His circuit of the house completed, Joe approached the front step again, thinking: one more knock, so I can say I really tried. When we get back to the highway, I’ll check the name on that mailbox—just to be thorough.
* * *
Fiercely Judy hissed the words, almost in the ear of the old man who sat in the seat ahead: “He is in that house!”
“I do not doubt that, Judy.” Lean fingers on the door handle beside him, the old man was staring ahead with serpent-like intensity. “But neither do I think that Joe is going to discover him. He is an honorable policeman, who will not dream of exceeding his authority on grounds no stronger than those which we have given him.”
“We can’t go away and leave Johnny in there!”
“We certainly cannot. Especially since this visit must alarm his captor. You say you see only one man with him, now?”
“Yes.”
“I think you are right.” And with the movement of a lithe twenty-year-old, Corday was suddenly out of the car. He held the door open, his tall form bending beside it, looking in at her. “I am going to take action. And you . . . but no.”
“What is it?” She had never seen eyes like his . . . they were so dark. And they were old no longer.
He said, eyes glittering: “I was about to order you to stay here in safety. But this is not the world for safety, is it? Nor are you and I the people who prize it above all. So, will you enter battle with me? In all the world are very few whom I would sooner ask.”
The man who spoke to her seemed to have been transformed, to have grown larger than life. And it seemed to Judy that she was transformed too. The young woman who stepped out of the car was a fit companion for heroic deeds. Yet she was still herself, perhaps more truly herself than ever before.
“What must I do?” she calmly asked.
“Come this way at once. Joe is returning.” Her companion’s voice had altered too, and there were hints of drums and trumpets even in its softness.
She followed him as quickly as she could, along the edge of the drive back in the direction of the highway.
“Now jump this way,” he ordered. “Leave no tracks.” The best sprint of her young legs took her sideways from the drive, to an area of matted leaves and brown grass that had been blown free of snow. From one snowless patch to the next she followed her companion, who moved ahead now like an acrobat, reaching back a hand from time to time to steady her. He led her through grass and brush and briefly along the top rail of a split-log fence, in a curving path that brought them into some bushes from which they could just see the car.
Crouching there motionless, with Corday’s hand upon her arm, Judy could see the alarm in Joe’s face as he came trotting the last yards to the vehicle, shocked by the realization that they were gone. “Corday?” he called out, almost threateningly. Then, louder: “Judy!”
In a moment he had spotted their footprints in the snow, leading back along the drive. Swearing, he started after them on foot, and promptly lost the trail where the snow gave way in spots to leaves and grass. Red-faced and muttering, Joe jumped into the car. Spinning wheels in snow, he got the Volks turned round and headed back to the highway. The sound of it died away.
“Now, my girl.” Corday—this youthful stranger she had known as Corday—stood up straight, raising her by both arms to stand beside him. “Before I can enter any house, I must be called, invited, by someone inside. Do not ask me to explain just now, but it is so. So you must get into this house, somehow, and then call to me. If no one answers the door for you, break in a window.”
“I will.” Around Judy the woods were growing minute by minute dimmer, darkness oozing up into them from the ground. But for the moment she was not at all afraid.
“Only call me, and I shall come. But you must call.”
Life sang in Judy’s blood, life of an intensity that nothing in her memory could match. It forced her to a knowledge that she had earlier refused. She breathed: “I called you once before. Didn’t I?”
The man before her nodded quickly, his timeless eyes joyful that she understood. “But ask no questions now,” he said. With a light pressure of his hand he sent her on her way.
Fear did not begin until she was out of the woods and well along the drive toward the house, where all the windows were utterly dark in the swiftly gathering twilight. The snow under Judy’s booted feet was marked now with Joe’s tracks, going and returning. And now she could see where someone, probably Joe also, had circled the house.
On the raised step under the protective overhang of roof that sheltered the front door, the snow was not as deep as in the open yard. It was much trampled by Joe’s feet, but an unbroken white grommet remaining between door and threshold showed that the door had not been opened for him. Judy rang the doorbell at once, heard the faint chime, and only then wondered what she would say if someone came. Her car had broken down, that would be it.
But no one answered.
A quick glance to her rear showed only the darkening gloom of woods and lawn and fields, but she knew Corday was there. Before her, she could still feel the habitation of the house. But there was no sound or light to give corroboration to the feeling.
She knocked, then rang again. Inside, she felt—she knew—that Johnny heard the bell. Johnny, locked up in fear and pain and darkness, unable or afraid to even cry out.
The window beside the front door, Judy soon discovered, could not be opened from the outside. Not by her pulling or pushing at it, at least. She balled a fist inside her mitten, then paused long enough to take off her scarf and warp it round her hand.
Judy’s first blow at the glass was not wholehearted enough to break it in, and she gave a little cry of frustration before she punched again. This time there was a satisfactory crash, followed by a tinkle on the floor inside.
As if the crash had been a signal prearranged, the front door was suddenly thrown wide. A young man, thick-necked and muscular but rather small, stood there wearing faded jeans and an old army shirt. One hand was out of sight on each side of the door frame. His neatly trimmed hair was somehow incongruous. His eyes were partially hidden behind the distortion of thick glasses; his mouth, twisted in rage or fear or both, was open on uneven teeth.
“What’re you doing?” The man’s voice was breathless, almost unintelligible with apparent strain.
Its urgent menace for the moment made Judy forget everything else and she took an involuntary step backward. “I—I need help with my car.”
“For that you break the window? Who was that guy who was just here?”
“I . . .” From some inward source, invention came. “I asked a man to help me. Now I don’t knew where he’s gone.”
“No help here. There’s a gas station down the highway, east, about half a mile.” The man’s extreme excitement had perhaps eased just a little. He had not changed his position in the doorway yet.
“I don’t think I can walk that far,” Judy pleaded. “Please, let me use your phone.”
“Get outta here,” he muttered, almost as if his thoughts were already on something else. He kept darting glances past her into the snowy dusk.
Judy was mastering her fright. Her nerves still vibrated in sympathy with her brother’s unceasing pain. “I won’t go away,” she said, regaining her lost step toward the door. “I can’t.”