A Touch of Death — 40
was a fifth, a little over half full. I shoved it in my
coat pocket and picked her up again. She was still
out like a hung jury, and I knew she would be for
hours. As I went out through the kitchen I grabbed
up the purse.
I put her on the back seat of the car and switched
on the flashlight long enough to take a look at the
keys. I sorted out a couple that looked promising,
cut the light, and went back outside, feeling for the
lock of the overhead door. The first key did the trick.
I boosted the door up slowly and got back in the car.
Picking out the ignition key by feel, I started the
Caddy and backed it out onto the driveway. The
drive was white gravel and I could see it all right, all
the way out to the big gates in front. I swung out
onto the street and felt my way very slowly for
another hundred yards. Then I switched on the
headlights and goosed the two hundred horses.
Housebreaking, I thought. Auto theft. Abduction.
What was next? Blackmail? Extortion? But I had it all
figured now, I was still within jumping distance of
solid ground in every direction, and I wasn’t in much
danger if I played it right. Somebody was going to
come home first in that $120,000 sweepstakes, and
as of now I looked like the favorite.
We were headed south, on the highway we’d come
in on. I rolled it up to seventy and tried to remember
where the turnoff was. It should be somewhere
around ten miles beyond that next town. I’d just
have to watch for it, because I wasn’t too sure,
approaching it from this direction. I’d been there
plenty of times, but had always come up from the
south.
The headlights of a car behind us hit the rear-view
mirror. I watched them for a minute. It probably
didn’t mean anything; there were always a few cars
on the road, even at four-thirty in the morning. They
continued to hang in about the same place, not
gaining or falling back.
Maybe the joker’d had a car there and was trying
to find out where we went. We were dipping down
A Touch of Death — 41
toward that long piece of tangent across the river
bottom now. We’ll see, chum, I thought. I flipped the
lights on high beam and gunned it.
I flattened it out at ninety-five and the swamp and
timber flashed past and disappeared behind us in
the night with just the long sucking sound of the
wind. I couldn’t watch him now because I couldn’t
take my eyes off the road, but when we came out
onto the winding grade at the other end I eased it
down and looked. He’d dropped back, but only a
little.
That was dumb, I thought. Suppose it was a
highway cop pacing us? But it wasn’t; he made no
attempt to haul us down. He was just hanging there.
I was still worrying about the turnoff. There was still
only a slight chance he was following us, but I didn’t
want him to see where we left the highway.
We blasted through the little town and I began
counting off the miles on the speedometer. The road
was winding now, and he was out of sight most of
the time. But I had to ease it, looking for the place.
We’d come nine miles. Ten. Eleven. Had I passed it?
Then we careened around a long curve and I saw
the huddled dark buildings of the country store and
filling station. I rode it down and made the turn,
throwing gravel as we left the pavement. The county
road ran straight ahead through dark walls of pine. I
stepped on the brakes again and snapped off the
lights as we slid to a stop. In a minute I saw his
lights as he went rocketing past on the highway. I
sighed with relief. It was probably some guy named
Joe, in the wholesale grocery business.
I cut the lights back on and before we started up I
looked at my watch. It was a little after five. We still
had about twenty miles to go, and I wanted to get
past the last houses on the way before daybreak. We
could make it if we kept moving.
Two miles ahead I turned right and followed a
county road going south through scrub pine. I knew
the way all right now. I’d been up here a dozen
times or more with Bill Livingston, and sometimes
A Touch of Death — 42
alone, or with a girl. It was his camp I was headed
for.
We’d been friends in college. His family had left
him a lot of money and five or ten thousand acres of
land back in here, including the lake where the
camp was and a bunch of sloughs and river bottom.
He was in Europe for the summer, but I knew where
he left the key to the place.
I slowed, watching for the wire gate on the left
side of the road. We came to it in a few minutes,
went through, and I closed it again. It was eight
miles of rough private road now, up over a series of
sand hills and then dropping down toward the lake.
The last time I’d been in they were cutting timber
back in here somewhere and logging trucks were
using the first three or four miles of the road. I could
see the tread marks of their big tires in the ruts now.
There was no way to tell whether any other cars had
been in or not.
