Donald Hamilton

The Steel Mirror

chapter ONE

He came back from the railway station with his tickets through the hot late afternoon sunshine; and at the door of the Ford garage he had to step aside for a fawn-colored Mercury convertible just driving in. He caught a glimpse of the face of the girl behind the wheel, rather slight and fragile beneath a hat that turned back from her forehead in a ruffled halo of pale straw. The hat had a veil that covered but did not conceal her face, and a large stiff black bow at the rear. The car had Illinois license plates, a Chicago sticker, and smelled strongly of boiling alcohol. It had, apparently, been driven hard; and something of the conjunction of the small face, the delicate veiled hat, and the overheated car fifty miles away from home, seemed incongruous to John Emmett; and, inside the garage, he walked very slowly toward the office door, waiting for the girl to get out so that he could get a full look at her.

“Please,” he heard her say to the mechanic who came up. “It keeps boiling.”

The mechanic raised the hood. “You’ve still got your antifreeze, haven’t you, Miss?”

She said, “Oh, is that it? Can you fix it?”

“Just drive it over the pit,” the mechanic said. “I’ll clean it out for you.”

The car jerked forward, backed, went forward again; the mechanic beckoning, waving, finally halting it with his hand. “Better let me do it, Miss,” he said, coming forward.

The girl laughed uncertainly. “I guess you’d better. I can’t seem to make it fit.”

Then she got out and brushed at the rear of her pale gabardine suit, and stood watching the mechanic put the car into place with two expert movements; the girl standing there slender and rather small in the dusk of the grimy garage, in the fragile hat and the expensive light suit. She was wearing white gloves and carrying a large rectangular black purse on a strap over her arm. The stockings on her fine legs were obviously nylon, and she was wearing dark pumps with moderately high heels.

All that cost and careful preparation, John Emmett thought, frowning, as for a cocktail party; standing a little stiff and cramped, a little crushed in the rear, with perspiration on her forehead and upper lip, beside an overheated car in a dirty garage in Jepson, Illinois. It was really none of his business, and he started to turn away.

“Please,” the girl asked the mechanic, “have you any roadmaps?”

“See the man in the office, Miss.”

Emmett held the door open for her as she came up, and followed her into the office.

“I’d like one of Illinois and one of Iowa,” she said, “and if you’ve got a big one that shows…”

Emmett grinned at her. “The guy over there,” he said.

She flushed a little, seeing the camera, like a badge proclaiming him a tourist, slung over his shoulder. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought…”

The man in the corner pushed a map across the counter. “All we’ve got is Illinois,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “well…”

“Try the Standard station up the street.”

Emmett had gone behind the counter where his suitcases stood, with his fishing-rod case, between the shelves of automobile accessories. He hesitated a moment and raised his head.

“I’ve got some in my car,” he said.

The girl turned, her gloved hand on the map on the counter. “Thank you,” she said politely, “thank you, but I can…”

“I won’t need them,” he said, and grinned wryly. “It’s not really my car any more. It kind of disintegrated about ten miles east of here. I just sold what was left of it.” As the girl looked at him he was suddenly glad that he had changed, in preparation for catching the eight o’clock train, from the dirty slacks and sports shirt in which he had been driving. He could see himself in the spotted plate-glass windows, looking not particularly young or handsome or athletic, or even, he thought, particularly intelligent, but quite respectable. “I’ve got the whole works,” he said. “Clear to the coast. You’re welcome to them. They’re no good to me without a car.”

“It’s very nice of you,” she said. “If you’re sure…”

He shrugged his shoulders. As they walked back into the garage he asked, “How far are you going?”

“Well,” she said, “not quite as far as the coast.”

He asked, smiling, “You wouldn’t like a passenger?”

She laughed, glancing at him, and said, “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

He opened the door of the ancient Ford with the D.C. plates that had been hauled away into the rear of the garage, and took the maps from the glove compartment.

“Thank you very much,” the girl said, receiving them. “I’m sorry about your car.”

He knew that she was really apologizing for the fact that she could not quite see her way clear to inviting a strange young man to ride with her, but he kicked the front tire of the Ford ruefully.

“And I just put new rubber on the thing,” he said. “Four new tires.”

“Can’t they fix it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said bitterly. “For a few hundred they’ll put in a new motor which might get here three weeks from now, overhaul the transmission and rear end, and for another fifty-something, they’ll beat the dents out of the fenders and throw in a paint job and simonize. By the time they got through I’d have to grab a plane to get to Bakersfield in time.” He grimaced. “I was going to spend a month seeing the country between jobs, but I guess I’ll just have to try a dude ranch I know, instead.”

As he talked, he found himself trying to introduce himself and at the same time make the girl feel a little sorry for the poor man whose vacation plans had broken down. Yet he was aware that she could not help him: he could hardly expect her to chauffeur him through the Rocky Mountains, and he was quite able to pay the train fare to wherever he wanted to go. So that, in the last analysis, he was not really talking about transportation at all, but about the two of them and the fact that he was curious about her and wanted to find out what brought her, dressed as she was, into this little town looking for roadmaps of Iowa and points west. He was, in other words, quite simply trying to pick her up. The realization startled him.

“Well,” he said shortly, “I think you’ll find all you need there. I’d better get my gear over to the railway station before somebody walks off with it.”

“Is there any clean place in town to eat?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” he said, and her face contracted a little at his brusqueness. Suddenly he understood that she was asking him to ask her to eat with him so that they could talk this matter over further; it was still not quite closed. She was actually considering it. He found himself a little startled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never been here before. Suppose I ask.”

“If you would.”

He came back to the office door after a moment, shoving the camera case back with his elbow.

“He says the truck drivers eat at the Elite, and the flossy place is called Parsons’.” He did not step across the sill, making his report through the open door, so that she would not think he was assuming he had permission to accompany her.

“Well,” she said uncertainly, “what would you—?”

“If you’re going alone,” he said carefully, “I’d suggest Parsons’; but if you don’t mind my company, the Elite probably has better food cheaper.”

She smiled very quickly. “But you don’t think I’d be safe there, alone?” There was a little mischief in her voice.

“Safe like a church,” he said, grinning, “but you might feel kind of conspicuous.”

He saw her glance down at her suit, and from the way she flushed he knew that she was aware of being overdressed for the Lincoln Highway. “Well,” she said, “if you’re really…”

“I haven’t had a bite since noon,” he said.

He was aware of her beside him as they came out into the sunlight, but he did not dare look at her directly for fear she would misinterpret his glance as either familiarity or curiosity.

“I don’t know your name,” her voice said, as if she were a little surprised at finding herself walking down a hot sidewalk in a strange town in Illinois beside a man whose name she did not know.

“Emmett,” he said, “John Emmett.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Emmett?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Did you work in Washington?”

“Yes,” he said. “At the F.R.L.”

“F.R.L.?”

“Federal Research Laboratory.”

They turned into the Elite restaurant which had three men parked with their rear ends thrust out in identical postures from the battered swivel stools by the counter; a table held four more talking deliberately over their coffee. A middle-aged couple by the window looked a little out of place. The men looked up, not all at once but taking turns at it, as Emmett and the girl came in; those with their backs turned, making the movement casual, as if they had turned to spit on the floor behind them and had just happened to notice the girl. Their faces made no comment, and after the last of them had had his look you could feel them carefully taking up where they had left off, eating and talking, but there was a sudden sense of male awareness throughout the room.

The girl selected a table and sat down, started to remove her gloves and stopped, looking at them, and grimaced. They were a little soiled. She stripped them and turned back her veil, and he saw her face for the first time without interference. It had wide, arched eyebrows, a small, straight nose, and a firm, rather pointed, chin. He watched her as she felt of the earrings like small gold blossoms with pale blue stone centers, which matched the spray of three such blossoms on a gold stalk that was pinned to her lapel. She glanced up, catching him watching her; and, perhaps to help him cover his confusion, rubbed her eyelids with the tips of her fingers.

“Remind me to buy some aspirin on the way back,” she said.

“Headache?”

She nodded. “It was kind of glary.”

“Come far?”

“Only from Chicago,” she said. “But I didn’t have any sunglasses. I’d better get some of those, too.” Then, quickly, before he could ask the logical next question, where she was going, she said, “But you’re unemployed at the moment.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, the axe.” He grinned. “Well, I suppose it’s fair enough. The other guy has the job back, and I’ve got the experience I gained while he was in the service.”

“Oh,” she said. “Then you weren’t…?”

“No,” he said, and wondered angrily, as always, why the answer to this question always made him feel small and embarrassed. “No, I wasn’t,” he said. “I went to Washington right after Pearl Harbor. The rest of the war, as far as I was concerned, was a duel between the Bureau and my draft board. The Bureau won. It didn’t really matter, because if I’d been drafted they’d have had me ordered right back to F.R.L., anyway.”

“If they wanted to keep you so badly, you must be a pretty good whatever-you-are,” the girl said, smiling.

“Chemist,” he said, and laughed. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow. No government bureau is going to admit that any man working for it is not absolutely irreplaceable.”

The waitress came up and gave them menus and water and said that the lamb was all gone. When they had ordered they sat in silence for a while, and the girl turned her head to look at the sign over the cash register: In God We Trust—all others pay cash. As the light changed on her face, Emmett saw the small scar on the left side of her mouth, just at the lip; noticing it because her fingers had come up absently to touch it and because she was too pretty a girl to be marred in any way. Suddenly she was looking at him, snatching her hand away, and he knew that he was flushing. The scar was no more than a faint white mark, but he knew that his staring at it had been unforgivable.

After a long time her voice said, “I… was in an accident. I haven’t quite got used to it yet. I keep wanting people to tell me it doesn’t show.”

She had opened her purse to look at herself, smiling at him a little apologetically over the edge of it.

He said carefully, “I didn’t notice. Until you touched it.”

“Thank you,” she said, closing the purse and laying it aside so the waitress could put the plates down. Then, looking up again quickly, she asked, “Do you mind driving at night, Mr. Emmett?”

chapter TWO

In the car, he sat smoking beside her, trying not to look at her because she had turned out to be a very bad driver, and he could not trust himself not to give advice. It was easy to see why she might have wanted somebody to help her get to wherever she was going. He sat watching the sun go down toward the rolling country to the west, and told himself that nothing could very well happen to you at forty-five. Behind him, his suitcases bounced together uneasily on the floor, and his hat and light topcoat kept company with her purse on the small rear seat of the convertible. Washington seemed much farther away than four days and eleven hundred miles. Gradually, in spite of the girl’s driving, he felt the sense of freedom return that had been lost to him for a while after the Ford broke down. He felt also a small pleasant sense of adventurousness and anticipation.

He laughed abruptly, and the girl glanced at him.

“I forgot to cash in my tickets,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know you’d bought…”

“I’d just come back from getting them,” he said.

He saw that she was frowning a little, and realized his error: she was thinking back over what had been said and remembering that he had only asked once, lightly, perhaps as a joke. He saw the color come into her face.

He said quickly, “I don’t like trains. I rode too many of them during the war. When I heard you ask for roadmaps of Iowa and points west…”

“But it’s better now, isn’t it?” she asked after a pause. “I mean, the trains.”

“Yes,” he said, a little dryly. “There aren’t so many uniforms.” After a while, she not speaking, he said slowly, “You see, I had two brothers, both older. They were both killed, Dave at Kasserine Pass, and Howie when the Lewistown went down off Savo. It made being a civilian kind of, shall we say, awkward. I got kind of allergic to uniforms, not having one myself.”

He sucked at his pipe and knocked the dead coals into his hand and threw them out the window beside him without looking at her. The windstream snatched the ashes away from him.

“I’m sorry,” the girl’s voice said.

He said, “It was a stupid reaction. After all, Washington was full of civilians. But I didn’t really feel the war was over until I loaded my stuff into the car last Wednesday and headed out. But getting on a train would have kind of spoiled it, don’t you see? So when I heard you ask for roadmaps I thought it was worth a try.”

She was silent for a while. He glanced at her. The blue stones in the small gold blossoms on the lobe of her ear and on the lapel of her jacket caught the light through the windshield; and the wind through the open window beside her, sweeping through the car, tugged at the veil she had turned back, at the brim of her hat, at the wisp of hair that had come free at her temple, and at one point of the collar of the thin eggshell-colored satin blouse that showed in a small triangle, between the lapels of her jacket, at her throat. She turned her head briefly to look at him through the sunglasses that looked a little strange with the rest of her costume.

“Incidentally, my name is Ann Nicholson, Mr. Emmett,” she said, smiling abruptly.

He laughed. “Yes. I looked at the registration card.”

After a moment she laughed also. He realized with a small shock that she had, briefly, been wondering if he had recognized her. He glanced at her again, but her face aroused no recollection in his mind. He was quite sure he had never seen her before, or even a reasonable portrait of her. He thought he would have remembered.

“I’m going to Denver,” she said, “if that helps you.”

“Denver’s fine,” he said. “I’ve got reservations for three days at a place on Hogback Lake, back in the mountains. If Mrs. Pruitt’s still running it, I can probably talk her into letting me stay longer.” The girl did not say anything, preoccupied with driving, and after a while he asked, “Do you know the country around Denver?”

She shook her head. “No. No, I’ve never been west before.”

“It’s fine country,” he said. “We used to drive out every summer. Howie had an old Dodge he had tied together with baling wire and rubber bands. I think we covered every national park west of the Mississippi.”

She started to speak, but a string of cars held back by a large truck bore down on them and claimed her attention; and when they had the road to themselves again she had, apparently, forgotten what she had been about to say. Emmett wondered if she, like himself, was thinking of how it had been simple and pleasant before the war—although probably not quite as simple and pleasant as it seemed in retrospect. But the war had shown you things about yourself and about other people that you would rather not have learned. Everything you did now was colored by what you had learned during the war.

Presently Ann Nicholson braked abruptly and swerved into a filling station, while the car that had been behind them whipped past with its horn screaming. The girl looked after it a little resentfully as it receded along the highway.

“Oh, damn,” she said wearily. “I always do that. But he doesn’t have to make such a fuss about it.”

Emmett looked at her drawn face as the convertible came to rest beside the pumps, and he opened his mouth to suggest that she let him drive.

“That sun’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he said instead. He did not want to frighten her by seeming eager to seize control of her car.

She removed her colored glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Yes, but it will be down in a little while.” She turned as the attendant came to her window, and gave him a key from the glove compartment. “Fill it, please.” Then she opened the door and got out. “Can you reach my purse?” she asked Emmett.

He leaned back, found it and gave it to her, then watched her walk around the front of the car, her heels a little uncertain in the gravel, her tailored skirt a little crumpled in the rear. She vanished around the white lattice-work at the side of the filling station after glancing up at the sign on it. He got out of the car and walked back and forth stiffly, kicking his feet in the white gravel.

“How far to Clinton?” he asked the attendant.

The man looked around. “Forty miles to the river,” he said, and hung up the hose. “Check the oil?”

Emmett nodded. “And clean off the windshield, will you?” It made him feel a little awkward to give orders about a woman’s car; a little like a gigolo. He opened the door and dragged his things out of the rear, opened one suitcase and took out a folded army blanket, throwing it back to the seat Then he got the keys from the ignition, finding himself suddenly pleased that she had trusted him enough to leave them, and opened the trunk. He put the bags away and closed the cover and, after a moment, unlocked and opened it again, looking inside, frowning. There was nothing there except the suitcases and fishing-rod container he had just put in, the spare tire, the jack and handle, and socket wrench for the wheel nuts.

“That’ll be three-o-five,” the attendant said, behind him. “Oil and water O.K.”

Emmett accepted the gas-tank key and stood for a moment, after closing the trunk, looking at the white clapboard station with the little wings of lattice-work that modestly concealed the doors on either side; everything very white and clean, the pumps, oil cans, and water can looking very new in the fading red light; only the hydraulic lift at the side showing enough grease to prove that they actually did business in this place. The white gravel expanse was bounded by a low white picket fence. Behind the station, on the hill, was a farm house not nearly as neat and tidy as the station, and there were other farms as far as you could see in all directions. The concrete highway ran arbitrarily through them as if laid down, not necessarily with a ruler but at least with a French curve, after everything else had been there for years except the filling station which belonged to the highway rather than to the Illinois countryside.

Ann Nicholson came out of the restroom. She had removed her hat, carrying it, with her purse, in her hand. She had also combed out her hair, loosening it from the pins that had held it in place under the hat, so that it fell in soft waves behind her ears, reaching her shoulders. It was light brown, fine in texture and, loose, made her look less remote and sophisticated, and several years younger. Without hat or gloves on she did not look quite so much, Emmett thought, like a mislaid orchid. She stopped by the attendant, who jerked his head towards Emmett; and she came to him, opening her purse.

“No, that’s all right,” he said. He was aware that the attendant was watching with sudden interest, having at first, probably, assumed that they were married.

“Please,” she said. “I don’t want you to…”

She had a lump of bills in her hand larger than any he could remember seeing. The top one was a ten. She saw him look at it and flushed, a little embarrassed, apparently, at the ostentation of the mass of money; and also, he thought wryly, without a doubt regretting a little that he had learned how much there was of it.

“The banks weren’t open,” she said apologetically. “I couldn’t get express checks. Please let me…”

“Fifty-fifty,” he said. “You take the next one.”

She glanced at the attendant. “Oh, all right,” she said, somewhat annoyed. She thrust the bills back into her purse and started for the car. “Do you mind driving now, Mr. Emmett?”

“Not a bit.”

“I think I’ll try to take a nap in back,” she said. “I’ve got a splitting headache. Oh, you took your things…”

He saw her look at the trunk. “Yes,” he said quickly. “I got out a blanket in case you’d want it. Use my coat for a pillow if you like.”

She hesitated, studied his face for a moment, and said, “Thank you,” and climbed over the folding seat into the rear of the car.

As he got behind the wheel he could see her, in the rearview mirror, carefully folding her jacket and laying it up behind the seat with her hat and purse; then as carefully removing her earrings, not pulling them off but unscrewing the tiny clamps until the gold blossoms fell into her hand. He started the car. The wheels spun in the gravel with the quick surge of power that answered his foot on the accelerator. He glanced up again, guiltily, but she was not looking. As they swung out onto the highway he heard her remove her shoes and lie down.

“Any speed limit you want to set?” he asked over his shoulder. “I mean, it’s your car.”

“Oh, no. Anything you think is safe, Mr. Emmett.”

He let the car gather speed along the concrete, and pulled down the visor in a vain attempt to cut out the glare of the sun that rested, like a target in the sights of a rifle, over the ribbon of concrete ahead. He heard her moving uncomfortably on the narrow leather seat behind him, trying, he guessed, to find a position that would allow her to relax without hopelessly wrinkling the skirt of her expensive suit. He wondered if he could hint that he would not look if she wanted to undress, but he suspected that the suggestion would merely startle her.

He thought of the empty trunk. Adjusting the rear-view mirror to his eyes, he saw his own face, rather young and long, now in the evening beginning to need a shave, the black eyebrows raised in an expression of wry surprise. He brought the eyebrows down to a frown, watching his ears waggle with the tightening of his scalp. A car whipped past, going east. He settled himself behind the wheel, glanced at the gas, radiator temperature, oil pressure, and ammeter readings, and let the speedometer steady at sixty-five.

Nothing but the car and wad of bills and the clothes she is wearing, he thought.

chapter THREE

They crossed the bridge at Clinton well after dark. As the lights of the town dwindled behind them and the speedometer crept back toward seventy, Emmett looked up and saw headlights in the rear-view mirror. The bastard’s back again, he thought. He was no longer trying to tell himself that there was nothing particularly strange about two cars going west at the same speed along Highway 30; but he had not yet decided what to do about it, or even what to think about it. At midnight he pulled into a gas station. The girl behind him roused and made an interrogative sound.

“Gas,” he said curtly. A car flashed past on the highway, but in the darkness he could tell no more than that it was a sedan. He told the attendant to fill the tank, and walked stiffly across the oil-stained concrete to the station. Flies buzzed around the electric lights. An old man with steel-rimmed glasses and a collarless white shirt jerked his head toward an unmarked door, and Emmett went inside.

“When’s the last time you had that oil changed, Mister?” the attendant asked him when he came out.

“Why?” Emmett asked. “Is it pretty black?”

“Never seen any dirtier,” the man said.

Emmett recalled the boiling radiator stinking of alcohol, now, in July. Hell of a way to treat a new car, he thought. It was almost as if he were pleased to find something about the girl to irritate him. He got into the car to drive it over the pit.

“What’s the matter?” Ann Nicholson’s voice asked sleepily.

“Going to have the oil changed,” he said, without looking around. If he looked at her he would have to tell her about the car that had been following them, and it seemed a ridiculous thing to have to say.

“Where are we?”

“Damned if I know,” he said, jockeying the car up the ramp. “I didn’t look at the sign. About a hundred and thirty miles west of Clinton.”

“What time is it?”

“Twelve-fifteen,” he said. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Can I bring you one?”

“No,” she said. “Yes. If you don’t mind.” She was only a voice from the darkness behind him.

“Sugar or cream?”

“Both, please.”

“I won’t be long,” he said, getting out. “Doughnut or sweet roll?”

“Yes,” she said. “It would taste good. Either one.”

The air was rather cool and the sky was clear so that, above the lights of the town, the stars seemed quite close. There were not many lights in the town and of the four gas stations clustered together on this side of it, two were closed. Beyond them he could see, in the distance, the uneven black horizon and occasional scattered lights out on the plain. The cars and trucks came and went along the concrete highway. He felt the wind of them as he walked; then, opposite the lunchwagon marked Al’s Diner, he waited while a Chicago bus went past, and darted across. Two men were seated on stools at opposite ends of the counter, and the counterman was chatting with one of them when he came in. Emmett seated himself in the middle. The counterman came over and wiped a space in front of him, not as if it needed wiping, but as if the gesture were a formality, like shaking hands.

“Coffee,” Emmett said. “Black.”

He felt very much like a stranger sitting there in the brown suit he had put on to wear on the train; he felt almost as conspicuous as Ann Nicholson had looked in the garage in Jepson. It was not an expensive suit, nor was it particularly well pressed at the moment, but it was a suit, complete with vest and tie, and it labeled him as a foreigner and a transient. He did not belong either to the town or the highway, he was just a tourist. The man slid a mug of coffee in front of him and went back to his conversation in the corner.

The silent man at the other end of the counter put down a coin and walked out. Emmett sipped his coffee and found himself uneasy about his camera and fishing tackle. After all, he told himself, he did not know anything at all about the girl, except that she had too little luggage and too much money, and that somebody was following her. He looked around and saw, through the grimy window, the convertible on the far side of the highway, still over the pit where he had left it

A sedan stopped outside the diner, arriving from the west; two people got out, came to the door, and entered. Emmett realized that he was staring and turned deliberately away to drink his coffee. He could still feel them behind him, standing there.

Then the strange girl was sitting down beside him.

“Hello,” she said.

He glanced at her. The man was standing at her elbow. There seemed no point in acting like a virgin accosted on a street corner.

“Hello,” Emmett said.

“You do push right along, don’t you?” the girl said, laughing.

“Do I?”

“My God,” she said, “yes,” and she rubbed the corners of her eyes and drew her fingertips down over her cheeks. “Coffee,” she said to the counterman. “Keep it coming. My God!”

She was a moderately tall girl, and neither slight nor fragile; only her waist and ankles, both slender, saved her from heaviness. She was wearing a close-fitting, long-sleeved black silk dress, elaborately draped, the silk printed with a great scarlet flower over her left shoulder and breast, and again over her right hip, the petals trailing diagonally across her skirt. Her hair was the color of polished brass, glossy and almost metallic without looking at all artificial. It had once during the day been built into a smooth roll over her forehead, but this was loosening now, and she looked rather as if she had pulled a hat off her head without bothering to remove the pins. Waiting for her coffee, she pushed idly at the trailing strands, unconcerned about their untidiness. She picked up the mug as it came to her, drained it as if it were a shot-glass of whisky, set it down hastily, and passed her hand across her chin.

“Damn!”

“I suggest that we move over to a booth,” said the stocky man beside her.

The girl glanced at him. “All right, Dr. Kaufman.”

Emmett watched her rise and tug at the elaborate dress. He noticed belatedly that it was creased and dusty, and that the strain of driving had caused the seam to burst for a matter of inches at the back of her right shoulder.

“Come on,” she said, a little irritably, turning her head to look at him. “You’re invited.”

He picked up his cup and followed them to the booth by the window. Glancing out, he could see the fawn-colored Mercury convertible waiting on the greasepit under the lights of the filling station. He sat down, facing the two of them.

The man had removed, and was polishing, his glasses. He looked curiously unruffled beside the gaudy dishevelment of the girl; a small compact man with a neat square face, smoothly shaven except for a short moustache. His hair, when he removed his hat, proved to be dark and thick and glossy. He was wearing a black suit with a fine white stripe, a white shirt, and a silk tie printed with a fine pattern of white and blue. He was somewhere around forty years of age. The girl, Emmett decided, was about fifteen years younger.

She brushed at her hair, brushed at the dust on her dress, and reached back gingerly, the dress almost too snug to allow it, to feel the ripped seam.

“God, I’m a wreck,” she said bitterly. “Start after lunch dressing for cocktails in Chicago, and wind up at midnight eating hamburgers in Iowa.”

She had a rich, full mouth, a rather wide, slightly upturned nose, and hazel eyes set wide apart under the light eyebrows. Her complexion was a little disappointing, but it did not really matter. She looked at him quickly and he felt a small shock of antagonism pass between them as their eyes met. She was smiling a little. He looked away.

He felt her rise. “Tell him French fries and pickles,” her voice said. “I’m going out back for a minute.”

Then she was gone, and he breathed a little more freely until he looked up and saw the man watching him dispassionately. Suddenly he knew that he was afraid, and had been afraid ever since they came in; for that matter, ever since he had first noticed the headlights in the rear-view mirror. At the back of his mind was the knowledge that they had crossed a state line at Clinton; that, although the car presumably belonged to the girl named, presumably, Ann Nicholson, who was now sleeping in it, he, John Emmett, had bought gas for it in Illinois; and, finally, there was a law known as the Mann Act which, although he was not familiar with its exact operation, was reputed to make crossing state lines in the company of strange young women a hazardous occupation, particularly if you paid the way. He could not remember if the prosecution had to prove that the crossing had been done for immoral purposes.

At the back of his mind was the uneasy awareness that, if Ann Nicholson had been fifty years old, or ugly, he would now be asleep in upper 6 of a Pullman car somewhere to the west of where he was sitting. The girl in the flowered black dress, merely by appearing, had somehow made the purity of his motives deeply suspect.

The man across the table spoke. “Do you mind showing me some identification?”

Emmett glanced at him, shrugged, and passed his wallet across. The man studied the various cards carefully and finally slid the wallet back over the scarred gray paint of the table.

“Very good, Mr. Emmett,” he said. “And Miss Nicholson?”

“Asleep across the road,” Emmett said stiffly. “Why?”

“Miss Nicholson is a patient of mine,” the older man said.

“And who are you?”

Then he remembered that the blonde girl had called the man Dr. Kaufman. He looked at the wallet the older man, in his turn, passed across, and read the professional qualifications listed on the cards in their neat celluloid holders.

“Hell,” he said sharply, looking up, “she isn’t crazy, is she?”

chapter FOUR

The stocky man retrieved the wallet with the cards that proclaimed him a psychiatrist in good standing with a number of professional societies. He drew out a folded newspaper clipping, opened it, and laid it in front of Emmett, carefully turning it right way around. Emmett, looking down at it without touching it, slowly filled and lighted his pipe. “Read it,” Dr. Kaufman suggested.

Emmett found that he did not particularly want to know what was wrong with the girl he had picked up, or allowed to pick him up, however the situation might be construed; and that if there were something wrong with her, he did not want to be involved with her. This, he realized, was a completely selfish reaction. He picked up the rectangle of newsprint and frowned at it. The blurred photograph showed a girl with a gaunt frightened face trying to shelter her thin body between the bodies of the middle-aged, well-dressed man and woman helping her away from a ship’s gangplank. The girl was wearing a tweed suit that looked cheap, clumsy, and several sizes too large; and there was something wrong with her mouth. Emmett read the column below the picture.

ANN NICHOLSON ARRIVES ON LAWSON CASTLE

New York, N.Y., March 26, AP: Still showing the strain of three years in a Nazi concentration camp, Miss Ann Nicholson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. R. Austen Nicholson, 204 Poplar Ave., Evanston, Illinois, was met by her parents today as she stepped from the gangplank of the ex-troop transport Lawson Castle. Reported missing when the Germans overran France, Miss Nicholson, who had remained in Paris rather than leave her fiancé, Georges Monteux, an officer on the staff of General Gamelin, was later learned to have been active in the French underground. Captured by the Gestapo in the spring of 1942, Miss Nicholson’s whereabouts were unknown until the American advance into Germany discovered her a prisoner at the infamous concentration camp of Hofstadt a week prior to VE day.

Miss Nicholson’s father is president of Barr-Giddings Steel and Foundry Co., Chicago.

Emmett looked up and saw the girl in the black dress coming down the far side of the highway. The headlights of a passing car brought her hair and the scarlet flowers on her dress abruptly to life, almost luminous. She waited until the car had passed and came running across the concrete toward the lunchwagon, silhouetted in the lights of another car approaching from the east.

“That was about two years ago,” Dr. Kaufman said. “A little more than two years ago. She spent over a year in a British hospital before they let her come home.”

Emmett watched the other girl, safely across, stop to tug down her dress and then come toward the diner with the taut short steps necessitated by the exaggerated heels of the sandals she was wearing. She walked with her whole body. Then she was inside, sitting down across from him. It occurred to him belatedly to wonder what she had been doing across the road, there being a filling station with a plainly marked restroom next door to the diner, but he did not ask.

The counterman came to the booth with hamburgers and coffee, replacing Emmett’s empty cup with a full one, and went back to the counter where he lit a cigarette and stared moodily at a newspaper. The man to whom he had been talking had left. The counterman found a pencil in a pocket of his apron, folded the paper back on itself, and began to work the crossword puzzle.

Dr. Kaufman said, “Excuse me. Miss Bethke, Mr. Emmett. Miss Bethke is a private nurse.”

The girl nodded her acceptance of the introduction, biting into a hamburger which she held with both hands.

Dr. Kaufman said, “You see, Mr. Emmett, her experiences left Miss Nicholson—I won’t bother you with jargon—but it left her for a long time unable to face the demands of ordinary society. She spent a considerable time in the hospital after reaching this country, thinking up new symptoms with amazing ingenuity so that she would not have to give up the security of the institutional routine. When her parents took her home and tried, as they naively explained to me later, to get her to take some ‘interest in life,’ she tried to kill herself. Rather clumsily and ineffectually; Miss Bethke caught her almost in the act of swallowing the capsules of seconal, which I have no doubt is what Miss Nicholson intended to happen.”

The nurse nodded her bright untidy head. “She made a noise like an elephant getting back to bed. As if that wasn’t enough, she knocked over the bedside table.”

“She did not want to die, you understand,” the doctor said. “She merely did not want to have to cope with the effort of living. She wanted to return to the hospital. I advised a quiet sanatorium, plastic surgery, dentistry, and, of course, diet and rest. Not until she could have some confidence in her appearance and had regained a certain amount of strength did I make an effort to discover the roots of her insecurity feelings; and then I ran up against a blank wall, Mr. Emmett. She has forgotten everything that happened between the time she was taken by the Gestapo, and the time she arrived in Hofstadt, a period of some three months.”

“Everything except a name,” Miss Bethke said quickly.

“Yes,” the doctor said, “of course. A name. Kissel.”

“Reinhard Kissel,” the girl said. “Dr. Reinhard Kissel.”

Dr. Kaufman said, “At first, of course, we thought that this Kissel had been the cause of the traumatic shock Miss Nicholson had received while in the hands of the Gestapo, which had caused her to withdraw as far as possible from contact with life. Later it developed that, on the contrary, she wanted to meet this man Kissel to reassure herself about something that had happened, to which he had been a witness…” He bit cautiously into his hamburger, chewed and swallowed, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. “What she wants, in other words, is for somebody to tell her what happened during the three months she was with the Gestapo. This in itself will not necessarily help her to remember the parts that her consciousness has suppressed, but it will make her feel safe in beginning to try to remember.”

The nurse had cleaned her plate and was redefining her mouth with dark lipstick. She looked up. “Perhaps,” she said. “But doesn’t it depend on what Kissel says, rather?”

The doctor frowned. The girl pressed her lips together and then smoothed the lipstick with the tip of her forefinger, watching the results in the mirror of her compact. “I mean, Kissel might say something that wouldn’t help the patient at all, mightn’t he?”

“Please, Miss Bethke.” After a moment, the doctor went on. “When I saw that my efforts to establish communication with the patient—in the psychoanalytical sense, of course; she never actually refused to talk to me—were meeting with violent resistance and were, in fact, retarding the whole process of recovery, I realized that I would have to be satisfied, for the time being, with a partial cure, as a surgeon might leave a shell splinter in a man’s body if the operation of removing it seemed too hazardous. I can say that I have been moderately successful. For the past few months Miss Nicholson has been living at home, driving about a little, accompanying her parents downtown occasionally, and even doing simple errands alone. You understand, Mr. Emmett, she wants to be cured, with reservations. She wants to be a normal person as long as no one asks her to reveal the source of her abnormality. Today—” he glanced at his watch, “—or, rather, yesterday, she took the plunge of attending a cocktail party given by one of her mother’s friends. I was rather encouraged by her willingness to undertake this ordeal. However, unfortunately or perhaps it may prove, fortunately, a young man who had had a little too much to drink was allowed to question her about her experiences, upsetting her so thoroughly that she ran out of the house and drove away. Miss Bethke followed and called me while Miss Nicholson was cashing a check. We have been keeping the patient in sight, trying to work out some way of taking advantage of her action without subjecting her to undue risk.”

“Taking advantage…” Emmett murmured.

Dr. Kaufman smiled. “We have learned that a Dr. Reinhard Kissel, recently admitted to this country, is teaching at a small college near Denver. With Miss Bethke’s help, I have arranged that the patient should learn about it—”

“It was in Time magazine,” the nurse said. “I left it where she could see it. She cut the piece out and keeps it in her purse.”

“But if you know that Kissel is in Denver…?”

The doctor nodded. “I might have had her confronted by Dr. Kissel, true. But it was our last resource, and I did not want to waste it. I wanted her to want to see him, to put it clumsily. Even now, I don’t want to let her know that she is not entirely on her own. It is a most hopeful sign that she should take the, for her, reckless step of driving across the country; it shows that at last she has developed a strong desire to learn the truth about herself. I don’t want to distract her in any way.” He drained his coffee mug and returned it to the exact center of the ring it had already left on the painted table. “On the other hand, of course, she is my patient and I am responsible for her safety. Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of approaching you and examining your credentials, Mr. Emmett, and of divulging as much of Miss Nicholson’s medical history as I have.”

He sat back and offered his cigarettes first to the nurse, who accepted, and then to Emmett, who refused, finally taking one himself. Emmett watched him light the nurse’s and his own, feeling a little as if the lights of the diner had suddenly brightened, like the lights going up in a theater after the fall of the curtain. He had an impulse to rise and stretch his legs and walk into the lobby for a drink of water. He was aware of the counterman in the corner, having difficulty with his crossword puzzle; and he heard, outside, the rising whine of a car leaving the town at well over the legal speed limit and accelerating to still higher speeds as it swept past. The diner was alive with the constant flicker of lights on the highway. He was back in the present again, looking across the table at the small compact doctor, and at the nurse with the shining untidy yellow-brown hair. He thought that it was a pity to waste a nurse like Miss Bethke on a female patient.

The doctor said, “I am going to take a chance on you, Mr. Emmett, that may cost me my career. It would not look well, if anything should happen, for me to have abandoned my patient to a stranger she picked up on the highway. On the other hand, if either Miss Bethke or I were to force our company on her at this point, she might very well relapse into her former attitude of resistance. It’s a risk I do not want to take…”

Emmett said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” He was not greatly impressed by the sight of the doctor pretending to argue aloud a decision he had obviously already made.

Dr. Kaufman took a card from his wallet and wrote an address on it. Emmett read the name he already knew: Paul Frederick Kaufman, M.D.; and the address: Estes Hotel, Denver.

“Merely make sure that she reaches Denver safely, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said. “Call me at that address when you get there and I’ll arrange to have her watched over from there. Try not to let her get too tired; if you can persuade her to stop at a hotel tomorrow night, do so. See that she doesn’t try to live entirely on hamburgers and Coca-Cola. And if she wants to talk, let her.”

Emmett frowned.

The older man smiled. “I won’t ask you to reveal any confidences, Mr. Emmett. It’s quite possible that she may be willing to talk to a stranger; we very often tell strangers things that we would never admit either to our family or our doctor. But once the dam has broken, so to speak, my task in the future will be easier. You can consult your conscience as to what you wish to pass on to me. Of course I will appreciate any clues you feel free to give me.”

“You’ll be in Denver?”

“Yes. By tomorrow night, probably, if I can get plane reservations.”

Emmett sat rubbing his mouth thoughtfully. “She isn’t,” he asked, “apt to go into convulsions or anything like that, is she?”

Dr. Kaufman laughed heartily. “Oh, no. The worst that can happen is that she should suddenly lose her nerve.” He reached for the card and wrote on it again. “Her parents’ address and telephone number. If she should become panicky at finding herself, so to speak, alone among strangers, get her a hotel room and call Mr. Nicholson long distance. He will either get in touch with me or make arrangements himself for having her brought back.”

Outside a big truck double-clutched, shifting into high gear. The roar of its exhaust died away to the west.

“It is, of course, a great deal to ask, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said carefully. “I realize that you probably did not plan your trip to include the duties of a male nurse.”

Emmett said without enthusiasm, “It’s all right. I just don’t want to have her start screaming in the middle of Omaha and find myself in jail charged with white slavery.”

“I think there’s very little chance of that,” the doctor said, laughing.

Emmett did not laugh. “And I didn’t like that part about her trying to kill herself, either.”

“I think I can guarantee that she will not try it again. It was, as I explained, only a protest against being put into a situation she was not yet ready to face.”

Emmett sighed. “O.K.,” he said. “I’ll deliver her to Denver. After all, I didn’t have to pick her up in the first place, did I?”

The counterman, seeing them rise, put away his pencil and came over, collected, went to the cash register, and returned with the change. They walked to the door. The girl in the black dress turned and put her hand on Emmett’s wrist.

“Be nice to her, Mr. Emmett.” She smiled and patted his wrist lightly. “But not too nice.”

He watched them walk away toward the Chevrolet sedan parked on the gravel. He could see the white gleam where her snug dress had split behind the shoulder. He knew that he liked neither of them very well, for no personal reason. But they had taken the girl named Ann Nicholson apart in front of his eyes. She was no longer a girl and a human being, she was a case for the medical journals. He felt a sense of loss. He had begun to like the girl named Ann Nicholson.

The man in the lunchwagon looked up irritably as Emmett came back inside.

“Coffee to take out,” Emmett said. “Sugar and cream. And a doughnut.”

The man filled the order and stood in front of Emmett, fitting the cover to the cardboard cup. “Must have been kind of a rough party,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind switching with the little guy.”

“You and me both,” Emmett said mechanically.

“Funny how the big girls always go for the peewees. Say, do you know a five-letter word… Never mind, I’ve got it.” He took out his pencil and hurried to the corner. “Twenty cents,” he said. “Just leave it on the counter, Mac.”

