BOB WALKED DOWN the track. That part of the country seldom had a day without clouds, because of the hills to the north, and now there was a gigantic one towering slowly forward over half the heavens, gradually blotting out the setting sun and filling the woods with hush and awe. The south wind was rising fitfully, as it often did at eventime, but it was as yet only in the treetops, and the undergrowth was motionless. He walked quickly, anxious to catch the mail with this letter to the landlord of his former rooms at Morgan; the party had caused him nearly to forget it. He was anxious, too, to get back to Amy, for he felt as if he had not spoken to her for hours. But the party had been an ordeal for him, and he welcomed a walk in the cool evening air.
It was over now. Old friends had seen him and shown him that they were going to ignore the past; and acquaintances had taken their cue from the successful tone of the party and decided not to hint or sneer. His first step back towards his own side of the fence had been taken, and if one part of his nature felt impatient and scornful of the whole business, another side was warmly grateful towards his own family and the friends who had made that step possible. I must be getting better, he thought, striding down towards the steep slope that led to Carr’s bungalow; it’s a long time since I’ve felt like that about people. They’ve taken me back, that’s what it amounts to. I can’t ever feel better about what I did, but I can feel grateful to them for wanting me back. And I’ve got her, and to-morrow we’re going up into the woods.
Carr’s bungalow had been deserted for months. The snows of a long winter had broken the rail fence so that part of it lay on the ground, and the windows of the house were boarded over. A grey rag on the porch flapped in the rising wind, and as Bob came sliding down the slope among the fading briars a chipmunk ran across the yard where he and Dan used to play. It stopped at the edge of the wood and look back at him, and he halted to return its stare. For a moment they steadily contemplated one another, then it darted off among the trees and he went on down the slope and crossed over to the fallen fence.
The wind was getting into its strength now, shaking the bushes with strong gusts and blowing dust along the ground. He stepped over the fence and walked round the house towards the mailbox on its post, and as he did so he thought again: I’m getting better. For weeks this particular spot had haunted his imagination, with its gap in the fence and its history of commonplace violence and breaking of the law. Here (it had seemed to him in countless miserable fits of brooding) he had taken as a boy the first steps that had led to the wrecking of his life as a young man. But now the spell was broken; he had come down to the mailbox without once thinking: I’ll have to go by Carr’s—I can’t face it; and this evening “Carr’s” was only a squalid little house falling into ruin, with a grey rag flapping on the porch where Dan used to lie on Sunday afternoons and read in the tabloids about Al Capone.
Good luck to Dan; I don’t ever want to see him again. The thought went through his head as he came round the house into the road. And then he saw that there was a small black sedan standing opposite Carr’s, and a woman in a light coat just getting out of it. She slammed the door and tried it, standing with her back to him, while he stopped, staring at her and recognizing her hair and the beautiful lines of her body with a shock of dismay, and then she turned hastily round as if she were in a hurry to set off somewhere.
It was Francey Carr.
She gasped loudly when she saw him and ran towards him, while he simply stood there looking at her, with all the nightmare of the last months horribly revived.
“Bob! I was coming to call you up!”
“What for?” he said roughly, moving a little away as she came up with him. She was breathing quickly and her face was very pale and for an instant a painful suspicion filled his mind. But it stayed no longer than her next words:
“It’s Dan. He’s taken Joe Murphy. He picked him up at the crossroads half an hour ago.”
“Picked him up?” he repeated stupidly.
“He’s crazy. The kid was waiting for the bus, and Dan and I were riding together. Dan stopped the car and said would he like a ride and the kid said no thank you, he was going by bus. So Dan said, “You’re a popular kid around Vine Falls, aren’t you, Joe? I guess they’d pay a lot to have you back if you were to get lost,” and then he got out his rod and made the kid get in. He told me to go home by the bus. But I went in to town and hired this,” she jerked her head at the car, “and I was coming up to call you from the box on your corner.”
“But he’s crazy!”
“Bob, he’s been crazy for weeks. A big job went wrong and he had to lie low and he got in with a man who put him on to some drug or other—Mary Warner, may be.” She lowered her voice over the mobsman’s name for the drug marihuana.
“Dan never used to be a hophead.”
“Oh, well, maybe he isn’t now. I don’t know. But he was certainly acting queer this evening.”
“Is he shot up much? Enough to make him hurt the kid?”
“Not much. He said he wouldn’t touch Joe unless the bulls came after him. But you know what they’re like in this state about kidnapping since the Rhinelander kid got bumped off. If they catch Dan they’ll lynch him, and me too.” And she began to cry, getting a cigarette case out of her bag and lighting one with shaking hands.
“But what did you come to me for?” he demanded. “What can I do?”
“Oh, Bob, you’re the only one that can do anything!” she said, sobbing and choking so over the smoke that he could hardly hear what she said. “You owe Joe a good turn, anyway, and Dan’ll listen to you. And maybe you could fix up about the ransom——”
“But where’s he taken him?” he asked, his strongest feeling one of fury at being dragged back into the violent unrealities of the life he had just escaped from.
“Up in the woods, he said.”
“The place near Black Lake?”
“No—the cabin, I guess.”
