A Touch Of Death Part 4

Here was where I went in business for myself.

All I'd accomplished in this thing so far was to get shoved around. I'd been played for a sucker by a smooth operator who'd told me about 10 percent of the whole story, but now the program was going to change.

We were all looking for that money. And the only person that really knew whether or not it was in this house was Mrs. Butler. She was the key to the whole thing. I didn't believe now that it was here, but she knew where it was, or where it was last seen. So what I wanted was Mrs. Butler. If I left her here she'd be killed, but if I took her with me I'd have the exact thing I needed: information.

And I knew just where to take her where we wouldn't be interrupted. I could sober her up, and maybe if I kept asking the right questions long enough, I might find out a little about this. Of course, if she didn't have anything to do with killing Butler, I was laying myself wide open to arrest for kidnapping, but I could see the way out of that. I tried to visualize the road map in my mind. It couldn't be much over fifty miles...

It collapsed on me then. Take her? How? I didn't have my car. Load her on my shoulder like a sack of oats, and walk through town with her? I cursed under my breath. I was right back where I'd started. But wait. She had a car, didn't she? She must have come back from Sanport in it.

I'd have to leave her while I went out to the garage to look. But that joker probably wouldn't try to ease back until he was sure I was gone. I went out and down the stairs, hurrying. I unlocked the kitchen door leading onto the back porch, cut the light, and went out. It was a few seconds before I could see anything in the dark. It'd be a nice time, I thought, for the gruesome b.a.s.t.a.r.d to try to clobber me with an ax.

When I could make out the squat shadow of the garage off beyond the corner of the house, I groped my way over to it. The big overhead door was locked. I went around to the side. There was a small door there. I tried the k.n.o.b. It was unlocked. I went in and closed it. When I switched on the flashlight I was standing beside a '53 Cadillac. I poked the beam in on the dash. The keys weren't in it. All I had to do now was find them. In a house of about twenty rooms. I looked at my watch. It was four-twenty. Maybe I couldn't make it now, even if I already had the keys.

I'd never pretended to be able to think like a woman, but I knew a little about drunks. It paid off. I covered the area between the front door, where she would come in, and the kitchen, where the bottle would be, and I found the purse on a table by the dining room door. Her key case was in it.

I left it where it was and went back upstairs. I had picked her up and started out of the room when ] thought of something else. Putting her down on the divan, I flashed the light around on the floor, looking for the bottle. It had been knocked over during the fight, but it was corked and none of it had spilled. It was a fifth, a little over half full. I shoved it in my coat pocket and picked her up again. She was still out like a hung jury, and I knew she would be for hours. As I went out through the kitchen I grabbed up the purse.

I put her on the back seat of the car and switched on the flashlight long enough to take a look at the keys. I sorted out a couple that looked promising, cut the light, and went back outside, feeling for the lock of the overhead door. The first key did the trick. I boosted the door up slowly and got back in the car. Picking out the ignition key by feel, I started the Caddy and backed it out onto the driveway. The drive was white gravel and I could see it all right, all the way out to the big gates in front. I swung out onto the street and felt my way very slowly for another hundred yards. Then I switched on the headlights and goosed the two hundred horses.

Housebreaking, I thought. Auto theft. Abduction. What was next? Blackmail? Extortion? But I had it all figured now, I was still within jumping distance of solid ground in every direction, and I wasn't in much danger if I played it right. Somebody was going to come home first in that $120,000 sweepstakes, and as of now I looked like the favorite.

We were headed south, on the highway we'd come in on. I rolled it up to seventy and tried to remember where the turnoff was. It should be somewhere around ten miles beyond that next town. I'd just have to watch for it, because I wasn't too sure, approaching it from this direction. I'd been there plenty of times, but had always come up from the south.

The headlights of a car behind us. .h.i.t the rear-view mirror. I watched them for a minute. It probably didn't mean anything; there were always a few cars on the road, even at four-thirty in the morning. They continued to hang in about the same place, not gaining or falling back.