Emmett looked at the quarter in his hand, grimaced, put it down, and went out. The highway was, momentarily, quite deserted. He crossed. The filling station attendant was asleep in the chair behind the desk, an empty Coca-Cola bottle on the floor beside him. He roused enough to count up the bill and make change. Emmett carried the cardboard cup and the oilpaper-wrapped doughnut carefully across the concrete to the greasepit and looked into the car. The girl was asleep in the rear, her face turned to the back cushion, one stockinged foot escaping from the blanket. He stood quite still until he had made sure that she was breathing evenly. Then he put the cup on the floor, the doughnut on the seat, and looked down the highway in the direction the Chevrolet had taken. He took the keys and went around to the trunk, opened it, moved the bags, and found the jack handle, a bar of iron about a foot long. Not, he thought, that I don’t trust him, or believe what he told me, but I’ve read too many stories that started out like this. The girl awoke as he backed off the ramp. He gave her the coffee and doughnut and drove slowly until she had finished.

chapter FIVE

The headlights of an approaching car looked suddenly pale in the early morning twilight and abruptly he could see, to the left, in the distance, a dark band of cottonwoods marking a river. He watched the headlights come towards him along the endless highway and vanish, leaving the dark approaching mass of the other car, the driver of which had apparently also realized that daylight had come. Emmett switched off the lights of the convertible as the car whipped past. The convertible roared on through the chill morning air. It was an effort to think of stopping; of getting out, walking, shaving, eating. He glanced at the mileage indicator and made a rough subtraction. Better than four hundred fifty, he thought with a certain pride. He divided the miles by the hours in his head and got an average of fifty-five approximately.

He was into the next town before he could make up his mind to stop, and out on the plain again. There was a haze along the horizon but the sky was clear overhead. The sun began to get into the eyes of the drivers going east. He could see them squinting behind their windshields. There was a railroad parallel to the highway. He saw the tanks and the loading platforms in the far distance and then the town. The convertible seemed to crawl when he got it down to forty. He rejected one filling station as being too dirty, another as being too close to the center of town, and pulled in at the third, beyond a small block of stores and a restaurant; he sat, unable to move, listening to the motor idling quietly. He switched it off, rubbed his eyes and his neck and moved his mouth about in his face.

“Fill it,” he said to the youth in army trousers who came up. He groped for the gas-tank key in the glove compartment, dropped it, picked it up, and held it out. “Ethyl,” he said. Then he turned his head stiffly to look at the girl.

“Miss Nicholson,” he said. She was sound asleep. She had not wakened when he stopped for gas at three. Her head was jammed against the leather armrest, the blanket drawn up to her chin exposing both her stockinged feet at the other end of the seat.

“Miss Nicholson,” he said. He turned painfully and hesitated, looking at her. It was always embarrassing to wake up a stranger from a sound sleep; it was not quite fair to look at anybody you did not know well before they had got themselves assembled for the day. He poked gingerly at her shoulder. “Miss Nicholson.”

She stirred and her breath caught and she sat up abruptly, staring at him. After a moment she pushed the tangled hair back from her face with one hand and the panic went out of her eyes.

“Oh,” she said.

“Morning.”

“Good morning,” she said, and rubbed her arm across her eyes and yawned. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in Nebraska.” He had looked at the name of the town but he could not recall it.

“What happened to Iowa?”

“It wore out,” he said.

She laughed and pushed the blanket aside and looked at her wrinkled gabardine skirt and the rumpled thin satin blouse pulled out at the waist. He turned away and heard her begin to tidy herself behind him.

“You should have waked me,” she said. “You shouldn’t have driven all night.”

He did not answer but crawled across the seat and let himself out. She found her shoes and pushed the folding seat forward and climbed over it. Something slid down, bounced, and rang on the oil-stained concrete: the jack handle he had put beside him on the seat. Ann Nicholson stepped down and, her purse and jacket clutched to her, stood staring down at the short ugly length of metal. Then she looked up at Emmett, her face shiny and pale beneath the disheveled light hair.

Emmett bent down and picked up the iron bar. “Run along and wash your face,” he said, throwing the handle back into the car.

He was aware of her hesitation; then her heels went across the concrete, slowly at first, then almost running. The attendant came up and spoke to Emmett, who, after a moment, turned on him sharply.

“Put the damn thing on the hoist. Grease. Never mind the oil. And get that crap off the windshield, will you? There are more damn bugs in this country…!”

He jerked his suitcase out of the trunk and carried it over the concrete island supporting the pumps, across the other drive, and around the station to the door at the side. Inside, he locked the door and stripped to his underwear, put his suit away neatly on the patent hanger inside the suitcase after brushing it off, and his shoes into a blue drawstring bag, changed his socks, pulled on a pair of flannel slacks, and stuck his feet into a pair of worn brown moccasins with rubber soles. Then, in his short-sleeved undershirt, he turned to look at himself in the mirror. The face that stared back at him looked greasy with sleeplessness, the eyes bloodshot from night driving, and the black hair hung lankly down onto the bulging forehead. Listen, he asked the mirror, listen, do I look like the kind of guy who would murder a sleeping girl with a jack handle. The mirror said, yes, he did.

He grimaced, washed his face and began to shave. Through the thin partition he could hear the girl moving in the other restroom. He could almost see her, as she fixed herself up, her face still drawn and frightened and preoccupied with imagining him, throughout the night, with the jack handle beside him, weighing the value of the car and the roll of bills in her purse against his conscience and the fact of murder. For the love of Mike, he thought, and why didn’t I put the damn thing away, anyway?

Finished, he put on a gaudy yellow sports shirt and went outside. She came out almost at the same time. She did not see him at once. He saw her, coming around the corner of the building, stop abruptly and stand looking at the vacant space beside the pumps where her car had been, her face shocked and pale.

“It’s on the hoist,” he said.

She whirled and saw him, then saw the car with the boy working under it.

“I thought you could probably use a grease job, considering the way your oil looked,” Emmett said.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

She came towards him slowly, almost reluctantly. He saw that she looked quite transformed, her hair brushed smooth, her face clean and fresh in the early morning sunlight. Below the neatly buttoned jacket the tailored skirt seemed to have thrown off the wrinkles she had slept into it, the fine gabardine showing only minute incipient creases as the light struck it.   ,

“How about something to eat while he finishes with the car?” Emmett asked.

“All right.”

He walked beside her toward the restaurant, a little chilly in the sports shirt. Inside the restaurant, as they entered, a stout woman in a print dress and a flowered apron was hoisting a large dripping bag of grounds out of the coffee-maker.

“Be with you in a minute,” she said without turning her head.

They sat down at a table by the window and watched her adjust the gas flame, dispose of the bag and grounds, and wipe off the battered monel drip pan. She came around the brief counter, drying her hands on her apron.

“Take a little while till the hot-plate warms,” she said. “I can give you coffee now, if you want.”

Outside, the cars and trucks went past at irregular intervals. When the woman had left them, Emmett took out his pipe, studied it, and laid it down on the table. He wanted the reassurance of it, but after a wakeful night his mouth did not want the taste of it. He leaned toward the window and squinted at the sun rising at the end of the street.

“It’s going to be hot today,” he said.

“Yes,” Ann Nicholson said absently. “Yes, I guess it is, Mr. Emmett.”

Suddenly they were regarding each other across the table, their glances locked in a curious sexless conflict. Some impulse of cruelty born of sleeplessness made Emmett hold his steady stare until the girl’s eyes broke away. They were, he noticed, grayish blue. She looked down at her hands. There were no rings on her fingers. The subdued nailpolish on her right thumbnail was a little chipped, as if she had marred it opening a purse or compact. She studied it dispassionately.

“Please,” she said at last. “This is a stupid question, Mr. Emmett, and please don’t misunderstand me, but… why did you have that jack handle…? I know it was in the trunk day before yesterday.”

“It was in the trunk last night,” he said. “I took it out.”

He was hungry, he was sleepy, and he was very tired. At the back of his mind were the things he had been told about her, but now, in the morning, they seemed very vague. She was a human being again, a girl of presumably normal intelligence, and if she wanted to have silly ideas about him she could sit and worry about them until he got good and ready to reassure her.

He heard her begin to laugh, and glanced up quickly. It occurred to him that he had not heard her laugh before, spontaneously and naturally, and that she had rather a nice laugh. He felt himself flush a little, nevertheless.

“Mr. Emmett,” she said. “Mr. Emmett, what did they tell you about me?”

He glanced at her again. He picked up his pipe and began to fill it. He knew that his face had turned quite red. “Oh,” he said. “You saw them.”

“Miss Bethke came over to see that I was all right. She woke me. And then I could see you at the window. But surely,” she said, “they didn’t say I was homicidal, did they?”

He grinned, suddenly feeling much better. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t you I was worrying about, Miss Nicholson.”

“Miss Bethke?” she asked. “And Dr. Kaufman?” She giggled, and then she was laughing again. “I’m sorry. But the idea of a man fending off Miss Bethke with a jack handle… I mean, it’s generally the other way around, I should imagine. Not that I know much of her private life…” Ann Nicholson drew a long breath. “Well,” she said, “that’s settled.” She smiled. “When it fell out… I wasn’t quite awake… I’d forgotten… I thought…”

“I know what you thought,” he said a little resentfully.

“But really, Mr. Emmett! Miss Bethke and Dr. Kaufman.”

“Well,” he said defensively, “it was a damn queer experience, you’ll have to admit. I mean, first those headlights following us and then… Well, I figured it would be nice to have something handy, just in case.” After a moment he added, grinning, “Your friend Miss Bethke doesn’t exactly inspire trust in a man. A lot of other things, yes, but hardly trust.”

“I know,” Ann Nicholson said. “Isn’t she wonderful? The first nurse I had was such an old stick I was almost glad when she had an accident and landed in the hospital.”

“Well, nobody would call Miss Bethke a stick,” Emmett said dryly.

“Mother detests her,” Ann Nicholson said. “She only puts up with her because she saved my life. I tried to kill myself, you know.”

Emmett glanced at her quickly. She sounded almost proud of it. It seemed to him that the whole room had suddenly become a little colder, and that the girl had suddenly moved far away from him. She was a case again, no longer a person. The stout woman put their coffee in front of them.

“I think I’ll have two eggs after all,” Ann Nicholson said, looking up to smile as pleasantly at the woman as if she had never heard of suicide. “Sunny side up, please.”

chapter SIX

When they came out they could feel the heat of the sun although the air was still quite cool. The boy at the filling station had finished with the car. Ann Nicholson paid him and got behind the wheel.

“If you want to sleep…” she said to Emmett.

“I think I’ll smoke a pipe first,” he said. He winced as, trying to find reverse, she clashed the gears noisily. Then they were on the highway again.

“I’m going to have to buy some things when the stores open,” Ann Nicholson said. “I had to clean my teeth with my handkerchief.”

Emmett said, “You can probably get a toothbrush but you won’t get much else. It’s Sunday.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

He packed his pipe carefully, lit it and dropped the match into the ashtray above the dashboard. Relaxing on the base of his spine, sunk down as far as possible on the slick leather seat, he watched the girl’s face with a remote sleepy bitterness. She made him uncomfortable. Not only did it make him uncomfortable to wonder how far she was from being normal, and to think of the things she had suffered that set her apart from ordinary people like himself, but also she aroused in him the somewhat resentful envy mixed with respect that he had felt, before, in the presence of the uniforms with the rows of ribbons. He remembered the newspaper clipping and, studying her face, tried to imagine her, in sweater and skirt, perhaps, or disguised as a boy, although it was difficult to see how the fragile face could be made to look like a boy’s face even with the hair cut short, slipping down darkened alleys with, at the end, always a large German sentry silhouetted against the light of the street; or crouching in the bushes in the rain while the lightning flashes showed the patrols searching for her; or standing by the window of a shabby room, her profile clear against the sunlight outside as she drew back the curtains minutely to look down at the street where a man in a trench coat, obviously a heavy, stood ostentatiously reading a newspaper. Because it always turned out Hollywood when you tried to imagine it. You knew it had not been like that, but you had no idea of how it really had been. When they said “underground” and “Gestapo” it came out Warner Brothers, passed by the state board of censors.

She cranked down the window beside her and the wind pushed at her soft light hair.

“What did they tell you about me, Mr. Emmett?”

He said carefully, “They said you’d had a pretty rugged time of it in France. Undergrounds and Gestapo and stuff. They said that after you came back you’d shown an aversion to society for a while and that you’d apparently forgotten some things the doctor thought you ought to want to remember…”

She said quickly, “Why? Why should I have to remember something like that? I remember quite enough of it to know I don’t want to know the rest!” Then she smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve got so I go defensive about it quite automatically. Of course I want to remember.”

“They said something about a man named Kissel,” Emmett said.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I thought they’d probably guessed.”

“I’m not supposed to be telling you this,” Emmett said. “It’s supposed to be entirely your own idea.”

She laughed. “What did they say about Dr. Kissel?” she asked after a pause.

“That he was teaching at some college near Denver. That you think he knows what happened to you during the time you’ve forgotten about. That you’re afraid of trying to remember until somebody tells you that it isn’t going to hurt. It sounds a little screwy to me.”

She threw him a quick glance. “Oh, it does, Mr. Emmett?” she said, rather stiffly.

“Well,” he said. “I can see you wanting, and I can see you not wanting, but this half-ass business, if you’ll pardon the expression, kind of puzzles me.”

She asked, “And what do you know about amnesia, Mr. Emmett?”

Her tone of voice annoyed him. He was tired and sleepy and the situation embarrassed him, and he did not give a damn what he said.

“That it’s generally faked,” he said.

The car slowed abruptly as her foot released the accelerator; then picked up speed again. After a long time, without looking at him, she asked, her voice almost harsh:

“Did Dr. Kaufman tell you to say that?”

“No,” Emmett said. “No, it’s entirely my own idea and I apologize.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” she said. “Please go on.”

He was suddenly a little frightened.

“No,” he said. “Really, I’m sorry. I’m always offensive when I’m sleepy.”

She said, “No, please tell me about amnesia, Mr. Emmett. I’m really quite interested.”

He flushed at the sarcasm in her voice. “All right,” he said angrily. “Apart from the kind where the hero gets bopped on the head with a blunt instrument, there are two kinds of amnesia, both discovered by the eminent psychiatroanalyst, Dr. Emmettstein. In the first the wife gets tired of having her husband read Li’l Abner aloud to her over the breakfast table and cuts his throat with the ham slicer and explains to the jury that suddenly everything went black. She can’t remember a thing. We call this, in the profession, legal, or courtroom amnesia. In the second kind, the husband gets tired of his wife’s nagging and cleans out the bank account, picks up a blonde, and goes on a binge. A week or so later he wakes up with a head, alone and broke. Suddenly the wife and kids look kind of good to him, but he’s going to have a hell of a time explaining that blonde. He trots into the nearest police station and says he found himself standing on the corner of Main Street and Elm and can’t for the life of him recall how he got there or where he’s been. This is known as domestic amnesia.”

He pulled at his pipe and felt the vibration of the car against the back of his head where it leaned against the metal of the door. He was afraid to look at the girl. He had let his resentment carry him into depths he knew nothing about. If her mind were really ill his skepticism could easily bring on some reaction he would be quite incapable of coping with, not being a psychiatrist.

“That’s very interesting,” her voice said softly. “You should have a consultation with Dr. Kaufman about my case.” She went on before he could speak, “Then you think there is no such thing as genuine amnesia?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I know there is. I’m just blowing off steam. Forget it.”

“Don’t be polite,” she said. Her voice held an edge of anger.

He glanced at her and said, his anger answering hers, “Well, damn it, nothing ever went black for me when I wanted it to. And if it did, I wouldn’t expect to come out of it with somebody’s name, address, and telephone number.”

She kicked the car out of gear and braked to a halt at the side of the road. A truck swerved past, its horn blaring. She glanced at it, startled, as it went on to the west, then turned to face Emmett.

“Does it occur to you that you’re being rather cruel, Mr. Emmett?”

He took his pipe from his mouth and looked at it with distaste. He did not say anything.

“Why do you dislike me?” she asked.

He looked up. “I don’t,” he said quickly. “I think you’re probably a fine girl, Miss Nicholson. But God damn it…!” He rubbed his eyes. He had a headache now. “Oh, forget it,” he said. “Please forget the whole thing.”

“What were you going to say?”

He turned to her. “Listen,” he said angrily, “I spent the whole damn war and a couple of years more being respectful and sympathetic to guys who kind of looked down at me because…”

“I see.”

“… So then I think I’m getting away from it,” he said savagely, “and I pick up a girl on the Lincoln Highway, and damn if she doesn’t turn out to be a lousy heroine.”

He knew that his face was quite red, and he could not make himself look at her. He cranked down the window beside him, knocked the hot ashes out of his pipe into his hand, and pitched them out before they could burn him. He heard the girl begin to laugh, looked up, and found himself grinning wryly.

“I think you’d better climb in back and get some sleep,” Ann Nicholson said.

chapter SEVEN

He woke up abruptly as the car lurched and came to a halt, the tires grinding in the gravel at the side of the road. It was hot in the cramped rear seat; he was stiff and his left arm was asleep. He heard the siren whine past, dying.

“My God,” he said, sitting up to rub his numb hand. “Don’t tell me you were speeding!”

Ann Nicholson turned a white frightened face toward him. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I slowed down to twenty-five in the town…”

Emmett sighed. “Well. It’s never any use arguing with them.”

He stopped. A tall man had got out of the black Ford sedan that had come to rest ahead. The man looked as if he had been thin ten years ago, and as if the weight he had put on since had not had time to distribute itself about his body; it was all in the lower chest and belly. He still had a thin man’s long legs and narrow shoulders. He was wearing a dark suit without a vest, a striped white shirt and a bow tie. When his coat swung open you could see the star pinned on the shirt. You could also see the cartridge belt constricting the abdomen, the lower part of the holster showing below the coat; but the holster was empty. The man had his gun in his hand. A lanky, sandy-haired boy in jeans and a blue shirt got out of the Ford on the far side and started walking gingerly around it. He held a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun across his body and looked quite nervous.

A car, approaching from the east, slowed and then, slamming into second and swinging wide into the far lane, screamed past with a whine of tortured gears, accelerating to hell out of there; it swerved crazily to avoid a large trailer truck. The truck rolled past with the hiss of released airbrakes.

The tall man made a motion with his gun. Emmett cleared his throat, pushed the seat forward and, opening the door, climbed out. The tall man jerked the gun again and Emmett raised his hands. The gun was a .44 or .45 Smith and Wesson with a six-inch barrel, he found himself noticing distantly. His brother Dave had had one like it for a while, trading it later to another guy for a .32 hammerless and a radio that did not work. The bluing was worn off the tall man’s gun at both sides of the muzzle, the top of the front sight, and the ribs of the cylinder, from being carried in the holster. The muzzle looked big enough to stick a forefinger into.

“What’s the matter, officer?” Emmett asked. The words sounded silly, in the face of the gun, but his voice was fairly good, he thought, considering the circumstances.

“Who the hell are you?” the tall man demanded.

Emmett told him.

“What are you doing in that car?”

Emmett told him.

“Oh, a hitch-hiker,” the tall man said contemptuously.

The sun was very bright. There was a ditch on either side of the road, and beyond each ditch a barbed wire fence. Emmett had a vision of himself fleeing crazily, hanging up in the barbed wire, feeling the bullets go into him as he struggled to get free.

The boy with the shotgun stood between the cars, his weapon uneasily trained on the convertible.

“Keep those hands up,” the tall man said sharply to Emmett. “Tell the girl to get out here.”

Emmett turned slowly. “You’d better come here, Miss Nicholson.”

“Nicholson, eh?” The tall man spat. “Bud, go around and check that license again.”

He waited unmoving in the sunshine for his order to be obeyed. He had a long face, wide at the cheekbones and narrow at the chin and forehead. There were more freckles on the face than Emmett could remember seeing on a human face before. He had a long, rubbery, thin-lipped mouth, and small, very blue eyes, set close together on each side of a large curved nose.

“Six-one-o-two-six-one,” the boy said. “Illinois.”

Ann Nicholson got out of the car. Emmett heard her footsteps come to him and felt her hand take his arm. The hand was trembling.

The tall man looked at her. “Your name’s Ann Nicholson?”

“A…” The word did not come out; all the self-possession she had showed with Emmett earlier in the morning was gone. She was quite terrified. She tried again. “… Yes.”

“We had a call from the Chicago police,” the tall man said. “Girl wearing light gabardine suit, light hat, blonde, about five-four, a hundred and fifteen pounds, driving tan Mercury convertible, Illinois license six-one-o-two-six-one. Name of Nicholson. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But…”

“Take a look in the car, Bud.”

Emmett heard the boy climb into the car. He cleared his throat. “What’s the trouble?”

“She’s wanted as a material witness in a murder case, Mister.”

Emmett felt the girl’s fingers dig into his arm. He turned his head slowly to look at her. Her face looked hollow and ugly with fright.

“Do you know anything about it?” he asked.

She shook her head convulsively.

“Nothing in the car, Sheriff Patman,” the boy’s voice said. “She’s got a roll of bills in her purse and there’s a camera in the glove compartment, but no weapons, saving a jack handle.”

The sheriff holstered his weapon and came forward. Emmett stood quite still and felt the big freckled hands pat him, turn him around, and take out his wallet.

“John E. Emmett, Washington, D.C. You’re a long ways from home, Mister.”

“Yes.”

“Well, keep your nose clean and you’ll be all right.”

He felt the wallet put into his hands. He saw the small blue eyes study Ann Nicholson with a look that he did not like.

“Sorry, Miss, but I can’t take any chances,” the tall man said. “Keep your hands up.”

The big freckled hands unfastened her jacket and pulled it open. Emmett looked away. He heard the girl gasp and told himself there was clearly nothing that he could do about it. He wished himself far away, on a Pullman rolling toward Denver.

“Sorry, Miss,” the sheriff’s voice said, sounding a little strained. “Get in the car. Reckon you’d better drive, Mister. Turn around and drive slow back to town. Bud, you follow in the lizzie.”

As they moved toward the car, Emmett glanced at the girl beside him. She was fastening her jacket again. There were two red spots in the whiteness of her face, but her lips, even with the lipstick, were quite pale. She did not look at him. The tall man got into the rear seat of the convertible. Emmett slid behind the wheel. Ann Nicholson got in beside him and closed the door. He turned the car around on the highway and drove at thirty-five back the way they had come, a little surprised to find it still early enough morning that the sun was in his eyes, going east. In the rear-view mirror he could see the Ford following closely.

They entered the town. It looked like any town they had been through, perhaps a little larger than average. There were railroad tracks on one side of the highway with the depot facing the business section.

“Turn left at the corner,” the tall man’s voice said. “Hell, watch the stoplight, Mister. Don’t they have stoplights in Washington, D.C.?”

The light changed and he made the turn.

“Now right,” the sheriff said. “Middle of the block.”

The brick building was two stories high. Over the main door the concrete slab was marked in sunken letters: Lane County Jail and Court House. A middle-aged woman in a print dress walked by carrying a shopping bag as the two cars stopped.

“Get out slow,” the sheriff ordered.

Emmett glanced uneasily at the no-parking signs on the lamp posts along the curb, but it seemed silly to mention them. He followed Ann Nicholson out of the car and sensed the tall man getting out behind him. The Ford had stopped behind the convertible.

“Run her up in the alley, Bud,” the sheriff said, and the Ford backed away. “All right, inside, you.”

The sun was very bright and hot as they crossed the sidewalk. The girl stopped before the door. She turned abruptly to face the tall man.

“Please,” she said. “There must be some mistake. I don’t know anything about…”

Emmett glanced at her, losing his sympathy for her in a quick flash of annoyance. There was so clearly no point in arguing about it. All you had to do was look at the freckled obstinate country face. The man was the law and he was going to take them inside and call Chicago about them. You did not stand on a hot sidewalk and tell a hick policeman that he was making a mistake. If he were making a mistake he would find it out in due time in his own way. You did not tell the law that you were only going thirty, or that you didn’t see the traffic light, or that you hadn’t killed anybody and didn’t know anything about it.

“Come on, Miss Nicholson,” he said, taking her arm. She pulled free without looking at him.

“Please!” she said to the sheriff.

The tall man walked up between them, taking an arm of each, and moved them bodily toward the door; then he released Emmett to turn the knob with his right hand. Abruptly the girl tore herself loose and was running down the sidewalk.

“Damn!” the sheriff said explosively. “Stay here, Mister, if you know what’s good for you.”

He ran after the girl. Emmett stood by the door, watching. There was something ridiculous and a little indecent about a girl trying to run fast in high-heeled pumps and the rather tight skirts they had taken to wearing. She whirled as the man, running easily, caught up with her, and struck at him with her clenched hands, as if pounding on a locked door. Then he had seized her, and suddenly she was fighting him desperately with a heedless, almost animal-like ferocity, using her nails and her teeth and her high heels. Emmett found himself walking slowly down the bright sidewalk toward them. He could hardly breathe and he wanted to be sick. The bitch, he thought, the stupid little bitch. In that moment he hated the girl more than he had hated anything in his whole life—for getting him into this, for not being fifty years old and ugly, and for making an obscene display of herself on a public street in broad daylight.

He took a long breath and, walking cautiously around them, suddenly wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, feeling her slight body writhe and twist against him. The tall man stepped back. His chest was heaving and his close-set blue eyes had a bright unpleasant shine.

“Cut it out, Miss Nicholson,” Emmett said, panting. It seemed idiotic to call her Miss while wrestling with her. “Damn it, stop it!” he snapped. She became still.

The sheriff stepped forward abruptly and slapped her viciously across the face, right hand and left hand. Emmett felt the slender body he had not yet released become rigid against him. He let it go abruptly, steadying the girl as she swayed. “Listen!” he said.

“You mind your own business, Mister.”

The tall man licked the blood from a scratch on his hand. There was sweat on his face, and an intent look of preoccupation as he studied the girl, moving his tongue slowly along his thin mouth. The damn little fool, Emmett thought bitterly, after what she’d been through over there you’d think she’d have more sense. He put himself in front of her without looking at her. He watched the man come forward and made certain plans, on a purely theoretical basis. He had not fought with, or struck, another human being since he was sixteen years old. The man outweighed him by well over fifty pounds and was at least four inches taller. He felt his stomach as a tight knot of nausea just below his ribs.

“Look,” he said weakly. “Look, Sheriff, Miss Nicholson’s been sick. She lost her head. She didn’t mean…”

Then the man was reaching for his shoulder to sweep him aside, and he moved forward inside the long arm and felt the other hand strike him a jarring blow in the chest; and he was inside that, too, his arms wrapped around the other’s body. He brought his knee up with all the strength that was in him. With the jolt he felt the larger man’s body contract as if the whole body were a muscle in spasm; he felt himself released. He stepped back, startled at what he had accomplished, and saw the sheriff bend over and grab at himself, groaning, and sit down on the sidewalk, doubled over.

The girl was leaning against a lamp post beneath a no parking sign, her hair wild about her face. Emmett grabbed her; she shied like a horse, stepping off the curb rather than pass close to the man on the sidewalk; then they were running back to the car. The boy the sheriff had called Bud was coming out of the alley beside the courthouse. He stopped and stood uncertainly, watching them throw themselves into the convertible; then ran toward the sheriff who was still sitting there, still holding himself where it hurt.

Outside the town, the green countryside seemed to have taken on a nightmarish quality under the bright sun; the gravel roads, at sixty-five, seemed to twist and turn with deliberate viciousness, trying to trick the hurtling car into the ditch. Presently the girl moved.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please stop. I…”

He glanced at her. She was lying back against the cushion beside him. Her face was gray and shiny. He returned his attention to the road, where it was needed.

“Listen,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of this county. If that ape catches us…”

“Please!” she gasped. “I’ve got to… I’m going to…” She sat up abruptly.

A wooden bridge rushed towards them. He saw a track lead off to the right along the cottonwoods bordering the creek, and wrenched at the wheel. The springs of the car clashed as they bounced on the sagging boards spanning the ditch; then they were lurching and pounding across an open field. He saw brown water gleaming in the sunshine through the cottonwoods to the left. The creek made a sharp turn south and the track followed it, the cottonwoods concealing it from the road. He braked and pulled up the emergency. The girl was fumbling with the door handle. He worked it for her and she stumbled out; she almost fell and he had to hold her, supporting her while she vomited. Then he helped her back into the car and gave her his handkerchief. She sat quite still with the handkerchief to her mouth.

After a long time she stirred. “Please,” she whispered. “My shoe…” She did not look at him.

He took the shoe off. She found some cleansing tissue in the glove compartment and he wiped the black suede clean and slid the shoe back on her foot. Then he walked around the car and got behind the wheel and drove a hundred yards down the track away from the mess on the ground. He switched off the engine and put his forehead against his arms folded over the steering wheel. How the hell did I get into this? he asked himself.

Presently he lifted his head and opened the door beside him and got out, started away from the car, returned and, with a glance at the girl, took the keys from the ignition and put them into his pocket. Then he walked slowly along the cottonwoods in the broiling sunshine. The track went on, winding through the foot-high prairie grass, finally, in the far distance, climbing up the rise away from the creek to end at a shabby farm house. There was a silo attached to the barn, a windmill, and a few scrawny poplars grew around the buildings. He stopped, turned, and walked slowly back toward the sand-colored convertible, shiny and conspicuous in the sunlight.

If they doubled in their tracks now, he thought, if they ran back into the town and put the car into the Ford garage—there was always a Ford garage—to be overhauled, perhaps, and then caught a train or bus… His mind started to work on it. But there might be an interminable wait. He remembered that it was Sunday. And it was no good anyway. He was trying to be clever and cunning. He was trying to outwit another man at his own specialty. He would wind up looking just as silly as Sheriff Patman would look trying to run a Grignard synthesis in his kitchen sink.

If he catches me, he’ll take me apart, Emmett thought. If he catches me he’ll kill me with his bare hands. There was not a doubt in his mind as to what would happen if the freckled sheriff caught him. Somehow he knew with utter certainty how a man like that thought and felt with respect to certain fundamentals, of which being kneed in the groin was definitely one.

He saw the girl get out of the car and come toward him. Two of the three buttons of her jacket had come unfastened, and the thin satin blouse spilled out through the gap. Her hair was no tidier than it had been, and one of her stockings was wrinkled down her leg.

“Hadn’t we better?—” She stopped in front of him.

He stared at her dispassionately, pleased at her dishevelment because he hated her. After a little she glanced down at herself, flushed, and started to tuck and brush and pat herself back to a show of respectability.

She stopped and looked up at him again. “Don’t let them… I couldn’t stand to be put in a cell. If they put me in a cell, I’ll kill myself.”

He took a step forward and seized her by the shoulders and shook her just once. The hair that she had tucked back slipped forward again, almost covering her left eye. She looked a little crazy, staring up at him through the veil of light tangled hair.

He said, “As soon as I’m out of this you can go right back to the booby-hatch you came from. And you can eat all the seconal you like. I’ll even make up a special batch, candy-coated, from me to you. But in the meantime, save your symptoms for Dr. Kaufman. Don’t throw any fits and don’t have hysterics and don’t talk silly about killing yourself. You have no idea what a pleasure it would be to finish knocking your ears down.”

He walked past her, leaving her standing there, and went to the car, and took the roadmaps from the glove compartment. He was aware of her coming up behind him.

“This country’s fixed nice for people who want to go east and west,” he said. “But you’ve practically got to break trail to get north and south.” He jerked his head. “Get in.”

She got into the car. He noticed absently that she was crying without sound. The tears ran down her cheeks and spotted her blouse and the lapels of her gabardine jacket. It did not affect him one way or the other. He was thinking of what it would mean to his life to be arrested and tried for resisting an officer of the law, even if he should escape without a beating. In one moment you could wreck your life and your career, merely because you had let yourself yield to an impulse and stupid chivalry. He started around the car, but stopped, turning back to the girl.

“Where’s that jack handle?”

“You threw it… in back, I think…”

“Move over.” He groped on the floor behind her and found it and looked from it to her. He walked to the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and threw the handle clattering inside; then closed the trunk, got behind the wheel, turned the car around, and, back on the gravel road, headed south. “Why did you hide the jack handle?”

“It won’t do me any good if he catches us,” Emmett said. “But I’m not taking any chances of your getting the bright idea that you might like to be alone. You might as well get used to the thought that I’m going to be right beside you until I can figure out—”

“Do you think I’d…?” Her voice trailed off, shocked and rather frightened.

“Nicholson,” he said, watching the road, “by me, you’re the great unknown. After that exhibition back there, I’m not taking any chances on what you might do, not any.”

“Don’t you understand what being put into a cell…?” She glanced at him. “Don’t you understand? I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know who’s supposed to have been killed.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“You’re frightened,” she said sharply. “You’re frightened silly.”

He glanced at her and grinned, feeling his lips slide back from his teeth. “Are you just figuring that out?”

She did not say anything.

He said, “You’ve got no idea of how scared I am, Nicholson. No idea at all.”

She said, “He can’t do anything. You were helping me. He didn’t have any right…” She did not believe a word of it. She was just talking to hear herself talk.

He did not take his eyes off the road. “You had it coming. What the hell did you learn over there, anyway? If you haven’t got sense enough not to wrestle with a guy like that. What did you want to run for, in the first place?”

“I told you. I… suddenly I just couldn’t go into the place. It seemed just like the place… where they had me…”

He said, “That’s all right. I’ll listen to your war experiences some time when I’m feeling respectful. Take a look behind. Can you see anything coming?”

She turned in the seat. “No. There’s nothing.”

“If he picks us up I’m going to give him a run for it. Get down on the floor if it happens. He’ll probably shoot.”

“Aren’t you—” She hesitated. “Aren’t you being a little silly, Mr. Emmett? This is the United States, you know.” She was again just talking to hear herself say what she wanted to believe, hoping that he would reassure her.

“Don’t be formal,” he said. “You know me. I’m the guy who wipes the goo off your shoes after you’ve coughed up your breakfast. Just call me Galahad for short.”

She did not say anything.

He said, “Sure, this is the United States. Lane County, Nebraska, and I’ve just spread the sheriff thereof all over his own pavement in front of his office door. With a girl and his own deputy watching. Can you figure out what’ll happen to me if that guy ever gets five minutes with me alone? My God, Nicholson,” he said, glancing at her, “the only time I’ve ever talked to a cop was a little matter of speeding. You should be telling me what a man like that will do.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said without conviction.

“You’re all right,” he said. “He won’t be mad at you any longer. He’s forgotten about you. But me, he’ll take me apart and run the remains through a sausage grinder. This isn’t a big city where if you sock one cop it doesn’t really affect the department’s prestige; they can afford to let the judge take care of it. A county sheriff is something else again. He can’t afford to be laughed at.”

“There’s a car,” she said. “It just pulled in from the side road. No, it’s going the other way.” She looked at him, facing backwards, kneeling on the seat. “Shouldn’t we… I mean, isn’t he bound to catch us if we just drive straight like this? Somebody will have seen us.”

He twisted the convertible past two wicked holes in the road and straightened it out again at sixty. He could see the dust rising in the rear-view mirror.

“Listen, Nicholson,” he said, “that’s a reasonably smart man back there, and he’ll expect one of two things. Either that we’re going to get back to the highway and hightail it out of there as fast as we can go, hoping that he won’t expect the most obvious thing; or that we’re going to play it smart and cagey. That’s what he’ll be hoping for. He’s come across smart and cagey people before. He knows all about smart and cagey people… Get down,” he said, watching a car approach. It looked like a Ford.

She turned in the seat, slid down with her skirt bunched in her lap, and stared at the approaching car. Emmett slowed down a little. The road was quite narrow. The other car pulled out to the side. Emmett shifted into second and squeezed the convertible past, raising his hand in appreciation of the other’s courtesy. The blue-shirted farmer in the Ford waggled a hand in response. Emmett took the convertible back to sixty.

“The trouble with Mr. Ford,” he said after a pause, “the trouble with Mr. Ford is, he made too damn many cars looking just alike.”

The girl did not answer. After a little she drew her arm across her face and looked at the wet smudge on the sleeve of her jacket. She pulled down her skirt and, opening her purse, found a comb and began to comb her hair.

Emmett said, “The way I figure it, that sheriff has two choices. He can get on the phone and throw out a dragnet or whatever you call it; or he can get in his car, hoping to catch us being smart and cagey. If he starts calling around we haven’t got a chance. This car sticks out like a sore thumb. If he’s going to block the roads he’ll have the bus depots and railroad stations watched. We could crawl into a hole somewhere and hide for a day or two, maybe, but in the end he’d get us; and we’d still be in Lane County, Nebraska.” He was silent a moment, busy with driving. It was a little like steering a sled down a sleeted city street. The car had no real grip on the washboard ruts of the road. Then he said, “You understand, Nicholson, you’re going to have to talk to the police. In fact, I’m damn well going to see that you talk to them. Don’t kid yourself a moment that I’m worrying one little bit about what happens to you.”

“Don’t be formal,” she said. “Call me Ann.” There was an edge of dislike to her voice.

He glanced at her. “You’re going to talk to the police, and I’m going to be the man who turns you over to them. You understand? I don’t care if you’re innocent as the Virgin Mary. I don’t care if you’ve got a face like the Mona Lisa and legs like Marlene Dietrich. I don’t care how much money you’ve got in your purse or what you care to offer as a bonus. I want to make everything clear: I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m not going to be an accessory to anything, at any price. I lost my head back there. I was all set to help him get you inside, carrying you if necessary, but when he hit you, something slipped. Don’t count on its slipping again. It’s not going to. I’m a peaceful, law-abiding professional man with an MS in chemistry, and all I want is to get to Bakersfield and take up my job with no police or sheriffs looking for me. As soon as we get some place where I can approach the law without getting hell beat out of me…”

He stopped talking and they watched a car, dragging dust behind it, converge on them from the left along a road that crossed the road they were on a mile ahead. As they came closer they saw that it was a large maroon coupe with chromium trim that glinted in the sunshine. It passed ahead of them and went on across the plain to the right. Its dust still lay over the intersection as they crossed.

“As for the sheriff,” Emmett said, “I’m hoping that he’s mad as hell. If he’s mad enough he won’t want anybody but himself to catch us. He’ll maybe notify somebody down the highway that he thought he saw us pass and to stop us if we go that way. Then he’ll get in his car and start driving around looking for us, hoping that we’ll try to be clever. He can’t turn out the countryside without admitting that he had us and let us get away; and if he gets the state police and a couple of other counties in on it there’ll be so much publicity that he won’t be able to touch me if he does catch us, and somebody else may get us first. So what I hope is that he’ll tear up the roads looking for us and then, hoping that we’ve tried to be smart, go back to town and check all the garages and hotels in case we’ve doubled back… And then, I rather expect, when he doesn’t find us, he’ll give the kid deputy a black eye to make him keep his mouth shut, get drunk, and go home and beat up his wife and anybody else who happens to be handy.”

Ann Nicholson had powdered her nose and defined her mouth neatly with clear red lipstick. She looked at herself in the mirror and closed the purse.

“Isn’t that,” she asked, “just wishful thinking? After all, he’s an officer, he’ll have to, sooner or later, notify—”

“Why?” Emmett demanded. “Nobody knows about it but us and the kid. We certainly aren’t going to admit that we resisted arrest and assaulted an officer of the law. And the kid isn’t apt to shoot his mouth off around town. And the sheriff isn’t so fond of the Chicago police that he’s going to get himself laughed about just to catch them a material witness… He’s worrying about Lane County, Nebraska, not Chicago, Illinois.”

