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 shirt 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 hell 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 glass, and went in.
Chapter 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 glass.
“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 damn 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 God, 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 oult 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 embarrassing.
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 pass 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
