Stagerock was, as she remembered the map, more than another day’s drive from here, but at least they had been located, pinpointed out of an unknown vastness. It was not until Kincaid’s voice was gone and the peculiar personality of the house closed about her again that she realized nothing had changed.
Philip did not know that he had been located. He didn’t know about the snapshot of himself on the porch of this house, or the laboratory number Cornelia had written down, or Hilary’s untiring detective work. He was probably unaware of Kincaid’s existence. Until Kincaid got him on the telephone and warned him that he was being watched this time, he would be proceeding according to plan.
And—the desk man had thought Mrs. Byrne was lying down in her room, the manager at the last motel had thought the drive might be too tiring for Mrs. Byrne. Cornelia was ordinarily an indestructible traveller, thought Margaret over a slow heavy gathering of her heartbeats, and certainly she had looked fresh enough when she left. Thinner, shadow-eyed the night before, but radiant on the morning of departure, as though she had already gathered strength from the open sunny miles ahead, the leaving behind of the house and Hilary.
She was sick again, then. Or she was being made to appear sick, so that disinterested people, miles apart, could bear witness—
At once miles away and directly in Margaret’s ear, Hilary had begun to shriek.
“There couldn’t have been a man,” repeated Margaret, in command of herself again five minutes later. “Hilary, your windows are too high for anyone to look in. You saw a reflection, that’s all.”
Hilary gave her a look of scarlet and belligerent contempt. “People stand on things to look in windows, and the light was out.”
Margaret could well believe it. The crash following Hilary’s outcry had been her bed-tray, and the floor was sprinkled with shattered china, a rich deposit of Jello, and a slippery trail of asparagus that Hilary’s heel had struck as she dived back into her bed. It seemed impossible, through Margaret’s pounding head and throat and chest, that she would ever be capable of cleaning all that up. She said with an edged reaction from terror, “And what was your light doing out?”
There was a bird in the pear tree, Hilary said, and it kept squawking. She had thought—here came the righteous note—that maybe some other bird was trying to take its nest. So she had turned off her light and gotten the flashlight—
“What flashlight?”
“I found it,” said Hilary—and she had tried to hypnotize the bird or birds into silence by aiming the beam up into the tree. She didn’t know how she had dropped the flashlight, but it went out when it hit the ground.
She was starting back to turn on her light again when a sound made her look back at the window, and there he was. Not all of him, just his eyes under his big hat.
Margaret’s stomach dropped briefly. She had to remind herself that Julio Garcia was dead, that this was a country of big hats, that workmen on their way to somewhere often walked through the field behind the house and, presumably, back again. One of them might easily have been curious about the flashlight beam, straddled the wire fence, come up to the house—
She opened the window, feeling the night air like ice on her hot body; unhooked the screen, leaned over to look out. There was nothing under the gilded net of pear branches but leaves dying into darkness and, off to the left, the very edge of something pale and square. A block of some kind, a concrete building block? She had seen some once in the angle of the house, but not this near the window.
“I told you,” said Hilary peevishly as Margaret stepped back into the lighted safety of the room and locked the window. “Are you going to call the police?”
It was a question she had asked herself ever since the echo of Hilary’s shriek had died—but what would she say to the police? “A man looked in the window.” No, she hadn’t seen him herself, a little girl had. If they came at all, which was doubtful, they would take one look at Hilary and depart. Or at best they would make a perfunctory tour of the grounds, and certainly whoever it was had long since fled.
“No,” said Margaret, and Hilary gave her a look of indignation. “Somebody could kidnap me for all you care.” Margaret had to stifle an impulse to unstrung laughter at the thought of anyone capable of such folly, but she recognized it even then as not amusement but a trembling approach to hysteria. Someone had come quietly up to the house in darkness, had bothered to move one of the heavy blocks into place in order to look over the sill—had taken the time, even warned by Hilary’s electrifying outcry, to move the block away again.
In the kitchen, assembling cleaning things, she went on impulse into the pantry and called Jerome Kincaid at the Paraguero. His line was busy, and she returned to Hilary’s room and the staggering business of cleaning up the floor. Fright had given her an artificial energy which ebbed at once; bending to the Jello and the asparagus, she was so dizzy that tiny bright sparks floated up everywhere. She sat down abruptly on the foot of Hilary’s bed, hands steadyingly at her burning cheeks, and Hilary said defensively, “Those plates were chipped anyway.” Plates? Oh yes, Cornelia’s conscientious list of damages, almost as laughable, now, as the thought of a madman making off with Hilary. Mrs. Foale was not coming back to count her dishes and glasses, thought Margaret
