“There’s nothing here, Bill,” Jerry said then, and after a moment Bill waded toward them, nodding to show he agreed.
“I could have told you that an hour ago,” Smith said. Bill said he knew.
“If she was here she got away,” Pam said. “You know that now.”
“I guess so,” Bill said. “I hope so.”
They went out of the shallow black pit and joined Smith on the grass. They were standing there, resting, futilely trying to rub the blackness off their hands, off their clothes, when Bill Weigand suddenly stiffened. He had been standing looking down the drive toward the road, and he stiffened at something he saw.
A small car was backing out of the driveway, into the road. It was backing fast and recklessly, as if no hazard of driving could compare with the peril the driver was getting away from. Bill Weigand’s hand started toward the under-arm holster which held his gun, but the movement stopped almost as it began. The car was straightening out in the road; almost before it had stopped backing, it was moving forward with a kind of jump. There was nothing to shoot at.
Bill was running, then, toward the Buick and Mullins, not asking why, not hesitating, although from where he stood he had seen nothing, ran after him. Pam North made a movement as if to join them—an excited, involuntary movement—and Jerry stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You’d be in the way,” he said. “We’d be in the way.”
She turned to him, started to speak and then nodded instead.
“Also,” Jerry said, “this way you don’t get hurt. For once. For a change.”
“But,” Pam said, “I don’t even know what it was. Do you?”
“A car,” Jerry said. “A car that started in and changed its mind. Very suddenly. Very … anxiously. And—I think it was a Pontiac.”
“Jerry!” Pam said. “Dorian?”
Jerry shook his head at that. There was no way of telling. If Dorian had been in the house, she had been gone from it a long time. It was hard to think why they—why anyone—would be bringing her back. But something had frightened the driver of the car, and he thought the car had been a Pontiac coupe.
Weigand’s Buick had to back and turn to head down the drive. It backed into a hollow which water from the fire hose had turned into a swamp; it hung there, rear wheels spinning. Before the Norths could move, Mullins was out of the car. He was behind it, pushing, and the churning wheels threw sod and water, and then mud, into his face. But the car moved and Mullins ran beside it, hauling at the door. He dragged himself in and the car seemed to leap down the drive. It went into the road outside in a skid turn.
“Ooooh!” Pam said. There was a shiver in her voice.
Then they heard the siren of the car begin, its wail rising and falling, circling among the hills, sounding of fear and a kind of anguish.
Bill had the accelerator pedal almost to the floor; as the car took it, straightening from its turn, the pedal went to the floor. The needle moved around on the big dial, fast at first and then more gradually. They were doing better than sixty within two hundred yards. Then they were almost at seventy, on a crowned black road. But the road turned and twisted, and at that speed no car would hold it. Bill slackened his pressure on the accelerator.
“Listen, Loot,” Mullins said, and his voice was oddly mild, “what’re we chasing, huh?”
A car—a coupe—probably a Pontiac coupe, Bill told him. Like the car in which Dorian had been kidnaped; a car which had started in toward the Wilming house, seen what there was to see—ruins, people, a car which might even from that distance have revealed its PD shield and the red headlights low down, where fog lights ride—seen all this, got out.
“Farno and Piper,” Weigand said. “Farno or Piper.”
Mullins said, “Jeez!” It was hard to tell whether he commented on the information or on Bill Weigand’s driving, now that the road was straightening.
It straightened for a mile, and at the end of the mile a car was moving fast ahead of them. It went around a curve, apparently down a hill, and vanished. The mile raced back under the Buick’s wheels, and then Bill braked hard for the turn, let the car roll into it, and then had to brake again as the road pitched down in a corkscrew.
They came out of it and to the road’s end. The end was two lanes of concrete running left and right, and a sign which said: “Thru Traffic. STOP.” They stopped, but not because of the sign. They stopped beyond the white line, so that they could see up and down the road. And then, without comment, Bill backed the car into the black road. A truck came on the concrete road from the left, over a hill, and as it reached them red and green lights bloomed on it in half a dozen places. It went on, fighting the hill beyond.
