Night of the Jabberwock Page 15

  Heil’s voice, soft again, said something I couldn’t hear, and there were footsteps toward the outer hall. I could hear other footsteps coming up the stairs. One or more of the day-shift deputies were arriving.

  Kates said, “Hi, Bill, Walt. Ehlers with you?”

  “Didn’t see him. Probably be here in a minute.” It sounded like Bill Dean’s voice.

  “That’s all right. We’ll leave him here, anyway. You both got your guns? Good. Listen, you two are going together and Hank and I are going together. We’ll work in pairs. Don’t worry about the roads leading out; the state boys are watching them for us. And there’s no train or bus out till late tomorrow morning. We just comb the town.”

  “Divide it between us, Rance?”

  “No. You, Walt and Bill cover the whole town. Drive through every street and alley. Hank and I will take places he might have holed in to hide. We’ll search his house and the Clarion office, whether there are lights on or not, and we’ll try any place else that’s indoors where he might’ve holed in. He might pick an empty house, for instance. Anybody got any other suggestions where he might think of holing in?”

  Bill Dean’s voice said, “He’s pretty thick with Carl Trenholm. He might go to Carl.”

  “Good idea, Bill. Anybody else?”

  Hank said, “He looked pretty drunk to me. And he broke that bottle he had. Might get into his head he wants another drink and break into a tavern. Probably Smiley’s; that’s where he hangs out, mostly.”

  “Okay, Hank. We’ll check—— That must be Dick coming. Any more ideas, anybody, before we split up?”

  Ehlers was coming in now. Hank said, “Sometimes a guy doubles back where he figures nobody’ll figure where he is. I mean, Rance, maybe he doubled back here and got in the back way or something, thinking the safest place to hide’s right under our noses. Right here in the building.”

  Kates said, “You heard that, Dick. And you’re staying here to watch the office, so that’s your job. Search the building here first before you settle down.”

  “Right, Rance.”

  Kates said, “One more thing. He’s dangerous. He’s probably armed by now. So don’t take any chances. When you see him, start shooting.”

  “At Doc Stoeger?” Someone’s voice sounded surprised and a little shocked. I couldn’t tell which of the deputies it was.

  “At Doc Stoeger,” Kates said. “Maybe you think of him as a harmless little guy—but that’s the kind that generally makes homicidal maniacs. He’s killed two men tonight and tried to kill me, probably thought he did kill me, or he’d have stayed and finished the job. And don’t forget who one of the men he did kill was. Miles.”

  Somebody muttered something.

  Bill Dean—I think it was Bill Dean—said, “I don’t get it, though. A guy like Doc. He isn’t broke; he’s got a paper that makes money and he’s not a crook. Why’d he suddenly want to kill two men for a couple of thousand lousy bucks?”

  Kates swore. He said, “He’s nuts, went off the beam. The money probably didn’t have much to do with it, although he took it all right. It was in that brief case under Miles’ body. Now listen, this is the last time I tell you; he’s a homicidal maniac and you better remember Miles the minute you spot him and shoot quick. He’s crazy as a bedbug. Came in here with a cock and bull story about a guy being croaked out at the Wentworth place—a guy named Yehudi Smith, of all names. And Doc had a card to prove it, only he printed the card himself. Crazy enough to put his own bug number—union label number—on it. Gives me a key that he says opens a fifteen-inch-high door to a beautiful garden. Well, that was the key to the luggage compartment of his own car, see? With Miles’ and Bonney’s bodies, and the pay roll money, in it. Parked right in front. He’d driven it here. Comes up and gives me the key. And tries to get me to go to a haunted house with him.”

  “Did anybody look there?” Dean asked.

  Hank said, “Sure, Bill. On my way back from Neilsville. Went through the whole dump. Nothing. And listen, Rance is right about him being crazy. I heard some of the stuff he said, myself. And if you don’t think he’s dangerous, look at Rance. I’m sorry about it, I liked Doc. But damn it, I’m with Rance on shooting first and catching him afterwards.”

