A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Red Tide

Young Mrs. Jacqueline Blaine opened a pair of gas-flame-blue eyes and looked wistfully up at the ceiling. Then she closed them again and nearly went back to sleep. There wasn’t very much to get up for; the party was over.

The party was over, and they hadn’t raised the twenty-five hundred dollars.

She rolled her head sidewise on the pillow and nestled it against the curve of one ivory shoulder, the way a pouting little girl does. Maybe it was that last thought made her do it, instinctively. Water was sizzling downward against tiling somewhere close by; then it broke off as cleanly as at the cut of a switch, and a lot of laggard, left-over drops went tick, tick, tick like a clock.

Jacqueline Blaine opened her eyes a second time, looked down her arm over the edge of the bed to the little diamond-splintered microcosm attached to the back of her wrist. It was about the size of one of her own elongated fingernails, and very hard to read numbers from. She raised her head slightly from the pillow, and still couldn’t make out the time on the tiny watch.

It didn’t matter; the party was over, they’d all gone — all but that old fossil, maybe. Gil had seemed to pin his hopes on him, had said he hoped he could get him alone. She could have told Gil right now the old bird was a hopeless case; Gil wouldn’t be able to make a dent in him. She’d seen that when she tried to lay the groundwork for Gil the day before.

Well, if he’d stayed, let Leona look after him, get his breakfast. She sat up and yawned, and until you’d seen her yawn, you would have called a yawn an ungainly grimace. Not after, though. She propped her chin up with her knees and looked around. A silverish evening dress was lying where she last remembered squirming out of it, too tired to care. Gil’s dress tie was coiled in a snake formation on the floor.

She could see a green tide rising and falling outside of the four windows, on two sides of the room. Not water, but trees swaying in the breeze. The upper halves of the panels were light-blue. The sun was somewhere straight overhead, she could tell that by the way it hardly came in past the sills. It wasn’t a bad lookout, even after a party. “It would be fun living in it,” she mourned to herself, “if the upkeep wasn’t so tough; if I didn’t have to be nice to eccentric old codgers, trying to get them to cough up. All to keep up appearances.”

Gil came out of the shower alcove. He was partly dressed already — trousers and undershirt, but feet still bare — and mopping his hair with a towel. He threw it behind him onto the floor and came on in. Her eyes followed him halfway around the room with growing curiosity.

“Well, how’d you make out?” she asked finally.

He didn’t answer. She glanced at the adjoining bed, but it was only rumpled on top, the covers hadn’t been turned down. He must have just lain down on it without getting in.

She didn’t speak again until she had come out of the shower in turn. He was all dressed now, standing looking out of the window, cigarette smoke working its way back around the bend of his neck. She snapped off her rubber bathing cap, remarked:

“I guess Leona thinks we died in our sleep.”

She wriggled into a yellow jersey that shot ten years to pieces — and she’d looked about twenty to begin with.

“Is Burroughs still here,” she asked wearily, “or did he decide to go back to town anyway, after I left you two last night?”

“He left,” he said shortly. He didn’t turn around. The smoke coming around the nape of his neck thickened almost to a fog, then thinned out again, as though he’d taken a whale of a drag just then.

“I was afraid of that,” she said. But she didn’t act particularly disturbed. “Took the eight-o’clock train, I suppose.”

He turned around. “Eight o’clock, hell!” he said. “He took the milk train!”

She put down the comb and stopped what she was doing. “What?” Then she said. “How do you know?”

“I drove him to the station, that’s how I know!” he snapped. His face was turned to her, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes focused a little too far to one side, then shifted over a little too far to the other, trying to dodge hers.

“What got into him, to go at that unearthly hour? The milk train — that hits here at 4:30 a.m., doesn’t it?”

He was looking down. “At 4:20,” he said. He was already lighting another cigarette, and it was a live one judging by the way it danced around before he could get it to stand still between his cupped hands.

“Well, what were you doing up at that hour yourself?”

“I hadn’t come up to bed yet at all. He decided to go, so I ran him in.”

“You had a row with him,” she stated positively. “Why else should he leave—”

“I did not!” He took a couple of quick steps toward the door, as though her barrage of questions was getting on his nerves, as though he wanted to escape from the room. Then he changed his mind, stayed in the new place, looking at her. “I got it out of him,” he said quietly. That special quietness of voice that made her an accomplice in his financial difficulties. No, every wife should be that. That special tone that seemed to make her his shill in a confidence game. That special tone that she was beginning to hate.

“You don’t act very happy about it,” she remonstrated.

He took a wallet out of his pocket, split it lengthwise, showing a pleating of currency edges. And it was so empty, most of the time!

“Not the whole twenty-five hundred?”

“The works.”

“You mean he carries that much in ready cash around with him, when he just comes for a week end in the country! Why... why, I saw him go in to cash a twenty-five-dollar check Saturday afternoon in the village. So he could hold up his end when he went out to the inn that night. I was embarrassed, because he asked me if I thought you could oblige him; I not only knew you couldn’t, but I knew it was up to us as hosts to pay his way, and I didn’t know what to say. Luckily you weren’t around, so he couldn’t ask you; he finally went in to get it cashed himself.”

“I know,” he said impatiently. “I met him out front and drove him in myself!”

“You?”

“I told him I was strapped, couldn’t help him out. Then after he’d cashed it himself and was putting it away, he explained that he had twenty. five hundred on him, but it was a deposit earmarked for the bank Monday morning. He hadn’t had time to put it in Friday afternoon before he came out here; our invitation had swept him off his feet so. He wanted this smaller amount just for expense money.”

“But then he handed the twenty-five hundred over to you anyway?”

“No, he didn’t,” he said, goaded. “At least, not at first. He had his check book on him, and when I finally broke down his resistance after you’d gone to bed last night, he wrote me out a check. Or started to. I suggested as long as he happened to have that exact amount in cash, he make the loan in cash; that I was overdrawn at my own bank, and if I tried to put his check through there they’d put a nick in it and I needed every penny. He finally agreed; I gave him a receipt, and he gave me the cash.”

“But then why did he leave at that ungodly hour?”

“Well, he did one of those slow burns, after it was all over and he’d come across. You know him when it comes to parting with money. It must have finally dawned on him that we’d only had him out here, among a lot of people so much younger than him, to put the bee on him. Anyway, he asked when the next train was, and I couldn’t induce him to stay over; he insisted on leaving then and there. So I drove him in. In one way, I was afraid if he didn’t go, he’d think it over and ask for his money back, so I didn’t urge him too much.”

“But you’re sure you didn’t have words over it?”

“He didn’t say a thing. But I could tell by the sour look on his face what he was thinking.”

“I suppose he’s off me, too,” she sighed.

“So what? You don’t need an extra grandfather.”

They had come out of the bedroom and started down the upper hail toward the stairs. She silenced him at sight of an open door ahead, with sunlight streaming out of it. “Don’t say anything about it in front of Leona. She’ll expect to get paid right away.”

An angular Negress with a dust cloth in her hand looked out at them as they reached the open door. “Mawnin’. I about give you two up. Coffee’s been on and off ’bout three times. I can’t drink no more of it myself; make me bilious. I done fix the old gentleman’s room up while I was waitin’.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to bother,” Jacqueline Blaine assured her happily, almost gayly; “we’re not having any more guests for a while, thank—”

“He still here, ain’t he?” asked Leona, peering surprisedly.

