The Steel Mirror

by Donald Hamilton

  “Six-one-o-two-six-one,” the boy said. “Illinois.”

  Ann Nicholson got out of the car. Emmett heard her footsteps come to him and felt her hand take his arm. The hand was trembling.

  The tall man looked at her. “Your name’s Ann Nicholson?”

  “A…” The word did not come out; all the self-possession she had showed with Emmett earlier in the morning was gone. She was quite terrified. She tried again. “… Yes.”

  “We had a call from the Chicago police,” the tall man said. “Girl wearing light gabardine suit, light hat, blonde, about five-four, a hundred and fifteen pounds, driving tan Mercury convertible, Illinois license six-one-o-two-six-one. Name of Nicholson. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But…”

  “Take a look in the car, Bud.”

  Emmett heard the boy climb into the car. He cleared his throat. “What’s the trouble?”

  “She’s wanted as a material witness in a murder case, Mister.”

  Emmett felt the girl’s fingers dig into his arm. He turned his head slowly to look at her. Her face looked hollow and ugly with fright.

  “Do you know anything about it?” he asked.

  She shook her head convulsively.

  “Nothing in the car, Sheriff Patman,” the boy’s voice said. “She’s got a roll of bills in her purse and there’s a camera in the glove compartment, but no weapons, saving a jack handle.”

  The sheriff holstered his weapon and came forward. Emmett stood quite still and felt the big freckled hands pat him, turn him around, and take out his wallet.

  “John E. Emmett, Washington, D.C. You’re a long ways from home, Mister.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, keep your nose clean and you’ll be all right.”

  He felt the wallet put into his hands. He saw the small blue eyes study Ann Nicholson with a look that he did not like.

  “Sorry, Miss, but I can’t take any chances,” the tall man said. “Keep your hands up.”

  The big freckled hands unfastened her jacket and pulled it open. Emmett looked away. He heard the girl gasp and told himself there was clearly nothing that he could do about it. He wished himself far away, on a Pullman rolling toward Denver.

  “Sorry, Miss,” the sheriff’s voice said, sounding a little strained. “Get in the car. Reckon you’d better drive, Mister. Turn around and drive slow back to town. Bud, you follow in the lizzie.”

  As they moved toward the car, Emmett glanced at the girl beside him. She was fastening her jacket again. There were two red spots in the whiteness of her face, but her lips, even with the lipstick, were quite pale. She did not look at him. The tall man got into the rear seat of the convertible. Emmett slid behind the wheel. Ann Nicholson got in beside him and closed the door. He turned the car around on the highway and drove at thirty-five back the way they had come, a little surprised to find it still early enough morning that the sun was in his eyes, going east. In the rear-view mirror he could see the Ford following closely.

  They entered the town. It looked like any town they had been through, perhaps a little larger than average. There were railroad tracks on one side of the highway with the depot facing the business section.

  “Turn left at the corner,” the tall man’s voice said. “Hell, watch the stoplight, Mister. Don’t they have stoplights in Washington, D.C.?”

  The light changed and he made the turn.

  “Now right,” the sheriff said. “Middle of the block.”

  The brick building was two stories high. Over the main door the concrete slab was marked in sunken letters: Lane County Jail and Court House. A middle-aged woman in a print dress walked by carrying a shopping bag as the two cars stopped.

  “Get out slow,” the sheriff ordered.

  Emmett glanced uneasily at the no-parking signs on the lamp posts along the curb, but it seemed silly to mention them. He followed Ann Nicholson out of the car and sensed the tall man getting out behind him. The Ford had stopped behind the convertible.

  “Run her up in the alley, Bud,” the sheriff said, and the Ford backed away. “All right, inside, you.”

  The sun was very bright and hot as they crossed the sidewalk. The girl stopped before the door. She turned abruptly to face the tall man.

