Dark Tunnel (22 page)

The speck of consciousness flickered and went out, and I turned on great black wheels in an infinity of humming wheels.

A
FTER THE WHEELS HAD
completed several 365-day journeys around the sun they stopped rotating, but the universe went on humming like an engine in neutral. I was lying on the rim of a wheel so big that it seemed flat to my back. The university coal-pile was on top of me and pinned me to the wheel so that I could not move my arms or head.

There was something in my right hand and I squeezed it and discovered that it was my left elbow. The coal-pile pressed down on my upturned face and there was something tight around my neck. I blew out and drew in a deep breath which whistled through my flattened nose. At least I was still breathing.

I stuck out my tongue and it came against a hard, rough surface that tasted familiar. Wood. Old wood. That was it, it was the lid of a coffin. I was buried alive in a tight coffin that pressed down on my face and folded arms. A wild claustrophobia seized me and I kicked out. My legs were free to kick but the lid of the coffin pressed down painfully on my stomach and groin.

I pressed put with my bent arms and the lid shifted slightly but the thing around my neck began to choke me. I felt like crying at the unfairness of being buried alive with something around my neck to choke me.

To choke me. I remembered Schneider and his promise to hang me. Was this how it felt to be hanged? Anger surged through me and I pushed frantically at the heavy lid of the coffin. It rose slightly and I saw light, but the rope was unbearably tight now and I moved my head sideways to ease the pressure.

I freed my right hand and got hold of the coffin-lid at the edge and pushed and it rose higher. But the rope had pulled my head over the edge of whatever I was lying on. I was going to give the lid a final desperate shove when I heard running feet somewhere below me.

A man’s voice, a voice I remembered from somewhere, shouted, “Branch, don’t move, and don’t let go of that beam.”

I tried to speak but there was no hole in my throat to speak through and the blood swelled in my head. As the black cloud bellied down at me again, the heavy lid lurched sideways but I held on with my right hand. Quick footsteps came up from somewhere and the weight was taken off my hand and arm. The pressure on my neck was released and the black cloud swooped up and away from me like an escaped balloon.

A hand raised my head where it dangled in space and I lay panting on a hard, narrow surface with somebody’s arm around my shoulders. As my vision cleared, I saw a face above me, a sullen Indian face that I remembered.

Wild ideas rushed through my mind like leering mimics of truth. He’s no F.B.I. man, he’s another spy. The president is a spy. And the old woman with the hard, bright face.

I struggled against the arm around me and tried to get up. The dark face said, “Take it easy, old boy. You’ll be all right in a minute. I’m Gordon, remember?”

I lay back and took it easy and my mind came back a piece at a time and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, with cracks in it. My neck was sore and my Adam’s apple felt as if Eve had taken a bite out of it. My arms were stiff, and my head and groin throbbed like a toothache. In five minutes I wasn’t all right, but I was fairly sane.

Gordon didn’t look particularly friendly, but he didn’t look like a spy either. Spies put ropes around your neck. I was still wearing a thick noose, with its end severed, around my neck like a necktie. Gordon had loosened it and I worked it over my head and took it off.

“A highly ingenious arrangement,” he was saying. “And so simple. Truly Attic in its simplicity.”

“What?” I said. “The Parthenon?” My voice scraped my throat like sandpaper and sounded like a crow cawing.

“Feeling better, Branch?”

“Yes, thanks. But my neck is somewhat chapped. Bring me my honey and almond cream. Also my bow of burning gold. I’m on a hunting trip.”

“You were, but you’re not,” Gordon said. “You’re going to be too busy explaining to play hare and hounds for a while. Can you get up now?”

“With excruciating ease,” I said and sat up. My head seemed to linger where it was and then got up by itself and jumped onto my shoulders with a jolt. In a minute it stopped vibrating and I could use it again for elementary purposes.

I was sitting astride a two-foot beam running along the top of a wooden wall twelve or fifteen feet above the floor of the old barn. The wall divided the wagon-floor, where Schneider had snared me, from the haymow, which still had some old grey-green hay in the corners. Gordon was sitting beside me on the beam supporting me with one arm, his feet on the top rung of a ladder which ran down to the wagon-floor.