I pushed it hard. In about ten minutes we came to
the fork where the logging trucks swung off to the
right. I went left. As soon as we were around the
next bend I stopped and got out and looked at the
ruts in the headlights. There hadn’t been a car
through since the last time it had rained, probably
weeks ago. We had it all to ourselves.
Dawn was breaking as we came down the last
grade. I caught glimpses of the arm of the lake
ahead, dark and oily smooth, like blued steel, with
patches of mist rising here and there in the timber.
It was intensely quiet, and beautiful. For a minute I
wished I were only going fishing. Then I brushed it
off.
We went through the meadow and crossed a
wooden culvert at the edge of the trees along the
lake shore. I stopped and got out. The key was
hanging on a nail just inside one end of the culvert.
The cabin faced the meadow rather than the lake.
It was large for a fishing or duck-hunting camp,
more like a deserted old farmhouse backed up
among the big trees at the lake’s edge. It was still
A Touch of Death — 43
half dark back in here, and I left the lights on as I
stopped by the overhang of the front porch.
The lock grated in the early-morning hush. I
pushed the door open and went in. Striking a match,
I located one of the kerosene lamps and lit it. This
was the main room, with a wood-burning kitchen
stove and some cupboards in the rear and a cot and
some chairs and a table up front. The door on the
right led into a storeroom that was cluttered with a
hundred or so old beat-up duck decoys, parts of
outboard motors, some oars, and a welter of fishing
tackle.
The other one, on the left, was closed. I pushed it
open and carried the lamp in. It was the bedroom. It
held two built-in bunks, one above the other, and a
double bed against the front wall. The bed was
spread with an Army blanket. I put the lamp down
on a small table and went back out to the car.
I carried her in and put her on the bed. Her face
was waxen white in the lamplight and her hair was a
dark mist across the pillow. She must have been at
least thirty, she was a passed-out drunk, but she was
the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I stood
looking down at her for a minute. The whole thing
was a lousy mess. Then I shrugged and picked up
the lamp. I wasn’t her mother. And it was a rough
world, any way you looked at it.
I built a fire in the cookstove and went up to the
spring for a couple of buckets of water. It was full
light now, and lovely, with bluish-gray smoke curling
out of the stovepipe above the old shake roof and
going off into the sky through the trees. I moved the
car into the old shed on the far side of the house and
closed the doors. Then I took an inventory of the
food supply. Bill always kept the kitchen well
stocked. There were a couple of boxes of canned
stuff in the storeroom and some flour and
miscellaneous staples in the cupboards. I opened a
fresh can of coffee and put on the coffeepot.
I sat down and smoked a cigarette, listening to the
crackle of the fire and realizing I felt tired after
A Touch of Death — 44
being on the run all night. Drawing a hand across
my face, I felt the rasp of beard stubble, and went
over to the mirror hanging on the rear wall. I looked
like a thug. My eyebrows and hair are blond, but
when the beard comes out it’s ginger-colored and
dirty.
I rooted around in the storeroom until I found
somebody’s duffel bag with a toilet kit in it. It held a
safety razor and some blades, but no shaving soap. I
used hand soap to lather up, and shaved. Then I put
the shirt and tie back on. It was a little better.
The coffee had started to boil. It smelled good. I
poured a cup and sat down to smoke another
cigarette. The sun was coming up now. I thought of
all that had happened since this time yesterday
morning. Everything had changed.
I no longer worried about the fact that I was
breaking laws as fast as they could set them up in
the gallery. My only concern was that what I was
doing was dangerous as hell and if I was caught I
was ruined. But it was not even that which caused
the chill goose flesh across my shoulders.
It was the thought of that money, more money
than I could earn in a lifetime. It lay somewhere just
beyond the reach of my fingers, and I could feel the
fingers itching as they stretched out toward it. Mrs.
Butler knew where it was.
And I had Mrs. Butler.
It was nearly two hours before I heard her move
on the bed in the other room. She was coming
around.
I’d better be good now. I had to be good to make
this stick. I picked up the bottle of whisky and a
glass, and went in.
A Touch of Death — 45
Five
She was sitting up on the bed with her hands on
each side of her face, the fingers running up into her
hair. It was the first time I had ever seen her eyes,
and I could see what Diana James had meant when
she said they were big and smoky-looking.
She stared at me.
“Good morning,” I said. I poured a drink into the
glass.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She looked around
the room. “And what am I doing in this place?”