Maybe the joker'd had a car there and was trying to find out where we went. We were dipping down toward that long piece of tangent across the river bottom now. We'll see, chum, I thought. I flipped the lights on high beam and gunned it.

I flattened it out at ninety-five and the swamp and timber flashed past and disappeared behind us in the night with just the long sucking sound of the wind. I couldn't watch him now because I couldn't take my eyes off the road, but when we came out onto the winding grade at the other end I eased it down and looked. He'd dropped back, but only a little.

That was dumb, I thought. Suppose it was a highway cop pacing us? But it wasn't; he made no attempt to haul us down. He was just hanging there. I was still worrying about the turnoff. There was still only a slight chance he was following us, but I didn't want him to see where we left the highway.

We blasted through the little town and I began counting off the miles on the speedometer. The road was winding now, and he was out of sight most of the time. But I had to ease it, looking for the place. We'd come nine miles. Ten. Eleven. Had I pa.s.sed it?

Then we careened around a long curve and I saw the huddled dark buildings of the country store and filling station. I rode it down and made the turn, throwing gravel as we left the pavement. The county road ran straight ahead through dark walls of pine. I stepped on the brakes again and snapped off the lights as we slid to a stop. In a minute I saw his lights as he went rocketing past on the highway. I sighed with relief. It was probably some guy named Joe, in the wholesale grocery business.

I cut the lights back on and before we started up I looked at my watch. It was a little after five. We still had about twenty miles to go, and I wanted to get past the last houses on the way before daybreak. We could make it if we kept moving.

Two miles ahead I turned right and followed a county road going south through scrub pine. I knew the way all right now. I'd been up here a dozen times or more with Bill Livingston, and sometimes alone, or with a girl. It was his camp I was headed for.

We'd been friends in college. His family had left him a lot of money and five or ten thousand acres of land back in here, including the lake where the camp was and a bunch of sloughs and river bottom. He was in Europe for the summer, but I knew where he left the key to the place.

I slowed, watching for the wire gate on the left side of the road. We came to it in a few minutes, went through, and I closed it again. It was eight miles of rough private road now, up over a series of sand hills and then dropping down toward the lake. The last time I'd been in they were cutting timber back in here somewhere and logging trucks were using the first three or four miles of the road. I could see the tread marks of their big tires in the ruts now. There was no way to tell whether any other cars had been in or not.

I pushed it hard. In about ten minutes we came to the fork where the logging trucks swung off to the right. I went left. As soon as we were around the next bend I stopped and got out and looked at the ruts in the headlights. There hadn't been a car through since the last time it had rained, probably weeks ago. We had it all to ourselves.

Dawn was breaking as we came down the last grade. I caught glimpses of the arm of the lake ahead, dark and oily smooth, like blued steel, with patches of mist rising here and there in the timber. It was intensely quiet, and beautiful. For a minute I wished I were only going fis.h.i.+ng. Then I brushed it off.

We went through the meadow and crossed a wooden culvert at the edge of the trees along the lake sh.o.r.e. I stopped and got out. The key was hanging on a nail just inside one end of the culvert.

The cabin faced the meadow rather than the lake. It was large for a fis.h.i.+ng or duck-hunting camp, more like a deserted old farmhouse backed up among the big trees at the lake's edge. It was still half dark back in here, and I left the lights on as I stopped by the overhang of the front porch.

The lock grated in the early-morning hush. I pushed the door open and went in. Striking a match, I located one of the kerosene lamps and lit it. This was the main room, with a wood-burning kitchen stove and some cupboards in the rear and a cot and some chairs and a table up front. The door on the right led into a storeroom that was cluttered with a hundred or so old beat-up duck decoys, parts of outboard motors, some oars, and a welter of fis.h.i.+ng tackle.

The other one, on the left, was closed. I pushed it open and carried the lamp in. It was the bedroom. It held two built-in bunks, one above the other, and a double bed against the front wall. The bed was spread with an Army blanket. I put the lamp down on a small table and went back out to the car.