This time it was Gil who answered. “No. Why?”

“He done left his bag in there — one of ’em, anyway. He want it sent to the station after him?”

Jacqueline looked in surprise from the maid to her husband. The blinding sunlight flashing through the doorway made his face seem whiter than it actually was. It was hard on the eyes, too, made him shift about, as in their bedroom before.

“He must’ve overlooked it in his hurry, gone off without it,” he murmured. “I didn’t know how many he’d brought with him so I never noticed.”

Jacqueline turned out the palms of her hands. “How could he do that, when he only brought two in the first place, and” — she glanced into the guest room — “this one’s the larger of the two?”

“It was in the clothes closet; maybe he didn’t see it himself,” offered Leona, “and forgot he had it with him. I slide it out just now.” She hurried down the stairs to prepare their delayed breakfast.

Jacqueline lowered her voice, with a precautionary glance after her, and asked him: “You didn’t get him drunk, did you? Is that how you got it out of him? He’s liable to make trouble for us as soon as he—”

“He was cold sober,” he growled. “Try to get him to drink!” So he had tried, she thought to herself, and hadn’t succeeded.

“Well, then, I don’t see how on earth anyone could go off and leave a bag that size, when they only brought one other one out with them in the first place.”

He was obviously irritable, nerves on edge; anyone would have been after being up the greater part of the night. He cut the discussion short by taking an angry step over, grasping the doorknob, and pulling the door shut. Since he seemed to take such a trifling thing that seriously, she refrained from dwelling on it any longer just then. He’d feel better after he’d had some coffee.

They sat down in a sun-drenched porch, open glass on three sides. Leona brought in two glasses of orange juice, with the pulp shreds all settled at the bottom from standing too long.

“Wabbie ’em around a little,” she suggested cheerily; “dat makes it clear up.”

Jackie Blaine believed in letting servants express their individualities. When you’re a good deal behind on their wages, you can’t very well object, anyway.

Gil’s face looked even more drawn down here than it had in the lesser sunlight upstairs. Haggard. But his mood had cleared a little. “Before long, we’ll sit breakfasting in the South American way — and will I be glad of a change of scene!”

“There won’t be much left to travel on, if you take care of our debts.”

“If,” he said half audibly.

The phone rang.

“That must be Burroughs, asking us to forward his bag.” Jackie Blaine got up and went in to answer it.

It wasn’t Burroughs, it was his wife.

“Oh, hello,” Jackie said cordially. “We were awfully sorry to hear you were laid up like that and couldn’t come out with Mr. Burroughs. Feeling any better?”

Mrs. Burroughs’ voice sounded cranky, put out. “I think it’s awfully inconsiderate of Homer not to let me know he was staying over another day. He knew I wasn’t well when he left! I think the least he might have done was phone me or send a wire if he wasn’t coming, and you can tell him I said so.”

Jackie Blaine tightened her hold on the telephone. “But, hold on, Mrs. Burroughs. He isn’t here any more; he did leave, early this morning.”

There was a startled stillness at the other end. Then: “Early this morning! Well, why hasn’t he gotten here? What train did he take?”

Jackie swiveled toward her husband, telephone and all. She could see him sitting out there from where she was. “Didn’t you say Mr. Burroughs took the milk train, Gil?”

She could see the gnarled lump of his Adam’s apple go all the way up, then ebb down again. Something made him swallow, though why he should swallow at that particular point — his cup wasn’t anywhere near his lips. Unless maybe there was some coffee left in his mouth from before, that he’d forgotten to swallow till now. He didn’t move at all. Not even his lips. It was like a statue speaking — a statue of gleaming white marble. “Yes, that’s right.”

Somehow there wasn’t very much color left in her own face. “What time would that bring him in, Gil?” She always used the car herself.

“Before eight.” She relayed it.

“Well, where is he then?” The voice was beginning to fray a little around the edges.

“He may have gone direct to his office from the train, Mrs. Burroughs; he may have had something important to attend to before he went home.”

Still more of the self-control in the other woman’s voice unraveled. “But he didn’t, I know he didn’t! That’s why I’m calling you; his office phoned a little while ago to ask me if I knew whether or not he’d be in today.”

“Oh.” The exclamation was soundless, a mental flash on Jackie’s part.

The voice had degenerated to a pitiful plea for assistance, all social stiffness gone now. It was the frightened whimper of a pampered invalid wife who suddenly has the tables turned on her. “But what’s become of him, Mrs. Blaine?”

Jackie said in a voice that sounded a little hollow in her own ears: “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Burroughs; I’m sure he’s just unavoidably detained somewhere in town.” But somehow she caught herself swallowing in her turn now, as Gil had before. It was such a straight line from here-or rather from the station out here — to his home, how could anything possibly happen to anyone traveling it?

“He was feeling all right when you saw him off, wasn’t he, Gil?”

He started up from his chair, moved over to one of the glass panels, stood staring out, boiling smoke.

“Leave me out of it for two minutes, will you?” His voice came back to her muffledly.

That “Leave me out of it” blurred the rest of the conversation as far as she was concerned. The voice she was listening to disintegrated into sobs and incoherent remarks. She heard herself saying vaguely: “Please don’t worry... I feel terrible... Will you call me back and let me know?” But what was there she could do? And she knew, oh, she knew that she didn’t want to hear from this woman again.

She hung up. She was strangely unable to turn around and look toward where Gil was standing. It was a physical incapacity. She felt almost rigid. She had remained standing during the entire conversation. She sat down now. She lighted a cigarette, but it went right out again because she didn’t keep it going. She let her head fall slowly as of its own weight forward into her upcurved hand, so that it was planted between her eyes and partly shut them out.

She didn’t want any more breakfast.

She saw the man get out of the car and come up to the house. She knew him by sight. He’d been here before. This was about three that afternoon, that Monday afternoon, the day Burroughs had — gone. He had a cheap car. The sound of it driving up and stopping was what had made her get up off the bed and go over to the window to look. She’d stopped crying by then anyway. You can’t cry all day long; there isn’t that much crying in you.

Then when she saw who it was — oh, that wasn’t anything. This was such a minor matter — now. And of course it could be taken care of easily enough — now. She stayed there by the window, waiting to see him walk out to his car and drive off again, within five minutes at the most — with the money he’d come for. Because Gil was down there; he could attend to it and get rid of him for good — now. Then there’d be one fewer to hound the two of them.

But the five minutes were up, and the man didn’t come right out again the way she’d expected him to. He seemed to be staying as long as those other times, when all he got was a drink and a lot of build-up. Angry voices filtered up to her-one angry voice, anyway, and one subdued, placative one.

She went outside to the head of the stairs and listened tautly. Not that this was new to her, but it had a new, a terrible significance now.

The angry voice, that of the man who had come in the car, was barking: “How long does this keep up, Blaine? You gimme that same run-around each time! You think all I gotta do is come out here? Look at this house you live in! Look at the front you put up! You mean you haven’t got that much, a guy like you?”

And Gil’s voice, whining plaintively: “I tell you I haven’t got it this minute! What am I going to do, take it out of my blood? You’re going to get it; just give me time.”

