Beware the Young Stranger

8

Vallancourt got home from police headquarters late in the afternoon. Charles had the front door open before he reached it, and Mrs. Ledbetter had made it her business to be hovering nearby. As he handed Charles his hat, Vallancourt shook his head.

“Mr. Hibbs is in the study, Mr. Vallancourt,” Charles said.

“How long has he been here?”

“Five minutes or so When he arrived, I called the police station. You were on your way here. Mr. Hibbs said he would wait.”

He went quickly to his study. Ralph Hibbs was thumbing through a travel magazine. He let the heavy periodical fall to the desk.

“Anything at all, John?”

The question and the anxious eyes behind the glasses killed his faint hope that Hibbs might have heard something.

“Not yet.”

“Surely Nancy is too level-headed to get herself in trouble.”

“Nancy is in love. At least she thinks she is, which amounts to the same thing.”

“Are you sure she’s with Keith Rollins?”

“Every other possibility has been eliminated.”

“Maybe she’ll talk some sense into him.”

“Don’t remind me which of the runaways will influence the other, Ralph.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“Of course not.” Vallancourt walked to the window, looked out. Darkness was falling dismally. “There’s a breed of woman, Ralph, who can’t attach conditions to loyalty.”

“I can’t believe she would deliberately...”

“How about you, Ralph? You’ll have to make plans of your own, won’t you?”

“You mean about the agency?”

“Yes.”

“With so many other things on my mind, John, I hadn’t given it much thought. But you’re right, of course. I’m still running the biggest auto agency in this end of the state, and Dorcas Ferguson was a major stockholder. But right now the business doesn’t seem important. What about you, John?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to talk to Howard since this morning. I left word for him to come over when he felt he could leave Ivy.”

Howard Conway arrived a few minutes later. A look of gauntness had managed to attach itself to his robust frame today.

“How is Ivy, Howard?”

“You can imagine.”

“Anything I can do?” Hibbs asked.

“No, thanks, Ralph. She’ll live through the ordeal.” Conway lit a cigarette with jerky motions. “I don’t need to ask you if you’ve heard anything, John. It’s all over your face.”

“She’s with him somewhere. We’re sure of that. We’ve had the day to check the college, her friends — to turn the town over and shake it out.”

Howard’s face tightened. “Too bad we didn’t nail him this morning.”

“Now we have to be very careful,” Vallancourt said. “He won’t back into a corner pleasantly.”

“He’s hardly more than a boy...” Hibbs mumbled.

Conway regarded him coldly. “The trouble with you, Ralph, is that you view every situation with the same preconception.”

“But he wouldn’t...”

“He’ll run himself right into a stone wall if he’s pushed to it. And when his own destruction is inevitable, he’ll wreck everything he can lay his hands on. Do you agree, John? Isn’t that what’s sticking in your craw?”

“I’m afraid so,” Vallancourt admitted. There was a helpless silence. Then he said, “The roadblocks haven’t stopped him. It means he stole a car and got through. Or else he’s still in this area.”

“Stealing a car would be risky,” Hibbs argued.

“A poor swimmer won’t regard a river as much of a risk with a forest fire behind him,” Vallancourt said grimly. “Anyway, a switch of cars wouldn’t be difficult. Take your own used-car division, Ralph. Stalwart, clean-cut young man comes in, looks around. Would any of your salesmen refuse to let him try out a car?”

“No, but we’d report it stolen.”

“Sure,” Conway said, “in an hour or so. When it became clear he wasn’t coming back. After you’d inherited one secondhand MG.”

“Which puts the search on a nationwide basis,” Vallancourt said. “Let’s take the smaller bite first.”

“You think he’s still in the area?” Hibbs asked.

“Yes.”

“One chance in two,” Howard said.

“On the surface, yes. Actually, the odds are in our favor.”

“I don’t dig,” Conway said.

“I don’t believe he’d realize at first that a whole section of the state had been cut off by roadblocks. He’s under tremendous pressure. He wouldn’t start sorting out details right away.”

