The gray afternoon crept; time was thick and slow; there was a kind of sullenness about time, as about the persisting fog, the steady doggedness of the freezing rain. It was as if each of those in the house carried time like a load on his shoulders. The result was weariness and more than weariness; there grew in each person under the sprawling roof of the monstrous house a feeling of futile exasperation and a nervous desire for action—for the taking of some step. As Captain Heimrich had anticipated, they stewed in it. For some the stewing was more difficult than for others, and for one—one accustomed to acting with confidence—the waiting was a greater ordeal than for any of the others.
Conditions imposed, although tacitly, enhanced the pressure of time, increased the exacerbation of nerves. It had not been explicit that each person was to remain in his room; that mingling, conversation, was not allowed. It would have been simpler if Heimrich had ordered that. Then the order could have been resented, even resisted. But it was merely that the corridors of the second floor were occupied by State troopers—one in each wing corridor, a third at the head of the staircase. Karen discovered this an hour or so after she had left the library. She opened her door and, as she did so, a trooper was in front of her. He did not physically bar her way. He merely shook his head, then said, “I wouldn’t, miss.” Karen had been going into the children’s room, and she looked across at the door of their room. “The kids are all right, miss,” the trooper said. “Don’t you worry.” Then he looked at her until she closed her door.
But she did not know whether this interdiction of movement, this confinement, was something inflicted only upon her, or on all of them. She did not know whether Scott had tried to leave his room at the far end of the west corridor, and had similarly been discouraged; whether Mrs. Bromwell herself had been denied free movement through her own house. As a result, Karen felt cut off and alone and, since the others who had sought to move through the house had in fact been similarly discouraged, each of them felt similarly isolated and, perhaps, discriminated against. (Mrs. Bromwell herself had made no move to leave her room. Enforcement of the conditions was not, therefore, put to the ultimate test. But this Karen did not know.)
So Karen was left—as all of them were left—in circumstances conducive to the development of anxiety, and with much heavy time in which to think things over. And none of them knew what Heimrich had found out, or what at the moment he was doing. Imagination was therefore encouraged to take flight. Perhaps, each of them had time to think, Heimrich is now—at this particular moment—taking some final step, fitting into place the last piece of his puzzle. Perhaps now he is getting up, summoning Sergeant Forniss, coming slowly up the stairs…. Perhaps, one of them was supposed to think, I have made a mistake and he has found it out; but perhaps there is something I can do, even now, to rectify that mistake. Perhaps I forgot something—perhaps—perhaps—
(That Captain Heimrich, relying on such action to make certain, and evident, what he had every reason to believe true, was merely taking a nap while he waited did not occur to anyone, and was not supposed to. That he, like a chess player who has made a pressing move, could now wait, even dozingly, for the pressure to take effect upon his opponent, was a thing at once too obvious and too unlikely to occur to any of them, even to the one who had had the most experience with the working of the police mind.)
Pressure was exerted on those who had nothing directly to do with the murder of Marta Bromwell as well as upon the person with most to hide. Even Karen Mason, who had not killed Marta, or thought of it, or of killing anyone, and who did not know who had, was not immune. Inevitably, there was some fear for herself. Heimrich had, at least for a time, suspected her, as at one time or another he had appeared to suspect each of the others—Scott, Miss James, Nickel and then Haas, even (Karen thought) Mrs. Bromwell herself. But she could not tell on which of them suspicion had finally fixed, if, by now, it had become fixed. (Without specific reason for thinking so, she felt it had.) Heimrich had listened, his eyes closed, his eyes open; he had observed them all, pointing now at one, now at another, never quite saying “You!” He might well by now believe she, or more likely she and Scott together, had planned all this, and carried it all out.
Yet her fear was not essentially for herself, and her anxiety not primarily about what might happen to her. She did not believe—being young and having had no special interest in criminal matters—that the innocent were not always proved so, in the end. Believing Scott innocent, this should have relieved her special anxiety about him, but it did not. One is always more confident of one’s own invulnerability than of anyone’s else; it is human experience that it is the other people who die. It is someone else, and most of all someone loved, who risks losing a front wheel at seventy miles an hour. It is for someone else that the laws of nature, including the law that the innocent are proved to be so, may fail. So, knowing him to be innocent (but she repeated the word “knowing” to herself) Karen Mason was very frightened for Scott.
