Dark Tunnel (23 page)

“I’ll ask him,” Gordon said. “Who is Ruth Esch?”

“A German woman who just came to this country. Peter Schneider’s fiancée.”

“Red-headed?”

“And green eyes. About thirty.”

“Is that the woman the taxi driver saw at the bootlegger’s?”

“Shiny? Yes. Did Shiny tell you?”

“He recognized this woman as the passenger he had driven downtown just before midnight. She recognized him, too, and left the bootlegger’s immediately. That’s suspicious in itself.”

“Where did she go when she left the bootlegger’s? Peter was alone when he caught up with me at the farm.”

“She hasn’t been seen since,” Gordon said. “Two drunks left at the same time, according to the taxi driver, and maybe she went with them. They haven’t been found, either.”

We passed the white boulder stained with Schneider’s blood. The stain was darker now. I remembered my exultation when I first saw it, and felt humiliated. Better stick to rabbits, Branch, half my mind said; but the other half said, you’ll get them yet.

We climbed the rail fence where Schneider had taken cover and entered the maple woods. It was pleasant to walk between the two levels of color, on the trees and on the ground, and have nothing around my neck. Not even skin.

Even Gordon was taking on some of the attributes of a human being. I said to him, “May I assume that you are beginning to be willing to toy with the hypothesis that I am not a murderer?”

His smile was so much like a sneer that it left me guessing. “If you’re innocent you have nothing to fear.” He added heavily as if he was by Jehovah out of the goddess of justice, “The law exists for the protection of the innocent and the apprehension of the guilty.”

He couldn’t even be friendly without riling me. “Don’t be so impartial,” I said. “I pay my income tax, and I haven’t killed anybody yet. Why didn’t you follow those two into McKinley Hall when you saw them, and apprehend the guilty and protect the innocent?”

“They had a key and I hadn’t. I should have jimmied the door sooner, but I didn’t do it until after I heard the shots. By the time I got in they were gone. I still don’t know how they got out.”

“I do,” I said smugly. “They got out through the steam-tunnel the same way I did. I met them later in the museum and we exchanged a few well-chosen shots.” I said nothing about seeing him in the basement of McKinley Hall. He wouldn’t have liked it.

“Have you any further information?” Gordon said. “It will be best for you if you tell me everything you know.”

“Nothing I can think of at the moment. Except that somebody is hitting me over the head with a hammer.”

“Your humor is excessively tinny this morning.” I couldn’t argue.

“I need breakfast.”

We emerged from the maple woods and crossed the pasture. I had chased Peter Schneider farther than I thought at the time, and I began to wonder how Gordon had got to the barn when he did.

“How did you happen to get here in the nick of time? Or is that just an old Federal Bureau of Investigation custom?”

“I’m glad you feel happy enough to joke about it,” Gordon said.

“After all, it was my own personal lynching party,” I said. “But it was pleasant to have you drop in. I’ll never resent the withholding tax again.”

“They don’t deduct it in jail,” he said, and I felt less chipper. He went on:

“I was at the Slipper with Haggerty when the taxi driver came tearing down the road, and we drove over to the bootlegger’s right away. Haggerty had a police car with a radio and when the old woman phoned the Arbana police about you, they got in touch with Haggerty at the bootlegger’s and I came over here with a couple of policemen. After a fairly lengthy correspondence with the deaf-mutes, I got the idea that you might be over there in the woods, so I went over. I finally worked over into the field and found the trail of blood, and that led me to the barn.”

“I’m glad Schneider cut his arm,” I said. “But it should have been his throat.”

We passed under the willow trees and around the corner of the barn. There was a long black sedan parked at the gate.

“Is that the police car?” I asked.

“No, it’s mine. I sent the police after Schneider.”

He opened the gate and said: “I want to phone. They may have caught him.”

The old woman came out of the front door of the farmhouse. She took one look at me and yelled to Gordon:

“That’s the man! Don’t let him get away!”

