Night Walker

by Donald Hamilton

  He grimaced at his own stupidity, and ran out of the room and down the stairs. He pulled the front door open, flattening himself against the wall as he did so. The darkness outside was silent except for the usual country noises; there was a shrill, persistent squeaking that might be due either to crickets or frogs, he did not know which. He checked the loading of the gun in his hand in the dim light and started out, then stopped. Suddenly the expedition seemed to have lost its point, and he could not help remembering that Lawrence Wilson undoubtedly knew every inch of the surrounding countryside by heart, having been brought up here. It seemed stupid for him, in his weakened condition, to go blundering after the man in the dark; and besides, Washington had ordered him to remain in the house until they got around to sending someone. The individual in Washington had made it clear that its agency appreciated being informed, but felt itself quite capable of handling the situation without the further assistance of members of the armed forces in doubtful standing. It was quite possible, Young reflected, that he would be making more trouble for himself in official quarters if he were to interfere now.

  He put his gun away, swung around, and went into the kitchen to get himself something to eat. The clock on the wall read nine-thirty, surprising him faintly; he had thought it was later.

  With the lights on, the bright, neat, modern kitchen reminded him painfully of Elizabeth. This is mine, she had said with pride. None of the rest of it had ever belonged to her, not the big old house, nor the antique furniture; not even the expensive clothes in her wardrobe, none of which he had ever seen her wear except the once when she came to take him from the hospital. He could not remember how she had seemed to him then; later images had crowded that first impression, never very strong, out of his mind. He found that he was thinking of her very much in the way he might have thought of a girl who had contracted a disease from which she was not expected to recover.

  Working somewhat grimly, he figured out the combination to the elaborate switchboard of the electric stove. He put coffee on, and broke a mess of eggs into a skillet; he had no fondness for kitchens or galleys, but a man who had learned to cook at the age of twelve on a coal-burning Shipmate in the cabin of a twenty-five foot catboat — such a man was not going to go hungry any time there was food available, even if he had managed to lose, over the years, that early enthusiasm for ships and the sea. The electric burners were slow in warming up; the eggs had just begun to sizzle when a car came down the drive fast and pulled up sharply in front of the house, skidding to a halt in the gravel. He could guess the identity of the visitors; that was the way you drove, he reflected wryly, when the government was paying for the tires.

  Suddenly he felt cold and weak and afraid. He cut all the switches on the stove, not trusting it to behave itself unattended. Besides, he doubted that they would wait around for him to finish his meal, and it might be weeks before anybody came in here again. He tried not to wonder what sort of inquisition was in store for him, or what the Navy would think up when the civilians got through. He started out of the kitchen, stopped, and took the gun out of his pocket. Having that found on him seemed an unnecessary complication, and he dropped the weapon into a nearby drawer. Then he squared his shoulders and marched to the front door, switching on the lights as he went.

  The door was still open, as he had left it. He was surprised to see no one on the steps. He moved forward to look at the light convertible parked below. The top was down and the car was empty. It was pale green, with considerable areas of chromium, and dark green leather upholstery. It seemed an unlikely vehicle to be engaged in official government business.

  “Put your hands up, sailor,” a voice said behind him.

  He recognized the voice and turned around. Bonita Decker was standing by the door to the living room, in which she had apparently hidden, upon his approach, after slipping silently into the house — a small, trim figure in light-blue denim shorts and a blue-and-white striped jersey. There was one of those long-billed white baseball caps on her red hair, giving her a tomboyish air, and a .22 automatic target pistol in her hand. The gun had a long and very slender barrel equipped with a high, adjustable front sight; and Young had no doubt, from the way she held it, that she knew precisely where it would shoot, to within an inch at twenty-five yards. The present range was about five feet.

  She said, “So you’ve got a face, after all! Not that it’s much of an improvement over the bandages.” She made a little motion with the gun. “I said, put your hands up!”

