Night Walker (2 page)

Young frowned, not entirely pleased by the other’s generosity. “Look, you don’t have to—”

“Skip it, skip it,” the driver said. “Hell, it’s the least I can do, isn’t it?”

Young said, “Well, it’s damn white of you, but—”

The man dropped the ten-dollar bill into his lap. “Hell, it’s nothing, Lieutenant. I’ll get my money back, won’t I? And you’re not taking me a damn bit out of my way. I was heading for Washington, anyway. I was just going to stop off to see my wife on my way down from New York; she’s staying at our place over
on the Bay. But it’s a forty-mile drive and the roads aren’t too good; and she’d a damn sight rather have me in the daytime, anyway. We haven’t been getting along lately, I can make it on my way back north.”

Young picked up the money reluctantly; it made him feel like a drunken bum accepting a handout. His pride wanted him to refuse the loan, but common sense told him to take it. Reporting for duty late would not improve his situation any, and there was no point in hurting the feelings of a man who was trying to do him a favor.

“Well, if you’re sure—”

“I said, skip it.”

“If you’ll give me your name and address—”

“You can send it to Bayport; my wife will see it gets to me. Lawrence Wilson, Bayport, Maryland.” Wilson held out his hand. “My friends call me Larry.”

“Dave,” Young said, taking the hand. “Dave Young.”

“Okay, Dave,” Wilson said. He gave his passenger’s uniform another glance before returning his attention to the road. “I used to be in the Navy myself, in a way,” he said presently. “Only quit last year.” Then he laughed sharply. “Quit, hell! Who am I trying to kid, anyway? You’re looking at a dirty red subversive, Dave.”

Startled, Young turned to look at the man beside him, thinking that some kind of a joke was intended.
Wilson’s expression was obscured by the shadow of his hat brim; but it was clear that he was not smiling.

“But what—”

“That,” said Wilson, “is what I’ve been trying to find out for a year now. What?”

“You mean they didn’t tell you—”

“Brother, you don’t know the setup. Nobody has to tell you anything, see. It’s that kind of a deal. They get ‘information’ that you’re a risk to departmental ‘security.’ You get a couple of hearings, but what the hell good does that do? You don’t know what you’re fighting against. All you can do is tell them what a swell guy you are and how much you love the United States of America. They’ve heard that routine before. So you go, and your friends hear about it and start acting funny, too! Everybody looking at you like they expected you to pull a hammer and sickle out of your pants pocket.... Nuts!” Wilson said bitterly. “I tell you, Dave, when it happens to you, you learn a lot of things about your friends and family you didn’t know before. Even the ones who don’t believe it about you stay away because they’re scared to be seen with you any longer.” The man glanced at Young. “Maybe
you
want to give me back that ten-spot and start walking, now!”

Young shifted uncomfortably in the darkness, because the accusation was not far from the truth. His first instinct had been to get out of this. It was, after all, none of his problem; and he did not want to
get mixed up in it, particularly in uniform. But now, directly challenged, he had to shake his head. Still it seemed strange that Wilson should tell so much to a complete stranger. It was almost as though the man wanted to be sure Young would remember him.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Wilson said presently. “Even a leper gets sympathy, but not a guy in my spot. Except from the radicals and crackpots who figure that because the government fired me I must be one of the boys. You’d be surprised how easy —” He checked himself abruptly.

The big coupé ran on through the night at high speed. Young tried to relax, but the speed made him uneasy, and he did not like the feeling of having brushed against the edge of a dark world of which he had no knowledge or understanding. He warned himself against the instinctive sympathy he felt for Wilson’s predicament; after all, he had nothing but Wilson’s own unsupported word for his innocence, and it was none of his business, anyway. He had problems enough of his own.

“Dave,” the man beside him said.

“Yes?”

“I bet you think I’m kind of a damn fool, spilling all this crap to a guy I never saw before. Well, to hell with it. You don’t know if I’m telling the truth and there’s no way I can prove it, yet. One day there are going to be some people with red faces around
Bayport, and I mean red, get it? But right now let’s skip it. What about you? You’re not regular Navy, are you; you haven’t got the ring...”