Perhaps even now, Heimrich was going—had gone—to Scott and had said, “You!” and then whatever the formal words were. “Scott Bromwell, I arrest you for the murder—” Was that it?
She moved restlessly about her room, hardly conscious she was moving, that now she was looking from one of the windows—looking the little way one could through fog and rain, her eyes encountering almost at the beginning of the drive that thickening gray wall. She looked, as the house faced, to the south, and as she stood there she could have seen—looking a little to her left, and but for the fog—the willows which grew in the Ralwood swamp; grew along the edges of the brook. Now she could see nothing except the grayness. It had been the same yesterday. Could it be that only a little less than twenty-four hours before she had gone toward the brook, calling Lorry’s name? That, twenty-four hours ago, Marta was alive? The hours since seemed many times as many.
She had gone through the fog calling and heard other voices—and then she thought, but Marta must have been looking too, why didn’t I hear her calling? In a moment, however, she realized that it was not certain Marta had been alive. If Pauline James had been following her she might have overtaken her much earlier; must have done if, after taking the child to Nickel, she had then seen Marta and followed her as Mrs. Bromwell said. Pauline would have had time, but not too much time, to have killed Marta and then returned to the house to tell them Lorry had disappeared. If Pauline was the one. If she was not, then it must have been one of the searchers, including Nickel among them—he had after all “found” the boy—or, if he were lying about waiting in Stamford, Haas. Haas or Nickel could have killed Marta either before or after the boy was found gone; so, she realized, could Mrs. Bromwell. Scott could not, she thought, and then realized that that was wrong. She had been some time in her room, getting ready to go to New York, and during that period anything might have happened. It was hopeless.
It was hopeless, yet something—or was it several things?—nagged at her mind. One of them was somehow associated with the direction—toward the swamp—in which she now looked from her bedroom window, seeing nothing but the grayness. Or was it associated merely with looking out the window into grayness? Was it—
Then with a little start, unwillingly, unhappily, she found one of the things which was nagging at her mind, and it was connected with direction, not with grayness. She had gone east from the house to look for Lorry and then, half lost in the fog, must have turned south toward the swamp. But before she turned she now remembered—as she had not remembered when Heimrich questioned her—she had heard Scott calling Lorry’s name. And Scott’s voice had come from ahead of her and to her right! Then, from the direction of the swamp! That was why, running back toward the house after finding Marta’s body, she had thought Scott would be the first to hear her.
It proved nothing—she told herself it proved nothing. She might easily have been confused; the fog, as she had insisted to Heimrich, did things to voices. Even if he had been there, or near there, it proved nothing. Scott hadn’t killed Marta. He would never have killed her, never have hurt her. That was true, however he might himself doubt, and be afraid. That had to be true.
But Karen Mason turned from the window and sat on the bed, her head between her hands. After a time she turned and lay on the bed, on her back, one arm over her eyes.…
The rain continued, although by four o’clock the wind had begun to back from northeast to north; at that hour, in New York City, the rain had stopped and the fog was beginning to lift a little. At High Ridge the rain varied in intensity; sometimes it was only a mist in the air. But again it was authentically rain, and at all times the ice continued to thicken.…
For some hours, the weight of ice had been bearing hard on trees. Under the trees for some miles around twigs lay on the icy ground, and here and there a sizeable branch had fallen. Many white birches, growing erratically at angles, as white birches will, had broken off under the weight, since they are brittle trees. The oaks and maples and ashes stood it better; the older among them had stood a hundred such burdens and now only bowed a little. There was a maple a mile or two from High Ridge, on a main road, which had endured all manner of things for more than a century. Ice sheathed it and grew thicker, inexorably. The maple, moving as the wind shifted and began a little to freshen, creaked in its ice armor. One heavy bough of the old tree extended over the road, and over the power and telephone lines which ran along the road. The bough looked strong, but for a year or two it had been weakening at the crotch. Although trees which grow by the roadside are examined each spring, and pruned—and, if hazardous, taken down—nobody had happened to notice what was happening to the old maple….
It was after four o’clock when Heimrich, who had been awake for fifteen minutes, sat up on the couch in the library and swung his feet to the floor. After a moment, he got up and went to one of the windows which looked out toward the east. It was already almost dark; the day’s light had never attained an intensity greater than that of dusk. Yet, peering into the growing darkness, Heimrich thought the fog was lessening. The darkness was growing harder.
