Alphabet Hicks

Eighteen

Heather had scornfully repudiated Hicks’s suggestion that she might be afraid.

She would certainly have denied that it was fear that made her heart beat faster when she entered the kitchen and found that Mrs. Powell was still there, washing up, and a state policeman in uniform was standing by the corner cupboard, drinking coffee. Mrs. Powell glanced at her, saw the long dark coat, and asked:

“Going out?”

“Just for a breath of air,” Heather said.

From the corner of her eye she saw that the policeman was looking at her, and, though he said nothing, she was convinced that if she started for the door he would stop her. She hesitated, became acutely aware that she was acting unnaturally, and turned and made for the door to the dining room, where she had just come from after getting the extra car key. She stood there a moment, berating herself as a coward and a ninny, and then went on through to the side hall. Without a glance at a man on a chair by the door to the living room, she opened the outer door and was on the terrace, and felt her heart start thumping again at the sight of another state policeman standing in a ray of light from a window. That made her mad. She addressed him without regard for the fact that she was interrupting something he was saying to Ross Dundee:

“If anyone wants me you can call,” she said. “I’ll be around within hearing.”

“Very well, Miss Gladd,” he replied, in a tone not only acquiescent but positively sympathetic.

Lord, I’m a simple-minded fool, she thought as she rounded the shrubbery and stepped onto the lawn.

She had decided on her route: straight back to the vegetable garden, around to the rear of the garage, on through the birches to the upper corner of the orchard. In the vicinity of the house there was enough light to go by, but farther on she found that clouds were obscuring the stars and it was so completely black that she barked her shin on a wheelbarrow someone had left at the corner of the vegetable garden. She went more cautiously, skirting the berry patch and threading her way through the slender birches.

She was in the orchard, towards the middle of it, when, stopping by a tree to decide whether to bear more to the left she heard a noise behind her. Her head whirled around and her heart stopped.

An apple falling, she thought.

She could see no movement, nothing whatever.

This is one on you, my fine brave girl, she thought. You’re scared stiff. An apple falling.

She went on, bearing to the left, walked faster, tripped on something and recovered her balance without falling. Still she went faster, walking straight into a low-hanging limb. Had someone enlarged the darned orchard? No, at last, here was the stone fence. She climbed over, deciding that she wasn’t so scared after all since she was carefully avoiding the poison ivy, and started across the meadow. Soon she came to the lane and turned right on it; and, stopping for a look to the rear, saw something moving.

A cow. No. There were never any cows in here; they mooed. It continued to move; it was coming closer! now she could hear it. Her legs were running, she was running. No, she wasn’t, she was standing still. She made her legs stop running...

A voice said, “It’s me. Ross Dundee.”

She was stunned, speechless with rage.

“If you call this around within hearing,” the voice said, from a face now near enough to be a blotch in the darkness.

“You... you—” Heather choked with fury.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you. I didn’t—”

“I’m not an utter coward,” she said contemptuously. “Will you let me alone? Will you stop following me around?”

“Yes. I will.” The face was near enough now so that it was a face. “I’ll stop following you around when you’re back inside the house. But I want to know where you got the fantastic idea that I had a sonograph plate of your sister’s voice.”

“I’m not going back. I’m never going inside that house again.”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“You’re leaving like this? At night? Walking? Without your things? Running away? No. You’re not. By God, if I have to carry you—”

“You try carrying me! You try! I’m walking to the road. I’m walking there now. You touch me!”

She turned and walked, not precipitately, with sufficient care on the ridge between the ruts of the lane. Without looking back she followed the lane to the bars in the fence gap, straddled the lower bar to get through, bumped into the rear of the car that was parked there, went around to the front door, and climbed in behind the steering wheel. As she banged the door shut the opposite one opened, and Ross Dundee was there beside her.

She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly, that if she wasn’t terribly careful and terribly strong she would cry. She might anyway. She wanted to order him to get out, in a tone of calm and concentrated disdain, but she didn’t dare to try to speak. In a moment she would...

