by Jerry eBooks
“I didn’t mean to put one over on him; it all came up sort of sudden. I knew I didn’t have a chance at that hotel desk, not even if the check had been signed by a millionaire, and I didn’t want him to come in with me and see them turn me down. Jack McGovern happened to come through the lobby just as I walked in, and on the spur of the moment I borrowed twenty-five from him as a personal loan without giving him the check. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just that I was embarrassed to let him know I couldn’t even accommodate one of my own house guests for a measly twenty-five. You know how they talk around here. I went out and gave the twenty-five to Burroughs, and I kept the endorsed check in my pocket. I intended tearing it up, but I couldn’t very well do it in front of him. Then later I forgot about it.
“I tackled him last night after you went to bed, and he didn’t come through. He got crabby, caught on we’d just played him for a sucker, refused to finish out the visit, insisted on taking the next train back. I drove him in; I couldn’t very well let him walk at that hour. He got out at the station and I came on back without waiting.
“I started to do a slow burn. There I was, not only no better off than before we asked him out, but even more in the red, on account of the expense of the big house party we threw to impress him. Naturally I was sore, after all the false hopes we’d raised, after the way you’d put yourself out to be nice to him. I couldn’t sleep all night, stayed down here drinking and pacing back and forth, half nuts with worry. And then sometime after daylight I happened to stick my hand in my pocket for something and suddenly turned up his twenty-five-dollar endorsed check.
“It was a crazy thing to do, but I didn’t stop to think. I lifted it, added two zips to the figures, got in the car then and there, and drove all the way in to town. I cashed it at his own bank the minute the doors opened at nine. I knew he had twenty times that much on tap at all times, so it wouldn’t hurt him any.”
“But, Gil, didn’t you know what would happen, didn’t you know what he could do to you?”
“Yeah, I did, but I guess I had a vague idea in the back of my mind that if it came to a showdown and he threatened to get nasty with me about it—well, there were a couple of times he got a little too affectionate with you; you told me so yourself—I could threaten to get just as nasty with him about that. You know how scared he is of that wife of his.”
“Gil,” was all she said, “Gil.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty low.”
“As long as it’s not the other. But then what’s become of him? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see him get on the train?”
“No, I just left him there at the station and turned around and drove back without waiting.”
She hesitated a moment before speaking. Then she said slowly: “What I’ve just heard hasn’t exactly been pleasant, but I told you I could take it, and I can, and I have. And I think—I know—I can stand the other, the worse thing, too, if you tell it to me now, right away, and get it over with. But now’s the time. This is your last chance, Gil. Don’t let me find out later, because later—it may be different, I may not still be able to feel the same way about it. You didn’t kill Burroughs last night, did you?”
He breathed deeply. His eyes looked into hers. “I never killed anyone in my life. And now, are you with me?”
She raised her head defiantly. “To the bitter end.”
“Bitter.” He smiled ruefully. “I don’t like that word.”
His name was Ward, he said. She wondered if that was customary on their parts, to give their names like that instead of their official standing. She wasn’t familiar with their technique, had never been interviewed before. And of course, she would be alone in the house when he happened to drop in. Still, on second thought, that might be better. Gil might have given a—well, a misleading impression, been keyed up, on account of that check business. This was Tuesday, the day after Burroughs had last been seen.
Her caller spared her any of that business of flaunting a badge in front of Leona; that was another consoling thing. He must have just given his name to Leona, because Leona went right back to the kitchen instead of stalling around outside the room so she could hear. Just people that came to try to collect money didn’t interest her any more; the novelty had worn off long ago.
Jackie Blaine said: “Sit down, Mr. Ward. My husband’s gone in to town—”
“I know that.” It came out as flat as a sheet of onion-skin paper, but for a minute it made her a little uneasy; it sounded as though they were already watching Gil’s movements.
“If there’s anything I can do—”
“There always is, don’t you think?”
