Girl Out Back - Charles Williams(6)

He sprang over and knelt beside me. “Hey, Mr. Ward.
Are you okay?”
I pushed myself to my hands and knees. “I’m all right,” I
said. “I just forgot about that damned hole.”
“Here. Let me help you up.” He took hold of my arm.
I tried to stand. The moment I put my right foot on the
ground I sucked my breath in sharply and collapsed.
Drawing a sleeve across my face to wipe off the sweat and
dirt, I said shakily, “It’s my ankle. Wait a minute.”
He watched as I unlaced my shoe. I grimaced
realistically as I pulled it off and felt the ankle and foot.
“It’s hot,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s broken. Probably
just a bad sprain.”
“You think you can walk on it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wait till I get my breath and I’ll
try again.”
I did, and gave an even better performance. “No use,” I
said.
“Mebbe I could cut you something for a crutch.”

Girl Out Back— 117
“Not with that knife? it’d have to be something pretty
heavy. It’ll have to be bandaged, too.” I moved the foot
slightly and said, “Whew!”
“Well...” he said hesitantly, “I’ve got a roll of bandage
stuff at the cabin. And some tape.”
I considered it, looking doubtful “I don’t know. . . .”
“Mebbe we could tear up our shirts and make a
bandage.”
“It’ll take a longer strip,” I told him. “Regular roll
bandage, or a torn-up sheet. And I’ll still have to have a
crutch.”
“I don’t see no other way,” he said. “I’ll just have to go to
the cabin. I got an axe there, and I could cut a sapling with
a fork, and pad it at the top. I’ll bring a sheet, and some
liniment.”
I frowned. “You re under arrest, on a serious charge. I’m
not supposed to let you out of my sight.”
“I can t think of nothing else,” he said.
“You wouldn’t try to escape?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, all right,” I said doubtfully. “I guess you couldn’t
get far, anyway, with no car.”
That was pretty crude, but in dealing with a low grade
mentality subtlety could be dangerous. He might miss it.
“Well, you’d better hurry along,” I went on, before he
could say anything. “It’ll be dark in another hour or two.”
“Sure,” he said. He went off through the timber in the
direction we had come, walking quite fast now.
As soon as he was out of sight I grinned and got up. I sat
on the log and lit a cigarette. The thing to do was give him
plenty of time; it didn’t matter when I got out of here. He’d
have to take to his feet after the car quit on him
somewhere this side of the highway, and it would be most
embarrassing for both of us if I refueled it and got out on
the road before he’d managed to thumb a ride. He might
even take time to pack a lot of his gear, in fact, since he’d
know I couldn’t crawl back to the camp-ground before
sometime tomorrow even if I knew the way. And even then
Girl Out Back— 118
I wouldn’t get out of the bottom until they sent a search
party after me.
I smoked the cigarette all the way out to the end before I
made any move to open the other two pails, extracting in
full measure the joys of anticipation. There were too few
moments like this in life, and when you’d used them up
they were gone forever. I thought of what was inside the
pails, and then appraised the craftsmanship of the
operation itself. Not bad, I thought. Of course, I’d had a lot
of luck at the beginning, but the solution of the problem
itself, after it was posed, was a creditable bit of work. It
was a minor masterpiece, if I did say so.
Come on, hammy, I thought; quit milking the curtain
calls and get to work. Grinding out the cigarette, I knelt
and took out my knife. In a moment I had all three of them
open. It was like dreaming you owned Fort Knox and then
waking up to find the deed and the keys in your hand. The
other two were exactly like the first, crammed full of
currency in every denomination from five to a hundred. I
hurriedly slipped off my shirt, spread it on the ground, and
began piling the money on it, not trying to count it but
searching for that I was going to have to destroy. When I
came to a package that had that crisp, new look about it I’d
toss it to one side. In a few minutes I had it all sorted out.
Of course, I’d have to go over it more carefully later on,
but I should have most of it. There were four more sheafs
of those new twenties, six tens, and two in the fifty-dollar
denomination.
Just to be sure, I picked up each one individually and
riffled through it to make certain the serial numbers ran
consecutively. They all did. I performed a quick calculation,
using the sums printed on the bands. The twelve packages
added up to twelve thousand dollars, which was an odd
coincidence, I reflected, since they varied individually
between $500 and $2,500 depending on denomination. I
looked at the little stack of it. Twelve thousand dollars! All
right, hero, I thought, you said you could; let’s see you do
it. Don’t stall around long enough to begin to wonder if
maybe it wouldn’t be safe ten years from now. It’ll never be
safe as long as you live, and the world’s not big enough to
find a place you could spend it. There are people who buy
Girl Out Back— 119
it, sure. But then somebody knows. The way it is now,
nobody does, or ever will. Keep it that way. Do it right.