“So he spots a string of cars at a roadblock.” Conway ran his fingers through his untidy hair. “He sneaks a turnaround on a sideroad and slips back to town.”

“No,” Vallancourt said. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” demanded Hibbs.

“Because, Ralph, the roadblock turns his pressures inside out. Now his brain starts exploding with details, real and fancied. Every pair of eyes that looks at the MG is filled with recognition, or suspicion. Everybody in sight is running for a phone to report his location. He wouldn’t dare venture back into town.”

“Stealing a car in the country wouldn’t be like going into a car lot.”

“Or walking city streets until he finds a car with the keys in it,” Conway said.

“But he can still pull a switch.” Vallancourt read the question in their eyes, and he gave them the painful answer: “Nancy’s car.”

Hibbs blinked. “Sure!”

“The sonofabitch,” Conway cried. “He may be three hundred miles from here by now!”

But Vallancourt shook his silvered head. “A switch occurred to me immediately. A description of Nancy’s car was sent out by the police. The only thing is, neither car has been spotted, in use or abandoned. The odds are that Nancy and Keith are still in the net.”

“In an area covering about four counties,” Conway said.

“Parked on a side road waiting for night?” Hibbs suggested.

“Waiting for night,” Vallancourt nodded. “But not on a side road, tavern, even a motel. No public place. A private place where he would feel safer.”

“His father’s apartment?”

“The police put Sam Rollins’s place under surveillance the first thing,” Vallancourt said, “along with the homes of Nancy’s friends.”

“He needs his attic room,” Conway said.

“His what?”

“Something Dorcas mentioned when she was planning to bring him here to live. One night at dinner she got pretty emotional about the poor darling’s lot in life.”

“Let’s get to this attic room, Howard.”

“It seems that Keith had a favorite spot back home, an attic room, where he would hide when his father decided to enforce his orders with a club, or life got too tough some other way.”

“We all occasionally need to close a door,” Ralph Hibbs said.

“Sure. Even a woman with the self-possession of a Dorcas Ferguson.”

Vallancourt came to quick attention. “She had such a place?”

“A cottage on the lake,” Conway said. “She never advertised the location. Would have defeated her purpose. It’s a kind of lodge. Now and then she’d take a day there to dig in the garden, or lie in the sun, or get drunk. Depended on her mood.”

“Did Keith know about the lodge?”

Conway paused with a cigarette lighter half raised. “Come to think of it, yes.”

Vallancourt’s eyes caught fire. “His querencia!”

Hibbs said blankly, “His what?”

“The other Sunday Nancy was talking to Keith on the phone. She laughed and said they’d picnic at ‘the querencia.’ I dismissed it at the time as some sort of new catch-phrase among the college set.”

Conway remembered his cigarette and lit it with a triumphant drag. “You’ve got it, John! We’ll corner the sonofabitch and make him sorry he ever walked through his aunt’s front door!”

“We’ll do nothing of the kind, Howard.”

Conway stared, and Hibbs sluiced moisture from his pale forehead with his finger. “We’d better call the police.”

Vallancourt caught him by the wrist. “We’ll not do that, either, Ralph. With Nancy there, the last thing I want is a posse of armed men and a battery of searchlights. Anyway, we’re not sure yet we’ve pinpointed the location.”

“All right,” Conway said on an unwilling note, “we’ll play it your way. Approach him nice and friendly. Talk Nancy away. Then let him look out.” He glanced at Hibbs. “You in?”

“Certainly, if I can be of help.”

“On my terms and conditions,” Vallancourt said in an iron voice. “Otherwise I go alone.”

The other two men nodded.

They rode in silence, Vallancourt holding the Continental to a fast, steady clip. Howard Conway had shucked his boredom; there was a pleasurable excitement working up in the man. An occasional uneasy rustling in the back seat reminded Vallancourt of Hibbs’s presence.

“Turn here,” Conway said intently.

The heavy car slued a trifle as it entered the right fork of the narrow county road. The countryside lay in a twilight hush through which the car’s rushing passage was a whisper.

The twilight was instantly transformed to black night as the Continental swooped down through the timber.

A graveled driveway flicked into view. Vallancourt touched the brakes.

