He asked the barman if he could lend him a large-scale map of the district. The barman found him one, and for twenty minutes or so, Harry studied the map. Then he finished his drink, returned the map, tipped the barman and walked over to the cabin.
There was a light showing in the window and he could see Glorie's shadow against the blind. As he walked in, closing the door behind him, Borg heaved himself out of his car and moved silently back to his post by the cabin window.
Glorie was slipping into her nightdress as Harry came in. For a brief moment he saw her white, well-made body before the silk garment covered it.
She didn't look at him, but walked over to the dressing table and began to brush her hair.
He took off his coat, undid the top button of his shirt and pulled off his tie.
“Glorie . . .”
“Yes?”
She didn't look around, but went on brushing her hair.
“I want to apologize,” Harry said. “I've acted like a heel. I'm sorry: I'm really sorry.”
She paused, the hairbrush stranded in midair, while she looked at him. Her big, dark eyes stared steadily at him. He had to make the effort to meet her gaze without flinching, but he did it.
“What exactly does that mean?” she asked, her voice low and cold.
“I've been sitting out there thinking,” he said and lit a cigarette. “I don't know what got into me to talk to you the way I talked to you, nor do I know what got into me to treat you as I have treated you. You are right, Glorie. I do owe everything to you. I've treated you damned badly and I'm sorry. I guess I've always been a fool about women. This kid knocked me off balance. There's been no other woman but you until she turned up. You know that. Now I've had time to think about her I realize what a fool I've been. You're right: she's only a kid. I was dazzled by her money, but I know now her old man would never let me get near her nor the money even if I wanted to, which I don't now.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, frowning. “You gave me a jolt, Glorie. It was what I wanted. I know now we two will be much better off working on this thing together without any outsider to help us. I might even teach you to fly. I've been making plans out there for us, Glorie. I want you to forgive me. I can't say how sorry I am to have treated you like this. It won't happen again.”
There, you smart bitch, he thought, swallow that lot, and if that's not enough to convince you, I've still got some more soft soap to feed you with.
“All right, Harry,” she said, still not looking at him. I’m glad you feel that way about it. You gave me a jolt too. Perhaps that's what we both needed.”
“Yeah.” He had to stifle the spark of anger that threatened to flare up. It had cost him a lot to make this speech; the effect on her was disappointing. He had expected to see her melt, but her face remained as set and as cold as before. “Well, what are we going to do? You're not going to keep me in the doghouse forever, are you? I'm sorry, and I mean it. It won't happen again: I promise you that.”
She put down the hair brush and stared at herself in the mirror.
“And I'm sorry and ashamed I had to threaten you,” she said. “I love you. You mean more to me than any other man can ever mean. I hate myself for holding this thing over your head, but for both our sakes, Harry, I've got to do it. You have had the chance to be the boss of this partnership. You haven't done very well, have you? Now it's my turn to see what I can do.”
“That's right,” Harry said. He had to fight the urge to get up, cross the room and slap her face. “I'm glad in a way you're taking charge, Glorie. You've always been just that bit smarter than I've been. But look, I've been doing some thinking out there and it seems to me we'd be sensible if we left Miami instead of staying on here. I’m going to be frank with you. I want to get away from temptation. This girl may try to hang on to me. Anyway, we're bound to run into her if we stay on here and I don't ever want to see her again. Let's clear out tomorrow. I'll buy a car and we can chuck our things in it and go. I thought we might have a look at New Orleans. What do you say?”
That was his trump card and he watched her closely, waiting for her reaction. Surely this should prove to her that he was sincere, he told himself. She was looking at him. He could see she was still a little doubtful, but she was melting. He could tell by the expression in her eyes.
“When we get to New Orleans, I'll fix a licence so we can get married,” he went on. “I’ll arrange for our capital to be transferred from New York and I'll turn twenty-five thousand over to you. I want you to have it, Glorie. You should have had it before.” Somehow he managed his wide, charming smile. “Then we'll really be partners. How's that?”
She turned her head away, but not before he had seen tears in her eyes.
“Yes, all right, Harry.”
His hands closed into fists. The trick was his! He had made a dent in her armour. That had been the right board to play.
“Fine. Well, let's turn in now,” he said. “We've got a lot to do tomorrow.” He had to make an effort to conceal a grin. “A hell of a lot to do.”
“Yes.”
As she moved past him to her bed, he caught hold of her and pulled her against him.
“It's going to be all right, baby,” he said. “You wait and see: we'll make a new start.”
She broke away from him.
“Please don't touch me,” she said. He could see her breasts under the thin silk of her nightdress rising and falling in her agitation. “I’ll get over it, but it'll take a little time. You don't know how you hurt me, Harry. It's something I can't throw off in a moment.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. He would have given a lot to have put his fingers around her white throat and squeezed the life out of her. “I know how you feel, but it's going to be all right.”
He watched her get into bed, then he hurriedly undressed, put on his pyjamas and got into the other bed.
