Death by Association

by Frances Lockridge

  All confidence, all assurance, left Mary’s mind as, for the moment motionless, she watched him go. She had fooled herself; believed what it was pleasant to believe, reassuring to believe. Knowing that a path was trapped, that a deadfall was somewhere along it, a man might still follow the path because there was no other—might be compelled along it, might have no choice between evils and be forced to put faith in resolution, and in skill.

  And Mac was not there. Heimrich—how could she know where Heimrich was? Her hands clenched momentarily, until the knuckles whitened. There isn’t any trap, she thought. Not really any trap. There would be only men to watch, and they were not watching. Only—

  She was on her feet, then. For an instant she stood at the table, looking once more—looking now with a kind of desperation—at the door through which (how long ago!) Barclay MacDonald had walked behind the boy in a red jacket. She knew, when the door was empty, that she could not wait for Mac—not even for him. Not for anybody.

  She went, then; she hurried; did hot quite run. She was through the door to the patio, and her heels were clicking on the cement path. She brushed past people, was brushed by them. She could hear her voice saying, “Sorry. So sorry,” and hear the breathless quality in her voice. She knew that, having passed her, men and women stopped and looked after her, curiously. But she looked only ahead, along the walk and beyond its turning at the far corner of the hotel; sought with great anxiety to pierce the comparative darkness of the lawn, laden with the heavy shadows of the palms. As she walked—and now almost ran—her eyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light.

  She was out of sight from the Penguin Bar when Barclay MacDonald entered it, hurrying down the stairs from the dining room; stopping abruptly when he saw the table empty.

  “Damn!” said Barclay MacDonald, with feeling, and, being a practical man, sought out the girl who served the bar.

  XI

  The walk alongwhich Mary Wister hurried, avoiding (or not quite avoiding) those who trickled through the warm night toward the soft brightness of the patio, toward the flames which darted under broiling meat, traversed the length of one of the arms which The Coral Isles reached out toward the sea. At the end of the wing, the path divided. One could go to the left, around the end of the wing and so to the sheltered porch which faced the water. One could go right, along a cemented path which curved among palm trees, toward the beach and the cluster of buildings which housed locker rooms, solariums, the tennis shop, even a small motion picture theater. That way, it was darker; where the path curved to circle the far end of the tennis courts, only the colored lights at the bases of palm trees, and the still faintly persisting light from the west, where the sun had set, fought with the shadows.

  Where the path divided, Mary Wister stopped suddenly, and at a loss. She had begun pursuit without thought; she followed Oslen, who followed the dark, vivid girl, with only the determination to follow. But now, since she could not anywhere see either the heavy largeness of the man nor the vibrating quickness of the girl, assurance was abruptly pulled out from under her. She could only stand where the walk divided, and look first in one direction and then in the other; could only try to see and, failing that, to guess.

  On the path to her left, several people walked, unhurried—a man and a girl; a couple in late middle life, moving slowly, as if urgency long ago had been spent; a man, alone, who walked with purpose, as if already he were late for something. But all of these, and the group of four which was some distance farther along the walk, were moving toward her and among them was no one she knew. It could be assumed, had to be assumed, that they were merely people going, at their leisure, to their dinner. The other way, although it led into relative darkness—and why would Rachel run from a frequented place, rather than toward one?—was almost certainly her way.

  She could not, she thought, be far behind Oslen; she had left the Penguin Bar only a few minutes after he had left. He had certainly come this way; he was certainly not in sight on the path toward the porch. Her unobstructed view along the other path was short and, that way, the palms were more numerous. Some of them—a good many of them, indeed—were large enough so that even a large man, wishing not to be seen, could step behind a bole and be hidden. It was not a particularly encouraging thought; starting down the path to the beach, Mary went with less haste, and with considerably less assurance. She was, sanity insisted, doing a very foolish thing.

  The point was, however, that it was a thing which needed doing, and which, so far as she could see, no one else was attending to. If Rachel was the bait in a trap where, except for herself—an adequate young woman in a green linen dress, but only that—was the trap? There appeared to be none; it appeared that something had gone desperately wrong, some contingency had been left unprovided for. I don’t want any part of this, Mary thought, going down the path with an uneasy eye for each thick trunk of palm; not any part at all. And I’m not really responsible. But that was the trouble. She could say that. She could say it over and over. But she could not believe it.

  So she went on, straining her eyes for sight of Oslen, fearing to find him and determined that she would—afraid and unwillingly resolute and above everything else, furious with all the rest—with, most of all, Dr. Barclay MacDonald, who had vanished when most needed; who might now, for all she knew, be contentedly finishing a drink at the table in the Penguin Bar, waiting placidly her return from what he would inevitably assume to be a moment of retirement. Damn Mac! Mary Wister said to herself, and thought she saw movement behind a great palm close to the walk, where the walk turned at right angles to round the tennis court.

  She stopped, and now, for the moment, there was only fear—a kind of cold tingling which absorbed mind and body. She waited for the movement to repeat itself—waited for William Oslen, not now a large, youngish man in the mold of an Eastern school—now a man who killed.

