“It was an awful thing for them to do,” she said, and suddenly her eyes were full of anger. I’d never seen her that way before. “Wait’ll I get hold of that Jim Tate. I’ll tell him what I think of him.”
“He wouldn’t mind,” I said. “Not if he could look at you while you’re telling him.”
“Well, I’d tell him anyway,” she said defiantly, and then all the vehemence went out of her and she was just confused and happy. “You’re teasing me.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not teasing you.” That terrific awareness of her began to get the best of me, and I wanted to take hold of her and kiss her so badly my arms hurt. She must have seen it in my face.
“Harry, I have to get to work!” she said hurriedly.
I walked with her up to the door. She unlocked it, and paused a moment in the doorway. “Sometime in the next year or so it’ll be five o’clock,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
She smiled. “I think it could be arranged.”
Somehow the day wore on. The hours dragged, but never did come to a complete standstill. We were busy, which helped a little. About three o’clock I drove back on to the lot after a short ride with a farmer who wanted a demonstration, and saw her come out of the office across the street and start up the sidewalk. I stopped in the middle of my sales pitch when I saw who was with her. It was Sutton.
The farmer hemmed and hawed and reckoned he’d have to think it over a little more. “Sure,” I said impatiently. “O.K. O.K.” I could still see them. They were turning in at the drugstore. He finally shuffled off and I slammed the car door shut and started walking across the street after them.
They were sitting in a booth. She was facing the front, and as I came through the door I got a glimpse of her face before she saw me. It was unhappy and afraid and somehow defenceless, as if she had come to expect humiliation from Sutton and knew of no way to escape it. There was something beaten about it. When she looked up and saw me I could see her begging me to stay away.
I was in no mood to pay any attention to it. There was nothing in my mind now except Sutton. I pulled up a chair and sat down at the end of the table, glancing at her and then at him.
“Well,” I said, “a little business meeting?”
He nodded affably, and then he said, “Sure. Why don’t you sit down? Oh, I see you already have.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
I leaned my arms on the table and looked at him. “You’re sure it’s all right? With you, I mean. You don’t have any objections?”
“Not a one, pal.”
“Well, that’s nice,” I said. “Isn’t it?” But I knew it wasn’t any use. Crowding him like that was just a waste of time. He was too much of the pro. He was pushing her around for what he could get out of it, and being jockeyed into a useless fight was only for suckers.
“Anything I could help with?” I asked.
“No-o, I don’t think so,” he said. Then he looked across at her and asked, with bland innocence, “Do you think there’s anything he could help with, honey?”
Her face was pale and you could see her fighting to keep from going all to pieces. I began to wonder if I was being very smart. I was blundering around in something I didn’t know anything about, and I began to have a feeling it was too deep to be cleared up by a kid stunt like slapping Sutton around, even if I could do it. She could only shake her head.
“Well, I’m sorry, pal,” he said with mock regret. “You see how it is. Maybe some other time, huh? We’ll give you a ring.”
“Please, Harry,” she said miserably, “it’s all right. It’s just a personal matter I have to talk over with Mr. Sutton.”
“O.K.,” I said. I shook my head and got up. There wasn’t anything else to do. I looked down at Sutton. “Sorry we couldn’t do any business.”
“Well, cheer up, pal. There’s days like that,” he said easily. “I’d cry, but it makes my mascara run.”
I went back to the lot. If she wouldn’t tell me what it was and didn’t want me mixed up in it, there was nothing I could do. I groused around the lot the rest of the afternoon. I already had an idea what it would be like when I picked her up at five o’clock, and it was. It was ruined. She was completely different when she had seen Sutton, or even when I mentioned him. She was tightened up and silent, and you could sense the desperate unhappiness tearing her up inside. We stopped on a little country road and I kissed her, but it wasn’t anything. She was somewhere else.
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I hate to be such a wet blanket, Harry. And I was looking forward so to seeing you.”
I took her face in my hands as I had that night. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s have it.”
She just shook her head with an infinite weariness.
“Don’t you see?” I said. “You’ve got to tell me. How can I help you if I don’t know what it is?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Harry.”
“The hell there’s not. It’s Sutton, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and then she nodded slowly.
“Well, Sutton puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. All he needs is for somebody to have a talk with him.”
“No,” she said desperately. “Don’t do it, Harry! Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because. You have to. You just have to,” she said pleadingly. “Just give me a little time. Don’t you see? It isn’t that I don’t want to tell you. I just can’t—not yet. It’s all so mixed up. I almost go crazy trying to decide what to do. It was bad enough before, but now—”
“But now what?” I asked, turning her face so she had to look at me.
“Now there’s you,” she said simply.
I kissed her and sat there holding her with the top of the blonde head just under my chin. Her face was pressed into my shirt and she was crying, quite silently. I thought of Sutton. If we had much more of this, something was going to happen to him.
