“And where does he live?”
“Way off someplace. Vista Canyon. I’ve never been there. Come to think about it, he’s pretty cagey where his private life is concerned.”
“Eddie, I’ll bet those pictures are at his house. And while he’s gone, if you can get away from Jake, you can go out there and find them.
“Then you’ll have a real weapon! Turn those photos over to Caldwell. You’ll save him, and you’ll also save yourself. Because once Caldwell has the pictures, he can threaten to expose the Professor if he makes trouble for you over leaving. Don’t you see? You can turn the tables and blackmail the Professor!”
She would have said more, but I was kissing her.
“Darling,” I said, “you’re on the first team. Now, go change your clothes. You’ve got an important date to go out and get stinking drunk.”
The Gin Mill was one of those fake “atmosphere” joints—with singing waiters complete with false mustaches, steins of beer, a “free lunch” which you paid for, and sawdust on the floors. There were also cuspidors alongside the booths.
That’s what I needed—the cuspidors. Jake shambled over to the bar and roosted there for three hours, while Ellen and I kept the waiter rushing to our booth with refills on scotch.
We drank a lot. At least, Jake thought we did. He’d glance in the mirror out of the corner of one bloodshot eye and catch a glimpse of us raising glasses. But he never noticed us as we emptied the shots into the cuspidor.
As the evening progressed our voices rose, and we began to muss each other up. That part was fun—and there was no need to fake. Around eleven I suggested a little singing. Ellen had a nice voice, but when she cut loose on some old favorites it was murder. Even I couldn’t stand it.
“Stop, you’re overdoing the act,” I whispered. But she kept right on singing. She was singing as I dragged her out of there. We staggered over to the car. Jake lumbered along behind at a discreet distance.
I drove Ellen up Wilshire to the apartment hotel where she stayed when she planned to be in town. It was her uncle’s place, but right now the legislature was in session and she had it all to herself.
“You coming in?” she asked.
“I wish I could,” I said. “But I’ve got work to do.” I watched Jake’s Ford in the rear-view mirror, but Ellen pulled my head around.
“Don’t try anything foolish, darling. That big gorilla could tear you to pieces.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to bother Jake at all. He’ll see me home, watch me stagger up the steps and call it a day.”
My prediction proved correct. I dropped Ellen, helped her lurch into the lobby, returned to my car and wove my way home to New Hampshire. Jake pulled up behind me.
“How’m I doin’, huh?” I yelled. “Some number, isn’t she? Some number, isn’t she? Some—”
“Not so loud!” Jake was actually embarrassed. “Look, you better turn in. You’re loaded to the eyeballs.”
“Good idea. See you tomorrow, same time, same sta’shun. ‘Bye now.”
He watched me locate the keyhole. I stepped inside, went upstairs and turned on the bedroom light. Then I went into the darkness of the bathroom and peered out of the window. Jake’s car was pulling away from the curb. Good. So far, everything checked. I looked at my watch. 11:35 by radium paint. Late, but not too late for me.
It was going to be a long drive to Vista Canyon. But that’s where the Professor lived. I didn’t know exactly where, and I didn’t know how I’d locate his place in the dark. But he was gone, Jake was gone, and now was the time. Now was the time to go back downstairs and drive away very quietly. Now was the time for speed, across town and out of town. Now was the time to wheel and climb and twist and turn through the Canyon passage.
Now was the time for midnight, and a moon, for skirling winds that clawed the clouds to phosphorescent shreds. Now was the time for silence on winding trails, for whisperings in woods, for howling in the far-off hills. Now was the time to park the car on the shoulder of the road, out of sight; to crunch through gravel and inspect the crooked signboard at the roadway’s fork.
Names, meaningless names, names of the wealthy, names of the reclusive. No Otto Hermann. Hills rose crazily all about me, leering and looming in the moonlight; huge, white wrinkled faces bearded by titanic trees. They watched and waited, watched and waited, while a little ant crawled along the road. Me.
I was a fool to feel that way. I was a fool to come here. Melodramatic nonsense. But if it was nonsense, why did the Professor hide his house?
Little beads of conversation began to string themselves on a single thread of recollection.
“It’s on the very top of the hill...the windlass and cable is convenient because we lower a little car down the hillside for groceries, and you can even ride in it yourself if you like.”
And, “It was built back in Prohibition days. Porch on three sides, wonderful view, completely private. But the big secret is the fox pen just below the house. You see, the bootleggers had to have a place to cache their liquor, and guess what they did? They set themselves up as running a fox farm, and—”
It hadn’t seemed important at the time I heard it. But now everything came back to me. Hillside. Look for a cable from the top of the hill. Three-sided porch. A fox pen in back, just below the level of the house.
I began to climb, to crawl. Crickets stopped their chirping and listened. I hit a winding trail that ended up before the door of a three-car garage. An owl hooted—derisively, I thought. I went back down to the road and started up another path. The wind laughed at me. Look for the cable, fool!
I found it. I followed it, through a tangle of scrub. I clung to the heavy wire as the going got tough. What was the legend—string in the lair of the Minotaur? But this wasn’t fantasy. It was all panting and sweat and dizziness. Then the house looked down at me over the edge of the hillside, and I stared back.
There were no lights on the porches, or inside. I walked around to the front door, using the gravel path as little as possible. The door was locked, of course. I contemplated the wire mesh of the screened-in porch. I felt for my pocket-knife. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout.
Supposing the Professor hadn’t left? What if somebody else was here—Dr. Sylvestro, for instance? There were no answers. There was only a duty to perform.
It takes about twelve seconds to break-and-enter a house, according to the movies. Working without director, lights or camera, I managed it in twenty minutes, with the aid of scraped and bleeding fingers. My trouser legs ripped as I wriggled through the wire mesh and dropped to the porch floor with a dull thud.
I got up and waited for an echo, a response from within the darkened house. Crickets punctuated the silence. The door opened to my hand. I was inside, groping for a light switch. I found it, then hesitated. But,
The light went on. I don’t know what I expected to see. A bubbling cauldron, a heap of skulls, the heads of children floating in alcohol—
It was a perfectly conventional room in a perfectly conventional home: unpainted furniture, covered with cushions; a round dining-room table, a stone fireplace and a pile of logs, bookcases made out of boards and bricks. A single touch of luxury was the grand piano that dominated the alcove of the living room.
I walked over to the bookshelves. It’s the first thing I do when visiting strangers. I looked at titles:
Professor Hermann hadn’t chosen these books. Maybe I’d made a mistake, maybe he didn’t live here at all. There were bedrooms and a kitchen to investigate now.
I walked towards the hall, and as I did so the cricket chirpings deepened, blending into croakings. Frogs. Frogs, out in back of the house, below. Below...I remembered something about a fox farm, a fox pen. Where they kept the liquor in Prohibition days—
Abruptly altering my course, I went out to the rear porch. I switched the light off as I departed, and then allowed the moon to guide me. The view was magnificent: silver trees on platinum hills. But I wasn’t here to prepare a prospectus on mining stock. I sent a stare down at the levelled area in back of the hilltop house. More wire netting, thin-meshed and held together by strutwork. A concrete flooring. This was the fox pen, all right. I didn’t see any foxes inside. I didn’t see the Professor, either.
Going down the porch steps, I listened carefully to the frogs. Were they trying to tell me something? If they were, they gave it up. As I fumbled with a latch and entered the fox pen, the croaking ceased. Silence. Silver silence. I stood inside the pen, but I didn’t feel very foxy. The frogs told me nothing, the silence told me nothing. I
