Vic thanked him for his visit, and then he was gone. Vic stood in the garage, listening to his car going into the distance and thinking that Horace had not asked him where Melinda was or when she was coming back, knowing that Vic probably wouldn't have known and that questions would have embarrassed him. Vic went over to his snail aquaria.
Hortense and Edgar were making love, Edgar reaching down from a little rock to kiss Hortense on the mouth. Hortense was reared on the end of her foot, swaying a little under his caress like a slow dancer enchanted by music. Vic watched for perhaps five minutes, thinking of absolutely nothing, not even of the snails, until he saw the cup-shaped excrescences start to appear on the right side of both the snails' heads. How they did adore each other, and how perfect they were together! The glutinous cups grew larger and touched, rim to rim. Their mouths drew apart.
Vic looked at his watch. Five minutes to ten. It struck him as a strangely depressing time of the evening. The house was utterly silent. He wondered if Trixie was asleep? He cleared his throat and the small, rational sound was as noisy as a foot over gravel.
The snails made no sound. Hortense was shooting her dart first. She missed. Or was that part of the game? After a few moments, Edgar tried, missed, drew back and struck again, hitting the right spot so that the dart went in, which inspired Hortense to try again, too. She had a harder time, aiming upward, but she made it after three deliberate and patient tries. Then as if shocked into a profounder trance, their heads went back a little, their tentacles drew almost in, and Vic knew that if they had had lidded eyes they would have been closed. The snails were motionless now. He stared at them until he saw the first signs that the rims of their cups were going to separate. Then he walked up and down the garage floor for a minute, suffering an unaccustomed sense of restlessness. His mind turned to Melinda, and he went to the snails again to keep himself from thinking of her.
A quarter to eleven. Was she at the Wilsons'? Were all the jaws working at once? Was the detective there, or would he have gone to bed after his hard day? Would anyone possibly think of the quarry?
Vic bent over the snails, looking at them now through a hand magnifying lens. They were connected only by the two darts. They would stay like this for at least another hour, he knew Tonight he hadn't their patience. He went into his room to read.
Chapter 24
Hortense spent twenty-four hours laying her eggs about five days later, and Detective Havermal was still prowling the community, doing a far more thorough and out-in-the-open job than Carpenter had done on the De Lisle case. Havermal visited the Cowans, the MacPhersons, the Stephen Hineses, the Petersons, old Carlyle, Hansen the grocer, Ed Clarke the hardware store proprietor (Vic was highly respected at Clarke's Hardware and probably spent more money there than any other of Ed's customers), Sam at the Lord Chesterfield bar, Wrigley the newsdealer who delivered papers to the Van Aliens, and Pete Lazzari and George Anderson, the two garbagemen who collected from the printing plant and the Van Allen house, respectively. Havermal visited them with his purpose more or less obvious, Vic gathered—to make Vic responsible for Cameron's disappearance—and he asked direct questions. The general attitude of the interrogated, Vic learned, was one of extreme caution in making any statements to Havermal arid also one of resentment. It was unfortunate for Havermal that his personality was so antagonizing. Even the garbage collectors, simple men, grasped the import of Havermal's insinuations, and reacted negatively.
Said Pete Lazzari to Vic, "I ain't interested in what Mrs. Van Allen does, I sez. I know she drinks some, that's all. You're tryin' to nail a guy for murder. 'That's' pretty interestin'. I known Mr. Van Allen six years, I sez, and you won't find a nicer guy in town. I beard of punks like you, I sez to him. You know where you belong? I sez. On my truck along with the rest of the muck!" Pete I Lazzari was all torso and no legs, and could toss loaded ashcans of garbage twelve feet into the air over the rim of his truck like nothing.
On his second visit to the Mellers, Horace turned him away at the door. Stephen Hines gave him a lecture on the English principle of law that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, and on its deterioration in America because of unlettered, base-minded persons like Havermal.
Melinda informed Vic that the airlines had been checked and that Tony had not taken any plane. But Cameron had bought two tickets. Havermal had found that out, and also the fact that they were under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Cameron. "He might have turned his ticket in and bought another ticket under another name," Vic said.
"No, he couldn't," Melinda said triumphantly. "You have to have a Tourist Card to get into Mexico, and they look at the card before the plane leaves New York. Tony told me."
Vic smiled. "Remember the story the Cowans told us when they went to Mexico a couple of years ago? Evelyn had lost her birth certificate and they hadn't time to get one for her, so they just told the clerk at the Mexican Consulate their names, and he wrote out Tourist Cards for them without asking for