“Not this one,” said Conway. “It belongs to the Harkleroads. They never get up from Florida until midsummer. We’re going to the upper end of the lake... Watch the curve when the road reaches the lake, John.”

The big car rocked. The lake was a limitless glass, unsilvered, mysterious. The hills made a broken black horizon against the deepening purple of the sky.

“The next driveway, John.”

“We’ll park on the road.” He stopped the car, leaving the headlights burning. His glance made a rapid orientation, marking the boathouse and dock to his left, the driveway toward his right, the outlines of the lodge with its long open gallery crouching on the hillside.

The three got out. Vallancourt and Hibbs carried flashlights.

“We’re making a social call,” the diplomat reminded them.

He was first up the driveway, keeping to its center. He held the flashlight steady.

“Keith,” he called in a clear, calm tone. “If you’re here, we came alone. We’d like to talk to you. You may show yourself safely. We’re not armed and we’ll keep our distance.”

A breeze, surly with the last chill of spring, snapped through the pines. Gravel crunched beneath the footsteps of the three men.

“Nobody’s here,” Hibbs whispered.

Vallancourt continued to climb toward the cottage. He raised his light to play the beam across the front of the building. The windows shone blackly. A hoseful of wind swept a shower of pine needles from the porch.

Vallancourt spoke over his shoulder. “Got a key, Howard?”

“Nope.”

“Does Keith?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen,” Ralph Hibbs said.

“What is it?”

“I heard something.”

They stood listening.

“You’re hearing things,” Conway decided.

“No,” Hibbs insisted. “I tell you I heard movement up there. On the hill above the driveway.”

Unbidden, Vallancourt’s mind created an imaginary scene, Nancy up on the dark hillside realizing now what a foolish and terrible mistake she had made... Nancy helpless against Keith’s strength... Keith’s arm locked about her throat, his breath hot against her ear as he warned her not to make a sound...

“I don’t hear a thing,” said Conway.

“Neither do I, now,” Hibbs said. “But I know damned well I did a minute ago.”

“Probably a dead branch blowing off a tree.”

“We’ll have to make sure,” Vallancourt said. He raised his voice again: “Keith, we’re not armed. We have not brought the police. Let’s have a word with you, that’s all.”

“Hell, John,” Conway said, disgusted, “he isn’t up here. He’s probably getting wrapped up by a roadblock while we stand here like idiots talking to the wind.”

“We’ll have to make sure, Howard.”

He walked quietly forward, then stopped with a jerk. His flashlight ray had fallen across the MG. The car sat empty. It looked like a toy.

The light probed, swung, stopped, swung back to the MG.

“At least we know he was here,” Hibbs said. “That means the two of them are in Nancy’s car.”

Vallancourt crossed the driveway to the MG and aimed the light. The key was not in the ignition. A glint of gray metal in the farther seat caught his eye.

“Howard, Ralph, will you come here?”

His tone brought Conway and Hibbs lumbering over.

“Take a look.”

“Looks like a cashbox.”

“The one Dorcas kept in her study, Howard?” Vallancourt asked.

“Could be.”

“Its disappearance was discovered right after her murder. The city detective seemed to consider it an important find.”

“Don’t you?” Conway asked.

“I’m not sure. We reached her place at about the same time, Howard. You were passing the MG when I pulled up. Did you get a look inside?”

Conway knuckled his chin. “I think I did. It’s natural to glance inside a convertible when it passes with the top down.”

“Did you see the cashbox?”

“No, John, I think there was a coat or jacket lying on the seat. Trenchcoat, maybe.”

“The cashbox might have been under the coat,” Hibbs said. “Anyway, the police can lift fingerprints from the box and determine if it really is... was Dorcas’s.”

“Yes,” Vallancourt said, “I’m sure they can. I’m sure they will.”

I’m equally sure, he thought, that Keith didn’t have the cashbox with him when he went out the window of the Ferguson living room. He was in there with a murdered woman, and the box was outside, in his car.

Why didn’t he keep going when he carried the box out? Why should he return to her lifeless body?