“I’m sorry I startled you. Lie down again, and rest.”
Her arms went around him, tight. Her face lifted to his, like the face of a child begging for comfort.
“Nothing can happen to us, Vick? Nothing can hurt us? Nothing can take you away from me again?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
Her mouth was warm, infinitely tender. She lay back again, still holding to his hand, and she smiled, but he knew that she was still afraid. And so was he, more afraid than he had ever been in his life before.
Faintly from the house he heard the door chimes, and then somewhere around in front the hounds began to bay a welcome. His hand tightened on Angie’s. For a moment neither of them moved. The chimes sounded again. Vickers said quietly,
“I guess that’s Bill. We’d better go in.”
It was Bill. He was alone, and his usual easy, acidly amiable self. As he came in, he jerked his head backward toward the world beyond the Vickers’ gate, and said,
“I suppose you know the joint is crawling with cops.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Vickers said. The three of them went into the living room. Upstairs, Joan Merrill’s door opened.
“Just like the old days,” said Bill, and sighed nostalgically. “I’d forgotten what it was like to have a shadow.”
Angie said, “You, too, Bill?”
“Sure. A character in a broken-down heap that I’ll bet could do ninety uphill if it had to. He thinks he’s invisible. Well, maybe he would be to a law-abiding citizen.”
Angie smiled. “But not to you.”
“Well, of course, I’ve reformed. But even so, one remembers the teachings of one’s youth, does one not?”
“Oh,” said Vickers, “definitely, one does. Drinks all round?”
“Right,” said Bill Saul, “and how about some threehanded gin?”
They played three-handed gin.
The afternoon wore on. Joan Merrill came into the living room and sat in a corner knitting. They had drinks, but no one got even remotely drunk. Bill Saul won consistently, but by small margins except where Angie was concerned. It was the usual pattern. Everything was normal. Nobody said anything or even looked anything out of the way. They did not mention the murder. They talked trivialities or concentrated on the cards, and everything was just as it had been four years, ago, three good friends playing a round of gin and Joan knitting quietly in the corner, and the shadows outside getting slowly longer across a smooth green lawn.
Bill Saul went out to the kitchen for more ice.
Joan Merrill put down her knitting and went out also. Nobody asked her why, or where she was going. Nobody noticed her at all.
Angie turned to Vickers and whispered, “I can’t stand this much longer.” There was a sudden hint of hysteria in her eyes. “Can’t we do something? Can’t we make him do something?”
“No.” He took hold of her, speaking rapidly. “Hold on, old girl. We’ve got to. He’s got to make the first move, in his own time.” He closed his eyes and turned a grimace of pain into a wry grin. “And I hope it’s soon, because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life playing three-handed gin. Christ, it’s given me a head!”
“Vick.” She started to speak, and then changed her mind, but he knew what she had been going to say.
“I hope,” he said somberly, “we’re not mistaken, because if it isn’t Bill...”
He did not finish. He reached out and began shuffling the cards.
Out in the kitchen Joan Merrill faced Bill Saul over a tray of ice cubes laid on the white table. Her voice was low and hurried.
“I’ve put a package in your car,” she said. “When you leave here, take it straight to Trehearne. There’s a note inside, explaining the whole thing to him. I can’t take it myself. I can’t even phone him. Michael keeps the den locked. You’ve simply got to do this for me.”
Bill Saul stared at her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s have that again, a little slower.”
Joan shot a look toward the door. She bent closer to Saul. “Listen. I’ve found evidence, proving Michael killed Harry. It’s in your car. I can’t leave here. I can’t leave Angie alone, with him. You’ve got to take the package to Trehearne. Do you understand?”
Bill Saul nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, I understand.” He picked up the tray of ice cubes. His eyes studied her, cold and clear and full of a cruel amusement. “You don’t play for pennies, do you?” he said softly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered stiffly. “Will you do that, Bill?”
“Sure.” Again he nodded. “Sure, I’ll do it.”
She turned away, toward the door. Very gently, Bill Saul put down the ice tray.
