Man Sinister

Chapter IV

There were two or three pieces of junk furniture in the room, none of them large enough to conceal McGinty. I pushed a moth-eaten hassock to one side and opened the closet door. The closet yawned emptily.

I didn’t begin to get the shakes, though, until I had searched every room in the bungalow, without finding McGinty. Had he crawled outside? But it was incredible that a man carrying five bullets in his back could have crawled away in the short time between Harold’s departure and when I entered the place.

Nevertheless, I checked the doors and windows. All were locked except the door Harold had used. The back door, then, was the only possible exit from the cottage. Beyond it stretched the high grass of the back yard for about a hundred feet before it blended with the high weeds of a vacant lot. The grass was heavy with the moisture of a summer night in the mountains. A wounded man laboring across the yard would have left a trail a child could read. Yet for spots which Harold’s feet had mashed, the grass in that yard was untrampled. McGinty most definitely had not crawled out of the cottage and away. He must still be in there. But how could I have missed anything as large as McGinty’s bulk?

I went back inside, and this time I included the attic and the cellar in my search. A cold sweat was on my face.

Finally I went back to the room in which Harold had shot McGinty, leveled the light in my hand as if it were a gun. Could Harold possibly have missed at this point-blank range?

I searched the wall and door casing, but found no bullet marks. Those bullets had come to rest in McGinty’s broad back and chest. When I had searched for signs of blood leading to the back door, and found none, I knew nothing else to do.

Standing on the back steps, I felt the slow, hard beating of my heart against my ribs. McGinty was not human — able to take five bullets, lose no blood, and walk or run across the back yard without leaving any foot marks on the grass.

Such a creature did not exist, of course. Then what had happened? Had I witnesses a killing at all? But I knew I had.

Vera was waiting on the front porch when I got back to the house on Northland. When she saw me, she ran to meet me halfway down the walk. She caught my arm.

“Steve! What has happened? Harold came in babbling that McGinty wouldn’t hound him any longer. Right after that, Papa Joe showed up, practically writhing. He was seething with anger, and deeply frightened at the same time. He called Harold into the parlor and they talked for a minute. Then Papa Joe went upstairs, yelling for Wilfred. He hasn’t come down since, and I can’t get anything out of Harold. I’ve been waiting for you. What is it, Steve?”

“I’m not sure yet. Where is Harold?”

“Upstairs, in our room.”

She followed me up. I opened the door. Harold swiveled his body around from the bureau. He’d been pouring himself a drink from the bottle that Wilfred had brought up from downstairs.

I closed the door. Vera moved around beside me, watching both of us.

I said bluntly, “You’re in serious trouble, Harold. If you want help, you’d better level with me. Why has McGinty followed you all the way down here because of that wharf girl painting?”

“Who said anything about the painting?”

“I did,” Vera said quietly. “Don’t you think you’d better tell him the rest of it?” She curved her glance at me. She was badly frightened, but clinging to her remaining poise with sheer willpower.

Harold had had almost an hour to calm himself down. The flush in his cheeks revealed that he’d been hitting the bottle heavily, bolstering his courage.

“First, Steve,” he said cautiously, “what are you going to do? Have a big slug and call the cops, as you told Papa Joe?”

“No, not yet.”

Astonishment whitened his face. “You mean you’ll help me get McGinty out of there so no one will ever know?”

“Not hardly. McGinty vanished.”

“He what?”

“Just that. There’s no trace of him in the cottage. No bulletholes. No blood.”

Silence fell over the room. Vera’s mouth worked. She cried suddenly, “What is this about bullets and blood?”

Harold set the whisky on the bureau and moved quickly to take her in his arms. But she was almost herself. She backed away from him, hysterical tears spilling down her cheeks.

“No, don’t try to wheedle me into submission! Tell me what happened to McGinty!”

“Darling, please—” Harold slipped his arm about her. She shrugged it off quickly, turning to me.

“Then Steve will tell me!”

Over her shoulder I glimpsed Harold’s anxious face. The plea in his eyes was urgent, unmistakable. It might have influenced me more than I thought but at the moment I believed I was thinking only of the lovely, distraught girl who was his wife.

