Fire Will Freeze

10

Maurice Hearst opened his eyes. A sliver of sun shot through a crack in the drawn blind and hit his eyeballs. He felt a sharp searing pain go right through his head.

He closed his eyes, wincing, and thought, funny, I don’t remember that crack in the blind. It wasn’t there before.

He turned his head and burrowed it into the pillow to shut out the light and the sounds that came from the next room, and from the street. But the sounds kept coming right through the pillow, and he could still imagine the sliver of light and it was almost as bad as seeing it, because it worried him. He couldn’t remember the crack in the blind, but he didn’t want to get up and look at it, he didn’t want to move at all. His head was too hot and heavy a thing to go carrying around. And it must be early, his alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

But as soon as he thought of his alarm this began to worry him, too. Maybe he’d forgotten to wind it, or the clock had stopped. It wasn’t a very good clock anyway, it had a loud rattling alarm and the tick was wheezy and uneven and you could hear it when you were walking down the hall even before you opened the door.

He moved his head and listened and heard no ticking, nothing but the boom-thump of his own blood pounding in his ears. He forced himself to open his eyes again. Then he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and tried to concentrate.

The blind and the clock — and now the ceiling. It wasn’t the right color.

“God,” he said aloud, and put up his hand to brush away the sudden sweat from his forehead. He saw his wrist, thick and tanned, with coarse fair hairs on it. But it was a swell wrist, he could remember it, it was his.

His eye traveled up and he saw that he was wearing his coat. He had gone to sleep with his clothes on. He had never done that before, never been drunk.

He moved again and the armholes of the coat felt tight and uncomfortable and the sleeves were too short.

Breathing hard and fighting off nausea, he sat up in the bed. These weren’t his clothes, this wasn’t his bed or his room, there was no clock...

No, that couldn’t be right.

I’m sick, he thought, I’m very, very sick and I’m imagining things and in a minute everything will be all right. When this pain goes away, when I can see better, it will be my room again.

He waited, his eyes closed, trying to force himself to breathe deeply and evenly. But he didn’t get enough oxygen that way, and he had to open his mouth and gasp and drag the air into his lungs.

Last night. Remember last night. Think about last night. Get that straight first.

But it wouldn’t come. Last night seemed ordinary. All his nights were pretty much the same. He played poker with Gaston, the headwaiter, and a couple of kitchen boys, or he went to bed early and read a book, or he took on some of the guests for billiards in the basement. Nobody could beat him at billiards. He had a steady eye and good nerves...

“Good nerves,” he said aloud, and tried to laugh about it. But the laugh turned out to be a whimper and his voice sounded as strange to him as the room and the bed and the clothes. It was weak and husky.

I’m sick, he thought again. Where did I get sick? Where was I? Where am I?

He looked around the room again. It wasn’t his room, but he’d seen it before. Somewhere, sometime before he had been in this room.

There was a pitcher of water on the little table beside the bed and three glasses.

Three glasses. Why three glasses? He squinted to make his eyes focus better, but there were still three glasses. He picked up one and poured some water into it. He was very thirsty and in a minute all the water was gone from the pitcher and he was feeling steadier and the pain behind his eyes had settled down into a gnawing ache. When he put the glass back on the table he saw an empty quart bottle of gin on the floor.

Gin, he thought, I never drink gin.

But the bottle was empty, and he, obviously, had been full, so he must have drunk gin, or else he’d had someone with him.

As soon as he thought of that he knew it was right. He couldn’t remember anybody, but something seemed to move in his mind and click into place. Someone had come here with him, maybe two people if there were three glasses.

From the next room came the sound of a vacuum cleaner starting up. I’m in a hotel, he thought. If I could get over to the window and pull up the blind and look out maybe I’d know where I am. I could always remember roads and buildings...

Roads.

There was something about the word that hit him. His heart began to thump again and the blood roared in his ears. Roads.

He swung his legs off the bed and staggered over to the window and tore at the blind to get it up. It came off the roller and fell on his head and he fought it off desperately as if it were an animate thing, and a mortal enemy.

It ripped and fell to the floor and he looked down at it savagely and kicked it away with his foot.

