The attack was swift, without warning, as if a mountain cat had crouched waiting within the room. But it was an attack without fangs or talons, precipitated by a hunger that wanted to devour but not to destroy. Her arms were locked around his neck, and her body was straining against his. He was drowning, he felt, in the astringent scent of her pale hair. Her lips moved against his.
“Two days, Connie. Only two days, and it seems like two years.”
He tangled his long fingers in the pale silk of her hair and drew her head back until her throat arched back at the tension. His mouth was hard against hers, until suddenly he released her and spun away, walking into the room with the precise military bearing that survived, rather ludicrously, even the swift, flaming attack. When he turned abruptly to face her, his pale eyes were still aflame, contradicting the effect of his conditioned reserve. It was this more than anything, he knew, that explained his strange and overwhelming fascination for her. This deep flame that broke through his chill restraint with the intensity and swiftness of heat lightning. She had the capacity to make it flare, and the knowledge, he realized, filled her with a shattering sense of excitement.
“It’s on the way, baby. Our way. The way you’ve got it planned.”
“You’ve seen grandfather?”
“I’ve seen him, and I’m in.”
“He’s a crafty old hellion, Connie. You don’t make millions by being stupid. You think he suspects anything?”
“Nothing. I’ll swear he suspects nothing.”
“He’s following the instructions? Even about the police?”
“Yes. He hates your guts, baby, but he admires you, just the same. With him, that’s probably better than love. He wouldn’t leave you a dime if he scorched in hell for it, but he’ll pay a fat ransom to keep anyone else from trying to hurt you.”
“I know. I told you it’d be like that. I’ve known the old devil for a long time, Connie. Is it going through tomorrow night?”
“On schedule. I’ll pick up the fifty grand at the old man’s place at six-thirty. From there. I’ll go to the bus terminal and catch the seven-thirty Darrowville bus. It’ll be a dry run to make the ride, of course, but I’d better make it for looks, just in case someone’s looking. When I get to Darrowville, I turn around and come back on the first bus. That’ll be next morning. I’ll still have the fifty grand. As far as anyone will ever know, the contact was made. Either somewhere along the way or in Darrowville itself.”
“When do I show up?”
“The next night. It’ll be a little rough. You’ll leave here after dark and walk to the highway. It’s a long way and tough going. You show up on the highway. Get yourself picked up. You’re in bad shape. You’ve been taken to a spot near the highway and released. You don’t know just where, because you were blindfolded. Say there were two men involved. Use your imagination when you describe them. Think you can do it? I’d pick you up here and drive you down near the highway, but it’d be too risky.”
She moved toward him and stopped, laughing.
“I can do it, all right,” she said. “Oil, I can do it.”
She stood there looking at him with her hands on her hips and her breasts rising against her blouse. The blood was burning in her cheeks.
Chapter II
When the bus was thirty-five miles from Darrowville and still ten miles out of Hogan, it began to rain. Water fell from an inky sky in a deluge that threatened to wash all traffic, including the clanking bus, off the highway. Sitting in his seat at the rear, Jeff Pitt looked out the window on his right and saw no farther than the streaming glass.
In his seat of authority, the driver hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering intently through the half-circle of windshield that was swept by the flapping wiper. Rain flooded in behind the rubber-edged blade, obscuring vision. The bus crept cautiously, the light of its headlamps beaten back. After about twenty minutes, there was a sharp downward tilt. For a moment, at the bottom, the ugly sound of rushing water swept under and around the bus, then the tilt was upward, the sound receding. Flash flood, Jeff thought.
Two rows forward and on the opposite side, Cleo Constance sat stiffly. He seemed a remote, self-isolated figure, forbidding approach. The gray homburg rode his head with unimpeachable correctness. His shoulders were rigid, square, under boxed blue tailoring. Most of the time his pale eyes were directed carefully ahead in a blind stare, but now and then his head turned briefly, showing a hard, flat cheek, a thin acquiline nose.
Pride, Jeff thought. Pride and arrogance to the degree of cruelty, sharpened by ambition and frustration. Well, one thing’s certain. He’s made no contact. Not yet. It’ll be at Hogan or Darrowville. Unless, of course, it’s made on the bus. And that isn’t likely. The kidnapper would have to expose himself openly that way. It isn’t at all likely. It’ll be arranged in a way to protect the kidnapper. I wonder if he’s waiting at Hogan? Or at Darrowville? Or is he on the bus? Besides Constance and me, four passengers. Could it be one of the four? Two men and two women. Could it be a woman? And why not? Not alone, of course. There’s a man in it somewhere. One or more. But a woman could make the contact. It’s been done before.
Across the aisle from Constance sat the fat little man who announced to Constance in a wheezy voice that he was Dr. Elliot Newman. Constance had responded with a cold nod and nothing more. A doctor. That explained the small brown bag he carried.
At the moment, Jeff could see only the back of Dr. Newman’s head. A brown felt hat was placed precisely level on the head. Between the hat and a thin ragged edge of gray hair was a strip of naked scalp. The little doctor had made no more gestures of friendliness after Constance’s obvious rebuff. Maybe he was sulking.
Up front, a couple of rows behind the driver, the young couple sat in heavy silence. If they had exchanged more than a dozen words during the ride, Jeff hadn’t noticed. The girl sat on the inside, next the window. Jeff could see only the top of her head over the high back of the seat. Her hair was mouse colored, stringy. It badly needed the benefits of one of the new shampoos. The new shampoos could work miracles, even with mouse-colored hair. Lady, you can be glamorous. Which side received the magic action? But probably it would be just as well to leave the hair as it was. Why take the mouse out of the hair when obviously nothing could be done for the mouse-like face, the gray little mouse-like soul?
The girl seemed to be sleeping. Jeff knew that she wasn’t. At the last stop he’d got off the bus for a stretch. Boarding it again, he’d noticed that the girl hadn’t moved. Her head was lying back against the seat, and he’d seen with a shock and a quick surge of compassion the open misery of her staring eyes. He’d seen also the indicative swell under her thin coat.
Married? he thought. I doubt it. Just trapped. Just trapped in one of life’s nasty little predicaments. How about the kid beside her? Papa? Probably, but fighting it. Trying to get out. He has the look. The sulky, trapped, resentful look. He hates her guts for looking like a mouse and acting like a woman. He’s a nasty little hunk. Slack mouth; could be vicious. The kind to use a shiv in a dark alley. But a kidnapper? It’s a hundred to one against, but you never can tell.
It’s dangerous to fall back on the old myth that you can tell a criminal, or his quality, just by the look of him. The same goes for the girl, if it happened to be the pair of them. What a beautifully classic case that would make for the records. The whole thing engineered by a pregnant mouse.
There was nothing mousy about the fourth passenger. The other woman. On the contrary, a bit brassy. Natural good looks underscored a little too heavily by cosmetics. Too lean, too tense and overdrawn, perhaps, for some tastes. But there was vitality in her bones and breath. In every glance and movement. Not contrived, either. Natural as sleeping. “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. Such men are dangerous.” Shakespeare, yet. How about a lean and hungry woman? Also dangerous? Kidnapper’s contact, maybe?