Heimrich turned and Forniss was sitting up and looking at him.
“O. K., Charlie,” Captain Heimrich said. “Let’s push them around a little. All of them.”
Sergeant Forniss got them. He got them in the East Room, with all of the lights, including the big light overhead, fighting the room’s shadows. He got them in what was, inescapably, a rough semi-circle around the fireplace. A fire was bright in it; during the afternoon—and this to Karen was surprising, almost grotesque—the house had continued to run, as if of itself. The late afternoon fire had been laid, and lighted; the room cleaned; the ash trays emptied. Probably as they sat there, the cook was starting dinner; William might be laying out the silver, rubbing dulled pieces with a soft cloth. As if it were a day like any other day, the routine life of the house went on. The fire was even spirited; its flames danced in the gloom, danced on the brass knobs of the tall andirons.
Forniss did not suggest where they were to sit, except generally that they were to be in a group. But by force of habit, those who came first—Scott, Pauline James, Karen—left the big chair to the right of the fireplace for Mrs. Bromwell. The lines in Scott’s face were deep; he looked at Karen and then, without conveying any message to her, looked away again. Haas came next, and now his smooth face showed nothing. He said, “Good afternoon” to all of them and sat down as far away from them as circumstances permitted. Then Stephen Nickel walked down the room from the hall, looked around and said, “Well, very comfortable, anyway,” and sat down next to Karen. Pauline James put a hand to her forehead when he came in, shielding her face.
Then Lucretia Bromwell came into her East Room, looked at everybody, and patted her son on the shoulder. She sat in the reserved chair and said to Forniss, “Well, young man, what’s wanted now?” But Heimrich had come in, then, and answered for the sergeant.
“What’s been all along, Mrs. Bromwell,” he said. “To get things straightened out.”
He pushed a chair into one end of the semi-circle, so that it was opposite that of Mrs. Bromwell. He chose a straight chair.
“To get things straightened out,” he repeated. “To find out which of you killed two people.” He looked around at all of them, as if giving each in turn a chance to speak. There was strain in each face; even in Stephen Nickel’s, even in the long face of Lucretia Bromwell herself. “Since,” Heimrich said, “one of you did. Or, possibly, two of you together.” He looked at Karen, then. He looked at Scott Bromwell.
“Mr. Bromwell, for instance,” Heimrich said, “planned to kill his wife. He denies he did kill her. He even denies, naturally, that he planned to. But he admits a plan—and that Higgins, among other things, prevented its being carried out. He first denied seeing Higgins last night; now he admits it.” Heimrich held the cuff links in his hand, as if he were weighing them. “He had to, finally,” Heimrich said. “Who else saw Higgins?”
This was unexpected; a sudden shift. Heimrich looked around at them.
“Miss James,” he said, “you gave him a package of cigarettes. Part of a package. When?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know what—” She paused, was told to go on. “I thought there was part of a package in my room,” she said. “When I looked, there wasn’t. Is that the one you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Is it?”
“I didn’t give him anything,” Pauline James said. She spoke from behind her shielding hand. “If he was there—if he got the cigarettes—I don’t know anything about it.”
“But,” Heimrich said, “you don’t ask how we know he got them from you.”
“Now captain,” Nickel said. “Now captain. We’ve all heard of fingerprints.”
Heimrich was unperturbed. He said, “Naturally” and, for a moment, closed his eyes. He opened them again.
“You came here to steal the little boy,” he told Nickel. “You say Marta Bromwell acquiesced; even helped. You say she was going away with you. But—Miss James, who did help you, didn’t know that. That wasn’t the way she got it, was it Mr. Nickel? Not at all the way, was it?”
“I can’t help that,” Nickel said. He looked at Pauline, who did not move, or seem to see him.
“Instead of helping you, Marta Bromwell might have tried to stop you, mightn’t she?” Heimrich said. “And—as Mr. Haas found out a while ago—you’re a tough man to stop, aren’t you? You don’t mind-pushing people. Maybe you pushed too hard. Maybe after you pushed too hard, you made up this other story. Which would explain Miss James’s surprise, wouldn’t it? She’d never heard about this plan of yours, because there wasn’t any such plan. You just came to kidnap the boy. Planning to get money for returning him, later.”
