Death's Sweet Song

I couldn't tell how I was doing. I couldn't tell what he was thinking or how much of the story he believed. “Dad,” I said tightly, “you hold the lives of three people in your hands. What happens to us now is up to you.”

He was hurt, but not nearly as hurt as he would have been if I had told him the truth. He looked at me once, then picked up his bag and slowly got to his feet. “Fm tired, Joe, very tired. I think I'll go home now.”

“The report, Dad. What are you going to do about it?”

He smiled then, and it was the saddest expression I'd ever seen. “It's a terrible thing,” he said, “holding other people's lives in your, hands. It makes an old man out of you. Maybe you were right, Joe, in not wanting to be a doctor.”

“The report?”

“I've never broken the law, that I know of.” And he smiled that sad smile again. “Maybe I'm overdue.” He walked out of the station, a little older, a little more bent, a little more tired. Relief washed over me like an icy sea. “I'll come back tomorrow,” he said wearily, “and treat the man's arm.”

“Tomorrow night, Dad, after I've closed the station. It has to be at night.”

“All right. Tomorrow night.” He got into his car, a battered old Dodge, and I stood there in the station doorway as he drove onto the highway and headed toward town. I felt as though the weight of the universe had been lifted from my shoulders. I took great gulps of air into my lungs and felt young again, and strong.

I never closed the station faster than I did that night. I took in the hose and oil displays, I locked the pumps and the door, and when I headed for Number 2 it was all I could do to keep from running.

Paula had the door open for me. “What happened?”

“It's all right,” I said. I walked over to the bed where Sheldon lay quietly, his eyes closed. “How about him?”

“He's asleep. What did you tell your father?”

“I told you everything was all right. He thinks I shot your husband.”

She blinked. That was all. Then she laughed. “Your father didn't like me Very much. He didn't approve of me. He thinks I led you astray, doesn't he?”

“Something like that.”

“And he knows about the robbery?”

“Not a thing. He doesn't even suspect anything.”

“Well,” she said, smiling, “you've got brains. I'm glad you didn't disappoint me by not using them.”

There never was another woman like Paula Sheldon. She didn't have to talk. What she had to say she could say with her eyes and her body. I lit a cigarette for her and one for me, and we stood there for one long moment saying nothing. Suddenly I reached for her, but she stepped aside as gracefully as a cat.

“No!”

“What's the matter with you?”

“I think you'd better go to your cabin,” she said. “You look like you could use some sleep.” Carelessly she dropped her cigarette to the floor and stepped on it, then she went over to the bed and placed the back of her hand to Sheldon's forehead. I followed and put one arm around her.

“That's enough,” she said flatly.

I wheeled her around, pinning her arms to her side, and when I put my mouth to hers it was like setting fire to a keg of powder. Her arms went around my neck. She melted and flowed against me and I could feel the nervous ripple of her body, the softness of her, the heat of her.

Then it was over. She slipped away.

“You'd better go.”

“Like hell!” I reached for her again and she whipped her hand across my face with a crack like a pistol shot in the silence of the room.

“Get out of here!” she hissed.

I almost hit her. I could feel the muscles in my shoulders and arms grow taut as I took a quick step toward her. She didn't move. She just stood there smiling that insolent smile, and I grabbed her by the front of her dress and slammed her against the wall. She went reeling back, then fell over a chair and went down to her hands and knees. Even then, in the midst of rage, I thought what a hell of a woman she was. I had to force myself to turn and walk out. If she had said one word, I would have come running. But she made no sound.

I took a shower and felt a little better. I opened all the doors and windows of my cabin to let in what little breeze there was. I lay across the bed in my shorts and tried to think about my life before Paula came into it, but the picture wouldn't come. It was hard to believe that I had ever been such a person.

Relax, I told myself. Relax and get some sleep.

Easier said than done. Paula had played hell with me. I could feel myself winding up tighter and tighter, and pretty soon I'd be ready to get up and start kicking holes in the wall.

That was when I heard it. A quick, soft shuffling outside. Then my door opened and Paula was standing there in the doorway, framed in moonlight, as pale as the moon herself. I sat up in bed as she came toward me.

She didn't say a word. She slipped onto the bed and her fingers were like a hundred snakes crawling over my body. “Goddamn you,” I said, “I ought to beat your brains out!”

She laughed softly. That hot mouth found me in the darkness and I pulled her down with me.

“Joe?”

“Yes?”

“What were you thinking about before I came?”

“Nothing.”

She laughed again.

Chapter Twelve

It was about two the next afternoon when Ike Abrams came back with the news. His drowsy eyes were bright with the excitement. “By God,”, he said, “Creston's about to bust loose at the seams! They just found old Otto Finney's body in the lake!”

“They what!”

“The old watchman at the box factory. They just found his body.”

I couldn't believe it. Otto Finney was at the bottom of the lake, where I had dumped him. He had to be!

“A funny thing,” Ike said, “the way it happened. You know that upper part of the lake has always been bothered with garfish and big cats. Well, the city opened that part of the lake to commercial fishermen, hoping they'd clean out the scavengers before they ruined it for game fish. Well, this morning these fishermen brought up something that damn near tore their nets to pieces, and it turned out to be a body. It was pretty much of a mess, I guess. All they had to go by for identification was his clothes.”

“Is it a positive identification?”

“According to the Sheriff, it is. And you know what kept old Otto underwater all this time? They had him wired to a flywheel.”

I couldn't think of a thing to say. I was stunned.

“They say Otis Miller is fit to kill about it. I sure wouldn't want to be in the killer's shoes, with the Sheriff in that frame of mind.”

“Does he have anything to go on, any clues?” Ike shrugged. “You know the Sheriff. He doesn't say a thing until he's ready to slip the noose around somebody's neck.” Then he noticed the blue Buick in the carport next to Number 2. “I see our star boarders are still with us.” He grinned.

That Buick! I should have got rid of it somehow, but it was too late now. I said, “Mr. Sheldon picked up some fever in Texas and doesn't feel like driving. They'll probably be staying over for a day or two.”

It didn't sound too good, but Ike took it in stride and was already beginning to sweep the driveway. Then he stopped. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “Sheldon didn't look so hot when they came in yesterday. His wife was driving, if I remember right.”

I didn't want to talk about the Sheldons; I wanted to hear more about the body. “You say the Sheriff hasn't got any clues to go on?”

“Who knows what Otis Miller has in his mind? All I know is they've got a body and a flywheel. If he could trace the flywheel, it might mean something, but that don't seem very likely. Lot of flywheels around. I think we've got one ourselves in the back of the station.”

A coldness was gathering in the pit of my stomach, and I didn't like it. “We had that hauled away the last time the junkman was around,” I said quickly.

“Oh?” Ike paused in his sweeping. “I don't remember. The flywheel came out of your dad's old Dodge, though— I remember that much. You don't see them very often these days.”

I'd heard enough. I turned the station over Jo Ike and went to my cabin. Then, when the way was clear, I made it over to Number 2. Sheldon was awake but he looked like hell.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Lousy.” It was barely a whisper.

I went into the kitchen, where Paula was warming some canned soup on the apartment-sized range. She looked at me blankly and it was almost impossible to believe that she was the same woman who had been in my cabin the night before.

“We're in trouble,” I said. “They found the body.”

She took the pan off the stove. “We had guessed that much, hadn't we?”

“But I hadn't guessed they'd find it this soon. Some commercial fishermen found it this morning, caught that flywheel in their nets.”

She didn't seem worried. “It served its purpose. The trail is cold now, just the way you said it would be. They'd never think of looking for the killer in Creston.”

“It's the flywheel!” I said. “That goddamn flywheel that we tied the body to. There's just a chance they might trace it back to me. It came out of my dad's old car and I just learned that there aren't many exactly like it.”

She thought about it. “That seems pretty farfetched.”

“My robbing a payroll and committing murder is pretty farfetched, too, but I did it.”

“Has anybody said anything to you, anything at all?”

“No.”

She poured the soup into a bowl. “Then stop worrying about it.”

“I was just beginning to worry. But I let her take the soup in to Sheldon and watched him sip from the spoon a few times before he fell back to sleep. I took Paula's arm when she came back to the kitchen.

“This is too damn risky,” I said, “sitting here right under Otis Miller's nose. You two have got to get out of here, out of Oklahoma.”

She smiled wryly. “You weren't so eager to get rid of me last night.” She jerked away from me and rinsed the bowl at the kitchen sink. “Besides,” she said, “Karl can't be moved.”

“He'll have to be moved. My helper at the station is beginning to wonder what the hell is going on back here.”

“Let him wonder. He's just a stupid farmer.”

“Your husband thought I was a stupid farmer, too, but I cut in for half of that payroll. Get this through your head: We're not as stupid out here as you people seem to think. And we've got a sheriff that's tough, as tough as they come.”

She smiled teasingly, and those white arms of hers went around my neck. “You don't really want me to go, do . you, Joe?” She knew the effect she had on a man when she plastered herself against him like that. I grabbed her, holding her tight enough to crush her, but she only smiled.

“Not now, Joe.”

“You started it, I didn't!” I forced her head back, and when our mouths came together the contact shocked both of us. Everything went to hell when I touched her. I didn't give a damn about anything or anybody.

I don't know how long we stood there wound up in each other, and I don't know how long Ike had been hollering before I finally heard him.

“Joe! Joe, you in there?”

I almost ignored him. I was tempted to tell him to get away and leave me alone, because that's the kind of effect Paula Sheldon had on me.

“Joe, the Sheriff wants to talk to you.”

That jerked me out of it. It was like having ice water poured on you. Paula hissed, “The Sheriff?” and she couldn't have got away from me faster. “What does he want?”

“I don't know.”

“Get out there and see. We can't have him coming in here.”

I felt sick. I couldn't imagine what Otis Miller wanted with me, but every bad thing in the world flashed through my mind as I stepped to the door, where Ike was waiting.

“Who did you say wanted me?”

“The Sheriff. He and Ray King are over by your cabin.”

Ike was beginning to think things. There were questions behind those sleepy eyes of his that I didn't like at all. Just before I opened the door I thought of something. “Just a minute, Ike.” I went back to the kitchen, where Paula was standing like a statue.

“Joe, get out of here!”

I headed straight for the kitchen stove, lifted the grating from one of the cold burners, and smeared my hands good with the collection of burned grease at the bottom. Then I got out.

Ike had already gone back to the station when I came out of Number 2, and the Sheriff and Ray King were standing beside their car, which was parked in front of my own cabin.

“Hello, Sheriff. Hello, Ray. Always something breaking down in a place like this—I just had a kitchen stove to fix for those people.” I made sure that they saw the grease on my hands. The Sheriff was sweating, and so was Ray, but I had never felt colder than I was at that moment.

“Just wanted to ask a few questions, Joe,” Otis said, “if you can spare us the time.”

“Sure, but let's go inside where I can wash up a little.” I needed the time to get set for whatever was coming. We went inside and I went into the bathroom and washed my hands. When I came out I felt that I was as ready as I would ever be.

