by Ellery Queen
He had a good view of the cabin. There were some expensive handhewn log structures along the Lake, but most of the cottages were of cheap clapboard or shingle construction, labeled “cabins” by the Balsam Lake Properties Association, whose brochures leaned heavily toward fiction. The “Pratt” cabin was a slapped-together shack of green-painted shingle walls streaked with years of damp. It had a badly weathered shake roof and a midget open porch with two sagging steps. The power line that provided its electricity dropped in from above the woods and hooked onto a naked insulator attached to the outside of the house. A bluish haze seeped out of the tin chimney pot on the roof. Like all the Lake cottages it used propane gas for cooking; Malone could see the silvered tank at the side of the cabin.
The haze coming out of the tin vent told Malone what he wanted to know.
The cabin was occupied.
They were there.
Malone had been lying in the bushes for almost two hours-he had just looked at his watch, it was half-past noon-when the door of the cabin opened and a man stepped out. He was not wearing a mask but his face was in shadow and Malone could not make out the features. He was sorry now that he had not stopped in town to pick up a pair of binoculars or at least borrow a pair from Jerry Sampson at the drug store, well it was too late for that. The man was a very big man with very heavy shoulders and Malone knew he was the one the small man had called Hinch.
The man looked around and then he jumped off the porch and strolled toward the woods east of the cabin. Malone got a good look at him in the sun. He was wearing a black leather jacket and tight black pants and blue Keds, and he had red hair that bushed down over his bull’s neck. He had a broken nose and a face that went with it, brutal and stupid.
Here’s one guy I’d better stay out of his reach. He’d stomp me to death and not even breathe hard.
Malone stopped thinking and started tracking.
He slid back on his belly until he was protected by the trees and then he got up in a crouch and keeping to the ground pine made a rapid quarter circle to the east, traveling on his toes. He knew where Hinch was headed, the other dirt road that led to the cabin. They must have their car hidden there.
He was right. They had parked it off the road and made an attempt to hide it but it was clumsily done and Malone could see it from the bushes across the road. It was the black sedan, the Chrysler New Yorker, covered with dust.
Hinch was bulling around in the underbrush. He got to the trunk and unlocked it and dug in for something inside. When the hand reappeared it was holding a half gallon of whisky by the neck. The seal on the bottle looked intact. He closed the trunk lid and shambled back toward the clearing.
Malone backtracked. He was just in time to see Hinch step into the cabin and shut the door.
He settled himself in his original hiding place. It would be a long wait if they were starting on another bottle. He did not know exactly what he was waiting for. A chance. A break. Anything. They might not show at all. Or they might all get drunk and pass out. The whisky might do the trick. I’ll have to see where I go from there.
I should have taken the rifle. Why did I chicken out? I could have shot this Hinch in the brush. From ten yards away even the measly.22 cartridge in the right spot would have taken him out for good.
Yes, and what would the other two do to Bibby when they heard a shot?
No. Wait them out.
If only they hadn’t taken his revolver. There was always something reassuring about the Colt’s weight on his hip, even though he had never fired it except on the state police pistol range during refreshers, and once at a marauding bobcat.
He could see Ellen’s face. Waiting.
Ellen’s face wavered, and Malone became aware of another, immediate danger.
His eyes insisted on drooping.
Those damned four days and nights on duty, and that heavy cold before that. The couple hours’ sleep I got last night were an appetizer, worse than nothing. He began to fight the droop.
His eyes kept doing it.
He fought them desperately. He pushed them up with his fingers. But even holding them open did no good. The clearing shimmered, fogged over.
If they’re drinking in there they’re maybe frightening Bibby. Don’t be scared, baby. Daddy’s coming.
The sky began to swing like Bibby’s swing in the backyard. Up… down…
If I maybe shut my eyes for just a few seconds.
Bibby I’m out here. It won’t be long.
He was still talking to her when sleep washed everything out.