“Not so good, captain,” Nickel said, but his tone was not quite so assured as it had been. “I brought the kid back.”
“Because things had got out of hand,” Heimrich said. “There’d been complications; it wasn’t going to work out. You thought up this plausible story, decided to claim Lorry was your son—perhaps figuring, later, to make a deal of some sort with Mr. Bromwell. How’s that, Mr. Nickel.”
“Lousy,” Nickel said. But he spoke quickly, with uncharacteristic emphasis. “And—he is my son.”
Heimrich looked at him for a moment.
“Miss Mason,” he said, and turned on her, “you still deny seeing Higgins last night—except in this—this shadow-play you tell about?”
“Yes,” Karen said.
“In spite of the earrings?”
“Yes.”
“In spite of the fact that—Marta Bromwell was in your way? Your way—and Mr. Bromtvell’s?”
“That’s not true,” Karen said. “We didn’t—we—”
“Didn’t what?”
“She wasn’t in our way, as you call it,” Karen said. “We didn’t even—”
Scott interrupted her.
“There is nothing between Miss Mason and me,” he said. “She knew nothing about—about any of it.”
“Now Mr. Bromwell,” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Bromwell.”
“Captain Heimrich,” Lucretia Bromwell said, “you are entirely absurd. What you suggest is—nonsense.”
“Why?” Heimrich asked her. “Because your son was deeply in love with his wife? He doesn’t pretend that, Mrs. Bromwell.”
“Certainly not,” she said. “Not with Marta. There is, however, someone—”
“No,” Scott said. “Don’t, mother. Skip it.”
“Someone else?” Heimrich said. “Who, Mrs. Bromwell?”
“Perhaps I was wrong,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “I thought—however, your other suggestion—” She hesitated. “Of course,” she said, “I realize I can’t speak for Karen.”
Karen looked at Lucretia Bromwell—and felt, suddenly, that she had never looked at her before. The long, old face held no expression; it was merely formidable. It was merely—frightening. Why, Karen thought, to help Scott she’d— she’d say anything.
“Mr. Haas,” Heimrich said, “you still want to say that Marta Bromwell was going away with you, not Mr. Nickel? That you spent the time you were gone—the long time—waiting for her at Stamford?”
“And driving back here in the fog,” Haas said. He was controlled again; suave again. “As for the other—I have no idea what Nickel thought. Or—what others here thought. Except that they hated Marta. All of them.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Lucretia Bromwell said. “This—this person is ridiculous, captain.”
“And,” Haas said, “as you can see, they are very—contemptuous. They regard themselves as of a special kind. If Marta had gone with me they would have felt it made them extremely—undignified. Even ridiculous. A young woman from the Middle West and the remarkable Bromwells. If she ran away with a—an orchestra leader—people might laugh at the Bromwells.” He turned to Scott and seemed to bow slightly. “Particularly at Mr. Bromwell,” he said.
“In what kind of a world,” Mrs. Bromwell enquired, “does this person live?”
She appeared to address her enquiry to infinity. It was not answered.
“On the other hand, Mr. Haas,” Heimrich said, “you are a very excitable man. As you proved today. If you discovered that Marta Bromwell was, in fact, going with Nickel and not with you—that she had merely been using you—you would have been very excited, naturally. You don’t deny that?”
Haas reddened momentarily. But this time he did not lose his temper.
“I would never have done anything to harm Marta,” he said. He paused. He took a breath. “I loved her,” he said.
Then it seemed to Karen that Haas achieved a dignity quite different from that to which his suavity, his careful grooming, so publicly pretended.
“Did you love her, Mr. Nickel?” Heimrich asked.
Nickel did not seem ready for the question. It was a moment before he shook his head. He said he wouldn’t call it that.
“But you, Miss James,” Heimrich said. “You—would have called it that. And—been jealous?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Because—because until afterward I didn’t know what Steve was—was planning to do.”
“No?” Heimrich said. “Miss James—did you follow Marta Bromwell last evening? After you gave the little boy to Mr. Nickel? Follow her toward the garage? The kennels?”
Pauline James took her hand away from her face, then.
“Does he say that?” she demanded, and indicated Nickel.