The angry voice rose to a roar, but at least it shifted toward the front door. “I’m warning you for the last time, you better get it and no more of this funny business! My boss has been mighty patient with you! There are other ways of handling welshers, and don’t forget it!”

The door slammed and the car outside racketed up and dwindled off in the distance.

Jackie Blaine crept down the stairs a step at a time toward where Gil was shakily pouring himself a drink. Her face was white, as white as his had been that noon when they first got up. But not because of what she had just heard. Still because of its implication.

“Who was it?” she said hoarsely.

“Verona’s stooge. Still that same lousy personal loan he once made me.”

“How much is it?”

“Six hundred odd.”

She knew all these things; she wanted to hear it from him. She spoke in a frightened whisper: “Then why didn’t you give it to him? You have twenty-five hundred on you.”

He went ahead with his drink.

“Why? Gil, look at me. Why?”

He wouldn’t answer.

She reeled over to him, like someone about to pass out; her head fell against his chest. “D’you love me?”

“That’s the one thing in my life that’s on the level.”

“Then you’ve got to tell me. I’ve got to know. Did you do anything to him last night?”

She buried her face against him, waiting. Silence.

“I can take it. I’ll stick with you. I’ll string along. But I’ve got to know, one way or the other.” She looked up. She began to shake him despairingly by the shoulders. “Gil, why don’t you answer me? Don’t stand there — That’s why you didn’t pay Verona’s debt, isn’t it? Because you’re afraid to have it known now that you have money on you — after he was here.”

“Yes, I am afraid,” he breathed almost inaudibly.

“Then you—” She sagged against him; he had to catch her under the arms or she would have gone down.

“No, wait. Pull yourself together a minute. Here, swallow this. Now... steady, hold onto the table. Yes, I did do something. I know what you’re thinking. No, not that. It’s bad enough, though. I’m worried. Stick with me, Jackie. I don’t want to get in trouble. I met him coming out of the house Saturday, wanting to cash that pin-money check, and I drove him in, like I told you. The bank was closed for the half day, of course, and I suggested getting it cashed at the hotel. I told him they knew me and I could get it done easier than he could, so I took it in for him and he waited outside in the car.

“I didn’t mean to put one over on him; it all came up sort of sudden. I knew I didn’t have a chance at that hotel desk, not even if the check had been signed by a millionaire, and I didn’t want him to come in with me and see them turn me down. Jack McGovern happened to come through the lobby just as I walked in, and on the spur of the moment I borrowed twenty-five from him as a personal loan without giving him the check. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just that I was embarrassed to let him know I couldn’t even accommodate one of my own house guests for a measly twenty-five. You know how they talk around here. I went out and gave the twenty-five to Burroughs, and I kept the endorsed check in my pocket. I intended tearing it up, but I couldn’t very well do it in front of him. Then later I forgot about it.

“I tackled him last night after you went to bed, and he didn’t come through. He got crabby, caught on we’d just played him for a sucker, refused to finish out the visit, insisted on taking the next train back. I drove him in; I couldn’t very well let him walk at that hour. He got out at the station and I came on back without waiting.

“I started to do a slow burn. There I was, not only no better off than before we asked him out, but even more in the red, on account of the expense of the big house party we threw to impress him. Naturally I was sore, after all the false hopes we’d raised, after the way you’d put yourself out to be nice to him. I couldn’t sleep all night, stayed down here drinking and pacing back and forth, half nuts with worry. And then sometime after daylight I happened to stick my hand in my pocket for something and suddenly turned up his twenty-five-dollar endorsed check.

“It was a crazy thing to do, but I didn’t stop to think. I lifted it, added two zips to the figures, got in the car then and there, and drove all the way in to town. I cashed it at his own bank the minute the doors opened at nine. I knew he had twenty times that much on tap at all times, so it wouldn’t hurt him any.”

“But, Gil, didn’t you know what would happen, didn’t you know what he could do to you?”

“Yeah, I did, but I guess I had a vague idea in the back of my mind that if it came to a showdown and he threatened to get nasty with me about it — well, there were a couple of times he got a little too affectionate with you; you told me so yourself — I could threaten to get just as nasty with him about that. You know how scared he is of that wife of his.”

“Gil,” was all she said, “Gil.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty low.”

“As long as it’s not the other. But then what’s become of him? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see him get on the train?”

“No, I just left him there at the station and turned around and drove back without waiting.”

She hesitated a moment before speaking. Then she said slowly: “What I’ve just heard hasn’t exactly been pleasant, but I told you I could take it, and I can, and I have. And I think — I know — I can stand the other, the worse thing, too, if you tell it to me now, right away, and get it over with. But now’s the time. This is your last chance, Gil. Don’t let me find out later, because later — it may be different, I may not still be able to feel the same way about it. You didn’t kill Burroughs last night, did you?”

He breathed deeply. His eyes looked into hers. “I never killed anyone in my life. And now, are you with me?”

She raised her head defiantly. “To the bitter end.”

“Bitter.” He smiled ruefully. “I don’t like that word.”

His name was Ward, he said. She wondered if that was customary on their parts, to give their names like that instead of their official standing. She wasn’t familiar with their technique, had never been interviewed before. And of course, she would be alone in the house when he happened to drop in. Still, on second thought, that might be better. Gil might have given a — well, a misleading impression, been keyed up, on account of that check business. This was Tuesday, the day after Burroughs had last been seen.

Her caller spared her any of that business of flaunting a badge in front of Leona; that was another consoling thing. He must have just given his name to Leona, because Leona went right back to the kitchen instead of stalling around outside the room so she could hear. Just people that came to try to collect money didn’t interest her any more; the novelty had worn off long ago.

Jackie Blaine said: “Sit down, Mr. Ward. My husband’s gone in to town—”

“I know that.” It came out as flat as a sheet of onion-skin paper, but for a minute it made her a little uneasy; it sounded as though they were already watching Gil’s movements.

“If there’s anything I can do—”

“There always is, don’t you think?”

He didn’t look so coarse, so hard-bitten, as she’d always imagined those men did. He looked — well, no different from any number of other young fellows they’d entertained out here, whom she’d danced with, golfed with, and almost invariably found herself putting in their places, in some dimly lighted corner, before the week-end was over. She knew how to handle the type well. But then she’d never parried life-and-death with them before. And maybe he just looked the type.

He said: “Mr. Homer Burroughs was here at your house from Friday until some time late Sunday night or early Monday morning.” There wasn’t the rising inflection of interrogation at the end of it.

“He was.”

“When did you last see him?”

“My husband drove him to the station in time for—”

“That isn’t what I asked you, Mrs. Blaine.”

She didn’t like that; he was trying to differentiate between Gil and herself. They were together in this, sink or swim. She answered it his way. “I said good night to Mr. Burroughs at ten to one Monday morning. My husband remained downstairs with him. My husband drove him—”

He didn’t want that part of it. “Then 1 A.M. Monday was the last time you saw him. When you left him, who else was in the house with him besides your husband, anyone?”

“Just my husband.”

“When you said good night, was it understood you weren’t to see him in the morning? Did he say anything about leaving in the small hours of the night?”

