Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02

by The Steel Mirror (v2. 1)

  “Don’t be formal,” he said. “You know me. I’m the guy who wipes the goo off your shoes after you’ve coughed up your breakfast. Just call me Galahad for short.”

  She did not say anything.

  He said, “Sure, this is the United States. Lane County, Nebraska, and I’ve just spread the sheriff thereof all over his own pavement in front of his office door. With a girl and his own deputy watching. Can you figure out what’ll happen to me if that guy ever gets five minutes with me alone? My God, Nicholson,” he said, glancing at her, “the only time I’ve ever talked to a cop was a little matter of speeding. You should be telling me what a man like that will do.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said without conviction.

  “You’re all right,” he said. “He won’t be mad at you any longer. He’s forgotten about you. But me, he’ll take me apart and run the remains through a sausage grinder. This isn’t a big city where if you sock one cop it doesn’t really affect the department’s prestige; they can afford to let the judge take care of it. A county sheriff is something else again. He can’t afford to be laughed at.”

  “There’s a car,” she said. “It just pulled in from the side road. No, it’s going the other way.” She looked at him, facing backwards, kneeling on the seat. “Shouldn’t we… I mean, isn’t he bound to catch us if we just drive straight like this? Somebody will have seen us.”

  He twisted the convertible past two wicked holes in the road and straightened it out again at sixty. He could see the dust rising in the rear-view mirror.

  “Listen, Nicholson,” he said, “that’s a reasonably smart man back there, and he’ll expect one of two things. Either that we’re going to get back to the highway and hightail it out of there as fast as we can go, hoping that he won’t expect the most obvious thing; or that we’re going to play it smart and cagey. That’s what he’ll be hoping for. He’s come across smart and cagey people before. He knows all about smart and cagey people… Get down,” he said, watching a car approach. It looked like a Ford.

  She turned in the seat, slid down with her skirt bunched in her lap, and stared at the approaching car. Emmett slowed down a little. The road was quite narrow. The other car pulled out to the side. Emmett shifted into second and squeezed the convertible past, raising his hand in appreciation of the other’s courtesy. The blue-shirted farmer in the Ford waggled a hand in response. Emmett took the convertible back to sixty.

  “The trouble with Mr. Ford,” he said after a pause, “the trouble with Mr. Ford is, he made too damn many cars looking just alike.”

  The girl did not answer. After a little she drew her arm across her face and looked at the wet smudge on the sleeve of her jacket. She pulled down her skirt and, opening her purse, found a comb and began to comb her hair.

  Emmett said, “The way I figure it, that sheriff has two choices. He can get on the phone and throw out a dragnet or whatever you call it; or he can get in his car, hoping to catch us being smart and cagey. If he starts calling around we haven’t got a chance. This car sticks out like a sore thumb. If he’s going to block the roads he’ll have the bus depots and railroad stations watched. We could crawl into a hole somewhere and hide for a day or two, maybe, but in the end he’d get us; and we’d still be in Lane County, Nebraska.” He was silent a moment, busy with driving. It was a little like steering a sled down a sleeted city street. The car had no real grip on the washboard ruts of the road. Then he said, “You understand, Nicholson, you’re going to have to talk to the police. In fact, I’m damn well going to see that you talk to them. Don’t kid yourself a moment that I’m worrying one little bit about what happens to you.”

  “Don’t be formal,” she said. “Call me Ann.” There was an edge of dislike to her voice.

  He glanced at her. “You’re going to talk to the police, and I’m going to be the man who turns you over to them. You understand? I don’t care if you’re innocent as the Virgin Mary. I don’t care if you’ve got a face like the Mona Lisa and legs like Marlene Dietrich. I don’t care how much money you’ve got in your purse or what you care to offer as a bonus. I want to make everything clear: I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m not going to be an accessory to anything, at any price. I lost my head back there. I was all set to help him get you inside, carrying you if necessary, but when he hit you, something slipped. Don’t count on its slipping again. It’s not going to. I’m a peaceful, law-abiding professional man with an MS in chemistry, and all I want is to get to Bakersfield and take up my job with no police or sheriffs looking for me. As soon as we get some place where I can approach the law without getting hell beat out of me…”

  He stopped talking and they watched a car, dragging dust behind it, converge on them from the left along a road that crossed the road they were on a mile ahead. As they came closer they saw that it was a large maroon coupe with chromium trim that glinted in the sunshine. It passed ahead of them and went on across the plain to the right. Its dust still lay over the intersection as they crossed.

