Night Walker (16 page)

“Do you want me to slip the latch?” he asked prosaically.

“I don’t care what you do. Let the place burn down, for all I care!”

He pressed the button, took hold of the knob, and started to pull the heavy door shut behind them; and he could not do it. This was the strangest thing that had happened to him yet. He was aware of the bright sunshine, and of the steady southeasterly breeze still blowing, and of the girl pausing to wait for him at the foot of the steps. He felt ridiculous and a little dizzy; and he was no more capable of shutting the door of the house irrevocably behind him than he would have been capable of putting the muzzle of the gun in his pocket into his mouth and pulling the trigger. The door had
become a symbol of something; if he shut it he would have to go, and he knew suddenly that he was not going anywhere.

He glanced at Elizabeth, below him. The wind was fluttering her thin slacks about her legs. Her thick, dark hair, dividing itself, had blown forward along each side of her face when she turned to look back at him questioningly. She looked, in that moment, pretty and desirable beyond belief; she represented affection of sorts, and an escape from responsibility. She was, he knew, the one person in the world before whom he would ever be able to appear as himself. She knew him for what he was, as he knew her; and she would never demand anything of him that he could not perform. All other women he would meet would expect him to live up to certain arbitrary standards of courage and loyalty; and the trouble was, he would be fool enough to try.

He turned abruptly and walked into the house, moving directly to the telephone. More quickly than he could have hoped, he was connected with the Washington number for which he had asked. He spoke clearly and slowly to the man who answered, enunciating his words carefully so that he would not have to repeat himself.

“This is Lieutenant Young,” he said. “Lieutenant David Young, United States Naval Reserve. I am
calling from a place near Bayport, Maryland. I have certain information...”

As he spoke, he was aware of her in the doorway, listening. Presently she was gone, and he heard the sound of the station wagon starting up, backing out of the garage, and heading out the road at rapidly increasing speed.

He awoke, breathless, in total darkness, waiting for something, and it came: a dull, reverberating sound like the note of a cracked and muffled bell — the sound that had summoned him back to consciousness. He had a memory of stumbling upstairs after his conversation with Washington and falling on the bed with his clothes on. Reaction had apparently hit him hard enough to make him fall asleep instantly and sleep the whole afternoon away and, judging by the dim, striped rectangle of the window, most of the evening as well. It surprised him, after what had been said over the phone, that no one had come for him yet.

The bell-like sound came again.
Bell, hell,
he thought, and sat up, reaching for the gun under the pillow. With the weapon in his hand, he slipped off the bed, approached the window cautiously, and looked out between the slats of the blind. Tonight there was no moon, and at first he could make out nothing but the dim circle of the drive, the blackness of the trees, and the dull sheen of the river at the foot
of the bluff. The lights in the cottages on the far bank had a dim and misty look. The fresh wind that had been blowing earlier had dwindled to a faint and erratic breeze. He could feel it cool on his face. After the days of having his head totally wrapped in bandages it was pleasant to have a face again.

Then a man stepped out of the border of bushes at the corner of the house and tiptoed out into the drive, bent to pick up some pellets of gravel, and straightened to toss them gently at the second-story window at that end of the house: the window of Elizabeth’s room. They struck the screen with the dull, ringing noise that had awakened Young. The man waited, poised, with his arm half-raised; a large man wearing a light topcoat and a hat pulled down over his eyes as if he was afraid of being recognized, a man who was supposed to be dead....

Young gripped the pistol tightly, feeling a violent mixture of fear and hatred. He reached for the cord of the Venetian blind and shoved the gun forward.

“Wilson,” he shouted.

His voice seemed to shatter the quiet, shockingly loud. He had forgotten that the cord was broken. In answer to his pull, one side of the blind rose part way; then the mechanism jammed. He jerked again, something gave way above, and he had to jump back, instinctively shielding his wounded head, as the whole blind came crashing down, with a tremendous,
clattering noise. When silence returned, and Young, shaken, stepped back to the window in a gingerly fashion, no one was visible outside.