“All right, fellows, what can I do for you?”

Otis sat on the edge of the bed, Ray took a chair, and I stood there in the doorway. “Well,” the Sheriff said slowly, “it isn't much, but I can't afford to overlook a thing. You've heard that they found Otto's-body in the lake.”

Not trusting my voice, I nodded.

“He was a fine old man,” Ray King said softly, and I nodded again, watching the Sheriff. Otis was staring down at his hands, and I couldn't tell what was going on in his mind. Ray King went on: “The picture's pretty clear now, Joe. Old Otto was killed during the robbery and his fingerprints were planted all over the place to throw us off the trail. The whole town's worked up about it. So is the Sheriff, and so am I. We want that killer, Joe, we want him bad!”

“I know how you feel,” I said. “I liked Otto, too. I guess everybody did.” My voice sounded all right. It was calm enough.

The Sheriff raised his head. “The point Ray's trying to make, Joe, is that we can't overlook a thing, no matter how small, if there is a chance in a million it might help us. That's the reason we're here.”

“I understand, Otis.”

“Well, here it is. The day before the robbery you were out to the box factory, weren't you?”

So that was it. “That's right,” I said. “I stopped by to pay Pat Sully some money I owed him.”

“So Pat told me. Joe, were you going somewhere else and just happened to drop by, or did you make a special trip just to see Pat?”

“Why, I guess I made the trip special. I was downtown and just happened to think of it—that's the way I do things sometimes.” I didn't like the way this was going. I couldn't tell where it was leading or what they were thinking. They just sat there dead-faced, their eyes expressionless.

“Now tell me this, Joe. Did you notice anything out of the way while you were out there that day?”

I could hear my heart pounding. “What do you mean, Sheriff?”

“I mean you used to work at the box factory and were pretty familiar with the place. You knew all the people, the buildings. It occurred to me that a person who hadn't been out there for a while might notice something that people who work there every day might pass by. I just want to know if you noticed anything out of the way, no matter how small—something that might help us.”

I made a show of thinking it over. “I'm sorry, Sheriff, I can't think of a thing.”

“Tell me just what you did while you were out there.”

“Did? Well, not much. I just went in and gave Pat the money I owed him and left. I wasn't there more than two or three minutes.”

“I see.” Otis took off his Stetson and wiped the sweat-band with his handkerchief. “Well, it was just a chance. I've talked to everybody at the factory, and they're not much help. There's one more thing, Joe, if you don't mind.”

“Sure.”

“It's out there in the car. I want you to take a look at something.”

What was he getting at now? Was it a trick? Was he beginning to suspect something or was it just routine? I felt as though my nerve ends had worked to the top of my skin. If anybody had touched me I'd have yelled.

But I managed to keep a straight face as we filed out of the cabin. Ike Abrams was standing at the corner of the station, watching us, and Otis called to him. “Come on back here, Ike, if you're not busy.” And then he opened the car door and there it was, on the floor.

The flywheel that I had tied to the body.

“Have you ever seen this before, Joe?”

At that moment I was completely defeated, crushed. My tongue was thick and my throat tight, and I knew I couldn't utter a word if my life depended on it. To gain time, I pushed my head and shoulders into the back of the car and pretended to take a close look at the flywheel. My God, I thought, he knows everything! He must! Why else would he bring that thing straight to me?

It was a bad moment. But it passed. I made my hands stop trembling. By sheer force of will I made myself stand up and say calmly, “Is this the flywheel that was tied to the body?”

“That's right. Did you ever see it before?”

“I don't think so. Of course, I can't be sure. Ike works on cars sometimes, back of the station, and leaves extra parts around.”

“What do you do with those extra parts?”

“Have them hauled away with the tin cans and other trash that piles up in a place like this. Maybe once a month I call a truck and have the stuff taken out to the dumping grounds.”

“I see.” Then he said, “Ike, how about you? You ever see a flywheel like this before?”

“Sure,” Ike said, and my insides seemed to shrivel.

“Have you ever seen this one before?”

“Can't be sure about that. But it looks like one that used to be back in the station.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well...” Ike pushed closer and had a good look. “Well, the ring gear is still on it, for one thing. See how chewed up it is? It looks like the assembly I took out of Dr. Hooper's old Dodge not too long ago. He had a bad habit of pushing the starter while the engine was running— absent-minded, I guess—and that's the reason the ring gear is chewed up the way it is. Had a hell of a time with the pinion gear jamming.”

“Is that the reason you replaced the flywheel?”

“Hell, no. Just a new ring gear would have fixed that part of it. That old car of his had a bad clutch that scored a flywheel. Had to replace the whole assembly.”

“When was that?”

“Maybe a month ago. A little longer.”

Otis turned to me. “Have you had the trash hauled since then?”

That was the big question. That was the jackpot question, and it could kill me if I didn't come up with the right answer.

That clutch, that flywheel, they had been taken out together, and it was reasonable to assume that they had been hauled away together. If they had been hauled away. If both of them were still in the station, everything would be fine. But I knew they weren't. If both of them were gone, that would be fine, too. But that clutch was still there.

You'd better think fast, Hooper.

And I couldn't think at all. I stood there with my forehead screwed up, trying to look as if I was thinking, but there was just a roaring emptiness in my brain. There was only one thing to do. I had to bluff it. I had to lower my head and bull my way through, and hope that Otis Miller would take it.

I heard myself saying, “Sure, all that stuff was hauled away almost a month ago. It's about time I called the truck again.”

“Ike would remember the hauling, wouldn't he?”

That was the end. I might as well get set for it. I looked at Ike and knew that he would be no help at all. “Sure,” I said, surprised to hear that my voice was still normal. “I guess Ike would remember.”

Ike was scratching his head, looking a bit sheepish. “Sheriff,” he said slowly, “I can't be sure when the last hauling was done, but I think I know what you're getting at. You're trying to trace that flywheel, is that right?”

“It's the only clue we have. That's right, Ike.”

“The flywheel I mentioned we had in the station, do you figure it's the same one you have in your car?”

The Sheriff said nothing. He just waited.

“Well,” Ike went on, “like I said, I don't remember exactly about the hauling. But I do remember that clutch assembly, because I took it home with me.”

The Sheriff's eyes widened. He looked as though he had reached for his gun and discovered it wasn't there. “What do you mean, Ike—you took it home with you?”

“Well...” Ike was sweating now. He knew that he had just kicked one of Otis Miller's ideas full of holes. I felt like the man who got a reprieve after they had already strapped him to the chair. I could hear relief whistling through my teeth. Suddenly I could smile. I could breathe again. Riding this kind of luck, nothing could stop me. Nothing! It was all I could do to keep from laughing.

The Sheriff was waiting.

“Well,” Ike said again, “I figured Joe wouldn't mind. I had an idea I could use some of the parts sometime.”

“Have you still got that clutch assembly?”

“Sure. At home.” Then Ike got smart, as he sometimes did. He stopped talking.

The Sheriff looked at Ike, then at me, then he took off his hat and wiped his face. Then, surprisingly, he grinned. “Well, I guess that's all. Sorry to have bothered you, Joe.”

“Not at all, Sheriff.” He could never in the world pin anything on me now, no matter what he was thinking behind that grin.

Then Otis turned to Ray King. “We'd better be going. I want to check with all garages and salvage yards on this thing.”

Ike and I stood there as they got into the car and drove out to the highway. My feeling of elation began to melt as the car disappeared. It had been a close thing—too close for comfort. If Otis had caught me in that lie about the flywheel, it would have been all over.

Chapter Thirteen

I used the stove-repair excuse on Ike again and back to the Sheldon cabin. Paula had the question ready before I got the door open.

“What did the Sheriff want?”

“I don't know what he wanted. He was very polite, but that doesn't mean a thing with Otis Miller.”

“What kind of questions did he ask?”

“It isn't the questions that matters. Most of them didn't make sense. But he had that damn flywheel with him. That's the important thing.”

Sheldon was awake again. He had been following the talk with his eyes closed, but now he opened them. His voice was husky, not much more than a whisper.

“He didn't trace the flywheel to you, did he?”

“Not for sure, but he may have ideas. There's no way of telling about a man like Otis.” I went over to the bed and said, “How do you feel?”

“Like hell.”

“You'd better take a turn for the better, because you've got to get out of here.”

Paula stepped between us.

“Look,” I said tightly, “I know what I'm talking about. This sheriffs no dummy. Sooner or later he'll begin tying all the loose ends together, and that will be the end of us.”

“We'll leave,” Paula said calmly, “when the doctor says it's all right. Not before.”

I could feel anger swelling in my throat. Tread lightly, I told myself. Take it easy and think straight. I turned and walked out.

Paula followed me out of the cabin and caught me at the bottom step. “This is the way it has to be, Joe. I don't like it any better than you do, but I can't leave him to die.” She looked at me. Then she took my hand and I could feel the current going up my arm. “It's going to work out all right, Joe.”

“You don't know the Sheriff.”

“It's going to work out. I can feel it. Karl will be ready to travel before long. When things cool off, you can contact me through my sister, just the way we planned.”

I wanted her, but I also wanted to stay alive. I said “That husband of yours is going to get us nothing but trouble. Leave him to me and I'll get rid of our troubles before they kill us.”

Her eyes snapped angrily. “No! Can't I make you understand? I owe Karl something, I owe him plenty, and this is the only way I can pay him back. Seeing him through this is the only way I'd ever feel right about leaving him.”

“This is a hell of a time to develop scruples about paying your debts!”

“Nevertheless, that's the way it is. I'm no good, Joe, but neither am I completely rotten.”

“All right!” I was mad, but not so mad that I didn't realize that I had to get away from there. “Nurse him back to health, if you can. Take your time. Everything's going to be just dandy.” I went back to the station and worked on the grease rack until I had calmed down.

It was a long day. They don't come any longer than that one.

I couldn't keep my mind on business for wondering about the Sheriff and whether or not he actually suspected anything. I knew one thing—I had to get hold of my father and have him patch Sheldon up well enough to travel. Every minute they remained in Creston piled more odds on Otis Miller's side of this thing.

I called my dad twice that afternoon but he wasn't home. There was nothing to do but wait.

I was on edge again when Ike came in, wearing that stupid grin of his.

“Well,” I said, “maybe you'll tell me what's so goddamn funny.”

Ike didn't bat an eye. “You know,” he said, “you're beginnin' to act just like Frank Sewell when he broke up with his wife. Damn if he wasn't the hardest man to live with you ever saw.”

“If I'm so hard to live with,” I said, “maybe you'd like to gather up your work clothes and quit.”

“Nope,” Ike said quietly. “I figure you'll get over it after a while.”

I never figured that Ike fancied himself as any cupid, but I could see that he was trying to swing the conversation around to me and Beth Langford. That was about the next to the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about.

I had to get away. I went around to the wash rack and cleaned the place up a little, and pretty soon I began to cool off. After a while I went back to Ike and apologized for blowing up. I had to stay on the good side of him. I wanted him to go on thinking that everything was exactly the way it always had been.