Tossing all twelve of them over beside the hole, I began
breaking the bands and crumpling bills into the bottom of
it. When I had a neat pile of them I stuck the flame of the
lighter against the corner of a fifty and shoved it in. They
began to burn, flaming up nicely. I went on breaking open
the bands and dropping money on the blaze, not enough at
a time to smother it or cause it to flare too high. I
remembered the other time, at the edge of the lake, and
reflected that if you did enough of this to become an addict
it could be a damned expensive habit. When it all was
reduced to ashes I picked up a stick and crushed them to
dust. I shoved in a little earth and stirred it about, mixing
it. Then, taking the shovel, I caved the hole in all around,
smoothing it out, and wound up by spreading the old dead
leaves back over the whole thing. Boys, I thought, your
trail is cold forever.
I was about to turn back to the other when I stopped,
listening intently. It had sounded like an outboard motor
starting, a long way off. I grinned. He could get down to
the camp-ground faster that way, all right, and carry his
luggage with less trouble. I held my breath and listened
again, but I couldn’t be sure whether I still heard it or not.
A mile was too far, and he was going the other way. Bon
voyage, Walter. I deem it a great honor to have touched
your gentle spirit, however briefly, and may the pastures
be forever green.
Well, they were green enough, I thought. He had that
$3,800 I’d given him, and while this didn’t run to such
items of baronial splendor as coconut farms, it would last
him the rest of his life. That overseer would probably have
shot him, anyway.
I knelt beside the money on the shirt and began putting
it back into the pails. In a moment I was struck by the
bizarre fact that while it was a streak of rust on a twentydollar
bill that had started me theorizing in the first place
and had eventually led to the correct solution in this thing,
the present pails were shiny and clean inside. He had
changed them a few months ago. Some of the money was
badly streaked with the old stains, but getting them off
would present no great problem. A few minutes’ research
Girl Out Back— 120
in any library would produce the answer. Then I grinned. I
could even write Good Housekeeping.
I finished the job, took one last, gloating look, and
pounded the lids back on. After donning my shirt, I sat
down to light another cigarette before starting back. Give
him a little more time, to be sure he didn’t come back to
the cabin after one of his comic books. He should be just
about down to the campground now and getting into the
car.
I noticed that in all the excitement over the money I had
forgotten to put my shoe back on. I reached for it and slid
it on my foot, but did not lace it. It was too luxurious just
sitting there on the leaves with my back against the log
while I smoked and thought of the $101,000 there in front
of me.
When I had finished the cigarette and ground it out, I
looked at my watch. It was nearly six. Time to roll. I leaned
forward to lace the shoe, and then froze up. What I’d heard
was behind me, and quite near, and there was no doubt as
to what it was. It was something or somebody walking
through dry leaves.
I whirled, still sitting, and stared with growing horror. It
was Cliffords. He was puffing his way toward me like some
pudgy and self-consciously important gnome, and in his
hands he was carrying a brown paper bag and a homemade
crutch.
I knew I had to quit staring some way, but nothing
seemed to work. The whole thing was crashing down
around me, and my mind didn’t seem capable of grasping
anything except the fact that now we were both headed for
prison.
He hurried up. “Well, this’ll fix you up, Mr. Ward. I made
you a real good crutch.” He showed it to me.
He wanted me to tell him how good it was.
“You. . . .” I shook my head and tried again. This time I
finally got tracked. “You were gone so long. I thought you’d
decided to run for it.”
He shook his head. “No, sir. Not me, Mr. Ward. Ain’t no
use tryin’ to outfox the F.B.I. I found that out.”
Girl Out Back— 121
Twelve
I tried to keep my face expressionless. What was the
matter with the suet-headed little moron? I’d drawn him a
picture; I’d sat down patiently and spelled it out for him,
syllable by syllable. I’d told him how horrible it was in
prison, and that he’d get ten years for what he’d done. I’d
given him $3,800. I’d furnished him a car. I’d broken my
goddamned ankle for him and promised him it would be at
least twelve to twenty-four hours before anybody even
found out he’d escaped. I wanted to scream at him. What
the hell did he want—Brownell to come down here and
carry him out piggy-back and furnish him with a Duncan
Hines list of approved hiding places;
“Ain’t nobody escapes from the G-men,” he went on,
hunkering down in front of me. “I should of knowed better
in the first place. Look at how you got Dillinger, and
Machine-gun Kelly, and Karpis. . . .”
He was an F.B.I, buff. And I’d opened my fat mouth and
made it worse.
“. . . and when you explained how you fellers’d caught up
with me . . .” He stopped and gave a sententious shake of
the head.
