Behind him meanwhile, disregarded, the storekeeper was urging helpfully: "Help you, sir? What town you from, mister? Got 'em all there. And if not, be glad to send for whichever one you want--"
He had opened it, meanwhile, casually. And from the inner page--it was only a single sheet, folded--this leaped up, searing him like a flash of gunpowder flame:
A HORRIFYING DISCOVERY IN THIS CITY.
The skeleton of a man has been unearthed in the cellar of a house on Decatur Street, in this city, within the last few days. At the time of the recent high water the occupants of the house quitted it, as did all their immediate neighbors. On their return the sunken outlines of a grave were revealed, its contents partly discernible. it is believed the flood washed away the loosely replaced soil, for there had been no sign until then of such an unlawful burial. Adding to the belief that foul play was committed, was the finding of a lead bullet imbedded in the remains. The present householders, who at once reported their grim find to the authorities, are absolved of all blame, since the condition of the remains prove the grave to have been in existence well before their occupancy began.
The authorities are at present engaged in compiling a record of all former occupants in order to trace them for questioning. More developments will be given later, as they are made known to us.
She turned from her mirror to stare, as he blasted the door in minutes later, breathing heavily, greenish of face. Her own cheeks were rosy as ripe peaches with the recent application of the rabbit's foot. "What is it? You're as white as though you'd seen a ghost."
I have, he thought; face to face. The ghost of the man we thought we'd buried forever.
"It's been found out," he said tersely.
She knew at once.
She read it through.
She took it with surprising matter-of-factness, he thought. No recoil, no paling; with an almost professional objectivity, as if her whole interest were in its accuracy and not in its context. She said nothing when she'd completed it. He was the one had to speak.
"Well ?"
"That was something we had to expect some day." She gestured with the paper, cast it down. "And there it is. What more is there to say ?" She shrugged philosophically. "We haven't done so badly. It could have been much quicker." She began to count on her fingers, the way gossiping housewives do over an impending childbirth. Or rather, its antecedents. "When was it? About the tenth of June, if I remember. It's a full three months now--"
"Bonny!" he retched, his eyes closing in horror.
"They won't know any more who it is. They won't be able to tell. That's one thing in our favor."
"But they know, they know," he choked, taking swift two-paced turns this way and that, like a bear seeking its way out through cage-bars.
She rose suddenly, flinging down something with a sort of angered impatience. Angered impatience with him, seeking to calm him, seeking to reason with him, for she went to him, took him by the two facings of his coat, and shook him once, quite violently, as if for his own good, to instill some sense in him.
"Will you listen to me ?" she flared. "Will you use your head? They know what, now. Very well. But they still don't know who. They don't know who caused it. And they never will." She gave a precautionary glance toward the closed door, lowered her voice. "There was no one in that room that day. No one in that house that day. No one who saw it happen. Never forget that. They can surmise, they can suspect, they can even feel sure, all they want, but they cannot prove. And the time is past, it is already too late; they will never be able to on the face of God's green earth. What was it they told you yourself when you went to them about me? You must have proof. And they have none. You threw the--you know what, away; it's lying rusted, buried in the sand, somewhere along the beach at Mobile, being eaten away by the salt water. Can they tell that a certain bullet comes from a certain one, and no other ?" She laughed derisively. "Not in any way that's ever been found yet!"
Half heeding her, he glanced around him at the walls, and even upward at the ceiling, as though he felt them closing in upon him.
"Let's get out of here," he said in a choked voice, pulling at his collar. "I can't stand it any more."
"It's not here it's been discovered. It's in Mobile. We're as safe here as we were before it was discovered. They didn't know we were here before. They still don't know we're here now."
He wanted to put an added move, an extra lap, even if a fruitless unneeded one, between themselves and Nemesis, looming dark like a massing cloudbank on the horizon.
She sighed, giving him a look as if she found him hopeless. "There goes our evening, I suppose," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "And I was counting on wearing the new wine red taffeta."
She clapped him reassuringly on the arm. "Go down and get yourself a drink; make it a good stiff one. You need that now more than anything, I can see that. There's a good boy. Then come back, and we'll see how you feel by that time, and we'll figure it out then. There's a good boy." And she added, quite inconsequentially, "I'll go ahead dressing in the meantime, anyway. I did want to show them that wine-red taffeta."
In the end they stayed for the time being. But it was not her reasoning that kept him, so much as a fascinating horror that held him in its grip now. He was waiting for the next Mobile newspaper to arrive at the tobacco shop, and knew no other way of obtaining it than by remaining close at hand, here where they were.
It took five days, though he prodded the shopkeeper almost continuously in between.
"Sometimes they send 'em, sometimes they don't," the latter told him. "I could write and hurry them up, if you'd want me to."
"No, don't do that," Durand said rather hastily. "It's just that-- I find nothing to do with myself down here. I like to get the news of the old home town."
Then when it came, he didn't have the courage to examine it there in the store, he took it back to her and they searched for it together, she holding the sheets spread, his strained face low on her shoulder.
"There it is," she said crisply, and narrowed the expanse with a sharp, crackling fold, and they read it together.
. . . Bruce Dollard, a renting agent, who has had charge of the property for the past several years, has informed the authorities of one instance in which the occupants gave abrupt notice of departure, quitting the house within the space of a single morning, with no previous indication before that day of intending to do so.
The proprietor of a tool shop has identified a shovel found in the cellar of the house as one that he sold to an unidentified woman some time ago, and it is thought the purchase of this implement may well aid in fixing the approximate time of the misdeed.
Other than that, there have been no further developments, but the authorities are confident of bringing to light new . . . .
"Now they know," he said bitterly. "Now there can be no denying it any longer. Now they know."
"No they don't," she said flatly. "Or it wouldn't be in here like this. They're guessing, as much as they ever were."
"The shovel--"
"The shovel was in the house, long after we left. Others could have used it, who came after us."
"It gets worse, all the time."
"It only seems to. They want to do the very thing to you they are doing: frighten you, cause you to blunder in some way. In actuality it's no whit worse than it was before it was found."
"How can you say that, when it stands there before you in black and white ?"
She shook her head. "The barking dog can't bite you at the same time; he has to stop when he's ready to sink his teeth in. Don't you know that when they do know, if they do, we will never know they do? You are waiting for a message that will never reach us. You are looking for news that will never come. Don't you know that we're safe so long as they keep on mentioning it? When they stop, that's the time to look out. When sudden silence falls, the danger has really begun."