#The shadows were long and cool on the green lawn. Bill Saul stood by the front door, called good-by to those inside, and closed the door. Coolin and Molly escorted him to his car and then chased it noisily down the drive. A man concealed near the gate checked his watch and made a notation in a small book. Farther down the hill, a rattle-trap car pulled unostentatiously from a dead-end side road and followed Saul’s car down the hill. It followed, at a discreet distance, all the way to the Bay Cities Headquarters, and the driver of it watched Bill Saul go into the building with a parcel under his arm. A parcel the size of a pair of shoes, wrapped neatly in brown paper.
Michael Vickers was very comfortable. It was dark inside his head, and completely relaxed, and he did not wish to do anything to disturb the darkness and the relaxation. Therefore he tried to ignore the sound. It was a loud, shrill sound, like a jagged streak of lightning. It had sharp edges. It jabbed him, and in spite of itself his brain stirred sluggishly.
The sound was repeated and became identified as a scream.
A pale gray blur appeared and began to seep through the nice calm darkness. As though the scream had tripped some trigger that set off a series of involuntary nervous explosions, he felt muscles twitching and grinding, and suddenly the focus was clear. His eyes were open, and they were looking at a hand.
It was not far away from him. It was spread out on some carpeting, and it had the handle of a poker under it. The rest of the poker stretched out away from the hand, and it was quite messy, having on it a mixture of soot and blood. It had spotted the carpet badly.
The hand moved, and he knew that it was his.
Vickers’ heart stopped beating. For the space of a breath everything ceased, hung motionless. Then it all started again with a thundering jerk. Blood swept to his head. He leapt up, or thought he was going to, and succeeded in floundering to his knees, balancing himself against the end of the couch. Sweat as cold as ice-water drenched him. He was suddenly half blind, everything obscured behind a weaving veil shot through with vicious flecks of brightness, but he could see enough.
He could see Joan Merrill. She lay not far away from him, and the back of her head was crushed in, and she was obviously dead.
He looked up. Angie was standing there. She had hold of the back of a chair. Her face was whiter than Joan’s. Her eyes were huge and staring. He could hear her breathing. It was ragged, harsh, the breathing of an animal which is afraid. He knew that it was Angie who had screamed.
Her mouth formed words, loosely. She did not say them with a clear voice, like a woman. They had a terrible unfinished sound, as though they came from a throat not meant for speech. She said them over and over, rapidly, more rapidly, until they overlapped and became an indistinguishable babbling.
“You killed her you killed her you killed her...”
She let go of the chair suddenly and began to run, stumbling, bumping into things... She half fell on the steps, and scrambled on. He heard her shoes clattering across the hall, and then the front door was wrenched open, and she was gone.
He turned his head toward the window and saw her running down the drive.
He pulled himself to his feet.
Coolin came in through the open door. He came to the archway and stopped suddenly. He grow
led and bared his teeth and began to shiver. Abruptly he flung back his head and howled. Outside, Molly began to answer him.
Vickers tried to walk. Waves of nausea and giddiness assailed him. The pain in his head was frightening. He fell to his hands and knees again and began to crawl toward the cellarette. He dropped the brandy decanter. Some of it spilled. He managed to pick it up and gulp the liquor. More of it spilled, this time on him. He dropped the decanter again. He put his hands against the wall and made himself stand erect. This time he did not fall.
Joan’s face was white and pure and unstained. It had not even a look of fear, or pain. It was calm, and full of a mystic dignity. Only the open eyes spoiled it. They were dull and empty, like the eyes of an idiot.
Vickers bent and closed them.
Outside, Angie had reached the gate. She ran through it, blindly, and men stepped out of the dusk that filled the street. They caught her. After a moment one of them took her away and two others began to run back toward the house. They had guns in their hands.
Vickers turned and stumbled out through the dining room. He was filled with a curious lassitude. It made his feet drag and he could not judge distances accurately. He found a side door and went through it. The air was cool and it smelled of evening. Angie’s car stood in the cement space in front of the garages. The keys were in it. Vickers climbed under the wheel. It took him a long time, several years, to start the motor and get the car in gear. The two men heard him and came fast around the corner of the house.
