Part 11 (1/2)

The three pails b.u.mped gently together as they swayed to his stride, forever three feet before my eyes. I tried to look away from them. I tried not to hear the small metallic sounds they made.

”We'll make her in fine shape,” he told me rea.s.suringly over his shoulder. ”Sure,” I said.

”When we get to the cabin, we'll use the boat.”

I didn't say anything. I merely reflected it would be wonderful if we drowned. It would be such a fitting close to our brief encounter and to this perfect idyll of a day. Nothing short of committing suicide could lend it that final little brush-stroke it needed to make it complete. A truly formidable day. I thought, trying to keep my mind and attention off those pails; the great wh.o.r.e of all days. Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, and smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, and smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.

The pails clinked companionably.

They contained one-hundred-and-one thousand dollars, and there were only two people on earth who knew it.

I wrenched my eyes away from the pails, feeling sick and very cold in my stomach. Still pools of shadow clotted and thickened under the trees as the sun went down.

n.o.body knew I was out here, or that I had even been here.

That was irrelevant. That wasn't the question at all.

The proposition as stated is that everything you buy in this antic bazaar has its individual price tag. Look at it first; don't be a fool and cry about the bill afterward. You know what it is now; and understand that it won't be any different after it's too late to return the merchandise.

He backed me into this corner. . . .

No, he didn't. You backed yourself into it. Don't wait and make that great discovery after it's too late. Accept it now. You can buy your way out in something less than a minute, but it's not going to be on a pa.s.s.

The pails swung gently behind his shoulder, three feet away. I was becoming hypnotized. I kept seeing them as they had looked when they were open on the ground. I could put out my hand and touch them. G.o.dwin's Law of Character Erosion states that the attrition of honesty. . . . Never mind that bright and soph.o.m.oric bit of wisdom. This is something else. Well, isn't murder the ultimate dishonesty?

The thing that was so terrible about it was its simplicity. I could go on and go to prison, for nothing. Or I could merely walk out of here with a fortune, and not go to prison at all.

It was twilight. I saw the edge of the clearing and the darkening bulk of the cabin ahead of us.

All right, I thought. But when you start, do it fast and very coldly, and don't think at all.

Now we were inside the cabin, from which the light was almost gone. I felt very tight, and far away, and was concentrating on details like remembering to limp as I walked. I had picked up my jacket and the paper bag that contained the $3,800. He had already put the three pails in the boat and had come back after the clothes he was going to take. He placed them in a cheap little imitation leather bag he took from under the bed.

”I reckon I can phone Mrs. Nunn to pick up the rest of my stuff,” he said. ”Mebbe sell it for me.”

”Yes,” I said.

I picked up the gun-belt from the floor. The loops were filled with cartridges and it was heavy. I held it out to him.

”I reckon I better leave that here,” he said.

”You can take it,” I told him. I'll turn in the gun, and maybe you can sell it to one of the deputies.”

He had to have it on, but I wished we could stop talking. My voice sounded squeezed and breathless, as if it were coming off the top of my throat.

He buckled on the belt. He looked once around the cabin and went on through the door without saying anything. I was glad; that was past now. The encircling wall of trees was dark. Far overhead in the fading sky a few splashes of orange and pink were left over from the silent explosion of sunset. He looked up at them and then around at the clearing's thickening dusk.

”I . . .” he said.

Don't look at him. Don't listen.

”I liked it here,” he said simply. ”It was a nice place.”

I clamped my jaws shut against the cold and terrible up-welling of pressure inside me and turned away. I gestured with my hand. We went down the trail toward the boat.

An old log running out into the water served as a pier. We got in. He handed me the valise, which I put forward with the pails. I shoved the folded paper bag into one of the pockets of my jacket, and dropped the jacket across the valise. He turned the boat outward and gave it a shove with an oar against the log. I sat on the mids.h.i.+ps seat, facing him. We coasted out of the cove on water that was as flat and black as oil. It was intensely still, and on both sides of the waterway night grew and deepened among the trees, pus.h.i.+ng outward to overrun this last outpost of day. I turned a little, looking forward, and slipped the wallet from the pocket of my trousers. I put it in the jacket. He cranked the motor. It began kicking us outward, away from the sh.o.r.e, as he headed for the bend. I removed my hat.

Almost at the same time I cried out, ”Wait!” His face was a blur under the big shadow of his hat as he looked at me inquiringly. I reached past his arm and cut the motor. Instantly, the vast silence of the forest rolled back over us, unbroken except for the faint swish of water past the hull and the roaring in my ears. I was cold now, and he was locked out and far away.

