Death and the Gentle Bull Page 16

  She struggled, then—struggled wildly. She clutched at the threatening hand, and twisted in a kind of frenzy and knew, while she threw her head back, hoping to beat with it against the man’s face, that she struggled hopelessly. Held as she was, she could not—

  And then, unbelievably, as she tore at the hand on her throat, she loosened its grip. The hand seemed, suddenly, to go lax, and then, with all her strength, she twisted her body and the hand which held her shoulder slipped on the wet cloth of her shirt and for an instant she was free. She leaped away, and the hands clutched again, and fastened on the cloth. But the cloth of the shirt tore in the grasping hands, and Evelyn ran.

  She ran without hope, could almost feel the hands closing on her, but she ran with desperation. She ran straight on, down the drive, between the pillars, across the hard surface of the road. She stumbled on the uneven surface, caught herself staggeringly, and went on. She clawed her way up the bank beyond, and over the low wall at its top; forced her way through bushes which tore at her, whipped her legs.

  As she ran across the road, the beam of a flashlight from behind sought her out. But it was dim in the fog; she was only half conscious of it—half conscious that its light had helped her find her way up the bank and to the wall. The light went out as she went over the wall.

  Wade’s trying to kill me, she thought as she ran down the slope beyond the wall, ran through high-growing goldenrod. Wade’s trying to kill me. It was Wade with Smith and he thinks I’ll remember and—

  They groped very slowly over a rise in Old Road and the amber lights picked up again the black wetness of the road. Roads and fog had seemed without end. “Pretty close, now,” Ray Crowley said. “I—” He stopped.

  Ahead—perhaps a hundred feet ahead—there had been sudden movement in the fog. It was movement from left to right across the road—a flicker of movement, as if denser but brighter fog had moved through fog. “See that?” Crowley asked, and his voice was low.

  “Something running across the road,” Heimrich said. “Yes. I saw it.”

  “A deer?” Ray said. “Tail up? Running? There’re a lot around.”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “I hope so. But—let’s stop here, Ray.”

  Crowley pulled the car to the right, onto the narrow shoulder. “About the same place, isn’t it?” he said, and Crowley said it was. “Better cut the lights,” Heimrich said. “I don’t think it was a deer, Ray. The girl, I think. We’d better find out, hadn’t we?”

  Ray Crowley took a deep breath, and Heimrich spoke quickly. “No,” he said. “Don’t call her. She wasn’t running for fun, you know. She was running from something, naturally. Can we get through here, Ray?”

  They could. They could get up a bank, over a low stone fence. Ray used his flashlight briefly, and Heimrich said, “No. Not unless we’re pretty sure.” They went into the gray darkness, their eyes adjusting slowly. “Moon’s up,” Ray said. It helped a little; the fog had now a kind of translucence. But it seemed, despite that, thicker than before.

  They were in the field of goldenrod again. Moving through it, they were almost at once coldly wet. They separated in the field, so that they were moving, more or less in parallel, but a hundred feet or so apart. Ray had gone to his left; he was about, he thought, where the runner must have entered the field.

  Both the men moved very slowly, stopping often to listen. After a time, they managed so that they stopped together, and thus made sure that any sound of movement heard was not their own. But it was a long time, as they moved through the field, toward the quarry cliff, before they heard anything.

  She crouched low in the goldenrod and she was shaking—with cold, with fear and with something worse than fear. She listened for the movements of the man who was trying to kill her. She had only her ears. That had been seen to. One flashlight would do for both, a gesture had said. And she had trusted.

  The sound was very slight, when she finally heard it. It was the faintest swishing of the tall-growing weeds against clothing; a damp, secret sound. It was coming toward her. The sound stopped, and she knew that the man had stopped, to listen—as she listened. The sound began again and, as it did, she moved. She had come straight in from the road; now she moved off toward her right. The ground began to rise, here; she was going up the slope of the hill into which the quarry had been driven. As she moved now, the sheer cliff of the quarry’s high side would be to her left—somewhere to her left.

