by Robert Bloch
Sam Loomis shrugged, then grinned. He wasn’t complaining about the situation. Maybe small-town people didn’t dig his sort of music, but at least they left him the freedom to enjoy it for himself. Just as he made no attempt to influence their tastes. It was a fair bargain.
Sam pulled out the big ledger and carried it over to the kitchen table. For the next hour, the table would double in brass as his desk. Just as he would double in brass as his own bookkeeper.
That was one of the drawbacks of living here in one room behind the hardware store. There was no extra space available, and everything doubled in brass. Still, he accepted the situation. It wouldn’t go on this way very much longer, the way things were breaking for him these days.
A quick glance at the figures seemed to confirm his optimism. He’d have to do some checking on inventory requirements, but it looked very much like he might be able to pay off another thousand this month. That would bring the total up to three thousand for the half-year mark. And this was off-season, too. There’d be more business coming this fall.
Sam scribbled a hasty figure-check on a sheet of scratch paper. Yes, he could probably swing it. Made him feel pretty good. It ought to make Mary feel good, too.
Mary hadn’t been too cheerful, lately. At least her letters sounded as if she were depressed. When she wrote at all, that is. Come to think of it, she owed him several letters now. He’d written her again, last Friday, and still no reply. Maybe she was sick. No, if that was the case he’d have gotten a note from the kid sister, Lila, or whatever her name was. Chances were that Mary was just discouraged, down in the dumps. Well, he didn’t blame her. She’d been sweating things out for a long time.
So had he, of course. It wasn’t easy, living like this. But it was the only way. She understood, she agreed to wait.
Maybe he ought to take a few days off next week, leave Summerfield in charge here, and take a run down to see her. Just drop in and surprise her, cheer her up. Why not? Things were very slack at the moment, and Bob could handle the store alone.
Sam sighed. The music was descending now, spiraling to a minor key. This must be the theme for the snake garden. Yes, he recognized it, with its slithering strings, its writhing woodwinds squirming over the sluggish bass. Snakes. Mary didn’t like snakes. Chances were, she didn’t like this kind of music, either.
Sometimes he almost wondered if they hadn’t made a mistake when they planned ahead. After all, what did they really know about each other? Aside from the companionship of the cruise and the two days Mary had spent here last year, they’d never been together. There were the letters, of course, but maybe they just made things worse. Because in the letters, Sam had begun to find another Mary—a moody, almost petulant personality, given to likes and dislikes so emphatic they were almost prejudices.
He shrugged. What had come over him? Was it the morbidity of the music? All at once he felt tension in the muscles at the back of his neck. He listened intently, trying to isolate the instrument, pinpoint the phrase that had triggered his reaction. Something was wrong, something he sensed, something he could almost hear.
Sam rose, pushing back his chair.
He could hear it now. A faint rattling, from up front. Of course, that’s all it was; he had heard something to bother him. Somebody was turning the knob of the front door.
The store was closed for the night, the shades drawn, but maybe it was some tourist. Most likely would be; folks in town knew when he closed up, and they also knew he lived in the back room. If they wanted to come down for anything after regular hours, they’d phone first.
Well, business was business, whoever the customer might be. Sam turned and went into the store, hurrying down the dim aisle. The blind had been pulled down on the front door, but he could hear the agitated rattling very plainly now—in fact, some of the pots and pans on the traffic-item counter were jiggling.
This must be an emergency, all right; probably the customer needed a new bulb for his kid’s Mickey Mouse flashlight.
Sam fumbled in his pocket, pulling out his key ring. “All right,” he called. “I’m opening up.” And did so, deftly, swinging the door back without withdrawing the key.
She stood there in the doorway, silhouetted against the street lamp’s glow from the curbing outside. For a moment the shock of recognition held him immobile; then he stepped forward and his arms closed around her.
“Mary!” he murmured. His mouth found hers, gratefully, greedily; and then she was stiffening, she was pulling away, her hands had come up shaping into balled fists that beat against his chest. What was wrong?