It was a fifty-fifty chance, and not good enough. One way or the other the Pontiac had gone, and they could sit there and toss coins. Neither needed to tell the other, or to be told, that it would be a fool’s game.
Bill Weigand swung out into the main road, circled, came back to the black road and the Buick went obediently up the twisting hill. If it was the Pontiac they wanted, an alarm was out. They could localize the alarm, give it an area. But not by careening the wrong way—even money, the wrong way—along a busy highway. Bill Weigand’s face was set and angry, and he did not comment. He drove back to the Wilming driveway, up it to the house, and beckoned to the Norths. He looked around for Smith.
“The trooper came back,” Pam explained, as she and Jerry got into the Buick. “Mr. Smith went with him. My, but we’re all dirty.” She looked at Bill. “He got away,” she said, as a statement of fact.
Bill nodded. He—they—the car had got away.
“Why did they come?” Pam said, as the Buick turned again, this time avoiding the swamp. “Didn’t they know?”
Bill, looking ahead, merely shrugged.
“We’ll know that when we catch them,” Mullins said, his politeness showing. He considered. “You know,” he said, “it’s beginning to get screwy at that.” He turned and regarded the Norths.
“Where were they during the fire,” Pam said, “if Dorian was here?” There was a kind of catch in her voice. “And got away, as we know she did. Where were they?”
There were two of them, Jerry pointed out. Perhaps one of them had stayed with Dorian, and got out with her. Perhaps the other had taken the Pontiac and gone for something—gone a good distance, and come back to a burned out house.
“And us,” Bill said, still without turning. “It’s a guess, Jerry. As Mullins says, we’ll know when we catch them.”
He had turned to the right this time when he reached the crowned black road. He drove a quarter of a mile or so, and turned into a driveway. It twisted through trees, came to a wide lawn, circled in front of a house. Weigand cut the motor.
“Stanton’s,” he said.
They got out. It was dusk now. As they stood in front of the house, lights began to go on in it. And then, at a french window which was one of a row of french windows on their right as they faced the house, a tall man with a forest of red hair appeared. He looked at them.
“My God,” he said, “you people look horrible! Like a minstrel show. Come in and wash.”
“I’d like to use your telephone,” Weigand said. “Before anything.”
“Hell yes,” Buford Stanton said. “Why not? Come in this way.” He continued to regard them as they walked toward him. “Don’t rub off on anything, if it’s all the same,” he said. He let them advance still further. “Find anything?” he asked.
Bill Weigand shook his head and said no at the same time, and before anyone else could speak.
“Didn’t think you would,” Stanton said. “Watch the curtains, will you?” They watched the curtains and went in, and Stanton raised his voice and shouted, in no particular direction, “Hey, Ford! Ford!”
They stood just inside. A group of sofa and chairs faced french windows a little way down the room, sidling away from a now unused fireplace. Donald and Beatrice Helms sat together, quite close together, o
n the sofa. The deep chair near them was the one Stanton had left to come to the window. The arrangement announced it; a cigarette, sending up a twisting trace of smoke from an ash tray, confirmed it.
“You called me, Mr. Stanton?” a quiet man in black asked, from an inner door. His voice was quiet; it seemed a belated muffler on Stanton’s shout.
“Ford,” Stanton said. “These people want to wash up. And use the telephone. Take care of them, will you?”
“Certainly, sir,” Ford said. He took it all for granted. “If you—?” he said to the Norths and Weigand, and they went past him obediently. They felt—Pam North in particular felt—that Buford Stanton watched them go rather intently.
Pam had a bathroom to herself, and did what she could with water and brushes. It was unlikely, she thought, that the shoes would ever be the same again and it was not certain about the dress. As for herself, time would tell. There was now, she thought, insufficient time. At least she would not rub off—or not a great deal—on Mr. Stanton’s furniture. She found her way back to the room through which they had entered.