  “As for the sheriff,” Emmett said, “I’m hoping that he’s mad as hell. If he’s mad enough he won’t want anybody but himself to catch us. He’ll maybe notify somebody down the highway that he thought he saw us pass and to stop us if we go that way. Then he’ll get in his car and start driving around looking for us, hoping that we’ll try to be clever. He can’t turn out the countryside without admitting that he had us and let us get away; and if he gets the state police and a couple of other counties in on it there’ll be so much publicity that he won’t be able to touch me if he does catch us, and somebody else may get us first. So what I hope is that he’ll tear up the roads looking for us and then, hoping that we’ve tried to be smart, go back to town and check all the garages and hotels in case we’ve doubled back… And then, I rather expect, when he doesn’t find us, he’ll give the kid deputy a black eye to make him keep his mouth shut, get drunk, and go home and beat up his wife and anybody else who happens to be handy.”

  Ann Nicholson had powdered her nose and defined her mouth neatly with clear red lipstick. She looked at herself in the mirror and closed the purse.

  “Isn’t that,” she asked, “just wishful thinking? After all, he’s an officer, he’ll have to, sooner or later, notify—”

  “Why?” Emmett demanded. “Nobody knows about it but us and the kid. We certainly aren’t going to admit that we resisted arrest and assaulted an officer of the law. And the kid isn’t apt to shoot his mouth off around town. And the sheriff isn’t so fond of the Chicago police that he’s going to get himself laughed about just to catch them a material witness… He’s worrying about Lane County, Nebraska, not Chicago, Illinois.”

  “You don’t know that,” the girl said.

  “No,” Emmett said. “But I’ll damn soon find out.” The car hit a curve and shot around it, the rear end whipping as the tires skidded in the loose gravel. “I’ve always hated these damned convertibles,” Emmett said grimly. “I saw one once that had rolled over with five people in it. Quite a mess.”

  Ann Nicholson shivered as the car trembled, skating over the washboard ruts left by the graders.

  “Damn flashy job that anybody can spot three miles off,” Emmett said bitterly.

  “My father wasn’t aware that I was going to be running from the police when he gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “Just one measly convertible for your birthday?” Emmett said. “Not even a Cadillac? You must have felt downright neglected… My Dad bought me a bicycle for my birthday once.”

  “Please don’t be childish,” Ann Nicholson said.

  They watched a car swing onto the road a mile ahead. When they caught up to it, it had a delivery truck body and Kansas license plates.

  chapter EIGHT

  A man in a Stetson hat was reading the Sunday comics in the hotel lobby as they came in. The clerk behind the desk was in shirtsleeves and there was perspiration on his bald head. Emmett signed the register: Mr. and Mrs. John E. Emmett, Chicago, Ill
inois, making the address agree with the license plates of the car. He was aware of the girl beside him, watching as he wrote it down.

  “That’ll be four-fifty for a double room with bath,” the clerk said. He sounded ready to make a deal.

  “That’s all right,” Emmett said.

  He took Ann Nicholson’s arm and they followed the boy with the bags into the elevator. On the fourth floor they got out and followed the boy down a long dim corridor, around a corner, and into a fairly large, barren room, the most obtrusive piece of furniture in which was a large iron double bed. The air of the room had the stagnant heat of a summer cottage that had not yet been opened for the season.

