THE FRIGHTENED ONES

The man in gray crossed the bleak November fields running low, keeping out of sight of the road. Few trees grew in the sandy northern Michigan soil, but there was an occasional heap of underbrush or a straggling hedgerow, and under cover of these he rested, panting, eyeing the gray sky, estimating the length of time until twilight. Darkness had always been his element and he would welcome it now.

He cursed the roughness of the frozen earth and the clumsiness of his feet in their heavy prison shoes. Somewhere, somehow, he must get a car, and that would be very difficult. He dared not venture into a town, and casual motorists were almost non-existent in winter on these northern roads. The vision of his own two Cadillacs, hidden away in a Chicago garage, rose up before him, and he cursed again at the prospect of being at the mercy of some junk heap belonging to a backwoods farmer. Like any criminal, he detested lack of quality in the belongings of his victims.

Scrambling to the top of a small hill, he threw himself on his stomach to look around. The only trace of human habitation in sight was a small house and a neat barn half a mile away. His sharp black eyes noted that no electric or telephone wires ran to the house. The poor boobs wouldn’t have much, but maybe he could get a change of clothing there, something to cover up the Prison Farm stamping on the back of his shirt. There might be a little money lying around too, and he could be a long way off with it before one of the hicks could plod into town to give the alarm.

Half sliding, half running, he went down the hill toward the lonely farmhouse.

* * * *

John Stevens and his mother were having one of their arguments. Or maybe, thought John angrily, it was just part of the same argument they’d had for the whole six months since his father’s funeral. Whichever it was, he was sick and tired of it. Sick of being nagged at and tired of trying to explain that a man nearly eighteen years old didn’t need his mother to tell him what to do.

“You don’t understand!” he shouted at her. “You don’t want to understand!”

She kept stirring the soup on the stove. “I don’t know what’s come over you,” she said. “You were always such a good boy before your father died.”

“Leave him out of this,” he said hoarsely. (It was true, he had been different then, secure in his father’s strength, not tortured and twisted by doubts, as now. But so had his mother been different.)

The change began in the moment that they turned from his father’s grave and walked slowly through the thick June grass to the car the undertaker had provided. Even in his grief he had been proud of her that day, of her ash-blond prettiness accentuated by a black dress, of her self-control, of the way she said exactly the right thing to the friends and neighbors who came up shyly to say, “If there’s anything I can do, Mrs. Stevens—”

“Thank you. I’ll make free to call you if there is. Thank you.”

He whispered to her consolingly, “I can work the farm. Don’t worry, Mother.”

“The farm? We’re going to sell the farm,” she said indifferently, flatly.

He was shocked. “But I want to be a farmer, you know I’ve always wanted to. Why on earth—”

“Not now. We’ll talk about it later.”

Later, however, never came. When he tried to reopen the subject, she was tired or had a headache, and if he persisted, she turned irritable. “I’m not up to discussing it, John. Can’t you see that?”

Well, he couldn’t. She hadn’t wept—not one single tear—and, except that she didn’t seem to want to talk to him, her behavior was as it had always been. Serene and cool, she went about her work, laying out clean clothes for him, having a hot meal waiting for him when he came in from the fields. “Aren’t the roses doing well?” she’d say.

“I guess so, Mother.” Their conversations never rose above this inconsequential level.

That first month he had been too absorbed in his sorrow to think. Everywhere he went, every day, there were so many reminders of his father: the corncrib, finished that very spring; the neat patching on Nellie’s harness; the new gutter for the pump; worst of all, his father’s old red sweater hanging on its nail just inside the barn door. John always touched the sweater gently as he went by, and it turned a little, revealing the darned sleeve and tire sagging pocket where his father had carried his pipe. More than one evening, frustrated by his mother’s silence, he went out to the barn to lean his face against the sweater and weep for all the warmth and cheer that his father had taken out of the world with him.

The second week of July, as he turned into the drive from a trip to town, he saw the Farm For Sale sign standing sturdily on the rim of the front lawn. He stared at it for a long time, unable to realize that his mother had so betrayed him.

She was sealing jelly glasses in the kitchen and she smiled nervously when he came in. “Well, how were things in town? Did Luther’s have the right land of paint?”

“You’re selling the farm.”

“I told you I was going to. We talked about it.”

“No, we didn’t. You’re really selling?”

She kept on working, not looking at him. “Why, what else could I do? The land’s worn out, the buildings are poor—”

“That’s not true. The land is—”

“And you have four years of college to get through. Plenty of time for you to be a farmer after that.”

“College,” he said tonelessly. “I’m not going to college.”

“Of course you are. Weren’t you third highest in your class? Your father always planned to—”

“That was then. I can’t do it now. Where would the money come from?”

“Why, from selling the farm. Where else?”

Like a mole uprooted by the plow and thrown into strange, merciless light, he looked about him. This was Home. He loved it, could not imagine a life without it. He had supposed it would be here always, for him to come back to. Some of this feeling he tried to express to her, but Iris words were halting and inadequate and she cut him off with an amused look. “This old place? We’ll be lucky to find somebody who’ll take it off our hands.”

In the face of such blasphemy he was speechless. His mother rattled on, moving briskly from table to stove. “I talked the whole thing over with Aunt Fay when she came up from Lansing for the funeral. She’s all alone in that big house and she’ll be glad to have us come five with her. We’ll pay our share, of course, and it’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to what you’d have to pay if you lived in a dormitory.”

“Lansing?” he said stupidly. “Why are we going to live in Lansing?”

“Because Michigan State College is there, silly.”

But that was not the real reason. He knew it by the way her eyes refused to meet his. All through supper he sat silent while she related the details of the plan that she had conceived and executed without a word to him. There’ll be enough money to see you through, John, and a little left for my old age.” The false, overly sweet smile that he had noticed earlier in the day reappeared. “I may even get myself a job as a saleslady somewhere, to help out. I’d enjoy that, I think.”

For a week he slept badly, pondering the reasons behind her nervous haste to get away. The answer eluded him. Whenever he was with her he was quiet and watchful; and day and night he was racked by a terrible homesickness. He left his food almost untouched, but his mother did not notice. She had become a stranger. He no longer knew anything about her.

From the day the For Sale sign went up, he stopped trying to work the land. Instead, he found a job at a garage in town, riding back and forth on his bicycle morning and evening. Besides the independence it gave him, there was the swapping of stories with the men who hung around the garage, the staying in of an evening to go to a show or shoot a game of pool, the pedaling home at midnight with juke-box tunes humming through his head. No harm in any of it, and it lessened his misery a little.

His mother’s objections were indirect. “Don’t you want to come right home from work and review your trigonometry awhile tonight?” And once when she smelled beer on his breath she reproached not him but his new friends. “A wild, worthless lot, that crowd.”

He answered defiantly, “I like them. You don’t have to.” He would not have admitted the savage delight he took in her perturbation.

The last word, naturally, had been hers. Late in September she showed him a check. “Option money. I believe the Michaelsons are going to buy it.”

“It’s—really sold then.”

“I think so.” She went over to the mirror above the fireplace. “I believe I’ll go downtown tomorrow and buy a new hat.” She leaned toward the glass, smiling a little. “I saw one in Forster’s window that—You’ll need some new clothes too, John.”

Watching her touch her hair and turn her head, he realized again that she was an attractive woman, and instantly the answers he had been seeking came to him. Life in this quiet place, with only a son, wasn’t enough for her. She had invented the flimsy excuse about his going to college because she needed stir and bustle and people, and she was going where she could find them. How bored she must have been, even while his father was alive, to be in such a hurry now! Perhaps she was dreaming already of a second and more satisfactory marriage. This, under the guise of self-sacrifice for her son’s future! Her lack of honesty revolted him.

Disillusionment bitter in his mouth, he said carefully, “I’d like to ask you a favor. Will you give back the option money and sell the farm to me?”

“Why, how could—”

Rapidly, earnestly, he went on. “You’d have to wait awhile for your money, but you have Dad’s insurance to tide you over. You go on to Aunt Fay’s and I’ll stay here and work at the garage until I have enough for a down payment. After that I’ll farm the place and send you so much every month. You won’t lose anything by it, I promise.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said crossly. “Leave you here, all by yourself? Who’d look after you?”

“I wouldn’t be alone for long. In a year or two I’d get married, maybe, and—”

She laughed right in his face. “Hattie Monaghan, I suppose. And she’s only sixteen.”

Patiently he kept on. “She won’t always be sixteen. ’Course it might not be Hattie. I haven’t thought much about—”

“Oh, it’d be Hattie, all right, that shiftless father of hers is just waiting to palm her off on the first fellow that wants her. She’s pretty and cute and she’ll have six children by the time she’s twenty-five, and you’ll work your head off here in this backwoods all your fife looking after the slew of them. No, I won’t hear of it!”

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child!” he shouted. “I’m not a child!”

She turned her back on him, decisively, and there was a grim determination in her aspect that forbade another word. He might have been a four-year-old having a tantrum instead of a young man seeking a plan on which to reconstruct his fife.

From then on he made a point of coming home only to sleep. Actually Hattie was not important to him, but as he lay on the garage floor staring at the underbellies of automobiles his thoughts came back to the girl again and again. She dominated his mind as a symbol of the independence he coveted. Married, he would be a man, not a possession of his mother’s; and Hattie’s warm breathlessness and soft laughter would fill the void that his mother’s indifference to him had left. He made plans for an imaginary elopement. He tried to imagine what it would be like to live with the Monaghans until he had money enough to set up a separate place. Once he went so far as to call Hattie on the garage phone, but the line was busy and he did not try again.

Thus, wavering and indecisive, bristling with the fury of the helpless, he came to the day of departure. Bricker’s grocery truck would come in a few hours to take him and his mother, bag and baggage, to the railroad station in town, and he was still quarreling, still trying to make a stand.

“I won’t go with you,” he said roughly. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m not going.”

His mother tied an apron over her black suit. “I’ll get us an early supper. There may not be a diner on the train.”

“I don’t want any supper.”

“Then get out of here, with your sulking and scowling!” Her eyes were bright and hard. “And have the decency not to make me come calling you when the truck gets here.”

He slammed the kitchen door behind him and walked out to the woodpile in front of the barn. He was, finally, defeated. She was not going to unbend, and inexperience made him shy away from complete rebellion. All he could do now was to hate her. He picked up the ax and began chopping furiously, the white chips leaping up to sting his face.

Wrapped in his misery, he did not hear the man approach. Suddenly, like an apparition, there he was, standing on the far side of the woodpile, watching. A tall, thin man, dressed in gray. A stranger.

“Hello, kid,” said the man easily. “My name’s Jack Norwood and I’ve got a truck with a flat tire down the road a ways. Can I use your phone?”

“We don’t have a phone. The nearest one’s two miles away, in town.”

Norwood’s black eyes darted around the barnyard. “No car either? Must be mighty peaceful around here. How do you stand it, a young guy full of beans, like you?”

“I’m used to it,” John said briefly. He propped the ax against the wood. “I work at a garage. Maybe I can help out.”

“Hell, no. I need a new tire. My spare went flat this morning.”