  Somebody: “God damn it, if he killed Miles——”

  “If he’s that crazy”—I think it was Dick Ehlers—“we’d be doing him a favour, the way I figure it. If I ever got that far off the beam, homicidal, damn if I wouldn’t rather be shot than spend the rest of my life in a padded cell. But what made him go off that way? All of a sudden, I mean?”

  “Alcohol. Softens the brain, and then all of a sudden, whang.”

  “Doc didn’t drink that much. He’d get drunk, a little, a night or two a week; but he wasn’t an alcoholic. And he was such a nice——’

  A fist hit a desk. It would have been Kates’ fist and Kates’ desk. It was Kates’ swivel chair that squealed and his voice that said, “What the hell are we having a sewing circle for. Come on, let’s go out and get him. And about shooting first, that’s orders. I’ve lost one deputy tonight already. Come on.”

  Footsteps, lots of them, toward the door.

  Kates’ voice calling back from it, “And don’t forget to search this building, Dick. Cellar to roof, before you settle down here.”

  “Right, Rance.”

  Footsteps, lots of heavy footsteps, going down the steps. And one set of them turning back along the hallway.

  Toward the County Surveyor’s office.

  Toward me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  And he was very proud and stiff:

  He said “I’d go and wake them, if——”

  I took a corkscrew from the shelf:

  I went to wake them up myself.

  I HOPED he’d take Rance Kates’ orders literally and search the place from cellar to attic, in that order. If he did, I could get out either the front or back way while he was in the basement. But he might start on this floor, with this room.

  So I tiptoed to the door, pulling one of my shoes out of my pocket as I went. I stood flat against the wall by the door, gripping the shoe, ready to swing the heel of it if Ehler’s head came in.

  It didn’t. The footsteps went on past and started down the back staircase. I breathed again.

  I opened the door and stepped out into the hall as soon as the footsteps were at the bottom of the back steps. Out there in the hall, in the quiet of the night, I could hear him moving about down there. He didn’t go to the basement; he was taking the main floor first. That wasn’t good. With him on the first floor I couldn’t risk either the front or the back stairs; I was stuck up here.

  Outside I heard first one car start and then another. At least the front entrance was clear if I had to try to leave that way, if Ehlers started upstairs by the back staircase.

  I took a spot in the middle of the hallway, equidistant from both flights of steps. I could still hear him walking around down on the floor below, but it was difficult to tell just where he was. I had to be ready to make a break in either direction.

  I swore to myself at the thoroughness of Kates’ plans for finding me. My house, my office, Carl’s place, Smiley’s or another tavern—every place I’d actually be likely to go. Even here, the courthouse, where I really was. But luckily, instead of all of them pitching in for a quick once-over here, he’d left only one man to do the job, and as long as I could hear him and he couldn’t hear me—and probably didn’t believe I was really here at all—I had an edge.

  Only, damn it, why didn’t Ehlers hurry? I wanted a drink, and if I could get out of here, I could get one somewhere somehow. I was shaking like a leaf, and my thoughts were, too. Even one drink would steady me enough to think straight.

  Maybe Kates kept a bottle in the bottom drawer of his desk.

  The way I felt just then, it was worth trying. I listened hard to the sounds below me and decided Ehlers was probably at the back of the building and I tiptoed to the front and
into Kates’ office.

  I went back to his desk and pulled the drawer open very quietly and slowly. There was a whisky bottle there. It was empty.

  I cussed Kates under my breath. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d tried to kill me; on top of that, he’d had to finish off that bottle without leaving a single drink in it. And it had been a good brand, too.

  I closed the drawer again as carefully as I’d opened it, so there’d be no sign of my having been there.

  Lying on the blotter on Kates’ desk was a revolver. I looked at it, wondering whether I should take it along with me. For a second the fact that it was rusty didn’t register and then I remembered Hank’s description of the gun that had been used as a bludgeon to kill Miles and Bonney, and I bent closer. Yes, it was an Iver-Johnson, nickel-plated where the plating wasn’t worn or knocked off. This was the death weapon, then.

