I said I thought there were some in the hall closet upstairs, and we went racing up to find them. Sure enough, there they were, with a pillow case, and we came tearing down again to put them on the bed. She had just finished up and we were heading for the sofa when a car pulled up outside. When I opened the door, Mantle was getting out. “Well!” I said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“Maybe to you,” he growled.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been pretty nervous out here.”
He came in and when he saw Jill warmed up a little. “And — speaking of pleasant surprises,” he told her, shaking hands, “I guess this one helps a little.”
“Deputy Mantle.”
We all sat down and I offered a drink. He declined, explaining that he was on duty. I offered something to eat, but he declined that too. Then he asked some questions about the “prowler,” as he called him, that the night clerk seemed to have told him about, seeming a bit puzzled by the boat we had said appeared, “and what it was doing there.” I said: “If you’re mixed up, it’s nothing to what we were.”
“It still makes no sense to me,” she put in. “What on earth, what in the world—?”
“Well, in the morning we’ll see,” he yawned, in a way that seemed to say we’d covered it for tonight. I told him I’d show him his bedroom, and he answered that as he was on duty he couldn’t go to bed, but would “lie down if I may — of course I’ll take off my shoes.”
I opened the door of Mom’s room and suddenly he said: “Oh, I almost forgot: The clerk mentioned that you didn’t have any weapon, now that we’ve impounded yours, so I brought you one as temporary replacement. I agree that with all this stuff about money coming out on TV and in the papers, you need it as something to reach for in a hurry. I brought you a rifle that’s been kicking around the office, an old one, like yours. Hold everything, I’ll get it.”
He went out and came back with a rifle. He handed it over, saying: “Clip’s in the chamber, not in the barrel yet — it takes a bolt action to load.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “it’s a Springfield!” And then: “Mr. Howell’s is an Enfield, but I like a Springfield better.” And then, at the surprised look on his face: “When I was in summer camp, they took us out on the range.”
“Nice to be an expert.”
He handed it over to me, and I took it through Mom’s room back to the kitchen and stood it in its place inside the back door. When I got back, she was putting on her coat, he helping her. “I have to be getting back,” she told me. When she’d shaken hands with him and he’d given her a pat, I took her out to her car. “Was I all right?” she whispered.
“Perfect,” I told her.
“Well, if he was baffled about the boat, why wouldn’t we be baffled by it?”
“That’s it, something like that ought not to match up completely. When something’s too good, it’s not good.”
“You love me?”
“I’m nuts about you.”
She pulled me to her and kissed me, then let me close the door, and started the motor. She put on her lights and I stood waving as she drove off. I went back in and told Mantle where the bathroom was, showed him the thing with a handle on it under the bed, and said good night.
18
I got up, dressed, and tiptoed up to the bathroom, but the towels told me he had already been there. I shaved, washed up, and came down, and when I went in the living room, the door of Mom’s room was open, the bed was made up, the receptacle under the bed, if it had ever been used, was empty, and everything was in order. When I looked out, Mantle was standing beside his car, talking into the phone. I opened the door and waved. He waved back but kept talking.
When he finally came in I told him to sit down and I’d get him some breakfast. He thanked me, but said he would eat in town. But the way he said it was different from the way he’d acted before, and it didn’t seem that Jill’s not being there quite accounted for it. He hadn’t hid that he liked her, but after she left he’d been friendly enough still, and it kept gnawing at me that something had happened to him right there in the house that had caused his change of manner. Then I thought it couldn’t be that, as nothing could have happened between his going to bed and getting up — and decided it had to be something caused by his phone call, perhaps some word of Mom. Later, though, I was to find out that things could happen to him, and did — right there in the house, right in Mom’s room, where he had spent the night. He was writing in a notebook without looking at me. Then: “Mr. Howell, if you’ll ring Miss Kreeger, and ask her to please come out for further questioning today, it’ll save my having to. And I’d ring that lawyer you had — Mr. Bledsoe. Have him come out. Have her and him and yourself on hand by 11:00, when Sergeant Edgren will be ready to start — and probably Mr. Knight.”
“What is this, Mr. Mantle?”
“Just matters that have come up.”
“Can you give me some idea what?”
“We can and will — all in due time.”
He looked at his watch, made more notes in his book, then repeated: “Eleven o’clock — I just talked to the sergeant, and he should be through by then, with some calls he’ll have to put in.”
“About this case?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What calls?”
“All in due time. You’ll know.”
With kind of a wave, he went out, got in his car, and drove off. I called her at the Occidental, and we tried to figure it out, what had caused the change, from a friendly enough officer the night before to a gimlet-eyed sleuth the next day. All of a sudden she asked: “The tree — what did he say about it?”
“He didn’t mention it.”
“Not at all?”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I was too worried about what had changed him to think about the tree. One thing at a time. When they get through with their questions, we can start up with ours.”
“It’s my money, though.”
“It’ll still be there.”
“I’ll feel better when I have it.”
Bledsoe wasn’t home. It turned out that he’d had to make a speech and had spent the night in Parkersburg. When I reached him at his office after he came in late, he didn’t at all want to come out.
“I’m busy as hell and just can’t spare the time.” But when I told him how Mantle was acting, he decided he could after all. So around 10:00 Jill came, bringing York with her, their quarrel apparently patched up. Then Bledsoe came and we all checked it over, the little I knew to tell them, trying to figure what it was all about. York went to Mom’s room and rummaged around looking for what might be there, and Jill went in and looked, but what they came up with was nothing, and what we all four figured out was the same. Then Edgren and Mantle came out in separate cars, and after them Mr. Knight in still another car. They all spoke kind of grim without really looking at us, except that Knight was grim to the officers as well as to us, as though he didn’t really have faith in whatever was coming off. It wasn’t much, but Bledsoe looked at me, then at Jill, and she looked at me like she wanted to throw me a wink.