She said, “Do me a favor, darling. Say anything you like, but don’t be corny. Please don’t be corny.”
I said, “He didn’t believe you.”
“Naturally not,” she said. “He’s probably got six secret agents who’ll swear in court that they’ve seen me wear the lousy thing. But it stopped him, didn’t it? Without coming right out and calling me a liar, he couldn’t go ahead and ask the other questions on his mind. And I just didn’t feel like answering his damn questions, darling.” She looked up at me defiantly. “Or yours either.”
“I haven’t asked any,” I said.
She said, “The fact is, I don’t know how that damn scarf got there. And I don’t want to guess. And I’m not going to help him guess. Or you. Or the police. Or anybody. What are they trying to prove, anyway? I’m five feet four and a half inches tall. Am I supposed to have got up on a stepladder so that I could lose my scarf six feet off the ground? Or do they think I slipped out of the house this morning, drove up into the mountains and committed murder, hung my scarf up in a tree so everybody’d know who’d done it, and came rushing back to give my husband breakfast in bed? Is that what you think, darling?”
I said, “It’s not my problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “I’m not a policeman. I don’t give a damn if your name is Booth and you murdered Lincoln. I don’t have to worry about it. I’m the one person in the world who doesn’t have to worry about it. As your husband, I don’t think I could be made to testify even if I’d seen you come in dripping blood; certainly I’m not obliged to play amateur detective in my own house. So just relax, Princess, and stop snapping at me like a Pekinese. Naturally, I wouldn’t mind being taken into your confidence—assuming that you actually have something to confide and aren’t just acting mysterious for fun—but all I really want to know is whether or not you know what the hell you’re doing. After all, the man wasn’t accusing you of murder. All he wanted was a reasonable explanation of a rather curious phenomenon. By lying about it, you make it look very big and important. Is that what you want?”
She said, “I don’t care how it looks, darling. And I know precisely what I’m doing.”
“Swell,” I said. “In that case, let’s just close the discussion and have a cup of coffee.”
“It’s cold by now,” she said. “I’ll take it out into the kitchen and warm it up… Greg?”
“Yes?”
“What would you do if you learned I had killed him?”
I said, “I’d keep my trap shut. Did you?”
“What do you think?”
I looked at her for a moment. She was far away from me. She might have killed somebody, at that. I suppose everybody is capable of it. I had killed a man once myself.
I said, “If you want to tell me, either way, go ahead and tell me. But I’m not going to play games with it.”
“You’re not sure, are you, darling?”
I said, “I’m sure of this: if you look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t, I’ll take your word for it. As long as you keep talking around it, I’ll reserve my opinion.”
She said, “What motive would I have for killing Jack Bates?”
“You go to hell, sweetheart,” I said. “I could make up a list of motives as long as your arm, both clean and dirty, for any woman around here to kill any man around here. Do you want me to lie and say they don’t apply to you?” She laughed. “All right, darling. You shave and get dressed. I’ll warm up the coffee; or would you rather have lunch? It’s past noon.”
“I just finished breakfast,” I said. “Although it seems quite a while ago.”
“Greg.”
“Yes?”
She looked up at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Honest. I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen, and I’d tell you about it if I could, but…” She shook her head quickly. “I know it looks screwy, but I do know what I’m doing. Now.”
I said, “The apology is accepted. The explanation is rejected as confused and inadequate. Don’t make little cryptic speeches at me, Princess. Either say something or shut up.”
“I am saying something,” she said. “I’m saying good-by.”
Everyone has his own way of taking these things; mine, perfected over a period of thirty-four years, might be called the poker-face technique. After all, a man looks pretty silly with his mouth hanging open. There are times when it might be more diplomatic to show a little reaction; if you don’t jump to their bombshells, people are apt to think you don’t care. However, I learned as a kid in the woods, hunting with older men, to keep from yelping when I stubbed my toe or cracked my head; and it’s one of the lessons you don’t unlearn very easily.
I let enough time go by to make sure my voice would work properly, and said, “Come back again when you can stay a little longer.”
She said, “Sometimes I wonder how tough you really are, darling. You have a very nice protective coating, I will say that for you. Well, it’s nice to hit a man who can take it.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m glad you enjoy it. Where are you going?”
“Reno. I should never have come back.”
“I can see that. Now.” I studied her for a moment. “This sudden departure is apt to look very funny to a lot of men with badges who don’t understand your impulsive nature.”
She said, “Darling, will you stop telling me how things are going to look! And why be bitter? You wouldn’t have had half as much fun playing invalid without me.” She drew a long, uneven breath. “We probably should never have got married in the first place. You’re really a very dull and demanding man to live with, most of the time. And this God-forsaken country, and the ghastly people…! Besides, theoretically I disapprove of you, and that’s not right. A woman should be proud of her husband’s work, shouldn’t she?”
“Aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “You’re a very fine scientist, I have no doubt, but”—she hesitated—“but you have no sense of moral responsibility whatsoever. What you’re doing is wrong, darling, wrong, wrong, wrong! You’re doing a terrible thing; why can’t you see it?”