  The boy set down the bags, raised the shade, and strained at the window until it opened with a crash. The room looked better with sunlight entering it, but the open window did not make it perceptibly cooler. The boy opened the bathroom and closet doors, arranged the suitcases neatly, and set the aluminum rod case carefully in a corner of the closet, while Emmett and the girl stood stiffly, watching him. Emmett thought that they must look very much like lovers waiting to be left alone. He squirmed out of the strap of his camera case and put the camera on the dark ornate dresser that looked as if it had crossed the plains in a covered wagon and had not been refinished since. The top was ringed with yellow liquor stains, partially concealed by a paper doily, upon which stood two glasses and an empty pitcher.

  “Did you put the car in the shade?” Emmett asked the boy. What he wanted to ask was, had the car been put where it could not be seen from the street.

  “Yes, sir. The parking lot’s got shade most of the afternoon.”

  “Well,” Emmett said, “see if you can scare up half a dozen cokes and some ice.” He relinquished a five-dollar bill.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He watched the boy leave, wondering what there was about the kid that recalled something unpleasant; then he realized that the boy had freckles. He was almost as freckled as the sheriff of Lane County, Nebraska.

  When the door had closed, Ann Nicholson walked slowly towards the bed, pushing the damp hair back from her face. Her pale satin blouse looked like a rather grubby boy’s shirt, dust-stained, with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open; it was quite wet across the back and shoulders where she had been in contact with the cushions of the car. Her black purse and shoes, even streaked with dust, looked incongruously dressy against the damp open-necked blouse, and the smudged, badly rumpled skirt of her gabardine suit. She laid the purse aside, sat down on the edge of the bed, and reached down to push at one shoe until it fell off to the floor, then, changing her legs around, at the other. Then she sat rubbing her foot in her lap, unaware or too hot and tired to care that her skirt had worked up to reveal the limp folds of a white silk slip and the tops of her stockings.

  “Why did you register like that?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Don’t get skittish,” he said. “We’ll be out of here before dark; I just figured we needed a break while I figured out what I’m going to do with you.”

  She glanced up. “I thought you were going to turn me over to the police.”

  He said wryly, “Well, it’s occurred to me that I don’t officially know you’re wanted, Nicholson. If I take you to a police station they’re going to want to know where I heard about it, and I don’t want to bring that sheriff into it. He’s apparently decided to keep his mouth shut since we weren’t stopped on the road. I don’t want to do anything to make him change his mind.” He saw her smile involuntarily at his predicament. “That’s all right,” he said grimly. “It’s funny. You can laugh if you want to.”

  She stopped smiling. “Just the same, I don’t like it,” she said with weary distaste. “That man knew perfectly well we weren’t married, and the boy, too. It makes me feel a little… cheap.”

  He said, “For a girl wanted by the police, you worry about the damnedest things.”

  “I’m hungry,” she said after a long pause. “I think I’m going to faint if I don’t get something to eat pretty soon.”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  She looked up angrily.

  He said, “You’ll faint if you this and you’ll die if you that and you’ll kill yourself if you do the other thing.”

  “Do I really sound like that?” she asked, looking up, startled.

  He did not want to like her, and he wished she would not persist in showing a rather likable honesty and directness.

  “Don’t take it to heart,” he said, and pulled off his tie and threw it at the dresser. He had changed back to his brown suit in a filling station, hoping to look more like a young businessman vacationing with his wife. He could feel the perspiration on his legs scratch stickily by the wool of his trousers as he moved to the telephone. “What’s the time, please?” He put the instrument down and set his watch back one hour. “Five thirty-five,” he said. “We gained an hour back there, somewhere.”

  Ann adjusted the tiny platinum watch on her wrist. “Where are we?” she asked without interest.

  “Boyne, Colorado.”

  “Colorado?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We left Kansas a couple of hours ago.”

  “I guess I must have been half asleep,” she said, and looked up at him quickly. “You must be dead. You didn’t get any sleep at all last night.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. After a moment he asked, “Do you mind if I look in your purse?”

  “Yes, of course I—” She stopped herself and her shoulders sagged a little. “Oh, go ahead!”