“Better take a little of this,” I said. “Or if you’d
rather have it, we’ve got black coffee.” I knew damn
well which she’d rather have, but I threw in the
coffee just to keep talking.
She took the drink. I corked the bottle and went
out into the other room with it. When I came back I
had a basin of cold water, a washcloth and towel,
and her purse. I set them on the table and shoved
the table over where she could reach it. She ignored
the whole thing.
“Will you answer my question?” she said. “What
am I doing in this revolting shanty?”
“Oh,” I said. “Then you don’t remember?”
“Certainly not. And I never saw you before.”
A Touch of Death — 46
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” I said. “Right now I
just want you to feel better.”
I squeezed out the cloth and handed it to her. She
scrubbed at her face with it and I gave her the
towel. Then I dug her comb out of the jumble of stuff
in her purse. I watched her comb her hair. It wasn’t
quite black in daylight. It was rich, dark brown.
“How about some coffee?” I said.
She stood up and brushed at the blue robe. I
nodded toward the door and followed her into the
other room. She sat down in the chair I pulled out
for her. I poured some coffee and then gave her a
cigarette and lit it. Then I sat down across from her,
straddling a chair with my arms across the back.
She ignored the coffee. “Perhaps you can explain
this,” she said.
I frowned. “Don’t you remember anything at all?”
“No.”
“I was hoping you would,” I said. “Especially what
happened before I got there.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“And will you, for the love of the merciful God, tell
me who you are?”
“Barton,” I said. “John Barton, of Globe Surety.
Remember? I’m from the Kansas City office, but they
put me on it because I used to work out of Sanport
and know this country.”
I had to keep snowing her. She was rum-dum, but
she still might be sharp enough to want to see
something that said Barton, of Globe Surety
Company. The thing was to give her the impression
I’d already shown her my credentials but that she’d
been drunk when she’d seen them. We wouldn’t
mention that. It would be embarrassing.
But she didn’t go for the fake hand-off. She came
right in and smeared me. “I’ve never heard of a
company by that name,” she said. “And I never saw
you before in my life. How do I know who you are?”
It was the longest, coldest bluff I had ever pulled
in my life, and if I didn’t make it stick I was
A Touch of Death — 47
penitentiary bait. I felt empty all the way down to my
legs.
“Oh, sure,” I said. I reached back for the wallet in
my hip pocket and started flipping through the
leaves of identification stuff. I made a show of
finding the one I wanted, and just as I started to
pass her the whole thing, I said, “Can you remember
anything at all about what he looked like? Even his
general build would help.”
She took her eyes off the wallet and looked at me.
“Who looked like?” she asked blankly.
“The man you said tried to kill you. Just before I
got there.”
That did it.
She gasped. And just for an instant I saw fear in
her eyes. Then it was gone. “Tried to kill me?”
“Yes,” I said, still crowding her. “I realize it was
dark, of course. But did he say anything when he
lunged at you? I mean, would you recognize his
voice?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she
said. “I was just up in my room—”
“That’s right,” I interrupted. I put the wallet back
in my pocket while I went on talking. “You were
playing the phonograph, you said. And when I found
you out there on the lawn you had a record in your
hand. I don’t think you even knew you were carrying
it, but I couldn’t get it away from you. You had a
death grip on it. At first I couldn’t make any sense at
all out of what you were trying to say.”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of it,”
she said. “Maybe you’d better tell me what
happened.”
“Sure.” I lit a cigarette for myself. “I had to talk to
you. We’re trying to run down a lead our Sanport
office dug up—but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Anyway, I got into Mount Temple last night after
midnight, and when I’d checked into the hotel I tried
to call you. The line was busy. I tried again later, and
A Touch of Death — 48
it was the same thing, so I got a cab and went out to
your house.
“And just as I was coming up the drive in the cab I
saw you in the headlights. You had run out the front
door and were going around toward the garage.
When I got over to where you were, you had fallen
on the lawn. You had this phonograph record in one
hand and your purse in the other. You were in a
panic, and practically hysterical. I couldn’t make out
what you were trying to say at first. It was
something about listening to the music in your room
by candlelight, and that you had looked around over
your shoulder and there was a man standing behind
you. I tried to calm you down and get the story
straightened out, but you just kept saying the same
thing over and over—that the man had lunged at you
with something in his hand.
