by Lionel White
Joyce had insisted that Bart take the key to the liquor chest and keep it on his chain with his other keys, and this had pleased him immeasurably for some odd reason.
He found the key now and opened the chest. A moment later he took out an unopened bottle of Scotch, one which had also been given to him by someone at the office at Christmas. He opened the bottle, having trouble with the metal cap, and found a shot glass and filled it. Then he took the drink and walked over to the big armchair in which he always sat in the evenings. He left the bottle uncapped, sitting on top of the liquor chest, the doors swinging open.
For a while he just sat there, holding the glass. At last he sighed and lifted it and drank it, making a wry face as the liquid hit his all but empty stomach.
God, it seemed utterly impossible that you could live with a person, know them and love them and share your every thought and feeling with them, for a year—and still not know them at all. His mind was in a turmoil and he knew that he wasn’t really thinking very clearly, but the fact remained that certain things were inescapable.
Joyce was gone. ‘Joyce had been at the bank, she’d taken twenty-six hundred dollars out of their account in the form of a certified check, and then she had vanished. After she had last been seen, in the bank, anything might have happened to her. She could have been in an accident, she could have been kidnapped—although this seemed utterly fantastic—or she might have been stricken with amnesia. But one single, clear fact stood out above all others: she had been perfectly normal when she had dropped him off at the railway station; she had apparently been completely normal when she had appeared at the bank to make the withdrawal.
And the man who had called twice on the telephone and hung up each time when Bart had answered.
For the first time since she had disappeared, Bart Sherwood had a momentary doubt about his wife. Was it conceivable that there was another man? Was it possible that she had taken the money and run away?
He stood up suddenly, shaking his head angrily at his own thoughts. It wasn’t possible. He knew full well that no person ever completely understands any other person; knew that no one really knows another’s heart. But he couldn’t so completely have misjudged and misunderstood her.
There was a reason somewhere. The money could be explained, and so could the telephone calls. It was possible that she had withdrawn the money, possible that by the most fantastic stretch of the imagination she might have some other man in her life. It was even possible that she could have taken the money and run off with this other man.
But it was utterly and completely impossible that she could have done it in this way, without first telling him about it. On that he would stake his life.
There had to be some explanation, some plan in back of the whole thing.
At two o’clock the doorbell rang and he crossed the living room, throwing the door open quickly, hoping …
His face fell when he saw Sims standing there, leaning against the side of the door jamb.
“Have you …” he began.
Sims shook his head and stepped inside.
“Nothing yet,” he said. “I’m sorry, but nothing … “
They sat down and Sims again began the questions, the thousand and one questions.
It infuriated him; he wanted to hit the man. But in the back of his mind he realized that Sims was, in his way, trying to help him, doing his job the way he saw it. He hadn’t minded so much when, from the tenure of the questions, it seemed the detective had a vague idea in the back of his mind that he, Bart Sherwood, might have some guilty knowledge. It was ridiculous, but Bart knew that a good cop should investigate every angle, suspect everyone. And he wanted a good cop on the job.
The thing which irritated him was the other line of questioning. Who had Joyce known before their marriage? Had she been engaged or gone out with other men? Did she have any particular male friends? What was the matter with Sims? Good God, what kind of girl did he think she was?
And the business about the money. He had no answers to that. No answers at all. He could see what was in back of the detective’s mind, and understood what he might be thinking.
“I just don’t know,” he said helplessly. “I just don’t know. I have no explanation. It seems impossible … “
Then the telephone rang again and as Bart started to get up, Sims quickly shook his head.
“Let me,” he said.
Bart stared at him as he crossed the room. Lifting the receiver from the hook, the detective held his hand half over his mouth. He spoke in a nasal, sing-song voice, a voice with a Southern accent.
“Miss Sherwood’s residence,” he said.
He listened for a moment and then spoke again.
“Miss Sherwood stepped out fo’ a few minutes. Nobody heah but me—ah’m the window cleaner. You wanna leave a message?”
He looked over at Bart, his eyes suddenly widening. He nodded quickly, then slowly put the receiver back. “What was it?”
Sims looked thoughtful for a second and then answered. “It just could be the same man who called before,” he said. “He didn’t give me his name, but he did give me a number.” He was scribbling on a notebook as he finished.
“I’ll get a trace,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later the two men left the house. They used Sims’s car and the detective drove fast, using his siren to run the red traffic lights.
7.
She could see the thin cracks of light filtering into the room through the closed wooden blinds and she knew that the room itself must face to the east. Some time during the early hours of the morning she must have finally fallen asleep because now it was daylight and now she was awake. Awake and lying on a bed in a strange room in a strange house.
With the realization that it was a new day came almost immediately her consciousness of the dull heavy pain in her arms and unthinkingly she started to turn onto her back. It was then she remembered that her wrists had been locked together by the handcuffs. The thin flannel blanket which they had thrown across her almost nude body had slipped during the night and lay half off the bed.