I have many of the aspects of a gentleman. I wear sixty-five-dollar suits. I am a member of the Modern Language Association. I speak pure English, at least in the lecture-room. I am generally chivalrous in my attitude to women. But I raised my right hand, pressed the thumb to my nose, and wiggled the fingers. The old woman groaned righteously and raised her eyes to heaven.

Gordon frowned at me. “Sit in the car, Branch. I trust you won’t try to run away again.”

I said I wouldn’t. I put the shotgun in the back seat and climbed into the front. Gordon followed the old woman into the house. I noticed he hadn’t left the ignition key in the car.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the driver’s mirror. There was chaff in my hair, my nose and cheeks were scraped, and I needed a shave. But what interested me most was my eyes. The pressure of the rope had broken some of the small vessels and suffused my eyeballs with blood. I looked like a pulp-magazine illustration of a homicidal sex-fiend whom any jury would convict on appearance alone.

I moved out of range of those horrible glaring eyes and saw that there were radio-dials on the dashboard. I turned on the radio in the hope of getting some news. My hope was not disappointed.

After listening to several numbers on a program of prewar recordings, I got an early news broadcast from Detroit. The Allies were advancing in Italy and the Russians were advancing in Russia, as usual.

“News of the state,” the announcer said breathlessly as if Atropos was standing at his shoulder. He was wrong, she was standing at mine.

The staccato words crashed into my consciousness like machinegun bullets: “Arbana: In the early hours of this morning, a member of the faculty of Midwestern University was murdered, allegedly by a colleague on the university staff. The victim was Dr. Herman Schneider, well-known refugee from the Nazis and head of the German Department at the university. Professor Robert Branch of the English Department, who quarreled publicly with the murdered man earlier in the evening, is now being sought for questioning by police.

“Hearing the sound of gunshots from McKinley Hall, the main building of the university, shortly after 3
A.M.
this morning, Constable Sale of the Arbana police force rushed into the building and apprehended Professor Branch, who was running downstairs from one of the upper floors. In an office on the fourth floor the officer discovered the body of Dr. Schneider, his skull smashed by a blow on the head from a horseshoe paperweight.

“Shortly after this discovery, Professor Branch overpowered the police officer and made his escape through the steam-tunnels underneath the campus. He is now being sought by local and state police and by the F.B.I., who expect further developments within a few hours. Detectives report that there is possibly a connection between the brutal murder of Dr. Schneider and the death earlier in the evening, apparently by suicide, of Professor Alexander Judd, chairman of the War Board of the university. The president of the university, Dr. Galloway, could not be reached for comment. Lansing …”

The announcer went on to something else and I switched off the radio. I sat perfectly still for a minute, numbed by shock. Then the panic that had driven me through the tunnels and across the fields came back and walloped me in the stomach. I flung open the door and jumped out of the car, ready to run.

Gordon came out of the farmhouse and walked across the lawn watching me alertly. I saw his long legs and remembered his shoulder-holster. I said, “I wonder if I could get a drink of water.”

He went to the dairy and brought me a brimming dipper. I emptied it and felt better, but my stomach was knotted and my knees were weak.

“Did they get him?”

“Not yet,” he said as he got into the driver’s seat. “They’re still after him. He went around Arbana on the back roads and apparently headed for Detroit.”

He started the engine and I got in beside him. He turned up the road in the direction of the barn where the barn-dance had been.

I felt irrational resentment against Gordon. He hadn’t let me know how serious my situation was. He had saved me from one noose, only to lead me into another. Then I remembered the serious warnings I had laughed off. I had been so glad to get out of the frying-pan that I didn’t believe in the fire. Probably I should be grateful to him for not putting handcuffs on me.

We passed the barn and the dancers were gone and the fiddler had stopped playing.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the bootlegger’s.”

“The whisperer?”

“Yes. I’m going to trace the two drunks who left when Ruth Esch did.”

“What if you don’t catch them? Do I stand the chance of being convicted of Schneider’s murder?”

Gordon avoided a direct answer. “We’ll catch them. Every policeman in the state will be on the lookout for them. And I’m going to telegraph their descriptions to every police station in the Middle West.”