“I’ve got a bike I could ride into town on. Somebody’d come out from the garage.” The moment he made the offer he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t like this man’s face, nor the queer way he kept looking around. He added awkwardly, “Except I couldn’t get back in time for a—sort of date I’ve got.”

The man chewed his underlip. “Your dad around? Or a brother, maybe?”

“No. Just my mother and me.” (He shouldn’t have said that, he was handling this all wrong.)

“She in the house?”

“Yes, getting supper.”

Norwood smiled and his manner became more authoritative. “Listen, I’m cold. Got an old coat or something I could borrow? Didn’t expect to be stranded out on the road like this. I ain’t dressed for it.”

“Well, I don’t know—”

Keeping his face toward John, the man made a quick, sidling semicircle toward the barn door. “How about this old red sweater? Just the ticket.”

There was no time to object. Norwood was buttoning the sweater, nervy as you please. “I can find you something better than that,” John said weakly. He hated seeing his father’s sweater on this man, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

“This’ll do.” The man smiled again, without mirth. “This’ll do fine.” He pulled the sweater well down and looked toward the house.

“My bike’s right by the back door,” John said hastily. “If you’d like to ride into town yourself—”

“Later, maybe. Let’s go in the house a minute. I’d like to get warmed up.”

“I don’t think—”

“Come on!” He gave John a push that nearly knocked him down, still grinning to show it was all in fun. “Your mom might even shell out with a cup of coffee. If you asked her.”

Here was the chance he’d been fighting his mother for—the right to take charge of what might be a serious situation—and he was flunking it simply because he didn’t know how to go about making a stand. How could he be sure that the fellow was dangerous, instead of just ignorant? You couldn’t knock a man down for borrowing an old sweater and asking for a cup of coffee! Reluctantly he led the way to the porch and noticed that Norwood had brought the ax along. The sight sent an added thrill of alarm along his nerves. He dared to say, “We usually leave the ax in the barn.”

“Oh, thought I was helping you out. I’ll just leave it inside the kitchen door.”

Inside the kitchen door. Not outside. That cinched it. The man was now in complete authority and, willy-nilly, John was the Trojan horse, taking the enemy into the citadel.

By little signals, by putting all his anxiety in his eyes when Norwood wasn’t looking, he tried to warn his mother to be on her guard. She didn’t notice. Chatting placidly, she put another plate on the table, apologizing for the fact that their good dishes were already packed. Norwood ate supper with them, taking the seat nearest the door, where the ax stood. He spoke monosyllabically and John spoke not at all because of the schemes that raced through his mind. Remarks he could make that would lead Norwood to think they were not as cut off from assistance as they seemed. A way to get rid of the ax. The remembering of a forgotten errand that would excuse him from the table and give him a chance to go for help. All of these had shortcomings: either they left his mother at the mercy of the stranger or they might precipitate instant action on Norwood’s part. No. Better to stall for time and hope for the best.

“You’re not eating, John,” said his mother.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll see if I can find a jar of those peaches you like.” She went into the pantry room and he could hear the rustle of paper as she searched among the jars, all ready in their cartons.

Norwood wiped his mouth and stood up decisively. “I’ve got to be going,” he said. The humorless smirk came back to his face and he reached a long arm over to Mrs. Stevens’ purse, lying on a chair. “Any money in here, I wonder?”

John forgot about the ax. The sight of those insolent fingers pawing through his mother’s possessions made him angrier than he had ever been in his life before. “Put that down,” he said ominously.

The man ignored him. “Ten dollars, for God’s sake!” he said. “That’s just like you dumb backwoods monkeys. Only ten bucks in the house!”

John leaped for him, but the man was quick. His left hand whipped out and caught the boy low in the stomach, doubling him up, with a paralyzing pain. “Don’t try to fight in the big leagues, sonny. You’re lucky I don’t decide to wreck this whole place, just for the hell of it.”

Gasping, John tried to straighten up. Then, through his giddiness, he heard his mother’s voice. “Drop that purse and get out,” she said.

Inexplicably, Norwood changed his tune. “Listen, lady,” he whined, “this is all a big mistake. I didn’t mean—”

The haze cleared and he saw now that his mother had a gun—his father’s old shotgun, which they kept in the comer of the pantry. She must have forgotten that it wasn’t loaded. “Get out of here!” she said, and he saw her finger whiten on the futile trigger.

Norwood saw it too and backed away. “Don’t get excited, lady. I’m goin’.” But his hand was groping behind him for the ax. John saw it just in time.

“No, you don’t!” he yelled, and snatched the ax away from the seeking fingers, lifted it above his head for the stroke that would lay the enemy at his feet.

The man didn’t wait. He was out the door like a scalded cat, grabbing the bicycle as he passed it, running with it down the drive until he reached the road, where he vaulted into the seat and disappeared around the curve.

Taking deep, triumphant breaths of the cold air that poured through the kitchen, John watched him go. The sensation of miserable helplessness was gone. Instead, he felt light, wonderful, shaken with inward laughter at the sight of a man running away from him! Closing tire door, he disdained to lock it. “If he tries to come back, I’ll settle his hash for sure!” he said, and meant it.

The new confidence that had come to him had missed his mother. She was leaning against the sink, the gun drooping in her hands, her face alarmingly white. Gently he took the gun from her and led her to a chair. “It’s all right now, Mother. It’s all over. Here, I’ll get you some coffee.”

In the moment of crisis, she had seemed to fill the room, but he saw now how little actual strength she had. She was all spirit, and his heart swelled with love and admiration for her. He put an arm around her shoulders and held the cup to her lips for the first few swallows. “You drink the rest of that and you’ll be all right.” He straddled the kitchen chair across from her and smiled reassuringly whenever her pitifully blank eyes looked at him.

“The gun wasn’t loaded,” she said vaguely.

“I knew, but I didn’t think you did.” He took one of her cold trembling hands and chafed it. His voice was respectful. “That took a lot of nerve. You’re a real, honest-to-God heroine.”

Her face crumpled into weeping. “I’m not. I’m not at all. You don’t know how it’s been—” The great gasping sobs would not let her speak. She put her head down on the table and cried as if she would never stop.

He waited until the worst of it was over. Then he brought cold water and sponged her face with it, talking softly the whole time. “We have to get you in shape,” he said. “Bricker’ll be along to pick us up in less than an hour. We’ll stop off at the police station to tell them about Norwood, and then we’ll go to the depot. You can’t get on a train looking like this.”

“I’m not going to get on the train,” she said wildly. “It’s too much, to lose everything at once! First your father, and then my house—oh, I knew what was sensible and I tried, but I can’t, I can’t. Not even for you!”

“Yes, you can. Come on, now. Pull yourself together.” He knelt beside her and raised her swollen face. “I know how you feel, and it won’t do. There’s no sense living in the past. You were right and I was wrong. We’ve got to go ahead. Just the way you planned.”

She looked at him then, and saw him. “I’m sorry. I—it was your father’s sweater and the funny look on your face—and when he hit you, I wanted to kill him!”

“It’s all over. Don’t think about it any more.”

“All right. I’ll try.” She wiped her eyes and smiled shakily. “I’m all in pieces. No good to you at all. I can’t even think what’s still to be done.”

He began picking up the dishes, briskly. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything. Count on me.”

* * * *

“Anything else, Ella?” asked Mr. Sims, stuffing the groceries into a big brown bag. “Here’s a little pack of candies I’m throwing in for the kids. Wouldn’t hurt you to have a few, either.”

Ella Mack smiled shyly at him. Mr. Sims had always been kind to her, from the days when her eyes barely came above the level of the counter. She had been a plain, undernourished child, beset by the care of younger half brothers, anxious over the health of a frail, weak mother, terrified of her rough, loudmouthed stepfather; and Mr. Sims had made her feel important, somehow, and valuable and pretty. He still made her feel that way, now that she was a plain and unattractive twenty.

“I’ll call Jimmy to carry these out to the car for you, Ella.”

The customary terror in which she lived rushed back, expunging the little interval of warmth and safety. Jimmy Blake had gone to high school with her, and she would be expected to talk to him: a few words about the weather, or the condition of her family’s old black Ford, or the doings of people whom they both knew. She was not equal to it, her timidity forbade it. “I’ll carry them myself, Mr. Sims. I’m used to lifting things.”

He helped her himself then, fussing a little about her driving the five miles home without a heater in the car. “Seems like your family ought to care a little more about you,” he said, “seeing as how you do all the work for them. If you don’t insist on your own rights, Ella, nobody will.”

“I guess I’m not much of an insister, Mr. Sims.”

Pulling away from the curb, she felt gay and a little reckless. Though she dare not be more than five minutes late getting home, she risked making a little circle of the town, seeing all the lights come on through the dusk. The State Police Post, next to the bank. The movie house, where she had never been allowed to go. Elnicky’s Bar, her stepfather’s hangout. The high school. The little house where Miss Lewis lived and where Ella might have lived too, if everything had been different.

Thinking of Miss Lewis always made her feel good, and she was smiling as she left the town behind her and headed out on the state road. Miss Lewis was the school district’s nurse, with her office in the high school, where Ella had first met her. That day Miss Lewis had been rushed off her feet giving eye and teeth examinations to four hundred incoming freshmen, and she had picked on Ella for help, at random.

“You, girl. What’s your name? Well, Ella, I need a hand here. Keep these fresh packages coming, and jot down what I tell you to on these cards. All right, Jim, sit down here and let’s have a look at you. Last time I saw you, you were seven and had the measles. What’s the idea of coming in here all grown up and making me feel old?”

Ella had helped Miss Lewis all that morning, shoulder to shoulder, as if they were equals. Miss Lewis didn’t give a lot of directions and fuss at you; she gave you a job, took it for granted that you had the sense to do it, and turned her attention to her own work. At noon she threw herself into a chair and looked up at Ella.

“You’re good,” she said. “The principal usually assigns me a girl for an assistant. Couple of hours’ work every day, pays a dollar an hour. How’d you like to be the girl this year?”

It was the first time in her life that Ella had been asked to make a decision of her own, and she made it quickly. “I’d like to, Miss Lewis.”

“I’ll fix it up then. You realize it’ll mean you’ll have no study periods. You’ll have to do all your studying at home.”

“I can do that.”

She did, too, though she suffered for it. Her stepfather, Gus, jawed at her every day. “A big girl, fourteen, settin’ around with her face in a book when she ought to be helping her maw! Let me tell you, Miss High-and-Mighty, you’re not going to get at them books till you’ve done every last thing that needs to be done in this house!”

Her mother, half ill from yearly birthing or miscarriage, tried to stand up for her. “Ella does more than she ought to, as it is. She has a right to an education.”

“What’s a woman need education for? All these laws about kids having to go to school till they’re sixteen! Poppycock!”

The thing that saved her was the ten dollars she brought home each week. Gus came to count on it. She handed it to him each Friday evening and he would be off to Elnicky’s, stumbling home any time after midnight. It was worth the price to her, to have the long evening alone with her mother and the kids, all of them free from Gus’s bruising tyranny. They became quite gay, those evenings. The children popped com, laughing and chattering, and Ella and her mother set each other’s hair and looked through the mail-order catalogue at the new styles. When Gus complained during the week of not feeling well, they lived on pins and needles lest he be not well enough to go out Friday night. Fortunately Gus was always well enough for that.