  He sat down on the bed beside her, she drawing away a little, and opened the purse, emptied it piecemeal, and sat frowning at the accumulation of commonplace items on the bedspread. He riffled through the roll of bills to make sure it contained nothing but bills, glanced in the coinpurse, opened the expensive compact, and tore the end off a pack of Philip Morris to see that it contained nothing but cigarettes. He began to replace the things by the handful.

  “Please,” she said stiffly. “I’d prefer to put them back myself, if you don’t mind.”

  He stopped and sat back, studying her face. It was drawn and shiny and tired, and not very clean. There was not much lipstick left on her mouth, and what there was seemed to be distributed in small flakes.

  Her gray eyes found him briefly and looked away. “Would it… would it help any if I gave you my word that I really don’t know what it’s all about?”

  He turned away from her and rubbed his eyes. “No.” He got up and walked to the closet and felt through her jacket, finding nothing but a forgotten wad of cleansing tissue in one pocket. He took her hat from the shelf and examined it. She was watching him when he turned around. She licked her lips, rising.

  “Should I… take my clothes off?”

  Her eyes challenged him, then they wavered and she looked down, flushing, and began to slowly unbutton her blouse. He said, “For Christ’s sake, sit down!”

  She glanced at him uncertainly, and sat down on the edge of the bed. After a time her fingers fastened up the buttons they had released. There was no triumph in her face.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

  He said harshly, “Anything. Anything that’ll make sense of this mess. Any damn thing at all that’ll tell me how you can be a material witness to a murder you claim not to know has happened. But,” he said, “I’ll settle for the clipping the nurse said you carried. About this Kissel you’re supposed to be going to see. At least I’d know somebody was telling the truth.”

  Ann lifted her head quickly. “I must say I’m getting a little tired of the way Miss Bethke…”

  Emmett did not say anything, and her voice died away. After a while she reached into her purse, glanced at him through her lashes with a touch of mischief, and pulled out the mirror and nailfile. With the file she poked beneath the leather backing of the mirror until she had brought a folded slip of paper within reach of her fingers. She pulled it out and offered it to Emmett.

/>   He said wryly, “Hell, maybe I should stick to chemistry.”

  She did not smile. He looked down at the clipping. It was one column wide, fairly long, and had been trimmed neatly with scissors.

  LONG JOURNEY’S END

  Tall, thin, graying physicist Reinhard Kissel, who walks with a cane as the result of injuries suffered at the hands of the Gestapo, had waited almost three years to be allowed to take the final step in a journey which began a few months after Hitler’s bloodless annexation of Austria. At that time a middle-aged instructor at Vienna’s Kaisersinstitut, Dr. Kissel slipped across the Swiss border a few hours ahead of the secret police, charged with disloyal and seditious utterances against the new regime.

  In Paris, which he reached some time later, Dr. Kissel was an undistinguished member of the colony of expatriate intellectuals existing precariously in that uneasy prewar capital. With the fall of France, however, the tall man with the harsh voice became an almost legendary figure who for two years improvised radio equipment in dimly lighted cellars for the use of those who maintained France’s contact with the outside world. Captured by the Nazis in 1942, Dr. Kissel was saved from execution by Germany’s desperate need for trained scientists. After an experience with the Gestapo that left him with a broken nose and a crippled foot, he was sent into Germany where he was put to work in a laboratory under heavy guard.

  The guards knew very little about electricity; Dr. Kissel, a great deal. A short-circuit in a high-voltage line set the laboratory on fire, and in the resulting confusion the scientist escaped. He was recaptured and consigned to the concentration camp at Glaubnitz. The disorganization that preceded the final collapse of the Nazi regime enabled him to escape a second time. He was taken into custody as he made his way into the American zone on crutches, his injured foot never having properly healed.

  Last week, Dr. Kissel’s three year wait was rewarded. The Department of Immigration and Naturalization approved his entry into this country. Small but progressive Fairmount University, near Denver, Colorado, invited him to fill the vacancy in its physics department left by the retirement of Dr. William O. French. Accepting, patient Dr. Kissel hoped that the mountain climate would give him relief from the chronic sinus infections that had plagued him since his beating at the hands of the Gestapo.