Joe did not repeat the question. There had been moments during the ride when mentally he swore at himself for being taken in by Judy’s hysterics and Corday’s strange act, and came very close to turning the car around at once. These moments were followed by others in which he nursed the feeling, hardly suitable for a cop but inextinguishable anyway, that weird things in the field of ESP did sometimes happen. His own mother and father had testified to mutual experiences. And the rational part of his mind suggested that the best way to cure Judy of this dream-idea might be to let her see that there was nothing in it. And, again, to get a kidnapping victim back, any effort at all was worth a try.
They were approaching a highway intersection. “What do I do here?” he asked his guide.
“Turn left,” Judy ordered. Give her credit, she was always decisive in giving directions. “We’re very close now. Another mile should do it.”
“Left it is,” Joe agreed. He could just picture himself talking to the sheriff’s office on the phone: Yessir, we know where the boy is now. His teenage sister saw it in a dream, and sure enough . . .
The new highway ran ahead of him almost straight, and almost empty. The sun, after almost breaking through the clouds a little earlier, had been smothered again in thick gray masses from which it did not seem likely to emerge again today. Although theoretically it was still daylight, Joe had already flicked his headlights on.
The last housing developments had now fallen behind. To right and left the road was bordered by snowy farm fields, brown hedgerows, patches of woods, wire farm fences. A narrow highway bridge came leaping up to bear the Volkswagen over a still narrower stream, a country creek that twisted its way in a frozen course to right and left. For just a moment the engine stuttered—
“Here!” The word burst out of Judy in a shriek. Joe looked wildly around for some impending accident. He braked, avoiding a skid in the freezing slush by fancy footwork on the pedals.
Judy’s fingers were biting like claws at his shoulder. “That next drive on our left,” she agonized. “Take that, he’s in a house back there.”
Joe had brought the small car to a complete stop on the shoulder of the highway. Now he eased it forward. Looking ahead on the left, he could now see that there was a driveway, a small unpaved road, a something, and he turned into it, between patches of hedgerow. A rural mailbox planted beside the highway was capped with snow, making any name that it might bear invisible.
Trackless snow also covered the narrow lane or drive. But the surface beneath was evidently solid and level, for going was not difficult. Almost at the start the drive turned, taking them out of sight of the highway among wintry thickets and small trees. It ran straight for fifty yards or so, then turned again, at the same time topping a small rise of ground.
Just before reaching this second turn, Joe eased the Rabbit to a stop. Directly ahead there had just come into his view the upper portion of one end of what he would later learn was a sprawling, white brick, ranch-style house. Now, squinting into the dusk, he thought he could make out cedar roof-shingles under a partial covering of snow.
Oddly, Joe felt almost cheated. He looked at the calm, unreadable face beside him for several seconds before he spoke. “I don’t know what this game is, mister.”
Corday’s thin lips parted, this time not in a smile. “It is a very serious game indeed. And I assure you that you and I are playing it on the same side.” Peering toward the house, the old man added, as if to himself: “The sun has not yet set.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Judy said in a tight voice: “Do something, please, Joe. You’re a policeman. My brother is in there.”
Joe looked at them both. Then he put the car in reverse and backed it up a few yards, getting it completely out of sight of the house. He turned the ignition off. He looked at them both again, and shook his head. “Judy, you know I’ve got no authority, outside the city. I’ll do this much: walk up to the front door and see who’s home, if anyone. You two stay here, just sit tight.”
Judy started to demand that he do more than that, but Corday reached back to touch her wrist and she fell silent. Joe got out of the car and, with a last look at Corday, took the keys with him. “Be back in a minute or so.”
Readying a story about car trouble and needing to use a phone, he trudged the last yards toward the house, following the curve of the drive through completely untracked snow. It was all crazy, of course. Somehow Judy must have glimpsed from the highway a white house and shingle roof . . .
The only sign of life that Joe could see ahead was the subtle wavering of heated air above a chimney. Not a great brick one that would have a fireplace at its base, but the small metal tube that would vent the house’s furnace to the air. The furnace was turned on, then. But the garage door and the front door under its shingled overhang were both sealed along their bases with unbroken snow. No light showed in any window. There were no Christmas decorations, either, if that meant anything, which it probably did not.
When he reached the front door he alternately pushed the bell button and knocked, police style, keeping up a steady barrage in a way that almost always got results, making whoever was inside think that there was some real emergency. The doorbell worked, for he could faintly hear the chime. It wasn’t answered, though.
A full minute of such thorough treatment got no results. Joe tried to peer into a large window on the porch beside the door, but the drapes were too tightly shut inside. Not quite ready to give up yet, he started around the house, looking for tracks or other signs of occupancy, and finding nothing that seemed consequential. A couple of imperfectly draped windows let him peek into a couple of rooms, which were empty of furniture. He did see some new-looking paint and shiny floors, as if some remodeling or refinishing project might recently have been completed; but it was too dark inside to be sure of even that much. It might be that the owners had moved out during the remodeling, but had left the heat turned on to protect the water pipes and the new plaster.
His circuit of the house completed, Joe approached the front step again, thinking: one more knock, so I can say I really tried. When we get back to the highway, I’ll check the name on that mailbox—just to be thorough.
* * *
Fiercely Judy hissed the words, almost in the ear of the old man who sat in the seat ahead: “He
“I do not doubt that, Judy.” Lean fingers on the door handle beside him, the old man was staring ahead with serpent-like intensity. “But neither do I think that Joe is going to discover him. He is an honorable policeman, who will not dream of exceeding his authority on grounds no stronger than those which we have given him.”
“We can’t go away and leave Johnny in there!”
“We certainly cannot. Especially since this visit must alarm his captor. You say you see only one man with him, now?”
“Yes.”
“I think you are right.” And with the movement of a lithe twenty-year-old, Corday was suddenly out of the car. He held the door open, his tall form bending beside it, looking in at her. “I am going to take action. And you . . . but no.”
“What is it?” She had never seen eyes like his . . . they were so dark. And they were old no longer.
He said, eyes glittering: “I was about to order you to stay here in safety. But this is not the world for safety, is it? Nor are you and I the people who prize it above all. So, will you enter battle with me? In all the world are very few whom I would sooner ask.”
The man who spoke to her seemed to have been transformed, to have grown larger than life. And it seemed to Judy that she was transformed too. The young woman who stepped out of the car was a fit companion for heroic deeds. Yet she was still herself, perhaps more truly herself than ever before.
“What must I do?” she calmly asked.
“Come this way at once. Joe is returning.” Her companion’s voice had altered too, and there were hints of drums and trumpets even in its softness.
She followed him as quickly as she could, along the edge of the drive back in the direction of the highway.
“Now jump this way,” he ordered. “Leave no tracks.” The best sprint of her young legs took her sideways from the drive, to an area of matted leaves and brown grass that had been blown free of snow. From one snowless patch to the next she followed her companion, who moved ahead now like an acrobat, reaching back a hand from time to time to steady her. He led her through grass and brush and briefly along the top rail of a split-log fence, in a curving path that brought them into some bushes from which they could just see the car.
