Dark Tunnel (19 page)

I dived for the door and it opened under my hand. I ran out on the floor of a great concrete vault lined on one side with black iron boilers. By the light of the few unshaded bulbs that hung in the furnace-room I could see no one, but the footsteps sounded through the door at my back like pounding fists. To my right were windows and an iron ladder leading up to a door in the wall.

I dropped my flashlight and scrambled up the ladder and got the iron door at the top open. The door from the tunnel sprang open below and I slammed the iron door shut. Two bullets rang flatly against it like the knocking of iron knuckles, and I jumped onto a black hill which loomed outside the door.

I was halfway up the side of the university coal-pile. Anthracite is not good to run in but there was nowhere to hide and nothing to do but run. I leaped and scrambled down the side of the coal-pile towards a railway track which gleamed faintly in the starlight. I heard the iron door open behind me and the sound of another shot but I didn’t look back.

When I reached the track it was easier to run, and there were buildings on each side which helped to shadow me. I heard scrambling and cursing behind me but I ran straight on down the track to the end of the buildings. By now the feet behind were ringing on the ties and I turned to my left and jumped down the embankment.

There was a board fence in front of me and beyond it the clotted darkness of a clump of trees. Before the flashlights behind me reached the end of the buildings, I flung myself over the fence and landed on my side in weeds.

I got to my feet crouching low and ran into the patch of trees. When I reached the other side with my face scratched by low branches, I stopped and listened. There was no sound behind me, but I had to get away from there. I remembered newspaper stories of police cordons thrown around trapped killers. To the police, I was a killer. But I wasn’t trapped yet.

The grove was in a valley, and on the hillside opposite me there was a huge dark building punctured with a few lighted windows. I knew the building—it was the hospital—and it helped me to get my bearings. Helen Madden lived near the hospital. If I could get to her she would help me.

Keeping close to the edge of the trees I ran along the valley, stumbling over hummocks and rubbish. With the lights of the great hospital above me, I felt more than ever like an outlaw, and I felt self-pity that other men should make me run like an unwanted dog among rubbish-heaps. But I felt pleasure, too, in running for my life. My two enemies were running in the same darkness.

I skirted the base of the hill beyond the hospital and climbed through underbrush and saplings to the old house where Helen Madden had an apartment. It had been made over into an apartment house which stood on a spur of hill overlooking the uncleared hillside I was climbing. When I got out of the woods I saw that a light was on, on the ground floor where Helen lived.

She was sitting at a lighted casement window looking out, with a cigarette in her hand. Its smoke rose straight up and she did not move. I tapped on the window and showed my face in the light. Her face changed when she saw me but she did not start. The line of smoke wavered once and was straight again.

She stared at me for a moment and then her eyes contracted and I knew she recognized me. She flung the window open and said, “Bob, what is it?”

I put my finger to my mouth; there were other people in the house.

I whispered, “The police are after me. Schneider has been killed and they think I killed him.”

“Did you?” she said without changing expression.

“No. I was framed. But I have to get away.”

“Who killed him?” Her voice was very light and dry.

I said, “Ruth Esch and Schneider’s son.”

Her whisper hissed, “His son!”

“Yes. I caught them escaping and they tried to kill me.”

Helen said quietly and seriously, “You’re not crazy, are you, Bob? If I let myself go to-night, I’d be crazy.”

I said, “I’m not crazy. Will you help me?”

“How?”

“Go and get my car and bring it to me.”

“Go to the police, Bob. Tell them the truth and stick by it. They can’t convict an innocent man.”

“They seem to have orders to shoot me on sight,” I said.

“Let me call them on the phone. This is fantastic.”

“It’s fantastic, yes. But they have evidence of murder against me.”

“Bob, did you kill him?”

“I almost wish I had. But I didn’t.”

For a quarter of a minute she said nothing. Then she said, “Have you your car-keys?”

I gave them to her.

“Where is the car?”