That was a bad hurdle to get over. “It was left indefinite,” she said. “We’re... we’re sort of casual out here about those things — formal good-byes and such.”

“Even so, as his hostess, wouldn’t it be up to him to at least drop some hint to let you know he was going, to thank you for your hospitality before taking his leave?”

She brought a gleam of her old prom-girl manner, of three or four years before, to the surface. Keep it light and off dangerous ground. It had worked to ward off boa-constrictor hugs; maybe it would work to keep your husband out of difficulties with the police. “You’ve read your Emily Post, I see. Won’t you have a drink while you’re doing this?”

He flattened her pitiful attempt like a locomotive running on a single track full steam ahead. “No, I won’t! Did he drop the slightest remark to indicate that he wouldn’t be here by the time you were up the following morning?”

He’d given her an opening there: her own and Gil’s habitual late hour for rising any day in the week. “Well, we took that for granted. After all, he had to be back at the office by nine and—”

But it didn’t work out so good. “But he didn’t have to take the milk train to get back to the office by nine. Isn’t it a little unusual that he should leave in the dead of night like that, a man of sixty-four, without getting his night’s rest first?”

“Well, all right. Say it is!” she flared resentfully. “But we’re not accountable for his eccentricities, why come to us about it? He left here, I assure you. Look under the carpet if you don’t think so!” A second later she wished she hadn’t said that; it seemed to put her ahead of him, so to speak. They got you all muddled, these professional detectives. Just think if it had been a case of out-and-out murder, instead of just trying to conceal that money business of Gil’s!

Ward smiled wryly at her dig about the carpet. “Oh, I don’t doubt he left the house, here.”

She didn’t like the slight emphasis he gave the word “house,” as though implying something had happened to him right outside it, or not far away.

“Then what more have we got to do with it? Who’s putting these ideas in your head, his wife?”

“I don’t have ideas in my head, just instructions, Mrs. Blaine.”

“Why don’t you check at the other end, in the city? Why don’t you find out what became of him there?”

He said very quietly, “Because he never got there, Mrs. Blaine.”

Womanlike, she kept trying to retain the offensive, as the best defense. “How do you know for sure? Just because he didn’t appear either at his home or his office? He may have been run over by a taxi. He may have been overcome by amnesia.”

“To get to the city, he would have had to take the train first of all, wouldn’t he, Mrs. Blaine? A man of sixty-four isn’t likely to thumb a ride in along the highway at four in the morning, with week-end baggage in the bargain, is he?”

“He did take the train. He must have. My husb—”

“We happen to know he didn’t. We’ve questioned the conductor on that train whose business it is to punch the passengers’ tickets as they get on at each successive stop. No one got on the 4:20 train at all at your particular station out here. And that milk train is empty enough to make it easy to keep track. The ticket agent didn’t sell anyone a ticket between the hours of one and six thirty that morning, and since you drove him out in the car yourself on Friday afternoon, it isn’t likely he had the second half of a round-trip ticket in his possession; he would have had to buy a one-way one.”

A cold chill ran down her spine; she tried not to be aware of it. “All I can say is, my husband drove him to the station and then came on back without watching him board the train. He may have strolled a little too far to the end of the platform while waiting and been waylaid by a footpad in the dark.”

“Yes,” he said reasonably enough. “But why should the footpad carry him off bodily with him into thin air? We’ve searched the immediate vicinity of the station pretty thoroughly, and now we’re combing over the woods and fields along the way. His baggage has disappeared, too. How many pieces did he bring with him, Mrs. Blaine?”

That one was a son of a gun. Would it be better to say one and try to cover up the presence of the one he’d left behind? Suppose it came out later that he’d brought two-as it was bound to-and they identified the second one, upstairs, as his? On the other hand, if she admitted that he’d left one behind, wouldn’t that only add to the strange circumstances surrounding his departure? She couldn’t afford to pile that additional strangeness on top of the already overwhelming strangeness of the hour at which he’d gone; it made it look too bad for them, too much as though his leave-taking had been impromptu, conditioned by anger or a quarrel. And then in the wake of that would unfailingly come revelation of Gil’s misdeed in regard to the check.

She took the plunge, answered the detective’s question with a deliberate but not unqualified falsehood, after all this had gone through her mind. “I believe... one.”

“You can’t say for sure? You brought him out in the car with you, Mrs. Blaine.”

“I’ve brought so many people out in the car. Sometimes I dream I’m a station-wagon driver.”

Then, just as she felt she couldn’t stand another minute of this cat-and-mouse play, just as she could feel the makings of a three-alarm scream gathering in her system, she recognized the sound of their own car outside and Gil was back at last. He sounded the horn once, briefly, as in a sort of questioning signal.

“Here’s my husband now,” she said, and jumped up and ran to the door before he could stop her.

“Hello, Gil,” she said loudly. She wound an arm around his neck, kissed him on the side of the face, back toward the ear — or seemed to. “There’s a detective in there,” she breathed.

His own breath answered hers: “Wait a minute; stay like this, up against me.” He said loudly down the back of her neck: “Hello, beautiful. Miss me?”

She could feel his hand fumbling between their bodies. He thrust something into her disengaged hand, the one that wasn’t clasping the nape of his neck. Spongy paper, currency. “Better get rid of this. I don’t think he’ll search me, but bury it in your stocking or somewhere, till he goes.” And then in a full-bodied voice: “Any calls for me?”

“No, but there’s a gentleman inside waiting to see you now.”

And under cover of that he’d gone on: “Go out and get in the car; take it away. Go down the village and... buy things. Anything. Keep buying, keep buying. Stay out. Phone here before you come back. Phone here first.”

Then they had to break it up; they’d gotten away with m— Not that word! They’d gotten away with a lot, as it was.

She followed Gil’s instructions now, but she did it her way. She couldn’t fathom the motivation. But she couldn’t just walk out the door, get in, and drive off; that would have been a dead give-away he’d cued her. She did it her way; it only took a minute longer. She went back into the living room after him, across it just to the opposite doorway, and called through to Leona in a war whoop: “Leona, need anything?” She didn’t have to worry about getting the wrong answer; she knew how they’d be fixed.

“Sure do,” said the uninhibited Leona, “all we got left after that bunch of cannibals is a lot of nothin’!”

“All right, I’ll run down and bring you back a shot of everything.” But as she passed the two men a second time, short as the delay had been — and necessary, she felt, for appearances’ sake— Gil’s face was almost agonized, as though he couldn’t wait for her to do as he’d told her and get out. Maybe the other man couldn’t notice it, but she could; she knew him so well. The detective, on the other hand, not only offered no objection to her going, but seemed to be deliberately holding his fire until she was out of the way, as though he preferred it that way, wanted to question Gil by himself.

She got in and drove off leisurely, and as she meshed gears, at the same time cached the wad of unlawful money under the elastic top of her stocking. Gil’s motive for so badly wanting her to get in the car and get away from the house, and stay away until the fellow left, must be this money, of course. He wanted to avoid being caught in incriminating possession of it. That must be it; she couldn’t figure out any other logical reason. Still, they couldn’t keep on indefinitely running bases with it like this.

