“Inis!” she cried. “I know you’re here. What have they done to you? Why don’t they let you answer me?”
Oh, Christ! It was the way she said it. It got you down. Calling for a man who has only a left hand. Who would never be alive any more.
MacComerou shot a tight-mouthed look at me, and I shot one to Trooper Stone, standing back of Rosenblatt with his broad changless smile.
“She’s your baby, Stone,” I said to him from the edges of my lips. “Get her out of here. Quick!” Aloud I called out, “Is that you, Elinor? They found the car, all right, you see, as Stone told us. Look in the rear, and see if that purse there isn’t yours.”
I got up, and went toward her, moving in, in front of her, with Stone. We did a nice-take-out, between us.
“They’ve found some tracks,” I said. “They’re all just looking at them. It still looks fairly hopeful. Of course he may have been a little hurt. But I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, too much.”
She put her hands upon my breast, with a breathless gasp.
“Oh, Dr. Riddle! You haven’t found him? You aren’t trying to tell me an untruth? Please! I thought I heard someone say that they had found him! Please don’t lie to me!”
“No,” I said. “We haven’t found him. You must have heard them talking about something else. He’s probably quite all right, Elinor. Probably quite unharmed.”
“Swear it!” she said.
Well, every man has his own conscience, which he must answer to at God’s white judgment day.
“So help me, God!” I said.
She walked back, stumbling a little, between Stone and me, then toward Stone’s police car.
“I thought I heard him, Dr. Riddle!” she said. “I thought I heard him! I thought that he was there, but he wouldn’t answer me! That was the most harrowing feeling of all! I’d rather know that he is dead than half alive! I really would! Hearing me, and not answering me, because something kept him from it! I don’t like it down here! I don’t like it! Please take me away!”
I got her into the car beside Stone, still a little on the edge of hysteria. With all that she had passed through. Perhaps I did tell her then, with a brief word, and quietly—to administer an anodyne to her uncertainty—that the man she had known as Inis St. Erme was dead, and she would see him no more.
But nothing worse than that.
I gave Stone the nod to get her away, and keep her away, with that. He reached over across her and shook my hand, for no reason, before starting back with her.
We got an army cot from John Flail’s tar-paper shack, a little farther back.
‘Flail had lived in a pigpen there, a mess. Blankets strewn about on the floor. A coffeepot had burned dry on the wood range, whose embers had gone out, though it was still warm. A plate with cold fried eggs and cold potatoes on the table. Two chairs with broken backs, one of which had been overset.
There was the cot on which John Flail’s body had been laid, beneath a sheet. I didn’t want to look at it. There was another cot, and the troopers took that, and took it on down and put that poor thing on it, and brought it back up, and put it in Flail’s shack there, with a sheet over it, too. I don’t think that it minded being left there, with that other black Indian-eyed man, John.
St. Erme had been found. He had to be, to make the terror real. But that was not all of it. His right hand had not been found. Corkscrew, also, had not been found.
It would seem that it would take no time at all to find him. With the hundred or more men who were already there. Men who knew all the countryside. With their lanterns and their guns. With him on foot, with his sawed-off legs. With his face—torn ear, cat teeth, red eyes, matted hair, and all of it. In his extraordinary clothing still, all except that damned saw-tooth hat. For if he had discarded his clothing—his glaring black and white checked sport coat, his green shirt, his gaudy tie—it would somewhere be found, like his hat. And even if he had hidden it, he would have been no less conspicuous, naked. But he was not found.
I have gone all over it in my own mind. I know the look of him better than I know my own face. The way he pinched his ear. The way he smiled. The way he held that dead and mangled kitten. The quiet voice in which he spoke his Latin.
Suns may rise and sink again. But for us, when our brief light goes out, tliere is one eternal night for sleeping.
Sleeping....
I low much he knew, that little man! Only a tramp, but more than he seemed. As are all men, no doubt. All men born beneath God. And, not less, those given over to the devil.