The beam that had pinned my face and arms and that I had mistaken for the lid of a coffin lay on the beam in front of me. One end of it was between my legs, and I could see a rope knotted around its middle. The rope passed over a rafter above my head and hung above the floor of the barn a few feet out of my reach.

“Do you see it?” Gordon said. “Study it as an object-lesson in the inadvisability of going on extra-legal spy hunts. Delayed-action murder fixed to look like suicide.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I’m feeling dull this morning. It’s still morning, isn’t it?”

“It’s not seven yet. But you appear to be rather dull in the evening, too, if last night was typical. Dull is putting it mildly.”

“Go to hell,” I barked, but my throat regretted it. “A man was killed, and somebody had to do something.”

“Such as kill another man?”

“Nonsense. What happened to you after Galloway’s hothouse-liberal fiasco?”

“I tailed Dr. Schneider to his home. But the more interesting question is what happened to you? And what happened to Dr. Schneider?”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you. But not here. I’m grateful to you for saving my neck, but I don’t have to submit to cross-questioning on a two-foot beam forty feet in the air.”

“Fifteen feet is a better estimate.”

“So what? While we sit here chatting, the man who put me here is probably on his way out of the state. Did you ever hear of Peter Schneider?” The ironic rasp I forced into my voice made me cough.

“The police are after him,” Gordon said. “They’re after you, too.”

“I thought you were the police.”

“That’s right. Can you climb down by yourself or do I use the fireman’s lift on you? Or do you want to stay up here and hang yourself some more?”

I remembered what Peter Schneider had said before I passed out. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I came into this barn you were in the act of hanging yourself. The rope around your neck was slung over the rafter, pulled tight, and tied to this heavy loose beam. The beam was then placed on your face so that when you pushed it off it would fall and jerk the rope. The rope would then jerk you off the beam by the neck and either break it immediately or strangle you.”

“So I suppose you’re going to book me on a charge of attempted suicide.” Watching the fixed snarl on his face, I wouldn’t have put it past him.

“Don’t be childish, Branch. I told you we’re after Peter Schneider.”

“Is it childish to ask why he went to all this trouble with ropes and beams? Why didn’t he just give himself the pleasure of hanging me by hand?”

“He went right back to the farm and told the old lady you had tried to kill him but he got away. The deaf-mutes confirmed the story in writing. She had already phoned the Arbana police about you. Schneider said he was going to get help, and drove away.”

“I get it,” I said. “If you found my body soon enough, you’d be able to establish that I killed myself after he left. ‘Slayer Suicides after Killing Father and Attempting to Kill Son.’”

“I’m glad you feel able to joke about it,” Gordon said with a certain nasty primness. “
Did
you kill Dr. Schneider?”

“I’ll answer questions on terra firma,” I said. “Go ahead and I’ll follow you down.”

Gordon went down the ladder like a cat, and I climbed down after him holding on tight. He went to the door and I followed him into the shaft of sunlight that came through it. I saw the shotgun lying in the chaff beside the door and stooped down to pick it up, balancing my head carefully.

“Drop it,” Gordon said, his hand inside his left lapel.

I straightened up in surprise. “For Christ’s sake. I paid forty dollars for that gun.”

“And it looks as if you intended to get your money’s worth,” Gordon said. “It was a trail of blood that led me to this barn. And I notice that you’re not bleeding anywhere.”

“You’re damn right I used it. Unfortunately, I didn’t hit him. He cut his arm and used the blood as bait for me. Like a sucker, I followed him to the barn and got a noose around my neck.”

“Stick to rabbits, Branch.” Gordon picked up the shotgun and broke it to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t, and he handed it to me.

I didn’t like his attitude. “Mr. Gordon,” I said, “I admire the bloodhound instincts which just saved my neck. But now you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you arrest me for murder, I’ll sue you for false arrest.”

Gordon’s teeth gleamed in the sun as if he was proud of them, but he wasn’t smiling. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Branch,” he said. “And you can start now. Why did you follow Schneider into McKinley Hall this morning?”

“How do you know I followed him in? Or do you hesitate to reveal the secrets of your fascinating trade?”