She said nothing about her home to Miss Lewis, ever, but somehow Miss Lewis came to know. At the beginning of Ella’s junior year Miss Lewis said, “It’s not right that you can’t have a pretty dress or two and some new shoes. How do you expect to go to the class parties? You earn the money, you’re entitled to spend some of it.”

“I wouldn’t be allowed to go to any parties anyway. My goodness!”

Miss Lewis looked thoughtful. “Would it help if I went out and talked to him, Ella?”

“No, oh no. It would make it worse.”

“Is he going to let you graduate?”

“Yes, I think so.”

The nurse’s eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “I rather thought he might, considering those ten dollars a week. What are you going to do after you’re through school?”

“Nothing,” she said bleakly. “I’ll just be home all the time then. Gus doesn’t believe in women working—outside the house, that is. He doesn’t mind how hard they work there.”

“He seems to like a little extra money coming in. Where will be get it?”

“The boys’ll be old enough to have jobs then. Paper routes or working in a store. He’ll have their money.” “You’ll be eighteen next year, Ella. Your own boss. You can do whatever you want to then.”

“There’s nothing I want to do, really, except go to college, and that’s out of the question.”

“St. Luke’s Hospital isn’t out of the question.” Miss Lewis sat forward on her chair, starch rustling. “Now listen. You’re intelligent and conscientious, and you have a real ability for nursing. If I recommend you to St. Luke’s, they’ll take you into training and it won’t cost you a cent. It’s a hard profession, nursing, but a good one. How about it?”

Ella closed her eyes on the marvelous vision and swallowed. “I couldn’t. I’d love to, but he’d never let me.” The nurse looked exasperated. “You’re not even his own child! He has five of his own. Let them help out. You’ve done your share.”

There was no way of telling Miss Lewis how Gus really was. The rages. The oaths. The blows. “I’m sorry, Miss Lewis. It’s wonderful of you, but I—couldn’t.”

“You’re afraid of him,” said Miss Lewis simply.

“I guess so. You don’t know how awful he can be.”

“You’d be away from home. He couldn’t get at you.”

“He’d take it out on the rest of them. I’d—worry so that it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“But your mother picked him out. It’s up to her to cope with him. All you have to do is tell him you’re going to be a nurse, and if he raises Cain, face him down! Stand up to him!”

Hopeless as urging jelly to turn into brick! Ella had not dared mention St. Luke’s even to her mother, who might precipitate calamity by broaching the subject to her husband. There had been nothing to do, after commencement, but fall into the hurried back-breaking routine of the unhired help in an overpopulated household. It was the price she was willing to pay for peace, the toll exacted by Gus’s violence. Even now, driving the rattletrap car through the early dark, she was anxious about how things might be going at home. Guiltily, because she had loitered, she pressed harder on the accelerator.

She saw the obstacle in the road just in time. Her brakes cried out, the wheels sent up sprays of gravel, the motor coughed and stalled. She peered over the steering wheel at the object her headlights had picked up. A bicycle, lying in the middle of the road! Her eyes searched the road margins for a sprawled child, but she saw no one. Gingerly she stepped out in the road, raised the bicycle, looked for bloodstains. So intent was she that when a hand touched her arm she screamed and heard the high, wailing echo calling back from the woods.

“That’s enough of that, sweetheart!” the man said. He clapped a rough hand over her mouth and talked close to her ear. “You’re going to drive me across the state line to Wentworth. Shut up and get in the car. I haven’t any time to waste.”

Holding her by the arms, he thrust her into the driver’s seat and swore when he looked at the gas gauge. “Damn it, there isn’t enough in here to go sixty miles!”

“The gauge doesn’t work,” she said stupidly.

“Well, let’s get going. If we have to stop anywhere, I’m your uncle Jack and don’t forget it.” He pressed her arm, numbingly. “Get it?”

“Yes.”

She started the engine and, once they were under way, he seemed to relax a little. “I bet I came twenty miles on that stinking contraption. Feels good to sit down. You live around here?”

“Yes.”

“Not gabby, are you? Well, that’s all right with me.” He took a heavy monkey wrench out from under his sweater. “See this? I’m going to take a little nap, and if you try any funny business—”

She did not hear all of what he said. She was conscious of a difficulty in breathing and the heavy thudding of her heart, but otherwise her mind was blank. She drove automatically, sitting as far from him as she could. Not until she heard a snore did she dare to look at him. There he sat, horrible even in sleep, slack mouth open, the wrench tightly in his hand. A nightmare that had escaped from dreams into reality. Terrifying. Impossible. Yet there he was.

For half an hour she drove by mere reflex action, and then she discovered a truth: fear, when it is extreme, does not last. Her mind threw off the inertia of shock and gave her a glimmer of hope. She was coming to the main highway on which she must turn to get to Wentworth, and there was a stop light or two there, a group of stores, some houses. There, surely, she could attract someone’s attention—by making faces or signaling or dropping something out of the window. Or she might drive the car into something and take her chances in the wreck.

But the man awoke, sharply. “What’re we coming to?”

“The main road into Wentworth. I’ll turn left at that light.”

“No. Go straight through.”

“That’ll take us to—”

“We’ll find a back road into Wentworth.”

The car bumped up to the smooth pavement, passed through the green halo of light, bumped down again to the gravel surface on the other side. “Good,” he said with satisfaction. “Just do what I tell you and you’ll be okay. I’m not a bad guy when you get to know me.” He patted her knee approvingly.

“Why don’t you drive?” she said desperately.

He pushed over closer to her and she felt his breath on her cheek. “Because I have to be sure you stay with me, sweetie. Can’t have you running to the cops. And it ain’t as easy for a driver to leave a car as it is for a passenger. See?”

“I won’t go to the cops. Please. If you let me out right here, I’ll let you take the car and I won’t say a word. Honestly I—”

He buried his face in her neck and laughed. “’Course you won’t. You’re not going to get the chance. That’s why.”

“But after I drop you off at Wentworth, what’s to stop me from going to the police then? You’ll have to believe me sometime. You’ll have to take my word for it. I won’t tell the police, if only you’ll—”

He paid no attention. He was pawing at her, babbling foolishly, and suddenly she grasped the significance of what he had half admitted. He could not risk turning her loose, no matter how she begged or promised. After she had served his various purposes he would kill her. Kidnapping, crossing a state line, criminal assault maybe, what did he have to lose? Her death was a necessity to him. Poor stupid little fool to take so long to realize that!

Since her death was inevitable and it no longer mattered what she did, she drove an elbow forcefully into his ribs. “Sit up and give me room! I can’t drive like this.”

He gave her space, leering. “You’re right. Mustn’t mix business with pleasure. Later we’ll pull over somewhere and get friendly. What d’you say?”

She didn’t answer. She was surveying her life with detachment, as if it were already over. To be dead in a ditch at twenty before she had even begun to live! Her revulsion was so great that she cranked down a window swiftly, to keep from being ill.

The man saw the headlights behind them before she did. “Somebody’s following us,” he said. “Turn down here and keep going.” He sat tensely for five minutes, watching the back window. “Yep. They’ve turned after us, and they’re coming fast. Hell!” He crouched down, gnawing excitedly at a fingernail. “Just over the next rise, turn off the lights and drive off the road into a field. Hurry!”

As they dropped down the next hill and she snapped off the lights obediently, he reached over and gave the wheel a mighty wrench. The car skidded, turned, leaped a culvert, and shuddered along over the rough ground where corn had been. Behind some tall shocks, he cut the motor and took the keys. In the stillness she heard the other car pass by, following the road.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked fiercely. “Have any idea?”

“No.”

“I’m going to take a quick look around. They might be bluffing, themselves.” He got out, dropping the keys into his pocket. “Stay here if you know what’s good for you. I won’t be far away. If I have to run after you and bring you back—” He fingered a second, and she knew that he was debating whether it would be safer to destroy her now. But she was a woman and he had another use for her, when he got around to it. A man he would have killed on the spot.

He moved away and she lost sight of him immediately in the thick darkness. Her hand crept to the door handle, and she waited. A sixth sense must have warned her that the time was not yet, because she did not hear him return until he was right beside her. “Just checking up,” he said threateningly, and went away again.

This time she didn’t wait. She pressed the handle softly and was free, running across the field, dodging behind the com shocks, going away from the road toward the farm-house that must be somewhere ahead. He was after her, almost from the start. She heard him swear and stumble, and once, when he circled ahead to cut her off, she almost ran into him. She threw herself on the ground and he passed within a yard of her without knowing it.

She never knew when he got into the car and drove away. It may have been during one of the periods when she was having a vomiting attack, pressing her face against a com shock to stifle the sound of retching. Between the nausea and the listening, it took her an hour to reach the lighted space near a barn where a man in overalls was working on a tractor motor. “May I use your telephone?” she said to him, and fell on her knees from sheer inability to stand any longer.

Their name was Benson, and they were very kind. Mr. Benson did the telephoning, first to the state police and then to Ella’s mother. “No, she’s all right, ma’am. The police are coming out to talk to her and they’ll drive her home. She’s been a mighty brave girl, I’d say. Mighty brave.” Mrs. Benson fed her a lavish supper and sponged her stained coat into respectability, marveling, “My goodness, I don’t know how you lived through it! I wouldn’t have had the nerve!”

“It isn’t hard to have the nerve when you know you’re going to be killed anyway.” A thought struck her and she paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. “But—you always are going to die anyway, aren’t you?” she said slowly. “Eventually, I mean.”

“Well, everybody dies, if that’s what you’re talking about,” said Mrs. Benson, puzzled. “But as for man, his days are as the grass,’ you know.” She smiled consolingly. “You’re young. You have a long time ahead of you, never fear.”

The police were kind too. Lieutenant Harris said that her mother was probably anxious to see her and they’d better do their talking while they drove. So at sixty miles an hour she answered a hundred questions, and Sergeant Connors, in the back seat, jotted down the answers. Finally she put a question of her own: “Who was he?”

“His name’s Jake Norris. Escaped from the Prison Farm this afternoon. Supposed to be doing ten years at hard labor. He’s a bad customer, miss. You’re lucky.”

“I think he was going to kill me.”

“Murder, robbery, rape, he’s done ’em all. The only conviction we could make stick in this state was assault with intent to kill. We sent him up for that.” He turned his head slightly and spoke to the sergeant. “If he’s heading for Wentworth, he must mean to catch a train to Chicago.”

“Could be. That’s his old stamping ground, the files said.”

“We’ll have to head him off. Once he’s in Chicago, he’ll be mighty hard to find.”

They let her off by the walk that led to the porch, and her mother came running down the steps, reaching out grateful arms to her. “Thank God, Ella. I’ve been so worried. Are you really all right? You aren’t hurt?”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Your father’s kinda upset. You know how he gets. Don’t pay any attention to what he says. He—”

“You’ll catch cold,” Ella said calmly. “Let’s go in.”