“Parked in front of the main entrance of the Law School. You can’t miss it.”

“Shall I bring it here?”

“No, not here. I’ve got to get away from here. Bring it to the Slipper.” The Slipper was a roadhouse a mile or so out of town where we had danced together.

“Can you get there?”

“Look, drive past the Slipper about two hundred yards, straight down the road, and park. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

“I wish you’d let me call the police,” she said.

“I’ll let you when I get Alec’s murderers,” I said, but I had very little hope of that.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

She closed the window and moved away into the room and I started down the hill on the other side of the house. From the streets beyond the hospital, I heard a police siren rising like the terror behind my eyes.

There was a scattering of houses along the crest of the hill, on the side of Helen’s house away from the hospital. None of the houses was lighted but I went down into the lightly wooded ravine behind them and headed for the open country. I avoided the roads, which might already be patrolled, and ran in the fields. This meant uneven footing and barbed wire fences to crawl through, but the cows and horses I saw carried no guns.

Most of the fields were of stubble or dying grass. I saw no people or lights. I could have been the last man, running from nowhere to nowhere across the dry skin of a played-out world.

I came to a railway embankment paralleled on both sides by board fences. I climbed the fence and the embankment and crouched by the track, trying to see and hear any sounds of pursuit. There were none. Behind me I could see the lights of the city, and far beyond them to the north, the reddish reflection of the lights of Detroit hung in the sky like the glow of a giant fire.

I crossed the tracks and descended the embankment and ran along beside the board fence on the other side. I was very tired, so tired I was no longer sweating, and I went more slowly now that I was away from the city. It would take Helen some time to get my car and drive out to the Slipper.

I had to cross a main highway to reach the side road where the roadhouse stood, and I travelled in the shadow of the railway embankment until I saw the highway. A car went by and I saw its headlights shine on the concrete. Down the road they scudded out of sight and there was no other car coming from either direction.

I crossed the highway on the railroad tracks and took to the fields again. So long as it was dark I felt safe from the police in the open country. So long as they were alive I couldn’t feel safe from Peter Schneider and Ruth Esch, but they had no way of tracing me here. If they didn’t have dogs’ noses.

Dog and bitch. A mad dog and a ravening bitch. I didn’t like to think about Ruth. The moral insanity of a friend is worse than a friend’s death.

I crossed more fields and reached the road I was looking for. Walking on the edge of the fields near the road, I headed for the Slipper.

I heard a car coming behind me and lay down behind the wire fence in the grass. Headlights came down the road between the trees like controlled lightning. I saw the car approaching—it wasn’t going very fast—and the orange light above the windshield. It was a taxi.

As the taxi went by, I saw a hooked nose and black eye above the steering wheel—Shiny! I had no time to hail him and it was just as well because there was somebody in the back seat. A head with a man’s hat on it was outlined in the rear window for a second before the car went out of sight.

I got up and walked on a quarter of a mile to the driveway which led into the Slipper. I could see the long, low building dimly through the trees, with no lights showing. Still no sign of Helen.

I heard another car coming and flopped to the grass again. As it came nearer I could see the lights sliding along the gravel road, and recognized the sound of my engine. So she had done it, and done it quickly! I began to plan a back-road route out of the county, but I lay where I was. Maybe the police were trailing her.

My sedan came in sight, going very slowly, and suddenly stopped. But I had said the other side of the Slipper! Then I understood. Two men got out of the car and climbed into the back seat. I couldn’t see who they were in the reflection of the headlights, but one wore a policeman’s cap and they both carried guns.

I lay still where I was, feeling angry and betrayed. The car started again and went slowly past me. I saw Helen’s white face behind the wheel, but nobody was visible in the back seat. She was helping the police to catch me. She thought I was either crazy or wrong. Christ!—the thought numbed my throat—perhaps she thought I was a murderer, too.

I had to get away from the Slipper. I couldn’t go back towards the highway because there would be more policemen waiting there. When I didn’t appear for my appointment with Helen, they would start searching the country around the Slipper.

