The Dark Tunnel

CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE WHEELS HAD completed several 365-day journeys around the sun they stopped rotating, but the universe went on humming like an engine in neutral. I was lying on the rim of a wheel so big that it seemed flat to my back. The university coal-pile was on top of me and pinned me to the wheel so that I could not move my arms or head.

There was something in my right hand and I squeezed it and discovered that it was my left elbow. The coal-pile pressed down on my upturned face and there was something tight around my neck. I blew out and drew in a deep breath which whistled through my flattened nose. At least I was still breathing.

I stuck out my tongue and it came against a hard, rough surface that tasted familiar. Wood. Old wood. That was it, it was the lid of a coffin. I was buried alive in a tight coffin that pressed down on my face and folded arms. A wild claustrophobia seized me and I kicked out. My legs were free to kick but the lid of the coffin pressed down painfully on my stomach and groin.

I pressed put with my bent arms and the lid shifted slightly but the thing around my neck began to choke me. I felt like crying at the unfairness of being buried alive with something around my neck to choke me.

To choke me. I remembered Schneider and his promise to hang me. Was this how it felt to be hanged? Anger surged through me and I pushed frantically at the heavy lid of the coffin. It rose slightly and I saw light, but the rope was unbearably tight now and I moved my head sideways to ease the pressure.

I freed my right hand and got hold of the coffin-lid at the edge and pushed and it rose higher. But the rope had pulled my head over the edge of whatever I was lying on. I was going to give the lid a final desperate shove when I heard running feet somewhere below me.

A man’s voice, a voice I remembered from somewhere, shouted, “Branch, don’t move, and don’t let go of that beam.”

I tried to speak but there was no hole in my throat to speak through and the blood swelled in my head. As the black cloud bellied down at me again, the heavy lid lurched sideways but I held on with my right hand. Quick footsteps came up from somewhere and the weight was taken off my hand and arm. The pressure on my neck was released and the black cloud swooped up and away from me like an escaped balloon.

A hand raised my head where it dangled in space and I lay panting on a hard, narrow surface with somebody’s arm around my shoulders. As my vision cleared, I saw a face above me, a sullen Indian face that I remembered.

Wild ideas rushed through my mind like leering mimics of truth. He’s no F.B.I. man, he’s another spy. The president is a spy. And the old woman with the hard, bright face.

I struggled against the arm around me and tried to get up. The dark face said, “Take it easy, old boy. You’ll be all right in a minute. I’m Gordon, remember?”

I lay back and took it easy and my mind came back a piece at a time and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, with cracks in it. My neck was sore and my Adam’s apple felt as if Eve had taken a bite out of it. My arms were stiff, and my head and groin throbbed like a toothache. In five minutes I wasn’t all right, but I was fairly sane.

Gordon didn’t look particularly friendly, but he didn’t look like a spy either. Spies put ropes around your neck. I was still wearing a thick noose, with its end severed, around my neck like a necktie. Gordon had loosened it and I worked it over my head and took it off.

“A highly ingenious arrangement,” he was saying. “And so simple. Truly Attic in its simplicity.”

“What?” I said. “The Parthenon?” My voice scraped my throat like sandpaper and sounded like a crow cawing.

“Feeling better, Branch?”

“Yes, thanks. But my neck is somewhat chapped. Bring me my honey and almond cream. Also my bow of burning gold. I’m on a hunting trip.”

“You were, but you’re not,” Gordon said. “You’re going to be too busy explaining to play hare and hounds for a while. Can you get up now?”

“With excruciating ease,” I said and sat up. My head seemed to linger where it was and then got up by itself and jumped onto my shoulders with a jolt. In a minute it stopped vibrating and I could use it again for elementary purposes.

I was sitting astride a two-foot beam running along the top of a wooden wall twelve or fifteen feet above the floor of the old barn. The wall divided the wagon-floor, where Schneider had snared me, from the haymow, which still had some old grey-green hay in the corners. Gordon was sitting beside me on the beam supporting me with one arm, his feet on the top rung of a ladder which ran down to the wagon-floor.

The beam that had pinned my face and arms and that I had mistaken for the lid of a coffin lay on the beam in front of me. One end of it was between my legs, and I could see a rope knotted around its middle. The rope passed over a rafter above my head and hung above the floor of the barn a few feet out of my reach.