“You mean where we——”
“Sure.” She tossed her cigarette away, not looking at him and he, too, glanced away from her as he spoke.
“You’d better tell the police,” he said in a hard voice. “Come on, let’s go,” and he took a step down the road. But Francey did not follow him.
“Bob, he swore he’d kill the kid if I squawked. He’s going to let the town know somehow to-night he’s got him, and then——”
“Is he working alone?”
She nodded.
“Was Joe scared?” said Bob suddenly.
“Sure he was, scared stiff, but he tried not to show it, he kinda made a joke of it——”
“Oh, hell.” The two words came out in a groan.
There was a pause. The wind blew furiously against them.
“I’ll have to go,” he said at last.
“Oh, Bob! I knew you would! Maybe he’ll let you have the kid back without any money——”
“How is this off for gasoline?” he interrupted, going over to the car.
“I just filled up.”
“All right.” He was getting into the driver’s seat when he suddenly remembered that he was forbidden to drive. But he put the thought impatiently aside.
“Aren’t you going home for a gun?”
“I won’t need one. If he isn’t so shot up as all that he won’t kill me. And he wouldn’t, anyway.”
“No. I guess it’ll be all right,” she said, relieved by his matter-of-fact tone. “Maybe he just meant it for a kind of joke; you know he’s got a funny sense of humour. But the kid was scared all right.”
“Yes. You said so before.” He had started the engine and the regular mechanical noise seemed to add to the violence that had come into the evening with the rising of the wind. He turned the car round while she watched, and set it towards the north.
“Francey.”
“What?”
“Do something for me, will you? Call up home and tell them I’ve had to go into Morgan and I may be back late. You needn’t say who you are.”
She nodded. “Sure I will, Bob. I’ll do that first thing after you’ve gone, so’s they won’t worry.”
“Thanks.” The car began to move. She came over and walked beside it, putting her hand for a moment over his.
“Gee, Bob, I think you’re swell!”
“I don’t feel it. Go home, there’s a good girl, and just lie low, will you? The quieter you keep the better.”
“Oh, Bob, I do hope you’ll be all right!” She was running beside the car with her red hair blowing in the wind as it used to when they were children, and he turned to look at her. But even the little affection that had been between them was dead now, killed by full bodily knowledge without love. He only smiled meaninglessly at her and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,” and then accelerated. The car moved off into the wild lights and moving shadows of evening.
When it had disappeared she stood for a little while glancing uncertainly about her, up into the woods where the trees were now swaying furiously in the wind, now down the road towards the town, and all the time frying to tilt her hat on her curls at its correct angle. The dust blew against her ankles and stung them. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something. At last she shook her head, said something under her breath, and began to walk quickly away towards the town. An expression of shame was on her doll-like face for a few moments; then, as she gave all her attention to increasing her pace and struggling against the wind, it faded. With her coat flapping and both hands holding on to her hat she passed quickly out of sight.
“Where’s Bob?” asked Mrs. Vorst in a surprised tone, coming into the drawing-room a little later and finding Amy still among the wreckage of the party. “I didn’t know you were all alone, Miss Lee—I’m so sorry! I thought Bob was here.”
“He just went out to post a letter. He said he’d be about ten minutes,” replied Amy. She was quite content to sit there by the window enjoying the restful silence. She turned her head to smile tranquilly at Bob’s mother.
“Well, won’t you come into the sun-parlour, and rest a little before we go up to change? I feel quite exhausted, don’t you?”
When they had been lying on the long chairs in the sun-parlour for a while, enjoying the evening light from the garden with the windows shut against the rising wind, Mr. Vorst joined them, and for half an hour Amy had to answer questions about her work. She knew very little about the side of it that most interested him, leaving as she did all questions of contracts, terms and translations to the efficient Messrs. Aubrett and Humfriss, and her natural disinclination to talk about the dull side of being a writer was increased by her gathering uneasiness at the prolonged absence of Bob. He had said he would be ten minutes, and he had been gone nearly an hour! It was silly to feel rather frightened, but she did.
At last, after a pause in their talk, she said to Mrs. Vorst with an uneasy smile—
“Wherever do you think Bob can be?”
“Yes—he is a long time, isn’t he!” said his mother at once, getting up and going over to the window. “If he’s not back soon he’ll get wet. Look!” She put a finger against the pane, where a glittering drop had just dashed, and turned to smile at Amy. “It’s going to be a wet night.”
“Where’d he go?” demanded his father, rousing himself from a silence.
“Only out to mail a letter, Miss Lee says.”
“Yes, I saw him,” said Amy eagerly, glad for some reason to be able to put her last sight of him into words. “I was looking out of the window and he came past with a letter in his hand; he was walking fast, and when he got to the edge of the lawn he turned round and held up the letter and called, ‘I won’t be ten minutes.’ And then he went into the wood.”
“Oh, then he’s gone down to the mailbox by Carr’s. Perhaps he’s coming the long way home; the road goes round the hill, you know, and turns off up to here by the river. Yes, I expect that’s what he’s done,” murmured Mrs. Vorst, still with her finger pressed against the window pane as she stared out into the garden. The whole expanse glittered with drops now and they were beginning to roll down it.