In spite of her knowing that she was alone in the room, her near nakedness embarrassed her and she struggled with her locked hands to bring the blanket back over her. It was the dark-eyed girl who had taken her clothes, had stripped her down to the diaphanous, transparent slip. She was becoming fully awake now, having first remembered the handcuffs and then the girl. Swiftly her mind recaptured the lost hours and it seemed incredible that this must be Tuesday morning and that all which had happened had taken place within the span of a single day.
Her eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the room and once more she gazed curiously around her. There was something almost pathetically incongruous about the room with its high, decorated ceiling, the faded, rich wallpaper and the beautifully parquet floor; the room held nothing but the bare iron bed upon which she lay and the card table set up over against the wall. She knew that at one time this must have been one of the master bedrooms in a fine Victorian mansion and that traces of its former grandeur were still about her.
Flick, the poodle, lay in a ball at the end of her bed and he hadn’t moved when she first awakened, but now he slowly stretched and leaped to the floor, straight-legged and yawning. He saw that her eyes were open and he moved over to her, his tail wagging furiously, waiting for her usual morning caress.
She spoke to him softly and he at once leaped back on the bed and snuggled close to her ….
Joyce Sherwood was a woman who’d had but a limited experience in life; in many ways she could be considered naive and unsophisticated. But at this moment she was fully aware of everything that had happened to her; fully understood the situation in which she found herself. She knew that she was not the victim of a kidnapping, in the normal sense of that word. She was not being held as a hostage. She had been unfortunate enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time; she had witnessed a robbery and a murder. She represented danger
to the men who had committed those crimes.
It was a line of thought which she would have preferred not to pursue, but the implications were inescapable. She knew that if she were freed and the men later taken prisoners, she’d be the key witness who could put them in the death house. They had already committed one murder, so they had nothing to lose by committing a second if it would in any way enhance their safety. She couldn’t avoid shivering as she thought about it. The only surprising thing was that she was still alive, and the fact that she was gave her the only source of possible hope.
There was a foul taste in her mouth and now she was hungry and slightly sorry she hadn’t eaten when they had offered her food the night before. She began to wonder if they were up yet. Then she began to think again of what had happened, trying to remember every detail.
There had been four of them, and she knew from their conversation that they intended to meet again. Could that be what they were waiting for, why they hadn’t done anything to her yet?
Once more she realized the way her thoughts were traveling and she made an effort to think of something else. She realized the futility of frightening herself by allowing her imagination to run wild. And so she tried to think of Bart and what Bart would be doing now. He must have reported her missing. He, and the police, must have realized that something had happened to her. Perhaps he had learned of the money she had drawn from the bank and if he had, the knowledge would be of no help. It would only serve to further confuse him. God, there must be some way …
Then she remembered the roadblock and the state trooper who had stopped their car as they’d driven north to the hideout. He had asked for her driving license, read her name and her description, he had checked the license plates on her car.
She had a sudden revival of hope. They would find her, they had to. Bart would report her missing and the police would know about her and sooner or later they would find her. She must hang on to her senses, control her fears and her emotions and wait. It was only a question of time.
But in the back of her mind, as she tried to reassure herself, was the nagging bit of knowledge that the other members of the gang would be arriving, that time itself was running out.
There were footsteps outside of the door in the hallway and a moment later the door was pushed open. It was the girl with the dark eyes and the dark hair, and she was holding a tray in her hand. Flick looked up and barked.
“Hang on to that dog,” the girl said.
Santino and Luder arrived at the house in Cameron Corners just before dark Tuesday evening. They came in a Ford station wagon which belonged to a friend of Santino, who’d loaned him the car for a few days with the understanding that Santino was not to use it for transporting narcotics or other illegal purposes.
It is a coincidence that the only person who noticed their arrival at the old three-story white house should have been Miss Bertha Abernathy.
Bertha Abernathy was a very nosy character, and the first to admit as much.
“Why shouldn’t I be curious?” Miss Abernathy would ask if one of her friends should laughingly accuse her of being an indefatigable gossip and busybody. “My father and my grandfather were born here in Cameron Corners, and I’ve lived here all of my life. This is my home, my town. If anything happens around here, I like to know about it. Not, of course,” she would add, “that very much does happen.”
Cameron Corners is the sort of town in which just about anything, from the arrival of a new family to a high-school basketball game, is big news. There is no local newspaper to report these events, but the town doesn’t really need a newspaper. The town has Miss Abernathy, who, now that she’s retired as librarian, has all her time to devote to her avocation and hobby.