“You don’t know that,” the girl said.

“No,” Emmett said. “But I’ll damn soon find out.” The car hit a curve and shot around it, the rear end whipping as the tires skidded in the loose gravel. “I’ve always hated these damned convertibles,” Emmett said grimly. “I saw one once that had rolled over with five people in it. Quite a mess.”

Ann Nicholson shivered as the car trembled, skating over the washboard ruts left by the graders.

“Damn flashy job that anybody can spot three miles off,” Emmett said bitterly.

“My father wasn’t aware that I was going to be running from the police when he gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Just one measly convertible for your birthday?” Emmett said. “Not even a Cadillac? You must have felt downright neglected… My Dad bought me a bicycle for my birthday once.”

“Please don’t be childish,” Ann Nicholson said.

They watched a car swing onto the road a mile ahead. When they caught up to it, it had a delivery truck body and Kansas license plates.

chapter EIGHT

A man in a Stetson hat was reading the Sunday comics in the hotel lobby as they came in. The clerk behind the desk was in shirtsleeves and there was perspiration on his bald head. Emmett signed the register: Mr. and Mrs. John E. Emmett, Chicago, Illinois, making the address agree with the license plates of the car. He was aware of the girl beside him, watching as he wrote it down.

“That’ll be four-fifty for a double room with bath,” the clerk said. He sounded ready to make a deal.

“That’s all right,” Emmett said.

He took Ann Nicholson’s arm and they followed the boy with the bags into the elevator. On the fourth floor they got out and followed the boy down a long dim corridor, around a corner, and into a fairly large, barren room, the most obtrusive piece of furniture in which was a large iron double bed. The air of the room had the stagnant heat of a summer cottage that had not yet been opened for the season.

The boy set down the bags, raised the shade, and strained at the window until it opened with a crash. The room looked better with sunlight entering it, but the open window did not make it perceptibly cooler. The boy opened the bathroom and closet doors, arranged the suitcases neatly, and set the aluminum rod case carefully in a corner of the closet, while Emmett and the girl stood stiffly, watching him. Emmett thought that they must look very much like lovers waiting to be left alone. He squirmed out of the strap of his camera case and put the camera on the dark ornate dresser that looked as if it had crossed the plains in a covered wagon and had not been refinished since. The top was ringed with yellow liquor stains, partially concealed by a paper doily, upon which stood two glasses and an empty pitcher.

“Did you put the car in the shade?” Emmett asked the boy. What he wanted to ask was, had the car been put where it could not be seen from the street.

“Yes, sir. The parking lot’s got shade most of the afternoon.”

“Well,” Emmett said, “see if you can scare up half a dozen cokes and some ice.” He relinquished a five-dollar bill.

“Yes, sir.”

He watched the boy leave, wondering what there was about the kid that recalled something unpleasant; then he realized that the boy had freckles. He was almost as freckled as the sheriff of Lane County, Nebraska.

When the door had closed, Ann Nicholson walked slowly towards the bed, pushing the damp hair back from her face. Her pale satin blouse looked like a rather grubby boy’s shirt, dust-stained, with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open; it was quite wet across the back and shoulders where she had been in contact with the cushions of the car. Her black purse and shoes, even streaked with dust, looked incongruously dressy against the damp open-necked blouse, and the smudged, badly rumpled skirt of her gabardine suit. She laid the purse aside, sat down on the edge of the bed, and reached down to push at one shoe until it fell off to the floor, then, changing her legs around, at the other. Then she sat rubbing her foot in her lap, unaware or too hot and tired to care that her skirt had worked up to reveal the limp folds of a white silk slip and the tops of her stockings.

“Why did you register like that?” she asked without looking at him.

“Don’t get skittish,” he said. “We’ll be out of here before dark; I just figured we needed a break while I figured out what I’m going to do with you.”

She glanced up. “I thought you were going to turn me over to the police.”

He said wryly, “Well, it’s occurred to me that I don’t officially know you’re wanted, Nicholson. If I take you to a police station they’re going to want to know where I heard about it, and I don’t want to bring that sheriff into it. He’s apparently decided to keep his mouth shut since we weren’t stopped on the road. I don’t want to do anything to make him change his mind.” He saw her smile involuntarily at his predicament. “That’s all right,” he said grimly. “It’s funny. You can laugh if you want to.”

She stopped smiling. “Just the same, I don’t like it,” she said with weary distaste. “That man knew perfectly well we weren’t married, and the boy, too. It makes me feel a little… cheap.”

He said, “For a girl wanted by the police, you worry about the damnedest things.”

“I’m hungry,” she said after a long pause. “I think I’m going to faint if I don’t get something to eat pretty soon.”

“I doubt it,” he said.

She looked up angrily.

He said, “You’ll faint if you this and you’ll die if you that and you’ll kill yourself if you do the other thing.”

“Do I really sound like that?” she asked, looking up, startled.

He did not want to like her, and he wished she would not persist in showing a rather likable honesty and directness.

“Don’t take it to heart,” he said, and pulled off his tie and threw it at the dresser. He had changed back to his brown suit in a filling station, hoping to look more like a young businessman vacationing with his wife. He could feel the perspiration on his legs scratch stickily by the wool of his trousers as he moved to the telephone. “What’s the time, please?” He put the instrument down and set his watch back one hour. “Five thirty-five,” he said. “We gained an hour back there, somewhere.”

Ann adjusted the tiny platinum watch on her wrist. “Where are we?” she asked without interest.

“Boyne, Colorado.”

“Colorado?”

“Sure,” he said. “We left Kansas a couple of hours ago.”

“I guess I must have been half asleep,” she said, and looked up at him quickly. “You must be dead. You didn’t get any sleep at all last night.”

He shrugged his shoulders. After a moment he asked, “Do you mind if I look in your purse?”

“Yes, of course I—” She stopped herself and her shoulders sagged a little. “Oh, go ahead!”

He sat down on the bed beside her, she drawing away a little, and opened the purse, emptied it piecemeal, and sat frowning at the accumulation of commonplace items on the bedspread. He riffled through the roll of bills to make sure it contained nothing but bills, glanced in the coinpurse, opened the expensive compact, and tore the end off a pack of Philip Morris to see that it contained nothing but cigarettes. He began to replace the things by the handful.

“Please,” she said stiffly. “I’d prefer to put them back myself, if you don’t mind.”

He stopped and sat back, studying her face. It was drawn and shiny and tired, and not very clean. There was not much lipstick left on her mouth, and what there was seemed to be distributed in small flakes.

Her gray eyes found him briefly and looked away. “Would it… would it help any if I gave you my word that I really don’t know what it’s all about?”

He turned away from her and rubbed his eyes. “No.” He got up and walked to the closet and felt through her jacket, finding nothing but a forgotten wad of cleansing tissue in one pocket. He took her hat from the shelf and examined it. She was watching him when he turned around. She licked her lips, rising.

“Should I… take my clothes off?”

Her eyes challenged him, then they wavered and she looked down, flushing, and began to slowly unbutton her blouse. He said, “For Christ’s sake, sit down!”

She glanced at him uncertainly, and sat down on the edge of the bed. After a time her fingers fastened up the buttons they had released. There was no triumph in her face.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

He said harshly, “Anything. Anything that’ll make sense of this mess. Any damn thing at all that’ll tell me how you can be a material witness to a murder you claim not to know has happened. But,” he said, “I’ll settle for the clipping the nurse said you carried. About this Kissel you’re supposed to be going to see. At least I’d know somebody was telling the truth.”

Ann lifted her head quickly. “I must say I’m getting a little tired of the way Miss Bethke…”

Emmett did not say anything, and her voice died away. After a while she reached into her purse, glanced at him through her lashes with a touch of mischief, and pulled out the mirror and nailfile. With the file she poked beneath the leather backing of the mirror until she had brought a folded slip of paper within reach of her fingers. She pulled it out and offered it to Emmett.

He said wryly, “Hell, maybe I should stick to chemistry.”

She did not smile. He looked down at the clipping. It was one column wide, fairly long, and had been trimmed neatly with scissors.

LONG JOURNEY’S END

Tall, thin, graying physicist Reinhard Kissel, who walks with a cane as the result of injuries suffered at the hands of the Gestapo, had waited almost three years to be allowed to take the final step in a journey which began a few months after Hitler’s bloodless annexation of Austria. At that time a middle-aged instructor at Vienna’s Kaisersinstitut, Dr. Kissel slipped across the Swiss border a few hours ahead of the secret police, charged with disloyal and seditious utterances against the new regime.

In Paris, which he reached some time later, Dr. Kissel was an undistinguished member of the colony of expatriate intellectuals existing precariously in that uneasy prewar capital. With the fall of France, however, the tall man with the harsh voice became an almost legendary figure who for two years improvised radio equipment in dimly lighted cellars for the use of those who maintained France’s contact with the outside world. Captured by the Nazis in 1942, Dr. Kissel was saved from execution by Germany’s desperate need for trained scientists. After an experience with the Gestapo that left him with a broken nose and a crippled foot, he was sent into Germany where he was put to work in a laboratory under heavy guard.

The guards knew very little about electricity; Dr. Kissel, a great deal. A short-circuit in a high-voltage line set the laboratory on fire, and in the resulting confusion the scientist escaped. He was recaptured and consigned to the concentration camp at Glaubnitz. The disorganization that preceded the final collapse of the Nazi regime enabled him to escape a second time. He was taken into custody as he made his way into the American zone on crutches, his injured foot never having properly healed.

Last week, Dr. Kissel’s three year wait was rewarded. The Department of Immigration and Naturalization approved his entry into this country. Small but progressive Fairmount University, near Denver, Colorado, invited him to fill the vacancy in its physics department left by the retirement of Dr. William O. French. Accepting, patient Dr. Kissel hoped that the mountain climate would give him relief from the chronic sinus infections that had plagued him since his beating at the hands of the Gestapo.

Emmett folded the clipping slowly along the original creases and gave it back. He had the same sense of unreality and of resentment that he had felt when, in the lunchwagon the night before, the doctor and nurse had told him the story of the girl beside him. He did not like to be reminded that these things had happened.

“Well,” he said after a pause, “that doesn’t really prove anything, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Ann said. “If I knew what you were trying to prove…”

He said, “Listen, people have been falling over themselves to tell me things about you, Nicholson. It embarrasses me to think how much I know of your private life; maybe it embarrasses you, too. But in passing on this mass of information,” he went on bitterly, “everybody seems to have overlooked a murder that occurred, presumably, yesterday afternoon or evening. That, I’ve got to learn the hard way, from a country sheriff. It makes me wonder what else I should know about you, that people have neglected to warn me about.”

She did not say anything. After a while she pushed the clipping slowly back into place behind the mirror, and put the mirror away in her purse.

Emmett found his pipe in his pocket and began to fill it mechanically. He said, “I keep wondering who you are and what it is you’ve forgotten, Nicholson. I mean, as an amateur psychologist, when I heard what they had to say about you I took for granted that all this double-talk had to do with whether the Nazis had raped you or not… Well, it’s the thing that comes to mind, isn’t it?” he said defensively as she glanced at him, startled, and shook her head quickly in a movement that was very close to a shudder, rejecting the idea. He said, “But if that were your trouble, I think you’d have had a stronger reaction when that sheriff searched you; and I don’t think you’d be quite so casual about picking up male strangers on the roadside and coming to hotels with them. The situation is getting too complicated for a simple question of virginity, anyway; and I’m just wondering, that’s all.”

She was looking at him, flushed and uncomfortable and indignant. A knock on the door stopped her retort. The boy came in with a carton of Coca-Cola and a bowl of ice cubes, which he set on the dresser.

“All right,” Emmett said, “now let’s try you on something hard. Let’s see how many Chicago papers you can find.” When the door had closed again, Ann rose quickly and went past him to the dresser without looking at him. He watched her struggle to get the cap off one of the bottles with the patent opener, succeed, charge a glass with ice cubes, and fill it. Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. He saw her slowly put the glass aside, startled by her appearance, and push at her untidy hair. “I looked rather nice, this time yesterday,” she said, a little sadly.

Emmett rose to fix a drink for himself. “You worry about the damnedest things,” he said. “How you look, what people are going to think about you… Why don’t you try worrying about who’s dead?” He filled his glass and looked at her. “Are you sure you’ve got the last couple of days all straight in your head? There aren’t any blank spaces? You can follow through from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night? You haven’t waked up somewhere with a smoking revolver in your hand?”

“Please,” she protested. “They only said material witness.”

“That may just mean they aren’t sure,” he said cruelly.

“I really haven’t any idea who might have been killed, Mr. Emmett,” she said stiffly. “Don’t you think I’ve been wondering, worrying about it? And do you have to act as if you thought I were a fraud?” she demanded, her voice rising a little. “Do you think I like not being able to remember—?”

“What?” he demanded.

She stared at him over her glass, suddenly silent.

“What is it you don’t remember?” he asked. “What is it you want Kissel to tell you didn’t happen to you? Goddamn it, if you’re afraid of it, you must know what it is. Something’s haunting you, Nicholson, something makes you want to crawl into a hospital bed and draw the covers up over your head, something that happened back there has got you scared of living, am I right? Well, you can tell me you don’t know whether it happened or not, and I’ll take a chance of believing you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you tell me you don’t know what it is.”

After a little she picked up her drink and carried it back to the bed, sat down, and looked at him again as if trying to make up her mind about something concerning him.

“Did Dr. Kaufman—?” She hesitated. “Did Dr. Kaufman tell you to ask me that?” she asked, the words coming, at last, in a rush.

Emmett shook his head.

“Did he… want you to try and make me talk?”

Emmett nodded.

“And, of course, tell him?”

Emmett said, “He wanted that. But I didn’t agree to it “

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t make a habit of repeating what people tell me. And I didn’t particularly like him.”

“He’s a nasty little man,” Ann said. “A man has to be a little peculiar to want to pick people’s brains, don’t you think?”

“Well, it helps, I guess,” Emmett said with sudden caution, wondering where she was trying to lead him.

“And she,” her voice went on, “is a vulgar, oversexed bitch, and I think they sleep together. Not that it’s any of my business.”

The quick viciousness of her voice brought his mind sharply to attention. He was a little shocked. There were girls who could talk about certain things and use certain words and you would think nothing of it; and then there were girls, like her, who could not.

He glanced at her and was suddenly aware that he did not really know what kind of a girl she was. He had only known her for twenty-four hours, although it seemed much longer. He glanced at her and realized that, in thinking about her, he had actually been thinking about an imaginary person—not even the quiet, well-dressed if slightly hot and rumpled, girl he had met in the garage the previous evening, but the girl he had never seen, who had gone to the cocktail party where something had happened to send her rushing off across country without exchanging her party clothes for something more suitable for traveling. He had been thinking of her as the girl he thought her to have been the day before, not as the girl he was actually seeing, sitting rather carelessly on the bed, shoeless, her expensive skirt and blouse showing clearly that she had not had them off for twenty-four hot breathless hours.

He had not been thinking of her as the girl who would pick up a strange man by the roadside; who would flee from a sheriff in utter panic and fight him like an alley cat when he caught her; whose voice could hold a sharp vixenish note when referring to another girl whom, a few hours earlier, she had claimed to like very much.

“This morning you said you liked Miss Bethke,” he reminded her quietly.

She did not say anything. After a moment she rubbed her eyes painfully with both hands, after putting her glass aside; then suddenly threw herself face down on the bed. He heard her harsh breathing as she fought back the tears. After a long time she turned over on her back, raised herself to arrange her clothes, and lay back again, looking up at him from the pillow. Her face looked almost gaunt in the harsh bright light from the window that faced the afternoon sun, gaunt and fragile, as if the skin had drawn tight over the fragile bones, and as if the bones themselves had no more substance than paper. As she lay on the bed, the thin damp material of her blouse revealed the shape of her small breasts, stirred by her shallow breathing, and the heavier stuff of her skirt outlined the contours of her flat stomach and slender thighs. Emmett looked away and busied himself relighting the dead coals in his pipe.

“If I… told you something…” She waited, but he did not let himself look at her. “If I told you something… would you promise not to tell anybody?”

“No,” he said.

He heard her breath catch, and he turned to face her. “Listen,” he said, “we’ve come some distance from the subject, but the subject is still a murder in Chicago. I don’t especially want to hear any more of the story of your life, and if I did promise not to tell, I’d break the promise in a minute if a policeman asked me to. Or even if nobody asked me to and I thought they ought to know… Christ,” he said wearily, “I started this by picking you up or letting you pick me up, or whatever happened back there, in the innocent hope that I’d get to know you well enough to make a pass at you. And now look at me! Here we are in a hotel room together and I know you so damn well that all I do is stand and talk to you. We might as well be married.” He stared at her with dislike. After a while, he said, “I’ll listen, but I won’t promise a thing.”

She said, “You’re not being very nice. Or very fair.”

“I can’t afford to be,” he said. “I don’t have a papa who gives me convertibles for my birthday. I’ve got to earn my own living. And there are always questions on the employment blanks: have you ever been arrested, and for what?”

“They used a dental drill,” she said. He saw that her fingers had come up to touch the tiny scar on her lip. “This… is where it slipped.”

He did not say anything. It seemed to him that even when he looked away, he could feel the steady regard of her gray eyes, watching him, unwavering. The words came slowly at first, then, as she lost herself in the memory, in a rush.

“After a while I fainted. I remember that they took the chair away when they left. I was lying on the floor when I woke up. There was nothing else in the cell except a big mirror on the door. I don’t know whether it concealed a peephole so they could watch me, or whether they just wanted me to see what was happening to me. They never turned out the light in the cell. It was quite bright, all the time… They came back several times. Again and again. I remember that it was morning when I was in the office again, but I don’t remember which morning. When they took me back, a man was just being taken from the cell next to mine. There was something wrong with his foot so they had to half carry him; there was blood on his face and he was dirty and almost naked… I hadn’t realized until then, in spite of the mirror, what I must look like. I looked just like that, except that I could walk. The guards made a big show of introducing us to each other. Frau Monteux, bitte to meet the eminent physicist, Dr. Reinhard Kissel. Dr. Kissel, make the acquaintance of the lovely wife of the eminent resistance leader, Georges Monteux… They made him kiss my hand. You know what men like that think is funny. Then I was back in the cell again. I tried to break the mirror with a bowl they had given me food in, so that I could use the splinters to kill myself, but the mirror was steel and wouldn’t break.” She was silent for a while. Then she went on without a trace of expression in her voice, “That’s the last I remember, Mr. Emmett. Trying to break the mirror. But it wouldn’t break.”

Emmett stood quite still, not looking at the girl or at anything in the room. He found himself considering the irrelevant fact that she had been married, as if it were important. When he drew on his pipe it made a ridiculous gurgling sound and he took it hastily from his mouth.

“When I got to England,” the quiet voice went on, “I learned what had happened to the others. They had all been taken the week after I was caught, except Georges and two others who had escaped. Georges had been killed later on, with the Maquis, helping an American flyer who had been shot down. But the Gestapo had got all the rest that week. After a while she said, “Don’t you see? I don’t know. I don’t know that I didn’t betray them. I can’t remember.”

chapter NINE

He leaned against the dresser without moving and looked at the girl sitting now childishly cross-legged in the center of the big iron bed. There was bitterness inside him. The war always came back. You had managed to stay out of it while it was going on; and now everywhere you went they threw the war you had not fought in your face and asked you to judge what had been right about it, and what had been wrong.

A knock on the door made him start. He crossed and pulled at the knob. The freckled boy was outside.

“I couldn’t get any Chicago papers, sir. I got the St. Louis Post and the Omaha Sun, in case you’d…”

Emmett took the papers and his change. He gave the boy a dollar and closed the door. The girl on the bed was watching him as he came back across the room. There was something disconcerting about her steady questioning stare. He clapped the papers on the bed beside her and unfolded the top one.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked softly.

“No,” he said without looking at her.

“That isn’t much better than saying it, is it?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” he said. “I mean, what the hell am I supposed to say about it? I mean, even supposing I was going to get indignant about it, I’d better make sure you’d done it, first, hadn’t I?”

A small sound made him look at her. He saw that she was crying. She looked at him with the tears running unheeded down her face.

“I thought it would help, telling somebody else,” she whispered. “My folks don’t even guess. They think I won’t talk about it because… because I had such a bad time in that place… They don’t even suspect…” She tried to brush the tears away. After a little she stopped crying and attempted, by craning her neck, to dry her face on the shoulder and sleeve of her blouse. He opened her purse and pulled two wadded handkerchiefs out of it; the one he had lent her earlier in the day and a smaller one. Something fell out and shattered on the bare boards of the floor. He gave her the handkerchiefs and turned to look down at the broken mirror. There was always something ugly and symbolical about a broken mirror, and particularly now after the story she had just told him.

“No,” he heard her say as he bent over. “No, I’ll get it.”

He heard her push herself across the bed and drop to the floor in one quick movement that startled him with its abruptness; a moment before she had been crying. He put himself in her way.

“Please, give it to me,” she gasped.

He looked down at her streaked pale face. “I think I’d like to see it first, if you don’t mind,” he said slowly, holding the broken mirror away from her, as she reached for it, as if keeping it away from a playful puppy, or a child. Her face seemed to contract a little; and for a moment he thought she would strike him. Then her shoulders sagged in defeat.

“There’s just the clipping,” she breathed. “You’ve already read it And—” She watched him draw a small card from behind the shattered glass. “—and a picture,” she said, her voice trailing off in silence.

He was looking down at a small studio photograph, on fairly stiff paper, of a size to be carried in the compartment of a wallet with the driver’s license and identification cards. The picture had apparently been carried flat for easy visibility for a long time; the face of it had the scuffed, smudged, worn look of paper that had rubbed against celluloid or leather for years. It was flat now, but at some intervening time it had been folded so that the crease broken into the photographic emulsion ran directly across the smiling face of the girl it represented: a younger Ann Nicholson than the girl he knew, with her hair worn longer and a young fullness to her face that she did not now have. The broken surface of the photograph marred the expression of the smiling young face, but he could see that even that long ago she had been lovely. The picture had been inscribed on the back: To Georges, with all my love—Ann.

“It’s mine,” she murmured. “Please, may I have it now?”

The momentary panic had left her, he thought; and then he saw her eyes avoid his as he looked at her. He glanced again at the picture in his hand; it seemed quite innocent, although there was something vaguely unpleasant and frightening about the wanton way it had been creased. You might fold a photograph like that before throwing it away, but this photograph had not been thrown away. Someone had carried it for a long time, treasuring it; and then the same person, or another, had broken it ruthlessly, but had not thrown it away.

Then the answer came to him. This was a picture she had given to the man she had apparently married in France. To Georges, with all my love… Georges had carried it; it was possible that Georges had broken it after the death and capture of his friends. But Georges, she had just told him, had been killed with the Maquis later, helping an American flyer escape. He glanced at her, feeling suddenly cold and rather scared.

“How did you get this?” he asked.

“It was… sent to me,” she whispered.

“By whom?”

“By Georges. When he was dying.” She hesitated. “He… wanted me to know… to know that he had kept it in spite of…”

“I see,” Emmett said. “And wounded to death, he sauntered out to the nearest mailbox and—”

“Do you have to be so cruel?”

“I have to know how you got this,” he said evenly. “I have to know why you jumped to keep me from seeing it. How was it sent? When did you get it?”

“I got it—” Her lips were gray in her white face. “I got it… yesterday. That’s why I—”

He was silent for a long time, and she did not finish. Then he shivered a little, and licked his lips. “That’s why you started off for Denver?”

She nodded mutely.

“Who brought it to you?” He remembered what he had been told. “A young fellow at the party sent you off, Dr. Kaufman said. Everything was going fine until you talked to him.”

“Yes.”

“And Georges died in 1944 or thereabouts, but you just got the picture yesterday.”

“Yes.” She caught her breath and said quickly, “He couldn’t reach me before, don’t you see? I was in the sanatorium when he came out of the army last year.”

“What did he have to say to you?”

“He said—” She hesitated. “He was the one… the aviator whose life Georges saved. He gave me the picture and said that… that Georges wanted me to know… to know he hadn’t blamed me. That he had forgiven me.”

He tried to see the expression on her averted face, but she would not turn. At last he said, “Then Georges believed you’d done it.”

Her head moved in a tiny nod.

“Then you do know,” he said. “You said you—”

She whirled to face him. “I said I didn’t remember,” she gasped. “I didn’t lie. I didn’t! Even Georges could have been mistaken, couldn’t…?” Her voice ran out abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“And the lad who carried the message?” Emmett asked. “What else did he say?”

“I’ve told you what he said.”

Emmett watched her with wary objectivity. It was like catching a mouse in a closed room; you had it, you would get it eventually, but it always found something to hide behind. “No,” he said, “you’ve told me what the message was from Georges. Didn’t—?” He cleared his throat, “—didn’t the guy have anything to say for himself? After all, he’d gone to some trouble to look you up personally, when he could have stuck the picture in the mail with a note, and forgot about it. Did he just hand you the picture and quote Georges’ dying words and walk out?”

She took the picture from his hands and ripped it in two along the crease, and dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. Then she faced him stiffly.

“No,” she said flatly, her head well back. “No, you’re perfectly right, Mr. Emmett. That wasn’t all he said. He gave me the picture, folded like that, as if he had not wanted to be contaminated by looking at it. He told me what Georges had said as if it hurt him to say it. Then he made a little speech. I don’t have to tell you what it was, do I? You can guess, can’t you?”

Emmett said slowly, “I think so.”

“He said he was going to take the story to the newspapers,” she whispered. “I wanted to die. I always want to die, but I never have the courage. I tried once, in the camp, with a knife… I couldn’t even manage to cut myself!”

“And then?”

“That’s all,” she whispered. “I ran away. I knew I had to… to see Dr. Kissel. To make sure. If he could just say something that would make me remember… To be told you’ve done something like that and not know—”

He had been in the little room too long. He could no longer feel anything for her; she had made too many demands on his emotions already, and it was too hot. When she buried her face in her hands, he found himself wondering whether or not she were peeking through her fingers to see how the gesture affected him. He could not help remembering that a man had been murdered in Chicago. He could not help the dreadful suspicion that he now knew who the victim must have been. After a time he looked away.

He turned to the papers on the bed, but as she moved behind him he found himself suddenly concentrating on tracing her path across the room by the small sounds of her feet and clothing and breathing; then she was beside him, putting her feet into the dusty black pumps by the bed; then moving away. The bathroom door closed on her. He felt himself slowly relaxing and he knew that, ridiculously, he had been afraid to have her behind him. There was no news of a Chicago murder in either paper. He took out the card Dr. Kaufman had given him and read the telephone number the doctor had written: R. Austen Nicholson, Evanston, Lake-view 2210. He picked up the telephone and asked for Evanston, Illinois.

chapter TEN

Emmett put down the phone slowly, aware that the man at the other end of the line considered him an unknown bum with dubious motives whom his daughter had probably found, drunk, outside a saloon. Emmett found himself breathing a little heavily and realized that he was angry, in spite of the fact that Mr. Nicholson had been quite polite. He looked up and saw the girl in the doorway watching him, drying her hands on a thin white hotel towel. Her face had a shiny fresh-scrubbed look.

Emmett said, “You’ll be glad to know everything is fine, Miss Nicholson. Your father told me to tell you not to worry about a thing; everything is all right.”

Relief struggled with puzzlement on her face. “Why didn’t you let me talk to him? And what’s the matter, if—?”

But he had picked up the telephone again. “I want police headquarters, Chicago,” he said. Looking up, he found her watching him. “Everything may be as beautiful as your parent thinks, but I’m not taking the word of a man I’ve only talked to long distance.”

She said stiffly, “One would think you wanted me to be a fugitive from justice.”

He said, “I don’t give a damn what you are, Miss Nicholson. I just want to know what I am.”

“Please,” she whispered. “What’s the matter? What did Dad say to you?”

His answer was cut off by a male voice in the telephone saying, “Chicago Police Headquarters.”

He said, “I want to talk to whoever’s handling the case of a man named Stevens who was found murdered last night.” He was annoyed to find his voice not quite certain, but there was something a little terrifying about calling the police about a murder.

“I’ll give you Homicide,” the voice said. Presently another voice, soft but with a hint of hoarseness, as if from too much smoking said, “Polachek here.”

He said, “My name’s Emmett. I’m calling for Miss Nicholson, Miss Ann Nicholson. She understands that you wanted to get in touch with her—”

“Oh, that’s all cleared up, Mr. Emmett,” the soft voice said quickly. “We’re sorry that it happened. The accident of her being the last known person to have talked to the victim… But of course, the testimony of her doctor and nurse frees her from any possible suspicion.”

“Do you want to talk to her? She’s right here.”

“No, I won’t bother Miss Nicholson now,” the man in Chicago said. “If we need her to fill in some background for us we’ll arrange to have her testimony taken by someone in Denver. Please give my apologies to Miss Nicholson and tell her I hope she wasn’t frightened or inconvenienced in any way.”

The smooth insincerity of the voice remained in Emmett’s ear after the connection had been broken; the man had clearly had pressure put on him and had not liked it. Emmett looked across the bed at the girl in the bathroom doorway.

“He hopes you weren’t frightened or inconvenienced in any way.” He turned his back on her hesitant smile, knowing that she was not quite sure whether the irony was his or the Chicago detective’s, but not pausing to enlighten her. He walked to the closet.

Her voice said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like something to eat before we start driving again.”

He turned with his arms full of suitcoat and topcoat. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You’re waiting here for Dr. Kaufman. He’s on his way from Denver by now; your dad was going to call him. I’m to get the hell out of here before I compromise you any further.” He dumped the stuff on the bed. “I can pick up my check at the Denver office of your dad’s company, he told me. He said he thought I’d find it adequate.”

The color left her face. “I’m sure Dad didn’t mean—!” she whispered.

“I don’t know what the hell he meant,” Emmett said wearily, “and I don’t care. I’m glad to get out of it.” He stared at her briefly. “You haven’t asked who was killed?”

Her eyes were innocent. “You mentioned the name. Stevens.”

“And it doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Not even,” he asked, “when I tell you that the last person Mr. Stevens is known to have talked to, is you?”

“You mean—” Her breath caught sharply. “He never told me his name.”

Emmett said, “He was found behind a signboard on Chicago’s west side with his head bashed in from behind. He died about four-thirty to five o’clock, just about the time… just a little after you’d left the party, Miss Nicholson. Naturally the police were interested in finding you. The body was discovered around midnight, before Dr. Kaufman and the nurse had got back. When they returned they gave you a complete alibi, and the call that had been sent out for you was canceled. I understand your father is raising hell about it.” He looked at her for a moment without liking. “You’ve got between here and Denver to decide how to explain what you and Stevens were talking about, and why you ran away. Detective Polachek said he was making arrangements to have your testimony taken.” He hesitated. “And I just want to warn you, Miss Nicholson, that man was mad. He didn’t like what your dad had said to him. You’d better pray that Dr. Kaufman and Miss Bethke weren’t lying about that alibi.”

She whispered, “Why, you think I killed him!”

He wished she would not look so extremely vulnerable, like a rumpled child, standing there with her face washed clean of the last traces of makeup. He reminded himself that the delicate face and the slight body had survived experiences that he could barely imagine. It was, he told himself, none of his business, and there was no reason for him to stick around. Very few innocent people were convicted of murder. He slung the camera case back over his shoulder. It was well after dark when he reached Denver.

He stood in the lighted station for a while, knowing that he was going back. He told himself to take it easy, at least stop and have a snack to eat. Then he heard the bus called and hurried out to it, driven by a mounting urgency. The bus driver had to wake him at the stop.

“Hey, Mac, you wanted Boyne, didn’t you?”

The other passengers obviously thought he’d had a big night in Denver and was coming home to Boyne to sleep it off. The driver helped him wrestle his belongings out the door. He looked at his watch as the bus pulled away; it read past midnight. He had never been so sleepy in his life.

The clerk at the hotel looked surprised to see him back.

“Quick trip, sir?” he asked and passed over the key. “Just leave the bags and I’ll have the boy bring them up in a minute.”

He walked stiffly across the lobby to the elevators. As he rode up he had not yet made up his mind what he was going to say to her. There was no explaining the vague panic that had seized him as he got off the bus in Denver; it would sound silly to say that he had ridden all the way there and come all the way back to see that she was all right, that Dr. Kaufman had arrived and taken over, that she had not jumped out of a window or hung herself with a stocking or drowned herself in the bathtub. It would sound as if she were very important to him, to draw him back over sixty miles, as tired as he was; it would be difficult to explain the feeling of guilt that he had had about her. She was a human being for whom he had been made responsible, and he could not feel that he had discharged the responsibility very well.

He hesitated in front of the door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked a second time, waited, put the key into the lock and opened the door. The room was quite dark except for the faintly visible rectangle of the open window.

“Miss Nicholson,” he whispered, acutely conscious of the misinterpretations that could be put on his sneaking back into the room like this in the middle of the night. All around him the hotel was silent. “Miss Nicholson. Ann.” His voice seemed to resound through the room. He knew a sudden taste of defeat and panic as he pressed the light switch.

There was still a moment for him to try to tell himself that it was all right; that she was only sound asleep, exhausted by the events of the night and the day. She was lying in the big iron bed, covered by a sheet that was thrown back a little so that he could see her slight shoulders bare except for the narrow ribbon straps of the slip she had worn to bed, lacking a nightgown. Her blouse hung neatly on a wire hanger inside the open closet; the closet looking barren and empty with nothing inside but the blouse and her jacket and hat. Her skirt was carefully folded over the back of the only chair in the room; her stockings and undergarments lay on the seat of the chair; and her shoes stood tidily, side by side, beneath it. There was a green glass bottle lying, with her purse, beside the telephone. A single brownish capsule had spilled from it, and the screw cap lay beside it. There were not many capsules left in the bottle.

He walked slowly across the bare floor, hearing the sound of his own feet and his own breathing.

“Ann,” he said. “Ann!”

His voice sounded like the voice of a frightened man about to burst into tears. It annoyed him. Her face was rather pale. Her hair was almost smooth; it showed that she had combed it carefully before going to bed, and the pillow had only disarranged it a little. Her lips were slightly parted. She had not put on lipstick to die. He could see the tiny scar.

He picked up her wrist and tried to remember how he had been told to take a pulse in the first-aid course he had taken during the war. Under his thumb he could feel only the heavy beating of his own blood. With his forefinger he could feel nothing at all. Then she moved her head a little and her breath caught in a little gasp and she was still again. He whirled and snatched up the telephone.

chapter ELEVEN

He washed his face and studied it in the bathroom mirror, but washing it had not helped it. It still needed a shave, some nourishment other than coffee, and about twelve hours of sleep. He dried it and combed the black hair out of it. The door behind him opened to show the head of the local doctor, whose name was Williams.

“Sorry,” Dr. Williams said, starting to retreat.

“Plenty of room,” Emmett said. The doctor came in and glanced at himself in the mirror over Emmett’s shoulder, rubbing a hand over his rough chin. He was still in the trousers, T-shirt, and moccasins he had arrived in just about ten hours earlier; a young man with light crisp hair and a confident air of knowing what he was about. He had lectured Emmett on the latest methods of combating barbiturate poisoning while injecting benzedrine into Ann Nicholson as if performing a laboratory demonstration.

“How is she?” Emmett asked.

“Patient’s fine,” the doctor said. “They’re taking her to St. Luke’s, in Denver, for observation. I didn’t try to convince them that a night’s sleep and a good spanking…” He yawned at his image in the mirror. “None of my business,” he said. “Through here?”

“It’s all yours,” Emmett said. He put the comb away and went out into the bedroom, bright again with daylight.

There was no one in the room; they had moved her into the suite at the end of the hall several hours before. After getting Dr. Williams, Emmett had called Dr. Kaufman, in Denver. The psychiatrist had been startled to learn that Ann was in Boyne; Mr. Nicholson’s message had not reached him, he said; he had been out to dinner and the hotel had not notified him when he returned. Having flown down himself, he had not expected them, driving, to reach the vicinity of Denver for another day. He had arrived within an hour. Later in the morning Mr. Nicholson, himself, had arrived by private plane from Chicago; Dr. Kaufman had notified him before starting out. Between them they had managed to keep the fourth floor of the hotel in an uproar until they had found a suitable place for the patient.

Emmett squeezed his face between his fingers to work some life into it. As he stepped into the hall the door of the suite at the end opened and the psychiatrist came out, looking clean-shaven and neatly brushed, pressed, and polished for a man who had been called in the early morning hours to drive sixty miles on an emergency call, but then, Emmett reflected, he had looked the same way in the lunchwagon in the middle of Iowa where they had first met in the middle of the night. The doctor turned in the doorway, reaching back a helping hand, and Ann Nicholson came out, leaning on the arm of one of the hotel maids.

She was dressed exactly as she had been when Emmett first saw her, her costume complete to hat and purse and white gloves; her blouse had been washed and ironed and the pale gabardine suit cleaned and pressed. Her hair was brushed smoothly out of sight beneath the fragile veiled hat, and under the veil she had the proper amount of makeup in the proper places; and she had the painted-clown look of a sick person who had been washed, dressed, and made presentable by someone else. As she was turning away toward the elevators she looked at him briefly, a blank look of nonrecognition that shocked and bewildered him. She did not know him at all.

He heard the elevator descend. Poor kid, he thought; and he felt again the sense of loss that he had felt once before, when Dr. Kaufman had first told him about her case while she slept in the car across the road—as if some part of his consciousness had recognized something that he could have become very fond of. Yes, he said to himself irritably, sure, she had damn nice legs. It was like thinking of someone who was dead.

“Oh, there you are, Emmett.”

He looked up to see her father come toward him down the hall; not a tall man but given an impression of height by the way he carried himself. Someone during the morning had told Emmett that Mr. Nicholson had served with the marines during the First World War; he had apparently never forgotten the training. He had a lined, brown, rectangular face, a little too big for his body, and stiff, short, graying dark hair. He carried a panama hat in one hand and a slip of yellow paper in the other, which he extended to Emmett. Emmett took the slip and saw that it was a check for five hundred dollars. He was a little relieved. He had been more or less expecting to catch hell.

“That’s all you’re going to get, young man,” Mr. Nicholson’s voice said.

Emmett looked up, startled.

The older man said harshly, “I don’t want to see you coming around again with your hand out, Emmett. I don’t know what you’ve managed to worm out of Ann; if you’re smart you can probably add a few things together, and maybe you think you’ve got something worth my paying for, but remember this: you picked her up and drove her across four or five states, and took her to a hotel, where she tried to kill herself. Figure what that would look like to a jury.”

He shook his head impatiently as Emmett tried to speak. “I’m not saying you laid a hand on my daughter,” he went on. “We both know she’s a screwball who’s tried to kill herself before, but don’t kid yourself you’ll be able to prove that in court. And figure your chances of ever holding another professional job after being tried for a morals offense, even if you did get off. Blackmail is a sucker’s game, Emmett. Don’t try it on me. I don’t care what you think you know. I’m not going to pay for it. If I see your face again, I’ll have you in jail on a federal charge.”

Emmett stared at him and thought, he got that tan on a golf course. Then he realized that the older man was afraid. He’s bluffing, Emmett thought, he wonders how much I know. If I wanted to shake him down I could flatten him like a toy balloon. He watched Mr. Nicholson set the panama hat on his head and pull it down carefully, back and front, hesitate as if to say something more, then turn without speaking and march away to the elevators.

