Night Walker (6 page)

His voice ceased. He glanced at his watch, came around the bed, removed the thermometer from Young’s mouth, read it, and put it down without comment. Then he returned to the window.

“You know that she called me,” he said, looking out. “I came, and sized up the situation, including her ability to stand up to questioning. She told me how Larry had already arranged for himself to be ‘killed’ in an accident many miles from here. It seemed too good an opportunity to dismiss; it seemed as if Fate had played a grim joke on Larry Wilson, letting him plan the official details of his own death. All that was necessary was to get rid of the body, which I did. It was — not an ethical act, by the standards of my profession, but sometimes the man takes precedence over the doctor, Mr. Young.” Henshaw cleared his throat. “We made one mistake.
We failed to allow for the fact that Larry, having arranged to substitute a dead body — your dead body — for himself, had failed to make the body, shall we say, quite dead enough. Imagine our feelings, Mr. Young, when, after disposing of one Larry Wilson, we suddenly found ourselves with another on our hands, and that one an imitation! Fortunately for us, you were too badly hurt to speak out at once. There was only one thing to do; and we took you out of the hospital at the earliest opportunity and brought you here, hoping that, since you had no reason to love Larry Wilson, we might somehow persuade you... Do you have a price, Mr. Young? We can afford to pay a reasonable amount.”

The last words were spoken in a different tone, quite abruptly. Young looked up. “Price?” he asked. “For what?”

“For doing what you have already done once this morning. For impersonating Larry Wilson until we can arrange for you to leave in a manner that will not arouse suspicion. “As long —” The doctor made a sharp little gesture with his hand. “Don’t you see, Mr. Young? It is a very simple proposition. As long as Larry Wilson seems to be in this house alive, his wife cannot possibly be suspected of having shot him.”

Young did not speak at once and a little silence followed. Young watched the man at the window. Dr. Henshaw was wearing the rough brown suit of the
day before, badly in need of pressing. It did nothing to flatter his heavy figure. The condition of the pockets of his jacket indicated that he was in the habit of shoving his hands into them deeply. He did so now.

“She’s a wonderful person, Mr. Young,” he said. “When I think of the way she has been treated here —! I would do anything to protect her, Mr. Young, anything!”

His voice was impressively sincere. Young studied him, feeling a certain respect, and also a certain pity, because you could never take quite seriously the feeling of a bald and middle-aged man for a girl twenty-odd years his junior. Yet this man had apparently loved well enough to put his career and reputation on the line for Elizabeth Wilson when she needed him. It was a thing not every man would do for the woman in his life, Young reflected; the old boy must have something on the ball, even though he didn’t look it.

“Anything!” Dr. Henshaw said softly. “I would even let an innocent man be punished for a crime he did not commit.”

Young looked at him sharply, and the doctor swung around to face him. “What do you mean?” Young demanded.

“It should be plain enough,” the doctor said. “I do not know your motives for keeping quiet about your
identity,
Lieutenant
Young, but I think I can make a fair guess at them. You were on your way to Norfolk to report for duty, were you not? And then, suddenly, you found yourself in the hospital under another man’s name... Are there, perhaps, reasons why you would prefer not to go back into the service, Lieutenant?”

“Listen—”

Henshaw waved the interruption aside. “No, your motives don’t really concern me, Lieutenant. I don’t think you are quite sure of them yourself, as a matter of fact; you’ve just been letting yourself drift with the tide, have you not? Well, I am suggesting that you keep right on drifting in the same direction, Lieutenant. It’s fair enough. We will keep your secret if you keep ours. But let me warn you; Mrs. Wilson’s welfare comes first with me. If you do anything at all to endanger her, I promise you that I will see you arrested, not only for desertion, but for murder.” The doctor leaned forward slightly to emphasize his words. “Consider your position, Mr. Young. You are the man who was found in Lawrence Wilson’s wrecked car, wearing his clothes, with his watch on your wrist and his wallet in your pocket. Who is going to believe that Larry Wilson — whose family has lived around here for generations — staged an unprovoked attack on a stranger he’d picked up along the highway, changed clothes with this man, and then
came running home to be shot to death by his own wife? Do you think the police will pay any attention to this crazy yarn, when the logical theory is that it was the hitchhiker — a man panic-stricken at the thought of being called back into the armed forces — who murdered Wilson for his car and clothes and money, and then, perhaps injured in the struggle, cracked up the car trying to get away. Think it over, Mr. Young.”