  But the movement was not repeated. She waited, trying to make herself go on, and her whole body and most of her mind said, “Go back, you little fool! Go back!”

  So, after a second, Mary Wister went on. She did not look at the tree; could not. She walked past it, and could not breathe, and waited as she walked, the muscles of her neck tightening. Only after she had taken half a dozen steps, and those into increasing darkness, did she dare look back. Looking, as she did, toward a lighter area, she could see clearly enough. There had been no one behind the tree. But there were trees ahead, and the buildings among which the shadows were darker still.

  She stopped again, but this time to listen; to hold her breath and listen. She heard the sea then, the heavy rustle, the deep obbligato of the great waters. It was always there, all lighter sounds, all human sounds, lived on its surface, by its sufferance. Yet for hours one did not hear it. Now she did, and for a moment heard nothing else. She tried to force the deep sound below the level of perception, and after a moment was successful. Then, in the shadows ahead, where the cement walk went among the frame buildings, passed the beach house and the tennis shop, she heard the sharp click of a woman’s slipper heel on pavement. The sound was single, not repeated.

  For a moment, Mary found it hard to explain. Then she guessed that someone—and surely Rachel!—had crossed the walk, but found it too wide to cross at a single stride, had had to risk the sound of leather heel on ringing surface. Mary realized then, also, how noisily revealing her own progress must have been along the whole length of the path. The thought was frightening; almost more than that, it was embarrassing. I’ll have to remember afterward how many unexpected feelings you can have, when really you’re scared to death, Mary Wister thought, and then thought, which was even more absurd in such terms, that she hoped she would have the opportunity.

  Still she waited, hoping for—and at the same time fearing—further sound from the pursued, or the pursuer she herself pursued. She listened and watched and was conscious, rather belatedly, that she herself was lost in shadows and that the others, if Oslen also was near by, unrevealed, would be wai
ting for further sounds from her, surely having been warned, and long warned, by the sharp staccato of her own steps.

  There were two of them, almost certainly there were three, standing silent in the warm night, sheltered in the deepest shadows, waiting for movement, for disclosure.

  Very carefully, Mary Wister stepped from the paved walk onto the grass beside it. She could move there almost silently. She moved forward. She felt, without seeing them, without hearing them, that others were moving with her, moving around her in the shadows.

  She reached, and sought for shelter, the side of the long, rectangular motion picture theater. Dark, deserted, it was nevertheless a refuge to Mary Wister, who from pursuer had come to feel herself a fugitive. With a wall at your back, there is a kind of safety—a feeling of safety.

  There she remained for what seemed a considerable time, but was in fact only a minute or a little more. She found, then, that she was breathing more quietly; realized, then, that for no reason (save the shadows, save the click of a heel on pavement) she had come near to panic. Not only a fool, but a frightened fool, Mary told herself; a woman, and a grown woman, thrown into panic by nothing, and, she became increasingly convinced, to no purpose. She had been so quick to move, accepted with so little thought a belief that she could do something which had to be done. So, in the shadow of a long frame building, in the shadow of palm trees, she was cowering against a wall, and listening tensely—and nobody knew she was there, or cared where she was. She threatened no one, and protected no one.

  But when she moved, she moved as quietly as she could, listened as intently, tried as anxiously to see into the shadows around her. She moved along the windowless wall of the improvised theater, away from the walk by which she had come. She would, she realized, be moving diagonally toward the shuffleboard court; there was, she remembered, another passage to it from the other side of the building. Remembering this, she moved the last few feet very cautiously, and almost soundlessly. When she reached the corner, she stopped, held her breath, and again listened.

  She could hear nothing, and see nothing, although here it was lighter. She did not at first understand this slightly greater light, and looked for its source.

  She was looking across the shuffleboard court, across a pingpong table beyond it, at the wall of the triangular building they called the water shed—at the great cistern. Midway along the wall, a single electric bulb, set into the concrete, burned dimly. Beyond the light, there was a rectangle of blackness against the wall.

  It took Mary Wister a long moment, standing tight against the wooden wall of the theater, two or three feet on the safe side of the corner of the building, to realize that the black rectangle was the door which led into the water shed—no, since it was black, the doorway itself! The door was open.

  It would not normally be left open. That thought was clear, and sudden, in Mary’s mind before she remembered that, when she had before looked at the wall, the door had been closed. It was set three or four feet up the wall—too high for a small child to clamber to. The picture was clear in her mind—it was a sliding door, one which slid vertically like—like a portcullis. Or like the door of a trap!

  Now it was open. It was open because—

  Mary drew in her breath quickly. The water shed was a trap—a great, triangular trap. A big man—a man as big as Oslen—could force a smaller person into it—a girl as small as Rachel Jones. The water would be deep enough there; the walls thick enough. Perhaps from season’s end to season’s beginning, no one ever looked into the water shed. A body might be hidden there for months, grappled under black water. Or floating on black water. And who would look?

  Almost convulsively, Mary started forward. But then she stopped. Someone was moving along the intersecting side of the building against which, now again, she flattened herself. The sounds of movement were clear; there seemed to be no particular effort to diminish them. She shrank back.