I said, “You’re referring to the Project—”
“You know what I’m referring to.”
I said slowly, “Princess, I’ve never denied the possibility that I might be wrong. One of the revealing things about this Davy Crockett character is that saying of his: ‘Be sure you’re right—then go ahead.’ It takes a man of very limited imagination to be sure he’s right. I’m not at all sure. I never have been, and I probably never will be—of anything I can’t prove mathematically and check in the laboratory for good measure. But it seems that every other person on this planet, including my wife, has been blessed with divine guidance on a number of subjects, including my work. It’s a pity the good Lord hasn’t seen fit to take me into His confidence as well!” I caught my breath; it was one of those times when even breathing seemed to require conscious effort. “Do you want me to quit, Natalie? Is that what you want?”
She shook her head quickly. “No. I couldn’t ask you; and if I did, and you agreed, we wouldn’t stay married very long, anyway, would we? You wouldn’t respect me for blackmailing you; and I wouldn’t respect you for letting yourself be blackmailed.”
I said, “But your ideal is a man who buries his head in the sand like an ostrich—or even commits suicide—rather than face some cold hard physical facts that the human race is inevitably going to have to face, sooner or later?”
“It hasn’t been proved that Jack killed himself,” she said.
I glanced at her, surprised. “I wasn’t thinking of Jack. I was thinking of old man Fischer. Why, have you discussed this with Jack? You’re talking pretty much like he was last night when he told me he was quitting.”
She hesitated, and her eyes were not quite candid when she replied, “We may have talked about it some time. It’s a fairly common subject of conversation around here.”
I said,
“Not common enough, apparently. You may have talked a lot about it to Jack Bates, although I wasn’t aware that the two of you went in for philosophical discussions. But in three years of marriage, this is the first time I’ve been told that you actually disapprove of the way I make my living. When did this moral revulsion come over you?”
“I… I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just… kind of grown. Knowing what you were doing over there, every day… I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I said, “Well, just brace yourself and hurt me now. Let’s hear this soft-boiled reasoning that makes scientific progress a crime against humanity.”
She shook her head quickly. “It’s no use, darling. You know exactly what I’m going to say because you’ve heard it from a lot of other people. And I know exactly what you’re going to say because I’ve heard it from you. You’re going to say that you might as well go on working on this terrible project of yours because somebody will. You’re going to say that what’s done with the results of your work is none of your business. You’re going to say that you’re a physicist, not a politician or a social scientist; and that it’s not your fault if other people haven’t done as well in their fields as you have in yours. And you’ll go right on tossing off horrible discoveries—you and people like you—with no more compunction than little boys playing with firecrackers, until you manage to destroy the whole world and everyone on it.”
I started to speak, and shut up. It was obviously no use. It was like being alone in a foreign country where nobody understood your language.
I said at last, “Well, I don’t see quite how we got onto this. We started out with a scarf hanging on a tree up in the Sandias. But I guess we’ve pretty well covered the ground, haven’t we, Princess?” She didn’t speak. I said, “I’ll get your suitcases out of the garage. Don’t forget to put gas in that toy of yours before you get out of town. It’s a long haul to the next pump.”
TEN
THE REST OF the day was a total loss. I was called over to the Project around three o’clock, presumably to help draw up a plan of action, but everybody was too busy talking about Jack Bates to get any work done. The Director had ordered a complete inventory of all classified documents on the Project, to see if anything was missing. Maybe he had to do it, but it wasn’t exactly a gesture of confidence; and the whole place was buzzing with theories. The human race contains a surprising percentage of ghouls, as you will see demonstrated on the highway any time there’s a serious accident—they’ll block traffic for an hour, even after the ambulance is gone, just to get a look at the blood. They were having a field day with the gory details of Jack’s death. I left as soon as I could, drove around for a while, had dinner at a hamburger joint, and went home to bed.
I don’t know what time it was when the telephone woke me; I never did get around to looking at my watch. I stumbled out into the hall in the dark, fished around for the instrument, found it, and got it to my ear.
“Mr. Gregory?” a female voice said. “Is this Mr. James Gregory, Heights 3-9180?… All right, go ahead, sir.” I heard the singing of miles of wire leading off into the unknown distance in an unknown direction. “Mr. Gregory?” a man’s voice said. “Mr. Gregory, this is Sheriff McKay, of Esmeralda County, Nevada. I’m talking from Goldfield. There’s been an accident. One of those little foreign cars went off the road a few miles south of here and burned. The trunk must have busted open when it rolled; we picked up a couple of suitcases with tags identifying the owner as… Are you there, Mr. Gregory?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m here.”
“… as Mrs. Natalie Walsh Gregory. You were named as next of kin.”
I said, “Is my wife—”
“We don’t know whether she’s hurt or not.” The distant voice paused, then went on: “To tell you the truth, we haven’t found her yet.”
