Girl out back

by Charles Williams

  Then I snorted. Precise chemical analysis by the Godwin laboratories. Millions of compounds were water soluble, and the minute dried crystals of practically any substance could be dispersed and spread with water. I was chasing moonbeams, and when I caught a sackful I’d build an arc light.

  Cliffords was absurd. This entire thing was absurd. It almost had to be Haig, or Haig’s ill-gotten swag, that they were seeking, because he was the biggest crime story, and the most baffling one, of the past decade, and because they had shown me his picture. So where was the connection between that coldly violent killer and this harmless old pixie getting his kicks out of space ships and Peter Rabbit? Why, of course, I thought sarcastically; you could see the tie-in almost immediately. Cliffords had at one time been an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Haig was born in California. Fool-proof, wasn’t it? And to narrow it down even further, they each had one left hand. Or at least, I supposed they did, or had.

  Look at it, I thought. Cliffords was already living up here alone in this isolated backwater before Haig had even begun his fantastic career. I’d established that. Haig would be twenty-eight now; Cliffords was forty-five, or around there. There could be no family relationship, or even nodding acquaintance, between the two; anybody Haig had even borrowed a match from in the past ten years had been run down and checked out by the F.B.I.

  So what did you have? You had nothing.

  No-o. Not quite. No matter how fantastic it was, you still had the almost dead certainty that this derailed leprechaun was spending Haig’s money.

  I cranked the motor.

  Around each bend the next reach lay glaring and empty under the sun, as devoid of any signs of life or human habitation as the last. After about thirty minutes I began watching the right-hand shore for the end of the road. I spotted it shortly, an opening in the trees where the bank had been cut down into a sloping ramp for launching boats off trailers. There were the remains of several old campfires, but no cars were visible. I slowed a little and began keeping a lookout for the cabin or a boat landing. A little over a mile ahead as I came around a bend the channel spread out to some two hundred yards in width and ran straight for almost a mile with an extensive bed of pads along the left side. About half-way up it I saw what I was looking for. A skiff was pulled up on a shelving bit of beach in a small cove on the right. The motor was tilted up on the stern. Cliffords wasn’t in sight, but as I went past I had a glimpse of weather-beaten gray back among the trees. That would be the cabin.

  I went on without slowing. He would probably hear me, but there would be nothing strange about an occasional fisherman going by. I cleared the next bend and continued another mile or two before I cut the motor and set up the fly-rod again. An hour went by as I fished with indifferent success, merely going through the motions. I refilled the motor from the fuel can and started back. The skiff was still in the cove. I didn’t see Cliffords anywhere. He probably took a nap this time of the afternoon, or caught up on his reading.

  I wound on down the channel until I was sure he could no longer hear the motor. The new models are a lot quieter than the old ones used to be. Just before rounding the last bend approaching the camp-site and launching ramp at the end of the road I cut the motor and swung into the bank where the limbs of a large tree overhung the water. Working the boat back under the screen of foliage, I made it fast, and stepped out.

  There was no trail. I kept open water in view from time to time as I slipped through the underbrush and timber. It was intensely still and very hot now, and my shirt became soaked with perspiration. An outraged blue jay called me a Sunday driver and expressed his doubts as to my legitimacy, and once I flushed out a wild sow with a litter of pigs. About twenty minutes later I swung to the left again and eased back out to the lake shore. Not far enough; I was still south of the last bend. I went on for another two hundred yards and tried once more. This was fine. I was just past the bend and I could see most of the long reach spread out ahead of me and to the right. The cove where his boat was beached was on this side, of course, and hidden because of the angle, but it didn’t matter. If he came out, I’d see him. I sat down in the shade with my back against the trunk of a tree, and lit a cigarette. It was ten minutes past three.

  There was no guarantee, of course, that he would go out. With 365 days a year in which to fish if he wanted, he probably took a day off now and then. Well, if he didn’t leave the place, there was nothing I could do about it; I’d just have to try again tomorrow.