“Do you see it?” Gordon said. “Study it as an object-lesson in the inadvisability of going on extra-legal spy hunts. Delayed-action murder fixed to look like suicide.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I’m feeling dull this morning. It’s still morning, isn’t it?”

“It’s not seven yet. But you appear to be rather dull in the evening, too, if last night was typical. Dull is putting it mildly.”

“Go to hell,” I barked, but my throat regretted it. “A man was killed, and somebody had to do something.”

“Such as kill another man?”

“Nonsense. What happened to you after Galloway’s hothouse-liberal fiasco?”

“I tailed Dr. Schneider to his home. But the more interesting question is what happened to you? And what happened to Dr. Schneider?”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you. But not here. I’m grateful to you for saving my neck, but I don’t have to submit to cross-questioning on a two-foot beam forty feet in the air.”

“Fifteen feet is a better estimate.”

“So what? While we sit here chatting, the man who put me here is probably on his way out of the state. Did you ever hear of Peter Schneider?” The ironic rasp I forced into my voice made me cough.

“The police are after him,” Gordon said. “They’re after you, too.”

“I thought you were the police.”

“That’s right. Can you climb down by yourself or do I use the fireman’s lift on you? Or do you want to stay up here and hang yourself some more?”

I remembered what Peter Schneider had said before I passed out. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I came into this barn you were in the act of hanging yourself. The rope around your neck was slung over the rafter, pulled tight, and tied to this heavy loose beam. The beam was then placed on your face so that when you pushed it off it would fall and jerk the rope. The rope would then jerk you off the beam by the neck and either break it immediately or strangle you.”

“So I suppose you’re going to book me on a charge of attempted suicide.” Watching the fixed snarl on his face, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

“Don’t be childish, Branch. I told you we’re after Peter Schneider.”

“Is it childish to ask why he went to all this trouble with ropes and beams? Why didn’t he just give himself the pleasure of hanging me by hand?”

“He went right back to the farm and told the old lady you had tried to kill him but he got away. The deaf-mutes confirmed the story in writing. She had already phoned the Arbana police about you. Schneider said he was going to get help, and drove away.”

“I get it,” I said. “If you found my body soon enough, you’d be able to establish that I killed myself after he left. ‘Slayer Suicides after Killing Father and Attempting to Kill Son.’”

“I’m glad you feel able to joke about it,” Gordon said with a certain nasty primness. “Did you kill Dr. Schneider?”

“I’ll answer questions on terra firma,” I said. “Go ahead and I’ll follow you down.”

Gordon went down the ladder like a cat, and I climbed down after him holding on tight. He went to the door and I followed him into the shaft of sunlight that came through it. I saw the shotgun lying in the chaff beside the door and stooped down to pick it up, balancing my head carefully.

“Drop it,” Gordon said, his hand inside his left lapel.

I straightened up in surprise. “For Christ’s sake. I paid forty dollars for that gun.”

“And it looks as if you intended to get your money’s worth,” Gordon said. “It was a trail of blood that led me to this barn. And I notice that you’re not bleeding anywhere.”

“You’re damn right I used it. Unfortunately, I didn’t hit him. He cut his arm and used the blood as bait for me. Like a sucker, I followed him to the barn and got a noose around my neck.”

“Stick to rabbits, Branch.” Gordon picked up the shotgun and broke it to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t, and he handed it to me.

I didn’t like his attitude. “Mr. Gordon,” I said, “I admire the bloodhound instincts which just saved my neck. But now you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you arrest me for murder, I’ll sue you for false arrest.”

Gordon’s teeth gleamed in the sun as if he was proud of them, but he wasn’t smiling. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Branch,” he said. “And you can start now. Why did you follow Schneider into McKinley Hall this morning?”

“How do you know I followed him in? Or do you hesitate to reveal the secrets of your fascinating trade?”

“It’s not your business, but I’ll tell you. After the War Board meeting, I tailed Schneider on the chance that he’d go looking for this evidence you were talking about. He went home in a taxi and his son met him at the door. They had an argument in German and finally the old man gave in. They came out to the green coupe parked on the driveway and drove into Arbana.”

