“Check,” Carl said. He took the keys and went out.
I could see a little of it now. They were hanging it on her quite neatly. The police already wanted me, and now they’d be after her, too, for killing Macaulay. I didn’t know what Barclay wanted with her, but he had her from every angle. There was nowhere we could run.
Nine
“Here, George.”
Barclay took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and tossed it, waddled into a ball, to the big towhead. “Put that in her mouth, so she doesn’t cry out in the alley.”
George tilted her face up and rammed the handkerchief into her mouth. Then he tied his own across it and around her neck to hold it in. She was crying softly and offered no resistance.
“Go, shall we?” Barclay said.
I saw him through dancing flickers of rage. My head was splitting and I was helpless and weak as a cat, nothing seemed to matter. “Suppose I don’t”? I asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he answered crisply. “Would you like to have her knocked about a bit to convince you?”
There was nothing else to do. I stood up. George gave me a bright, hard grin, and led her past. As they started out through the archway she pulled suddenly away and tried to fall to her knees beside Macaulay. George cursed and yanked her back. Barclay watched me with his hand in the pocket of his jacket. He shook his head warningly.
“Your boy’s good,” I said.
“He’s efficient.”
“Don’t overmatch him and get him hurt,” I said. “He might lose his confidence.”
George glanced back over his shoulder at me. Barclay said, “Let’s not be heroic, Manning. Suppose you follow them.”
I followed them. Barclay followed me. As we went through the kitchen I could hear the phonograph softly playing Victor Herbert for a dead man, and then we were outside in the darkness and Barclay eased the door shut. I could see nothing but the pale gleam of her head, and that very faintly. Barclay had taken the gun from his pocket and was holding it against my back as we walked slowly through the garden and out the gate. At the end of the alley George stopped and I bumped gently against her. He stepped ahead to peer up and down the sidewalk. I put my hand on her arm and let it slide down until I had her hand in mine. I squeezed it, but there was no answering pressure. All her lines were down.
“All right,” George whispered.
We moved ahead across the walk. There was no one in sight. It was just another peaceful evening in an upper-middle-class suburb where the only violence was on 21-inch screens. George opened the door of the truck and tipped the seat up. He helped Shannon Macaulay into the back and got in himself.
“Get in,” Barclay whispered to me. I slid under the wheel and he sat beside me. “You know where to pick up Carl. Don’t attempt anything foolish.”
They couldn’t get away with it, but they did. We rolled downtown through increasing streams of traffic. I counted three police cars, and once one stopped beside us at a traffic light almost near enough to touch. It was like a nightmare. Every turn of the wheels was taking her farther beyond the reach of help by anyone. There was nothing in the house to indicate the others had ever been there, and when the police found her car abandoned at the airport they would be sure she had done it and fled.
Just before we reached the corner of Lindsay and Second, Barclay climbed over the seat and sat on the floor in back with the others. I stopped. Carl got in. We went on, going out of town now. Nobody said anything. I thought of their three guns. It was like driving a nitro-glycerin truck over a rough road.
Traffic thinned out. We were driving through dimly lighted streets. I made the last turn and stopped before the gates of the boat yard. I beeped the horn. The old watchman swung them open. I pulled inside and he stood by my elbow.
“I’m going to get under way in a few minutes,” I said. “This man will drive the truck back to a garage for me.”
He glanced at Carl. There was dead silence from the rear of the truck. I could hear my own breathing. Carl nodded.
“Okay, Mr. Manning,” the watchman said. “You need any help down there at the dock?”
I shook my head. “No. Thanks.”
We rolled ahead.
At the lower end of the yard I swung the truck in a circle and backed it up against the end of the pier. The watchman was settling down with his magazine again, in the pool of light at the gate. Everything was black behind us.
“Get out and open the rear door, Manning,” Barclay said softly.
I stepped out. Carl slid behind the wheel. I went around in back and pulled the door open. They stepped out. “Give us two minutes,” Barclay whispered to Carl. “Then drive on out.”
I led the way down the pier with Barclay close behind me and then George and Shannon Macaulay. It was intensely dark and I had to keep my eyes averted from the glow of lights over the city off to the left in order to make out the form of the pier and the clots of shadow which were the craft moored to it. Beyond in the channel the buoy winked on and off and the bell clanged restlessly in the night. Then the tall stick of the Ballerina was above us, shadowy against the stars. I felt my way aboard and stepped down into the cockpit.
“Stand clear,” Barclay whispered. “Move to the aft end of the cockpit and sit down.”
He was taking no chances of our being scrambled too closely together in close quarters in the dark. I stepped back. I could have jumped over the side and possibly escaped, but he knew I wouldn’t. I had nowhere to go, with the police looking for me, and I couldn’t leave her. They helped her down into the cockpit.
“Take her below and stay there with her,” Barclay said quietly. “I’ll watch Manning.”
I could hear the soft scraping of shoes on the companionway and two shadows disappeared. “Start your auxiliary, Manning, and cast off,” Barclay said. “Let’s go to sea.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I’ll give you a course when we’re outside. Now, step to it.”
“I’ll have to light the running lights first. Is that all right with you?”
“Certainly.”
“I just wanted to be sure I had your permission.”
He sighed in the darkness. “I assure you this is no game, Manning. It should have penetrated before now, but in case it hasn’t I’d like to call your attention to the fact that your position is very poor, and Mrs. Macaulay’s is even more dangerous. What happens to her depends on the way the two of you co-operate. Now suppose you take this sloop away from the dock before the watchman hears us and comes down here to investigate.”
Getting the watchman killed would accomplish nothing. “All right,” I said. As soon as the running lights were burning I started the engine and cast off the lines. We moved slowly away from the pier. I took her straight out toward the channel and swung hard over as we cleared the buoy. The twin rows of the channel markers stretched ahead of us, going seaward between the long dark lines of the jetties. There was no other traffic.
Barclay sat down across from me in the cockpit and lit a cigarette. The tip glowed. “Neat, wasn’t it?” he asked, above the noise of the engine.
“I suppose so,” I said. “If killing people is your idea of neatness.”