  An hour dragged by. Mosquitoes buzzed around my face. I smoked more cigarettes, being careful to throw the butts in the water. This was an occupation for a grown man, I thought with disgust; why didn’t I go on up there and join him and we could take turns being Dick Tracy? Of all the stupid. . . .

  I heard his motor start. He came out of the cove and headed this way. I stepped back a little further from the bank. He cut his motor and came to rest almost opposite me, near the beds of pads along the other shore. He set up a casting outfit and began fishing, kicking the boat along with the oars now and then. Good.

  I faded back and turned, hurrying now. In a few minutes I came up in back of the clearing. I stopped short, studying it intently as I remained motionless in the edge of the timber. Nothing moved anywhere. The two unpainted old buildings slumped dejectedly in an attitude of timeless and perpetually arrested collapse, lying partly in shadow now as the late afternoon sun slanted across the trees on my right. The far one, and the larger of the two, was the cabin itself, roofed with split oak shakes and sitting on round foundation blocks sawn from logs. A section of rusting stovepipe extended above the roof here at the rear and was guyed with baling wire. The one small window I could see was open. There was no door in back. The other building, a small shed about the size of a one-car garage, was nearer and to my right. Weeds were grown up around the rear of it. I could see no window, but presumably the door would be around in front. I went carefully back over the ground again, searching for a dog or for any evidence of one. There was none. Of course, he might be in the cabin.

  I slipped noiselessly up to the rear window and peeped in. There was only one room, and it was empty. Opposite me was the door, which stood open. I could catch glimpses of water beyond, through the trees. Hurrying around the corner, I cased the terrain in front. The cove, where he kept his boat, was about fifty yards away. I could see only patches of the lake beyond, in the direction where he was fishing, but it was all right. He should be good for an hour or two, and I’d hear his motor if he started back. I stepped inside.

  It was not very large, perhaps fifteen by twenty feet, with small windows on three sides and the one door here in front. In the rear there was a wood-burning cookstove, a woodbox, a pine table, two chairs, and a large wooden case covered with oilcloth which presumably served as a cooking table and sink because it was littered with dirty dishes. Some shelves along the wall held a supply of staple groceries and some dishes and cooking utensils. A frying-pan and two large pots hung from nails driven into the wall above the stove. At the right in the front part of the room was an unmade bed, while on the left was an old chest of drawers whose veneer was peeling, a table, and a trunk. A pump shotgun and a .22 rifle stood in the corner next to the trunk.

  Everywhere you looked, on the table and on the trunk, under the bed, and piled on the floor around the sides of the room, were stacks of old comic books and cheap true crime magazines whose covers ran largely to toothsome and improbable girls who had died violently in attitudes calculated to display the optimum expanse of thigh. The floor hadn’t been swept for some time. I looked around at the dirty dishes and the rumpled bed. Well, I hadn’t come out here to inspect him for a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

  I started with the chest. On top of it there was nothing except a folded towel and a pair of thick-lensed spectacles. I slid out the top drawer. There were some handkerchiefs in it and his shaving gear and a small mirror, and two boxes of .38 caliber ammunition. Two envelopes bore the pri
nted return address of an office of the Southern Pacific Railroad. They had been opened, but through the glassine windows I could see there was something still inside. Maybe the checks came with a voucher attached; I’d be able to find out just how large the pension was. I was reaching for one of them when I spied the corner of his wallet sticking out from under the handkerchiefs. I hurriedly slipped it out and flipped it open. It held seven ten-dollar bills, a five, and four singles. But not one of them had a stain along the edge. There was simply no trace of it at all.

  I felt suddenly let down and cheated. Taking the tens over to the window, I turned them carefully in the light, examining them all over. It was no use. They were just like any of millions of others. I shrugged, and returned all the money to the wallet. There was no identification in it except an old New Mexico driver’s liscense that had expired in 1953. It was made out to Walter E. Cliffords, and gave an address in Lordsburg. He was five feet six inches tall and weighed 152. Hair, br. Eyes, bl. He was born in 1910.