“All very interesting,” I said. “But all it proves against me is that I was right.”

Gordon clipped me off. “Not quite. They parked near the campus and the old man got out and crossed the campus to McKinley Hall. I couldn’t follow him in because I had no key, so I stood in the shadow of a tree and watched all the back doors. A few minutes after Schneider went in, you came around from the front of the building and entered by the west door. I want to know why.”

“I’m not ashamed of my reason,” I said. “I got the idea that Judd had hidden his evidence in the Middle English Dictionary office, and I went to look for it. Old Schneider had the same idea. I found it and Schneider tried to hold me up. I knocked him out. But it’s obvious to me now that I should have let him shoot me.”

The irony was lost on Gordon. “Did you knock him out with a horseshoe?” he said. “And have you got the evidence you found?”

“Listen, Gordon,” I said. “I’ll answer questions after you find Peter Schneider, if you still want to ask them. Didn’t you see anybody else enter the building?”

“Just before I heard the shots I saw a man and a woman go in at the east end. The man looked like Peter Schneider and–”

“I knew it,” I said. “Peter Schneider and Ruth Esch killed the old man. I left him unconscious on the floor – without a hole in his head – and went down to get the policeman. While I was gone, they killed him and ran away with the envelope.”

“What envelope?”

“An oilskin envelope with information about the new A S T Program in it. Judd told me he found it in Schneider’s office. Schneider and his son were both spies, and Peter made off with the evidence.”

Gordon kept on looking like a stolid redskin. “You say that the two Schneiders were spies working in cahoots, and you also say that Peter killed his father. It doesn’t hang together.”

“Doesn’t it? Peter couldn’t get his father out of the building. Maybe the old man was weakening and Peter was afraid he’d talk to the police. He had no deep filial affections, I happen to know. And it was a chance to frame me for murder.”

“You’re good at explanations, Branch. But there’s no evidence.”

“What happened to Schneider’s bun? He had a Lüger which he tried to use on me. Even if I had killed him, it would have been in self-defense.”

“So you say. Did you assault a police officer in self-defense?”

“That was a mistake. I saw I was being framed for a murder and it made me mad. I guess I was a little crazy. Anyway, I thought I had to get away and I got away.”

“For a while,” Gordon said. “You’d have been better off in jail. Don’t attempt another getaway. I can shoot, and I can run.”

“And you can swim,” I said. “What a list of accomplishments! Go practise the aquatic art in some convenient lake.”

“I can also be unpleasant, if necessary.”

“You’ve convinced me.”

He snarled silently one last time and jerked his thumb towards the door. I stepped outside into sunshine that hurt my eyes, and he followed me. We left the barn with nothing dangling in it but the rope.

I felt good about that and about the bright sun on the autumn fields. But I resented his suspicion and the crack about being better off in jail. It implied that all my bones were sore for nothing.

As we started across the field, where Peter had pretended to stagger and fall, I said, “If I had spent the night in jail I wouldn’t have found out who killed Alec Judd.”

“So you know that, too” Gordon said.

“I know that Ruth Esch left McKinley Hall about a quarter to twelve last night.”

“Twenty minutes before Judd was killed, according to your own story.”

I said with heavy irony, “No doubt delayed-action murder sounds fantastic to the literal ear of the law, but I recently acted as guinea pig in a little experiment intended to prove its feasibility.”

Gordon turned to me with a glint in his sombre eyes. “You’ve got something there, Branch. I’ll have to examine that room.”

“There’s another possibility, too,” I said. “At least it may not be an impossibility. The receiver of the telephone in Judd’s office was hanging down when I went up there after he fell, and it seems he put in a phone call shortly before.”

“He did? Who to?”

“I don’t know. I tried to find out from the university operator, but she wouldn’t tell me what she had heard. She probably told Sergeant Haggerty – I know he was talking

“I’ll ask him,” Gordon said. “Who is Ruth Esch?”

“A German woman who just came to this country. Peter Schneider’s fiancée.”

“Red-headed?”

“And green eyes. About thirty.”

“Is that the woman the taxi driver saw at the bootlegger’s?”

“Shiny? Yes. Did Shiny tell you?”

