficient and coded and deadly. Police cars raced down highways in the darkness all around us. Like hell we were alone. We had lots of company; it was just spread out around us, waiting.

I turned my head and I could see the red glow of the car’s taillights behind me. We could beat them. They had everything in their favor except the two things they had to have to win: a description of the car and a description of me. They didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, or even that I existed. If I could keep them from seeing her, we could make it.

I finished the cigarette and flipped it outward in the darkness. She called softly. I turned. She had opened one of the car doors so the ceiling light would come on. When I walked up, she was holding a mirror and putting lipstick on her mouth.

She had changed into a skirt and a dark blouse about the color of her eyes. The sleeves of the blouse were full and then tight-fitting about the wrists, and below them her hands were slender and pale and very beautiful. She finished with the lipstick, put the mirror back in her purse, and looked up at me.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. “For a woman who’s just murdered another one, you look great.”

“You have a deplorable command of English,” she said. “Don’t you find murdered a bit pretentious as applied to vermin? Why not exterminated? Or simply removed?”

“Yes, Your Highness. Excuse me for breathing. Now, take those three keys out of your purse and hand them

here.”

“Why?”

“Because I like your company. I adore you, and

wouldn’t have you leave me for anything.”

“They’re no good to you alone.”

“I know. But they are to you. And if we get clear of here tonight you might suddenly decide you didn’t need any more help—not at today’s prices. I can’t watch you all the time. I have to sleep occasionally, and I don’t intend to follow you to the John. So just to remove the temptation, I’ll take charge of them.”

Her eyes met mine coolly, not quite defying me, but just testing me and watching. “There’s an easy way,” I said, “and a hard way. How do you want it?” She took the three keys out of her purse and put them in my hand. “That’s better,” I said. I put them in my wallet.

I looked at my watch. It was nine-twenty. I could feel that awful urge to run and run faster and keep on running take hold of me again. I got behind the wheel and we rolled back on the road. We shot ahead in the darkness.

We crossed the river on a long wooden bridge. The road began to rise again. We couldn’t make much speed. There were too many chuckholes in the road. I managed to keep it around forty.

“Just where, precisely, are we going?” she asked.

“Sanport. Thirty-eight-twenty-seven Davy Avenue. Memorize it, in case we get separated. My apartment’s on the third floor. Number Three-o-three.”

“Number Three-o-three. Thirty-eight-twenty-seven

Davy,” she repeated. “That’s easy to remember.”

“And my name’s Scarborough. Lee Scarborough.”

“Is that authentic? Or another alias?”

“It’s my right name.”

“To what do I owe this unprecented confidence? You

wouldn’t tell me before.”

“With those two people listening? You think I’m crazy?”

“Oh,” she said. “And, in case we do get to Sanport

alive, what do we do with the car?”

“I’m going to take it to the airport and ditch it. After I get you into the apartment. I’ll take a taxi or limousine back to town.”

“That’s a little obvious,” she pointed out. “I mean, if we were really taking a plane, we’d leave the car anywhere but at the airport.”

“I know. But they’ll never be sure. As a matter of fact, they may never get a lead on this car, anyway. But even if they do, and find it out there, all they can do is suspect you’re in Sanport. You’ll be on ice. You’ll never go out on the street.”

“We can’t get the money out of the vaults unless I go out.”

“I know. But we can wait until some of the heat’s off. How long is the rent paid on them?”

“For a year. A year from July, that is.”

“All right. It’s easy, if we just get there. You stay right in the apartment for at least a month. Maybe longer. We do what we can to change your appearance. I’m working on that now. Maybe we’ll make you a redhead. Change you from the skin out, cheap, flashy clothes, that sort of thing. There’s only one thing, though. How many times have you been in that bank where you rented the boxes?”

“Banks,” she said. “They’re in three different ones. I was in each of them only once.”

“Well, it’s all right, then. They won’t remember what you looked like. If you’ve changed from a brunette to a redhead, they’ll” never notice. I understand it’s been done before, anyway.”

“So if I don’t go mad in a month of being shut up in that apartment, and I manage to get the money out without being recognized, what then? You murder me, I suppose, and leave the country? Is that it?”

“I’ve already told you,” I said. “I take you to the Coast. San Francisco, for instance. In my car. I could buy a trailer and let you ride in that, out of sight, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary if your appearance can be changed enough. You can take out a Social Security card under the name of Susie Mumble or something and go to work. They’ll never get you—if you lay off the juice and keep your mouth shut.”

“Go to work as a waitress, I suppose?”

“Waitress. Carhop. B-girl. Who cares? As a matter of fact, with your looks you’d never have to work anywhere very long.”

“Well, thank you. Do you mean my looks as they are now, or after I’ve suffered a month of your remodeling?”

I shrugged. “Either way. You’d come out a beautiful wench no matter what we did. There’d be plenty of wolves drooling to support you.”

“I like your objective appraisal. I take it you don’t include yourself among them?”

