“Why, you crazy old... you gave the money to Jim,” he mimicked. “You think I’d believe that?”
“You’ll have to believe it.”
If it hadn’t been an indication that the old nut was going to be stubborn, this could have been a laugh. Hell, he was Jim!
He snicked the gun barrel again. It left a wide welt across the old man’s face. The old man staggered, bumped into the table.
The lamp teetered, tilted, fell to the floor with a crash. The room plunged in darkness.
The silence was deafening.
The young man clutched and smothered the scream in his throat. He listened for the old man’s breathing; he didn’t hear it because his own breath was too strong, too harsh. He heard only the grim whisper of the rain and the shrieking wind.
No movement. Silence. So the old man must have sensed what had happened. Now they were alike. The young man and the old one. Both blind. Both groping, each in his own kind of total darkness, with the heavy breath of death in the room.
The door. It wasn’t too late to get out. A quick dash, into the hall... the heavy poker struck him a lashing blow on the side of the face. The young man screamed; the house jarred under the impact of his body to the floor. He knew the old man had moved silently, guided by the sound of the young man’s breathing.
He squirmed on the floor, frantic. He heard the poker strike the worn carpet. He squeezed the trigger, mouthing hoarse sobs.
Still he could not see the old blind man. The sudden flash of the gun had left the young man more blind than ever.
The young man bolted blindly for the door, and the ancient piano groaned a whanging discord as his body plunged against it.
He staggered back from the piano, heard the whistling swish of the falling poker again. He had murdered this old man in his mind, and now the living corpse was demanding retribution...
He twisted to one side, and the poker missed. He sensed that the old fool was off balance. Now was his chance!
His hand shot out; he felt the cloth of the old man’s coat. In a flashing motion, sick with the knots in his belly, the young man brought the gun to bear.
He was squeezing the trigger when the aged, strong hand shot out, gripped his wrist, and twisted. The cracking of the bone of the young man’s wrist and the roar of the gun were mingled. The young man’s scream was a lost gurgle as the bullet parted flesh and bone between his eyes.
The house was still rocking with echoes when the scrape of a footstep sounded in the hallway door. The old man said heavily, “Eva?”
“Yes.”
“You’re all right?”
“Yes, Gar, and you...”
“I’m all right,” he said. “I was afraid he had done something to you, Eva.”
“No. Nothing, compared to what he might have done. I was getting my senses back when I heard the gun fire. I’ll light a lamp.”
Gar waited, heard the scratching as she struck a match, the swift intake of her breath, as the lamp, flared up and she looked at the body of the young man.
Then he peeled his lips back from his teeth and said it. “He’s not Jim, Eva? Not our Jim?”
Her voice came, slow, drawn, “No, Gar. He ain’t really our Jim.”
“I’m glad,” the old man. “Jim may come back someday and he may not, but I’m glad that this... Eva...” His voice stumbled, broke. He turned and shuffled to the window. He pushed back the calico curtains and turned his face toward the night, as if he had eyes, as if he stared out there, waiting for the first gleam of sunrise to meet his gaze.
“I tried to tell the pore young man,” he whispered, “that I’d given the money to Jim. But he was a coward he couldn’t stand the seconds passing. He never would let me get around to telling him how I’d used all the money to get the private detective down from Atlanta, and how the detective has worked these three weeks since Hergishiner’s murder and finally landed Ron Cline, the man who really murdered Hergishiner, behind bars just last night...”