“He recognized this woman as the passenger he had driven downtown just before midnight. She recognized him, too, and left the bootlegger’s immediately. That’s suspicious in itself.”

“Where did she go when she left the bootlegger’s? Peter was alone when he caught up with me at the farm.”

“She hasn’t been seen since,” Gordon said. “Two drunks left at the same time, according to the taxi driver, and maybe she went with them. They haven’t been found, either.”

We passed the white boulder stained with Schneider’s blood. The stain was darker now. I remembered my exultation when I first saw it, and felt humiliated. Better stick to rabbits, Branch, half my mind said; but the other half said, you’ll get them yet.

We climbed the rail fence where Schneider had taken cover and entered the maple woods. It was pleasant to walk between the two levels of color, on the trees and on the ground, and have nothing around my neck. Not even skin.

Even Gordon was taking on some of the attributes of a human being. I said to him, “May I assume that you are beginning to be willing to toy with the hypothesis that I am not a murderer?”

His smile was so much like a sneer that it left me guessing. “If you’re innocent you have nothing to fear.” He added heavily as if he was by Jehovah out of the goddess of justice, “The law exists for the protection of the innocent and the apprehension of the guilty.”

He couldn’t even be friendly without riling me. “Don’t be so impartial,” I said. “I pay my income tax, and I haven’t killed anybody yet. Why didn’t you follow those two into McKinley Hall when you saw them, and apprehend the guilty and protect the innocent?”

“They had a key and I hadn’t. I should have jimmied the door sooner, but I didn’t do it until after I heard the shots. By the time I got in they were gone. I still don’t know how they got out.”

“I do,” I said smugly. “They got out through the steam-tunnel the same way I did. I met them later in the museum and we exchanged a few well-chosen shots.” I said nothing about seeing him in the basement of McKinley Hall. He wouldn’t have liked it.

“Have you any further information?” Gordon said. “It will be best for you if you tell me everything you know.”

“Nothing I can think of at the moment. Except that somebody is hitting me over the head with a hammer.”

“Your humor is excessively tinny this morning.” I couldn’t argue.

“I need breakfast.”

We emerged from the maple woods and crossed the pasture. I had chased Peter Schneider farther than I thought at the time, and I began to wonder how Gordon had got to the barn when he did.

“How did you happen to get here in the nick of time? Or is that just an old Federal Bureau of Investigation custom?”

“I’m glad you feel happy enough to joke about it,” Gordon said.

“After all, it was my own personal lynching party,” I said. “But it was pleasant to have you drop in. I’ll never resent the withholding tax again.”

“They don’t deduct it in jail,” he said, and I felt less chipper. He went on:

“I was at the Slipper with Haggerty when the taxi driver came tearing down the road, and we drove over to the bootlegger’s right away. Haggerty had a police car with a radio and when the old woman phoned the Arbana police about you, they got in touch with Haggerty at the bootlegger’s and I came over here with a couple of policemen. After a fairly lengthy correspondence with the deaf-mutes, I got the idea that you might be over there in the woods, so I went over. I finally worked over into the field and found the trail of blood, and that led me to the barn.”

“I’m glad Schneider cut his arm,” I said. “But it should have been his throat.”

We passed under the willow trees and around the corner of the barn. There was a long black sedan parked at the gate.

“Is that the police car?” I asked.

“No, it’s mine. I sent the police after Schneider.”

He opened the gate and said: “I want to phone. They may have caught him.”

The old woman came out of the front door of the farmhouse. She took one look at me and yelled to Gordon:

“That’s the man! Don’t let him get away!”

I have many of the aspects of a gentleman. I wear sixty-five-dollar suits. I am a member of the Modern Language Association. I speak pure English, at least in the lecture-room. I am generally chivalrous in my attitude to women. But I raised my right hand, pressed the thumb to my nose, and wiggled the fingers. The old woman groaned righteously and raised her eyes to heaven.

Gordon frowned at me. “Sit in the car, Branch. I trust you won’t try to run away again.”

I said I wouldn’t. I put the shotgun in the back seat and climbed into the front. Gordon followed the old woman into the house. I noticed he hadn’t left the ignition key in the car.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the driver’s mirror. There was chaff in my hair, my nose and cheeks were scraped, and I needed a shave. But what interested me most was my eyes. The pressure of the rope had broken some of the small vessels and suffused my eyeballs with blood. I looked like a pulp-magazine illustration of a homicidal sex-fiend whom any jury would convict on appearance alone.