  “Please,” she said. “There must be some mistake. I don’t know anything about…”

  Emmett glanced at her, losing his sympathy for her in a quick flash of annoyance. There was so clearly no point in arguing about it. All you had to do was look at the freckled obstinate country face. The man was the law and he was going to take them inside and call Chicago about them. You did not stand on a hot sidewalk and tell a hick policeman that he was making a mistake. If he were making a mistake he would find it out in due time in his own way. You did not tell the law that you were only going thirty, or that you didn’t see the traffic light, or that you hadn’t killed anybody and didn’t know anything about it.

  “Come on, Miss Nicholson,” he said, taking her arm. She pulled free without looking at him.

  “Please!” she said to the sheriff.

  The tall man walked up between them, taking an arm of each, and moved them bodily toward the door; then he released Emmett to turn the knob with his right hand. Abruptly the girl tore herself loose and was running down the sidewalk.

  “Damn!” the sheriff said explosively. “Stay here, Mister, if you know what’s good for you.”

  He ran after the girl. Emmett stood by the door, watching. There was something ridiculous and a little indecent about a girl trying to run fast in high-heeled pumps and the rather tight skirts they had taken to wearing. She whirled as the man, running easily, caught up with her, and struck at him with her clenched hands, as if pounding on a locked door. Then he had seized her, and suddenly she was fighting him desperately with a heedless, almost animal-like ferocity, using her nails and her teeth and her high heels. Emmett found himself walking slowly down the bright sidewalk toward them. He could hardly breathe and he wanted to be sick. The bitch, he thought, the stupid little bitch. In that moment he hated the girl more than he had hated anything in his whole life—for getting him into this, for not being fifty years old and ugly, and for making an obscene display of herself on a public street in broad daylight.

  He took a long breath and, walking cautiously around them, suddenly wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides, feeling her slight body writhe and twist against him. The tall man stepped back. His chest was heaving and his close-set blue eyes had a bright unpleasant shine.

  “Cut it out, Miss Nicholson,” Emmett said, panting. It seemed idiotic to call her Miss while wrestling with her. “Damn it, stop it!” he snapped. She became still.

  The sheriff stepped forward abruptly and slapped her viciously across the face, right hand and left hand. Emmett felt the slender body he had not yet released become rigid against him. He let it go abruptly, steadying the girl as she swayed. “Listen!” he said.

  “You mind your own business, Mister.”

  The tall man licked the blood from a scratch on his hand. There was sweat on his face, and an intent look of preoccupation as he studied the girl, moving his tongue slowly along his thin mouth. The damn little fool, Emmett thought bitterly, after what she’d been through over there you’d think she’d have more sense. He put himself in front of her without looking at her. He watched the man come forward and made certain plans, on a purely theoretical basis. He had not fought with, or struck, another human being since he was sixteen years old. The man outweighed him by well over fifty pounds and was at least four inches taller. He felt his stomach as a tight knot of nausea just below his ribs.

  “Look,” he said weakly. “Look, Sheriff, Miss Nicholson’s been sick. She lost her head. She didn’t mean…”

  Then the man was reaching for his shoulder to sweep him aside, and he moved forward inside the long arm and felt the other hand strike him a jarring blow in the chest; and he was inside that, too, his arms wrapped around the other’
s body. He brought his knee up with all the strength that was in him. With the jolt he felt the larger man’s body contract as if the whole body were a muscle in spasm; he felt himself released. He stepped back, startled at what he had accomplished, and saw the sheriff bend over and grab at himself, groaning, and sit down on the sidewalk, doubled over.

  The girl was leaning against a lamp post beneath a no parking sign, her hair wild about her face. Emmett grabbed her; she shied like a horse, stepping off the curb rather than pass close to the man on the sidewalk; then they were running back to the car. The boy the sheriff had called Bud was coming out of the alley beside the courthouse. He stopped and stood uncertainly, watching them throw themselves into the convertible; then ran toward the sheriff who was still sitting there, still holding himself where it hurt.

