The Man in the Net

by Patrick Quentin

  Quite soon he was asleep, and in his dreams Steve Ritter was hunting him through the woods, galloping on all fours —like a hound.

  He struggled up from sleep dimly aware that a voice was calling his name. He opened his eyes on to sunlight. For a moment he was vague as to his whereabouts. Then he thought: The studio—and remembered.

  “Hey, John. John—shape up there, John boy.”

  It was Steve Ritter’s voice, loud, heavy with false jocularity. The voice of his dreams?

  “Hey, John. Want us to come up and get you?”

  He swung off the couch. He had an old pair of blue jeans which he kept in the studio to wear when he painted. He went to the peg where they hung. They weren’t there. He returned to the couch, put on the pants of his city suit and his shoes and stepped out of the studio on to the lawn.

  A group of men—seven or eight of them—in jeans and work-shirts were standing with their backs to him, gazing up at the house. In the center was Steve Ritter’s broad, muscular back.

  They had a dog with them, a fluffy mutt with a long brown tail. It saw him and started dashing toward him, barking shrilly. Almost as if they were one unit, the group of men turned and stood absolutely still, watching him. His faculties were still blurred by sleep. Panic leaped through him. They’d found Linda. They’d found her dead and they’d come to get him. Then, as control came back, he realized it was one of the search-parties.

  The men just continued to stand on the lawn with Steve Ritter in the middle of the group. Some of them were carrying lunch boxes. As he walked toward them none of them moved. When he was right up to them, Steve Ritter grinned at him.

  “Hi, John. Slept in the studio, eh? House seemed kind of—lonesome, did it?”

  It was there, the quality which had been in the dream, the threat masked behind the bland, smiling facade.

  “Well, John, I guess you know all these folks?” Steve Ritter nodded down the line of men, some of whom he recognized. “They’ve all been kind enough to give their time. Them and a lot of other guys too. This here’s just one of the search-parties. We came to get you, John. Figured you’d want to tag along. After all, you must be feeling pretty bad, pretty eager to do all you can to locate Linda.”

  One of die men spat on the lawn. The faces, wind-burned, blue-eyed, utterly without expression, were all watching him fixedly.

  He said, “So there’s no word yet?”

  “No, boy. ’Fraid not. Not a single response that amounts to anything from the teletype.” Steve Ritter hitched up his blue jeans. “Well—come on, guys. Let’s git gitting. But— wait a minute. You eat any breakfast, John?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Not matter? Sure it matters. You all het up and everything? You didn’t ought to start out on an empty stomach.” Steve Ritter turned to the others. “Did he, boys? He should get himself a cup of coffee or something.”

  All the men grinned. One of them laughed and then stifled the laugh.

  “Sure, Steve. Sure. Let the guy have a cup of coffee.” Steve Ritter went up to John and threw his arm around his shoulder. “Now you get in that kitchen and whip yourself up something. Don’t worry about us. Get yourself in good shape. We’ll be out in them woods quite a piece. You just don’t worry about us. We’ll wait for you.”

  The dog started to bark again. Someone threw a twig at it. His arm still on John’s shoulder, Steve led him toward the house. All the men turned to watch. When they got to the kitchen door, Steve left him. Simultaneously, all the men dropped down on to the grass.

  He made himself some coffee and fried a couple of eggs. Why not? He had to eat. From outside on the lawn, he could hear the murmuring voices of the search-party. Every now and then the dog barked and a voice was raised, shouting at it to shut up.

  When he had finished, he went out of the kitchen door. All the men got up, edging together, forming a phalanx. “Well, John,” said Steve, “ate something? Feel better?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “That’s the boy. Now what do you say? After all, you’re the authority. Linda’d been drinking, you say, was kind of mixed up. She come out of the house with the suitcase. Now, which way you figure she’d go?”

  The sarcasm in his voice was veiled, but the men responded to it. One of them grinned. They eased a little closer together. It wasn’t just Steve Ritter now. They all of them felt the same way. To them the search for Linda alive was a farce, but they were playing it Steve Ritter’s way, going along with it, drawing out the elaborate cat-and-mouse game until the word came from Steve.

