The New Black Mask (No 4)

Final installment. In the previous three installments Britt Rainstar’s inability to act on his problems has made him the target of a series of murder attempts. His indecision has also resulted in promises to marry Manny Aloe (who is one of the murder suspects) and Kay Nolton (the police officer assigned to protect him), should he ever obtain a divorce from Connie.

24

It was a pretty grim weekend.

Mrs. Olmstead decided to replace her usual grumbling and mumbling with silence — the kind in which conversation is omitted but not the clashing and crashing of pans, the smashing of dishes, and the like.

Kay performed her nurse’s duties with a vengeance, taking my pulse and temperature every hour on the hour, or so it seemed to me, and generally interrupting me so often in doing her job that doing my own was virtually impossible.

Monday night, after dinner, there was a respite in the turmoil. Kay had retired to her room for a time, and Mrs. Olmstead was apparently doing something that could not be done noisily. At any rate, it seemed to be a good time to do some writing, and I dragged a chair up to my typewriter and went to work. Or, rather, I tried to. The weekend’s incessant clatter and interruptions had gotten me so keyed up that I couldn’t write a word.

I got up and paced around my office, then went back to my typewriter. I squirmed and fidgeted and stared helplessly at the paper. And, finally, I went out into the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

I shook the pot, discovering that there was still some in it. I put it on the stove to warm, and got a cup and saucer from the cupboard. Moving very quietly, to be sure. Keeping an eye on the door to Mrs. Olmstead’s quarters and listening for any sounds that might signal a resumption of her racket.

I poured my coffee and sipped it standing by the stove, then quietly washed and dried the cup and saucer and returned them to the cupboard. And suddenly I found myself grimacing with irritation at the preposterousness of my situation.

This was my house. Kay and Mrs. Olmstead were working for me. Yet they had made nothing but trouble for me throughout the weekend, and they had certainly not refrained from throwing their weight around before then — forcing me to cater to them. And just why the hell should things be this way?

Why had most of my life been like this, a constant giving-in and knuckling-under to people who didn’t give a damn about my welfare, regardless of what they professed or pretended?

I was brooding over the matter, silently swearing that there were going to be some changes made, when I became aware of a very muted buzzing. So muted that I almost failed to hear it.

I looked around, listening, trying to locate the source of the sound. I looked down at the floor, saw the faint outline of the telephone cord extending along the baseboard of the cabinetwork. And I yanked open the door of the lower cupboard and snatched out the telephone.

Just as Manny was about to give up and hang up.

She asked me where in the world I’d been, and I said I’d been right there and I’d explain the delay in answering when I saw her. “But I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I wasn’t expecting any calls tonight.”

“I know, but I just had to call you, Britt. I’ve been reading the manuscript you gave me on erosion, and I think it’s wonderful, darling! Absolutely beautiful! The-parallel you draw between the decline of the soil and the deterioration of the people — the lowering of life expectancy and the incidence of serious disease. Britt, I can’t tell you when I’ve been so excited about something!”

“Well, thank you,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m very pleased that you like it.”

“Oh, I do! In its own way, I think it’s every bit as good as Deserts on the March.”

I mumbled, pleased, saying nothing that made any sense, I’m sure. Even to be mentioned in the same breath with Dr. Paul Sears’s classic work was overwhelming. And I knew that Manny wasn’t simply buttering me up to make me feel good.

“There’s only one thing wrong with what you’ve done,” she went on. “It’s far too good for us. You’ve got to make it into a full-length book that will reach the kind of audience it deserves.”

“But PXA is paying for it. Paying very well, too.”

“I know. But I’m sure something can be worked out with Pat. I’ll talk to him after I talk to you, let’s see, the day after tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well, I haven’t read all you’ve done, and I want to read back through the whole manuscript before our meeting. So...” She hesitated. “I’m not sure I can make it on Tuesday. Suppose I call you Wednesday and see what we can set up?”

I said that was fine with me; I was glad to have the additional time to work. We talked a few minutes more, largely about the work and how well she liked it. Then we hung up, and I started to leave the kitchen. And Mrs. Olmstead’s surly voice brought me to a halt.

“What’s going on here, anyways? Wakin’ folks up at this time o’ night!”

Her face was sleep-puffed, her eyes streaked with threads of yellowish matter. She rubbed them with a grayish-looking fist, meanwhile surveying me sourly.

“Well?” she grunted, “I ast you a question, Mis-ter Rainstar.”

“Hold out your hands,” I said.

“Huh?” She blinked stupidly. “What for?”

“Hold them out! Now!”

She held them out. I put the phone in them, took her by the elbow, and hustled her out to the hallway writing desk. I took the phone out of her hands and placed it on the desk.

“Now that is where it belongs,” I said, “and that is where I want it. Can you remember that, Mrs. Olmstead?”

She said surlily that she could. She could remember things a heck of a lot better than people who couldn’t even remember to mail a letter.

“I tell you one thing, though. That phone’s out here an’ I’m back in the kitchen, I ain’t sure I’m gonna hear it.”

“All right,” I said. “When you’re actually in the kitchen working, you can keep the phone with you. But never put it away in a cupboard where I found it just now.”

She shrugged, started to turn away without answering.

“One thing more,” I said. “I’ve noticed that we’re always running out of shopping money. No matter how much I leave for you, you use it. It’s going to have to stop, Mrs. Olmstead.”

“Now you listen to me,” she said, shaking a belligerent finger at me: “I can’t help it that groceries is high! I don’t spend a nickel more for ’em than I have to.”

I said I knew groceries were high. I also knew that Jack Daniels was high, and I’d noticed several bottles of it stowed in the bottom cupboard.

“You’ll have to start drinking something cheaper,” I said. “You apparently do a great deal of drinking in bars when you’re supposedly out shopping, so I can’t supply you with Jack Daniels for your home consumption.”

She looked pretty woebegone at that, so I told her not to worry about it, for God’s sake, and to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. And watching her trudge away, shoulders slumped, in her dirty old robe, I felt like nine kinds of a heel. Because, really, why fuss about a little booze if it made her feel good? At her age, with all passion spent and the capacity for all other good things gone, she surely was entitled to good booze. Drinking was probably all that made life-become-existence tolerable for her, as it probably is for all who drink.

I went to bed and to sleep. Thinking that the reason I hated getting tough with people was that it was too tough on me.

The next day went fairly well for me. There was practically no trouble from Mrs. Olmstead. I avoided any with Kay by simply submitting to her ministrations.

I got in a good day’s work and continued to work until after nine that night.

Around ten, while I was toweling myself off after a shower, Kay came into the bathroom bearing a thermometer.

I took her by the shoulders, pushed her outside, and locked the door.

When I had finished drying myself, I put on my pajamas, came out of the bathroom, and climbed into bed, nodding at Kay, who stood waiting for me, prim-faced.

“Does that mean,” she said icily, “that I now have your permission to take your temperature?”

“If you like,” I said.

“Well, thank you so much!” she said.

She took my temperature. I held up my wrist, and she took my pulse, almost hurling my hand away from her when she had finished.

She left then, turning the light off and closing the door very gently. Some twenty minutes later, she tapped on the door with her fingernails, pushed it open, and came in. Through slitted eyes, I watched her approach my bed. A soft, sweet-smelling shadow in the dim glow of the hall light.

She stood looking down at me. Then her hands came out from behind her and went up over her head. And they were holding a long sharp knife.

I let out a wild yell, but the knife was already plunging downward.

It stabbed against my chest, then folded over as cardboard will. And Kay fell across me, shaking with laughter.

After a time, she crawled over into bed next to me, shedding her shorty nightgown en route. She nuzzled me and whispered naughtily in my ear. I told her she wasn’t funny, dammit; she’d damned near scared me to death. She said she was terribly sorry, but she’d just had to snap me out of my stiffishness some way. And I said oh, well.

We were about to take it from there when I remembered something and sat up abruptly.

“My God!” I said. “You’ve got to get out of here! This place is going to be full of cops in about a minute!”

“What? What the heck are you talking about?”

“The walls are bugged! Any loud cry for help will bring the police.”

“Britt, darling,” she said soothingly, “you just lie right back down here by mama. You just shut your mouth so mama can kiss it.”

“But you don’t understand, dammit! Jeff Claggett couldn’t stake the place out, but I was afraid to come back here without plenty of protection. So—”

“So he told you that story,” said Kay, and determinedly pulled me back down at her side. “And he gave you me. It’s all the protection he could give you, and it’s all you need. Take it from Officer Nolton, Britt. Soon-to-be-resigned Officer Nolton, thanks to your dear friend, the sergeant.”

“Knock it off,” I said crossly. “I had an idea all along that I was being kidded.”

“Why, of course, you did,” Kay said smoothly. “And, now, you’re sure.”

And now, of course, I was, since my yell for help had brought no response. Jeff had deceived me about the house being bugged, just as he had about Kay’s status. He had done it in my own best interests, and I was hardly inclined to chide or reproach him.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling that uneasiness which comes to one whose welfare is almost totally dependent upon another person, no matter how well intentioned that person may be. Nor could I help wondering whether there were other deceptions I didn’t yet know about. Or whether something meant for my own good might turn out just the opposite.