“You didn’t seem to know how you’d got away
from him, but when I suggested we go inside you
started to go to pieces. Nothing could make you go
back inside the house. All you wanted to do was get
in the car and get away. I was afraid we’d wake the
neighbors, so I went along with it. I drove, and tried
to figure out what to do. I couldn’t take you to the
hotel or a tourist court there in town, of course,
because you’d be known everywhere. You went to
sleep, and I finally thought of this place. It’s a duck
club I belonged to when I was in Sanport and I knew
there wouldn’t, be anybody out here this time of
year. Maybe you could get some rest, and we could
talk it over when you woke up. That’s about it.
“I wish you could remember something about that
man, though. If he was trying to kill you, he may get
you next time.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Her eyes
were thoughtful.
“Do you have any idea who he could have been?” I
asked.
“No,” she said. “Do you really think I saw
anybody?”
A Touch of Death — 49
“Yes,” I said. Baby, I thought, if you only knew.
“Yes. I think you did. You were under a terrible
strain.”
“I must have been.” She stared moodily down at
her hands. When she looked back up at me she said,
“You said you came to talk to me. What about?”
“Your husband.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I suppose you want to ask some
more questions. Or the same ones over again. I’ve
told it so many times. . .”
“Yes,” I said. I felt good. I’d put it over. “It’s been
rough on you, and we hate to be the pests we are,
but we’ve got a job to do. However, mine isn’t quite
the same as the police’s. They’re looking for your
husband.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
I studied the end of the cigarette. “Only
incidentally.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Butler. My orders,
first and last, are to find that money. Any way I can.
We have to pick up the tab for it if it’s not recovered,
so you can see where our interest is.”
“I wish I could help you. You can see that, can’t
you? But there isn’t anything I can tell you that
hasn’t already been told.”
I waited, not saying anything.
She sighed again. “All right. He came home from
the bank at noon that Saturday, said he was going to
some lake in Louisiana, fishing, and that he’d be
home Sunday night. I didn’t see any money, or
anything that could have held that much money, but
maybe it was in the car, if he had it. He didn’t take
any clothes except fishing clothes, as far as I could
tell afterward. I know he didn’t take a bag. Just the
fishing tackle. I was a little worried when he didn’t
return Sunday night, but I thought perhaps he had
merely decided to stay over another day. And then,
Monday morning, Mr. Matthews, the president of
A Touch of Death — 50
the bank, came out and told me—” She quit talking
and just stared down at her hands.
“You don’t have any idea why he would do a thing
like that?” I asked.
The hesitation was hardly noticeable. “No,” she
said.
I frowned at the cigarette in my hand, and then
looked squarely at her. “Well, I’m afraid we do now,”
I said. “It’s unpleasant, and I wish I didn’t have to be
the one to tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was running off with another woman.”
“No!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But that’s the lead I
mentioned, the thing our Sanport office found out.
The girl’s name is Diana James, or at least that’s
what she calls herself. She had an apartment in
Sanport, and that’s where he was headed. She was
going to hide him there.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Unfortunately, it’s true.”
“Then,” she said, “under the circumstances, don’t
you think you’re just wasting your time talking to
me? Apparently this James person is the only one
who really knows anything about my husband.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not quite as simple as that. You
see, he never did get to her apartment. And the only
answer to that is a very ugly one.”
She was watching me narrowly. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Butler. But he’s dead, and has
been ever since that Saturday.”
She tried to get up from the chair, but her legs
wouldn’t hold her and she slumped onto the table. I
carried her into the other room and put her on the
bed. In a moment her eyes opened. She just lay
there looking up at the rafters. She didn’t cry.
I went out to the other room and got the bottle. It
had gone all right so far. She knew now that at least
one outfit was wise to the fact that Butler had never
A Touch of Death — 51
reached the James girl’s apartment, and had
guessed why he hadn’t. Maybe not the police, but
the insurance company was working with them,
wasn’t it?
“I’m sorry,” I said. I held out the drink. “This will
make you feel better.”
She sat up and brushed the dark hair back from
her face with her hand. She drank the whisky and
shuddered.
“You must have suspected it,” I said. “After all, it’s
been over two months, with the police in twenty
states looking for him.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Maybe I just didn’t want
to admit it.”
I sat down in the chair and lit her a cigarette. She
took it between listless fingers and forgot it.