  Young looked at her for a moment, thoughtfully. The gun made him nervous; it was not only defiance that made him push his hands deliberately into his pockets, but the need to conceal a slight tremor that he did not wish the girl to see. She said fiercely, “If you think I’m kidding...!” He grinned at her, and forced himself to turn aside in a leisurely manner, walk past her, and back through the dining room away from her. In spite of his pose of indifference, he was thoroughly aware of her behind him — standing for a moment where he had left her and then coming after him. He pushed through the swinging door and let it close itself in her face. He walked straight across the kitchen to the stove and pressed the proper buttons in the instrument panel, causing a small warning light to come on inside the transparent plastic of each button, and the elements to crackle as they began to heat up again.

  He did not look around, but he knew when she pushed the door open cautiously, looked around it, and shoved it back as far as it would go to make certain that no one was hiding behind it. She came into the kitchen with the long-barreled pistol ready. She did not speak at once.

  At last she said, “You take some awful chances, sailor.” He did not turn his head.

  “Stop making like a movie, Red,” he said, speaking for the first time. “Give your dialogue a rest. You’re not going to shoot anybody unless they come at you with an ax, and we both know it. You didn’t come here to shoot anybody; you came here for information. If you were in a position to back up any shooting with facts you wouldn’t have come here at all; you’d have gone to the police or the F.B.I.”

  She said quickly, “I’ll have all the facts I need as soon as I trace that —” She checked herself.

  Young grinned. “Oh,” he said, “so you haven’t traced my uniform button yet? I’m ashamed of you; I thought you’d know all about me by this time.”

  She said, “They’re so damn secretive in Washington!

  Wouldn’t you think one of Dad’s old shipmates — But I’ll find out, and when I do—”

  Young said, “You’re wasting your time in Washington, Red. Try Norfalk, Lieutenant David Martin Young, U.S.N.R., serial number 210934.” He gave the congealing eggs in the skillet a poke with the spatula and turned to face her. “So now you know, what good does it do you?”

  She hesitated, clearly somewhat disconcerted by his attitude. “It might do the Navy Department some good,” she said. “Or the F.B.I.; they track down deserters, don’t they?”

  “What makes you think I’m a deserter? How do you know I’m not a member of Naval Intelligence on a special assignment?” He grinned at her startled expression. “I’m kidding you. But let’s not start heaving big words around, Red. I’m just a poor damn Reserve officer a few days late in reporting for active duty; and that’s not desertion according to my reading of the Navy Regulations. As for the F.B.I., if you’ve got anything to say to them, just stick around. They should be along sooner or later.”

  She frowned. “You’ve been in touch with the F.B.I.?”

  “I called them around two o’clock this afternoon. The fact that they still haven’t got around to picking me up seems to indicate that I’m not quite in the public enemy class yet.”

  “If you called them.”

  Young shrugged his shoulders and turned away from her to attend to his cooking. The girl behind him was silent for a long time.

  “You had a gun this morning,” she said at last. “Where is it?”

  “Right beside you in the drawer,” Young
said, and heard her check on this. He lowered the heat under the coffee as it came to a boil. Bonita Decker spoke again.

  “Where is she?”

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Who do you think I meant, Cleopatra?” Her voice sounded very young and sarcastic.

  Young said, “Elizabeth took it on the lam, as we criminals say.”

  “Oh, so that’s why the station wagon’s gone. I noticed the garage was standing open.”

  “That’s why.”

  “So she ran out on you, sailor.”

  “I had an invitation,” Young said. “I decided not to accept.”

  “Isn’t it a little late for you to develop a conscience? What kind of a deal did you make with the F.B.I.? Can they promise you immunity if you’re an accessory to murder?”

  Young asked, “What murder?”

  “Larry—”

  “If Larry Wilson’s dead, that was a mighty substantial ghost I saw pitching gravel at Elizabeth’s window about half an hour ago.”