  She stopped again and listened. At first she heard nothing. The man—and the man was Wade—had stopped again, was listening again. She crouched low. What remained of her white shirt would, even in the fog, betray her to anyone close enough. And—when he was close enough, he would use the light. Not yet. Now it would reveal more to her than to him. But—when he was close enough. When he was ready.

  There was sound again, but now it confused her. It seemed to come from two places, very faintly through the damp night. Her ears played tricks, she thought; the fog played tricks, or the contour of the. land. Wade was, as now she crouched facing back toward the road, on her left, as well as on her right. He was everywhere in the night.

  It’s in my mind, she thought. It’s all broken up in my mind. The sound stopped—the sound and the echo of the sound. She waited. The sound to her left resumed.

  She turned and went again, gropingly, through the goldenrod. It had been easy enough before; the light stalks parted readily. But now the foliage dragged at her; it seemed to require all her strength to move away from death. She was, she thought, moving with each step more slowly. She stopped again to listen, and heard the sound again—and the echo of the sound. The sound was closer.

  And ahead, now, was the cliff’s edge. He was driving her toward the cliff. It was ahead—but was it ahead? She stopped again. In the fog nothing differed from any other thing. There was nothing familiar. Was the cliff ahead? Or to her right—or her left? I’m lost, she thought. I don’t know which way to turn. I’ve got out of bed in a dark room and lost the way and this wall is wrong and the door is gone and—

  That’s panic, she thought. Don’t panic.

  She went on.

  The girl’s going toward the cliff, Heimrich thought. If it is the girl, and it’s the girl all right.

  He couldn’t, he realized, chance it much longer. He would have to call to her. Probably thinks it’s the man who’s after her, Heimrich thought. If she hears us at all, and probably she does, since we can hear her. If it is her.

  That was the point. It might be the man they wanted; the man who was supposed to be around, doing just what he evidently was doing. If they called to the girl, identified themselves, she would be all right. And so would the man they were after—the man who had been so lucky (so damned lucky) with the weather.

  Only, Heimrich thought, moving through the high weeds, he won’t be all right. For now—yes. We won’t pick him up while he’s at it; wind it up quick and neat and according to plan. He—

  Heimrich heard two sounds then, in quick succession. One was a car starting up on the road behind him. It had been, from the sound, parked beyond the Merritt driveway. That would have been the place. The man had doubled back and—Heimrich swore, under his breath. The man hadn’t crossed the road at all. He’d started the girl running, seen the police car stop, waited until they had had time to get deep into the field, and then got in the car and driven away. Very neat.

  Then Heimrich heard the second sound. It was the high scream of a woman in terror.

  For the final seconds—but they did not seem like seconds; they had no measurement in time—she had walked through the goldenrod dazedly. All thought had stopped; reality had failed. Flight and fear were at once meaningless. She went on to no purpose; the fog was in her mind.

  Then the ground moved under her foot, and seemed to fall away ahead of her, carrying her with it. For an instant even this seemed a dream, but then the dream broke. She screamed, and clutched wildly about her, as earth broke away from the top of the cliff;
fell away toward the quarry pool, toward the rocks at the surface of black water.

  One flung-out hand found something—a branch, a root—and her body’s weight wrenched at her shoulder. She was hanging over the edge of the cliff, and the thing she clutched seemed to be fighting to free itself from her grasp. She screamed again, and heard a man shout somewhere, and the sound of running.

  He was coming to finish it. She might as well let go—let it all go. But, instead, she found the support—it was a tree root, exposed by the falling away of the cliff’s lip—with her other hand, and clung desperately with both. When he came, he would break her hold. She would fall into the darkness.

  But he would have to break the hold. If he was to kill her, let him use his hands—his hands on hers. Let him feel death—don’t let him off—don’t—

  A light was around her, on her hands. A man was lying on the ground above her, reaching down. You have to do it, Wade! I won’t do it for you!

  Hands closed on her wrists. “Hold on,” a man said. “Got you, Evvie!”

  But still, the hands on her wrists now supporting most of her weight, she dangled there, above the water and the rocks. Then she felt herself lifted up, dragged up and forward and finally across the ground. The ground hurt, bruisingly. She tried to roll to her back, and instead was lifted up, carried for a step or two, put down on her feet.

