by Otto Penzler
“Nobody saw them,” Mason said. “But they’re not there so they did come out.”
“They didn’t come out,” Joe Gorman said. “I was watching for them from the window of my diner at this end.”
“That was the three seconds you were getting something out of the icebox in your pantry,” Mason said.
“And I suppose everyone else along Main Street had his head in a closet at just that time!” Joe Gorman said.
“Or someone reached down out of the heavens and snatched that station wagon up into space,” Haviland said. He was looking at Peabody’s pudgy face as he spoke, and something he saw there made him add quickly: “I’m kidding, of course.”
Peabody laughed nervously. “It’s the only good explanation we’ve had so far.”
Karl Dickler put his hand up to his cheek. There was a nerve there that had started to twitch, regularly as the tick of a clock. “I like Jerry. I’d give the same kind of report on him you’ve been getting, Mr. Haviland. But you can’t pass up the facts. I’d have said he’d defend those kids with his life. But did he? And the old man—his father. He won’t answer questions directly. There’s something queer about him. Damn it, Mr. Haviland, my kids are—out there, somewhere!” He waved toward the frost-coated window panes.
“Every highway within two hundred miles of here is being patrolled, Mr. Dickler,” Haviland said. “If they’d driven straight away from here in daylight—granting Mason is right and everybody was in a closet when the station wagon went through town—they’d have been seen a hundred times after they left Clayton. There isn’t one report of anyone having seen the station wagon with the school-bus markings.” Haviland paused to light a cigarette. His tapering fingers were nicotine stained.
“If you’d ever investigated a crime, Mr. Dickler, you’d know we usually are swamped with calls from people who think they’ve seen the wanted man. A bus—a busload of kids. Somebody had to see it! But there isn’t even a crackpot report. If there was some place he could have stayed undercover—and don’t tell me, I know there isn’t—and started moving after dark, he might get some distance. But alarms are out everywhere. He couldn’t travel five miles now without being trapped.”
“We’ve told ourselves all these things for hours!” Dickler said, pinching savagely at his twitching cheek. “What are you going to do, Haviland?”
“Unless we’re all wrong,” Haviland said, “we’re going to hear from the kidnappers soon. Tonight—or maybe in the morning—by mail, or phone or in some unexpected way. But we’ll hear. They’ll demand money. What other purpose can there be? Once we hear, we’ll have to start to play it by ear. That’s the way those cases are.”
“Meanwhile you just sit here and wait!” Dickler said, a kind of despair rising in his voice. “What am I going to say to my wife?”
“I think all the parents of the children should go home. You may be the one the kidnappers contact. It may be your child they put on the phone to convince you the kids are safe,” Haviland said. “As soon as it’s daylight—”
“You think the kids are safe?” Dickler cried out.
Haviland stared at the distraught father for a minute. Then he spoke, gently. “What kind of assurance could I give you, Mr. Dickler? Even if I tried, you wouldn’t believe me. People who play this kind of game are without feelings, not rational. When you fight them, you have to walk quietly. If you scare them, God knows what to expect. That’s why I urge you all to go home and wait.” He dropped his cigarette on the floor and heeled it out. “And pray,” he said.…
Elizabeth Deering, Jerry Mahoney’s girl, was sick with anxiety. Jerry was foremost in her mind; Jerry, missing with the children; Jerry, worse than that, suspected by his friends. But on top of that was old Pat Mahoney.
He hadn’t made the slightest sense since the angry crowd had left his house. He had talked on endlessly about the old days in vaudeville. He seemed obsessed with the memory of the first time he had seen The Great Thurston in Sioux City. He remembered card tricks, and sawing the lady in half, and his wife Nora’s childish delight in being completely bewildered. He seemed to remember everything he had seen the great man do.
Elizabeth tried, but she could not bring Pat back to the present. The tragedy seemed to have tipped him right out of the world of reason. She was partly relieved when she heard firm steps on the front porch. The other part of her, when she saw Sergeant Mason and the tall stranger, was the fear that they had news—bad news about Jerry.