She was the first and Stanton and Helms stood up. Beatrice Helms smiled at her.
“A transformation,” Buford Stanton assured her. “Recognize you now, Mrs. North.” He surveyed her. “Didn’t do your dress any good,” he said. “However. Sit ye doon.”
He was worried about something, Pam thought. He was uneasy, uncertain. That was why he said something so absurd as “sit ye doon.” It came from trying to be easy, from meeting a situation which was not conducive to ease. That was rather interesting, Pam thought. She sat down.
“You need a drink,” Stanton told her, still, she thought, talking too much. But perhaps he always did. “Scotch? Bourbon?”
She looked at the impressive traveling bar and saw what she wanted.
“A martini, if it’s all right,” she said. “Very dry?”
“A clean drink,” Stanton assured her. He went to the bar. “Paper dry,” he said. He mixed. The drink was almost colorless. He admired it. “One dry martini,” he told her, presenting it.
Pam North drank. Her stomach was surprised, accepting, warmed. She made a face at the first sip, as she always did, in spite of all she could do. “Delicious,” she said through the contortion. “Don’t pay any attention to that. It’s a reflex or something. Sometimes I think it must be early religious training.”
Now I’m talking too much, Pam thought. I wish Jerry and Bill would come.
“I know a man who always sneezes,” Stanton said. “Or is that cats?”
“If you mean Emmet, it’s cats,” Donald Helms said. His voice was easy; he seemed lazily, almost indifferently, amused.
“Reminds me of a story,” Stanton said. He leaned forward. “Did you ever hear the one—” he said, and began to tell the one. He told it with intensity and drama, using his arms, his face. It was funny, and Pam laughed. The Helmses looked at each other when Stanton began. When he finished they smiled, but did not laugh.
“Heard it, those two have,” Stanton said, unembarrassed. “The hell with them. You like cats, Mrs. North?”
“Very much,” Pam said. “I’ve got one. Martini.”
“What?” Stanton said. “Oh, sorry. I hadn’t noticed you—” He looked at her glass, which was better than half full. He looked at her.
“The name of my cat,” Pam said. “Jerry’s and mine, or maybe we’re hers. Martini.”
“Whimsy, for God’s sake,” Stanton said. “Martini!”
Pam North was unconcerned.
“One man’s whimsy,” she said, and then looked around at the sound of Jerry and Bill coming in. They were a little cleaner. It still made her unhappy to look at Bill’s set face. Would it help—somehow, sometime—that Buford Stanton was ill at ease, that the Helmses were quiet and companionable together?
“Find the telephone, lieutenant?” Stanton said now. “Get your report in? Or whatever it was?”
“Thanks,” Bill said. “I got through.”
He walked over toward them, with Jerry beside him and Mullins just behind them. “Drinks?” Stanton said, generally. “You all look like you could use them.”
The slight hesitancy in Bill Weigand’s acceptance would not be noticed, Pam thought, except by people who knew him well. But he did accept, and Jerry North and Mullins accepted too. They were settled when Stanton spoke again, and now there was clearly puzzlement, perhaps even worry, in his tone.
“Is there something funny about the fire, lieutenant?” Buford Stanton asked. “Your being here. I don’t get it.”
Donald and Beatrice Helms looked as if they did not get it either. There was, Pam North thought, a great air of innocence. Bill Weigand looked at them and did not speak for a moment.
“Unless—” Stanton said, and thought a moment and suddenly seemed very astonished.
“Unless what, Mr. Stanton?” Bill said.
“Unless you’re not satisfied about Wilming’s death,” Stanton said. “Unless the police think—” He stopped again, because Bill Weigand was nodding slowly.
“Right,” Bill said. “What did you think brought me out here, Mr. Stanton?” He looked at the others. “Mrs. Helms?” he said. “Mr. Helms?”
None of them answered. They looked at him.