I know him well. He is near to me right now—Corkscrew, old Doc. Very near and very quiet, and lying hidden. I know that he is near, although I cannot see him. Perhaps within ten feet of me.
I will see him, I know that, before this night is ended.
I do not want to see him, but I must. It is not for a man to choose. God made me be a doctor.
Lying very quiet—old Doc, old Corkscrew. Yet I must awake him, I must see him. And, before I see him, in the shape he appeared to Elinor and St. Erme upon the road, I will see that damned killer in his own shape, I think.
MacComerou had got close to him somehow. He had got very close, had old Adam, with his shrewd old brain. With his shrewd old brain that knew too much of murder.
I can sec the dark night down there in the swamp, and the torches moving here and there, far off. I can hear the voices of the men calling to each other. Old Adam and Gregori Unistaire and I had stayed behind. We were going through the huge sawdust heaps, those damp mountainous piles of soft-footed rotted lignin, which had been down in the old ravine back of the sawmill for a hundred years, from the time when all this country had been much more populated than it is now. The old sawdust of a hundred years, consumed by a slow cold fireless burning, piled down on the slope of the ravine.
Old Adam and Gregori and I were going through them, plowing through them to our knees, wading around and up and down the slope along the edge of the ravine. With our flashes, with clubs in our fists. For Gregori had had a surrealistic idea that Corkscrew might be hiding down there, and Old Adam hadn’t wanted him to look alone.
And there was an imminence of sliding in the soft stuff all beneath us. As we plowed, we had got farther apart, pausing and turning aside to look at some hillock stirring, and so widening our distance a little more, before we might be aware of it. Along the sloping side of the ravine back of the old sawmill.
And then MacComerou’s light, where he was, had gone out. I saw it go out, though Gregori didn’t.
“MacComerou!” I shouted. “Adam!”
But there was no answer from him. I stood knee-deep in the damp heaps of pith, with my cudgel in my fist. I put out my own torch, too, and moved aside. The seconds seemed like hours. There was someone creeping through that sawdust with a knife.
“Adam!” I called. “Damn you, old Adam!”
“What ees it, Harry, my friend!” Unistaire called out to me. “Where are you?”
His light had moved halfway down the sawdust slopes toward the bottom of the ravine, where MacComerou’s light had gone out.
“Watch out, Gregori!” I called to him. “Watch out! Put out your torch! The Professor’s has gone out! Adam! Where are you, old Adam?”
“Harry!” Unistaire screamed to me, still with his light on. “Here is something! It is a body! Here! Come down and help me! It is buried in the sawdust heaps, with sawdust in its mouth and eyes!”
I plowed toward his light, which was focused downward. Moving quietly, straining my eyes through the darkness around me.
“Who?” I called. “Not Quelch’s? Not Rosenblatt’s?”
“No, Harry! A bald white-fringed head! An old man, Harry! The sawdust sticks so. Oh, my God, it is the old man himself! It is old MacComerou! Harry! Harry!”
His light came floundering and plowing up toward me, waving from side to side. I heard his sobbing breath as I plunged down to meet him, with my darkened torch clubbed in my fist.
‘Watch out!” I called with a dry breathless throat. “Watch out for your light!”
“Harry! He’s dead and buried, back down there! Har—”
Unistaire’s light went out, within twenty feet of me. There was only the blackness, and the sliding underfoot.
I turned on my torch, sweeping it around me. The damp sawdust heaps were starting to flow downward. They were moving downward in a great soft sea. Unistaire lay ten feet from me, already partly buried, with his feet upward on the sliding slope, his head down. With a great red gash across where his throat had been, as wide as the mouth of a tiger laughing.
I got to him, sweeping my light around. The blood was still pouring from his throat. His eyes were on me. But his life was ended.
I wheeled the flash around me, crouching.
“All right!” I said. “All right! I’m here! I’m watching. I’m no surrealist! Try that on me, damn you!’’
Why he didn’t, I don’t know. Perhaps he was caught to the thighs himself in the sliding stuff, and couldn’t move last enough. Fast enough to come in at me, or to get away, if his strike missed. Perhaps he was struggling to get out of it in this moment for his own dear life. Perhaps he would never choose a moment when he knew that I was watching.