The remainder of that day was a jumble of confused impressions with which Young did not try to cope, taking refuge in sleep, real or pretended. Then, suddenly, it was morning again, he was alone in the sunlit bedroom, and his mind was refreshed and clear. He could no longer avoid the thought that was clamoring for his attention.

“Deserter,” he whispered, fitting the ugly word to his tongue. This was the real edge to Dr. Henshaw’s threat. The notion of being accused of murder was too unreal to be taken quite seriously; but this was a charge that he could not honestly deny, remembering his indecision in the hospital, and his readiness here to play the role Elizabeth Wilson had desired of him. He might never have consciously decided not to report for duty; but he had certainly been quick enough to lose himself in another man’s identity when the opportunity offered.

Yet the idea had a fantastic quality; it was something he had never considered, even back in the bad days after his release from the hospital when it had
seemed they were about to send him back to sea again. He had considered throwing himself on the mercy of the medical authorities, and he had on one occasion toyed with the thought of shooting himself, but it had never occurred to him to think of deserting. The war’s end had saved him then. When, a few weeks ago, he had received orders back to active duty he had gone out and got thoroughly plastered, but he had not dreamed of not proceeding and reporting as ordered. Yet the germ of the notion must have been somewhere in his mind, he reflected, for him to slide so readily into acceptance of the present situation....

He sat up abruptly.
Acceptance, hell!
he thought, with sudden anger. Listening, he could hear sounds of activity from the kitchen downstairs, but nothing moved on the second floor of the house. He threw the covers aside, swung his feet to the floor, and stood up cautiously. The problems of operating in a vertical rather than a horizontal plane took a little consideration, but he ventured the three steps from the bed to the dresser without meeting disaster. From there he made it to the nearby closet door. Opening this, he studied the clothes inside. There were not very many of them; apparently Lawrence Wilson had removed most of his personal belongings when he left. Nevertheless, enough remained to dress his successor adequately; and it had already
been established, Young reflected, that Wilson’s garments would fit him. After all, he had been wearing one of the man’s suits when the police had picked him up, half dead, at the scene of the wreck.

He frowned, his mind busy with feverish plans for escape. He was not aware of the girl’s presence until her soft, Southern voice addressed him from the doorway.

“Honey, whatever are you doing? You’re supposed to stay in bed, hear?”

He turned, startled, to face her. She was wearing the somewhat tarnished gold robe that seemed to be her usual morning costume, and her dark hair was no tidier than it had been the morning before, but her mouth was red with fresh lipstick. She was holding a large tray with breakfast for two. When he did not move or speak, she came forward and set the tray on the dresser. She looked up at him, standing there.

“I declare, you’re bigger than I remembered. It’s no wonder we had trouble getting you up the stairs the other day.”

Her appearance and attitude disconcerted him. He found himself, unwillingly, aware of the graceful shape of her body beneath the satin negligee, and of the small, promising fullness of her lower lip. It was hard to look upon her as a jailer.

He said, “I can’t stay here, Mrs. Wilson.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “Why not?”

“The Navy’ll be looking for me.”

“Let them look, honey. They won’t come here. You’re Larry Wilson now, remember.”

He said, “That’s not precisely what I meant.”

She hesitated. “Oh, I see. You’ve changed your mind. You want to go back?” Her voice was flat. She glanced at the open closet door. “You were looking for some clothes to run away in, honey? That’s why you’re up?”

He nodded.

She regarded him for a moment longer, then said, “Why, you don’t have to run away, honey. The telephone’s right at the foot of the stairs. You can call them right now if you like. I declare, you’re big enough. I couldn’t do a thing to stop you. If you
want
to see me put in prison —” Her voice trailed away. She faced him a little defiantly, her shoulders square and her head well back.

There was, he told himself, no reason why he should consider this girl in making his decision. Yet it was an added complication, and beneath the weight of it his strength and resolve began to crumble. He found himself swaying a little, and steadied himself against the dresser; then Elizabeth Wilson was beside him, helping him back to the bed.

