In her abstracted state she hardly noticed, at first, the bearded man walking up the driveway out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the yard. When she awakened to his approach she was struck by something familiar in his walk—strikingly familiar—but when she tried to place it her mind seemed to shy from what she knew and she could not explain to herself the sense of sudden discovery. He came to the door and let himself in. When he saw her he paused, flustered, but at last nodded to her, the stocking still drawn down over his face, and then, without a glance at the inert Luke, he went on upstairs.
2
He paced. She heard him going back and forth over her head and she remembered dreams of someone walking on her grave. Luke was awake now, sitting with his head in his hands, his face white, saying nothing. Nick sat on the couch, the gun in his lap, cleaning his fingernails with the greatest possible concentration. She too sat silent and almost motionless, waiting. The footsteps overhead went slowly back and forth, from one end of the house to the other, loud on the hardwood of the hallway over the kitchen, softer when he came to the wide old boards of the bedroom floors or the Runians’ throw-rugs. She lit a cigarette, and Nick looked at her. The Sunlight Man had told her not to smoke. She sat with the cigarette hanging between her fingers, waiting for Nick to decide, and finally he looked down. “You want one?” she said. He glanced up, then away again. When he’d thought about it a minute he nodded and she reached one toward him, then lit her own and threw him the matches. Then silence again. Two o’clock. She closed her eyes, thinking nothing in particular, wondering if Luke would be better off if he ate something, and when she opened them again—after nearly an hour, she would have sworn—only twelve minutes had passed. She sighed and closed her eyes again. Seven minutes later, Luke said, “I’m going out.” “You can’t,” Nick said. “That’s what you think,” Luke said. But when he moved toward the door Nick leaned forward, half-standing, aiming the pistol directly at him, and Luke was afraid. As for Millie, she was terrified; it was as if all her insides had turned to loose pudding. “For the love of God, stop it, Luke,” she said. “Nick, put that damned gun down.” They obeyed, both of them, instantly, grateful to escape the test. She wiped sweat from the bridge of her nose, and again for a long time they all sat silent.
The police arrived at four. As the black and white car turned in at the driveway the bearded man came down the stairs lightly, the stocking still over his face, his hands in the pockets of his suitcoat, and nodded to Nick. “Come with me,” he said. And then, to Millie, “Don’t say a word. Be sensible. Show them whatever they ask to see, and remember—” He curled his fingers at her, like claws, as though it were all some joke. “—I’ll be right here beside you, invisible.” The police car had gone around to the back now. The Sunlight Man made a quick inspection of the kitchen, then went down the cellar steps, pushing Nick in front of him. The knock came, and she breathed deep, trying to think. She heard the cellar door opening again and knew he was somewhere behind her.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Hodge,” the policeman said. He slid his hat off. It was the one called Miller.
“Afternoon,” she said. Her voice was very faint, and she was sure she had given it all away. She couldn’t tell whether she was glad of it or not.
“Everything all right here?” he asked. He was looking at her closely, and she realized she must be pale.
She wet her lips. “Oh yes, fine,” she said. Then, hastily, “Luke’s been ill. My son. He has—these headaches.”
The policeman glanced at Luke, and the shorter policeman with him nodded, sympathetic. “It’s a hell of a thing all right,” the short one said. “My first wife had headaches. Migraine.”
“These are histamine,” Luke said stupidly.
Miller said, “Mrs. Hodge, you seen anybody around here? I guess you know—” He let it trail off, and she nodded.
“I heard. It was terrible.”
“We thought he might head for here.”
“That’s what we thought too,” she said. “I could hardly sleep last night. And that storm, on top of it.” Her shudder was real enough.
He slid his lower lip over his upper and looked at his boots.
“Would you like to come in, officers?” she said. She tried to think of some way of signalling to them.
“Yes, thank you.”
Luke sat down in the chair by the fireplace and covered his face with his hands.
“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Miller said.
She nodded, faint with indecision.
“You don’t mind if we look around?”
“No, of course not. We’d be grateful.”