I had to keep on going. I got up and ran away from the road until I came to the fence on the other side of the field. It was a rail fence and I climbed it and moved along behind it in a half-crouch. Two hundred yards across the field I could see my car parked on the road with its headlights shining steadily. Nobody moved in it or around it. Keeping well away from the road, I headed in the direction Shiny had taken.

There was a chance that I might find him and get him to drive me somewhere or let me use his taxi. Perhaps he had been driving a late partygoer to his house in the country, and would drive back on the same road with an empty cab. In that case I’d better get back to the road so I could hail him if he passed.

When the headlights of my car were out of sight behind the trees, I went back to the road and walked along beside it in the ditch. A car’s headlights and engine would warn me in advance and give me a chance to hide if it came from behind me. If it came from the other direction, it might be Shiny.

I walked nearly a mile—to my tired legs it seemed farther—but no car came from either direction. The night was still very dark.

At last I came to a lane leading down a slope under dark arched trees. At the end of the lane there was a red light glowing. Maybe the tail-light of Shiny’s taxi. But any car would do if the keys were in it.

I turned down the lane walking as silently as I could in the fallen leaves. When I got closer to the red light, I saw that it wasn’t the tail-light of a car. It was a small red bulb hanging in the front window of a house. All the blinds in the windows were drawn but there was light shining around the edges and through the cracks.

I passed an old barn on a hillock beside the lane. It hung sideways against the darkness like a tired old man leaning on a wall. Half its boarding had fallen off and I could see the stars through it.

When I had walked past the old barn, I could see the lower front of the house. There was a patch of bare ground in front of it and two cars were parked there with their red tail-lights burning. Before I reached the cars, I saw that one was Shiny’s taxi.

The dashboard lights were on and I looked for the ignition key. It wasn’t there. None in the other car, either.

There was a burst of music from the house, shrill clarinets and drooling saxophones.
Sugar Blues.
I looked at the red bulb in the front window, hanging between the pane and the drawn blind. The music had stopped pretending to have a tune and was pumping rhythmically at a single theme.

I moved around to the side of the house. The dingy white paint was peeling off it and the windowsills were rotting. The blinds were drawn in the side windows, too, but I stood on tiptoe at the window where the music seemed to be and looked past a torn corner of the blind.

There were several people at tables in the room, three men I didn’t know and Shiny. He was sitting at a round table by himself with a glass of beer in front of him. Two young men sat at another table with whiskey-glasses, and an old man in shirtsleeves was in the far corner beside a record-player, tapping his knee with a finger in time to the music.

I heard the high giggle of a woman from an upstairs room. The music went on pumping. Finally, it went out with a whine and the old man got up with difficulty and turned the record.

Shiny sat over his beer, moving only to smoke and drink. The two young men were arguing with drunken extravagance, as if something mattered very much and they knew what it was. One turned to the old man and said, “Bring us another, pop,” very loudly. The old man hobbled over and took their glasses.

I went back to the front of the house, climbed the porch, and knocked on the front door. There was a sound of dragging steps and the door opened six inches. I saw a porous, red-veined nose and drooping eyes like an old hound’s.

The old man whispered, moving his stubbled lips like an elocutionist, “What you want?”

“A drink,” I said. “And a fried egg sandwich if you can make it.”

“You got us wrong, friend, this is a private house.”

The woman’s voice came from upstairs in a high, thin scream which fluttered down into a giggle, “Stop it.’

“There’s a friend of mine in here. Shiny.”

“Shiny? Say, you ain’t one of the boys from the university that got us knocked off last year?” He was still whispering.

“Do I look it?”

He opened the door wider and looked at my face. “Who scratched your face?”

“My wife.”

“What happened to your clothes? You’re all mud.”

“I fell down,” I said. “I was walking along in a field and I fell down.”

“Drunk?”

“I’m always drunk. When I have the money.”