She’d stepped up speed now, was coursing the sleek turnpike to the village at her usual projectile clip. But not too fast to glimpse a group of men in the distance, widely separated and apparently wading around aimlessly in the fields. She had an idea what they were doing out there, though. And then a few minutes later, when that strip of woods, thick as the bristles of a hairbrush, closed in on both sides of the road, she could make out a few more of them under the trees. They were using pocket lights in there, although it wasn’t quite dusk yet.

“What are they looking for him this far back for?” she thought impatiently. “If Gil says he let him off at the station platform—” Stupid police. That malicious Mrs. Burroughs, paying them back now because she’d sensed that the old fool had had a soft spot for Jackie. And then in conclusion: “How do they know he’s dead, anyway?”

She braked outside the village grocery. She subtracted a twenty from the money first of all, tucked that in the pocket of her jumper. She hadn’t brought any bag; he’d rushed her out so. Then she went in and started buying out the store.

By the time she was through, she had a knee-high carton filled with stuff. “Take it out and put it in the rumble for me, I’ll take it right along with me. Let me use your phone a minute; I want to make sure I’ve got everything.”

Gil answered her himself. “I just got rid of him this minute,” he said, in a voice hoarse from long strain. “Whew!”

She said for the benefit of the storekeeper, “Do you need anything else while I’m out?”

“No, come on back now; it’s all right.” And then sharply: “Listen! If you run into him, don’t stop for him, hear me? Don’t even slow down; just drive past fast. He’s got no authority to stop you; he’s a city dick. He’s done his questioning and he’s through. Don’t stop for anyone and don’t let anyone get in the car with you.”

The store manager called in to her just then from out front: “Mrs. Blaine, the rumble’s locked. I can’t get into it. Where’ll I put this stuff?”

“The whole key rack’s sticking in the dashboard; take it out yourself. You know the one, that broad flat one.”

“That key ain’t on it any more. I don’t see it here with the rest.”

“Wait a minute, I’ll ask my husband. Gil, where’s the key to the rumble? We can’t find it.”

“I lost it.” She couldn’t really hear him the first time; his voice choked up. Maybe he’d been taking a drink just then.

The storekeeper said: “Maybe it’s just jammed. Should I try to pry it up for you?”

“No, you might spoil the paint job.”

Gil was saying thickly in her ear: “Never mind about the rumble; let it alone. Get away from that store.” Suddenly, incredibly, he was screaming at her over the wire! Literally screaming, like someone in pain. “Come on back, will ya! Come on back, I tell ya! Come on back with that car!”

“All right, for Heaven’s sake; all right.” Her eardrum tingled. That detective certainly had set his nerves on edge.

She drove back with the carton of stuff beside her on the seat. Gil was waiting for her all the way out in the middle of the roadway that passed their house.

“I’ll put it to bed myself,” he said gruffly, and drove the car into the garage, groceries and all, he was in such a hurry.

His face was all twinkling with perspiration when he turned to her after finishing locking the garage doors on it.

She woke up that night, sometime between two and three, and he wasn’t in the room. She called, and he wasn’t in the house at all. She got up and looked out the window, and the white garage doors showed a slight wedge of black between their two halves, so he’d taken the car out with him.

She wasn’t really worried at first. Still, where could he have gone at this unearthly hour? Where was there for him to go — around here? And why slip out like that, without saying a word to her? She sat there in the dark for about thirty, forty minutes, sometimes on the edge of the bed, sometimes over by the window, watching the road for him.

Suddenly a black shape came along, blurring the highway’s tape-like whiteness. But in almost absolute silence, hardly recognizable as a car, lights out. It was gliding along, practically coasting, the downward tilt of the road past the house helping it.

It was he, though. He took the car around, berthed it in the garage, and then she heard him come in downstairs. A glass clinked once or twice, and then he came up. She’d put the light on, so as not to throw a scare into him. His face was like putty; she’d never seen him look like this before.

“Matter, couldn’t you sleep, Gil?” she said quietly.

“I took the car out for a run, and every time I’d stop and think I’d found a place where I was alone, I’d hear some other damn car somewhere in the distance or see its lights, or think I did, anyway. Judas, the whole country seemed awake — twigs snapping, stars peering down—”

“But why stop? Why should it annoy you if there were other cars in the distance? What were you trying to do, get rid of something, throw something away?”

“Yeah,” he said, low.

For a minute she got badly frightened again, like Monday morning, until he, seeming to take fright from her fright in turn, quickly stammered:

“Uh-huh that other bag of his, that second bag he left behind. He’s coming back, that guy, I know he is; he isn’t through yet. I was on pins and needles the whole time he was here, this afternoon, thinking he was going to go looking around and find it up there.” He let some sulphur matches trickle out of his pocket. “I was going to try to burn it, but I was afraid somebody’d see me, somebody was following me.” He threw himself face down across the bed. Not crying or anything, just exhausted with spent emotion. “The bitter end,” he panted, “the bitter end.”

A minute later she stepped back into the room, astonishment written all over her face.

“But, Gil, you didn’t even have it with you, do you realize that? It’s right there in the guest-room closet, where it’s been all along!”

He didn’t turn his head. His voice came muffledly: “I’m going crazy, I guess. I don’t even know what I’m doing any more. Maybe I took one of our own by mistake.”

“Why did all this have to happen to us?” she sobbed dryly as she reached out to snap off the light.

He was right, Ward came back. The next day, that was Wednesday, two days after It. He had a different air about him, a disarming, almost apologetic one, as though he were simply here to ask a favor.

“What, more questioning?” she greeted him caustically.

“I’m sorry you resent my interviewing you yesterday. It was just routine, but I tried to be as inoffensive as I could about it. No, so far as we’re concerned, you people no longer figure in it — except of course as his last known jumping-off place into nothingness. We have a new theory we’re working on.”

“What is it?” she said, forgetting to be aloof.

“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to divulge it. However, a couple of interviews with Mrs. Burroughs were enough to give it an impetus. She’s a hypochondriac if there ever was one.”

“I think I know what you’re driving at. You mean his disappearance was voluntary, to get away from the sickroom atmosphere in his home?”

His knowing expression told her she was right. And for a moment a great big sun came up and shone through the darkness she had been living in ever since Mrs. Burroughs’ phone call Monday noon. How wonderful it would be if that should turn out to be the correct explanation, what a reprieve for herself and Gil! Why, it would automatically cover up the check matter as well. If the old man had been about to drop from sight, he certainly could have been expected to cash a check for that amount, to keep himself in funds; there wouldn’t be any mystery about it, then.

Meanwhile, as to Ward: You could tell he wasn’t here altogether on business. He was looking into her face a little too personally, she thought. Well, he was only a man after all. What could you do about it?

“The local chief out here, whom I’m co-operating with, can’t put me up at his house; he’s got three of our guys staying with him already. I was wondering if it would put you out if I... er... asked permission to make this my headquarters; you know, just sleep here while I’m detailed out here, so I wouldn’t have to keep running back and forth, to the city and out again, every night?”

She nearly fell over. “But this is a private home, after all.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be in your way much. You can bill the department for it if you like.”

“That isn’t the point. There’s a perfectly good hotel in the village.”

“I already tried to get quarters there. They’re all filled up. You’re entitled to refuse if you want to. It’d just be a way of showing your good will and willingness to cooperate. After all, it’s just as much to the interest of you and your husband as anyone else to have this matter cleared up.”