He let in the clutch and shot lurching toward them along the drive.
They fell aside, out of his way. He heard shots. A round hole came in the windscreen and something whanged nastily against metal somewhere, but he was going fast. Very fast. The drive rushed past under his wheels. Dim shadowy shapes of trees and shrubs swept backward like streaming water. There was a white gate. It was open. There were people beyond it, quite a lot of them, men and women. More of them were coming out of the houses along the street. They scattered like quail from in front of him. Somewhere there was another shot. Then he was at the end of the street and the hill dropped away under his wheels, and he was going down it like a falling star.
A car darted up at him. It was going to block his way. He set the horn to screaming with a hoarse wildness. He saw that the car was black and white, and on it there was a big red light blazing. Vickers did not want to be stopped. He had the center of the road. He held it. The red light rushed up toward him, nearer, very near, and the wind slid whining along his side windows, and the wheel between his hands fought to be free, and under him the car yawed and swung, and he kept on. He was not afraid. He did not hate the men behind the red light. It did not even particularly bother him when they began to shoot at him and there were two more holes in the windscreen. It was only that he did not wish to be stopped.
He was not stopped.
The red light swerved and vanished. There was a glancing crash of fenders. Glancing automatically at the rear-view mirror he saw the police car go caroming into a cutbank and tip lazily over onto its side. It made quite a lot of noise. It did not occur to Vickers to wonder whether anyone was hurt. He was hardly aware that there were men in the car. It was simply an obstacle. Now it was gone. The dark road fell clear before him.
Some instinctive control took over when he reached Sunset. He drove east to Laurel Canyon, and he drove like a Christian. He had no trouble. He climbed the winding road to the turn-off and then up that, and stopped the car in front of Bill Saul’s house. There were lights on, and a radio was playing inside.
Vickers got out of the car.
He took the gun out of his pocket. The gun he had carried since the day after Harry’s death. He walked across the gravel drive and climbed the steps. He did not hurry. He tried the door. It was locked, and he rapped on it with the knuckles of his left hand. High heels tapped across the floor inside. He waited. He was not impatient. Peggy opened the door, and yawned.
“Yes?” she said.
“Is Bill here?”
“Sure. He’s in the shower right now, but...” A delayed light dawned slowly. She smiled. “You’re Michael Vickers.”
‘I’m Michael Vickers,” he said. ‘I’ll come in.”
She held the door wider for him, and then she saw the gun. Her face became a caricature of a face, the mouth and eyes stretched idiotically, the skin turning a bleached yellow under the light tan. She looked upward from the gun into Vickers’ face, into his eyes, and her throat opened to let out the waiting shriek. Vickers hit her across the temple with the flat of the gun. She made no sound at all. He eased her fall with his free hand, more because she fell against him than because he cared how hard she fell, and then he pulled the door shut. He did not glance again at Peggy. She was not a person. She was like the car with the red light. He went back through the house.
There were two bedrooms, but he remembered which one was Bill’s. He could hear the shower running. He went softly into the bedroom. It was empty. A man’s clothes lay in casual disorder across the tumbled bed. Vickers could hear Bill Saul moving about in the shower. The door was pulled half shut, screening off most of the bath. Vickers could see only part of the porcelain basin and a strip of mirror above it. He moved lightly toward the bed, making no sound. He bent over the clothes. With his free hand he picked up the cuffs of the shirt and studied them. They were white and clean. He dropped the shirt and began to search the pockets of the suit. The water ran in the shower. Out in the living room the radio played softly. There was no warning. There was no change of sound, no slightest shift in tempo, no indication of any kind. There was only the shot, through the crack of the bathroom door.
Vickers’ gun dropped out of his hand. It struck the side of the bed and fell from there to the floor. For one stunned instant Vickers remained motionless, bending over the bed. He watched the blood start to pour out from under the cuff of his right sleeve. It dripped off his fingers with amazing swiftness, making spots of brilliant red on the rumpled white sheet. It was only a second. A split second. It was too long. Vickers knew then that it had been too long the moment he entered the room.