I moved out of range of those horrible glaring eyes and saw that there were radio-dials on the dashboard. I turned on the radio in the hope of getting some news. My hope was not disappointed.

After listening to several numbers on a program of prewar recordings, I got an early news broadcast from Detroit. The Allies were advancing in Italy and the Russians were advancing in Russia, as usual.

“News of the state,” the announcer said breathlessly as if Atropos was standing at his shoulder. He was wrong, she was standing at mine.

The staccato words crashed into my consciousness like machinegun bullets: “Arbana: In the early hours of this morning, a member of the faculty of Midwestern University was murdered, allegedly by a colleague on the university staff. The victim was Dr. Herman Schneider, well-known refugee from the Nazis and head of the German Department at the university. Professor Robert Branch of the English Department, who quarreled publicly with the murdered man earlier in the evening, is now being sought for questioning by police.

“Hearing the sound of gunshots from McKinley Hall, the main building of the university, shortly after 3 A.M. this morning, Constable Sale of the Arbana police force rushed into the building and apprehended Professor Branch, who was running downstairs from one of the upper floors. In an office on the fourth floor the officer discovered the body of Dr. Schneider, his skull smashed by a blow on the head from a horseshoe paperweight.

“Shortly after this discovery, Professor Branch overpowered the police officer and made his escape through the steam-tunnels underneath the campus. He is now being sought by local and state police and by the F.B.I., who expect further developments within a few hours. Detectives report that there is possibly a connection between the brutal murder of Dr. Schneider and the death earlier in the evening, apparently by suicide, of Professor Alexander Judd, chairman of the War Board of the university. The president of the university, Dr. Galloway, could not be reached for comment. Lansing …”

The announcer went on to something else and I switched off the radio. I sat perfectly still for a minute, numbed by shock. Then the panic that had driven me through the tunnels and across the fields came back and walloped me in the stomach. I flung open the door and jumped out of the car, ready to run.

Gordon came out of the farmhouse and walked across the lawn watching me alertly. I saw his long legs and remembered his shoulder-holster. I said, “I wonder if I could get a drink of water.”

He went to the dairy and brought me a brimming dipper. I emptied it and felt better, but my stomach was knotted and my knees were weak.

“Did they get him?”

“Not yet,” he said as he got into the driver’s seat. “They’re still after him. He went around Arbana on the back roads and apparently headed for Detroit.”

He started the engine and I got in beside him. He turned up the road in the direction of the barn where the barn-dance had been.

I felt irrational resentment against Gordon. He hadn’t let me know how serious my situation was. He had saved me from one noose, only to lead me into another. Then I remembered the serious warnings I had laughed off. I had been so glad to get out of the frying-pan that I didn’t believe in the fire. Probably I should be grateful to him for not putting handcuffs on me.

We passed the barn and the dancers were gone and the fiddler had stopped playing.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the bootlegger’s.”

“The whisperer?”

“Yes. I’m going to trace the two drunks who left when Ruth Esch did.”

“What if you don’t catch them? Do I stand the chance of being convicted of Schneider’s murder?”

Gordon avoided a direct answer. “We’ll catch them. Every policeman in the state will be on the lookout for them. And I’m going to telegraph their descriptions to every police station in the Middle West.”

“Don’t omit Canada. They just came from Canada and may try to go back.”

“Where in Canada?”

“Ruth Esch wrote me a letter three days ago from Kirkland Lake, Ontario.”

“Have you still got it?”

I felt in my pockets. The letter was gone.

“No, I must have lost it. Or Peter took it.”

“You say the Esch woman wrote you a letter. Is she a friend of yours?” He shifted his black eyes from the road for a moment to glance at me.

“She was. In Germany, years ago. Not any more.”

I told him what he needed to know about Ruth Esch, including a complete physical description. Like Gordon, I wanted to catch her, but I dreaded meeting her again. There is a story in the Heimskringla about a Norse king who married a witch. She died but her body remained warm and beautiful. The king went mad and kept vigil by her beautiful body in the belief that she was sleeping and would come back to him. After years of vigil, he awoke from his madness and the body was crawling with worms.