Around six o'clock I told Ike that I'd close the station myself and sent him home.

It was well after dark when my dad came back to have another look at the patient. He was a very old man that night as he got out of his car and said heavily, “You all right, Joe?”

“Sure, Dad, I'm fine. I want to talk to you when you finish back there.”

He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. All the things my son could have been! I could see him thinking it. I could see it in those ancient, melancholy eyes. Then he nodded. “All right, Joe.” And he walked heavily back to Number 2.

That was when the black Ford rolled up in front of the station. I went out automatically and reached for the gas hose. The car door opened and a man said, “Never mind, Hooper.”

I froze.

He was a big man with a big, humorless grin. He wore a straw sombrero and a loud sport shirt. His name was Bunt Manley.

Chapter Fourteen

He didn't get out of the car. He sat there for a moment, grinning. Then he started the car and drove around to the side of the station and parked. When he came back I was still standing there, frozen, feeling the bottom falling out of everything.

“Wasn't that your dad headed back toward the cabins, Hooper?”

There were no words in me at that moment.

“Sure it was your dad,” Manley said. “Could it be there's somebody back there needs a doctor? You know, that's a right interesting idea. I think I'll just go back and give the doc a hand.”

“Stay where you are,” I said. “My father doesn't like to be bothered when he's caring for a patient.”

“I'll bet,” he said dryly. “Especially if the patient happens to be a man named Karl Sheldon.”

That was it. I didn't know how he knew, but he did. He knew everything. He stood there looking at me, half grinning, then he fished out a cigarette and lighted it. “You know,” he said roughly, “you're really quite a boy, Hooper. Tell you the truth, I didn't think you had the guts for a thing like this.”

I had to bluff it, there was no other way. “I don't know what you're talking about, Bunt.”

He laughed suddenly. “You know damn well what I'm talking about.” Then, surprisingly, he turned on his heel and went to his car. But he was back almost immediately, with a newspaper in his hand. “Here,” he said. “I want to read you a little piece of news that turned up in yesterday's paper. Date-lined Crowell, Texas. 'Last night Frank Hennessy, city marshal of Crowell, Texas, prevented the burglary of a city drugstore...' So on and so on, but here's the interesting part. 'Hennessy was able to provide descriptions of the would-be burglars. The man was of tall, athletic build. He had dark, thick hair, and was well dressed. In all probability the man is carrying one of the Marshal's bullets in his body. The man's woman companion was slight of build with short blonde hair.”

Looking at me, Manley folded the paper. “You heard enough, Hooper?”

“I still don't know what you're talking about.”

He wasn't grinning now. “I'm talking about that blue Buick back there in one of your carports, Hooper. I saw it this afternoon and began putting two and two together.” He snapped his cigarette straight at my feet. “Funny thing about it, though. I never tied you in with them until just now, when I saw your old man headed back to that shack. Sheldon's been here two days, hasn't he? And your old man has been taking care of him. Now, does it stand to reason that Doc Hooper would treat a bullet wound and not report it—unless he had a mighty good reason?” He reached out quickly and grabbed the front of my shirt. “I know the reason, Hooper. He's doing it to keep his son out of the electric chair!”

Something snapped when I felt those thick fingers grab me. A rage caught fire inside me and I wasn't afraid any more, I was just mad. I knocked his hand away and then grabbed his arm and slammed him against the station wall. “Listen,” I said hoarsely. “Listen to me, you sonofabitch. If you try to drag my father into this thing, I'll kill you!”

He was startled. He hadn't expected this kind of reaction. “Look here!”

“You look, Manley! And don't you forget! So help me God, I'll kill you if my father is brought into this!” I let him go and he almost fell.

I had learned one thing these past few days. You had to be tough if you didn't want people stepping on you. You had to let them know who was boss, even if you had to beat it into their thick skulls.

“All right,” I said, still shaking with rage. “You think you know something. You think you've got me nailed, don't you?”

“Wait a minute, Hooper! For Christ's sake!”

And only then did I realize that I was about to hit him. My fist was a hard club, ready to smash into that thick face of his. I think I would have killed him at that moment, right on the spot, if I hadn't suddenly snapped out of it. And Manley knew it. Maybe, at that moment, Bunt Manley was remembering that old watchman that they had fished out of the lake.

When I relaxed he began to breathe again, but not very well. “For Christ's sake, Hooper, I haven't got anything against you! It's them!”

“Who's them?”

“You know who I mean. Karl Sheldon and that wife of his. I've got something coming from them, but not from you, Hooper.”

“What have you got coming from Sheldon and his wife?”

“Well, it was my idea, wasn't it? That box factory?” He was thinking a little faster now. “After all, I was the one that got in touch with Sheldon and told him about it. He was supposed to cut me in on it. I want my share of the money, that's all.”

“You're not getting a penny, Manley. And you're not going to mention my father. Is that clear?”

“Sure, Hooper, I told you it wasn't you I was after. And what could I gain by bringing your old man in on a thing like this?”

“I just wanted to be sure you had it straight.”

I was thinking. Maybe—just maybe—Bunt Manley had a point here. It was a lousy piece of luck that he had to know at all, but he did, and there was nothing I could do to change that. If he could somehow talk Sheldon out of part of his take, maybe it would be a good idea. Maybe that would satisfy him and he would be quiet.

But I knew, even then, that it was wishful thinking. Manley would never be satisfied. There was too much greed in those quick little eyes. And besides, Paula would never turn loose a penny of that money; I had seen enough of her to know that.

The answer was clear, and I think Manley was beginning to get it now. I went around to his car and took his keys, just in case he decided this wasn't such a good place to butt in, after all.

“What are you doing?” he asked quickly.

“Nothing. I think we ought to talk this over with Sheldon and his wife, that's all. After my father gets out of there.”

I had a tire tool in my hand, a nice, solid piece of iron, and Manley knew I would use it if he made a move. He didn't make the move. After a while I heard those dragging steps again and my dad came around the side of the station. I took hold of Manley's arm and squeezed it hard. “Just remember,” I said. “Dad, is that you?”

“Yes, Joe.”

I went around to the side of the station where he was standing, as though he didn't want to look at me in the light. “Is he all right, Dad?”

“Yes, he's better, Joe.”

“Is he able to travel, Dad? They want to go as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” he said, “he'll be able to travel tomorrow.” I had almost forgotten how stooped and small he was. He said quietly, without looking at me, “Is that all, Joe?”

“Yes, Dad, I guess that's all. And thanks for everything.”

He made no answer. He stood there for a moment, his head bowed, and then he turned and walked slowly to his car.

I stood there, feeling lousy about the way I had hurt him. Then I thought: Just be glad he doesn't know the real truth. That's the one thing in this mess you can be glad of.

I turned to Manley, the tire tool still in my hand. He must have been a mindreader, that Manley. He stared at me for maybe five seconds and knew all the answers. He could look into his future and see nothing but the endless darkness of death.

“Joe, for Christ's sake!”

“Just shut up,” I said, “until I get this station locked up.” And that was when he started to run. He knew now that he had made a mistake—a lot of mistakes. In the first place, he should have brought a gun with him if he figured on taking a slice of that thirty thousand dollars. But the small detail of a gun had slipped his mind, and now there was no way out except to run for it.

He moved fast. It's hard to believe that a man his size could move as fast as he did—but it wasn't fast enough for the tire tool. I drew back and let it fly, and it caught him right in the middle of the back, about three inches below the shoulders. He dropped as though he had been shot.

I thought he was dead at first. I turned him over with my foot and his eyes had that glazed look that I had seen before. But his pulse was still there, and he was still breathing. I rolled him over to the wash rack and locked up the station.

I had no feeling at all for Manley. The lousy chisler had tried to horn in on money that I had risked my life for, and he deserved to be dead. But I was glad he wasn't, just yet. This time somebody else was going to pull the trigger. This time somebody else was going to have the pressure put on him, not me.

I was thinking fast now. There was one thing I knew —Paula Sheldon was the one woman in the world for me. That I was sure of. But how could I be sure that I was the man for her? What if she turned against me sometime in the future? She was the one person who could get me electrocuted, because she knew that it was my gun that had killed Otto Finney.

Think this out carefully, Hooper. You need Paula Sheldon the way an alcoholic needs his booze. But what if she decided to leave you? There's nothing you can do about it, because she's holding a knife at your throat.

What I needed was a knife like hers, and I thought I knew just how to get it.

There was very little traffic on the highway, and for once in my life I was glad that there were no customers. After I got the station locked up, I went around to the wash rack and saw that Manley was just beginning to come out of it. I pulled him up by one arm and half dragged him back to the Sheldons' cabin.

Paula's pale face got even paler when I came in with Manley. Even Sheldon showed signs of life.

“Hooper, what the hell...”

I dumped Manley right in the middle of the floor and looked at both of them. “So you had to come back to Creston,” I said tightly. “I told you this thing was going to blow up right in our faces if you didn't get out of here.”

Paula was standing very erect, as cold and pale as marble. “How much does Manley know?”

I had the feeling that she was scared, actually scared for the first time. It was good to know that I wasn't the only person in this thing with some feelings. “He knows everything,” I said. “Every damn thing there is to be known.”

“How?” Sheldon asked.

“Because of that stupid drugstore job of yours in Texas. It was in the paper and Manley saw it. Then, out of curiosity, probably, he drove out this way and saw that Buick of yours. Not even Manley is so stupid that he couldn't fill in the rest for himself.”

“What does he want?” Sheldon said weakly. “A share of the money?”

“That's what he said. But I've got an idea he won't be satisfied for anything less than the whole take.”

Sheldon looked even sicker than before. He'd had enough. There was nothing in the world he would like better than to undo everything that had happened and forget that he had ever heard of Creston, Oklahoma. At that moment I think Sheldon would gladly have given up every penny.

But not Paula. She had recovered from the first shock of seeing me drag Manley into the place, and now that gleaming, steel-trap brain of hers was working as coolly as ever. She turned her gaze on Manley, who was trying to lift himself to his hands and knees without much success. Shaking his head dumbly, he moved as though the right side of his body were paralyzed, and maybe it was.

Still looking at Manley, Paula spoke to me. “You shouldn't have brought him here. You should have killed him.”

“I've had my share of killing.”

Her head snapped up. “You've gone yellow?”

“If you want to call it that. It's just that I don't intend to carry more than my load in this thing. You brought this on when you came back here. You can get out of it the best way you can.”

Surprisingly, she smiled. “I think I called you a stupid farmer once. I apologize.”

There was absolutely no way of knowing what she would do or how she would react. She showed admiration only when I lashed out the hardest.

“What are we going to do?” Sheldon asked hoarsely from the bed.

“That's up to you. Or your wife.” I looked at both of them and knew that it was going to have to be Paula. Not until then did I realize that I was still carrying that tire tool in my hand—but Paula had noticed. She took it from me.