He didn’t look so coarse, so hard-bitten, as she’d always imagined those men did. He looked—well, no different from any number of other young fellows they’d entertained out here, whom she’d danced with, golfed with, and almost invariably found herself putting in their places, in some dimly lighted corner, before the week-end was over. She knew how to handle the type well. But then she’d never parried life-and-death with them before. And maybe he just looked the type.
He said: “Mr. Homer Burroughs was here at your house from Friday until some time late Sunday night or early Monday morning.” There wasn’t the rising inflection of interrogation at the end of it.
“He was.”
“When did you last see him?”
“My husband drove him to the station in time for—”
“That isn’t what I asked you, Mrs. Blaine.”
She didn’t like that; he was trying to differentiate between Gil and herself. They were together in this, sink or swim. She answered it his way. “I said good night to Mr. Burroughs at ten to one Monday morning. My husband remained downstairs with him. My husband drove him—”
He didn’t want that part of it. “Then 1 A.M. Monday was the last time you saw him. When you left him, who else was in the house with him besides your husband, anyone?”
“Just my husband.”
“When you said good night, was it understood you weren’t to see him in the morning? Did he say anything about leaving in the small hours of the night?”
That was a bad hurdle to get over. “It was left indefinite,” she said. “We’re . . . we’re sort of casual out here about those things—formal good-byes and such.”
“Even so, as his hostess, wouldn’t it be up to him to at least drop some hint to let you know he was going, to thank you for your hospitality before taking his leave?”
She brought a gleam of her old prom-girl manner, of three or four years before, to the surface. Keep it light and off dangerous ground. It had worked to ward off boa-constrictor hugs; maybe it would work to keep your husband out of difficulties with the police. “You’ve read your Emily Post, I see. Won’t you have a drink while you’re doing this?”
He flattened her pitiful attempt like a locomotive running on a single track full steam ahead. “No, I won’t! Did he drop the slightest remark to indicate that he wouldn’t be here by the time you were up the following morning?”
He’d given her an opening there: her own and Gil’s habitual late hour for rising any day in the week. “Well, we took that for granted. After all, he had to be back at the office by nine and—”
But it didn’t work out so good. “But he didn’t have to take the milk train to get back to the office by nine. Isn’t it a little unusual that he should leave in the dead of night like that, a man of sixty-four, without getting his night’s rest first?”
“Well, all right. Say it is!” she flared resentfully. “But we’re not accountable for his eccentricities, why come to us about it? He left here, I assure you. Look under the carpet if you don’t think so!” A second later she wished she hadn’t said that; it seemed to put her ahead of him, so to speak. They got you all muddled, these professional detectives. Just think if it had been a case of out-and-out murder, instead of just trying to conceal that money business of Gil’s!
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sp; Ward smiled wryly at her dig about the carpet. “Oh, I don’t doubt he left the house, here.”
She didn’t like the slight emphasis he gave the word “house,” as though implying something had happened to him right outside it, or not far away.
“Then what more have we got to do with it? Who’s putting these ideas in your head, his wife?”
“I don’t have ideas in my head, just instructions, Mrs. Blaine.”
“Why don’t you check at the other end, in the city? Why don’t you find out what became of him there?”
He said very quietly, “Because he never got there, Mrs. Blaine.”
Womanlike, she kept trying to retain the offensive, as the best defense. “How do you know for sure? Just because he didn’t appear either at his home or his office? He may have been run over by a taxi. He may have been overcome by amnesia.”
“To get to the city, he would have had to take the train first of all, wouldn’t he, Mrs. Blaine? A man of sixty-four isn’t likely to thumb a ride in along the highway at four in the morning, with week-end baggage in the bargain, is he?”