They talked for a while. Young gave the name of the university to which he had been going; in answer to the other’s questioning — Wilson was the kind of a man to whom the most personal inquiries seemed to come quite naturally — he said that his parents were dead and that he was not only not married, he had no particular girl in mind for the honor. He said that he had originally joined the Navy because he had done some sailing as a kid and liked boats. Wilson brightened at this information.

“Say, if you like boats, maybe you’d like to see a picture of one I designed for a friend of mine. That’s my field, you know, ship design. This one’s a thirty-foot sloop, a little smaller than the stuff the Navy had me on....”

Driving one-handed, he produced his wallet again, and tried to find something among the licenses and identification cards shielded in clear plastic and hinged to form a sort of book. Young waited. The glow from the luminous dashboard gave Wilson very little light to work by; he had to look up quickly to pull the car back as it ran out onto the shoulder of the highway. In the dim light it was hard to tell, but Young was almost sure Wilson’s hand was shaking as he handed over the wallet.

“You find it; it’s in there somewhere. There’s a map light in the glove compartment, if it feels like working.”

Young opened the compartment and leaned forward to hold the wallet under the light that came on automatically. Leafing through the cards, he came on a snapshot of a white sailboat made fast to a dock. A girl was standing in the cockpit, facing the camera self-consciously, sunburned and in bathing costume. She was quite small, and had an intriguing, innocent, tomboyish look about her.

“That’s it.” Wilson let the car’s momentum carry it along with decreasing speed as he looked over Young’s shoulder.

“Nice-looking craft,” Young said. “Is that your wife?”

“Elizabeth?” Wilson laughed sharply. “Hell, no. Just try to get her on a boat! No, that’s Bunny; we’ve sailed together since we were kids. She’s the only one who — stuck by me after that Washington business broke. Got her folks to give her a boat for Christmas and then asked me to design it for her, to give me something to do except brood, I guess. I knew she was doing me a favor, but I wasn’t going to turn it down. We worked on it together, as a matter of fact; she told me what she wanted in the way of racing gadgets and general layout and I did the calculating and the drawing up of the lines.... She’s a pretty slick
little bucket, eh? I wish I had a shot that showed you the lines, but you can make out the rig, all right. It takes three or four to race her right; but even a girl can handle her easy, for cruising.” Wilson’s voice was insistent and his words seemed to be coming faster now. “The binnacle is set into the cockpit floor where it’s out of the way. We’ve got good big winches for the jib sheets...”

As Young leaned forward to study the details, there was a quick movement beside him; then something hit him across the head harder than he had ever been struck before. He tried to struggle upright, dazed and bewildered; but the man beside him, still talking rapidly as if to deceive some unseen observer — perhaps his own conscience — struck a second and a third time, driving his passenger down into black unconsciousness.

It was the same old nightmare. Young recognized it at once although a long time had passed since the last one; so long that he had congratulated himself on having the thing licked. But here it was again, and he lay watching it unfold in his mind, knowing exactly what was coming, knowing that it was a nightmare, but feeling himself, as always, helplessly drawn into it and swept away by it.

It took the same course as always. They were blacked out and making standard speed through a nearly calm sea when the torpedo hit forward. The one amidships followed almost immediately. He was aware, as he listened for orders and shouted some of his own — his voice cracking as he tried to make it carry over the noise — of the ship losing way and taking a sharp list to port. He was out on the flight-deck now and a roar and a hot breath of flame told him that the high-octane gas for the planes was going up. It was no longer dark. A squawking voice was repeating the order to abandon ship. There was fire everywhere and she was being shaken by a series of
jolts and jars from below. He heard the screaming nearby, saw where it came from, wrapped something about his head, and started for it, wondering how much time he had. Everything seemed to be in slow motion; yet time seemed to be moving very fast. He was working furiously, less conscious of what he was doing than of the time rushing past him.
Now
it comes, he thought,
now,
and
now.
But it did not come, and then he was finished and over the side, and there was fuel oil on the water and the ship’s flaming bulk continued to drift down on him no matter how hard he swam....

He awoke with a nurse holding him to keep him from throwing himself out of the hospital bed. When he lay still, warm waves of pain washed over him, gradually subsiding. Through the gaps in the bandages that otherwise completely swathed his face and head he could see the white hospital ceiling dim with night again. It had been night when they had brought him into this room. There had been a day, and now it was night again. The lapse of time disturbed him vaguely; somewhere somebody had been awaiting him. His memories were a confused mixture of what had happened long ago and what had happened quite recently.