  Outside the town, the green countryside seemed to have taken on a nightmarish quality under the bright sun; the gravel roads, at sixty-five, seemed to twist and turn with deliberate viciousness, trying to trick the hurtling car into the ditch. Presently the girl moved.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please stop. I…”

  He glanced at her. She was lying back against the cushion beside him. Her face was gray and shiny. He returned his attention to the road, where it was needed.

  “Listen,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of this county. If that ape catches us…”

  “Please!” she gasped. “I’ve got to… I’m going to…” She sat up abruptly.

  A wooden bridge rushed towards them. He saw a track lead off to the right along the cottonwoods bordering the creek, and wrenched at the wheel. The springs of the car clashed as they bounced on the sagging boards spanning the ditch; then they were lurching and pounding across an open field. He saw brown water gleaming in the sunshine through the cottonwoods to the left. The creek made a sharp turn south and the track followed it, the cottonwoods concealing it from the road. He braked and pulled up the emergency. The girl was fumbling with the door handle. He worked it for her and she stumbled out; she almost fell and he had to hold her, supporting her while she vomited. Then he helped her back into the car and gave her his handkerchief. She sat quite still with the handkerchief to her mouth.

  After a long time she stirred. “Please,” she whispered. “My shoe…” She did not look at him.

  He took the shoe off. She found some cleansing tissue in the glove compartment and he wiped the black suede clean and slid the shoe back on her foot. Then he walked around the car and got behind the wheel and drove a hundred yards down the track away from the mess on the ground. He switched off the engine and put his forehead against his arms folded over the steering wheel. How the hell did I get into this? he asked himself.

  Presently he lifted his head and opened the door beside him and got out, started away from the car, returned and, with a glance at the girl, took the keys from the ignition and put them into his pocket. Then he walked slowly along the cottonwoods in the broiling sunshine. The track went on, winding through the foot-high prairie grass, finally, in the far distance, climbing up the rise away from the creek to end at a shabby farm house. There was a silo attached to the barn, a windmill, and a few scrawny poplars grew around the buildings. He stopped, turned, and walked slowly back toward the sand-colored convertible, shiny and conspicuous in the sunlight.

  If they doubled in their tracks now, he thought, if they ran back into the town and put the car into the Ford garage—there was always a Ford garage—to be overhauled, perhaps, and then caught a train or bus… His mind started to work on it. But there might be an interminable wait. He remembered that it was Sunday. And it was no good anyway. He was trying to be clever and cunning. He was trying to outwit another man at his own specialty. He would wind up looking just as silly as Sheriff Patman would look trying to run a Grignard synthesis in his kitchen sink.

  If he catches me, he’ll take me apart, Emmett thought. If he catches me he’ll kill me with his bare hands. There was not a doubt in his mind as to what would happen if the freckled sheriff caught him. Somehow he knew with utter certainty how a man like that thought and felt with respect to certain fundamentals, of which being kneed in the groin was definitely one.

  He saw the girl get out of the car and come toward him. Two of the three buttons of her jacket had come unfastened, and the thin satin blouse spilled out through the gap. Her hair was no tidier than it had been, and one of her stockings was wrinkled down her leg.

  “Hadn’t we better?—” She stopped in front of him.

  He stared at her dispassionately, pleased at her dishevelment because he hated her. After a little she glanced down at herself, flushed, and started to tuck and brush and pat herself back to a show of respectability.

  She stopped and looked up at him again. “Don’t let them… I couldn’t stand to be put in a cell. If they put me in a cell, I’ll kill myself.”

  He took a step forward and seized her by the shoulders and shook her just once. The hair that she had tucked back slipped forward again, almost covering her left eye. She looked a little crazy, staring up at him through the veil of light tangled hair.

  He said, “As soon as I’m out of this you can go right back to the booby-hatch you came from. And you can eat all the seconal you like. I’ll even make up a special batch, candy-coated, from me to you. But in the meantime, save your symptoms for Dr. Kaufman. Don’t throw any fits and don’t have hysterics and don’t talk silly about killing yourself. You have no idea what a pleasure it would be to finish knocking your ears down.”

