Night Walker

by Donald Hamilton

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I wish I knew how the kid fits into this.” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “That’s a lot to ask. Hell, I don’t even know how I fit into it, do I, Elizabeth?”

  “David,” she said. “Honey—”

  He swung away from her. “What’s that cruiser doing down there, anyway?” he asked abruptly. “It couldn’t have wintered there; even if you don’t have enough ice here to cut it to pieces one good storm would have finished it. It’s a hell of an exposed location to keep a boat tied up to a dock, even in summer.”

  She said, “Why, Larry used to — Does it matter, honey?”

  “I’m asking,” he said.

  She sighed. “All right. Larry used to keep it at a mooring you had to row out to, but before he left he took the boat to the yard and pulled the mooring up on shore. This spring I — I got a letter from him asking me to have the yard fix it up and bring it around; it — seemed like little enough to do.”

  He did not look at her. He knew her well enough now that he did not even have to see her face to know when she was lying, although her reasons were not always clear.

  “I declare,” she said, “I didn’t know I was going to have to look after it like a baby or I’d never — Bob had to show me how to pump out the water and fix the ropes and the bumpers or whatever you call them....” Her voice died away. “Breakfast is ready, honey,” she said at last.

  He nodded, not trusting himself to look at her. He held tightly to the thought of the gun, heavy in his pocket. Liar or not, she had sat up all night with a gun to protect him as he slept. He wanted to believe that.

  There was an uncomfortable intimacy to the breakfast nook in the corner; it was hard to retain an attitude of aloofness toward a girl when you had to face her in a cramped space where your knees met, across a tiny table over which your hands were bound to collide in reaching for one thing or another for which neither of you had wanted to ask, not wanting to accept any favors or assistance whatever. After a while the silence became ridiculous, and Young spoke.

  “This is a nice kitchen you’ve got here.”

  “At least it’s mine,” she said without raising her glance from the plate.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All the rest is his or his family’s. This is mine.” Her voice became stronger. “I declare, I never thought I’d settle for a darn old kitchen, but — but it’s the only place in the house where I can sit and look at something that never belonged to anybody else, just me. Just me and Westinghouse and General Electric, honey.” She licked her lips. “That stove — that stove didn’t come out of the country house of Colonel Oglethorpe Wilson’s maternal grandmother. It just came straight from Mr. Spofford, the local dealer, to me. The deep-freeze — the deep-freeze wasn’t ever a part of the estate of — of Governor Winthrop Wilson and nobody ever had to trace it to the attic of a little old farm down in the south end of the county and — have it restored by — I don’t have to remember where the darn thing came from, either, or why it’s important. It’s important because it keeps the food cold, and if it doesn’t work I send for a serviceman, and if it wears out I’ll get rid of it and buy another one. I — I don’t have to pretend I think it’s something precious and wonderful just because it once belonged to some old fogy I never saw who’d have looked down his nose at me like all the rest of the stupid, pompous, stuck-up—”

  She checked herself abruptly, and drew a long, harsh breath. After a moment she made as if to rise. He pulled his knees out of the way, and she slid out of the booth and walked quickly to the stove. He saw her use a knuckle at the corner of one eye, before she picked up the coffee pot and came back to fill the cups. Then she carried the pot back to the stove and stood there for a moment. The way her shoulders squared themselves slightly beneath the thin, pink sweater, before she turned again, told him that she had made up her mind, at last, to speak.

  “Honey,” she said, “honey, I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I didn’t know it was going to be you.”

  Then she walked quickly toward the door, almost running before she got there; but when she reached the door she stopped and turned again.

  “And I — I didn’t know he was going to be there last night; and I didn’t know he even had a gun. You mustn’t think — I can’t bear it if you think — I didn’t send you out that door to be shot at; I didn’t!”

  When he reached her, she had turned her face against the door jamb, pressing against it hard as if seeking the pain, so that when she looked up at him, sensing him above her, there was a small, round, pink mark in the center of her forehead. He noticed that there was a trace of dried blood on her cheek; presumably where a flying sliver of glass had cut her the night before. This disturbed him; he took out his handkerchief and moistened it with his tongue and wiped the blood away gently, relieved to find that the cut itself was insignificant. All this time she was watching him with wide, questioning eyes. The pink mark on her forehead had died away again, so that her face was quite pale, even to the lips. Suddenly she was in his arms.

  After a while he said, “Elizabeth.”

  Her voice was muffled. “Yes, honey.”

  “Pardon me,” he said, stroking her hair, “but isn’t it about time to decide whose team you’re pitching for?” He felt her become quite still. “I love you but I can’t take a hell of a lot more of this; and I don’t think you can, either. You’ve got to make up your mind; you can’t have it both ways. First, you protect Larry Wilson from me and then you turn around and sit up all night to protect me from Larry Wilson and then you turn around again and start lying like hell to protect him... It won’t work, darling. I mean, you can’t have it both ways, or did I say that? I appreciate that the guy is your husband and that there are some things you can’t do to anybody you’ve once been married to. Even the law doesn’t demand that. I certainly don’t ask it. But I’m conceited enough to think that you like me—”

  He stopped, because her shoulders had begun to shake. He released her, startled, and saw her take a step backward and toss back her long, dark hair, with a swing of her head, to stare at him. Her hands came together to grip each other so tightly that the knuckles showed white and bloodless. Then her head went back and she was laughing helplessly, unable to stop.