“Pauliel” he said. “For God’s sake!”
“Did you?” Heimrich insisted. “Whoever says it?”
“No,” Pauline James said. “No. No. No!”
“I only told you what I saw, captain,” Lucretia Bromwell said. “What I thought it meant. Miss James could merely have gone out to—for some fresh air.”
“I went around the house, from the west wing door,” Pauline said. “I was carrying Lorry. He—” she indicated Stephen Nickel— “was waiting and took Lorry. I went back the same way.”
“Then from this side of the house,” Heimrich said, “you couldn’t have been seen?”
“I don’t see how,” Pauline James said. “I—”
“Mrs. Bromwell?” Heimrich said.
“It is obvious,” Lucretia Bromwell said, “that she should deny it. Even if, in fact, she did not kill Marta. I told you what I saw.”
But, Karen thought, when I watched Marta—
The thought was not finished, because Mrs. Bromwell was continuing.
“As for our hating Marta,” she said, “—and I must say you have a very jumpy mind, captain—as for our hating Marta, that is nonsense. She could be very irritating, to all of us. She often was. Yesterday afternoon, for example, she was—being very unpleasant to Karen. Even Karen lost her temper. It was—”
“When was this?” Heimrich’s question rode Mrs. Bromwell down; it seemed to ride her down very easily.
“Why,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “quite early, I think. I came into the room—this room—and Karen and Marta were quarreling. They seemed—very angry.” She paused, seeming surprised at what she said. “But I don’t mean—” she said.
“It isn’t true,” Karen said. “We were—it wasn’t a quarrel. Mrs. Bromwell, what are …
The branch was as old as the maple tree, but weaker than the whole tree. As the ice thickened, pulling the branch down, the bark began to crack where the bough joined the trunk. The bough began to sag a little, almost imperceptibly. Its creaking as it moved took on a different note.…
“You’re trying to save Scott,” Karen said, and suddenly she was on her feet. “You don’t care who you hurt, what you—” And then she stopped, because, as if it were happening then, happening all over again, she saw Lucretia Bromwell holding a tailored white blouse, carrying it toward the bathroom—and saw the french cuffs of the blouse dangling open.
“They weren’t yours!” Karen said, and turned on Scott. “They weren’t yours at all. They were hers! And so you—”
“Wait a minute, Miss Mason,” Heimrich said. “What are you talking about?”
“The cuff links,” Karen said. “Don’t you see?”
“I don’t, naturally,” Heimrich said, and then, without raising his voice, “Sit still, Mrs. Bromwell.” He looked an instant at the tall old woman. “Go on, Miss Mason,” he said. “Go right ahead.”
Karen looked at Scott Bromwell, who still did not look at her. But Mrs. Bromwell did.
“What’s the matter with the girl?” Mrs. Bromwell asked.
“These, apparently,” Heimrich said, and held the gold cuff links out in his open hand. “Go on, Miss Mason.”
“She was wearing them yesterday,” Karen said. “She must have been. She had on a blouse with french cuffs when she was wearing a suit—before she changed.” She made herself speak slowly, carefully. “Today she started to put on the blouse again and then decided it was soiled. She was surprised. She carried it to the hamper and the cuffs fell open. But she didn’t take links out then. She didn’t need to, because they had already been taken. Either she just discovered that when I was there or—she had forgotten. So she pretended the blouse was soiled, although she’d only worn it for an hour or two.”
Karen paused a moment.
“And,” she said, “Scott claimed them because he realized that—that it was his mother who had seen Higgins.” She looked at Scott. “Tell him,” she said. But Scott Bromwell did not move. “Don’t you see?” she asked Heimrich, but Heimrich, after a moment, shook his head.
Even if what she said was true, he pointed out, the fact did not necessarily prove anything. Because, if Higgins had got earrings from her room without her knowledge—as she claimed—cigarettes from Miss James’s room without her knowledge—as she claimed—he could have got the cuff links from Mrs. Bromwell’s room, again without being seen by Mrs. Bromwell.
“The difference is,” Karen said, “she—she lied about it. And Scott lied for her. She didn’t admit—”
“Fiddlesticks,” Mrs. Bromwell said sharply. “The girl’s beside herself. I’ve no idea what Scott said, or why he said it, but of course the links are mine. Apparently this Higgins got into my room some time and stole them. It proves nothing.”