“Don’t omit Canada. They just came from Canada and may try to go back.”

“Where in Canada?”

“Ruth Esch wrote me a letter three days ago from Kirkland Lake, Ontario.”

“Have you still got it?”

I felt in my pockets. The letter was gone.

“No, I must have lost it. Or Peter took it.”

“You say the Esch woman wrote you a letter. Is she a friend of yours?” He shifted his black eyes from the road for a moment to glance at me.

“She was. In Germany, years ago. Not any more.”

I told him what he needed to know about Ruth Esch, including a complete physical description. Like Gordon, I wanted to catch her, but I dreaded meeting her again. There is a story in the
Heimskringla
about a Norse king who married a witch. She died but her body remained warm and beautiful. The king went mad and kept vigil by her beautiful body in the belief that she was sleeping and would come back to him. After years of vigil, he awoke from his madness and the body was crawling with worms.

I dreaded meeting her again. But I was going to have to travel a long way before I met her again.

I said to Gordon, “I heard a news broadcast on your radio. The police are after me for Schneider’s murder.”

“I told you.”

“Yes, but not so vividly as the newscaster. Are you going to turn me in?”

“I have to,” Gordon said. “In any case, it’s the safest place for you.”

“Because Michigan doesn’t inflict the death penalty? I want to know whether it can be proved that Schneider was a spy, even if you don’t catch the other two.”

“Maybe it can. He hasn’t been investigated yet.”

“What have you got on him?”

“Everything you’ve given us, but that isn’t enough without evidence. Naturally we’ll investigate him thoroughly now. Have you any further leads?”

“I’ve told you everything I know. At least I think I have.” Something was struggling towards the surface of my unconscious. I could feel it moving but I couldn’t see what it was. Probably a duck-billed platypus, I thought, and tried to relax.

It was farther to the bootlegger’s by road than it was on foot. We had to follow the side road until it reached the main road and then turn back towards the old house.

Before we reached the main road we passed a patch of woods on the right side of the road, and I saw something that made me suspicious of my unconscious again. Two men wearing bright plaid blankets around them and colored leaves in their hair came running out of the woods towards the car, yelling and waving their arms.

Gordon stopped the car and we sat and watched them climb over the fence and jump across the ditch to the road.

“Can you give us a lift to town?” one of them asked. He stuck his head in the open window on my side and I saw the tear-stains on his face and recognized him.

I said to Gordon. “These are the two men that left the bootlegger’s when Ruth Esch did.”

“Get into the back seat,” Gordon said and they climbed in, clutching their blankets around them.

“I’ve got to get to the police,” the weepy one said. “My car has been stolen.”

Gordon turned around in his seat and said, “I’m a police agent. Where have you been?”

“In the woods, sleeping,” said the other babe in the woods. I turned and looked at them. Their eyes were like boiled Brussels sprouts and their faces were sicklied o’er with the pale cast of a hangover.

“On a camping party, boys?” Gordon said. “I was just going to start looking for you.”

“Hell, no,” said the man who wept, beyond irony. “Our clothes were stolen. And my car.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and I reached for a handkerchief.

“By a red-headed woman?”

“How did you know? Say, did you catch her?”

“Not yet,” Gordon said. He started the car and in a minute we turned into the main road.

“Well, you better get busy. I want to see that dame put away for a good long time. She asks me for a lift and she looks like a lady and naturally I give her one at that time of morning. But after we drive down the road a piece, she pulls a gun on us and makes us get out of the car and take off our clothes and drives away with the car
and
the clothes. First time a hitch-hiker ever fooled me and, by Jesus, it’s the last—”

Gordon cut him off. “Why didn’t you report this theft sooner?”

The other man spoke, “Well, Johnnie here was awful broken up, and when she took his car he went off in the woods and was sick.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Johnnie said, “I was just sad. My dear wife, and then my dear car—”

“Yes, he was,” the other man said. “I went to find him and he had passed out. I couldn’t wake him up so I covered him with leaves and let him sleep. I couldn’t leave him in that condition, so I kept guard over him—”

“You passed out, too,” Johnnie said.