There was a faint click as the celluloid slid back the tongue of the lock. I opened the door a crack. The passageway was dark. I couldn't hear a sound from inside the house. "Let's go," I whispered to Harris, who was standing on the step behind me. There was a blur of movement I knew was caused by his putting on his mask. I lined myself up with the doorway and moved straight down the black passageway to avoid bumping into anything.
My outstretched left hand made contact with the wood of the inner door. I groped for the knob, found it, and turned it. The door inched open. It wasn't locked. I reached across my chest with my right hand and drew the Sauer from its holster. I opened the door wide and walked into the lighted kitchen with the automatic showing in my hand.
A woman in pajamas with her hair up in curlers was standing at the stove. She was stirring a steaming pot with a long-handled ladle. She appeared middle-aged although her complexion was unlined. Her mouth opened but no sound emerged as she stared at me. The ladle hung in midair where her arm movement had frozen. Liquid dripped from it to expire with a hiss on the burner. On the kitchen table beside the woman there was a green wooden tray with deep troughs containing wooden dishes and bowls and wooden utensils.
The woman's eyes passed fearfully from the gun in my hand to the masked Harris, who appeared beside me. "What-what do you want?" she whispered.
"Call your husband," I said in a normal tone. "But carefully. No panic. No one's going to get hurt."
She moistened dry lips. "He-he can't hear me if I call him from here."
"Then let's go where he can hear you. Carefully," I said again. She dropped the ladle into the pot. I followed her from the kitchen in gradually diminishing light through a dining room to a flight of stairs at the front of the house. I could hear her clear her throat. "George!" she called huskily. There was no response. "George!" There was an edge of panic in her tone until a muffled voice answered from upstairs. "Please bring my robe down to the kitchen."
She led the way back into the lighted area of the house. I heard footsteps on the front stair treads, and Harris moved to one side to widen the distance between us. Slippered feet shuffled through the dining room. "You know it's your turn to get the meal, Shirley," George Mace was complaining as he entered the kitchen with his wife's robe over his arm. "Why did you-"
His plaintive query choked off as he focused on Harris and me. His startled glance took in Harris's mask and my automatic. "What's going on h-here?" he said in a tone he tried to make forceful but which quavered in spite of him.
His wife held out her hand for the robe. He handed it to her automatically. She slipped it on as Harris spoke for the first time. "Do what you're told and nothing will happen, Mace."
"You know my name?" Bewilderment took over from fear.
"You and your boss are going to take us down to the bank in a couple of hours," Harris informed him. "In the meantime, just behave yourself."
"Whatever it is you're planning, you'll never get away with it!" Mace said sharply.
I was looking at the tray on the kitchen table with its wooden bowls and spoons. "Who's the meal for?" I asked Shirley Mace.
She swallowed. "M-me."
"You wouldn't need a tray. Who else is in the house?"
"N-nobody."
"She was bringing the tray up to me," George Mace said quickly. "I haven't been feeling-"
"Shut your mouth," I told him. I looked at the woman. "Tell me. Right now."
"It's for my-our daughter," she got out painfully.
"You haven't any kids!" Harris said at once. His tone was brittle. A stubby-barreled Colt appeared in his right hand. He took two long strides toward Mace and placed the gun against his head. "Who else is in this house?"
"It's the truth!" Shirley Mace burst out. "It's-it's the truth, that's all!"
I gestured for Harris to step away from the ashen-faced assistant bank manager. "Then take the meal to her," I said to the woman. Shirley Mace stared at me blankly. "I said take the tray to your daughter."
She looked at her husband. I had never seen such an expression on a grown man's face. George Mace looked as if he were going to cry. "Do-do what they say, Shirley," he said. His voice broke.
"And no tricks," Harris added, his tone hard.
Shirley Mace turned back to the stove. She ladled the bowls on the tray full of a rich-looking stew. Considering the hour of the morning and the soggy temperature outside, it was a heavy meal. Mrs. Mace went to the refrigerator and removed a large plastic glass of milk. She placed this in a slot on the tray, added half a dozen cookies, and picked up the tray. "Open the door, George," she said in a dull tone.
Her husband stepped forward and opened a door I had thought led to a pantry. Steps were visible leading down to a basement. Mace leaned forward and snapped on a light. Mrs. Mace started down the stairs. I moved in behind her. "You go, too," Harris said from behind me to George Mace. I could hear their footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.
The basement was well lighted. At first glance I thought it was small. Then I realized that what appeared to be a foundation wall was actually a high wooden fence. The area inside the fence took up most of the space in the basement. Mrs. Mace went to a door in the fence, balanced the tray on one arm, and pulled a wooden pin that latched the door.
The opening of the door disclosed that the interior was actually a stockade. It, too, was brightly lighted. Floor and walls were padded with mattresses. A tubular-steel jungle gym like the type seen in playgrounds stood in one corner. Seated on the floor mattress was a naked girl. She was stocky, with wide shoulders and good, clear skin. She had long black hair streaming down her back, and she was smiling at us with the childlike smile of a five-year-old welcoming visitors to a pretend tea party. Physically, she could have been twenty-five.
Mrs. Mace approached to within a couple of yards of the seated girl and stooped to place the tray in front of her. "Here's your dinner, Rachel," she said in a stifled voice. I noticed that she didn't get too close to the girl.
I looked at Preacher Harris. He was staring in horror at the mentally retarded Rachel, who had picked up one of the bowls of stew and was slurping down its contents without bothering with a spoon. Some of the greasy stew spilled over and ran down between her full breasts. She paid no attention.
I moved over to George Mace, who was standing in the open doorway with a wounded look on his face. "Twenty-two years in the same house and the same job," I said. "No vacations, no social life together. One of you stayed with her all the time?"
"Exactly," Shirley Mace said bitterly. For the first time she sounded as though she were coming out of the shock induced by our appearance in her kitchen. "He wouldn't have her put away."
"That's enough, Shirley," her husband said with the air of a man who has been over the same tired ground innumerable times. "She's ours."
I looked at the interior walls of the wooden stockade, which showed signs of reinforcement in several places. "She's dangerous?" I asked Mace.
"She's very strong," he replied. "Can we go upstairs now?"
Preacher Harris was tugging at my arm. When I turned to him, he drew me to one side. "Let's pack it in here," he said urgently. "Altogether." He was looking at Rachel stuffing whole cookies into her mouth and dribbling as much milk into her lap as into her mouth. "This-this-I can't-" Harris drew a deep breath. "We could never move her to the Barton house, anyway."
"Just take it easy," I said. "We'll work it out."
Shirley Mace reapproached her daughter when the girl set down the empty glass and beamed vacantly at us again. "Over to the shower now, Rachel," she said in a coaxing tone. The girl rose and shambled toward the corner where an open shower stall stood. En route she had to pass the jungle gym, and she reached upward and hand-walked the length of the overhead bars effortlessly.