  “That way, you think?” Steve Ritter’s blue eyes were fixed solemnly on his face as he pointed beyond the apple trees to the woods. “Or that way, maybe?” He indicated the road. “Of course, with the suitcase being on the dump by the lake, looks like that’s where to look for her, but that ain’t our search-party. There’s another party handling that area. Maybe back in the woods, eh?” He turned to consult the others. “That way, you think, boys? Start off by covering the woods back there?”

  “Sure, Steve. Start with the woods back there.”

  “We got to cover the whole territory before we’re through, don’t we?”

  “Anywheres, Steve. You’re the boss.”

  One of the men had strolled away and was standing by Linda’s zinnias, peering through the open doors of the studio.

  “Boy,” he said. “Look at them paintings. He must have got pretty near four dozen of ’em stacked up against the walls.”

  “Okay, boys,” called Steve. “Shape up now. This is it.” And they all started off through the apple trees, down the slope choked with second growth and over the little creek into the woods.

  Once the search had begun, Steve was as serious and expert as an officer with a platoon. He had the men fan out at regular distances from each other and maneuvered them slowly forward, covering every inch of ground. The timber hadn’t been cut for years; great maples, hemlocks and beeches towered up over the smaller trees, the bulky outcroppings of rock and the wreckage of dead trunks, and limbs torn off by ice-storms. Sunlight came down in wide shafts. The smell of the woods, damp, secret, which John had loved and always associated in his mind with the children, impregnated the air.

  Nobody talked. John, off on the extreme right of the fan, could every now and then catch a glimpse through the high underbrush of the man next to him and every now and then hear the crunch of twigs under shoes. But, by and large, the silence was intact, and slowly, as he moved forward, ducking under saplings, climbing over dead logs, the horror began. It wasn’t the horror of finding Linda lying stretched there, under a rock, near a fallen tree, in a patch of sunlight; it was horror of the men. This was the dream again. It wasn’t Linda alive they were hunting for. It wasn’t even Linda dead. Not only that. It was the body of Linda, murdered, buried perhaps in a shallow grave. And it was him. Although he was part of the hunt, he was its destined victim too.

  What have you done with your wife?

  They covered the whole area on John’s side of the Archertown road and then crossed the road, swinging into an even larger stretch of woods. The only house they passed was the little neat clapboard box where Emily and Angel lived with their mother. John was familiar with the whole area; he knew the hills, the sheer drops, the brooks, the high cliffs of rock, but he had never before been so conscious of the vastness and desolateness. After a few hours, Steve Ritter called a halt for lunch. The men gathered together and opened the lunch boxes. Hardly anyone spoke while they ate, except for an occasional gruff monosyllable. They all lit cigarettes and lay for a while under the trees, smoking.

  Then Steve said, “Okay, boys.”

  And the search began again. It was almost four when the great circle had been completed and they came out again on the Archertown road only a few hundred yards from John’s house. There was an overgrown meadow between the road and the house, which was part of the property. Instead of taking the road, Steve led them through the strip of woodland int
o the meadow. As they walked across it, closer together now, weary, sweating from the afternoon sun, John caught a glimpse of the house’s roof ahead of them. At least this part of the nightmare was over. But maybe one of the other search-parties or the men dragging the lake … When they got to the house, Steve would call and they’d know whatever there was to know.

  The dog was running ahead of them, hidden in the weeds except for the tall, foolish, wagging tail. They moved on, slower now, relaxed, down the slope toward the creek which separated them from the house. Suddenly the dog’s tail ahead of them stiffened. John saw the ragged, fluffy brown beacon quicken into quivering alertness. Then the dog started to yelp. All the men dashed forward. John ran with the others, feeling his stomach turn over. They all reached the dog at once. Steve Ritter pressed ahead. He stood looking down, while the others crowded around him.

  John, straining over a shoulder, made himself look too, his mind infected by horror images. There was a small circular area of charred grass. In its center, with the dog sniffing at it, was—what? Some sort of material? A piece of clothing? A … ?