You’re good, Godwin. You were magnificent. Tell him
some more about how bright you are.
Girl Out Back— 122
“. . . and if you can’t travel at all, Mr. Ward, I got it all
figured out. I’ll go down the lake and call your office and
have ‘em send out help. . . .”
If only he’d shut up. I was contemplating the ultimate
madness of it. I’d arrested him, and now there was no way
on earth I could escape from him. I was his hero—along
with the F.B.I, in general. By God, he wasn’t going to
desert me. He’d help me get back to the office if it took the
rest of the week. Maybe they’d put his picture in the
papers. If I took him down to Sanport and kicked him out
of the car he’d be in F.B.I, headquarters inside of twenty
minutes telling them all about it. If I left him here and ran,
he’d do the same thing. They’d get a description from him,
and it might take Ramsey as long as five minutes to
recognize me.
No, that wasn’t quite the ultimate. The final, most putrid
joke of all was the fact they probably wouldn’t even
prosecute the fatuous little meat-head. Why should they?
They’d have me. Presumably I was intelligent enough to
know right from wrong, and they could reach into the State
and Federal grab-bags without even looking and come up
with a half-dozen charges that would stick. I tried a few on
for size—conspiracy, obstructing justice, destroying
evidence, impersonating a Federal officer, compounding a
felony, and probably grand theft and accessory to armed
robbery. Add flight to escape prosecution. And, oh yes, I
had just finished destroying twelve thousand dollars worth
of United States currency they were trying to recover.
They were going to like me better than anybody they’d had
in their hair since Gaston B. Means.
“You got your shoe back on,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied wearily. “It began to feel a little better.”
“Don’t seem to be swole much. You reckon you’ll need
the bandage?”
“I don’t think so.” I laced the shoe up rather loosely. He
handed me the crutch and I struggled to my feet, not
bothering to make much of a production of it. What
difference did it make now? Anyway, I was an F.B.I,
superman, wasn’t I? If I tucked my feet up my pants legs
and roared off the ground like a pheasant he wouldn’t
consider it more than mildly noteworthy.
Girl Out Back— 123
I’ll carry the surp buckets,” he said. He strung their
handles on the wooden shaft of the shovel and slung it
across his shoulder. I stared at them.
I’ll go slow,” he said. “Just tell me when you want to stop
and rest.”
He started out. I fell in behind him.
In a moment lie looked back over his shoulder. “Is the
crutch about right?”
“It’s fine,” I said. He went on.
The three pails bumped gently together as they swayed
to his stride, forever three feet before my eyes. I tried to
look away from them. I tried not to hear the small metallic
sounds they made.
“We’ll make her in fine shape,” he told me reassuringly
over his shoulder. “Sure,” I said.
“When we get to the cabin, we’ll use the boat.”
I didn’t say anything. I merely reflected it would be
wonderful if we drowned. It would be such a fitting close to
our brief encounter and to this perfect idyll of a day.
Nothing short of committing suicide could lend it that final
little brush-stroke it needed to make it complete. A truly
formidable day. I thought, trying to keep my mind and
attention off those pails; the great whore of all days.
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, and
smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The pails clinked companionably.
They contained one-hundred-and-one thousand dollars,
and there were only two people on earth who knew it.
I wrenched my eyes away from the pails, feeling sick and
very cold in my stomach. Still pools of shadow clotted and
thickened under the trees as the sun went down.
Nobody knew I was out here, or that I had even been
here.
That was irrelevant. That wasn’t the question at all.
The proposition as stated is that everything you buy in
this antic bazaar has its individual price tag. Look at it
first; don’t be a fool and cry about the bill afterward. You
know what it is now; and understand that it won’t be any
different after it’s too late to return the merchandise.
Girl Out Back— 124
He backed me into this corner. . . .
No, he didn’t. You backed yourself into it. Don’t wait and
make that great discovery after it’s too late. Accept it now.
You can buy your way out in something less than a minute,
but it’s not going to be on a pass.
The pails swung gently behind his shoulder, three feet
away. I was becoming hypnotized. I kept seeing them as
they had looked when they were open on the ground. I
could put out my hand and touch them. Godwin’s Law of
Character Erosion states that the attrition of honesty. . . .
Never mind that bright and sophomoric bit of wisdom. This
is something else. Well, isn’t murder the ultimate
dishonesty?
The thing that was so terrible about it was its simplicity.
I could go on and go to prison, for nothing. Or I could
merely walk out of here with a fortune, and not go to
prison at all.
It was twilight. I saw the edge of the clearing and the
darkening bulk of the cabin ahead of us.
All right, I thought. But when you start, do it fast and
very coldly, and don’t think at all.