The sun beat in on his eyes and for a second he could see nothing but a black-red glare. The glare faded and became the orange twinkle of sun on snow.

He was on the second floor of the hotel. Just outside his window a painted sign swung gently back and forth: Hotel Metropole, it said on one side. Prix moderes. Tout confort. On the other side it said, Metropole Hotel. All conveniences. Reasonable Rates.

The sign brought everything back so vividly that he had to breathe deeply again to ward off the sudden nausea that hit him.

The bus. Where’s the bus? I’ve lost the bus.

He strained his eyes to see across the street. There was the station looking the way it always did, too bright and modern in this sleepy third-rate little town. But the place in front of the station where he always parked the bus was empty.

That was where he kept the bus, waiting for the Montreal train to come in. Sometimes it was late and he went across to the Metropole for coffee or beer, but he’d never stayed here before. He’d never been upstairs.

He turned away from the window and sat on the bed holding his head in his hands and trying to think through the pain. Maybe if I talked out loud, he thought, maybe if I asked myself questions I’d remember everything.

What’s your name?

Maurice A. Hearst. A for Albert.

How old are you?

Twenty-six, hell, no, twenty-seven. Who cares? Old enough to know better than to talk to strangers.

Strangers, eh? What kind of strangers?

I don’t know. That just slipped out. I don’t...

Well, take it easy. Where do you work?

I work for the Chateau Neige. I drive their bus. I’ve been there for two years now and I’m a damn good driver and that bus gets through roads that nothing else can get through but a snowplow. It’s like a jeep, see? It bounces. It doesn’t look so hot and you have to coddle the engine but...

All right, all right, so it’s a jeep. Where were you last night?

I don’t know.

All right. Where were you this morning?

Here.

You couldn’t have been here this morning. You drove the bus down this morning, didn’t you? That was this morning, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

He groaned, “Oh, Jesus,” and rolled his head back and forth. Then he began again.

You still there, Mr. Hearst?

Sure, sure. It’s my wrist, isn’t it? Sure, I’m here.

You know what day this is?

No.

You know what time it is?

No — wait, the sun — it’s noon, twelve o’clock.

Good work, Mr. Hearst. Where are you usually at noon?

I’m in my bus waiting for the train to come in.

So that makes this today and not yesterday. Isn’t that right?

Sure, sure. It’s today. If it isn’t yesterday it must be today.

So you’ve lost twenty-four hours. Where were you yesterday at noon?

I was in my bus. I had the motor idling because on the trip down it coughed a couple of times and I didn’t want to have any trouble with it going back. It was ten below and the roads were as bad as I’ve ever seen them.

Anybody with you on the trip down?

No, not this time.

All right. You’re sitting with the motor idling. Do you remember seeing anyone?

Sure, a kid with a St. Bernard.

That’s dandy. Maybe he got you drunk.

I wasn’t drunk. I was knocked out or something. I’m sick.

All right. The kid and the dog. And what else?

A couple of guys came out of the station. I remember thinking it was funny because the older guy was all dressed up but the younger one was shabby...

Hearst got off the bed and walked over to the window again. He tried to picture the bus standing in front of the station, and himself behind the wheel, and the two men walking out of the station. There had been no sun and the wind ripped up the street, and the train was going to be late... The two men came over and one of them rapped on the door of the bus, it was the well-dressed one who looked as if he came from the city...

Hearst looked down at the blue serge suit he was wearing. It belonged to the shabby young man, the one who hadn’t talked. The older man had done the talking. He looked as if he came from the city...

“Is this the Chateau Neige bus?”

“Sure is,” Hearst said.

“How long do you wait here?”

“As long as it takes the train to come in. Been late a lot the last month.”

The older man grinned and said, “The war or the weather?”

“Both,” Hearst said. He liked talking but the two men were keeping the door open and the bus heater didn’t work so well. He said, “You want to go up to the Lodge? Well, hop in. I have to close this door.”

“No, no,” the older man said. “I’m supposed to meet somebody here, a lady. She’s going on up but I’ve got to wait a couple of days in town here. Business. Any place I can get a drink?”

Hearst pointed. “Sure. The Metropole.”

The shabby man smiled and nodded his head.

