“Yes.”
“Then you did keep those plates.”
“No, I didn’t. I kept only one. I kept that one because it was my sister’s voice and I didn’t understand how you got it.”
“It wasn’t your sister’s voice.”
“It was!”
“It wasn’t. It was my mother’s voice. Where is it?”
A car came around a curve and was there on the road, its lights full on them, dazzling in their faces. It roared on by and was gone.
“They saw us,” Heather said. “Whoever it was. That’s the kind of a nitwit I am. This is ridiculous. I’m not going to talk about that plate or anything else.”
She opened the door and got out, opened the rear door and climbed in, and lay down on the back seat. It required an acrobatic disposal of her long legs, and even so was not an eminently comfortable position, but it served the double purpose of concealing her from the beams of another car’s lights and of isolating her from her unwelcome companion. She heard the sound of movement in the front seat but didn’t open her eyes. If he said anything, no matter what, she wouldn’t reply; but he didn’t say anything. She shut her eyes tight, but that only made them sting, so she opened them and stared at the dark. After a while she closed them again. She wished Hicks would come. Not that his coming, or anything else, would ever make things clear again and bring life back. Nothing would ever do that. Only she couldn’t go on forever having nightmares... not sleeping... not sleeping...
Whenever the lights of a car showed in either direction, Ross ducked out of sight. Frequently, at brief intervals, he looked over the back of the seat into the tonneau. From the sound of the breathing, surely she was asleep, but that was hard to believe. He wanted her to be asleep. If she was asleep, he was there guarding and protecting her, which exactly fitted his idea of the matter to begin with. He sat as quietly as possible, not to awaken her. He wanted to turn on the dash light to see what time it was, but refrained from clicking the switch. Not that he was impatient; it would suit him all right if Hicks never came.
Footsteps on the grassy roadside. He cocked his head; from the right — no, the left. Hicks from that direction? Then he saw it wasn’t Hicks, from the size of the moving perpendicular blob, just as a squeaky voice came out of the darkness:
“That you, Miss Gladd?”
Ross spoke in a low voice: “Tim? It’s Ross.”
But there was movement in the back seat, and Heather had the door open by the time the boy got there, and was asking, “What is it? Who is it?”
“It’s Tim Darby, Miss Gladd. I’ve got a message for you. Gee, it’s exciting. Only he said you’d be alone. Only of course Ross is all right.”
“A message?”
“Yeah, on the telephone. He said you’d be here in the car. Here, Mom wrote it down. It says you’re to meet him...”
Heather took the slip of paper, turned on the ceiling light, and peered at the penciled scrawclass="underline"
“Don’t drive past Dundee entrance. Go around by Route 11 to Crescent Road. Am in a car parked half mile beyond Crescent Farm. License JV 28. ABC.”
“Thank you, Tim,” Heather said, hardly aware that Ross’s fingers, reaching over from the front seat, were removing the paper from hers. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Gladd. Gee, it’s exciting. We’re not going to squeal. Mom says she won’t. I’ll wait here till you’re gone. If the cops come I won’t tell ’em where you went, no matter what they do. No matter if they torture me.”
“Attaboy, Tim,” Ross said. “We know we can count on you. It might be better if you’d go right back home and lay low. Then the cops won’t know anything about it. When did the message come?”
“Just now. Just a minute ago.”
Heather was back in the front seat, behind the steering wheel. She got a key from her coat pocket, inserted and turned it, and pushed the starter button. The engine roared and subsided. She turned her head to Ross:
“Give me that paper and get out. If you have the slightest remnant of manners... I can’t put you out. Will you get out?”
“Certainly not. You don’t even know who that message is from. Do you think it’s from Hicks?”
“Of course it is. It’s signed ABC. His name is Alphabet Hicks.”
“How did he get over to Crescent Road in a car? If he’s loose in a car, why didn’t he drive here?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s so close to the house. Will you get out?”
“I should say not. How did he know Darbys live there? How did he know to phone Darbys?”
“Because I told him their name.”
“When?”
“This evening. Before I left the house. Will you—”
“You said you were waiting for him here. Was this phone message prearranged?”
Heather pulled the gear lever to low. “I’m not going to sit here and argue,” she declared fiercely. “I’m going to remind you of something that I certainly didn’t think I would ever be forced to mention. You said you loved me. You know all the things you said. If you love me so darned much, prove it. Get out of this car!”
“That would be a fine way to prove it. A fine way!”
“You won’t?”
“No!”
Heather switched on the driving lights, let the clutch in, and rolled onto the road, turning left toward Katonah.
It was not a sociable ride, since not a word was spoken. From the Dundee entrance to Crescent Farm on Crescent Road it was only three miles by the direct route, but going around by Route 11 doubled the distance. Ordinarily Heather was a good driver, neither a crawler nor a crowder, but now she stammered and staggered along, slithering to the perimeter on curves, jerking the gas in, and when she met a car a little short of the turn onto Route 11 she went so wide she nearly slid into the ditch. She twisted her neck for a swift glance at her companion, but he didn’t even grunt. Two miles farther on came another right turn onto Crescent Road, which was little more than a lane as modern roads go. After a long rise over a hill and a gradual descent beyond, it wound through a wood, was in open country again for a stretch as it passed Crescent Farm, and then dipped into another wood, becoming so narrow that the branches of the trees made an overhead canopy for it...
Heather stamped on the brake so energetically that the car shivered in protest and dug its rubber into the dirt, then shifted to low and cautiously sidled over onto the bumpy roadside. Barely twenty feet ahead, also off the road, stood a large black sedan. Its lights were off, but Heather’s lights were bright on the license plate, JV 28. She pushed a knob on the dash, and everything was pitch dark, but Ross reached over and pulled the knob out again.
“Let there be light,” he muttered. “You wait here.”
He climbed out and started for the other car, from which there had been no sign of life, and Heather opened her door and slipped out and followed him. She was at his elbow as he glanced through the window and saw that the driver’s seat was empty; and so was the rear. As his head turned to her for a comment, she seized his arm convulsively, and, seeing her stare, he wheeled around. A man who had been concealed at the front of the car, presumably crouching there at the bumper, was now erect; and in the glare of the lights of their car his narrowed eyes, above his broad nose and thin mouth, were amazing like the eyes of a wary malevolent pig. A pistol in his hand was leveled straight at them.
Nineteen
Hicks stood in the upper hall frowning at space.
The conference with Dundee and his lawyer in Ross Dundee’s room, where he had just left them, had made no inroads upon the world’s available supply of cordiality. Dundee had been splenetic, the lawyer croaky and coldly suspicious, and Hicks himself somewhat trying. The result had been conspicuously negative. Hicks would have walked out on them much sooner, only he wanted to allow plenty of time for Heather to get out of the house and to the car before moving to join her.