  I dropped the wallet back in the drawer and reached for one of the envelopes. When I slid the voucher out, I gave a little start of surprise. The check was still attached to it. It was the same story in the other one. I rooted among the handkerchiefs and came up with one more. The checks were all in the amount of $58.50, payable to Walter E. Cliffords, and he hadn’t cashed one since May. He must be popular with the accounting department, I thought. And suffering from no shortage of money, in spite of the fact she’d said he spent nearly half that amount on comic books and magazines each month. Well, he might get something from Social Security . . . no, you had to be sixty-five, didn’t you? One thing was clear, however; his finances didn’t ring true at all.

  The other two drawers held nothing but clothing. I closed them and turned to the trunk. It wasn’t locked. Lifting off the stacks of magazines, I raised the lid, conscious of a strong odor of moth crystals. The compartmented tray on top held a hodge-podge of miscellaneous stuff, shotgun shells, plastic boxes of bass flies and spinning lures, gun-cleaning equipment, some bottles of old patent medicine, and another pair of spectacles in a case. I lifted it out and set it aside. The bottom was full of winter clothing. I snatched it all out, feeling in the pockets of the jackets and the raincoat. There was nothing else in it except some magazines lying on the bottom.

  Well, what now? I shook my head, still crouched on my knees beside the trunk and staring musingly into its emptiness. There should have been something. Something besides you, honey, I thought.

  The uppermost magazine was another of those true detective things. On its cover a creamy-textured and extremely loth maiden in a Place Pigalle outfit was trying to stay at least one jump ahead of a hearty type with a cleaver. Ah, youth. What mad pursuit? . . . What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

  Wait a minute . . . . I frowned thoughtfully. Why in the trunk? He must have a half-ton of these things stacked around the room; what was special about this one? I grabbed it up. There were two more under it, another crime magazine of a different brand and one of those pocket-sized digests that can reduce Gibbon to four hundred words. I felt the stirrings of an illogical excitement; here I was going back into left field again. The digest magazine displayed its table of contents on the cover. I ran my eye down it rapidly. Half-way down I stopped.

  Wild Bill Haig, Enigma.

  So?

  I dropped it and began leafing frantically through one of the crime books for its table of contents. There it was. I gulped it at one devouring glance, and drew a blank. Was I wrong again? I started back, more slowly. Girls in Purgatory . . . Clue of the Bloodstained Something . . . Ice-Cold Blonde . . . Nude Something Or Other . . . Is This Man Among the Living? . . .

  Hold it. Try page forty-three.

  I found it, and then breathed softly. It was Haig, all right. The next one was easy; it was the lead story. Will They Ever Solve the Mystery of Bill Haig?

  I don’t know, pal, but give me a little time; I’m working on it. I closed the magazine and dropped it softly back into the trunk.

  I put everything back in the trunk the way it had been, closed it, replaced the magazines on top, and went to work. I tore the rumpled bed apart and turned and probed the mattress and pillows. I pulled the drawers out of the chest and looked under and in back of them. I looked in the stove, and pulled the pots away from the wall to see behind them. I tore the piles of magazines down and shuffled them. Every few minutes I stepped to the door to check the cove again, and then returned to the methodical ransacking. I was careful to put everything back the way it was, but I missed nothing. I even went through the groceries and pried the lids off three one-gallon pails of syrup. It was a complete blank. The only money in this cabin was that in his wallet.

  Of course it was too big to hide in a place like this. That was obvious, but he should have some of it here where it was convenient. If I could just find one of those twenty-dollar bills—then I’d know. After all, the magazine articles could be a coincidence. Maybe he idolized criminals, or collected Haigiana the way some people collected data on Sherlock Holmes. Hell, there could be half a dozen good explanations for it. I had to find something more concrete.