* * *
Now we were inside the cabin, from which the light was
almost gone. I felt very tight, and far away, and was
concentrating on details like remembering to limp as I
walked. I had picked up my jacket and the paper bag that
contained the $3,800. He had already put the three pails in
the boat and had come back after the clothes he was going
to take. He placed them in a cheap little imitation leather
bag he took from under the bed.
“I reckon I can phone Mrs. Nunn to pick up the rest of
my stuff,” he said. “Mebbe sell it for me.”
“Yes,” I said.
I picked up the gun-belt from the floor. The loops were
filled with cartridges and it was heavy. I held it out to him.
“I reckon I better leave that here,” he said.
“You can take it,” I told him. I’ll turn in the gun, and
maybe you can sell it to one of the deputies.”
Girl Out Back— 125
He had to have it on, but I wished we could stop talking.
My voice sounded squeezed and breathless, as if it were
coming off the top of my throat.
He buckled on the belt. He looked once around the cabin
and went on through the door without saying anything. I
was glad; that was past now. The encircling wall of trees
was dark. Far overhead in the fading sky a few splashes of
orange and pink were left over from the silent explosion of
sunset. He looked up at them and then around at the
clearing’s thickening dusk.
“I . . .” he said.
Don’t look at him. Don’t listen.
“I liked it here,” he said simply. “It was a nice place.”
I clamped my jaws shut against the cold and terrible upwelling
of pressure inside me and turned away. I gestured
with my hand. We went down the trail toward the boat.
An old log running out into the water served as a pier.
We got in. He handed me the valise, which I put forward
with the pails. I shoved the folded paper bag into one of
the pockets of my jacket, and dropped the jacket across the
valise. He turned the boat outward and gave it a shove
with an oar against the log. I sat on the midships seat,
facing him. We coasted out of the cove on water that was
as flat and black as oil. It was intensely still, and on both
sides of the waterway night grew and deepened among the
trees, pushing outward to overrun this last outpost of day. I
turned a little, looking forward, and slipped the wallet from
the pocket of my trousers. I put it in the jacket. He cranked
the motor. It began kicking us outward, away from the
shore, as he headed for the bend. I removed my hat.
Almost at the same time I cried out, “Wait!” His face was
a blur under the big shadow of his hat as he looked at me
inquiringly. I reached past his arm and cut the motor.
Instantly, the vast silence of the forest rolled back over us,
unbroken except for the faint swish of water past the hull
and the roaring in my ears. I was cold now, and he was
locked out and far away.
I stood up. “I thought . . .” The boat rocked under my
weight. I swayed, and lunged astern and outward,
grabbing frantically for him as I fell. We went over the side
Girl Out Back— 126
together. The water closed over us. He kicked against me.
I lost him. I went upward, and my head broke the surface.
Water swirled behind me, and I heard him gasp. “You . . .
You all right, Mr. Ward?”
I turned and found him, and pressed him down into the
water. He struggled wildly for a few seconds, and then he
jerked with one final convulsion and became still under my
hands, settling away from them toward the bottom. I
snatched the gun from my trousers and let it drop. A last
bubble of air, released from somewhere in his clothing,
came upward, brushing against my throat.
It was a problem, an assignment you were handed and
told to work out on the spot and under pressure; my mind
was ice cold and very clear, shored off from everything as I
concentrated on it. The boat was a deeper clot of shadow
some ten feet away. I swam over to it, moving clumsily in
my clothes and shoes. Catching the gunwale with one
hand, I oriented myself with the dark shore-line, and began
kicking back the way we had come. In a few minutes, just
outside the cove, I could reach bottom with my feet. I
waded in, pulling the boat.
Landing it beside the log, I stood alongside it while water
ran out of my hair and clothing. Stripping the cuff-links
from my shirt, I dropped them in the pocket of my jacket,
which was still across his valise. I slipped off the tie and
shirt, wrung them out, rolled them together, and tossed
them on to the bank. Then I stepped out of the trousers,
squeezed as much of the water from them as I could, and
stepped out on the ground myself. I put the trousers down
with the shirt and tie. I emptied the water out of my shoes,
wrung out the socks and put them with the other clothing,
and put the shoes back on. Then, going back and forth on
the log, I removed the valise, my jacket and hat, and the
three pails from the boat, placing them near the pale blur
of the shirt which I could see fairly well in the darkness. I
went up to the cabin. Just outside the door and a little to
one side, where he had dropped them, I felt around for the
spinning rod and the big bass on its stringer. I couldn’t find
either of them. I oriented myself, and tried some more.
That was odd. He’d dropped them both right here. Then I
understood. When he came back for the bandage and the
Girl Out Back— 127
crutch, he’d moved them. But where? I had to have that
rod.
