Bliss didn’t need to be told twice. He was frantically going through everything of Smiles’ he could lay his hands on, all her keepsakes, mementos, accumulated belongings, scattering them around. He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, and Stillman saw him standing there staring fixedly at something in one of the trinket boxes he had been plumbing through.
“What’s the matter? Did you find some more?”
Bliss acted scared. His face was pale. “No, not writing,” he said in a bated voice. “Something even— Look.”
The detective’s chin thrust over his shoulder. “Who are they?”
“That’s evidently a snapshot of her and her mother, taken at a beach when she was a girl. I’ve never seen it before, but—”
“How do you know it’s her mother? It could be some other woman, a friend of the family’s.”
Bliss had turned it over right while he was speaking. On the back, in schoolgirlish handwriting, was the notation: Mamma and I, at Sea Crest, 19—
Bliss reversed it again, right side forward.
“Well, what’re you acting so scared about?” Stillman demanded impatiently. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Because this woman on the snapshot isn’t the same woman I spoke to as her mother up at Denby tonight!”
“Now, wait a minute; hold your horses. You admit yourself you had never set eyes on her before until tonight; eight years is eight years. She’s in a bathing-suit in this snapshot. She may have dyed or bleached her hair since, or it may have turned gray on her.”
“That has nothing to do with it! I’m not looking at her hair or her clothes. The whole shape of her face is different. The bone structure is different. The features are different. This woman has a broad, round face. The one in Denby has a long, oval one. I tell you, it’s not the same woman at all!”
“Gimme that, and gimme those.” Stillman pocketed letters and snapshot. “Come on downstairs. I think I’ll smoke another cigarette.” His way of saying: “You’ve got yourself a reprieve.”
When they were below again, he sat down, with a misleading air of leisure. “Gimme your wife’s family background, as much of it as you can, as much of it as she told you.”
“Smiles was down here on her own when I met her. Her own father died when she was a kid, and left them comfortably well off, with their own house up in—”
“Denby?”
“No, it was some other place; I can’t think of it offhand. While she was still a youngster, her mother gave Smiles her whole time and attention. But when Smiles had finished her schooling, about two years ago, the mother was still an attractive woman, young for her years, lively, good-hearted. It was only natural that she should marry again. Smiles didn’t resent that; she’d expected her to. When the mother fell for this mason, Joe Alden, whom she first met when they were having some repairs made to the house, Smiles tried to like him. He’d been a good man in his line, too, but she couldn’t help noticing that after he married her mother, he stopped dead, never did a stroke of work from then on; pretending he couldn’t find any—when she knew for a fact that there was work to be had. That was the first thing she didn’t like. Maybe he sensed she was onto him, but anyway they didn’t rub well together. For her mother’s sake, to avoid trouble, she decided to clear out, so her mother wouldn’t have to choose between them. She was so diplomatic about it, though, that her mother never guessed what the real reason was.
“She came on down here, and not long ago Alden and her mother sold their own house and moved to a new one in Denby. Smiles said she supposed he did it to get away from the gossipy neighbors as much as anything else; they were probably beginning to criticize him for not at least making a stab at getting a job after he was once married.”
“Did they come down when you married Smiles?”
“No. Smiles didn’t notify them ahead; just sent a wire of announcement the day we were married. Her mother had been in poor health, and she was afraid the trip down would be more than she could stand. Well, there’s the background.”
“Nothing much there to dig into, at first sight.”
“There never is, anywhere—at first sight,” Bliss let him know. “Listen, Stillman. I’m going back up there again. Whatever’s wrong is up at that end, not at this.”
“I was detailed here to bring you in for questioning, you know.” But he didn’t move.
“Suppose I hadn’t gone up to you outside in the street just now. Suppose I hadn’t shown up around here for, say, another eight or ten hours. Can’t you give me those extra hours? Come up there with me, never leave me out of your sight, put the bracelet on me, do anything you want, but at least let me go up there once more and confront those people. If you lock me up down at this end, then I’ve lost her sure as anything. I’ll never find out what became of her—and you won’t either. Something bothered me up there. A whole lot of things bothered me up there, but I’ve only cleared up one of them so far. Let me take a crack at the rest.
“You don’t want much,” Stillman said grudgingly. “D’ya know what can happen to me for stepping out of line like that? D’ya know I can be broken for anything like that?”
“You mean you’re ready to ignore the discrepancy in handwriting in those two letters, and my assurance that there’s someone up there that doesn’t match the woman on that snapshot?”
“No, naturally not; I’m going to let my lieutenant know about both those things.”
“And by that time it’ll be too late. It’s already three days since she’s been gone.”
“Tell you what,” Stillman said. “I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll start out for headquarters now, and on the way we’ll stop in at that bus terminal. If I can find any evidence, the slightest shred, that she started for Denby that night, I’ll go up there with you. If not, we go over to headquarters.”
All Bliss said was: “I know you’ll find out she did leave.”
Stillman took him without handcuffing him, merely remarking, “If you try anything, you’ll be the loser, not me.”
The ticket-seller again went as far as he had with Bliss the time before, but still couldn’t go any further than that. “Yeah, she bought a ticket for as far as the money she had on her would take her, but I can’t remember where it was to.”
