Wolff turned, scowling. “You’ll have to. I have no choice. I don’t know just what I’m going to do yet, but I’m going to do something.”
“For God’s sake, man!” Haggard snapped. “Pull out of it! There are some things that even you can’t get away with. I’m phoning.” He moved toward the door again.
“Dunning!” Wolff ordered. “Stop him!”
Dunning usually carried out Wolff’s orders with instant obedience. For the second time tonight he hesitated. But Haggard was stopped by Anne. She had moved into the doorway, and she stood there facing the doctor defiantly.
“Not just yet, Doctor,” she said.
And Wolff, behind him, cut in, “Listen to me a minute.”
Haggard, not quite certain how to get around Mrs. Wolff, turned part way.
Wolff’s voice came rapidly. “It isn’t as if this were murder. It’s not. I didn’t intend to kill him. You know that. He was a blackmailer. And I’m not going to take it on the chin just because a rat like that happened to have a bad heart. No jury would indict me. But the newspapers won’t wait to find that out. They’ll make it look as bad as they can, and, when the Senate Committee hears about it, I’ll in one hell of a spot.”
Wolff saw that this argument was not having the desired effect. He stopped abruptly and tried another. “Haggard, you’ve been working nearly ten years on that problem of yours. You’re right on the edge of something big. How long would it take you to reach the same point if you had to begin over again from scratch? Even if you found someone to give you a new lab and back a long series of experiments with no commercial value, what about that new strain of rats? How long would it take you to breed them again? What about those somatic-cell cultures you’ve been nursing so carefully for the last four years? It would be too bad if—”
This hit home. There was blank consternation in the doctor’s face and he gasped as though Wolff’s words were hammerlike physical blows.
“You — you wouldn’t—”
“I own that lab and everything in it. I can do what I like with it. And I will — if necessary.”
The scientifically designed thermostat that regulated Haggard’s emotions came very close to breaking down. The man took a sudden step forward.
Wolff saw the look in his eyes and snapped, “Dunning!”
Haggard stopped. “All right, damn you,” he said. “You win. But some day—” His eyes held Wolff’s for a moment, then dropped to the body on the floor. “But what do you think you can do about that? There’s no way—”
“We’re going to find one,” Wolff answered. “You’re a doctor. You should be able to suggest—”
The answer came from Anne Wolff. Quietly she said, “Dudley. The Pines.”
Wolff turned and looked at her. He was silent for a moment. Then very slowly he said, “Yes. Of course. It’ll have to be that. No one would ever know.”
“The Pines?” Haggard asked. “What—”
“Graveyard,” Wolff said. “Old one. Here on the estate. It’s in a pine grove quarter of a mile east of the house and back from the shore. No one ever goes there. I don’t suppose many people even know about it now. If the body were put there it would never be found.”
The silence for a moment after Wolff stopped speaking was intense.
Finally Haggard said, “You’re determined?”
Wolff nodded. “Yes.”
The doctor looked at Dunning a bit skeptically. “What about him?”
Wolff didn’t look at him at all. “Dunning,” he said flatly, “will do as I say.”
Haggard glanced at Anne. She still stood in the doorway. Then he made his decision. “I don’t seem to have much choice either. We’d better get it over with then.”
Dudley Wolff was the captain of industry again, ruthless and efficient. “Anne. Go down and talk to Galt. Keep him out of the way. Dunning, get a pick and some spades. Make sure none of the servants see you. Meet us outside. The door off the rear hallway. We’ll use the back stairs.”
Wolff, Haggard, and Dunning worked hard for the next two hours. It was no easy job carrying the body the distance it had to go. But they did it.
There were half a dozen graves there in the small clearing beneath the dark pines. The men worked steadily, somewhat frantically, by the shielded light of an electric torch. Doctor Haggard carefully cut away the sod above one grave, slicing it as neatly as though he were working with a dissecting scalpel. Dunning, rather more white-faced than usual, lifted it and stacked it on one side.
None of the men was used to the heavy physical labor that came next. Luckily the frozen ground was sandy and not as hard as it might have been.
When they had reached a depth of four feet, Haggard said, “That’s enough.” His voice was a tight tense whisper. “We’ll turn up something we don’t want to if we go much farther.”
Dunning, whose hands trembled, helped the doctor lower the blanket-wrapped body into the hole. The perspiration on Wolff’s forehead as he watched them did not all come from the physical exertion of his digging. His hands gripped his spade in a desperate effort to keep control over the fear inside him. Haggard, noticing it, took the spade from his hands.
He and Dunning finished the job hurriedly. There was a good-sized heap of earth left over when they were done.
“Dunning can come over tomorrow and clear that away,” Wolff said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He helped them replace the sod and scuffle a covering of pine needles over it again. Dunning quickly gathered up the spades and the pick.
Then they moved off hastily, eager to get back to the warmth and light of the house. Their light bobbed jerkily as they made their way over the uneven ground and blinked like a ghostly will-o’-the-wisp as it passed between the trees.
And in the cold black of the thick woods behind them, a man squatted silently on the ground watching the light recede. He had been there a long time without moving and he was cold. But his lips smiled.
Chapter Four:
Will-O’-the-Wisp
After kissing the boys at the police station good-by, I took the Parkway back into town at a more cautious rate of speed and without further mishap. From my apartment on East 40th Street I phoned the Wolff house. I suspected that Dudley might have issued orders to Phillips concerning calls from me so I boosted my voice up a couple of octaves and said, “Is this Mamaroneck 3824?”
Phillips admitted it.
“Hollywood calling,” I said then. “I have a call for Miss Kathryn Wolff.” Then I held my hand over my mouth to muffle my voice and create an effect of distance. “Hello. Hello. Orson Welles’s office. Is this Miss Wolff?”
That, I felt sure, would get her if anything would. But I was no Julian Eltinge. My female impersonations apparently needed another week of rehearsal and a tryout in Philadelphia before braving the Phillips criticism. He sounded like George Jean Nathan.
“Miss Wolff is engaged at the moment,” he said coldly, and then skeptically, “If Mr. Welles will call again in the morning—”
I gave in. “Okay, Phillips. It’s me she’s engaged to. Be a good skate and put me through. This is Ross Harte.”
Phillips was a skate all right — one of those flat fishy ones with a sting in its tail. “I thought so,” he said. “I’m sorry. That is impossible. My instructions—”
I hung up. Phillips sounded about as sorry as a man whose rich uncle has just contracted bubonic plague — and about as helpful. I thought it over gloomily and decided that perhaps, after all, it was just as well. Kay’s emotional upset, and mine too for that matter, would have a chance to settle overnight. We could discuss things the next day far more rationally and with greater hope of agreement than now.