“Crazy thing to do on a night like this,” said his father, getting up. Amy happened to be looking at him as he spoke, and he suddenly gave her a grudging, amused, sympathetic smile. But then, the boy is crazy. We know that, don’t we? it said. Amy replied with a shy but eager look, and thus a completely unexpected friendship was formed. The fact was, she had charmed him. Her fame, her simplicity, her feminine ignorance of contracts and her French-seeming elegance was a new combination for him, and its piquancy brought stimulating memories of a time when he was a happier man, with the energy and inclination to admire piquancy in a woman. His suspicions about her relationship with his son had vanished: they were simply not possible in the face of this new liking for her. She’s charming, he decided, and she and Bob ought to do very well together; they’re both so darned queer! But Sharlie isn’t sure about her yet; I can tell that.
“Oh, he’ll be in any minute now,” he said, moving to open the door for them.
“Surely,” murmured Mrs. Vorst, but for a moment she lingered by the window, looking up at the lowering twilight sky, before she followed Amy out of the room.
When Bob had been driving for an hour and had left the town well behind him, he had an impulse to turn back. He was not afraid of Dan, for he knew him too well to believe that he would be dangerous, but a deep distaste and weariness came over him. He must go on, of course; the boy must be got back as quickly and secretly as possible; and it was quite out of the question to stop on the way to the cabin and tell Joe’s parents or inform the police, but he loathed the task in front of him. He could already hear Dan’s soft voice, gently justifying himself in sentences full of the long words which helped to hypnotize him when he was in a self-justifying mood. He would have to “manage” Dan as he had done many times before, exactly as if he were managing an ill-tempered and worthless horse; and this time, too, he might be more difficult to manage than he had ever been, if Francey had not been exaggerating about the drugs and his mood.
Maybe he will shoot me, and the kid too, thought Bob as he turned the car off the main road into one that led up into the mountains. But I guess he won’t; Dan isn’t a killer. Poor little kid, I bet he’s scared! I’ve got to get him out of this, and safe, too. I’ve got the chance now to make up for what I did to him. And he drove on, ashamed that he had even let the thought of going back enter his head.
He was now working his way straight across the State by lesser roads, where the only traffic was an occasional Ford full of parcels and children on its way back from shopping to some lonely farm. The rainstorm that had swept down from the hills with the giant cloud was now over, and had shattered the cloud itself into long banks of grey lying above a serene and gorgeous afterglow of gold. The little faces of some children looking through the windows of an old car which he passed were glorified by this radiance from the west, and their quick smiles and the small hands they waved to him seemed beautiful. But ahead of him rose the barrier of the Gluscap Mountains, spread for hundreds of miles with their sombre woods against the sky of the north. The children’s faces made him think tenderly of Amy, and he wondered if Francey had called them up at home yet and given his message? It’ll seem crazy to them, he thought, and they’ll wonder why I couldn’t call them up myself, and who the heck Francey is, but it’s better than leaving them without a word.
The road grew rougher and lonelier under the fast-darkening sky as the car steadily climbed. The air was keen here, and he caught wafts of scent from berry-bushes scattered over with little flowers, from patches of wiry grass drenched by rain and from the sombre branches of pines where already the night wind was faintly hissing, from hemlocks and pines standing motionless with raindrops glittering on their leaves from the glow in the west. To-morrow I’ll be here with her, he thought. It’s beautiful here—I wish she could see it now. And he thought how different it would look to-morrow, under the hot sun and blue sky, with the katydids fiddling and the morning glories open. His mind went over into to-morrow and rested there in happiness, as if to-morrow were paradise.
He switched on the lights, and turned the car up a track leading to the heart of the hills.
Amy looked out of her window before she went down to dinner to see if Bob might be crossing the lawn. But it was dark except for the faintest streak of light in the west, and she could make out nothing. She drew her head in, disturbed and anxious, and went downstairs.
“Bob back?” inquired Mr. Vorst, shaking cocktails in the drawing-room, whence all traces of the party had been cleared away.
“I don’t know, dear; I haven’t heard him. Myron, is Bob back?” asked Mrs. Vorst, as the handyman came in to speak to Mr. Vorst.
“Nope.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, startled.
“Yep. He ain’t in. Reckon something’s happened to him,” retorted Myron with satisfaction.
“Don’t be a fool! What could have happened to him? He only went to mail a letter!” said Mr. Vorst sharply: Amy had suddenly sat upright in her low chair and was staring across at Myron with a white face.
“Dunno, but it’s mighty queer; goin’ out to mail a letter and not comin’ back,” persisted Myron sulkily, looking at Amy out of the corner of his eye. “Crazy kind o’ thing to do, the first night o’ visitors bein’ here, and so forth.”
“Maybe he went down to see his Aunt Carol; I might just go and call her up,” and Mrs. Vorst went quickly out of the room.
“Mrs. Vorst’s sister is in bed; had a touch of grippe,” explained Mr. Vorst. “She thought maybe Bob might have gone down to see her. Is that right for you, Miss Lee?” coming across to her with a glass held up and smiling.
“Yes, thank you,” she said faintly, taking it in her cold fingers.