  She watched, from the shadow, while William Oslen came to the corner of the building and then stepped away from it—mercifully with his back to her—and stood for a moment. He looked up and down the blank concrete wall beyond the shuffleboard court as she had done; seemed to seek, as she had sought, the source of light. Then he saw the open door and, seeing it, made an odd, soft sound. It was wordless; its meaning beyond translation. Then, moving quickly for all his size, he crossed the shuffleboard court, circled the pingpong table, made for the open door in the thick wall. Mary could only watch.

  He reached the door and stopped for a moment before looking into it. Instead, he looked from right to left, and back again, along the wall. Only then, apparently satisfied he was alone, did William Oslen go to the door and lean into it.

  He stood so, peering in, for several seconds. Then, with no preliminary movement, as if suddenly compelled, the big pianist hoisted himself from the ground, hung for an instant, and lifted himself into the doorway. It was a low door, and he crouched in it. His body was in strange perspective; menacing. The single light threw his shadow along the wall. Then he was gone.

  Mary started instinctively toward the water shed and then, as if her muscles had frozen, she stopped. That was not the way, her mind told her—her mind commanded. Alone, she could do nothing; alone in the darkness which must be deep in the cistern shed she would be helpless. She had done what she could. Now—surely now!—the others would come. She would scream out for help now. Now silence was without meaning. Now there must be strength and quickness; sudden, open violence now! She filled her lungs to cry out.

  And then, from the shed, she heard a woman scream. The sound was muffled by the heavy walls. Within it might reverberate, echo from concrete, from the surface of dark water. But here it was a frail sound, muted, dim in Mary’s ears—dim and terrible. Then Mary Wister ran, and ran toward the door in the concrete wall, knowing there was no longer time to wait. But as she ran she called into the night—called, “Here! They’re here!” and called, “Help! Help!” But she felt that the night swallowed her voice, that the heavy sound of the sea overwhelmed it. As she ran across the shuffleboard court she was not calling loudly, although still she thought she was. She was saying, “Mac! Mac!” but the words gasped in her throat.

  Then she was at the little, high-set door; she was standing in front of it, her hands on the high sill, as before her Oslen had stood. And inside, at first, was only darkness—heavy darkness. After a second, there was faint light—barely perceptible light, trickling from a distant, tiny bulb set in the ceiling deep in the cavern.

  The light reflected darkly from the surface of water, perhaps four feet, perhaps six, below the sill level. The surface of the water was almost as much to be felt as to be seen; it was not as if there were water there, the substance of water, but as if there, a harder darkness, was the far limit of vision made manifest. Yet as she looked longer—and now time was measured not as by a clock, but could be counted by the quick breaths she snatched of heavy air—the surface of the water was a dark, faintly moving mirror, which sullenly reflected the little light.

  She looked at the water first, and breathed the air. The air was heavy, odorous. It was oppressive air and the odor was strange, sweetish—the odor of darkness, and of vegetation which was robbed of light. In the warm night, Mary felt coldness, and found it hard to breathe, and for a moment could not move.

  Then, deep in the darkness, a woman cried out again and here the sound was shapeless and frightening; here it was repeated, seemed to be everywhere in the spreading darkness within. First the cry was the wordless cry of fear. Then the woman—the voice had no identity; it was only a voice of fear—cried, “No! Don’t! Oh—please! Please!”

  Then Mary Wister lifted herself on her hands, hung for an instant against the wall, and found the sill with her feet. She stood in the doorway, not needing to crouch as Oslen had done. Then, far along the inner wall, and to her right, she saw them—two moving shadows. They seemed, at first, to be pinned against the wall, above the black water.

&nbs
p; That was illusion, and held only for a breath. Above the water, there was a ledge, perhaps two feet in width, jutting from the wall. It was wet and perilous; she thought that it did not project at right angles from the wall, but that it sloped toward the water. She pulled off her shoes against the edge of the shelf, and heard soft splashes in the blackness below her. Then she started along the ledge, leaning as close as she could to the wall, toward those she had seen—toward the shadows she had seen. She became, herself, a shadow creeping against the cold dank of the wall.

  She had no plan and could make none. She could merely move along the slippery ledge, seeking to overtake the others, who seemed to be moving away from her, but slowly—hope that, somehow, she could delay Oslen until help came. For help must surely come—even over the deep note of the sea on coral shoals, her cry must have been heard. She had to believe that. There was no alternative to that belief; she clung to it as she tried to cling with her shoulder, with her hands, to the damp concrete on her right, with her stockinged feet to the cold ledge under them.

  The two farther along the ledge, almost a hundred feet farther along the ledge, appeared not to have heard her. At least they continued their slow progress, one shadow toilsomely leading the other along the ledge above the evil water. It was, Mary thought, surely flight and pursuit, but flight reduced by darkness, by the treachery of the ledge, to a plodding hopelessness and pursuit almost equally slowed. Yet the second shadow, she thought, gained on the first. And both were silent now.