The children were waiting for her just inside the door, and she hugged them, smiling to show that she was unharmed. Then she walked across the room to where Gus stood, red-faced and glowering.

“I’m sorry about your car,” she said. “The police think they’ll get it back for you.”

“Stoppin’ to pick up strangers!” he bellowed. “After all you’ve been told! I ought to—”

“Oh, keep quiet a minute,” she said impatiently.

Gus’s jaw dropped. In the sudden stillness she heard her mother gasp, saw the grin on her oldest brother’s face. The resolution that had been forming in her mind crystallized, rock-hard.

“I’m leaving here tonight,” she told him. “I’m going in to stay with Miss Lewis for a few days. Until she can get me into the Nurses’ Training School at St. Luke’s. I’m going to learn to be a nurse.”

Gus recovered and started for her, hand upraised. “I’ll learn you to talk to me like that, you little snip! I’ll—”

She did not retreat a step. A bright mounting anger threw color into her cheeks and brought a glint into her eye that her stepfather didn’t relish. “You lay a hand on me, Gus, and it’ll be the sorriest day of your life! I mean it!”

He dropped the hand and tried to cover bafflement with bluster. “Talkin’ big won’t get you noplace. You keep it up and I’ll take a belt to you! I’m warnin’ you—”

“No, I’m warning you. The next time I hear of you beating one of these kids I’m going to report you to the county authorities. You’re not a fit person to have charge of children and everybody knows it! It’s high time something was done about it.”

Her mother whispered fearfully, “Ella, Ella, don’t.” “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mom. They have laws for people like him.” She turned her back deliberately on the strangled sounds which were all that Gus’s loose mouth could utter. “I guess they pay me a little money, even while I’m learning. I’ll send it to you.”

“No, honey. You keep it for yourself. I—this is all so quick that I—won’t you even take off your coat?”

“The bus is nearly due.” She hugged her mother and reached out a hand to the youngsters. “I’ll write. Every week. And after I graduate I’ll have a house and you can all come and stay with me whenever you like. I’ll miss you so much.”

They clustered around her, talking and weeping, and her mother said, “I’m glad for you, you know that. But to go tonight—right after that awful man worried us so—”

“I’m two years late now, Mom. The sooner the better.”

Gus had decided to change his tune. The kid really meant to go, and she was a lot of help around the place. He advanced with a forgiving air. “Maybe I was a little hasty, Ella. Seems like we ought to talk this over, reach an understanding. I’m a reasonable man—”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I’ve had a good many years of your reasonableness. I don’t want another minute of it.”

He clutched a chair back, his knuckles whitening. “I’ve heard all I want to hear from you. Now you get out of here. This minute. Don’t wait to pack your clothes.”

“What clothes?” she said, walking toward the door.

They all followed her, and her oldest brother said, “It’s pretty dark, Sis. Want me to walk you to the bus?”

“Thanks, Jerry, but you’d better stay here with Mom. I’m not afraid.”

It was wonderful to know as she walked down the lane, turning to wave at them through her tears, that she would never be afraid of anything again.

* * * *

People said that the only reason old Walt Sparks didn’t live in a shack, in spite of all his money, was that he was sentimental about the big house. He had lived there always; first with his mother, who had died when Walt was forty; for the next ten years with his wife and baby son; and from then on by himself, and he was now in his seventieth year. A long time to live in one house.

Among his neighbors in the widely scattered houses around the lake, to the tradespeople in Wentworth, twenty miles away, old Walt was known as a recluse, a hermit. “The old boy’s getting queerer every day,” they said. “It’s a wonder young Doc Sparks doesn’t keep more of an eye on his dad.” The older, wiser heads guessed that young Doc Sparks had tried and that his father had resisted. “Old Walt doesn’t want to have anything to do with anybody,” they said. “Afraid it might cost him money. He’s still got the first dime he ever earned. Wonder what he’s going to do with it?”

Still, if the old gentleman had no ultimate plans, he did have a way of life. Each Friday he drove into Wentworth to collect his rents, visit his bank, pick up his meager supplies. Much as he deplored the expense of a car, it was necessary that he have one, for this. Six days a week it sat in the garage; but on the seventh, rain or shine, he wheeled it slowly out and made his way to town. Years ago he had bought inexpensive cars, but he had found that they didn’t hold up the way they should. Now he owned a big black Lincoln, powerful and certain, five years old and apparently impervious to wear. He did not consider it an extravagance, he could justify its cost to himself.

It was a little harder to justify his gun collection. Sometimes, taking the pistols, the rifles, the muskets down from their racks, fingering the smooth metal, oiling and reloading carefully, he felt a qualm through his pleasure. One gun, for protection, yes. But twenty-five guns? On these occasions he reminded himself hastily that every man had a right to one foible, that, since he lived frugally, without a telephone, without automatic heat or hot water, without new clothes or the gadgets that were necessities to other people, he had a right to a comparatively inexpensive weakness. The sight of the loaded guns lying quiescent in their racks gave him a feeling of power, of self-sufficiency, that was very warming. He had never fired a gun in his life.

His most genuine passion, however, was the house. It had fourteen rooms, all high-ceilinged, many with fireplaces, which were useful, because heat crept slowly through the lower floor and reached the upper ones not at all. The wood-burning stove in the kitchen kept him warm while he prepared his meals, and he usually went to bed early, rolling himself into the old-fashioned quilts and bulky comforters. Stove, fireplace brass, and bedding he kept immaculate. He tended the house as carefully as his mother had, polishing, sweeping, dusting, airing. Each day he lowered the window shades against the sun, and twice a year he tugged the big carpets outside, hung them on a line, beat them vigorously. All the rooms were kept open and livable, mahogany glowing, antimacassars primly placed on the chair backs though no heads ever rested against them. His son’s wife Isabelle sniffed at all this, had said something once about false gods and idolatry. “This isn’t a house, it’s a shrine,” she had said disturbingly.

He answered crossly, “That’s foolish. A shrine for what?”

“I don’t know, Father Sparks. I thought maybe you did.”

He didn’t care for Isabelle, couldn’t imagine why George had married her. One of those smarty Eastern-school girls who talked right up to a man. She didn’t come out any more with George on his weekly visits. Said she had to stay with the children, and he was just as glad. Matter of fact he’d said more than once that he’d just as soon George didn’t come out either.

“Seems to me a young doctor, getting started, would have something better to do with his time,” he told George.

“I don’t like to think of you all alone out here without a soul near in case something happened to you. I just come to check up.”

“Well, you don’t have to. There’s nothing the matter with me.”

George looked amused. “I won’t muss up the place, Dad. Ten minutes, once a week. You can put up with that.”

“All foolishness!”

“I don’t know that it is. With your asthma and blood pressure—”

“You don’t know a thing about my blood pressure! I don’t hold with doctors. Never did.”

“Well, put it that I worry about you.”

He would have liked to say, “Worry about my money, most likely!” but he knew that wasn’t true. George didn’t have sense enough to care about money. Not practical. Namby-pamby and soft, the way May had been.

Old Walt’s mother had warned him against marrying May. “She’s not our kind, Walter. She’ll never make a good, careful, hard-working wife.” But within a year of his mother’s death he had married the smiling, prettily complexioned creature, and for a while all had been beer and skittles. They had romped through the house like a couple of kids, treated themselves to trips and movies, and sat down every night to May’s beautiful and extravagant dinners. He was as charmed as a man from the dim, frozen Arctic suddenly let loose in a tropical island paradise.

Occasionally, looking over the grocery bill, he felt a pang. “Two pounds of butter in one week. May!”

“Well, I baked that Scotch shortbread you liked, and—”

“But two pounds!”

She put her soft arms around his neck. “We can afford it, Walter, can’t we?”

At first he said that they could. As the years after George’s birth went by, however, his conscience troubled him increasingly. He had to admit that May asked very little for herself, but she was insatiable in demanding things for the child. They began to quarrel about whether a new furnace should be put in, and the price of vitamin tablets, and how fast George outgrew his shoes and if he should be allowed to play in the living room.

“I tell you, May, he’s wearing out the furniture! Climbing all over it and nicking pieces out of the legs with those fool toys of his.”

“He doesn’t climb over it. It’s just that his legs aren’t long enough to sit in it properly, and his heels—”

“I don’t care what it is! You keep him off that furniture!”

“Do you really expect the furniture to last forever, Walter? Do you honestly believe you’ll never have to buy another stick till the day you die? Isn’t furniture supposed to be used and wear out?”

“Not if it’s properly taken care of,” he said stubbornly.

“I do take care of it. But if my son isn’t allowed to sit on a chair, or eat his meals at the table—”

“God knows he eats! Meat every day.”

“The doctor says he needs it. He says everyone—”

“Don’t mention the doctor to me. Of all the silly waste! You’d think a kid couldn’t grow up by himself. In the old days—”

“In the old days a lot of them didn’t grow up.”

Once, in the midst of an argument, she said soberly, “Are you keeping something from me, Walter? Have we lost a lot of money? Are we poor?”

“We aren’t yet, but we will be if you keep this up!”

Gradually she changed, became quieter, more conservative. The arguments ceased, and he was pleased at the improvement in her. Sometimes, coming into the house, he would hear her talking and laughing with the youngster, but when she heard his step she became silent and subdued. Evenings, after George was put to bed, she sat and sewed. She was an expert needlewoman and he enjoyed watching her at it.

“You look pretty doing that,” he told her gruffly.

Her smile had a peculiar quality. “A good thing. I haven’t bought a new dress in five years.”

“Well, you don’t need clothes. We don’t go anywhere.”

“No,” she said agreeably, “and of course we don’t have anyone in.”

The grocery bills had long since become reasonable. She fed George separately and, though he had an idea that George got butter and lamb chops, he was pleased to see beans and potatoes and margarine on his own plate.

“Nobody could want a better meal than that,” he said defiantly, wiping his lips.

She had taken to having only toast and tea for her dinner. “I’m glad you like it,” she said politely.

When George was eight years old and in school all day, she suggested that she go back to her old job as a stenographer in Wentworth. “I believe they’d take me, even part time,” she said. “I was good at it.”

Much as the idea of the extra money appealed to him, he vetoed this. Certain things simply were not fitting, and a wife working outside her home was one of them. Especially a wife as frail-looking as May had become in the past few years. (Oh, these silly dieting fads that women took up!) He put his foot down and no more was said about the matter. Lulled by her outward meekness, he did not see that the storm signals were flying now in earnest.

George’s tenth birthday arrived. Walt had been away on a business trip and he arrived home a day early, not to honor the occasion, for no one had reminded him of it, but quite by accident. He was amazed to find the house in a clatter with six boys running around in it, a birthday supper on the table, and a magnificent sheep-lined jacket, size 14, peeping from an open box. Fuming and fretting, he contained himself until they were alone. Then he waved the jacket in her face.

“What’s this for, a young king? How much did you spend for this?”

“Eighteen dollars,” she said crisply. “He needs it. It’ll wear for two years at least.”

