All the while he was growling deep in his throat, and he kept coming in. Coming in for the kill. He had meant what he said—he wouldn’t stop now until he killed me. And I was beginning to realize he could do it.
Mike was heavy, Mike was strong, and he pushed me back towards the edge of the pool. I could see him gritting his teeth in the moonlight, and the blood running out of the corners of his mouth looked bright and heavy as quicksilver.
His knee came up suddenly, found its target. My loins lanced with pain. His thumbs sought my eyes. I pushed him off, but only for a moment. He growled louder.
Then everything went away, and I felt something tightening around my throat. He had my neck, he was choking me, trying to tear my windpipe out, trying to tear my head from my body.
Lorna whimpered and he growled louder, but I could only gasp from far away. Everything was far away, including life. It was oozing out of my body, my breath was going, my sight and senses. He was killing me.
I kicked up and in. It was a last convulsive movement, but something happened. The tightness suddenly relaxed. I could get to my feet, slowly. There was time to breathe now, time to fight off the pain and regain my awareness, time to watch him. He stood doubled-up at the edge of the pool, waiting for his pain to ease. Then he’d come in again and finish killing me.
I couldn’t wait. I moved towards him. He was getting ready, now. He spread his big hands and poised there, crouching to spring. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and swung from the waist.
My hand hurt. I stood unsteadily, rubbing my fingers, watching him fall backwards into the pool. It took a million years before he hit the water, another million years before the splash came, another million before he disappeared.
Lorna stopped whimpering. Everything got very quiet. I could hear my panting subside. I could hear a little bird chirping a mile away. I could hear the stars going round and round on their courses. I walked over to the pool and looked down. There was nothing to see in the pool but bubbles. Pretty little silvery bubbles, gleaming in the moonlight.
The water stabbed me with novacained needles. I gulped, paddled, then dived. Silver pressed my eyeballs, but I could see through silver. I could see something dark and huddled, bobbing down there at the bottom of the pool.
I reached for it, tugged at it. Heavy. Heavy as the weight inside my lungs, my head. I went up for air, got it. Then I dived again, tugged again. This time I could lift. We came to the surface together, live and dead weight. Dead weight. He couldn’t be— I had to get him out.
“Help me lift him up!” I panted.
Lorna stared over the edge of the pool. Her lips twitched, and then her mouth tried to run away from her face. But she reached down and held Mike’s collar as I pulled myself over the side and then grabbed him under the arms.
I pushed and lifted. He was heavy as lead. Lead. Dead. No, he was all right. He had to be all right.
Then he was sprawled out on the grass, face down, and I was kneeling over him, pressing his back and lifting him, press and lift—
“Is wrong, perhaps?”
I jerked and Lorna jerked. Mike Drayton just lay there.
We stared up at the plumpness of Miss Bauer.
“What are you doing here?”
“She is with me.”
Professor Hermann emerged from the shadows of the walk. “What goes on here? We’ve been looking all over for you. When the party broke up, we left, and I called your apartment from a filling station. No answer, so I came back. Apparently it was wise that I did so.”
“We had a fight,” I said. “I hit him and he fell into the pool. I fished him out. But—”
The Professor pushed me aside. He knelt and took off his hat. The bald moon of his skull shone down over Mike’s face as he turned him over on the grass. A fat hand fumbled beneath the soggy wet shirt. It came to rest there, and it stayed forever.
The wind stopped moving. The grass stopped rustling. The stars stopped twinkling. The trees bent forward, listening...listening for a heartbeat.
“He’s dead,” said Professor Hermann.
Then everything was moving again, fast. Too fast.
“Steady up.” Miss Bauer was holding me.
“But he can’t be. We’ve got to work on his lungs, get the water out! He couldn’t have stayed under more than a minute or so—”
“He was unconscious,” the Professor said. “It is too bad.”
“Too bad?” We all looked at Lorna. Her mouth was twitching again, but this time a torrent of sound gushed out.
“I’ll say it’s too bad! Wait until the papers get hold of this, wait until Lolly finds out. I’m through! Himberg will tie a can to me. And the cops! God, somebody do something. You got to—”
I shook her. It only jumbled the sounds together.
“Oh God...Himberg...gotta...”
I slapped the mouth shut.
“Cut that out!”
The Professor put on his hat, rose and laid his hand on Lorna’s shaking shoulder. “He’s right. Hysteria will not help, now. We must be calm. We must think.”
“Think? What good will thinking do? Mike’s dead, and they’ll find out, they’ll get us—”
“No. Not if we’re calm.”
That stopped her for a moment. The Professor’s voice gained assurance as he went on.
“Listen to me, Miss Lewis. I may have a solution, but you’ll have to help me.”
“How?”
“By answering questions. Here.”
He gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. He watched it wobble between her lips, then steady a bit as she inhaled.
“Better? Now listen to me and answer. Are there any servants in the house now?”
“No. I told Frieda to clear out when the gang left. The rest were just hired for the party. They went home, all of them.”
“Good. Can you remember what Mike did at the party?”
“Mike—No—I don’t want to talk about him—”
“You must. It’s important. Your life, your career.”
He knew how to get to her, all right. Not with “life” but with “career.” She sobered at the word.
“What time did Mike go upstairs with his bottle?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I saw him. Miss Bauer saw him. Others must have seen him—that group on the stairway.”
“Yes, you’re right. Let me see, now. It was around eleven, I guess.”
“Was he drunk?”
“No more than usual.”
“He drank frequently?”
“He’s been lushed up, off and on, for the last six months now, like I told you the other day.”
“And people know that? Your friends?”
“Right.”
“Did they know why—the reasons he had for drinking?”
“Say, I don’t tell people everything. You know and Judd knows, because I told him tonight. But outside of that, nobody. I guess they all thought he was just a rummy.”
“But it is established generally that he drank a great deal. That he was moody, anti-social.”
“He pulled that stunt at every party I’ve given, or every one we went to. Not that he’d come with me very often, the louse. And when he did, he generally sneaked off in the middle of the evening and took the car with