He grimaced at his own stupidity, and ran out of the room and down the stairs. He pulled the front door open, flattening himself against the wall as he did so. The darkness outside was silent except for the usual country noises; there was a shrill, persistent squeaking that might be due either to crickets or frogs, he did not know which. He checked the loading of the gun in his hand in the dim light and started out, then stopped. Suddenly the expedition seemed to have lost its point, and he could not help remembering that Lawrence Wilson undoubtedly knew every inch of the surrounding countryside by heart, having been brought up here. It seemed stupid for him, in his weakened condition, to go blundering after the man in the dark; and besides, Washington had ordered him to remain in the house until they got around to sending someone. The individual in Washington had made it clear that its agency appreciated being informed, but felt itself quite capable of handling the situation without the further assistance of members of the armed forces in doubtful standing. It was quite possible, Young reflected, that he would be making more trouble for himself in official quarters if he were to interfere now.

He put his gun away, swung around, and went into
the kitchen to get himself something to eat. The clock on the wall read nine-thirty, surprising him faintly; he had thought it was later.

With the lights on, the bright, neat, modern kitchen reminded him painfully of Elizabeth.
This is mine,
she had said with pride. None of the rest of it had ever belonged to her, not the big old house, nor the antique furniture; not even the expensive clothes in her wardrobe, none of which he had ever seen her wear except the once when she came to take him from the hospital. He could not remember how she had seemed to him then; later images had crowded that first impression, never very strong, out of his mind. He found that he was thinking of her very much in the way he might have thought of a girl who had contracted a disease from which she was not expected to recover.

Working somewhat grimly, he figured out the combination to the elaborate switchboard of the electric stove. He put coffee on, and broke a mess of eggs into a skillet; he had no fondness for kitchens or galleys, but a man who had learned to cook at the age of twelve on a coal-burning Shipmate in the cabin of a twenty-five foot catboat — such a man was not going to go hungry any time there was food available, even if he had managed to lose, over the years, that early enthusiasm for ships and the sea. The electric burners were slow in warming up; the eggs had just
begun to sizzle when a car came down the drive fast and pulled up sharply in front of the house, skidding to a halt in the gravel. He could guess the identity of the visitors; that was the way you drove, he reflected wryly, when the government was paying for the tires.

Suddenly he felt cold and weak and afraid. He cut all the switches on the stove, not trusting it to behave itself unattended. Besides, he doubted that they would wait around for him to finish his meal, and it might be weeks before anybody came in here again. He tried not to wonder what sort of inquisition was in store for him, or what the Navy would think up when the civilians got through. He started out of the kitchen, stopped, and took the gun out of his pocket. Having that found on him seemed an unnecessary complication, and he dropped the weapon into a nearby drawer. Then he squared his shoulders and marched to the front door, switching on the lights as he went.

The door was still open, as he had left it. He was surprised to see no one on the steps. He moved forward to look at the light convertible parked below. The top was down and the car was empty. It was pale green, with considerable areas of chromium, and dark green leather upholstery. It seemed an unlikely vehicle to be engaged in official government business.

“Put your hands up, sailor,” a voice said behind him.

He recognized the voice and turned around.
Bonita Decker was standing by the door to the living room, in which she had apparently hidden, upon his approach, after slipping silently into the house — a small, trim figure in light-blue denim shorts and a blue-and-white striped jersey. There was one of those long-billed white baseball caps on her red hair, giving her a tomboyish air, and a .22 automatic target pistol in her hand. The gun had a long and very slender barrel equipped with a high, adjustable front sight; and Young had no doubt, from the way she held it, that she knew precisely where it would shoot, to within an inch at twenty-five yards. The present range was about five feet.

She said, “So you’ve got a face, after all! Not that it’s much of an improvement over the bandages.” She made a little motion with the gun. “I said, put your hands up!”