“He did take the train. He must have. My husb—”
“We happen to know he didn’t. We’ve questioned the conductor on that train whose business it is to punch the passengers’ tickets as they get on at each successive stop. No one got on the 4:20 train at all at your particular station out here. And that milk train is empty enough to make it easy to keep track. The ticket agent didn’t sell anyone a ticket between the hours of one and six thirty that morning, and since you drove him out in the car yourself on Friday afternoon, it isn’t likely he had the second half of a round-trip ticket in his possession; he would have had to buy a one-way one.”
A cold chill ran down her spine; she tried not to be aware of it. “All I can say is, my husband drove him to the station and then came on back without watching him board the train. He may have strolled a little too far to the end of the platform while waiting and been waylaid by a footpad in the dark.”
“Yes,” he said reasonably enough. “But why should the footpad carry him off bodily with him into thin air? We’ve searched the immediate vicinity of the station pretty thoroughly, and now we’re combing over the woods and fields along the way. His baggage has disappeared, too. How many pieces did he bring with him, Mrs. Blaine?”
That one was a son of a gun. Would it be better to say one and try to cover up the presence of the one he’d left behind? Suppose it came out later that he’d brought two-as it was bound to-and they identified the second one, upstairs, as his? On the other hand, if she admitted that he’d left one behind, wouldn’t that only add to the strange circumstances surrounding his departure? She couldn’t afford to pile that additional strangeness on top of the already overwhelming strangeness of the hour at which he’d gone; it made it look too bad for them, too much as though his leave-taking had been impromptu, conditioned by anger or a quarrel. And then in the wake of that would unfailingly come revelation of Gil’s misdeed in regard to the check.
She took the plunge, answered the detective’s question with a deliberate but not unqualified falsehood, after all this had gone through her mind. “I believe . . . one.”
“You can’t say for sure? You brought him out in the car with you, Mrs. Blaine.”
“I’ve brought so many people out in the car. Sometimes I dream I’m a station-wagon driver.”
Then, just as she felt she couldn’t stand another minute of this cat-and-mouse play, just as she could feel the makings of a three-alarm scream gathering in her system, she recognized the sound of their own car outside and Gil was back at last. He sounded the horn once, briefly, as in a sort of questioning signal.
“Here’s my husband now,” she said, and jumped up and ran to the door before he could stop her.
“Hello, Gil,” she said loudly. She wound an arm around his neck, kissed him on the side of the face, back toward the ear—or seemed to. “There’s a detective in there,” she breathed.
His own breath answered hers: “Wait a minute; stay like this, up against me.” He said loudly down the back of her neck: “Hello, beautiful. Miss me?”
She could feel his hand fumbling between their bodies. He thrust something into her disengaged hand, the one that wasn’t clasping the nape of his neck. Spongy paper, currency. “Better get rid of this. I don’t think he’ll search me, but bury it in your stocking or somewhere, till he goes.” And then in a fulibodied voice: “Any calls for me?”
“No, but there’s a gentleman inside waiting to see you now.”
And under cover of that he’d gone on: “Go out and get in the car; take it away. Go down the village and . . . buy things. Anything. Keep buying, keep buying. Stay out. Phone here before you come back. Phone here first.”
Then they had to break it up; they’d gotten away with m—Not that word! They’d gotten away with a lot, as it was.
She followed Gil’s instructions now, but she did it her way. She couldn’t fathom the motivation. But she couldn’t just walk out the door, get in, and drive off; that would have been a dead give-away he’d cued her. She did it her way; it only took a minute longer. She went back into the living room after him, across it just to the opposite doorway, and called through to Leona in a war whoop: “Leona, need anything?” She didn’t have to worry about getting the wrong answer; she knew how they’d be fixed.
“Sure do,” said the uninhibited Leona, “all we got lef’ after that bunch of cannibals is a lot of nothin’!”