“Good night, Glorie,” he said as he reached for the light switch. “It's going to be all right.”
“Yes, Harry.”
He turned off the light. Darkness pressed in on him. He lay still, his mind active. It hadn't been as easy as he had hoped, but at least she had agreed to leave Miami, and that was vital to his plan. He would have to be very careful how he handled her in the morning. By tomorrow night, with any luck, he would be free of her for good, free to go ahead with his plans and, more important still, free to meet Joan again, and this time in safety.
It was a long time before Harry fell asleep. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, as the faint light of the rising sun came through the blind, he was awakened by a sound that chilled him.
It was the sound of Glorie weeping.
III
Soon after eleven o'clock the next morning, Harry completed the purchase of a 1945 Buick saloon. He drove the car to a parking lot in the centre of the town. Then he set out on foot in search of a hardware store which he found a hundred yards or so up the road. He bought a short-handled shovel and had the salesman wrap it in brown paper. He returned to the car and locked the shovel in the boot.
Fifteen yards or so behind him, Borg moved after him. The significance of the shovel was not lost on him. Having heard Glorie's terms and Harry's apparent capitulation, he had already guessed that Harry planned to wipe Glorie out. The shovel confirmed his guess. He watched Harry take a heavy wrench from the tool kit of the car and conceal it in the pocket of the driver's door. He then got into the car and drove back to the motel.
Knowing the direction he intended to take, Borg didn't follow him. He drove in his car to a side road on the main highway and settled down to wait.
Harry found Glorie closing her suitcase. She had already packed.
“Come and see what I've bought,” he said, “and tell me if you approve.” Somehow he managed to make his voice Sound friendly and he noticed her reaction. Her face brightened as she came to the door.
Together they inspected the car.
“It'll do to get on with,” he said. “Th
ere's plenty of room. When we hit the jackpot we'll get something better.”
“I think it's fine,” she said.
He watched her turn the handle on the boot and try to open it.
“The lock's busted,” he said. “The guy who sold me the car offered to put it right, but I didn't want to wait. We can put the suitcases on the back seat.”
He brought the cases out and put them in the car.
“I guess that's all. Did you settle up here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fine, then we can get off.”
She went back into the cabin for her handbag and hat. He stood in the doorway, watching her while she put her hat on and tucked up her dark hair. She looked suddenly over her shoulder at him.
“You're not angry with me anymore, Harry?”
He forced a smile.
“No, I’m not angry. Let's forget it, shall we?”
“You do see why I . . .”
“Let's forget it,” he said. He knew this was his cue to go to her and take her in his arms, but knowing what he was going to do to her made such a move impossible. “Well, come on, baby, let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
She followed him out to the car. He slid under the driving wheel as she went around to the far door. He started the engine.
“It should be a pretty good trip,” he said, as he engaged gear.
“We have some fine country to go through. We'll spend the night at Tampa. I've always wanted to go there. That's where they make cigars and can rattlesnakes.”
He talked on as he drove swiftly along the broad U.S.27, heading for the Everglades National Park. And as he talked, giving Glorie bits of information he had picked up about the district, he felt sure she was relaxing. Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw she had lost the scraped, bony look and she seemed more her old self.
They drove for an hour before they hit the road that cut through the lonely primeval swamp land, and they passed Borg, sitting patiently in his car, without noticing him. Soon they were running alongside Tamiami canal.
On the highway lay the mangled bodies of raccoons and snakes that had crawled out of the swamp to sleep on the warm road and had been caught by the early morning traffic. Flocks of yellow-headed, red-cheeked buzzards were gorging themselves on the corpses. It was only when the Buick was nearly on them that they flew croaking out of the way.
Glorie hunched her shoulders with a shiver.
“It's horrible, isn't it?” '
“Yeah,” Harry said, “but it's nature. I guess the snakes were suckers to come out on the road and get run over.”
He was thinking of the buzzards. There was no need to have brought the shovel. In an hour or so there would be nothing left of Glorie except her bones if he left her body in the undergrowth.
He felt a cold trickle of sweat down his back. He had planned to knock her on the head and bury her somewhere along the coast road to Naples, but this seemed easier.
There was fast-moving traffic at the moment, but if he was quick, timed it right, he could stun her with the wrench, wait until there was no traffic in sight, then carry her across the road into the forest. He needn't carry her far; just out of sight of the road, and then leave her to the buzzards.
He looked in his driving mirror. There was a car coming, but behind the car he could see a long stretch of empty road. He looked ahead. Apart from a truck that was toiling along about a quarter of a mile away, there was no other traffic.
He slowed down, letting the car pass him. It was travelling at a high speed, and it went past with a swish and a rush of air “Do you hear that knocking?” he said. “Something's loose at the back.”
“I didn't hear anything.”
He had slowed to a crawl. The truck was coming up faster now it had crested the slope. It would be on him before he could do anything, and he cursed silently. He glanced in the driving mirror again. The road behind him was empty.