Manley never knew what hit him. Still dazed, he was trying to bring himself to his knees when Paula swung. It was the first time I had ever heard the mushy sound of a skull caving in. It's a sound I won't soon forget. Manley fell on his face, kicked once, and then was completely still. There was very little blood.

Everything in the room seemed to freeze for just a moment. I hadn't been ready for anything as cold-blooded as this, and neither had Sheldon. He lifted himself up in bed for just an instant, staring wide-eyed at Manley, who was dead. There was no doubt about that; he was dead. Then Sheldon made a thin little sound, almost a kittenish sound, and dropped back on the pillow.

Only Paula took it completely in stride. She looked at the tire tool, then wiped it neatly on Manley's shirt and put it to one side. She said, “He came in a car, didn't he?”

I nodded.

“Get it. Bring it back here.” Her breathing came slightly faster than usual, it was the only way her excitement betrayed her. She stood very straight and brushed her hair away from her forehead. “Mr. Manley,” she said, “is going to have a very bad accident.”

An “accident” was the only way. My father had seen Bunt Manley with me just a few minutes before; that fact immediately canceled out any attempt to get rid of the body. Sure as hell the Sheriff would be back asking more questions, and that was the last thing in the world I could allow to happen. I said, “All right. I'll get his car.”

Chapter Fifteen

I knew just where it had to happen, and how. I looked at my watch and it was almost eleven o'clock—just about time enough if we worked fast. I carried Manley's body out to his car and dumped him into the front seat. Paula stayed behind long enough to clean up what little blood there was on the floor, and then she came out and said, “I'll follow you in the Buick.”

“All right. We don't have far to go.” My heart was beating like a hammer against my rib cage.

“This part is up to you,” she said. “Do you know exactly what you're going to do?”

“Exactly. Now get in that Buick and follow me. Turn your headlights off when you see mine go out.”

She touched my arm. “You're all right, Joe,” she said huskily. “You're a lot of man.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly.

“I wanted you to know, Joe.”

“You told me. Now get in the Buick.”

She got into the Buick and I got into Manley's car. The body was sprawled all over the floor boards and I had to shove it over in order to get my foot on the brake pedal. I turned on the switch and started the motor.

When I got to the highway I slowed down until the Buick's headlights showed in my rear-view mirror. I looked at my watch again and it was ten minutes after eleven—still enough time. I hit thirty-five on the speedometer and held it there. Take it slow and easy. This is the one time in your life when you can't afford to pick up a highway patrolman, Hooper.

About two miles outside of Creston, just on the other side of the oil-field supply houses, I turned off the highway and eased down to a crawl until I was sure that Paula was still behind me. We followed the graveled road for maybe a mile, until I could see a stand of tall cottonwoods in the headlights. That was the thing I was looking for. Just beyond the cottonwoods I saw the outstretched arms of a railroad-crossing sign and I snapped off my lights. The Buick's lights went out behind me and both of us slowed down to a crawl again. Just before reaching the crossing I stopped the car.

Eleven-twenty, my watch said. It was time. I got out of the car and the country road was completely deserted. Paula, in the Buick, was about fifty yards back, pulled off on the gravel shoulder. I knew that she must have figured it out by now, because she made no move to get— out of the car.

I walked up the slight grade to the crossing and listened until my ears hurt, but there were only the million little sounds that come with the night. I got down on my knees and put an ear to the rail, but I couldn't be sure whether I heard anything or not. My watch said eleven-twenty-five.

The Rock Island Rocket, unless they had changed schedule, hit Creston at eleven-fifteen on the dot, stopping just long enough to take on express. From this crossing to Creston, as well as I could judge, was about eight miles. It shouldn't take a train like the Rocket more than ten minutes to cover eight miles.

Then I heard it. The rasping sound of its horn cut the night like a knife. I hurried back to the car and got it started. I slammed it forward until it exactly straddled the tracks, and then I saw the light. The dazzling brilliance of that single enormous headlight sprang up like a thousand suns on the other side of the cottonwoods. I thought, I've got to get out of here, and fast! I kicked the door open. All I could think of was getting out of there. Then I caught my arm on something, my wrist. I didn't know what was holding me and I was too excited „to find out. That locomotive was crashing around that stand of cottonwoods, the noise filling the night, and then I gave my arm a hard tug and it was free. I ran.

I never ran faster.

Paula had the Buick running by the time I got there. She had the door open and I dived in.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes.”

-"Joe, are you sure?”

“Goddamnit, I said yes!”

Then she slammed the car in gear, and we had traveled maybe fifty feet when all hell broke loose behind us. Fire lit up the sky like worlds colliding, and the locomotive slammed into Manley's car. The engineer didn't have a chance to stop, he didn't see the car until he was on top of it. I heard the nerve-shattering screech of steel on steel, and the racket of coupled coaches slamming together, and then the locomotive crashed headlong into the car, scattering it all over the countryside. I looked back once and that was enough.

Paula and I rode in tense silence until we hit the highway. Then she said, “Joe...” and I stared straight ahead. “Joe, are you sorry?”

“About Manley? It's a little late to be sorry, isn't it?”

She smiled. At a time like that she could smile. After a moment she said quietly, “You're quite a man, Joe, you really are. You're hard and you're tough. You're a lot tougher than you think.”

I said nothing. I was still hearing that locomotive slamming into Manley's car.

She leaned against me for just a moment. “I mean it, Joe. I've been thinking. I know a place in Arkansas,” she said, steering the car through the night, “near Hot Springs. A friend of Karl's lives there. For a price he would take care of Karl for a week or two, however long it takes his arm to get well. Then it will be the two of us, Joe. Just you and me.”

I looked at her. “You just now thought of this place?”

“Not exactly,” she said softly, almost crooned. “I'll tell you the truth, Joe. Until tonight I wasn't absolutely sure about you.”

“Are you sure now?”

“Yes.”

And then we were back at the station. Paula drove off the highway and put the car into the port. When she switched off the ignition I reached out for her, brought her hard against me, and pressed her back against the seat, my mouth on hers.

“Yes,” she said again, “I'm sure.”

She twisted expertly and was out of my arms, but her eyes were glistening with the brightness of excitement. I followed her into the cabin, almost ran over her, for she was standing frozen in the doorway.

“Joe!”

I saw what had stopped her. It was her husband, Karl Sheldon, lying face down on the floor.

I went down on one knee beside him and turned him over. His face was flushed, and the heat of his fever burned my hand as I felt of his forehead. I looked around and saw two suitcases partly packed, and I guessed that, in his eagerness to get away from here, he had tried to pack himself while Paula and I were out disposing of Manley's body. In the middle of the job he must have passed out.

My only emotion was one of anger. Goddamn him, I thought, why didn't he stay in bed? I had a crazy urge to close my fingers around his throat and choke out the little life that was left in him, but instead I lifted him and put him on the bed. Paula felt of his forehead and looked at me.

“Joe, we'll have to get your father.”

I tried to hold onto my anger. “Look,” I said. “It will just take more time, and time is a thing that could kill us. Not more than an hour ago my father was here. He looked at your husband and said he was able to travel.”

“That was an hour ago. He wasn't this sick then. Look at him—does he look in any shape to travel? Do you want him to die?”

“Why not?”

The pressure was being applied and the only thing I could think of was kill. It got to be a fever, a worse fever than the kind Sheldon had. Great God, I thought, what has happened to me in just a few short days? After a moment I took Paula's arm and held it for a moment. “I guess I didn't mean that,” I said.

She was in complete control of herself. “You know how I feel about Karl,” she said evenly. “I'll leave him, but not now, not like this.”

“I said I didn't mean it!” Then I turned for the door and walked out.

There was a night light burning in the station and it felt as bright as those factory floodlights as I lifted the receiver and gave the number. I could hear the ringing. It must have gone on for a full minute before my father answered.

“Dad, can you come out to the station? Right away?”

He didn't say a thing. I could hear his heavy breathing. I could almost feel his weariness. “Dad,” I said, “it's important.”

“All right, Joe.” He hung up. I sat down at the plank desk and tried to tell myself that it was going to be all right. After all, my father didn't know I had anything to do with the robbery and killing. For all he knew, I had just got myself into some kind of fool scrape over a woman. People got into that kind of trouble every day. And Sheriff Miller—if he had anything to throw, he would have hit me with it long before now. Miller meant business. He would have jumped on me good if he'd had any idea I was mixed up in a killing.

He hadn't jumped, so everything was all right. But it didn't feel all right. There was this thing with Manley and my nerves were still raw from that, but I couldn't see how they could possibly tie me up to a train wreck. That part had been foolproof, much better than the lake.

But it didn't feel right. As I sat there I could fed the cold emptiness growing in my guts.

I remembered then how easy it had seemed at first. A pushover robbery, fifteen thousand dollars in my pocket. Easy. What a joke that had been, but I wasn't laughing. Somewhere along the line my future had gone up in a bright, hot flame. It started the day I first looked at Paula Sheldon, and it was sealed the night I eavesdropped at Sheldon's window.

I needed sleep. I got up, went to the far wall of the station, and began moving cases of oil. When I had all the money together I locked the station again and went to my car and stuffed the money under the rear seat. I was just beginning to realize that I was actually preparing to leave Creston, preparing to wipe out in one night the plans that had been half a lifetime in the making. As far back as I could remember I had known just what I wanted—position, respectability, family; the same things, more or less, that every man wants out of life.

And what do you have now, Joe Hooper?

Fifteen thousand dollars. That's a lot of money in any man's language. And Paula Sheldon, if I wanted her on her terms. And I did.

The door to Number 2 opened and Paula said, “Joe, is that you?”

“Yes.”

She came outside and over to where I was standing.

“He seems to be sleeping. Did you call your father?”

“He's on his way.” She leaned against me and it was like a charge of electricity against my bare arm. I grabbed her, pulled her hard against me, and she squirmed like a snake.

“Joe, not now!”

“What's wrong with now?”

She laughed softly, moving her head to one side as I tried to kiss her. “What were you thinking, Joe, when I called to you just now?”

“Nothing.”

She smiled. I felt her hands on my arms, crawling up and down my arms and across my shoulders. Then, deliberately, she gouged her sharp fingernails into the muscles of my shoulders. “You're hard, Joe. I like men who are hard!”

That mouth of hers found mine and everything seemed worth while again. Who gave a damn about the past or the future, as long as there was a present? I held her tight, so tight that I knew I was hurting her, but she made no sound of complaint. My arms and legs felt weak when I finally released her.

“We're getting out of here,” I said. “Tonight.”

“If your father says it's all right.”

“All right or not. It's got to be tonight; I've got to get away from Creston.”

She was silent for a moment, then turned her face up to mine. “You really mean it, don't you, Joe? Don't you have any roots here? Don't you feel just a little sorry to leave this place?”

“No.”

“What about your father?”

“He'll be better off without me.”

“Karl asked you once if you had a girl here in Creston. Do you, Joe?”

“Not any more.”

“No girl, no roots.”