“Maybe you’d like to join us?” the older man suggested. “We’re strangers in town...”

“Have to wait here,” Hearst said, but the idea tempted him. He’d go and look on the call board and see how late the train was going to be and maybe he’d have time for a quick one.

Both of the men looked pleased, and they went with him to see about the train. It wasn’t due for half an hour.

The older man said his name was Aldington. He was in the lumber business. The other man, hunched inside his coat even in the bar, kept smiling stupidly at everybody and didn’t say anything.

Hearst ordered beer but Mr. Aldington wanted whisky and after a whispered conversation with the bartender and the passing of a bill, he got it.

“Too cold for beer,” he said to Hearst. “What’s this place like, to stay at, I mean?”

Hearst didn’t know. He noticed that Mr. Aldington was carrying a briefcase.

Mr. Aldington saw him looking at it and winked. “Stimulant,” he said. “I always freeze in this country.”

He went over to the desk and registered. When he came back he said, he wanted to go upstairs and deposit his briefcase. Did Mr. Hearst want to come, too, and they’d all have a drink and then go back to the station together?

It was too cold for beer, Hearst decided, and if Mr. Aldington was going to come up to the Lodge later to see his girlfriend, it would be better to humor him...

The last he saw of Mr. Aldington, Mr. Aldington was disappearing in a grey fuzzy blur which finally wavered and dissolved into nothing.

Hearst looked around the room and found that they’d left him a coat and a peaked cap and a pair of heavy work boots. He put them on and went downstairs, hanging onto the railing. He walked drunkenly over to the desk and the Frenchwoman who owned the Metropole looked up in surprise. She didn’t recognize him at first.

Then she said, “Why, Monsieur Hearst!”

“What day is this?” Hearst croaked, swaying on his feet.

“Drunk,” said Madame Picard sadly. “This is Friday. I did not see you enter.”

“Where’s Henri?” Henri was the bartender.

“This is Henri’s holiday,” Madame Picard said. “And I would not allow him to serve you in your condition. A man who must drive a bus, a man who is responsible for the lives and safety of...”

“I’ve been here all night.”

“Then you owe me money,” Madame Picard said and promptly opened her registry book. There is no record, Monsieur Hearst. You are imagining things. Monsieur Picard, who had his weakness like every man, used to imagine that there were...”

“I’m not drunk,” Hearst said.

“Ho, ho,” said Madame Picard gaily. “Monsieur Picard to the life! Never, never drunk, until he fell over!”

Hearst lurched to the door and wrenched it open, and gasped the cold air into his lungs. Then he closed the door behind him and began to run.

The stationmaster was in his office. When he saw Hearst he regarded him with a frown.

“It’s about time,” he said. “Train’s been in ten minutes and there’s a gang of weekenders raising a racket for the bus.”

He pointed to a group of young men and women standing together in one corner, talking loudly.

“I haven’t got the bus,” Hearst said. “Someone stole it yesterday.”

“You’re crazy,” the stationmaster said. “Where’s your uniform? What are you doing in that rig?”

“I’m telling you,” Hearst said wildly. “A couple of men took the bus yesterday and left me doped up in the Metropole all night.”

“Some kidder you are,” the stationmaster said sourly. “I saw you leave here yesterday. Had a loadful, too, the kind that pay high and like it. And you phoned in like you usually do from Chapelle when the weather’s bad. You said you could make it all right but the roads were bad and you’d be late.”

“I phoned in?” Hearst said slowly. Mr. Aldington knew his job, whatever it was. Only someone who’d made the trip before could have known that he phoned in from Chapelle when the going was tough.

“Give me the phone,” he said. “I’ve got to get in touch with the Lodge.”

“Well, you’d better use pigeons,” the stationmaster said acidly. “The wires are down. I just tried them, to see what was keeping you.”

Hearst sat down abruptly in a chair and passed his hand over his eyes. The stationmaster watched him with a worried frown.

“No one else but you could get that bus through the roads the way they were yesterday,” he said.

“I know,” Hearst said, with mournful pride. “And what did they want with it? Who in hell would want my bus?”

“Kidnapping, maybe. You’d better phone the police.”