We went to the movies Wednesday night, and she began to snap out of it a little. Neither of us had seen anything more of Sutton. She was very quiet, but she didn’t break down any more, and I just gave her time as she had asked me. I knew she was fighting it out with herself, and once or twice I had the feeling she was very near to telling me about it. She never did quite make it, but I left her alone. I knew that was what she wanted, and it was wonderful just being with her.
Gulick and I were busy at the lot, with the cars moving pretty well, and I was starting to work up another ad. I thought about the buried money a hundred times a day, but stayed away from the place. The uproar over the robbery was dying down a little, but I knew now I was being watched. The whole thing telegraphed itself. They’d given up too easily when they got that phone call from Harshaw. The alibi she’d handed me was second-hand and hearsay, coming to them through Harshaw, and yet they’d just folded up and quit as if she’d already testified to it under oath. I wasn’t free; I was just being allowed to run around on the end of a line until I hanged myself. Well, it was all right; two could play at that game. As long as I left the money where it was, I was safe. They had nothing else to go on, and they’d never find it.
Gulick and I were sitting in the office around four o’clock Thursday afternoon when the phone rang. He answered. “Hello,” he said. “Harshaw’s Car Lot. Hello! Hello!” Then he put the receiver back in the cradle.
“Wrong number?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They just hung up.”
About twenty minutes later the same thing happened again. I began to have a feeling about it then. The third time it rang he was outside and I answered myself. My hunch was right.
“It’s about time you answered,” she said. Her voice was pitched very low and I had a little trouble hearing it.
“We didn’t expect you back so soon,” I said, giving it the employee-to-boss’s-wife treatment. “I hope yo
u had a nice trip.”
“Aren’t you cute?” she said. “Cut it out.”
“I didn’t think you’d be back till Monday.”
“I’ll tell you about that. When I see you. Tonight, that is.”
I looked up just then and saw Gulick coming back in from the lot. “Well, I don’t know.” I said. “It depends on how much you want for it. That model’s three years old.”
She was fast enough on the uptake. “Oh,” she said, “So old prissy-pants is there?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
“Well, he can’t hear me. So listen. Go to the same place you went before—”
Gulick sat down and started reading the paper at the next desk. “I don’t think we can made any deal on that basis,” I said.
“Don’t you really?” she asked softly. Something in her voice told me she was enjoying it.
“No.”
“Well, that is too bad, isn’t it?” she purred. Then she went on, “Oh, by the way, wasn’t it lucky I saw you over there the other day at the fire? Just suppose I’d missed you.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. I could feel the snare begin to tighten around my neck. It was nylon and very smooth, and all she was doing was adjusting my tie for me, the dirty little …
“I did so want to see you,” she said regretfully. “But of course, if you’ve got another date—”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll think it over.”
“You’re so nice. The same time as before, then?”
“Yes.”
“All right. ’Bye now.”
I was furious as I drove out the highway after dark, but I was scared too. If it had been dangerous before, it was suicidal now. There wasn’t only Harshaw and the gossips to think about; there was that Sheriff. She had furnished me with an alibi, so how long would it take him to get suspicious if he even heard of our being seen together? And what were they doing back here on Thursday, four days ahead of time? It was funny, too, that he hadn’t come to the office. The whole thing was crazy.
Just before I turned off at the old gravel pit I checked the road behind me. There some other headlights, two or three sets of them, about a half mile back. I made my turn anyway, and drove on into the timber. All the cars went on past without slowing down. I still wasn’t sure, though, and I felt uneasy.
I drove along the road until I found what I was looking for, a place where I could pull off into the trees and get the car out of sight. After I got it turned around facing the road again I cut the lights and waited. I’d have a pretty good look at anyone going past, but there’d be no chance he’d see me back of that screen of leaves and underbrush.
I lighted a cigarette and smoked it out nervously, listening to the night sounds and thinking of the dangerous mess I was drifting further into all the time. I had twelve thousand dollars I couldn’t touch, I was crazy about a girl who was in some kind of trouble she couldn’t tell me about, and I was getting more hopelessly fouled up every day with this crazy Dolores Harshaw. I had to ditch her while I was still able to.
13
MINUTES DRAGGED BY; I FINISHED the cigarette and crushed it out in the tray. Then I heard a car coming and could see splashes of light breaking against the trees. It came up past me and went on. I had a fairly good look at it and was sure it was the Oldsmobile. But maybe I’d better wait a few minutes and be sure she wasn’t being followed. Then I had a better idea; it couldn’t be over a quarter mile to the old sawmill, so why not walk? If I heard another car coming I could jump out of the road and take to the timber.
There wasn’t any other car. My eyes became accustomed to the sooty blackness under the trees, and when I came out into the clearing around the old mill I could see fairly well in the starlight. The Olds was parked off the road at the edge of the clearing. She wasn’t in it. Then I spotted her, a gleam of white over by the old sawdust pile. She was standing near the back of it, where it slid off into the shadowy depths of the ravine.
