“Are you trying to make sense?” she asked.
“You’d be very smart to keep your voice down, Helen. Very smart.”
“But who are you? Where am I?” With gingerly fingertips she touched the place where her hair was black-matted with her blood. The swelling was not as great. “Was I in an accident?”
“Sort of an accident. You’re somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Seven Mile Lake, if that means anything.”
“It doesn’t. Was I on a trip?”
“Keep the voice down, please.”
“Why?”
“We’ll get to that. Just accept the fact it’s important.”
She looked beyond me, frowning. “Wait a minute! They didn’t want me to see Arnold, and I shouldn’t have. He was completely mad. I couldn’t communicate. When he started up, I jumped. I could feel myself falling...” She touched her head and winced again. “I did this then?”
“Yes.”
She looked at a tiny gold watch. “Four in the afternoon?”
“Yes. You hit your head last night.”
She stared at me with obvious anger. “My God, do I have to pry all this out of you bit by bit? What the hell am I doing in Pennsylvania?”
“You’re kidnaped,” I told her. It sounded ridiculously melo-dramatic.
“Do you mean that?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“You’re asking my father for money?”
“No. It isn’t that well organized, Helen. There aren’t any special plans. You’re just... kidnaped. We came along and you were knocked out, lying on the road. So we brought you along with us.”
“You were drunk?”
“No.”
“How many of you?”
“Four of us. One is a girl.”
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“That wouldn’t be pertinent.”
She sat, biting her lip, staring at me. I could tell that her mind was working, and I could sense that it was excellent equipment, agile and logical.
“Kidnaping is a very stupid idea. Don’t you think you made a mistake?”
“It’s possible.”
“If it was just... a sort of joke, you could let me go, couldn’t you? If you’re not after money. I’d make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. I’d say... I’d hitched a ride with you.”
“The others wouldn’t want to let you go, Helen.”
“But they’re not here. You could unhook the screen and let me out that window and tell them later that it was the smart thing to do. You do look and sound too bright for this sort of thing, really.”
“You wheedle real well, Helen.”
“Well, if you’re not after money, what good has it done you to lug an unconscious girl around?”
“You weren’t unconscious. You acted like a polite nine-year-old child.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“It isn’t the kind of thing you make up, is it?”
She stirred uneasily and her face got slightly red. “Did any of you do anything to me when I was like that?”
“Something came close to happening, but it didn’t.”
“Why can’t you let me go?”
I looked directly into her eyes. “They wouldn’t like it and it wouldn’t be a good idea for me either. We killed Arnold Crown.”
She closed her eyes. For long moments she had a pasty color. As the glow of health began to come back she opened her eyes again. “The way you said it, I believe you. But what a foul thing! Why did you do it?”
“That’s a very good question.”
She tensed suddenly and sucked her lips white, and her eyes went round. “Three men and a girl. Are you the ones...”
“We’ve had a lot of publicity lately, Helen.”
That’s when I expected her to fall apart, when the full realization of her situation became apparent to her.
To my surprise she forced a smile. “Then I’m in a hell of a spot. You people don’t have anything to lose, do you?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“So it didn’t make any difference whether you picked me up or left me on the road — whether you killed Arnold or didn’t kill him.”
“No difference at all.”
“Is that what you’re after? That kind of freedom?”
“Lectures I do not need, Miss Wister.”
She frowned. “They know I’m missing?”
“I’d say eighty to a hundred million people know it.”
“And they know... who has me?”
“Yes.”
“What pure hell for my people. And Dal.” She stared at me with obvious conjecture. “All right. I want to get out of this. Is there any chance at all?”
“Hardly any.”
She closed her eyes again, but not for long. “So I’ll be killed. For kicks. Isn’t that the reason you people have?”
“We’re expressing aggression and hostility, miss.”
“What if it were up to you? You alone? It wouldn’t happen then, would it?”
“You’re judging a book by the cover.”
“I’m asking you. Do you have any desire to help me? If you don’t, I’ll have to take any chance I can. It would be the same with me as it is with you — nothing to lose.”
No tears, no begging, no hysterics. Yet a complete awareness of mortal danger. This was a woman. A woman in the same sense that the Spanish call a man muy hombre. A bright unquenchable spirit, the kind that won’t break. Gallantry is a fitting word. You can’t find many of those. I wondered if that architect knew what a wondrous thing he almost acquired.
I found another balk line across my soul, and knew I would help. I was becoming a veritable tower of virtue.
“Maybe I can help. Maybe. But you have to be a hell of an actress.”
“I guess you can say I’ve got a hell of a motivation.”
“We’ll be leaving at dusk. You’ve got to be barely able to move. You’ve got to be semi-conscious. The head injury is getting worse. You’re damn near in a coma, and going deeper all the time. You cannot let yourself respond to anything. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“When the time is right, I’ll give you a signal of some kind, and then you have to start to die. We’ll be rolling along in the car. I don’t know how the hell to tell you to do it, but make it convincing. Then it’ll be my problem to get you out of the car without injury. It’s the only chance you have.”
She thought it over. “Suppose, because of the way I act, they get careless and give me a good chance to make a run for it. Without high heels, I can run like the wind.”
“It could be okay for you, but bad for them and bad for me. I’ll watch so you don’t get a chance to do it that way. It has to be my way.”
“What if I started screaming this minute?”
“I’d knock you unconscious with my fist. And if you think you’ve picked a good time to start screaming when we’re in the car, the girl with us will have a knife into your heart at the first bleat.”
“What are they like?” she asked me.
“You’ll see.”
“How did... someone like you get into such trouble?”
I smiled at her. “When I was a young girl I got raped by my uncle and ran away from home and I’ve been in this place ever since. You wanna buy me another drink before we go upstairs, Mr. Barlow?”
“You aren’t what you look like, are you?”
“Not lately.”
“But you were, once upon a time.”
“I was?”
“Now it’s the eyes, I think. That’s the wrong part. They don’t fit the rest. It’s your eyes that give me... a strange feeling.”
“And your teeth are so big, Grandma.”
“Please, please help me,” she said.
“I told you I’m going to.”
“It would be such a crummy stupid way to die.”
I heard somebody stirring around at dusk. Then I heard Nan’s voice. Somebody rapped on the door. I unlocked the door and opened it, after signaling Helen to lie back. Sandy looked in and said, “Kiss her awake, sweet prince.”