"He can follow his own backtrail. I"m not concerned about that. But I"ve got to take you home. Your family"ll be worried about you."
"But we can"t just go off and leave poor s.p.u.n.ky down here alone-"
"I"ll find him," I said. "You just get in the car. And then give me your shoes."
She looked at me wonderingly. "My shoes? But why?"
I grinned. "I want something you"re wearing, and I can"t think of anything else you can spare without starting a riot."
"Oh," she said. She sat down on the seat and slipped off the wedgies. They had gra.s.s straps, and it suddenly occurred to me they were the same as the ones Dolores Harshaw wore. I took them back and put them down on the sand where we"d eaten lunch, and then got in the car.
"We"re just going to leave them there?" she asked, puzzled.
"Yes. And when I get back, s.p.u.n.ky should be asleep with his head on them. It"s an old trick. When you lose a dog, leave something he knows is yours at the last place he saw you. When he comes back he"ll wait by it."
I wasn"t nearly as optimistic about it as I pretended, but there was nothing else we could do at the moment. My experience when I was a boy had been with hunting dogs- bird dogs and hounds-and as far as I knew these house-bred fluffb.a.l.l.s like s.p.u.n.ky might be as helpless in the woods as bubble-dancers.
She was very quiet as we drove back to town. They were waiting on the front porch and you could see they had been worried about her. There was a great deal of excited talk while she tried to explain the shoe trick and why she was barefoot, and then Gloria Two began to cry when she realized s.p.u.n.ky was lost. Robinson wanted to go with me to help look for him when I went back, but I told him it wasn"t necessary.. For some reason I wanted to do it alone.
It was slow going, driving back over that road at night, and it was nearly nine o"clock before I got to the bridge. As I made the last turn I expected to see s.p.u.n.ky come bounding into the headlights, overjoyed at seeing somebody again, but the river bank was deserted and silent as it had been when we left. I got out and walked down to where I"d left her shoes. He wasn"t there. I began to be worried about it then. There was no telling what had happened to him. There were thousands and thousands of acres of wild river bottom down here and if he didn"t have any sense of direction or a good nose he might never find his way back.
I picked the shoes up and took them back to the car, suddenly conscious of the presence of Gloria Harper in everything connected with this place and with the whole happy afternoon which had slipped past us so quickly. She was everywhere. I wanted to see her now-but how could I go back and face her without the dog? She would be desolate because Gloria Two was heartbroken and...
For G.o.d"s sake, I thought angrily, how silly can you get? I had a sudden, sharp, and contemptuous picture of Harry Madox at the age of thirty struggling to keep from drowning in all this sea of blonde heartbreak over a paddle-footed mop of a dog.
I didn"t leave, though. I called myself eighteen different kinds of a fool, but I stayed and began calling and whistling. I cut the light after a while to keep from running the battery down, and sat there in the dark smoking cigarettes in the intervals when I wasn"t yelling. It was ten o"clock, and then ten-thirty. I"d waste another half hour, and then I"d go back.
I had made a last series of whistles and was about to give up when I heard him. He was barking a short distance downriver. I walked back away from the car and yelled, "Here, s.p.u.n.ky! Here, boy!" and then I saw the shadowy movement across the sand as he ran towards me. He was scared stiff and whining and trying to climb all over me. I picked him up and opened the car door to turn on the ceiling light, and looked him over to see if he"d been snake bitten. He was all right, or appeared to be, except that he was covered with mud.
I shoved him in the back and climbed in myself. He leaned up on the back of the seat and began licking me on the ear while I tried to light a cigarette. I swore at him, but it didn"t do any good, and I finally gave up. I was glad too. Now I wouldn"t have to go back and tell her I couldn"t find him.
The house was dark when I pulled up in front. I knew they"d have returned from Bible Cla.s.s by this time, so I supposed they were all in bed. They were-all except one. I had just climbed out of the car when she came out the gate, a blur in the darkness in some kind of long, pale housecoat. I knew she had been sitting up waiting for me on the porch.
"Here"s your friend," I said, pitching my voice down so I wouldn"t wake them up. I scooped him out of the back of the car and dropped him over the fence. When I turned back she was standing beside me and quite near, and my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness so I could see her face. Her eyes were very big and they looked black in the starlight, and her hair was a rumpled mop of blondeness.