“Which don’t prove she ever hit Denby,” Stillman grunted.
“Tackle the bus driver,” Bliss pleaded. “No. 27. I know he was holding out on me. I could tell by the way he acted. She rode with him, all right, but for some reason he was cagey about saying so.”
But they were out of luck. No. 27 was up at the other end, due to bring the cityward bus in the following afternoon.
Stillman was already trying to steer his charge out of the place and on his way over to headquarters, but Bliss wouldn’t give up. “There must be someone around here that saw her get on that night. One of the attendants, one of the concessionaires that are around here every night. Maybe she checked her bag, maybe she drank a cup of coffee at the counter.”
She hadn’t checked her bag; the checkroom attendant couldn’t remember anyone like her. She hadn’t stopped at the lunch counter, either; neither could the counterman recall her. Nor the Negro that shined shoes. They even interrogated the matron of the restroom, when she happened to appear outside the door briefly. No, she hadn’t noticed anyone like that, either.
“All right, come on,” Stillman said, hooking his arm around Bliss’s.
“One more spin. How about him, over there, behind the magazine stand?”
Stillman only gave in because it happened to be near the exit; they had to pass it on their way out.
And it broke! The fog lifted, if only momentarily, for the first time since the previous Tuesday night. “Sure I do,” the vendor said readily. “How could I help remembering? She came up to me in such a funny way. She said, ‘I have exactly one dime left, which I overlooked when I was buying my ticket because it slipped to the bottom of my handbag. Let me have a magazine.’ Naturally, I as
ked her which one she wanted. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘so long as it lasts until I get off the bus. I want to be sure my mind is taken up.’ Well, I’ve been doing business here for years, and it’s gotten so I can clock the various stops. I mean, if they’re riding a long distance, I give them a good thick magazine; if they’re riding a short distance, I give them a skinny one. I gave her one for a medium distance—Denby; that was where she told me she was going.”
All Stillman said was: “Come on over to the window while I get our tickets.”
Bliss didn’t say “Thanks.” He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The grateful look he gave the detective spoke for itself.
“Two to Denby, round,” Stillman told the ticket-seller. It was too late for the morning bus; the next one left in the early afternoon.
As they turned from the window, Bliss wondered aloud:
“Still and all, why was that driver so reluctant to admit she rode on the bus with him that night? And the ticket man claims she didn’t buy a ticket to Denby, but to some point short of there.”
“It’s easy to see what it adds up to,” Stillman told him. “She had a ticket for only part of the distance. She coaxed the driver into letting her ride the rest of the way to Denby. Probably explained her plight to him, and he felt sorry for her. That explains his reluctance to let you think she was on the bus at all. He must have thought you were a company spotter and naturally what he did would be against the regulations.”
Tucking away the tickets in his inside coat pocket, the detective stood there a moment or two undecidedly. Then he said, “We may as well go back to your house. I might be able to turn up something else while we’re waiting, and you can catch a nap. And, too, I’m going to call in, see if I can still make this detour up there and back legitimate while I’m about it.”
When they got back to his house Bliss, exhausted, fell asleep in the bedroom. He remained oblivious to everything until the detective woke him up a half hour before bus time.
“Any luck?” Bliss asked him, shrugging into his coat.
“Nope, nothing more,” Stillman said. Then he announced, “I’ve given my word to my lieutenant I’ll show up at headquarters and have you with me, no later than nine tomorrow morning. He doesn’t know you’re with me right now; I let him think I got a tip where I could lay my hands on you. Leaving now, we will get up there around sunset, and we’ll have to take the night bus back. That gives us only a few hours up there to see if we can find any trace of her. Pretty tight squeeze, if you ask me.”
They boarded the bus together and sat down in one of the back seats. They didn’t talk much during the long, monotonous ride up.
“Better take another snooze while you’ve got the chance,” Stillman said.
Bliss thought he wouldn’t be able to again, but, little by little, sheer physical exhaustion, combined with the lulling motion of the bus, overcame him and he dropped off.
It seemed like only five minutes later that Stillman shook him by the shoulder, rousing him. The sun was low in the west; he’d slept through nearly the entire trip. “Snap out of it, Bliss; we get off in another couple of minutes, right on time.”
“I dreamed about her,” Bliss said dully. “I dreamed she was in some kind of danger, needed me bad. She kept calling to me, ‘Ed! Hurry up, Ed!’ ”
Stillman dropped his eyes. “I heard you say her name twice in your sleep: ‘Smiles, Smiles,’ ” he remarked quietly. “Damned if you act like any guilty man I ever had in my custody before. Even in your sleep you sound like you were innocent.”
“Denby!” the driver called out.
As the bus pulled away and left them behind at the crossroads, Stillman said, “Now that we’re up here, let’s have an understanding with each other. I don’t want to haul you around on the end of a handcuff with me, but my job is at stake; I’ve got to be sure that you’re still with me when I start back.”
“Would my word of honor that I won’t try to give you the slip while we’re up here be worth anything to you?”
Stillman looked at him square in the eye. “Is it worth anything to you?”
