Night Walker (10 page)

Young whispered, “Elizabeth, did your husband have any night glasses around the place? Binoculars, telescope, anything?”

She hesitated. “I don’t think so, honey. If he had any, they’d be down on the
Amberjack,
wouldn’t they?”

“Damn it, if I could just read the name—!”

As he watched, the riding light shifted through a brief arc as the little yacht rolled minutely to the weight of a person climbing aboard. Young heard the distant clatter of oars being stowed, the rattle of oarlocks being removed from their sockets, and the yacht rolled briefly again as a second person joined the first aboard. He could see the little white dinghy now, drifting back on the tide to lie astern; but the canopy over the larger craft’s cockpit cast an impenetrable shadow, and be could not make out what the people aboard were doing.

Suddenly a shadowy form appeared forward, and at the same time the motor started, with a sputtering, liquid noise that was due to the exhaust’s being located at the water line. The small figure on the forward deck, braced to the strain, brought the cable in hand over hand, paused for a moment as the anchor
came awash, sloshing it back and forth to clean the mud from it; then the hook was aboard and the yacht was moving ahead. The riding light went out smartly and the running lights came on; coming to cruising speed, the craft made a wide turn to pick up the channel outside the cove, and faded into the darkness to the southeast. Presently the wake made a belated, rhythmic, rushing sound along the shore.

“Well —” Young said, and let his voice die. There was nothing to say. A boat had come in, its crew had gone ashore to stretch their legs; they had returned aboard; they had taken their little ship out again. They had been careful to break no regulation regarding the handling of small craft in the navigable inland waters of the United States; they were probably even thoughtful enough not to dump the garbage or flush the head until they were well offshore. There was no law that said yachtsmen could not step ashore for a taste of terra firma at one o’clock in the morning.

Elizabeth spoke quietly: “Can I turn on a light now?”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

“I declare,” she said, “I don’t know if I ought to. The room’s such a mess.”

But the light came on anyway, and he turned to look at her. She faced him, he thought, a little defiantly, as if awaiting his anger; although he knew of no good reason why he should be angry with her. He certainly hoped she did not think he still held her little deceit against her. Yet there was a kind of pleading in the way she took a step forward now, almost shyly, in the manner of a pretty girl who wants to be forgiven for something. He hesitated, troubled and uneasy; then drew her to him and held her with an emotion that was curiously compounded of affection and desire and grief, the last because he wanted very much to trust her but knew that he could not afford to, and perhaps never would. Not that it made a great difference. Theirs was not a relationship built upon trust and respect but simply upon loneliness and mutual need.

Presently, still holding her, he said, “Don’t you ever pick up in here, sweetheart? God, what a rat’s nest! Where was you brought up, in a barn?”

She poked him very lightly in the chest, just enough to make it clear that she could have hurt him had she wanted to. “Never you mind where I was brought up, hear? Get back to your own room if — if you don’t like it here.”

There was silence between them for a while. Then she raised her head to look up at him, and he looked down at her, conscious as never before of the shape of her face and the delicately wanton curve of her mouth. The thin slacks and sweater showed her figure in a new and pleasant light. Some girls looked slim and boyish in pants; it was a nice way for them to look, but it was not particularly exciting. But there was nothing boyish about Elizabeth’s looks, although she was slim enough. The slacks seemed to emphasize the feminine smallness of her waist and the graceful roundness of her hips. The light sweater made it almost embarrassingly clear that she was wearing nothing beneath it. An impulse that he could not resist made him lift a hand to confirm this impression gently, uneasily aware that the bandages made him an unromantic and perhaps even repulsive figure; he was fully prepared for her to strike his hand away, but she caught it with her own and held it to her breast for a moment.

“David,” she whispered. “Honey—”

Then she was lying against him hard, and her mouth was urgent and possessive against his; and he was no longer aware of himself or his surrounding, only of her. Despite the clothes she was wearing there was no awkwardness or embarrassment in what followed: the small delay — and her breathless laughter at his clumsiness — only served to make more complete the ultimate fulfillment.

