Beware the Young Stranger

13

Vallancourt sensed Ralph Hibbs’s growing discouragement. He was not strongly affected by it. By training, tradition, and experience, he and Hibbs were very different. The attempt to anticipate their quarry’s moves, to track down a course of action as if a mistake would not have terrifying consequences — these were factors in a milieu strange to Hibbs. Vallancourt was the hunter.

With Hibbs standing disconsolately beside the door, Vallancourt tapped the bell on the motel desk and waited.

Although their search had so far proved fruitless, Vallancourt was not discouraged. Against big game there were no rewards for impatience or discouragement. You followed the trail and your hunches. He had never felt more vitally alive.

A woman came through the doorway beyond the desk. She had a spare frame, a dry-skinned face. Her mouth was plotted in lines of strain, her eyes snappish.

Vallancourt felt himself tighten.

She looked surprised at Ralph Hibbs’s prosperous portliness and the well-cut excellence that was Vallancourt.

“What can I do for you?” She seemed to take it for granted that such men would not have chosen her place for lodging.

“We’re looking for a young couple,” Vallancourt said with absolute assurance, “who registered here this evening.”

“We only had one young couple. Don’t get much calls here nowadays. Folks have gone soft on fancies — swimming pools, air conditioning.”

“One couple is all we’re after,” Vallancourt smiled. “The boy is husky, with black hair in a widow’s peak — good-looking youngster, twenty-two years old. The girl is tall, blonde, with a golden tan.” He added, “Pretty.”

The woman’s eyes flickered. “My husband registered them. What have they done?”

“Which unit are they in?”

“They took two cabins. Registered as brother and sister.”

Bless you, Nancy, Vallancourt thought. And bless you, woman, for telling me.

“They said they wasn’t from the college,” the woman said. “We’re careful here, we don’t break no laws. They told my husband they was on the way downstate to see a sick relative and their car had broke down.”

“They gave you a plausible story,” Vallancourt said. “But they’re runaways.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course not.”

The drab, pale pink of her lips curled inward until it disappeared. “If they’re what you say, I want them out of here.”

“They’re what I say. Where are they?”

“You the girl’s father?”

“Yes.”

The woman sniffed like a wolverine. “Probably give her a nice home, car of her own, all the advantages. Kids nowadays are going to hell in a basket.”

Vallancourt held himself in. It would do no good to rush her. A glimpse of his inner suffering would probably cause her to keep him dangling.

“You might as well sit down over there and wait,” she said. “They ain’t back yet.”

“They checked in and went out?”

“Practically right away. I just had time to do a little shopping and come back. They was ready to leave when I drove in.”

“Did you notice the car they were driving?”

“It was Newt’s and my car. Newt’s my husband. They came here in a taxi.”

Dumped Nancy’s car, he thought.

“May I speak with him?”

“Newt went with them. I let him talk me out of the keys. Should have knowed better.” Her lips curled. “They didn’t make even a show of going to the car-rental agency, like they said. Instead, they turned right on the state road. If you ask me, they’re over in Tuscawana by this time, lapping away in some gin mill. With Newt sitting next to your girl so’s he can let his leg bump hers now and then. When that old lech gets back...”

“Will you describe your car?”

“An old one. Packard, about the last that was made. Black and gray; the gray part is on top.”

“Now if you’ll give me the license number, please.”

“I don’t want nothing to happen to my car.”

“Shall I call the police?” Vallancourt asked pleasantly.

“BD-4418,” she said quickly.

“Thank you.” Vallancourt jotted the number down. “Come on, Ralph.”

“I just don’t like trouble,” she said. And when Vallancourt reached the door, she called, “Better watch out for Newt. He’s got a mean streak a mile long, ’specially when he’s been drinking.”

“We’ll be careful.”

“I didn’t know, remember,” she said. “You can’t law me. Newt was the one registered them.”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

“Mister, with Newt you always got something to worry about.”

They went outside. When they were in Vallancourt’s car, Hibbs said, “A rented car, John? I mean, after he ditches the Packard?”

“I think we can rule that out, Ralph. He’d have to identify himself, show his driver’s license.” Vallancourt studied the highway briefly. “He means to make his try tonight, in that jalopy with the other man driving.”

“Newt sounds like an unwholesome character,” Hibbs said. “Keith might have bribed him. He was pretty well heeled with the money from Dorcas’s cashbox.”

“The primary question is direction,” Vallancourt said. “The right turn on the highway might have been a deception play. But we’ll have to play the odds. He was under pressure and in a hurry, conditions that don’t make for complicated thinking.”

A block from the motel Vallancourt turned into a filling station. While the Continental was being gassed, he used the station telephone and called police headquarters.

A desk sergeant had to say hello three times before Vallancourt could bring himself to answer. Let him go through, he was thinking. Hang up and don’t throw Nancy into the danger of what might happen at a roadblock.

But let him through, and you make him drunk with triumph. It might be catching.

Stop him?

Surely by this time Nancy has begun to think, to be her old self. Whatever her feelings for him, she must know now that this route is inexorably downward. At this very moment she may be praying that you’ll do the best thing for both of them.

On the other hand... play the ostrich and you make the showdown tougher. The moment of truth you and Nancy will have to face some time, somewhere...

“John Vallancourt speaking.”

