'You're right. I wasn't thinking. Anyway, he didn't come here.'
'That's lucky for you, he might have finished the job. Will you tell me what happened?'
'I got him out of the trunk, and took off the cuffs, and he got a lucky kick in at my head. He got me down and hit me with a rock, and I was out for a few seconds or a minute or something, and when I was getting up he came back around the car with the knife and let me have it. I thought I was dead.'
'And that's it?'
'Till I opened my eyes and saw your wife. It beats me how I got here.'
'It beats me,' Grofield said, 'that you weren't seen.'
Dan reached up a shaky hand and wiped his mouth. He was still very weak; the talking had worn him, and he was beginning to breathe hard. He said, 'Can I stay? I know how you feel about-' He let the sentence lapse.
Grofield shook his head. 'There's no choice,' he said. 'Naturally you'll stay.'
'Only for a few days, till I get my strength back.'
It would be more than that, but Grofield didn't say so. 'Sure,' he said, and got to his feet. 'Your wallet looked pretty fat when I undressed you. I'll want you to pay your way.'
'Sure,' Dan said. 'Take what you want.'
'Just your expenses,' Grofield said. 'Ordinarily I wouldn't, but we're running kind of tight.'
Mary said, 'Do you like minestrone? Canned, I mean.'
'Sure.'
'Rest for a while,' she said, 'and I'll make it. Come on, Alan, let him rest.'
They went out and shut the door, and Grofield said, 'I'm sorry about this.'
'That's all right. We'll say he's my cousin that came to visit and caught a cold on the trip and has to stay in bed for a while.'
Grofield grinned at her. 'Okay.'
7
When the phone started to ring, Grofield was on the ladder, a paint brush in his hand. He was putting a new coat of white on the words MEAD GROVE THEATER that filled the whole side of the barn facing the country road.
'Crap,' he said. Mary was at work, he'd have to answer it himself. He put the brush in the bucket standing on the ladder top, and went hurriedly down to the ground.
He was now about midway between the two phones, one extension in the box-office to his right and one backstage near the lightboard. He hesitated, while the phone started a third ring, and then trotted around to the big open doorway leading to the stage. He went up the wooden ladder fixed to the outer wall and headed across the stage. Dan was sitting on the leather chair in the living room set, crossways to the house so he could get a little sun from the open door. This was the first day he was up and around, after being here a week. He looked pale and thin, but itchy and impatient. He lifted a hand in a slow weak wave as Grofield trotted by at an angle toward the lightboard.
'Hello?'
'Grofield?' The voice was male, heavy, somewhat indistinct.
'Speaking.'
'This is Barnes.'
The name had a familiar sound to it, but Grofield made no immediate connections. He said, 'Barnes?'
'From Salt Lake City.'.
'Oh!' Now he remembered, and an image of Ed Barnes flashed in his mind – a tall man, very broad in the shoulder but somewhat gone to fat, about forty years old, with thin black hair and a lumpy formless nose. Grofield had worked with Barnes once, on a bank job in Salt Lake City.
Barnes was saying, 'You free?'
'As a bird,' Grofield said.
'Could you get to St. Louis tomorrow?'
'Yes.'
'Meet Charles Martin at the Hotel Hoyle.'
'Done.'
Grofield hung up and went back across the stage toward Dan. 'I'm leaving tomorrow for a while,' he said.
Dan looked sour. 'You got something?'
'You know Ed Barnes?'
'I worked with him once or twice.'
'If it works out,' Grofield said, 'you'll probably be gone before I get back.'