  Chapter Eleven

  He spoke into the telephone. “This is Lawrence Wilson. Yes, Wilson. I’d like to speak to Dr. Henshaw, please... Doc, you’d better get out here on the double. Elizabeth’s throwing some kind of a wingding and I’ll be damned if I can get her to snap out of... All right, Doc.”

  He put the phone down, drew a long breath, and went back up the stairs to the big light room with its basically neat, old-fashioned furniture that was overlaid, as if with tidal debris, with the litter of Elizabeth’s occupancy. She looked a little like tidal debris herself, lying where she had flung herself across the big, untidy bed. She had a pillow pressed to her face and he thought she had stuffed part of it into her mouth to silence herself. Her body had a look of trembling rigidity like that, he thought, of a hawser stretched to the breaking point; when a line began to vibrate like that you slacked off quickly if you did not want it to carry away.

  But there was nothing he could do. He had considered slapping her face — a popular remedy — and had found himself incapable of striking her. He had also debated putting her into the bathtub and turning on the cold shower, but this had seemed like a messy and humiliating procedure, especially if it did not work. Besides, the sight of him, or his touch, seemed to set her off again; and although he was tremendously worried about her he could not help resenting, a little, being considered so excruciatingly funny, even by a girl who at the moment was obviously not responsible for her own behavior.

  It was a relief to hear the car in the drive. Young stepped out of the room as silently as he had entered, and waited by the stairs. Presently the doctor’s bald head appeared, and Henshaw came up, somewhat breathless from the climb,
carrying his bag. He passed Young with a nodded greeting, went to the bedroom door and looked in, and turned back again.

  “What happened, Mr. Young?”

  “We had a kind of rough night out here, Doc,” Young said. He had had time to think things over; and now he studied the man facing him with some care. Henshaw looked as middle-aged and respectable as ever in the same or another baggy brown suit: a heavy, sagging man with a lined, honest face, the mouth of which, however, had a slightly peevish and womanly look. Young had not noticed that look before, but he noticed it now. A man with a mouth like that was not to be trusted. “Kind of rough,” Young said softly. “I guess it just got her down. I almost threw one myself when it happened. I’ve been shot at by a lot of people, mostly Japs, but I’ve never had a ghost use me as a target before.”

  Something changed in Henshaw’s eyes. “A ghost?”

  “Let’s quit kidding, Doc,” Young said gently. “I don’t know what’s going on around here, but I do know that Larry Wilson’s alive. He took a potshot at me last night. Elizabeth put me to bed and stayed up with a gun in case he should come back. Maybe it just wore her down, or maybe it was a delayed reaction or something; anyway, she got hysterical right after breakfast. I don’t know just what set her off.”

  “Alive?” the doctor whispered. “Wilson is alive?”

  Young said, “Cut it out, Doc. It was a good gag while it lasted, but now you can cut it out.”

  Henshaw let his breath go out in a little sigh. “All right, Mr. Young. I’ll cut it out. We’ll talk about it later.” He took a fresh grip on his bag.

  Young said, “Doc.”

  About to turn away, the older man looked back. “Yes?”

  “Careful, Doc. Easy with the hypo. I suppose you have to put her to sleep, but it would be nice if she woke up again, don’t you think?” Henshaw did not speak, and Young went on: “There’s a lot of funny stuff going on around here, Doc, and you’re one of the funnier parts, I think. Any man who goes for a woman half his age is a screwball anyway; and any doctor who’ll monkey with murder, real or phony, doesn’t really take his profession too damn seriously.”

  Henshaw licked his lips. His voice was somewhat shrill when he spoke. “You’re hardly in a position to criticize anybody else’s professional conduct—”

  “Take it easy, Doc.”

  “I have told you: I do not like to be called Doc!”

  “Don’t get mad, Doc,” Young said softly. “I’m just trying to make sure we understand each other, Doc.”

  Henshaw again moistened his lips with his tongue. “I — I understand,” he said shakily. “You’re doing me an injustice, but — I understand. I’ll be careful.”

  Young stepped back, and watched the doctor go into the room and pull the door shut. He stood there for a moment longer and a sentence from the conversation drifted unwanted through his mind: You’re hardly in a position to criticize anybody else’s professional conduct. Young shivered, took his hand from the gun in his pocket, finding it sweaty, and turned away.

  From his own room — the room he had come to think of as his — he could hear the voices next door, Elizabeth’s high and breathless at first, gradually becoming calmer. The thick walls of the old house prevented him from making out what she was saying. Presently the voices died away, the door opened, and he heard Henshaw come along the hall.

  The doctor entered the room and set his bag on the dresser. “Now you, Mr. Young,” he said.

  “Never mind me,” Young said. “I’m doing fine. How is she?”