Well, obviously, he would have taken it inside the cabin. I
straightened and was about to go in when I stopped. How
in the name of God was I going to find anything in there
without a light? My cigarette lighter was down there in my
trousers, soaking wet. It would be hours before it would
work. Well, he had matches in there somewhere; I just had
to find them. I stepped inside and groped my way toward
the rear, bumping into a chair. The noise it made as it fell
to the floor was startling and all out of proportion in the
stillness. I went on until I felt the stove, and then stopped,
trying to visualize the exact layout. Nearly all the back wall
was covered with shelves, as I remembered, but the
matches should be on the end near the stove. I moved,
holding my hands before me. I touched the edge of a shelf
and began sliding my hands along it. Something fell to the
floor and broke. I cursed. I knocked something else over,
but it remained on the shelf. I was beginning to be nervous
and apprehensive now. It might take an hour to find his
box of matches. Then I grunted. I had felt them. It was a
large cardboard box, slid partly open. They were the big
kitchen ones.
I struck one, and the instant it flared he came flying back
at me from a dozen directions at once, from the dirty,
syrup-smeared dishes and the unmade bed and from the
piles of cheap and pathetic magazines. The poor, lost,
futile. . . .
Stop it!
I coldly sealed him out and swung around, searching for
the lamp. It was on the big packing box that had the
oilcloth on it. I lit it, replaced the chimney, and looked
around in the dim yellow light. There was the rod. It was in
the corner by the chest of drawers, where the rifle and
shotgun stood. The stringer was on the floor beside it. The
bass was gone. Well, naturally, he would have thrown it
back in the lake so it wouldn’t smell up the place.
I was about to go across to pick up the rod when I
became conscious of something sticky under my shoe. I
looked down. The thing I had knocked off the shelf and
broken was a syrup pitcher, and I was tracking syrup all
Girl Out Back— 128
over the cabin. I swore, whispering harshly in the
darkness. Damn the rotten luck. Well, I’d clean it up later; I
had to come back, anyway. There were some torn-up comic
books in the wood-box beside the stove. I ripped some
pages off one, cleaned the syrup from my shoe, and stuffed
the paper in the stove. Setting two matches on the floor
just to one side of the door where I could find them next
time, I picked up the rod, blew out the lamp, and went out.
It was two or three minutes before my eyes became
accustomed to the darkness again. I went down to the boat
and put the rod in. It still had a small spinner attached to
the line. I felt around under the forward seat until I located
his tackle box. It was a metal one, with a tray that hinged
upward when the lid was raised. Opening it, I set it on the
bottom grating between the midships and after seats.
Placing my shoe near one end of the tray, I stepped down,
putting part of my weight on it. I felt it bend a little, and
then the box upset, spilling lures about the bottom of the
boat and under the grating. Taking off my shoes. I set them
out on the log and shoved off with the oar.
I paddled until I was headed outward, and then cranked
the motor. Idling down to slow speed, I pointed the bow
straight across toward the weed beds along the other
shore. When I was nearly half-way across I stood up and
dived over the side. I came up, and the boat was drawing
away, a diminishing shadow on the dark surface of the
water as the motor kept up its thrumming sound in the
night. It was swinging to the right, I thought. It didn’t
matter much where it hit something and came to rest, but I
hoped it wouldn’t double back and run me down.
I got my bearings and started swimming back to the
cove. When I waded out of the water and sat on the log to
put my shoes on I tried to judge where it was now. It
sounded as if it were on the other side, and it didn’t appear
to be moving. Probably it had already plowed into the pails.
That was fine.
I stepped ashore, picked up the valise, and returned to
the cabin, hurrying now because I wanted to get away from
here. Lighting the lamp again, I put the clothes back in one
of the drawers of the chest, and shoved the valise under
the bed where he’d got it. I located a paper bag and picked
up the shattered glass of the syrup pitcher. I soused his
Girl Out Back— 129
dish towel in the water pail, wrung it out, and mopped up
the syrup, dropping the towel in the bag when I had
finished. What else. Oh, yes—the plate I had used for an
ash-tray. I scraped the butts into the bag, wiped the plate
with a handful of paper from the wood-box to remove the
rest of the ashes, and put the paper in the fire-box of the
stove. Better burn all that, I thought. I stuck a match to it,
and then shoved in the carton the money had been in, and
the waxed paper that had been used to wrap that hidden
under the house. When it had all burned down and gone
out, I pulverized the ashes with the poker and replaced the
lid. I put the blackened pieces of hardware from Haig’s
suitcase in the paper bag, shoved the table back where it
had been, and looked around. What else? There was
nothing to indicate I had ever been here.
Of course, I had left footprints out there in a few places
in the hard earth of the yard and in the trail, but it didn’t
matter, even though my shoes were larger than his.