The terrible panic of the nightmare still lurked shadowy at the back of his consciousness. He felt the need to apologize for the disturbance he had made.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Didn’t mean to wake up everybody...”

His mouth felt clumsy and shapeless, but he seemed to have all the teeth to which he was entitled. His chest hurt and there was pain all through his face, but his eyes were functioning properly. He thought,
Well, I can see and talk and eat, I guess. I’m alive. I’ve got arms and legs and a head. Man, have I got a head!

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Mr. Wilson!” the nurse said severely. “A grown man, screaming like a baby!”

He looked up at her blankly. Then the doctor came into the room, paused at the table by the door, and approached the bed with a hypodermic.

“Just relax, Mr. Wilson, and I’ll give you something to help you sleep.... No, don’t try to talk now. Just lie still, please. Nurse...”

The sting of the needle was insignificant against the other pain, but the alcohol, swabbed on the punctured skin, left a brief, cold memory behind it. He let the drug carry him away. It did not really matter that they had got his name wrong. It was not as if
he
didn’t know who he was....

Suddenly it was morning and the nurse was in the room again, fussing with something at the dresser. He had past and present all sorted out now; he could differentiate old nightmares from new realities. At
one time in his life he had escaped from a wrecked and burning ship; at a later time he had escaped from a wrecked and burning automobile. The first occasion was quite clear in his mind. They had given him a medal for it. The second occasion was not quite so clear; he could not remember everything that had happened, and even the parts he could remember seemed contradictory and confusing. He remembered a man in a light hat and coat, who had told a disquieting story that did not have to be true. He tried for the man’s face, but could not make it come clear. He remembered waking up screaming and being called by a name that was not his.

“Nurse,” he whispered.

“What is it, Mr. Wilson?” She laughed cheerfully. “You’re in the Rogerstown Memorial Hospital, if that’s what’s worrying you?”

He hesitated. An instinct warned him to be careful. “What’s the matter with me? My face?”

“Oh, you’re going to be all right, Mr. Wilson,” the nurse said, still working at the dresser. She was a middle-aged woman with a thick, competent body dressed in starched white. There was gray in her hair beneath the cap. “You just have a slight concussion and a few assorted cuts and burns and bruises, that’s all. In a week or two you’ll be almost as good as new,”

He suspected that his nose was broken, and he felt as if a mule had kicked him in the chest; but he had
been in hospitals before, and he knew that there was never any use in arguing with this kind of professional optimism.

“Was there — was anybody else hurt?” he whispered cautiously, feeling his way.

“Why, no!” she said, clearly startled at the thought that this might be worrying him. “Why, did you think you’d hit somebody? There wasn’t a soul around when the highway police got there. A farmer saw the fire and called them. They said you must have fallen asleep and driven off the road. You’re a very lucky young man, Mr. Wilson. If the door hadn’t opened and let you fall clear as the car rolled...”

Young lay still. He could remember now his last glimpse of Lawrence Wilson, leaning over him with the iron that apparently had been lying hidden behind the seat all the time they had been talking; even so, his mind would not at once grasp the enormity that the nurse’s words suggested.
He tried to burn me! He knocked me out and tried to burn me in the car! If the door hadn’t opened...

The nurse turned dramatically to show him the bowl of flowers she had been arranging. “Aren’t they lovely, Mr. Wilson?” she cried. “I think glads are the prettiest things! Here’s the card.”

She put it into his hand and, after a glance at the bright array of pink gladioli, he brought the card up into his limited field of vision. It was one of those
comic cards you send to invalids, a cartoon of a little girl in a boat with violently shaking sails, captioned,
I was all a-flutter when I heard you were sick.
The card was signed,
Bunny.
He gave it back to the nurse; it took all his strength to hold it out long enough for her to take it. He was tiring and his thoughts were slow and muddy; and he could not seem to concentrate on the fact that he was in a hospital under the name of a man who had, for some unknown reason, tried to kill him; and that the man’s girlfriend was sending him flowers and might even decide to pay a visit.