  There were two men, and she looked up at the man who had held her.

  “Why,” she said. “Ray! It isn’t— Was it you all the—”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It wasn’t Ray all the time, Miss Merritt.”

  She put her hands over her face, then, and began to cry—to cry harshly.

  “Put a coat around her, Ray,” Heimrich said. “You recognized the man, Miss Merritt?”

  She took her hands down, then. She started to shake her head.

  “Now Miss Merritt,” Heimrich said. “You recognized the man this time, didn’t you?”

  She looked up at him, light from the flash on her face. She started to speak and failed. Her face was set. Heimrich waited.

  She did not speak the name that pounded in her mind. But—finally, slowly—she nodded her head.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I thought you’d recognize him, this time.”

  XIV

  They had taken her back, across the road, to the Merritt house. It was at her insistence that they had moved quietly, not arousing her parents. She said, dully, that nobody could help her do it; Heimrich had guessed that she was avoiding, defensively, any emotional pressure which would break a temporary anesthesia of the mind. They waited, in the house, for her to dress.

  “Practically unchanged,” Heimrich said, as if to himself, and Ray Crowley looked at him in the dim light and waited. Heimrich’s eyes were closed. “The key word is ‘practically.’ ” Crowley continued to wait; he was learning. “The catalytic agent, Ray,” Heimrich said. “You often find it. You know what it is?”

  “Not precisely,” Crowley said.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Probably I don’t either. Except for the definition. A substance used by chemists—any one of a good many substances, I suppose. You put it with other substances and it ‘accelerates a reaction,’ the definition says. But it is not involved in the reaction. It can be recovered afterward ‘practically unchanged.’ This time it’s the girl, Ray. In it, but not actually of it. Accelerating the reaction. But, whether she can be ‘recovered practically unchanged’—I don’t know, Ray.”

  “You planned it that way?”

  “Now Ray. It wasn’t my plan, naturally. All I did was—shape it a little.”

  He was told that he had taken a chance. He agreed that, as things turned out, he apparently had. But the formation of earth and rock at the edge of a cliff, a lack of tenacity in nature—that could not have been anticipated.

  “I didn’t mean that, sir,” Crowley said, and was told that Heimrich knew he didn’t. It had, however, been the greatest peril.

  “Not Landcraft?”

  Heimrich opened his eyes and looked at Ray Crowley. After a moment he smiled faintly and shook his head.

  “Not the way you mean,” he said. “I don’t think you quite get it, Ray. I didn’t myself—or not all of it. It’s based on an old saying—or part of it. ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’ But—so may the innocent. Depends on circumstances. If—”

  He was interrupted. Evelyn Merritt came into the room and stood just inside and waited. She had changed to a dark slack suit, a thin sweater under the jacket. Her face was very pale. There was little expression in her eyes. “I’m ready,” she said.

  The two men stood up.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Merritt,” Heimrich said. “We do need you.”

  “You told me,” she said. “Shall we get it over, captain?”

  The youth had gone out of her voice. Only the texture of youth remained, and seemed false. There was, Heimrich thought, another old saying having to do with the making of omelets—a very harsh saying, however homely its form. Heimrich did not much care for the saying, or for its implications. But he cared less for murder.

  There was no hurry, now. Ray Crowley drove the car slowly in the luminous fog. As gently as he could, Heimrich got details of the story from Evelyn Merritt—of the brief, violent story, which had begun with a tapping on glass like the tapping of branches swaying in a gentle breeze.

  “You knew who it was?” Heimrich said. “That was the reason you went out, naturally.”

  She used the name, then, for the first time.

  “It was Wade,” she said.

  “You saw his face? The fog blurs things.”

  “He came the way he always did,” the girl said. “I knew who it was.”

  “At once?”

  “What’s the use?” the girl said. “I don’t remember—yes—it was that hat he wears. At first. Of course, afterward, it was—oh, everything. How does one know a person?”

  “He got behind you and grabbed you and you—broke loose?”

  “Yes. His hands slipped, somehow.”