Nobody would be looking for footprints. What had
happened to him would be perfectly obvious. He’d
stumbled over the tackle box, fallen overboard wearing
that gun-belt and gun, and had drowned when the boat
plowed on and left him. An autopsy would bear it out.
I picked up the paper bag, blew out the lamp, and went
out. When my eyes were accustomed to the darkness
again, I walked down to the lake about fifty yards above
the cove, and threw the bag out into the water. The
hardware and broken glass were heavy enough to make it
sink. Picking my way through the dark trees, I went back
down to the cove.
I rolled my shirt, trousers, and socks into a bundle and
knotted the tie around it. Putting on the jacket and the hat,
I picked up the crutch, the three pails and the bundle of
wet clothing, and started down the lake through the
timber. It was slow going and it was farther this way
because I had to follow the shore-line to keep from being
lost. Brush scratched my legs, and it required intense and
constant alertness to keep from running into tree trunks.
The sound of the outboard motor grew fainter behind me. I
stopped once to tear the padding from the crutch and
dispose of it under a log. A few hundred yards farther
along I threw the forked sapling itself into the water. I was
Girl Out Back— 130
conscious that I was tiring, but had no conception of the
passage of time. It could have been twenty minutes or it
might have been hours that I’d been wrapped in this
furious concentration, impervious to everything except this
Problem I was working on. Nothing else existed, or could
exist until I was through with it.
I stumbled into an open space and realized I had reached
the camp-ground. I swung left, located the road, and in
another minute was standing beside the station wagon.
The moves remaining in the Problem were dwindling
rapidly now, being checked off one by one. I fished the
keys from the pocket of my jacket and unlocked the door.
Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, I
hurried out to where I had hidden the can of gasoline and
refueled the car. I replaced the registration certificate.
Lifting out the suitcase, stripped off the jacket and wet
shorts, and dressed in the slacks and sports shirt I’d had
on before.
Like an operating team making a sponge count, I spread
out the wet clothes and checked to be sure I hadn’t lost
anything. It was all there—shirt, tie, socks, trousers, cufflinks,
lighter, pocket-knife, wallet, bogus credentials, the
sodden remains of the warrant, the brown paper bag
containing the ten dollar bills, and even the drowned and
mushy package of cigarettes in my shirt. I tossed the paper
bag in the suitcase, and put the wallet, knife, and lighter in
the pockets of my slacks. Rolling everything else back up in
the shirt, I stowed the bundle in the rear of the car.
I took out the knife and pried the lids off the three pails.
So oblivious was I to everything but the closing moves of
the Problem I scarcely even recognized the paper bundles
as money as I hurriedly transferred them to the suitcase.
When the pails were empty I put the jacket in the bag on
top of the bundles, closed the bag, and stowed it in the car
alongside the wet clothes, pulling the blankets and the
kapok life-belts over it. Picking up the flashlight and the
three pails, I walked back to the edge of the water. I sailed
the lids out into it. Then I filled the three pails with water
so they would sink, and threw them as far as I could out
into the lake. I turned the light on my watch. It was
waterproof, and still running after its two immersions in
the lake.
Girl Out Back— 131
It was eight seventeen. The Problem was solved, and all I
had to do was go home. I switched off the light and stood
there for a moment as the tenseness uncoiled along my
nerves. It had been a rough assignment with tremendous
pressure and no margin for error, but I hadn’t missed a
move. I knew that. It was perfect.
Then, suddenly, I became conscious that something had
changed. I turned my head with a puzzled frown,
wondering what it was. I hadn’t heard anything; all about
me was the vast silence of the swamp.
Wait. That was it! It was the silence itself. All this time I
had been listening to the thin, faraway drone of the
outboard motor without consciously hearing it, and now it
had stopped. The motor had run out of fuel at last.
I fought it, but the concentration was all gone now and it
was too terrible and too graphic to be denied. It was as if
he hadn’t died an hour ago, but right now—at this exact
instant as the motor made its final revolution and became
quiet at last and all movement and life and sound were
gone forever from that dark and brooding channel before
his cabin.
“Are you all right, Mr. Ward?”
It all came up then. I whirled and fell to my knees with
my hands in the edge of the water and made a horrible
retching sound as I heaved and suffocated with the sting of
vomit in my nostrils. When I was wrung out and weak I
moved a little and washed my face, and then lay back on
the ground, still shaking.
Don’t be so damned dramatic, I told myself coldly. You
knew beforehand it wasn’t going to be any picnic, didn’t
you? You’re not that stupid.
But there wasn’t any way I could have known he was
going to say that. He just didn’t know whether I could
swim or not, and he wanted to help me.