I snapped out my torch. I got Unistaire’s body by the feet. I dragged him backward up the sliding avalanche, plunging and plowing, with that soft stuff sliding away beneath me and all around. I got him clear out onto solid ground, as the whole top of the slope caved away, and went cascading down.
And I was shouting....
There is a gang of men digging now with shovels. But old MacComerou’s body, down there toward the bottom of the ravine, may have already begun to sink down deeper of its own weight, after the sawdust was disturbed by Unistaire, uncovering him. It was certainly buried far deeper under those scores of tons of damp rotted lignin refuse that slid down.
Deep, deep, old Adam MacComerou lies, with his great brain, with the sawdust in his eyes.
It will be like Humbling out a lake, to move all that stuff with shovels. Nor was I able to put my finger precisely on the spot where Unistaire’s light had been focused—the spot where he had stumbled on him—when he began to scoop and brush away the damp sawdust from old Adam’s face, shouting out in terror to me. At the best, with all men digging, it must take many days.
It was after they had found me there with Unistaire’s body at the edge of the sawdust pit, when they had come running in answer to my shout, that the troopers told me Lieutenant Rosenblatt wanted me to return to MacComerou’s house. Rosenblatt wanted to be able to keep an eye on me, it seemed, while the search went on.
And I am here.
It was more than an hour ago that Rosenblatt went surging out, with his wrinkled angry pugdog face, with a shout to Trooper Stone, at that scream which sounded like Ouelch’s, down toward John Flail’s.
Rosenblatt went crashing through the screen door and plunging down off the porch, and running up the drive past the barn, up past the water tank on the stony pasture slope, toward the path that cuts through the woods in back, over toward the swamp and John Flail’s.
It is shorter that way, much shorter, to get to the swamp and John Flail’s. Not half the distance as by the road in front up to the Swamp Road, then off and down it. If John Flail had taken that way home last evening from MacComerou’s here, just before that gray car came rushing up the road, he would probably be alive now. But he always went the road way, for fear of ghosts. So he is one himself now.
Rosenblatt thought that Stone was in the bedroom just beyond the door, getting a brief, light hour of sleep—after the night before, which Stone had spent up on duty—when he went rushing out. He thought that Stone was in there, and so did I.
“Take care of her, Ed!” Rosenblatt shouted as he went slamming out. “This time I’m going to run that bastard down!”
A man like Stone—a man like Stone who is a trained policeman—would have come out of that closed bedroom door within half a minute, at Rosenblatt’s parting shout, I should have known. Out of any sleep, he would have waked up instantly to take over, reaching for his gun. without bothering to put his shoes on, if he had removed them, and would have come out.
At once. To protect that sleeping girl. To be the guardian dog, to arrange the defenses, to say what lamps should be left burning and what put out. He would have had some strategical plan with which to meet the killer if he came. He would have had his gun. And there would have been two of us. It may well take two men to handle that devil. He has a knife, and he’s strong.
It was Rosenblatt’s fault for thinking he was leaving Stone to take over. It was mine for not shouting to him immediately to come back, when Stone did not appear.
I waited for Stone to emerge from the bedroom, sitting at old Adam MacComerou’s desk here, getting the terms of the problem arranged in my mind, and beginning to make my notes. Thinking that I heard Stone moving around in there, just beyond the door. Thinking that Stone had found a lamp in there and lit it, and was perhaps fussing with his necktie and combing his hair and would be out at any moment.
I waited ten minutes, I waited twenty, working on my notes. I waited sixty seconds more, with my pencil motionless. Then I knew Stone wasn’t in there. It was something of a shock to realize it.
I called to him quietly, “Stone!” So as not to awake and frighten her. But I knew he wasn’t there. I went to the door, with club in hand. I braced myself, and opened it. But there was no one there.