It was only natural, when she looked out her living-room window and saw the station wagon turn into the driveway of the place across the way, that she should be curious. Miss Abernathy’s family and the Bleekses had been close friends for longer than she cared to remember. She’d been brought up with Aggie Bleeks and at one time it had been expected that she would be married to young Carlton Bleeks. But Carlton had been killed in World War I and the rest of the Bleekses had died off, all except Aggie, who had married an Italian count and moved to the Riviera. That had been more than ten years ago, and the old Bleeks mansion had been vacant for almost a decade, until it had finally been rented by a New York real estate agent this last spring. Aggie must have made the arrangements from her home in the Riviera, and Miss Abernathy had resented the fact that she hadn’t written to her first about it. The young couple who’d taken the house were certainly queer ones. People by the name of Brown; a thin wisp of a man in his early thirties, who was almost never at home, and his rather common, though very pretty young wife.
Miss Abernathy had called, as she called on all new people who moved into the town, or at least the right part of the town, and had found the wife home alone. It hadn’t been a very satisfactory call.
Mrs. Brown had a most peculiar accent and an almost psychopathic reserve, and her clothes were as odd as the furnishings which they had moved into the old place. Miss Abernathy saw only the living room, but that was plenty. The stuff looked as though it had come out of a Sears catalogue, which as a matter of fact, it had.
Miss Abernathy’s call had not been returned, and although she was a little resentful, it really didn’t bother her. The Browns were very strange people. It seemed that Mr. Brown was some sort of salesman and spent the week in New York. They never seemed to go out, never had visitors. It was because of this that Miss Abernathy had been most interested in seeing the station wagon arrive on that Tuesday just after dark. It was the second time in two days that the Browns had had company. Miss Abernathy already knew about the previous guests. She had been watching at the window on Monday afternoon when the girl and the odd-looking dog and the man with one arm drove into the old barn and then walked back down the driveway to enter the side door.
It was very strange. That very morning, Monday, she had met Mrs. Brown down at the market while she was shopping and had stopped to pass the time of day. Mrs. Brown had dropped the information that she was expecting guests—she’d been doing some rather heavy shopping from the size of the bags of groceries the clerk was piling into her car—and Miss Abernathy had commented on it.
“Mr. Brown is bringing some men home with him for a few days. Business acquaintances,” Mrs. Brown had said.
She hadn’t mentioned a dog and a woman and a man with one arm. And Mr. Brown hadn’t been with the others when they arrived. There was something very odd about it, and it didn’t take Miss Abernathy long to let her curiosity get the better of her. She paid a visit that afternoon.
Mrs. Brown almost hadn’t let her in. But Miss Abernathy was an old hand at that sort of thing and she’d managed to push herself past the other woman into the parlor. There was no sign of the visitors.
Before she’d left, Mrs. Brown had explained. She almost had to, the way Miss Abernathy put her questions.
“My father,” Mrs. Brown had said, “has been very ill and has come for a visit. His nurse accompanied him. He never goes anywhere without her. I know he would like to meet you, but he’s upstairs resting.”
“It’s so nice you can have him,” Miss Abernathy said. “But a shame it had to be just at this time.”
“A shame?” The woman looked positively alarmed. “Well, I mean of course when you were expecting your other guests. The men you told me were going to be here with your husband … “
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”
Miss Abernathy had left soon afterward, but not before finding out that the dog belonged to the nurse and that Mrs. Brown’s father would be around for an indefinite stay. She thought it was most peculiar—a nurse with her own dog. It couldn’t be very good for a sick man.
And now Mr. Brown was back home and he had one of his guests with him. She watched the two men as they parked the car in the old barn in back of the house and returned to the side door. She
imagined Mr. Brown would get a bit of a surprise when he found his father-in-law staying with them.
They certainly were strange people.
“Get rid of that damned dog!”
It was the slender dried-up one, the one with peculiar eyes, who was talking. The bony fingers of his nervous, clawlike hands incessantly played with each other as he sat across the room from her, in the overstuffed chair. His emaciated, evil face jerked on the scrawny neck in an oddly savage way as he emphasized his remarks, indicating the dog which sat still and alert at her feet.
Joyce was downstairs now, in what had been the parlor of the old mansion. They’d brought her down, after allowing her to get dressed, soon after the others had arrived.
“They wanna ask you some questions,” the girl had told her. But they hadn’t asked questions. They’d just talked among themselves. They were all there, all but the girl. She was probably preparing the evening’s meal.
There was Cribbins, the one who had forced her at gunpoint to drive to the house. He was over on the couch under the drawn shades of the window and he was in his shirt sleeves. There was a cigarette in his thin, hard mouth and he’d removed his shoes and sat in his stocking feet. The gun which he never seemed to be without was strapped to his chest, and he wore the holster under his left armpit.
Next to him was the third man, the one who had arrived with the slender man. They called him Luder, and he was the only one who seemed even partially human. He was a big man, slightly gone to seed. He didn’t speak at all; only the other two talked. The horrible part of it was the way they went on speaking to each other as though she weren’t there in the room with them at all.
It was this cold indifference to her, more than anything else, which frightened her the most: the complete lack of reticence with which they discussed their plans—get rid of the dog. Would they go on from there? Would the next thing be: Get rid of the girl?