  I went around back and entered the shed. There wasn’t too much light, even with the door open, but my eyes gradually became accustomed to the dimness. One side of it was stacked with stove-wood. There was a bench on the right that held the remains of an outboard motor, a five-gallon can of fuel, and a dozen or so beat-up old duck decoys. A pair of oars leaned against the rear wall. The floor of hard-packed earth, under close scrutiny, showed no indication of having ever been dug up. An old hunting coat hung from the wall above the bench. I took it down and went through all the pockets. I was working against time now, beginning to feel jittery as I listened for his motor. What about the wood? There wasn’t time to tear all that down and get it piled back. I’d just have to return tomorrow. Was there anywhere else? I looked swiftly around. nothing remained except the underside of the bench. Sitting, I slid back under it and looked up. The light was too poor here to see much more than its general outline. I fished the lighter from my pocket and flipped it, holding it above the level of my eyes, and then the sudden intake of my breath made a little gasping sound in the stillness.

  The framing of the bench was of two-by-sixes, a long one across the front and shorter ones running from front to back between it and the wall. To the bottom of a pair of these, at the front of the bench, a short section of plank had been nailed, forming a pocket that was accessible only from down here. And sitting in the pocket was a small cereal carton. I snatched it down and slid from under the bench.

  My lips pursed in a noiseless whistle as I lifted them out. They still had the paper bands on them, two blocks of tens and that sheaf of brand-new twenties. Intense excitement was running along my nerves as I stepped quickly to the door and shot a glance down toward the cove. I couldn’t see it, because the cabin was in my line of sight. But hell, I’d have heard the motor, wouldn’t I? I forgot him, having eyes now only for these three bundles of currency. The twenties and one pad of the tens were marked with that telltale rusty stain along the bottom edge; the other block of tens showed no trace of it. I smiled. I had everything now that I need to know, except where it was actually hidden, and that I’d find out. But first I had to stop them.

  I shoved the twenties in my pocket, put the tens back in the carton, and replaced it under the bench. Just as I was about to straighten, I heard him. And he wasn’t out on the lake in his boat; he was in the cabin.

  What I’d heard was the rattle of a stove lid. I cursed myself for a fool; why hadn’t I had sense enough to realize he might fish all the way back to the cove and not start his motor at all? Could I get out? It would be risky, but still possible. The door of the shed was in plain view of the rear window of the cabin, but I could make it if I watched my chance. I eased up to the door and peered out. Then icy gooseflesh prickled across my back. He had come out of the cabin and was just rounding the corne
r, headed this way. He was coming to the shed for wood.

  There was no way out. I whirled, searching frantically for a place to hide and knowing there was none except the ridiculous and almost certainly futile gesture of crawling under the bench. I dived under it and squeezed as far back into the corner as I could go. He came in. I could see his legs, almost to his hips, and I could see a little of the barrel of that .38 sticking out of the holster swinging against his thigh. He was Wyatt Earp. I held my breath, and prayed that if he looked around under here I wouldn’t remind him too much of one of the Clanton boys.

  He was picking up wood and piling it into his arm. I could have touched him. I stared with horrible fascination, and then looked away and tried not even thinking. He might feel the stare, or hear the thought.

  He went out.

  I was weak as the tension snapped, and I wanted to sit there and rest. Instead, I forced myself to slide noiselessly from under the bench and peer out at him. He was almost to the corner. He was turning it. I moved. Two steps out the door and a hard turn to the right and I was going around the side of the shed that was away from the cabin. I was in back of it and safe when I heard the wood fall into the box as he threw it down. I sighed. There was nothing to it now; all I had to do was fade back into the timber while keeping the shed between me and that window.

  When I got back to the boat the sun was far down and the waterway was in shadow. Squatting on the bank under the trees, I hurriedly slipped the twenties from my pocket and counted them. There were forty-seven. It was even better than I’d dared hope. There was only one outstanding and unaccounted for.

  The percentages were in my favor. If he’d spent it in town he’d done it more than three months ago, because he hadn’t been there since. The Nunns didn’t have it. And if they’d had it and spent it, there was a good chance the continuity of ownership was showing a blank spot or two somewhere along the line because otherwise the F.B.I, would be here sitting right in my lap at this moment.