“Nothing.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

She laughed. The sound of that laughter cut like a whip, and at that moment I could have killed her, and I almost did. I knocked her back against the car and grabbed for her throat. But she was too fast for me. She slipped out of my arms and moved quickly along the side of the car, and there was a flash of uneasiness in her eyes. Not fear, just uneasiness that came from the knowledge that she had done something very dangerous. By the time I got my hands on her again that first unreasoning burst of anger had disappeared, but Paula didn't know it.

“Joe, what's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong,” I said roughly. Then, very gently, I put my hands on her throat and slowly let my fingers begin to squeeze. “Just you, Paula. That's the way you want it, isn't it?”

That was when the first fear showed in her eyes. In my mind were all the things I was giving up for her, and she had laughed at them. I don't know what would have happened if the car hadn't pulled off the highway just then, if the headlights hadn't cut a bright swath across the row of cabins and snapped me out of it. I turned her loose and said, “That must be my father. You'd better go back to Karl.”

She slipped away quickly, as silently as the night itself, and I stood there by the car as rigid as steel. Slowly I made myself relax. I told myself that what had happened had been for the best. She knew who was boss now. That was Sheldon's trouble; he had never let her know who was boss.

It didn't occur to me that my father, in his old Dodge, hadn't had time to reach the station. I watched the headlights coming toward me from the highway, and when the car stopped a little way from my cabin I stepped out and said: “Dad, is that you?”

“No, Joe.” A thick, squat figure stepped out of the car and said, “It's the Sheriff, Joe. Otis Miller.”

Chapter Sixteen

The muscles in my legs turned to milksop. The Sheriff waited for Ray King to get out of the car and then the two of them came toward me. If my legs could have worked I would have started running in stark panic—but they wouldn't work and that was the only thing that saved me.

Otis Miller said, “Hope we didn't wake you, Joe, comin' out here like this in the middle of the night.”

“Not at all, Sheriff.” I was amazed that my voice could sound so calm. “Too hot to sleep in that cabin of mine— but we could go in and have a beer. What have you got on your mind?”

“Just some questions, Joe,” Ray King said.

At this time of night! But I merely nodded at the door to my cabin and the two of them went in ahead of me. I followed and turned on the light. Otis sat heavily in the room's only armchair and Ray took the edge of the bed. They were very businesslike. Their faces told me nothing.

“How about that beer?” I said. “There's some in the icebox.”

Both of them shook their heads. “Later, maybe,” Otis said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. “Joe, didn't I see somebody with you as we drove off the highway just a minute ago?”

I was sure they could hear my heart pounding. I had to stand there looking them right in the eye, not knowing what they were thinking, or how much they knew. “Oh, yes,” I said, and again my voice sounded all-right. “That was the lady from the next cabin. Her husband came down with the fever. She knew my father was a doctor and wanted me to call him.”

“Did you do it?”

“Sure, just before you drove up. He'll be here soon.”

I was going to have to explain my father some way when he got here, and I might as well do it now. If Otis and Ray already knew about the Sheldons, there was nothing I could do about it, anyway. I needed a minute to get myself set for whatever was coming, so I said, “Ray, you sure you won't have a beer with me?”

“No, thanks, Joe. Maybe later.”

I went into the kitchen and got a can out of the icebox and opened it. Why had they come here at this time of night? Why in heaven's name had they come? I forced myself to calm down. By sheer will power I stuffed my fear down to the bottom of my guts and held it there. Then I went back to them.

“About those questions. Is it anything special, Sheriff?”

“Can't say yet about that Joe, have you been here all night?”

“No, not all night. I closed the station and went into town to see a movie.”

“By yourself. No one was with you?”

“No, I was by myself.” I tried to grin. “Maybe you've heard; me and Beth Langford kind of called things off.”

He hadn't heard and he wasn't interested.

I said, “What's this all about, anyway? Is it so important that it can't wait till morning?”

“It's important enough,” Otis said. “Joe, how well did you know Bunt Manley?”

Here it comes, I thought. Buy my voice was a thing apart; it answered calmly. “Bunt Manley? Why, I don't know him very well. He put in some federal time for bootlegging a while back, didn't he?”

“When was the last time you saw Manley?”

I started to say I couldn't remember, but I recalled just in time that my dad had seen me with Manley just a couple of hours ago. It would take too short a memory to forget a thing like that.

I said, “Come to think of it, I saw Bunt Manley tonight. Not more than two hours ago.”

“Here at the station?”

“Sure.” I felt a little better. I was convinced that I could make up lies as fast as Otis could ask the questions. “Sure,” I said again. “He drove up to the station just as I was closing up. He wanted some gas.”

“I see. Does Bunt Manley usually trade with you?”

“No, not as a rule. Nearly everybody in town, though, drops in on me at one time or another.”

“What did Manley do after he got his gas?”

“Paid me and drove off, that's all. Say, couldn't you give me an idea what this is about?”

“In a minute. When was the last time you saw Manley before tonight?”

I made a show of thinking. “I can't remember, Sheriff. I might have seen him in town, but not to speak to.”

“I see. Joe, could you give me the time?”

“Sure.” Then I looked at my wrist and my watch wasn't there. “I must have left my watch lying around somewhere,” I said, and started toward the dresser. But Otis stopped me.

He held up a watch and said, “Is this yours, Joe?”

That was when the roof fell in. That watch! I didn't know just what part it was going to play in my future, but I knew it wasn't going to be good. I could see it in the Sheriff's eyes, in the tight lines at the corners of Ray King's mouth. There was absolutely no use denying it was my watch. On the back was the legend “Joseph Hooper, Jr. May 16, 1938,” engraved in the gold. My dad had given me the watch when I was graduated from high school, and if that engraving wasn't enough to settle it, the local jeweler had the records.

It was my watch, all right. But where had it come from? How had the Sheriff got hold of it? I remembered having it on my wrist only a short time before, because I had been counting the seconds while waiting for that train.

Otis Miller said again, “Is this yours, Joe?”

“Yes, it's mine.” That was all I could say.

“Could you guess where we found this watch, Joe?” he asked, his voice silky-smooth, his face bland.

It was like playing barehanded with a swamp moccasin, but I had to play with him until I found out where he was headed. “No, I have no idea where I lost it.”

The Sheriff stood up, a rare smile touching the corners of his thick mouth. “You sonofabitch!” he said softly. “You know, all right.”

Ray King came out of his chair. “Hold it, Otis. Take it easy.”

“Stay out of this, Ray. I swore I'd get the bastard that killed Otto Finney, and by God, I'm going to do it.” He stepped in front of me and shoved the watch in my face. “It's yours, isn't it? You admit it?”

“I told you it was mine.” My heart sank. I could feel the ground falling out from under me.

“AH right, now I'll tell you where we found your watch. Just about an hour ago we picked it up near the railroad tracks where Bunt Manley was murdered. See this leather strap? The stitching is rotten. That's how you lost the watch. You killed Manley, probably while he was here at the station, then you put him in his own car and put the car on the tracks to make it look like an accident. But while you were fooling with that car you caught your watch strap on something and the stitching pulled loose and you lost it. That's the way it happened, isn't it?”

That was exactly the way it happened. But the first shock had worn off and now I was more angry than afraid. I said, “Otis, that's the craziest story I ever heard of. Are you actually accusing me of killing somebody?”

“I'm not accusing you, I'm telling you!”

I turned to the deputy. “Ray, for God's sake, what's got into him? Has he gone out of his mind completely?”

Ray only looked at me. This was Otis Miller's play and he wasn't going to try to take it from him. I wheeled back to the Sheriff.

“Tell me one thing,” I said, “just one thing, before you make any more of these crazy accusations. Why in the world would I want to kill Bunt Manley when I hardly even knew the man?”

“Maybe you didn't want to kill him,” the Sheriff spat. “But maybe you had to kill him. Maybe he came around wanting a bigger share of the money and you decided you had to kill him.”

“What money are you talking about? This gets crazier all the time!”

“You know what money, Hooper. The same money you and Bunt Manley took from old Provo's box factory. If I have to spell it out for you, by God, I'll do it. I've been keeping my eye on Manley ever since he got out of the pen. He's never been any good and I knew sooner or later he'd get himself in bad trouble. So Manley was the one I thought of first when you broke into the factory and killed the old watchman. But Manley couldn't have done the job alone. Somebody had to be in it with him, so when I started looking for a partner I found you.”

The Sheriffs voice was still, soft, and sure.

I was practically yelling. “What the hell do you mean? I thought you were a responsible man, Otis, but here you are building a case on nothing but thin air and making these insane accusations! Well, I've had enough of it! I demand that you offer some proof or shut up and get out of here!”

He grinned. “That suits me fine. We'll start with that bogus bill that you brought around to my office right after the robbery. I knew at the time you were lying through your teeth about just getting it, because that kind of paper hasn't been seen in more than a year. That was a mistake, Hooper, because I started to wonder why you'd go to that much trouble to pump me about the robbery.”

I snorted. “I didn't pump you. I might have mentioned it casually. Hell, the whole town was talking about it. If I mentioned it, do you call that proof that I had a hand in it or killed Manley?”

“And Otto Finney, too,” he said softly. “Don't forget Otto. No, it doesn't prove anything in particular, but it all adds up to a jury.”

We stood there glaring at each other and nobody had to tell me that he had me by the throat and I was fighting for my life. From here on out it would be brass knucks, and I knew it. I tried to get set for it.

“All right,” he said, and his voice was hard now, hitting like a hammer. “Here's something maybe you didn't know. We knew Manley got some ideas during his stay in Leavenworth. We figured he'd try something like this before long. But Manley was smart, we didn't learn a thing from him, so we figured our best bet was to find the man who was in it with him. That turned out to be easier than I had hoped, when we found Otto's body in the lake with that flywheel tied to him. That was your big mistake, Hooper, that flywheel.”

It wasn't “Joe” now, it was “Hooper,” and he said it as though he had a mouthful of quinine.

“That flywheel is the thing that cooked you, Hooper. We have Ike Abrams' word that he took it out of your father's car and left it in the back of your station. No mistake about it, it's the same flywheel. The jury will take Ike's word for that. You and Bunt Manley robbed the box factory and killed the watchman; then you smeared Otto's fingerprints all over the safe to throw me off the track. Finally you brought the body out here, weighted it with that flywheel, then took it out to the lake and dumped it. It's as simple as that and I can prove every damn word of it.

“Have you heard enough? Well, I'm not through yet. There's plenty more. There's something else that started me thinking about you, Hooper. That visit of yours to the box factory. You hadn't been near that factory for years, not since you used to work there, but on the day before the robbery you made the trip just to pay a five-dollar debt. I ask you, does a story like that hold water? Like hell it does! You went out there to get the exact layout in your mind because the robbery was all set for the next night, when you knew the entire payroll would be in the safe. You prowled around the front office, where the safe was, then you went back to the warehouse and talked to some of the workmen.”

I was almost ready to explode. “All this talk doesn't prove a damn thing and you know it!”

