He shrugged satirically. “Maybe his hands were too numb with the cold to be able to write like other times. I heard him blowing on them while he was standing there.”
She let the note drift to the floor. She had only one more question to ask. “How could he have bolted the door on the inside, after he went out?”
“I did that, after he left. So no one else could get in.”
She nodded to herself, as though she’d expected him to answer that even before he did.
She pointed. She kept her finger stretched out, frozen. “That’s a grave under there,” she said hollowly.
He turned to look, as if he hadn’t seen it before himself. “Oh yeah, that,” he said glibly. “Yeah, I know it is. That’s Rags, he’s under there. I buried him a little while ago. I guess I beat him once too often.”
A three-foot dog in a six-foot grave, she thought.
He smiled, as though he’d read her mind. “I hit a water pipe under the cellar floor,” he said. “I had to tack over a ways, after I’d already begun. That made it twice as long.”
Her finger continued stiffly pointing, as if she’d lost all power of moving it. He had to slap it brutally down finally, or it would have stayed like that forever.
“Then where is the dog, if you think he ain’t in there?” he growled. “Where is he, if you’re so smart? You don’t see him around here, do you?”
She didn’t answer that. It was too easy. He’d probably driven it out of the house ahead of time, so that animal wouldn’t betray him. Dogs were known to act strangely — when there was anything buried.
He began pacing feverishly back and forth, as if irritated by her unspoken accusation. “Well, don’t let it worry you,” he snarled. “I’m going to get out of here. I’m cooler now; they’ve lost the trail. I’m going right tonight, as soon as it gets dark enough.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t go without money?”
“I’ve got some now.” He stopped, took something out of his clothing with a sort of murderous derision, and gave her a quick glimpse of it. Then he put it away again. It looked like a lot; it looked like several hundred dollars.
“I know whose it is,” was all she said. “I know what you’ve done.”
He grinned at her. “It started out to be like you think,” he said, “but it wasn’t. That fool dog of mine saved him. I got the stove started, but the mutt began to whine outside the door when he smelled the gas. He musta sneaked up after me without my noticing. I dragged him down below with me again and brained him. Before I could go back up again and finish it, the old guy had roused himself and put it out. I heard him leave the house. Then I went up there afterward and — found the dough.”
Lies, all lies, made up as he went along. “I know what you’ve done,” she kept saying. “I know what you’ve done.” She followed him to the door that night when he left. Not to give him her parting blessing, but to close it upon him forever.
“Don’t ever come back here again, Jerry,” she said. “I gave you refuge when you came here, because you were the son of my own father. You killed a man before you went in. You killed another when you broke out. Now you’ve killed a third, right here in my own house. There’s too much blood on you now to be forgiven. Remember, if you try to come here again—”
“Hallelujah,” he jeered. The door closed and he was gone.
Within half an hour a knock sounded. She thought it was the police, coming here after him, but when she opened the door a cautious inch or two, it was he, back again. His breath fanned into her face from the gloom outside, hot and panting, like that of a hunted animal looking for a hole to crawl into.
“Let me in. You’ve got to. They’re all around here, thick as flies. I can’t make it. I can’t get past them. They nearly—”
She tried desperately to hold him out. His greater weight, on the outside, slowly, implacably pushed the door back, and her silent, straining figure with it. He slipped through, and it was no good trying to hold it any longer.
“Close it, what’s the matter with you?” he hissed. He drew the bolt that her fingers refused to touch. Then he sagged with his back against it for a moment, mopping his face with the back of his hand.
“I’ll be all right, just have to lie low some more and wait. They don’t know about you. They don’t know for sure I’m here in town at all. It’s just that the trail led this way, and then they lost it.”
“I told you not to come back here.”
His open hand slashed across her face. “Shut up. Get back in your own room and stay there. I’m taking over here now. If you try anything, I’ll let you have it like I would one of them!”
Something he was holding in his hand clicked in the dark. She couldn’t see what it was. She didn’t have to; she knew. He gave her a push. She went back to her own room and closed the door softly after her. She didn’t put on the light. She sat there in the dark, listening. There was a window, but it was no good to her. Her time of climbing out of windows was over and done with, twenty years past. She would only have fallen to the ground and lain there helpless, and he would—
She heard him go to the back door and lock it and take the key out, so she couldn’t get out that way. Then he returned to the front door again. He didn’t go down to the cellar this time any more. He knew Mr. Davis wasn’t coming back; he knew it was safe for him to stay upstairs all night. Who should know that better than he? She heard him spread out something on the floor, in the hall there by the front door, and lie down on it.
She sat and waited. When you’re old, you’re patient.
She heard the scrape of a match, one time, on the woodwork, and for a moment or two there was a feeble flicker along the seams of her room door. Then a whiff of tobacco smoke drifted in to her. He’d rolled himself a cigarette, to ease his ragged nerves. That was his weakness. He could kill people without compunction, but he couldn’t do without those little cylinders he rolled for very long.
She didn’t move. She just sat there in the dark. She could wait. She had all night.
Again she was astir in the pre-dawn darkness, just as she had been every day for years past. But this time her mission was a different one. Not hot shaving water to be taken up to the second floor. Mr. Davis wasn’t up there any more. Mr. Davis would never be up there again. Mr. Davis was in the cellar now, lying quiet, lying still.
The door of her room was narrowly open behind her. It had taken a long time to open it so that it didn’t creak, didn’t make a sound. Long, stealthy minutes of pushing it a little, then stopping, then pushing it a little more, then stopping. But she had a lot of time. And now she was creeping with snaillike slowness along the floor, on her hands and knees, toward where the front door lay ahead, unseen in the sooty gloom. She could hear his heavy breathing in the stillness, and it guided her. He was stretched out lengthwise across the inside of the door, like a sort of human bolt, barring her way out, barring anyone else’s way in.
It hurt to lie flat like that and pull yourself along; it made you ache, but she didn’t mind that. Her skirt would rustle a little, and she would stop and wait, to make sure he hadn’t heard it. Then she’d go on again.
Nearer and nearer, inch by inch. She was nearly up to him now. He’d rolled up his own coat behind his shoulders for a headrest. She could see the white of his shirt sleeves faintly peering at her in the gloom. They guided her, too, they and the heavy, thick breathing.
She was there now. She couldn’t get any closer without touching him. She could make out things better now; her eyes were getting more used to the dark. And the dark itself was beginning to thin a little; daybreak was on the way.
He was holding the gun clenched tightly in his hand, even in his sleep. It was pointing toward the door, ready for instant use. He could have pulled the trigger even before his eyelids were all the way up. She couldn’t have gotten it away from him even if she’d tried, but she didn’t want to, she wasn’t after that. She’d never held one in her life; she wouldn’t have known how to use it; he would only have taken it right away from her again.