An open window, with the screen removed. The bed was empty. With the door wide open from the living room behind me, letting in all the light of the white lamp that could shine in, I entered, step by step. Watching from the edges of my eyes, half turning to right and left, quickly, letting no shadow get behind me. I closed and locked the window. Then I came out again.
The way Stone had been got rid of is obvious. A tap at the window beside his bed. He awakes instantly. To see a face that he knows, that is not the face of Corkscrew, that is not the face of death, as he knows it and is looking for it. The face of a man who is helping to pursue the search for the red-eyed little killer, and perhaps is helping to direct it. Not the killer at all. It would never occur to him. A man who during the murder hour was somewhere else. A man who was alibied.
Stone! This is me! Lieutenant Rosenblatt out in the living room wanted me to tell you, without letting Miss Darrie know! They have found St. Erme’s hand down by Dead Bridegroom’s Pond, around on the other side of the pond, back somewhere in the woods! Lieutenant Rosenblatt wants you to go down there and take charge, without letting her know, while he stays here with her! Quietly!
Or: Lieutenant Rosenblatt wants you to go get St. Erme’s hat, Trooper Stone, and go around unobtrusively with it among all the searchers, finding out how many heads it will fit on, without letting Miss Darrie know. Or: Lieutenant Rosenblatt wants you to go down to the next place that has a phone, without letting Miss Darrie know, and phone the police in Spardersburg, Pennsylvania, to find out what they may know about a man named Gus who used to work in a lunch wagon, and to stay there till you have got some positive information.
Or anything else nonsensical but that might sound plausible, that will keep Stone away for a long time. Lieutenant Rosenblatt is staying on guard himself. And Stone goes off on a wild-goose chase.
Or perhaps, as Stone removed the screen and slid his legs out over the window ledge, with both hands on the ledge to ease himself down, with his gun bolstered, with that known face waiting out in the night for him, he was killed with the knife right there.
Stone was not here, as Rosenblatt thought, that is all. After Stone, he got Rosenblatt out on a wild-goose chase himself.
There is no gun or weapon of any kind in the house. There is no bread knife with a serrated blade in the kitchen, such as he has himself. There is no knife of any sort. Even the stove poker out there has been removed. There are no heavy objects such as doorstops. It is almost as if the h
ouse had been deliberately and carefully denuded, at some time in the past, of all small common objects of assault which a maniac might use. Of course, he may have done it himself during the night. There is nothing heavier than the books on the bookshelf above me—Who’s Who, and old MaeComerou’s own massive buckram tome that has in it all there is to be known of murder. But I couldn’t hit him with that and make it hurt.
I went out a while ago to get the crank from the old Draco coupe on the drive near the back porch, but it had been taken. My surgical instruments—not that any of them would be of such use—were taken from the unlocked trunk compartment at some moment tonight. Before I had met her, even. I found them missing down there at Dead Bridegroom’s Pond, which was why I locked the car when I came back.
I haven’t dared to go out farther into the night, in search of any weapons. Out to the barn, or even so far as the garden. I daren’t leave her alone here. Nor am I sure that I should be able to see him first, or soon enough, out in the darkness. I have good eyes, perfect emmetropic eyes. But his eyes are no less good. And perhaps in the night they are a cat’s eyes, not quite human.
The door into the little front hallway, at the other end of the room behind me, is locked with a key, and the front door itself is nailed and padlocked. The window in the bedroom is closed and locked. The copper screen at the window beside me, against which the moths are fluttering with their crimson eyes and white dusty bodies, cannot be pushed in. I have planted a chair with a lot of pans balanced on it against the planked door out in the kitchen that opens out into the woodshed in the back. I have done the same against the kitchen screen door.
There is the white gasoline lamp here in the living room on the desk, which illuminates the whole room fairly. There is a yellow kerosene lamp burning on the shelf out in the kitchen above the sink. There are no other lamps with fuel in them. The fuel would be out in the barn, perhaps.
The telephone bell at times still gives forth its ghostly jangle. But there is no meaning in it. The wire has been cut.
The Red Right Hand Page 15