He said, incredibly, “This car happens to be the property of R. I. Dundee and Company.”

That fixed her. There was no longer any necessity for crying.

“I suppose,” she said, in precisely the tone which only a moment before had seemed out of the question, “I can’t get rid of you without telling you what I am going to do. Mr. Hicks drove this car here. Since he is working for your father, I presume he is using the car with his permission. I am going to wait here for him and we are going to drive to New York.”

“You and Hicks?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know him! What do you know about him? Listen, for God’s sake—”

“I’m not going to listen. About that sonograph plate, I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t understand about it and I don’t expect you to tell me. I don’t understand anything about all this awful horrible business. If I stayed in that house another night, sitting there and lying there not understanding anything, I’d go crazy. I think Mr. Hicks understands it, or he’s going to. I don’t think that dreadful district attorney would ever find out anything. Whether anybody finds out anything or not, I can’t stay there and I’m not going to, and I won’t talk about it. Now you can go back to the house and tell the police, and they can come and get me. I’ll be right here.”

Heather was looking, not at Ross, but straight ahead through the windshield into the darkness. He was gazing at her profile. He told it:

“That’s a fine, noble, generous thing to say. Me telling the police. You have no right to say a thing like that, even to me.”

“You can tell them if you want to.”

“Thanks. I don’t want to. Anyway, I can’t, because I won’t be seeing them. I’ll be going to New York with you and Hicks.”

“You will not!”

“I will. But I’ll settle that with Hicks. You said you won’t talk about all this awful business, and I don’t expect you to, but I’ve got to ask you one question and I hope you’ll answer it. About that sonograph plate. Do you mean the one that was in with those other unmarked plates?”

“Yes.”

“Then you did keep those plates.”

“No, I didn’t. I kept only one. I kept that one because it was my sister’s voice and I didn’t understand how you got it.”

“It wasn’t your sister’s voice.”

“It was!”

“It wasn’t. It was my mother’s voice. Where is it?”

A car came around a curve and was there on the road, its lights full on them, dazzling in their faces. It roared on by and was gone.

“They saw us,” Heather said. “Whoever it was. That’s the kind of a nitwit I am. This is ridiculous. I’m not going to talk about that plate or anything else.”

She opened the door and got out, opened the rear door and climbed in, and lay down on the back seat. It required an acrobatic disposal of her long legs, and even so was not an eminently comfortable position, but it served the double purpose of concealing her from the beams of another car’s lights and of isolating her from her unwelcome companion. She heard the sound of movement in the front seat but didn’t open her eyes. If he said anything, no matter what, she wouldn’t reply; but he didn’t say anything. She shut her eyes tight, but that only made them sting, so she opened them and stared at the dark. After a while she closed them again. She wished Hicks would come. Not that his coming, or anything else, would ever make things clear again and bring life back. Nothing would ever do that. Only she couldn’t go on forever having nightmares... not sleeping... not sleeping...

Whenever the lights of a car showed in either direction, Ross ducked out of sight. Frequently, at brief intervals, he looked over the back of the seat into the tonneau. From the sound of the breathing, surely she was asleep, but that was hard to believe. He wanted her to be asleep. If she was asleep, he was there guarding and protecting her, which exactly fitted his idea of the matter to begin with. He sat as quietly as possible, not to awaken her. He wanted to turn on the dash light to see what time it was, but refrained from clicking the switch. Not that he was impatient; it would suit him all right if Hicks never came.

Footsteps on the grassy roadside. He cocked his head; from the right — no, the left. Hicks from that direction? Then he saw it wasn’t Hicks, from the size of the moving perpendicular blob, just as a squeaky voice came out of the darkness:

“That you, Miss Gladd?”

Ross spoke in a low voice: “Tim? It’s Ross.”

But there was movement in the back seat, and Heather had the door open by the time the boy got there, and was asking, “What is it? Who is it?”