25

My sense of uneasiness increased rather than diminished. It became so aggravated under Kay’s incessant inquiries as to what was bothering me that I blew up and told her she was.

“Everything about you is getting to me,” I said. “That blushing trick, the prudish-sweet manner, the cute-kiddy way you talk, like you wouldn’t say crap if you were up to your collar in it, the — oh, crud to it!” I said. “You’ve got me so bollixed up I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”

We were in my bedroom at the time — where else? — and I was fully prepared to go to bed — by myself.

Kay said she was sorry she got on my nerves, but I’d feel a lot better after I had something she had for me. She started to climb into bed with me. I put a leg up in the air, warding her off. She tried to come by the other way, and I stuck up an arm.

She frowned at me, hands on her hips. “Now, you see here, I have as much right to that bed as you have.”

“Right to it?” I said. “You talk like a girl in a wooden hat, baby.”

“You said you didn’t think I was awful. Because I did it, I mean. You said you’d marry me if you weren’t already married.”

“Which I am,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”

Kay said that part didn’t matter. What was important was that I wanted to marry her, and that kind of made her my wife, and this was a community-property state, so half of the bed was hers. And while I was unraveling that one, she hopped over me and into bed.

I let her stay. For one thing, it is very hard to push a beautiful, well-built girl out of your bed. For another, while I knew she had skunked me again, that I had fallen for her act, it was a very good act. And what did one more fall matter to an incurable fall guy?

By the following day, Wednesday, my feelings of uneasiness had blossomed into a sense of foreboding. The feeling grew in me that things had gotten completely out of hand and were about to become worse and that there was nothing I could do about it.

It wasn’t helped much by the bitter look Mrs. Olmstead gave me as she departed to do her shopping or drinking or whatever she did with my money. Nor was I cheered by a brief bit of sharpness that I had with Manny when she called to make an appointment with me. We finally made one for that afternoon, but I was still feeling quite down and more than a little irritated when Kay showed her into my office around four o’clock.

As it turned out, she also was not feeling her best, a fact she admitted as soon as our opening pleasantries were over.

“I don’t want to argue with you, Britt,” she said, “but you look quite well. I think you’re probably in a lot better condition than I am. And as long as you’ve been going out, anyway — it isn’t as if you were bedridden — I don’t see why you couldn’t have come to the office.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hold it right there. Regardless of how well I look or don’t look, I’m under strict orders not to leave the house.”

“But I called here several times when you were out. At least Mrs. Olmstead told me you were. Of course...” Manny paused, frowning. “Of course, that could have been her way of saying that you just didn’t want to talk to me...”

“There’d never be a time when I didn’t want to talk to you. You should know that.”

“I know. But...” She hesitated again. “Perhaps it wasn’t Mrs. Olmstead. I thought it was, and she said it was but— Do you suppose it could have been what’s-her-name, your nurse?”

“I’ll find out,” I said. “I know they’ve been feuding, and they just might have — one of them might have — tried to drag me into the quarrel.” I pondered the matter a moment, then sighed and threw up my hands. “Hell, I’ll never find out. Both of them are entirely capable of lying.”

“Poor Britt.” Manny laughed softly. “Well, it doesn’t matter, dear. It doesn’t bother me now that I know you haven’t been going out at all.”

“I haven’t been. That’s the truth, Manny.”

“I believe you.”

“The only time I’ve left the house was when I walked to your car with you last Friday.”

“Well...” She smiled at me, her golden head tilted to one side. “Since it’s been so long, maybe you should walk to my car with me again today.”

“Well...”

“Well?” Her smile faded, began to draw in around the edges. “You’re afraid to, is that it? You still don’t trust me.”

“I haven’t said that,” I said. “You gave me your word that I had nothing more to fear from you, and I’m more than anxious to believe you. I could probably say something more positive if I wasn’t a little bewildered.”

“Yes? About what?”

“About your visit here this afternoon. I thought you were here to discuss my manuscript. But we’ve talked about practically nothing except my mishandled telephone calls and my walking to your car with you.”

Manny’s expression cleared, and she apologized hastily. “I’m sorry, dear. You have every right to be puzzled. But I like the manuscript better than ever, and Pat thinks it’s a fine job too. He agrees that you should make a book out of it, and there won’t be any problem about the money. We’ll call it square for the right to do a digest.”

“That’s very generous of you,” I said, “and I’m very grateful.”

“We consider it a privilege to be associated with the project. I just wish I could be here to see it through to the end — not that you need my help, of course. But I can’t be. T-that’s w-why—” she averted her head suddenly. “That’s why I made such a big thing of being outside the house with you. Even for a little while.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you mean you can’t be here until the work is finished?”

“I mean, this is the last time I’ll see you. I’m leaving the company and going back East.”

“B-but—” I stared at her, stunned. “But, why?”

“I’m getting married.”

I continued to stare at her. I shook my head incredulously, unable to believe what I had heard.

“You’re the only person I’ve told, so please keep it to yourself. I don’t want anyone else to know just yet.”

Married! My Manny getting married!

“But you can’t!” I suddenly exploded. “I won’t let you!”

“Oh?” She smiled at me sadly. “Why not, Britt?”

“Well, all right,” I said doggedly. “I can’t marry you. Not now, anyway. Maybe never. But why the big hurry? We’d got everything straightened out between us, and I thought that... that—”

“That we could pick up where we left off? I’d’ve been willing to settle for that, at least until something better could be worked out. But it just isn’t possible.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Good-bye and good luck, Britt.”

“Wait a minute.” I also stood up, and I took her hand and held on to it. “Who is this guy anyway?”

“You wouldn’t know him. I knew him in the East a long time ago.”

“But why are you suddenly rushing into marriage with him?”

“Why do you think I’m rushing? But never mind. It’s settled, Britt, so please let go of my hand.”

I let go of it.

She turned toward the door, and I started to accompany her. But she gestured for me to remain where I was.

“I’m afraid I’m pretty stupid, darling. It’s the police who’ve ordered you to stay in the house, isn’t it? And your nurse is one of them?”

“Yes,” I said. “To both questions.”

“That’s what Pat figured. He remembered her from somewhere, and it finally dawned on him that he’d seen her in uniform.”

“All right,” I said. “She’s a cop, and I’m under orders not to leave the house. But I did it once, and since this is a pretty special occasion — the last time we’ll see each other—”

“No!” she said sharply. “You’ll stay inside as you’ve been told to!”

I said I’d at least walk to the front door with her, and I did. She held out her hand to me again, a firm little smile on her face, and I took it and pulled her into my arms. There was the briefest moment of resistance, then she came to me almost violently, as though swept on a wave of emotion. She embraced me, kissed me over and over, ran her soft, small hands through my hair.

And Kay Nolton cleared her throat noisily and said, “Well, excuse me!”

Manny drew away away from me, giving Kay an icy look. “How long were you watching us?” she demanded. “Or did you lose track of the time?”

“Never you mind, toots. I’m paid to watch people!”

“You should be paying,” said Manny. “You get so much fun out of it.”

And before Kay could come up with a retort, she was out of the house and slamming the door of the car. Kay said something obscene, then turned angrily on me. She said it was a darned good thing that Manny wasn’t coming back to the house, and that she, Kay, would snatch her bald-headed if Manny ever did.

I accused her of snooping, listening outside the door while Manny and I were talking. She said I was doggone right she’d been listening, and if I didn’t like it I could do the next best thing. I went into my office and closed the door, and at dinnertime she brought a tray in to me, also bringing a cup of coffee for herself.

She sat down across from me, sipping from her cup as I ate. I complimented her on the dinner, and made other small talk. In the midst of it she broke in with a curt question.

“Why isn’t Miss Aloe coming here to the house anymore, Britt? I know she isn’t, but I don’t know why.”

“You mean you missed part of our conversation?” I said.

“Answer me! I’ve got a right to know.”

I lifted the tray from my lap and set it on a chair. I shook out my napkin and dropped it on top of the tray. Then I leaned back in my chair, and looked thoughtfully out the window.

“Well?” she said sullenly.

“I was just mulling over your remark,” I said, “about your having a right to know. I don’t feel that you have a right to know anything about my personal affairs. But I can see how you might, and I suppose it’s my fault that you do. So, to answer your question: Miss Aloe is giving up her position here and going back East. That’s why I won’t be seeing her again.”

Kay said “oh” in a rather timid tone. She said that she was sorry if she’d said or done anything that she shouldn’t have.

I shook my head, brushing off her statement. Not trusting myself to speak. I was suddenly overwhelmed by my sense of loss, the knowledge of how much Manny had meant to me. And I jumped up and went over to the window. Stood there staring out into the gathering dusk.

Behind me, I heard Kay getting up quietly. I heard her pick up the dinner tray and leave the room, softly clicking the door shut behind her.

Several minutes passed. Then she knocked and came in again, carrying the phone on its long extension cord. She handed it to me and started to leave, but I motioned for her to remain. She did so, taking the chair she had occupied before.