After a while, when some of my strength returned, I went
back to the station wagon and drove out of the bottom.
Girl Out Back— 132
Thirteen
I had only two gallons of gasoline. Trying to get all the way
home on that would be too risky, and there probably
wouldn’t be anything open at Hampstead, so I drove back
to Exeter and filled up. It was a few minutes past ten when
I got home, fervently glad I had the place all to myself.
People were still up in several nearby houses. I drove on
into the garage and closed the overhead door. There was a
smaller side door that faced the kitchen porch. I went
around to the front of the house and let myself in. I turned
on a light in the kitchen, drew the curtains, and brought
the suitcase and bundle of clothes in through the back.
Turning on the oven in the kitchen range, I spread the
wet trousers and the the on the back of a chair before it.
The shirt was hopelessly stained with the mushy cigarettes.
It would never do to put it in the laundry; according to the
best traditions of the mystery story, employees of laundries
spent ninety per cent of their time searching for evidence
of crimes. Well, I knew several ways to circumvent these
sterling but over zealous citizens. I dumped the cigarettes
into the sink, rinsed out as much of the stain as possible,
and tore off the buttons, which I threw in the refuse can,
the one in the house. Then I tore the shirt into handy-sized
polishing cloths, saturated them with some of Reba’s floor
wax, and threw them in the garbage can behind the house.
Girl Out Back— 133
I went upstairs to the bathroom. With a pair of kitchen
shears I cut the black identification folder into scraps and
flushed it down the john. The soggy warrant followed it,
and then the drowned cigarettes. I took off my shoes and
put them on shoe trees to dry naturally in the closet. I put
the hat away. Donning a pair of slippers and combing my
hair, I went back downstairs and turned the trousers and
tie before the oven. When they began to feel merely damp,
I broke out Reba’s ironing board and electric iron and
pressed them carefully. I slid the trousers neatly on to a
hanger, added the jacket, and went back to the bedroom. I
put the suit away where it had been and hung the tie back
on the rack. I was the only living person who knew Special
Agent Ward had ever existed, and now the last trace of him
was gone.
I’d saved the best part until last. Taking the suitcase, I
went downstairs to the den, drew the curtains over the
small windows, and switched on the reading lamp beside
the big chair. I dragged over my trunk and emptied it of
the accumulation of books and papers and old clothes I’d
never quite got around to throwing away. Then I hunted up
a pad and pencil and opened the suitcase.
I piled it on the floor first, separated into individual
stacks of hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, and fives, writing
down the amounts printed on the bands and hoping
Cliffords had been correct in his count. He hadn’t, but it
was even better. The total when I added it came to
$103,500. I added the $2,800 still in the paper bag.
That made a grand total of $107,300. I stared at it and
whistled softly. It was all mine, and nobody on earth knew
I had it. I wondered if anybody else in all history had ever
pulled off a coup this size entirely alone and without even
the suspicion of one other human being. When you stopped
to examine it, the thing must be without parallel. It wasn’t
solely that there was no reason anyone should suspect I
had it; there wasn’t even anybody to miss it. That was what
made it fantastic. There was absolutely no link between
Haig and Cliffords, and none between Cliffords and me,
and both Haig and Cliffords were dead. . . .
If only he had run. I wanted him to! That’s the way I
meant it.
Girl Out Back— 134
I fought down the sick spasm. It passed in a moment.
There would be others, plenty of them, but they would pass
too. Time didn’t wound all heels; it was still the other way
around. The only saving grace of cliches was that they
were true. It would never go away, of course, but you could
live with it if you were being paid enough according to
your individual sense of values. Mine, perhaps, would raise
more than one eyebrow among the Good Housekeeping
crowd, but then I wasn’t asking them to live by them; I was
merely doing so myself.
I got up to find cigarettes and came back to stare at the
pile of money again, excitedly making plans. I’d hold on
here for another six months. By that time they would have
given up in this area and stopped watching it. Let’s see,
that would be in February. I’d take it to Florida and put it
in several safe deposit boxes. Cash—that is, currency—was
always unusual in any kind of business transaction and
likely to attract attention, so I would open several
scattered checking accounts, add to them gradually, and
eventually consolidate them. I’d lie low until mid-summer,
at the very bottom of the season, studying the west coast
and the Keys for a good location to buy into a marina in a
small way or start one of my own. And once I had a
business established it would be easy to convert increasing
amounts of currency into investments or use it to enlarge
the operation. It was just a matter of going slowly.
I put it into the bottom of the trunk and covered it with
the old clothing I’d taken out—ski things I hadn’t used for
years, a dinner jacket, a uniform, and a couple of doublebreasted
suits. It would be safe here. They never went into
my things, and I had the only key, anyway. I replaced the
books and papers, locked the trunk and moved it back
against the wall. The key I put into my wallet.