Otis grinned tightly. “It proves plenty, and I can see your guts crawling. Do you know how long the factory burglar alarm had been installed, Hooper? Just two days! That means that whoever took the money and killed the watchman gave that place a thorough going-over not more than two days before the job. And you're the man, Hooper. I can put my hands on at least twenty people who will testify to it. How does it look to you now, Hooper? The jury will throw the book at you. When the story gets out, you'll be lucky if they don't lynch you on the courthouse lawn.”

My voice deserted me. I couldn't make a sound.

“I'm not making any promises, Hooper, but if you'll sign a statement I'll at least see that you get a fair trial.”

My brain was numb. I just stood there too sick to move.

Then a light stabbed the darkness outside the cabin, and I heard the sound of my father's old Dodge pulling up in front of my door.

Ray King said, “It's your father, I think, Joe.”

“Look,” I said. “Don't say anything to him about this. Not now, anyway. He has a patient next door. That's the only reason he's out here.”

Otis Miller said nothing. The two of them looked at each other and finally Ray nodded. I went to the door and said, “Dad, is that you?”

“Yes, Joe. It's pretty late for you to be up, isn't it?”

“Some friends of mine dropped in. Anyway, I wanted to stay up till you got here. I don't know how important it is, but his wife seems to think he's getting worse.”

I could see him standing there, a stooped, bone-tired old man. After a moment he turned and walked heavily toward Number 2.

“How about it, Hooper?” Otis said. “You ready to sign that statement?”

The brief escape from the Sheriffs hammering had given me a chance to get things straight in my mind. At first I felt empty and helpless. I knew they had me. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and I might as well do what they said. So this is the way it ends, Hooper.

After a moment I turned to the Sheriff and looked dully into those eyes of his.

That was the thing that saved me.

I had expected to see the iron-hard glint of victory in those eyes. But it wasn't there. There was anticipation, anxiety, expectation, but not that glint of complete victory. At last I recognized what I saw there. Otis Miller's eyes were the eyes of a gambler who had just run an outrageous bluff and was waiting for his opponent to call.

The implication struck me like an icy shower. It jarred me awake, it released the numbness in my brain. Otis Miller didn't have a damn thing on me! Maybe he had tried to run the most fantastic bluff in history, but he still didn't have a leg to stand on and he knew it.

Oh, he knew I was guilty, all right. He was mixed up about Manley, but he had me pegged every inch of the way. But he couldn't prove a bit of it. All that loud talk of his had been so much hogwash in the hope that he could panic me into a confession.

I felt like a teen-ager on his first drunk. I wanted to laugh right in Otis Miller's face and then kick him and Ray King out of my cabin. What I did was look at Otis and grin.

“Now,” I said, “are you through, Otis?” The glee of the top dog was bubbling inside me. “Are you finally through shooting off that fat mouth of yours? Because if you are, I've got a few things to say that might interest you.”

He reacted just the way I had known he would, as though I had whipped him across the face with a pistol butt.

I had to laugh then; I couldn't hold it back. “Who the hell do you think you are, Otis? None of your talk means a thing. That flywheel story, for instance. There's no way in the world you can prove the flywheel was in my station on the night of the robbery. It was hauled away to the dumping grounds almost a month before, where anybody could have picked it up. As for the bogus bill, I always thought it was a sheriff's duty to take care of things like that. You can suspect anything you please, Otis, but you'd better be damn sure you have proof to back you up before you accuse people of robbery and murder.”

He opened his mouth but I didn't give him a chance to say a word.

“That visit to the factory,” I said. “No jury is going to convict a man for going out of his way to pay an honest debt. That burglar alarm doesn't prove a thing, either, because any top law officer will tell you that any burglar worth his salt takes care of burglar alarms as a matter of course. That just about blows your conviction sky-high, doesn't it, Otis?”

I wasn't through yet. When you got Otis down, it was a good idea to kick him, just to be safe.

“What else is there?” I said. “Oh, yes, the watch. Well, listen carefully, Otis, because this is what happened to my watch. I missed it tonight just before Bunt Manley drove up for gas. I figured at the time the strap had broken and I'd dropped it somewhere, and I intended to look for it when I wasn't busy. While Manley was here I saw him pick something up, but I didn't think anything about it at the time. Manley wouldn't be above picking up a watch, of course, but I didn't think about that until it was too late. So that's what happened to my watch. Also, while Manley was here I noticed that he had been drinking and mentioned that he shouldn't be driving in his condition, but he wouldn't listen to me. Half drunk, he stalled his car on the railroad tracks and got himself killed by a train. Later, you found my watch near the scene of the accident, which isn't surprising. I'll bet you found a lot of other things, too, didn't you, Otis, scattered clear to hell and gone, probably?”

I had shown the cape to the bull but he hadn't charged. He got red in the face, his throat swelled, veins stood out on his forehead, but he didn't charge because he knew that he couldn't win. Ray King stood stiffly, looking grim, but Otis was almost crazy with rage and frustration. Maybe a full minute went by before he made a sound, before he trusted himself to open his mouth.

Suddenly he wheeled and went to the door, then he turned and came back. “You think you're smart, don't you, Hooper? Well, listen to me.”

“You listen to me!” I said. “If you think you've got something, you're welcome to use it. Take me down to the courthouse, lock me up, bring me to trial. You try that, Otis, and you'll be the laughingstock of the country. The jury wouldn't be out thirty seconds before they come in with a verdict of not guilty.”

That was the reason I was so sure that nothing was going to happen. Otis wasn't going to bring me in until he had the evidence he needed, and he didn't have it. The law of double jeopardy worked in Creston as well as it did in other places, and once they found me not guilty it would be over, no matter what Otis might turn up later.

Ray King touched his boss's arm. “Well, Otis?”

I could see the angry blood pumping in the Sheriffs throat, but he took a tight rein on his voice. “You're guilty, Hooper,” he said softly. “You're guilty as hell and I won't let up on you until I see you cooked. You can bank on it!”

Then he tramped out, stiffly, like a mechanical man operating on overwound springs. Even the back of his neck looked angry as he went out.

I stood at the door as the two men got in the car, circled the cabin, and headed toward the highway.

Well, I had won that round, but he was a bulldog, that Otis Miller. He had his teeth in my throat and he wasn't going to turn loose until I was dead. There was only one answer—I had to get out of Creston, far away from Creston, before he scraped together a real case against me.

I heard the door slam at the Sheldon cabin, and when I looked out the window I saw my dad heading for his car. I went to the door and started to speak, but he didn't even look in my direction. He leaned against the car for a moment. Then he looked up at the white clouds sliding under the pale belly of the moon and I thought I heard him say something, but I couldn't catch what it was. Finally he got into his car and drove away.

I kicked the door open and headed for Number 2.

I ran into Paula at the door of the Sheldon cabin; she was just coming out. “Joe,” she said quickly, “I'm afraid we're in trouble.”

“You can say that again. Do you know who I've been fighting with for the past half hour? The Sheriff!”

“At this time of night!”

“The time of day or night doesn't mean a thing to Otis Miller. Didn't you hear the car?”

“I heard it, but I thought it was your father. I thought he had stopped to talk to you before looking at Karl.”

“It was the Sheriff, all right, and he threw the book at me. He hit me with everything he could get his hands on. Luckily, it wasn't enough to panic me into a confession, the way he had hoped.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you mean he actually suspects you of that robbery?”

“He doesn't suspect, he knows. There's absolutely no doubt about it in his mind. But he doesn't have the evidence to convince a jury, and that's the only thing that saved me. Paula, we've got to get out of here, and we've got to do it in a hurry!” I went inside, dropped on a chair, and looked at Sheldon, who seemed to be asleep. “What did Dad say about him?” I asked.

“He has a high fever, but he should be all right tomorrow. We'll leave tomorrow night.”

I was too tired to argue. Anyway, I needed some rest. All of us did, before starting the trip to Arkansas. Then I remembered something. “You said something about trouble,” I said, looking up at her. “What is it?”

“Your father. He knows everything.”

I felt the nervous tingling of my scalp. “The factory, the killing? How could he know?”

“He saw those sketches you made for Karl. I had meant to burn them, but so much has happened.... Anyway, he saw them, and the minute he looked at them he knew everything.”

A cold void opened in my bowels. This was the beginning of a sickness that I knew would never be cured. Paula sat on the arm of the chair, then put her hands on my shoulders and gently massaged the back of my neck. “He can just guess,” I said. “He doesn't really know.” “He knows,” she said, “because I told him. I thought if I laid it on the line for him, it would scare him so that he wouldn't dare go to the police. Now I don't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father has a conscience,” she said. “A strong one. It will eat at him until he'll finally have to do something about it.”

I got out of the chair so suddenly that I almost knocked her off the arm. I went to the door and looked out at the darkness, remembering how he had looked standing there beside his car, his face turned up to the black sky. Paula came over and stood beside me.

“What are we going to do, Joe?”

“What can we do?”

Her voice was suddenly brittle, and it was one of those rare times when I felt that she actually understood what it was to be afraid. “Don't you understand?” she said. “He knows everything! Sooner or later—maybe not tomorrow or the next day, but pretty soon—he won't be able to hold it inside him. He'll start talking and he'll tell everything he knows.”

“By that time we'll be far away from Creston.”

“That won't help us. For murder, they'll come after you, no matter where you are.”

“All right,” I said tightly, “you think of something. It was your idea to tell him everything.”

She said nothing. She just stood there beside me looking out at the night. But somehow I knew what she was thinking. I knew her well enough to guess the solution that would come instinctively to her mind. I took one of her arms and jerked her around to face me.

“You can forget it!” I said. “You can damn well forget it right now!”

There was a flicker of pain in her eyes. “Joe, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You know, all right!” I let her go and she almost fell.

There was nothing—absolutely nothing—that she wouldn't do. She would have killed my father in a minute, because he had become dangerous to her. Several long seconds passed as we stood there staring at each other, as we sized each other up like two savages. Then she closed her eyes, swayed, and leaned against me. Those arms of hers went around my neck and her face tilted up to mine.

“I'm sorry, Joe. You can see right through me, can't you? You can read me like a book.”

I said nothing.

“I'm over it now,” she said huskily. “Things will work out fine. You'll see.”

Chapter Seventeen

The first thing I did the next morning was write a letter.

Dad:

I guess you knew this would happen sooner or later. The station and tourist-court business just didn't work out. Everything seems to have gone to pieces this past year—first the business, then breaking up with Beth. There's no reason why I should stay on in Creston, so I'm pulling out. The bank can take over the station, if they want it. They would have done it anyway in another month or so....

I wrote the letter for the jury's benefit, in case I ever had to face a jury. At least they couldn't say I was running away without a legitimate reason. When I finished the letter I went to the station and opened up as usual.

It was a long day, that day. I kept telling myself that in a few hours Creston and all its memories would be behind me, and Paula and I would start building something for ourselves. I never thought about our future, just the beginning of it.

The end I didn't want to know.