“You can take it we aren’t satisfied,” Bill said. “And if we needed more, the fire gave us more.” He put down his glass. “You may as well know,” he said. “It was very funny about the fire. Somebody arranged it.”
“What the hell?” Stanton said.
Bill Weigand nodded.
“Very carefully,” he said. “With considerable ingenuity. Perhaps with too much ingenuity.” He nodded at them, letting it sink in. “Obviously to get Wilming,” he said.
Mrs. Helms made a little sound. It was not easy to translate. It seemed to contain surprise and shock and something like disbelief. Perhaps, Pam North thought, there was fear in it too.
“Obviously to get Wilming,” Weigand repeated. “He was supposed—” He broke off. “Never mind,” he said. “He was supposed to do certain things, as a result of which the place would catch fire—very suddenly. So suddenly that it would kill him.”
“But—” Helms said.
Again Bill Weigand nodded.
“He was already dead,” he said. “Yes, Mr. Helms. So he didn’t spring the trap. Somebody else sprung it.” He regarded them, and his face was set. “Somebody it wasn’t intended for. The person who set it didn’t care, apparently—didn’t think, or didn’t care. Anybody could wander in and—set off the trap. Anybody could be—caught.”
“But look here,” Stanton said. “Who was caught?”
“I said could be,” Bill said. “Sometimes traps miss. Sometimes what’s trapped gets out. Is that supposed to make it better?”
His tone was suddenly angry, abstractly angry.
“You see,” he said, “I think my wife sprung that trap. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps she was intended to—if it wasn’t needed for Wilming. You see, it’s quite a personal matter with me, Mr. Stanton.” His voice was low, level, very hard. “Quite personal. I don’t deny that.”
The Helmses and Stanton looked unhappy and worried and, Pam thought, puzzled. Then Stanton spoke for them.
“Your wife, lieutenant?” he said. “I’m afraid we—well, I’m afraid we don’t understand.” He looked at the other two. “I don’t?” he said, making it an enquiry. Donald Helms and his wife shook their heads slowly.
“My wife is Dorian Hunt,” he said. “I think you, at any rate, know her as Dorian Hunt, Mr. Helms? She draws.”
“Hunt,” Helms said. “Of course. I didn’t know—”
Bill Weigand brushed it aside. There was no reason he should know, or shouldn’t. It was a professional name; her maiden name.
“Yesterday,” Bill said, “she was in Wilming’s office, apparently just after he went out the window—she and a girl named St. John. Vilma St. John. You all knew her?”
They knew he
r. It was Helms who picked up the tense.
“Knew?” he repeated.
“Last night she was found dead in her apartment over in Brooklyn,” Weigand said. His voice was without expression now. “Somebody had strangled her. You didn’t see it in the papers this morning?”
They hadn’t. They looked shocked. Or perhaps it was not so deep as shock, more conventional than shock.
“Reasonably,” Weigand said. “The papers didn’t connect it with—his. With Wilming. We didn’t make a point of connecting it, and by the time the reporters got it they didn’t have much time to think. And there was something else they didn’t get at all, and won’t get unless—well, won’t unless it has to come out. At about the time the St. John girl was killed my wife was kidnaped. And I have reason to think that she was, at some time last night or today—sometime before the fire—in Wilming’s cottage. I don’t know where she is now.”
His tone made no comment on this statement; it came out flat—it lay flat, unornamented by any revealed emotion, in front of all of them.
“But—” Helms began and stopped and started over. “You think it means that they saw something—heard something—I don’t understand.”
“Adjust your mind to it, Mr. Helms,” Bill said. “Your friend didn’t fall by accident. He didn’t jump. Somebody pushed him. Apparently somebody planned to burn him up, thought better of that, and pushed him out of a window.” He paused. “With equivalent results,” he added.
“Who?” Stanton said, and Bill shook his head and smiled faintly.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Stanton,” he said, and now his voice was almost gentle. “That’s what brings me here. That ‘who.’ Because, you see, we don’t know yet.”
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