Emmett looked down and watched his own fingers tear the check across, place the pieces together, and tear them again, while the muscles of his face gradually relaxed. But he felt a little cold and a little sick with the knowledge that he had spent more than a day with, and rather liked, a girl whose father considered her dangerously insane and was in panic lest John Emmett had learned too much about her.

chapter TWELVE

When he got off at the bus depot in Denver that afternoon it was as if he had not been in the city for years. The brief visit of the night before seemed like a journey taken in a dream. Reaching the hotel where he had originally arranged to stay, planning the trip a long time ago in Washington, he was startled to find the reservation waiting for him, and to realize that this was the day he had expected to arrive in Denver. It did not seem possible that everything that had happened had taken no more time than he would normally have spent driving here.

He had dinner at the hotel, rolled into bed while there was yet daylight at the windows, and slept until nine the following morning. The solid hours of rest seemed to draw a curtain over the events of the past days; shaving, he found that he could hardly recall Ann Nicholson’s face. He could bring back the things she had said and done, and the clothes she had worn, but whenever he tried for the face it was the face of a stranger staring at him with dull nonrecognition. He shivered a little and tried to wipe it out of his mind. Going out for breakfast, the hotel dining room having closed by the time he got down, he stopped at the desk for mail. There was a card from his parents hoping he was having a nice time.

“Oh, and there was a call for you last night, sir,” the clerk said. “We didn’t put it through since you’d specially asked not to be disturbed. A lady—”

Emmett felt his whole body waiting for the name, tense with the sudden crazy expectation of finding that the girl of whom he had been thinking had tried to call him. What would I say to her? he asked himself. What did you say to a girl you had rather liked, who had turned out to be a little cracked?

“Here you are, sir,” the clerk said, finding the slip of paper on which the message had been recorded.

Emmett took it and glanced at it warily. He read: Mr. J. E. Emmett call Mrs. Amos Pruitt, Hogback Lake Lodge, Summit, Colo., confirm cabin reservations 8th to 11th. Tel: Summit 721, ring 4. He did not know whether it was relief or disappointment that made him laugh so abruptly that the clerk looked at him a little strangely. He thanked the man, tucked the note into his wallet, and walked out into the sunshine, rereading his parents’ card. It was rather startling to be again reminded that he was supposed to be in the middle of a carefully planned month’s vacation. He tried in vain to find in himself any eagerness for the fishing at Hogback Lake. He found himself wishing, instead, that it were the end of the month, so that he could be getting to work at his new job in California.

The air-conditioning met him coldly as he turned into the first restaurant along the street. The place had chromium plated steel furniture upholstered in two tones of green leather; the tables were a polished black composition resembling obsidian. He selected a small table by a pillar, and a rather pretty girl in a green uniform, with a green bow in her hair, took his order with an impersonality that matched the shining lifelessness of the restaurant; but he had the impression that she thought he was giving himself airs, to take a table by himself, when he could have perched on one of the round upholstered stools by the counter and made life easy for her. The place was almost empty since it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

Emmett filled his pipe slowly, watching a large man who had come in behind him pause at the cash register for a pack of cigarettes; he was still studying the man idly when the man turned away and looked over the deserted restaurant, as if for a desirable place to sit. Emmett was not quite aware of the exact moment he knew the man was coming over to him. He felt himself put the pipe into his mouth and light it, a part of his mind vaguely hoping that the gesture looked natural and unconcerned, while he watched the stranger approach. He saw a big man with the look of a college athlete—sunburned, with cropped dark hair and the type of regular, handsome, rather heavy features that, during the fall, could be seen bursting out of the rotogravure sections of papers all over the country, framed by a football helmet and occasionally adorned by a nose-guard. The man was wearing dark slacks and a light sports jacket that emphasized the width of his shoulders; his head was bare. He stopped at the table.

“Mr. Emmett?”

Emmett nodded. The big man without asking leave pulled out a chair and sat down facing him. After a pause, he took a leather folder from his pocket and slid it across the table.

Emmett opened it slowly and looked at the credentials inside, which certified the bearer, Edward Manning Kirkpatrick, to be an authorized agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of the United States Department of Justice. Emmett returned the folder gingerly. He leaned back to let the waitress put his breakfast in front of him.

“Coffee here, please,” the big man said. “Black.”

They sat in silence waiting for the girl to return. Outside the street was bright with sunlight, and people walked past the plate-glass window in a steady procession. Not until the waitress had put a cup down in front of him and retreated to the chromium-finished counter, did Kirkpatrick again look at Emmett directly.

Then he said, “We had a visitor this morning, Mr. Emmett. A detective lieutenant from the homicide bureau of the Chicago police, named Polachek. He was down here about the murder of a man named Stevens.” The big man took from his pocket a small notebook with a spiral wire binding. “You’re acquainted with Miss Ann Nicholson, aren’t you, Mr. Emmett?” he said.

Emmett nodded. He had a feeling of being hypnotized; he was aware, presently, that he had begun to eat, but he could not seem to taste the food.

The big man searched for a page in the notebook and found it. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “you met her, presumably for the first time, in a garage in Jepson, Illinois, last Saturday evening.” He was no longer asking questions. His voice went on confidently, paraphrasing the contents of the little book. “You struck up a friendship with Miss Nicholson and, your own car having broken down, persuaded her to give you a lift west. Around midnight Saturday, Miss Nicholson’s doctor and nurse, who had been following their patient to keep an eye on her, explained to you certain medical facts about her, and asked you to help her to Denver. You agreed. Sunday morning, the fifth, you helped Miss Nicholson escape from a Nebraska sheriff who was about to detain her for questioning in connection with the Stevens killing. Sunday afternoon you registered with Miss Nicholson as man and wife at the Boyne Hotel, about sixty miles east of here. You left her that evening, but returned in the middle of the night in time to save her from the consequences of an overdose of sedative, presumably self-administered.” The federal man looked up. “Have I got all that straight?”

Emmett nodded stiffly. “That’s pretty close. Did the detective…?”

“Yes,” Kirkpatrick said. “Lieutenant Polachek seems to have put in some pretty thorough work in two days. He seemed like a good man.” The big man tasted his coffee and, finding it rather hot, put the cup down quickly. “However, when he got out here, he found himself blocked from further progress, Mr. Emmett. It appears that Miss Nicholson has been taken to a place called Young’s Valley Ranch, a sanatorium, or if you prefer, asylum, back in the mountains. At this place they told Polachek politely to go roll his hoop. Miss Nicholson was quite ‘ill’ and an interview was out of the question. Polachek tried to get some cooperation from the local officials, since he was a thousand miles, more or less, outside his own jurisdiction, but somebody, presumably the girl’s father, brought enough pressure to bear to stop that. Polachek then got a little mad and brought us what he’d managed to pick up, frankly hoping we’d be able to blast something loose for him somewhere. We found his information interesting enough that we persuaded him to take the ten o’clock plane east and leave this end of the investigation to us.”

It reminded Emmett of where he was, to hear Chicago called the East, and it made him feel a little like Rip Van Winkle to learn how much had been going on while he slept. He licked his lips.

“Then… he had enough evidence to arrest her?”

Kirkpatrick glanced up. “He thought so. I understand Mr. Nicholson used some influence when his daughter first disappeared to have the alarm sent out for her canceled, but there has never, Polachek seemed to think, been any real doubt—”

“The nurse,” Emmett said. “I thought the nurse gave her an alibi.”

“Lieutenant Polachek has evidence that Miss Bethke, the nurse, did not leave the cocktail party until at least ten minutes after Miss Nicholson’s car had driven away, which makes it kind of unlikely that she was following her patient as closely as she claimed.”

“She was following her when I saw them.”

“Yes, about an hour after leaving the party Miss Nicholson tried to cash a check for a thousand dollars at a large Evanston department store where she was known. The store called her father, who stalled long enough for the doctor and nurse to pick up the trail, as close as Polachek has it figured. Then he told them to pay up.” Kirkpatrick smiled. “Incidentally, Mr. Emmett, the girl’s behavior led the department store manager to think she was either drunk or under the influence of shock; he says she could hardly talk coherently.”

Emmett said sarcastically, “I suppose there was blood on her clothes, too. It’s a wonder he didn’t call the police.”

Kirkpatrick said smoothly, “It’s interesting that you should bring up that point, Mr. Emmett. Polachek wondered about that; he was rather intrigued by the fact that the minute her father caught up to her, in Boyne, he sent her suit out to be cleaned. As a matter of fact, he paid the man ten dollars to rush the job.”

Emmett said, “There wasn’t any blood on her when I met her.”

“Were you looking for blood, Mr. Emmett? Or for places where blood had been washed away, that might still be detected by a laboratory? How do you explain her father’s—?”

Emmett said, “My God, she hadn’t had that ice-cream suit of hers off for twenty-four hours; she’d slept in it and it was getting to look pretty sad. He wanted to get her out of the hotel without attracting any more attention than he had to. Naturally he wouldn’t want her walking through the lobby looking like a tramp… And maybe I wasn’t looking for bloodstains when I met her, Mr. Kirkpatrick,” he said a little angrily, “but she was pretty enough that I gave her a good once-over, and if she’d been scrubbing spots off that suit, I’ll eat it.”

Kirkpatrick smiled. “Yes. Of course, you’d be considered a prejudiced witness, wouldn’t you? You’ve been taking quite an interest in Miss Nicholson.”

Emmett said hotly, “Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing to me if she’s a female Bluebeard, except that she seemed like kind of a nice kid. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to see anybody hanged because the manager of a department store said she looked like she’d just been murdering somebody.”

The big man laughed, and looked down to consult his notebook, then looked up again.

“And how do you dispose of her motive, Mr. Emmett?” he asked quietly.

Emmett glanced at him, frowning. Then the damning story the girl herself had told him came back to him. “Oh, you know about that, too?”

“Yes. We know why Stevens came to see her. We have the testimony of Stevens’ wife that he felt rather bitterly about Miss Nicholson’s immunity—she’s been considered rather a heroine, hasn’t she?—and was intending to confront her with his information and then take it to the newspapers. It’s rather suggestive, isn’t it? that he should be murdered before he could carry out the second half of his program. And that shortly thereafter she should turn up, obviously on the verge of hysterics, to cash a large check, and then should flee blindly across the country without even stopping for a change of clothes. Considering her medical history—”

“What else has she done, besides trying to kill herself once before?” Emmett demanded.

Kirkpatrick shrugged. “According to Polachek, the doctor was discreet, but obviously felt he couldn’t take the responsibility… It was the nurse who offered the alibi, probably bribed to do it by Mr. Nicholson. The doctor was non-committal. He gave the impression that he wasn’t exactly surprised by what had happened, Polachek says.”

Emmett said, “Then he’s a hell of a doctor, letting a homicidal patient run around loose.”

“With many of them, you can’t tell they’re homicidal until they kill somebody,” the federal man said. “Does the girl herself give any reason for her behavior? Did she say where she was going?”

“Didn’t Dr. Kaufman—?”

“Yes, but I’d like to hear Miss Nicholson’s version.”

“She said that she was, of course, shocked by Stevens’ accusation,” Emmett said. “And that, to confirm or deny it, she was going to see a man who had been in the same prison where she was kept, who would know the truth.”

“And this man’s name?”

“Kissel,” Emmett said. “Reinhard Kissel. He’s teaching at Fairmount University, according to a clipping Miss Nicholson carried.”

The federal man closed his little book and put it away. “Yes,” he said, “that’s very nice. Unfortunately Dr. Kissel is not at Fairmount; that press release was faked by us. Dr. Kissel happens to be doing some very confidential work for the government down at the special project in New Mexico. Have you ever heard of Numa, Mr. Emmett? You should, you’re a chemist, aren’t you?”

Emmett looked up. After a moment he nodded. He had heard of Numa, although it was not as well known as Los Alamos; and he felt the electric tingle go down his spine that was always set off by the names: Los Alamos, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Bikini, or the key words: uranium, fission, atomic, nuclear. They always made you, these days, stop and look again, feeling that small warning shock; and then you always went quickly on, because you did not really want to know what was being said about them, because you did not have the answer, either.

“If you read the article,” the big man’s voice went on, taking him deeper into unreality, “you know that Dr. Kissel worked in an unspecified German laboratory for some eighteen months. It happens that our scientists are very interested in the work that was being done in that laboratory toward the end of the war, particularly since it doesn’t now happen to be in the part of Germany under our control. They are having the old man reconstruct the place for them as well as he can remember it; fortunately he has a mind like flypaper. The Germans were very close to beating us out, you know, Mr. Emmett.”

Emmett nodded.

“Unfortunately,” Kirkpatrick went on, “it took Dr. Kissel several years before he could persuade the wooden-headed officials over there to take his story to the right people. They thought he was just another DP looking for a free ride to the land of liberty. Even so, his information is apparently considered important, since we’ve been assigned to protect him.” The big man smiled. “Do you begin to see our interest in Miss Nicholson?”

Emmett said, “Yes, but you don’t really think she—!”

“Well,” the big man said, “last Saturday there were two men in this country that we know about, who knew the truth about Miss Nicholson, and today there’s only one: Dr. Kissel. Maybe all she wants is to ask him a question, but I’ve got to keep the alternative in mind, don’t I?”

Emmett did not say anything.

“And there’s another possibility,” the other’s voice went on. “Here I am with a man on my hands who has to be protected. But the G in G-man doesn’t stand for God, Mr. Emmett. I have to let Dr. Kissel live like a human being, for one thing. It’s not just a matter of locking the old man into a bullet-proof cell every night when he gets back from the lab; he’s got to be kept happy. He likes the movies, he dotes on strawberry sundaes, and he likes to talk to people. If I keep visitors away he’ll start to squawk that he’s being kept a prisoner, and that even the Nazis let him see a human face once in a while. And then his memory will start to go bad on him. I understand Miss Nicholson seems to have a neat knack of forgetting things, but you should hear Dr. Kissel when something happens he doesn’t like! He not only can’t remember anything, he can’t even talk English any more, until whatever it is, is fixed up.” The big man grimaced wryly and passed a hand over his mouth.

“And then,” he said, “there’s Mr. Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson isn’t God, either, but he can swing a certain amount of weight. He has a nice story to show why his daughter should be allowed to talk to Dr. Kissel, if he wants to use it: do we want to stand in the way of a sick girl’s regaining her sanity, or establishing her innocence? Remember that if Kissel says she didn’t betray her husband and friends to the Nazis, there goes most of her motive for killing Stevens. Even if she can’t remember what happened, the State would have to work damn hard to prove that, not knowing whether she’d betrayed them or not, she up and murdered the first man who came along and suggested she had. After all, Stevens had got it second-hand from her husband. She could hope that Monteux had merely jumped to the wrong conclusion when she was captured and the whole organization arrested the following week, or that the Nazis had got the dope from somebody else and covered their informant by blaming it publicly on her. Hell, maybe Monteux himself did the job, and she knows it and is covering for him. It’s a kind of coincidence that he escaped, isn’t it? Maybe that’s what makes her act so screwy… Anyway, if Kissel should happen to clear her, we’d pretty well have to admit that she was a misunderstood, if slightly neurotic, young lady.”

Emmett said, “Has anybody asked Kissel?”

The big man glanced at him. “Nobody but myself has tried. Interesting, isn’t it, Mr. Emmett? You’d think her doctor, or her parents, would jump to hear what Dr. Kissel had to say the minute they learned he was in this country, but I can tell you for certain that nobody’s approached him. It almost looks, doesn’t it, as though they already knew—?”

“But what does Kissel say?”

Kirkpatrick smiled. “When I called him this morning, he wouldn’t answer the question. He claimed he wanted to see the girl before he gave an answer. Even that is suggestive, don’t you think? If he was going to say something pleasant, do you think he’d be so careful of whom he said it to?” Emmett looked down and found his hand holding his pipe; he put the stem in his mouth and searched himself for a match. Kirkpatrick leaned across the table to give him a light from a windproof lighter.

“But consider my predicament, Mr. Emmett,” he said. “Suppose her father should insist on her seeing Dr. Kissel; after all, he’s almost got to insist, now, and hope for the best, since his daughter’s started the business. Otherwise it looks as if he believed her to have been a traitress… Well, if I block him, I have a fight on my hands; there may be publicity, which is just what we don’t want, obviously. But if I let the girl in, then I’ve got to let him in, too; and the doctor and the nurse to take care of her in case she gets an unpleasant shock; and maybe even you, Mr. Emmett. And with a man of Mr. Nicholson’s standing I’d look silly as hell searching his daughter and medical advisers and friends, wouldn’t I? If I’m going to antagonize him, I might as well not let him in at all. But,” the big man said heavily, leaning forward on his elbows, “it would take only one little fountain pen shooting bullets instead of ink to make certain people very happy. And they’ve taken a couple of cracks at him already, Mr. Emmett.”

“You mean, somebody’s tried to—?”

Kirkpatrick said, “You see, the Nazi laboratory where Dr. Kissel worked as a prisoner has been moved piecemeal and reassembled, Mr. Emmett, considerably to the east of where it was. We know that some very intensive work has been going on in that laboratory. The people in charge haven’t any desire for us to learn even as much as what the place looked like four years ago. They must be getting pretty damn desperate by now. Pretty soon it’ll be too late: we’ll have everything Kissel knows down on paper, doublechecked, and reconstructed to scale. And just at this point, Mr. Emmett,” Kirkpatrick said, smiling gently, “I’m supposed to believe that the appearance of you and Dr. Kaufman and the beautiful nurse, with this poor crazy girl and her not very bright parent, is a coincidence? Clever, but not very convincing, Mr. Emmett. Just a little too elaborate.” He sat up and there was anger on his brown face. “Why don’t you leave the kid alone? Haven’t you done enough to her already? Why don’t you people give up and go home, Emmett? Or will they liquidate you for failing?”

chapter THIRTEEN

Emmett walked slowly back to the hotel. Clouds were rising over the mountains to the westward, and the mountains themselves hidden behind the buildings across the street, but the sun was still bright and hot. He could not make himself think coherently. Reaching the hotel, he walked blindly through the lobby, dark after the sunshine outside, to the telephone booths behind the cigar counter. He looked up a number in the city directory and stepped into a booth. The light going on above his head, as he closed the door, startled him vaguely. He called the number, and presently a friendly girl’s voice answered.

“This is Arapahoe six two six two.”

Emmett said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Edward Kirkpatrick.”

The voice said without hesitation, “Mr. Kirkpatrick isn’t in right now. Would you like to leave a message?”

Emmett started to hang up. As if sensing his action, the friendly voice said quickly, “I can give you Mr. Long.” Emmett dropped the receiver hastily on the hook before, he told himself wryly, the girl gave him J. Edgar Hoover, just to be nice. The small private joke made him feel a little better, and somehow it was reassuring to know that apparently the big man was exactly what he had claimed to be, at least he was known around the office. Emmett thought, Well, he still didn’t go through that routine and turn me loose again without a reason. He’s playing a different game from what he’d like to have me think.

There was something comforting and secure about the four walls of the booth, as if the world outside had become somewhat too large to handle for the moment. He stuffed tobacco into his pipe slowly, presently discovering that he had forgotten to shake out the ashes of the previous load. He sat picking at the mess with the small blade of his penknife, and wondered what would happen if he simply got on a train and went away somewhere. Home, perhaps. But on the other hand, if you were going to be questioned and maybe arrested by police or federal officials, it would do less damage if it happened where nobody knew you. He got his pipe emptied, and refilled, and lighted. Somebody tapped impatiently at the door of the booth.

He glanced up, rose, and opened the door. Stepping out, he was aware that the woman waiting was staring at him with what was probably a dirty look for occupying the booth so long; he did not look at her directly to make sure.

“Sorry,” he said, starting away.

“Please,” she said softly. “Mr. Emmett—”

He stood quite still for a fraction of a second. Even before he had turned he knew that the girl was not the one he had, in the first moment of hearing her voice, thought it might be, but his breathing had stopped momentarily. It seemed to him peculiar and a little frightening that, in spite of what he knew and guessed about her, every stranger who telephoned him should be for a moment Ann Nicholson; every strange voice addressing him, Ann Nicholson’s voice.

He turned to see the girl who had spoken come after him, and recognized the nurse, Miss Bethke. There was always something arrogant and gaudy about a blonde wearing green, and today she was wearing a white dress drawn together at the waist by a bright green sash; and her wide hat, the purse and gloves she carried in her hand, and her high-heeled sandals, were all the same brilliant shade of green. Her legs, he noticed, were bare and a little sunburned.

“Darling!” she exclaimed, her voice a protest. “Really, I’ve been waiting hours!” Before he could pull away, she had taken his hand, tucking it firmly beneath her elbow. “Come on, we’re going to have to simply dash to make it!”

He found himself being led rapidly back through the lobby, her strong fingers tightening on his hand to counteract the sudden slipperiness of perspiration. If he wanted loose, her grip said, he could damn well put his foot in her side and pull. She was not going to be polite about it. He could either come along like a good boy or involve both of them in a ridiculous tug of war in front of the desk clerk and the half-dozen people scattered through the lobby.

He was aware of her face, serene and handsome beneath the brim of the large green hat; he was aware of a bald man at the desk turning away from the clerk to look at them as they went past—the man’s interest seemed to be mainly centered about the nurse’s ankles. No one else seemed to be paying any attention. Outside, the sunlight was like a blow in the face. Emmett felt his hand released.

“I’ve got to talk to you, Emmett.” Miss Bethke’s voice was a little breathless with strain or excitement.

Emmett took out a handkerchief to dry his hand. He saw that she was rubbing hers against her dress. His hand was striped with the red-and-white marks left by her fingers.

The doorman said, “Taxi, sir?”

He nodded before he knew that he had come to a decision. He walked slowly across the sidewalk to the curb, the blonde girl beside him. She got in ahead of him. She was pulling on her green gloves as the cab started away.

“Estes Hotel,” she said to the driver. Then she turned to Emmett. “The drug,” she said, “the seconal she tried to kill herself with. Emmett, where the hell did she get the stuff?”

He had had the feeling all morning that the whole world had got ahead of him while he slept—that everybody knew more than he did—that he had somehow lost contact. Now he stared at the girl blankly, for a moment not even sure of what she was talking about. Ann Nicholson’s attempted suicide seemed to belong to the past so completely that it had even lost its quality of shock; it was only a link in a chain of evidence. Then something stirred in his mind, and he glanced at the girl beside him.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked warily.

She smiled and patted his knee with a green-gloved hand, and leaned forward to tell the driver to pull up at the side entrance. He followed her into the hotel with a sense of deliberately walking into danger. It seemed like a rather stupid thing to do.

Her key admitted them to a room on the twelfth floor that was large enough to hold a small sofa, a comfortable chair, and a small, low cocktail table between them. There were also a writing desk, a dresser, and a vanity table, all white. The bed apparently folded out of sight behind the double doors in one wall. The room looked light and spacious, illuminated by two large, neatly curtained windows. The nurse reached back to close the door behind them.

“It’s part of Mr. Nicholson’s suite,” she said, explaining the expensive look of the room. “Miss Nicholson uses it, as a matter of fact, but since she’s not here… Anyway, I’m staying here until Mr. Nicholson makes up his mind whether the patient is going to need me again. At least, that’s what he says,” she finished cryptically.

He watched her fling back the shining mane of her hair and walk across the room to the white telephone.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She turned to smile at him over the mouthpiece of the instrument. “I think he wants to keep an eye on me, Emmett. Hello, room service—?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Rum Cokes all right?”

When she had finished ordering, she slid from the arm of the sofa to the seat and raised herself to pull her dress into place. She leaned forward and ran a gloved hand down her leg.

“Damn,” she said, “I need a shave.” She began to peel off the gloves. Then she looked up at him abruptly. “Sit down, darling. I’m not going to bite you; don’t stand there with your bare face hanging out. My God!”

He came forward uncomfortably, but an unconcerned part of his mind was studying her objectively and deciding that there was too much stuff with gloves and purse, and with dress and hair and legs; altogether too much stuff: the girl was nervous as a kitten. There were two of him, one who wanted to get out of there before the trap closed, and one who wanted to stay and see what would happen, who thought he could probably take care of himself. This second guy, he thought, was probably mistaken. He felt as stiff and awkward as if wearing his first pair of long trousers, as he sat down in the chair facing her. Then he had to get up again and take care of the boy with the drinks.

As he gave her a glass, she looked up at him searchingly and said, “Listen, if you have business in the john, it’s the door over there; and if you haven’t, for God’s sake relax before I throw something at you.”

He sat down. “Did you bring me here to ask me something?” he demanded. “Or just to have somebody to crack wise to?”

She laughed, and put her glass aside to remove her hat and throw it, with her gloves, to a corner of the sofa. Then she glanced at him again.

“What did she tell you about me, anyway?”

Emmett hesitated.

The blonde girl smiled, not very pleasantly. “I was making up to her father, wasn’t I?”

Emmett said, “No, to Dr. Kaufman.”

The nurse’s smile faltered, and died. Suddenly she looked plain and rather tired. “I swear, Emmett,” she said wearily, “next case I take, the patient’s either going to be damn good and sane, or so screwy I have to pick her off the chandeliers. This business of trying to keep it a secret that little Angelface isn’t quite hitting on all six—”

Emmett found that things people told him seemed to have stopped carrying conviction some time ago. He had stopped trying to sort out the truths from the falsehoods; he no longer believed anything, he merely filed it for reference. He was merely collecting information and waiting for a hunch. As a chemist you learned that, contrary to the popular idea of scientific procedure, one good hunch was often worth a ream of data.

He said, “All right. So she called you a bitch, and you call her crazy, and what have we got? Let’s stick to this drug you were interested in, Miss Bethke. Why did you practically kidnap me to ask where she got it?”

She made a small ceremony of opening her purse to examine her appearance in the mirror, then putting it down on the table between them.

“If you were a nurse, Emmett,” she said deliberately, “and your patient took an overdose of sedative once, and you managed to get out of the mess without even losing your job… If you were that lucky once, Emmett, you’d make damn sure it didn’t happen again, wouldn’t you? And if she did do it again, and you knew that you had all the drugs you’d ever brought into the house safely locked away except what had been used up—” She made a little despairing gesture with her hand. “Hell, I’ve even got the aspirin under cover, that’s how careful I’ve been, Emmett.”

He frowned, not quite sure of the significance of what she was telling him. “You mean, you don’t think she got it from you?”

“I know she didn’t get it from me! That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” the nurse said sharply. “The first time, yes. The first time, nobody’d bothered to tell me I was taking care of a mental case. I was told it was a simple matter of hardship and undernourishment. I had no idea she might try anything like that. But this time—”

Emmett said flatly, “It was a regular prescription bottle.”

“Can you remember what it looked like?” she demanded, leaning forward.

He thought for a moment. He could recall the bottle quite clearly, he had studied it, and read the label of it several times, while waiting for the doctor. It had seemed to him important, yet he could not decide why. But there had been nothing else to do except listen to the shallow breathing of the girl in the bed, and to wonder, every time it paused, whether it would ever start again.

“It was,” he said, rather proud of his memory, “a one-ounce, green-glass, wide-mouth bottle, kind of a jar, rather—”

“How big?”

“I said one ounce,” he pointed out, a little impatiently. “You’re a nurse. How big is a one-ounce bottle? About one and a quarter by two and a half inches, I’d say.”

“And the label?”

He said, “Some chain drug store they have in the middle west. Wallman’s?”

“Walgreen’s?”

“That’s right.” He closed his eyes to remember. “Patient’s name: A. Nicholson. Physician’s name: P. F. Kaufman, M.D. Instructions: one at night if restless. And the usual blurb about the prescription not being refillable.”

“And—” She hesitated. “—the date? Can you remember the date?”

“I think it was January,” he said. Then he nodded. “January, this year. I can’t remember the day of the month.” After a while he looked at her. “Well, it looks like you slipped, doesn’t it? Or could she have got the stuff direct from Kaufman?”

“Oh, no,” she said. Her voice was suddenly rough with some emotion. “No, it’s the right bottle, all right.” She got up so abruptly that the glasses jumped on the cocktail table, and stood with her back to him, stroking her thin dress down over her hips with stiff fingers. “The only trouble,” she said softly, “is, I threw that damn bottle out empty three months ago!”

Again she was ahead of him, and he could not see what she was getting all worked up about.

“You mean,” he said, “somebody picked up the empty bottle, Miss Bethke—?”

She whirled on him. “For God’s sake, call me Helene!” she snapped. “Miss Bethke this. Miss Bethke that. As if I were a housekeeper or something… Sorry, I didn’t mean you.” She picked up his empty glass and her own. “More?” she asked. He nodded and watched her go to the dresser; it was a pleasure to watch her walk. “Aren’t you cute, Emmett?” she murmured without looking at him. She mimicked his voice with deadly accuracy: “‘Somebody must have picked up the bottle, Miss Bethke—’ Somebody! The colored help, I suppose, or the man who collects the garbage; and she made a date with him to give it back to her in Boyne, Colorado. Be your age, John Emmett!”

He watched her turn, flicking the polished bright hair back over her shoulder with one hand, pick up the drinks, and come to stand above him. It gave him a feeling of inadequacy to have to look up at her. Her voice was low and savage when she spoke.

“You know she hates my guts, don’t you? She’s accused me of sleeping with every man who’s come to the house. If you don’t believe me, ask her father. Once I found ink spilled over my uniforms; somebody had accidentally knocked over a bottle on top of the dresser, and the drawer just happened to be open. Or the time I came in to find the cat playing with my best nylons…”

Emmett reached up to take the glass she held out to him.

“I saved her life, once, remember,” Helene Bethke said. “She’s never forgiven me that. She picked up that empty bottle and got a refill for it. How was I going to prove it was empty when she got it? How am I, Emmett?”

Emmett said stiffly, “The label said, not to be refilled.”

“Oh, the drugstore wouldn’t do it. But you can get the stuff, if you know where to go and have the money.”

“How would she know where to go?”

“Listen,” the blonde girl said sharply, “when you’ve nursed as many feebs as I have, you won’t ask how they know where to go. It’s an instinct with them, like homing pigeons. When they get that way, I really believe they can smell knives, or poison, or firearms, or the people who’ll sell them what they want.”

The crude term for imbecile seemed to put Ann Nicholson immeasurably far away from him; she was no longer a pretty girl he had known, but only a warped brain capable of a certain perverse, vicious cunning.

“But why?” he demanded. “Why would she want the bottle?”

“To ruin me,” the nurse said flatly. “I stopped her once. This time she was going to take my career with her when she went. I’d look fine applying for another job and trying to explain how I’d lost my previous patient, wouldn’t I? I bet the little bitch was smiling when you found her.”

She swung impatiently away from him, sipping her drink; he tasted his drink absently, watching her. Then he sat quite still, his mouth and nose segregating an elusive taste and odor for his brain to identify. On me! he thought incredulously, She has the nerve to try it on me, a chemist! The blonde girl turned back to face him, about to speak; he saw her recognize his discovery in his face.

He was a little embarrassed. He could feel his blood singing in his ears, and he was aware of a sense of outrage, but he could not see precisely what he was going to do about it. Her eyes followed his face as he rose; her face turning up to him was expressionless, the hazel eyes blank, as if a shade had dropped. He knew that he was in the presence of something primitive and unfamiliar. People who cared much for human life did not use chloral; it was an unreliable agent. Helene Bethke looked cool and self-possessed and a little contemptuous. Her composure irritated him unendurably; when she moved, he flung the drugged drink in her face.

There was ice in it. He saw her, through a singing haze, thrown off balance by the shock of the cascade of ice and cold liquid; when she started again toward the purse on the table, he was ahead of her. She did not stop. He put his shoulder and hip into her with deliberate violence, taking the impact of her compact body with a savage pleasure that derived from sources he was aware weren’t very nice. She was hurled across the cocktail table to strike against the sofa and roll off onto the floor in a flurry of green sandals and bare muscular legs and stained white dress. He took a small gun from the green purse, looked at it for a moment, and recalled how to put the slide back to check the loads: there was a shell in the chamber.

“No,” he said. “Don’t move.”

She had pulled herself up to kneel beside the sofa, her forehead pressed against her folded arms. Her shoulders shook with the force of her breathing as she kneeled there, her disheveled bright hair matted and sticky, her dress splashed and awry and ripped at the waist. Her dishevelment embarrassed him and made him want to turn his back while she pulled herself together.

She rose with a last shuddering intake of breath; standing, she regarded the gun for a moment, then his face. Then she looked down at her ruined dress and, gingerly, as if not liking to touch it, her fingers marking the silk where it was still clean, tugged at the knot of the sash. Her face contracted with impatience, something tore, and she stripped the dress off over her head. She had nothing at all on beneath it. She stood there without anything on but the green sandals, using the dress to dry her hands and face and hair. Then she threw it at him.

As he ducked, there were steps behind him, and a cold hard bar of metal that he somehow knew to be a gunbarrel came down across his wrist: he dropped Helene Bethke’s pistol. He turned slowly to face Dr. Kaufman, who had come in from the bathroom.

“Kick it this way, Mr. Emmett.”

He kicked the smaller gun across the rug. The doctor picked it up and dropped it into his pocket. He put his own revolver away but kept his hand on it.

“I’m sorry about your wrist,” he said politely, seeing Emmett rubbing it. “I’m afraid I struck harder than I had intended.”

“I’ll live,” Emmett said curtly.

Dr. Kaufman said, “Perhaps.”

chapter FOURTEEN

He sat in the big chair that was deep enough and low enough that, as far as quick action was concerned, he was as effectively immobilized as if he had been tied. The doctor sat on the sofa and told him about the climate; it seemed that it was fine for certain respiratory diseases, the humidity and pollen count were quite low, and yet you could count on a cooling shower several afternoons a week. Dr. Kaufman expected that they would have one that afternoon, from the look of the sky, although often the thunderheads dissipated themselves over the mountains without reaching Denver.

Emmett listened to him and watched, waiting for the blonde girl to return from the bathroom. It seemed to Emmett that he had never spent so much time and effort on trying to understand people as he had today, with so little results. He did not know why the big man from the FBI had accused him of being a foreign agent, when Kirkpatrick certainly had access to his agency’s wartime files, which would show that one John E. Emmett had been thoroughly investigated and proved to be safe for confidential work at the Federal Research Labs. He could not understand why Helene Bethke should apparently have lied to give an alibi to a girl she obviously hated. He could not clarify the character of Ann Nicholson in his mind; at one moment she seemed to be a small, rather helpless, slightly unbalanced girl who was the victim of a savage persecution, and at the next she was a cunning maniac who had left a trail of treachery and death reaching back to France and the war.

He could not work out in his mind the relationship between the doctor and the nurse. Ann Nicholson had accused them of being lovers, but the impatient attitude of the girl and the rather tolerant contempt that seemed to be characteristic of the man, did not bear out this theory. Yet they were certainly working together. He did not even bother to try to understand what they wanted of him. There was no sense in wasting effort guessing at what he was going to learn in a few minutes, anyway.

Helene Bethke came in from the bathroom, wrapping a towel about her head like a turban. Her face was freshly washed and free of makeup except for lipstick, but the lipstick was so fresh and heavy that it looked wet. She was wearing a white chenille robe that parted, showing her legs as she moved; she had to keep reaching for it. She sat down at the white vanity table and found a cleansing tissue to blot her lips. Emmett found himself experiencing a curious resentment; he was a little startled to realize that he did not like to see the blonde girl making herself at home among things designed for Ann Nicholson.

“Have you got it?” the nurse asked Dr. Kaufman over her shoulder.

“No, I was waiting for you. Was it necessary to take a bath?”

“Did you ever swim in Coca-Cola? I couldn’t be drinking a plain highball when I get it thrown in my face, not me!” She dropped the tissue in the wastebasket and turned. “He’s got it in his wallet,” she said.

Dr. Kaufman glanced at Emmett. After a moment he held out the hand that did not rest on the gun in his pocket.

“Please, Mr. Emmett.”

Emmett looked at the hand reached out to him across the cocktail table. It was like walking into the middle of a movie. He did not have any idea what was going on. He shrugged and took out his wallet. The doctor received it and sat back to examine it. Helene Bethke went quickly to the sofa and, sitting on the arm, reached over the stocky man’s shoulder and picked from the bill compartment a slip of paper which Emmett recognized. It had been given him by the desk clerk when he came down from his hotel room that morning.

“Mrs. Amos Pruitt,” the doctor read, the nurse holding the slip for him. “Mrs. Amos Pruitt, Hogback Lake Lodge, reservations. Summit seven two one, ring four.”

They were both looking at Emmett with the same calculating, weighing look.

“You’d better call,” Helene Bethke said. She passed the telephone to the man, the cord running across her knees, one bare.

“Summit seven two one,” the doctor said after a pause. “Ring four.”

The nurse said, “Find out if—”

“Be quiet!” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Pruitt. Mrs. Amos Pruitt? Oh, Mrs. Pruitt, this is Dr. Einsinger, of Young’s Valley Ranch… Yes, Young’s Valley. That’s right. Mrs. Pruitt, we were wondering if one of our patients could have come by your place. A young lady driving a Mercury convertible with Illinois plates…”

The room was quite still as he listened to the reply.

“I see,” he said. “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Pruitt. If you should happen to… Oh, no, not dangerous at all, Mrs. Pruitt, except to herself, poor child. We are trying to find her before she… Well, I hope so too, Mrs. Pruitt. Sorry to have troubled you.”

He hung up very slowly and looked at Emmett; and Emmett felt a slow relaxation and rearrangement going on, as if a dangerous experiment had just proved to be a failure, and the doctor was now studying the apparatus gingerly to determine how to release the pressure or disconnect the terminals with minimum risk to himself.

“You see,” he said quietly, “she got away from us, Mr. Emmett.”

Emmett said, “Yes, I got the idea.”

Dr. Kaufman grimaced. “We stopped at a gas station…” He hesitated. “I went inside. She asked her father to get her a soft drink from the dispenser. She had seemed rather sick and dazed all morning, hardly capable of standing up unsupported. He did not even consider… The moment he was out of the car she was behind the wheel and away.”

Helene Bethke said, “We thought you might know—”

“Actually,” the doctor said, “it’s very important for us to find her, you understand. Not only because of what she may do to herself, but because of what the police will do to her if they catch her, and…” he paused and looked up, “… what she may do to someone who does not suspect the truth about her case.”

Emmett said, “What is the truth, Dr. Kaufman?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” the doctor said.

“But I understood that Miss Bethke gave her an alibi for the Stevens murder.”

“Miss Bethke lied,” the doctor said without looking at the nurse. “Miss Bethke’s job was to keep an eye on the patient. But Miss Bethke, unfortunately, was flirting with a number of young men at the punchbowl when the patient slipped away from the party. Going back to report her mistake to Mr. Nicholson, Miss Bethke heard him on the phone talking to the manager of a local department store where the patient was trying to cash a check. She saw the opportunity to conceal her lapse from duty, and hurried to the store. When I came there, sent by Mr. Nicholson, Miss Bethke gave me to believe that she had been following the patient all the time. At this time, of course, we knew nothing about the murder, which is why I took the step of leaving Miss Nicholson in your care. And Miss Bethke did not see fit to confess her little deceit until after our session with the police the following morning.”

The blonde girl stood up and walked quickly to the dresser. “I didn’t know anybody had been killed,” she said. “My God! I’d been driving all night. I was dead for sleep, I was starving, my best dress was a wreck, and suddenly those damned policemen were shooting questions at me—”

The doctor said with false mildness, “And now, of course, we’re all in the same boat with Miss Bethke. The police will never believe that Mr. Nicholson and I were not aware of the truth. Our only hope is to get the patient committed to an institution, where she certainly belongs, and hope that the police will not feel it worth while to pursue the investigation against a suspect who cannot be convicted.”