“All right, I’ll run down and bring you back a shot of everything.” But as she passed the two men a second time, short as the delay had been—and necessary, she felt, for appearances’ sake—Gil’s face was almost agonized, as though he couldn’t wait for her to do as he’d told her and get out. Maybe the other man couldn’t notice it, but she could; she knew him so well. The detective, on the other hand, not only offered no objection to her going, but seemed to be deliberately holding his fire until she was out of the way, as though he preferred it that way, wanted to question Gil by himself.
She got in and drove off leisurely, and as she meshed gears, at the same time cached the wad of unlawful money under the elastic top of her stocking. Gil’s motive for so badly wanting her to get in the car and get away from the house, and stay away until the fellow left, must be this money, of course. He wanted to avoid being caught in incriminating possession of it. That must be it; she couldn’t figure out any other logical reason. Still, they couldn’t keep on indefinitely running bases with it like this.
She’d stepped up speed now, was coursing the sleek turnpike to the village at her usual projectile clip. But not too fast to glimpse a group of men in the distance, widely separated and apparently wading around aimlessly in the fields. She had an idea what they were doing out there, though. And then a few minutes later, when that strip of woods, thick as the bristles of a hairbrush, closed in on both sides of the road, she could make out a few more of them under the trees. They were using pocket lights in there, although it wasn’t quite dusk yet.
“What are they looking for him this far back for?” she thought impatiently. “If Gil says he let him off at the station platform—” Stupid police. That malicious Mrs. Burroughs, paying them back now because she’d sensed that the old fool had had a soft spot for Jackie. And then in conclusion: “How do they know he’s dead, anyway?”
She braked outside the village grocery. She subtracted a twenty from the money first of all, tucked that in the pocket of her jumper. She hadn’t brought any bag; he’d rushed her out so. Then she went in and started buying out the store.
By the time she was through, she had a knee-high carton filled with stuff. “Take it out and put it in the rumble for me, I’ll take it right along with me. Let me use your phone a minute; I want to make sure I’ve got everything.”
Gil answered her himself. “I just got rid of him this minute,” he said, in a voice hoarse from long strain. “Whew!”
She said for the benefi
t of the storekeeper, “Do you need anything else while I’m out?”
“No, come on back now; it’s all right.” And then sharply: “Listen! If you run into him, don’t stop for him, hear me? Don’t even slow down; just drive past fast. He’s got no authority to stop you; he’s a city dick. He’s done his questioning and he’s through. Don’t stop for anyone and don’t let anyone get in the car with you.”
The store manager called in to her just then from out front: “Mrs. Blaine, the rumble’s locked. I can’t get into it. Where’ll I put this stuff?”
“The whole key rack’s sticking in the dashboard; take it out yourself. You know the one, that broad flat one.”
“That key ain’t on it any more. I don’t see it here with the rest.”
“Wait a minute, I’ll ask my husband. Gil, where’s the key to the rumble? We can’t find it.”
“I lost it.” She couldn’t really hear him the first time; his voice choked up. Maybe he’d been taking a drink just then.
The storekeeper said: “Maybe it’s just jammed. Should I try to pry it up for you?”
“No, you might spoil the paint job.”
Gil was saying thickly in her ear: “Never mind about the rumble; let it alone. Get away from that store.” Suddenly, incredibly, he was screaming at her over the wire! Literally screaming, like someone in pain. “Come on back, will ya! Come on back, I tell ya! Come on back with that car!”
“All right, for Heaven’s sake; all right.” Her eardrum tingled. That detective certainly had set his nerves on edge.
She drove back with the carton of stuff beside her on the seat. Gil was waiting for her all the way out in the middle of the roadway that passed their house.
“I’ll put it to bed myself,” he said gruffly, and drove the car into the garage, groceries and all, he was in such a hurry.
His face was all twinkling with perspiration when he turned to her after finishing locking the garage doors on it.
She woke up that night, sometime between two and three, and he wasn’t in the room. She called, and he wasn’t in the house at all. She got up and looked out the window, and the white garage doors showed a slight wedge of black between their two halves, so he’d taken the car out with him.