“Britt?” It was Jeff Claggett. “How was your visit with Miss Aloe?”

“All right,” I said. “At least partly all right. She’s leaving town and going back East. Yes, within the next day or so, I believe.”

“The hell!” He grunted with surprise. “Just like that, huh? She give you any reason?”

“Well...” I hesitated. “I don’t need to consult with her anymore. I’m going ahead with the work on my own.”

“Yes? Nothing else?”

“I couldn’t say,” I said carefully. “What else could there be, and what does it matter, an way? I am sure that I have nothing more to fear from her. I’m positive of it, Jeff. And that’s all I’m concerned about.”

“So who said no?” He sounded amused. “Why so emphatic?”

“Let it go,” I said. “The point is that there’s no longer any reason to continue our present arrangement. If you’d like to make it official, Miss Nolton is right here and—”

“Hold it! Hold it, Britt!” Claggett snapped. “I think we can close things out there very soon. But you leave it to me to say when, okay?”

“Well, all right,” I said. “I think it would be better to—”

“Why guess about something when you can be sure? Why not wait until Miss Aloe actually leaves town?” He paused, then lowered his voice. “Nolton throwing her weight around? Is that it, Britt?”

“Well...” I sidled a glance at Kay. “I imagine it would be difficult to make a change, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.”

“All right, then,” I said. “I’ll manage.”

We hung up, and I passed the phone back to Kay. She took it silently, but at the door she turned and gave me a stricken look.

I faced around to my typewriter and began pounding on the keys. And I kept at it until I was sure she had gone.

I had had about enough of Kay Nolton. What had started out as a pleasant giving, something that we could both enjoy, had wound up as an attempt to take me over.

I wasn’t ready to be taken over, and I never would be. Nor would I ever want to take anyone else over. Love isn’t tantamount to ownership. Love is being part of someone else, while still remaining yourself.

That was the way it had been with me and Manny. And now that she was gone from my life...

Well. Kay could not fill the space Manny had left. It was too great for any other to fill.

Kay left me alone that night. Which was just as well for her. I had discovered that confronting people when they insisted on it was not nearly so fearful as I had thought, and I was all ready to do it again.

The mood was with me the next day, and when Mrs. Olmstead appeared in my office doorway and announced that she needed more money to go shopping, I flatly refused to give her any.

“You’ve had far too much already,” I told her coldly. “You’ve constantly emptied that cashbox in the telephone desk and then come grumbling to me for more. You must have had over six hundred dollars in less than two weeks’ time. The best thing you can do now is to pack up your belongings and clear out.”

“That don’t make me mad none!” She glared at me defiantly. “You just pay me my wages, an’ I’ll be out of here faster’n you can say scat!”

“I don’t have to pay you,” I said. “You’ve already paid yourself several times over.”

If she had given me any kind of argument, I probably would have relented. But surprisingly she didn’t argue at all. Oh, she did a little under-the-breath cursing on her way out of my office. In no more than ten minutes, however, she was packed and gone from the house.

Kay, who had been standing by during the proceedings, declared that I had done exactly the right thing. “You should have done it long ago, Britt. You were far too patient with that woman.”

“I’ve been that way with a lot of people,” I said. “But it’s a fault I’m going to correct.”

She dropped her eyes, toeing in with one white shod foot, a slow blush spreading up her cheeks to blend with the auburn of her hair. It was all beautifully calculated. I have never seen such control. She was saying, as clearly as if she had spoken, that she had been a naughty, naughty girl and she was truly sorry for it.

“Will you forgive your naughty girl, Britt?” She spoke in a cute-child’s voice. “She’s awfully sorry, and she promises never to be naughty again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Why, of course, it matters. But I’ll be good from now on, honey. I swear I’ll—”

“I don’t care whether you are or not,” I said. “I can hang by my thumbs a few days if I have to. If it takes any longer than that to wrap things up here, and if I still need a cop-nurse, you won’t be her.”

She gave me no more argument than Mrs. Olmstead had. I was amazed at how easy it was to tell people off — without being very proud of it — although, admittedly, my experience was pretty limited.

I didn’t feel much like working; the thought of Manny, my Manny, being married to another was too much on my mind. But I worked, anyway, and I was still at it when Claggett arrived in midafternoon.

Manny was back in the hospital, he informed me. The same reputable hospital she had been in before with the same reputable doctors in attendance.

And, as before, she was in absolute seclusion, and no information about her condition or the nature of her illness was being given out.

26

“I could probably get a court order and find out,” Claggett said, “if I could show any reason why it was necessary for me to know. But I can’t think what the hell it would be.”

“Probably there isn’t any,” I said. “Nothing sinister, I mean. She told me yesterday that she wasn’t feeling well. Possibly she got to feeling worse and had to go to the hospital.”

“Possibly. But why so secretive about it?”

“Well...”

“Tell you something,” Claggett said. “Maybe I’m a little cynical, but I’ve never known anyone to pull a cover-up yet unless there was something to cover up.”

“That’s probably true. But this could hardly be called a cover-up, could it?”

“It’s close enough. And the one thing I’ve found that’s usually covered up with doctors is mental illness. It’s my guess,” said Claggett thoughtfully, “that Miss Aloe has had a nervous breakdown or something of the kind. The second one in less than a month. Either that or she’s pretending to. So that leaves us with a couple of questions.”

“Yes?” I said. “I mean, it does?”

“To take the last one first. If she’s pretending, why is she? And, secondly, if she’s actually had a nervous collapse, what brought it on?”

“I just hope she’s all right,” I said. “In any case, I don’t see what her being in the hospital has to do with me.”

“Well, it could be just a coincidence, but the last time she was hospitalized, you had a pretty bad accident.”

“It was a coincidence,” I said, and wondered why I suddenly felt so uncomfortable and uneasy. “I’m positive that she’s leveling with me, Jeff. I knew it when she wasn’t, and I know it now that she is.”

Claggett shrugged and said that was good. He, himself, would never trust his own judgment where someone he loved was concerned. Because you could love someone who was completely no good and untrustworthy.

“But we’ll see,” he said, and stood up. “I have no basis for believing that she’s not on the level with you, but we shouldn’t be long in finding out.”

I walked to the door with him, wondering whether I should tell him about Manny’s impending marriage. But I had promised not to, and I could think of no reason why I should.

We shook hands, and he promised to keep in touch. Then, just as he was leaving, he abruptly pulled me back from the door and moved back into the shadows himself.

I started to ask what was the matter, but he gestured me to silence. So we stood there tensely in silence, waiting. And then there was the sound of footsteps mounting to the porch and crossing to the door.

My view was obscured by Jeff Claggett and the heavy shadows of the porch. But I could see a little, see that a man was standing with his face pressed against the screen to peer inside.

Apparently he also was having a problem in seeing, for he reached down to the door handle, pulled it open, and stepped uncertainly across the threshold.

Claggett grabbed him in a bone-crushing bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides. The man let out a startled gasp.

“W-what’s going on here?”

“You tell me, you son of a bitch!” rasped Claggett. “Let’s see how fast you can talk.”

“It’s all right, Jeff,” I said. “He’s my father-in-law.”

27

Connie’s letters to me had gone unanswered. When she telephoned, Mrs. Olmstead told her I had moved and that she had no idea where I was. And for the last ten days or so, the phone had simply gone unanswered. Luther Bannerman had determined to find out just what was what (to borrow his expression). And he’d driven all the way here from the Midwest to do it.

He was in the dining room now with Kay, stuffing himself with the impromptu meal she had prepared for him at my request, rambling and rumbling on endlessly about my general worthlessness.

“...me an’ daughter just couldn’t support him any longer, so he comes back down here. An’ he sent her a little money, but it was like pulling teeth to get it out of him. And this last month, more than a month, I guess, he didn’t send nothing! No, sir, not one red cent! So I just up and decided— Pass me that coffeepot, wall you, Miss. Yes, and I believe I’ll have some more of them beans an’ potato salad, and a few of them...”

In the kitchen, Jeff Claggett unwrapped the strip of black tape from around the telephone cord and held the two ends apart.

“A real sweet old lady,” he laughed sourly. “Well, that takes care of any calls since she left today, if you had any since then. But I’m damned if I understand how she could head off the others.”

I said it was easy, as easy as it was for her to see that I got no mail that would reveal what she was up to. “She kept the phone out in the kitchen when she was in the house, and when she was away she hid it where it couldn’t be heard.”

“And you never caught on?” Claggett frowned. “She pulls this for almost a month, and you never tipped?”

“Why should I?” I said. “If someone like you called, of course, she’d see that you got through to me. Anyone else would be inclined to take her at her word. She had a little luck, I’ll admit. But it wasn’t all that hard to pull off with someone who gets and makes as few calls as I do.”

“Yeah, well, let’s get on with the rest of it,” Claggett sighed. “I hate to ask, but...?”

“The answer is yes to both questions,” I said. “Mrs. Olmstead mailed the checks I sent to my wife — or rather, she didn’t mail them. And she made my bank deposits for me — or didn’t make them.”

