The Judge reminded her, “He has a shoulder holster, baby. Look in that.”
She complied, but it was empty.
From my position at her feet I stared up into her pale face. A flood of unpleasant bits of newborn knowledge rushed into my half-baked skull, sweeping in with the awful rush of backwater across a bottom-land. Hindsight is a wonderful, futile thing!
Consider for instance Eleanor’s amazing story of her escape. How we had swallowed it, hook, line, sinker and pole.
The Judge was such a rotten shot that he had only nicked her shoulder. We had swallowed it. She had escaped down the back stairway, driven part way to Boone, transferred to a bus, walked from the bus terminal to my office, all that in broad daylight with a fresh wound. We had swallowed it. She had practically jumped at the suggestion to bring her along with us, in spite of her weakened condition, in spite of the certain danger had she been on the level. We swallowed it without a suspicion.
And only a few minutes ago, in the car, she had said she wasn’t worried about deportation... not now.
I turned on her, bitterly. “You damned little cheat. You were shot, weren’t you? You couldn’t fake that.”
The Judge answered for her. He showed no trace of anxiety at her condition, no worry at her being twenty-four hours late. He didn’t seem to care a damn.
“She was shot. That was necessary. Eleanor understands that. Eleanor is going to be repaid for her trouble.”
He shouldn’t have said that. But he did. And no sooner was it out of his mouth than something sharp connected in that just mentioned half-baked skull I own. If there had been a maze of wires and relays in me, like a mechanical man, the Judge would have heard a relay click all the way across the room. At his words the relay clicked, a circuit closed, and all the electrical knowledge in that mythical maze of wires focused down to a fine point. The fine point was behind the bridge of my nose, and my nose itched.
Eleanor was marked for death.
She wasn’t keen enough to realize it, to see ahead and discover where her part in the plan was leading her. A long-range plan of clever duplicity, equaled only by that earlier duplicity that had erased Harry Evans by remote control.
Eleanor’s eyes were glassy.
“You stupid, damn fool!” I bit out at her. “If you had the brains of a brass monkey you’d realize what you’ve done. You’re going to be repaid, all right. Yes indeed, paid the same way Leonore was paid when her usefulness was ended.”
The Judge butted in. “You’re annoying the lady, son.” Not his words, but the quiet undertone conveyed the warning; a warning Eleanor didn’t catch.
She just stared at me. I looked again. She wasn’t staring. Her eyes had turned completely glassy and the pupils were vanishing. I got to my knees.
Eleanor gritted between tight teeth: “I’m going to be sick...”
The Judge ordered sharply, “Go in the bathroom.”
She tried to get up. She put out a hand on the chair arm for a prop, but couldn’t make it. I got to my feet and moved towards her.
“Easy, son!” Dunkles snarled at me. He was on his feet, gun pointing at my midriff.
“Easy yourself. Can’t you see she’s sick!”
I don’t know why I felt sympathy for her. I should be hating her guts and hoping she fell out of the chair and banged her punkinhead on the floor. But I didn’t feel that way at all. I guess I’m chicken-hearted about women.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked the Judge.
I put an arm under Eleanor’s good shoulder and got her to her feet. Dunkles followed us to the bathroom. Once there, I didn’t know what to do for her. I sat her down, gave her my handkerchief to hold over her mouth, and turned to the medicine cabinet. Dunkles was watching me in the mirror.
Eleanor gulped once, took her hand away from her mouth long enough to say there were “three more out in the car” and that two of them would be in after me before long.
I growled, “Damn you, sister, get wise.”
It seemed to upset the kindly faced gentleman. He sat down on the narrow, white rim of the bathtub, near the doorway, where he could watch me and the front door.
He said again, “Stop annoying the lady, son.” And to Eleanor, “Who else is out there, baby?”
She told him. He pursed his lips and whistled.
Then he instructed, “Eleanor, baby, when you are feeling better, step over to the telephone and tell him what you have just told me.”
She nodded and said in a few minutes.
The medicine cabinet held a few things that could be used as an emetic, and a couple of bottles of advertised stuff supposed to settle the stomach and calm the nerves. I decided on that, and dropped a wafer in a glass of water. Tap water.
We watched it sizzle. I told myself happily that a couple of people were due for a surprise when Eleanor tried to phone the barn. There began to appear a dim ray of hope along the horizon. Unless — someone at the barn had tried to call the cottage and found the phone not working.
The wafer fizzled out and I handed the glass to the girl. She drank it slowly, making a face.
The Judge fumbled in his coat for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit a match, all with one hand. I put my left hand, the one encased in the plaster cast, up on the wall, sort of leaning it against the side of the medicine cabinet. Swinging down from that distance would give it an added punch.
Eleanor finished the water and handed the glass to me. I put it in the little wire jigger fastened to the washstand, pushed the cabinet door to a position where I could see the Judge more clearly in the mirror, and watched. I wanted very much to see what he did with that paper match.
He flipped it into the tub behind him.
I must have yelled “Eureka!” or something. They both jumped and stared at me.
“Eleanor,” I burst out excitedly, “Eleanor, I’ve told you twice I was going to prove something to you! Remember?”
She said, yes, faintly.
“Eleanor, I’m going to show you how your sister was murdered. You wouldn’t believe me before; you’ve got to, now. I can prove it to you, here, now, this minute...”
The Judge cut in with an, easy son! but I ignored him.
“Eleanor — do you know how your sister died?”
“Why... of course. They said—” She glanced at the Judge. “The papers said she drowned.”
“Yes and no.” I was watching the Judge, too. He was bunching up his leg muscles. “The State’s Attorney told me she was drowned in purified water. That means city water, from a tap like this one. Such as you just drank. Not lake water. But Eleanor... she didn’t exactly drown.”
That one even stopped the Judge. It took him by sheer surprise, caused him to drop the preparations he was making to jump me. I watched him in the mirror.
“What!” he and Eleanor demanded, in unison.
“No. Ask Doc Burbee, out in the car. He performed the autopsy. Your sister was strangled to death, Eleanor. Strangled on a paper match thrown into a bathtub.”
Dunkles leaped, leaped without taking time to gather his wits or his muscles for the blow.
I didn’t make the same mistake, nor the one of turning around to face him. I saw him coming and whipped the plaster cast down and around in a fast cutting arc, putting all the strength into it I could muster. It contacted the jut of his jaw. The gun dropped from his hand. He sprawled backwards and slipped over the rim into the bathtub.
Eleanor had scrambled to her feet in panic, trying to get past us to the door. I pushed her back down on the seat and said, “I hope you believe me now, sister.”
A small noise came from the front door. It was pushed open a crack. Thompson’s gun appeared in the opening followed by Thompson, and then by Burbee and his pistol. I motioned to them to come into the bathroom.