I dreaded meeting her again. But I was going to have to travel a long way before I met her again.

I said to Gordon, “I heard a news broadcast on your radio. The police are after me for Schneider’s murder.”

“I told you.”

“Yes, but not so vividly as the newscaster. Are you going to turn me in?”

“I have to,” Gordon said. “In any case, it’s the safest place for you.”

“Because Michigan doesn’t inflict the death penalty? I want to know whether it can be proved that Schneider was a spy, even if you don’t catch the other two.”

“Maybe it can. He hasn’t been investigated yet.”

“What have you got on him?”

“Everything you’ve given us, but that isn’t enough without evidence. Naturally we’ll investigate him thoroughly now. Have you any further leads?”

“I’ve told you everything I know. At least I think I have.” Something was struggling towards the surface of my unconscious. I could feel it moving but I couldn’t see what it was. Probably a duck-billed platypus, I thought, and tried to relax.

It was farther to the bootlegger’s by road than it was on foot. We had to follow the side road until it reached the main road and then turn back towards the old house.

Before we reached the main road we passed a patch of woods on the right side of the road, and I saw something that made me suspicious of my unconscious again. Two men wearing bright plaid blankets around them and colored leaves in their hair came running out of the woods towards the car, yelling and waving their arms.

Gordon stopped the car and we sat and watched them climb over the fence and jump across the ditch to the road.

“Can you give us a lift to town?” one of them asked. He stuck his head in the open window on my side and I saw the tear-stains on his face and recognized him.

I said to Gordon. “These are the two men that left the bootlegger’s when Ruth Esch did.”

“Get into the back seat,” Gordon said and they climbed in, clutching their blankets around them.

“I’ve got to get to the police,” the weepy one said. “My car has been stolen.”

Gordon turned around in his seat and said, “I’m a police agent. Where have you been?”

“In the woods, sleeping,” said the other babe in the woods. I turned and looked at them. Their eyes were like boiled Brussels sprouts and their faces were sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a hangover.

“On a camping party, boys?” Gordon said. “I was just going to start looking for you.”

“Hell, no,” said the man who wept, beyond irony. “Our clothes were stolen. And my car.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and I reached for a handkerchief.

“By a red-headed woman?”

“How did you know? Say, did you catch her?”

“Not yet,” Gordon said. He started the car and in a minute we turned into the main road.

“Well, you better get busy. I want to see that dame put away for a good long time. She asks me for a lift and she looks like a lady and naturally I give her one at that time of morning. But after we drive down the road a piece, she pulls a gun on us and makes us get out of the car and take off our clothes and drives away with the car and the clothes. First time a hitch-hiker ever fooled me and, by Jesus, it’s the last–”

Gordon cut him off. “Why didn’t you report this theft sooner?”

The other man spoke, “Well, Johnnie here was awful broken up, and when she took his car he went off in the woods and was sick.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Johnnie said, “I was just sad. My dear wife, and then my dear car–”

“Yes, he was,” the other man said. “I went to find him and he had passed out. I couldn’t wake him up so I covered him with leaves and let him sleep. I couldn’t leave him in that condition, so I kept guard over him–”

“You passed out, too,” Johnnie said.

“Oh, I did not. I–”

“I’m taking you to the local police,” Gordon said. “They’ll ask you to swear out a warrant for the woman’s arrest.”

“Nothing I’d like better,” said Johnnie. The tears of things were not affecting him so strongly now, and he seemed to have given up the idea of weeping.

A minute later I felt like weeping myself.

Gordon turned down the lane under the trees, and I saw the old barn and the dingy house. The barn looked even worse by day, like a corpse in sunlight. The sight of the house with the paint peeling off was not improved by the black police car which stood in front of it.

As we drew up behind it, a sharp-nosed man in plain clothes came out of the house and let out a combination of a whoop and a sneer.

Haggerty came down the porch steps with the speed of a weasel and said to me, “Get out.”

I got out.

He said, “Hold out your hands.”

In the dazed hope that he might be going to give me something to eat, I held out my hands. He snapped handcuffs on my wrists.