Bartholdi’s eyes, fastened on Otis’s serio-comic face, widened briefly in surprise. Otis’s explanation of the Personal was one that he had not thought of. It made a certain kind of sense. It not only explained why the item had been published, but also why it had been published in such transparent terms as to be readily understood by anyone familiar with the parties involved. And Terry’s real appointment, it was practically certain, had been the one with O’Hara that O’Hara had mentioned.
“You make her sound,” he said, “like a very unpleasant person.”
“She’s more than that. She’s dangerous.”
With a final nod of his head, like an exclamation point, Otis slammed the door. Bartholdi, retreating down the hall, was forced to agree. Terry Miles had been dangerous. And, dead, she was more dangerous than she had ever been alive.
The danger, however, was no longer dispersed. It was pointed, like a loaded gun, directly at her murderer.
Going down the stairs at the end of the hall, Bartholdi continued his descent to the basement. His nose told him, as he approached Orville Reasnor’s door, that the building superintendent had recently cooked his dinner. The smell of it hung heavily in the hall. Among other things, Bartholdi’s nose said, there was onion in it.
Orville, opening his door, brought his own odor with him; and if onion was still in it, it was not smellable. Orville’s perfume, Bartholdi decided, was compounded of pine-scented disinfectant and stale perspiration.
He identified himself and declined an invitation to enter. “I just want to ask you a question or two.”
“What about?” Orville’s tone clearly implied that he was an employee of infinite discretion. “Has Prof Miles finally got the police after that floozy wife of his? If he has, there’s no use asking me anything about it. I mind my own business.”
“What makes you think I’m looking for Mrs. Miles?”
“She’s missing, ain’t she? Dr. Miles was here Friday night with Mr. Moran looking for her, and she ain’t come back. Leastwise, I ain’t seen her.”
“I’m trying to find out where she’s gone.”
“Not knowing, I couldn’t say.”
“She left here, I understand, about the same time as Ben Green. I’m wondering if they could have gone away together.”
“I wouldn’t put it past either one of them. But it so happens that they didn’t.”
“Oh? You’re sure about that?”
“I saw Mr. Green leave — carrying a bag, he was — and there wasn’t nobody with him. I was working in the vestibule upstairs, and he walked right past me. He’s a snooty bastard. Talks when he takes a notion, which ain’t often.”
“What time was that, do you remember?”
“I couldn’t say. Some time in the afternoon. I’m no clock-watcher when I’m about my work.”
“Well, that seems to settle it.” Bartholdi sniffed, wishing he could somehow eliminate the olfactory evidence of Orville. “You had something good for dinner, eh? I love the smell of onions cooking.”
“I had liver. Onions go good with liver.”
“I thought for a minute you’d been making a Student’s Ragout.”
“Student’s what? Never heard of it. I don’t go for them fancy dishes. Plain eats is what I like.”
“I’m with you. You can’t go wrong on plain eats.”
On the apron behind the building, Bartholdi breathed gratefully pi the good cold November air. Remembering his thoughts after leaving Otis Bowers, he felt a stirring at the roots of his hair, an electric tingling in his flesh that had nothing to do with the cold.
Yes, Terry Miles was still dangerous. She was deadly dangerous to a frightened and desperate murderer; and in spite of irrelevancies and diversions and unconfirmed assumptions, Bartholdi was sure — as he had been sure for some time — who her murderer was.
23
The lane was a tunnel in darkness; the hedges hemmed in the road; the wind whispered in the hedges. Once the road had been graveled, but the gravel was gone, pressed into the clay bed or thrown aside by wheels. The clay had been softened by rains and rutted while soft; now it was frozen hard, and the ruts writhed treacherously underfoot.
Farley had approached the lane alone, after parting from Bartholdi some distance from where it began. He walked along at a measured pace, counting his steps. He had not been told to do this, but he did it for such comfort as it provided, having anticipated that what could be a five-mile walk along a lonely road on a dark night was nothing to bring home to one’s dreams.
“Take your time, Mr. Moran,” Bartholdi had said. “There’s no telling when you’ll be contacted — if you’re contacted at all — but I have a hunch it will be on your return trip. This kidnapper will want to wait as long as he can before he makes his move, just to be sure there’s no trap. Remember, you won’t be alone. My men have got to stay back some distance, of course, but one of them will always be close enough to protect you. Here, take this police whistle. After you’ve been contacted by the kidnapper and he’s left, give two blasts on it. The alarm will be passed along from station to station, and in a matter of seconds we’ll close in.
“The chances are at least even that the kidnapper will slip through, considering the terrain. That can’t be helped. So you’ve got to get a good look at him, if it’s at all possible. And don’t go being a hero, Mr. Moran.”
“Don’t worry,” Farley had said, “I won’t.”
“Be sure you’re safely away from him before you use the whistle, then hide yourself in a bush and stay put till one of my officers shows up. Here’s your package. It’s got nothing but paper in it, of course.”
The night was cold. The sky was remote, it’s blackness pricked by pinpoint stars. Farley heard the wind in the hedges; he heard from somewhere, dying, the fluty boom of an owl.
His foot struck something that rolled away in the darkness, and he sprang aside, heart in his mouth. His other foot jammed into a deep rut and he staggered, almost falling Pain shot up his leg; he had twisted his ankle.
The road felt like cement as he knelt on it. He rubbed the turned ankle, trying to massage the pain away. Finally, the pain dwindled to a throb... He could see, nearby, faintly on the dark clayey road, the object he had tripped over. He crawled ahead and picked it up. It was an orange from an Osage hedge. He cursed and hurled it away. It struck the frozen ground with a crash, like a rock, and bounded away.
Farley got up on his feet, testing his ankle cautiously. Limping, he walked on. His hands, ungloved, were cold, and he shoved them into the big patch pockets of his thick wool jacket. In one pocket bulged the dummy package. The whistle lay in the other.
He came suddenly on a concrete culvert spanning the dry bed of a shallow ravine that ran with water when the rains fell and the snows melted. The culvert was no more than a flat slab without railings. He sat down on the slab, dangling his legs into the ravine. All at once, it seemed, the entire earth had dropped into a profound silence, in which all living things crouched mute, listening for — what? He, too, was listening, leaning forward on the slab; then, becoming aware of what he was doing, the tension left him, and he laughed:
Farley, he mocked himself, you are about to fall under the spell of the witches and the goblins and that old black magic. Get with it, man!
The spell was instantly broken; the night was filled at once with a thousand small, comforting sounds. Rising, Farley went on. He had developed a blister, and the ankle prevented his going too briskly; but he came soon enough to the intersection — the end of the lane.