"It was wonderful of you," she whispered.
"Not at all."
"I was worried; you were gone so long."
"We were whispering like a boy and girl in a doorway. "He wasn"t there. I had to keep calling him. But he"s all right; he was just lost."
"I was afraid you were lost."
"You were?"
"Yes," she said quietly. "Thank you for everything. It was a lovely day, wasn"t it?"
"Is it midnight yet?"
"Not quite."
"Well, happy birthday, Junior." I took her face in my hands and kissed her. And then they dynamited the dam.
She wasn"t Junior any more and n.o.body was kidding and the light touch was gone somewhere downriver in the night. Her arms were around my neck and I was holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe. It was crazy and very wonderful. We didn"t say anything. After a long time I let go of her and took her face in my hands again and tilted it up a little, and she put her hands up over mine. I could see the starshine in her eyes as if they were wet.
"It was a wonderful day, wasn"t it?" she asked softly.
"And getting better," I said.
"I"ve got to go in, Harry."
"I can"t let you go."
"I"ll see you in the morning." Suddenly she pulled my head down and kissed me and slipped away inside the gate. "Good night, Harry," she said. I watched until she was up on the front porch and then when I heard the screen door open and close I got in the car and drove off.
I don"t know how long I drove around, or where I went. Everything was mixed up and I couldn"t sort it out. Once I remembered standing beside the car somewhere on a dark country road smoking and grinding a cigarette b.u.t.t under my foot and thinking: I"m thirty years old and she"s just a kid-just a big-eyed, beautiful kid who never says much. That"s all she is. And kissing her is like driving into a nitro truck.
It must have been after two when I got back to the rooming house. I was still in the dream, and only half noticed the strange car parked at the curb on the other side of the street. I cut my lights and got out, and then the spot hit me right in the eyes.
"Madox?" The voice came from the wall of darkness somewhere on my right.
"It"s him." That one was on the left.
I couldn"t see anything but the light, and cold was running up my back like a stream of ice water. But somehow I got my mind back in time from the rosy cloud it was in, and I had sense enough not to try to run. I froze up tight and waited.
"Yeah," I said, trying to make my voice sound natural. "I"m Madox. What is it?"
"We"re from the Sheriff"s office. You better come along with us."
10
It was tough, with that light in my face. I couldn"t let anything show. Just hang on, I thought desperately. Play it dumb. Play it a line at a time till you find out.
"I don"t get it," I said, as naturally as I could. "You want to see me? You must have the wrong party."
"We don"t think so." They came out of the light then, one on each side of me. I recognized them. They were the two deputies who had been talking to Gulick Sat.u.r.day afternoon. "Let"s take a ride."
"Well, sure," I said. "But how"s for telling me what this is all about?"
"Bank robbery-and arson," the short one said.
"Bank robbery?" I said. "Aren"t you guys reaching for it a little? Look, I"m a car salesman. I work for George Harshaw-"
"We know all about that," he said, cutting me off. "But we want to have a little talk with you. I"d advise you to come along without any argument; you"re just making it tough on yourself."
"Sure. If I can help you any way, I"ll be glad to." I shrugged.
He came over behind me and felt me under the arms and down the sides. "He"s clean, Buck," he said to the other one, and then to me, "All right, Madox. Get in the car."
"O.K.," I said. "But wait"ll I lock mine."
"We"ll do it. You got your keys?"
"Yeah."
"Let me have "em."
I gave him the keys, which were still in my hand. He tossed them to the tall deputy, the one called Buck, who went around in back of the car and opened the trunk. He switched on a long-barrelled flashlight and looked over every inch of it. Then he went inside the car and began lifting up the seats and pawing through the junk in the glove compartment.
"Where you been?" the short one asked me while Buck was shaking down the car. "Two-thirty"s a little late for this town."
"Just riding around," I said. "It"s too hot to sleep."
"Things on your mind, maybe?" He managed to get a lot of suggestion into it. "Just where you been riding around?"
"h.e.l.l, I don"t know," I said, suddenly realizing I had no idea where I"d been. "Just around. Up the highway and back."
"Maybe you"d better try to remember. You don"t look too good, right now."
