Joe couldn’t tell what had changed. He thought it was the stillness — the immense woods’ stillness — that made him jumpy. Then he saw the car parked ahead, and the sight of it brought a relief so great that his heart pumped inside him in one great bound.
“Maybe,” he said, “you better dim your headlights. It looks like there are some petters ahead of us.”
Mr. Cramer almost jumped. He glanced back across his shoulder to stare a moment at the dim reddish glow of tail reflectors showing faintly in the deep shadow of a clump of trees. Then he muttered something and leaned down below the hood, his right hand coming out of his pocket empty.
In a moment or two he got back into the car. “It’ll hold,” he said. “Now we better push on.”
Mr. Cramer stopped only once more, for gas; at eight o’clock they were in Albany. There he thought it might be better if he saw Mr. Higgins first, alone. Joe could take the car and store it at a parking lot, and then meet him at five, after his own business was done, outside Fenner & Lisle’s. That would, he thought, be best. The personal interview mightn’t be necessary.
At five Joe was waiting with the car before Fenner & Lisle’s warehouse.
Mr. Cramer appeared about six, long after the other men had gone home. And he didn’t come from the main building, but rounded the corner from, he said, the private offices. He looked very tired, very pale, as if he hadn’t slept at all; and his exhaustion made him irritable, despite the great news he bore. The job was Joe’s; it was all set now; he had the papers. Next Monday Joe was to report at the New York branch.
At seven they were clear of Albany, speeding southward in the gathering spring dusk, a few minutes after McCann had had his call from headquarters, and just as he was facing Mrs. Cramer once more on the porch.
“What I don’t know,” McCann was saying, “I can guess.” His fat face wasn’t kind or guileless any more; it was drawn down tightly around his mouth. “I guess you needed money — maybe your husband was out of work — and so you picked young Nolan because you saw right away how much he looked like your husband. Then you gave him some song and dance about going to this dentist and using your husband’s name, so that if anything ever came up Rapp could identify him as William Frederick Cramer.
“The very day young Nolan went to the dentist your husband shaved off his mustache, so that would fit. Probably a lot of people told him it made him look younger; it usually does. Whatever kind of accident you planned to rig up on Nolan, he’d be dead, and he’d look a hell of a lot like your husband, and anyone who saw him would just say how young he looked. They’d put down any difference to the mustache and the glasses. You both thought there wouldn’t be any trouble collecting insurance; someway or other you’d talked this Nolan into not telling anyone about you, even his wife. That made it perfect. Nobody knew he was coming here; when he was found he’d have your husband’s glasses on, and his license in his pocket. There wouldn’t be any identification question; he’d be brought here, and buried as soon as possible. In another town, where no one knew you, you could join up again, with fifteen thousand dollars in your pocket. Neither of you ever figured on a leak.”
She listened to him silently, looking out to the street, with her hands in her lap. It was hard to say just how McCann knew he had her, how he knew that any minute now she was going to crack.
“You got one chance,” he said. “Maybe not much of a one. If young Nolan’s dead I can’t help you; even if he isn’t I can’t promise anything. But if we stop it before it’s done, the charge won’t be murder. That’s worth thinking about. Where’d your husband take him?”
She watched McCann for a moment with queer, glazed dark eyes, and then she began to cry. The license number and the make of William Frederick Cramer’s car she whispered dully, clutching his arm, swearing between his questions that she knew nothing. Nothing! If anything had happened—
McCann had all he wanted when a dark coupe pulled up before the house and two men got out. They greeted him and sat stolidly on the porch, on either side of Mrs. Cramer, while he went inside and used the telephone.
“Shoot it to the state cops,” he said. “Have them cover every road out of Albany. His idea is to knock off the kid and leave him in the car, so that it will look like a hitchhiker did it. Maybe it’s over already; he could have pulled the job last night. Only if he did, someone would have found the body by this time. I think we’ve still got a chance. He’ll dawdle along and do the job pretty late, on a side road — that’s the safest way. Somewhere near a railroad too, so he can get away easy. It’s fifty-fifty we can get him first. Step on it, Larry.”
Then McCann hung up, wiping his face with a hand that shook slightly. There was nothing more he could do now — nothing but sit out there and wait, and hope that when he saw Elizabeth Nolan, very soon now, he could tell her everything was fine, there was nothing to worry about, her Joe would be home okay. Monday morning he’d be back to work at his old job, at a salary.
Mr. Cramer had evidently been drinking that afternoon. His breathing was heavy and sour, his face flushed; every time a car passed he glanced at it quickly out of the corners of his eyes.
Once they stopped for gas, and behind the car Mr. Cramer spoke in a low tone to the attendant. He seemed to be asking something about the railroad, though Joe didn’t pay much attention. He felt angry, both at himself and at Mr. Cramer; he wondered why he was jumpy again, and what was biting Cramer to make him act this way. Tiredness, maybe.
Outside the village they hit a dirt road, leading right. Mr. Cramer stopped just inside it.
“Take the wheel,” he said. “I’m sick of driving. Go straight up this road.”
It didn’t look like a short cut, but Joe didn’t argue.
“I should have relieved you before,” he said. “I guess you’re tired. You look bad, Mr. Cramer.”
“Do I?” the other man asked harshly. “Well, I’m fine. I’m all right.”
Joe tightened his own mouth. This Cramer, he thought, seemed to be getting screwy. Why would a remark like that make him so sore? They went up the road and came out over a low hill, above a railroad, with a dark field on their left, and a white farmhouse ghostly against it, one window framed in dim yellow. Cramer cursed when he saw it. They went on, bumping over ruts. They went past the house, a mile into woods. Cramer took his hand out of his pocket and held it down against his leg.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Stop the car.”
He was half swung around in his seat to face Joe; his words were as thick as his breathing. His expression was so queer Joe thought he was sick.
“I’ll help you out,” he said.
Cramer only shook his head. He got out by himself, leaving the door open, so that Joe could see his hand, and the gun in it.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
The feeling of last night — the disturbed emotion of quiet and loneliness that stretched endlessly around them — thickened his lips as if they were held away from his gums with pods of cotton. This Cramer, he thought — Behind them a car whined for the hill and Cramer looked back toward it, his face as pale as modeled wax.
“I am sick,” he said, wetting his lips. “I’m sick, Joe. I carry this gun for Fenner & Lisle’s, but I haven’t got a license for it. I came in here to get rid of it, Joe. I’m going to throw it in the field. Just let this car get by.”
The headlights got painfully bright on the mirror; in another moment, going very slowly, the car slipped by. It was a light coupé, dark-colored, very like the one that had passed them going the other way, before they turned off the state road. Joe thought that as he saw it, but he felt he was wrong. Why would it have turned to follow them? He had a sudden, crazy impulse to shout out at it, to ask it to stop. He didn’t. It went by.