“I’m not Mary!” she gasped. “I’m Lila.”
“Lila?” He stepped back once more. “The kid—I mean, Mary’s sister?”
She nodded. As she did so he caught a glimpse of her face in profile, and the lamplight glinted on her hair. It was brown, much lighter than Mary’s. Now he could see the difference in the shape of the snub nose, the higher angle of the broad cheekbones. She was a trifle shorter, too, and her hips and shoulders seemed slimmer.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It’s this light.”
“That’s all right.” Her voice was different, too; softer and lower.
“Come inside, won’t you?”
“Well—” She hesitated, glancing down at her feet, and then Sam noticed the small suitcase on the sidewalk.
“Here, let me take this for you.” He scooped it up. As he passed her in the doorway he switched on the rear light. “My room is in back,” he told her. “Follow me.”
She trailed behind him in silence. Not quite silence, because Respighi’s tone poem still resounded from the radio. As they entered his makeshift living quarters, Sam went over to switch it off. She lifted her hand.
“Don’t,” she told him. “I’m trying to recognize that music.” She nodded. “Villa-Lobos?”
“Respighi. Something called Brazilian Impressions. It’s on the Urania label, I believe.”
“Oh. We don’t stock that.” For the first time he remembered that Lila worked in a record shop.
“You want me to leave it on, or do you want to talk?” he asked.
“Turn it off. We’d better talk.”
He nodded, bent over the set, then faced her. “Sit down,” he invited. “Take off your coat.”
“Thanks. I don’t intend to stay long. I’ve got to find a room.”
“You’re here on a visit?”
“Just overnight. I’ll probably leave again in the morning. And it isn’t exactly a visit. I’m looking for Mary.”
“Looking for—” Sam stared at her. “But what would she be doing here?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that.”
“But how could I? Mary isn’t here.”
“Was she here? Earlier this week, I mean?”
“Of course not. Why, I haven’t seen her since she drove up last summer.” Sam sat down on the sofa bed. “What’s the matter, Lila? What’s this all about?”
“I wish I knew.”
She avoided his gaze, lowering her lashes and staring at her hands. They twisted in her lap, twisted like serpents. In the bright light, Sam noticed that her hair was almost blond. She didn’t resemble Mary at all, now. She was quite another girl. A nervous, unhappy girl.
“Please,” he said. “Tell me.”
Lila looked up suddenly, her wide hazel eyes searching his. “You weren’t lying when you said Mary hasn’t been here?”
“No, it’s the truth. I haven’t even heard from her these last few weeks. I was beginning to get worried. Then you come bursting in here and—” His voice broke off. “Tell me!”
“All right. I believe you. But there isn’t much to tell.” She took a deep breath and started to speak again, her hands roaming restlessly across the front of her skirt. “I haven’t seen Mary since a week ago last night, at the apartment. That’s the night I left for Dallas, to see some wholesale suppliers down there—I do the buying for the shop. Anyway, I spent the weekend and to
ok a train back up late Sunday night. I got in early Monday morning. Mary wasn’t at the apartment. At first I wasn’t concerned; maybe she’d left early for work. But she usually called me sometime during the day, and when she didn’t phone by noon, I decided to call her at the office. Mr. Lowery answered the phone. He said he was just getting ready to call me and see what was wrong. Mary hadn’t come in that morning. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since the middle of Friday afternoon.”
“Wait a minute,” Sam said, slowly. “Let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me that Mary has been missing for an entire week?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then why wasn’t I notified before this?” He stood up, feeling the renewed tension in his neck muscles, feeling it in his throat and his voice. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me, phone me? What about the police?”
“Sam. I—”
“Instead, you waited all this time and then came up here to ask if I’d seen her. It doesn’t make sense!”