  “You saw him?” she demanded. “Tonight?” Young shrugged briefly, letting his original statement stand; and the girl behind him was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was totally changed. She seemed to be speaking to herself, to be asking herself for reassurance. “But if he’s all right — if he’s all right, why doesn’t he get in touch with me?”

  Young glanced at her again. She was leaning against the counter on the far side of the kitchen. She had put away her own gun as well as the gun she had found in the drawer, tucking them both inside the snug waistband of her shorts. The brace of pistols gave her — with her slim, bare legs, bright hair, and rakish boy’s cap — something of the air of a musical comedy pirate; but there was no corresponding gaiety in her small, freckled face. Young put the skillet off the hot burner and moved across the room to put two slices of bread in the toaster on the table in the breakfast nook.

  He spoke quietly. “Why don’t you wake up, Red?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said, “that I think you’ve been played for a sucker; and that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Giving me the benefit —!” The small girl by the door straightened up angrily. “What the hell are you talking about, anyway?”

  Young said, “When Larry Wilson needed a place to hide out, he went to his wife, not to you. Think it over, small fry.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “You don’t believe that he came here? Then where did this hypothetical murder take place? Is it your theory that he was killed some place else and brought here just to use up a stray piece of mooring chain that was lying around? That chain’s your only evidence of murder, Red; you’d better stick to it.”

  She flushed beneath the freckles. “Well, if Larry did come here, it wasn’t to hide out. He had nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “The Navy Department seems to have thought different when they fired him.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it!” she said angrily. “If you know anything at all, you know why he was fired. He wasn’t fired for anything he’d done; he was fired because they couldn’t have a man in a sensitive position whose wife was mixed up in—”

  “Oh,” Young said. “I see! That’s what he told you, that it was all Elizabeth’s fault!”

  “You’re damn right it was all her fault!” Bonita Decker cried. “And if Larry hadn’t been so damn soft-hearted; if he hadn’t been looking for a way to protect the little tramp just because he happened to marry her in a weak moment—!”

  Young waited for her to go on, but she did not, and he said, “I wouldn’t say that Larry Wilson was a softhearted person, but then I’m prejudiced. Being beaten up with a tire-iron does that to me.” He held up his hand quickly, as she started to protest. “Never mind, Red. I know you don’t believe that, although it happens to be true. You don’t believe anything you don’t hear direct from our soft-hearted Mr. Wilson’s gentlemanly lips, do you? The guy’s a pretty convincing talker, I’ll admit. I had a chat with him myself, and found him persuasive as hell. But let’s take a look at a few facts. Wilson came here that night; you’ll grant that much?”

  “I — I suppose so,” she said reluctantly, as if afraid that the admission was a tactical mistake.

  “All right,” Young said. “He came here. We won’t specify the reason, since we can’t agree on it. Let’s just see what happened next. Wilson and Elizabeth had a disagreement. He got rough, and she grabbed a gun and put a bullet into him—”

  “So she did shoot him!”

  “That’s right,” Young said. “She did. But he came to in the boat on his way to a watery grave, all wrapped up in that chain you’ve been worrying about. He was kind of mad about the whole deal, I gather. He bullied Dr. Henshaw, who’d been drafted for the burial detail, into putting him ashore and keeping quiet about it. Henshaw says the bullet just laid our boy’s scalp open for an inch or two and stunned him for a while; as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow. He’s still one scalp wound and a broken nose up on me.... Anyway, Henshaw was scared silly and did as he was told. He dumped the chain and kept his mouth shut, letting Elizabeth go on believing that she was a self-made widow. And now we come to the interesting part, Red. Here is our hero, wounded, dressed in some odds and ends of clothes that happened to be aboard the boat — they’d pulled my uniform off him and burned it, thinking he was dead... What’s the matter?”

  Bonita Decker said scornfully, “Am I supposed to be believing this fairy tale? What’s Larry supposed to have been doing in your uniform?”