He lost his temper completely. Pacing up and down amidst the wreckage of the birthday party, he spoke loudly and at length, ending up with the question he asked so often. “You’ll ruin me! Do you think I’m a rich man?”

This time the query didn’t shatter her. “Yes,” she said angrily, “I do.” Other words came flooding from her lips, her voice harsh with the freight of them. She gave him every figure: the value of each of his properties; the amount of rent he collected; the size of his savings and government bondholdings. “You’re worth three hundred thousand dollars, and we live like paupers! I wouldn’t mind, but we aren’t poor and I’m sick of living as if we were. I saved the money for the party, it didn’t cost you a cent. I shouldn’t have had to do that. I should have a reasonable household allowance to manage. Every cent I have to ask you for, you make me feel like a criminal! Why should I have to crawl to you for the most ordinary little necessities!”

He said, with what dignity he could muster, “I’m putting by for the future. You’ll be glad of it someday.”

“I won’t be glad of it. How much do we need for a future? We have enough right now for the rest of our lives. You’ll keep right on scrimping to the edge of your grave, and what for?”

“There might come a time when we’ll need it. Waste not, want not, my mother always said.”

“Your mother was a poor girl from the Old Country. It’s natural that, when she finally got a house and a nest egg, she’d hang onto them. But you’ve no excuse. You think you’re saving for something, but you’re not. You’re saving because you enjoy it, because you think more of houses and furniture and money than you do of people!”

“Just because I won’t let you be wasteful—”

She leaned toward him, her hands crushing the gaudy birthday trimmings on the table. “Answer me one thing, Walter. Will you send George to college when he’s ready to go?”

“That’s a long time off, May. Time to think about that when—”

“Right now. I want your promise. In writing. I want a legal contract with you that you’ll send George to college.”

“Maybe he won’t want to go. After he finishes high school, perhaps he’ll go into business or—”

“Would you help him get started in a business, then? Business or college, do you have any intention of doing something for him?”

He looked judicious. “Well now, that depends. Too much help makes a young fellow soft. I don’t want him spoiled. He’ll be all the better for coming up the hard way. You’re being unreasonable, May.”

She studied his face for a minute. Then, without another word, she began clearing the table. When she picked up the boy’s new jacket to carry it upstairs, he said magnanimously, “He can keep that, since you’ve bought it. If he only wears it for good, it’ll last a long time.”

“Yes, he’ll keep it,” she said, and walked out of the room.

By the time he came home the next afternoon she had gone, taking the boy and every stitch that belonged to the two of them. He was too proud, too outraged, to go after them. And, with the first shock over, he had been glad to be alone again in the spotless, unlittered rooms, with no outward drains on his patience or his purse.

There had never been a divorce. May and George settled in Wentworth, and once in a while he saw her on Main Street there, hurrying to work. His lawyer advised him that the courts might allow her something for the child’s maintenance, but she did not ask for anything and he did not offer it. She died when George was in medical school, and he allowed her to be buried in his family plot, though he did not attend the funeral. After all, they had not spoken to each other in thirteen years.

It was early in their separation, however, that he had made his will, to punish her. He had a second cousin, Agatha Munn, a sensible woman about his own age, widowed, making her living in Flint by running a very clean boardinghouse, where she set a plain but nourishing table. In Agatha’s eyes Walt was a great man. On his rare visits she treated him with flattering deference, not only asking his advice on business matters but taking it. The two of them agreed on everything: that free milk for impoverished school children was a waste of taxpayers’ money, since it further encouraged their parents in shiftless ways; that no one appreciated anything he got for nothing; that the amount of money a man acquired was an absolute measure of his intelligence.

It was to Agatha that he willed his fortune and his house. She would handle his affairs well, and she had a son as careful as herself to carry on after her. To May and George he put down a grudging thousand dollars apiece; and even after May’s death he kept the will sturdily intact. He would teach the son the lesson that the mother hadn’t had a chance to learn.

He swerved from this severity just once. On the occasion of George’s graduation from medical school old Walt sent his son a check for fifty dollars. He regretted the impulse almost immediately, told himself that he had started something, that the boy would be expecting future handouts. And he was dumfounded when, on the very day that George moved into his combined house and office in Wentworth, he brought the check, still uncashed, out to the house.

“I don’t need this, Dad. Thanks a lot, anyway.”

Old Walt covered his relief by being gruff. “Didn’t know you’d gotten so rich. Working your way through school must be more profitable than I thought.”

“No, it isn’t profitable. But you need this worse than I do.”

Indignation made him reckless. “That’s foolish! Do you have any idea how much I’m worth?”

“What you’re worth to whom?” George said, smiling.

He couldn’t figure out why he had felt insulted, nor why George, before he left, had seemed sorry about the whole thing. “Get this straight, Dad. I don’t want your money. I’ll never touch a cent of it. Let’s forget all about how rich or poor we are and see if we can’t build up some kind of relationship on that basis.”

Crazy talk. Unbelievable. Yet, as the years hurried by and George faithfully kept up his visits, old Walt was forced to believe it. Test and probe as he might, he could not find a flaw in George’s indifference to his wealth. The nearest he came was when George mentioned how badly Wentworth needed a hospital.

“Even a clinic would do. Three or four beds for emergency cases. Operating facilities. Every year we lose some patients who can’t last out the trip to Meyersville. The town says they can’t afford it. My opinion is they can’t afford not to afford it.”

Old Walt watched him from beneath his brows. “Might be a good thing for an old codger like me to sink my money into. Do some good before I go.”

He saw the quick fight on George’s face, but it lasted only an instant. Then George laughed a little. “No, Dad. I wasn’t hinting. You mustn’t think of such a thing.”

“Why mustn’t I?” he said petulantly. “I didn’t say I would, but what’s so funny in my thinking about it?”

“Believe me, I was laughing at myself,” George said apologetically.

He ignored this. “You treat me as if I were a kid, still wet behind the ears. Got a swelled head, that’s what’s wrong with you. I’ll think and do as I please!”

“What I meant was—well, if something I said made you decide to give Wentworth a clinic, look what would happen. You’d be unhappy the minute you’d done it. You’d feel bamboozled, and you’d be sorry, and you’d hold it all against me. That’s the way you are and you can’t help it. I don’t want that kind of thing to happen. I want us to be—friends.”

There was a pressure in the old man’s chest and the faint, alarming pain he had noticed lately, but he managed to snarl, “Why should we be friends? What have I ever done for you? You come tramping in here without a bit of encouragement, and you belittle me to my face and probably laugh at me behind my back—”

“That’s not so,” said George reasonably. “I’ve never belittled or laughed either. And if you’ve never done anything for me, at least you’ve not done anything against me. According to your lights, you’re honest and fair and, God knows, you’re self-sufficient. I can admire you for those things, and I do. As to why I come here, isn’t blood supposed to be thicker than water? I even think that you’d miss me a little if I didn’t come, though I don’t expect you to give me the satisfaction of saying so.”

“Wouldn’t miss you at all,” muttered old Walt perversely.

To himself, he had to admit that George’s visits made life more interesting. They talked about George’s cases and the best spray for fruit trees and the proper kind of power mower to buy. He even enjoyed George’s attempts at bossing him, though he opposed them stubbornly. He refused to have a telephone installed, he continued to change his own tires, shovel snow, prune the orchard, and paint the house. He snickered at any mention of balanced diet or vitamins. It so amused him to defy George on these matters that he arranged, each Friday evening, some remark that would outrage his son afresh.

“Went up on the roof and cleaned the gutters today,” he would announce innocently. And George was off, talking warmly about the avoidance of strain on seventy-year-old hearts and the months in bed a broken hipbone would entail, while old Walt smiled wickedly to himself, the center of attention.

On this particular Friday evening, he came in at dusk from raking ancient leaves, knowing that George would see the great piles as he drove up and be ready with a lecture by the time he set foot inside the door. He puttered around the kitchen, frying ham and potatoes, making coffee; and after the last pan had been scoured he went to his desk by the fireplace in the living room, threw more hickory logs into the blaze, sighed heavily as he sat down. He was tired tonight, and there was no telling how late George would be. It depended on the number of calls the boy had to make. Once it had been eleven o’clock before he arrived, and old Walt had been asleep in a chair.

“This is too late for an early-rising gent like you to be up,” George had said, “but I need a cup of coffee. I’m glad you waited.”

“Wasn’t waiting,” he had answered gruffly. “Just happened to fall asleep down here, that’s all.”

Tonight he decided to occupy himself with checking the rent receipts and making up the cash on hand into tidy parcels to be locked away in his strongbox until his next visit to town. From one drawer he took his old leather money pouch, dropping it on the desk top with a solid, jingling thud. From another he brought out his account book.

As he lifted this, his eye was caught by the long white envelope that lay beneath. His last will and testament. A hundred times he had seen it there without disturbing it, but this time he picked it up and sat turning the envelope in his hands.

Were he to destroy this piece of paper, George would be a wealthy man. The foolish feeling he had come to have for the boy tempted him. He reminded himself, shudderingly, of what George would do with the money: the building of the clinic, and a fund set up for treating the worthless, free of charge; and, one way or another, it’d be give, give, give, until the work of old Walt’s entire lifetime had been frittered away. Impossible to contemplate. The prospect offended all his instincts. Provoked, he shoved the envelope to one side and turned to his accounting.

How long he worked he did not know. He heard only the sighing of the fire and the punctual calling of the cuckoo clock from the kitchen. So, when he looked up and saw the man in the red sweater standing there, he was completely taken aback. Not afraid, exactly, but surprised and angry.

“What the hell do you want?” he blurted out, getting to his feet.

“The keys to the car in the garage out there,” said the man outrageously.

Such unholy disregard for privacy and property floored the old man. “Why—what—you mean, you want a lift to someplace?”

“That’s right, Pop. Only I’ll do my own driving. Where are the keys?”

Old Walt became intensely conscious of the emptiness of the house, of the money littering the desk, of the gun rack not three feet behind the intruder’s shoulder. “I don’t hand out the keys to my car, mister,” he said firmly. “Now you go along about your business, if you know what’s good for you.”

His fingers, creeping toward his pocket, had betrayed him. Quick as a striking snake, the man lunged for the coat pocket and came up with the keys. “Like taking candy from a baby, Pop.”

“I’ll call my son!” old Walt said loudly. “I’ll call my son and he’ll—”

“Quit bluffing. I been watching. There ain’t nobody else here. Do you think I’m a fool?” His black eyes glittered as he looked down at the desk. “Say, this is nice, real nice. Got any more of it in the house?” He began scooping the money up, stuffing it into his pockets.

Old Walt saw his chance and took it. He ran past the man to the gun rack, pulling down an army revolver, pointed it at the scoundrel’s impudent back. “Now then,” he said, panting. “Now then. Put that back where you found it. You—you thief!”

The man turned quickly and his eyes shone. “Guns!” he said softly. “What d’ya know! Guns.” He actually took a step forward.

So unnerving was it to see pleasure where fear should have been that the old man hesitated. “Stay where you are! This is loaded. I warn you!” he called out desperately to the advancing enemy.

