Something in Tully’s face above her sobered her.
“Now don’t you try muscle on me, mister!”
“Cox told you his plan, didn’t he?”
“He never—”
“And I was beginning to feel sorry for you! Either you were both in on this from the start, or he cut you in on the action when you showed up at the Hobby!”
She shrank deep into the chair. “No. I swear—”
“Making you share the crime of whatever he was up to would be a kind of insurance for Cox. That’s it, isn’t it? He didn’t trust you, so he assigned part of the job to you. What were you supposed to do, Maudie?” Tully was shaking her now, his fingers deep in her fat shoulders. “What part of the mucky plan did he assign to you? Talk, you bitch!”
It was the sight of her eyes that brought him to his senses. They were bugging out, terrified, from her purpling face; and to Tully’s horror he saw that his hands were around her neck. He released her and backed off. She felt her throat unbelievingly.
“You were gonna choke me,” she whispered. “I ought to have you arrested for f’lonious assault, that’s what I ought to do!.. But I got a better idea, Mr. Tully.”
She was all bitch now, a mountain of triumphant flesh. Tully half turned away, half closed his smarting eyes. The Blake woman got out of the chair and waddled over to him, still feeling her neck.
“I was trying to ease you into it because I thought you were real class and a nice guy and I didn’t want to hurt you no more than I had to. But now, Mr. Tully, I’m gonna give it to you good! You know what your seventy-eight bucks bought? You listen!”
He tried to avoid her sour breath, but he could not.
“You drive on up to the Lodge at Wilton Lake — the Lodge, hear? Talk to the people who run it — the maids and the bellhops — take a good long look at the register—”
“What are you talking about?” Tully stammered. “The register for when — what?”
“Two summers ago — first week in June, Mr. Tuny,” the woman jeered. “Him and her — yeah! Cranny Cox and your wife.”
Tully became aware of his surroundings. He was seated behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot of Flynn’s Inn. A man came staggering out of the bar and a blare of drunken noise came out with him. Then the door closed and everything was silent again.
He had no recollection of leaving Maudie Blake’s room or of getting into the Imperial. He remembered only the ghost of a cackle behind him, as if some witch had laughed in a nightmare...
He lit a cigarette mechanically.
The Blake woman was a vicious liar, of course. It couldn’t possibly be true. To shack up at a resort hotel with a rotten punk like Crandall Cox... Impossible. Not Ruth. Not a woman as fastidious as Ruth.
Then why had she gone running to the Hobby Motel at Cox’s call... with a gun... two years later?
There’s a reason, Tully thought desperately. There’s got to be a reason — a reason that takes me off this hook — a reason a man could live with...
One thing is sure, he told himself. I know my wife. I’m not going to give that sodden bag of lard the satisfaction of having made me drive up to Wilton Lake on a sneak check...
Two summers ago... that was before their marriage, before they had even met. Maybe Ruth had been there at the Lodge at the same time as Cox, so what? It could have been the frankest coincidence, something the jealous mind of this Blake virago had seized and built on to house her jealousy. Or else Cox, having met Ruth casually, had done the building to torment Maudie Blake, in the sadistic way of kept men contemptuously sure of their keepers. That was it! Cox had made up the whole story and spilled it to Maudie Blake for laughs, knowing she would fall for it and agonize over it.
So it wouldn’t really be doubting Ruth if he did drive up to the Lake and sort of got the feel of the place again. Tully began to think about it even pleasurably. He hadn’t been up to the Lake in years...
And, of course! He sat up in the car, tingling.
If Ruth had spent some time at Wilton Lake two summers ago she could hardly have failed, in her instinctive appreciation of nature, to fall under its spell. It was a beautiful, serene, secluded place, not over-patronized, and at this particular season... Why, she might be up there right now! Frightened, maybe, not knowing what to do, not daring to phone, hoping against hope that somehow he would fathom her hide-out and come secretly to her rescue...
What am I waiting for? Tully asked himself exultantly.
As he started his car he shut down his mind, refusing to think past the point at which he had stopped.
9
The distance from town to the Lake was a hundred and sixty miles. Tully covered it in under three hours, taking the final twists of the mountain road shortly after nine o’clock.
The Lodge lay at the northern end of the great lake — a rugged, spreading two-story ranch building of ivy-overgrown fieldstone and hand-hewn logs. The west terrace was lighted with copper torches. Cooks in tall chef’s hats were serving an outdoor barbecue to the music of a strolling trio of cowboy-clad guitarists. Half the terrace tables were unoccupied.
The beamed lobby with its great field-stone fireplaces was quiet. An attractive woman of middle age was on duty behind the desk.
“I was to meet my wife here,” Tully said. “Do you have a Mrs. Tully registered?”
The woman consulted a register-file. “I’m sorry, sir, she hasn’t arrived yet. If you have a reservation, would you like to register for the two of you?”
“No. I want to see the manager.”
Tully was hungry-faced and gray. The woman hesitated.
“It’s important.”
She looked him over carefully. “Just a moment, please.” She lifted the wicket, crossed the lobby and disappeared through the tall doors that led to the terrace.
She came back several minutes later with a sunburned young man. He smiled and said, “I’m the manager of the Lodge, Mr. Tully — Dalrymple is the name. Don’t worry about your wife’s not getting here on schedule. It happens all the time.”
“May I speak to you in private, Mr. Dalrymple?”
The young manager’s smile became rather fixed.
“Of course. This way, please.”
In his office, Dalrymple offered Tully a chair. Tully shook his head, and the manager chose to remain standing, too. He was no longer smiling at all. “I really don’t see what the problem is, sir, if it’s merely a matter of your wife’s being delayed—”
“She may be here already,” Tully said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Registered under another name.”
The manager now sat down, slowly. “I see,” he said. “I see... Of course, Mr. Tully, the management can’t accept the least responsibility—”
“I’m not asking you to accept any responsibility. I’m not here to make trouble,” Tully said. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and showed Dalrymple a clear snapshot of Ruth. “This is my wife, Mr. Dalrymple. All I want to know: Is she here? Under any name?”
The manager accepted the wallet photo and sat studying it a moment. “No, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. We’re not a large hotel. Vacationers are our stock in trade, and I make it my business to know every guest. I assure you, your wife isn’t registered under her own or any other name.”
The manager was smiling again. He started to rise. “If that’s all, Mr. Tully...”
“It’s not.”
The manager remained in mid-rise.
Tully’s pallor had taken on a haggard caste. “Two summers ago... the first week of June... May I see your register for that period?”