“It’s about all I’ve got. I know I’ve never broken it.”
Stillman nodded slowly. “I think maybe it’ll be worth taking a chance on. All right, let me have it.”
They shook hands solemnly.
Dusk was rapidly falling by now; the sun was already gone from sight and its afterglow fading out.
“Come on, let’s get out to their place,” Bliss said impatiently.
“Let’s do a little inquiring around first. Remember, we have no evidence so far that she actually got off the bus here at all, let alone reached their house. Just her buying that magazine and saying she was coming here is no proof in itself. Now, let’s see, she gets off in the middle of the night at this sleeping hamlet. Would she know the way out to their house, or would she have to ask someone?”
“She’d have to ask. Remember, I told you they moved here after Smiles had already left home. This would have been her first trip up here.”
“Well, that ought to cinch it for us, if she couldn’t get out there without asking directions. Let’s try our luck at that filling-station first; it would probably have been the only thing open any more at the hour she came.”
The single attendant on duty came out, said, “Yes, gents?”
“Look,” Stillman began. “The traffic to and from here isn’t exactly heavy, so this shouldn’t be too hard. Think back to Tuesday night, the last bus north. Did you see anyone get off it?”
“I don’t have to see ’em get off; I got a sure-fire way of telling whether anyone gets off or not.”
“What’s that?”
“Anyone that does get off, at least anyone that’s a stranger here, never fails to stop by me and ask their way. That’s as far as the last bus is concerned. The store is closed before then. And no one asked their way of me Tuesday night, so I figure no strangers got off.”
“This don’t look so good,” murmured Stillman in an aside to Bliss. Then he asked the attendant, “Did you hear it go by at all? You must have, it’s so quiet here.”
“Yeah, sure, I did. It was right on time, too.”
“Then you could tell if it stopped to let anyone down or went straight through without stopping, couldn’t you?”
“Yeah, usually I can,” was the disappointing answer. “But just that night, at that particular time, I was doing some repair work on a guy’s car, trying to hammer out a bent fender for him, and my own noise drowned it out. As long as no one stopped by, though, I’m pretty sure it never stopped.”
“Damn it,” Stillman growled, as they turned away, “she couldn’t have been more unseen if she was a ghost!”
After they were out of earshot of the filling-station attendant, Bliss said, “If Alden, for instance, had known she was coming and waited to meet her at the bus, that would do away with her having to ask anyone for directions. She may have telephoned ahead, or sent a wire up.”
“If she didn’t even have enough money to buy a ticket all the way, she certainly wouldn’t have been able to make a toll call. Anyway, if we accept that theory, that means we’re implicating them directly in her disappearance, and we have no evidence so far to support that. Remember, she may have met with foul play right here in Denby, along the road to their house, without ever having reached it.”
It was fully dark by the time they rounded the bend in the road and came in sight of that last house of all, with the low brick wall in front of it. This time not a patch of light showed from any of the windows, upstairs or down, and yet it was earlier in the evening than when Bliss himself had arrived.
“Hello?” the detective said. “Looks like nobody’s home.”
They turned in under the willow arch, rang the bell, and waited. Stillman pummeled the door and they waited some more. This was just perfunctory, however; it had been obvious to the two of them from the moment they first looked at the place that no one was in.
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br /> “Well, come on. What’re we waiting for?” Bliss demanded. “I can get in one of the windows without any trouble.”
Stillman laid a restraining hand on his arm. “No, you don’t; that’s breaking and entering. And I’m out of jurisdiction up here to begin with. We’ll have to go back and dig up the local law; maybe I can talk him into putting the seal of official approval on it. Let’s see if we can tell anything from the outside, first. I may be able to shine my torch in through one of the windows.”
He clicked it on, made a white puddle against the front of the house, walked slowly in the wake of that as it moved along until it leaped in through one of the black window embrasures. They both edged up until their noses were nearly pressed flat against the glass, trying to peer through. It wouldn’t work. The blinds were not down, but the closely webbed net curtains that hung down inside of the panes effectively parried its rays. They coursed slowly along the side of the house, trying it at window after window, each time with the same results.
Stillman turned away finally, but left his torch on. He splashed it up and down the short length of private dirt lane that ran beside the house, from the corrugated tin shack at the back that served Alden as a garage to the public highway in front. He motioned Bliss back as the latter started to step out onto it. “Stay off here a minute. I want to see if I can find out something from these tire prints their car left. See ’em?”
It would have been hard not to. The road past the house was macadamized, but there was a border of soft, powdery dust along the side of it, as with most rural roads. “I want to see if I can make out which way they turned,” Stillman explained, strewing his beam of light along them and following offside. “If they went in to the city, to offer their cooperation to us down there, that would take them off to the right; no other way they could turn from here. If they turned to the left, up that way, it was definitely a lam, and it changes the looks of things all around.”
The beam of his light, coursing along the prints like quicksilver in a channel, started to curve around toward the right as it followed them up out of sight on the hard-surfaced road. There was his answer.
FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR: Eyes That Watch You, The Night I Died, You'll Never See Me Again, Murder Always Gathers Momentum Page 13