Then, terrifyingly, the room began to whirl. An excruciating pain shot through his left arm and gripped his chest. He felt himself toppling to the floor amidst a great roaring in his ears. Consciousness departed and returned intermittently, so that, lying there motionless, he saw his surroundings only in occasional flashes, as if a light switch were being flicked on and off. He knew that the strange man was taking an overcoat and a hat from the closet and putting them on. He saw the gun lifted from his impotent hand, to be jammed into the overcoat pocket. But when or how the man left he did not know.

There was a long gap, and then George was bending over him, his face distressed, his hands busy with a hypodermic needle. He wanted to ask George if the thief had been caught but he found it impossible to speak, and George, seeing his effort, forbade it.

“You mustn’t move, Dad. Not a finger. Not an eyelash. I’ve put you on the couch here by the fire, and I’m wrapping you in a blanket. You have to stay warm and quiet while I run down to Yorks’ and phone for an ambulance. Understand? I’ll be gone just ten minutes. You must listen to me this time. Please.”

Lying there alone, his mind began to collect itself. He had had a heart attack and he was going to die. The idea of death was so foreign to him that he nearly smiled at the absurdity of it. Well, not a bad way to leave the world, lying lazily here in this familiar room, watching the firelight dance on tire walls. His eyes lingered on it all, like a child bidding his favorite toys good night. The old pictures. The big armchair. The desk.

The desk! A terrible urgency seized him. That white envelope lying there contained a foolish paper, drawn up in the days when he had been blind and ignorant. He loved George, there was no harm in admitting it now; and he wanted George to know it too. But suppose he should die before George got back? He must obviate that possibility. He was not going to deny himself this final pleasure of giving his son a present.

He rolled himself off the couch. Walking was beyond him, but he could creep. Painfully, stubbornly, he inched his way to the desk, pulled himself up the side of it, grasped the will in his hand. He had to get close to the fireplace to make sure of his aim, but it was very near, and the paper was obedient. It fluttered into the flames, and he lay on the hearth, contented, watching it burn.

He would have liked so much to tell George about everything: the intruder, the gun, the stolen car, and the present he had just given him. But time had run out. When he felt arms lifting him, he looked into his son’s face and tried to say, “Good boy.” The words were inarticulate. His head fell back against George’s shoulder, and his pulse ceased.

* * * *

Wentworth, a city of a hundred and fifty thousand souls, lies on the northwestern edge of Lake Michigan, in the state of Wisconsin. Summers, when the tourist season is under way, its population doubles. The little expensive shops reopen, the hotels import college students to augment their staffs, cabins and cottages are jammed, and hundreds of boats come to dance in the harbor. Winters, the town relapses into sedateness, like a conservative household that has survived the stay of a rich, hysterically gay relative. Snow fences go up along the roads and the town turns its back to the cutting wind off the lake and goes about its usual business at the dairy farm and boat factory.

Asked to name Wentworth’s most prominent citizen, a native resident would reply unhesitatingly, “Mike Cassidy. You’ve heard of him? The big lawyer, goes all over the United States? Mike’s a local boy, one of the smartest we ever had. Big shots from Cleveland and Chicago come looking for Mike when they need a good lawyer. No, I don’t know him myself, except on sight. He doesn’t mix much. Not like his brother Paul.” A new enthusiasm would creep into the native’s voice. “Have you met Paul Cassidy? Cap, we call him. Well, you will. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. Big friendly guy, honest as the day is long, takes a real personal interest in people. One of the finest athletes in the state, in his time. He’s been our chief of police for the last ten years, and you won’t find a better-run department anywhere!”

The average taxpayer in Wentworth had no idea that Cap Cassidy was about to lose his job. The people who knew it—a real estate man or two, the president of the bank, a big building contractor, two members of the City Council, Mayor Haynes, and Mike Cassidy—were keeping quiet about it, biding their time.

But Cap Cassidy was finding out. He had felt the first premonition on a day, months ago, when Mike dropped in at City Hall. Usually the brothers saw each other only on Cap’s instigation. It was a bad sign when Mike came around on his own.

“Nothing special on my mind,” Mike said, innocent-faced. “Have a few minutes to spare before I take the train to Chicago, thought I’d see how you were.”

Cap admitted cautiously that he was fine, and Mike strolled about the office and talked about inconsequential matters. “Saw Laura downtown about a week ago. She tells me the youngsters have had the flu.”

“A lot of it around.” He knew there was something Mike wanted to say, and since he didn’t come right out with it, he must be waiting for a cue. Carefully Cap introduced several likely subjects that fell flat. Then he said, “What’s taking you to Chicago?” By the slight straightening of Mike’s small wiry body, he knew immediately that he had given the proper line.

“Have a client there I’m handling some business for. Named Frescatti. Ever hear of him?”

“Angelo Frescatti? Sure, I’ve heard of him. Just like I’ve heard about the Capones and Bugsy Moran and—”

“Come now. Come now. He isn’t quite that bad. You sound so virtuous, Paul.”

He’d had a lifetime of Mike’s little jeers and he took the tiny stings as a matter of course. “I’ve even seen him. On television, when the Kefauver Committee was getting evidence about gambling in Chicago. My private opinion is that he ought to be hanged. How did you happen to get mixed up with a crook like him?”

Mike was amused. “I warn you, you’re talking libelously. There’s no genuine proof that—well, no matter. I’ve just bought a hundred acres on the lake for him. Up along the bay where they thought they were going to have the municipal air field.”

“What does Frescatti want property around here for?”

Mike shrugged. “He didn’t say, precisely. I imagine, to build a hotel. I had to make a careful examination of possible restrictions on something of that sort.”

“Hotel!” said Cap furiously. “Frescatti doesn’t run hotels, he runs gambling joints. You’d better remind him that this state has laws about that kind of tiring. He can’t bring one of his dives in here!”

“Who says he can’t?” said Mike softly.

“I do. I’ll close him down the minute he opens!”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I am, really. In the first place, it’s uncharitable of you to assume that tire hotel will be anything more than just a hotel. In the second place, Mr. Frescatti is a very generous man to those who understand him. If you were to be realistic about this scheme of his you might find it—rewarding.”

Cap got out of his chair. “Are you offering me a bribe? Did Frescatti tell you to—”

“He doesn’t know you exist, Paul. Sorry. Your fame hasn’t spread to Chicago. I was simply giving you some information for your own good. I see that my efforts were wasted.” He looked greatly pleased. “I drought they would be.”

Cap was left to puzzle over that last remark. From anyone else it might have been a compliment, but not from Mike, who had hated him since boyhood. Without cause, Cap would swear to that. Often, driven wild by his younger brother’s spitefulness, Cap had yearned to knock him down, but he never had. Mike was five inches too short and forty pounds too light to be fair fighting game. There was nothing for it but to accept the perplexing situation and try to make allowances.

Cap’s wife, Laura, said he made too many allowances. When they were first married, she refused to listen to his accounts of how brilliantly Mike was doing at the university. “Don’t get your hopes up, Paul. He won’t be any different when he comes home than he was before. It’ll save you a lot of trouble if you stop trying to be friends with him.”

“He’s bound to outgrow his crankiness. You’ll see.”

“He won’t outgrow being jealous of you.”

He had to look at her twice to make sure she wasn’t joking. “You’re talking through your hat! He’s a professional man, a lawyer, and I’m a policeman. What’s he got to be jealous of?”

“I don’t know. Being kid brother to a hero must be a hard tiling to shake off.”

“A hero!” he said with some of Mike’s own disdain. “That’s all past and done.”

“Not for him.” She laid her cheek against his shoulder. “In a way, lie’s right. You’re a better man than he is. That’s why I can’t bear to see you putting yourself out for him, over and over again, and getting kicked in the teeth for your pains. You have a thousand friends. You don’t need him.”

“Mike doesn’t care about people. With his brains, he doesn’t have to care.”

She sat up irritably. “I won’t have you feeling inferior to him! That’s what he’d like, that’s what he’s after. And you mustn’t trust him. He isn’t honest. Not even with himself.”

He laid most of this to wifely prejudice. Mike was devious but not dishonest. His professional reputation was impeccable. He couldn’t be bought. To be fair to him, he didn’t care particularly about money. So it was not like him to take Frescatti for a client. Why had he? Why did Mike want to visit Frescatti’s interests on a town where he himself lived? How did he reconcile this with the fact that he was a leading member of the Wentworth Civic Crusaders and adviser to the Better Business Bureau? Personal power and the manipulation of people were the things Mike cared about, and it was difficult to see how Frescatti could help him there. Then what were his motives?

Cap let a few weeks pass and then went to Mayor Haynes. The mayor was a pudgy little man who diverted attention from thought by talking continuously. It was one of Cap’s little jokes that he hated to ask the mayor a question for fear he might answer it.

Mayor Haynes launched into a happy monologue. “Yes, I’ve talked to Mike. He came around a few weeks back, to sound me out. All I can tell you is that we—the Council and myself—have the matter under consideration. Naturally I brought up some objections, but your brother assures me that they are invalid. He is certain that Mr. Frescatti wishes only to build a hotel—a luxury hotel, such as we do not have at present—and chose this location because it is the most beautiful in the state.” He paused, but Cap did not take the opportunity to echo praises of the local scenery. The mayor resumed, defensively. “Well, a place like that might be an excellent thing for the town. Increase business, draw tourists. Mr. Prescott, over at the bank, is all for it. He—”

The chief said bluntly, “Mr. Prescott is thinking of the bank, I’m thinking of the town.”

“Of course you are!” said the mayor approvingly. “And so am I. Mike pointed out, too, that if Mr. Frescatti exceeds the terms of the license we grant him we can always close him down. That’ll put him on his good behavior, as it were. The risk isn’t—”

“Once he opens, he’ll stay open, you’ll find. How do you suppose he keeps running in St. Louis and Los Angeles? The citizens don’t want him, but he’s going full blast.”

The mayor shifted in his chair. “No need to get stirred up about it yet, Paul, seems to me. It’s all a long way off. Mr. Frescatti may change his mind, the Council may not vote the permit—a lot of things can happen. Let’s not cross our bridges until we come to them.”

The signs of bridge-crossing appeared, soon enough. First, beginning nowhere, there was a ripple of excited gossip through the town. Then in quick succession Mike addressed the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. Businessmen began to look judicious and benign when the new hotel was mentioned. An alarming hint blew up that a site a hundred miles farther south was also under consideration. The Wentworth Eagle met this with an editorial: “Many people have called to inquire if Wentworth has lost the chance of playing host to the great hotel whose building is being contemplated by a Chicago corporation, represented locally by Michael Cassidy. As far as we can ascertain, there is no truth to the rumor. Mr. Forbes, president of the corporation, told us, when contacted in Chicago, that Wentworth is still the favored location, providing that various minor difficulties can be ironed out.” By August, when the architect’s drawings were displayed magnificently in the window of Stucky’s hardware store, crowds gathered before them all day, eager, impressed. So expertly had the town been softened up that anyone who denounced the project, on any grounds at all, stood a grave chance of being called an obstacle to progress and an enemy of the people.

Hoping against hope, Cap went again to the mayor. “Frescatti’s name isn’t connected with the hotel any more. Has he dropped out?”