Claggett asked me if I hadn’t gotten deposit slips, and I said no, but the amounts were noted in my bankbook. Claggett said he’d just bet they were, and he’d bet I hadn’t written “For deposit only” on the back of the checks. I said I hadn’t and couldn’t.

“I needed some cash for household expenses,” I explained, “and I’d run out of personal checks. I had some on order, but they never arrived.”

“I wonder why.” Claggett laughed shortly. “Well, I guess there’s no way of knowing how much she’s taken you for offhand or how much, if any, we can recover — when and if we catch up with her. But Mr. Blabbermouth, or Bannerman, shapes up to me like a guy who means to get money out of you right now.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said. “I should have at least a few hundred left in the bank, but it wouldn’t be enough to get him off my back.”

“No,” he said. “With a guy like him there’s never enough. Well—” he drew a glass of water from the sink, drank it down thoughtfully, “want me to handle him for you?”

“Well...” I hesitated. “How are you going to do it?”

“Yes or no, Britt.”

I said yes. He said all right, then. He would do it, and there was to be no interference from me.

We went into the dining room and sat down across from Bannerman. He had stuffed his mouth so full that a slimy trickle streaked down from the corner of it. Claggett told him disgustedly to use his napkin, for God’s sake. My father-in-law did so, but with a pious word of rebuke.

“Good men got good appetites, Mister Detective. Surest sign there is of a clean conscience. Like I was telling the young lady—”

“We heard what you told her,” Claggett said coldly. “The kind of crap I’d expect from a pea-brain loudmouth. No, stick around, Nolton.” He nodded to Kay, who resumed her chair. “I’d like to know what you think of this character.”

“He already knows,” Kay said. “I told him when he tried to give me a feel.”

Bannerman spluttered red-faced that he’d done nothing of the kind. He’d just been tryin’ to show his appreciation for all the trouble she’d gone to for him. But Kay had taken her cue from Claggett — that here was a guy who should have his ears pinned back. And she was more than ready to do the job.

“Are you calling me a liar, buster?” She gave him a pugnacious glare. “Well, are you?”

He said, “N-no, ma’am, ’course not. I was just—”

“Aaah, shut up!” she said.

And Claggett said, “Yes, shut up, Bannerman. You’ve been talking ever since you stepped through the door today, and now it’s time you did some listening. You want to, or do you want trouble?”

“He wants trouble,” Kay said.

“I don’t neither!” Bannerman waved his hands a little wildly. “Britt, make these people stop—”

“All right, listen and listen good,” Claggett said. “Mr. Rainstar has already given your daughter a great deal of money. I imagine he’ll probably provide her with a little more when he’s able to, which he isn’t at present. Meanwhile, you can pack up that rattletrap heap you drove down here in and get the hell back where you came from.”

Anger stained Luther Bannerman’s face the color of eggplant. “I know what I can do all right!” he said hoarsely. “An’ it’s just what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna have Mr. Britton Rainstar in jail for the attempted murder of my daughter!”

“How are you going to do that?” Claggett asked. “You and your daughter are going to be in jail for the attempted murder of Mr. Rainstar.”

“W-what?” Bannerman’s mouth dropped open. “Why, that’s crazy!”

“You hated his guts,” Claggett continued evenly. “You’d convinced yourselves that he was a very bad man. By being different from you, by being poor instead of rich. So you tried to kill him, and here’s how you went about it...”

He proceeded to explain, despite Bannerman’s repeated attempts to interrupt. Increasingly fearful and frantic attempts. And his explanation was so cool and persuasive that it was as though he was reciting an actual chronicle of events.

The steering apparatus of my car had been tampered with; also, probably, the accelerator. Evidence of the tampering would be destroyed, of course, when my car went over the cliff. All that was necessary then was for me to be literally driven out of the house, so angered that I would jump into the car and head for town.

But Connie had overdone the business of making me angry. She had pursued me to the kitchen door — and been knocked unconscious when I flung it open. And when I headed for town, she was in the car with me...

“That’s the way it was, wasn’t it?” Claggett concluded. “You and your daughter tried to kill Mr. Rainstar, and your little plan backfired on you.”

My father-in-law looked at Claggett helplessly. He looked at me, eyes welling piteously.

“Tell him, Britt. Tell him that Connie and me w-wouldn’t, that we just ain’t the kind of p-people to... to—

He broke off, obviously — very obviously — overcome with emotion.

I wet my lips hesitantly. In spite of myself, I felt sorry for him. This man who had done so much to humiliate me, to make me feel small and worthless, now seemed very much that way himself. And I think I might have spoken up for him, despite a stern glance from Jeff Claggett. But my father-in-law compensated in blind doggedness for his considerable shortcomings in cerebral talents, and he was talking again before I had a chance to speak.

“I’ll tell you what happened!” he said surlily. “That fella right there, that half-breed Injun, Britt Rainstar, tried to kill my daughter for her insurance! He stood to collect a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and that was just plenty of motive for a no-account loafer like him!”

Claggett appeared astonished. “You mean to tell me that Mr. Rainstar was your daughter’s beneficiary?”

“Yes, he was! I’m in the insurance business, and I wrote the policy myself!”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Claggett said in a shocked voice. “Did you know about this, Britt?”

“I told you about it,” I said, a little puzzled. “Don’t you remember? Mr. Bannerman wrote up a similar policy on me with my wife as beneficiary, at the same time.”

He nodded, and said “Oh, yes,” it all came back to him now. “But the company rejected you, didn’t they? They wouldn’t approve of your policy.”

“That’s right. I don’t know why exactly, but apparently I wasn’t considered a very stable character or something of the kind.”

“You were a danged poor risk, that’s what!” Bannerman said grimly. “Just the kind of fella that would get himself in a fix with the law. Which is just what you went and done! Why, if I hadn’t spoken up to the sheriff, after you tried to kill poor little Connie—”

He chopped the sentence off suddenly. He gulped painfully, as though swallowing something that had turned out to be much larger than he had thought.

Kay gave him a cold, narrow-eyed grin. There was a snap to Claggett’s voice like a trap being sprung.

“So Mr. Rainstar was a pretty disreputable character, was he? Was he, Bannerman?”

“I... I... I didn’t say that! I didn’t say nothin’ like that, a-tall, an’ don’t you—”

“Sure, you did. And you told everyone in town what a no-goodnik he w>as. A blabbermouth like you would be bound to tell ’em, and don’t think I won’t dig up the witnesses who’ll swear that you did!”

“But I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I was just talkin’,” Bannerman whined. “You know how it is, Britt. You say you wish someone was dead, or you’d like to kill ’em, but—”

“No,” I said. “I’ve never said anything like that in my life.”

“You didn’t trust your son-in-law, Bannerman,” Claggett persisted. “And you sure as hell didn’t like him. But you allowed the policy on your daughter to stand — a policy that made him her beneficiary? Why didn’t you cancel it?”

“I— Never you mind!” Bannerman said peevishly. “None of your doggoned business, that’s why!”

Claggett asked me if I had ever seen the policy, and I said I hadn’t. He turned back to Bannerman, his eyes like blue ice.

“There isn’t any policy, is there? There never was. It was just a gimmick to squeeze Mr. Rainstar. Something to threaten him with when he tried to get a divorce.”

“That ain’t so! There is too a policy!”

“All right. What’s the name of the insurance company?”

“I–I disremember, offhand,” Bannerman stammered, and then blurted out, “I don’t have to tell you, anyway!”

“Now look, you!” Claggett leaned forward, jaw jutting. “Maybe you can throw your weight around with your friendly hometown sheriff. Maybe he thinks the sun rises and sets in your ass. But with me, you’re just a pimple on the ass of progress. So you tell me: what’s the name of the insurance company?”

“But I–I really don’t—”

“All right.” Claggett made motions of rising. “Don’t tell me. I’ll just check it out with the Underwriters Bureau.”

And, at that, Bannerman gave up.

He admitted weakly that there was no policy and that there never had been. But he brazenly denied that he and Connie had done wrong by King about it.

Ol’ Britt was tryin’ to get a divorce, and she had a right to keep him from it, any way she could. And never mind why she was so dead set against a divorce. A woman didn’t have to explain a thing like that. The fact that she didn’t want one was reason enough.

“Anyways, Connie hasn’t been at all well since the accident. Taken all kinds of money to pervide for her. If she hadn’t had some way of scarin’ money out o’ Britt—”

“Apparently, she’s able to take care of herself now,” Claggett said. “Or do you have round-the-clock nurses? And just remember I’ll check up on your story!”

“Well...” Bannerman hesitated. “Yeah, Connie’s coming along pretty good right now. Course, she’s all jammed up inside, an’ she’s always gonna be an invalid—”

“What doctor told you that? What doctors? What hospital did her X rays?”

“Well...,” Bannerman said weakly. “Well...” and said no more.

“Jeff,” I said. “Can’t we wind this up? Just get this — this thing the hell out of here? If I have to look at him another minute, I’m going to throw up!”