I stood up. ”I thought . . .” The boat rocked under my weight. I swayed, and lunged astern and outward, grabbing frantically for him as I fell. We went over the side together. The water closed over us. He kicked against me. I lost him. I went upward, and my head broke the surface.

Water swirled behind me, and I heard him gasp. ”You . . . You all right, Mr. Ward?”

I turned and found him, and pressed him down into the water. He struggled wildly for a few seconds, and then he jerked with one final convulsion and became still under my hands, settling away from them toward the bottom. I s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun from my trousers and let it drop. A last bubble of air, released from somewhere in his clothing, came upward, brus.h.i.+ng against my throat.

It was a problem, an a.s.signment you were handed and told to work out on the spot and under pressure; my mind was ice cold and very clear, sh.o.r.ed off from everything as I concentrated on it. The boat was a deeper clot of shadow some ten feet away. I swam over to it, moving clumsily in my clothes and shoes. Catching the gunwale with one hand, I oriented myself with the dark sh.o.r.e-line, and began kicking back the way we had come. In a few minutes, just outside the cove, I could reach bottom with my feet. I waded in, pulling the boat.

Landing it beside the log, I stood alongside it while water ran out of my hair and clothing. Stripping the cuff-links from my s.h.i.+rt, I dropped them in the pocket of my jacket, which was still across his valise. I slipped off the tie and s.h.i.+rt, wrung them out, rolled them together, and tossed them on to the bank. Then I stepped out of the trousers, squeezed as much of the water from them as I could, and stepped out on the ground myself. I put the trousers down with the s.h.i.+rt and tie. I emptied the water out of my shoes, wrung out the socks and put them with the other clothing, and put the shoes back on. Then, going back and forth on the log, I removed the valise, my jacket and hat, and the three pails from the boat, placing them near the pale blur of the s.h.i.+rt which I could see fairly well in the darkness. I went up to the cabin. Just outside the door and a little to one side, where he had dropped them, I felt around for the spinning rod and the big ba.s.s on its stringer. I couldn't find either of them. I oriented myself, and tried some more. That was odd. He'd dropped them both right here. Then I understood. When he came back for the bandage and the crutch, he'd moved them. But where? I had had to have that rod. to have that rod.

Well, obviously, he would have taken it inside the cabin. I straightened and was about to go in when I stopped. How in the name of G.o.d was I going to find anything in there without a light? My cigarette lighter was down there in my trousers, soaking wet. It would be hours before it would work. Well, he had matches in there somewhere; I just had to find them. I stepped inside and groped my way toward the rear, b.u.mping into a chair. The noise it made as it fell to the floor was startling and all out of proportion in the stillness. I went on until I felt the stove, and then stopped, trying to visualize the exact layout. Nearly all the back wall was covered with shelves, as I remembered, but the matches should be on the end near the stove. I moved, holding my hands before me. I touched the edge of a shelf and began sliding my hands along it. Something fell to the floor and broke. I cursed. I knocked something else over, but it remained on the shelf. I was beginning to be nervous and apprehensive now. It might take an hour to find his box of matches. Then I grunted. I had felt them. It was a large cardboard box, slid partly open. They were the big kitchen ones.

I struck one, and the instant it flared he came flying back at me from a dozen directions at once, from the dirty, syrup-smeared dishes and the unmade bed and from the piles of cheap and pathetic magazines. The poor, lost, futile. . . .

Stop it!

I coldly sealed him out and swung around, searching for the lamp. It was on the big packing box that had the oilcloth on it. I lit it, replaced the chimney, and looked around in the dim yellow light. There was the rod. It was in the corner by the chest of drawers, where the rifle and shotgun stood. The stringer was on the floor beside it. The ba.s.s was gone. Well, naturally, he would have thrown it back in the lake so it wouldn't smell up the place.

I was about to go across to pick up the rod when I became conscious of something sticky under my shoe. I looked down. The thing I had knocked off the shelf and broken was a syrup pitcher, and I was tracking syrup all over the cabin. I swore, whispering harshly in the darkness. d.a.m.n the rotten luck. Well, I'd clean it up later; I had to come back, anyway. There were some torn-up comic books in the wood-box beside the stove. I ripped some pages off one, cleaned the syrup from my shoe, and stuffed the paper in the stove. Setting two matches on the floor just to one side of the door where I could find them next time, I picked up the rod, blew out the lamp, and went out.