* * *
“No more,” Furia said. He took the bottle from Hinch and screwed back the top. Hinch was left with a few drops in his glass.
“Aw, Fure,” Hinch said.
“I said that’s enough.” Furia was not drinking. He never drank anything but soda pop, not even beer. You’re scared to let go Goldie once told him, laughing.
“Okay, Fure, okay.” Hinch upended the glass and let the drops trickle into his mouth. He tossed the glass into the sink. It hit some dirty dishes and shattered.
“Watch it,” Furia said. “You’ll wake up the kid. That’s all we need is a bawling kid.”
“She’s out like a light,” Goldie said. She was still nursing hers, her third; she knew there would not be a fourth, not with Fure around. “It’s wonderful what a mouthful of booze will do to a nine-year-old. She’s gone on a real long trip.” She giggled. “Byebye Bibby.”
“You could get sent up for feeding a kid the sauce,” Hinch said with a grin. “You want to get sent up, Goldie?”
“Listen, buster, when I’m sent up it’s going to be for something important,” Goldie said. “Like for murder?”
“All right, all right,” Furia said. “You better get going, Hinch.”
“Yes, sir” Hinch said.
“And don’t go getting smart, Hinch. Just do like I told you. You remember what you got to do?”
“What am I, a birdbrain? Sure I remember. Hang around town, keep my ears open. Right, Fure?”
“That’s right. Nothing else. No more booze, no picking up a broad, no anything. Just listen. And don’t call attention to yourself.”
“The best place to hear the dirt is Freight Street,” Goldie said. “That’s the street that runs past the railroad station. The old town rummies hang out down there. Cash their social security checks and run to the liquor store. Buy a bottle of cheap port, Hinch, and pass it around. They’ll tell you what’s going on. They get the word before the Selectmen do. You can park the car in the railroad lot. Everybody uses it.”
“Yes, ma am” Hinch said, and started for the door.
“Wait a minute. I’m going with you. We can meet afterward at the lot.”
“The hell you say.” Furia banged on the table with the bottle. “You’re going no place, Goldie!”
“Will you listen to me?” Goldie said wearily. “Before you blow your stack. I’ve got to get a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like Tampax, for one, if you must know. I fell olf the roof this morning. Also I need hair dye, I’m starting to sprout green around the roots. And some deodorant for Hinch. I can’t stand being around him any more. He stinks.”
“I ain’t heard no complaints from my broads,” Hinch said hotly.
“Well, I’m not one of your broads. Why don’t you break down and take a bath once in a while? We need some groceries, too, Fure. Bread, and there’s no milk for the kid.”
Furia considered this.
Hinch spat into the sink. “I thought you were the one so scared to show your pussy around here.”
“You’re sore because I wouldn’t put out for you,” Goldie said, smiling.
Furia went up to Hinch and stuck his jaw out. The top of his head came to Hinch’s chin. “You been making passes at Goldie?”
Hinch backed off. “Fure, I never! I swear to God. She’s just trying to get me in trouble. She don’t like me.”
“And that’s a
fact,” Goldie said, still smiling.
“You lay one finger on her, Hinch, and you know what? You’re dead.”
“I never,” Hinch mumbled.
“Just remember I gave you the word. About going, Goldie, the answer is no. It’s too risky.”
“It might be if I went to a beauty parlor. But there’s a drug store in town that didn’t use to be here. And I noticed a supermarket last night that’s new, too. I’ll be careful, don’t worry.”
“The hell with the milk,” Furia said. “Nobody ever bought me no milk. I was lucky to get a glass of water without no cockaroach in it.”
“Whatever you say, Fure.”
“Tell you what, Goldie. Long as you’re going, bring me back some of that frozen pizza pie crap. I feel like a pizza. And some cherry-vanilla ice cream.”
“You’ll go to hell in a hand basket,” Goldie said, laughing. “Okay, pizza and ice cream.”