By the time she got in to Gil, she was already beginning to see the humorous side of it. “It’s Ward again. He wants to be our house guest; can you tie that? He hinted that now they think Burroughs disappeared voluntarily, to get away from that invalid wife of his.”

His face was a white pucker of frightening suspicion. “He’s lying! He’s trying different tactics, that’s all. He’s trying to plant himself here in the house with us as a spy.”

“But don’t you think it’ll look worse, if we seem to have anything to hide by not letting him in? Then they’ll simply hang around watching us from the outside. If we let him in, we may be able to get rid of him for good in a day or two.”

“He’ll watch every move I make, he’ll listen to every word that’s said. It’s been tough up to now; it’ll be hell that way.”

“Well, you go out and shoo him away then; you’re the boss.”

He took a quick step toward the door. Then his courage seemed to ooze out of him. She saw him falter, come to a stop, rake his fingers through his hair.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said uncertainly, “maybe it’ll look twice as bad if we turn him away, like we have something to hide. Tell him O.K.” And he poured himself a drink the size of Lake Erie.

“He’ll sleep on the davenport in the living room and like it,” she said firmly. “I’m not running a lodging-house for homeless detectives.”

It was the least she could do, she felt, meeting him along the road like that: ask him if he wanted a lift back to the house with her. After all, she had nothing against the man; he was just doing his job. And Gil’s half-hysterical injunction, over the wire the day before, “Don’t take anyone in the car with you!” was furthest from her thoughts, had no meaning at the moment. For that matter, it had had no meaning even at the time.

“Sure, don’t mind if I do,” he accepted. He slung himself up on the running board without obliging her to come to a complete stop, and dropped into the seat beside her without opening the door, displacing some parcels she’d had there.

“Why don’t you put these in the rumble?” he asked, piling them on his lap for want of a better place.

She took one hand off the wheel, snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, I wanted to stop at a repair shop and have a new key made; we’ve lost the old one.”

He was sitting sideways, face turned toward her, studying her profile. In one way it was annoying, in another way it was excessively flattering. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.

“Didn’t the mister object to your coming out like this?”

She thought it was said kiddingly; it was one of those things should have been said kiddingly. But when she looked at him, his face was dead serious.

She eyed him in frank surprise. “How did you know? We had a little set-to about the car, that was all. I wanted it and he didn’t want me to have it; wanted it himself, I guess. So I took it anyway, while he was shaving, and here I am.” Then, afraid she had given him a misleading impression of their domestic relations, she tried to minimize it. “Oh, but that’s nothing new with us, that’s been going on ever since we’ve had a car.” It wasn’t true; it had never happened before — until tonight.

“Oh,” he said. And an alertness that had momentarily come into his expression slowly left it again.

They came to the belt of woods that crossed and enfolded the roadway, and she slowed to a laggard crawl. She fumbled for a cigarette and he put a match to it. Without their noticing it, the car had come to a full halt. The light wind, no longer in their faces, veered, changed direction. Suddenly she flung the cigarette away from her with a disgusted grimace.

They both became aware of it at the same time. She crinkled her nose, threw in the clutch.

“There must be something dead in these woods,” she remarked. “Do you notice that odor? Every once in a while you get a whiff of it.”

“There’s something dead — somewhere around,” he agreed cryptically.

As soon as they picked up speed again and came out between the open fields, it disappeared, left behind — apparently — under the dank trees. He didn’t say a word from that time on. That only occurred to her later. He forgot to thank her when they drew up at the house. He forgot even to say good night. He was evidently lost in thought, thinking of something else entirely.

Gil’s grip, as she entered their bedroom in the dark, fell on her shoulder like the jaws of a steel trap — and was just as merciless. He must have been standing unseen a little inside the doorway. His voice was an unrecognizable strangled sound.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to let anyone get in that car with you!”

“I just met him now, on my way back.”

“Where’d you go with it? I’ve died every minute since you left!”

“I told you I wanted to see the new war picture.”

The idea seemed to send him floundering back against the bedroom wall in the dark.

“You went to the movies?” he gasped. “And where was the car? What’d you do with it while you were in there?”

“What does anyone do with a car while they’re in seeing a show? I left it parked around the corner from the theater.”

This time he just gave a wordless gasp — the sort of sound that is wrenched from a person when something goes hurtling by and narrowly misses hitting him.

She was in a half sleep when some sense of impending danger aroused her. It was neither a sound nor a motion, it was just the impalpable presence of some menace in itself. She started up. There was a late moon tonight, and the room was dark-blue and white, not black. Gil was crouched to one side of the window, peering down, his back to her. Not a muscle rippled, he was so still.

“Gil, what is it?” she breathed softly.

His silencing hiss came back even softer, no louder than a thread of steam escaping from a radiator valve.

She put her foot to the floor, crept up behind him. The sibilance came again:

“Get back, you fool. I don’t want him to see me up here.”

The sound of a stealthy tinkering came up from below, somewhere. A very small sound it was in the night stillness. She peered over his shoulder. Ward was standing down there at the garage doors, fumbling with them.

“If he gets them open and goes in there—”

Suddenly she foreshortened her glance, brought it down perpendicularly over Gil’s shoulder, saw the gun for the first time, blue-black as a bottle fly in the moonlight. Steady, for all Gil’s nerves; held so sure and steady there wasn’t a waver in it. Centered remorselessly on the man outside the garage down there.

“Gil!” Her inhalation of terror seemed to fill the room with a sound like rushing wind.

He stiff-armed her behind him, never even turned his head, never even took his eyes off his objective. “Get back, I tell you. If he gets them open, I’m going to shoot.”

But this would be murder, the very thing she’d dreaded so Monday, and that had missed them the first time by a hairbreadth. He must have the money hidden in there in the garage. She had to do something to stop him, to keep it from happening. She floundered across the room on her bare feet, found the opposite wall, groped along it.

“Gil, get back. I’m going to put on the lights.”

She just gave him time enough to swerve aside, snapped the switch, and the room flared into noonday brilliance that cast a big warning yellow patch on the ground outside.

There was a single retreating footfall on the concrete runway down there, and the next time they looked, the space in front of the garage doors showed empty.

She crept out to the head of the stairs, listened, came back again.

“He’s gone to bed,” she said. “I heard the day bed creak.”

The reaction had set in; the tension Gil had been under must have been terrific. He was shaking all over like someone attached to an electric reducing belt. “He’ll only make another stab at it again tomorrow night. I can’t stand it any more, I can’t stand it any more! I’m getting out of here — now.”

It was no use reasoning with him, she could see that at a glance. He was in a state bordering on frenzy. For a moment she was half tempted to say: “Oh, let’s go downstairs to him now, the two of us, admit you raised the check, give him back the money, and get it over with! Anything’s better than this nightmare!”

But she checked herself. How much did they get for doing what he’d done? Ten years? Twenty? Her courage failed her; she had no right to ask him to give up that much of his life.

Meanwhile he was whipping a necktie around his collar, shrugging on his jacket. She whispered: “Gil, let’s stop and think before we cut ourselves off completely— Where can we go, at this hour?”

“I rented a furnished room in the city today, under an assumed name.” He whispered an address. “We’ll be safe there for a couple of days at least. As soon as I can get boat tickets — I have to get rid of that car, that’s the main thing.”