“It’s Tim Darby, Miss Gladd. I’ve got a message for you. Gee, it’s exciting. Only he said you’d be alone. Only of course Ross is all right.”

“A message?”

“Yeah, on the telephone. He said you’d be here in the car. Here, Mom wrote it down. It says you’re to meet him...”

Heather took the slip of paper, turned on the ceiling light, and peered at the penciled scrawl:

“Thank you, Tim,” Heather said, hardly aware that Ross’s fingers, reaching over from the front seat, were removing the paper from hers. “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Gladd. Gee, it’s exciting. We’re not going to squeal. Mom says she won’t. I’ll wait here till you’re gone. If the cops come I won’t tell ’em where you went, no matter what they do. No matter if they torture me.”

“Attaboy, Tim,” Ross said. “We know we can count on you. It might be better if you’d go right back home and lay low. Then the cops won’t know anything about it. When did the message come?”

“Just now. Just a minute ago.”

Heather was back in the front seat, behind the steering wheel. She got a key from her coat pocket, inserted and turned it, and pushed the starter button. The engine roared and subsided. She turned her head to Ross:

“Give me that paper and get out. If you have the slightest remnant of manners... I can’t put you out. Will you get out?”

“Certainly not. You don’t even know who that message is from. Do you think it’s from Hicks?”

“Of course it is. It’s signed ABC. His name is Alphabet Hicks.”

“How did he get over to Crescent Road in a car? If he’s loose in a car, why didn’t he drive here?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s so close to the house. Will you get out?”

“I should say not. How did he know Darbys live there? How did he know to phone Darbys?”

“Because I told him their name.”

“When?”

“This evening. Before I left the house. Will you—”

“You said you were waiting for him here. Was this phone message prearranged?”

Heather pulled the gear lever to low. “I’m not going to sit here and argue,” she declared fiercely. “I’m going to remind you of something that I certainly didn’t think I would ever be forced to mention. You said you loved me. You know all the things you said. If you love me so darned much, prove it. Get out of this car!”

“That would be a fine way to prove it. A fine way!”

“You won’t?”

“No!”

Heather switched on the driving lights, let the clutch in, and rolled onto the road, turning left toward Katonah.

It was not a sociable ride, since not a word was spoken. From the Dundee entrance to Crescent Farm on Crescent Road it was only three miles by the direct route, but going around by Route 11 doubled the distance. Ordinarily Heather was a good driver, neither a crawler nor a crowder, but now she stammered and staggered along, slithering to the perimeter on curves, jerking the gas in, and when she met a car a little short of the turn onto Route 11 she went so wide she nearly slid into the ditch. She twisted her neck for a swift glance at her companion, but he didn’t even grunt. Two miles farther on came another right turn onto Crescent Road, which was little more than a lane as modern roads go. After a long rise over a hill and a gradual descent beyond, it wound through a wood, was in open country again for a stretch as it passed Crescent Farm, and then dipped into another wood, becoming so narrow that the branches of the trees made an overhead canopy for it...

Heather stamped on the brake so energetically that the car shivered in protest and dug its rubber into the dirt, then shifted to low and cautiously sidled over onto the bumpy roadside. Barely twenty feet ahead, also off the road, stood a large black sedan. Its lights were off, but Heather’s lights were bright on the license plate, JV 28. She pushed a knob on the dash, and everything was pitch dark, but Ross reached over and pulled the knob out again.

“Let there be light,” he muttered. “You wait here.”

He climbed out and started for the other car, from which there had been no sign of life, and Heather opened her door and slipped out and followed him. She was at his elbow as he glanced through the window and saw that the driver’s seat was empty; and so was the rear. As his head turned to her for a comment, she seized his arm convulsively, and, seeing her stare, he wheeled around. A man who had been concealed at the front of the car, presumably crouching there at the bumper, was now erect; and in the glare of the lights of their car his narrowed eyes, above his broad nose and thin mouth, were amazing like the eyes of a wary malevolent pig. A pistol in his hand was leveled straight at them.