I wasn't afraid of my father's telling what he knew. After all, I was his son, and a man doesn't go out of his way to send his son to the electric chair. I actually hated Paula every time I thought of her telling him everything. The hate became so powerful at times that my hands ached to get around that pale, soft throat of hers—but I knew what would happen if I tried it. She would look at me and I would be kissing her.

The best thing to do was forget it. My father was hurt and there was no way to ease the pain. And there was no changing the way I felt about Paula, either. Forget it.

I tried. I cleaned all around the grease rack and straightened things in back of the station, and somehow the morning became afternoon and after a long while Ike came, as he always did.

“How's it goin', Joe?”

“All right, I guess. You take over for a while. I think I'll go back to the shack and wash up a little.”

“Sure.”

Ike thought I was acting strange, and I guess I was. But every hour now seemed like a year, and I kept looking at my wrist for the watch that wasn't there. Every time I did it I thought of Otis Miller and wondered if he and Ray King had dug up anything else or if they would be back to take up the questioning again.

They didn't come back. Maybe they had somebody watching me, but I doubted it. So I went to my cabin, took a cold shower, and gave myself a few minutes to settle down, and then I began packing. I threw all my clothes into suitcases, rounded up a few other things I would need, like toilet articles and razor blades, and not until that minute did I remember the gun. That revolver that Sheldon had given me. The one that had killed Otto Finney.

I didn't want to keep it on me, but I sure couldn't leave it here in my cabin. Finally I shoved it into my waistband, under my shirt. It felt cold and deadly, like a coiled snake.

It was almost sundown when I left my cabin. Ike was doing something in front of the station but he didn't seem to be looking my way, so I went over to the Sheldons'. Paula and her husband were having what sounded like a serious talk when I came in, but they broke it off and Paula stood up.

“Are you ready, Joe?”

“I was ready days ago.” I looked at Sheldon. “How do you feel?”

“Better than I did yesterday. Have you heard any more from the Sheriff?”

“No, but that doesn't mean he's stopped working on me.” I turned to Paula. “You've got everything ready to go, haven't you? I want to pull out as soon as it's time to close the station. With a little luck we ought to be well into Arkansas by sunup tomorrow.”

“Everything's ready,” she said. “But I want your father to have another look at Karl before we leave.”

I stared at her. “Are you crazy? We've pushed my father just about as far as he'll go. It simply won't do to have him come again.”

“Would you like it better if Karl's arm became infected again, and we had to go to another doctor somewhere? A doctor we didn't know?” She turned suddenly, went to the window, and stood looking flatly at the sleazy curtains. “It doesn't seem very smart to me,” she said. “The answer is no,” I said.

“All right. But it seems like a little thing to fight about. If your father just brought out some sulfa, we'd have nothing to worry about. We wouldn't have to depend on doctors.”

“No.”

But I was weakening, and she could tell it. She turned from the window and said, “I know what's worrying you. You just don't want to see him, do you? Well, you won't have to. I can drive into town and pick up the drugs and dressings we'll need; all you have to do is let him know I'm coming.”

It seemed a little thing. It didn't seem possible that it could cause my father any more pain. After a moment I said, “It's no good. You don't even know where the house is.”

“I can find it. I've been in bigger towns than Creston. All you have to do is give me the directions.”

What a hell of a fuss about nothing! I thought. It was beginning to grate on my nerves. “All right!” I said finally. “If it will make you happy, you can drive in and get the medicine you need. I guess it's all right.”

“Of course it's all right,” she said. “The Sheriff doesn't suspect me and Karl. If I should be seen, it wouldn't mean anything.”

“I know all that, and I said it was all right!” I was getting jumpy, much too jumpy. I just wanted to get away from here—far away. That was the only thing I could think of. I walked to the door and said, “I think I'll go to the station.”

Sheldon said, “You'd better send your helper home and close the station yourself when the time comes.” I nodded and went out.

Darkness had settled over that bald Oklahoma prairie, but it was still early and there was plenty of traffic on the highway. As I came around to the front of the station I saw that Ike had washed down the cement driveway by the gas pumps, and now he was spraying water around the station to settle the dust.

I didn't know just what to do about Ike. We were friends and he had been a lot of help to me with the station, and I didn't feel like picking up and leaving him without a word. He turned and grinned when he heard me come up.

“Hot as hell tonight.”

“Yeah.” I went inside and checked the cash register. I took out enough to cover Ike's salary for two weeks and it just about cleaned it out. “Ike,” I called, “can you come here a minute?”

“Sure.” He hung up the water hose and came inside. I handed him the money.

“What's this, Joe?”

“Two week's pay, Ike. It looks like you're out of a job.”

He looked as though he had been slapped. “You mean I'm fired, Joe?”

“I mean the business is on the rocks. You know as well as I do that we've barely made expenses these past few months, if that.”

He stood there for a moment, looking stupid. He scratched his head. “You mean you're throwin' it up, Joe? You're quittin'?”

“There's nothing left to do. If you can't make this kind of business pay during the tourist season, then you might as well give up.”

He looked uncomfortable as he took the money, folded it slowly, and put it in his pocket. “By golly, Joe, I'm sorry to hear it. I kind of liked working out here. You've been a good boss.”

“Thanks, Ike.”

“If there's anything I can do...”

“Just one thing, Ike.” I counted out forty dollars, most of it from my pocket. “This is what I owe the gas company on the last delivery. Will you contact them tomorrow and pay them off?”

His forehead wrinkled at that one. “Ike,” I said, “I'm just sick of this place. When I close up tonight I don't want to have to look at it or think about it again. Maybe I'll just pack up and go fishing or something. Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd take care of the gasoline people.”

“Well, sure, Joe, if that's the way you want it. I guess I know how you feel. The business has been pretty much of a disappointment, at that, I guess.”

“Ike,” I said, “that's the understatement of the year.”

I had expected something of a fuss, or at least a pep talk, for Ike was a great one for seeing a thing through to the end. But he was surprisingly calm, as though he had seen it coming from a long way off—and maybe he had.

“Well, Joe...”

“I guess that's it, Ike.”

We said a few more things, none of them making much sense, and finally I got Ike in his Ford and headed him for town.

The last small thread was cut. I was free. Automatically, I began locking up, bringing in the display cases of oil, disconnecting the water hose, locking the pumps. I looked out at the highway and thought: I'm free! Free to go anywhere I damn please!

Far up the highway I could see the lights atop the towering grain elevators. Creston, Oklahoma. If I never saw it again, it would be fine with me.

Just as I finished locking up I heard Paula starting the Buick. She drove around to the front of the station. I went around to the driver's side of the car and thought: Christ, she can be beautiful when she wants to! I'll never forget how she looked at that moment as she reached through the window and traced her fingers lightly over my chest.

“It won't be long now, Joe. Within another hour this town will be behind us.”

“I'm ready.”

“We'll start just as soon as I get back. Just as soon as I pick up the medicine and dressings from your father. You didn't forget to call him, did you?”

“I didn't have a chance. Ike left just a few minutes ago. But I'll do it now, if you're still sure it's necessary.”

“I explained it to you, Joe. It's insurance we've got to have. If Karl's arm should get bad again, we won't find another doctor as co-operative as your father.”

I still didn't like it, but when Paula got hold of something she wouldn't turn it loose without a fight. And right now I didn't feel like a fight. “All right,” I said finally, “I guess you'll have it your way.”

I had to unlock the station again to get to the phone. I got the number and listened to the ringing at the other end, and at last a thousand-year-old voice, a voice without life, said, “Hello.”

“Dad, this is Joe. I've got a little favor to ask of you.”

He didn't say a thing. For a moment I thought he had hung up on me, but then I heard the hum of the open line and knew that he was still there.

“Dad, this is the last thing I'm going to ask of you. Believe me, it is. You know this man you've been treating; well, he and his wife are pulling out tonight. They're pulling out for good and you'll never hear of them again. But the woman wants you to give her some medicine, just in case her husband's arm starts acting up again. I'm sending her over to pick it up. Is that all right?”

There was only the hum of the wire.

“Dad, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“You'll let her have the medicine, won't you? Sulfa, or whatever you think best.”

“Do I have a choice, Joe?”

I felt like hell. For a moment I just stood there with the receiver in my hand, unable to think of anything else to say, and finally I hung up.

I went outside, where Paula was waiting. “It's all right,” I said. “But make it fast. Don't drag it out any longer than is absolutely necessary. I'm afraid he's had just about all he can take.”

I told her how to get to the house, which wasn't much of a job. The town wasn't big enough to get lost in, and anyway, the streets were clearly marked. She smiled faintly and squeezed my hand, then she put the Buick in gear and left me standing there. God, I thought, I'll be glad when it's over!

After I got the station locked again, I went around to Number 2 to see how Sheldon was doing. He was doing fine. He had his clothes on and was doing some packing as I came in.

“You're looking pretty good,” I said.

He looked at me, then looked away, fast. “I'll feel better when we're away from here.”

“Well, it shouldn't be long now. It won't take Paula long to pick up the medicine.”

He wouldn't look at me. He kept fiddling with a shirt that he was trying to get folded, keeping me behind him. He looked nervous and pale, but I put that down to his sickness.

I said, “You want me to help you with that?”

“No!” He turned on me then, and there was something in those eyes of his that put ice in my veins. “What's the matter with you?” I said. “Nothing! Just get out of here and leave me alone! Do you have to stand there watching me, watching every move I make?”

“Look,” I said, “you're pretty jumpy, aren't you? Hadn't you better just sit down and take it easy?”

I thought for a minute that he was going to spring at me. Then he seemed to go to mush inside. He leaned against the bed, then he sat down and put his face in his hands. I guess that was when the first germ of fear became implanted in my brain. I looked at Sheldon and knew that something was wrong, something was wrong as hell. Here he had just pulled through a serious sickness and within an hour would be on his way to freedom, and he looked like a man getting ready to walk his last mile. I stepped over to him, pushed his head back, and made him look at me.

“What's eating you, Sheldon?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, yes, there is! Something's got its fangs in your guts and I want to know what it is.”

“I tell you it's nothing!”

I think I already knew. In the dark cellar of my mind I knew what it was. Panic's cold feet raced up my spine as I grabbed the front of Sheldon's shirt. I heard myself saying it, before the thought was really clear in my mind.

“Out with it, Sheldon! Does it have anything to do with my father?”

He whined, and I slammed him across the face with the back of my fist.

“Goddamn you, you'd better tell it and tell it fast, or you're going to curse the day you were born! Has it got anything to do with my father?”

But he was too sick and too scared and too weak to make a sound. I hit him again, knowing it was hopeless, knowing that it was a waste of time, but I hit him. His mouth came open and his teeth were red with blood.

“It's Paula, isn't it?” I almost yelled at him. “What's she going to do? What's she got in that hard little brain of hers?”

But I already knew. It was in Sheldon's eyes, gleaming there in the twin small seas of pain. Paula was going to kill my father. He knew too much about her, so she was going to kill him.

I should have guessed. I should have known when I first saw that look in her eyes the night before. That was when she had made up her mind.