“Oh, Mr. Vallancourt. Have you heard from your daughter?”

“Not directly. But I’ve run across their trail.” Vallancourt gave the desk sergeant the motel woman’s story about the Packard.

He hung up, the steadiness of his hand a passing mockery. He went outside, paid for the gas, and got into the Lincoln.

As the car hissed onto the highway, Hibbs said sulkily, “I’m still here, you know.”

“The roadblocks are ready for him, Ralph.”

Hibbs looked at him a moment longer; then he shifted his gaze to the highway ahead.

The big car pressed over the outer edge of the speed limit.

Suddenly Hibbs jerked forward in the seat. “John! Off there in the ditch!”

Vallancourt had already seen the wrecked car. He eased off, letting the Continental roll onto the shoulder before bringing it to a stop.

He had the door open and was out before Hibbs could hitch himself around.

Vallancourt had swung in several yards past the ditched car. He had completed his circuit of the old Packard by the time Hibbs came puffing up.

“Looks like the one,” Hibbs gasped.

“It is. The license checks.”

“Is she... Are they...?”

Vallancourt shook his head. His eyes were probing the darkness.

Ralph had lumbered around to the front of the jalopy. “Doesn’t look as if they hit anything — until the ditch.” He glanced from the car to the road. “It’s a straight stretch. Funny place for a car to go off the highway. Unless an oncoming car forced them off.”

Or there was trouble inside the car, Vallancourt thought.

“Might as well notify the men at the roadblocks.”

Vallancourt nodded absently. His brain was busy trying to put itself behind the dark, brooding eyes under the fine forehead and widow’s peak.

Newt is driving, he thought. And I’m sitting beside him.... No, that would leave Nancy alone, out of my line of vision, in back. I am in the rear seat where I can watch Newt and lay a steadying hand on Nancy’s shoulder.

Everything is going well. We have the car and Newt to drive us out.

Then it begins to go sour. How? Why? Perhaps Newt wants more money. Or gets cold feet. No... won’t do. It’s something more than a sudden, irrational dissatisfaction with a deal.

Back up...

Newt is driving. He wrecks the car? Deliberately? If so, it was certainly not from greed, but from fear. The only explanation. He’s afraid of what will happen once he’s past the roadblocks. He’d rather take a chance on running the car in the ditch here and now...

Vallancourt moved to the hood of the Packard and laid his palm on it. The metal was still warm.

He suddenly thought, Keith, you haven’t had much time. You may be watching every move I’m making.

Any of the thickets offered a shelter. For Keith — and what else?

“Ralph...”

“What is it?”

“You’ve expressed a desire to be of service.”

“Anything I can do. You know that.”

Vallancourt took the keys from the ignition, moved to the trunk of the Packard, opened it. From the welter of old papers, oil cans and junk tires, he salvaged a jack-handle.

“Turn the Lincoln around. Find a phone and get the highway patrol out here.”

He watched the Continental swing full circle. Then, as the red taillight glow dwindled in the darkness, he stepped off the road to stand in the thickest shadows, listening, waiting.

He won’t like the waiting, Vallancourt thought. He’s an aggressor, not a counterattacker.

Stepping very carefully, inches at a time, he drifted several yards further from the Packard. He carried the jackhandle loosely, ready for instant launching in any direction.

The silence became a heavy question. Had some unwary motorist stopped and found himself impressed into service as a chauffeur? If so, where was Newt?

In the stand of trees ahead, a twig cracked. In the silence, it sounded like a shot.

“Keith,” Vallancourt said quietly. “Before you make a move, listen to what I have to say. You’ve a chance, understand? The cashbox, Keith... the box that belonged to Dorcas Ferguson. I question the way it showed up after it disappeared from Dorcas’s study. It’s a detail that makes me want to hear what you have to say.”

Nothing.

“Nancy — if you’re there with Keith, convince him that I mean what I say. By itself, the cashbox isn’t enough. But it’s a starting point.” Vallancourt’s tone took on an edge of anger. “Keith, you young fool! I’m trying to tell you I don’t think you’re guilty. And I want to help you.”

He held his breath. Twigs cracked. Undergrowth swished somewhere ahead.

And then a human form stumbled into view. The shadow was too tall and rawboned to be Keith’s.

Vallancourt moved quickly to the other man. The man was old, and his face was clotted with blood. He saw that the old man’s nose was broken.

“Are you Newt?”

“Yeah. Where is he? Where is he?”

He took the trembling arm and helped the old man toward the highway. “I don’t know. Neither he nor my daughter was around when I got here. Did he do this?”

Newt cursed steadily and horribly. “If I was younger — so help me I’d break his back. I’d rip—”

“You’ve no idea where they went?”

“No,” Newt stumbled; Vallancourt supported him. “I laid low, scared he was still looking. Then I heard your voice.” He hawked blood from his throat. “The way he hit me... Nearly killed me. I think he busted something loose in my gut.”

“We’ll get you to a doctor, then you’ll have to tell the police what happened.”

“Sure,” Newt croaked. “I’ll tell! One time I got nothing to hide from the fuzz. He made me haul them off. Used the gun.”

Ice water coursed down Vallancourt’s back. “Gun?”

“Belonged to my wife. He took it. Even money they bury the first man catches up to that sonofabitch.”