“Wish I could, sometimes.” The old man’s voice was surprisingly clear, reasonable, thoughtful. If they could put him on the stand like this they’d have a good chance in court, provided of course that they could catch someone for him to be a witness against. Wherever his voice was coming from now, it was a great distance from Skid Row. The old gray-blue eyes looked at Joe from behind their hoods, took note of him, and gazed on through.
“We’re going to look at some buildings, big houses, ask you to look at them. I guess they’ve told you about that.”
“Yeah.” A sigh. “I’ll look at ’em. I’ll tell you what I can.”
“That’s good.”
The old man went back to his thumbnail. Joe stared out the window at passing suburbia. For some reason he found himself wondering what his life would have been like if he’d been born on a farm.
Time passed silently in the car. The old man had already been questioned on every subject where it was thought he might know something. There were other topics the men might have talked about but didn’t want to bring up in front of him. They were probably all tired, wishing they could be spending their Sunday on something else. The caravan kept moving at a good clip along the highway, keeping up with all but the fastest traffic. A half hour had gone by with no conversation of consequence, and suburbia was being replaced by farmlands, when suddenly the old man sighed. There was that in the sound which got attention.
“I’m gonna have to take a hand,” he announced. His hands were still clasped together, but he was staring straight ahead, no longer at his thumbnails.
The Intelligence man had hitched himself around in his seat, and was looking back at the potential witness with a psychologist’s estimating eye. “Take a hand in what matter, sir?” he inquired.
“Once a man realizes who his real enemies are, then he’s got to do something about it.”
Joe felt a chill.
“Like his kidnappers,” said the Intelligence man.
The old man stared at him blankly for a while. Then at last he said “Right,” as if his thoughts had been racing a long way ahead and had had to come back to answer belatedly.
Satisfied, the Intelligence man nodded, smiled, turned to face front again, letting well enough alone. Joe still felt a chill.
“And a man has to help his friends,” murmured the old man, very low. “His allies; even if he doesn’t like ’em.” He fell back into a near-trance, staring at his hands.
Charley Snider had seen a lot of psychos in his day, and probably thought he knew the harmless ones. He glanced at the old man once now, then out at cornfields. Then, as if something the glance had shown him had caught belatedly at his instincts, he looked back again. “Mr. Falcon?”
“Don’t bug me now,” said the old man in a voice of fierce concentration. “Gimme ten minutes to—think.” And something in the way he said it made Intelligence turn his head again, open his mouth, and then decide not to interfere. Christoffel looked back in the mirror, and then just kept on driving.
Five minutes later the driver commented: “Looks like some heavy weather up ahead. Damn. Some of those back roads’ll be…” He let it go. No one bothered to take it up.
A good seven minutes more passed, before the old man relaxed, with a sigh that seemed to come out of some vault of the dark past. He let himself sink back in the seat, suddenly looking worn and almost frail. “That’s it,” he breathed. “Talisman’s out, just in time.”
Joe looked round sharply. Charley asked: “Who’s that?”
“Just thinking out loud,” said Falcon weakly. Before anyone could ask him anything else, he added: “I think we’re gonna meet some people up there, this place we’re going to.”
“Someone named Talisman?” asked Charley. “Who’s that?”
“We’ll see,” said the old man, letting his eyes close. “I can identify the place for you. I’m sure of that now.”
It was the first time he’d ever made such a confident assertion, and the others exchanged hopeful looks.
“How about the people?” Charley asked him. “The ones who kidnapped you. If they’re there.”
Another great sigh. “Yeah, them too.”
After that, nobody wanted to push any more questions at him right away. Five minutes more of silence and it began to rain; as the driver had foreseen, heavy stuff. The wipers monotonously flogged the windshield.
“Helicopters won’t do us a damn bit of good in this, if we should need ’em,” someone in the front seat complained.
“They’re still standing by.”
The car radio signaled, and the Intelligence man talked for a time on its handset phone. Joe couldn’t hear much of what the conversation was about. He wasn’t trying very hard. He had other things to think about. The first “castle “ they were to take a look at was near Sycamore. Pale stone and pointed windows, behind a towering hedge. Joe might have described the place as a castle himself, but the old man dismissed it with an absently contemptuous wave of his hand.
“You sure? Take a good look.”
“I’m sure. Let’s get the hell on with it. This is not the place.”
“You said you didn’t get much of a look at the outside of the place where they were holding you.”
“I got a quick look. This ain’t it. Let’s go.”
They stopped at a drive in for hamburgers and coffee. An hour after that, they discovered that the road by which they had intended to approach the Littlewood castle was flooded, the river here up with the rain, over the floodplain that lay along its southwestern bank.
“Okay. Back through Blackhawk then, and we’ll go around, come in from the other direction.” Men were looking at their watches and
