The Intriguers

XV.

He was, it turned out, a slight and skinny older man, somewhere in his sixties, with a gaunt country face-a mountain face, rather-stubbled with gray beard. His hair was also gray, rather thin and wispy beneath the ancient felt hat that fell off when I jumped him from behind. He was stronger than I'd expected, all wire and whipcord, and it was a good thing I hadn't missed my grip or he'd have given me real trouble despite the difference in our ages. As it was, he managed to get me once on the shin with the heel of his heavy shoe, before I could apply pressure properly and put him out.

I laid him down, rubbed my shin, and took inventory. First I checked that the brief flurry of action on the ridge had attracted no attention at the house half a mile away. Then I massaged my shin some more, and looked down at the man who had kicked it. In addition to the lethal, high-laced shoes and the now-misplaced hat, he was dressed in overall pants, a gray work shirt, and the dark coat of an old suit, frayed at wrists and elbows. The 'rifle beside him was a.300 Savage Model 99, perhaps the best of the old lever actions, although the Winchester was the one that got all the glory. This specimen was so old that the bluing had worn off all the metal parts, leaving them silvery, and no finish remained on the stock, but the bore was clean and seemed to be in good condition. His optical equipment was an ancient pair of field glasses that could have gone to war with Robert E. Lee or maybe Ulysses S. Grant.

I found some keys on him, a pair of rimless glasses in a hard case, a small plastic container of unidentified pills, a blue bandana handkerchief, some loose change, and a two-bladed pocket knife with the stag handle worn quite smooth. There was also a wallet containing a driver's license made out to Harvey Bascomb Hollingshead, 72, of Bascomb, Kentucky. I sighed, looking down at the thin, stubborn old face. I'd missed the age by a few years. I rubbed my shin once more. For a septuagenarian, he kicked hard.

I tied his wrists with his belt and his ankles with mine, used his handkerchief to gag him, and slung him over my back. Well, I'd like to be able to say it was as easy as that. Actually, slight as he was, he made a heavy and unwieldy load, and I was out of practice and maybe a little out of condition. Swimming and fishing in Mexico with attractive blonde company isn't the best preparation for heavy backpacking.

It took me three tries to get him up; and then I thought I'd end up in the coronary ward before I managed to transport him through the brush to the grove of trees in which Martha was waiting. I didn't take him all the way to the car, however. I didn't dare leave him alone with the girl. Her unpredictable humanitarian impulses might well cause her to revive him and turn him loose. Having labored hard over this warm body, I had no intention of losing it.

I hid the old man in a ditch, therefore, and went back up the hill for the rifle and glasses I hadn't been able to manage on my first trip. I also remembered to pick up the fallen hat. Martha wasn't very good about obeying orders. When she heard me coming, instead of playing possum as instructed, she jumped out of the rental car and ran to meet me.

"Mart, what have you been doing all this time? I've been going out of my mind worrying… What's that'?"

"Spoils of war," I said, moving past her to lay the stuff on the hood of the car.

"So you got him." Her voice was suddenly flat. "Did you… did you have to hurt him?"

I glanced at her sharply, but she was quite sincere, and quite oblivious to the fact that the man whose health she was now worrying about was a man whom she'd recently been denouncing as totally non-human.

"I got something," I said. I fished out the ring of keys I'd confiscated and handed them to her. "Find the right one and open up the back door of this ancient hearse, will you, while I bring it in."

She had the doors open by the time I came staggering up with my bound prisoner. I dumped him into the rear of his vehicle, not too gently. I was getting tired of lugging him around, and my shin still hurt. Martha stared at him.

"But that old man isn't… That can't be the Carl you've been telling me about!"

"You're so right," I said. "He can't be. Get that gear from the hood and toss it in here, will you? Don't be seared of the gun. I've got the cartridges in my pocket." While she was gone, I checked the bandana gag to make sure it wasn't too tight. To hell with his wrists and ankles. I didn't want to strangle him, but gangrene didn't worry me. He could do a lot of talking before he died of gangrene. As I've said, I was a little tired of the old gent, and he was a complication I didn't appreciate. "Okay, you drive the Chevy; I'll handle this wreck," I said as Martha put the rifle, hat, and glasses beside the old man. "Follow me, but stay well back so it won't look too much as if we're together. Hold it!"

We stood motionless, listening, as a car drove by on the dirt road, but it went on without slowing or stopping. Martha was looking down at the unconscious captive.

"But… but who is he?"

"Miss Borden," I said, "allow me to present Mr. Hollingshead, of Bascomb, Kentucky."

"Hollingshead?" She frowned briefly. "Hollingshead! That was the name of one of the students who… Dubuque, Hollingshead, and Janssen."

