Darker Than You Think (41 page)

Barbee
nodded, and saw her desperate hope.

"I
remember," he said hoarsely. "And I don't think Nick Spivak
wrote that note."

The
sleek she-wolf must have written it, he thought, when she sprang upon
Nick's desk and took his pencil in her paws while that great armored
snake was dragging Nick's body to the window. But that was madness—he
dared not speak of that.

"Didn't
Sam come here at all?" he asked faintly.

She
shook her head dazedly, and then she must have caught the meaning of
his nod toward the sedan parked in front of the house.

"Oh—that
car!" She caught her breath. "Sam had a man bring that from
the Foundation garage yesterday for me to use in place of ours—the
one Rex was killed in." Her brooding eyes clung to Barbee's
face. "Sam said on the phone he thought the enemy wouldn't know
our car, but somehow they did."

Barbee
dropped his eyes and stirred his coffee.

"Do
you know what Sam did?"

"Only
that he went away." She jabbed angrily at her tears again. "I
don't know where. He said something about the deaths of Dr. Mondrick
and Rex and Nick leaving him with a terribly important job to do
alone. He wouldn't say what. I told him to take this car, but he said
he hadn't time to come home. He said he would take a station wagon
that belongs to the Foundation. He wouldn't tell me where."

She
blew her nose hard on a paper napkin."

"Will,"
she whispered huskily, "what
can
we
do to help him?"

"We've
got to find him first." Barbee lifted his quivering cup, trying
to think. "But—I think I can," he whispered slowly.
"I think I can find him—because he knows every officer in
four states will be looking for that station wagon by noon. I think I
know where Sam would go."

She
leaned across the little white table, desperately.

"Where,
Will?" she sobbed hoarsely. "Where is he?"

"Just
a hunch." Barbee shrugged uncomfortably in the red hospital
robe. "Maybe I'm wrong—I don't think so. If I'm right,
it's still better if you don't know.

I
imagine the police will soon be here again—looking for me as
well as Sam."

Her
white hands flew to her throat.

"Police!"
she gasped. "You wouldn't—lead them?"

"Of
course not, Nora." He tried to smile at her concern. "I'll
take precautions—my danger is as great as Sam's. Now, suppose
you gather up some things he'll need. Rough clothing, boots, sleeping
bag, matches, frying pan, a few groceries, a light rifle— maybe
you have the light personal equipment he brought back from the
expedition?"

She
nodded, rising eagerly.

"I'll
need that car," he added, "to get to where he is."

"Take
it," she said. "Take anything you need—and let me
write a note for Sam."

"Okay—but
step on it," he told her. "The cops are after me too,
remember." He stood up, facing her gravely. "Nora, I've had
just the vaguest glimpse of what's behind this, but I think it's
worse than it looks—and it looks pretty ugly. We've got to help
Sam, for a lot more than just his own sake. He's the last
hope—against something worse than most men ever fear."

She
nodded slowly, clutching the edges of the little table.

"I
know that, Will." Her dark-circled eyes were very wide, and she
shuddered. "Sam wouldn't ever tell me—not even after the
dreadful night when he had the box here and something killed Pat's
little dog. I could see that made him sick, and I've felt something
wrong ever since that plane landed with them." Her dry voice
dropped. "Something waiting just out of sight, silent and
grinning and dreadful, too hideous to have a name."

But
it did, Barbee thought. It was named the Child of Night.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Not
All Human

Listening
breathlessly for the whine of the prowl cars, Barbee went in the
bathroom to change the felt slippers and the hospital robe for
walking shoes and khakis of Sam's, making the shoes fit with two
pairs of heavy socks. Nora had gathered blankets and clothing and
food and equipment. He made a pack as heavy as he could stagger
under, while she wrote her note to Sam.

"Don't
tell the cops you've seen me," he warned her harshly. "Don't
tell them anything—for all we know, they may be working with
these enemies of Sam's."

"I
won't." She swallowed hard. "Help him, Will!"

He
looked up and down the quiet street again and tossed his pack into
the back seat of the Foundation sedan. It started easily. He waved at
Nora's white face in the doorway, grinning with a hope he didn't
feel, and drove down Pine Street at a careful eighteen miles an hour.

Once
a siren howled somewhere behind him, but he drove on quietly and
managed at last to breathe again. He turned south on the first
through street to Center, and west on Center toward the state
highway. Still he kept to an inconspicuous legal speed, and he heard
no other siren. Ten miles west, he turned north on a rutted dirt road
toward the hills.