  “And you ran.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I ran. Do—do I have to see him, captain?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “All of them, Miss Merritt. Because—we can’t have murder, naturally. I know it will be difficult. You’ll do it as I said?”

  (You love a man and he tries to kill you. You point a finger; say, “That’s the man.” And the word is “difficult”!)

  She nodded her head, but did not say anything. Crowley turned the car up the Landcraft driveway. The house was larger in the fog. It seemed to waver in the fog. Crowley stopped the car behind another in the turnaround and Heimrich walked to the other car and felt the radiator cowling. It was just perceptibly warm. Of course, it had not been run far. It had, also, had time to cool. They went to the door, the girl between them, and Harvey Landcraft came to the door after a few seconds. He said, “Well, hello. Hello, Evvie.” He looked at her again. “You all right?” he asked.

  “She’s all right, Mr. Landcraft,” Heimrich said. “Had an unpleasant experience, but she’s all right now. Your brother around?”

  “Sure,” Harvey said. He gestured them in. “You want to talk to him?”

  “All of you,” Heimrich said.

  He was told that Bonita, if he meant her also, had gone to bed. Heimrich was sorry. He wanted all of them. “Including,” he said, “Mr. Ballard. Mr. Thayer, if he’s still here.”

  Harvey Landcraft hesitated. Heimrich merely looked at him. “O.K.,” Harvey said. “You’re the boss, apparently. Thayer’s in the library.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  They found Thayer in the library, Thayer said, “Again, eh?” and, “Evening, Miss Merritt.” Harvey left; after a time returned.

  “Bonny’ll be along,” he said. “I called Ballard. Wade’s around somewhere. Probably—”

  There was a sound from the hall. “Wade?” Harvey called, and Wade Landcraft answered. He came into the room. He
was wearing the battered felt hat, and took it off and held it for a moment, and put it down on a chair. He did not, at once, seem to see Evelyn Merritt; looked at Heimrich. He said, “Well. You again.”

  Then he saw Evelyn, and moved into the room and held out both hands toward her and said, “Evvie!” She did not move from the chair. “You all right?” he asked, the words quick.

  “Why shouldn’t she be, Mr. Landcraft?” Heimrich said. “I want you to hear—all of you to hear—about something that happened to her. But—she’s all right.”

  Wade moved toward the girl.

  “Wait,” Heimrich said. “Sit down, won’t you? When the—”

  Bonita came into the room, then. She wore a house coat; only a house coat, Heimrich decided. She was a very pretty young woman. She looked a little sleepy.

  “The damned police, the damned police, the damned police are here,” she sang to a fraction of a tune which was older than she. She looked around. “Oh,” she said. “Trouble.” She looked at Evelyn. She said, “Darling, you look terrible,” and went to the other girl and sat on the arm of her chair. “Tell mamma.”

  Evelyn smiled with her lips. She shook her head and looked at Heimrich. Only his eyes moved. They said, “Not yet.”

  Ballard was the last. He wore corduroy trousers and a light windbreak, zipped over what appeared to be the top of yellow pajamas. He smoothed his hair down as he stood in the doorway. He said, to Harvey, “You wanted me?”

  “Miss Merritt has something to tell us,” Heimrich said. “Something I want you all to hear. All right, Miss Merritt.”

  The voice, to her own ears, was another’s voice—expressionless, plodding. She spoke slowly; it was as if each word had to be individually remembered. “I was sitting reading a book and someone—” She did not look around; looked only at Heimrich, who sat a little detached from the others, with the light on his face. But she did not really see Heimrich. “I went out and—”

  She paused, because someone had spoken. She heard Heimrich say, “Later. Go on, Miss Merritt.”

  Each word was dry in her mouth. “—from behind. I—” The scene was not, in her own mind, re-created. There were words to say. “—ran across and—” But she did not feel herself running; did not re-endure the minutes—which were seconds; which were hours—in the field of goldenrod. “—the ground gave way and I started—” Her shoulders ached still from the strain of her body’s weight against her desperate hands; her hands were bruised. Someone else’s shoulders; another person’s hands. She finished. She stopped. Then she looked down at the hands lying loosely in her lap. She heard someone swear. It was over. But there was no feeling that anything was over.