“Don’t worry, he’s perfectly all right,” he said very kindly completely dropping his pretence of not noticing her agitation. “It’s just some quite ordinary thing, I’m sure … only naturally we all still feel a bit jumpy about Bob, because of what happened——”
“Yes!” she said gratefully, looking up at him. “He’s only just come back, you see, hasn’t he?”
He nodded, returning her look steadily. Myron was still fussing about the window as they spoke, with his back to them, but listening to every word. Suddenly a telephone bell rang faintly as if from a distant part of the house.
“That’s in my study—you can’t get through while Mrs. Vorst’s talking in the dining-room—maybe it’s Bob—there now, Miss Lee, you’ll have to come and give him a talking-to!” and he hurried, smiling, out of the room. She heard him running upstairs with the heavy step of middle-age, and then there was silence except for the distant sound of Mrs. Vorst’s low voice through the half-open door as she talked on the telephone to her sister-in-law’s house.
Myron finished what he was doing to the window and came slowly across the room to the door. To reach it he had to pass Amy, and when he was level with her he suddenly said—
“Worried about Bob, ain’t yer?”
“Yes! Oh, yes, I am! And I’m frightened!” she answered at once, turning round in her chair to face him with her hands pressed together. She could think of nothing but that scrap of newspaper! that awful picture of something lying on the ground! The longing to tell someone about it was torturing her.
“So’m I,” he said gloomily, standing on one foot and lowering his queer battered face so that it looked dolefully down at her. “All very well, but I reckon something must hev happened to him.”
“What could have, do you think?” she asked fearfully.
“Well, I dunno. But I reckon Dan Carr’s got hold o’ him again, somehow. I kind o’ feel it. He’s been round here lately. Buddy o’ mine down at Hannigan’s Pool Rooms saw him only yesterday. An’ he wouldn’t like Bob leavin’ his mob an’ comin’ back home. Jest out o’ spite he’d want him ter go back with them again.”
“Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?” she said quietly, beginning to rock to and fro, staring down at the ground.
“Quit bein’ hysterical, fer a start,” said Myron at once—just as he had to the weeping Helen three months ago. “That don’t help any. If Bob is with Dan, I reckon he’ll be all right. He’s a poor thing, Dan Carr, a poor mean thing. Hain’t got no faculty. When he was a kid I used to notice his hands. Like a bear’s paws—no good fer anythin’. All talk, he was, an’ still is. Now Bob’s hands—they’re a human creature’s hands. Clever. There’s a lot in hands, if you notice.”
She nodded, drying her eyes and not looking at him, but she had stopped rocking.
“Yes——” he went on musingly in his unlovely New England voice. “I reckon that’s about what’s happened. Now what I’m jest wonderin’ is this——”
For the next moment she did not hear what he was saying, for she was wondering whether to tell him about the scrap of newspaper. In spite of his spiteful, inquisitive manner, she felt at ease with him in a strange way, exactly as a child feels more at home with another child, even an unpleasant child, than with the kindest and most intelligent grown-up. She knew that Myron would believe her story about the scrap of newspaper. He might say it was queer, but he would at once see how queer it was, and would not try to soothe her by explaining it away.
She came out of her agitated thoughts to hear him saying:
“—An’ I reckon ef he’s got him anywhere, that’s wheer he is.”
“I want to tell you something,” she began at once, not heeding what he said. “I’ve had queer dreams sometimes about Bob (he and I are going to get married, you know,” she explained simply, lifting her wet eyes to Myron, whose own dim brown ones seemed at once to blaze with passionate interest) “and there’s one dream I had that frightened me very much. It was about a bit of newspaper. It was a photograph of a cabin in the woods somewhere, and there were some men standing round a—a—dark thing lying on the ground. It might have been someone dead. Do you think it could have anything to do with Bob?”
“Ain’t that just what I’ve been tellin’ yer?” he said shortly, suddenly stooping to pick up a dirty glass which someone had left down beside a chair. “Dan’s got a cabin he uses up in the Gluscaps, on the Moon River. That’s wheer I reckon he’s took Bob—ef he’s got him. That’s wheer you dreamt about. Ah, I believe in dreams. My uncle married a woman from Missouri and they had a darkey servant as used to see hants. (That’s what they call a ghost down South; a hant.) He saw a hant in the woods one day when he was out berryin’ with my aunt’s children an’ he fainted clean away. Skeered, you know. Sure, that’s wheer you dreamt about. Dan’s cabin.” And he began to move towards the door with the usual spiteful yet wooden expression on his face.
“But if Dan really has got him, and taken him there, can’t we do something?” she exclaimed desperately, getting up and moving after him.
“Oh, maybe it ain’t so at all, maybe it’s all imaginin’ an’ so forth,” he said at once, backing out of the room. “Can’t go to the police with a tale like that now, can we? Me thinkin’ Dan may hev get him, an’ you dreamin’ about a picture that may be Dan’s cabin. Why, the police wouldn’t go anywheer fer that. Psychopaths’ ward, thet’s wheer they’d put us.”
“And perhaps Dan hasn’t got him at all!” she said, a great relief suddenly coming over her. “Perhaps it’s just some quite ordinary thing, and in a minute he’ll come in, and we’ll all feel so silly for having been so frightened——”
“Mebbe,” he said, but he said it doubtfully, and just then Mrs. Vorst came past him into the room, trying not to look worried.