There was more to the conversation, but I don’t remember it clearly. I do recall phoning the airport, once the line was clear; they gave me a choice of landing in Las Vegas, a hundred and eighty miles southeast of where I wanted to be, or at Reno, two hundred and sixty miles northwest. Two charter pilots were off prospecting for uranium, and the third had a broken collarbone from falling off a ladder while painting his house. I sent off a telegram to my father-in-law, dressed, went out into the garage, and started loading the Pontiac. I never drive anywhere in that country, particularly in winter, without a sleeping bag, a little food, plenty of water, and something to cook on. Civilization gets mighty thin on some of those long and desolate roads—even the paved ones—when a storm comes up or your car decides to quit on you; it’s a consolation to know that you can sit it out if you have to. I had the big door open, the engine running, and the lights on ready to move out, when a car came down the street fast and pulled up in front, blocking the driveway. Van Horn’s neat and businesslike figure emerged. He came up the lane of my headlights and around the car to my window. I pushed the button and the glass came down. Sometimes I wonder if the Russians haven’t got a point about us decadent democratic weaklings, after all. Motors to open and close the windows, for God’s sake! “What do you want?” I asked.
He said, “The Army’s warming up a plane for us at Kirtland Field. Grab a warm coat and come on. You’re in no condition to drive eight hundred miles alone, anyway.”
I said, “Never mind my condition.” It would have been naïve to ask how he knew where I was going: he would only tell me it was his business to know. I turned off the motor and lights, went back to the trunk and yanked it open again. With my head inside, I said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “The way people keep dying and disappearing around here, I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”
Airplanes usually give me the creeps, but this one didn’t bother me much. I had other things to think about. At one point, I recall, Van Horn nudged me and pointed down. He wanted to call my attention to the fact that we were over the Grand Canyon. It was daylight now, and the view was, I’ll admit, quite spectacular, but it was not my day for appreciating scenery.
Goldfield is situated in a kind of bowl, surrounded by the low, naked Nevada hills. The whole bowl has been torn up by mining operations. The decaying rigs and shacks of deserted mines are dotted all over the landscape. I have heard that the town was quite a metropolis once; the scene of one of the last great American gold rushes, some time around nineteen hundred. Now only the nucleus of a city remains. There are a few small filling stations and cafés—west of the Mississippi, any restaurant is a café—some short streets of modern, inhabited residences, a school or two, and several impressive public buildings massively constructed of gray stone: Goldfield is the county seat. In one of these, we found the office of the sheriff, who drove us to the scene in a brand-new Chevrolet pickup truck. In that country, the pickup is the family vehicle; but they like to keep a jeep handy for rough going.
I got out and looked around. There were people around, and jeeps; and a small plane was circling overhead. They presumably knew what they were doing. I didn’t ask them what it was. I stood there for a while. It was a desolate place. The Triumph had left the road a couple of hundred yards south of where I was standing and dug two straight furrows slantingly across the wide and shallow ditch—hardly deep enough to be called that—that bordered the highway for miles through this region. The far edge of the ditch had apparently been enough to flip it into the air at the speed it was traveling; it had struck and bounced crazily across the desert for a hundred yards, disintegrating and strewing parts and contents everywhere, and mowing down a couple of yucca or Joshua trees before coming to a halt—I never know at what point in size a yucca becomes a Joshua or vice versa.
Now it was lying there with its three remaining wheels in the air, the hood and trunk lid gone, and the red paint blistered and blackened by fire. I walked over. People were doing things to the wreck, Van Horn among them. The place was lousy with the yuccas; they grew everywhere, up and down the low
rounded hills, carefully spaced, each one with plenty of room around it, never two close together. Even yuccas need water, I guess, and have to fight for enough area to survive. They grew eight to twelve feet tall, with twisted arms covered by pointed spiny leaves somewhat like the leaves at the base of a pineapple. Many were brown and withered at this time of year. They cast long distorted shadows. It was a hell of a place.
I walked to the top of the nearest hill. In the distance, at least ten miles to the east, the ground sloped down to a white patch that would be a sink into which all the water in the area ran when it rained, and then evaporated during the hot dry periods between rains, leaving a salt deposit. To the west was a low range of hills, studded with yuccas. North and south ran the highway, the only sign of civilization—if you could call it that. The civilized people driving along it kept stopping and getting out to gawk at the wreck, hoping, I guess, to see some mangled bodies. They were annoyed at the sheriff’s men for keeping them at a distance.
I walked back down. Van Horn said, “Oh, there you are. We’d like a full description of what she was wearing when she left home.”
I said, “A blue-and-white striped shirt, gray flannel shorts, long white socks, brown loafers. A blue leather jacket. White string driving gloves with leather palms… Of course she may have changed.”
He shook his head. “The time it took her to get here doesn’t allow for many stops; besides I had a man following her.”
“What does he say?”
“He says she stepped on the gas after leaving Vegas. At a hundred and five miles per hour he remembered his wife and baby, and let Mrs. Gregory pull ahead of him. When he got here, the car was burning, but there was no sign of a human being around. It was dark, of course. He looked around as best he could; then drove on to Goldfield to get help and report to me.”
The sheriff said, “Somebody could have picked her up and rushed her to a hospital, but we’ve checked every place within three hundred miles.”
Assassins Have Starry Eyes Page 7