Emmett said, “Well, what was all this stuff about where she got the drug with which she tried to kill herself?”

The doctor glanced briefly at the nurse. “Well,” he said, “it is a point that’s aroused some discussion, Miss Bethke insisting, of course, that she has not been careless…”

The nurse said wearily, “Oh, hell, she probably did get it from me, Doctor.”

“Well, did she or didn’t she?”

“All right.” The blonde girl’s voice was angry. “She did. I left the damn bottle out one night and it vanished. I didn’t dare tell anybody. I just said she’d finished it and asked you to write another prescription. I tried to find where the little bitch had hidden the stuff, but in some ways she’s clever as a pack-rat—”

“That’s enough, Miss Bethke.”

Emmett said, “And was it necessary to slip me a Mickey Finn? Why not just ask me if I knew where she was?”

The doctor smiled. “Tell me honestly, Mr. Emmett, if you had known, would you have told just upon being asked? Be honest, now.” He chuckled when Emmett hesitated. “She is a very pretty girl, isn’t she; and very charming, too, in her happier moments?”

There was a knock at the door. The nurse turned at the dresser with a glass in her hand. The doctor looked up slowly. “Come in,” Helene Bethke said, after a pause.

The door opened and Mr. Nicholson, in a wilted gray seersucker suit, came in, followed by a bald man Emmett had seen before. Presently he remembered: he had seen the man talking to the desk clerk as Helene Bethke marched him out of the lobby of his hotel. The man had ogled the nurse’s ankles as they went past.

Mr. Nicholson closed the door behind him, and looked at the wet rug. The glasses had been set upright, but there was still a pool of liquid on the cocktail table. He looked at the girl in her robe with the turban of towel about her head, and at Emmett, and apparently what he saw added up to something in his mind, because he said, “I wish you’d stick to medicine, Miss Bethke, and you, Dr. Kaufman. What kind of a roughhouse has been going on in my suite? Is that a gun in your pocket, Doc?”

The doctor stood up and showed the weapon. He smiled apologetically. “Miss Bethke heard Mr. Emmett receive a message from a lady this morning,” he said. “She told me, and I thought it worth investigating as a possible lead.”

Mr. Nicholson said, “Plaice here reports that while he was looking for Emmett to ask him a few questions, the nurse marched him off right under his, Plaice’s nose.”

“We didn’t know you had anybody else—”

“And I don’t like guns, Doc. If somebody got shot, we’d be sunk. Things are bad enough without a lot of irresponsible—” Ann’s father checked himself. “Is that the message? Let’s have a look at it.”

Dr. Kaufman gave it to the nurse, who passed it to Mr. Nicholson. He read it, snorted, showed it to the man beside him, and gave it back to the nurse.

“Mr. Plaice has already investigated that call,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I rang up Mrs. Pruitt myself. She has an urgent demand for a cabin. Mr. Emmett reserved a cabin several months ago. She hasn’t heard from him since. She wants to be sure he is going to claim it; otherwise she can give it to this other client. As far as she knows, Emmett is planning to arrive alone.” He looked from one face to the other with some annoyance. “Plaice has checked and found that the lady exists, runs the place she claims to, and has a formidable reputation for honesty and respectability. I think we can forget that particular clue. You can give it back to Mr. Emmett, nurse.” Mr. Nicholson smiled. “Oh, yes, and his wallet, too. I appreciate your trying to help, both of you, but this is a case for a trained investigator, like Mr. Plaice. Mr. Plaice is a private detective who has done some work for the company from time to time. I have every confidence in him.” He glanced at the man beside him. “All right. Let me know if you make any progress.”

The man put his hat on his head and went out. Mr. Nicholson came slowly forward to stand above Emmett. Seen from the chair, he was a rather impressive figure in spite of his lack of height; his military carriage even overcame the handicap of the rumpled seersucker suit and the wilted collar. “Where is my daughter, Emmett?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Emmett said.

“I can’t afford a scandal right now,” the gray-haired man said. “There’s some talk of a congressional investigation of some of our war contracts. As far as I know we’re in the clear, but picture to yourself what the papers would make of it if they learned that my daughter… Not as much the murder as the other thing.”

“I still don’t know where she is, Mr. Nicholson,” Emmett said. “I’m sorry.”

“If she gets in touch with you, let me know.”

“All right, Mr. Nicholson,” Emmett said. There did not seem to be any point in arguing with a man who was certain you were going to obey him. He got to his feet, saw that he was not wanted here any longer, and started for the door.

“Emmett.”

He stopped and looked around.

“It’s ten thousand dollars,” Mr. Nicholson said, “if you do. If you don’t, you’ll never hold another professional job again. That’s a promise.”

As he went out, Emmett reflected that he seemed to have heard approximately the same threat once before, in Boyne.

Out on the street again, he found that the thunderhead in the west had reached the zenith, and as he walked away from the hotel the sun went behind it, leaving the air suddenly a little chilly. It gave him a peculiar feeling to wonder if some body would be following him. He walked into a drugstore and got change for a dollar and entered a phone booth. “Summit seven two one,” he said. “Ring four.”

As he waited, he discovered that he was shaking.

“Speak up, man,” a distant female voice said abruptly in his ear. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

“… John Emmett,” he said. “Ee, double-em, ee, double-tee.”

“Oh, it’s you,” the voice said. “It’s about time you called. How are your brothers? Howard? And the one that was always tinkering with the car? Dave?”

“It was Howie that used to work on the car, Mrs. Pruitt,” he said automatically. There was a silence, and he realized that he had passed a test.

“Your wife’s here, young man,” the sharp voice said. “A lot of people have been asking for her. You’d better come get her. She’s going to starve in that cabin if she doesn’t unlock the door long enough for me to give her something to eat.”

chapter FIFTEEN

He saw the station wagon waiting in the darkness as the bus rolled up to the false-front building that was Summit’s hotel and post office; the town otherwise consisting of two general stores, three saloons, and two churches. The saloons were lighted, as was the hotel; the stores and churches, dark. As Emmett got out he heard the clanking of a steam shovel in the bed of the creek that passed through the center of town. It surprised him that they were still working at it, after almost ten years. You’d have thought they’d have sieved all the silver out of that creek by now, he reflected.

“You’re Mister Emmett, I reckon,” a man’s voice said. He turned and shook hands with a small compact figure wearing boots, jeans, a blue shirt, and a finger-marked Stetson. By the light from the bus and the hotel he could see that the man’s face was brown and middle-aged. “Mack,” the man said. “Pete Mack. It confuses some people.”

The bus pulled away, leaving them standing beside Emmett’s piled luggage. Pete Mack spat out the dust it had kicked into his face and grabbed the bags; Emmett followed him with camera and fishing-rod case, feeling awkward and a little lost. He could feel the mountains all around him in the darkness, and his lungs were aware of the altitude.

“Still digging up that creek, I see,” he said in a conscious attempt to establish himself as an old-timer, as the station wagon bounced across the wooden bridge.

Pete Mack spat through the window beside him. “Young fellow just started it up again. Veteran. Expected to make a fortune by Christmas.” After a moment he added, “Last Christmas.”

Emmett glanced back at the great futile mounds of bluish clay illuminated by the lights of the shovel in the ravaged stream-bed bordered by cottonwoods. It seemed to him they were so obviously symbolical as to be merely silly. Then it occurred to him that he had no very strong position from which to criticize the other man; his own reasons for coming up here were not exactly brilliant. He held onto the door handle as the station wagon, in low, started up a dirt track that went up the mountainside at an angle that seemed to approach close to forty-five degrees.

“Is Johnny Parsons still around?” he asked. “Tall, redheaded guy… He taught my brother Dave how to use a rope.”

“Johnny lost a leg in the war,” the man behind the wheel said. “He’s got a job in a garage in Colorado Springs.”

“Dave got killed,” Emmett said. “In North Africa.”

“That’s tough,” Pete Mack said.

Mrs. Pruitt was on the porch when they arrived; a bulky woman in a clean print dress with a wide brimmed Stetson squashed down over her short gray hair.

“Leave his duffle in the car, Pete,” she said “… come on in here, young feller,” she said to Emmett.

Emmett was aware that the compact figure of the driver followed them onto the porch. Glancing back he saw the man waiting idly against a porch pillar, lighting a cigarette. He followed the woman into the house. It was getting close to midnight and all the guests had, apparently, retired to their cabins; the large rustic living room was empty, illuminated by the glow of the fireplace and by one small table lamp with a figured paper shade. Mrs. Pruitt turned on the ceiling fixture and threw her hat on the piano. She walked to the fireplace and studied the well-preserved snarling bear’s head above the mantel. Presently she reached up and patted the long-dead animal on the nose, turning to face Emmett.

“How are the other boys?” she asked.

“Dead,” he said.

She glanced at him sharply, but her voice was easy when she spoke. “Well, that’s the way it goes, I reckon. In the war, eh?” Her voice did not require an answer. She walked to the sideboard and brought out a bottle of whisky and two shot glasses which she filled carefully, to the brim; then after corking the bottle with a sharp blow from the heel of her hand, she gave Emmett one of the small glasses and took up the other. “They were good boys,” she said. “When you wrote me, I remembered the three of you kids and that pile of junk you called a car. Gave you a cabin for old times’ sake, Mister Emmett. There were six on the list ahead of you. That’s the kind of business we’re doing these days.” She held up her glass, looked through it at the light, and emptied it in a single swallow. Emmett managed to imitate her without choking. The woman’s pale blue eyes regarded him narrowly. “You’re a hell of a bridegroom, Sonny.”

Emmett did not say anything.

Mrs. Pruitt said, “When she came driving in here all breathless in her nice new suit with a brand new suitcase and a shiny wedding ring I didn’t need for anybody to draw me a picture. I was glad to help out; I believe in young folks getting married. She was of an age to know her own mind. I didn’t see where her old man had any business messing with it; that’s why I lied to him… But leaving a nice young lady like that waiting for you a night and a day! And then standing chewing the fat with an old character like myself, like you had all the time in the world!” She turned and picked a jangling key ring off the mantelpiece, selected a key, and held it out. “Cabin eight, Mister Emmett. You can let yourself in easy and surprise her.”

Emmett took the keys and started for the door. He was aware when the woman moved behind him.

“Who the hell do you think you’re kidding, Sonny?”

He stopped. He heard her footsteps come up behind him. Her hand took the keys away from him. He saw that Pete Mack had come into the side door. There was a large caliber Colt revolver thrust into the waistband of the small man’s jeans. “Come on,” Mrs. Pruitt said, giving Emmett a little push. “Now that you’re here I’m going to find out if it’s you that’s scaring that child to death. Do you think I can’t tell the difference between a nervous bride and a young girl that’s frightened near to wetting her underpants?”

He could see the lake to the left as they came out, cold and metallic in the dark. There was a soft cushion of dust and pine needles over the hard clay of the yard. There were small pine trees all around. Pete Mack lounged along beside them, smoking his cigarette leisurely, his hand never straying near the gun at his waist. It seemed to Emmett that he had seen too many unfired guns in one day. If he saw another one, he thought, he might find himself doing something reckless just to learn if it would go off.

“Here we are, number eight,” the woman beside him said, stopping. He saw the outlines of the fawn-colored convertible parked beside the dark cottage. Mrs. Pruitt climbed the steps and looked down at him, saying, “I’ve been leaving the child alone since she seemed to want it, but it’s time she got some food in her belly, anyway.”

Something clattered to the floor beyond the door; the key had been in the lock, Emmett realized. Mrs. Pruitt had forced it out with her own key. The woman hesitated, then knocked.

“Mrs. Emmett,” she said. “Mrs. Emmett…”

“Her name is Nicholson,” Emmett said.

Mrs. Pruitt glanced at him testily. She did not knock again, but after a moment turned the key in the lock and tried the door. It started open; she held it, beckoning to Emmett.

“All right, Sonny,” she said. “I want to see what she does when she sees you. The light switch is to the right as you go in.”

Emmett mounted to the stoop beside her, pushed the door open, and went inside. It seemed to him that he had been through all this before, in the hotel in Boyne. There was no light at all in the room; apparently she had the shades drawn at all the windows. The cabin smelled of pine logs, of fear, and of death. He knew what he was going to find, and he did not want to find it. There was not a sound of movement and the beating of his own heart filled the darkness. He groped for the light switch, found it before he had expected to, and the burst of light was like an explosion.

She was crouched on the bed like an animal, her weight on her knees and hands. She was wearing slacks and a brightly checkered wool shirt; one tail of it had pulled out in front and one sleeve was rolled higher than the other. Her face showed little furrows from the pillow as if she had been sleeping on top of the bed in her clothes, waking to hear the key in the lock. Behind the tousled veil of her hair her eyes caught the light queerly, looking quite mad.

“Hello, Mr. Emmett,” she whispered.

“Hello,” he said.

She pushed herself off the bed to stand up, facing him. The tail of her red and white shirt hung down over her stomach. Her slacks were damply creased and wrinkled from being slept in, so that the neat knife-edged crease sewn into the brown gabardine looked unreal and fraudulent.

“I tried Sheepshead Lake…” She pushed the wild hair back from her face. “… and Dogleg Lake, and Hogshead Lake. I had a simply dreadful time trying to remember—”

Her eyes pleaded with him to help her talk. He caught the glint of the cheap wedding ring on her hand, and said, “Hello, Mrs. Emmett.”

“I hope you don’t mind.” She glanced down and slipped off the ring and dropped it. She watched it helplessly as it rolled away across the floor. “I couldn’t think of… I knew it would look like… I didn’t want people to think… I…”

Her mouth was still talking, but she had used up all the rational sounds inside her; there was nothing left but fear and madness. Her lips moved but nothing came except a mindless little whimper. He caught her as she swayed, and she clung to him, her fingers digging fiercely into his biceps.

“He…”

“What?” Emmett asked, holding her.

“He said… he said, take this, it’ll make you sleep. It was just one pill. He said, t-take it like a good girl, you’ll feel better in the morning, Miss Nicholson…”

“Who?”

“Dr. K-Kauf—” She pressed her face against him. He could feel her tremble with the effort of retaining the shred of control that still remained to her. “Kaufman,” she gasped.

“He came to the hotel?”

She nodded mutely without raising her head.

He pushed the damp hair back from her temple. “When?”

“About three hours…”

“After I left?”

She nodded again. “And… and in the m-morning I’d tried to kill my—” She swallowed. “—myself again!”

“Why didn’t you tell somebody?”

The gray eyes were looking up at him with a dreadful emptiness. “Would you… have believed me? You d-don’t even quite believe me now.”

“Your father?”

“He thinks I’m a m-m—” Her teeth were beginning to chatter as if with cold. “Murderess,” she whispered; and then she was clinging to him again, shivering violently. He led her to the bed and wrapped a blanket around her; she clutched it to her. Her face looked up to him. “This is perfectly silly!” she gasped, and her voice was suddenly quite sane, but her whole body was trembling.

He sat beside her and held her against him. A shadow fell over them. He looked up to see Mrs. Pruitt with a small filled glass in her hand.

“Give her this,” the older woman said. “Pete’s heating up some grub and coffee.”

Emmett looked at her and saw himself accepted. He said, “Have him put gas in the car, will you? You have a pump?”

Mrs. Pruitt studied him for a moment before nodding. “Yes, we’ve got a pump. But might be it would be better if Pete brought it over in a five-gallon can. Pump’s right over by the stable where anybody can see.”

“That’s fine,” Emmett said. “Use the pump and turn on the lights.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Sonny.”

“You,” said Emmett, “and me both, Mom. And don’t let anybody use your phone, Mom.”

The woman’s eyes smiled slowly. “Okay, Sonny. Okay.”

When she had left he sat holding the girl, who had begun to cry softly. He waited for her to stop crying and wondered, as he had before, how he had ever got into this.

Half an hour later they came into the kitchen to find the small man busy at the coal range; when he turned to wave them to seats at the oilcloth-covered table, Emmett saw that the double-action revolver was missing from his belt. Ann Nicholson sat down in the chair he held for her. He heard her laugh uncertainly.

“I’m quite, quite drunk,” she breathed. “Everything is wonderfully hazy.” Her eyes were still not quite normal, but it was a good effort nevertheless.

“It’ll do that on an empty stomach. You’ll be all right as soon as you get some food,” Mrs. Pruitt said.

The girl smiled at her, her hands buttering a roll with hungry haste. Emmett studied the small drawn face across the corner of the table. He saw the smile and the words she had been about to speak die on her lips; he realized that he was not looking very happy. He straightened up in his chair and reached for the coffee pot. Pete Mack put steaming plates in front of them.

“At this time of night,” the small man said, “you take ham and eggs, and I don’t give a damn who you are.”

Presently Emmett rose and caught Mrs. Pruitt’s eye and walked into the living room. The woman came in behind him, walked past him, and stood regarding the snarling dead bear.

“I call him Amos,” she said. “He looks kind of like him, doesn’t he?”

They were in a dead world peopled by ghosts that had lived before the war. Emmett did not speak. She tapped the animal on the nose and turned to face him.

“Your car’s all ready, Mr. Emmett. Gas and tires O.K. Your duffle’s in the trunk.”

“How many calls did you get about her?” Emmett asked.

“Two,” Mrs. Pruitt said. “Her father and a doctor Einsinger, who claimed she was an escaped patient from Young’s Valley. Is she?”

Emmett said, “They were going to put her in, but she got away from them.”

“Is she crazy?”

Emmett said, “Why ask me?”

“Do you know what you’re doing, Sonny?”

“No.”

“Do you want a gun?”

Emmett shook his head. “How did you know where to call me?” he asked.

“You said in your letter you’d be stopping at the Harvester, Sonny.”

“Did I?”

For the first time her direct glance wavered.

Emmett said, “You never got a call from a Denver number: Arapahoe six two six two.”

Mrs. Pruitt asked, “How would I know the number that was calling?”

“He’d have you call back. He’d have you look up the number, or ask the operator to give you the number, and call him back, so you wouldn’t take his word for whom you were talking to.”

“What’s his name?”

“Kirkpatrick,” Emmett said. “That’s the one I talked to. There’s another one in the office named Long. You never talked to either of them?”

“No,” Mrs. Pruitt said. After a pause, she went deliberately on, “We don’t have much truck with federal men up here, except the Forest Service… You’re sure you don’t want a gun? I’ve got an old one nobody’d ever trace; Amos took it off a drunk in a bar once.”

“No,” Emmett said. “The hell with guns. I might shoot somebody, and then where would I be?”

Walking back into the kitchen behind her, he reflected on the unpublicized side of adventure; you got tired, you got sleepy, and you could not keep from worrying how what you were doing now would affect what you would like to be doing a year from now. Or ten years from now, he thought. He lit his pipe and watched the girl cleaning the second, or maybe the third, helping from her plate. The food had put a little color in her face. She looked up and saw him.

“Let’s get going,” he said.

“Let the child finish eating,” Mrs. Pruitt said.

Ann Nicholson got up quickly, wiping her mouth on the napkin. “I’m all through,” she said, and turned to the small man by the stove. “Thanks ever so much, Mr. Mack. It tasted wonderful.”

Mrs. Pruitt said, “Don’t let it go to your head, Pete. After starving herself for two days, she’d think a horse was tenderloin.”

Emmett watched the girl begin to laugh, glance at him, stop, and go out through the door; in the slacks and shirt she seemed smaller and still, in a way, more human and durable, than he remembered her. He walked slowly to the door and turned to look at Mrs. Pruitt.

Mrs. Pruitt said, “I’m betting that girl’s all right.”

He was a little tired of Mrs. Pruitt’s carefully rough-hewn picturesqueness; and he reflected that it was very easy to be magnanimous and kindly about a girl you weren’t ever going to see again.

“You are?” He asked, “What the hell do you think I’m doing?”

She laughed at his irritability. “So long,” she said. “And watch your step, Sonny.”

“So long. And thanks a lot,” he said. “Mom.”

Ann was waiting for him at the car. He opened the door for her, and closed it behind her, and walked around to get in beside her. He felt curiously breathless. The feeling had nothing to do with the girl; it was as far removed from sex and love as any emotion could be. He glanced at an object in his hand, and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

“What was that, Mr. Emmett?” Ann asked. He remembered her naive way of asking questions.

“A nail,” he said. “A ten-penny nail. It was on the steps. Mrs. Pruitt must have been doing some carpentering.” He glanced at her as he turned on the lights and started the car. “Turn around so you can look behind,” he said. “I want to know if anybody is following us.”

chapter SIXTEEN

The road climbed up to the ridge above Hogback Lake and followed it for a mile, the lake gleaming black in the darkness below and behind them; then plunged down into the canyon on the far side. Emmett let the convertible down the grade in second gear, dragging the engine. The headlights showed alternately raw earth cutbanks, to the left; and to the right, the tops of small pine trees rising out of the darkness.

“I can’t see anything yet,” Ann said, kneeling on the seat to look behind.

Emmett said, “He’s going to kill himself on this road, running without lights.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably a guy named Plaice who works for your father; although I thought your old man had convinced himself you weren’t up here. Maybe he just sent somebody to follow me and make sure. Anyway, there was somebody trailing the bus up the Summit, and I thought I caught a glimpse of him behind us, coming out to the Lodge.”

She crouched on the seat beside him. “It’s just as if the war had never stopped,” she whispered. “And it’s even worse in a way because you feel like such a dreadful fool all the time; as if you were playing a sort of silly drunken game. At least, during the war, everybody else was doing the same thing.”

He glanced at her, a little startled by the accuracy with which she had described his own feeling of embarrassment and isolation at having to think and act like a character in a cheap melodrama. He had a guilty sense of having underestimated her. She returned his look briefly.

“I prayed you would come,” she said. “Really. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I mean somebody I’d never met before. But there wasn’t anything else left to pray for. There wasn’t anybody else. Dad… seems to have given me up as hopeless.” She hesitated. “I couldn’t even make myself go outside the cabin. Just wait and hope you’d come.”

Emmett did not say anything.

“He tried to kill me,” she said. “He tried to kill me!”

“Take it easy,” he said, watching the road.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Really, I’m all right. I won’t make another exhibition of myself. Don’t sound as if you thought I… I’m all right.”

“I know you are,” he said.

She said, “… and suddenly I began to wonder if the other time, eighteen months ago…” Her voice trailed off. “I never really remembered,” she said after a while. “It was just the same way. She gave me the pill, I was getting one every night, then; and when I woke up they were doing things to me and everybody said I’d tried to… But I never really remembered doing it.” Her voice died away and started over again. “In those days I was having so many dreams. I’d often thought about… I didn’t really know… It was easier just to let them think… I wanted to go to the hospital.” She kept running down, and having to wind herself up again. “But she saved me, that time. At least they said it was she who found me. And it was he who treated me for it. Shouldn’t that prove they didn’t…? It gets all mixed up when I try to think about it.”

The car rolled out across the mountain meadow at the bottom of the canyon, crossed the bridged stream in the center, and began the long grind up again in second, finally in low.

“In Boyne,” she said, “you saved my life, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

She glanced at him, and he heard her sigh as if giving up the idea of thanking him.

“I still can’t see anybody,” she said presently, raising herself to look through the rear window. “Are you sure—?”

“He may have spotted your car at the Lodge and headed back to town to telephone,” Emmett said. “If he does, we’re sunk. There are only two ways to go from Summit: back toward Denver, or west across the pass. With your dad’s money, he can probably manage to have both ends covered, if he’s notified in time. But I’m hoping the guy didn’t dare take the gamble of leaving us to hunt for the telephone, for fear we’d take a couple of Mrs. Pruitt’s horses and head back into the mountains before he could get back to keep an eye on us.” He shrugged. “Well, we’ll find out.”

Ann asked, “What happens if Dad catches us?” Emmett did not answer at once, and she said, “He wants to have me committed to an institution, doesn’t he? I heard him talking to Dr. Kaufman.”

Emmett nodded.

She asked, “What will he do to you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “He threatened to have me blackballed if I didn’t cooperate. I’ll believe he can do it when I see it happen.”

“Then… you’re taking quite a risk for me.”

“I’m glad you appreciate that,” he said dryly. “And don’t forget the ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand!”

“That he offered me for letting him know if you got in touch with me.”

She glanced at him, remaining silent.

He said, “Not to mention the check for five hundred that I tore up in Boyne. For saving your life and keeping my mouth shut.” He let his voice change. “Don’t be silly, Nicholson. Let’s not get started on big words like gratitude and appreciation.”

She hesitated. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Nicholson,” she said at last.

“All right: Ann,” he said, and paused a moment, as if her given name had raised an obstacle to going on. “Look, Ann,” he said, “I’ve spent my whole life being sensible. I became a chemist when I wanted to become a free-lance photographer—that’s why I still keep lugging that damn camera around; I worked my way through college with the thing—because I didn’t quite have… well, I didn’t know if I had what it took to make a living in a cut-throat field like that. I knew I could always get some kind of a routine job in chemistry. Then the war came along. I wanted to go; and still, I didn’t particularly like the idea of getting killed, and I again wasn’t quite sure that I had what was needed. So I compromised: I figured I’d do the best I could as a civilian and leave the decision up to the draft board.”

The car lurched, throwing her shoulder against him; he stiffened his arm to support her.

“Hang on,” he said. “Well, the trouble with being sensible is that it’s a sort of self-limiting reaction. Every time you make another safe, prudent decision, you raise the pressure another notch. One day the time will have come when you just say to hell with it. You say, this time, just once, I’m going to act like a reckless damn fool. This one time I’m going to play my hunches and blow the works and get it out of my system.”

“And… am I one of your hunches?” the girl beside him asked.

He did not answer her directly. He said irritably, “People trying to bribe me. People trying to scare me. People trying to kid me with double-talk. It was,” he said, “well, sort of a challenge.”

The car negotiated the last rise and the headlights burst out into the open barren country, the road two deep ruts across the high meadows. Every so often the transmission would hit bottom with a scraping sound.

She glanced at him. “In other words, you’re not doing it for me, you’re sort of doing it for yourself.”

He ignored the trace of amusement in her voice. “That’s right,” he said. “And for a gent from the FBI who claims to think I’m a communist agent with designs on Reinhard Kissel’s life.”

He felt her start. “A com—!” She caught her breath. “But that’s just ridiculous!”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Did he really say that?”

“Yes,” Emmett said. “You were my Trojan horse, so to speak. I was planning to use you to get in and see Kissel, whom I would then shoot with a gun disguised as a fountain pen.”

Ann laughed uncertainly, clearly half convinced that he was joking.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “That’s what the man said. Of course, we can make a distinction between what Comrade Kirkpatrick says and what he means, Comrade Nicholson. If the federal Comrade really wanted you to be kept from seeing Dr. Kissel, why did he have Mrs. Pruitt get in touch with me, instead of turning you over to your dad, who’d have been delighted to take you out of circulation?”

“You mean, he knew I was—?”

“Damn right, he knew,” Emmett said. “That woman back there talks in circles, too, but she let me know that much.”

“Oh, I liked her!” Ann protested.

“Yes, I love her like a mother, but she will be cryptic,” Emmett said ruefully. “However, there’s no doubt from what she hinted that Kirkpatrick knew you were there; and I suspect he pretty well told Mrs. Pruitt how to behave. I can’t see Mrs. Pruitt sticking her neck out as far as she did without orders. Suppose you’d been lured up to her place by some blackmailing Casanova; she hadn’t seen me for ten years, how did she know what kind of a heel I’d turned out to be? She was taking an awful risk of having her place in the papers as another weekend love-nest; she could have been ruined, with your dad and your doctor calling up like that. Granted that she has a heart of gold, it was an awful chance to take for a girl she’d never seen before and a guy she’d met only once for a couple of weeks ten years ago. No,” he said, “I think she had her instructions.”

“But why…?” Ann licked her lips.

“If I knew that,” Emmett said, “I’d be a lot happier. I mean, is he giving you rope to hang yourself with; or is he setting a trap for somebody else?”

“But why should the FBI be interested in Dr. Kissel at all?” she demanded. “I don’t understand. I thought he was just teaching at Fairmount University.”

Emmett told her.

“I don’t like that,” she whispered when he was through, her voice barely audible over the sound of the motor. She clung to the back of the seat, looking through the rear window. There was nothing there, Emmett saw, glancing at the mirror; only the black saw-toothed horizon of pines against a gun-metal sky. “I don’t like that!” Ann breathed, a small edge of hysteria in her voice now. “It’s as if people were going out of their way to make things complicated.”

Emmett said, “Are you just beginning to catch on? They are.” She did not say anything, and he went on, abruptly changing the subject, “You woke up in Boyne, knowing that Dr. Kaufman had tried to kill you, yet you didn’t mention it to anybody. You came out of the room on his arm, letting him touch you, the man who’d tried to murder you; you drove off, with him in the car. Not a word about his trying to poison you; at least your father seemed to have no suspicions of Kaufman when I saw them in Denver.” He glanced at her quickly. “What’s the matter, were you afraid your dad had something to do with it, that they were both in it together? Were you afraid to bring it out into the open? Is that why you ran away instead of accusing Dr. Kaufman?”

Her face had turned to him, suddenly shocked. “Oh, no!” she gasped. “I never—!”

“Well, your dad’s behavior is a little queer,” Emmett said.

“No,” she said. “Really, no. He… he’s just fed up with me, Mr. Emmett. He can’t quite decide whether I’m a hysterical female who likes to play sick, or really crazy, and he’s worried about some congressional investigation, and he has really decided that the best place for me is an asylum. You can’t suspect Dad. It’s… it must be very hard for him. Mother, too. Sometimes I wish… Sometimes I think it would have been much better for everybody if I’d never come back. I keep remembering how glad they were to see me; and now, they look sort of… sort of beaten, when they look at me. And I can’t—” She swallowed, and did not go on. After a long time she said, “Please don’t think of Dad like that, Mr. Emmett.”

“Well…”

She said, “Please remember, it’s not an intellectual puzzle; it’s my family.” Her voice carried an impressive dignity.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She said, “The first nurse died.”

He glanced at her quickly, startled. “What?”

“The first nurse,” Ann said softly. “She died.”

They were back among the small mountain pines again, the headlights flickering among the trunks on either side of the road.

“It’s like a nightmare,” Ann said. “You’re with people you know, and maybe you like them and maybe you don’t, but they’re still civilized human beings; and you wouldn’t dream of being afraid of them; then you look at them and suddenly their faces have changed and their teeth have changed and they start to close in on you like vicious animals…”

Emmett said, “What do you want to do, have us both in hysterics?”

She glanced at him, a little of the tenseness leaving her face.

He said, “Stick to the facts; leave the atmosphere alone. Don’t work yourself into a tizzy. What about this nurse you had that died?”

“She just… died.”

“How?”

“She was killed in an accident. The man with her—he’s still in the hospital; there’s something wrong with his back—claimed a drunken driver had forced them off the road. They hit a culvert.”

“I see,” Emmett said, without expression, watching the road ahead. “And after that you got Helene Bethke?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Ann glanced at him, frowning.

He repeated, “How? Who recommended her? Did she just walk in the door and say: ‘Here I am, folks’?”

“I don’t know,” Ann said slowly. “I think… well, I think Dad just hired her through ordinary channels. But…”

“What?”

“If you knew Dad, and if you know what most nurses look like, you’d know she was a certainty for the job. I mean, I’ve never seen Dad—” She smiled reminiscently. “—seen Dad hire a woman who had bad ankles or a flat chest if he had any choice at all. Even Miss Lewis, the one who died, wasn’t bad looking in a school-teacherish sort of way. He never does anything about it, as far as I know, but he likes them to look nice… She was a little flushed and embarrassed.

Emmett grinned. He said, “So with Miss Lewis out of the way, Miss Bethke could pretty well count on getting the job against run-of-the-mine competition?”

“Yes, I…” She hesitated. “You don’t think I’m… It isn’t too fantastic, is it?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “What doctor did you have at this time?”

“Oh, old Dr. Shearing. I’ve been going to him since I was a child.”

“And what happened then?”

“I… They said I’d tried to kill myself.”

“And Kaufman, not Dr. Shearing, saved you?”

“Yes.” Ann looked at him briefly, and back to the dark road behind them. “Miss Bethke explained afterwards that she’d tried to reach Dr. Shearing but he was out on a call, so she telephoned Dr. Kaufman, whom she had met on a previous case, knowing that he lived quite close.”

“It seems odd,” Emmett said, “to call a psychiatrist to pump out a stomach… And after that, Kaufman took over?”

“More or less,” she said. “The folks were grateful to him, of course, for saving my life. And Dr. Shearing agreed that it seemed to be… to be a case for a psychiatrist rather than a G.P.”

The left wheels of the car, front and rear in immediate succession, pounded into the same hole in the road, and he had to hold her with his elbow to keep her from being thrown across him.

She caught herself and looked at him. “You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked. “Do you?”

He said, “You haven’t said anything yet. If you mean, do I believe that Kaufman and Bethke together conspired to get rid of your previous nurse and insinuate themselves…”

He glanced at her. “What do you think their motive is?”

He felt her hand on his arm. “Please. I’m not crazy. Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Emmett. I know how… how melodramatic…” She paused to take a breath. “That morning in Boyne,” she said flatly. “I knew he had tried to kill me, but it didn’t really make sense. Do you know what I mean? There he was, polishing his glasses on a nice clean handkerchief, and he’d tried to kill me, but I couldn’t really believe it. After all, he’d even managed to mention quite casually a number of people he’d talked to in Denver the night before, while he was apologizing to Dad for not getting his message to come to Boyne. I knew they’d all laugh at me if I said anything. It would sound completely, well, fantastic. Or they’d have looked at me sort of shocked and hurt, and then explained to me carefully how I’d imagined it, as if I were four years old and not very bright. It’s funny, but sometimes it’s easier just to go ahead and get killed than it is to be laughed at or have people think you’re crazy. I even wondered if perhaps I hadn’t dreamed it; even though I knew I hadn’t tried to kill myself, this time.” She took her hand away, to catch herself by the back of the seat as the convertible lurched sharply. “And then, riding in the car with him and Dad, I began to think how much this had been like the last time. I’d never really questioned the last time before, don’t you see? I mean, when you wake up like that sick and headachey and they tell you you’ve tried to… It never occurred to me to question it. Oh, sometimes I’d wondered if it hadn’t been an accident, if I hadn’t just got up to take another pill to make me sleep and forgotten how many… But now everything I remembered about it seemed to become sinister. Do you know what I mean? Little things that I’d never really thought about before. The way they had been very formal with each other while the folks were in the room… and then when they thought they were alone… She glanced at him quickly, almost guiltily. “I learned in Germany that when you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, the best thing to do is act sick and stupid. And I heard them when they thought I was too sick to notice; I couldn’t hear what they said, but they weren’t being formal any longer… I thought they were having a love affair. I told you, remember. I thought they were using our house as a meeting place. That’s what I’ve thought about them all along, and it wasn’t really any of my business… But driving away from Boyne that morning I began to wonder if it wasn’t something else they had between them, and suddenly I remembered how conveniently Miss Lewis had been killed. He was sitting right beside me, all of us in the front seat. I couldn’t even look at him. I would have been sick if I’d looked at him. It seemed as if the whole world had turned into a dreadful plot against me…”

Emmett said, “Hold it. You’re off again.”

He heard her breath catch sharply. Then she swallowed and said, her voice a little stiff but quite normal, “Thank you. I… I’ve been in a complete panic for two days; it’s a little hard… After I got away from them I managed to hold on to… to keep control of myself long enough to buy some clothes and find Mrs. Pruitt’s place. I even managed to shower and change and smoke a cigarette; I was proud of myself; and suddenly there was a noise outside and I seemed to come all apart… Well,” she said, “you saw me. It’s a little hard to come back to civilization after being a frightened animal hiding in a hole. I’m sorry if I keep slipping now and then. I’m still all tight and shaking inside. I don’t know if you know what I mean.”

“I can guess,” he said. “If you’d rather not talk about it—”

“Oh, no!” she cried. “Please. You have to keep talking to me. I’ll be all right as long as I can keep talking.” After a moment, she asked, “You don’t believe it, do you? What I’ve just told you? You think it’s the product of… product of a disordered imagination: that’s the phrase, isn’t it?”

He did not answer at once.

She said quickly, “You don’t have to humor me; I won’t start eating the upholstery; I won’t even begin to cry, I promise you.”

He said, “I’m just trying to fit it into some other things that have happened.” He told her of his experiences in Denver. She was silent and intent until he had finished. He thought his description of the scene with Helene Bethke shocked her a little. He said, “It was phony as hell. If all he is is a reputable psychiatrist, and if she’s just a registered nurse, then they certainly take their cases seriously, to go making with the guns and the Mickey Finns. It didn’t correspond with my idea of professional behavior, even if your disappearance had kind of put them both on a spot. My opinion is that your dad may think they were trying to help him, but I doubt if he’d ever have heard any information they got from me, if he hadn’t come in and squeezed it out of them.”

“Then you do believe—”

He said, “They’ve got some game they’re playing on their own, all right.”

She glanced at him, hesitated, and when she spoke her voice sounded a little distant. “Did you really… throw a drink in her face? And knock her across the table?” She laughed quickly. “You’re rather a surprising person, aren’t you?”

He said, “Yes, I keep amazing myself all to pieces.” He did not like to think of the incident. There were too many queer little emotions involved, beside the sense of outrage at discovering that the blonde girl had tried to drug him.

“I wasn’t blaming you,” Ann said. “I think it was wonderful.” She added with tart amusement, “It’s a pity you had to spoil the effect by standing there gawking at her naked figure while he came up and took the gun away from you.”

Emmett grimaced. “It doesn’t pay to be honest. I should have censored it a little, I guess.”

He heard her laugh. There was something cheerful in the sound, now, not strained or bitter as her laughter had been; and it seemed to him that his minor discomfort had brought them measurably closer.

He said, “But you miss the big point, Ann. What really got me going.”

“What?” she asked. “That they were desperate to find me?”

“No, that bottle she kept bringing into the conversation,” he said. “Presumably it was just a red herring, something to talk about so I wouldn’t notice the funny taste in my drink. Yet they kept worrying the damn thing to death. First Helene Bethke wanted me to think you’d kept it to ruin her, dug it out of the wastebasket, or something, and had it refilled so it would look as if she had been careless. That did not make me look convinced enough, I guess; so then she changed the story to admitting that she had been careless and let you swipe the bottle.”

“But I didn’t!”

The earth seemed to drop out of the beam of the headlights. He braked hastily and watched the light swing down to pick up the road again, where it plunged down the mountainside toward the town of Summit, visible in the canyon below them as a cluster of lights. Emmett threw the gearshift into second, and let the car begin to grind its way down the hill under easy control.

“I know,” he said. “I know you didn’t. You never had it with you, did you?”

chapter SEVENTEEN

Emmett said, “If they hadn’t felt guilty about it, and tried to over-explain it to me, I’d probably never have thought about asking myself where the hell you’d been keeping a one-ounce bottle, where I hadn’t seen it. But once the idea occurred to me… He glanced at her, a little uncomfortable. “I mean, take that suit you were wearing. And the blouse. I’m human. I’ll look. And if you had a bottle one and a half by two and a half inches tacked to you somewhere under that outfit, I’ll never whistle at another blonde as long as I live. I mean, after twenty-four hours with somebody—” He cleared his throat. “—and I’d been through your purse and jacket And I couldn’t quite see you keeping something like that in the car, where anybody might find it. And after all, I didn’t have to trust my lecherous eye; that Nebraska sheriff had searched you. You didn’t have it on you.”