Mason was less aggressive than he had been on his first visit. He introduced Haviland and said they wanted to talk to Pat. Elizabeth took them back into the living room where old Pat still sat in the overstuffed armchair.
Mason introduced Haviland. “Mr. Haviland is a special investigator from the Attorney General’s office, Pat.”
Pat’s eyes brightened. “Say, you’re the fellow that solved that murder over in Johnsville, aren’t you?” he said. “Smart piece of work.”
“Thanks,” Haviland said. He looked at Pat, astonished at his gaudy vest and tie and the glittering diamond on his finger. He had been prepared for Pat, but not adequately.
“Sit down,” Pat said. “Maybe Liz would make us some coffee if we asked her pretty.”
Mason nodded to Liz, who went out into the kitchen. He followed her to tell her there was no news. Haviland sat down on the couch next to Pat, stretched out his long legs and offered Pat a cigarette.
“Don’t smoke,” Pat said. “Never really liked anything but cigars. Nora hated the smell of ’em. So what was I to do? You go to vaudeville in the old days, Mr. Haviland?”
“When I was a kid,” Haviland said, lighting a cigarette. “I never had the pleasure of seeing you, though, Mr. Mahoney.”
“Call me Pat,” Pat said. “Everyone does. I was nothing, Mr. Haviland. Just a third-rate song-and-dance man. But Nora—well, if you ever saw my Nora …”
Haviland waited for him to go on, but Pat seemed lost in his precious memories.
“You must be very worried about your son, Pat,” he said.
For a fractional moment the mask of pleasant incompetence seemed to be stripped from Pat’s face. “Wouldn’t you be?” he asked harshly. Then, almost instantly, the mask was fitted back into place, and old Pat gave his cackling laugh. “You got theories, Mr. Haviland? How’re you going to handle this case?”
“I think,” Haviland said, conversationally, “the children and your son have been kidnapped. I think we’ll hear from the kidnappers soon. I think, in all probability, the whole town will be asked to get up a large ransom.”
Pat nodded. “I’ll chip in this diamond ring,” he said. “It’s got Jerry out of trouble more than once.”
Haviland’s eyes narrowed. “He’s been in trouble before?”
“His main trouble was his Pop,” Pat said. “Sometimes there wasn’t enough to eat. But we could always raise eating money on this ring.” He turned his bright, laughing eyes directly on Haviland. “You figured out how the bus disappeared?”
“No,” Haviland said.
“Of course it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Pat said.
“Well, if we knew—” Haviland said.
“It wouldn’t really matter,” Pat said. “It’s what’s going to happen now that matters.”
“You mean the demand for money?”
“If that’s what’s going to happen,” Pat said. The cackling laugh suddenly grated on Haviland’s nerves. The old joker did know something!
“You have a different theory, Pat?” Haviland asked, keeping his exasperation out of his voice.
“You ever see The Great Thurston on the Keith-Orpheum circuit?” Pat asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Haviland said.
“Greatest magic act I ever saw,” Pat said. “Better than Houdini. Better than anyone. I first saw him in Sioux City—”
“About the case here, Pat,” Haviland interrupted. “You have a theory?”
“I got no theory,” Pat said. “But I kno
w what’s going to happen.”
Haviland leaned forward. “What’s going to happen?”
“One of two things,” Pat said. “Everybody in this town is going to be looking for that station wagon in the lake, where they know it isn’t, and they’re going to be looking for it in the woods, where they know it isn’t. That’s one thing that may happen. The other thing is, they buy this theory of yours, Mr. Haviland—and it’s a good theory, mind you—and they all stay home and wait to hear something. There’s one same result from both things, isn’t there?”
“Same result?”
“Sure. Nobody in Clayton goes to work. The quarries don’t operate. The small businesses will shut down. People will be looking and people will be waiting …”
“So?”
“So what good will that do anyone?” Pat asked.
Haviland ground out his cigarette in an ashtray. “It won’t do anyone any good. The quarry owners will lose some money. The small businesses will lose some money.”
“Not much point in it, is there?” Pat said, grinning.
Haviland rose. He’d had about enough. Mason and Elizabeth were coming back from the kitchen with coffee. “There isn’t much point to anything you’re saying, Mr. Mahoney.”