“You see how that changes the picture, don’t you?”
I said. “We’re not looking for your husband any
more. We’re looking for whoever killed him. That is,
the police are, or will be as soon as they get the
word about the James girl. What I’m looking for is
the money. And that brings us to why I wanted to
talk to you. You might be able to add something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you might think of something that didn’t
seem important before, but that might be significant
now in view of this. Was there somebody who could
have found out he was going to do it? Was there
somebody who knew about Diana James? You see
the jealousy angle, don’t you? I mean—he had one
girlfriend that we know of, so there might have been
another.”
“I understand he was also married,” she said. “But
go on.”
“Believe me, Mrs. Butler, I don’t enjoy this either.
But my orders are to find that money. The police
are going to have their hands full trying to find a
murderer, and building a case that’ll stand up in
court.” I paused just a second; then I added, “I’m not
interested in that angle of it.”
A Touch of Death — 52
“You’re not?”
“No. Let’s look at it objectively. Up to the point of
recovering the money and prosecuting the man who
stole it, our jobs overlap. But if the man is dead, he’s
beyond the reach of prosecution, so when we get the
money back we’re out of it. That may sound callous
to you, but it’s only sound business. The police are
paid to solve murders; we’re not.”
I stopped. It was very quiet in the room.
“You see what I mean, don’t you?” I said.
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I understand perfectly.”
She paused, and then added, “They must pay you
well.”
“Well enough. But, again, it’s strictly business, if
you look at it in the right way. I don’t think your
husband was killed for that money. The motive was
jealousy, and the money didn’t have anything to do
with it. That being the case, we’re not involved. We
get back what belongs to us. We drop it. You see?”
“And if you don’t get it back?”
“Then it’s a different story. People’s emotional
explosions don’t interest us until they start costing
us a hundred and twenty thousand dollars an
explosion. Then we’re in it up to the neck, and we
get rough about it.”
She nodded again. “Yes. I can see you would feel
quite unclean if you ever became contaminated with
an emotion.”
“It’s a job. Like pumping gas, or being vicepresident
of a bank. If I want to be emotional, I do it
on my own time.”
She said nothing. She just continued to watch me.
I leaned forward a little and tapped her on the
wrist, “But let’s get back to what we were talking
about. Catching your husband would have been
easy, if somebody hadn’t killed him. We’d have had
that money back by now except that a clear-cut case
of embezzlement got loused up with some jealous
woman blowing her stack. She’s just making it tough
for me—and for no reason at all, because she didn’t
A Touch of Death — 53
want the money in the first place. And when I find
out who she is I can make it tough for her. Or she
can get off the hook by being sensible. You see how
simple it is?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is very simple. Isn’t it?”
She smiled. And then she hit me as hard as she
could across the mouth.
A Touch of Death — 54
Six
“Now that I’ve answered your question,” she said
coolly, “perhaps you’ll answer one for me. What
were you doing in my house?”
It had been too sudden. Even without having your
mouth bounced off your teeth, it was a little hard to
keep up. “I just told you.”
The big smoke-blue eyes were perfectly selfpossessed
now. “I know. You said I was wandering
around on the lawn with a phonograph record in my
hand, which isn’t a bad extension of the actual truth.
So you must have been up there in my room when I
was listening to the phonograph.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Certainly not. I know what I did. I went to sleep.
And just in case you think I’m bluffing, I can even
tell you the last recording I played before I dropped
off. It was Handel’s Water Music Suite. Wasn’t it?”
“How would I know?” I said.
“You probably wouldn’t, at that. But just who are
you? And what is your business, besides extortion?”
I was catching up a little. “Don’t throw your
weight around too much,” I said. “Suppose the
police started wondering just why his car showed up
right in front of Diana James’s apartment.”
A Touch of Death — 55
‘Did it?” she asked.
“You know damned well it did.”
She shook her head. “No. But it does have a
certain element of poetic justice, doesn’t it?”
It was odd, but I believed her. About that part of it,
anyway.
“I’m beginning to understand now,” she said,
studying me thoughtfully through the cigarette
smoke. “How is the accessible Miss James? As
bountiful as ever, I hope?”
“She likes you too,” I said.
She smiled. “We adore each other. But I do wish
she would stop sending people up here to tear my
house apart.”