Claggett said he felt the same way, and he jerked a thumb at Bannerman and told him to beat it. The latter said he’d like to; there was nothing he’d like to do more. But he just didn’t see how he could do it.

“I used practically every cent I had comin’ down here. And that ol’ car of mine ain’t gonna go much farther, without some work bein’ done on it. I want t’get back home; these here big cities ain’t for me. But—”

“Save it,” Claggett said curtly. “You’ve probably got half of the first nickel you ever made, but I’ll give you a stake to get rid of you. Nolton.” He gestured to Kay. “Get him in his car, and see that he stays in it till I come out.”

“Yes, sir! Come on, you!”

She hustled my father-in-law out of the room, and the front door opened then closed behind them.

I gave Claggett my heartfelt thanks for the way he had handled things and promised to pay back whatever money he gave my father-in-law.

“No problem.” He dismissed the matter. “But tell me, Britt. I was just bluffing, of course, trying to shake him up, but do you suppose he and your wife did try to kill you?”

“What for?” I said. “I was willing to get out of their lives. I still am. Why should they risk a murder rap just because they hated me?”

“Well, hatred has been the motive for a lot of murders.”

“Not with people like them,” I said. “Not unless it would make them something. I’ll tell you, Jeff, I don’t see them risking a nickel to see the Holy Ghost do a skirt dance.”

He grinned. Then, again becoming thoughtful, he raised another question.

“Why is your wife so opposed to divorce, d’you suppose? I know you’ll give her money as long as you have it to give, but—”

“Money doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it,” I said. “She was that way right from the beginning, when I didn’t have a cent and it didn’t look like I ever would have. I just don’t know.” I shook my head. “There was a little physical attraction between us at one time, very little. But that didn’t last, and we never had any other interests in common.”

“Well.” Claggett shrugged. “Bannerman was right about one thing. A woman doesn’t have to give a reason for not wanting a divorce.”

We talked about other matters for a few minutes, i.e., Mrs. Olmstead, my work for PXA, and the prospects for suing over the condemnation of my land. Then he went back to Bannerman again, wondering why the latter had caved in so quickly when he, Claggett, had threatened to call the Underwriters Bureau.

“Why didn’t he try to bluff it out, Britt? Just tell me to go ahead and check? He had nothing to lose by it, and I might have backed down.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is it important?”

“We-el...” He hesitated, frowning. “Yes, I think it might be. And I think it bears on the reason for your wife’s not giving you a divorce. Don’t ask me why. It’s just a hunch. But...”

His voice died away. I looked at his troubled face, and again I felt that icy tingling at my spine — a warning of impending doom. And even as he was rising to leave, a pall seemed to descend on the decaying elegance of the ancient Rainstar mansion.

28

Claggett drove off toward town to get some money for my father-in-law, Bannerman following him in his rattletrap old vehicle. Kay came back into the house.

While she prepared dinner for the two of us, I cleaned up the mess Luther Bannerman had left and carried the dishes out into the kitchen. She glanced at me as I took clean silver and plates from the cupboard, asked if I was still mad at her. I said I never had been — I’d simply tried to set her straight on where we stood. Moreover, I said, I was grateful to her for the several jolts she had given my father-in-law.

She said that had been a pleasure. “But if you’re not mad, why do you look so funny, Britt? So kind of down-in-the-mouth?”

“Maybe it’s because of seeing him,” I said. “He always did depress me. On the other hand...”

I left the sentence hanging, unable to explain why I felt as I did, the all-pervading gloom that had settled over me. Kay said she was sort of down-in-the-dumps herself, for some reason.

“Maybe it’s this dam old house,” she said. “Just staying inside here day after day. The ceilings are so high that you can hardly see them. The staircase goes up and up, and it’s always dark and shadowy. You feel like you’re climbing one of those mountains that are always covered with clouds. There are always a lot of funny noises, like someone was sneaking up behind you. And...”

I laughed, cutting her off. The house was home to me, and it had never struck me as being gloomy or depressing.

“We both need a good stiff drink,” I said. “Hold the dinner a few minutes, and I’ll do the honors.”

I couldn’t find any booze; Mrs. Olmstead apparently had finished it all off. But I dug up a bottle of pretty fair wine, and we had some before dinner and with it.

We ate and drank, and Kay asked how much Mrs. Olmstead had stolen from me. I said I would have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out.

“It really doesn’t bother me a hell of a lot,” I added. “If she hadn’t gotten it, my wife would have.”

“Oh, yes. She tore up the checks you sent your wife, didn’t she?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Well, uh, look, Britt...” She paused delicately. “I’ve got some money saved. Quite a bit, actually. So if you’d like to—”

I said, “Thanks, I appreciate the offer. But I can get by all right.”

“Well, uh, yes. I suppose. But—” Another delicate pause. “How about your wife, Britt? How much do you think she’d want to give you a divorce?”

I told her to forget it. Connie had apparently made up her mind not to give me a divorce on any terms, and there was no use in discussing it.

“I don’t know why. Perhaps she has a reason, and I’m too stupid to see it. But—” I laughed suddenly, then quickly apologized. “I’m sorry, Kay. I just thought of a story my great-grandfather used to tell me. Would you care to hear it?”

“I’d love to,” she said, in a tone that gave the lie to her statement.

But I told it to her, anyway.

There was once a handsome young Indian chief who married a maiden from a neighboring tribe.

She was neither fair of figure or face, and her disposition was truly ugly. Never did she have a kind word to say to her husband. Never was he able to do anything that pleased her. She was simply a homely shrew, through and through. And the tribe’s other squaws and braves wondered why they remained together as husband and wife.

The days passed, and the months, and the years.

Finally, when the chief was a very old man, he died.

His wife laughed joyously at his funeral, having inherited his many ponies and buffalo hides and other such wealth. And this, his wealth, was her reason, of course, for marrying him and remaining with him for so many years.

Kay stared at me, frowning. I looked at her deadpan, and she shook her head bewilderedly.

“That’s the end of the story? What’s the point?”

“I just told you,” I said. “She married him and stuck with him for his dough. Or the Indian equivalent thereof.”

“But — but, dam it! Why did he marry her?”

“Because he was stupid,” I said. “His whole tribe was stupid.”

“Wha-aat?”

“Why, sure,” I said. “A lot of Indians are stupid. That’s why we wound up in the shape we’re in today.”

Kay jumped up and left the table.

29

I was sorry now that I had told her the story, but it hadn’t been a rib. My great-grandfather actually had told it to me, a bit of bitter fun-poking at Indians, their decline and fall. But there was wisdom in it for any race.

We all overlook the obvious.

Danger is so commonplace that we have become insensitive to it.

We wring the hand of Evil and are shocked at the loss of fingers.

I left the dining room, pausing in the hallway to glance into the kitchen. Kay was aware of me, I am sure, but she did not look up. So I went on down the hall to the vast reception area, crossed its gleaming parquet expanse, and started up the stairs.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but what Kay had said was true. The upward climb was seemingly interminable and as shadowed as it was long. There were those strange sounds, also, like stealthy footsteps in pursuit, sounds where there should have been none. And, due to a trick of acoustics, no sounds where sounds should have been.

I reached the landing, breathing hard, almost leaping up the last several steps. I whirled around, tensed, heart pounding. But there was no one behind me. Nothing but shadows. Cautiously, I looked down over the brief balustrade that joined the top of the staircase to the wall of the landing.

The parquet floor below me was so distant that I would not have known that it was there had I not known that it was, so distant and so cloaked in darkness. I backed away hastily, feeling more than a little dizzy.

I went on to my room, cursing my runaway imagination. Calling down curses upon Kay for her unwitting planting of fear in my mind. Cops should know better than that, I thought. It didn’t bother cops to talk about darkness and shadows and funny noises, and people sneaking up behind other people. Cops were brave — which was not an adjective that could be applied to Britton Rainstar.

I was, at least figuratively, a very yellow red man.

I had a streak of snowy gray right down the middle of my raven locks. And I had a streak of another color right down the middle of my tawny back.

I got out of my clothes and took a shower.

I put on pajamas and a robe and carpet slippers.

My pulse was acting up, and there was a kind of jumpiness to my toes. They kept jerking and squirming of their own volition; my toes always do that when I am very nervous. I almost called out to Kay when she came up the stairs, because she was a nurse, wasn’t she? and I certainly needed something to soothe my nerves.

But she was miffed at me, or she would have come to me without being summoned. And if I managed to un-miff her, I was sure, what I would get to soothe me was Kay herself. One of the best little soothers in the world, but one that I simply could not partake of.

I had screwed the lid on that jar (you should excuse the expression). She was forever forbidden fruit, even though I should become one, God forbid.

I tried to concentrate on nonscary things. To think of something nice. And the nicest thing I could think of was something I had just determined not to think of. And while I was doing my damndest not to think of her, simultaneously doing my damndest to think of something else, she came into my room.

Fully dressed, even to her blue cape. Carrying her small nurse’s kit in one hand, her suitcase in the other.

“All right, Britt,” she said. “I’m moving in here with you or I’m moving out. Leaving! Right this minute.”