“No, he isn’t down at Aunt Carol’s,” she said. “Didn’t the telephone go upstairs?” to Myron.
“Sure. Mr. Vorst’s up theer now.”
“Oh, then perhaps it’s Bob——”
But Mr. Vorst was coming down the stairs shaking his head. “Only the Sentinel, wanting me to look in tomorrow,” he said.
Mrs. Vorst took up her drink and stared at it. She seemed to have forgotten Amy’s presence. At last she said:
“Oh, well. Perhaps we’d better have dinner. Tell Olga, will you, Myron?”
Myron went out, and Mr. Vorst drained his glass.
“Another, Miss Lee?”
She shook her head, smiling painfully.
“Sharlie?”
“No, thanks. Webster, do you think he could have fallen and twisted his ankle?”
“In Carr’s Wood? He knows it like the back of his own hand. No; there’s some perfectly good and simple reason … oh, he’ll be in any minute now.”
“Maybe Myron ought to go down with a torch and look——”
“Oh, Sharlie!” He dropped his hand affectionately on her shoulder, turning to smile at Amy. “Be your age! We’re getting all worked up over nothing. Let’s come in and eat. It’s queer,” he went on, as they crossed the hall to the dining-room, “I always eat everything in sight at a cocktail party and yet I’m never so ready for my dinner as after we’ve thrown one——”
They sat down, and the Polish girl began to hand the soup.
Out in the kitchen, Myron sat himself down in his old hickory rocker with that morning’s Sentinel and began to read the first column of the first page. But before he had read half-way down he sighed loudly, crumpled the paper into a ball, and dropped it on the floor. Then he got up and went into the little room opening off the kitchen which was his lair.
Here he hoarded old coats discarded years ago by Boone and Bob, back numbers of Life and the Sentinel, a buffalo robe worn greasy with age, flattened moccasins, and a drawerful of beautiful and fantastic tiny toys carved out of scraps of wood; fairylike boats with full-rigged sails made from bits of bright stuff discarded by Lou in her dressmaking; models of his own rocker fitted with a minute cushion, cradles with peanut-babies in them, little sofas fitted with roly-poly pillows, and miniature birdcages made from fragments of wire, with tiny birds of cork and killdeer or chickadee feathers inside. No child had ever been gladdened by a present of one of these marvels save Lou; Boone and Bob and Irene had years ago forgotten that they existed, but Lou still possessed a set of doll’s furniture, bed, table, chairs and sofa, given to her by Myron when she was eight. He admired her deftness; she had always been clever with her hands, and the elfin furniture was a tribute from one artist to another.
But this evening Myron had not come to admire his drawerful of toys; he had business with the drawer next to it. Then he put on his overcoat and hat and came out into the kitchen.
Olga looked up from the salad she was mixing.
“Goin’ to the movies,” remarked Myron, and went out to the yard. Presently, while she was nicely dropping in the oil, Olga heard his old car start up and drive away.
Bob stopped at last at the beginning of a track too rough for the car to attempt, which went up into the woods. All was still, but long streamers of cloud moved quickly across the bright stars as if there was a high wind blowing up there, and far off he could hear the roar of falling water—the Mooween, dashing down between its rocks. He remembered how black they used to look against the white foam, like big animals crouching to drink. The Indians had seen them thus: the river’s name meant Black Bear. He shut the door of the car and turned up his collar against the wind and set off along the track.
The wood was full of little sounds and movement, while the clouds moved quickly among the black branches over his head, now hiding a big glittering star, now leaving it flashing clear, and the fresh woodsy smell he so well remembered came out from wet moss and drenched leaves. Once he went past a clearing where trees had been cut down, and their stumps glimmered; he saw the woodsmen’s deserted cabin and the blackened ring left by their fire. He thought vaguely about the woods, rolling away across their mountain-range, always beautiful, full of darting secret life, and able to do without man. It’s cold and lonely here but it’s beautiful, he thought, glancing away on either side into the confusion of tree trunks now beginning to be visible in the radiance forerunning the rising moon. I wonder where Dan’s parked the car? Poor little kid; he must be scared. And by now at home they’ll have called up all sorts of folk in Morgan to see if I’m there, and they’ll be getting scared, too. She’ll be frightened. I wish I’d called them up myself, now. It was a fool thing to do. But I had to come. I’ve got to get Joe back.
It’ll be all right, I guess. It’s just one of Dan’s crazy jokes.
But if they catch him this time he won’t get off.
When he had been walking steadily for nearly an hour he came to a place where he stopped, and stared up into the branches overhead.
A white rag hung there, showing plainly even in the confusing gloom, and he at once turned aside and entered the forest.
Soon his shoes and his trousers as far as the knee were soaked in dew as he moved slowly through the undergrowth, with a slightly swaying movement like that of a man wading in deep water. The moon had risen and its light made his way a little easier and the roar of the water sounded loud and very near.
And at last he came out into a glade where old stumps showed grey by the doubtful light from the young moon, and across the far end of the clearing something white moved and splashed among black rounded shapes: the Mooween between its bearlike rocks. A ruined cabin, dark and silent, stood on the far edge of the clearing where the trees began again.