I felt sick. All day she had been planning it. She had made up that story about having to go after medicine, knowing that I wouldn't have the guts to face my father myself, now that he knew all about us. She was going to murder him. Right this minute she was on her way. '

It seemed like a lifetime as I stood there, my fist doubled, ready to hit Sheldon again. I thought: She must have known that I'd find out. She couldn't keep a thing like this a secret. How she meant to explain it to me, I couldn't guess—but she would think of something. I knew her well enough for that. With the help of that ripe mouth and soft body she would think of something, and make it sound logical enough, when the time came.

But the time would not come. I was almost sorry as I thought it. The end had already arrived.

I let Sheldon go and he fell to the floor, still whimpering. I could have killed him without a qualm, as easily as stepping on a spider, but there was no time for it. I was out of the cabin and racing through the night toward my car.

I drove like a crazy man, deaf and dumb, blind to everything but the grayish highway and the dazzling lights that rushed at me from the darkness and then fell swiftly behind. I assaulted the night with speed, split it open and made it scream. Past the floodlighted oil-field supply houses, the wind rushing. Past the big motels and the crumby shacks. Past the towering grain elevators; pale, unbelievable giants in the darkness, topped with blinking red lights. Over the railroad overpass and down the breath-taking slope on the other side to Creston.

How I got there, I didn't know. But I was there. I had not passed the Buick—that was one thing I was sure of—and that meant that Paula had reached Creston before me. I drove as though each second were a matter of life or death. And it was. I skirted the heart of town to avoid traffic. Maybe, just maybe...

The tires screamed as I took a corner too fast, too sharp. There was a spine-shattering jar as the front wheel hit the curb. The explosion blew a ragged hole in the night, in my hopes. The right front tire went out and the Chevy careened sideways, jumped the curb, crashed into a squat cement marker, and came to a shuddering halt.

The starter wouldn't work. I jabbed it and there was nothing but silence. Up and down the street doors came open, people came out to see what the noise was about. The car wouldn't start. Maybe it was a battery cable broken loose, maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, I didn't have time to look into it. I got out of the car and began running.

People were pouring into the street. I ignored their shouted questions. I ran.

Through alleys, up streets, across yards, over hedges I ran. From one end of town to the other, almost, I ran, with fire in my lungs and ice in my belly. I almost forgot why I was running. The muscles in my thighs quivered, my knees wanted to buckle. Just a minute, I thought. Rest just a minute. Give yourself a chance to breathe. And then I would remember and keep going.

The Buick was the first thing I saw. I passed the church and the Langford house, and then I wiped the sweat from my eyes and there was the blue Buick parked at the curb in front of my father's house. How long it had been there, I didn't know. But not too long. Paula would have taken it easy on a strange street in a strange town. She couldn't have driven so very fast. Whether or not it had been fast enough, only time would tell.

I almost fell on my face when I reached the car. I couldn't get enough air into my lungs, no matter how hard I tried. Then I saw that the car was empty, and that gave me a new strength. I staggered like a drunk man, a straw man, an empty shell of a man. I shoved the front gate open and stumbled up the walk to the front porch. The porch light was on. The front door was open, because of the heat, and there was a light in the front room. There was also a light on the south side of the house, in my father's bedroom. I noticed all this as I stumbled toward the porch. And then I saw Paula.

She was standing almost in the center of the front room, calm and erect, with no flicker of emotion on her beautiful face. In her hand was Sheldon's .38 revolver and it was pointed at the door of my father's bedroom.

An ocean of hopelessness washed over me. I was too late. I wanted to let go and sink to the bottom depths and never look up again.

And then I heard my father calling, his voice muffled, “Just a minute. I'll be with you in just a minute.”

Thank God! My heart took up its beating again, and now I could see the situation as it was. My father had been napping, probably—about the only kind of sleep he got. Obviously, Paula had got here just ahead of me. She had stepped into the front room and called out, and now...

And now the nightmare was reality. My father would open the bedroom door. Perhaps he would get one startled look at Paula and the gun, and then he would be dead. Panic and exhaustion held me frozen. I tried to call out to Paula, and no sound came from my throat.

The door to my father's bedroom opened. He stood framed in the doorway, wearing a faded blue bathrobe and ragged carpet slippers. His thin hair was tousled, his eyes swollen with sleep, and I don't think he even saw Paula's gun before the sudden blast cracked the night.

I stood there, my throat swollen with a yell that would not come out. My father did not fall. Startled, he jerked to one side. With wide, unbelieving eyes, he stared at Paula as she took one step toward him, then another....

Slowly, languidly, gracefully—almost beautifully—she died.

She seemed almost to melt to the floor. There was hardly a sound as Paula went down to her knees, and then she fell over on her shoulder and lay staring blankly at the front wall of the room. The thing I noticed was how cold and beautiful she looked. Her mouth seemed brazenly red.

Not until later did I realize that I had taken my own .38 from my waistband, and that the barrel was hot, and that a whisper of burned powder had become mingled with the clean smell of the summer night. Perhaps several seconds went by before I realized fully that Paula was dead and that I had killed her.

There seemed nothing to do after that. Nothing I wanted to do.

I sat on the front porch and held my face in my hands, and after a while the Sheriff came.

Chapter Eighteen

The wall clock in the Sheriff's office said seven o'clock. We had been there almost eight hours, Otis, Ray King, and a county stenographer taking down everything I said. The Sheriff didn't know it, but he was doing me a favor by keeping me there. I didn't want to be left alone. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Paula. I could imagine what it would be like if I tried to sleep. A great numbness had taken hold of me now, and that was the way I wanted to keep it. I was a hollow man, without feelings, without conscience, with sensibilities, but I knew that wouldn't last if they left me to myself.

Otis Miller, his thick face beginning to sag with weariness, sat staring at me with red-rimmed eyes. Unbelieving eyes. He had known me all my life, I guess. Doc Hooper's boy. Tackle on the high-school football team, soldiered with a tank outfit in Africa and France. A little erratic, maybe, but would settle down eventually and marry Steve Langford's girl. That was the way he'd had me pegged, more than likely, before the robbery. He was trying to figure out what would make a boy like that turn to robbing and killing.

He wasn't having much luck. Fatigue had dulled the edge of his imagination. He had all the facts before him— I had given them to him, almost gladly—but they were just the bare facts and didn't tell the whole story.

I was guilty, all right. There was no doubt in the Sheriff's mind about that. It was the why of the thing that stumped him.

“All right, Hooper,” he said heavily, “let's hear it again.”

He wasn't giving up yet, and I was glad of that. I wanted to keep talking, I wanted to have people around me. That was the important thing. I just didn't want to be taken to a cell and left to myself.

“All right, Otis. What do you want to know?” My voice sounded lifeless. I felt lifeless and hollow. It was a strange, cold feeling.

“First,” the Sheriff said, “let's get the main facts straight again. Is it true that on the night of the fourteenth you and this Karl Sheldon robbed Max Provo's box factory?”

“It's true.”

Like a wooden dummy talking.

“And on that same night you killed old Otto Finney and disposed of the body in the lake?”

“True.”

A wooden dummy. You put your hand inside the hollow dummy, and you press on something, and its mouth comes open and it seems to talk. That was the way it seemed to me. The words just came out and I had nothing to do with them at all.

“Who helped you dispose of the body?”

Something went wrong with the dummy. The mouth came open but the words wouldn't come out. I couldn't make myself say Paula's name.

“The woman?” the Sheriff said. “The Sheldon woman?”

I nodded.

“Then what happened?”

“That's about all. We split the money and they went away.”

“Where did they go?”

“Somewhere in Texas, I think.”

“All right. We have all the details about Bunt Manley and the Sheldon woman. You killed them, too; is that right?”

I nodded.

“The stenographer has it all down. Do you have anything to add to your original statement concerning the deaths of Manley and the Sheldon woman?”

“I guess not.”

He turned to the stenographer. “For the record, you'd better put in that this confession was not obtained through duress or force. Is that right, Hooper?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“Do you have anything else to add to the statement before it's typed up?”

At some point during the night Otis had dropped his toughness. He was almost gentle now. “Do you want to talk to a lawyer before signing the statement?”

Sheldon was still alive and would talk his head off, and I knew it. I said, “A lawyer couldn't help me.”

Otis gave the signal and the stenographer gathered up his notes and left the room. The Sheriff and his deputy sat there staring at me.

It was all over. Otis said, “Well, Hooper, we might as well go over to the jail.”

For the first time in eight hours a real emotion went to work on me. Fear. Fear of being put in a cell and left to, myself.

Ray King said, “Is there something else you want to say?”

Suddenly I felt an insane urge to laugh. “We almost got away with it.” I heard myself saying. “We came so close!”

“You're wrong, Hooper,” the Sheriff said. “You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.” Suddenly he pushed himself back from his desk, still not satisfied with the bare facts. He still wanted an answer, but he wasn't sure of the question. He said, “You never had a chance, Hooper. We're not completely stupid down here. We had you nailed to that box-factory job and, in spite of what you think, we could have made a good case in court. But we also knew you didn't pull the robbery alone. I figured Bunt Manley helped you, but I was wrong in that. Anyway, we didn't want to pull you in until we found out who was in it with you. With all the circumstantial evidence we had on you, do you think we'd just forget about you?”

He snorted. “We had you watched day and night, Hooper. Ike Abrams or one of my deputies reported every move you made. You thought you were going to leave this town scot-free, didn't you? Well, let me tell you, you couldn't have got away in a Patton tank. We were just waiting for you or the Sheldons to make a mistake, and when you did make one it was a lulu!”

I stared at him. “You had Ike spying on me all the time?”

“You're a murderer, Hooper. Ike was doing a job for the Sheriff's office. And it didn't take him long to tie you up with Sheldon's wife. After that it was just a matter of waiting. There's one thing I'm curious about though. Why did you kill her?”

I closed my eyes and there she was.

I could almost feel sorry for Sheldon; he wouldn't die easy in the chair. Maybe I wouldn't, either, but the prospect was not frightening now. I had died the instant my finger had pulled the trigger on that .38. With a woman like Paula it seemed ridiculous to think such thoughts—but I had loved her. I must have loved her to have done the things I had done.

Ray King said, “Maybe I'll never understand it, Joe, but I'd like to try. You threw over a fine girl like Beth Langford, then turned to robbing and murdering because of a woman like Paula Sheldon. Why?”

I thought of the cell that was waiting for me. When I reached it I wanted to be able to drop into dreamless, thoughtless oblivion—and the time was not yet.

I looked at them and they were waiting for the answer. They wanted a simple, clear-cut answer and there wasn't any.

It was a long story. Almost a month ago, I thought; that was when I saw her for the first time. That was when the Buick stopped on the highway in front of the station. Less than a month ago it had been. It seemed like a thousand lifetimes.

Otis and Ray were waiting and I didn't know where to begin. And then I thought dully: Begin at the beginning, and maybe there will be an answer there for you, as well as for them. And I said:

“This is the way it was....” And I started at the beginning.

THE END