  Steve Ritter picked it up and, as it fell into shape, it revealed itself as a pair of blue jeans. Both the legs had been burnt off to the knee. The rest was intact and was spattered with stains of various colors of paint.

  John’s second of relief was splintered again as he recognized what they were. His blue jeans. The blue jeans he kept in the studio. The blue jeans which had not been there that morning.

  It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t surely be possible unless someone, with deliberate malice, had done this to him. Suddenly a totally new vista opened up in his mind.

  If they had been planted, not by Linda, but by …

  As if they’d received some inaudible word of command, the men eased away into a circle, leaving Steve Ritter holding up the jeans and looking directly at John.

  “Someone’s been burning blue jeans on your property, John.”

  John looked back at him, struggling against the panic of this new idea. Not by Linda, but by … Who?

  Steve dropped his eyes to survey the jeans. “Blue jeans with paint on ’em, I guess. Blue paint, green paint, red paint—paint like a painter uses painting a picture. What d’you think, John? Who’d be burning up a pair of blue jeans on your property? Whose would they be, maybe, with paint on ’em like a painter’s blue jeans?”

  All the red, round, blue-eyed faces were watching John. The circle seemed to move the fraction of an inch closer, hemming him in.

  “What d’you think, John, boy?” Steve held the jeans higher. “About your size, would you say?”

  When he stopped speaking, there was a sudden ominous silence.

  Then one of the men called, “Have him try ’em on for size, Steve.”

  The others all laughed and took it up.

  “Yeah, Steve, have him try ’em on for size. Have him model ’em.”

  John said, “They’re mine. I looked for them this morning in the studio. They weren’t there. Somebody brought them out here.”

  “But they’re yours?” exclaimed Steve. “You admit they’re yours?”

  “Have him try ’em on,” called one of the men again. “How can the guy be sure they’re his? Maybe there’s another painter around here wanting to burn up blue jeans.”

  The circle contracted again. The hostility, the tension, the almost sexual excitation which had been there all the day was mounting. Steve looked from John to the men and then back to John. His features had sharpened into the features of a leader feeling his control over his men slipping away.

  “Gee, boys, if the guy says they’re his …”

  “Try ’em on. Try ’em on.” The words came in a chanted chorus. “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? You modest? You scared of stripping down in front of a bunch of guys?”

  One of the men sprang forward, grabbing at John’s belt. John swung at him. Steve Ritter shouted. But the excitement was unleashed. All the men plunged on to John, sending him sprawling to the ground. He was smothered in their hard, sweaty bodies. He felt hands groping for his belt and then tearing at his pants. Three of them were sitting on him; two others were tugging his pants down and then pulling on the jeans. The hands came up to his waist; then all the men were clambering off him. They took up their position again in a circle around him. He got up, buttoning the jeans at his waist.

  “They fit,” cried one of the men. “It’s a perfect fit.”

  They all started to laugh in a pulsing male roar and then, just as suddenly, were silent.

  Sick with anger and disgust, John glanced down at his knees, protruding from the charred ends of the pants legs. Then, while the silence seemed to thicken, he pulled the blue jeans off and put his trousers back on.

  The fever had left the men now. They moved awkwardly from one foot to another. One of them coughed. Steve Ritter, his face hard with annoyance, bent and picked up the blue jeans. The men had rejected his authority and now he was rejecting them.

  “Okay, you guys.” His eyes glinting, he gestured with his thumb toward the road which stretched about twenty feet to the left. “Knock off. The party’s over. Get the hell back home—all of you.”

  Hangdog, ashamed of themselves, the men started to stream away across the meadow to the road and up it toward where they’d parked their cars by the house.

  Steve Ritter stood holding the blue jeans. Slowly he turned to John.