The moon had brought the sense of summer back into the night. Its light seemed to calm the moving tops of the trees. The wind had fallen. Little flowers on a bush showed white as Bob went past and a sweet smell wafted over him. He put his hands in his pockets and, still walking towards the hut with his eyes fixed on its shut door, he shouted:
“Dan! Hullo there!”
The loud sound seemed to have nothing to do with the motionless trees, the rushing water, the faint light from the moon.
He shouted again, still advancing—
“Dan!”
. . .
Mrs. Vorst said suddenly—
“I can’t stand this a minute longer, Webster! Where is he? He went out to mail a letter and he’s been gone three hours!”
She crushed out her cigarette and stood up quickly, looking wildly at her husband. Amy, too, was looking at Mr. Vorst, but with an absolutely expressionless face. Her terror and anxiety had so increased during the last hour that she was now almost incapable of thought, let alone sensible speech, and automatically she had put on once more the mask that had served her so well in her childhood.
“Now, don’t worry, Sharlie. Everything’s going to be all right,” Mr. Vorst said soothingly. “I’m still sure the boy’s perfectly safe, but if it will make you feel better we’ll have Myron go down to Carr’s and see if he has turned his ankle or met a wild Indian or something—why, you’ll give Miss Lee a very poor opinion of Vine Falls if you go on like this——” he went on turning to smile at Amy. But the faint movement of the lips and the agonized stare with which she met his smile stopped him from finishing his speech. Good God, she’s terrified out of her wits, he thought, returning her stare and trying to think of something to say. Her terror communicated itself to him, and when he spoke again it was in a changed tone.
“I’ll go down with him. It certainly is very strange—Miss Lee’s first evening here——” and he hurried out of the room.
“What can have happened?” said Mrs. Vorst at once in a low voice, turning to Amy. “Oh, I’m so frightened! It’s crazy of me, I suppose, but I can’t help being afraid of Dan Carr.”
Amy made a faint sound in her throat. Her eyes were fixed on Mrs. Vorst imploringly, as if asking for mercy.
Mr. Vorst came back almost immediately.
“Myron’s gone to the movies,” he said angrily. “I’ll go.” He was tying the belt of his coat as he spoke.
Mrs. Vorst said slowly—
“Webster, I shouldn’t trouble. I’m sure he’s not down there with a twisted ankle. You’d better call up the police.”
“The police! Don’t be crazy, dear!”
“It’s you who are crazy!” she cried, losing control. “He’s been gone three hours—leaving her here without a word on her first evening! Of course there’s something wrong—he wouldn’t have done that unless there was something badly wrong—I want you to call up the police right away!”
“I’ll call up Jacoby; I was playing golf with him this morning and talking about Bob. He won’t get talking all over the place——” Mr. Vorst muttered, and went out of the room. Mrs. Vorst went over and sat beside Amy.
“Ah hate waiting for someone who doesn’t come. Ah do so,” she said softly yet violently, the Southern accent coming into her voice as it always did when she was moved. “Ah hate it worse than anything in this world. And when it’s mah own son and—Miss Lee!” suddenly putting her hand on Amy’s bare arm, “what is it? Are you sick?”
Amy shook her head. She was shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering.
“I’m all right,” she managed to say. “I’m only so worried. You don’t think Dan could have——”
“Now, now, I don’t think Dan’s done anything,” said Mrs. Vorst, getting up and going over to the table. “I only said that because—well, Dan always was a mean creature and I wondered if he might be mad at Bob’s coming home—here, drink this; I’m going to have one, too,” and she held out the highball she had been mixing while she talked.
Amy took it and sipped it, but instead of restoring her spirits and courage it went to her head and immediately swept her away into the dreamlike trance of horror against which she had been struggling. She sat there, turning the glass in her fingers and staring at Mrs. Vorst; and all she could think was that to-morrow they were to have gone to the woods, and now they would never go. They would never go.
“Joe Murphy’s missing, too,” said Mr. Vorst, coming back with a white face. “His father called up the station an hour ago. He’s never been home!”
“He was here this afternoon; Bob asked him up!” exclaimed Mrs. Vorst.
“Did they go off together?” he asked.
“Bob was by himself, when I saw him,” put in Amy, slowly.
“Do you think they can be together, Webster? Perhaps Bob ran across Joe down in the wood and thought he’d better see him home.”
“It doesn’t take three hours to get to Joe’s home.”
“No.” Mrs. Vorst put her hand against her forehead. “I wasn’t thinking. … What are they going to do about Bob?”
“Calling all cars to look out for him, and Joe too. That’s all they can do, for the time being. Both of them may turn up any minute. I expect they’ve gone to the movies.” Mr. Vorst spoke irritably to hide his alarm and dismay.
“Well.” He sat down heavily, and stared at his wife, and then at Amy. “Now there’s nothing to do but wait. Miss Lee, will you smoke?”
“No, thank you,” she whispered.
Then for a while no-one spoke. A clock somewhere struck ten.
Towards three o’clock Mrs. Vorst helped Amy upstairs and made her lie on the bed. She could not stop trembling, and lay shaking in silence while Mrs. Vorst found some sleeping tablets and poured out a glass of water.