But again Heimrich shook his head.
“Now Mrs. Bromwell,” he said, “why did your son think it did? Why was he so sure it did?”
“My son,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “will have to speak for himself.”
But Scott Bromwell did not speak for himself. He was given time. He did not speak at all.
“Mr. Bromwell,” Heimrich said, “did you see Higgins last night?”
Scott seemed about to speak, and they waited. But again he did not speak.
“Mr. Bromwell,” Heimrich said, “it seems to me that, short of confessing, you’ve done about all you can. Doesn’t it to you?”
“He has nothing to confess,” Lucretia Bromwell said. She was leaning forward now.
“No,” Heimrich said, “I don’t think he has, Mrs. Bromwell. I don’t really think he has.”
Now his whole attention, formerly so erratic, had one center, and the center was the dominating old woman by the fire.
“You see,” he said to her, “he didn’t have to guess as much as the rest of us. Because—whatever hypotheses could be strung together—it was always clear what Higgins knew. He knew that Mr. Bromwell had hidden the car as part of a plan to—well, say to meet his wife on the road. He says not to kill her—and maybe he wouldn’t have. But—you thought he would, didn’t you? So—you killed her first.”
“Fiddle—” Mrs. Bromwell began, but Heimrich shook his head, and, unexpectedly, she was silenced.
“With what Higgins knew,” Heimrich said, “it was obvious, naturally, that he would go to Mr. Bromwell. So obvious that it was easy not to see there was another person he might have gone to—you, Mrs. Bromwell. Figuring you would pay for your son’s protection. What Higgins didn’t know, of course, was that you had an additional reason to—keep him quiet. That if we—Forniss and I—did finally decide your son was guilty, you’d have to speak up. So you killed Higgins for your own sake, didn’t you, Mrs. Bromwell?”
She merely stared at him.
“Mr. Bromwell,” Heimrich said after he had waited, “your mother knew of your plan, didn’t she?”
This time Scott looked at his mother; then he looked away from her.
“I don’t—” he began, but Karen spoke quickly.
“He thought she did,” Karen said. “He told me so. Thought she saw him with the jewel case, listened on the telephone when the people from the kennels called, put two and two together. But—but Scott didn’t plan to kill her! He would never have—have hurt her.”
Heimrich looked at her.
“I know it,” she repeated. “I—I know Scott!”
Then Heimrich nodded.
“Perhaps you do,” he said. “Perhaps you do. But—his mother didn’t, you see. When did you realize the way things were, Mr. Bromwell?”
Scott did not answer, and Heimrich apparently did not expect him to.
“Naturally,” he said, “you knew when you saw the cuff links. You realized that Higgins would go either to you or to your mother. And—he hadn’t found you, had he? So you knew then.”
“Scott,” Mrs. Bromwell said, and she stood up then. “Was I wrong?”
Scott hesitated; he spoke finally, very slowly.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you were.”
Lucretia Bromwell looked at him as if, only then, had she ever really seen him. And then she reddened slowly, as if she had been guilty of public awkwardness. (Karen could no longer look at Lucretia Bromwell, who had committed murder by mistake, because of misjudgment and who blushed for the error.)
“I am afraid,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “that I made myself rather ridiculous, Captain Heimrich.”
Heimrich opened his eyes then, having never heard confession of murder so phrased. After a second he nodded.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’m afraid you weren’t very—”
The burden of ice was too much for the old branch. It tore loose with a rending sound and fell across the power lines and the telephone cable. They checked it only for an instant, and broke under it. The power cables writhed on the ice of the road, fire spitting from them at the ancient enemy of damp. Over an area of several square miles the lights went off.…
“—very—” Heimrich said, and they were in sudden darkness when he finished the word. The fire flickered, but its light was nothing—was at first only a source of uneasy shadows—in the big room. For several seconds everyone was blinded, less by the darkness—which was not absolute—than by the abruptness of the light’s failure. In those seconds there was a sense of movement.
“Stay where you are,” Heimrich said, his voice heavy and abrupt. “Sergeant!”
It was the one on Karen’s right who moved first, who flicked on a pocket lighter. It lighted the face of Stephen Nickel, but at first nothing else. Involuntarily, all—even Heimrich and Forniss—looked at this abrupt tiny light, which made the circle of darkness outside it only the more intense. There was no doubt, now, that someone was moving.
