Still, after the foolishness he had been smart. Immediately the car had stopped, even before the flames had begun to lick up, he had grabbed the dead driver’s wallet and suitcase. Then out of the car and away, into the darkness, while behind him the flames had suddenly opened like a great mouth, engulfing the car, and all at once exploding.
Some busybody must have seen him leave the car and run away up the hill. He had planned to stay there until the police had gone, and then continue on along the highway, but some busybody must have seen him run away. Another one who sided automatically with Doctor Chax.
The old man would, too. They all did.
The madman felt very sad, not wanting to do what he knew he would have to do. But wasn’t self-preservation the prime law? He couldn’t let his emotions stand in his way, shouldn’t let weakness cause him to be captured and turned back to the tortures of Doctor Chax.
Hadn’t his father told him, time and time again, the mark of a man is that he always does what is necessary, no matter what?
But it was hard, it was so hard...
Moaning softly, the madman crept back down the stoop to the suitcase, and removed one of the leather straps. The strap was an inch wide, tough black leather, with a square brass buckle. He twisted it around his left hand, and went back up on the porch.
The door was locked. The two living-room windows were locked.
Sorrow began to be displaced by irritation, and irritation by anger. Wasn’t the task difficult enough as it was? Did it have to be made even more difficult?
He circled the house like a winter wind, seeking some crack to come in through, and found it at last in a small kitchen window, the only unlocked window on the ground floor.
It was a job getting through. The window was high, and just inside was the kitchen sink, a broad deep old-fashioned sink against which he cracked his left elbow. He gritted his teeth with the pain, and crawled the rest of the way through the window and down across the sink to the floor, and huddled there on all fours, rubbing the elbow. His head kept moving back and forth in a distracted way, like the head of a snake. He’d lost his hat on the way in, and he found it and put it back on before going any farther. He thought of it as a kind of disguise.
The kitchen was in darkness. He left it, and moved through a dark hall to a semi-dark dining room, lit indirectly from the one lamp burning in the living room.
The old man was still asleep. The television set murmured — a man at a desk was interviewing a man on a leather chair, and both were laughing, and a crowd of unseen people were laughing — but other than that the house was silent.
The madman tiptoed across the living room, his sneakers silent on the faded Persian-style carpet. He moved around behind the floral armchair in which the old man slept. He held the leather strap now in both hands and he dropped it over the old man’s head and tightened it around the old man’s neck.
The old man awoke and thrashed. But the madman had the leverage, pinning the old man back against the chair, keeping the strap tight around the old man’s throat, and after a while the thrashing subsided and stopped.
The madman switched off the table lamp before moving, because he didn’t want to see the old man’s face. He’d seen the faces of people who’d been strangled, and it always made him feel sick. The television set gave wan blue light.
In the near-darkness he crossed the room. He had seen the staircase while the light was on, and he headed straight for it and felt along the wall till he found a light switch. It shouldn’t frighten anyone if the staircase light went on; those upstairs would think it was the old man, coming up to bed.
He clicked the switch on, and a light blossomed at the head of the stairs. He climbed the stairs quickly — they were covered in gray carpet, badly worn in the center — and paused in the small second-floor hall.
There were four doors, two shut and two open. He investigated.
One of the open doors led to the bathroom. The other led to a bedroom with a double bed in it. But there was no one in the bed.
He opened the closed door on the right, and found the old man’s wife, asleep. She, too, woke up, just as the old man had, but her struggles were never as strong as his had been.
The closed door on the left led to a nursery, with a crib. But the crib was empty.
The madman was glad. He would have hated it if the crib had had an occupant.
But that was the full household. The old man and his wife, a married son or daughter and mate, and a grandchild. The younger couple and the grandchild must be away visiting. The madman was glad of it.
Though sometimes he thought the best thing would be to kill all the children. Then the human race would stop. But it was too much for one man to do. Though when he tried to argue with himself that children were for the most part better than adults — more honest, more willing to let a man alone, more apt to see truth — he could always counter the argument with the reminder that children, unless they are stopped, grow into adults.
He went back downstairs. The upstairs hall light let him see fairly well in the living room, well enough to go get the old man and tumble him out of the chair and drag him by the armpits across the room. He dragged the old man upstairs — a job that winded him again — and dumped him on the floor in the bedroom with his wife, and closed the door. Then he went back downstairs, switched on living-room lights, switched off the upstairs hall light, and unlocked the front door. He went outside and got the suitcase and brought it in with him, and locked the door again. Then he pulled the living-room shades, turned off the television set, and opened the suitcase on the floor.
He was safe now. Safe for tonight in this house. Safe for tomorrow with the contents of the suitcase. Shirts, socks, shoes, slacks, and a blue-gray suit. He could dress properly, and shave himself, and make himself presentable, and then he could go anywhere.
But go where?
He sat cross-legged on the floor, in front of the suitcase, and frowned as he tried to find an answer. All of his plans till now had been aimed at getting away from the asylum. He hadn’t thought of what to do next, what to do once he was safely free.
What could he do? Where could he go?
He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go anywhere near home. But where else was there? He remembered enough about the outside world to know it was a world of papers and numbers. If he tried to get a job anywhere he would have to have a Social Security card, and they’d want a list of former employers, and they’d want to know if he was in the Army...
He sat cross-legged on the floor and looked at the suitcase, and tried to think what he would do tomorrow. He was on his own. No one would help him. He was alone, with the whole world ranged against him, all of them waiting for a chance to turn him over to Doctor Chax.
Maybe, if he could get out of the country, get to Mexico or Canada...
How much money did he have?
He pulled out the wallet he’d taken from the driver, and found it contained forty-three dollars. Not enough, forty-three dollars. He’d have to find more.
Maybe there was some money here in the house. Or he could find the old man’s keys and get into the garage, and get the money out of the cash register.
He put the forty-three dollars back in the wallet, and then he stopped, and looked hard at the wallet.
The wallet had more than money in it. The wallet had cards in it, all sorts of identification cards, in four plastic pockets.
He dragged all the cards out and read them, read every word. Studied them, turned them over, shuffled them back and forth in his hands. And he began to smile.
There was a driver’s license.
And a membership card in Actor’s Equity.