Chapter 27
Wednesday, March 2nd, 1966
Monday night and Tuesday night passed without incident, save for Abe’s and Corey’s perpetual cursing. To exist in a miasma of skunk was a torment amounting to torture, for no brain in creation had ever managed to do what brains normally did with smells, horrible or otherwise: blot them out after a little time had elapsed. Skunk stuck, skunk was the absolute olfactory pits. Only their affection for Carmine had persuaded them to consent, but once the skunk was applied, they rued it. Luckily the bathtub in the old section of the County Services building was large enough to fit two men in it at one time, otherwise a very old friendship might have soured.
The weather continued fine and above freezing; perfect for abductions. No rain, no wind.
Carmine had tried to think of every contingency. Besides Abe, Corey and himself concealed where they had an unobstructed view of the tunnel door, there were unmarkeds on each corner of Deer Lane, on each corner of Ponsonby Lane, one in front of Major Minor’s reception office, one in the spot where Carmine had hidden himself a month ago, and more on Route 133. These vehicles were for effect; Ponsonby would be expecting them because he must have seen the ones on Deer Lane a month ago. The real shadowers were concealed up the driveways of the four houses on Deer Lane. No car was already parked in them; Carmine surmised that the car Ponsonby used was definitely well down Route 133. Though it wasn’t either of the cars in his garage, the station wagon and the red Mustang convertible; they had been there a month ago, and they were there now. Perhaps his accomplice provided the transportation? In which case, Ponsonby walked to a rendezvous.
“At least you get to wear nose plugs,” Carmine comforted as the three crept up the slope, secure in the fact that Ponsonby was still driving home from the Hug. “I may not be wearing any eau de skunk, but I do have to smell the pair of you. Man, do you stink!”
“Mouth breathing isn’t much help,” Corey groused. “I can taste the fucking awful stuff! And I finally know why it drives dogs insane.”
Falling back on the talents of the departmental bird watcher, Pete Evans, they had constructed a good hide twenty feet from the door without a tree trunk between it and them. All three lay flat, but able to take turns in rolling on their sides to prevent their muscles locking up; one man was sufficient to keep vigil provided that the other two were alert.
There had turned out to be no warning devices, even a trip wire; given his own tumble, Carmine had thought them unlikely. Ponsonby was positive his tunnel was his secret. His conceit on the subject was interesting, as if it lived in a different part of his psyche from Dr. Charles Ponsonby, researcher and bon vivant. In fact, Ponsonby was a mass of contradictions – afraid of picking up a rat, unafraid of police interception.
While Carmine waited out the boring hours, he pondered on the tunnel. Who had made it? How old was it? Despite cutting off the extra distance ascending and descending the ridge involved, it had to be at least three hundred yards long, maybe longer. Even if it was too small in bore to permit a man to do other than crawl down it on his belly, what had happened to the soil and small rocks taken out of it? Connecticut was a land of dry stone walls because its farmers had removed the stones from their fields as they ploughed. How many tons of soil and small rocks? One hundred? Two hundred? How was it ventilated, for ventilated it must be? Had those two old barns from upstate New York provided the timber for shoring up?
At 2 A.M. on that cloudy night came a faint noise, a groaning that gradually increased, then changed to the soft whine of well-lubricated hinges occluded by particles of dirt. Dryer than when Carmine had fallen, the covering of dead leaves cascaded to the far side as the door opened toward the three men in their hide. The shape that emerged from a black cavity was just as black; it poised, crouching, gave a tiny mew of disgust as a strong odor of skunk wafted its way. The dog’s head popped up, then disappeared immediately. Biddy would not be doing guard duty tonight. They could hear Ponsonby coaxing the dog out, but no dog came. Skunk.
The arrangement was that Carmine would follow Ponsonby while Corey and Abe remained by the tunnel entrance; he waited with breath suspended as the shape straightened to a man’s height, so dark that it was difficult to see amid the shadowy lightlessness of this moonless, starless night. What is he wearing? Carmine asked himself. Even the face was invisible. And when the shape began to move, it went silently, hardly a whisper of feet on the forest floor. Carmine too wore black, had blackened his face and put on sneakers, but he didn’t dare approach the shape too nearly – twenty feet minimum, praying that Ponsonby’s head covering made it harder for him to hear.
Ponsonby flitted off down the slope toward the circular end of Deer Lane. Just short of the parking area Ponsonby veered in the direction of Route 133, still concealed by the woods, which continued on this side all the way to 133. Now that the ground was more level, Carmine found his quarry actually harder to see; he was tempted to diverge the short distance to the road, on which he could make better progress, but Holloman Council’s parsimony denied him this. Gravel.
The sweat was pouring off him, blinding him; he brushed it out of his eyes quickly, but when he looked to where the shape had been at the start of his gesture, it wasn’t there. Not because Ponsonby had realized he was being followed, Carmine was sure. A quirk of fate. He had left his tunnel door open; the moment he thought he was followed, he would have returned to it, and in that direction he definitely hadn’t gone. He was still heading for Route 133, lost in the darkness.
Carmine did the sensible thing, took to the gravel and ran as quietly as he could toward the humdrum Chrysler parked on Deer Lane’s forested corner.
“He’s out, but I lost him,” he said to Marciano and Patrick after he climbed in and shut the back door gently. “Ghost is the right word for him. He’s wearing black from head to foot, he makes no sound, and he must have better eyes than a night bird. He also must know every inch of this forest. There’s nothing else for it now, we have to wait for him to come home with some poor, terrified girl. God, I didn’t want it to go that far!”
“Do we get word out on the radio?” Marciano asked.
“No, since we have no idea what kind of vehicle he’s using. He might have something sitting on his dashboard good enough to tune into every band we have. You wait here until I buzz you on my two-way that he’s back at his tunnel, give me ten minutes, then you and the rest close in on the house. That’s still best.”
Carmine got out of the car and took to the trees, working his way back to the parking area and then up to the hide.
“I lost him, so now we wait.”
“He can’t be going far,” Corey said low-voiced. “He’s too late to get farther than Holloman County.”
When Ponsonby returned around 5 A.M. he was a little easier to see; though the body slung around his shoulders was wrapped in black, it gave him more bulk, added noise to his footsteps. Instead of coming up from Deer Lane, he approached the gaping door from its side, dumped his cargo on the ground in front of the hole and insinuated himself into it before dragging the bundle down in his wake. The door closed, apparently worked by a lever, and the night went back to its usual foresty sounds.
Carmine’s finger was actually on the call button of his two-way to send Marciano the signal when he heard something: he froze, nudged his companions to keep still and quiet. A figure breasted the ridge above and began the descent to the door, led by the panting, grizzling, reluctant dog, torn between its guiding duties and the unbearable stench of skunk. Claire Ponsonby. She carried a big bucket and a rake. Desperate to get away, Biddy kept whining and straining at its harness while she hung on to the loop, forced to work one-handed, trying to persuade the dog to stay. First she used the rake to cover the door with the leaves already heaped to one side, then she emptied her bucket of leaves on top of them and raked again. Finally she gave up fighting the dog, shrugged and turned to let Biddy lead her up the incline.