I went back up to the kitchen, made a sandwich, and
opened a can of beer. Carrying them into the living-room, I
loaded the gramophone with arias from Eugene Onegin
and Boris Godunov. The house was too quiet. After a while
I switched it off and went upstairs. I took a shower and lay
down naked on the bed. Her note was still pinned to the
pillow. I crumpled it and threw it on the dresser, wishing
she would come back. A fight would be better than this
intense silence. I switched off the light. The moon had
Girl Out Back— 135
come up now and its soft light was slanting in under the
honeysuckle about the window.
It hit me without warning. I rolled my face down into the
pillow and locked my arms around it, shaking and sick and
trying not to make any sound. The picture was a long time
going away. There was something stark and forever lost
and terrible about it, the boat lying motionless there in the
moonlight between the dark walls of the trees as if it were
waiting for him to come back and get it.
I sat up and lit a cigarette. It was all right. Conscience
was no avenging lion; it was a jackal. It circled you like any
other carrion-eating vermin, knowing it had no chance
when you were on guard and waiting for the precise
moment you were waking up or going to sleep. A couple of
bad moments a day were no exorbitant price to pay tor a
hundred thousand dollars. Fade, brother. We’ve done this
routine before, and I always outlasted you. Remember?
I awoke once during the night, drenched with sweat and
tangled in the sheet as if I had been threshing wildly about.
In the morning, when my eyes first opened to the gray
coolness of dawn, it was a minute or two before it came
back, and when it did it was with a rush of freezing and
overwhelming terror. They would catch me; I’d go to the
electric chair. Then reason took hold again and it
disappeared.
Catch me? There wasn’t a chance in the world. How
could they? It was absolutely impregnable from every
angle. In the first place, Cliffords had merely drowned. An
autopsy would prove that, and an examination of his boat
would tell them how it happened. And, secondly, I didn’t
even know him, and had never been to his place.
I shaved and dressed and drove downtown for some
breakfast. While I was sitting at the counter in Joey’s
eating half a melon, Ramsey came in and sat down two
stools away.
He nodded and smiled. “How are you tins morning, Mr.
Godwin?”
”Fine, thanks,” I said. “are you having any luck?” It was a
waste of rime, I knew, even if I weren’t already aware he
wasn’t having any luck. None of them would tell you what
day it was.
Girl Out Back— 136
Hmmmm, not much,” he replied. He gave his order to the
waitress. Then he looked around at me again. “How is the
fishing in this area? I understand you’re quite an
authority.”
“I know it pretty well,” I said. “It’s part of the job, and
then I fish a lot myself. You thinking of trying it?”
“I thought I might, when my vacation comes up. What do
you think of Sumner Lake?”
I took a sip of my coffee. “Well, it’s usually a good bet.”
“Have you been up there recently?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just a few days ago, in fact. For once,
though, it let me down. August is a bad month.”
“Oh? Well, I was thinking of early October. Thanks a lot.
If I do make it, I’ll stop by and talk to you.”
“Sure,” I said. “Any time. Be glad to help.”
The canteloup tasted like asbestos pipe-insulation, but I
went ahead and forced it down. I paid the bill and drove
over to the store. What was he after, anyway? Was he
checking on me? For some reason I couldn’t determine, I
suddenly thought of that Russian policeman—what was his
name?— who haunted Raskolnikov at every turn.
Nuts, it was merely a coincidence. He just happened to
want to go fishing; that’s all.
Otis had already opened up and was sweeping down the
showroom. He came over and leaned the broom against the
showcase to light a cigarette.
“Little trick I picked up in the army,” he said. “You watch
till you see some brass coming and then grab a broom and
sweep like hell.”
“Anything happen yesterday?” I asked. “Anybody force
his way in and buy something before you could stop him?”
“Oh, sure. Matter of fact, I kept the place open till you
were clear out of sight. Sold a five-horse motor. For cash.
It’s in the safe.”
“Good,” I said. My heart wasn’t in it this morning.
Otis was silent for a moment. He started to turn away,
but then appeared to change his mind about it. He
balanced the broom on his foot, watching it moodily.
Girl Out Back— 137
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I almost forgot. That guy Nunn called
up a couple of hours after you’d left.”
“Oh?”
He nodded, still looking at the broom. “Wanted to talk to
you, but I told him you’d gone for the rest of the day. So
then he wanted to know where.”
“What was on his mind?” I asked. I didn’t like this much.
“He was crying about the job we did on his motors, as
near as I could tell. I tried to get him to let me in on what
he thought was the matter with ’em, but he just said he
jumped you about ’em when you stayed out there last
week.”