“I believe he’s a member of the corporation. Just a member. Several of the biggest men in the Middle West are in it with him. Men of undoubted probity who—”

“Undoubted probity, my foot! Those boys are figureheads. Frescatti owns them.”

The mayor’s face flushed a bit. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the handling of this matter to the city government, Paul. I appreciate your concern. No one is more interested in keeping Wentworth clean than I am, but—” But stop trying to throw a monkey wrench into the works, and go away.

Useless though he suspected it to be, Chief Cassidy began to build up a folder on Frescatti and his previous business ventures. At his own expense he drove to the state library and spent two days among the newspaper files, taking notes. The folder grew so bulky that it scarcely fitted into the drawer of his desk, where he carefully locked it away after each ensuing addition. He indicated to Mayor Haynes that he had some pertinent information about Frescatti that His Honor should see, and this time the mayor told him firmly that he was out of his province.

All he could do, after that rebuff, was to consider the plight of the chief of police of Wentworth, once Frescatti was entrenched. That official would have to close one eye, grant special favors, overlook the presence of men listed in his files as criminal or undesirable, and help cover up the messes that threatened unfortunate publicity. Money would pass into complacent palms until the whole arm of the law was paralyzed. A hopeless and untenable situation.

The prospect depressed him to such an extent that Laura threatened to call a doctor and several of his friends complained that he had cut them dead on the street. Only Avery, the brightest young man on the Eagle, came close to the truth. “If you aren’t sick or in trouble at home, then you’re holding out on me. Have a heart, Cap. Spill it.” But there was no use in telling Avery. Mr. Hoiles, who owned the Eagle, was solidly on Mike’s side.

In September he impulsively wrote out his resignation, to take effect on the last day of the year. “In the light of present circumstances, I believe it will soon be impossible to discharge my duties as chief of police properly and to the satisfaction of the mayor and the Council, therefore I...” He left the letter on the mayor’s desk before he went home that night.

It was harder to tell Laura than he had thought. He stood before the upstairs mirror while he changed his clothes, and the reflection in the glass disturbed him. From a distance he looked like a husky young fellow; there were no pouches under his eyes, no gray in his hair. But, closer up, he saw the telltale slackness under the jaw, the lines that stayed even when the face was composed. He was forty-seven years old. What kind of new job could you get at forty-seven? His whistling, as he ran down the stairs, was not as cheerful as he would have liked.

The news was far more than Laura had bargained for. “You shouldn’t have!” she wailed. “Oh, Paul, is it too late to get that letter back?”

“I don’t want it back. I’ll find something else to do. A situation like that would drive me crazy.”

“But you’ve played right into their hands. Don’t you see? You’ve done just what Mike wanted you to do!”

“Don’t blame my resignation on Mike. He had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, didn’t he? Why did he jump at the chance to let this—gangster—loose on the town? Why did he make a special visit, first thing, to tell you about it? Because he knew you wouldn’t be able to stomach it, that’s why!”

Downhearted as he was, he had to laugh. “You believe that Mike went to all this trouble just to make me quit? That this million-dollar deal was all for my benefit? I’d be flattered if I could think so.”

“He knew you’d never believe it! For half a cent I’d call him up myself and—”

He forbade that. “He’d laugh at you, Laura. I won’t let you make a fool of yourself.”

“No. You’d rather let him get away with making fools of all of us. I know.” And, though she hugged him tenderly a minute later, he was left with an impression that he had failed her in some mysterious fashion.

The mayor paid him a call the next morning, bearing the letter in his hand and looking grieved. “You don’t mean this, my boy. A hasty, ill-considered action. We all make them. What do you say we tear it up, here and now?” Even in the face of refusal, he would not concede the matter settled. “Maybe you need time to think it over, Paul. I won’t show this to the Council until—oh, the first of December. Meanwhile, we won’t say a word about it, to anybody. Then, if you reconsider, as I’m sure you will, there’ll be no awkwardness about your simply keeping on. No explanations, no newspaper stories—”

“That’s very good of you, but—”

The mayor waved a magnanimous hand. “You’ve nothing to thank me for. I’m glad to go along with you, just as far as I possibly can.”

Which was pretty decent of the old codger, any way you looked at it.

In October great shipments of lumber and steel began pouring into town. The second week in November the Eagle printed a regretful item: “Mr. and Mrs. Michael Cassidy have recently purchased a home in Cleveland, Ohio, and have announced that they will take residence there by next April. The move is necessitated by Mr. Cassidy’s business interests. We wish them bon voyage and an eventual return.”

Cap read this at four o’clock in the afternoon. At four-ten he walked into his brother’s law office, ready to say a thing or two about rats and sinking ships, but the secretary said that Mike was out of town. “I’m sure he’ll be sorry to have missed you, Mr. Cassidy. His wife happens to be here, just stepped in for a minute. Would you care to talk to her?”

“Well, no, I—”

But Olga had heard his voice. “Is that you, Paul? Come on in.”

She was sitting at Mike’s desk leafing through a big scrapbook, and her smile for him was genuine. Childless herself, she had frequently borrowed one of his three youngsters for a picnic or a movie, but she hadn’t done that for a long time now. Interested in other things, likely. Club work or shopping sprees. He had an idea that her dress was extremely stylish. She had always borne her loneliness picturesquely and with dignity.

“Why don’t you age a little?” he said. “You’re making the rest of us look conspicuous.”

“Lovely man!” She pointed to the scrapbook. “Look what I found on Mike’s desk. Speaking of aging, here’s your lost youth.”

He turned the heavy pages slowly. Every picture was of himself: at ten, scowling out from beneath the visor of a baseball cap; at fifteen, in football harness; at seventeen, accepting the County Tennis Tournament Singles Cup. The clippings, crisp with age, detailed each achievement of his, no matter how small or long-forgotten: the day he had pulled two half-drowned vacationers out of the lake; the award for being voted Best All-Around Boy in the senior class. (He knew now what happened to Best All-Around Boys. They ended on the ash heap at fifty.)

“Where did all this come from?” he said wonderingly.

“Mike must have saved it. I’ve never seen it before, didn’t dream you’d been so famous.”

He closed the book and his voice was harsh. “Guess Mike kept it for laughs.”

“Why would he? There’s nothing funny about it.”

“Mike does strange things.”

She considered this, tilting her head reflectively. “And you’ve never tried to stop him,” she said almost absently. “Have you?”

“I learned a long time ago that there’s no stopping Mike once he gets the bit between his teeth.”

“I think he can be stopped. Oh, not without a struggle. More of a one than I could put up. But you might be a match for him, if you cared to be.”

Her tone was light and friendly, and he suppressed the resentment he had begun to feel. “A lot of bickering and brawling, that’s what it’d take. I won’t stoop to it.”

“Too proud to fight. I see.” She took his arm, laughing as if there were some joke that they both understood. “Well, I guess one excuse is as good as another.”

He left her at the curb where her car stood and walked back to the City Hall. The clock in the Methodist steeple tolled five, but he didn’t want to go home until he was calmer. The scrapbook and Olga had upset him. There was an unwanted tension in his nerves and muscles, a physical sensation of needing to run or fight, or both. If he ate dinner feeling like this, he’d be sick.

In the outer office the police stenographer handed him a note. “This just came in for us, sir. It’s marked urgent.”

“Thanks, Bill. Have you looked up this Norris in the files yet? I’d like to see what we have on him.”

“I’ll do that, right away. Mr. Avery from the Eagle is inside, waiting for you.”

“Good. Call my wife and tell her I won’t be home for dinner, will you? Think I’ll stick around awhile.”

Avery greeted him enthusiastically. “Say, Cap, I’ve had a brain storm. Should have had it a long time ago. I’d like to do a big feature story on you!”

He liked Avery. His good humor was restored. “Going to make a little go a long way?” he asked indulgently.

Avery scowled. “None of this modesty business, please. I’m after facts. You’re the worst public relations man in the world, but I’m going to make you famous in spite of yourself.”

It turned out that Avery had a friend on a Milwaukee paper that was running a series on Wisconsin’s Outstanding Citizens. “You know, people who haven’t been publicized but have a strong influence on their communities. Well, take all this work you do with delinquent kids, for one thing. The principal of the high school says that you—”

The record from the files was delivered. “Just a second, Avery. I have to take a look at this.”

“Something come up? I hope.”

“A convict escaped from the Michigan State Prison Farm about an hour ago. That’s in the Upper Peninsula, about a hundred miles from us. They’re alerting all points.”

Avery came to look over his shoulder. “Bad medicine, hey? A real tough hombre. Maybe I’d better stay downtown tonight. Hoiles is in Florida, and if this guy heads our way—”

“A hundred miles across fairly open country is a long way to come without being caught. It’s more likely he’ll stay on the Michigan side, mix in with a bunch of deer hunters, and try to get the boat across the Straits.”

Avery went back to his chair and began scribbling rapidly in a small notebook. “God knows, nothing exciting has happened around here since that farmer murdered his wife, back in 1950. If he does come this way and you get him, it’ll make a wonderful finale for my feature story.”

Cap looked silently at the bent head and the hurrying pencil. He had planned to stall Avery along until events themselves showed the young man that he had chosen unwisely in the matter of Wisconsin’s Outstanding Citizens. But now he felt a twinge of pity. The Big Story. The Happy Ending. How young a man had to be to believe in those! “There isn’t going to be a feature story,” he said slowly. “Not about me.”

The fat was in the fire then, with a vengeance. No one denied Avery something without explaining why. He rattled questions like a machine gun until the chief, cut off from evasion, confessed his impending resignation. The admission was not enough. Avery wanted reasons, probed for them, got nowhere, reached for his hat. “I’m going up to your house and have a talk with your wife,” he said. “She’s probably just as sore about this thing as I am. She’ll talk.”

Reluctantly Cap unlocked the desk drawer and brought out the Frescatti folder. “For your own information, then. Otherwise, this is in strictest confidence.”

By eight o’clock he had told the whole story, citing chapter and verse, and Avery sat immobile, mulling it over. When he finally spoke his voice was respectful. “They put it over smooth as clockwork, didn’t they? The people in town who’d buck the thing won’t hear about it until it’s too late. Very clever. Lots of brains behind a scheme like this.”

“Mike’s.”

“I suppose. He’s a real spellbinder, that boy. Has the mayor in his pocket obviously.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Haynes is trying to be fair. The way he stalled off my resignation shows—”

“What a babe in the woods you are!” said Avery cynically. “Stop trying to attribute fine, righteous motives to politicians. They don’t have ’em.”

“He knows I’m against the deal, but he wants me to keep on being police chief anyway. How do you explain that if—”

Avery slapped a hand down on the desk. “I’ll tell you how I explain it! Haynes wants you to resign, all right, but not now, not till the whole thing’s ironclad. He’s keeping you under wraps because he’s afraid of you! You’re well thought of. Too many people know you’re a square shooter. What if you were to open your face and spill all this stuff you’ve told me? Do you think this precious deal would go through then? No, sir. And the mayor knows it.” His shrewd eyes softened a little as he stared at the older man. “Though if he knew you just a bit better he’d be resting easier. You’re not the kind to raise a public stink. Even a healthy public stink.”