Young looked at her for a moment, thoughtfully. The gun made him nervous; it was not only defiance that made him push his hands deliberately into his pockets, but the need to conceal a slight tremor that he did not wish the girl to see. She said fiercely, “If you think I’m kidding...!” He grinned at her, and forced himself to turn aside in a leisurely manner, walk past her, and back through the dining room away from her. In spite of his pose of indifference, he was thoroughly aware of her behind him — standing for a moment where he had left her and then coming after him. He
pushed through the swinging door and let it close itself in her face. He walked straight across the kitchen to the stove and pressed the proper buttons in the instrument panel, causing a small warning light to come on inside the transparent plastic of each button, and the elements to crackle as they began to heat up again.

He did not look around, but he knew when she pushed the door open cautiously, looked around it, and shoved it back as far as it would go to make certain that no one was hiding behind it. She came into the kitchen with the long-barreled pistol ready. She did not speak at once.

At last she said, “You take some awful chances, sailor.” He did not turn his head.

“Stop making like a movie, Red,” he said, speaking for the first time. “Give your dialogue a rest. You’re not going to shoot anybody unless they come at you with an ax, and we both know it. You didn’t come here to shoot anybody; you came here for information. If you were in a position to back up any shooting with facts you wouldn’t have come here at all; you’d have gone to the police or the F.B.I.”

She said quickly, “I’ll have all the facts I need as soon as I trace that —” She checked herself.

Young grinned. “Oh,” he said, “so you haven’t traced my uniform button yet? I’m ashamed of you; I thought you’d know all about me by this time.”

She said, “They’re so damn secretive in Washington!

Wouldn’t you think one of Dad’s old shipmates — But I’ll find out, and when I do—”

Young said, “You’re wasting your time in Washington, Red. Try Norfalk, Lieutenant David Martin Young, U.S.N.R., serial number 210934.” He gave the congealing eggs in the skillet a poke with the spatula and turned to face her. “So now you know, what good does it do you?”

She hesitated, clearly somewhat disconcerted by his attitude. “It might do the Navy Department some good,” she said. “Or the F.B.I.; they track down deserters, don’t they?”

“What makes you think I’m a deserter? How do you know I’m not a member of Naval Intelligence on a special assignment?” He grinned at her startled expression. “I’m kidding you. But let’s not start heaving big words around, Red. I’m just a poor damn Reserve officer a few days late in reporting for active duty; and that’s not desertion according to my reading of the Navy Regulations. As for the F.B.I., if you’ve got anything to say to them, just stick around. They should be along sooner or later.”

She frowned. “You’ve been in touch with the F.B.I.?”

“I called them around two o’clock this afternoon. The fact that they still haven’t got around to picking me up seems to indicate that I’m not quite in the public enemy class yet.”

“
If
you called them.”

Young shrugged his shoulders and turned away from her to attend to his cooking. The girl behind him was silent for a long time.

“You had a gun this morning,” she said at last. “Where is it?”

“Right beside you in the drawer,” Young said, and heard her check on this. He lowered the heat under the coffee as it came to a boil. Bonita Decker spoke again.

“Where is
she?
”

“Elizabeth?”

“Who do you think I meant, Cleopatra?” Her voice sounded very young and sarcastic.

Young said, “Elizabeth took it on the lam, as we criminals say.”

“Oh, so that’s why the station wagon’s gone. I noticed the garage was standing open.”

“That’s why.”

“So she ran out on you, sailor.”

“I had an invitation,” Young said. “I decided not to accept.”

“Isn’t it a little late for you to develop a conscience? What kind of a deal did you make with the F.B.I.? Can they promise you immunity if you’re an accessory to murder?”

Young asked, “What murder?”

“Larry—”

“If Larry Wilson’s dead, that was a mighty substantial ghost I saw pitching gravel at Elizabeth’s window about half an hour ago.”

“You
saw
him?” she demanded. “Tonight?” Young shrugged briefly, letting his original statement stand; and the girl behind him was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was totally changed. She seemed to be speaking to herself, to be asking herself for reassurance. “But if he’s all right — if he’s all right, why doesn’t he get in touch with me?”