“Nothing makes sense. You see, the police don’t know about this. And Mr. Lowery doesn’t know about you. After what he told me, I agreed not to call them. But I was so worried, so frightened, and I had to know. That’s why, today, I decided to drive up here and find out for myself. I thought maybe the two of you might have planned it together.”
“Planned what?” Sam shouted.
“That’s what I’d like to know.” The answer was soft, but there was nothing soft about the face of the man who stood in the doorway. He was tall, thin, and deeply tanned; a gray Stetson shadowed his forehead but not his eyes. The eyes were ice-blue and ice-hard.
“Who are you?” Sam muttered. “How did you get in here?”
“Front door was unlocked, so I just stepped inside. I came here to get a little information, but I see Miss Crane already beat me to the question. Maybe you’d like to give us both an answer now.”
“Answer?”
“That’s right.” The tall man moved forward, one hand dipping into the pocket of his gray jacket. Sam lifted his arm, then dropped it, as the hand came forth, extending a wallet. The tall man flipped it open. “The name’s Arbogast. Milton Arbogast. Licensed investigator, representing Parity Mutual. We carry a bonding policy on the Lowery Agency your girl-friend worked for. That’s why I’m here now. I want to find out what you two did with the forty thousand dollars.”
— 7 —
The gray Stetson was on the table now, and the gray jacket was draped over the back of one of Sam’s chairs. Arbogast snubbed his third cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lighted another.
“All right,” he said. “You didn’t leave Fairvale any time during the past week. I’ll buy that, Loomis. You’d know better than to lie. Too easy for me to check your story around town here.” The investigator inhaled slowly. “Of course that doesn’t prove Mary Crane hasn’t been to see you. She could have sneaked in some evening after your store closed, just like her sister did, tonight.”
Sam sighed. “But she didn’t. Look, you heard what Lila here just told you. I haven’t even heard from Mary for weeks. I wrote her a letter last Friday, the very day she’s supposed to have disappeared. Why should I do a thing like that if I knew she was going to come here?”
“To cover up, of course. Very smart move.” Arbogast exhaled savagely.
Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not that smart. Not that smart at all. I didn’t know about the money. The way you’ve explained it, not even Mr. Lowery knew in advance that somebody was going to bring him forty thousand dollars in cash on Friday afternoon. Certainly Mary didn’t know. How could we possibly plan anything together?”
“She could have phoned you from a pay station after she took the money, on Friday night, and told you to write her.”
“Check with the phone company here,” Sam answered wearily. “You’ll find I haven’t had any long-distance calls for a month.”
Arbogast nodded. “So she didn’t phone you. She drove straight up, told you what had happened, and made a date to meet you later, after things cooled down.”
Lila bit her lip. “My sister’s not a criminal. You don’t have any right to talk about her that way. You have no real proof that she took the money. Maybe Mr. Lowery took it himself. Maybe he cooked up this whole story, just to cover up—”
“Sorry,” Arbogast murmured. “I know how you feel, but you can’t make him your patsy. Unless the thief is found, tried and convicted, our company doesn’t pay off—and Lowery is out of the forty grand. So he couldn’t profit from the deal in any way. Besides, you’re overlooking obvious facts. Mary Crane is missing. She has been missing ever since the afternoon she received that money. She didn’t take it to the bank. She didn’t hide it in the apartment. But it’s gone. And her car is gone. And she’s gone.” Again a cigarette died and was interred in the ash tray. “It all adds up.”
Lila began to sob softly. “No, it doesn’t! You should have listened to me when I wanted to call the police. Instead I let you and Mr. Lowery talk me out of it. Because you said you wanted to keep things quiet, and maybe if we waited Mary would decide to bring the money back. You wouldn’t believe what I said, but I know now that I was right. Mary didn’t take that money. Somebody must have kidnaped her. Somebody who knew about it—”
Arbogast shrugged, then rose wearily and walked over to the girl. He patted her shoulder. “Listen, Miss Crane—we went through this before, remember? Nobody else knew about the money. Your sister wasn’t kidnaped. She went home and packed her bags, drove off in her own car, and she was alone. Didn’t your landlady see her off? So be reasonable.”