I carried her in and put her on the bed. Her face was waxen white in the lamplight and her hair was a dark mist across the pillow. She must have been at least thirty, she was a pa.s.sed-out drunk, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I stood looking down at her for a minute. The whole thing was a lousy mess. Then I shrugged and picked up the lamp. I wasn't her mother. And it was a rough world, any way you looked at it.

I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the car into the old shed on the far side of the house and closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned stuff in the storeroom and some flour and miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.

I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but when the beard comes out it's ginger-colored and dirty.

I rooted around in the storeroom until I found somebody's duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put the s.h.i.+rt and tie back on. It was a little better.

The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down to smoke another cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of all that had happened since this time yesterday morning. Everything had changed.

I no longer worried about the fact that I was breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in the gallery. My only concern was that what I was doing was dangerous as h.e.l.l and if I was caught I was ruined. But it was not even that which caused the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.

It was the thought of that money, more money than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs. Butler knew where it was.

And I had Mrs. Butler.

It was nearly two hours before I heard her move on the bed in the other room. She was coming around.

I'd better be good now. I had to be good to make this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a gla.s.s, and went in.

Five

She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on each side of her face, the fingers running up into her hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes, and I could see what Diana James had meant when she said they were big and smoky-looking.

She stared at me.

"Good morning," I said. I poured a drink into the gla.s.s.

"Who are you?" she demanded. She looked around the room. "And what am I doing in this place?"

"Better take a little of this," I said. "Or if you'd rather have it, we've got black coffee." I knew d.a.m.n well which she'd rather have, but I threw in the coffee just to keep talking.

She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went out into the other room with it. When I came back I had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel, and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved the table over where she could reach it. She ignored the whole thing.

"Will you answer my question?" she said. "What am I doing in this revolting shanty?"

"Oh," I said. "Then you don't remember?"

"Certainly not. And I never saw you before."

"We'll get to that in a minute," I said. "Right now I just want you to feel better."

I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn't quite black in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.

"How about some coffee?" I said.

She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I nodded toward the door and followed her into the other room. She sat down in the chair I pulled out for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her, straddling a chair with my arms across the back.

She ignored the coffee. "Perhaps you can explain this," she said.

I frowned. "Don't you remember anything at all?"

"No."

"I was hoping you would," I said. "Especially what happened before I got there."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "And will you, for the love of the merciful G.o.d, tell me who you are?"

"Barton," I said. "John Barton, of Globe Surety. Remember? I'm from the Kansas City office, but they put me on it because I used to work out of Sanport and know this country."

I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but she still might be sharp enough to want to see something that said Barton, of Globe Surety Company. The thing was to give her the impression I'd already shown her my credentials but that she'd been drunk when she'd seen them. We wouldn't mention that. It would be embarra.s.sing.

But she didn't go for the fake hand-off. She came right in and smeared me. "I've never heard of a company by that name," she said. "And I never saw you before in my life. How do I know who you are?"

It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled in my life, and if I didn't make it stick I was penitentiary bait. I felt empty all the way down to my legs.

"Oh, sure," I said. I reached back for the wallet in my hip pocket and started flipping through the leaves of identification stuff. I made a show of finding the one I wanted, and just as I started to pa.s.s her the whole thing, I said, "Can you remember anything at all about what he looked like? Even his general build would help."

She took her eyes off the wallet and looked at me. "Who looked like?" she asked blankly.

"The man you said tried to kill you. Just before I got there."

That did it.

She gasped. And just for an instant I saw fear in her eyes. Then it was gone. "Tried to kill me?"

"Yes," I said, still crowding her. "I realize it was dark, of course. But did he say anything when he lunged at you? I mean, would you recognize his voice?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," she said. "I was just up in my room-"

"That's right," I interrupted. I put the wallet back in my pocket while I went on talking. "You were playing the phonograph, you said. And when I found you out there on the lawn you had a record in your hand. I don't think you even knew you were carrying it, but I couldn't get it away from you. You had a death grip on it. At first I couldn't make any sense at all out of what you were trying to say."