“Oh, come off of it,” I laughed. “You’d get a permanent black eye with the department. As big as your butt, baby! You’d never get a decent job anywhere.”

“But you won’t know about it, will you, Britt?” She gave me a spiteful grin. “After I leave, and you’re all alone here in this big ol’ house...”

She set her bags down and did a pantomime of what would happen to me, clawing her hands and walking like a zombie. And it was ridiculous as hell, of course, but it was pretty darned scary too.

“... then the big Black Thing will come out of the darkness,” she intoned, in ghostly tones, “and poor little Britt won’t see it until it’s too late. He’ll hear it, but he’ll think it’s just one of those noises he’s always hearing. So he won’t look around, and—”

“Now, knock it off, dammit!” I said. “You stop that, right now!”

“... and the big Black Tiling will come closer and closer.” (She came closer and closer.) “And closer and closer, and closer — GOTCHA!”

“Yeow!” I yelled, my hair standing on end. “Get away from me, you crazy broad!”

“ ’Fraidy cat, ’fraidy cat!” she chanted. “B. R. has a yellow streak running down his spine!”

I said I’d rather have a yellow streak running down it than pimples. She said angrily that she didn’t have pimples running down hers. And I said she would have when my hex went to work.

“A pretty sight you’ll be when you start blushing. Your back will look like peaches flambé in eruption. Ah, Kay, baby,” I said, “enough of this clowning around. Just give me something to make me sleep, and then go back to your room and—”

“I won’t go back to my room! But I’ll give you a hypo if you really want it.”

“If I want it?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, I won’t be here. You’ll be aww-ll all-alone, with the big Black Things. I thought you might be afraid to go to sleep aww-ll all-alone m this big ol’ house, but—”

“All right,” I said grimly. “We wound up our little affair, and it’s going to stay wound up. You know it’s best for both of us. Why, goddammit—” I waved my arms wildly. “What kind of a cop are you anyway? A cop is supposed to be something pretty special!”

She said she was something pretty special, wasn’t she? — managing a demure blush. I said she could stay or get out, just as she damned pleased.

“It’s strictly up to you, Miss Misbegotten! My car keys are there in the top dresser drawer!”

“Thank you, but I’ll walk, Mr. Mangy Mane. I’m a strong girl, and I’m not afraid of the dark.”

She picked up her bags and left.

I heard the prolonged creaking of the stairs, as she descended them. A couple of moments later, I heard the loud slamming of the front door.

I settled back on the pillows, smugly grinning to myself. Dismissing the notion of going downstairs and setting the bolts on the door. It would be a lot of bother for nothing. I would just have to go down and unbolt it, when Kay came back. As, of course, she would in a very few minutes. Probably she had never left the porch.

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to relax. Ignoring the sibilant scratchings, the all-but-inaudible creakings and poppings peculiar to very old houses.

I thought of the stupid Indian and his blindness to the obvious. I thought of Connie’s senseless refusal to give me a divorce. I thought of Luther Bannerman, his quick admission that Connie had no insurance policy when he thought Claggett was going to check on it.

Why didn’t Connie want a divorce? Why the fear of Claggett’s checking with the insurance company? What—

Oh, my God!

I sat up abruptly, slapping a hand to my forehead, wondering how I could have missed something that an idiot child should have seen.

I was insured. That was what Claggett would have discovered. Bannerman had lied in saying that the insurance company had rejected me.

Why had he lied? Why else but to keep me from becoming wary, to allay any nasty suspicions I might entertain about his and Connie’s plans for me.

Of course, the existence of the policy would have to be revealed in order to collect the death benefit. The double-indemnity payoff of two hundred thousand dollars. But there was absolutely nothing to indicate that fraud and deception had been practiced to obtain the policy. Quite the contrary, in fact.

I, myself, had applied for it and named Connie as my beneficiary. She had what is legally known as an insurable interest in me. And if I was the kind of guy — as I probably was — who might neglect or forget to keep up my premium payments, she had the right to make them for me. Moreover, she definitely was not obligated to make the fact known that I had the policy, an asset that could be cashed in or encumbered to her disadvantage.

If her marital status should change, if, for example, we should be divorced, I would have to certify to the change. And, inevitably, I would actually know what I had only been assumed to know — that I was insured. So there could be no divorce.

Connie and her father couldn’t risk another automobile accident by way of killing me. Two such accidents might make my insurers suspicious. An accident of any kind there on their home grounds might arouse suspicion, and so I had been allowed to clear out.

I returned to my home. After a time, I began remitting sizable sums of money to Connie, and as long as I did I was left alone. They could wait. Time enough to kill me when the flow of money to Connie stopped.

Now, it had stopped. So now—

A blast of cold air swept over me. The front door had opened. I sat up abruptly, the short hairs on my neck rising. I waited and listened, nerves tensing, face contorted into a stiffening mask of fear.

And then I grinned and relaxed, lay back down again.

It would be Kay, of course. I hadn’t expected her to stay away this long. To say that I was damned glad she had returned was a gross understatement. But I must be very careful not to show it. Now, more than ever, Kay had to be kept at a distance.

After all, I had promised to marry her — when and if I was free. And Connie’s attempt to murder me was a felony, noncontestable grounds for divorce.

Kay would undoubtedly hold me to my promise. Kay was a very stubborn and determined young woman. Once she got an idea in her head, she would not let go of it, even when it was in her own interests to do so. Maybe it was a characteristic of all blushing redheads. Maybe that was why they blushed.

At any rate, there must be no gladsome welcomes between us, nothing that might develop into intimacy.

Perhaps I should pretend to be asleep, yes? But yes. Definitely. It would show how little I was disturbed by her absence. It would throw figurative cold water on the hottest of hot-pantsed redheaded blushers.

I closed my eyes and composed myself. I folded my hands on my chest, began to breathe in even-measured breaths. This should convince her, I thought. Lo, the Poor Indian, at rest after the day’s travail. Poor Lo, sleeping the sleep of the just.

Kay finished her ascent of the stairs.

She came to the door of my room and looked in at me.

I wondered how I looked, whether my hair was combed properly and whether any hair was sticking out of my nose. Nothing looks cruddier than protruding nose hairs. I didn’t think I had any, but sometimes they show when you are lying down when they would not show otherwise.

Kay crossed to my bed, stood looking down at me. My nose twitched involuntarily.

She had apparently been running in her haste to get back to me. She had gotten herself all sweaty, anyway, and she stank like hell.

I am very sensitive about such things. I can endure the direct hardships — my Indian heritage, I suppose. But I can’t stand a stinky squaw.

I opened my eyes and frowned up at her.

“Look, baby,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but — b-bbbbbbb-uht—”

It wasn’t Kay.

It wasn’t anyone I had ever seen before.

30

He was a young man, younger than I was. I knew that without knowing exactly how I knew it. Perhaps it was due to cocksureness, the arrogance that emanated from him like the odor of sweat. He was also a pro — a professional killer.

No one but a pro would have had the incredible nervelessness and patience of this man. To loiter in a hospital lobby, say, until he could give me a murderous shove down its entrance steps. Or to wait in the fields adjacent to my house, until he could get me in the scope of his high-powered rifle. Or, missing me, to go on waiting until the house was unguarded and I was unprotected.

The pro knows that there is always a time to kill, if he will wait for it. He knows that when necessity demands disguise, it must be quickly and easily used, and readily disposed of. And this man was wearing makeup.

It was a dry kind, a sort of chalk. It could be applied with a few practiced touches, removed with a brush of the sleeve. I could detect it because he had overused it, making his face a shocking mask of hideousness.

Cavernous eyes. A goblin’s mouth. Repulsively exaggerated nostrils.

And why? Why the desire to scare me witless? Hatred? Why would he hate me?

There was a click. The gleam of a razor-sharp switchblade. He held it up for me to see — gingerly tested its murderous edge, then looked at me grinning, relishing my stark terror.

Why? Who? Who could enjoy my torture, and why?

“Why, you son of a bitch!” I exploded. “You’re Manny’s husband!” His eyes flickered acknowledgment as I looked past him. “Get him, Manny! Get him good, this time!”

He turned his head. An impulse reaction.

The ruse bought me a split second. I vaulted over the end of the bed and hurtled into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door, just as he lunged against it.

A crack appeared in the inlaid paneling of the door. I called out to the guy shakily, foolishly. “I’m a historical monument, mister. This house is, I mean. You damage a historical monument, and—”

His shoulder hit the panel like a pile driver.

The crack became a split.

He swung viciously and his fist came through the wood. He fumbled blindly for the lock. I stooped, opened my mouth, and chomped down on his fingers.

There was an anguished yell. He jerked his hand back so hard that I bumped my head against the door. I massaged it carefully, listening, straining my ears for some indication of what the bastard would try next.

I couldn’t hear anything. Not a damned thing.

I continued to listen, and I still heard nothing.

Had he given up? No way! Not so soon. Not a professional killer with a personal interest in wasting me. Who hated me, was jealous of me, because of Manny.