“I am reasonable! You’re the one who doesn’t make sense! Following me up here to see Mr. Loomis—”
The investigator shook his head. “What makes you think I followed you?” he asked quietly.
“How else did you happen to come here tonight? You didn’t know that Mary and Sam Loomis were engaged. Outside of me, no one knew. You didn’t even know Sam Loomis existed.”
Arbogast shook his head. “I knew. Remember up at your apartment, when I looked through your sister’s desk? I came across this envelope.” He flourished it.
“Why, it’s addressed to me,” Sam muttered—and rose to reach for it.
Arbogast drew his hand away. “You won’t need this,” he said. “There’s no letter inside, just the envelope. But I can use it, because it’s in her handwriting.” He paused. “As a matter of fact, I have been using it, ever since Wednesday morning when I started out for here.”
“You started out for here—on Wednesday?” Lila dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“That’s right. I wasn’t following you. I was way ahead of you. The address on the envelope gave me a lead. That, plus Loomis’ picture in the frame next to your sister’s bed. ‘With all my love—Sam.’ Easy enough to figure out the connection. So I decided to put myself in your sister’s place. I’ve just laid my hands on forty thousand dollars in cash. I’ve got to get out of town, fast. Where do I go? Canada, Mexico, the West Indies? Too risky. Besides, I haven’t had time to make long-range plans. My natural impulse would be to come straight to loverboy, here.”
Sam hit the kitchen table so hard that the cigarette butts jumped out of the ash tray. “That’s about enough!” he said. “You have no official right to make such accusations. So far you haven’t offered one word of proof to back up any of this.”
Arbogast fumbled for another cigarette. “You want proof, eh? What do you think I’ve been doing back there on the road, ever since Wednesday morning? That’s when I found the car.”
“You found my sister’s car?” Lila was on her feet.
“Sure. I had a funny hunch that one of the first things she’d do would be to ditch it. So I called around town, to all the dealers and the used car lots, giving a description and the license number. Sure enough, it paid off. I found the place. Showed the guy my credentials and he talked. Talked fast, too—guess he thought the car was hot. I didn’t
exactly contradict his notion, either.
“Turned out that Mary Crane made a fast trade with him on Friday night, just before closing time. Took a hell of a beating on the deal, too. But I got all the info on the title, and a full description of the heap she drove out with. Heading north.
“So I headed north, too. But I couldn’t go very fast. I was playing one hunch—that she’d stick to the highway because she was coming here. Probably drive straight through, the first night. So I drove straight through, for eight hours. Then I spent a lot of time around Oklahoma City, checking motels along the highway, and used car places on the road. I figured she might switch again, just to be on the safe side. But no dice. Thursday I got up as far as Tulsa. Same routine, same results. It wasn’t until this morning when the needle turned up in the haystack. Another lot, another dealer, just north of there. She made the second trade early last Saturday—took another shellacking and ended up with a blue 1953 Plymouth, with a bad front fender.”
He took a notebook from his pocket. “It’s all down here in black and white,” he said. “Title dope, engine number, everything. Both dealers are having photostats made and sending them back to the home office for me. But that doesn’t matter, now. What matters is that Mary Crane drove north out of Tulsa on the main highway last Saturday morning, after switching cars twice in sixteen hours. As far as I’m concerned, this is the place she was heading for. And unless something unexpected happened—unless the car broke down, or there was an accident—she should have arrived here last Saturday night.”
“But she didn’t,” Sam said. “I haven’t seen her. Look, I can dig up proof, if you want it. Last Saturday night I was over at the Legion Hall playing cards. Plenty of witnesses. Sunday morning I went to church. Sunday noon I had dinner at—”
Arbogast raised a hand wearily. “Okay I get the message. You didn’t see her. So something must have happened. I’ll start checking back.”