He was moving toward the kitchen, his eyebrows lowered, and she had a feeling he was straining his ears, listening. Suppose they found him on their own and she had nothing to do with it. Would the Sunlight Man blame her, in that case? If, say, he escaped them—shot his way out of it, as they said on TV—would he turn on her then, if she’d done nothing? Dear God, please let them find him, she thought. The second policeman had gone to the diningroom and stood now at the window looking out.
“We’ve been so frightened,” she said.
He studied her, smiling with only his mouth. “You look guilty as hell. Been up to something?”
She knew her alarm showed. A wink would tell him, she thought, but she did nothing.
Still he was looking at her, but with another part of his mind he was listening to something far away. Could he hear them, down in the cellar? He said, “What is it? Come out with it.”
“Really,” she said. She gave a little laugh. “I can’t imagine …”
The other policeman had gone into the downstairs bathroom to look there. He came out holding a bottle. “Look at this,” he said.
Miller unscrewed the cap and smelled the pills, then broke a little piece off between his fingernails, watching her as he did it. He ground the powder between his thumb and first finger and tasted a little.
“What you think?” the other policeman said.
Miller screwed the cap back on and shrugged. “I think the druggist’s label came off,” he said. “Get back to work. Don’t get sidetracked.” The other man went back through the livingroom toward the stairs, and Miller leaned toward her. “Look, we got bigger fish than that to fry, right now, so you’re in luck. But throw it away or something. Understand?”
She managed a sickly smile.
Miller studied her.
“What’s in here?” he said.
“That’s the door to the cellar.”
He opened it and looked down. “There a lightswitch?”
“It’s here.” She reached in past him and turned the stairway light on. The stairway was crooked and worn and had no railing. She could see the dim, cobwebbed stone of the wall, and on the floor two inches of water from seepage and last night’s rain.
“Stinks,” he said.
She nodded.
“These old cellars always stink,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. “You should smell mine. Rats?”
“Hundreds of them,” she said. “Sometimes at night you can hear them swimming around.”
Miller made a face. He went halfway down the stairs and leaned over to look around. There would be nothing to see, she was sure. The shelves of ancient mason jars full of long-ago rotted tomatoes and peaches and pears, all black now; the old wood furnace with its side caved in; the cobwebbed pipes leading out from the furnace; the chutes for wood, the doors to the apple bins, empty for years. He came back up the stairs and called to the other one. They both went down. They were there for a long time, but they found nothing. They found nothing upstairs either. Was it possible that he really had become invisible? The shorter one went out to look in the barn. Again, nothing.
“You haven’t seen or heard anything?” he asked when they were getting ready to leave.
“Nothing,” she said feebly.
Luke was rubbing his eyes with both hands, and she could feel his frustration and anger
like a shock running through her. She refused to be thrown off. I exist, no one else. …
“Ok,” Miller said. “Sorry to take your time.” He said something more, and she watched his mouth move, trying to concentrate on the words, but her mind seemed to have snapped off, she could not make herself listen to anything but the silence of the flooded cellar.
Then they were gone, and she and Luke were alone again, staring at each other with the old dull hostility, weary to the heart.
“Well, what more could I do?” she said.
“You could have winked,” he snapped. “You could have slipped him a note.”
“And you couldn’t?” she said.
Luke said nothing.
They heard something moving through the water in the cellar, then coming up the stairs.
3
He returned from the cellar a changed man—exuberant, expansive, tyrannical. He stalked back and forth through the kitchen in his bare feet, his wet shoes and stockings on the oven door beside Nick’s, and he bounced up and down as he walked, making a kind of dance of it, his huge rear end protruding and his beard jutting forward. “We were superb,” he said, “we were brilliant! Millie, I underestimated you!” But he would not let her have a cigarette or a drink. “Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health,” he said. “Get your mind off it. Sing after me.” He threw out his arms and sang, still in the false, high squeaky voice:
“Mae swn yn Mhortinllaen, swn hwylie’n codi,
Blocie i gyd yn gwichian,
Dafydd Jones yn gweiddi; Ni fedra’i aros gartre yn fy myw;
Rhaid i mi fynd yn llongwr iawn ar Fflat Huw Puw!”