“Maybe I was mistaken.”
He had trouble in keeping his voice steady. Sweat beaded his forehead and his heart was hammering. He shoved his foot down hard on the gas pedal and sent the car surging forward so as to meet and pass the truck.
The truck went past and thundered on down the road. A quick glance behind and a look ahead told him the road was now empty for at least a quarter of a mile either way. He trod down hard on the foot brake and pulled up by the side of the road.
The steamy heat and the smell of decaying vegetation came out of the forest of cypress and palmetto trees.
“Have a look at the back, will you? It sounds as if the bumper has come adrift.”
She opened the door.
“I didn't hear anything, Harry.”
“Well, look, will you?”
He found his voice was shooting up and he throttled it back just in time. His hand slid into the pocket of the door and his fingers closed around the wrench. He opened his door as Glorie got out on to the hot road and went around to the back of the car.
This was it, he thought, one quick blow, then he'd pick her up and rush her into the undergrowth. He could finish her there.
He kept the wrench hidden behind his back as he went around the car.
“There's nothing loose,” Glorie said. “I think you imagined it, Harry.”
She was facing him, looking right at him. He couldn't meet her gaze. He bent over the bumper and pushed it.
“That's funny,” he said. His voice sounded far away. “I could have sworn . . .”
“Shall we go on?”
“Yes.”
He waited for her to turn. He held the wrench so tightly his fingers ached. As he turned, he saw a car coming fast, and he just stopped the upward swing of his arm in time.
The car, a low-slung coupe, was coming like a bolt out of the blue. Glorie had reached the car door. She opened it. Harry watched her. He was shaking, but he had enough presence of mind to keep the wrench out of sight. The sports car flashed by and went snarling down the road, leaving behind it a cloud of dust.
Harry shoved the wrench into his hip pocket, moved forward and caught hold of Glorie's arm, stopping her as she was about to get into the car.
“Just a second...”
A big oil truck struggled up the slope and into sight and came pounding towards them. Harry thought he must be nuts to have hoped to get rid of her on this road. It seemed alive with traffic.
“Don't let's get in just yet,” he said. “I want to have a look at the forest. Come on. Let's stretch our legs.”
If he could get her into the forest and out of sight of the passing traffic...
“Oh no,” she said, pulling away from him. “I wouldn't go in there. It's full of snakes.”
The oil truck came abreast of them and slowed. The driver leaned out of the cab window.
“I'm looking for the Denbridge Service Station,” he shouted above the roar of his engine. “Is it on this road?”
Glorie got into the car and shut the door.
“Yes,” Harry said, silently cursing the truck driver. “About three miles further on.”
The driver waved and accelerated. The truck went on with a grinding of gears.
For a long moment Harry stood motionless, then he walked slowly around the car. It would have to be the coast road, he told himself. He was crazy to have stopped here.
“I forgot the snakes,” he muttered as he got into the car. “I wouldn't want to tread on a snake myself.”
“The wood must be full of them,” Glorie said. “You've only got to look at the road...”
“That's right.”
He accelerated and sent the car forward fast. They had over a hundred miles ahead of them before they reached Naples.
The canal side of the road was alive with wild birds and the surface of the milky coloured water was constantly being broken as fish reared up to snap at the swarm of insects buzzing above the water.
As Harry drove the Buick mile after mile, the scene gradually changed: the c
ypress forest gave way to low oak and willow hammocks with the occasional maple tree forcing its way through the dense undergrowth. Every now and then he caught a glimpse of an isolated Seminole village, half hidden from view behind high palisaded walls.
From the barman's map, Harry knew that some way ahead the road forked to Collier City. From the look of the map he had judged there would be lonely stretches along that road, and it was there where he had planned to get rid of Glorie.
Glorie seemed too absorbed by the scenery, the flocks of wild birds that rose out of the forest, startled by the noise of the speeding car, and the turtles that basked along the side of the canal, to talk, and Harry was glad of her preoccupation.
When they reached Royal Palm Hammock, with its white palms growing wild and thrusting their trunks above the cabbage palms, Harry slowed his speed. Somewhere ahead, within a few miles, was the junction to Highway 27A where he was to turn off for Collier City.
After ten minutes of slow driving, he saw ahead of him the fork in the road. He swung the car on to it, leaving the main road on his right, and entered the flat area of wasteland that was covered with palmettos and pines.
After driving a mile or so, Glorie said suddenly, “Is this right?
Shouldn't you have kept to the main highway?”
“It doesn't matter,” Harry said curtly. “This is more interesting, and we can pick up the highway later on. Look what we're coming to. There must have been a clam-canning plant here at one time.”
On either side of the road now appeared great mounds of gleaming clamshells, bleached white by the sun that formed a solid wall, shutting out the view. The mounds continued for nearly half a mile, then the road suddenly opened out on to a dazzling white sand beach with palm trees, palmettos, sea lavender and coco-plum trees to provide a mile deep belt of shade.
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