I remembered the slashed cushions. “So that’s
who—”
“You didn’t think there was anything original
about it, did you? I can assure you that in almost
nothing connected with Miss James are you likely to
be the first.”
I said nothing. I was busy with a lot of things. She
knew the house had been searched before, but still
she hadn’t reported it to the police. That meant she
couldn’t, and that I was still right. She was in
whatever it was right up to her neck. She couldn’t
report me either.
Her eyes were slightly mocking. “But I see you
admit you had started to search the place. What
changed your mind? I was asleep and wouldn’t
bother you.”
“It got a little crowded,” I said. “With three of us.”
“Three?”
“The other one was the man who tried to kill you.”
“Oh, we’re going back to that again?”
“Listen,” I said. I told her what had happened.
“You don’t expect me to believe that?” she asked
when I had finished.
A Touch of Death — 56
“When you go back to the house, take a look at
what’s left of your records and the player. We rolled
on ‘em. The other guy was a heavyweight, too.”
“He was?” she asked. She was thinking about it.
Then she shrugged it off. “I don’t believe you.”
“Suit yourself,” I said.
Then I stopped. We had both heard it. It was a car
crossing that wooden culvert at the edge of the
meadow. It came on, and pulled to a stop right in
front of the porch. I could hear the brakes squeak.
I shook my head savagely and motioned for her to
stay where she was. She couldn’t be seen through
the front window. I stepped out into the other room.
The coat, with the gun in it, was on the back of a
chair against the other wall. As I started across I
could look out the front door and see the car. There
was only one person in it, and it was a girl. I could
hear the radio, crooning softly.
I went out and walked around the car to the
driver’s side. She smiled. She was an ash blonde
with an angelic face and a cool pair of eyes, and you
knew she could turn on the honey-chile like throwing
a switch at Boulder Dam. She turned it on.
“Good moarornin’,” she said. It came out slowly
and kept falling on you like honey dripping out of a
spoon. “It’s absolutely the silliest thing, but I think
I’m lost.”
“Yes?” I said. She was eight miles from a county
road and twenty from the highway. And she didn’t
look much like a bird watcher. “What are you
looking for?”
She poured another jug of it over me. “A
farmhouse. It’s a man named Mr. Gillespie. They
said to go out this road, and take that road, and turn
over here, and go down that way, you know how
people tell you to go somewhere, they just get you
all mixed up, it’s the silliest thing. Actually. All these
roads with no names on them, how do you know
which one they mean?”
A Touch of Death — 57
Maybe I imagined it, but the patter and the eyes
didn’t seem to match. And the eyes were looking
around.
The radio had quit crooning and was talking. I
didn’t pay any attention to it. Not then.
“Did they tell you to go through a gate?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, definitely a gate. Mr. Cramer, he’s the
manager of the store, he was the one that found out
Mr. Gillespie had forgotten to sign one of the timepayment
papers when he bought the cookstove and
took it home in his truck. Anyway, he definitely said
a gate, and then about a mile after the gate you turn
— I know you’re not Mr. Gillespie, are you? You
don’t look a bit like him.”
“No,” I said. “My name’s Graves. I’m on a fishing
trip.”
“My,” she said admiringly, looking at the white
shirt and the tie, “you go fishing all dressed up,
don’t you? My brother, when he goes fishing, he’s
the messiest thing, actually, you should see him.”
“I just got here,” I said. “A few minutes ago.”
Her story was plausible enough. She might be
looking for somebody named Gillespie. God knows,
she sounded as if she could get lost. She could get
lost in a telephone booth, or a double bed. But
still. . .
An icicle walked slowly up my spine and sat down
between my shoulder blades.
It was the radio. It was what the radio was saying.
“. . .Butler. . .”
“Are you fishing all alone?” Dreamboat asked.
All I had to do was stand there in the sunlight
beside the car and try to hear what the radio was
saying, and remember it, and listen to this pink-andsilver
idiot, and answer in the right places, and at
the same time try to figure out whether she was an
idiot or not and what she was really up to, and keep
her from noticing I was paying any attention to the
radio.
A Touch of Death — 58
“Mrs. Madelon Butler, thirty-three, lovely brunette
widow of the missing bank official sought since last
June eighth. . .”
Widow. So they’d found his body.
“Mrs. Butler is believed to have fled in a blue 1953
Cadillac.”