For the second time that day Cap felt that he had been weighed and found wanting, and indignation boiled up in his voice. “One person isn’t enough to stop this thing. Suppose I went around to the men’s clubs, the way Mike did, do you know what they’d say? Paul Cassidy’s afraid he’s going to lose his job and he’s out hustling to keep it.’ That’s all the effect I’d have, and they’d grin behind their hands. No, thanks. I’m not going to make a martyr or a laughingstock out of myself, either one!”

“Well, don’t get sore at me,” said Avery mildly. “I’m not telling you what to do. If I owned the newspaper I’d give you a helping hand. As it is, I can’t even talk about it to anyone. Hoiles would fire me in a minute and right now I need the job.” He stood up, buttoning his overcoat. “Funny, the things that keep people in line. I’m afraid of losing my job. You’re afraid of being laughed at. Two of a kind.”

“For God’s sake, Avery, you’re talking as if we were a couple of cowards! There’s such a thing as common sense, you know!”

Avery winked at him. “Well, if you decide not to be sensible and go on a crusade, let me know. I’m feeling a little reckless these days. I might join you just for the hell of it.”

The chief resisted a childish impulse to hurl the folder against the door that Avery closed behind him. Fuming, he threw it back into the drawer and wished that he had a milk of magnesia tablet. His stomach, usually an amiably efficient organ, could not digest this silly talk about crusading.

Joe, the night dispatcher, came in. “New bulletin on that escaped convict. The Michigan police report that he tried to get a girl to drive him here. She got away and he made off in her car. They think he might be making for our depot, to board a train for Chicago.”

With action in the offing, he became excited and absorbed. He sifted every fact out of the new report: the old red sweater Norris was wearing, the make and license number of the car, the exact spot where the girl had abandoned it. While Joe called some of the day men back to duty, Cap plotted the road blocks and alerted his patrol cars. “Norris may have left the Ford by now and be on foot or hitching a ride. Stop any man who answers his description. Better to bring in ten innocent men than to let him slip by. He was unarmed at last report, but he is dangerous. Don’t fool with him. Stop him.”

He telephoned the ticket agent at the railroad station. The train for Chicago made up at Winnipeg, Canada, cut across the northern edge of Minnesota, pulled into Wentworth at ten-thirty, was on its way again at ten-thirty-five. Tonight it was running dead on schedule.

Cap took his gun from the top of the filing case and strapped it on under his suit coat. It had been a long time since he had worn it, and it felt good. “I’ll cover the depot myself,” he said to Joe. “If they should nail Norris beforehand, call me there.”

As he pulled his car out of the deserted police garage, the clock on the dashboard registered nine-forty. Usually a couple of his men sat near the entrance, swapping stories and trying to keep their feet warm while they waited for emergency calls. Tonight they were all out, patrolling the town, looking for a tall thin man in an old red sweater. And if they missed him it was up to the chief to provide the final, insurmountable barrier to the fugitive’s escape. The way he figured, it was only fitting and proper that the last responsibility should be his.

The station platform was long and floodlights lit the center portion of it in front of the main entrance to the old-fashioned inadequate building. The pavement here was of ancient brick with a raised curb marking the twelve-inch drop to the railroad tracks. As he parked his car in the fringe of darkness, where two empty taxicabs stood, he was in the position of a man sitting in a theater and looking up at a lighted stage where players moved about. In this case the players were a group of teen-agers, milling and laughing, their coats open to the wind, their heads bared to the snow. There were a dozen of them and he heartily wished them a thousand miles away. If Norris came, these too-emotional girls and these incautious boys were the very kinds of bystanders to make things tough. They would have to be protected, not only from gunfire, but from their own reckless impulses. He debated sending them home, but he’d have to give them a reason. Then give them five minutes to get to the Sugar Bowl or the nearest telephone, and half of the town might come trooping down! No, he’d have to let them stay.

They came to greet him the minute he stepped into the lights. He knew them all and his banter was knowing and friendly. He pretended to believe that they were all skipping town at once, and while they explained that they were only waiting to meet two “real cool” Canadian boys who were coming in on the ten-thirty, his eyes surveyed the waiting room through the station window and discovered no one but the two cab drivers, also known to him, warming their hands at a radiator. “Have to talk to the ticket agent a minute,” he said. “If anyone shows up out here while I’m inside—anyone you don’t know—come in and tell me, will you? I’m expecting to meet a man here.”

He was talking to old Mr. Gillis at the ticket window when young Louise Rickard stuck her head in at the door. “Man’s here,” she said.

He was at the door in three leaps before he heard their laughter and knew it was a joke. There was a man, but it was only Avery. “This is a stranger?” he said to them, and allowed Avery to pull him off to one side.

“Went back to headquarters on the off chance and hit the jackpot,” Avery said. “Nothing doing here yet, I take it?”

“No. Chances are, there won’t be.”

“Pessimist! I’ve been talking long distance to the Michigan authorities and I’ve got quite a story ready to roll. This boy Norris can’t fail me now.”

“When a man’s working by trial and error, as he is, you can’t count on anything.”

“Is there anywhere north of us where he could get this train?”

“No.”

“Any place where it slows down and he could ride the rods or something like that?”

“Gillis says the train is small until they add on some cars farther south, and the crew police it pretty well.”

“But if he managed to get aboard and they didn’t know who he was, he could buy a ticket from the conductor?”

“Yes.”

Avery looked at his watch. “She’ll be along in ten minutes. I think I’ll go call your office again. Something new might have come in.”

“Help yourself.”

He decided to make a brief turn of the far end of the platform where he had not been. The high school kids were standing out near the tracks now, facing the way the train would come, and they did not notice him. He walked along close to the building and then halfway around it, looking into every shadow, peering behind each crate. Satisfied, he took his hand off his gun, leaving his overcoat open. There was a place where, standing in darkness, he could look down the entire length of the platform. A good enough vantage point for waiting.

Under his feet the pavement trembled, and far away the train whistled. Expectancy animated the entire depot. The two drivers came out and went to their cabs. Avery appeared and looked around. He was followed by a clerk carrying a leather mailbag, and the two of them stood and talked. The oncoming train grew noisier and the girls shrieked and put their hands over their ears. The chief, leaning toward the light, watched them all.

He saw the black shiny car drive up and park neatly beside his own. A Lincoln. Not new but well kept. No one got out. Someone waiting to take a passenger home with him? Still, he didn’t know anyone in town who owned a black Lincoln like that one. From this distance there was no chance of identifying the driver. Inconspicuously, he began edging his way down the platform, using the din of the nearing locomotive as a time signal.

The train rushed into the station, enveloping everything in a smoky haze. A Pullman porter swung out and set a wooden platform in place for the disembarking passengers. The conductor appeared, waving the converging young people back. There was a confusion of sounds and voices, and the little crowd, having received the new arrivals, began bearing them away by slow inches. Ensconsed in a dark angle near the parking area, Cap cursed their lack of speed. Couldn’t they walk and talk at the same time? When the conductor called out, “All aboard!” they were still on the platform, all screaming and giggling at once.

The door of the Lincoln opened and a tall thin man in a respectable overcoat and a felt hat, tipped against the wind, got out. He moved purposefully toward the train, and so rapidly that Cap had just time to intercept him. He lunged forward and let the man run into him. “I’d like to see your driver’s license,” he said.

The man stepped back from the collision, glancing obliquely from beneath the hatbrim. “Listen, I’m in a hurry. Some other time.”

Cap produced his badge, keeping his other hand on the gun in its holster. “The driver’s license. Now.”

The man’s two hands came out of his pockets. In one was a sheaf of money, in the other a gun. “Which’ll it be?” he said. “Take your choice.”

Cap stared down at the weapon, marveling at his own stupidity. He hadn’t expected such boldness and, in spite of his warnings to his men, he had counted too heavily on the authority of his badge. Now there was only one way out and he sighed, regretting the way, regretting many things.

The train’s wheels gave a preparatory jerk. Norris trembled with impatience, but he was careful to keep his face away from the light and the chief’s bulk between himself and the chattering kids. “You don’t have to worry about taking the dough,” he urged. “Some of my friends passed me the word this is a safe town. That’s why I made for it. Play ball, for God’s sake! Be smart.”

With one hand Cap reached for the money. With the other he drew his gun and shot Norris a careful three inches above the heart. The convict fell, and the wind lifted the paper bills and swirled them after the departing train.

Cap turned and looked at the young people, huddled in dismay. “Go on home,” he said gently. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Avery came running up, delirious with excitement. “What happened? I went back in to the phone, and I heard the shot—” He stared down at the gun in the convict’s relaxed hand. “Did he pull a gun too? Did he use it?”

“He tried to. I don’t know what happened that he didn’t. Something wrong with the gun, maybe. Call the Meyersville ambulance, will you? I’ll stay here till they come.”

“You bet.” He took a few steps and returned, to shake the chief’s hand. “You’re a real hero, Cap. I’m proud to know you.”

“Wait until tomorrow. The real heroics start then.” He touched Norris lightly with his foot. “We can’t have this. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Crusading?”

“Yes.”

“Count me in.”

“Thanks.”

A safe town. Win or lose, he was going to try for that.

* * * *

Newspapers everywhere printed the story of the capture. The following, taken from one of the Detroit papers, is as accurate as any.

WENTWORTH POLICE CHIEF STOPS CONVICT

FUGITIVE WOUNDED IN GUN BATTLE AT DEPOT

Jake Norris, convicted thief and suspected murderer, who escaped from the Altman Prison Farm yesterday, is in Meyersville Hospital recovering from a wound incurred in a gun battle with Paul Cassidy, chief of police of the city of Wentworth. Norris, supposedly unarmed, drew a gun first and attempted to fire. Later, police discovered that his gun, though otherwise in good condition, contained very old ammunition. The source of the gun has not yet been traced.

Norris was apprehended as he was about to board a train for Chicago. Mayor Haynes of Wentworth later issued a statement of commendation of Chief Cassidy “whose brave action saved the lives of our townspeople and prevented a menace being let loose on the country at large.”

The first report of the route of the fleeing Norris came from Mrs. Elizabeth Stevens, a widow, at whose Michigan farm Norris seized a sweater and a bicycle. His attempt to take some money was foiled by Mrs. Stevens’ son John, who forced the convict to flee.

Later Norris stopped a car driven by Miss Ella Mack of Black Corners and demanded to be driven across the state line to Wentworth. Miss Mack escaped and notified the police. Her car, with two flat tires, was discovered ten miles further on, parked on the shoulder of Route 62 in the lake area.

When Norris arrived at the railroad station he drove a black Lincoln sedan. Its license plate was missing and mud had been rubbed on the back of the car to conceal this. Police believe he secured the car from a house whose owners were away. No such car has been reported as missing. Doctors say it will be several days before Norris can be questioned.

“Norris is a thoroughly bad character,” says Lieutenant Harris of the Michigan State Police, “We are fortunate that his attempted escape had no serious consequences, except to himself.”