The three young men in Elizabeth’s bedroom saw the six men arrive, and they didn’t like it. One of them said, “We’d better get out of here.”
The leader was trying to remember about fingerprints; what had he touched, what was the likelihood of being able to wipe every fingerprint away? He said, “We stay here until we get Bradford Lockridge. We need him now more than ever.”
“Why?”
He turned on them, his fear transposing itself into fury. “Because we’re going to need asylum now. We killed that guy; you think they won’t get onto us? We’ve got to get out of this country, and that means China, and that means we need Lockridge. Because if we give them Lockridge they’ll be happy about us, and they’ll give us asylum.”
The second one said, “I don’t want to go to China.”
“It’s better than jail. Better than jail for the rest of your life. We have to hide somewhere. We’ll be able to move around again when the house is crowded.” Then we’ll get Lockridge and get out of here, same as we planned.”
Downstairs, Fanshaw and Holt and White and the three Wellingtons had finished checking out the first floor, and the credentials of the caterer’s men. They then asked the caterer’s men to join them while they looked the house over for a suspected burglar. The caterer’s men, while dressed as waiters, were all burly men, used to carrying heavy cases of food and drink, used to performing occasionally as bouncers. The six family members split up, each taking two of the caterer’s men along, and they proceeded to search the rest of the house, the Wellington brothers taking the basement and the other four going on up to the second floor.
They found all three young men fairly quickly. One tried to plead his way out and was ignored. One tried to run his way out and was caught by the caterer’s men. And the leader tried to bluff and bluster his way out and got his face slapped by Joseph Holt.
They had the three in the upstairs hall when Mortimer Wellington came out of Elizabeth’s bedroom, a drawn look on his round face. He was holding his right hand out away from himself, and it was smeared with reddish-brown. “We’d better call the police,” he said. “They’ve killed Earl.”
v
Neither Sterling nor Bradford was told about Earl. The cortege continued to drive around for fifteen minutes, while things were briskly taken care of in the house. The local police came and took away the three young men and the body. They moved with more speed and fewer questions than they might have, except that Wellington’s department had been in touch with their chief; they understood they were involved on the periphery of something hush-hush in connection with national security, but they didn’t know — and didn’t expect to know — exactly what. The last young man, waiting in the motorboat, was not discovered. He stayed where he was until dark when, certain by then that something had gone wrong, he drove the boat across the river and walked up route 14 to Millersburg, where at a gas station he got a lift back south again to Harrisburg. From Harrisburg he took a late bus east to Philadelphia, then the train to New York and another train out to Babylon, Long Island, arriving at ten the next morning. His parents were delighted at the fact of his return home, the change in his appearance, and his newly subdued manner. Two days later he was picked up and transported back to Lancashire to be charged as an accessory in the murder of Earl Chatham.
Once the house had been cleared of the young men and their victim, Eugene White walked out and down a block and a half, standing at the corner until the cortege came by, facing the other way during the passage of the car containing Bradford, nodding to Wellington two cars later, and then going on back to the house.
Wellington said, into the transmitter, “Seven. To the house.”
In the lead car, Albert Bloor leaned forward and said to the driver, “We’ll go to the house now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later, the cars were emptying in front of Sterling’s house. The family members went slowly inside, Bradford at all times in the center of a large group, and just inside the door Joseph Holt took Wellington to one side and said, “Three of them were in here. They killed Earl.”
Wellington frowned, truly shocked. “They killed him?”
“Hit him with a lamp. I suppose they were afraid he’d give the alarm.”
Wellington shook his head. “I thought they’d use more professional people,” he said.
“We’ll have to tell Patricia,” Holt said.
Wellington seemed to be thinking about something else. He looked at Holt without really focusing on him, then suddenly seemed to draw himself back in. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ll have to tell several people. But not Bradford. We get him away from here first.”
“It’s a hell of a complication,” Holt said. “Isn’t that a bitch? I should be pitying Earl, and I do, but all I can really think is, it’s a hell of a complication.”
Wellington said, “Bradford doesn’t have to know about it till tomorrow. We can have it covered by then.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Get to Evelyn,” Wellington said. “Tell her to hurry Bradford along. No need to tell her why.”
Holt nodded, and went away. Wellington went into the parlor where the food and drinks were to be found, and disguised himself with a small plate of turkey and a cup of coffee. He then stood unobtrusively in a corner, watching, unnoticed. The small voice in his ear was talking to him, telling him the current situation, the whereabouts of the body and the seven captured young men, the present legal position, the handling of the problem of the two Chinese agents waiting at the farmhouse, the search for the still-missing eighth Twelfth of July activist. From time to time, shielded by his coffee cup, Wellington’s lips moved, but no sound escaped. He might have been chewing, or talking to himself.
vi
Two men with drawn guns came in the front door of the farmhouse. One of the Chinese, seeing them, jumped to his feet and ran through the farmhouse toward the rear. As he dashed into the kitchen, two more armed men entered through the back door. He turned in mid-flight, as though to jump through the closed kitchen window, and both men fired. Killed by two bullets in the head, he crashed forward and down into the sink, and flopped backwards onto the floor.
In the living room, the other Chinese rose and held his hands high up over his head. “I am your prisoner,” he said, in carefully enunciated perfect English, as though it were a magic phrase that would change the situation, or remove him to another place, or render him invisible. One of the two men strode up to him, pressed the barrel of the pistol against the left side of his chest, looked coldly into his astonished eyes, and pulled the trigger.
vii
The family was sorting itself out. Ten minutes ago, Wellington had seen Bradford leave, in his car, accompanied by Evelyn and Howard. Two other cars had followed him, at an unobtrusive distance; in the first were Robert Pratt and John Bloor, John’s wife Deborah, his cousin Albert Jr., and Albert’s wife Jane, and in the second were Gregory and Audrey Holt, and Thomas Wellington. (No further trouble was assumed, but they were taking no chances.)
Off to the police to make their statements about the death of Earl Chatham — so as to allow the mills of justice to begin to grind without too noticeable a pause for special interests — were four of the group of six that had discovered the body and the young killers: the three Wellingtons, Walter and William and Mortimer, and the psychiatrist James Fanshaw. A man of Wellington’s had already seen the young men, and pointed out to them that any statement about their intention to kidnap Bradford Lockridge would only further complicate their already bleak legal picture, whereas cooperation might eventually, in unspecified ways, redound to their favor.