“You do what you think is right, honey,” she said breathlessly. “I declare, I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble on my account. And don’t pay any attention
to Bob Henshaw and his threats, hear? He told me what he’d said to you yesterday and I was perfectly furious with him. I hope you don’t think I’d let him do anything like that, even to save me. If you feel you’ve got to — to sacrifice me to your conscience, honey, you just go right ahead.”

Her voice was sweet and wholly insincere, yet her nearness was pleasant and reassuring. He caught her arm as, after tucking the covers about him, she started to rise. She stopped talking and looked down at him quickly.

He said, “Elizabeth, you’re a fraud. If I went near that phone, you’d probably shoot me.”

The false cheerfulness slipped from her face like a mask, leaving it strained and pleading. “But you won’t,” she whispered. “You won’t, will you, honey? You’ll stay and help me. Won’t you?” she whispered, and abruptly she raised a hand to her mouth and scrubbed it back and forth roughly, removing the fresh lipstick; then she kissed him without caution or restraint.

He was aware of the disturbing pressure of her lips and body; and he was not too weak to react to it, but she slipped away from him expertly as he tried to hold her, and stood up to look down at him, smiling. The smile gradually died away; and they studied each other for a long moment curiously, both clearly quite aware that a pact of sorts had been sealed.

“I declare,” she said, “it would be real nice if I could see your face.”

He said dryly, “Don’t be too sure of that.”

She moved her shoulders in a shrug that was less graceful than her usual gestures. “Well,” she said, “well, we’d better do something about this breakfast before it gets stone cold.”

He watched her turn toward the tray, the worn and soiled satin of her negligee swirling in a fluid way about her. He found that he could no longer look at her critically. They had suddenly become partners, accomplices in each other’s crimes.

He said abruptly, “It was during the war. I was on a ship that was torpedoed. Ever since I’ve been allergic to ships and the sea and fire and the smell of gasoline. I’ve tried to lick it, but every time I think I’m getting somewhere it comes back again, as strong as ever. Hell, after my little encounter with your husband, I wound up having one of my nightmares again. I hadn’t had one of those for four years.”

She brought him a plate and set a cup of coffee beside him. “You don’t have to tell me, honey. I declare, the uniform doesn’t mean anything to me. I saw too many of them in Washington during the war, and the fellows inside them all had the same idea, about me. That’s why I finally married Larry, I reckon; he was the one man I went around with who didn’t have a uniform and couldn’t act as if he
thought his commission entitled him to bedroom privileges from every girl in Washington.”

Young said, “It isn’t just being scared, Elizabeth, although God knows I’m scared enough. It’s — well, it’s like this. I’m a lieutenant now; and I’d be up for lieutenant commander pretty soon. Well, a lieutenant commander probably didn’t seem very much to you in Washington, but he can be a pretty big wheel on shipboard. And — well, I keep seeing myself on the bridge some dark night with the responsibility for a few million dollars worth of ship, maybe, and the lives of several hundred men and suddenly something happens, anything... I don’t know what I’d do, Elizabeth. I used to know, but I don’t any more. I simply have no idea how I’d react. And I guess I really would just as soon not have to find out; I guess that’s what it all amounts to, why I didn’t tell them who I was in the hospital, why I let you and Henshaw bring me here.”

She said, “Honey, eat your breakfast. I don’t care, I tell you.”

He looked at her where she was sitting on the edge of the bed now, eating off her knee; and he saw that she really did not care. She was not that interested in him. The fact that he intended to help her was enough. He found himself wryly amused at the thought that his personal tragedy could mean so little to someone else.

After she had left the room to take the tray downstairs, he got out of the bed again and moved around it to the window and looked out at the river and the Bay. They looked much as they had the day before; it was another nice day, with the same southeasterly breeze, apparently the prevailing summer breeze in this area. Far out, a sailboat was heading toward him wing-and-wing on a course that would eventually bring it into the mouth of the river below the house. Young wondered idly if this was the boat he had seen putting out the day before; presently, as it approached, he decided that this was a somewhat smaller craft. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar, reminding him of the picture Lawrence Wilson had shown him just before knocking him out, of the sloop he, Wilson, had designed for the girl called Bunny. The guess was confirmed when the boat came close enough for him to see that the small, solitary figure in the cockpit had red hair.