In my thoughts a plan of action was forming, he must not know that I was after him. Secure in the belief of his success he would be emboldened, until the moment came for me to strike.
Somehow a way must be found to keep hidden my disappearance from the funeral home, the fact that I still lived. That would take some doing. There was one man with the power to swing it. Lew Whitfield.
Normally I could have walked the distance from the funeral home to Lew’s house in ten minutes. Today that movement required a full thirty minutes. I hurried as fast as I could. I knew that my absence from the funeral home might be discovered at any moment and an alarm raised. I passed few people. Dock workers. Fishermen. I got a glance or two from some of them, the kind of glance they might give a man who’s been out all night on a drunk and got in a fight.
I was reeling on my feet when I arrived at Lew’s. His large, old frame house loomed against the red eye of the rising sun like a hulking barn. For three years Lew had promised himself to paint the place next summer.
I walked around the side of the house to his study window. The window was open against the Florida weather, as I had guessed it would be. The screen, however, was locked. My head was spinning, and it took me a few seconds to figure a way out of that. Then I remembered the pen knife in my pocket. I used it to cut a small hole in the screen through which I could slip a finger and throw the hook latch.
I pulled the screen out, crawled over the sill, and collapsed on the floor of Lew’s study. I was going again, back into that nether world of shadows. I clenched my hands and almost screamed aloud. I was slipping—slipping. The shadows were heavier. Sweat broke cold on my forehead. The effort of my exertion had been too much. Over me the shadows came.
The blackout didn’t last long. I woke slowly, blind with that ache in my head. I could hear footsteps moving about overhead. A child came running down the steps outside the door, and from the back of the house I heard Marge Whitfield, “Breakfast!”
I heard the scramble toward the dining room. Then the house was silent as the family ate.
I pulled myself across the floor, up on the leather couch against the wall. I sat down with a deep sigh. Lew’s desk, as cluttered as my own, was across the room from me.
* * * *
Fifteen or twenty minutes passed before Lew came into the study. The door swung open, admitting him, partially concealing the couch. He closed the door. He was alone. He patted his stomach as if his breakfast had been the best; and then he walked to the window and stood looking out at the day, lost in thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the friend he’d lost.
When he turned, he saw me.
He had nerve. His face drained of color and his body went rigid, but he made no outcry upon beholding the apparition before him.
He breathed out explosively, crossed the room, and reached out to touch my shoulder.
“It’s really me, Lew. You’re not seeing things.”
“But how, Doug? How?”
“I don’t know myself, yet.”
“I’ll get Marge, Vicky—a doctor.”
“No, wait! No one must know, Lew, until we’re ready. Until I say the word.”
“But, man, you may be dying.”
“You’re probably right, but I’ll take long enough in the process. I have that feeling. That I won’t die until I find him.”
He dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the couch beside me. “I don’t understand any of this, Doug!”
“You thought last night I tried to kill myself,” I said, “but such a thought was the furthest thing from my mind. Somebody tried to murder me.”
He found a cigar in his pocket with fingers that shook. Then he dropped one flat word: “Who?”
“I don’t know. That is, I don’t know his name. I can’t think of anybody who would have done it—except maybe the man who’s been fooling around with my wife.”
“So you know that? Although ‘fooling around’ might be a little strong.”
I cut a quick glance at his face. “You mean you’ve known for some time?”
“Nothing definite, Doug. Just talk I heard—behind your back.”
I felt more than a little ill. “The old saying has some ground under it, then, about the husband being the last to know. You’re going to help, Lew. First, you’ve got to get hold of that undertaker. Next you’ve got to dig into—her recent past. Find the man. Find out if he’s the kind who might commit murder for a beautiful woman who will come into considerable material comforts and money through her husband’s death.”
He made no move to interrupt as I tried to bring back everything that had passed through my mind last night. I told him of the growing distance between Vicky and me lately. I told him about the incident on the Bath Club terrace.
“Thelma Grigby’s phone call only brought the matter to the forefront of my mind. Now we’ve got to lay a trap for him. He mustn’t know that his plan has failed—until it’s too late to do him any good.”
Lew’s heavy face had taken on a greyness. “It might hold water,” he admitted. “It’s an old story. But what of Vicky?”
“I have to know about her, too,” I said slowly. “She was pretty quick to tell the world that I’d killed
