“I'm scared, Ben.”
He slid his arms around her, all the way, and gave her a quick, reassuring hug. He said, “There's no need to be scared, Gwyn. I'm here, and I'll take care of you.”
“Don't let her touch me.”
“I won't, Gwyn.”
“She must be a crazy woman.”
“Let's go see what this is all about.”
She turned around to go back with him, and she screamed, bringing her hands up to her face as if she could block out the reality by blocking out the vision itself. The dead girl, impossibly, stood not more than six feet away from them, smiling.
Ben said, “Gwyn? What is it?”
“There she is!”
He looked where Gwyn pointed, pursed his mouth, looked down at the girl at his side. He said. “There isn't anyone here but you and me.”
“There is!”
He gave her a searching look and said, “No one at all, Gwyn. The hallway's empty.”
“You don't see her?”
“There's no one to see, Gwyn.”
The dead girl grinned, wickedly now, and said, in a voice as thin as rice paper, “I told you, before, Gwyn, that we have a few tricks that come in handy.”
“She just spoke,” Gwyn said.
His grip on her tightened, but he said nothing.
“For God's sake, she just talked to me, Ben! You mean to tell me you didn't hear a word of it?”
But she knew that he hadn't.
He said, “No one spoke.”
“She did. Yes, she did.”
“No one but you and I.”
She remembered what Dr. Recard had said— that you could not be going mad if you thought that you were, that the truly mad person was absolutely sure of his sanity. Therefore, if Dr. Recard were to be believed, she must not be insane now, could be nowhere near insane; yet she remained uncheered by this reasoning.
The dead girl stepped toward her.
. “Stay back,” she said.
“I need you,” the specter said.
“Don't touch me!”
Ben said, “Gwyn, there isn't anyone here!”
The dead girl grinned, almost on top of her now, and she said, “A fall down these steps would do it, Gwyn. He'd think you fell, and then you'd be with me forever.”
Her head swam. In the back of her mind, leering, she saw the head of Death, where it always lay at the edge of her memory, waiting to claim her just as it had claimed so many who were dear to her in years past. “No!” she said.
The dead girl reached for her, palms flattened, arms stiff. “Just a quick shove—”
Gwyn pulled away from Ben, who would clearly be no help for her, turned and grabbed the stair railing, started down toward the first floor as fast as she could go.
“Gwyn!” the ghost called after her.
And Ben, not hearing that other-worldly plea, cried, “Gwyn, what's gotten into you.”
She did not answer either of them, did not look back until, as she neared the bottom steps, she heard Ben scream behind her. She whirled in time to see him falling, head over heels, thumping rudely from step to step by the rail, clawing out for support — and then coming to a brutal and final stop. His head caught between two stairs railings, twisted and sheet-white, breaking his neck. His face was streaked with blood, his eyes bulging, more blood running from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, God,” Gwyn said.
The ghost, smiling, stooped by the body. “He's dead,” she said. “Well, he'll be happier now.”
Madness?
Reality?
The dead girl stood again and started down the steps. “Well,” she said, “you've already reached the bottom, safely enough. We'll have to look for some other way for you to reach your end. But there are plenty, dear, so don't fret. And it'll be less painful than his end was, I assure you.”
Gwyn turned and ran along the hallway, deeper into the dark manor house, alone with the dead girl, so terrified now that she could not even cry, and could barely draw a breath. Madness…?
TWENTY-TWO
The Kettle and Coach, on the outskirts of Calder, was more crowded than usual, and considerably rowdier than the Barnabys liked it, though neither was put out by the cloud of cigarette smoke that hung over the cocktail lounge, or by the roar of conversation that, by its very volume, almost ruled out conversation. They actually seemed to enjoy the close quarters, the hustle and the bustle, and they had a smile and a few words for almost everyone they saw. After all, the more contacts they made, the more sound their alibi for the evening.
From the cocktail lounge, they went into the dining room, where they ate a leisurely dinner, accompanied by a bottle of good wine and a lot of unimportant business talk between Will and Edgar Aimes. It was near the end of this dinner that waiter brought a message from the cocktail lounge.
“Mr. Barnaby?”
Will looked up, smiled. “Yes?”
“A phone call, sir. You can take it in the lounge.”
“Thank you.”
“Business?” Edgar Aimes asked.
“Our friend Mr. Morby, I should imagine.” He smiled at Mrs. Aimes, who had no idea who Mr. Morby was and never would. He said, “You will excuse me,” as if she were the only important person at the table.
His special attention took her mind off Morby. She flushed and said, “Of course, Will.”
He followed the waiter to the lounge and had the proper telephone pointed out to him, tipped the waiter a dollar, waved away the man's profuse thanks, and stepped into the glass booth, drawing the folding door tight shut behind him.
“Hello?”
“Morby here.”
“How are things?”
“The job is finished. I thought you'd like to know that it went well, as smoothly as it could have.”
Barnaby smiled. “I bet those tramps were screaming their heads off, eh?”
“I wouldn't know,” Morby said. “I don't stick around to see how a job affects anyone.”
“Well, I would have,” Barnaby said, chuckling.
“And you'd never last in a profession like this,” Morby said, without rancor, as a man might say the sun will rise in the morning.
“Perhaps you're right.”
“Of course I am,” Morby said. “And if you've any work for me in the future, don't hesitate to call.”
“I won't.”
Morby hung up.
By the time he got back to the dinner table, Barnaby was feeling like a million bucks, or better. And if the second half of tonight's plans were running to schedule, he'd actually be worth far more than a measly million, in just a few months time.
The young fisherman was not going to back down from his position, and the longer he held to it, the more he stirred up the men who were listening to him. His name was Tom Asher, and he swore that the Princess Lee had not been ripped open by an explosion in her fuel tanks nor by any gas fumes trapped in a lower hold. He said, “It was plastic explosives, as sure as I stand here. I was in Vietnam eighteen months, and I saw that kind of blow-up a hundred times. If it'd been a gasoline explosion, from the start, you'd have had a fireball, a big mushrooming effect. But this was compact and neat, ripping right through the top and right through the bottom of the boat. The fireball, what there was of it, came later, when the gas tanks went. You could see that, a second explosion a few seconds after the first. And from the smallness of the fireball, I'd say her fuel tanks were nearly empty. No, it wasn't an accident. It was a shaped charge, a planned blow-up.”
Jack Younger (the elder), was a squat, muscular man with a full gray beard and bushy sideburns, a chest like half a barrel and arms as thick as the limbs of large oak trees. He was the strongest of the fishermen, and he was the most reasonable as well. Right now, he felt as if he were the only thing holding back a second explosion that might be far more damaging than the first.