Afterward they lay on the bed for a while, silent, in each other’s arms. She was the first to speak.

“David—”

“Yes.”

“Honey, you’re breaking my arm.”

He laughed at this, and moved to let her free herself. He was surprised to find that there was still light in the room; there had been a space of time when light and darkness had meant nothing. The light did not disturb him; there could no longer be any question of modesty between them, and he was pleased to be able to see her face. He pushed the dark hair back from her forehead gently, lying beside her on the bed. Regarding her, he could not help wondering what might be in store for them together; the present was pleasant enough but the future looked unpromising, to say the least. The same thought must have come to her, because the smile with which she had been watching him died.

“Honey,” she whispered, “honey, let’s get out of here.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.” Her voice became stronger. “I have money. I have about four thousand dollars in the house —” She flushed a little as he looked at her sharply. “Well, I’m not
stupid,
honey! I declare, men sometimes act as if women had no sense at all. After — after what happened, it seemed like I might need some money in a hurry, so — so I got some, and not out of the local bank, either. Out of one of his New York accounts where it won’t show up for a while. We can go a long way on four thousand dollars, and nobody knows he’s dead. You can just keep on being Larry Wilson — some place where nobody will know the difference even after you get those bandages off — and I can be taking care of your affairs for you while you recover from your accident.” She sat up quickly. “Honey, come on!”

He hesitated, with an odd feeling of reluctance, as if leaving this house with her would be the final step in the process of degeneration that had started when he had first refrained from establishing his identity at the hospital.

“What about Henshaw?” he asked.

“Oh, Bob will just have to take care of himself,” she said carelessly. It seemed like a cavalier way for her to dismiss the older man, who had, after all,
risked a great deal for her. Young watched her get up and climb into her slacks, an action that not even she could make look graceful. She jerked the fastener closed and turned to look at him. “Well?”

Her impatience was contagious. Certainly he had no desire to remain in this place, but he hadn’t forgotten Henshaw’s threat either. “Well, all right,” he said hesitantly. “All right, Elizabeth.”

Later, he never remembered a great deal about the half hour that followed, perhaps because he was weaker than he had realized until he started back to his room to get dressed. He remembered that she had to pick out the clothes for him and help him put them on. He remembered that it became funny, and that both of them laughed crazily at the startling picture he made when she placed one of Larry Wilson’s discarded hats upon his bandaged head. He remembered that the house already had a deserted and shut-up look when they came down the stairs. She had already packed the bags and brought them down — they were standing by the door — and the lights had been turned out; only the hall light was burning. He remembered that he was carrying the flashlight because she would have to manage the bags, and that this embarrassed him a little, in a masculine way.

He stopped in the small hallway between the stairs and the front door to catch his breath for the descent.
It occurred to him that he had never been downstairs in this house before, to be aware of it; and he looked about him curiously, finding himself between the dining room, to the right, and the living room, to the left. On the living room table, within his range of vision, an incongruous object gleamed dully in the light that spilled through the archway that separated this room from the hall.

“Honey, come
on!
” Elizabeth said impatiently, but he pulled himself free and moved forward to look at the large and efficient-looking binoculars lying on the mahogany table that was badly in need of dusting. They were Navy 7×50’s, a type with which he was quite familiar. He remembered that they made pretty good night glasses; and he remembered something else, and turned to look at the girl who had come into the room behind him.

The light was behind her, but he could read the defiance in her attitude. “All right,” she said. “All right, I lied about them. I didn’t want you looking at that boat with binoculars, honey. You’ve got such a funny conscience.”

Young said, “But you looked at it.” She nodded, and he asked, “What was the name?”

She licked her lips and hesitated. She spoke almost sullenly: “Well, they’re gone, so it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“Tell me.”

She said, “Honey, what difference does it make? You can’t do anything about it, can you?” She made a quick gesture, as he stepped forward. “Honey, keep your shirt on! It was a funny name. I’m trying to remember....
Marbeth,
” she said triumphantly. “That’s it.
Marbeth, New York.
”

He looked down at her shadowed face. The list she had taken from him was still clear in his mind:
Shooting Star, Aloha, Marbeth
... She caught his arm as he moved.