“It’s not your business, but I’ll tell you. After the War Board meeting, I tailed Schneider on the chance that he’d go looking for this evidence you were talking about. He went home in a taxi and his son met him at the door. They had an argument in German and finally the old man gave in. They came out to the green coupe parked on the driveway and drove into Arbana.”

“All very interesting,” I said. “But all it proves against me is that I was right.”

Gordon clipped me off. “Not quite. They parked near the campus and the old man got out and crossed the campus to McKinley Hall. I couldn’t follow him in because I had no key, so I stood in the shadow of a tree and watched all the back doors. A few minutes after Schneider went in, you came around from the front of the building and entered by the west door. I want to know why.”

“I’m not ashamed of my reason,” I said. “I got the idea that Judd had hidden his evidence in the Middle English Dictionary office, and I went to look for it. Old Schneider had the same idea. I found it and Schneider tried to hold me up. I knocked him out. But it’s obvious to me now that I should have let him shoot me.”

The irony was lost on Gordon. “Did you knock him out with a horseshoe?” he said. “And have you got the evidence you found?”

“Listen, Gordon,” I said. “I’ll answer questions after you find Peter Schneider, if you still want to ask them. Didn’t you see anybody else enter the building?”

“Just before I heard the shots I saw a man and a woman go in at the east end. The man looked like Peter Schneider and—”

“I knew it,” I said. “Peter Schneider and Ruth Esch killed the old man. I left him unconscious on the floor—
without
a hole in his head—and went down to get the policeman. While I was gone, they killed him and ran away with the envelope.”

“What envelope?”

“An oilskin envelope with information about the new A S T Program in it. Judd told me he found it in Schneider’s office. Schneider and his son were both spies, and Peter made off with the evidence.”

Gordon kept on looking like a stolid redskin. “You say that the two Schneiders were spies working in cahoots, and you also say that Peter killed his father. It doesn’t hang together.”

“Doesn’t it? Peter couldn’t get his father out of the building. Maybe the old man was weakening and Peter was afraid he’d talk to the police. He had no deep filial affections, I happen to know. And it was a chance to frame me for murder.”

“You’re good at explanations, Branch. But there’s no evidence.”

“What happened to Schneider’s bun? He had a Lüger which he tried to use on me. Even if I had killed him, it would have been in self-defense.”

“So you say. Did you assault a police officer in self-defense?”

“That was a mistake. I saw I was being framed for a murder and it made me mad. I guess I was a little crazy. Anyway, I thought I had to get away and I got away.”

“For a while,” Gordon said. “You’d have been better off in jail. Don’t attempt another getaway. I can shoot, and I can run.”

“And you can swim,” I said. “What a list of accomplishments! Go practise the aquatic art in some convenient lake.”

“I can also be unpleasant, if necessary.”

“You’ve convinced me.”

He snarled silently one last time and jerked his thumb towards the door. I stepped outside into sunshine that hurt my eyes, and he followed me. We left the barn with nothing dangling in it but the rope.

I felt good about that and about the bright sun on the autumn fields. But I resented his suspicion and the crack about being better off in jail. It implied that all my bones were sore for nothing.

As we started across the field, where Peter had pretended to stagger and fall, I said, “If I had spent the night in jail I wouldn’t have found out who killed Alec Judd.”

“So you know that, too” Gordon said.

“I know that Ruth Esch left McKinley Hall about a quarter to twelve last night.”

“Twenty minutes before Judd was killed, according to your own story.”

I said with heavy irony, “No doubt delayed-action murder sounds fantastic to the literal ear of the law, but I recently acted as guinea pig in a little experiment intended to prove its feasibility.”

Gordon turned to me with a glint in his sombre eyes. “You’ve got something there, Branch. I’ll have to examine that room.”

“There’s another possibility, too,” I said. “At least it may not be an impossibility. The receiver of the telephone in Judd’s office was hanging down when I went up there after he fell, and it seems he put in a phone call shortly before.”

“He did? Who to?”

“I don’t know. I tried to find out from the university operator, but she wouldn’t tell me what she had heard. She probably told Sergeant Haggerty—I know he was talking