  Exhibit A.

  I reached out to pick it up, and then jerked my hand back. Hadn’t I been framed well enough without helping the framer by putting my fingerprints on that gun? That was all I needed, to have my fingerprints on the weapon that had done the killing. Or were they there already? Considering everything else, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if they were.

  Then I almost went through the ceiling. The phone rang.

  I could hear, in the silence between the first ring and the second, Ehler’s footsteps starting upstairs. But back here in the office, I couldn’t tell whether he was coming up the front way or the back, and I might not have time to make it anyway, even if I knew.

  I looked around frantically and saw a closet, the door ajar. I grabbed up the Iver-Johnson and ducked into the closet, behind the door. And I stood there, trying not to breathe, while Ehlers came in and picked up the phone.

  He said, “Sheriffs office,” and then, “Oh you, Rance,” and then he listened a while.

  “You’re phoning from the Clarion? Not at Smiley’s or there, huh? … No, no calls have come in…. Yeah, I’m almost through looking around here. Searched the first floor and the basement. Just got to go over this floor yet.”

  I swore at myself. He’d been down in the basement then, and I could have got away. But the building had been so quiet that his walking around down there had sounded to me as though it had been on the main floor.

  ’Don’t worry, I’m not taking any chances, Rance. Gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.”

  There was a gun in my hand, too, and suddenly I realized what a damned foolish thing I’d done to pick it up off Kates’ desk. Ehlers must have known it was there. If he missed it, if he happened to glance down at the desk while he was talking on the phone—

  God must have loved me. He didn’t. He said, “Okay, Rance,” and then he put the phone down and walked out.

  I heard him go back along the hallway and around the el and start opening doors back there. I had to get out quick, down the front steps, before he worked his way back here. As a matter of routine, he’d probably open this closet door too when he’d searched his way back to the office he’d started from.

  I let myself out and tiptoed down the steps. Out into the night again, on to Oak Street. And I had to get off it quick, because either of the two cars looking for me might cruise by at any moment. Carmel City isn’t large; a car can cruise all of its streets and alleys in pretty short order. Besides I still had my shoes in my pockets and—I realized now—I still had a gun in my hand.

  Hoping Ehlers wouldn’t happen to be looking out of any of the windows, I ran around the corner and into the mouth of the alley behind the courthouse. As soon as I was comparatively safe in the friendly darkness, I sat down on the alley kerbstone and put my shoes back on, and put the gun into my pocket. I hadn’t meant to bring it along at all, but as long as I had I couldn’t throw it away now.

  Anyway, it was going to get Dick Ehlers in trouble with Kates. When Kates looked for that gun and found it missing, he’d know that I’d been in the courthouse and that Ehlers had missed me. He’d know that I’d been right in his own office while he’d been out searching for me.

  And so there I was in the dark, in safety for a few minutes until a car full of deputies decided to cruise down that particular alley looking for me. And I had a gun in my pocket that might or might not shoot—I hadn’t checked that—and I had my shoes on and my hands were shaking again.

  I didn’t even have to ask myself, ‘Little man, what now?’ The little man not only wanted a drink; he really needed one.

  And Kates had already been to Smiley’s looking for me and had found that I wasn’t there.

  So I started down the alley toward Smiley’s.

  Funny, but I was getting over being scared. A little, anyway. You can get only just so scared, and then something happens to your adrenal glands or something. I can’t remember offhand whether your adrenals make you frightened or whether they get going and operate against it, but mine were getting either into or out of action, as the case might be. I’d been scared so much that night that I—or my glands—was getting tired of it.

  I was getting brave, almost. And it wasn’t Dutch courage, either; it had been so long since I’d had a drink that I’d forgotten what one tasted like. I was cold damn sober. About three times during the course of the long evening and the long night I’d been on the borderline of intoxication, but always something had happened to keep me from drinking for a while and then something had sobered me up. Some foolish little thing like being taken for a ride by gangsters or watching a man die suddenly or horribly by quaffing a bottle labelled “DRINK ME” or finding murdered men in the back of my own car or discovering that a sheriff intended to shoot me down in cold blood. Little things like that.

