There was a knife stuck in it, right through the body. And a couple of brown stains on the material just under the knife blade, as though the doll had bled. Raggedy Ann looked up at us with her black triangle eyes, and she had a knife stuck all the way through her.
“That’s it,” I said. Then I realized I’d whispered it. I cleared my throat and spoke aloud. “That’s what he used.”
“He was watching us,” she said. She looked at me, and her eyes were wide, and not triangle-shaped at all. “He watched and watched, and if we hadn’t come down in here he wouldn’t have bothered us.”
“He knew we’d find it.”
“Andy, my mother will start to worry, she’ll call the police. They’ll search for us, won’t they?”
“Not on your life. I’ll tell you just what he did when he left here, after he locked us in. He took the station wagon away and hid it, and if anybody says, ‘Where’s Edna?’ he’ll say, ‘I don’t know, and I haven’t seen Andy either.’ And everybody’ll say, ‘Those two crazy kids eloped, at a time like this, what do you think of that?’ ”
“They won’t even look for its.”
“Not here they won’t. They’ll look in New York, or in some state where there’s no waiting period to get married, but they won’t look in here.”
“Andy, I’m scared.”
“That’s two of us.” I remembered the scissors then, and went over and got them. “But we’ve still got a chance,” I said, showing them to her.
I went back to work. She insisted on helping me, using the other pair of scissors.
The scissors helped. Finishing nails have practically no head at all, but the scissors could grip them and give me at least a little leverage, once I’d dug some of the wood away. But whoever had done this job had loved hammering» nails. There were thousands of them, millions. Or at least it seemed that way.
The first candle gave out, and we lit the second. The room smelled like a decayed tooth. I felt dizzy, and there were green and yellow flashes at the corner of my eyes.
Edna fainted. I half-carried, half-dragged her down the steps and stretched her out on the floor. Her breathing was quick and jagged. I went back up and fought nails out of plywood with sewing scissors.
The second candle burned out, and we were in darkness again. I had less than half of the nails out. But the bottom corner, farthest from the door, was free. I went cautiously down the steps and pawed around in the blackness till I found the saber, and brought it back up the steps again. I closed my eyes against the dust, and by touch alone managed to slip the saber in between the corner of the plywood and the two-by-four. I pushed it in almost to the hilt, where the metal was thick and should be less prone to break. Then, with some leverage to help me, I tugged on the saber, trying to pry the plywood free.
The sound of squealing nails was then the most beautiful song in the world. I heaved on the saber, again and again, and each time the nails would squawk, and each time I edged the saber higher up the wall. I kept slamming my fingers between the saber handle and the wall corner, but I didn’t care. Not then. All I cared about was the beautiful sound those nails made.
I got it off. One huge chunk of plywood, millions of nails still sticking out of its other side. I wrestled it slowly down the stairs, afraid any second it would slip away from me and go crashing down onto Edna, but I finally got it tucked away to one side, and then I went back up and attacked the other side of the wall.
That was easier. I only had to push, with nothing beyond the plywood to hold it back. I sat on the top step, my back braced against the other wall, and kicked out with both feet until I saw light around the edges of the plywood, and then I kicked it even harder.
Air came in, that was the thing. Air and a touch of gray dim light, and for the first time I really thought there was a chance I might live through this.
And for the first time, I got mad at the beast that had locked us in here to die. Up till now, I’d been too worried about Edna, and too worried about myself, to have room for any other emotion. Now I had plenty of room. Plenty of room. And I needed every bit of it.
I kicked the wall down, and went crawling out to partial gloom. The theater lights were out, but there was a window in the green room, over the exit door, and daylight streamed through that, some of it finding its way into this dressing room, the door not completely closed.
I staggered to my feet and went stumbling out of the dressing room and out to the wings and the lightboard. I threw the master lever up, and every light in the place went on. Then I went back around to the prop room door and unlocked it, and carried Edna up out of there.
I left her on the sofa in the green room, still unconscious but breathing more regularly, and went back into the prop room and found the doll with the knife in it. He might even have been dumb enough to leave his fingerprints on the knife handle, so I carried it out by the doll’s left arm. I went out of the theater and around the building to the farmhouse. The sun was high. It was almost noon. We’d been in there fifteen hours.
Jack Andrews was in the kitchen, making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He looked at me in surprise and said, “Where the hell have you been? Where’s Edna?”
“Just listen to me,” I said. It was one of two, Ling or Archer.
But he said, “You married?”
“Do I look married? Listen to me, God damn it.”
He saw the Raggedy Ann I was carrying, then, and said, “What the hell is that?”
“Shut up, Jack. Just shut up, that’s all. You let me ask the questions, God damn it.”
“I just don’t—”
“Shut up! Now! Now, tell me, where did you go after supper last night?”
“Where did I—”
“Now stop that. Answer, don’t ask. Where did you go after supper last night?”
“Well— A bunch of us went into Clinton, to the movies.”
“Did Archer go?”
“No, it was just—”
“Did Ling go?”
“If you’ll let me talk, I’ll tell you who—”
“Did Ling go?”
“No, it was—”
“All right, never mind.”
He started asking questions again, and I went around him to the front of the house and upstairs. Ling and Archer, unlike the rest of us, had private rooms, facing each other down at the end of the hall.
I tried Archer first. I went storming into his room and found him sitting at his writing table, the bottle tilted up over his mouth. He ducked it down fast, spilling some, and glared at me, starting to spout things about knocking first, and I overrode him, saying, “I got about ten seconds, Archer. I want you to listen, and answer fast. Where did you go after supper last night?”
“Go? I didn’t go anywhere, I stayed right here.”
“In this room?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Well, of course. What in the world—”
I held the doll up by its arms, and showed it to him. “I think you’re it, Archer,” I said. “I’m going to Einstein with this, and this time I’m going to force him to listen. Your fingerprints may still be on this knife, but either way you don’t have any alibi for either time; and—”
“Either time? Now, wait, wait.”
“You wait, Archer.” I backed for the door. “Just wait for Einstein.”
“Wait, please. I wasn’t alone!”
I stopped, my hand on the knob. “What?”
“Bobbi Barten was with me. Ask her, she’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to bruit it around, Andy, you can understand that, but—”