“Look, you!” I called to him. “It’s all over between Manny and me. I mean it!”

I paused, listening.

“You hear me out there? It’s you and her from now on. She told me so herself. Maybe you think she’s stalling by going to the hospital, but...”

Maybe she was, too. Maybe her earlier hospitalization had also been a stall. Or maybe just the thought of being tied up with this guy again had driven her up the wall. Because he really had her on the spot, you know?

She had tried to kill him, had done such a job on him that she believed she had killed him. Thus her long convalescence after his “death.” Also, after his recent reappearance, he would have discovered her painful pestering of me in the course of casing her situation. So she was vulnerable to pressure — a girl who had not only tried to kill her husband but had also pulled some pretty raw stuff on her whilom lover. And the fact that her husband, the guy who was pressuring her, was on pretty shaky grounds himself would not deter him for a moment.

For he was one of those bullish, dog-in-the-manger types. The kind who would pull the temple down on his head to get a fly on the ceiling. That was the way it was. Add up everything that had happened and that was the answer.

I called out to him again, making my voice stern. I said I would give him until I counted to ten, wondering what the hell I was talking about. Until I counted to ten, then what? But he didn’t seem very bright, either, so I went right ahead.

“One two three four — Do you hear me? I’m counting! — five six seven eight — All right! Don t say I didn’t warn you! — ni-un ten!”

Silence.

Still silence.

Well, he could be gone, couldn’t he? I’d chomped down on his fingers damned hard, and he could be seriously bitten. Maybe I’d even gotten an artery, and the bastard had beat it before he bled to death.

It just about had to be something like that. I would just about have to hear him if he still remained here.

I unlocked the door. I hesitated, then suddenly flung it open. And—

I think he must have been standing against the far wall of the bedroom. Nursing his injured hand. Measuring the distance to the bathroom door as he readied himself for the attack upon it.

Then, at last, hurtling himself forward. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, legs churning like pistons, rapidly gaining momentum until he hit the door with the impact of a charging bull. Rather, he didn’t hit the door, since the door was no longer there. I had flung it open. Instead, he rocketed through the opening and hit the wall on the opposite side. And he hit it so hard that several of its tiles were loosened.

There was an explosive spllaat! He bounced backward, and his head struck the floor with the sound of a bursting melon.

For a moment, I thought he must be dead. Then, a kind of twitching shudder ran through his body, and I knew he was only dead to the world. Very unconscious, but very much alive.

I got busy.

I yanked off my robe and tied him up with its cord.

I grabbed up some towels and tied him up with them.

I tied him up with the hose of the enema.

I tied him up with the electric-light cords from the reading lamps. And some pillowcases and bedsheets. And a large roll of adhesive bandage.

That was about all I could find to tie him up with, so I let it go at that. But I still wasn’t sure that it was enough. With a guy like that, you could never be sure.

I backed out of the bathroom, keeping my eye on him. I backed across the bedroom, still watching him, and out into the hallway. And then I stopped stock-still, my breath sucking in with shock.

Connie stood flattened against the wall, immediately outside my door. And lurking in the shadows at the top of the stairs was the hulking figure of my father-in-law, Luther Bannerman.

I looked from him to her, staring stupidly, momentarily paralyzed with shock. I thought, How... why... what...? Immediately following it with the thought, How silly can you get?

She and Bannerman had journeyed from their home place together. Having a supposedly invalided daughter was a gimmick for chiseling money from me. So he had parked her before coming out to my house this afternoon, picking her up afterward. Since Kay wouldn’t have volunteered any information, they assumed that she was no more than the nurse she appeared to be, one who went home at night. She left. While they waited to make sure she would not return, they saw Manny’s husband enter the house in a way that no legitimate guest would. So they followed him inside, and when he failed to do the job he had come to...

My confusion lasted only a moment. It could have taken no longer than that to sort things out and put them in proper order. But Connie and Luther Bannerman were already edging toward me. Arms outspread to head off my escape.

I backed away. Back was the only way I could go.

“Get him. Papa!” Connie hissed. “Now!”

I saw a shadow upon the shadows — Bannerman poising to slug me. I threw up an arm, drew my own fist back.

“You hypocrite son of a bitch! You come any closer, I’ll—!”

Connie slugged me in the stomach. She stiff-armed me under the chin.

I staggered backward and fell over the rail of the balustrade.

I went over it and down, my vision moving in a dizzying arc from beamed ceiling to paneled walls to parquet floor. I did a swift back-and-forth review of the floor and decided that I was in no hurry at all to get down to it.

I had never seen such a hard-looking floor.

I was only sixty-plus feet above it — only! — but it seemed like sixty miles.

I had hooked my feet through the balusters when I went over the rail.

Connie was alternately pounding on them and trying to pry them loose, meanwhile hollering to her father for help.

“Do something, dam it! Slug him!”

Bannerman moved down the stairs a step or two. He leaned over the rail, striking at me. I jabbed a finger in his eve.

He cursed and let out a howl.

Connie cursed, howled for him to do something, goddammit!

“Never mind your damned eye! Hit him, can’t you?”

“Don’t you cuss me, Daughter!” He leaned over the rail again. “It ain’t nice to cuss your papa!”

Connie yelled “Oh, shit!” exasperatedly, and gave my foot an agonizing blow.

Her father took another swing at me, and my head seemed to explode. I heard him shout with triumph, Connie’s maliciously delighted laugh.

“That almost got him, Papa. Just a little bit more now.”

“Don’t you worry, Daughter. Just you leave him to papa.”

He aimed another blow at me. She hit my sore foot again.

And I kicked her, and I grabbed him.

He was off balance, leaning far out over the rail. I grabbed him by the ears, simultaneously kicking at Connie.

He came over the rail with a terrified howl, clutching my wrists for dear life. My foot went between Connie’s legs, and she was propelled upward as Bannerman’s weight yanked me downward.

She shrieked, one terror-filled shriek after another. Shrieking, she flattened herself against my leg and hung on to it.

She shrieked and screamed, and he yelled and howled. And one jerked one way, and the other pulled the other way. And I thought, My God, they’re going to deafen me and pull me apart at the same time.

They were really a couple of lousy would-be murderers. But they were amateurs, of course, and even a pro can goof up. As witness, Manny’s husband.

I caught a glimpse of him, as I was swung back and forth, looking more like a mummy than a man, due to the variety and number of items with which I had bound him. He came hopping through my bedroom door, very dazed and wobbly looking. He hopped out onto the landing, lost his balance, and crashed heavily into the balustrade.

It creaked and scraped ominously. The distant floor of the reception hall seemed to jump up at me a few inches, and the terrified vocalizings of the Bannermans increased.

Somehow, the mummy got to his feet again, though why I don’t know. I doubt that he knew what he was doing. He got to the head of the stairs, stood looking down them dazedly. He executed another little hop — and, of course, he fell. Went down the steps in a series of bouncing somersaults, hitting the leg that Bannerman had just managed to hook over the rail.

The jolt almost knocked Bannerman loose from me. Naturally, I was yanked downward also, simultaneously exerting a tremendous yank upon the balustrade.

It was too much. Too damned much. It tore loose from its ancient moorings and dropped downward. Connie skidded down my body headfirst, unable to stop her plunge until she was extended almost the length of her body. Clutching her father’s legs, she clung to me by her heels.

She screamed and cursed him, hysterically. He cursed and kicked at her.

A strange calm had settled over me — the calm of the doomed. I was at once a part of things and yet outside them, and my overall view was objective.

I didn’t know how the few screws and spikes that still attached the balustrade to the landing managed to stay in place, why it didn’t plunge downward, bearing us with it, into the reception hall. Moreover, I didn’t seem to care. Rather, I cared without caring. What concerned me, in a vaguely humorous way, was the preposterous picture we must have made. Connie, Bannerman, and I balled together in a kind of crazy bomb, which was about to be dropped at any moment.

I waited for the weight to go off of me, the signal that we were making the final plunge. I waited, and I kept my eyes closed tight, knowing that if I opened them, if I looked down at that floor so far below me, it would be about the last time I looked at anything.

There was so much racket from the Bannermans and the grating and screeching of the balustrade that I could hear nothing else. But suddenly the weight did go off of me in two gentle yanks. There was another wait then, and I expected to hit the floor at any moment. Then, I myself was yanked, and a couple of strong arms went around me. And I was hustled effortlessly upward.

I was set down on my feet. I received a gentle bearing-down shake, then a sharp slap. I opened my eyes, found myself on the second-floor landing, with its ruined balustrade.

Connie and Bannerman were stretched out on the floor, facedown, with their hands behind their heads. Manny’s husband lay at the foot of the stairs in a heap.

Kay peered at me anxiously. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, darling. Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said. Because I was alive, wasn’t I, and being alive was fine, wasn’t it?

To show my gratitude, I would gladly have gone down on my knees and kissed her can.

“I would have been back sooner, Britt, but a truck driver tried to pick me up. I think I broke his darned jaw.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Britt, honey... we don’t have to say anything to Sergeant Claggett about my leaving you alone, do we? Let’s not, okay?”