“And say. Does this wide place in the road have a newspaper?”
“Sure, a weekly. Comes out on Thursdays.”
“That’s today. Groovy. Pick me up one.” Furia chuckled. “I want to read my reviews.”
Goldie nodded. She was in slacks and tight turtleneck and pea jacket, she had her hair bound in a scarf. She picked up her purse. “Okay, Stinkfoot, let’s go. I’ll stick my nose out the window.”
“I swear to Christ,” Hinch gargled, “if it wasn’t for Fure I’d tear that bitch tongue of yours out by the roots.”
“Then what would he play with?” Goldie said, and sailed past him as if he weren’t there.
Malone awoke to pain. Something that felt like a needle was scratching his face and his back was one burning ache. For a moment he did not know where he was.
Then he remembered and he brushed the branch out of his face. He sat up in the darkness.
Dark.
He had slept all afternoon and into the evening, well into it. The moon was high. He could not see the hands of his watch but he knew it must be late. He had slept ten hours or more.
He stared over at the cabin. It was lit up; the shades were only half drawn. A figure passed, another. A third. They were careless. He could not see above their waists, but they were all there.
What chances have I missed?
How is God’s name could I have let myself fall asleep with Bibby in there?
He strained to see her.
Bibby Bibby.
There’s no sense to this.
There’s no sense to me.
Malone crouched in his bush for ten minutes arguing with the prosecution. While he argued he found himself working his muscles, beginning with his feet and going up. Isometric exercises got the aches and stiffness out. It was something he had learned to do during the cramped hours in the patrol car.
He worked at it with passion.
It was like a miracle. When he was altogether limbered up he had a plan readymade. He did not know where it came from. One moment he was blundering about in a mystery, the next it was all clear, solved, perfect.
He began to crawl about in the dark, feeling for dry twigs, brittle leaves, pine needles. He arranged them just outside the clearing on a line of sight with the cabin’s front windows, making a little pile of tinder in the heart of the brush and laying down thicker pieces of branch like the spokes of a wheel over it, Boy Scout fashion. It should be enough to blaze up and start a smoky fire. The bushes would burn slowly, it had been a wet month, there was not much danger of setting the woods on fire. But I’ll burn the whole damn county down if it means getting Bibby out of there.
They’re bound to see the fire or at least smell the smoke. They can’t afford to have half of New Bradford roaring into the woods to put it out. They’ll have to leave the shack and put it out themselves. If the woman stays inside I’ll break her neck.
He blocked the view from the cabin with his body and on hands and knees struck a paper match and very carefully touched the flame to the tinder.
It flared up.
Malone ducked into the woods and made his way rapidly around the perimeter of the clearing to a point at right angles to the porch. Here he stopped. He had both the fire and the front door in sight. The fire had grown taller and huskier, it was jumping. Then the bushes began to smoke. The smoke tumbled into the clearing like surf, a shifting wall through which the flames licked and darted. The sharp sweetness of burning leaves and green wood rolled through the clearing and struck the cabin. Malone’s eyes began to water.
Come on.
They came. One of them opened the door and Malone heard a startled yell, then something about blankets, and a moment later three figures dashed out of the shack and across the clearing and began slapping the fire and stamping on embers, shouting orders to one another. They ran around like hooched-up Indians in a Western.
But Malone was not there to applaud. Even before they were at the fire he was on his way around to the back door of the cabin and yanking at the knob. The door was locked. He ran at it and through it without feeling anything. He found Barbara immediately. She was lying on a cot in a tiny bedroom with a door open to the kitchen and he ran in and snatched a blanket and wrapped her in it and flung her over his shoulder fireman style and ran out and through the broken door and into the woods and made a great circle around to where he had hidden the Saab and then he was on the dirt road and a heartbeat after that on the blacktop speeding away from the Lake.
Only then did the smell from the sleeping child’s mouth register on his brain and he knew what they had done to her to keep her quiet.
