“You say such sweet things,”
“I’m going to wait for dark and then I’m going back to Baker. You can do what you feel like doing. Come with me, stay here, hitch-hike or drop dead. I want to get all the way back into town and into the hotel before being stopped. That’s the only way I’m going to clear myself of running out on a hotel bill. Then I’m turning that package over to the law and telling them everything I know.”
“No, Lane. No, please.”
He pushed her hand away. “No more of that, sugar. It doesn’t work any more.”
She grew as solemn as a child. “But I have to get to New York with that package. While you were driving, I was planning on what I would do, too. You see, it won’t do any good for me to be picked up and for that package to be taken. It won’t stop anything or cure anything. There’s a man in New York. I want to go to him. And I want to make a phone call so that after I take the package to him, they’ll come for him and find it there. He laughs about them. They’ve been trying to get him for years. But he’s clever.”
“Then,” said Lane, “Little Lord Fauntleroy told the fairy princess that he believed every last word that dripped from her dainty lips.”
“It’s the truth!”
He lay back and locked his hands behind his head. He squinted up at the blue sky through the live oak leaves. “Darling,” he said lazily, “I wouldn’t believe you if you were on your deathbed and I was your only child.”
She called him a name. He turned and grinned at her. “Now you’re in character again.”
Tears filled her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks. She said in a small voice, “I’ll tell you a story. I suppose it happens a lot. I wouldn’t know. It isn’t a pretty story and it has the corniest possible beginning. It started five years ago in one of those little up-state New York towns, the ones with the elms and the white houses. When I say corny, Lane, I really mean it. I sang in the church choir.”
He turned up onto one elbow. “Oh, come now!” But he looked at her face and saw that it was true.
“You know how it is,” she said, “You’re full of wanting and wanting and yet you don’t really know exactly what it is you want or how to go about getting it. Everything seems dull and you keep imagining yourself as a movie actress or a famous newspaper girl or something. Everybody say you’re pretty. I was a brunette then. And you think of the kind of a man you want to marry, and all of them in the town that aren’t married, they seem so young and dumb. Nothing to them.
“So a band came to town to play for a big dance. I went with a boy and there was a fellow in the band. He played a trumpet. Wherever I was on the floor I could feel him watching me. In his eyes it was like we shared some kind of secret we couldn’t talk about. It made me crazy to find out what the secret was. Oh, he wasn’t good-looking. He was nearly bald and he wasn’t tall, but there was something about him.
“When the band left I followed them, on a coach. It was like that. They let me sing with them and they didn’t pay much because I was green and I had a lot to learn. When we were in New York, the regular girl singer who had been sick came back to work. I couldn’t go home then. The trumpet player went with another band and they went out to the coast and I didn’t have enough money to follow them. I guess he didn’t want me to anyway.
“You learn a lot when you have to learn fast. And the biggest thing I learned was that my voice was really no good. No good at all. That’s a hard thing to learn, Lane. Then George came along. He was the sort of man I’d dreamed about back in the small town. Tall and dark, with a nice crooked smile. He could order wines and he drove a big car and everybody gave him a table as soon as he went into a place. When it was too late, I found out what kind of a business he was in. By then I couldn’t leave him. And just the other day I found out that there isn’t any goodness in him. Nothing but cruelty. Now I want to hurt him.”
“This George,” Lane asked, “he sent you down here to pick up that package? Why?”
“He’s been a little worried for a long time. He was afraid that one of the regular people might be trapped by the law. He thought they might not think of me as to be trusted for a thing like this. All I want to do is frame George. I don’t care what happens after that.”
Lane Sanson shut his eyes against the sun-glare. He could hear the soft metronome of her weeping.
“There’s a better way,” he said, “We’ll both go back and you tell those people what you want to do. Let them rig it for you. If they want the goods on this George character, they’ll play ball with you.”
“They won’t trust me,” she said in a small voice.
“That’s a chance you have to take.”
“I’m frightened, Lane.”
“In what way?”
“Prison. I dream of it sometimes. All gray walls and it’s always raining and gray cotton and big bells ringing. Do this, do that. Years and years, Lane.”
She flung herself toward him, her head under his chin. The sobs shook her and her tears scalded his throat. He put his arm around her and tried to comfort her.
When at last the tempo of the sobs decreased, until they were only great shuddering breaths that came at long intervals, he said, “So we’ll go back as soon as it’s dark?”
Her voice was muffled. “Anything you say, Lane.”
“To keep you amused,” he said bitterly, “I shall now tell you a long story of a promising young citizen named Lane Sanson who, as far as all reports go, apparently dropped dead several years ago. It is a long amusing story about a book and a blonde wife and a problem involving integrity.”
“Tell me,” she whispered.
Chapter Seven
Ambush
When Tomkinton, Clavna and the Ranger named Vance came into the third-floor room, all Christy could do was look at them with his small, alert, blue eyes. Tomkinton came quickly back from the bathroom. He checked the top drawers of the bureau. He whistled softly.
“Bad, bad news, Clav. The bird has flown.”
Clavna cursed with great feeling. “Oh, that’s fine! That’s great! We can probably get jobs as ribbon clerks. You had to be the one to say we didn’t have to cover the whole joint because there was no reason for her to run.”
“Don’t try to pass the buck to me,” Tomkinton said hotly.
“No need to get in a fuss,” Vance said. “This is a tough town to run away from. I’ll put the lid on.” He picked up the room phone.
As he picked it up, there was a loud scream of rubber in front of the hotel. Tomkinton ran to the window. A blue convertible, several years old, rocked down through traffic. He squinted but the license was already too far away for him to read.
“Go down to the lobby and see what you can find out about the car, Clav,” he directed.
Vance, on the phone, was saying, “You already got the description. The Saybree woman. Yeah. Give them the word at the bridge and tell Hall that I think it’s hot enough to radio up the line for the usual road blocks. That leaves the airport and the bus station.”
He hung up and grinned at Tomkinton. He was a lean man with a saddle-leather face and the Ranger uniform sat well on his shoulders. “Least we got us a murderer — if you boys got the right dope on this guy on the floor. He is the one you called Christy, isn’t he?”
“That’s him,” Tomkinton said. Tomkinton was a young, round-faced man with the look of an affable bank teller. He walked over to Christy. He said softly, “Killing Shaymen was a mistake, friend. A bad mistake. Not up to your usual style.”