“Fine,” I said.

“I’ll think of a good story to cover. Just leave it to me.”

“Fine,” I said.

“You do love me, don’t you, Britt? You don’t think I’m awful?”

“Fine,” I said.

And then I put my arms around her and sank slowly down to my knees.

No, not to kiss her can, although I really wouldn’t have minded.

It was just that I’d waited as long as I could — and I couldn’t wait any longer — for something soft to faint on.

31

Kay’s story was that she had gone out of the house to investigate some suspicious noises and had found a guy apparently trying to break in. During her pursuit of him (he had got away) Manny’s husband and, subsequently, the Bannermans had entered the house. But, fortunately, she was in time to overpower them and save me from death.

The story didn’t go down very well with Jeff Claggett, but he couldn’t call her a liar without calling me one, so he let it go. And not only did Kay keep her job with the department, she received a commendation and promotion. The increase in pay, she estimated, would pay for the all-white gown and accoutrements. Which, she advised me unblushingly, she intended to wear at our wedding.

To move on:

Connie and Luther Bannerman pleaded guilty to attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They received ten years on each count, said sentences to run consecutively.

Manny’s husband remained mute and was convicted of attempted murder. But other charges were dug up against him before he could begin serving sentence — he was a very bad guy, seemingly. The last I heard, he had accumulated two life sentences, plus fifty years, and he was still standing mute. Apparently, he saw nothing to gain by talking.

Manny was taken from her hospital to the criminal ward of the county hospital. Pat Aloe could have got her out, I am sure, since the charge against her of harboring a criminal — failing to report her husband to the police — was a purely technical one. But Pat had grimly washed his hands of Manny. He wanted nothing more to do with her. He had no further need for her, for that matter, having begun the swift closing out of PXA’s affairs.

Manny cooperated fully with the authorities, and their attitude toward her was generally sympathetic. She had attacked her husband without intent to kill him. His abuse had driven her temporarily insane, and when she recovered her senses, she was holding a steam pressing iron in her hand and he was sprawled on the ground at her feet. The storm was gathering by now, and she was forced to flee back inside her resort cabin. When the police came in the morning to investigate the storm’s havoc, she was near death with shock and was never questioned about her husband’s supposed death.

Actually, he wasn’t even seriously hurt, but there was a dead man nearby — one of several who had died in the storm — who resembled him in size and coloring. Manny’s husband made the features of the dead man unrecognizable with a few brutal blows, switched clothes with him, and planted his identification on him.

He disappeared into the night then, and no one ever questioned the fact that he was dead. Possibly because so many people were glad to have him that way. Rumors had been circulating for some time that he had irritated people who were not of a mind to put up with it, and only his apparent death saved him from the actuality.

There followed an extended period of hiding out, of keeping out of the way of former associates. Finally, however, believing that feeling about him had cooled down, and having sized up Manny’s situation, he had paid her a covert visit.

She was terrified. Anyone who knew him well would be. Also, she was vulnerable to his threats, thanks to the nominal attempt on his life and the malicious mischief she had made for me. She couldn’t go to the police. She couldn’t go to Pat, who was already furious with her. So she acceded to her husband’s demands. She would go away with him, if he would leave me alone.

She collapsed after his visit and was forced to go to the hospital. His reaction was to try to kill me. She hoped to buy him off, and he accepted the money she gave him. But, of course, he would not stay bought. Again, he gave her an ultimatum: She would go back to him, or I would go — period. So she had agreed to go back to him, but the ugly prospect had brought on another nervous collapse with its resultant hospitalization.

Actually, he had no intention of leaving me alone, regardless of what she did. He was a handsome hood, and as vain and mean as he was handsome. And it was simply not tolerable to him to allow his wife’s lover to live.

So he had tried to kill me for the third time. At the same time the Bannermans were attempting to kill me for the second time. And so much for them.

The charge against Manny was dismissed, with the urgent recommendation that she seek psychiatric help. She gladly promised to do so.

Mrs. Olmstead was caught up with in Las Vegas. She was drunk, thoroughly unremorseful, and some twenty thousand dollars ahead of the game. She returned most of my money, I think. I’m not sure, since I don’t know exactly how much she got away with. Anyway, I declined to prosecute, and she was still in Vegas the last I heard.

Still drunk, still unremorseful, and still a big winner.

32

I went to the hospital a few days after the Bannermans and Manny’s husband tried to kill me. My house needed repairs to make it livable, and it was kind of lonesome there by myself, so I went to the hospital. And I remained there while the courts dealt with my would-be killers, and certain other happy events came to pass.

The doctors hinted that I was malingering and suggested that I do it elsewhere. Jeff Claggett gave me a stern scolding.

“You don’t want to marry Nolton. You shouldn’t marry her. Why not lay it on the line with her, instead of pulling the sick act?”

“Well... I do like her, Jeff,” I said. “And she saved my life, you know.”

“Oh, hell! She was goofing off when she should have been on the job, and we both know it.”

“Well... but I promised to marry her. I didn’t think I’d ever be free of Connie at the time, but—”

“That wasn’t a promise, dammit! Anyway, you’ve got a right to change your mind. You shouldn’t go ahead with something that’s all wrong to keep a promise that should never have been made.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with Kay as soon as I get some other things out of the way.”

“What things?”

“Well...”

“You’ve got a go-ahead on your erosion book and a hefty advance from the publisher. You’re getting a good settlement on your condemnation suit; my lawyer friend says it will be coming through any day now. So what the hell are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” I said firmly. “And I won’t wait any longer.”

“Good! You’ll settle with Nolton right away, then?”

“You bet I will,” I said. “Maybe not right away, but...”

He cursed, and stamped out of the room.

The phone rang, and of course it was Kay.

“Just one question, Britt Rainstar,” she said. “How much longer do you plan on staying in that hospital?”

“What’s the difference?” I said. “My divorce hasn’t come through yet.”

“Hasn’t it?” she said. “Hasn’t it?”

“I, uh, well—” I laughed nervously. “I haven’t received the papers yet, but I believe I did hear that, uh— My goodness, Kay,” I said, “you surely don’t think that I don’t want to marry you.”

“That’s exactly what I think, Britt.”

“Well, shame on you,” I said. “The very idea!”

“Then, when are you leaving the hospital?”

“Very soon,” I said. “Practically any day now.”

She slammed down the phone.

I lay back on the pillows and closed my eyes.

I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. My shame increased as the days drifted by and I stayed on in the hospital. The naive, evasive-child manner I maintained was evidence of my general feeling of hopeless unworthiness. The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-hound-dawg routine set to different music.

Whatever I did, I was bound to make someone unhappy, and I have always shrunk from doing that. I am always terribly unhappy when I make others unhappy.

I wondered what in the name of God I could tell Manny. After all, I had told her that the only reason I didn’t marry her was because I couldn’t. I was married to Connie, and there was no way I could dissolve our marriage. Now, however, I was free of Connie, and Manny was free of her husband. So how could I possibly tell her that I was marrying Kay Nolton?

I was wrestling with the riddle the afternoon she came to see me, the first time I had seen her since that seemingly long-ago day when she had come to the house.

I stalled on giving her the news about Kay, staving it off by complimenting her on how nice she looked. She thanked me and said she certainly hoped she looked nice.

“You see, I’m getting married, Britt,” she said. “I thought you should be the first to know.”

I gulped and said, “Oh,” thinking that that took me off the hook all right — or sank it into me. “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy, Manny.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure I will be.”

“Is it, uh, anyone I know?”

“We-el, no...” She shook her head. “I don’t believe you do. You’re going to get acquainted with him, because I intend to see that you do. And I think you’ll like him — the real him — a lot better than the man you think you know.”

“Uh, what?” I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Well, you’d just better!” Her voice rose, broke into joyous laughter. “You’d better, you nutty, mixed-up mixed-blood, or I’ll take your pretty gray-streaked scalp!”

She came to me at a run, flung herself down on the bed with me.

Naturally, the bed collapsed noisily.

We were picking ourselves up when the door slammed open and a nurse came rushing in. She had red hair and beautiful long legs and a scrubbed-clean look.

“Kay—,” I stammered. “W-what are you doing here?”

She snapped that her name was Nolton, Miss Nolton, and she was there because she was a nurse, as I very well knew. “Now, what’s going on here, Miss?” she demanded, glaring at Manny. “Never mind! I want you out of here, right this minute! And for goodness sake — for goodness sake — do us all a favor and take him with you!”

“Oh, I intend to,” Manny said sunnily. “I’m getting married, and he’s the bridegroom.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Kay said. “I’m g-glad that s-someone’s willing to marry him. He had t-that... that I—”

She turned suddenly, and hurried out the door.

Manny came into my arms, and I did what you do when a very lovely girl comes into your arms. And then, over her shoulder, I saw the door ease open. And I saw that it was Kay who had opened it.

She stuck out her tongue at me.

She winked and grinned at me. And, then, just as she closed the door, she turned on a truly beautiful blush.

And when it comes time to close the door on someone or something, I know of no nicer way to do it.