Through the rage he kept telling himself well it could have been worse a lot worse I hope Ellen sees it that way God damn their slimy souls.
It was like a movie. One shot he was in the shack bundling Bibby in a blanket the next he was in the Saab pushing it at its top speed and the next he was in his own parlor.
And there was Ellen, flying from the rocker, grabbing Bibby from him, sitting down with the child in her arms to rock her the way she used to when Bibby was an infant. And staring up at him with such fear in her eyes that he wondered if he wasn’t dreaming.
“What is it, Ellen? What are you so scared about? Wake up, honey, I got Bibby back and she’s okay, they gave her a shot of whisky to keep her quiet, that’s why she’s sleeping and smells like that but it won’t hurt her, don’t worry, maybe give her a headache tomorrow morning, that’s all. Now you put her to bed while I call John to shoot some cars over to Balsam and pick those three hoods up,” he could not seem to stop talking, something was terribly wrong, her eyes said so, and he didn’t want to know, it was too much, he had had enough for one day, “and we’ll give John the bag with the money-”
Ellen mouthed, “It isn’t here any more.”
Thursday-Friday
The Money
“What do you mean?’5 Malone said. “What do you mean it isn’t here any more?”
“Somebody took it.”
“Who? How? I told you not to let it out of your sight!”
“Don’t yell at me› Loney. I don’t think I can take any more.”
“Will you answer me, for God’s sake? How did it happen?”
Ellen got out of the rocker with Barbara. She pressed her lips to the child’s defenseless neck. “After I’ve got this baby in bed.”
He sank onto the sofa staring. Halfway up the stairs she turned. “Did you say whisky? They gave a nine-year-old whisky?”
He did not answer. She hissed something profane and vicious and ran the rest of the way.
Malone sat there listening to the small sounds from upstairs.
I got Bibby back. The money is gone. Now what?
His elbows dug into his dirt-soaked knees and he took his head in his hands and tried to think. But the thoughts were stuck, going round and round like a toy train.
When Ellen came down she was calmer. Give a woman her kid to tuck in and she doesn’t give a damn about anything else. She took his cap off and got him out of his hunting jacket and smoothed
his hair. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
Malone shook his head. “Now tell me what happened.”
She sat down by his side and held on to her own hands.
“There’s not an awful lot to tell, Loney. It happened so fast. I had to go to the bathroom this afternoon-”
“And you left the money in here?”
“What was I supposed to do, take the bag to the toilet with me? Why didn’t you chain it to my wrist? How was I supposed to know-?”
“All right” He did a swiveling exercise with his head, making his neckbones creak. “I can’t seem to get this tiredness out. I could be coming down with the flu.”
“You’re such an optimist. You could be fighting it off.” She smiled at him, anxious to get away from the money. She didn’t want to talk about it.
“You went to the toilet and you left the bag here in the parlor,” Malone said. And he could think of nothing else. “You came out and it was gone?”
“No, he was still here.”
“Who was still here?”
“The man-”
“What man? What did he look like?”
“I’ll tell you if you’ll only let me,” Ellen said sullenly. “He must have heard me flush and realized I was coming out so he hid in the hall next to the bathroom door. I guess. Anyway, just as I stepped out something hit me on the head and I fell down.”
“Hit you?” For the first time Malone saw the bruise. It was well up in her hair, a purple and yellow-green lump the size of a robin’s egg. The hair around the lump was stiff with clotted blood. “Christ!”
He clutched her. She made a hard bundle in his arms.
“And I sounded off at you! We’d better get Dr. Levitt to look at your head right away.”
“I don’t need any doctor. It throbs like hell, that’s all. The main thing, Loney, we’ve got Bibby back.”
He cursed. He did not know whom or what he was cursing-the unknown thief, the punks, Tom Howland, himself, or fate. The main thing, yes, but it was not over, not by a long shot. Not with that money gone. They’d have real blood in their eyes this time.