“David, what are you going to do?”

The question stopped him. He could think of nothing to do that would not bring complete disaster down upon both of them; and on the other hand, what did he know? A man who was dead had carried a list of boats, which had been destroyed. One of these boats had showed up, presumably to meet the man; not finding him, it had departed. There was a presumption of illegal and perhaps even treasonous activities, but it was only a presumption, based upon Larry Wilson’s reputation. There was no proof at all.

Elizabeth gripped his arm tightly. “Come on, honey,” she said. “We’re wasting time. It’s none of our business, is it?” She kissed him quickly. “We can be a long ways from here by morning if we hurry, hear? Don’t forget the flashlight.”

He found himself wishing desperately to be well and strong again; he seemed incapable of seeing the
alternatives clearly. He let her urge him toward the door. She released him to pick up the bags and follow him.

“Honey,” she said, “be careful. Did you bring the gun?”

He looked around sharply, surprised by the question. “What do you mean?”

She said, “Why, nothing. I mean, that boat. I declare, I’m just all upset and nervous.”

He studied her for a moment, noting that her eyes were not quite candid. He remembered the dampness of her sandals: she had been outside, earlier in the evening. He drew a deep breath and patted his pocket to reassure himself about the presence of the gun. He opened the door, which opened inward, so that he had to step back a pace. An utterly familiar voice whispered from the darkness outside.

“Well, did you finally get your patient to sleep, Elizabeth? I must say it took you long enough! I’ve been wait—”

Young was not aware of pressing the switch, but the flashlight beam shot out across the lawn and swung in the direction from which the whisper had come. Then the night seemed to erupt with a bellowing noise: the sound of a heavy revolver fired at close range. Something smashed the flashlight from Young’s hand, not only taking it away from him but demolishing it in the process, and numbing his arm
to the shoulder. There seemed to be an endless shower of broken glass and burst metal.

He was not aware of ducking, but he was on his knees in the doorway. The fall had wrenched his chest, and the agony of it joined with the stinging pain of his arm. A man was running away from him across the lawn; a big man with a revolver in one hand; a man wearing a light hat and topcoat that looked horribly familiar; and after a while he realized what was so horrible about it: the man he was looking at, who had just shot a flashlight out of his hand, was a man who was dead and buried, sunk in the Bay securely wrapped in fathoms of heavy chain....

Wakefulness came upon him suddenly and he sat up, finding himself on a sofa in a living room gray with daylight. He sat there for a moment, bewildered; then he caught sight of his right wrist decorated with a large, fresh, Band-Aid.

It came back to him then: the flashlight shattering in his hand and the figure running across the lawn, and he thought,
He’s alive. The bastard’s alive!
The thought left him with a curious mixture of exultation and panic.

He could remember Elizabeth helping him in here afterward; the shock seemed to have taken his remaining strength. Neither of them had said anything; there had been nothing to say. The identity of that single figure running across the lawn in the darkness, gun in hand, had showed that her whole behavior from the beginning had almost certainly been one great calculated falsehood.
Almost?
Young thought grimly,
Why almost?
The husband she had claimed to have murdered was alive; her whole story had been a fabric of deceit.

He shook his head and looked about the living room, a long, high, noble room filled with furniture — too much furniture — that, except for the television set in the corner, had an old-American look to it. Young had no way of knowing if the stuff was genuine, never having paid much attention to antiques. He did notice the liquor rings, and the cigarette burns and dust. A spiral of smoke rose lazily from a cluttered ashtray on the floor by a big chair near the door. He watched it for a while, then rose and extinguished the smoldering butt. There was, he saw, a coffee cup and a plate with half a sandwich on the small table beside the chair. A motion-picture magazine with a torn cover lay open and face down, on the seat of the chair. On the arm of the chair lay the nickel-plated automatic pistol he had put into his pocket before leaving his room the night before.