When I came up I saw why she’d been so easy to see. She was wearing only a pair of brief, pale-coloured shorts and a halter, and all that stacked and uncovered blondeness was almost luminous in the darkness.
She turned when she heard me, and put her arms up. They tightened around my neck as she came up against me. You could no more halfway kiss her than you could fall part way down an elevator shaft and then change your mind, but even so she knew something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t tell me I’m slipping?”
I drew back a little. “What’d you have to see me about?”
“Now I’ve heard everything.”
The anger came boiling up in me again. Maybe she thought she owned me. “Well, if that’s all,” I said, “let’s get on with it. If we hurry, maybe we can make the next train home.”
Her palm exploded against my face and made my eyes sting. I grabbed her arm and tightened up on it. “Keep your hand to yourself, you little witch,” I said, “or I’ll break it off.”
“Well, so we’ve got another girl now, have we?”
“And whose business would that be if I had?”
“It might be mine. You ever think of that?”
“It’s not. And I didn’t.”
“You might be surprised.” She looked up at me with a tantalizing smile. “Now, let’s see. It wouldn’t be that leggy blonde in the loan office, would it? What’s her name? Harper? I saw you at the movies with her. But no, I guess she’s not quite your type. Pretty, all right, but a little young and watered-down for you.”
“Knock it off,” I said. “If you wanted to see me about something, start talking.”
“So it is the little dear?” She laughed. “Well, how do you like that? She must be the sly one, all right, with that innocent look. But I guess you can never tell about that long-underwear type.”
I caught myself just in time. I couldn’t let her needle me into losing my head. There was something a little too cocky about her which got home to me, even through the blaze of anger, and I had to find out what she was up to.
“Let’s get down to cases,” I said. “I came out here to tell you something. Don’t call me up any more. I don’t like it. And this is the last time I’m going to meet you out here. You may be crazy, but I’m not. If you’ve got to play in the sawdust to keep yourself from jumping at night, go find yourself another boy friend. I’m through.”
“My goodness,” she said. “You are in a state tonight, aren’t you? What’s she been doing to you, taking you to church? Or maybe you’re still a little nervous?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It must have been just awful. Imagine them thinking you did it.”
I could feel it coming, but went on playing it deadpan. “Well, I guess they had to pick up somebody. But what’s that got to do with it?”
“Well, nothing, I suppose,” she said innocently. “Except that— Well, I suppose I thought you’d be glad to see me. After all, I did see you there, and I was the only one, wasn’t I?”
“Probably others did, and just didn’t remember,” I said, beginning to sweat. “The fact that you saw me proves I was there, so there must have been more.”
“But it was so stupid of them not to remember, wasn’t it?”
“Well, maybe they just didn’t know me.”
“At least, not as well as I do.”
“I can’t see that it matters now, anyway,” I said. “After all, somebody saw me there, and that settles it. But don’t think I’m not glad you did. It was a break for me.”
“Oh, it was for me too,” she said earnestly. “Just for the sweet things you said. Remember?”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
“I knew you would. It was right at the beginning. I was watching the fire-engine hook on to the water line, and you came over to where I was standing and said you’d never seen me looking prettier and that you wished we were alone. You remember that, don’t you?”
The dirt
y, rotten little … “Yes,” I said. “And what else did I say?”
“Why, let me see now. You said it was funny it was that building, because we’d just been in it the other day, and who’d have thought all those old papers and trash and junk would catch fire like that? Of course, nobody else knew that—”
“I see,” I said. “It was quite a conversation, wasn’t it. Was that all?”
“Well, not quite. You said nobody could ever take my place, and you’d never be able to leave me. I thought that was awful sweet. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very sweet. So now let’s cut it out. What’s the angle?”
“Why, nothing at all, sweet. Except that I’d hate to think you didn’t mean all those nice things you said to me.”
“And if I told you to go to hell?”
“Then I’d know I just dreamed the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be awful?”
She knew she didn’t have to say the rest of it. Without her alibi I’d be headed right back to the quiz show and maybe this time they’d break me. She had me right where she wanted me.
“I love talking to you,” she said, smiling. “We understand each other so well. You know, in a lot of ways we’re just alike.”
“Isn’t that nice?” I said.
“Yes, I think so. Now kiss me like a good boy, and tell me you like me better than that skinny little owl.”
There was no way to kiss her like a good boy. You could start out that way, but you always ended up on the other side of the tracks. If you hated her, it didn’t make any difference; it worked just the same.
“M-m-m!” she said. “See? You do like me, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Isn’t that funny? I could have sworn you did. But, honey, before you get carried away with not liking me, I just remembered there was something I wanted to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“This will kill you. I think I got caught one of those other times.”