The door to the bath was wide open now. Bill Saul stood there. He had a gun, which he held almost carelessly. His eyes were not careless. He was still wet from the shower. He had a towel knotted around his waist, and the water ran in little trickles down his body and his bare legs and made a damp track on the floor.
Vickers straightened. He did not try to pick up his gun. He did not seem to be afraid, nor even, particularly, in pain. His eyes had an odd expression in them, or rather, a lack of it. They looked steadily at Bill Saul and his wet naked body and his gun.
“You were expecting me.”
Saul said, “I’ve been expecting you since the day you came back.” The muzzle of the automatic described a small tight arc. “Will you walk ahead of me, Vick? Into the living room. I’m going to call the police.”
Vickers walked as far as the foot of the bed, and sat down on it. “No need to bother, Bill,” he said. “They’ll be here, soon enough.” He smiled at Saul. “They want me, you know. For murder.”
The water ran briskly in the shower. Out in the living room, the radio played Chopin’s Polonaise. Peggy slept.
Chapter Nineteen
Bill Saul said, “Murder?”
Vickers nodded. He seemed surprised that Bill questioned him. “Of course.”
Saul stood still in the doorway, waiting. Vickers said nothing more. There was a subtle air of malicious pleasure about him. It was not quite sane. Finally Saul said harshly, “Tell me.”
“It’s all rather hazy. I woke up with a poker in my hand. Joan was dead.”
Saul’s eyes narrowed. “So you killed Joan.”
Vickers shook his head. “No.” He studied Saul with that strange, shocking amusement. Not a muscle of Saul’s poker face moved, but it began to change color, slowly. “Not Joan,” Vickers said. “Angie.” He added, as though it were not important, “You kill
ed Joan.”
He watched Saul’s body stiffen, muscle by muscle, and draw forward into a half crouch. He watched a light come into Saul’s pale eyes. Saul said,
“You’re lying. Why would you kill Angie?”
“I had a splitting headache,” said Vickers, as though that explained everything. “She screamed at me, very loudly, which hurt my head, and then she said you were right, Bill, and that I was obviously quite mad, and I...” He shrugged. “Well, I still had the poker in my hand. I suppose it was to stop her screaming, as much as anything. Though she really shouldn’t have said I was mad.”
Saul said again, very slowly, very distinctly, “You’re lying.”
“Really, Bill! Why should I lie about a thing like that? Go and telephone, if you like. Check up.” He leaned over and took hold of the footboard with his left hand. He looked suddenly faint. “When you come back, old boy, bring me a drink, will you? I feel rotten.” He slid off the end of the bed and lay on the floor.
Bill Saul did not move. He watched Vickers. His muscles began to twitch like an animal’s. Presently he went very carefully around Vickers and stooped and picked up his gun. Vickers did not move. Saul went back around him. Something had happened to Saul’s face. It was no longer composed and without emotion. There was something terrible in it now. He looked down at Vickers again, and then at the door that led to the telephone. Vickers was quite still. Saul began to move toward the door. After the first step he went faster and faster until he was almost running. The radio and the hissing water in the shower stall covered any other sound. They covered the slight sound of Vickers getting to his feet with incredible swiftness. Saul sensed danger one split second too late. He tried to turn and fire, and he was fast, but he was off balance and he didn’t quite make it. The shot missed.
Vickers hit him, low, with the point of his shoulder. He gathered Bill into his arms and the two of them went down. The impact wedged them both into the doorway. One gun went flying out of Saul’s hand, out of reach. The other one, his own, he hung onto, but Vickers was on top of him in the narrow space of the doorway, and Vickers’ left hand took hold of his wrist and held it. They lay there like that. They did not seem to move. Sweat broke out on Saul’s face and he breathed harshly through his teeth, and after a while his arm relaxed and the gun dropped out of his hand, and Vickers picked it up.
Stranger At Home Page 17