Hopscotch

— 23 -

Cutter came into the storeroom, ducking his head to clear the doorway; Ross looked up from the scribbled note in his hand-Better luck next time. M.K.-and tossed it disgustedly back into the empty carton; and Myerson shot a bitter look at Cutter. “Have you ever considered shining shoes as a trade, Joe? Maybe you ought to keep it in mind-maybe you’re equipped for it.”

Cutter said, “I grant you in the long parade of stupid mistakes we’ve made this one deserves a special float all to itself.”

Myerson pulled the cigarette from his mouth with a perceptible tremor of his plump fingers. “By God this is enough. I want the bastard dead, you hear me?” It was the first time he’d seen one of Kendig’s pranks firsthand and he was distressed.

“All right,” Cutter said. He was squinting as if the light was too strong. “It’s got to be done but let’s not rationalize it into one of God’s Commandments.”

Myerson stood unsteady, the muscles of his feet making constant corrections in his balance. Abruptly Cutter smiled at him. Ross thought it wasn’t because there was anything worth smiling about; it was just that Myerson was already discomfited and Cutter’s smile was designed to make him more so.

Kendig had pulled the storeroom apart with a vengeance-to make sure it didn’t escape anyone’s notice that he’d been there. The housekeeper had reported it to the desk at breakfast time and the manager had reported it to the Yard and Myerson had been in Merritt’s office at the time; Myerson had collected Ross and they’d left a message for Cutter and now here they were looking at the strewn soap cartons and the amiable little note from Kendig in the box where the manuscript must have been.

“Under our noses,” Myerson grouched. “Right here under our noses all the time.”

He was talking to Cutter but Cutter was listening with a lack of interest that he didn’t bother to conceal. He was pensive; Myerson walked around him in a circle, too agitated to stand still, but Cutter didn’t turn to keep facing him and Myerson had to come around again to see Cutter’s face. Myerson began to shout but Cutter cut across him: “Spare me the recriminations, all right?”

The skin on Myerson’s ruddy face tightened. “I suppose you’ve got a rabbit to pull out of the hat now, have you? Because if you don’t Joe, I have a very strong premonition that you’re likely to spend the rest of your career decoding signals from the Russian scientific base in Antarctica.” Myerson beamed wickedly but the quality of Cutter’s answering glance smothered the smile quickly from his face.

“There aren’t any rabbits,” Cutter said quietly. “There’s only a fabric of assumptions and suppositions and surmises. He left it here forty-eight hours and then he collected it. He could have left it here indefinitely but he collected it. That means something.”

“Does it? I’ll ask my Ouija board.”

“It means one of two things,” Cutter went on. “Either he wants to mail out another chapter or he’s planning to leave the country.”

“Give that man a cigar.”

“Am I still running this show?”

Myerson dropped his cigarette and ground it out under the sole of his shoe. “Hell Joe, of course you are.”

“Then I want more men. I want to double the cover on every airplane and boat that leaves this island. And I want to double up on Follett’s idea, covering the post offices.”

“Makes sense,” Myerson conceded. He turned a final distasteful glance on the jumbled array of overturned cartons, fished Kendig’s note out of the empty one and dropped it gingerly into ah envelope, glanced bleakly at Ross, scowled again at Cutter and went.

Ross said, “I have a feeling it’s the post office idea that’s going to do the trick. I don’t mean anything personal, Joe.”

“I misjudged Follett. It was a brilliant idea. Don’t apologize.”

The Yard technicians arrived. Cutter and Ross relinquished the basement to them and went upstairs through the lobby to the car. Ross got behind the wheel. “Where to?”

“Chartermain’s office.”

Ross put it in gear and vectored into the traffic. The sun was a pale disk in the haze. Last night he’d dropped by Cutter’s room to ask him something. Cutter had been reading the Bible. Ross had picked it up and glanced at the open pages. Deuteronomy. Something had leaped out at him. I have set before thee life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life.

Suspicion wormed in him. “Sometimes I get the feeling Kendig thinks if he just charges head-on hard enough at death it’ll get out of his way.”

Cutter said, “There’s a classic rat-psychology experiment where they send a hungry rat down a tunnel. There’s food at the far end of the tunnel. But to get to the food the rat has to walk across an electric grid. The shock current is increased as he gets closer to the food. They keep testing the rat, increasing the current. The rat has to decide for himself how hungry he is-whether the reward’s worth the pain.”

Ross pulled up in the jammed lane of traffic. He looked straight at Cutter. “Who are you talking about, Joe-you or Kendig?”

“When I was a little kid there was a fight on my street. A couple of kids a little older than me-maybe they were eight or nine. I don’t know what the fight was about. One of them hit the other one in the nose and the kid fell down flat on his back. He was a little dazed-I mean an eight-year-old can’t hit very hard. But the kid died. They told us later if we’d turned him over on his side he’d have been fine. But the blood ran back in his throat, he drew it into his lungs and strangled on it.”

“Christ.”

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault. But sometimes you get the feeling it’s all been written down in the book long before you were born,” Cutter said. “I think I was talking about Kendig before. If there’s food in sight you can’t starve to death. He’ll cross the grid sooner or later, even though he knows the shock current’s too high to survive. But he’s got no choice. It’s an inevitable accident-like the kid dying because the rest of us were too ignorant to turn him over.”

Ross said, “You could duck it. You could tell Myerson to pull you off the job.”

“Wouldn’t help. I’m still the most likely one to catch him. If it’s not me it might be Yaskov and we don’t want to think about what Yaskov’s people would do to him before he died.”

“I’m sorry, Joe. But he brought it on himself, didn’t he?”

“Sure he did. Just like the rat in the tunnel.”