I gripped her shoulders, kept my voice even and gentle as possible. “Tonight Harold met McGinty and fired a gun at him. Fortunately, he did not shoot straight.”

She murmured a broken, thankful sounding word and sank in a chair. Harold poured a small drink of straight whisky for her. She took it.

I crossed the hall to my room. I pulled my scuffed gladstone out of the closet, opened it on the bed, and began tossing clothes into it. I had the bag half-filled when the door opened. I threw a glance over my shoulder. Harold closed the door, came across the room.

“What’s the idea of the bag, Steve?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

He lighted a cigarette. His fingers were still shaking. “I know you had a run-in with Papa Joe this afternoon. He told me. Now you’re peeved at me. I can’t say that I blame you.”

I said nothing, but went on packing.

“What you did tonight was decent, Steve. I appreciate it. I really do.”

“Why don’t you take this McGinty trouble to the police, whatever it is, and be done with it?”

His smile was sly. “There’s no need for that now, is there?”

Some inkling of what he was thinking slipped into my consciousness. I snapped the gladstone closed before lifting my gaze to meet his. I saw the expression in his eyes that I was afraid I would see.

“You’re thinking,” I said, “that I carried McGinty out of the cottage, that I’ll chuck him some place for you.”

“I could hardly ask you to take such a risk, could I?”

I was angered at his growing confidence. I swung the bag off of the bed. “I didn’t lie to Vera. McGinty really did vanish, even though he couldn’t have left the cottage. If you missed him, the walls of the cottage would have stopped the bullets. The walls showed not a single bullet mark. McGinty took all that lead, and still did not bleed.”

The sincerity of my tone caused a momentary shadow of doubt to cross Harold’s face. He was struggling to believe what he wanted to believe, and he won.

“I hope you don’t tell that tale to any police inspectors, Steve. I’ll side you in anything you say, provided you’ll keep it plausible.” He turned to leave, then paused. “If they find McGinty in a culvert it’s possible they’ll learn that he knew me. So it’s a regrettable coincidence that he ran into trouble from another source. I’ll see to it that the gun disappears — and I’ve not left the house all evening.”

The door closed behind him. I turned to pick up the bag. I felt exactly as if I had been talking to Papa Joe.

When I reached the hallway, Ellen was just topping the stairs. She said, “There’s a lady down in the parlor to see you, Mr. Martin.”

I deposited the bag outside the parlor door, entered the gloomy room, and drew up short. Lucy Quavely was standing near the center of the room, casually lighting a cigarette.

She looked at me over the tip of the flame dancing on the tiny gold lighter.

“Do you intend to come in, Steve?”

“Yes, of course.” I stepped forward. “Nice to see you, Lucy.”

“You’re a liar. Will you ask me to sit down?”

I motioned to a chair without speaking. She was taller than Bryanne, her body more the feminine athlete’s. The bones of her face were prominent, giving her almost a hungry look. She’d never worn much makeup, I remembered. Now she wore only a touch of lipstick. Her dark brown hair hung straight, almost lank. She disdained style. She was wearing a light polo coat, sweater, tweed skirt, flat-heeled shoes. Her very casualness was in itself utter pretentiousness.

The chill gaze of her slightly slanted eyes was designed to reduce her vis-a-vis to pure crudity. Often the gaze succeeded.

I voiced a question I couldn’t suppress. “How is Bryanne?”

“Much better. The last operation helped. She’s walking now. It was much easier for her to learn to walk the first time, when she was a baby.”

“Lucy,” I said thickly, “will you please say why you’re here, and get out?”

“Still the ruffian,” she drawled. “How dreadfully masculine you are! It was unthinkable for you to marry a Quavely in the first place. After you did that horrible thing to Bryanne I wondered sometimes if our hate wouldn’t reach out and smother you. The irresistible wall, Steve, just hoping you would try to prove yourself the irresistible force.”

I said nothing. Bryanne could not have survived amid turmoil. There had never been in my mind any thought of irresistible forces, only the belief that in my surrender had lain the only possible road back to life for Bryanne.