"Right," I said. "Apparently, Mr. Hollingshead is another of those perverted oddball characters you object to so strongly, who resent having their kids shot. At least I can't think of any other motive that would bring him clear from Kentucky and put him on the ridge above the sheriff's house with a loaded rifle."

She didn't respond to my sarcasm. She just said: "But haven't you got him tied awfully tightly, Matt? Those straps look as if they're cutting off the circulation."

I stared at her, a little awed. She was so consistently inconsistent it approached true genius.

I said, "Sweetheart, what in the world are you worrying about? By your own definition, that's not a human being lying there. That's just another vengeance-machine. Who cares about its lousy circulation?"

"Damn you, Matthew Helm…"

She glared at me, swung away, and marched over to the white sedan, her long, phony hair and the brief, crisp pleats of her skirt bouncing indignantly in unison. The car door slammed, and the engine started with a roar. I got the old truck going without any trouble. Half an hour later we were a safe distance, I hoped, from Fort Adams and its burly sheriff. We were parked beside a dim wheel-track across the open prairie, in a kind of fold of land that hid us from the highway a few hundred yards away. I went back, opened the rear of the truck, and saw that my passenger's eyes were open. I turned to Martha, who'd come over, and drew her aside to where the old man couldn't see or hear us.

"There are two ways of doing this," I said. "I can trick him into talking, maybe, or I can try to force him to talk. It's up to you."

"What do you mean?"

I said, "If you don't play along with the lies I'm going to tell, I'll have to get rough. The choice is yours. Cooperate, or watch me go into my Inquisition routine. I'm real good at twisting arms and pulling fingernails, if I do say so myself."

She hesitated. "All right," she said reluctantly, after a moment. "All right, Matt. I'll play along as well as I can."

I went to the truck and untied and ungagged Mr. Hollingshead. I put my belt back where it belonged, and moved my short-barreled revolver from a pocket to its home in front of my left hip, now that there was something to hold it there once more. It took a little while for speech and circulation to return to the old gent, but it took him no time at all, after he'd managed to sit up, to spot the location of his lever-action rifle.

I saw his eyes flick that way and back to me. I reached into my pocket and brought out a handful of.300 Savage cartridges and showed them to him. He nodded slightly and paid no more attention to the rifle. I saw perspiration appear on his forehead as the blood started working its way back into the constricted areas. At last he licked his lips and spoke.

"Help me stand up, Sonny." A look of faint amusement came into his faded blue eyes as I hesitated. "What's the matter, you afraid of a feeble old man teetering on the edge of the eternal grave?"

"Feeble old man, hell," I said. "You forget, Gramps we wrestled a little. I've got a big bruise to show for it. I don't want any more."

"You slipped up on me real nice there," Hollingshead said. "And that was some kind of a fancy wrestling lock you put on me. What's your name, Sonny?"

"Janssen," I said. "Anders Janssen."

Martha did fine. Maybe she gave a slight start, but I didn't think it was enough for the old man to notice, particularly since his attention was all on me.

"Janssen, eh?" Hollingshead worked his dry lips together and spat. "Well, that figures, I guess. You live in Washington, don't you? I was thinking of getting in touch with you, but Indiana was more on my way, heading west. Indiana, and a man named Roger Dubuque, if you want to call that a man."

"What's wrong with Roger Dubuque?" I asked.

"What's wrong with a white-faced city feller that's real embarrassed-shamed and embarrassed-because his boy's been killed by the police? Not heartbroken, mind you, not angry, just embarrassed and afraid of what all his city neighbors might be thinking. He had no idea of taking any action, not he. I told him that down our way, if the constable can't handle a kid with a rock without shooting him to death, we kick him the hell out and get a new constable who knows his business. It made no difference to that city man. He had half a mind to curry favor with the police by giving them my name, he did, but I talked him out of that."

I grinned. "Just how did you talk him out of it, Mr. Hollingshead?"

The old gent smiled thinly. It wasn't a very nice smile. "Why, I told him that no matter how long they put me in prison for, I'd manage to live long enough to come back and shoot hell out of him. He scared easy."

"I'll bet," I said.

"It made me leery of you, Sonny, being as you lived in the city, too. Maybe I misjudged you. When I got here, I soon found somebody else was working along the lines I had in mind. That you?"

"That's me," I lied.

Hollingshead nodded slowly. "Well, I can't say I hold with them foreign methods using slip-nooses and all. A gun's always been good enough for us Hollingsheads and Bascombs, but maybe I'm being finicky. Anyway, it seems to me you've had your fun, Sonny. Why not go home now and leave that child-murdering bastard of a sheriff to me? I'll take care of him for both of us."