“But, Gil, don’t you see we’re convicting ourselves, by doing this?”

“Are you coming with me? Or are you doing to let me down just when I need you most, like women usually do? You’re half in love with him already! I’ve seen the looks he’s starting to give you. They all fall for you; why shouldn’t he? All right, stay here with him then.”

She silenced him by pressing her fingers to his mouth. “To the bitter end,” she whispered, misty-eyed, “to the bitter end. If you want it this way, then this is the way it’ll be.”

He didn’t even thank her: she didn’t expect him to, anyway. “Go out there again and make sure he’s sleeping.”

She came back, said: “He’s snoring; I can hear him all the way up here.”

While she began to dress with frantic haste, Gil started down ahead.

“I’ll take the brakes off, you take the wheel, and I’ll push it out into the road so he won’t hear us start.”

Ward’s snoring filled the house as she crept down the dark stairs after Gil moments later. “Why? Why?” she kept thinking distractedly. But she’d made her decision; she went ahead unfalteringly.

He had the garage doors open by the time she’d joined him. The place smelled terrible; a stray cat must have found its way in and died in there some place. She got in, guided the car out backward as he pushed at the hood. Then he shifted around to the rear. The incline of the concrete path helped carry them down to the road. You could still hear Ward snoring inside the house, from out where they were. Gil pushed it down the road a considerable distance from the house, before he jumped in and took over the wheel.

“Made it,” he muttered hoarsely.

She wasn’t a slow driver herself by any means, but she’d never forced the car to such a speed as he got out of it now. The gauge broke in new numbers on their dial. The wheels seemed to churn air most of the time and just come down for contact at intervals.

“Gil, take a little of the head off it.” She shuddered. “You’ll kill the two of us!”

“Look back and see if there’s anything in sight behind us.”

There was, but far away. It had nothing to do with them. It definitely wasn’t Ward; he couldn’t have gotten another car that quickly. But it spurred Gil on to keep up that death-inviting pace long after they’d lost sight of it. And then suddenly, ahead—

The other car peered unexpectedly at them over a rise. There was plenty of room for them both, at a normal rate of speed. They wouldn’t even have had to swerve; neither was hogging the road. But Gil was going so fast, and in the attempt to shift over farther, their rear wheels swept out of line with their front, they started a long forward skid, and the other car nicked them in passing. It wasn’t anything; at an ordinary rate of speed it would have just scraped the paint off their fender or something. But it swept them against a tree growing close to the roadway, and that in turn flung them back broadside on the asphalt again. Miraculously they stayed right side up, but with a bad dent toward their rear where they’d hit the tree. The rumble lid had sprung up and that whole side of the chassis was flattened in.

The other car had stopped farther down the road; it hadn’t been going any too slow itself. She was on the floor, thrown there in a coiled-rope formation, but unhurt. She heard Gil swear icily under his breath, fling open the door, shoot out as though pursued by devils.

She looked up into the rear-sight mirror and there was a face in it. The sunken, hideously grinning face of Homer Burroughs, peering up above the level of the forcibly opened rumble. She could see it so plain, swimming on the moonlit mirror; even the dark bruises mottling it under the silvery hair, even the heavy auto wrench riding his shoulder like an epaulette, thrown up out of the bottom of the rumble as his body had been thrown up — like a macabre jack-in-the-box. And the odor of the woods that she and Ward had noticed earlier was all around her in the night, though she was far from those particular woods now.

She acted quickly, by instinct alone. Almost before Gil had gotten back there, to flatten the rumble top down again, smother what it had inadvertently revealed before the occupants of the other car came up and saw it, she had opened the door on her side and jumped down. She began to run silently along the edge of the road, in the shadows cast by the overhanging trees. She didn’t know where she was going. She only wanted to get away from this man. This man who had killed. This man who was no longer her husband, who spelled Fear and Horror to her now. She saw now that she had lied to him — and to herself — Monday, when she told him she could stand it even if he’d done this, so long as he only admitted it. If she’d seen Burroughs’ battered corpse at the time, as she had now, the same thing would have happened then: she would have fled away from Gil like one demented. She couldn’t stand cowardly murder.

He’d gotten the rumble down, and was standing there pressed slightly backward upon it, at bay, arms out at either side to hold it down. He either didn’t see her scurry by along the edge of the trees, or was too preoccupied in facing the two men who were coming solicitously back toward him, to pay any attention. The half-formed idea in her churning mind was to get into that other, momentarily vacated car and get away from him. Anywhere, but get away!

She was halfway to it now. She could hear their voices, back there where she’d run from:

“Are you all right, brother? How badly did we hit you?”

“Gee, we banged up his rumble, Art.”

And then Gil’s sharp, dangerous: “Get away from it!”

The two shots came with sickening suddenness. Just bam! and then bam! again, and there were two huddled, loglike forms on the roadway in the moonlight up there by Gil’s car.

Murder again. Murder trebled now. How far, how far away they’d stopped that other car! She’d never make it. She saw that now. He’d already called her name warningly once, he was already running toward her like a winged messenger of death. She was up to it at last, had one foot on the running board now. But he had a smoking gun in his hand that could reach out from where he was to where she was quicker than any car could get under way. And this one, too, like theirs, had brought up broadside to the road. Before she could back up for clearance, turn, and get away, he’d be upon her. In her frustrated panic, hand on the door catch, she was conscious of the caked dust spewed upon the sides of the car, thrown up by its wheel action. They’d driven it hard.

Instead of getting in, she ran around it to the opposite side, away from him, as though to take cover. Then she stood there staring at him over it. At last she rounded it once more at the rear and came back toward him, away from it. Met him a few paces before it.

He seized her relentlessly by the wrist. “So now you know,” he heaved. “So you ran out on me.”

“I lost my head for a minute; anyone would have.”

“I watched you. You didn’t go the other way. You started back toward him, the guy you love now.”

He was dragging her toward their own car, swinging her from side to side like a primordial ape with a living victim.

“You’re dangerous to me now, I can see that. I’ve just shot two men; I’m fighting for my life. And anything or anyone that might help to trap me, has got to be removed.”

“Gil, you wouldn’t do such a thing. I’m your wife!”

“Fugitives have no wives.”

He half raised the gun toward her, lowered it again. He looked up the road, and down. The moonlight was crafty in his eyes.

“Get in, I’ll give you one more chance.”

She knew it was only a postponement. One thing at a time; he had to get to cover first. If he left her lying out here on the open road they’d know instantly who had done it. She could read her death warrant in his eyes, as they started off once more toward the city.

It was inconceivable that he meant to go through with such a thing. Even the sight of the grimy tenement room, suggestive of crime and violence, failed to make it more plausible. “This isn’t happening,” she thought, “this isn’t real; my husband hasn’t brought me to this unspeakable room in the slums, intending to do away with me. I’m still asleep, at home, and I’m having a bad dream.

“Yet all these days he’s known, and he hasn’t told me. All these days I’ve been living with a murderer.” She visualized again the way he’d shot those two men down in cold blood, without a qualm, without a moment’s hesitation. Why wouldn’t he be capable of doing the same to her? He was kill-crazy now, at bay. The red tide of murder had swept over him, effacing all love, trust, compassion, wiping away their very marriage itself. And he could kill this woman in the room with him, he could kill anyone on God’s earth tonight.