“You’re a business proposition to me, a hundred and twenty thousand dollars’ worth of meat to deliver on the hoof. I like my women warm to the touch. And not quite so deadly with a gun.”

“I am already aware of the vulgar depths of your taste. Diana James, for instance.”

I saw Diana James turn a little, as if someone had twitched at her clothing, and collapse, sprawling on the concrete floor.

“Why did you call her Cynthia?” I asked, remembering.

“Because that was her real name. Cynthia Cannon.”

“Why did she change it?”

“Why does any criminal?”

“I thought she was a nurse.”

“I believe she was.”

I shrugged. “All right. It’s nothing to me. I don’t give a damn. I don’t care how you killed Butler, why you killed him, or where, or who helped you. I don’t care who those two blonds were, or how they got in it, or why they wanted to kill you. I don’t care why you shot Diana James, or whatever her name was, or why she changed her name.”

“Well, that’s good,” she said.

“Shut up till I finish. There’s just one thing I care about, and you’d better be telling the truth about that. If there’s not any hundred and twenty thousand in those three boxes, or you try to run out with it, hell will never

hold you.”

“Don’t worry. It’s there.”

“Baby,” I said, “it had better be.”

Chapter Twelve

We tried the radio.

It crooned, and gave away thousands of dollars, and told jokes cleaned up with kissing, and groaned as private eyes were hit on the head, and poured sirup on us, and after a long time there was some news. Big Three, it said, and investigation, and tax cut, and budget, and Senator Frammis in a statement this morning, but nothing about Butler.

It was too soon.

We were pounding over a rough road in a vacuum of dead silence and blackness while all around us the sirens were screaming and teletypes were chattering and police cars were taking stations on highways intersecting a circle they had drawn on the map like a proposition in plane geometry, but it was too soon for anybody to know

about it except the hunters and the hunted.

I cursed and turned the radio off.

She lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat. “Don’t be so intense, Mr. Scarborough,” she said with amusement. “We’ll get through. Cyclops is feeling only the backs of the sheep.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I guess they haven’t made a comic book

of it yet.”

“Go choke yourself,” I said.

“A month. One whole, enchanting month.”

“Don’t worry. If I can stand it for a hundred and twenty

grand, you should be able to put up with it to stay out of the electric chair.”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?”

I shrugged her off and concentrated on driving. We came out at last on the intersecting east-west road and

turned right, watching for the one that crossed going south. I looked at the time. It was nearly eleven. The few farmhouses we passed were dark. I began to watch the gasoline gauge. It was dropping faster than I had expected. It must be nearly thirty miles to that small town on the map. And if we got there too late, everything might be closed.

It was a race between the gas gauge and the clock. When we saw the lights of the little town ahead it was ten minutes till midnight and the gauge had been on empty for two miles.

“Get down out of sight while we go through,” I said.

“Aren’t we going to get gasoline?” she asked.

“Not with you in the car.”

She got down, squatting on the floor with her head and shoulders on the seat. I drove through without stopping, looking for an open gas station and knowing that if we didn’t find one we were sunk. It was a one-street town two blocks long, with half a dozen cars parked in the puddle of light in front of the lone cafe. There was a garage at the end of the street, on a corner.

It was open.

The attendant in white coveralls stood in the empty drive between the pumps and watched us go past. I’d been afraid of that. But it couldn’t be helped. Anything moving at all in a town like this would be seen.

I drove on, past the scattered dark houses at the edge of town, hoping there would be enough left in the tank to get back. We went around a curve and the lights were gone, swallowed up in the night behind us. I slowed. We crossed a wooden bridge where willows grew out over the roadside ditch. I slid to a stop.

“Wait right here,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. And don’t show yourself on the road until you’re sure it’s

me. I’ll flip the lights up and down before I stop.”

“All right,” she said. She got out of the car.

There were no cars in sight. I made a fast U turn and

headed back.

I stopped in the pool of light in the driveway. The attendant came over. He was a big black-headed kid with a grin. “Fill ‘er up?” he asked, looking at me with faint curiosity. He knew it was the same car he’d just seen going past headed south.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s empty. Just lucky I noticed it before I got clear out of town.”

He shoved the nozzle in the tank. It was the automatic type that shuts itself off. He went around in front and checked the oil and water and started cleaning the windshield while the bell on the pump tinkled away the gallons. I could hear a radio yammering in the office. It sounded funny, like a cab dispatcher’s radio, cutting off, coming on, going off again. I couldn’t tell what it was saying.

The kid jerked his head toward the car’s license tags and said, “Lot of excitement up your way tonight.”

I could feel my mouth dry up. “Hows that?”

“Mrs. Butler again. You don’t happen to know her, do you?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Just thought maybe you did, seeing as you’re from the same county. She’s got this whole end of the state in an uproar. With all the cops looking for her, she comes right back to her own house. Or at least they figure it must have been her. Some man with her, too, from the looks of it. They slugged a deputy sheriff and shackled him with his own handcuffs, and the house got afire some way”

“All this on the radio?” I asked. “I didn’t hear anything about it.”