"How?" I said. "You're not going to make a.300 Savage shoot half a mile no matter how hot you load it; and that old gun of yours hasn't even got a scope on it."

"The day I clutter up a good rifle with a lot of glass will be the day they bury me. Give me a hand, will you? The old legs aren't what they used to be, and you didn't do them a damn bit of good… Ahhh." He stood for a moment, stamping his feet cautiously. Then he spoke as if there had been no interruption: "Wasn't going to take him from that ridge, Sonny. There's other places… The boy didn't come home from school. You know anything about that?"

"I might," I said, and it wasn't entirely a lie, this time.

"The older girl's married and moved away. The younger one drives that little blue foreign car to her high school. Sheriff, he made some money selling land to that development next door, and seems like first thing he did with it was buy new cars for everybody. The boy's about ten. He rides the school bus. Generally he's home by four o'clock. Today he didn't get off with the other youngsters, at the corner. The woman, she flagged the bus down and talked to the driver. Then she ran into the house. Ten minutes later, sheriff comes driving up with his tires on fire, and that's when you jumped me. I don't know as I care for the idea of using a man's younguns against him, Janssen, if that's what's in your mind." I didn't say anything. After a moment, Hollingshead shrugged his thin shoulders, dismissing the subject. He looked towards Martha. "Who's she?"

"Never mind," I said. "You don't need to know who she is. And don't lecture me, old man. My daughter's dead, and your son-"

"Grandson. Last Hollingshead male, if that means anything to you. Sometimes I get to thinking nobody knows what family feeling is these days."

"I know," I said.

I felt shabby and fraudulent as I said it. The more I talked with him, the less I liked lying to him, but likes and dislikes-those of any agent-are totally irrelevant, as Mac would be the first to point out.

"Reckon you do," Hollingshead said. "My son, now, he don't. Just like that Dubuque, but my son was brought up right. He ought to know that if you let them get away with it…" The old man drew a long breath. "You can't let them get away with it. Not ever. There's things no man's obliged to take, like having his kin shot down for nothing. When they step over that line, they've got to die, no matter if they're wearing pretty blue uniforms or big white hats and fancy badges. But my son, he's got a good job in the city pumping gas, and a little mouse-faced wife, and he wasn't going to do anything. Just like that Dubuque, he was thinking of his neighbors, not of his boy dead. So I came instead. Somebody's got to die, Janssen, for spilling the last of the Hollingshead blood, and rightfully it ought to be a Hollingshead that kills him."

I said, "if you feel like that, Mr. Hollingshead, why did you approach Dubuque at all? If you're set on doing the job yourself?"

The old man hesitated. "Well, Sonny," he said, "I'll tell you, I was kind of bluffing when I told that man how long I was going to live if he went to the police about me. Chances are, he'd have been safe doing all the talking he wanted. Fact is, I haven't got one whole hell of a lot of time left, according to the doctor, and I'll thank you to give me back those little pills you took out of my shirt pocket. Can't tell when I might need them in a hurry."

"You'll get them back. They're in the truck," I said. Neither of us moved at once. "You don't fight like a man with a bad heart." I said.

He smiled wryly. "Wasn't thinking of my heart when you jumped me. Anyway, I wasn't real sure I'd last the trip out, let alone be fit enough to do the work when I got here. That's why I wanted somebody else along, to take over if it turned out that way. But now I'm here, I feel I'm going to make it, Janssen, and I'd be much obliged if you'd leave me to it." He regarded me for a moment. "I tell you, I'll make a deal with you. You let me have that sheriff and I'll… You got one of those wire nooses with you? And the wire and stuff you made it out of?"

"I might have," I said, weaseling out of the direct lie.

"Well, you just toss it into my truck there. When they catch me-with my heart, I'm not about to run very fast – I'll say I took care of all three of them, leaving you free and clear. That's fair enough, isn't it?"

I hesitated. "I'll have to think about it. First, I'll get you those pills."

I walked to the truck and made as if to reach inside, although the little plastic container was actually in my pocket. There was something else I had to get out, and I had to turn my back on him to do it inconspicuously. Then I returned, holding out the pill bottle, and managed to let it drop before he could grasp it. When he reached down for it, I slipped the hypodermic needle into his neck, and caught him so he wouldn't hurt himself as he fell.

"Pick up that pillbox and put it into his shirt pocket so he's got it handy." I said, supporting the dead weight once more. There was no movement. I saw Martha standing there, staring at me with big, accusing eyes. "Oh, for Christ's sake, it's only a sedative!" I snapped. "He'll wake up nice and rested in four hours. Now pick up the pills, please."