  “So,” he said. And then, “Okay, boy, these jeans go to Captain Green. It’s not me anymore. It’s Captain Green. He’s the boss.” A ghost of the old, almost affectionate mockery showed behind the brilliance of his eyes. “I figure he’ll be wondering, don’t you, John? He’ll be wondering how come, on the day your wife disappeared, your blue jeans happened to get burnt up here in the meadow. Why burn ’em up? he’ll figure. Was there maybe something on ’em—something that was better off burning? That’s what he’ll figure. They got an analytical laboratory, the troopers, up to Springfield or some place. All the most modem gadgets. They’ll be able to find out. Even if there’s only the teensiest spot of…”

  He stopped suddenly, his eyes challenging John. The anger was burning in John like acid. Someone had done this to him. Steve? I didn’t want to… but he forced me … It’s like a disease … Fling it at him, he thought. You were my wife’s lover. You’ve murdered her. You’re pinning it on me. But that wasn’t true. Steve hadn’t been Linda’s lover. That had been a lie born of devious, alcoholic malice. And why talk about murder? How did murder come into it? What was it but the assumption of the Enemy? A kind of cold, despairing calm descended on him. The known facts, the truth. Stick to the truth. It was the only weapon with which to fight the nightmare.

  He said, “I’ve told you I don’t know anything about those jeans except that they’ve been taken from my studio. And, since it seems about time to say it again, I haven’t any more idea than you what’s happened to Linda.”

  “Any more idea than me?” Steve’s lips stretched into the white grin. “Maybe you haven’t, John. Maybe you haven’t any more idea than me or all those other guys or Captain Green or, for that matter, the whole of Stoneville. Maybe we’ve all got the same idea.”

  He touched John’s arm lightly. “Okay, John, boy. I guess you won’t be hearing from Captain Green today. What you done anyways to get Captain Green on your tail again? You didn’t burn those jeans. You’ve said so. You don’t know nothing to help the search. No, I guess you won’t be hearing from Captain Green, unless word of Linda comes through on the teletype, until they got those jeans checked up by the laboratory. Then, of course, seeing how they’re your property, I guess the Captain’ll keep you informed. That’s only civil, ain’t it?”

  The hand on John’s arm gently caressed his skin. “So— you just take it easy and stay home painting some of them paintings. Don’t you start getting all twisted up inside or, before you know it, you’ll be the one needing the psychiatrist. How I figure it—there’s no cause to worry
anyways. Linda’s going to show up, ain’t she, John? When she sobers up, gets all that liquor out of her system—bingo, she’ll show up like magic. Oh, John dear”—his voice raised into a mincing soprano—“how could I have done it—writing that terrible note, destroying all those lovely pictures in a drunken orgy? Oh, John, darling, forgive me …”

  The grin still on his face, he turned abruptly and started across the meadow, dangling the charred jeans from his right hand.

  12

  WHEN JOHN reached the house, the phone was ringing three rings—his number on the party line. Don’t answer it, he thought. Whoever was calling, it was someone of the same breed as Steve Ritter and those red-faced, hamhanded men in the meadow. Reject them all. Pretend, for a while at least, that they didn’t exist. The finicky, tinkling rings sounded again. A sudden irrational optimism surged through him and he ran to the telephone.

  A man’s voice—booming, meticulous, familiar … who was it?—said, “Hello, hello. Is that Hamilton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Hamilton, this is George Carey.”

  That came as a shock. Surely, of all the people who now considered him a pariah, old Mr. Carey must be the first and foremost.

  “Yes, Mr. Carey?”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Hamilton. Very sorry. It all seems most odd.” The voice sounded stiff and awkward as if Mr. Carey felt the social necessity of making some comment but was finding it highly distasteful. “They are searching for her, I understand. They appear to be doing everything that can be done under the circumstances.”

  “Yes,” said John.

  “I’m calling,” said Mr. Carey, “because, as you may remember, the town meeting is being held tonight at eight. I realize this is not exactly—ah—precisely an easy time for you, but both Mrs. Carey and myself feel that you, as a resident, are as anxious as we to preserve the quality in Stoneville which means so much to all of us. The fight is going to be very close as you know. Every vote counts.” Mr. Carey cleared his throat. “There may have been a little misunderstanding between us the other night, Hamilton. Nothing serious. I hope you agree. But both Mrs. Carey and myself feel sure that your attitude toward the hotel project hasn’t changed and that you’ll be down there this evening, doing your part. That is, we’re both hoping you’ll register your vote against the sale of the north shore. We are both hoping it.”