There was an interval of midnight in a small room with the windows shut and no air. My chest labored against the ground. They put a ton of coal on my back. One of the hard lumps pressed into the middle of my back. I made some noises. but they must have been unimportant. Nobody bothered about them. I heard the sound of a boat motor get louder, and a soft thud of feet walking on the pine needles, making a dry, slithering sound. Then a couple of heavy grunts and steps going away. Then steps coming back and a hurry voice, with a sort of accent.
«What did you get there, Charlie?»
«Oh nothing,» Charlie said cooingly. «Smoking pipe, not doing anything. Summer visitor, ha, ha.»
«Did he see the stiff?»
«Not seeing,» Charlie said. I wondered why.
«Okay, let’s go.»
«Ah, too bad,» Charlie said. «Too bad.» The weight got off my back and the lumps of hard coal went away from my spine. «Too bad,» Charlie said again. «But must do.»
He didn’t fool this time. He hit me with the gun. Come around and I’ll let you feel the lump under my scalp. I’ve got several of them.
Time passed and I was up on my knees, whining. I put a foot on the ground and hoisted myself on it and wiped my face off with the back of my hand and put the other foot on the ground and climbed out of the hole it felt like I was in.
The shine of water, dark now from the sun but silvered by the moon, was directly in front of me. To the right was the big fallen tree. That brought it back. I moved cautiously towards it, rubbing my head with careful fingertips. It was swollen and soft, but not bleeding. I stopped and looked back for my hat, and then remembered I had left it in the car.
I went around the tree. The moon was bright as it can only be in the mountains or on the desert. You could almost see that there was no body on the ground now and no gun lying against the tree with ants crawling on it. The ground had a sort of smoothed-out, raked look.
I stood there and listened, and all I heard was the blood pounding in my head, and all I felt was my head aching. Then my hand jumped for the gun and the gun was there. And the hand jumped again for my wallet and the wallet was there. I hauled it out and looked at my money. That seemed to be there, too.
I turned around and plowed back to the car. I wanted to go back to the hotel and get a couple of drinks and lie down. I wanted to meet Charlie after a while, but not right away. First I wanted to lie down for a while. I was a growing boy and I needed rest.
I got into the car and started it and tooled it around on the soft ground and back on to the dirt road and back along that to the highway. I didn’t meet any cars. The music was still going well in the dancing pavilion off to the side, and the throaty-voiced singer was giving out «I’ll Never Smile Again.»
When I reached the highway I put the lights on and drove back to the village. The local law hung out in a one-room pineboard shack halfway up the block from the boat landing, across the street from the firehouse. There was a naked light burning inside, behind a glass-paneled door.
I stopped the car on the other side of the street and sat there for a minute looking into the shack. There was a man inside, sitting bareheaded in a swivel chair at an old rolltop desk. I opened the car door and moved to get out, then stopped and shut the door again and started the motor and drove on.
I had a hundred dollars to earn, after all.
THREE
I drove two miles past the village and came to the bakery and turned on a newly oiled road towards the lake. I passed a couple of camps and then saw the brownish tents of the boys’ camp with lights strung between them and a clatter coming from a big tent where they were washing dishes. A little beyond that the road curved around an inlet and a dirt road branched off. It was deeply rutted and full of stones half embedded in the dirt, and the trees barely gave it room to pass. I went by a couple of lighted cabins, old ones built of pine with the bark left on. Then the road climbed and the place got emptier, and after a while a big cabin hung over the edge of the bluff looking down on the lake at its feet. The cabin had two chimneys and a rustic fence, and a double garage outside the fence. There was a long porch on the lake side, and steps going down to the water. Light came from the windows. My headlights tilted up enough to catch the name Baldwin painted on a wooden board nailed to a tree. This was the cabin, all right.
The garage was open and a sedan was parked in it. I stopped a little beyond and went far enough into the garage to feel the exhaust pipe of the car. It was cold. I went through a rustic gate up a path outlined in stones to the porch. The door opened as I got there. A tall woman stood there, framed against the light. A little silky dog rushed out past her, tumbled down the steps and hit me in the stomach with two front paws, then dropped to the ground and ran in circles making noises of approval.
«Down, Shiny!» the woman called. «Down! Isn’t she a funny little dog? Funny itty doggie. She’s half coyote.»
The dog ran back into the house. I said: «Are you Mrs. Lacey? I’m Evans. I called you up about an hour ago.»
«Yes, I’m Mrs. Lacey,» she said. «My husband hasn’t come in yet. I — well, come in, won’t you?» Her voice had a remote sound, like a voice in the mist.
She closed the door behind me after I went in and stood there looking at me, then shrugged a little and sat down in a wicker chair. I sat down in another just like it. The dog appeared from nowhere, jumped in my lap, wiped a neat tongue across the end of my nose and jumped down again. It was a small grayish dog with a sharp nose and a long, feathery tail.
It was a long room with a lot of windows and not very fresh curtains at them. There was a big fireplace, Indian rugs, two davenports with faded cretonne slips over them, more wicker furniture, not too comfortable. There were some antlers on the wall, one pair with six points.
«Fred isn’t home yet,» Mrs. Lacey said again. «I don’t know what’s keeping him.»
I nodded. She had a pale face, rather taut, dark hair that was a little wild. She was wearing a double-breasted scarlet coat with brass buttons, gray flannel slacks, pigskin clog sandals, and no stockings. There was a necklace of cloudy amber around her throat and a bandeau of old-rose material in her hair. She was in her middle thirties, so it was too late for her to learn how to dress herself.
«You wanted to see my husband on business?»
«Yes. He wrote me to come up and stay at the Indian Head and phone him.»
«Oh — at the Indian Head,» she said, as if that meant something. She crossed her legs, didn’t like them that way, and uncrossed them again. She leaned forward and cupped a long chin in her hand. «What kind of business are you in, Mr. Evans?»
«I’m a private detective.»
«It’s… it’s about the money?» she asked quickly.
I nodded. That seemed safe. It was usually about money. It was about a hundred dollars that I had in my pocket, anyhow.
«Of course,» she said. «Naturally. Would you care for a drink?»
«Very much.»
She went over to a little wooden bar and came back with two glasses. We drank. We looked at each other over the rims of our glasses.
«The Indian Head,» she said. «We stayed there two nights when we came up. While the cabin was being cleaned up. It had been empty for two years before we bought it. They get so dirty.»
«I guess so,» I said.
«You say my husband wrote to you?» She was looking down into her glass now. «I suppose he told you the story.»
I offered her a cigarette. She started to reach, then shook her head and put her hand on her kneecap and twisted it. She gave me the careful up-from-under look.
«He was a little vague,» I said. «In spots.»