Five minutes later Sergeant Mackay of the Mounted Police arrived at the station. A big, taciturn, weather-beaten man of forty, he listened carefully to Hearst’s story. He knew Hearst as a steady young man who liked his job and drank very little. Every day Hearst’s bus passed the corner where the courthouse was and Mackay often waved to him from his office window. He had waved yesterday. He remembered noticing that the bus was full and wondering what strange urge brought people with money to this wilderness in order to slide down hills and break their necks.

“Sounds a little crazy,” he said when Hearst had finished.

“Crazy as hell,” Hearst said wearily. “What did they want — the bus or the people in it or just one of the people in it? And where are the people now?”

“Frozen to death,” said the stationmaster in a sinister whisper.

“Keep out of this, George,” Mackay said, and turned back to Hearst. “They may have gotten the bus through all right. We’ve had no complaints from the Lodge.”

“The wires are down,” Hearst said. “And I guess they figured I just stayed in town on account of the roads. I had to do that once last winter.”

Mackay took out his notebook. He used the notebook chiefly for grocery lists provided by his wife. There wasn’t much crime in the winter up here. People were too busy trying to keep warm.

“What did these two men look like?” he said. “Were they French or English?”

“The big one, Aldington, was English, I think. He had on a grey felt hat and a grey overcoat that looked expensive. Dark skin, black hair, and a lot of teeth.”

“What do you mean, a lot of teeth?” said the stationmaster.

Mackay said, “George, you got work to do, do it. Tell that gang over there that there isn’t any bus today. They”ll have to stay at the hotel overnight.” George went away reluctantly.

“He was toothy,” Hearst said.

“Age?”

“I don’t know. Maybe forty, maybe thirty-five. He looked fit, though, and pretty muscular. His eyes were brown, I guess, and he was good-looking.”

“And the other guy?”

Hearst looked helpless. “I don’t know. He didn’t talk. He just smiled and seemed kind of half-witted. I figure he was French and didn’t want to be spotted.”

“He didn’t make any noise?”

“Well, he laughed once. It was a crazy laugh, sort of high and giggly and shrill. Sounded like Hitler.”

“Like Hitler,” Mackay said thoughtfully, and stared across the desk at Hearst. “Go on.”

“He looked as if he’d been outdoors a lot. He had on these clothes I’m wearing so I guess he was a little smaller than me.”

Mackay ran his eye slowly over the blue serge suit, the peaked cap and the overcoat.

He said suddenly, “Let me see those shoes. Take them off.”

Hearst took them off and Mackay examined the shoes and the lining. Then he dived for the Montreal and District telephone directory. Hearst peered over his shoulder and noted the page number and saw where Mackay’s finger stopped on the page.

Mackay said, “Step out there a minute, Hearst. I’m calling long distance on business.”

“Can’t I...?”

“No.”

Hearst, minus shoes, walked over to the main door where the stationmaster was giving the weekenders a long and untruthful account of the missing bus. He told them that the drifts were fifteen feet high, that even the snowplow was stuck, and that the Metropole was one of the finest hotels in the country. They would be, he said, very surprised.

They certainly will, Hearst thought, watching them troop across the street.

“You’re some liar,” he said.

“Sure,” George said. “But look at my results. They’re happy as hell because they got something to tell their friends when they get back.”

Mackay came to the door. He handed Hearst the boots. “I’m going back to the office. Everything’s settled. I’ve got someone tracing the bus and I know who one of your two friends is.”

He smiled and walked out.

“Hey,” Hearst shouted, but the door had closed again.

“How do you like that?” George said. “No gratitude in him. Wouldn’t even give us a clue.”

He took one of the boots and examined it but it seemed an ordinary boot. He tossed it back to Hearst who put it on. They went back to the office.

Hearst picked up the telephone directory and turned to the page Mackay had been looking at. At the approximate place where Mackay’s finger had stopped were three private numbers and the number of a boys’ reform school.

“For God’s sake,” Hearst said in disgust. “A reform school!”

“What’s that?” George said quickly, and Hearst told him.

“It’s a clue!” George yelped. “Oh boy, a clue!”

“A clue, hell,” Hearst said. “If either of those guys came from a boy’s reform school I should be in diapers.”