  Young said, “Never mind that for the moment. Stay with this. The man’s been shot; he hasn’t much in the way of money or clothes, so what does he do? Does he go running to his little red-haired girlfriend who has lots of money and a nice cruising sailboat for him to hide aboard?” He looked at her. “Well, does he?”

  She said, “You know I don’t believe any of this.”

  Young said, “And I don’t have to believe that you’re innocently involved, either, Red. You’ve been doing an awful lot of snooping and an awful little bit of going to the police with what you’ve dug up. Don’t get on your high horse with me; at least I’ve called the F.B.I. As far as I know, you haven’t called anybody. There’s only one thing in your favor, and that’s the fact that apparently Larry Wilson hasn’t got in touch with you at all since he’s been back here; and of course I don’t even know that’s true.”

  The toast popped up, startling them both. He turned to take it out.

  “And suppose it is true,” the girl said defiantly, “what difference does it make?”

  “Well,” Young said, “I’d say it indicates that he knows you wouldn’t have any part of what he’s been doing, which is the only reason I’m talking to you like this, Red. Wake up, will you? Don’t you realize the runaround you’ve been getting? He came to you with some sob story and got you to have that boat built, didn’t he? And then the two of you spent a lot of time on it together? Everybody around here thought you were having a hot affair — even Elizabeth pretended that she thought you were lovers — but it wasn’t anything like that, was it? You were just doing a favor for an old friend, weren’t you; helping him out of a jam? You were giving him a hand in clearing his name... I don’t know why it is that every time they get the goods on one of those boys, there’s always some idealistic sap ready to carry the ball for him.”

  He finally located the butter occupying a little compartment all its own in the big refrigerator. He kicked the door shut. “Wake up, kid!” he said without looking at her. “They were both in it together, Elizabeth and our boy, Larry. If they disagreed, it was only because she has a habit of losing her head in a pinch; maybe she was threatening to sell him out. Listen, I know that girl; she couldn’t conduct an operation like this if her life depended on it. She’s brittle; she cracks, when things get tough. When the Navy clamped down on Larry Wilson, he had to find somebody else
to help him cover up and still give him an excuse for hanging around the water. You were elected.” He looked at her standing there, and he saw that he had shaken her. But she was not convinced; she started to protest. He shook his head quickly. “Don’t jump down my throat yet,” he said. “Let’s eat first.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  He poured a second cup of coffee for each of them, watching the girl, across the small table of the breakfast nook, cleaning up her plate with a youthful appetite seemingly unaffected by disillusionment or heartbreak. Her suspicion of him did not, apparently, reach to the food he had cooked. Seeing the way things were going, he shoved two more slices of bread into the toaster.

  “It looks,” he said, “as if you hadn’t eaten for a while.”

  She spoke without taking her attention from the business at hand. “I told you I spent the day in Washington; and when I drove past this place on the way home it was all dark... I sneaked down the drive and saw that her car was gone. Well, I didn’t feel like doing any poking around in the dark in a dress and high heels and without a gun; and when I got home everybody’d had dinner and the cook was still in the kitchen and she raises hell if I help myself and more hell if I ask her to fix something for me, and then Mother asks if I can’t be a little more considerate about mealtimes and Mark shoves his big oar in —” She drew a long breath, swallowing. “Anyway, I figured I’d meet up with a hamburger or something sooner or later, so I just changed my clothes and came here. Your light was on, so I drove right up... You scramble a mean egg, sailor. Is there any more of that toast?”

  “Coming up,” he said. “So you’re a Navy junior, Red?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it showed.”

  He said, “You said something about seeing an old shipmate of your dad’s in Washington. I suppose there’s a lot of Navy people around here; after all, Annapolis is right down the Bay.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Yes, Dad was Navy. Captain. Class of—”

  Young grinned. “Don’t waste that Academy routine on me, Red. U.S.N.R., remember?”