It was two or three minutes before my eyes became accustomed to the darkness again. I went down to the boat and put the rod in. It still had a small spinner attached to the line. I felt around under the forward seat until I located his tackle box. It was a metal one, with a tray that hinged upward when the lid was raised. Opening it, I set it on the bottom grating between the mids.h.i.+ps and after seats. Placing my shoe near one end of the tray, I stepped down, putting part of my weight on it. I felt it bend a little, and then the box upset, spilling lures about the bottom of the boat and under the grating. Taking off my shoes. I set them out on the log and shoved off with the oar.

I paddled until I was headed outward, and then cranked the motor. Idling down to slow speed, I pointed the bow straight across toward the weed beds along the other sh.o.r.e. When I was nearly half-way across I stood up and dived over the side. I came up, and the boat was drawing away, a diminis.h.i.+ng shadow on the dark surface of the water as the motor kept up its thrumming sound in the night. It was swinging to the right, I thought. It didn't matter much where it hit something and came to rest, but I hoped it wouldn't double back and run me down.

I got my bearings and started swimming back to the cove. When I waded out of the water and sat on the log to put my shoes on I tried to judge where it was now. It sounded as if it were on the other side, and it didn't appear to be moving. Probably it had already plowed into the pails. That was fine.

I stepped ash.o.r.e, picked up the valise, and returned to the cabin, hurrying now because I wanted to get away from here. Lighting the lamp again, I put the clothes back in one of the drawers of the chest, and shoved the valise under the bed where he'd got it. I located a paper bag and picked up the shattered gla.s.s of the syrup pitcher. I soused his dish towel in the water pail, wrung it out, and mopped up the syrup, dropping the towel in the bag when I had finished. What else. Oh, yes-the plate I had used for an ash-tray. I sc.r.a.ped the b.u.t.ts into the bag, wiped the plate with a handful of paper from the wood-box to remove the rest of the ashes, and put the paper in the fire-box of the stove. Better burn all that, I thought. I stuck a match to it, and then shoved in the carton the money had been in, and the waxed paper that had been used to wrap that hidden under the house. When it had all burned down and gone out, I pulverized the ashes with the poker and replaced the lid. I put the blackened pieces of hardware from Haig's suitcase in the paper bag, shoved the table back where it had been, and looked around. What else? There was nothing to indicate I had ever been here.

Of course, I had left footprints out there in a few places in the hard earth of the yard and in the trail, but it didn't matter, even though my shoes were larger than his. n.o.body would be looking for footprints. What had happened to him would be perfectly obvious. He'd stumbled over the tackle box, fallen overboard wearing that gun-belt and gun, and had drowned when the boat plowed on and left him. An autopsy would bear it out.

I picked up the paper bag, blew out the lamp, and went out. When my eyes were accustomed to the darkness again, I walked down to the lake about fifty yards above the cove, and threw the bag out into the water. The hardware and broken gla.s.s were heavy enough to make it sink. Picking my way through the dark trees, I went back down to the cove.

I rolled my s.h.i.+rt, trousers, and socks into a bundle and knotted the tie around it. Putting on the jacket and the hat, I picked up the crutch, the three pails and the bundle of wet clothing, and started down the lake through the timber. It was slow going and it was farther this way because I had to follow the sh.o.r.e-line to keep from being lost. Brush scratched my legs, and it required intense and constant alertness to keep from running into tree trunks. The sound of the outboard motor grew fainter behind me. I stopped once to tear the padding from the crutch and dispose of it under a log. A few hundred yards farther along I threw the forked sapling itself into the water. I was conscious that I was tiring, but had no conception of the pa.s.sage of time. It could have been twenty minutes or it might have been hours that I'd been wrapped in this furious concentration, impervious to everything except this Problem I was working on. Nothing else existed, or could exist until I was through with it.

I stumbled into an open s.p.a.ce and realized I had reached the camp-ground. I swung left, located the road, and in another minute was standing beside the station wagon. The moves remaining in the Problem were dwindling rapidly now, being checked off one by one. I fished the keys from the pocket of my jacket and unlocked the door. Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, I hurried out to where I had hidden the can of gasoline and refueled the car. I replaced the registration certificate. Lifting out the suitcase, stripped off the jacket and wet shorts, and dressed in the slacks and sports s.h.i.+rt I'd had on before.