The convertible was noisy with the whine of gears, the engine spinning against compression.

Emmett went on, watching the road, “And why should you keep the bottle, anyway? She said, to ruin her, but I didn’t happen to think you were that crazy. Say you did swipe the bottle, to have the stuff in case it kind of got too much for you. Would you want to keep that chunk of glass with you, when you’d know the nurse would be after it like a bloodhound? If I were doing it, I’d keep the pills and drop the bottle down the nearest sewer; maybe I’d even combine the contents of the capsules into one slug and heave out the gelatine.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I wondered why they were so anxious to explain that bottle, when it seemed kind of irrelevant. After all, your father wasn’t in a position to get tough with Helene Bethke, even if she had been careless. Why should they worry about it? Unless that bottle had some significance I hadn’t thought of… And then it occurred to me that, while there was no reason for you to want to keep the bottle around, somebody who’d tried to kill you would want to make sure there were no questions about where you’d got the stuff. It’s pretty hard to get, particularly for a young lady with a record like yours. If the bottle had been unmarked, or if there hadn’t been any bottle, somebody might have thought it worth while to mention the fact to the police. But there you were, with your own prescription bottle beside you. You’d tried to commit suicide before.”

Ann shivered. He glanced at her. Still kneeling on the seat beside him, she had buried her face in her folded arms. She looked up abruptly.

“… so cold-blooded,” she breathed. “So clever and coldblooded, and inhuman. And they don’t even really hate me. I would know if they hated me like that. If they wanted revenge…”

“Revenge?” he asked, startled. The possibility had not occurred to him.

“Yes, for what happened in France. If… if they thought I’d done that; if they wanted to make me pay for the life of somebody who’d been executed because I…”

Emmett said, “What kind of maniacs would it take to kill two people, cripple a third, and try for a fourth, all as a sort of preliminary to avenging themselves on one sick girl?”

She was quite still, beside him. “Kill two?”

He glanced at her. “Well, we’ve got to assume that Stevens’ murder ties into it somewhere, don’t we? And your nurse, Miss Lewis, makes two. And her boy friend, you told me, was crippled…”

Ann hesitated. “And… try for a fourth?”

“Yes. Somebody’s taken a couple of cracks at Dr. Kissel. Didn’t I tell you? That’s why the FBI is so concerned.”

“It’s like a nightmare,” she said softly.

He said, “I don’t think you realize how bad it is.”

“What do you mean?”

He said, “If your dad gets you, you wind up in the booby hatch, right? And what do you think your chances are of getting out again, soon?” He took his eyes off the twisting road to glance at her, and saw her answer in her shadowed face. “Right,” he said. “You won’t. At least as long as he’s worrying about his war contracts being investigated, which is apt to be some time. And then there’s a detective from Chicago running around trying to get a warrant for you. The FBI has headed him off for the time being, but he’ll be back if things don’t clear up; and if he gets you, you’ll stand trial for murder. And you haven’t got a chance there, either.”

“But I didn’t do it,” she said.

Emmett said, “They won’t worry about that. You’ll be convicted on the basis that the murdered man accused you, with some corroboration, of having helped the Nazis. Unless you can prove you didn’t, you’re sunk; and I don’t think you can, can you?”

“No,” she breathed. “I can’t I don’t even know whether I did it or not.”

“Exactly,” he said, shifting gears as they came out on the relatively level ground of the canyon floor. “And once they get that wartime background established, anybody can convict you of anything from spitting on the sidewalk to high treason. A lot of people who aren’t quite sure just how brave they’d be in a similar situation will be howling for your blood just to reassure themselves that they are potential heroes. You’ll be free game, Ann. It’ll be open season on you. Anybody’ll be able to take a shot at you, unless you can prove that your husband was mistaken in telling Stevens you betrayed him and the others, or that Stevens was lying. They’ll convict you of murder as soon as look at you. After that, it’ll be only a question of whether they’ll electrocute you, put you in jail for life, or whether your dad can manage to get you off with insanity and stick you into the asylum where he’s been trying to put you, anyway.”

She was silent beside him. The steam shovel was still working in the ravaged creek bed as they passed through the town, but the saloons were closed. Ann waited to speak until they had left the darkened buildings behind, as if afraid they might overhear. There was a little anger in her voice.

“You must have some reason for making it sound so hopeless. You must have some hope, or you wouldn’t be here.”

He said without looking at her, “I’m just trying to show you that everything hangs on what happened in France. If you can prove you didn’t betray them, your motive for killing Stevens becomes kind of uncertain. If you can prove you weren’t a collaborator, willing or unwilling, you stand some sort of a chance in court.” After a moment he went on, “That’s why I want to get you in to talk to Dr. Kissel, regardless of what this FBI joker has up his sleeve. It’s a hell of a gamble, but—”

“Dr. Kissel?”

“Yes. He’s got the dope, hasn’t he? He can tell you.”

Her voice was strained. “But what if he should say the wrong thing? Then I’ll be… The FBI will turn me over to Dad or the police, won’t they? It’s… just like walking into prison, isn’t it?”

Emmett said, “Sooner or later somebody’s going to catch you. You might as well trade your freedom for an interview with Kissel, while you’ve got it to trade.”

He was aware of her eyes studying his face for a moment before she answered; then she laughed, a little sharply. “Well, after all, that’s what I came out here to do, isn’t it? To see Dr. Kissel.” There was something defiant, almost strident, in her voice, and he did not like it.

He said, “I wish I were as sure you didn’t remember as I am of some other things. That amnesia bothers me.”

She said stiffly, “It bothers me, too.”

When they had passed the first sharp turn in the winding canyon below the town, Emmett cut the lights and backed the convertible quickly around the bend and got out. He was aware of the girl getting out on the far side and coming around to stand beside him.

“Now we’ll make sure,” he said. “The road comes down just a little to the right of the lights of the steam shovel. You can see the notch against the sky.”

He felt her hand come to rest on his arm; the brief hostility that had been between them was wiped away by the suspense of the moment. The fingers on his arm tightened a little as twin headlights made an arc across the sky and then dipped towards the town.

“He waited at the top to see which way we’d go, I guess,” Emmett said. “Now he knows we’re heading back toward Denver. He’s barreling along to close up with us before we get out of the canyon to some place where we can turn off.” He glanced at her face, dimly white in the darkness. “Exciting, ain’t it?” he said dryly. He could feel the sudden pulse in his throat, belying the calmness of his voice. They got back into the car.

“What are you going to do?” she asked when they were driving again.

“Take him,” Emmett said.

He felt her look at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

He said, feeling the tightness in his chest, “If I tried to shake him off, he’d be warned; and I doubt if I could lose him. I haven’t driven in mountains for years; he’s sure to be an expert at it. And we can’t afford to have him with us. The only thing you’ve got to trade with is your freedom, and I expect he’s just waiting to get help before he grabs us. So we have to put him out of commission before he can get reinforcements.”

“Kill him?”

He glanced at her and did not say anything.

She said, in the same tone, “I don’t want anybody killed, Mr. Emmett. I’d rather give myself up.”

He let out his breath slowly. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you said that.”

He was aware of her smiling at him, not quite happily. “It must be dreadful not to know whether or not you’re riding with a homicidal maniac,” she murmured.

He could see the headlights now in the mirror whenever the canyon opened up behind them—either the lights themselves, or the beams striking out over the blackness to the left, or the glare behind a wall of rock. It shouldn’t be too hard, he thought, I’ve given the bastard no reason to think I know he’s following me. Presently he stopped the convertible where the road was narrow.

“Take over,” he said, getting out.

Ann slid quickly behind the wheel. It occurred to him that she could easily drive off and leave him there; then he remembered that, if that was what she wanted, she could have left Mrs. Pruitt’s without him any time before he arrived; she did not have to go there at all, in the first place. He took the ten-penny nail he had picked up at the Lodge from his pocket, and propped it against the right rear tire.

“Ahead slow,” he said.

He did not look around to see how close the headlights were. The wheel turned and the nail snapped out.

“Hold it,” he said.

He had trouble finding the nail again on the rough gravel of the road. He put it back and braced it with the edge of his shoe.

“Ahead,” he said.

He snatched his foot away as the car moved forward. There was a sudden hiss that settled rapidly to a sighing that gradually died away. The springs creaked as the weight of the car shifted.

“Far enough,” he said. “Bring the keys, quick!”

He was aware of her coming at a run around the car and he heard questions that he did not answer, snatching the keys from her hand to open the trunk. He passed tools out to her.

“Make with the jack,” he said, “while I get this spare clear.”

“The handle—”

“Never mind the handle!” he said breathlessly, angry with her.

Then headlights flooded around the bend above them, pinning them against the rear of the convertible. Emmett was aware of the girl beside him straightening up to sweep back her hair with the back of her hand, in a completely natural gesture. He set down the suitcases he had pulled out of the trunk to free the spare tire. Ann turned her back to the lights and bent down again to fit the jack into place. She was, he thought, doing very well. He remembered that she had a certain amount of practice at this sort of thing during the war. The thought made him feel a little inadequate. He did not know how well he was doing.

As the other car slowed for them he walked back toward it and glanced over his shoulder at the space between the stalled Mercury and the edge of the road, beyond which the canyon was a black chasm.

“I think you can make it, Mister,” he shouted, squinting at the vague face behind the lights and windshield. “Take it easy and I’ll coach you.”

He stepped aside to let the other car go past; but it stopped alongside him. The man behind the wheel leaned out to look at the slender figure in the checkered shirt and the tailored brown slacks, kneeling in the gravel by the rear bumper of the convertible.

“Got a flat tire, eh?”

Emmett said, “Uhuh. Picked up a nail.” He tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. He had never seen the man before in his life. Then he realized that there was no reason why he should have; Mr. Nicholson could afford to hire more than one investigator.

The man pulled up his emergency brake and got out. “Don’t cotton to the looks of that shoulder,” he said. He walked out on the edge and stamped his foot. In the shine of the lights Emmett could see him clearly: a solid, middle-aged man in a brown suit without a vest and a light cattleman’s hat. His trousers were tucked into carved boots with two-inch heels. “She won’t hold,” he said, after testing the ground again. “Reckon I’d better give you a hand.” He walked to the rear of the convertible. “Here, I’ll take care of that, Ma’am.”

Ann straightened up, rubbing her soiled hands together. She was smiling at the man as Emmett swung the jack handle, striking at the shoulder, not the head, not wanting to take a chance of killing.

chapter EIGHTEEN

The shock of the blow going home left Emmett as surprised as the man he had struck. Part of his mind had been calmly certain that he would never get away with it; that he would find himself standing there flatfooted, holding the bar of iron, while the man pointed a gun at him, and told him to drop it and stop acting like a jackass. Instead the man in the Stetson hat gave a little grunt and grabbed for his shoulder; then staggered as the pain got to him, swayed against the car, and sat down in the road.

Emmett was aware of Ann running to him and catching at his left hand. They stood looking down at the man sitting in the gravel, in the glare of his own headlights, staring up at them with wet, pain-glazed eyes.

“Who is he?”

“Damned if I know,” Emmett said, and freed himself from her grip. Holding the jack handle ready, he went forward. The man’s eyes followed him.

“It’s broken,” the man whispered. “You bastard.”

“Think if it had been your head,” Emmett said. He stood over the man with the jack handle ready. “Take your gun out and throw it over to her.”

The man shook his head. “No gun,” he whispered hoarsely. He looked ready to cry.

“Stand up.”

The man pushed himself painfully up, holding his shoulder, and stood uncertainly, rocking a little in his high-heeled boots. Emmett made him turn around. There was dust on the rear of his trousers and on the skirt of his coat. Emmett felt his hips and armpits from the rear and found nothing but a wallet identifying the man as Henry Fulton McElroy, salesman for Whitmore and Lovett, equipment for all types of mining operations. He walked the man back to his car. Some precautionary sense made him search the car before the man got in; there was a sawed-off little Colt .38 slung by a bracket under the dash. It didn’t mean any thing, he reflected; lots of people in these parts carried guns. A salesman traveling nights through this type of country would be very apt to keep a gun handy. Emmett thought: how the hell did I ever get into this, anyway?

Ann came up to him. He did not answer the question in her eyes. He did not even want to consider the possibility that he had struck down an innocent passerby, who doubtless, in spite of his pain, was carefully taking note of their appearance, and of the beautifully illuminated Illinois license plate staring him in the face from the rear of the convertible ahead.

Emmett glanced at the shiny wet face of the man, and at the gun in his own hand, and shivered a little; in his mind a sudden clear picture of the man reaching for the weapon and he, John Emmett, instinctively pressing the trigger and becoming a murderer. He held the gun out to Ann.

“Stick it in the glove compartment,” he said as she frowned at it. “I can handle him without it. But it looks as if you were elected to change the tire.”

He knew that he did not trust her to hold a gun on the man, either; he could not trust her not to shoot. They were very close to the edge of something dark and irrevocable, but there was still hope as long as nobody else got killed.

No headlights followed them when they drove off again. The road let them down through a slot in the mountainside where the walls towered black above them and they could hear the rushing water of a mountain stream far below, never seeing it; then the canyon widened again and there were no more trees except for the scattered, stunted desert junipers of the foothills, black in the sudden morning twilight.

Ann said, “It’s funny, the way there aren’t any trees above a certain point up there; and then there aren’t any below a certain point down here.”

Her voice sounded rusty with disuse. They had not spoken for several hours.

Emmett said, “Above the timberline, the cold kills them. Down here they don’t get enough water.”

She said, “I wish I could wash my hands.”

He glanced at the slender, grimy, somewhat battered hands she displayed in the light of the dashboard. There did not seem to be much to say about them. If you wanted to make something of them, you could remember her, by way of contrast, in the restaurant in Jepson where they had first talked together, grimacing at her white gloves with fastidious distaste because they were minutely soiled. Perhaps this was the comparison she wanted him to draw, he thought; but a contrast that could be wiped out by a bar of soap and a swab of mercurochrome did not seem to him of any great significance. He thought the contrast in himself, then and now, was rather more important.

Ann’s voice asked abruptly, “Do you think he’s going to be all right back there?”

Emmett shrugged. “Somebody’ll find him.”

“But if he should try to drive… What if he went off the road? He might be killed.”

He glanced at her. Then he stopped the car and pulled up the emergency brake, and cut the engine. He felt his hands beginning to shake, and his stomach muscles were fluttering as if he had been cold for a long time. After a while he started to fill his pipe. He felt her take it, and the pouch, from his hands. He brushed at the spilled tobacco in his lap.

“Why don’t you keep your big mouth shut?” he asked savagely. “What did you want us to do, take him to a hospital?”

She did not answer. He watched her fill the pipe carefully, rather inexpertly, not tamping the tobacco down hard enough; but he did not correct her. When she looked at him, her eyes seemed very large in her pale face, the face smudged with dirt and weariness.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve just got the shakes, is all.” She held out the pipe, but he did not take it. Instead he took her by the shoulders, waited for her face to turn up for the kiss, and kissed her. She buried her face in the shoulder of his jacket.

“What are we going to do, darling?” she breathed. “What are we going to do?”

He held her without answering. The sun was rising over the plains visible through the shallow notch of the canyon ahead. He felt the sickening tension inside him somehow relieved by her nearness, and his mind began to work again for the first time in hours. He knew that she was crying soundlessly; and he knew when she had stopped. When she stirred in his arms he released her and, without looking at her, threw off the brake and let the car begin to move down the steep canyon road. When it was rolling, he let in the clutch, starting up the engine.

“You’ve got lipstick on your mouth,” Ann said. “I didn’t think I had any left.”

chapter NINETEEN

He watched her carry her suitcase around the corner of the filling station, which was precariously balanced on a few square feet of level ground between the road and the slope of the canyon wall leading down to the creek below. Standing beside the car, he lit his pipe, feeling already the promise of heat in the early morning sunshine on his back. The tobacco tasted strong and harsh to his tongue. A man in overalls came out of the shack with a sandwich in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other.

“Fill her,” Emmett said. “Can I use your phone? I want to call Denver.”

“I reckon,” the man said. He put his cup aside and came forward without haste. “Have the operator tell you what it cost when you’re through.”

Inside, Emmett could hear sounds of movement through the thin partition at the rear of the office. He looked at the wall for a moment, and studied the long-limbed figure of a girl on the calendar tacked to it. The girl was blonde and was wearing very little except a pair of high-heeled sandals, and reminded him uneasily of Helene Bethke. He turned to the telephone and frowned.

“Give it a crank,” the attendant shouted, from outside. “Crank like hell and tell the gal your number.”

Emmett picked up the receiver and wound the crank at the side of the box, filling the office with a tinkling ringing more like the sound of a doorbell, he thought, than like that of a telephone.

“Give me Denver,” he said when the operator answered. “The Estes Hotel, Denver. I want to speak to Mr. R. Austen Nicholson. Person to person, please.” The operator asked a question. He looked at the instrument in front of him and found the answer. “Mariposa seven four, ring two short, one long.”

As he waited, he heard Ann suddenly begin to move about again beyond the thin wall, resolutely and a little too noisily, as if determined not to eavesdrop. There was a rush of water from a faucet. The sound surprised him; after a moment he realized that he had not expected the lonely filling station to have running water. There was talk on the telephone; then a voice spoke in his ear.

“Nicholson here.”

Emmett said, “This is John Emmett, Mr. Nicholson.”

“Yes?” The older man’s voice was expressionless, neither in favor of, nor opposed to, John Emmett. It was not, Emmett realized sharply, the voice of a man who had heard a report from an employee with a broken shoulder. He was aware of a small sick sense of panic; the man he had struck must have been found by now. It followed that either the man had no connection with Mr. Nicholson, or he had been in too bad a condition to report to his employer. Emmett thought: Christ, maybe he was from the FBI. But there was no time to think of it now.

“I’m not alone,” he said into the telephone.

There was a pause. Mr. Nicholson’s voice asked, “How is she?”

“Fine,” Emmett said.

“Is she listening?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you bringing her to me?”

“No,” Emmett said. “Not directly.”

“I see.” After another pause, the distant voice asked, “How much do you want, Emmett?”

Anger tempted Emmett to find out how high the price could be made to go, but he said, “Nothing. All I want is some information and some help.”

“All I want is my daughter,” the man in Denver said. “Before the police get her.”

Emmett said, “Well, I’m not going to let anybody railroad a girl into the insane asylum for their own convenience, Mr. Nicholson; on the other hand, if she is off the beam—” He cleared his throat. “You get what I mean, Mr. Nicholson? I mean, she trusts me, more or less. I want to do what’s best for her. I don’t want to make any money out of it. However, I don’t want to get into any trouble.”

Mr. Nicholson said harshly, “Don’t you think we’re qualified to judge what’s best for her, young man?”

“Who’s we?” Emmett asked.

“Myself, her father. Her doctor and nurse—”

Emmett said, “That’s a question I wanted to ask. Exactly where was Dr. Kaufman at the time Ann was supposed to be trying to kill herself in Boyne?”

“Dr. Kaufman?” Mr. Nicholson sounded startled; then he laughed. “Oh, I see!”

“What do you see, Mr. Nicholson?”

The older man’s voice said wearily, “Does she claim now that she didn’t try to kill herself?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it’s no use pointing out to you that it’s only eighteen months since she tried it before; and that she’s now trying to claim that that was an accident, even though she admitted at the time… Now she wants us to believe that the latest attempt was Dr. Kaufman trying to murder her? Hell, Emmett,” Ann’s father said roughly, “don’t be gullible. Anyway, Doc was at a University Club dinner that night.”

Emmett said, “What about checking on it, Mr. Nicholson?”

“Hell, I was with her the next morning, Emmett. She didn’t say anything then. It’s just something she’s cooked up since to make trouble. If she’d spent as much time learning how to act decent as she has trying to harass her medical attendants…” Emmett remained silent. “Oh, all right,” Mr. Nicholson said. “I’ll put Plaice on it. What else is worrying your goddamned conscience?”

“Dr. Kissel,” Emmett said.

There was a pause. “I see.”

“She wants to see him,” Emmett said. “She thinks he can clear her. If she’s right, if he should say that she was innocent in the French business, that wouldn’t leave her much motive for killing Stevens, would it? I think even the Chicago police would admit that.”

Mr. Nicholson said, “I doubt it. First of all, since she doesn’t remember, she’s still got the motive, hasn’t she? And second, they’d simply claim we bribed the man. Assuming he says what you hope, young man.”

Emmett said, “Fortunately, unless you’ve been in contact with him during the past twenty-four hours, there are some pretty reliable witnesses to swear that nobody’s contacted Dr. Kissel. It happens that Dr. Kissel is a little more important, and considerably less accessible, than everybody seems to think. Why do you think I’m calling you, Mr. Nicholson, instead of just driving up to Fairmount and knocking on the door? Because Dr. Kissel isn’t there. He’s working for the government down in New Mexico, and the FBI is keeping an eye on him. That’s why I need you to put pressure on the man in charge, a Mr. Kirkpatrick, to let us see Dr. Kissel…”

“The FBI!” Mr. Nicholson’s snort was explosive. “And why the hell, young man, should I get involved with the FBI, in addition to my other troubles? Why don’t I just call up the Associated Press and give them the story?”

Emmett said, “I think Kirkpatrick will agree to keep everything quiet. He doesn’t want publicity any more than you do. You can reach him through the Denver office. Arapahoe six two six two.” He went on in a different tone of voice, “Of course, if you’d prefer for us to try it by ourselves and get picked up trying to crawl through the barbed wire…” There was a period of silence. Then the voice in the telephone, thinned by distance, said, “You’re going to see Dr. Kissel, come hell or high water, is that it?”

“That’s right, Mr. Nicholson.”

“Tell me, young man, is this really Ann’s idea, or is it yours?”

“Well,” Emmett said, “mine, I guess. At least, you could say I’ve taken it over.”

“I thought so.” The man in Denver hesitated, as if organizing his thoughts. “Suppose I can convince you in some other way,” he went on presently. “All you want to know is what Dr. Kissel is going to say, right? For your own peace of mind; to know you’re doing the right thing for her. Suppose I tell you—”

“Then you have been in touch with him,” Emmett said quickly.

There was anger in Mr. Nicholson’s voice when he answered. “Do you think Reinhard Kissel is the only person in the world who knows what my daughter did in France, young man? I only wish that were true. Give me credit for a few human instincts, Emmett, no matter what she’s told you about me—”

Emmett said, “Ann hasn’t—”

“I know what she thinks of me, Emmett,” Mr. Nicholson went on. “But before you judge, remember that I’ve given her the finest treatment possible for over three years; I’ve shielded her and protected her; her mother and I have never let her know that we even guessed—”

Emmett said, “Ann seemed to think you didn’t have any idea until Stevens—”

“Do you think we wouldn’t check? Do you think I wouldn’t try to find out what had turned my daughter from a normal, rather snippy, young debutante to a suicidal neurotic? And I found out, Emmett. I can show you the reports of investigators who located the survivors of the resistance unit she and her husband were members of in Paris; they all believed Monteux’ wife had betrayed them… I know,” he said as Emmett tried to interrupt, “they could have been deceived or mistaken. But I didn’t stop there. I can show you authenticated photostats of her dossier, completely damning; and of arrest records for those who were caught and executed, all reading identically: Subject arrested on information furnished by Ann Monteux (File 2037-A), wife of gang leader Georges Monteux (still at large)…”

The door at the rear of the filling station opened and closed, and she came past the window; then she was putting the cheap new suitcase back into the trunk of the car. He saw her turn to look into the dusk of the office where he was standing. Her freshly brushed hair looked light and fluffy in the early morning sunshine, soft and a little disorganized, beginning to escape the discipline of her expensive permanent wave. She had exchanged her wool shirt for a brief scarlet halter that left her shoulders and arms quite bare; she stood for a moment hugging herself as if a little cold.

Her father’s voice stopped listing the evidence against her. Emmett watched her turn away and get into the car. He did not want to look at her; yet he could not stop looking at her, trying to learn what was the truth.

“I can get the documents for you in eight hours,” Mr. Nicholson’s voice said in his ear. “Why should I want to slander my own daughter, Emmett? Why should I lie? Goddamn it, young man, do you think I like it?” There was a terrible sincerity in the metallic voice; and Emmett had a momentary vision of how it might be for the parent.

He said, “Look, Mr. Nicholson, Dr. Kissel is her witness. Don’t you see? For my own peace of mind I’ve got to let her see him.” He hoped it sounded fatuous enough to be convincing.

When Mr. Nicholson spoke again, he sounded resigned. “All right, I guess I know how you feel. I didn’t want to believe it myself, at first. Maybe I’d like to hear what the man has to say, myself. Call me back this afternoon.”

“All right, Mr. Nicholson.”

“Just one thing, Emmett…”

“Yes?”

“Just for God’s sake don’t let her get behind you with any kind of a weapon after she learns that you’re actually going to call her bluff and confront her with Kissel. I don’t want to have to cope with two murders in the family.”

Emmett glanced at the gentle profile of the girl in the car. “What makes you so sure Ann killed Stevens?” he asked.

“Damn it,” the telephone said, “I have her own word for it, haven’t I? She called me up in hysterics right after beating his brains out and asked me what to do, didn’t she? Why do you think I sent Kaufman and the nurse after her, except to see that she got clear all right?”

chapter TWENTY

They crossed the state line into New Mexico in the middle afternoon and stopped in a town where the main street was white glaring concrete wide enough, Emmett thought, to land a large airplane on. In the three-block business section the space along the curb was marked with neat painted lines for diagonal parking; these still left four clear lanes for traffic in the center. You had the feeling that the stores on the east side of the street did not serve the same customers as those on the west side; that if you lived there you would find it easier to walk a block or two beneath the awnings that sheltered the sidewalk to a store on the same side than it would be to cross the wide street through the burning sunshine to a similar store directly opposite where you were standing; as if the highway had been an obstacle, like a river, dividing the town in two.

Emmett stood for a moment in the doorway of the drugstore from which he had called Mr. Nicholson again, looking at the fawn-colored convertible parked a dozen spaces away along the sidewalk. It was dusty now; the windshield, headlights, and the front of the fenders splashed with the remains of innumerable insects. When he had first seen it, it had looked like a woman’s car; but now, he reflected, you could tell that a man had been driving it. Somehow a man got a car dirty in not quite the same way that a woman would. He tried to think what was the difference, but his mind was busy with a totally separate problem: how he could be certain that Mr. Nicholson did not mean to double-cross them. After all, once he got his hands on Ann, Mr. Nicholson would have no further incentive for carrying out his part of the bargain. If he could get his daughter safely put away in an institution, Mr. Nicholson could easily deal with John Emmett.

A slight figure in a scarlet halter and brown slacks rolled above the knees came across the wide street through the sunshine, carrying a large brown paper sack of groceries. Emmett turned away before she could see him and went back through the dusk of the drugstore to the telephone booth. It was too hot to close the door.

“Denver,” he said. “Arapahoe six two six two.”

He waited, watching the doorway, but Ann did not come in to look for him. Presently the girl with the nice voice, with whom he had spoken once before, was on the line. “Mr. Kirkpatrick,” he said.

“What is your name, please?”

“Emmett,” he said. “John Emmett.”

The girl’s voice said, “Mr. Kirkpatrick isn’t here, but he left a message for you, Mr. Emmett, in case you should call this office for confirmation. He said to tell you there would be an army car waiting at Numa, on the south edge of town, to escort you into the Project. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Emmett. Does that agree with what you’ve been told of the arrangements?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “It checks. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Emmett.”

He put the receiver away and found that he was not at all reassured. The fact that the federal man had anticipated his suspicions of Mr. Nicholson only emphasized the fact that both Kirkpatrick and Mr. Nicholson had reasons for not wanting the interview to go through, and that they could very well have come to an agreement. And even if Kirkpatrick were on the level, there was only one road through Numa, and it would be easy enough for Mr. Nicholson to have the Mercury convertible picked up as it approached the rendezvous. It was not likely that the FBI was so anxious to have Dr. Kissel exposed to the danger of an interview as to raise any serious questions if the party never showed up.

Emmett found his hands shaking a little as he filled and lighted his pipe. He was tired and sleepy, and frightened at how wrong he could be, in how many different ways. He walked slowly to the soda fountain. From the last stool, nearest the door, he could just catch a glimpse of the girl waiting for him beside the car; the afternoon sun still too hot to let her sit inside in comfort. He remembered that they had hardly spoken to each other since leaving the filling station from which he had called her father that morning. She had not referred to the call, nor had he mentioned it; remaining silent because he did not know how he wanted to bring it up. There was, after all, no really good way of asking a girl you had kissed if she were a confessed murderess.

He thought of Mrs. Pruitt saying: I’m betting that girl’s all right. He remembered his own response: What the hell do you think I’m doing? It seemed to him that the time had come to decide just how much he was going to put into the center of the table. He was already in the game for more than he could afford to lose.

The boy behind the fountain gave him a Coke and answered his questions, and looked after him with some curiosity as he went out.

Emmett was aware of Ann straightening up as he came out of the drugstore, but he walked quickly away from her; then he was around the corner, pausing to orient himself. There were no awnings on the side street and the sun burned his bare head. He had forgotten his hat in the car. He followed the directions the boy had given him. The building he wanted was white stucco resembling adobe, and the room he wanted was on the second floor. A man in shirtsleeves asked him the questions and recorded the answers, finally shoving the completed license across the desk.

“Any minister or justice of the peace,” the man said.

Emmett took the paper and folded it slowly. “What else do I need?” he asked.

“Just the girl,” the man said, smiling.

“No medical—?”

“You’re all set to go, Mac,” the man said gently.

“How soon can we—?”

“Right now, if your girl’s ready and you can catch Judge Pierce before he leaves. You’d better let me call him if you want him to wait for you.” The man reached for his telephone.

“Yes,” Emmett said, a little breathlessly, “have him wait, please.”

When he came back around the corner, he saw that Ann had retreated into the doorway of a drygoods store, but she went forward to the car when she saw him approach. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder as she started to get into the car. She turned sharply to look at him, her face a little flushed with heat and with the annoyance of being kept waiting; her shoulders bare, a little pink, and showing a faint sheen of perspiration. She looked small and hot and rather sticky, like a child that had been playing in the sun, but her expression was adult and reserved, rather hostile. He realized abruptly the enormity of what he had been about to suggest to her—and the impossibility of explaining to her why it was necessary.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to see some people. You’d better roll your pants down.”

She glanced down to her bare legs, and back to his face. “I like them like that,” she said stiffly. “It’s so hot…”

He heard his own voice crackle with anger. “Roll them down, goddamn it!”

“John!” she breathed, staring at him. “What’s the—?”

There was, for a moment, nobody passing on the sidewalk; no cars on the bright hot street; they were quite alone beside the convertible parked diagonally to the curb. Then he had struck her, and she was back against the car with one hand to her cheek. He could feel the tingling in his own hand. He watched all hurt and shock and bewilderment and life slowly drain from her face, leaving it a mask that he did not recognize.

“And get in the car and put a blouse on,” he whispered.

The voice that answered him was no voice he had ever heard before. It was dull and submissive. “My suitcase is in the trunk…”

When she climbed out of the car again, she was wearing the eggshell satin blouse she had worn with the suit he had first seen her in; the blouse a little crushed from being packed in the suitcase, but giving her an expensive, fragile, casually festive air. She crouched in front of him, rolling down the legs of her slacks, then straightened up for his inspection, her eyes avoiding him. There was a faint red mark on her cheek. He nodded and took her arm. They walked slowly away along the sidewalk.

He said without looking at her, “When you ask one man who doesn’t like you to force another man who doesn’t like you to do something neither of them may want done, you’re asking for trouble. I’m in this up to my neck already, Nicholson. That guy whose shoulder I busted last night could put me in jail for a good long time. I need an official stake, so to speak, in what’s going on. Something to make my position legal, so I can’t be ignored.”

Her face turned up to him briefly, but she did not speak.

He said, “Keep walking. We’re on our way to see a judge, who’s going to marry us… Keep walking!” He made his fingers bite into the soft flesh of her arm. “I’ve got the license in my pocket, Nicholson. The only way you can stop me is to kick up a fuss. If you kick up a fuss, we’ll land in jail with a lot of policemen asking questions. Remember that.”

Again her glance touched him, but she remained silent. He said, “I want you to make up your mind right now what you’re going to do. I don’t want you to go off half-cocked when you get in there. Make your decision now, while we’re walking. You can tell the judge that I’m forcing you to marry me, and he’ll have me put in jail, but you’ll go with me. Once the police have us, you’re on the road to Chicago and a murder trial you can’t win. If it’s worth that much to you to keep from marrying me, go right ahead and yell. But just be sure you know what you’re doing and what the consequences will be.”

She reached up to pry gently at the fingers that gripped her arm. He hesitated, and released her. The satin of her sleeve was quite wet where he had been holding her. She walked along beside him, silent, plucking the thin material free of her skin. It began to dry almost instantly in the hot dry air.

He said, “If you’re wondering about the ring, I picked up the one you bought to fool Mrs. Pruitt. You dropped it in the cabin, remember?”

She did not look at him, or answer him, and they went up the court-house steps in silence. When they came out, the doorway was in shadow, and they paused a moment before plunging out into the bright street. The judge, who had come down with them, shook hands with them both again and wished them all the luck in the world. He asked if he could drive them anywhere. Emmett said their car was right around the corner. They watched him go down the street to his own car. He waved to them as he drove past. They walked slowly down the steps to the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” Emmett said, walking beside her without touching her. “If I’d done it any other way you’d have wanted to argue. Maybe you’d have refused. I couldn’t take the chance. I had to catch you by surprise.” She did not say anything. He went on, “When we’re through with this business, you can probably get it annulled without much trouble. I had to fudge a lot of the answers on the application.”

Her face had a remote, closed look, and he did not think she had heard what he was saying. He did not think she knew where she was. She was safe inside a dark refuge of her own that she had built for herself some time ago. He had caught her by surprise, striking her; he had been a friend, able to hurt her. But now she was safe inside her defenses and nothing he could say or do would reach her. Now he was allied in her mind with the savage world she had known during the war. She knew how to deal with him, now.

He watched her fingers come up absently to rub the tiny scar on her lip, the wedding ring glinting on the appropriate finger; and he shivered.

“Did you get everything I asked you to?”

“Yes,” she said mechanically.

“You don’t mind camping out?”

“No.”

It was like speaking to an obedient doll. “I have a feeling we’ll do better not registering anywhere tonight,” he said, and tried a grin. “Even though it’s legal, now.”

She looked at him and looked away. He stopped trying to grin and opened the car door for her, closed it behind her, and walked around the car to get behind the wheel.

The sun was almost down when the road dipped to show them a barren plain below, broken by a series of garishly striped, eroded buttes that, Emmett thought, were good for nothing but putting on a postcard. You did not believe in them, seeing them in the red evening sunlight, even while you were looking at them. Even the wide graded highway, with its accompanying line of telephone poles, running straight through to the horizon, did not break the illusion of unreality; a distant car, dragging dust behind it, was a busy insect from another planet.

Emmett heard the quickly indrawn breath of the girl beside him, and glanced at her, but did not speak in spite of a sudden desire to share the experience with her, in words. Her face was suddenly alive again, with awe and wonder, but he knew that his voice would break the spell. He led the car down the series of switchbacks a little too fast, having to brake a little too often. He was getting quite tired, he realized suddenly; almost dangerously tired. It seemed a long time since he had had any sleep. It seemed almost as if he had been driving along endless mountain and desert roads as long as he could remember. When he saw a faint track leading off the highway toward the badlands, he swung the car onto it, jouncing across the parched clay of the alkali plain. He stopped the car when the first butte hid them from the road, and switched off the engine. Presently the car began to creak and tinkle metallically as various parts of it contracted, cooling. He was aware that his shirt was still wet across the back from the heat of the day, but now he was a little chilly. Ann was silent beside him, waiting for him to move. He took his camera from the glove compartment, hesitated, looked at the space where it had been; then got stiffly out of the car and took a picture of the steep clay cliff above them, the erosion patterns standing out clearly shadowed by the low sunlight. But it was a picture that really needed color film, he reflected. He was not really thinking about it, anyway. As he turned back toward the convertible, Ann’s voice stopped him.

“Just a minute, please; I’m not decent.”

Then she came out, tucking in the tails of the bright wool shirt she had put on against the chill of evening. As she bent over, fastening up her belt, her light hair parted and fell forward along her cheeks so that, looking down on her bent head, he could see the little curling wisps at the nape of her neck, still faintly damp with perspiration.

“Where’s the gun?” he asked softly.

She was quite still for a moment. At last she lifted her face to him, silently questioning. As he looked down at her, all the uncertainty and weariness of the long day was boiling up in anger inside him, urging him to lash out at her with the suspicions he could not put aside, to repay her for the quiet contempt with which she was treating him. Georges trusted you, he wanted to say, and look what it got him. Maybe you even talked Stevens into believing in you. Stevens is dead, murdered. He felt a sudden bitter sense of kinship with these two dead men he had never known. One of them had been, like himself, her husband. The thought startled him with its reminder of how deeply he had committed himself to helping a girl he barely knew.

He said mildly, “The gun I took off that guy last night. Didn’t you put it in the glove compartment?”

“Oh,” she said quickly. “No, I’m sorry. It’s in back.” She brushed at her slacks and straightened up. “Do you want it?” she asked politely. “I’ll get it for you.”

He studied her for a moment. Her head was well back, a little defiant, and he was aware of the slenderness of her throat against the open collar of the checkered wool shirt.

“Never mind,” he said carefully. “So long as you know where it is.”

As he closed the camera case and went back to the car to get the food out he found that his mind had suddenly begun, like a radar screen, plotting her position as she moved behind him.

chapter TWENTY-ONE

He heard a coyote in the distance and knew that he had not been asleep because he had, vaguely, been listening to the sound for a long time. It was not the sound that had brought his mind back to the present. He moved a little to rouse himself fully, and something gouged him in the thigh: the car keys that he had dropped into his pocket before turning in.

The ground was hard and lumpy beneath him. Even completely dressed except for his shoes, with a wool shirt under his sweater and a blanket wrapped around him, he was a little cold. It was difficult to recall the glaring heat of the day; now the air felt almost frosty. Except for the wailing of the coyote it was very still on the desert. If any cars were passing along the road a quarter of a mile away, he could not hear them. When he opened his eyes he could see the convertible, and the buttes to the eastward, bright and silvery in the cold moonlight. Presently he heard the girl he had married move again in the car when she was supposedly sleeping.

He closed his eyes and heard her open the car door carefully; then he lost her, her stockinged feet making no sound on the sun-baked clay. He waited, thinking, even if she does, she’ll want to tell me why; she’ll want to talk first. He could not remember ever having been so scared in his life.

“John.”

He did not move, and he heard a clump of the dry desert grass rustle as she stepped closer.

“John,” she whispered.

He sat up and looked at the gun in her hand.

The hand that held the gun was trembling a little, with cold, or with some strong emotion, or with both. Her whole body seemed to contract, as if with pain, when the coyote howled again, coming closer. She looked down at the gun.

“You forgot this,” she whispered.

He did not say anything. He watched the gleaming small revolver pointed at him in the moonlight. The weapon was not cocked; that gave him, he decided, a little time unless she was aware of the effort that would be necessary to work the stiff double-action mechanism. He got a grip on the blanket so that he could rip it aside and roll free if he saw the hammer begin to rise.