She sat slumped on the edge of the creaky iron bedstead, fingers pressed to her temples. He’d locked the room door after they came in, pulled down the patched blue shade on the window. He stood listening for a moment by the door, to see if anyone had followed them up, then he turned to her. “I’ve got to get rid of that car first,” he muttered to himself. Suddenly he’d come over, thrust her aside, was disheveling the bed, pulling out the sheets from under the threadbare cotton blankets. They squealed like pigs as he tore long strips down their lengths.

She guessed what they were for. “No, Gil, don’t!” she whimpered smotheredly. She ran for the door, pulled uselessly at the knob. He swung her around back behind him.

“Don’t do this to me!”

“I can’t just leave you locked in here. You’d scream or break a window. You sold out to him, and you’re my enemy now.”

He flung her face-down on the bed, caught her hands behind her back, deftly tied them together with strips of sheeting. Then her ankles in the same way. He sat her up, lashed her already once-secured hands to the iron bed frame. Then he wound a final length around her face, snuffing out her mouth. Her eyes were wide with horror. It wasn’t so much what was being done to her, as whom it was being done by.

“Can you breathe?” He plucked it down a little from the tip of her nose. “Breathe while you can.” His eyes, flicking over to the length of tubing connecting a wall jet with a one-burner gas ring, then back again to her, betrayed his intended method when the time came. He’d stun her first with a blow from his gun butt, probably, then remove her bonds to make it look like a suicide, disconnect the tube and let the gas take its course. That happened so often in these cheap rooming houses; that was the way out so many took.

He listened carefully at the door. Then he unlocked it, and as he turned to go glanced back and said to her:

“Keep your eyes on this doorknob. And when you see it start to turn, begin saying your prayers.”

She heard him lock the door again on the other side, and the faint creak of his step descending the warped stairs.

He would come back — in forty minutes, in an hour — and kill her. But therein didn’t lie the full horror of it. It was that this man and she had danced by moonlight not so long ago, had exchanged kisses and vows under the stars. It was that he had brought her candy, and orchids to wear on her coat. It was that they had stood up together and sworn to cherish and cling to one another for the rest of their lives.

Yet she saw that it must have been in him from the beginning, this fatal flaw of character that had finally led him to murder. People didn’t change that abruptly; they couldn’t. There were some who could never be capable of murder, no matter what the circumstances. And others, like Gil, needed only a slight push in that direction to fall into it almost of their own accords. He’d been a potential murderer all along. He hadn’t known it and she hadn’t, so who was to blame?

She couldn’t free her hands. She only succeeded in tightening the knots in the sheeting more inextricably when she strained against them; it was that kind of material. The bed had no casters, and one foot, caught in a crack in the floor, held it fast against her attempts to drag it after her.

He’d been gone a long time. Against her will she found herself eying the china knob on the inside of the door. When it started to turn, he’d said—

And suddenly the light, given back by its glossy surface, seemed to flash, to waver. It was moving, it was going slowly around! Without his having made a sound on the stairs outside. She could feel her temples begin to pound. But the key rattle didn’t come. Instead the knob relapsed again to where it had been. With a slight rustling sound, so she knew she hadn’t been mistaken, she had actually seen it move. She stared toward it till her eyes threatened to start from their sockets, but it didn’t move again. Why didn’t he come in and get it over with? Why this exquisite additional torture? Maybe he’d heard someone coming on the stairs.

There was another agonizing wait, during which she screamed silently against the gag. There, he was coming back again. This time she could hear the furtive tread on the oil-cloth covered stairs. He must have gone down to the street again for a minute to make doubly sure no one was about.

The key hardly scraped at all, so deftly did he fit it in. And once again the china knob wheeled and sent out wavers of light. And this time the door opened — and let Death in. Death was a face she’d kissed a thousand times. Death was a hand that had stroked her hair. Death was a man whose name she had taken in place of her own.

He locked the door behind him, Death did. He said, tightlipped: “I sent it into the river. It was misty and there was no one around to see. At last I’m rid of him, that damned old man! And by the time they fish him out again, if they ever do, I’ll be far away. There’s a tanker leaves for Venezuela at midday.”

The rubber extension tube went whup! as he pulled off the nozzle of the jet. The key didn’t make any sound as he turned it, and the gas didn’t either, as it started coming in.

He dropped his eyes before hers. “Don’t look at me like that; it’s no use. I’m going through with it.”

He drew his gun and gripped it down near the bore, and then he shifted his cuff back out of the way, as a man does when he doesn’t want anything to hamper the swing of his arm. The last thing he said was “You won’t feel anything, Jackie.” That was Gil Blaine, dying inside the murderer.

Then he raised the gun butt high over his head, with a terrible intensity, so that his whole arm shook. Or maybe it was just the way she was looking at him, so that he had to use twice as much will power, to get it done.

It had gone up as high as it could; now it started to come down again. Her head seemed to be made of glass. It shattered, she could hear it shatter with the blow, and her skull seemed to rain all around her on the floor, and the blow itself exploded deafeningly in her own ears, like a shot. But without causing any pain.

Then as her eyes started spasmodically open again, it was he that was falling, his whole body, and not just his arm any more. She turned her head dazedly. The window shade was being held aside by an arm, and there was broken glass all over the floor, and Ward was out there looking into the room through a sort of saw-toothed halo where the windowpane had been, lazy smoke soft-focusing him. He reached up and did something to the catch, raised the frame, climbed through across the sill.

When he’d turned off the gas jet and freed her, she hid her face against him, still sitting there on the bedstead, and clung like that for a long time. It was a funny thing to do, with a mere detective, but still — who else had she?

“You weren’t in line with the keyhole when I squinted through it, or I would have shot the lock off then. I wasn’t sure that this was the right room, so I went through to the back yard and climbed the fire escape from there. All I had to go by was what you’d traced in the dust on the side of that car left standing out there on the road: just my name and this address. And, gee, Jackie, if you knew how close I came to never noticing it at all!”

“I didn’t think it would be seen, but it was all I had time to do. Anything could have happened. Someone’s sleeve could have brushed against it and erased it.

“He killed Burroughs early Monday morning. And he’s had him in our locked rumble seat ever since! That explains so many things in his behavior the past few days I couldn’t understand. But, oh, you’re so blind when you trust anyone! He finally dumped him, car and all, into the river just now, before he came back.”

“We’ll get it up. I was sure of him from the first, but without a body or any trace of one, our hands were tied. And then you, you pulled so much weight in his favor just by being in the picture at all, so honest and so-We all knew you couldn’t be a party to a murder.”

She lifted her head, but without trying to see past him into the room. He seemed to understand what she was trying to ask, and told her:

“He’s dead. I wasn’t very careful, I guess.”

She wondered if he’d meant to do it that way. It was better that way. Better even for Gil himself.

Ward stood her up and walked her out through the door, leaning her against him so she wouldn’t have to look at Gil lying on the floor. Outside the night seemed clean and fresh again, all evil gone from it, and the stars looked as new as though they’d never been used before. She drew a deep breath, of infinite pity but no regret.

“So this is how it ends.”