Pat’s eyes twinkled. “You said you never saw The Great Thurston, didn’t you?”
“I never saw him,” Haviland said.
“Well, we’ll see. If they’re supposed to stay home and wait, they’ll stay home and wait. If they’re supposed to be out searching, they’ll be out searching. Ah, coffee! Smells real good. Pull up a chair, Sergeant. By the way, Mr. Haviland, I’ll make you a bet,” Pat said.
“I’m not a betting man,” Haviland said.
“Oh, just a manner-of-speaking bet,” Pat said. “I’ll make you a bet that tomorrow morning they’ll be out searching. I’ll make you a bet that even if you order them to stay home and wait, they’ll be out searching.”
“Look here, Pat, if you know something …”
A dreamy look came into Pat’s eyes. “Nora was so taken with The Great Thurston that time in Sioux City I went around to see him afterwards. I thought maybe he’d show me how to do a few simple tricks. I pretended it was for Nora, but really I thought we might use ’em in our act. He wouldn’t tell me anything—that is, not about any of his tricks. But he told me the whole principle of his business.”
“Sugar?” Elizabeth asked Haviland. Poor old man, she thought.
“The principle is,” Pat said, “to make your audience think only what you want them to think, and see only what you want them to see.” Pat’s eyes brightened. “Which reminds me, there’s something I’d like to have you see, Mr. Haviland.”
Haviland gulped his coffee. Somehow he felt mesmerized by the old man. Pat was at the foot of the stairs, beckoning. Haviland followed.
Elizabeth looked at Mason and there were tears in her eyes. “It’s thrown him completely off base,” she said. “You know what he’s going to show Mr. Haviland?” Sergeant Mason shook his head.
“A cowboy suit!” Elizabeth said, and dropped down on the couch, crying softly. “He’s going to show him a cowboy suit.”
And she was right. Haviland found himself in the attic, his head bowed to keep from bumping into the sloping beams. Old Pat had opened a wardrobe trunk and, with the gesture of a waiter taking the silver lid off a tomato surprise, revealed two cowboy suits, one hanging neatly on each side of the trunk—Nora’s and his. Chaps, shirt, vest, boots, Stetsons, and gun belts—all studded with stage jewelry.
“… and when the lights went out,” Pat was saying, “all you could see was these jew jaws, sparkling. And we’d take out the guns …” And suddenly Pat had the two jeweled six-shooters in his hands, twirling and spinning them. “In the old days I could draw these guns and twirl ’em into position faster than Jesse James!”
The spell was broken for Haviland. The old guy was cuckoo. “I enjoyed seeing them, Mr. Mahoney,” he said. “But now, I’m afraid I’ve got to get back.…”
As soon as dawn broke, Haviland had Sergeant Mason and Sheriff George Peabody take him out to the scene of the disappearance. Everyone else was at home, waiting to hear from the kidnappers. It had been a terrible night for the whole town, a night filled with forebodings and dark imaginings. Haviland covered every inch of the two-mile stretch of the dugway. You couldn’t get away from the facts. There was no way for it to have happened—but it had happened.
About eight-thirty he was back in Clayton in Joe’s Diner, stamping his feet to warm them and waiting eagerly for eggs and toast to go with his steaming cup of black coffee. All the parents had been checked. There’d been no phone calls, no notes slipped under doors, nothing in the early-morning mail.
Haviland never got his breakfast. Trooper Teliski came charging into the diner just as Joe Gorman was taking the eggs off the grill. Teliski, a healthy young man, was white as parchment and the words came out of him in a kind of choking sob. “We’ve found ’em,” he said. “Or at least we know where they are. Helicopters spotted ’em. I just finished passing the word in town.”
Joe Gorman dropped the plate of eggs on the floor behind the counter. Haviland spun around on his counter stool. Just looking at Teliski made the hair rise on the back of his neck.
“The old quarry off the dugway,” Teliski said, and gulped for air. “No sign of the bus. It didn’t drive up there. But the kids.” Teliski steadied himself on the counter. “Schoolbooks,” he said. “A couple of coats—lying on the edge of the quarry. And in the quarry—more of the same. A red beret belonging to one of the kids—”
“Peter!” Joe Gorman cried out.