“Do you want the car keys?” he asked. “They’re in my pocket. You can take them and beat it, if that’s what you want.”

Her face was a small pinched mask in the moonlight. The muzzle of the gun sagged a little.

“Oh, don’t be silly, John,” she breathed.

Then the gun dropped to the ground and she stood looking at it; presently giving it a small push toward him with her stockinged foot.

“There it is!” she whispered. “You can relax now. You can go to sleep now. You can—” She turned her back on him sharply, choking. Her voice was harsh with tears when she spoke again: “I suppose you took the cartridges out of it when I wasn’t looking!”

He glanced at her back and, with sudden anger, raked up the cut-off revolver, pointed it out across the desert, and pulled the trigger. There was more flame than he had expected; and for an instant the little gun was alive in his grasp. The report was a short, smashing sound, like the sound of a blow. It jerked Ann around to face him, gasping. After a pause the echo came yammering back at them from the distant buttes.

“Don’t you want to make sure they aren’t blanks?” Emmett demanded, holding up the weapon.

“Why did you leave it? You left it there deliberately, to test me!” She caught her breath. “You’ve been lying here, waiting… You thought I might…! I don’t like booby-traps, John Emmett!”

He said, “All right, and if I’d guessed wrong about you, who’d have been the booby?”

The coyote howled again. Ann shivered convulsively. After a moment she sank down on the blanket beside Emmett, hugging herself against the cold. They did not speak for a while.

“This afternoon… striking me!” She breathed at last. “Tonight… waiting for me to—to attack you—as if I were s-some kind of an animal you had to beat and trick…!”

He said, “Your father said you called him up in hysterics, Saturday night, and confessed to killing Stevens.”

For a moment she was quite still; he thought she had even stopped breathing. When she spoke, her voice was just barely audible.

“No. Oh, no!”

Emmett said, “He warned me not to let you get behind me with a weapon. I thought I’d try it and see what happened.”

He felt her glance at him through the pale darkness. “Does that mean… that you don’t believe I…?”

“Did you?” he asked.

“No.”

“No what?” he asked. “No you didn’t kill him, or no you didn’t call him.”

“Both.”

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes found him again. She did not speak.

He said, “Your memory’s kind of tricky in spots, Nicholson.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t call me Nicholson. It sounds as if…” She choked down a laugh that had come dangerously close to hysteria. “Besides, it isn’t even right! I’m Mrs. Emmett. Mrs. John Emmett. Remember?”

He was silent, waiting.

She shook her head impatiently. “We’ve been through all that before. I know I didn’t kill anybody, or telephone anybody.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She said, “I thought Miss Bethke gave me a… an alibi.”

“She was lying to cover the fact that she’d let you get away from her. The Chicago police know it. They think your dad bribed her, and consider it another point against you. Then your dad had your suit cleaned in Boyne; they think that was to get rid of bloodstains. Between you and your old man, Ann, you might as well take an electric cord between your teeth and turn on the juice.”

“But you married me.” He saw her eyes studying him in the moonlight. “Why, if it’s that bad?”

“I told you,” he said. “I was stuck with you anyway. I want to make sure you’re stuck with me, and your dad with both of us.” He waited for her to make a comment, or ask a question. When she did not speak, he went on, “What about that Saturday afternoon, the afternoon Stevens was killed? You beat it from the cocktail party after talking to him. Some time later you cashed a check in a department store.”

She stirred beside him. “How did you find out all this?”

He said impatiently, “I don’t have to find out. I just stand around and people come and tell me things. The amount of information, probably phony, that people have given me, I need a secretary to keep track of it all. Now, you cashed a check at this store. The manager says you were almost incoherent; he thought you were either stinking drunk or had been in an accident.”

“Oh, I wasn’t.”

“Tell me what happened in between.”

“Nothing,” she said. “I… just left the party and drove down to the lake front. I had to—to think.”

“Think?”

“Well,” she said, a little defiantly. “I cried. Then it took me about twenty minutes to get my hair up and my hat back on and my makeup presentable again. It had been quite a deluge. Then… I knew I had to see Dr. Kissel, and I knew they’d stop me if I went home… at least I’d have had to explain why I wanted to go to Denver, so I just cashed the check and drove off.”

“You had that clipping that said Kissel was at Fairmount U.?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How long had you had it?”

She hesitated. “Months,” she whispered at last, avoiding his eyes.

“And still, it wasn’t until last Saturday that you felt impelled to head for Fairmount to discover what Kissel had to say about you?”

“Oh, please!” she gasped. “Don’t be sarcastic about it, John. Can’t you understand? I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to know. Until Stevens—”

“Yes,” he said.

“—made it impossible for me to go on deceiving myself that I could just forget…”

“Yes,” he said. “Tell me, what about that clipping? How did you get it?”

She looked up abruptly. “That was a funny thing,” she said, quite slowly. “We get Time, but that copy just vanished from the house. I wondered if maybe they hadn’t hidden it from me for some—some medical reason.”

“I see.”

“I just happened to notice the cover on a newsstand and picked it up because I hadn’t seen it around home. And suddenly the name jumped out at me… Why?” she asked. “Why did you ask that?”

He said, “Miss Bethke claims to have made a point of leaving the magazine where you could find it.”

She stared at him; even in the dark he could see the sudden hunted look in her eyes. “But that isn’t true. It simply isn’t true!” she gasped. “Damn it, John Emmett, I’m not crazy! I don’t care if it does sound as if I were trying to claim that everybody is lying except me. And you don’t think so or you wouldn’t have married me, so don’t look at me like that.”

“Take it easy,” he said.

“What are you trying to prove?” she demanded. “Why do you keep pointing out how—how everything seems to…?”

He waited while she fought back the tears. At last he said. “Let’s go back to Saturday again. You left Stevens and had yourself a cry and decided to see Dr. Kissel, is that right?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“What made you think Stevens might be lying?”

She said, shocked, “Oh, not lying! Mistaken. I’m sure he believed what he was saying.”

“But you think he might have been wrong? What makes you think Dr. Kissel is going to say anything different?”

She did not look at him. After a long pause, she whispered, “I have to say that, don’t I? I have to think that.”

“Do you know that your father claims to have proof you betrayed them?”

He heard the sharp hissing intake of her breath. Then she had struck him across the face with what must have been just about all the strength she could muster; he felt the blow drive tears into his eyes.

“… always…!” she gasped “… to shock me, hurt me…!”

He rubbed his stinging cheek without answering. He found that he was glad of the pain; it was as if it paid off a debt he had owed her since that afternoon when he had struck her. The thought was irrelevant and he put it aside. He saw her eyes waver, and the anger go out of them. “Proof?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“I thought… they didn’t even guess…”

Emmett did not say anything. The girl beside him put both hands to her mouth in a curious abrupt gesture; she was staring at him with an expression he did not try to understand. Then he saw that her shoulders were shaking. She was laughing. She bent over, hiding her face from him, shaken by the silent, frightening laughter. He heard the coyote howling far away. The distant sound of life seemed to make the place where they were more deserted and lonely. When he spoke, telling her to snap out of it, his voice sounded helpless and scared. He kneeled beside her and lifted her and held her. After a long time he felt her bring herself under control with an effort that left her exhausted.

“… sorry…!” she breathed weakly, “… couldn’t help…”

“What was so damn funny?” His mouth was dry.

“… just seemed… trying so hard… years… to keep it secret… and they’ve known all the time… She swallowed with difficulty. “… handkerchief?”

He pressed his into her hand, and found himself, without thinking, stroking the disheveled light hair back from her temple; and suddenly she had raised her head to look at him.

“Don’t do that.”

“Sorry.”

He let his hand fall. He would have released her, had there been any way of doing it without making a point of it. He could feel himself flushing.

She whispered, “If… you want to leave g-guns around to see if I’m going to shoot you, and spring information on me like that to see… to study my reactions…” She drew a long ragged breath. “I mean, until you make up your mind about me, you haven’t any right to kiss me as you did this morning, or touch me as you did just now. As if you liked me. That’s dirty.”

He did not say anything. He looked past her at the moon setting toward the distant low black rim of the mountains to the west. He thought it must be well past midnight. The buttes looked cold and bleak and hostile in the shimmering semidarkness. He had the sudden thought that probably things would have looked pretty much the same had they been on the moon watching the earth set. Then he recalled that the same side of the moon always faced the earth, so that, from the moon, the earth should never set. He tried to visualize the problem, to see if this were correct, but it got all mixed up inside his head.

“I’m sorry,” Ann’s voice said. “I didn’t mean to be nasty.”

He could see the pattern of her shirt in the moonlight, and the shape of her face, but he could not make out her expression. There was no resistance when he kissed her, nor was there at first any response, and he saw her eyes open, studying him gravely; then she made a small sound like a sob and came to him, her mouth to his mouth, her body to his body, her hands holding him. Then she had turned sharply away.

“You mustn’t ever hit me again,” she breathed. “It was like dying.”

He could feel his heart beating. He heard the coyote’s voice in the distance, answered closer. It occurred to him that this was a strange place to be making love; then he thought that probably one place was as good as another. He watched her averted face, waiting for her to look at him again.

chapter TWENTY-TWO

He shaved from a cup of water, crouching a little to use his reflection in the side window of the convertible as a guide. It was still just barely morning. There was a heavy dawn mist that looked as if it might very well become rain later on; you could not feel the sun behind it. The plains were flat and gray, the buttes colorless in the weak directionless light. He knew when she came around the car and when she stopped behind him. He found himself thinking that if she were to come quite silently into a perfectly dark room where he was waiting, he would know when she was near him. Then he thought that this was really getting pretty corny.

“I thought you were going to change into your suit,” he said, glancing at her to find her still in the checkered wool shirt and the brown gabardine slacks that somehow, although creased and dusty, managed to retain a hint of the stiff sized look of newness.

“It had got too wrinkled in the suitcase,” she said. “And I don’t seem to have a whole stocking to my name.”

He turned back to his shaving. He could see her in the window, but she would not meet his eyes, even in the glass. “We’ll stop at the first town we come to,” he said.

She said without expression, “It doesn’t really matter, unless you think I look too disreputable. After all, I looked worse than this the last time he saw me. He might not recognize me all dressed up.”

He was startled to realize that he had almost forgotten that within a few hours she would be meeting the man she had started out to see almost a week ago.

The rain caught them on the road, but lasted less than ten minutes. Half an hour later there was no indication that it had rained at all. By the time they reached the town of Numa, a little early, the sun was as hot as it had been the previous day. Emmett drove slowly through the town until he saw the sign: NUMA BIDS YOU GOOD-BYE—COME AGAIN, and beyond it the graded gravel highways leading out across the plain.

A Chevrolet sedan painted olive-green with army numbers in black was waiting by the sign. The front door was open and a corporal sat behind the wheel. A sergeant and a lieutenant squatted in the shade of the car. They looked as if they had been talking some time earlier, but had run out of conversation and were merely waiting to finish their cigarettes before rising. When Emmett stopped the convertible they both pitched their butts away and stood up, the sergeant taking a hitch to the belt that held his service automatic. The officer came back along his car to the convertible. His silver bars were bright in the sunlight. He had sweated through his shirt under the armpits.

He glanced at the license number of the Mercury as he passed it, came to the door, introduced himself, and got in beside Ann when she moved over to make room for him. He told Emmett to keep straight on the way he was heading. As they gathered speed again, Emmett could see the army sedan in the rear-view mirror, following. After some miles, he was told to turn left on a narrow but well-paved asphalt road. There was a mesa purple in the distance, but no sign of anything living and no markers along the road until they came to a neat placard: U.S. ARMY—NO THOROUGHFARE.

They could see the village of steel huts for a long time before they reached it. At the gate a sentry stopped them, and a big man came out to meet them. The lieutenant got out and Kirkpatrick got in. The difference in the amount of room occupied by the two men was noticeable. The federal man had the hot rumpled look of any large man in a palm beach suit after the first hour of a warm day; his brown face was shiny. He told Emmett to drive ahead; obeying, Emmett saw in the mirror the army car pick up the officer and fall in behind.

“Your father’s already here, Miss Nicholson,” Kirkpatrick said.

“Yes?” Ann did not look at him, or correct him as to her name or title. She was watching the huts, like great halfsections of corrugated drainpipe laid in geometrical patterns in the dust, slide past the windows. Squeezed between the two men, she had to lean forward a little to look to the sides.

Kirkpatrick said, a little pointedly, “The secret work is handled in another area. This section is just for routine clerical and filing, and quarters for the army personnel.”

“I see.” Ann smiled and sat back. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to look.”

“It’s perfectly all right, Miss Nicholson. I was just explaining why there was nothing to see.” The big man cleared his throat. “My name is Kirkpatrick. Mr. Emmett has probably told you about me.” Ann turned the green lenses of her sunglasses toward him, but did not speak. Kirkpatrick went on, “I’m with the FBI. We’ve got the job of protecting Dr. Reinhard Kissel, the man you want to see; cooperating with the army, of course. I don’t know if Emmett has explained, but Dr. Kissel saw some things in a Nazi laboratory during the war that our scientists are very interested in having him reconstruct for them. Certain other parties seem to be just as interested in keeping him from finishing the job…”

Ann hesitated. “I shouldn’t think they’d have much chance, in here,” she said.

“Dr. Kissel is a rather independent old man. He says that he spent enough of his life behind barbed wire already that he sees no reason for living behind it now. He refuses to take up quarters on the project, it reminds him of a concentration camp, he says.”

Ann said softly, “I can sympathize with his point of view.”

“Turn right at the next corner, Mr. Emmett,” the big man said. “Miss Nicholson, I’m just telling you all this to warn you; if anything happens, get down on the floor and crawl behind some furniture. We’ve taken all the precautions we can, and I don’t expect any trouble. Nevertheless, this interview wasn’t my idea; and with all due respect to you and your father—” He glanced past her. “—and to Mr. Emmett, whom I understand to be the moving spirit behind the occasion, I still don’t like it. I’ve been forced into it against my better judgment, Miss Nicholson, and I want to make my position very clear: Beside Dr. Kissel’s safety, your life, or that of your father or doctor or nurse, or of Mr. Emmett here, doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.” He paused, and went on, “If it’s necessary to start shooting, I’ll shoot. It’s up to you to get out of the way… That goes for you, too,” he said curtly to Emmett. “This building here. Number twenty-seven.”

Between the metal buildings the sunlight seemed to be focused as if by mirrors, and the heat gave an air of shimmering unreality to the semicircular fronts of the quonset huts lining the street. Emmett got out of the car on his side, and Ann slid behind the wheel to stand beside him. He glanced at her; she was tugging down her halter. He could not see her expression for the dark glasses. He wished he would not be so acutely aware, every time he looked at her, of being in love with her. He hoped it did not show. Kirkpatrick came around the car and led them inside.

Some of the girls typing in the outer office looked up as they passed through, but most of them paid no attention; nevertheless Emmett was suddenly aware that his sports shirt was soiled and his slacks needed pressing, and that Ann, in slacks and halter, looked no more respectable. It had not seemed to matter, driving, but now it made him uneasy and uncomfortable.

Kirkpatrick ushered them through a brief corridor and an open door into a conference room mainly occupied by a large wooden table surrounded by chairs. Six evenly spaced microphones, hanging from the ceiling, formed a straight line down the center of the long table, about two feet above it. There was a portable blackboard, on castors, pushed back against the far wall, and more chairs lined the long walls of the room. Dr. Kaufman, Helene Bethke, and Ann’s father were waiting to the right of the door. They looked dwarfed and unimportant occupying only three chairs out of thirty in the room. The older man rose at once as his daughter came in with Emmett. Kirkpatrick pressed a catch and let the door sigh closed behind them, taking up his station against it, as if to keep them from escaping.

As her father came forward, Ann took off her sunglasses, folded them carefully, and then seemed baffled by the fact that there was no pocket in her scanty halter. She faced Mr. Nicholson with the glasses in her hand.

“Hello, Sister,” Mr. Nicholson said. He looked her over and smiled. “Where did you get those pants?”

She explained her appearance carefully. “We’ve been camping out. On the desert.”

Emmett felt the older man’s glance touch him, and he felt himself flush a little. It seemed like a stupid and immature reaction, but he could not help it. Mr. Nicholson did not seem to have noticed it.

“We were worried about you, Sister,” he said gravely to Ann. “What made you run off like that? You don’t really think any of us would hurt you, do you?”

Ann was not looking at him any longer. She hesitated, watching Dr. Kaufman come forward, and Emmett, beside her, could sense her sudden panic.

“No,” she whispered. “No, of course I don’t.”

Dr. Kaufman’s stocky figure was neat in tan gabardine; his thick dark hair was brushed back, smooth and glossy, from his forehead. He was the only person in the room who did not seem to be perspiring. Ann watched him approach, and the glasses in her hand seemed to bother her. She shifted them from one hand to the other, unable to find a natural way to hold them. Emmett wanted to reach out and take them from her, but he could not bring himself to call attention to her nervousness. It reminded him startlingly, however, that she was facing a man she knew to have tried to kill her.

Her father said, “Emmett asked me over the phone to find out where Doc was last Sunday night when you—” He avoided the word “suicide.” “—when you were alone in the hotel in Boyne. I just got a report from the office this morning; Plaice had called in that he checked Doc’s story completely.” Mr. Nicholson looked at Emmett. “You don’t have to take my word for it, young man. He’ll be meeting us in Santa Fe after we’re through here. You can ask him.” He turned back to his daughter. “You see, Sister? Dr. Kaufman didn’t leave Denver that night until well after midnight, long after Emmett had already found you unconscious.”

Ann’s face was expressionless. She held the sunglasses firmly between both hands. “I see,” she murmured, and faced the doctor. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly.

Dr. Kaufman smiled. “That’s quite all right, Ann,” he said cheerfully. “We’re used to it. I’ve had patients accuse me of worse than trying to kill them. It’s readily explained; you felt that my probing and questioning had driven you to the point of taking your own life. You blamed me for your act; it was a simple matter for your mind to clear you of all guilt by transferring it to me.”

“Yes,” Ann said. “Of course.”

Dr. Kaufman laughed. “You don’t believe a word of it, naturally. Would you rather I left the room?”

She hesitated again, then, without speaking, shook her head. Dr. Kaufman reached out and gently disengaged the sunglasses from her fingers. Then he led her to one of the chairs at the side of the room. He gave the glasses to Helene Bethke; and then passed his hand rapidly in front of the eyes of the girl in the chair; then, with his hand on her forehead, drew back first one eyelid and then the other. The nurse passed him a thermometer.

Kirkpatrick cleared his throat, suddenly drawing the attention of everyone in the room to the presence of the big man they had forgotten, still standing by the door.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Dr. Kissel is in his laboratory, over in the restricted area. I’ll bring him around.”

As he pulled the door open, Dr. Kaufman said, “Just a minute, please,” and turned to the seated girl. “Ann,” he said.

Ann looked up at him. With the thermometer in her mouth she looked, Emmett thought, like a frightened little girl sucking a lollipop, perhaps in a police station where she had been taken after being found, lost, on the street.

“Ann, do you want to see Reinhard Kissel?” the psychiatrist asked. “Are you ready to see him? You don’t have to until you’re ready, you know.”

Emmett saw Ann’s eyes find him briefly and then look away; there was something almost furtive in the quick glances. He was suddenly afraid to hear what her answer was going to be. Then Kirkpatrick laughed, swinging them around to look at him again.

“Baloney,” the big man said. “I’ve been beat over the head with one senator and three congressmen to make me arrange this; now you’re going to hear what the old man’s got to say whether you like it or not.” The door hissed closed behind him.

There was a small tinkling sound of breaking glass. Ann stood up, slowly and carefully crushing into powder the stem of the thermometer she had spit out on the floor. She walked to the end of the room, nobody moving, and stood staring at the blackboard. Someone had been playing games with chalk on the board; the crosses had won five straight, Emmett noticed, over the noughts; one game was incomplete. Ann’s shoulders were shaking. After a while, Emmett realized that she was laughing. He watched her apprehensively, remembering her hysterical laughter of the night before. When the doctor and nurse started after her, he said angrily:

“Goddamn it, leave her alone!”

They stopped and, after a pause, turned back; Helene Bethke idly kicking the smashed remnants of the thermometer out of sight beneath the chairs. Ann had picked up a piece of chalk and finished the incomplete game, the crosses winning again. Emmett walked slowly down the long room to stand beside her. She drew another grid on the board and marked a nought in the center box. He picked up a piece of chalk and put a cross in the corner.

“Take it easy,” he said without looking at her.

“Don’t let him touch me again. Or her either.” She choked on a reminiscent giggle. “But wasn’t he funny when that man said baloney? Did you see his face?” The giggle came back. She could not seem to stop it.

Emmett put his hand on her wrist and drove his fingers cruelly into her flesh. He felt her fight back the incipient hysteria; then her breath came easily again and she tugged at his hand. He released her.

“Thanks,” she gasped. “Now go away.”

He glanced at her. She would not look at him. She had not looked at him directly all day.

“Go away,” she breathed. Her voice shrilled on the edge of uncontrol. “I don’t want you here. Go away!”

He wanted to take her in his arms, but he sensed that she would either strike him or burst into tears if he touched her again. He put the chalk back into the trough and walked back to Mr. Nicholson. You could go to heaven with company, he thought, but apparently you had to go to hell alone.

Mr. Nicholson said, “If I’d known what this would involve, Emmett, I’d have told you to go to hell. What does that G-man think we’re going to do, anyway? Blow the place up and murder his pet scientist?”

The nurse said, “Mr. Nicholson was carrying a cigarette case that set off some kind of alarm on the door. Some kind of a cell, they said. Really, you never heard such a noise. And then a soldier searched him…”

“Exactly who is this man Kissel, anyway?” Dr. Kaufman asked. “I understood him to be just another refugee scientist.” Emmett moved his shoulders in a shrug meant to indicate that he did not know, or knew but did not care to tell, however they wanted to interpret it. He was aware that Ann had turned to face the room before he sensed the door opening behind him, and looked around.

The man who came in was quite tall in spite of his stooped posture; he had thick black hair streaked with white. He wore bifocal glasses without rims set on a rather large nose that had been broken and thickened in the bridge, like the nose of a boxer. He wore a dirty brown laboratory coat that reached below his knees; and he walked with the aid of a heavy cane with a crook handle, resting against it for a moment as he came in, locating the girl at the other end of the room, and considering her and the path he would have to take to reach her; then starting forward again. Something about the way he wielded the cane hinted at swordsmanship.

Kirkpatrick, who had come in behind him, closed the door and stood free of it. The big man’s eyes had a curiously unfocused look, as if he were watching everything in the room at once. His hands hung clear at his sides, and his feet were a little apart. The old man walked deliberately away from him, limping, the cane punctuating each alternate step. Waiting, Ann slowly tilted her head back as he approached, looking up at him, tall above her, as he stopped in front of her.

Dr. Kissel said harshly, “I never expected to see you again, Frau Monteux.” The German title and the French name took them back to another place and time.

Her lips barely moved. “No.”

“Five years, is it not?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“And you do not remember?”

She shook her head.

He said, “Some things it is better to forget, eh? Sometimes I wish I, too, could forget.” The harsh voice did not quite slip into sarcasm, but the hint was there.

Ann was silent. Emmett, watching her, was aware of the sound of typing from the outer office. It seemed loud and insistent. There was another sound, like the whining of an electric clock. He glanced at the corner from which it seemed to come and saw the machine there, half hidden behind the chairs, and understood why this room had been selected for the interview; the microphones above the table were recording.

“I understand that you remember our meeting in the corridor outside my cell in the Gestapo prison in Paris,” the old man said. “You have remembered my name. But that is all?”

Ann’s lips formed the word, yes.

“But you have no idea why our guards went through the elaborate formality of introducing two scarecrows whom they never expected to meet each other again, Frau Monteux? You were really not aware at the time that they were throwing your name, and your husband’s record with the resistance, in my face? that they were taunting me with the fact that a woman, a girl, had more courage than I? I had just agreed to work for them.”

Ann was silent, motionless.

The old man went on, “I spent a great deal of the remainder of the war, Frau Monteux, recalling the way your eyes had stared at me, I thought with contempt. Perhaps you were the biggest factor in driving me to make the rather stupid attempt at sabotage and flight that led them to send me to Glaubnitz. It is strange how one’s own conscience can… And all the time you did not know and did not remember!”

He started to turn, using the cane as a pivot.

“And I?”

He paused, glancing at her. “There is nothing for you to look back on with anything but pride,” he said bitterly.

“You’re sure? How can you be sure?”

“We had adjoining cells, you remember.”

“But… you’re sure?” she breathed.

“Quite sure.” He cleared his throat and said reluctantly, “I… took steps to find out. It would have made me, frankly, feel better about my own weakness to know that you had capitulated. But you did not speak in the prison. You did not speak in the hospital to which you were taken, very ill, a few days following our meeting. I could not trace you further, but I understand you were sent to one of the eastern camps. What happened there I do not know; but by that time, by using your name, the Gestapo had already tricked the information out of certain of your associates, so it does not really matter.”

“They… used my name?”

“One of their standard practices,” the old man said. “To show one prisoner what purports to be a transcript of another prisoner’s testimony. I have no doubt the American police use it occasionally.”

“I see,” Ann whispered. “Thank you.”

Dr. Kissel glanced at her again. After a moment he took a fresh grip on his cane and strode, limping, back to Kirkpatrick, who opened the door for him and let it close again behind him; but they could hear the sound of the cane receding through the corridor and outer office. Then it was gone. Kirkpatrick straightened up, as if he had been listening intently and had heard something reassuring. He walked slowly to the machine in the corner, threw a switch; and the faint whirring stopped. He turned to face Ann.

“Congratulations, Miss Nicholson,” he said. “I’ll have a copy of Dr. Kissel’s statement sent to the Chicago police. It will at least give them something to think about.”

Ann reached behind her to steady herself; then her shoulders streaked the chalk marks on the blackboard, as she crumpled to the floor.

chapter TWENTY-THREE

Mr. Nicholson walked down the length of the room with his hands deep in the pockets of the jacket of his gray seersucker suit, drawing the garment tight across his buttocks. “I tell you, Emmett, the evidence seemed conclusive. I find it hard to blame myself…” His voice trailed off. He reached the streaked blackboard and swung around and came back toward where Emmett sat on the big table dangling his feet aimlessly, watching. Mr. Nicholson’s face looked redder against the gray of his hair and suit. The room seemed to fit him, Emmett thought; you could tell that he was a man at home in conference rooms. “Of course, I never really believed my daughter could have…”

Emmett listened with a flat sense of anticlimax. Everything had been much easier than he had anticipated. His fears of the day before seemed in retrospect melodramatic and rather silly; no one had tried to trap them or hurt them. It was hard to remember that a man had been murdered in Chicago. The nightmare quality of the situation had been dissolved, as if by daylight; and it was hard to keep from wondering if the whole thing had not existed only in the tortured imagination of a girl obsessed with the question of an older guilt, now answered.

No one had made a betraying dash for the nearest window, or been shot down by Kirkpatrick in the act of drawing a gun. It seemed to Emmett that the federal man must also have a flat and foolish taste in his mouth, after all his precautions. The only flaw in the entire performance had been that the girl who had been exonerated, instead of being radiantly happy, had fainted—which was reasonable after the strain she had undergone. Kirkpatrick, the closest, reaching her first, had picked her up and carried her out of the room. Dr. Kaufman and the nurse had followed, leaving Emmett and Mr. Nicholson to wait.

Mr. Nicholson paused in front of Emmett. “I can’t understand it. I tell you, I checked every possibility. Except this one.”

Emmett said, “Doesn’t what Kissel said explain what happened, sir? The Nazis arranged for her to seem guilty; maybe they even made a deal with the person who actually squealed to protect him by letting the records read that way. When your investigators got to work, they found the phony records, and there you are. Personally, I’d rather take the word of one eyewitness than any number of old Gestapo dossiers and affidavits.”

The older man frowned at him, then turned away again and strode nervously down the room. “I was so sure. I thought I had done everything I could. I saw no valid reason for risking having our shame made public by investigating further. I thought I knew exactly what Kissel would say. If I’d only acted when I first heard about him—!”

He made a helpless gesture with his hand, indicating vain regret. Emmett could not quite reach the source of the older man’s emotion; it seemed to him that he was missing something, but he could not grasp it.

He asked, “What are your plans for her now, Mr. Nicholson?”

Ann’s father glanced around, his face hardening, as if anticipating conflict. “I think that after her experiences a rest in a quiet sanatorium still wouldn’t do her any harm. I’ll have to discuss it with Dr. Kaufman, of course.”

Emmett said, “No.”

Mr. Nicholson turned to face him. “Just out of curiosity, young man, not that it makes a particle of difference, but why do you say that?”

Emmett said, “She doesn’t need a sanatorium.”

“That’s hardly a matter for you or me to decide, Emmett.”

“Listen,” Emmett said, “that girl’s as healthy as I am. What people seem to forget about her is she was tough enough to live through an experience that killed a majority of people exposed to it. Now you want to wrap her in cottonwool for the rest of her life and encourage her to brood about how sorry she is for herself. Nuts to that.” He grimaced. “Look at the way she’s managed to pull one out of the hat every time she’s needed it, so far. Stevens must have given her a terrific shock, but she recovered and headed west to check on what he’d told her; and when I met her a few hours later she was acting like a nice normal person. That morning in Boyne after she is supposed to have tried to kill herself she was scared stiff, yet she hung on long enough to escape from you and the doctor; she remembered an address I’d only mentioned once, and had enough left to put on a good act for the lady running the place. She didn’t let herself come apart until she was as safe as she could make herself. And when we went out of there she still had the shakes, but you should have seen her pull herself together when she had to. The only trouble with Ann, Mr. Nicholson,” he said, “is that everybody’s been encouraging her to have hysterics at the drop of a hat. Sure she’s forgotten three months of her life; sure she’s been worrying about it, but Kissel’s settled that. She can forget it. Or remember it, if she wants to. She’s all set to go now, and you want to stick her in an asylum and let her go back to being a helpless invalid! Nuts to that, Mr. Nicholson.”

Mr. Nicholson said dryly, “You rather fancy yourself as an amateur psychologist, don’t you, young man?”

Emmett ignored him. “As for Kaufman and the blonde menace, she hates them and is scared of them. Whether she’s justified or not,” he said, making a concession to the quick challenge in the older man’s face, “I see no reason why she should have to have a doctor who makes her skin crawl.”

Mr. Nicholson said, “You seem to have my daughter’s life all arranged for her.”

Emmett glanced at him, hesitated, and said, “I ought to. I married her yesterday.”

He watched the older man start, begin to speak, catch himself and turn away. Mr. Nicholson walked to the blackboard before speaking.

“I see.”

Emmett did not say anything. Mr. Nicholson turned.

“I could probably have it annulled.”

Emmett remained silent.

“Do you want money?”

“No,” Emmett said.

“Then why—?”

Emmett said, “Mainly because I was afraid you’d try to pull a fast one on this interview, Mr. Nicholson. I figured if I was married to her I had something to deal with.”

Mr. Nicholson smiled thinly. “You’re a smart young man, Emmett. I did consider something like that. However, I would have had to ask Mr. Kirkpatrick to cooperate, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to confessing that I was so certain my daughter was guilty of treason that I didn’t even think it worth while to let her… He cleared his throat. “Then you’re not in love with her?”

Emmett said, “That hasn’t got much to do with the situation, has it?” He knew that his voice had changed a little, and was annoyed at himself. “The fact is that I have a legal right to a voice in her affairs; and if I should walk out that door now, for instance, and find that she’d been slipped away and stuck into an institution somewhere, I’d raise a stink from here to the coast. I wouldn’t care who it made trouble for. She’s my wife and she’s not going to be put away for anybody’s convenience.”

The door opened, letting in the clatter of typewriters from the outer office. Emmett stopped talking abruptly, surprised and somewhat embarrassed by his own vehemence. Helene Bethke waited politely in the doorway, as if apologizing for the interruption and waiting for him to finish.

“Mr. Nicholson,” she said at last. “We’re ready to leave now, Mr. Nicholson.”

Ann’s father looked up. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, yes. Just a momentary reaction from strain, very natural. She’s waiting for you in the car, Mr. Nicholson.” She held the door for him, and waited, as the older man went on, for Emmett to pass her, before letting it close again. She walked through the office beside Emmett. He glanced at her; today, for the first time since he had met her almost a week ago, she was wearing a uniform, her body armored in starched white cotton, her legs and feet institutionalized by white stockings and flat white shoes. The shining yellow-brown hair was pulled into a tight knot and partially covered by a prim nurse’s cap. She looked a little sturdy and almost plain; and the heat of the day had already attacked the crispness of her uniform, but he could remember her otherwise, and looked away quickly before she could catch him watching her. He held the outer door for her. “So you married her?”

Emmett glanced at her again. “Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

He did not say anything.

“Why are you afraid of me, Emmett?” the blonde girl asked.

“Shouldn’t I be?” he asked. “After that chloral cocktail you tried to feed me in Denver?”

“It wouldn’t have hurt you,” she said negligently. “All we wanted was to learn where she was.”

Her eyes, watching him, were very blue and hard and unfeminine, and it seemed to him suddenly that nothing was settled, nothing solved.

He asked, “Aren’t you going to try to convince me that I imagined it?”

Helene Bethke said quietly, “Don’t be clever, Emmett. You don’t know as much as you think you do. You’re not as smart as you think you are. You’ve been luckier than you deserve, and so has she. Be thankful for what you’ve got.” She patted his cheek lightly. “Don’t try for the jackpot, little boy. Leave it alone, now.”

She turned and walked away through the blinding sunshine toward where Dr. Kaufman and Kirkpatrick were talking politely to Mr. Nicholson beside his car, a long Buick.

Emmett followed her slowly, but stopped as he came abreast of Ann’s car, opened the door, and retrieved the sunglasses he had hung on the crossarm of the steering wheel. On a sudden impulse he reached over and opened the glove compartment on the far side, the car parked left side to the curb. The snub-nosed revolver he had taken from the man who had been following them two nights before—if the man had been following them—slid out into his hand. The weapon, quite hot from the closed compartment, was a reminder that somewhere, presumably in a hospital, an unexplained individual named Henry McElroy was waiting for a shoulder to heal. Perhaps the police were already on the trail of the fawn-colored convertible with the Illinois plates; and if not, Emmett asked himself, why not? Over a day had passed. They had not been stopped along the road. It almost seemed as if the man must be shielding those who had attacked him. But why?

He slipped the gun into his right hand slacks pocket, backed out of the car, and straightened up to put on the dark glasses; then closed the door of the convertible. As he walked toward the waiting group, he could feel the weight and bulk of the revolver in his pocket, but he did not dare to look down at himself. He felt awkward and conspicuous, as if he had lost a button from his trousers.

He was stopped by Kirkpatrick’s outstretched hand. “I understand congratulations are in order, Mr. Emmett.” Emmett shook the big hand and made some response. Kirkpatrick clapped him on the shoulder. “Take good care of her. The little girl’s had a tough time, but it’s all fixed now, eh?” The big man turned to Mr. Nicholson. “No hard feelings, sir? You understand, I’ve got a pretty big responsibility. Kissel’s damned important to us. But I’m glad to’ve been able to help you out, even if you did have to twist my arm to make me like it.”

Mr. Nicholson laughed. “Well, it’s the first time I’ve been treated like a potential desperado, but I can see your point.” He surveyed the group. “Mr. Kirkpatrick has offered to drive the convertible down to Santa Fe for us, so we don’t have to split up.” He gestured to the open rear door of the Buick. “Hop in back, Emmett. Want to talk to you. Doc, you can drive, can’t you?”

Settling himself in the back seat of the big car, Emmett glanced at Ann, beside him, glad that she was on his left where she could not feel the gun. She did not quite look at him as she answered his greeting; and the warmly sentimental feeling that had grown inside him, talking about her during her absence, died abruptly.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I’m all right,” she said. “It was silly of me to faint.” Her words did not mean anything, he saw, even to her. She was only making a conventional sound rather than leave his question hanging unanswered between them; and he could see that she hoped he would not force her to make the effort again. Her face was rather pale but her mouth had been freshly made up with the clear red lipstick she used; her hair had been recently combed. The marks of the comb showed where the hair was damp at the temples. Her eyes looked straight ahead of her, avoiding him. He wished he could get her alone and talk to her.

As the Buick slid smoothly from the curb, Emmett caught a glimpse of Kirkpatrick’s sweating brown face; the big man’s hand raised in unenthusiastic farewell, and he remembered that he had wanted a long talk with the federal man who must have the answers to a number of questions that needed asking. He recalled Kirkpatrick’s big hand crushing his fingers, patting his shoulder, the big man’s voice saying: Take good care of her, she’s had a tough time. He wondered if it could have been a warning. He shifted so that the gun in his pocket would not gouge his thigh, and tried to see, past the neat, blonde, capped head of the nurse in the front seat, where Dr. Kaufman was taking them. He wondered what it would feel like to shoot somebody, particularly a woman.

Mr. Nicholson, in the corner of the rear seat beyond Aim, leaned forward to look at him.

“Well, what are your plans now, John?”

The older man’s use of his given name startled him, but he was more shocked at his realization that he had no plans. Everything had led to Dr. Kissel, and everything was to have ended tidily with Dr. Kissel.

“I haven’t thought that far head, sir,” he said.

“Let’s see, you’ve got a job with Southwest Petroleum, right?”

Emmett nodded. “Starting the first.”

The older man chuckled. “We’ve really given you quite a vacation, haven’t we, young man? Do you mind if I ask how much Southwest is paying you?”

Emmett told him.

He had a momentary fear that Mr. Nicholson was going to ridicule the salary, compare it, perhaps, with Ann’s monthly allowance, but the older man went on without comment:

“Do you know any metallurgy?”

“Not much,” Emmett said.

“How about grease analysis? That’s more in your line, isn’t it?”

“I can get along.”

“Lubricating oils?”

“That’s my field,” Emmett said.

Mr. Nicholson rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully. “We’re associated with Federal Refining. Their South American branch needs a chemist. Good money. Quarters furnished. After two years, vacation with pay in the States for you and—” he glanced at Ann, “—and your family, with transportation paid by the company.” He laughed. “The reason I know about it is, I was going to offer it to you anyway, to get rid of you. But it’s a real job, John. You’ll be in charge of the lab down there; it won’t be just a matter of their putting my son-in-law on the payroll, don’t worry about that.”

They were outside the gate now, the doctor guiding the big sedan across the level, endless plain at an even sixty-five. Emmett caught a glimpse of the gold-rimmed glasses in the rear-view mirror; the eyes behind the glasses studying him briefly. He remembered that Ann had claimed that this man had tried to kill her, and at the time he had believed her. He still believed her, he found, but as you believe something to think about, not to talk about it; as you might know that a man was a crook, and refrain from trusting him with your money, without feeling assured enough to announce the fact in public. He was going to get rid of Dr. Kaufman, as a doctor for Ann, and that was the extent of his intentions. Too much had happened for him to try to understand it all. But he suddenly did not like the feeling of being completely at the mercy of the small, neatly manicured hands on the steering wheel.

He said to Mr. Nicholson, “I’d have to talk it over with Ann.”

Mr. Nicholson said, “I can have you kids on a plane in two hours.”