She shook her head. "I don't remember any of it," she said. "Maybe you'd better tell me what happened."

"Sure." I lit a cigarette for myself. "I had to talk to you. We're trying to run down a lead our Sanport office dug up-but I'll get to that in a minute. Anyway, I got into Mount Temple last night after midnight, and when I'd checked into the hotel I tried to call you. The line was busy. I tried again later, and it was the same thing, so I got a cab and went out to your house.

"And just as I was coming up the drive in the cab I saw you in the headlights. You had run out the front door and were going around toward the garage. When I got over to where you were, you had fallen on the lawn. You had this phonograph record in one hand and your purse in the other. You were in a panic, and practically hysterical. I couldn't make out what you were trying to say at first. It was something about listening to the music in your room by candlelight, and that you had looked around over your shoulder and there was a man standing behind you. I tried to calm you down and get the story straightened out, but you just kept saying the same thing over and over-that the man had lunged at you with something in his hand.

"You didn't seem to know how you'd got away from him, but when I suggested we go inside you started to go to pieces. Nothing could make you go back inside the house. All you wanted to do was get in the car and get away. I was afraid we'd wake the neighbors, so I went along with it. I drove, and tried to figure out what to do. I couldn't take you to the hotel or a tourist court there in town, of course, because you'd be known everywhere. You went to sleep, and I finally thought of this place. It's a duck club I belonged to when I was in Sanport and I knew there wouldn't, be anybody out here this time of year. Maybe you could get some rest, and we could talk it over when you woke up. That's about it.

"I wish you could remember something about that man, though. If he was trying to kill you, he may get you next time."

She didn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes were thoughtful.

"Do you have any idea who he could have been?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Do you really think I saw anybody?"

"Yes," I said. Baby, I thought, if you only knew. "Yes. I think you did. You were under a terrible strain."

"I must have been." She stared moodily down at her hands. When she looked back up at me she said, "You said you came to talk to me. What about?"

"Your husband."

"Oh." She sighed. "I suppose you want to ask some more questions. Or the same ones over again. I've told it so many times. . ."

"Yes," I said. I felt good. I'd put it over. "It's been rough on you, and we hate to be the pests we are, but we've got a job to do. However, mine isn't quite the same as the police's. They're looking for your husband."

"Aren't you?" she asked.

I studied the end of the cigarette. "Only incidentally."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll be frank with you, Mrs. Butler. My orders, first and last, are to find that money. Any way I can. We have to pick up the tab for it if it's not recovered, so you can see where our interest is."

"I wish I could help you. You can see that, can't you? But there isn't anything I can tell you that hasn't already been told."

I waited, not saying anything.

She sighed again. "All right. He came home from the bank at noon that Sat.u.r.day, said he was going to some lake in Louisiana, fis.h.i.+ng, and that he'd be home Sunday night. I didn't see any money, or anything that could have held that much money, but maybe it was in the car, if he had it. He didn't take any clothes except fis.h.i.+ng clothes, as far as I could tell afterward. I know he didn't take a bag. Just the fis.h.i.+ng tackle. I was a little worried when he didn't return Sunday night, but I thought perhaps he had merely decided to stay over another day. And then, Monday morning, Mr. Matthews, the president of the bank, came out and told me-" She quit talking and just stared down at her hands.

"You don't have any idea why he would do a thing like that?" I asked.

The hesitation was hardly noticeable. "No," she said.

I frowned at the cigarette in my hand, and then looked squarely at her. "Well, I'm afraid we do now," I said. "It's unpleasant, and I wish I didn't have to be the one to tell you."

"What do you mean?"

"He was running off with another woman."

"No!"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Butler. But that's the lead I mentioned, the thing our Sanport office found out. The girl's name is Diana James, or at least that's what she calls herself. She had an apartment in Sanport, and that's where he was headed. She was going to hide him there."