“Now I want you just to take these, honey. Just be a sweet good child. Come along.” It was the softest, kindest murmur. “Try to relax and get some sleep.”
Amy obediently swallowed the tablets and drank some water, never taking her eyes from Mrs. Vorst’s worried face.
“I’m going to sit up with Mr. Vorst, just in case there’s any news. But I want you to call me at once if you feel bad. Will you?”
Trying to stop trembling, Amy nodded.
“I’m sure Myron’s gone to look for Bob. If anyone—I’m sure he’ll find him, too.”
Again Amy nodded. Her lips moved and Mrs. Vorst bent nearer. She caught a murmur—
“… so sorry … such a nuisance … so worried——”
“Ah, never mind about that.” She gently arranged the eiderdown over Amy’s shoulders. “Just try to sleep. Shall I sit with you for a little while?”
On Amy’s grateful nod and murmur, she turned out the lights and seated herself in a low chair by the radiator. Presently she got up and crept over to the bed. Hurried breathing told her that Amy had fallen asleep, and she went quietly out of the room.
The hall was still except for the loud slow ticking of the clock, and the flowers looked unreal in the electric light. Her husband had fallen asleep in his chair with his mouth open and looked an old, tired, weak man. She sat down opposite him and shut her eyes, but was at once compelled to open them again: it was impossible to rest. Presently three o’clock struck. She sat quite still, staring about the room with her hands clasped together, and the night crept on.
Amy slept only for a little while. Suddenly she started awake, as if aroused by a shout, and in the very instant of waking, without pause or mercy, fear leapt upon her and she began to tremble uncontrollably. He hasn’t come back. He just went out to post a letter and he hasn’t come back. The police are looking for him. It’s true. I forgot it while I was asleep, but it’s true.
But her mind would not accept the truth; her mind rushed away terrified, down corridors of hope, of fantasy, of memory. To-morrow perhaps we’ll go to the woods after all, if he isn’t too tired. Perhaps he’s come in while I was asleep. No, they promised to wake me up. But perhaps he said no, don’t wake her, let her sleep. Then they wouldn’t have told me.
Was that the front door?
Someone talking in the hall?
She started up in the darkness, shaking so violently from head to foot that the bed trembled under her. The room was utterly silent. A line of light lay under her door, but downstairs there was not a sound. She felt as if the house was alive, and waiting, in a timeless trance of horror, for one who would never come.
She lay down again and dozed uneasily for a little while, half-dreaming, half-remembering, the Hurrying People and the Lady Ligeia’s Entombment and all the fears of her childhood, and while she was seeing them she forgot Bob. And then for a few blessed moments she would fall dreamlessly asleep—but always at intervals of half an hour or less, she started awake, again, trembling, and at once in the grip, without pause or mercy, of fear.
She did not know how long this went on. Sometimes she heard the clock chime but she lost count of the hours. Fear raced after her terrified mind and seized it and swung it round to face the unbearable fact that must be borne. The only expression she could give to her agony was the ceaseless trembling that shook her body. She lost all sense of time, she could remember nothing. There was nothing in the world but darkness, and fear without pause or mercy, and the shaking of her cold body huddled on the bed.
When footsteps came quickly up the stairs and hurried along the passage just before sunrise, she had fallen into a stupor and could not hear.
“Dan? Hullo there!”
Suddenly the door of the hut was jerked open and a dark figure stood there, motionless, glaring at Bob, with one hand steadily holding a gun against its side. For a moment they confronted one another across the clearing filled by the dim rays of the moon, and Bob heard the noise of the water very clearly and noticed how white Dan’s face was; so white that it seemed to draw upon itself all the light in the heavens. Then Dan let his arm sink to his side, dropping the gun into his pocket, and lurched forward.
“How in hell did you get here?” he said hoarsely, and passed his hand across his forehead. “I was asleep. And I heard someone calling ‘Dan’. Why didn’t you call’ Silk’? No-one calls me Dan now.” He wiped his forehead again.
“I thought you might know it was me if I called ‘Dan’,” said Bob, beginning to smile. But as he looked more closely at Dan the smile died. He wore one of his thick dark overcoats closely buttoned round him and the scarf of violet silk that Bob remembered so well, and his hair was disordered and on one cheek was a wide smear, black in the moonlight.
“That’s right,” Dan said, as if to himself. “I did know. I knew your voice. I was dreaming we were kids again, shooting together. The woods, I guess. Being in the woods again.” He stopped, and stared down at the ground for a moment, then suddenly lifted his face and stared up at Bob.
“What do you want?” he demanded loudly. “How in hell did you get here? Who sent you? No-one knew except Gloria.”
“Gloria’s dead,” said Bob, and he took one uncontrollable step backwards. “Francey sent me.”
“I told her I’d kill her if she squealed,” said Dan in a low voice. “Of course—I meant Francey. Sure, Gloria’s dead. I meant Francey. Why’d Francey——?”
“She’s scared for you. She’s afraid they’ll lynch you for kidnapping Joe,” said Bob, slowly and clearly. While he was speaking he glanced, without moving his head, over Dan’s shoulder at the hut. The door was slowly swinging to in the wind and as he watched, it slammed.