Emmett hesitated. He did not want to ask the question, but it came anyway, “What’s the rush, sir?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Emmett,” Mr. Nicholson said, forgetting the more familiar form of address he had been using. “Remember what I told you over the telephone yesterday. Just because somebody’s just told her she’s a heroine doesn’t change anything, does it? She didn’t know she was a heroine last Saturday when this man Stevens accused her of betraying those people.” He cleared his throat. “Hell, it’s partly my fault, but what does that help? If I’d checked with Kissel earlier she could have laughed in Stevens’ face when he told her that story; but what the hell difference is it going to make to a jury that she killed him for a mistake? He’s dead, isn’t he? She may have a trick memory, John, but my memory’s perfect, and I heard her blubbering into a telephone asking daddy please to help her, she’d just murdered a man. Kissel can’t say anything to change that!”

Emmett was aware that the blonde girl in the seat in front of him had moved, slowly raising her hand to tuck back a strand of shining hair blown free by the rush of air through the open window beside her. He looked away from her.

He heard his own voice saying, “One hysterical woman’s voice probably sounds pretty much like another, over the phone, Mr. Nicholson.” Not until he had said it, did the thought become clear in his mind.

Ann’s father’s face was contemptuous. “Don’t try to tell me I wouldn’t know my own daughter’s—!”

Helene Bethke turned. “I warned you against being too clever, Emmett,” she said sharply. “And you’re only guessing.”

He said, a little breathlessly, “Yes, but I remember now that when you picked me up in the lobby of my hotel in Denver a couple of days ago you startled me by sounding just like Ann. At the time I was rather preoccupied, and I decided it was just my imagination. But it wasn’t, was it, Miss Bethke. You were looking for Ann. You wanted to know if I were interested enough in her to perhaps know where she was; if I’d jump at hearing her voice. I did; after all she was supposed to be safely tucked away in Young’s Canyon Ranch. But it’s interesting that you can do it, isn’t it? Imitate her, I mean. But you’re kind of a natural mimic, aren’t you? I remember, when we were talking that day, you got sarcastic and repeated back a sentence I had said, taking off my voice and expression perfectly.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” the blonde girl murmured. “It just shows how smart you are. You’re just showing off, Emmett. You’ve got a nice brain and you’ve used it, all the way through, very neatly and logically; you’ve even got a sort of scared ruthlessness, as I’ve got reason to remember…” She smiled briefly. “… and as poor Metschnik learned the same night, when he was following you down from that lodge in the mountains.”

“Metschnik?”

“The character you laid out with a jack handle. You’ll be glad to know his shoulder’s mending nicely. I think he was calling himself Henry McElroy at the time.”

“What was he following us for?” Emmett demanded stupidly.

“Well, darling,” Helene Bethke said, smiling, “If he saw the opportunity, he was going to kill you.”

chapter TWENTY-FOUR

“Fortunately,” Dr. Kaufman said, “that will no longer be necessary.”

The doctor had slowed the car a little, and pitched his voice so that it could be heard clearly in the back seat, above the sound of the wind. Then the sedan rushed on smoothly for a while through the bright noon sunshine; the telephone poles that flickered past the windows cast no shadows. Emmett could feel the drops of perspiration run down beneath his sports shirt. Ann moved a little beside him, and he knew an aching sense of responsibility. Not only had he married her; he had brought her here. He slipped his hand into his pocket, with some difficulty because it was wet, and found the gun. It seemed like a melodramatic gesture, and he could not see himself using the weapon.

Dr. Kaufman said, “I think we can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement.” He kept turning his head, not all the way around, as he spoke, so that his voice came back in snatches, as if he were tossing back to them the leaves from a notebook in which he had it all written down. “You see,” he said, “the gentleman with the cane back there, who has just so kindly testified to Miss Nicholson’s wartime heroism, does not happen to be Reinhard Kissel.”

Then the car ran on for another space of time.

Emmett heard Ann’s voice, breathlessly, “I… thought it was a trick. I thought you and Dad had arranged… to fool…” He felt her small damp hand on his wrist, and realized that she was talking to him. “I knew he wasn’t… but I didn’t want to spoil…”

Emmett listened to them. They were way ahead of him, but he was gradually catching up. Reinhard Kissel was not Reinhard Kissel. It made a wild sort of sense. In the light of it, everything that had happened began to make a screwy sort of sense.

“Please,” Ann whispered. “You have to believe me. I didn’t realize… I thought it was a trick to help me. It all happened so fast…”

He could not understand the pleading, desperate note in her voice. Kissel wasn’t Kissel, and what he had said didn’t count. They were right back where they had started, and it was tough. He would have to figure out something else. It was a big disappointment, all right. Perhaps the real Kissel was dead and they would never know for certain…

He heard Ann’s voice again, with that pleading note in it that said that she was guilty as hell of whatever she was trying to defend herself against; that said that she wanted you to tell her you did not believe something you both knew to be true about her. He glanced at her, and her eyes met his for the first time that day, and looked away.

He whispered, “You knew, and you didn’t…!” He had caught up to them now. He was right alongside them. He was even a little ahead of them, and he took the gun out of his pocket. “Let’s go back,” he said. “Let’s go back and talk it over with Kirkpatrick.”

He saw the gold-rimmed glasses glint in the rear-view mirror, and the neatly manicured hands tighten on the steering wheel as the doctor saw the gun. He saw the color go out of Helene Bethke’s face, watching him over the back of the seat. When she moved, he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck where he had aimed, raised dust from the upholstery and passed through the seat to smack metallically into the dashboard, passing between the doctor and the nurse. The sound of the shot was deafening inside the car. The blonde girl froze in the middle of what she had been about to do or say. The car rolled gently to a halt at the side of the road, and the heat closed in about it like a great glowing blanket Dr. Kaufman disengaged the gears and returned his hands to the steering wheel and did not look around. Presently he shivered a little.

“Your capacity for sudden violence is a little amazing, Mr. Emmett.”

Emmett said, “I surprise myself all to pieces sometimes. Turn the damn car around and let’s get going.”

“Actually,” the doctor said, “it’s a rather common behavior pattern among young men who spent the war as non-combatants. A sort of compensatory mechanism to make up for certain feelings of guilt and inadequacy. You are trying to prove to yourself that if you had been in the service, you would have made as good a soldier as the next man, or perhaps a little better…”

“That’s all right,” Emmett said. “Just start the car. I’ll take the treatment next week.”

He was beginning to feel a little foolish sitting there holding the short-barreled revolver, the walnut grips slippery with sweat; and also a little sick with the knowledge that, if he did not want to become completely ridiculous, he would have to hit one of them with the next shot. As a bluff, he had carried it as far as it would go.

“Tell him to put it away, Miss Nicholson.” The doctor’s voice was the reasonable voice of a man who had spent his life among irrational people. He coughed apologetically and corrected himself. “I’m sorry: Mrs. Emmett. Tell your husband to put the gun away, Mrs. Emmett.”

She stirred, and Emmett glanced at her.

“Please,” she whispered. “Oh, please, John! Don’t you understand…?”

He stared at her incredulously. Her hand was tight on his wrist and her eyes were bright and pleading.

“Don’t you see?” she breathed. “If we go back… tell them…”

Emmett asked softly, “Do you know what that place was?”

She nodded her head. “But—”

“And you still want us to drive away without telling them they’ve got an impostor—?”

Her voice was suddenly clear and firm. “Do you realize what will happen to me, darling, if they learn that what he said doesn’t mean anything? that I still have a perfectly good motive for killing Stevens? Is it that important, John?” Her voice changed. “Please… for me,” she whispered. “Put it away. At least hear what he has to say, darling.”

Mr. Nicholson said, “Probably Ann’s right, Emmett.”

“Yes,” Dr. Kaufman’s voice said, “there’s no need for violence, Emmett. Nothing is going to happen to you. I wouldn’t dare let anything happen to you now; it would call attention to precisely what I want to keep concealed. We are simply going to have a little talk. When we’re through you’ll be at liberty to run to the nearest telephone, call Mr. Kirkpatrick, and tell him that Dr. Kissel is not Dr. Kissel. If you still want to.”

Emmett looked down at the gun in his free hand. The fact of the matter, he reflected bitterly, was that a gun was no good unless you were going to shoot somebody with it. He wasn’t, and they sensed it. He put the thing back into his pocket. The girl in the front seat relaxed visibly and ran the tip of her tongue over her dark lips. Dr. Kaufman wiped perspiration off his glasses with a clean white handkerchief. Emmett was rather shocked at the realization that they had actually been afraid of him.

Dr. Kaufman started the car again. As they picked up speed the blanket of heat seemed to lift a little, allowing them to breathe.

“Well,” the doctor said, “now that the excitement is over, suppose we talk like reasonable human beings. First of all, the question of Dr. Kissel’s business at the Project; this does not need to concern us. It is, shall we say, on a higher operational level. It is enough for us to know that to come here in the guise of Dr. Reinhard Kissel, a well-known—in his own country—scientist, he has allowed himself to be crippled, and disfigured by plastic surgery; that he has given up his family and career in the hope of obtaining for his country a few scraps of knowledge which, if your country’s peaceful pretensions were genuine, should have long ago been available to any laboratory in the world…” He smiled into the windshield as Emmett stirred. “Well, it’s a debatable point, Mr. Emmett. We won’t argue it. The fact of the matter is that the true Dr. Kissel came into our hands, dying, well before the end of the war. He had some useful information about Nazi research; more than that, he had a recognized name; yet, because of his flight from Austria and subsequent experiences, very few people knew him by sight. There was a good chance that a substitute, well briefed and documented, could go undetected for a considerable length of time over here, in the United States; particularly if this substitute were supplied with a wealth of interesting information to use, shall we say, as bait.”

Emmett reached over and removed Ann’s tight fingers from his wrist. He saw her face suddenly become drawn and white, and he regretted his action, because it had been childish. It had not hurt him to let her hold onto him, whatever his opinion of her behavior.

Dr. Kaufman said, “However, in checking all eventualities, those in charge noticed in the true Dr. Kissel’s account a meeting with an American girl who, if still alive, might possibly prove embarrassing. The plan was put into action nevertheless; but as a precaution, Miss Bethke and I were assigned to make sure that Miss Nicholson was not apt to challenge the identity of the spurious Dr. Kissel. Unfortunately, we found that the reverse was true. Miss Nicholson had forgotten her experiences in the Gestapo prison and was very likely, if she ever learned that he was in this country, to ask ‘Dr. Kissel’ to fill in the gap in her memory.” Dr. Kaufman grimaced at the rear-view mirror. “Reporting this, I received one of the comprehensive plans of operation they make a habit of giving you, ordering me: a) to establish Miss Bethke, and myself if possible, in a position close to Miss Nicholson; b) to do my best to prevent Miss Nicholson from attempting to make contact with ‘Dr. Kissel’; c) to lay the groundwork for removing her without embarrassing questions, should she insist on seeing him; and, d) to discredit her testimony in advance as much as possible in case all other efforts should fail.”

“Then you did hide the magazine,” Ann whispered. “The one that told about him coming to teach at Fairmount.”

“Miss Bethke took care of that,” the doctor said.

“And… you tried to kill me in Boyne?”

“Yes,” the doctor said curtly.

Mr. Nicholson drew a deep breath.

“And… the time before, when I was supposed to have tried…?”

“Miss Bethke administered a slight overdose to give you the necessary reputation for attempted self-destruction and to have an excuse for getting me on the case.”

“And… Stevens?” she breathed.

“Mr. Stevens,” the doctor said, “was going to tell the newspapers about your wartime experiences. Unfortunately, while Miss Bethke was reporting this to me, you vanished. Not knowing where you were, or how soon we might regain contact with you, we had to stop Stevens. We could not afford publicity that might reveal the story of your meeting with Dr. Kissel until we could be quite sure of…”

“… of killing me?” Ann whispered.

The doctor nodded, watching the road. “We could not take the chance of having you publicly refuting the newspaper story by citing Dr. Kissel as a witness.”

“So you killed Stevens instead? Because I was not… not available.”

The doctor nodded calmly.

“… and tried to blame it on me, to make Dad believe I…!” Ann’s voice began to rise “… and then in Boyne to make it look as if I’d committed…!”

Emmett put his hand on her knee and squeezed hard. She stopped, took a long breath, and was silent. Everyone waited, as if a little embarrassed by the display of indignation. At last Mr. Nicholson cleared his throat.

“But Plaice, Doctor… Plaice reported that you were in Denver that night.”

Dr. Kaufman said, “A voice called your Denver office, Mr. Nicholson. I’m afraid that you’re a little too trusting where telephones are concerned.”

“And Plaice?—”

“He’s being held, waiting for your word to release him.” There was a definite disadvantage, Emmett decided, in holding a conversation with a man who showed you only the back of his head and the glint of his spectacles in a small rectangular mirror. It was surprising how little you could tell from a voice when you did not have the face to go with it.

“… your word, Mr. Nicholson,” the doctor said smoothly, “that we’ll agree to forget this conversation.” He raised his hand briefly from the steering wheel. “Please, Mr. Nicholson. Let’s just take a look at the present situation. When Metschnik failed to stop the young couple in the mountains, and you informed me that Mr. Emmett was quite set on the interview, I saw that I could no longer hope to prevent it. For one thing, Metschnik was in the hospital, two of my men were keeping an eye on Plaice in case he should break my alibi prematurely; and that hardly left me enough force to cover the roads into Numa. And for another thing, once it was known that Miss Nicholson—pardon me; Mrs. Emmett—was definitely on her way to see Dr. Kissel, nothing could be allowed to happen to her, or somebody might have got the idea that we were averse to letting Dr. Kissel meet an old acquaintance. There was nothing left to me, therefore, but to advise ‘Dr. Kissel’ what to tell the young lady.”

Emmett said, “I thought Dr. Kissel was under guard. How did you get in touch with him?”

The doctor laughed. “Dr. Kissel has developed a convenient aversion to barbed wire fences, Mr. Emmett. And he likes to stroll around the town of Numa in the evening; even the FBI can’t cover a man, particularly one who is supposed to be friendly and has to be treated with respect, every moment of the time. We have contacts.” He cleared his throat and went on, “Well, if I instructed him to tell Miss Nicholson that she had actually betrayed her French comrades, she would be quite sure to call attention to the fact that he was not Dr. Kissel at all. And while it would look as if she were attacking him out of spite and to discredit his testimony; and while her medical history would prevent her accusations from carrying a great deal of weight, nevertheless a certain amount of damage would be done. We could not afford to have Dr. Kissel’s identity questioned, even by an unbalanced young lady with questionable motives. The alternative, of course, was for Dr. Kissel to assure the young lady that her wartime record had been quite heroic; and count on her sense of self-preservation to keep her silent.”

Emmett glanced at Ann, seeing her color and become pale again. Mr. Nicholson stirred. “And what makes you think we’ll—?”

“Please,” the doctor said, “let me finish. As it now stands, your daughter has been absolved from guilt in the wartime matter, am I right? Dr. Kissel’s testimony to that effect is on record. This casts certain doubts on her motives for killing Stevens. In a few days, if we come to an agreement and everything progresses satisfactorily, the Chicago police will discover Stevens’ watch and wallet in the possession of a drunken vagrant who will confess to the murder. Whether this man is finally convicted or not, I rather believe that by the time they are through with him the Chicago police will pretty well have forgotten their early suspicions of Mrs. Emmett.”

Emmett asked, “And if we go back?”

“If we go back, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said, “Dr. Kissel will be forced to testify that he is, indeed, a foreign agent whom you and Mr. Nicholson bribed and blackmailed to give the right testimony; using him for your private ends in the full knowledge, of course, that your failure to report him would allow him to continue to have access to secret information. Of course, your action in finally giving the facts to the authorities may save you from a charge of treason, but I don’t think you’ll have a very pleasant time of it,” the doctor said, “particularly since I will have to confess to the murder of Stevens. I killed him, of course, on Mr. Nicholson’s instructions. Perhaps I was a little over-zealous, but Mr. Nicholson had offered me a considerable sum of money if I could persuade Stevens to keep quiet; and when the man refused, I lost my head and killed him… I will, of course, have to testify that I have been aware throughout the case that Miss Nicholson—Mrs. Emmett—did betray her French husband and his associates to the Nazis, not only through proof shown me by her father, but by the medical evidence…”

Ann shifted position but did not speak. Emmett found that he still had his hand on her knee; he felt her hand cover it, holding it there.

Emmett asked the question, “What medical evidence?”

“The amnesia, of course,” Dr. Kaufman said impatiently, flinging his head around to throw them the answer, then looking back to the road. “And that very interesting and symbolical act of trying to break the mirror in her cell. Has she told you that when, after meeting Dr. Kissel, she was returned to her cell, she turned to the mirror on the door and tried to break it? It happened to be metal. This is the last thing she recalls. Ask yourself, Mr. Emmett, under similar circumstances, what significance a similar act on your part would have.”

“Go on,” Emmett said.

“You come into the cell,” the doctor’s voice said. “You catch sight of yourself in the mirror. You are not looking your best, perhaps, but at this late date, sick and exhausted as you probably are, is your physical appearance going to arouse you to a frenzy? Yet you turn on the mirror and try to smash it… It’s an act of self-loathing, is it not? She could not bear to look at herself. Perhaps she even truly wished to kill herself. Ask yourself why, Mr. Emmett.”

Emmett was silent. The doctor continued: “And the amnesia. Amnesia, Mr. Emmett, is the human mind’s ingenious way of avoiding a memory too dreadful for the patient to live with. But Miss Nicholson could recall every unpleasant detail of her torture, up to a point. There is no physical evidence that anything more terrible happened to her later. What, then, is her mind trying to protect her from knowing, except that she betrayed them?” Dr. Kaufman smiled at the road ahead of him. “I am explaining this at length because officially, of course, I will not know what the true Dr. Kissel had to say on the point. Actually, of course, the real Dr. Kissel stated with heat that Miss Nicholson did betray…”

“We just have your word for that,” Emmett said quickly.

“Exactly. Which is why I went into the medical aspects of the case. And don’t forget the proof in Mr. Nicholson’s hands, which you have so blithely ignored. It doesn’t really matter, Mr. Emmett,” the doctor said cheerfully. “After all, you can’t prove she didn’t do it. There is absolutely no evidence in her favor, and a great mass of evidence against her. The question is, after all, what will a jury believe? What will the newspapers believe? After I admit that Miss Bethke and I have been banking fees and salaries large enough to be classed as polite blackmail, paid to us by Mr. Nicholson for remaining silent, it will be clear enough to the court what he believes. And Miss Nicholson’s two attempts at suicide, which you will have difficulty proving to have been anything else at this late date, will indicate what her private belief is on the subject. Your faith in her courage and integrity will sound very touching in court, Mr. Emmett, assuming that you still feel that way at the time, but it will prove nothing except that she’s a very pretty girl with whom you are in love.” He cleared his throat. “On the other hand, Mr. Emmett, if you remain silent this can all be forgotten.”

He felt Ann’s fingers tighten on his hand. “Please, John,” she whispered. “Please. We’re not at war, are we? What difference can it really make what that man learns? Everyone says it’s just a matter of time before they learn all about it, anyway.”

He felt very sorry for both of them, for being the people they were. There were times when you would like to be somebody altogether different from yourself, who could do the things you somehow could not do.

Dr. Kaufman had stopped the car at a through highway although there was nothing coming in either direction. Now he swung in left into the sun; the sound of the motor rising smoothly to three distinct peaks with the shifting of the gears.

“Think it over,” he said. “You can call Mr. Kirkpatrick from Santa Fe, if that’s the way you want it to be.”

chapter TWENTY-FIVE

When they reached Santa Fe late in the afternoon it was no cooler. They stood in the hotel corridor while the bellboy fumbled with the key; the three of them left alone together by the doctor and nurse, who had got off at a different floor. It was, Emmett decided, an apt phrase: each one of them was alone with the problem he had to solve, yet they were all three bound together by the fact that each one’s solution would affect the others. Then they were inside, and the boy had gone, and the door was closed. There was, after all, a little breeze coming in through the open window; and the dusk of the room seemed somewhat cooler than the harsh sunlight outside.

Ann walked to the bed and sat down. Her face was shiny and almost ugly with strain and weariness. After a while she raised her eyes to the two men standing above her. She did not speak.

“Well,” Mr. Nicholson said. “Well—”

Then he turned and walked to the telephone.

“Dad?” Ann said.

“Damn it,” he said, “I was in the marines, once.”

The phrase and its implications made Emmett furiously angry, with an anger out of all proportions to the immediate cause.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “what the hell has your service record got to do with making a simple telephone call, Mr. Nicholson?”

The gun chafed his thigh. He took it out and looked at it. He felt angry enough to kill somebody, but he could not see what it would accomplish. He tossed the gun clattering on the dresser. Ann was watching him.

“You too?” she asked.

“Don’t be silly,” he said.

“Even if it means—?”

He said, “Oh, go to hell, Ann. You aren’t that dumb.”

Mr. Nicholson picked up the telephone. “I’m sorry, Sister,” he said in a rather businesslike voice. “After all, we can’t let those damn Reds…”

It was, Emmett reflected, a little difficult to realize that you were watching a couple of men being very patriotic. They sounded like a couple of jackasses. Ann got up and walked quickly to the window, and stood there, looking out at the roofs of Santa Fe in the afternoon sunshine. Emmett turned to the dresser and dropped the gun out of sight into the top drawer, wishing, as he touched it, that he had never seen the thing. He thought, You were getting to be pretty hot stuff, kneeing people, throwing drinks at them, and slugging them with jack handles. It’s just as well somebody’s reminded you that you aren’t Humphrey Bogart, or there would have been no living with you.

He said, “Damn it, Mr. Nicholson, do you need a squad of marines to help you work that telephone? Let’s get it over with.”

Ann’s father looked up angrily. “Keep your shirt on, Sonny-boy.”

Somebody rapped curtly at the hall door. Mr. Nicholson replaced the telephone quickly, almost guiltily. Emmett turned towards the door, but Kirkpatrick walked in before he could reach it. The big man looked hot and rumpled and sweaty, yet somehow brown and competent.

“I left your car with the doorman, Mrs. Emmett,” he reported. “He’ll send up the keys.”

“Thank you.” Ann turned at the windows, the light behind her. “My father and… and Mr. Emmett have something to tell you,” she murmured.

“I see.” Kirkpatrick smiled. “Did it go all right?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. Her voice seemed a little distant. Emmett could not see her expression for the heavy shadows on her face; the sun was bright in her hair. “I don’t think they guessed that I’d told you. But you’d better ask—Mr. Emmett or…” She caught herself and brought her voice back from the distant room to which it had retreated. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll lie down for a minute, I’m rather tired. Call me if you need me.”

They watched her walk slowly through the connecting door into the adjoining room, waiting in complete silence even after the door had closed behind her to make sure that she made it all right.

chapter TWENTY-SIX

In the morning he rode up in the elevator and went down the hall and knocked on the door. It was opened for him by Mr. Nicholson, holding a telephone and stretching just about as far as he could reach to turn the knob. The older man waved Emmett inside and went back to his conversation with someone in Chicago who was catching hell. Emmett walked slowly across the room and caught sight of himself in the mirror: a young man neatly and, for that climate, almost formally dressed in a light tropical worsted suit, a green sports shirt, and white shoes. He had debated putting on a white shirt and tie, but had restrained himself. Even so, he decided grimly, he looked as if he only needed a stiff straw hat and a small bouquet of flowers to complete his costume.

Mr. Nicholson said, “I don’t give a damn where you get it, Smith. Just give me a ring when you’ve got it; I’ll be waiting to hear from you.” He put down the telephone heavily. “I swear to God,” he said to Emmett. “If one of the chewing-gum vending machines in the plant went on the bum, they’d call me long distance to ask what to do with it. Well, you look as if you got yourself a night’s sleep, John.”

“Yes,” Emmett said. “I slept all right.”

“That’s more than I did,” Mr. Nicholson said. “I’m glad you got here. I’ve got to go to Washington and have my wrist slapped and I wanted to have a talk with you first. Drink?”

“No, thanks,” Emmett said. He watched the gray-haired man pour himself a stiff one. “What’s the matter in Washington, Mr. Nicholson; if it’s any of my business?”

“I don’t know,” Ann’s father said. “They don’t know. I guess they don’t like a man to make money. Every so often they have to stand up on their hind legs and come out against making money. We’re supposed to be in business for the fun of it, I guess.” He tasted his drink. “Oh, hell, boy, don’t look so goddamn righteous. So I’m a bloated war profiteer. What the hell have you got to brag about? You sat on your can in a laboratory and pulled down your monthly check, didn’t you? At least I fought in one war, young man!”

Even as he felt anger flare in him, Emmett realized that the older man facing him was dead tired, a little drunk, and rather frightened at the idea that he might be held up to contempt as a man who had made a profit on his country’s suffering, even if the final result would be, as he had said, no more than a slap on the wrist. Emmett was silent, watching Mr. Nicholson turn wearily away from him.

“I take that back,” Ann’s father said without looking around. “Pass up that remark, John.”

“Sure.”

“What are you going to do about this marriage?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Mr. Nicholson, “is it or ain’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Emmett said.

Mr. Nicholson turned back to look at him, nursing the glass between his hands. Then he put it aside and, leaning over the telephone table, wrote a name and address on a card which he gave to Emmett.

“When you find out,” he said, “either way, and if you want that South American job, which is a hell of a fine opportunity for a man your age, incidentally, this is the lad you contact.” He held up his hand quickly. “Don’t answer now. Maybe your heart will be broken and you’ll want to get away. Maybe she loves you and you’ll want to take her into new surroundings for a while. I think I’d like to see that. But I’m going to be pretty damn busy for the next couple of months, and God only knows how this mess is going to turn out; so I thought I’d get you fixed up before I left. There it is. Take it or leave it.” He picked up his glass and stared into it. “John, tell me, did she do it?” he asked softly. “Did she betray them?”

“I don’t know,” Emmett said. “I don’t know any more than you do, Mr. Nicholson.”

“Well,” said Mr. Nicholson, “the war’s been over a long time. I think I’d rather just leave it at not knowing.”

“Yes,” Emmett said.

Ann’s father looked up. The two men stared at each other for a measurable length of time. Then Mr. Nicholson jerked his head toward the connecting door.

“I guess you can go in,” he said.

She was sitting on a low stool by the dresser when Emmett looked up from closing the door behind him; and for a moment he was afraid that he had made a mistake, that he had not heard her voice tell him to come in, that she was not aware that he was in the room. Then she laid the emery board aside.

“It’s shocking how disgraceful your hands can get in a week,” she said lightly. “I seem to have broken half my fingernails.”

He watched her rise and come toward him, and he knew suddenly that he had never seen this girl before, even though he was married to her. Always before she had been fleeing something; always before she had been a little hot or tired or mussed or frightened. He was seeing her for the first time on her own terms, among her own surroundings.

She was wearing white sandals and a light print dress of a shade of pale violet that gave the illusion of matching her eyes, although he knew that her eyes were gray. It was hard to reconcile her appearance with anything he remembered of her; she even seemed to have become taller than could be accounted for merely by the high heels of her sandals. He tried to find a phrase to tell her, without betraying himself, that she looked very nice. While he was still groping among the inadequate words in his mind, she had held out her hand to him.

“I’m glad you could come before we left,” she said. “I wanted to thank you, Mr. Emmett.”

He thought he took it without flinching. “You’re leaving?” he asked flatly.

“Yes,” she said. “With Dad.”

“He didn’t say—”

She smiled. “He doesn’t know yet.”

He felt her fingers press his hand lightly and release it. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“For what?”

She smiled at him again. “I’d forgotten you were like that,” she said. “Why, for helping me.”

“I didn’t get very far,” he said. “It was rather inconclusive.”

“You didn’t have very much to work with,” she said. She walked past him to the window. “Dad’s lawyers are Fairman and Bannister, Chicago,” she said without turning her head.

“Check.”

She asked, “How much did you know? Did you know that man was going to turn out not to be Dr. Kissel? You might have told me.”

It was all settled, he realized. Her lawyers were Fairman and Bannister, and that was taken care of; now he could just explain a few things before he went out, closing the door behind him like a gentleman.

He said, “No, I didn’t know.”

“But you must have known something,” she insisted. “You were so intent on having me meet him.”

Emmett said, “You’d started out to see him. I figured I’d help you go through with it.”

“Was that the only reason?”

“Well,” he said, “they’d tried to kill you. It seemed to me they were doing their best to stop you. And then I got the impression that Kirkpatrick, in spite of acting dead set against the interview, really wanted his hand forced. Talking to me, he had intimated that it would be nice for you if Kissel were to say you hadn’t betrayed anybody. That sounded like bait to me, when I got to thinking it over. And then he had hinted that if your dad were to put pressure on him, he might have to let you see the man. I didn’t think he’d have let that slip if he’d really thought I was a foreign agent—it sounded kind of like a cue. And then he didn’t stop you when he could have, at Mrs. Pruitt’s place. It might have been some kind of a trap; he could have been working with the Chicago police, for instance, to get the final evidence against you; but I figured it was worth the gamble to play along with him and see what happened.” He went on after a short pause, “Of course, I never suspected that anybody was worried about Kissel. I thought you were the center of interest all along. I figured that somebody, for some reason, didn’t want you to know the truth about what had happened to you in France. That seemed to me to indicate that the truth might be the opposite to what everybody was thinking.” He smiled. “Actually, you weren’t that important, and I hit on what Kissel was going to say merely by a wild coincidence.”

She laughed, glancing at him over her shoulder. “It is rather disconcerting, isn’t it? To find that I’m just a supporting member of the cast. Do you remember when I was seeing it all as a great plot directed against myself? The night we drove away from Mrs. Pruitt’s…”

“Yes,” he said, “I remember.”

“I was very close to the edge that night,” she said. “I wanted to let go and just throw a beautiful scene, completely mad, and you wouldn’t let me. Every time I started to go over, you’d pull me back. I think I hated you.” She looked away abruptly, as if sensing that reminiscences were dangerous. “Mr. Kirkpatrick seems to be quite a clever man,” she said.

“Yes,” Emmett said. “That beef fools you.”

“Did he explain why I had to let you all think that I hadn’t told him about Dr. Kissel not being the right man?” He could see the roofs of the city of Santa Fe beyond her. The sun was very bright beyond the immediate shadow of the building in which they stood. There was not a cloud in the sky. He felt as if the two of them were standing there by the window, casually putting the last pieces into a jigsaw puzzle in which they had lost interest, but which they could not quite bring themselves to leave uncompleted.

“When did you tell him?” he asked; and, asking, he remembered the terrible ride from Numa to Santa Fe yesterday, sitting beside her wanting to hate her. Wanting to hate, and not being able to, could be as dreadful, he thought, as wanting to love and not being able to.

“When he picked me up after I’d pretended to faint,” she said. “I did think, when I saw it wasn’t the right man, that it might be some kind of a trick, but it was a little too important. But I didn’t want to blurt it out in front of all of you, in case… So I fainted.”

He said, “And you’re the little girl your dad wanted to stick in an asylum because you’re not quite bright enough to cope with the outside world.”

She did not smile. “It wasn’t quite fair to you or Dad, but I had to do it, don’t you see?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t he want them to know? What is he going to do about them?”

Emmett said, “Nothing.”

“But they’re murderers!”

“It’s more important than that,” he said. “You see, in order to show that he’s the genuine Kissel, and to prove that he’s worthy of confidence, the guy with the cane back there is apparently revealing a lot of stuff that we didn’t know. Probably his superiors figure it’s worth while. We’re still ahead of them, you know. They figure they can throw us a few tidbits of their research, Kissel of course pretending it’s stuff he picked up in a Nazi lab during the war, on the gamble that we’ll let slip some big gimmick they can use.”

She said, “It’s a horrible game. You’d think grown people would have more sense… I mean, all of us.”

Emmett nodded. After a while he said, “Well, as long as Kissel, Kaufman, Bethke and Co. think they’re unsuspected by the authorities, we keep getting material that at least shows us how far they’ve got. The big brass apparently feel that this takes precedence over a couple of murders that can’t be unmurdered.”

“But what good did I do if they already knew…?

“Oh, this is a recent development, since yesterday morning,” Emmett said. “They didn’t know. Only Kirkpatrick guessed and he wasn’t getting anywhere with proving it. Kirkpatrick got suspicious of Kissel for the simple reason that the man got shot at twice, missed both times. They were apparently trying to convince us how important Dr. Kissel was, but Kirkpatrick seemed to think that their marksmanship is generally better than that; and when they miss twice running, he wants to know why. So he found a few indications, but nothing that could impress the men on top, who were very enthusiastic about what Kissel was revealing to them, and wouldn’t hear anything against him. That’s why Kirkpatrick had to work in double-talk, so that if something blew he could say he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. That’s what he says,” Emmett said. “I think the man likes to talk that way. Anyway, he says that you’ll be contacted discreetly some time in the near future, to make a statement. In the meantime we’re all to walk around with long faces, as if our consciences had a bad toothache.”

She turned away from the window to look at him. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad it’s all worked out so nicely for Mr. Kirkpatrick.” Then she said slowly, “John…”

“Yes.”

“You’ll always remember, won’t you, that I didn’t have to tell.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll remember.”

“I could have let you think that you had heard the truth, couldn’t I? I don’t have to be noble and say that the one man who had testified in my behalf was a fraud.”

“No,” he said.

A small breath of warm air through the window behind her pushed a lock of her hair forward along her cheek. She tucked it back mechanically. “John…”

“Yes,” he said.

“Two nights ago… she said… on the desert… She flushed. “There’s no really… comfortable way of referring to it, is there?” He did not say anything. She went on after a pause, without looking at him, stiffly: “I don’t want you to feel that… that you took advantage of an overwrought little girl whom you had already forced into marriage. It wasn’t… I mean, I wanted…You can’t know what it’s like,” she breathed. “Not to dare let yourself be a human being for years and years. Holding your breath. Waiting to be accused. Not daring to let yourself think or feel or… or live, because you know that sooner or later you’re going to have to face this thing… you don’t want to build up something just to see it smashed; you don’t dare love anybody, or let them love you, because you couldn’t bear to see them change to hating you, when…” She turned abruptly away from him. “You know I did it, don’t you?” she gasped.

“Yes,” he said.

“Whe… how long…?”

“I had a little hope,” Emmett said, “that everybody would prove to be wrong, until I knew you’d identified that man as not being Kissel. Here was a man you’d seen only once,” he said, explaining it in detail just to keep talking. “You’d seen him only once after he’d been beaten severely. Probably the light was poor. You weren’t feeling very well yourself. Five years later you meet a substitute who’s even undergone plastic surgery to make him resemble the original Dr. Kissel, and you spot him as a fake on the spot.” He grimaced. “It didn’t wash, Ann. Therefore you must have detected him, not from the way he looked, but from what he said. He must have said something the real Kissel wouldn’t have said, and that tipped you off.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “He said I was innocent.” After a while she said, “John, I saw them executed. They made me stand in a window and watch.”

He said slowly, “I thought you didn’t remember.”

He saw her force herself to turn slowly to face him. “What can you do?” she asked, “when you’ve done something so dreadful that… that you can’t even admit it to yourself? You haven’t got the courage to confess, but you can’t quite make yourself lie about it. It’s so easy to pretend to forget. Sometimes…” She closed her eyes and shivered and opened them again. “Sometimes you can even almost fool yourself.”

“If you remembered,” he said, “why did you want to see Kissel? Why did you bring Kissel into it at all? If you knew you’d done it?”

She drew a long breath, bracing herself against the high windowsill behind her. “Have you ever really thought of how hard it can be to confess, John? Dr. Kissel was the beginning of my confession; I was going to remember other things and gradually… and then I couldn’t go any further. Can you see yourself facing people you’ve known all your life, your parents…” Her throat worked. “And then someone comes and throws your guilt in your face. Before you’ve managed to confess it. Stevens. I pleaded with him to wait a few days. I told him I knew a man who had proof I was innocent. All I wanted was time, but he wouldn’t listen. So I went anyway, hoping that I could see Dr. Kissel before… I thought that the paper he went to would want to check on a story like that, and it might take several days. And in the meantime I would have seen Dr. Kissel, of my own free will, and he would have accused me, and I would have pretended to remember everything. Somehow it didn’t seem as if it would be quite as nasty that way, doing it myself, as being driven out of hiding like an animal.”

“I see,” he said.

“I wanted to tell you,” she whispered. “There were so many times I almost… But I needed you so badly, and I was afraid you’d leave me if you knew.” Her eyes searched his face for a moment. Then she said, “I could have let you believe what that man said yesterday. Doesn’t that help a little?” Then her voice became low and breathless, “It’s hard to—to become reconciled to the thought that sometimes—sometimes you only get one chance and if you muff that you can’t ever atone… just a little more courage,” she whispered. “Have you any idea how often I’ve wished that I’d had just a little more to give just then? Just to hold out another day. Maybe they’d have given up. But there wasn’t any more. You just have so much and that’s all there is and then you’re through if you can’t manage to kill yourself. Anyway you’re through.”

The breeze displaced the vagrant lock of hair again. She tossed her head to put it back into place. Then she walked past him into the middle of the large, light hotel room and turned.

“I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “I can’t really blame myself for letting you marry me; after all, you hardly gave me any choice. But we can let the lawyers work that out; I don’t think there’ll be any trouble.” Her voice became harsher. “I don’t really need you or anybody else, John Emmett. Don’t feel that you owe me anything because… because I let you make love to me. Don’t feel that you have to be sorry for me. I’m all right. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m alive, aren’t I? That’s more than you can say for a lot of people who were supposed to be cleverer or nobler or braver or stronger—”

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

“Why don’t you go?” she gasped. “Do you have to make a speech at me, too? Can’t you just leave? Don’t you think I know what kind of a coward and hypocrite I am without being told?”

He reached her and took her by the shoulders. “Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t, Ann.”

He saw that her eyes, looking up at him, had become darker than the color of her dress.

“You mustn’t touch me,” she said childishly. “I told you once before, you mustn’t touch me unless you—”

Then she was in his arms, crying softly. He stroked her hair back with the tips of his fingers. A conventional part of his mind had made the conventional judgment, saying harshly that what she had done was unforgivable, but the voice did not carry conviction. You could not live in a world where weakness was unforgivable, when you did not know how strong you yourself were.

“You’ve had a permanent,” he said after a while.

“No, just set,” she whispered.

“I like you fluffy better,” he said. “You look too damn expensive like that. I only make a few thousand a year.”

She was silent, motionless in his arms. He could feel her mind retreat from him.

“You can’t want me,” she said.

“You’re thinking of guys like Stevens,” he said. “He was an aviator, shot down; he went through it; he knew what it was all about. Maybe he had a right to judge. What right have I to judge, darling? I’m the character who never went to war. How can I tell you how brave you should have been, when I don’t even know how brave I am myself?”

You could not help what you saw in the steel mirror, and the mirror would not break. There were those who could be proud of what they had seen in it—and then there were the others, who simply had to live with it.

Table of Contents

chapter ONE

chapter TWO

chapter THREE

chapter FOUR

chapter FIVE

chapter SIX

chapter SEVEN

chapter EIGHT

chapter NINE

chapter TEN

chapter ELEVEN

chapter TWELVE

chapter THIRTEEN

chapter FOURTEEN

chapter FIFTEEN

chapter SIXTEEN

chapter SEVENTEEN

chapter EIGHTEEN

chapter NINETEEN

chapter TWENTY

chapter TWENTY-ONE

chapter TWENTY-TWO

chapter TWENTY-THREE

chapter TWENTY-FOUR

chapter TWENTY-FIVE

chapter TWENTY-SIX