“I don’t see any car,” she said, looking around.
“How did you get here?”
“. . .sought in connection with the murder. Police
in neighboring states have been alerted, and a
description of Mrs. Butler and the license number of
the car. . .”
“Pickup truck,” I said. “Its in the shed.”
“. . .since the discovery of the body late yesterday,
but no trace of the missing money has been found.
Police are positive, however, that the apprehension
of Mrs. Butler will clear up. . .”
The man had known the body’d been found, and
that they were going to arrest her. He didn’t want
her arrested. He still didn’t. Maybe this lost blonde
wasn’t lost.
“Malenkov,” the radio said.
But she was going to get lost, and damned fast.
“—drink of water,” she was saying. She was
smiling at me. She wanted to come into the house.
She wanted to look around.
I smiled at her. “Sure, baby. But water? Look, I got
bourbon.”
I was leaning in the window a little. I slid her skirt
up.
“Thought I saw an ant on your stocking,” I said. I
patted a handful of bare, pink-candy thigh. “Come on
in, Blondie.”
The “You—” was as cold and deadly as a rifle shot.
Then she got back into character. “Well! I must say!”
But the only thing she could do, under the
circumstances, was go. She went.
I took a deep breath and watched the car go
across the meadow and into the timber, and then I
A Touch of Death — 59
could hear it climbing the hill in second gear. It
didn’t stop. I heard it die away in the distance.
He might be out there in the timber somewhere
with his gun, or he might be still in town. Maybe
he’d just sent her scouting. If that had been his car
following us last night, he had finally figured out
where we’d turned off, and he knew we had to be
back in this country somewhere.
Well, there was a lot of it. They had plenty of
places to look.
Unless, I thought coldly. . .Maybe she had seen
through that old varsity fumble and knew I was just
trying to get rid of her. Maybe she knew she had
already found what she was looking for.
There was one way to find out. That was to stand
out here in the open like a goof until he got back
with the gun and shot a hole in my head. I went
inside.
Madelon Butler had come out of the bedroom and
was standing by the table where the bottle was. She
turned and watched me.
“Could you hear the radio?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Why?”
“You’d better sit down. There at the end of the
table, where you can’t be seen from outside. And
take a drink. You’re going to need it.”
She sat down. “What is it now?”
“They’ve found your husband’s body. And the
police are looking for you.”
She poured the drink and smiled at me. “You do
have a flair for melodrama, don’t you?”
“You think I’m lying?”
“Certainly. And who was this timely courier,
bringing the news? An accomplice?”
I sat down where I could see out the door and
across the meadow. “Look. See if you can get this
through your supercilious head. You’re in a jam. One
hell of a jam. Nobody brought any news. It was on
the radio, in that car. The police are looking for you,
A Touch of Death — 60
for murder. And not only that, but the girl in the car
was looking for you too.”
I told her about it.
She listened boredly until I had finished; then all
she did was reach for her purse and take out a
mirror and some make-up stuff. She splashed
crimson onto her mouth. In spite of myself, I
watched her. She was arrogant and conceited as
hell, but when you looked away from her for a
moment and then looked back you went through it
all over again. You didn’t believe anybody could be
that beautiful.
“I’m ready to go back to town,” she said, “if you
are.”
“Don’t you want to hear me waste my breath any
more?”
“Frankly, no. I should think we’d about run
through your repertoire.”
“You don’t believe any of it at all?” She put the
finishing touches on the lips, pressed them together,
looked in the mirror once more, and then across at
me. She smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous. By your own
admission, you’re a housebreaker, liar, and
impostor. And attempted extortionist. Quite an array
of talent, I’ll admit; but to ask me to believe you is a
little insulting, wouldn’t you say?”
I leaned across the table and caught her wrist.
“And don’t forget abduction, while you’re adding it
up. So why don’t you have me arrested, if you don’t
believe any of it?”
“And add to the burden of the taxpayers?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll tell you why. You can’t.”
“Don’t paw me,” she said.
I reached over and took the other wrist. I slid my
hands up inside the wide sleeves of the robe and
held her arms above the elbows. “I want that money.
And I’m going to get it. Why don’t you use your
head? Alone, you haven’t got a chance, and the
money’s no good to you if you’re dead. Maybe I can
save you.”
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