“Ah!” Dan sprang round, his hand on his gun.
“It’s only the door. You’re jittering,” said Bob, and put his hand towards his pocket for his cigarette case.
Then he stopped dead, staring. The bulge in Dan’s coat swung round and covered him.
“The first lesson you learn is alone,” said Dan, softly, “and the last. The psychology of the superman is solitary. Trust nobody. You’ll be crucified if you trust anyone. Like Gloria.”
“Don’t be a fool, Dan,” said Bob quietly. “I haven’t got a gun, anyway; and I came to get Joe back and get you out of this mess too, if I can. Is the kid inside?”
“In the cellar. I had to dope him.”
“Is he all right?” Bob controlled a movement towards the hut and tried to speak naturally.
“You’re lying about the gun, aren’t you?”
Suddenly the white face was close to his own and he smelled the sickliness of drugged breath, while two strong, violent hands clapped against his pockets and sides, searching. There was the extreme of horror in this abrupt bodily contact, as if an animal had pounced on him. When Dan stood back, Bob was trembling with disgust and rage.
“Jesus, it’s true,” breathed Dan, staring. “You bloody mug.”
“I didn’t think I’d need a gun. I came up here to get some sense into you, not to shoot you,” said Bob, trying to keep his voice calm.
But already the trees against the sky, and the moon itself (now giving a light strong enough to cast their two shadows on the grass) and the bright stars, and the flowers on the little bush by the edge of the wood, were assuming to him that unspeakable beauty which only falls upon natural objects when the human eyes which look at them are in danger of death. In a few minutes, perhaps (he thought) I shall be dead. Oh God, please comfort her and keep her safe, and let Joe be saved. For Jesus Christ’s sake, amen.
Dan was silent, but on the white face lifted to Bob’s there was a faint smile, as if he were listening to something that gave him pleasure.
“The bulls’ll get Francey and third-degree her and she’ll talk. Then they’ll get you,” Bob went on in the same quiet reasonable tone. “You can’t win, Dan. Let me take the kid back to-night. I’ll make up some story—say we’ve been for a drive together, or something.”
Still Dan said nothing; only listened, smiling.
“I won’t squeal. I give you my word.”
“Go on talking,” said Dan.
“I’m alone. I came up without telling anyone. If you give me the kid and let us go, you can make a getaway and no-one need ever know.”
He was interrupted by a deep noise that he did not at first realize came from the back of Dan’s throat. It began as an actual snarl and slowly turned to words.
“Ah-h-h-h! You—make—me sick! You came up here alone. You’ve got no gun. And so I’d admire your nobility and let the kid go. Now get this——”
He stopped and put his hand to his head.
“I forgot,” he said in his usual soft controlled voice. “The kid’s dead. I forgot.”
After a pause Bob said—
“Are you sure?”
“I felt his heart. It didn’t move. He’s in there on the bed, in the cellar.”
“Dan, let me look at him!”
“I tell you he’s dead. It’s no use.”
“You don’t know—you’re all in—you may be mistaken. Just let me look at him—for God’s sake——”
He started forward as if to move to the cabin, but at once Dan’s gun covered his heart, and he stood still.
“Not afraid, are you?”
“Of course I’m afraid, you fool,” said Bob through his teeth.
Dan shut his eyes and his shoulders writhed as if in pain while all the muscles of his face shuddered.
“Blast you,” he burst out at last, lowering the gun. “You’re afraid and you don’t care if I know it. What can I do? I never had a chance. You had everything.” His face twisted, and suddenly he was choking with horrible tears. “You think you can come your Jesus stuff over me, trusting me—but I’m what I’ve made myself—beyond good’n evil——”
The moon had risen above the trees and now sailed clear of cloud.
“Do you know what?” Dan said, gulping. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Are you?” said Bob stupidly, after a pause. “What for, Dan?”
“I’ve always hated you. Ever since we were kids. You had something I hadn’t. All the chances I wanted. Christ, I was glad when you killed that kid! I thought I’d get you that time. But you got away. You’ve always got away. Only this time you won’t, because——”
He choked, and shook his head like a beast in a rage, writhing his shoulders again. “… but that’s not why I’m going to kill you, that’s not why——” he went on, speaking lower and faster and moving a little away from Bob and raising the gun. “Do you know why? It’s because you’re sorry for me, you damned Jesus of Nazareth, in spite of everything you’ve always been sorry for me——”
A sharp crack cut across the inhuman raging voice. Dan screamed and flung himself, rather than fell, upon his face. As he fell he fired, and Bob saw a spurt of earth go up just beyond his outstretched hand on the grass.
A man was coming slowly across the clearing, holding an old-fashioned revolver loosely in front of him in one hand and wiping his forehead with a large spotted handkerchief held in the other.
He stopped when he came up to the body. It lay still, looking very dark against the silver of the moonlit grass. Black blood was slowly spreading over the violet silk scarf. Like one of the rocks of the Mooween it lay there; the body of a youngish, fattish man; dead.
Myron touched one of the outflung hands with the tip of his shoe.
“Jest like a bear’s paws,” he said. “He never did have no faculty.”