  “She will be all right when she wakes up.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “Two or three hours, perhaps longer since you indicated that she did not get much sleep last night.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Young said.

  Henshaw shrugged and together they moved quietly into Elizabeth’s room. The girl was lying peacefully in the bed. Her breathing seemed deep and even. Her face was pale, but not as pale as it had been; she was never, Young reminded himself, a really robust-looking girl. He was helplessly aware that she could be dying before his eyes and he would not know it; and when he glanced at the man beside him he saw that Henshaw knew this too and was amused by it.

  “She’s all right, Mr. Young. I give you my word. I would not harm her.”

  Elizabeth stirred at the whisper and made a little sound and was still again. The two men glanced at each other guiltily and moved on tiptoe out of the room. Young closed the door gently. They did not speak again until they were downstairs.

  Young cleared his throat. “How about some coffee? I never got to finish mine.”

  “All right, Mr. Young.” When they were seated in the little booth in the kitchen, the doctor studied his companion for a moment and said, “You seem to have taken the bit in your teeth, Mr. Young. I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your being out of bed if you feel up to it, if you take things easy; but I advise you not to over-exert yourself for a while yet.”

  “All right, Doctor Henshaw.”

  The older man looked down into his coffee cup. “She was mine until you came,” he said abruptly. “It was the most wonderful thing in my life, Mr. Young. I — I have never been very popular in that way; my family is a good one, as good as any around here, but there was never much money and I had to work very hard to get through medical school. For a not very brilliant man without financial support to get through medical school — The others had time for girls, but I did not. And the internship, and starting in practice, and building it up year after year, and then the war came along and I was sent out to the West Coast, where I was put to treating, not wounded soldiers, not even soldiers with colds and venereal disease, but their dependents! Sniveling children and complaining women for four years, free, while everything I had built here fell apart; and when I returned the younger doctors who had been overseas were already back and doing very well at the expense of the practice I used to have... Well, I am making a living again, and I suppose I should not complain. Certainly I do not ask you to sympathize. I merely want you to understand what it meant to me that — that a girl like Elizabeth could even look at me. I just want you to know why — I did what I did. I have told Elizabeth. I think she understands. I do not expect her to forgive me.”

  Young said, “Can you blame her? But you might be wrong. She forgives easy.”

  “It no longer matters, does it?” Henshaw said. “I seem to have lost her anyway.” There was silence between them for a while. At last the doctor looked up. “How much do you know, Mr. Young?”

  Young moved his shoulders. “Enough, I think.”

  “I should like to hear your conclusions.”

  Young said, “Well, I was told a pretty complicated story when I arrived here. I was told that she had shot her husband and called you, and you had disposed of the body for her. When I saw him alive last night, naturally my first thought was that both of you had been lying. I figured you must both have been playing ball with him, keeping him hidden, feeding me this line of tripe to keep me quiet; she because he’s her husband and you because — well, maybe he was blackmailing you, having caught you playing around with his wife. Something like that. That was my first idea.”

  “It was wrong,” Henshaw said.

  Young said, “That’s right, it was wrong. Her hysterics put me on the right track. When I tried to figure out what hit her so hard this morning, Doc, I came on a funny thing. She’d been perfectly all right — a little tired and upset, but all right — until I mentioned Larry Wilson’s name. Before that, we had both been talking about the guy who had shot at me, but we’d each been taking for granted that the other knew who it was. Yet she’d been a couple of steps behind me when the shot was fired, well back in the hall. I decided that she’d never seen the guy at all. She had thought it was somebody else entirely!”

  Henshaw had started to drink from his cup; now he put it down again gently. “Who, Mr. Young?”

  “Why, you, Doc,” Young said. “Sh
e’d thought it was you. You see, we were about to run out on you. It probably bothered her; she probably felt guilty about leaving you, cold, like that. Suddenly a gun goes off in our faces, I’m lying there bleeding — a little, anyway — and somebody takes off across the lawn. Naturally Elizabeth jumped to the conclusion that it was you; that you’d suspected something, sneaked back to keep an eye on us, and lost your head when you saw us about to run away together. Why shouldn’t she think that — if she had no idea her husband was alive?”

  He looked across the table at the older man. Henshaw would not meet his eyes. Young stood up abruptly, pushed his way out of the booth, and took his coffee cup to the stove and refilled it.

  “You’re kind of a louse, aren’t you, Doc?” he said softly, without looking around. “To let her go all this time thinking she was a murderer! It’s no wonder she blew her top when I let slip it was Wilson who shot at me last night!”

  Henshaw said, “I have told her I was sorry. I have tried to explain the circumstances—”

  “Circumstances!” Young said.

  “How did you guess?”

  Young said, “Damn it, the person who shoots a man might make a mistake about his being dead. But the person who buries him can be damn sure!” He drew a long breath. “If Wilson was alive, that made you a liar, Doc. You never dumped him out in the Bay with a mooring chain about him. They don’t get up out of six fathoms of water and come back to shoot off guns. He never went over the side at all, did he, Doc?”