  He walked past her, leaving her standing there, and went to the car, and took the roadmaps from the glove compartment. He was aware of her coming up behind him.

  “This country’s fixed nice for people who want to go east and west,” he said. “But you’ve practically got to break trail to get north and south.” He jerked his head. “Get in.”

  She got into the car. He noticed absently that she was crying without sound. The tears ran down her cheeks and spotted her blouse and the lapels of her gabardine jacket. It did not affect him one way or the other. He was thinking of what it would mean to his life to be arrested and tried for resisting an officer of the law, even if he should escape without a beating. In one moment you could wreck your life and your career, merely because you had let yourself yield to an impulse and stupid chivalry. He started around the car, but stopped, turning back to the girl.

  “Where’s that jack handle?”

  “You threw it… in back, I think…”

  “Move over.” He groped on the floor behind her and found it and looked from it to her. He walked to the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and threw the handle clattering inside; then closed the trunk, got behind the wheel, turned the car around, and, back on the gravel road, headed south. “Why did you hide the jack handle?”

  “It won’t do me any good if he catches us,” Emmett said. “But I’m not taking any chances of your getting the bright idea that you might like to be alone. You might as well get used to the thought that I’m going to be right beside you until I can figure out—”

  “Do you think I’d…?” Her voice trailed off, shocked and rather frightened.

  “Nicholson,” he said, watching the road, “by me, you’re the great unknown. After that exhibition back there, I’m not taking any chances on what you might do, not any.”

  “Don’t you understand what being put into a cell…?” She glanced at him. “Don’t you understand? I don’t know anything about it. I don’t even know who’s supposed to have been killed.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “You’re frightened,” she said sharply. “You’re frightened silly.”

  He glanced at her and grinned, feeling his lips slide back from his teeth. “Are you just figuring that out?”

  She did not say anything.

  He said, “You’ve got no idea of how scared I am, Nicholson. No idea at all.”

  She said, “He can’t do anything. You were
helping me. He didn’t have any right…” She did not believe a word of it. She was just talking to hear herself talk.

  He did not take his eyes off the road. “You had it coming. What the hell did you learn over there, anyway? If you haven’t got sense enough not to wrestle with a guy like that. What did you want to run for, in the first place?”

  “I told you. I… suddenly I just couldn’t go into the place. It seemed just like the place… where they had me…”

  He said, “That’s all right. I’ll listen to your war experiences some time when I’m feeling respectful. Take a look behind. Can you see anything coming?”

  She turned in the seat. “No. There’s nothing.”

  “If he picks us up I’m going to give him a run for it. Get down on the floor if it happens. He’ll probably shoot.”

  “Aren’t you—” She hesitated. “Aren’t you being a little silly, Mr. Emmett? This is the United States, you know.” She was again just talking to hear herself say what she wanted to believe, hoping that he would reassure her.

  “Don’t be formal,” he said. “You know me. I’m the guy who wipes the goo off your shoes after you’ve coughed up your breakfast. Just call me Galahad for short.”

  She did not say anything.

  He said, “Sure, this is the United States. Lane County, Nebraska, and I’ve just spread the sheriff thereof all over his own pavement in front of his office door. With a girl and his own deputy watching. Can you figure out what’ll happen to me if that guy ever gets five minutes with me alone? My God, Nicholson,” he said, glancing at her, “the only time I’ve ever talked to a cop was a little matter of speeding. You should be telling me what a man like that will do.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said without conviction.

  “You’re all right,” he said. “He won’t be mad at you any longer. He’s forgotten about you. But me, he’ll take me apart and run the remains through a sausage grinder. This isn’t a big city where if you sock one cop it doesn’t really affect the department’s prestige; they can afford to let the judge take care of it. A county sheriff is something else again. He can’t afford to be laughed at.”