“Stay where you are. All of you,” Captain Heimrich ordered again. “Sergeant—stop her!”
Forniss aready was moving toward the rear of the room. But his first movement brought him hard against a chair; he pitched forward in the darkness, clutching for it; landed sprawled in it. He swore. He pulled himself out of the chair. And then a door closed sharply, with finality.
“The library!” Heimrich said. He started toward it, and now his eyes were accustomed to firelight. He got around the circle of chairs; he and Forniss got to the library door almost at the same moment. But the door resisted; Forniss spent a second pulling at it before they both realized that it was locked against them. They went back then, went the long way around, the length of the East Room, back through the hall. In the hall the darkness was almost complete. They had to go slowly, creepingly. They found the other door into the library and went into the smaller room and lighted matches. There was nobody in the room.
They went back to the East Room, and now all of them except Scott Bromwell were on their feet—all except Scott and his mother, who was not there.
“Flashlights!” Heimrich said, to Scott. “Where are they?” Scott only looked toward him. “Damn it, man—” Heimrich began, and dropped it. It wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t expect it to do any good.
But by then Forniss had got a flashlight from his coat in the hall closet, and found another there for Heimrich. After that they could begin to search the big, dark house; after a little several troopers, also with flashlights, were helping—and Stephen Nickel was helping. But Scott Bromwell, who knew the house better than any of them except his mother, sat in front of the fire in the East Room, not moving. And nobody asked him to help.
Nor did Karen help. She walked to the end of the long room nearest the entrance hall; she stood there in the darkness, by a window, and looked out at darkness. She felt as if all that had supported her for twenty-four hours and more had suddenly melted; she felt, physically, as if she could hardly stand. She looked out dully and heard the others moving around her; saw now and then the moving finger of a flashlight. Someone was shining a flash through an upstairs window on the front of the house, moving it from side to side. It showed only that the fog had lifted; the beam was clear in the darkness, but it found nothing.
Men with lights began to appear outside then, three or four of them, ineffectually surrounding the house, throwing sharp channels of light this way and that. Someone came down the stairs, moving rapidly—a heavy man moving rapidly. The beam of a flashlight caught Karen, outlining her against the window.
“Miss Mason!” Heimrich said. “Where would she go?”
She merely shook her head.
“You don’t want it this way,” Heimrich told her, and was beside her. “Nobody—”
Then it happened. The car had cleared the garage, was on the driveway swinging from it to a juncture with the main drive below the big graveled turnaround, before its lights went on. They went on glaringly then, and as they went on the car swirled, skidding on the ice. It went almost half around, so that its lights were blindingly in their eyes; then it swung back, still on the ice-sheathed drive.
Heimrich wrenched at the casement fastening, pushed the window open, shouted into the night. A flashlight beam near the drive danced from side to side, in frantic signalling. But the car went on. At the last moment the flashlight described an arc as the man jumped away from the car. He fell on the ice, and was up again, slowly. But they could see only the light.
The car was beyond them now, going away from the house; it was on the drive and its twin tail-lights were red, retreating eyes. At a twist in the drive the car skidded again, came out of it again. It was moving faster now.
Men were yelling outside, and above other men were running, converging on the staircase. But nothing could stop the car; it was beyond the reach of any of them. As it went down the drive it went faster and faster.
“God!” Heimrich said. “She’s—she’s not even trying! You see that?”
Karen did not answer; he was not, in any actual sense, speaking to her. Then he was not beside her; he was running across the room toward the hall, and she heard him and others at the door. She saw them come out of it, their lights stabbing uncertainly into the darkness as they slipped on the ice. They went slowly, yet about their grotesque, clumsy movements there was a feeling of desperate urgency. Down the long drive, the red eyes receded, each moment seeming to gain speed in their retreat.
The car had dipped with the drive, so that Karen did not see the end. But she heard it through the open window—a great crashing of metal, a tearing of metal. There was that crash first and then, after an instant, another crash, different in texture—less shrill, heavier. Karen Mason put her hands over her eyes to shut out what she could not see.
After a second she turned away from the window and looked back down the room. Scott Bromwell had not moved. He had only covered his face with his hands.