Driving,
he had time to try to analyze the hunch that he could find Sam Quain.
Quain was an outdoor man who had roughed it on four continents.
Expecting the police to broadcast a warning for him, he would want to
get off the roads. His boyhood had been spent on a ranch in these
hills, and his instinct would be to seek them.

Quain
would be burdened, no doubt, with the box from Asia—surely he
wouldn't abandon that. It was heavy—whether or not it was
actually lined with silver. Barbee recalled the way Rex Chittum and
Nick Spivak had stooped to its weight when they carried it off the
chartered plane. Unaided, Sam couldn't carry it far. He would choose
some secluded refuge that he could approach by car.

Barbee
knew the spot!

Perhaps
there were flaws in the logic of his explanation. That didn't matter.
The hunch itself had been a sudden, certain intuition. The bungling
effort at analysis must have left out much of his unconscious
reasoning—if hunches were that. But he knew where Sam would be.

A
vivid picture of the place had flashed across his mind while he sat
in Nora's kitchen. On a Christmas vacation, one mild winter when the
snows were light, he had been riding with Sam and Rex up a
little-used road that twisted through the hills to where an abandoned
sawmill had gone to rust, when Sam reined in his pony to point out a
smoky streak on the bare, iron-reddened cliff above Laurel Canyon.
That dark streak, Sam said, marked an Indian cave.

Barbee
knew that cave would be the place. Far from any used roads, it was
yet accessible to such a driver as Sam. There was timber enough to
hide the station wagon, even from search by air. There was firewood,
shelter enough, water in Laurel Creek. He would be able to carry that
precious box up to the cave, and it was still a natural fortress as
it had been a thousand years ago. Such were the reasons Barbee found,
but the conclusion had gone before. Sam had to be there.

Twice
he parked for an hour where the black sedan would be concealed and
climbed to where he could watch the lonely track behind. He saw no
hint of any pursuit—but the fresh tire-pattern in the weedy
ruts assured him that Sam Quain must really be ahead.

Noon
had passed before he reached Bear Canyon. The morning had turned
warm, but heavy clouds had hidden the sun again and a rising south
wind promised rain. He drove harder, fearful of
a
downpour
that would turn these neglected ruts into a river.

Beneath
the tall red cliffs above Laurel Canyon, the station wagon had been
so deftly hidden, screened with weeds where the trail twisted between
a
granite
boulder and an overhanging tree, that he almost rammed it before he
saw it. He left the sedan hidden beside it, and started the climb
with his pack.

Ascending
Laurel Canyon, he walked boldly in the open. He knew Sam Quain—and
knew that any attempt to stalk him now would be suicidal. Dull human
senses brought him no clues, but an intuition as keen as the senses
of the gray wolf he had been told him that Sam Quain held his life
suspended.

"Sam!"
Apprehension quivered in his hail. "It's Barbee—with
supplies."

He
gasped with alarm and quick relief when the fugitive stepped out of a
red-splashed clump of scrub oak, unexpectedly near. Quain's bronzed
and haggard head was bare, his shirt muddy and torn. His raw-boned
body seemed to droop with a dead exhaustion, but the level revolver
in his big hand looked as deadly as his hard voice sounded.

"Barbee—what
the devil are you doing here?"

"I
just brought some things you need." Barbee turned hastily to
show the pack, holding up his hands. "You don't have to worry—I
hid the car, and my trail is as safe as yours. Nora sent a note."

Quain's
drawn, red-stubbled face failed to soften.

"I
ought to kill you, Barbee." His voice was thick and hard and
strange. "I should have killed you long ago—or Dr.
Mondrick should. But I guess you aren't all bad—your warning to
Nora saved me from the police last night, and I do need that pack."

Barbee
tramped on, with both hands lifted, until the gun beckoned him to
stop.

"Sam—can
you trust me now?" Pleading quivered in his voice. "I want
to help—if you'll only tell me what this is all about.
Yesterday I went to Glennhaven. I thought I was losing my mind. Maybe
I am—but I think there's something more."

Quain's
red-rimmed eyes narrowed watchfully.

"There's
more," his hard voice grated. "Plenty more."

Darkening
clouds had lowered about the peaks, and now the strong south wind
that blew up Laurel Canyon seemed suddenly cool and damp. Thunder
rumbled dully against the cliffs above, and the first huge raindrops
crashed against the red hanging oak leaves and splashed their faces,
cold as ice.