Haviland headed for the door. The main street of Clayton was frightening to see. People ran out of houses, screaming at each other, heading crazily toward the dugway. Those who went for their cars scattered the people in front of them. There was no order—only blind panic.
Haviland stood on the curb outside the diner, ice in his veins. He looked down the street to where old Pat Mahoney lived, just in time to see a wildly weeping woman pick up a stone and throw it through the front window of Pat’s home.
“Come on—what’s the matter with you?” Teliski shouted from behind the wheel of the State Police car.
Haviland stood where he was, frozen, staring at the broken window of Pat Mahoney’s house. The abandoned quarry, he knew, was sixty feet deep, full to within six feet of the top with icy water fed in by constantly bubbling springs.
A fire engine roared past. They were going to try to pump out the quarry. It would be like bailing out the Atlantic Ocean with a tea cup.
“Haviland!” Teliski called desperately.
Haviland still stared at Pat Mahoney’s house. A cackling old voice rang in his ears. “I’ll make you a bet, Mr. Haviland. I’ll make you a bet that even if you order them to stay at home and wait, they’ll be out searching.”
Rage such as he had never known flooded the ice out of Haviland’s veins. So Pat had known! The old codger had known last night!
Haviland had never witnessed anything like the scene at the quarry.
The old road, long since overgrown, which ran about two hundred yards in from the dugway to the quarry, had been trampled down as if by a herd of buffalo.
Within three-quarters of an hour of the news reaching town, it seemed as if everyone from Clayton and half the population of Lakeview had arrived at the quarry’s edge.
One of the very first army helicopters which had taken to the air at dawn had spotted the clothes and books at the edge of the abandoned stone pit.
The pilot had dropped down close enough to identify the strange objects and radioed immediately to State Police. The stampede had followed.
Haviland was trained to be objective in the face of tragedy, but he found himself torn to pieces by what he saw. Women crowded forward, screaming, trying to examine the articles of clothing and the books. Maybe not all the children were in this icy grave. It was only the hope of desperation. No
one really believed it. It seemed, as Trooper Teliski had said, to be the work of a maniac.
Haviland collected as many facts about the quarry as he could from a shaken Sheriff Peabody.
“Marble’s always been Clayton’s business,” Peabody said. “Half the big buildings in New York have got their marble out of Clayton quarries. This was one of the first quarries opened up by Clayton Marble Company nearly six years ago. When they started up new ones, this one was abandoned.”
In spite of the cold, Peabody was sweating. He wiped the sleeve of his plaid hunting shirt across his face. “Sixty feet down, and sheer walls,” he said. “They took the blocks out at ten-foot levels, so there is a little ledge about every ten feet going down. A kid couldn’t climb out of it if it was empty.”
Haviland glanced over at the fire engine which had started to pump water from the quarry. “Not much use in that,” he said.
“The springs are feeding it faster than they can pump it out,” Peabody said. “There’s no use telling them. They got to feel they’re doing something.” The fat sheriff’s mouth set in a grim slit. “Why would Jerry Mahoney do a thing like this? Why? I guess you can only say the old man is a little crazy, and the son has gone off his rocker too.”
“There are some things that don’t fit,” Haviland said. He noticed his own hands weren’t steady as he lit a cigarette. The hysterical shrieking of one of the women near the edge of the quarry grated on his nerves. “Where is the station wagon?”
“He must have driven up here and—and done what he did to the kids,” Peabody said. “Then waited till after dark to make a getaway.”
“But you searched this part of the woods before dark last night,” Haviland said.
“We missed it somehow, that’s all,” Peabody said, stubbornly.
“A nine-passenger station wagon is pretty hard to miss,” Haviland said.
“So we missed it,” Peabody said. “God knows how, but we missed it.” He shook his head. “I suppose the only thing that’ll work here is grappling hooks. They’re sending a crane over from one of the active quarries. Take an hour or more to get it here. Nobody’ll leave here till the hooks have scraped the bottom of that place and they’ve brought up the kids.”