“All right,” he said. “Now go back to the car. Walk up that pathway of light from here, and get back in the car, and wait for me in it. And don’t look around, just keep walking straight ahead.”
She didn’t seem to understand, or else was too undone by terror to be able to move of her own volition. He had to give her a slight push away from him to start her off. She tottered a few uncertain steps through the shuffling leaves.
“Go ahead, keep walking straight back along those lights like I told you,” his voice came after her. “And don’t look back!”
She was a woman and a frightened one. The admonition had an opposite effect to that intended; it brought her head around, uncontrollably.
He already had the gun out in his hand, although he hadn’t quite brought it all the way up yet, it was still at half position. It must have come out silently behind her back as she was moving away.
Her scream was like a bird, clawed and dying, that manages to spiral up through the trees for one last flutter before it drops down dead. She tried to close in toward him again, as though nearness was a guarantee of immunity and the danger lay in being detached from him.
“Stay there!” he warned flintily. “I tried to make it as easy for you as I could, I told you not to look back.”
“Don’t! What for?” she wailed. “I told you I’d tell them everything you want me to! I told you I would! I will, I will—!”
“No,” he contradicted with horrifying calm, “you won’t, and I’ll make sure you don’t. Tell it to him instead, when he catches up to you in the next world, about half an hour from now.” His arm stretched out at firing position with the gun.
She made a perfect silhouette against the fuzzy headlight glare. Trapped, unable even to flee aside into the protective darkness beyond the beams in time, for they were so wide, she floundered around where she stood in a complete, befuddled circle, that brought her around facing him once more as she had been before.
That was all there was time for.
Then the shot echoed thunderously under the ceiling of trees overhead. Her scream was its counterpoint.
He must have missed, as fairly close to one another as they were. There was no smoke at his end, as there should have been, though her mind had no time to reason about that. She felt nothing; she still staved up, too dazed to run or do anything but waver there, like a ribbon streamer before an electric fan. He was the one stumbled sideways against a near-by tree trunk, leaned there inertly for a minute, face pressed against the bark, as though in remorse for what he had just attempted. Then she saw that he was holding his shoulder with the other hand. The gun winked harmlessly from the bed of leaves where he had dropped it, like a lump of coal in the light flare.
A man’s figure glided swiftly past her from the rear, went down the path of light toward him. He was holding a gun of his own, she saw, centered on the crumbling figure against the tree. He dipped for a minute, and the wink was gone from the leaves underfoot. Then he stepped in close, there was a flash of reflected light down by their wrists, and something made the sound of a twig snapping. Lombard’s sagging figure came away from the tree, leaned soddenly against him, then straightened itself.
In the leaden quiet the second man’s voice reached her clearly.
“I arrest you for the murder of Marcella Henderson!”
He put something to his lips, and a whistle sounded with doleful, long drawn out finality. Then the silence came down on the three of them again.
Burgess leaned down solicitously and raised her from the kneeling position she had collapsed into on the bed of leaves, hands pressed tightly over her sobbing face.
“I know,” he said soothingly. “I know it was pretty bad. It’s over now. It’s over. You did the job. You’ve saved him. Lean on me, that’s it. Have a good cry. Go to it. You’ve got it coming to you.”
Womanlike, she stopped then and there. “I don’t want to now. I’m all right, now. It’s just that — I didn’t think anyone would get here in time to—”
“They wouldn’t have just by tailing the two of you. Not the way he drove.” A second car had braked somewhere farther up the lane only moments before; its occupants hadn’t even reached the spot yet. “I couldn’t take any chances on that. I was riding right with you the whole way out, didn’t you know that? I was right in the trunk compartment. I heard the whole thing. I’ve been in it ever since you first walked inside the store.”
He raised his voice, shouted back to where flashlights were winking fitfully under the trees as the second party descended. “Is that Gregory and the rest of you fellows? Go back — don’t waste time getting out and coming over here. Get over to the highway fast and get on the nearest telephone. Get the District Attorney’s office. We only have a few minutes. I’ll follow you in the other car. Tell them I’m holding a guy named John Lombard, self-confessed killer of Mrs. Henderson, to get word to the warden—”
“You haven’t got a bit of evidence against me,” Lombard growled, wincing with pain.
“No? What more do I need than what you’ve just given me? I caught you in the very act of murdering in cold blood a girl whom you never even set eyes on until just an hour ago! What could you have possibly had against her, except that her evidence was the one thing that could have still saved Henderson, absolved him of the crime? And why were you determined not to let that happen? Because that would have meant reopening the whole case, and your own immunity would have been endangered. That’s my evidence against you!”
A State Trooper came thudding up to them. “Need a hand here?”
“Carry the girl over to the car. She’s just been through a pretty rocky experience and needs looking after. I’ll take care of the guy.”
The husky trooper picked her up bodily, cradled her in his arms. “Who is she?” he asked over his shoulder, as he led the way back along the glowing headlight carpet.
“A pretty valuable little person,” Burgess answered from the rear, jarring his prisoner along beside him, “so walk gently with her, officer, walk slow. That’s Henderson’s girl, Carol Richman, you’re holding in your arms. The best man of us all.”
23
One Day After the Execution
They were together in the living room of Burgess’ small flat in Jackson Heights. That was the scene of their first meeting, following the release. He’d arranged it that way for them. He’d had her there waiting for Henderson, when the latter came down on the train. As he expressed it to her, “Who wants to meet outside a prison gate? You two have had enough of that stuff already. Wait for him over at my place. It may be only instalment-plan furniture, but at least it’s non-penal.”
They were sitting close together on the sofa, in soft lamplight, in a state of profound — if still somewhat dazed — peace. Henderson had his arm around her, and her head was resting in the notch of his shoulder.
Something about the two of them gave Burgess a choking feeling in the throat, when he came in and saw them. “How’s it coming, you two?” he asked gruffly, in order not to show it.
“Gee, everything’s so good-looking, isn’t it?” Henderson marvelled. “I’d almost forgotten how good-looking everything is. Carpets on the floor. Soft light coming from a lampshade. A sofa cushion behind me. And look, the best-looking thing of all—” He nudged the top of her head with his chin. “It’s all mine, I’ve got it all back again, and it’s good for another forty years yet!”