  So I kept going down the alley toward Smiley’s. The dog that had barked at me before barked again. But I didn’t waste time barking back. I kept on going down the alley toward Smiley’s.

  There was the street to cross. I took a quick look both ways but didn’t worry about it beyond that. If the sheriff’s car or the deputies’ car suddenly turned the corner and started spraying me with headlights and then bullets, well, then that was that. You can only get so worried; then you quit worrying. When things can’t get any worse, outside of your getting killed, then either you get killed or things start getting better.

  Things started to get better; the window into the back room of Smiley’s was open. I didn’t bother taking off my shoes this time. Smiley would be asleep upstairs, but alone, and Smiley’s so sound a sleeper that a bazooka shell exploding in the next room wouldn’t wake him. I remember times I’ve dropped into the tavern on a dull afternoon and found him asleep; it was almost hopeless to try to wake him, and I’d generally help myself and leave the money on the ledge of the register. And he dropped asleep so quickly and easily that even if Kates and Hank had wakened him when they’d look for me here, he’d be asleep again by now.

  In fact—yes, I could hear a faint rumbling sound overhead, like very distant thunder. Smiley snoring.

  I groped my way through the dark back room and opened the door to the tavern. There was a dim light in there that burned all night long, and the shades were left up. But Kates had already been here and the chances of anyone else happening to pass and look in at half-past three of a Friday morning were negligible.

  I took a bottle of the best bonded Bourbon Smiley had from the back bar and because it looked as though there was still at least a fair chance that this might be the last drink I ever had, I took a bottle of seltzer from the case under the bar. I took them to the table around the el, the one that’s out of sight of the windows, the table at which Bat and George had sat early this evening.

  Bat and George seemed, now, to have sat there a long time ago, years maybe, and seemed not a tenth as frightening as they’d been at the time. Almost, they seemed a little funny, somehow.

  I left the two bottles on the table and went back for a glass, a swizzle stick, and some ice cubes from the refrigerator. This drink I’d waited a long time for, and it wa
s going to be a good one.

  I’d even pay a good price for it, I decided, especially after I looked in my wallet and found I had several tens but nothing smaller. I put a ten-dollar bill on the ledge of the register, and I wondered if I’d ever get my change out of it.

  I went back to the table and made myself a drink, a good one.

  I lighted up a cigar, too. That was a bit risky because if Kates came by here again for another check, he might see cigar smoke in the dim light, even though I was out of his range of vision. But I decided the risk was worth it. You can, I was finding, get into such a God-awful jam that a little more risk doesn’t seem to matter at all.

  I took a long good swig of the drink and then a deep drag from the cigar, and I felt pretty good. I held out my hands and they weren’t shaking. Very silly of them not to be, but they weren’t.

  Now, I thought, is my first chance to think for a long time. My first real chance since Yehudi Smith had died.

  Little man, what now?

  The pattern. Could I make any sense out of the pattern?

  Yehudi Smith—only that undoubtedly wasn’t his real name, else the card he gave me wouldn’t have been printed in my own shop—had called to see me and had told me——

  Skip what he told you, I told myself. That was gobbledegook, just the kind of gobbledegook that would entice you to go to such a crazy place at such a crazy time. He knew you—that is, I corrected myself—he knew a lot about you. Your hobby and your weaknesses and what you were and what would interest you.

  His coming there was planned. Planned well in advance; the card proved that.

  According to a plan, he called on you at a time when no one else would be there. Probably, sitting in his car, he’d watched you come home, knowing Mrs. Carr was there—in all probability he or someone had been watching the house all evening—and waiting until she’d left to present himself.

  No one had seen him, no one besides yourself.

  He’d led you on a wild-goose chase. There weren’t any Vorpal Blades; that was gobbledegook, too.