Papa Joe’s whole body shook as if with a chill. But his voice came flat, controlled. “What are you going to do now?”
“Get back to the house as fast as I can, knock my stomach in place with a stiff slug of Old Seaman, then call the police.” Instantly I wondered if I’d sounded flippant. I hadn’t wanted to.
“No,” Papa Joe said, “you’re not calling the police.” The shaking was gone now. As he faced me he was like a tight steel spring.
“What else can we do?” I demanded. “We can’t conceal the fact that the man followed Harold here to Asheville. If we try to hide this, it’s going to make matters worse. Let’s shoot it clean. That’s Harold’s only chance.”
“Steve, Harold is my own son, my only son. Do you think I’ll allow him to be sacrificed to a whim of yours?”
I experienced an upsurge of impatience. It was not a moment to be governed by whims, even his.
I took a step toward the cottage. Papa Joe’s cane moved with the speed of a’ striking snake. I managed to get my face out of the way, but the cane crashed on my shoulders. Before he could strike again, I tore it out of his grasp.
He stiffened, breathing thickly through his nostrils, the glitter in his eyes a challenge.
“Because of the years Harold and I spent together as children,” I said, “I’ll do what I can to help him. Otherwise, the feelings you and I have for each other are such that we can’t stay under the same roof much longer. Now go back to the house. I think Harold went there. Try to get him calmed down. He’s going to need a sound, steady grip on himself. I’ll see if there’s anything at all that can be done for McGinty, then we’ll call the police.”
I handed the cane back to him. He strode stiffly away.
The back door of the cottage was still standing open, as Harold had left it in his headlong flight. I groped my way into a dark hall.
I could feel damp sweat on the palms of my hands. If McGinty was alive I didn’t want him thinking I was Harold, and start shooting.
I said, “McGinty, this is not Cranford. I’m Steve Martin. I’ve come to help you.”
There was no answer. The silence became stifling. A wan glow of light was just ahead — the flashlight that Harold had dropped.
I entered the room where the shooting had taken place. The smell of gunpowder was still strong. I picked up the flashlight and moved to the room where McGinty had crashed down.
The room was empty! McGinty had gone down in this room. I had heard him fall. But he was not there now!
Chapter IV
There were two or three pieces of junk furniture in the room, none of them large enough to conceal McGinty. I pushed a moth-eaten hassock to one side and opened the closet door. The closet yawned emptily.
I didn’t begin to get the shakes, though, until I had searched every room in the bungalow, without finding McGinty. Had he crawled outside? But it was incredible that a man carrying five bullets in his back could have crawled away in the short time between Harold’s departure and when I entered the place.
Nevertheless, I checked the doors and windows. All were locked except the door Harold had used. The back door, then, was the only possible exit from the cottage. Beyond it stretched the high grass of the back yard for about a hundred feet before it blended with the high weeds of a vacant lot. The grass was heavy with the moisture of a summer night in the mountains. A wounded man laboring across the yard would have left a trail a child could read. Yet for spots which Harold’s feet had mashed, the grass in that yard was untrampled. McGinty most definitely had not crawled out of the cottage and away. He must still be in there. But how could I have missed anything as large as McGinty’s bulk?
I went back inside, and this time I included the attic and the cellar in my search. A cold sweat was on my face.
Finally I went back to the room in which Harold had shot McGinty, leveled the light in my hand as if it were a gun. Could Harold possibly have missed at this point-blank range?
I searched the wall and door casing, but found no bullet marks. Those bullets had come to rest in McGinty’s broad back and chest. When I had searched for signs of blood leading to the back door, and found none, I knew nothing else to do.
Standing on the back steps, I felt the slow, hard beating of my heart against my ribs. McGinty was not human — able to take five bullets, lose no blood, and walk or run across the back yard without leaving any foot marks on the grass.
Such a creature did not exist, of course. Then what had happened? Had I witnesses a killing at all? But I knew I had.
Vera was waiting on the front porch when I got back to the house on Northland. When she saw me, she ran to meet me halfway down the walk. She caught my arm.
“Steve! What has happened? Harold came in babbling that McGinty wouldn’t hound him any longer. Right after that, Papa Joe showed up, practically writhing. He was seething with anger, and deeply frightened at the same time. He called Harold into the parlor and they talked for a minute. Then Papa Joe went upstairs, yelling for Wilfred. He hasn’t come down since, and I can’t get anything out of Harold. I’ve been waiting for you. What is it, Steve?”
“I’m not sure yet. Where is Harold?”
“Upstairs, in our room.”
She followed me up. I opened the door. Harold swiveled his body around from the bureau. He’d been pouring himself a drink from the bottle that Wilfred had brought up from downstairs.
I closed the door. Vera moved around beside me, watching both of us.
I said bluntly, “You’re in serious trouble, Harold. If you want help, you’d better level with me. Why has McGinty followed you all the way down here because of that wharf girl painting?”
“Who said anything about the painting?”
“I did,” Vera said quietly. “Don’t you think you’d better tell him the rest of it?” She curved her glance at me. She was badly frightened, but clinging to her remaining poise with sheer willpower.
Harold had had almost an hour to calm himself down. The flush in his cheeks revealed that he’d been hitting the bottle heavily, bolstering his courage.
“First, Steve,” he said cautiously, “what are you going to do? Have a big slug and call the cops, as you told Papa Joe?”
“No, not yet.”
Astonishment whitened his face. “You mean you’ll help me get McGinty out of there so no one will ever know?”
“Not hardly. McGinty vanished.”
“He what?”
“Just that. There’s no trace of him in the cottage. No bulletholes. No blood.”
Silence fell over the room. Vera’s mouth worked. She cried suddenly, “What is this about bullets and blood?”
Harold set the whisky on the bureau and moved quickly to take her in his arms. But she was almost herself. She backed away from him, hysterical tears spilling down her cheeks.
“No, don’t try to wheedle me into submission! Tell me what happened to McGinty!”
“Darling, please—” Harold slipped his arm about her. She shrugged it off quickly, turning to me.
“Then Steve will tell me!”
Over her shoulder I glimpsed Harold’s anxious face. The plea in his eyes was urgent, unmistakable. It might have influenced me more than I thought but at the moment I believed I was thinking only of the lovely, distraught girl who was his wife.
I gripped her shoulders, kept my voice even and gentle as possible. “Tonight Harold met McGinty and fired a gun at him. Fortunately, he did not shoot straight.”
She murmured a broken, thankful sounding word and sank in a chair. Harold poured a small drink of straight whisky for her. She took it.