Just then Buck slammed the door and came over to us. "What you doing with a pair of girl"s shoes in your car?" he asked.
I stared at him. Shoes? Then I remembered; I hadn"t given them to her. "Oh," I said. "They belong to a friend of mine."
"She always leave her shoes in the car?" Buck asked, "I"ve heard of "em leaving their pants around here and there-"
"Take it easy, Mac," I said. I told them about losing the dog and going back to find him. They motioned me towards the police car while I was talking and we got in, all three of us in the back seat. There was another man in front, at the wheel.
"And what girl was this?" the short one asked.
"Her name"s Gloria Harper."
"She live here in town?"
"It"s all right," the man in front said. I knew who he was then. He was the deputy who"d been at the fire, the one who lived here. "I know her. She"s a nice kid. If this guy"s mixed up in something I doubt if she is."
We went on through town and north on the highway. It was about twenty miles to the county seat. I was still flying blind, but I was beginning to have a hunch they were too. Maybe they didn"t have a thing to go on except the fact that I was a stranger in town.
I began to breathe a little easier. So far I hadn"t made a false move or spilled anything, in spite of the suddenness of it, and now that I was on guard all I had to do was play it as it turned up and stick to my story. I even had my alibi there in the front seat, the deputy who"d seen me at the fire. The only thing I had to remember was not to spring it too soon in the game. Let it come out naturally-that was the thing.
When we got into town we drove right to the jail. The Sheriff was there waiting for us in a hot, bleak office full of harsh light and steel filing cabinets. It was the first time I"d seen him up close, and I didn"t much like what I saw. There wasn"t any of the pot-bellied court-house stooge here; he was a policeman doing police work. The hair must have been prematurely white because the face was that of a man in his forties, a face with all the flabby indecision of the front side of an ax.
"What took you so long?" he asked Buck.
"He was out ridin" around," Buck said.
"Where?"
It was the short deputy who answered. "He says he don"t know." He grinned.
I turned and looked at him. He wasn"t over five feet five, with a deformed left hand and a nasty pair of eyes, and you could see he liked going around with the badge and gun as much as he didn"t like men bigger than he was. The other two-Buck and the one who"d been at the fire-looked harmless enough, just lanky, serious-minded country boys drawing a county paycheck.
"All right, all right," the Sheriff said. "You and Buck can go home." They went out and he jerked his head towards a folding chair over against the wall. "Sit down, Madox," he said, taking a cigar out of a box.
I sat down. The big unshaded bulb hanging in the middle of the room made it even hotter than it was inside. I fished out a cigarette and lighted it, throwing the match into a dirty spittoon. Sweat ran down my chest inside the shirt. How much did they know?
"What"s this all about, Sheriff?" I asked.
He bit the end off the cigar and looked over at the deputy, ignoring me. "What about the car, Tate?"
"It was clean. Wasn"t nothing in it but a pair of girl"s shoes and the junk in the glove locker. The usual stuff."
"And his room?"
Tate shook his head. "Nothing there but his clothes." He sat astride the chair with his arms propped on the back, watching me while he smoked a cigarette.
The Sheriff jerked his head around suddenly, and the cold, incisive eyes bored into me. "All right, Madox; where"d you hide it?"
"Hide what?" I asked.
"That money."
"Look, Sheriff," I said. "I could ask you what money, and waste some more of your time and mine, but I understand that I"m supposed to have robbed a bank. Is that right?"
"That"s right."
"Well, let"s get down to cases. I didn"t rob a bank. I happen to be a car salesman, and I haven"t got any sidelines. But if you think there"s any way I can help you, let"s get on with it and quit horsing around so I can get back and get some sleep. I"ve got to work tomorrow."
"O.K.," he said. He leaned backwards across the desk and flipped open one of the drawers. His hand came out holding a cardboard box. He lifted the lid off, then walked over and handed it to me. I looked at it and had to fight to keep my face still. It was the alarm clock.
"Where"d you buy it, Madox?"
"I didn"t."
"You know what it is, don"t you?" He didn"t raise his voice or threaten. He didn"t have to. He just looked at you.
"Sure," I said. "It looks like what"s left of a clock." It was black, and the gla.s.s was melted.
"That"s right. It"s an alarm clock. Take a good look at it. See anything funny about it?"