He said: “That’s Welsh. Magnificent language. Magnificent song, too, as you can hear. All about Huw Puw’s boat. Let’s do it again now. First phrase. All together! Mae swn yn Mhortinllaen . . .” He drew himself up and glared at them. “I’ll say it just one more time.” The pistol appeared in his hand, and he aimed it at Millie. “Mae, swn, yn, Mhortinllaen . . .” She tried, feebly, to sing with him. He shook his fist. “What’s the matter with you people? You sing along with Mitch. I hear you. You sing along with Lawrence Welk. But I ask you to sing a simple little boatsong, the most ridiculous, simplest little song in the world, and you act like you’ve gotten a sliver through your tongue.” Abruptly he stomped away, curling his toes as he raised his feet. “Forget it,” he said. He whirled and pointed his finger at her, the gun in the other hand aimed at the ceiling like a starter’s pistol. “The trouble with you is, you’re rotten,” he said. “I see those magazines you read. ‘Horoscope for Weight-Watchers.’ ‘Barbara Walters Visits Princess Grace of Monaco.’ ‘FDR’s Secret Affair.’ ‘How James Bond Destroyed My Husband, by Mrs. Ian Fleming.’ ‘Foods Everyone Loves.’ ‘The Truth about the Best Seller List.’ ‘Why Teen-Agers Rebel.’ Gyuck! How can you improve your mind, reading tripe like that? Heads stuffed with cotton candy!” He bounded closer, like a fencer, and shook his finger under her nose. “Everyone should learn at least one Welsh song, if only for the double l’s. The guttural noises clean out the throat and help to prevent brainless cooing. Now. One more time. He moved the revolver slowly toward her forehead until the metal pressed against her skin. Her heart pounded violently. “Repeat after me,” he said. “Mae swn yn Mhortinllaen, swn hwylie’n codi.”
She repeated it.
He smiled. “Good. Excellent! We may have discovered an important new educational method!” He swung away. “As I’ve said, my object is to make you a saint. I do what good I can as I pass, you know. After we’ve learned ‘Fflat Huw Puw’ we’ll learn ‘The Dream of the Rood’ in Old English.” He looked at his hand as if surprised. The gun was gone. He shrugged. “I understand how you feel,” he said. “But we mustn’t waste valuable time, simply because we’re imprisoned here. Keep the mind alert, I always say. Try to learn something new and significant every day.” He tipped his head, crafty. “What do you know about manure?” he said.
She waited and became aware that she was wringing her hands.
“A well-kept manure heap may be safely taken as one of the surest indications of thrift and success in farming,” he said in the voice of a lecturer. He leaned toward her. “Neglect of this resource causes losses which, though little appreciated, are vast in extent. According to recent statistics—or anyway recent in 1906—there are in the United States, in round numbers, 19,500,000 horses, mules, and burros, 61,000,000 cattle, 47,000,000 hogs, and 51,600,000 sheep. Think of it! If all these animals were kept in stalls or pens throughout the year and the manure carefully saved, the approximate value of the fertilizing constituents of the manure produced by each horse or mule annually would be $27, by each head of cattle $20, by each hog $8, and by each sheep $2. 1906 prices, of course. You didn’t know that, did you? You’d be surprised how much I could teach you about economy, the fine art of getting ahead if you ever catch up. Take burdocks—those weeds right out there across the driveway—also known as cockle button, cuckold dock, beggars’ buttons, hurrbur, stick button, hardock, and bardane. Worth money! Around 50,000 pounds of burdock root are imported annually from Belgium, for medical purposes. Or were in 1904. Or take common mustard. The imports into the United States of black and white mustard together during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1903, amounted to 5,302,876 pounds. Three to six cents per pound for the seeds. The Lord be praised!”
“Listen,” Luke said.
The Sunlight Man drew himself up. “It is interesting to note that in South Africa pumpkins are often given to horses as green feed.”
“I need a drink,” Millie said.
“Did Teresa drink? Did St. George drink? I withdraw the question.”
He went on and on, and whenever any of them tried to leave the room he stopped them and demanded their attention. Exactly at seven o’clock he bowed from the waist and said, “Students, I bid you good evening. I must go make a phonecall,” and without another word he went out. They watched him hurry down the driveway toward the road.