“Van, are you crazy? Are you crazy?” The harshness was hoarseness now, an ugly sound. “I’m going to hang up—”
“Wait. I want you to come up to the house.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to be in Bridgeport. Van, for God’s sake, hang up!”
“Not till you say you’ll stop in at Darien.” Harrison sounded tender, and amused, too. “Otherwise—”
“All right!” With a whimper, Martha slammed the phone down.
Nikki hung up. She was conscious of no thoughts, just a fear of great dimensions.
She went into the living room and paused to compose herself before opening the door to the study.
While she stood there she heard the clatter of Martha’s high heels crossing the foyer, the quick door, the secretive little snick.
Martha was gone.
Nikki opened the door. “I hope I wasn’t too long—”
Dirk still had the study extension to his ear.
Nikki thought she was going to die. His features held in the rigid expressionlessness of a bronze casting; for one blank moment Nikki thought he was dead.
But then he moved. He took the receiver from his ear and turned his head to look at it. The bronze shattered as he frowned. The phone dropped and dangled over the side of the desk, bumping against a drawer.
Dirk got up, pushing himself from the heels of his hands.
“Dirk. Dirk, wait.”
Nikki heard the voice clearly. She almost turned to look behind her. But then she realized it had been her own.
He came around the desk, striking his thigh against the sharp corner but paying no attention.
“Dirk, where are you going?”
He came soberly across the study, with a sort of thoughtful purpose, as if to touch her, or say something important. When he was one step away, Nikki realized that he did not even know she was there.
“Dirk!” She seized his arm.
He simply walked through her and the doorway and the living room. Nikki hung on. The arm in her grip was swollen and quivering.
He went into the bedroom and over to the bureau and opened the top drawer. After a moment he looked puzzled and hurt.
“Oh, yes,” he said. His face cleared. “He took it.”
“I’ll phone Ellery, Dirk,” Nikki heard herself babbling. “You just wait here. Just one minute. When Ellery gets here—”
His arm moved and Nikki felt something flat and solid come up against her spine and the back of her head with a crash. Dirk wavered and became fluid and then the whole room went under water and after a while Nikki opened her eyes to find herself staring straight up at the plaster cupids around the ceiling fixture.
She scrambled to her feet, looking around wildly.
“Dirk!”
He was not in the bedroom.
“Dirk!”
Or the bathroom.
“Dirk!” Nikki scampered through the apartment, shrieking his name.
But Dirk was gone, too.
The next thing Nikki knew she was railing at the telephone operator in a haughty voice for not hurrying the Darien call, and a woman’s voice was saying in her ear far away, “But the line is busy. Shall I try the number again in a few minutes?”
“Oh, no, damn it,” Nikki heard herself sob, and then, somehow, there was Ellery’s voice, and she was sobbing. “No, Dirk’s left, he’s left, and I can’t get a connection with Darien — the line is busy, busy — I wanted to warn Harrison, head off Martha — he’s probably left the phone off the hook so he won’t be disturbed, damn his soul to hell... he’s getting ready to play the great lover, he’s setting his cheap little stage...”
“Nikki,” said Ellery, “wait, wait.”
But Nikki sobbed: “If he knows about Harrison, he knows where Harrison lives. He’s bound to have looked it up. He’s after them, Ellery, he’s gone after them. He acted so... so—”
“Nikki! Nikki, listen to me,” said Ellery. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” Nikki sobbed.
“We’ll have to take the West Side Highway as the shortest route — if I came east and south to pick you up we’d waste time. Get into a cab and come right over here. I’ll be in front of the house in the car. Do you understand, Nikki? Come just as you are. This minute.”
Ellery drove up the West Side Highway at a carefully calculated pace, fast and slow by turns, weaving the car in and out of traffic like a tailor plying his needle.
“Faster, Ellery!”
“No, we don’t want to be picked up. A stop for a ticket might be fatal. Let Dirk take the chances. He’s probably racing.”
“Oh, I hope they stop him, I hope they throw the book at him... You’re sure, Ellery? You’re sure it was still busy?”
“I kept at it until I had to go downstairs. Harrison left the receiver off the hook, all right.”
Traffic lightened after Ellery made the turnoff into the Cross County and Hutchinson River Parkways, but the Westchester police cars were numerous here and he could not step up his speed. Nikki, tearing her nails, kept wondering how he could be so calm. Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck... the signs moved by sluggishly, like a parade of old ladies.
“There he is!” Nikki screamed. A black Buick Roadmaster was drawn up on the grass; a New York State trooper was writing a ticket on the fender. But as Ellery braked past, Nikki saw that the man behind the wheel had an oystershell face and gray hair and fat fair hands with a diamond on one finger.
Then they were in Connecticut, on the Merritt Parkway.
It was interminable. Nikki closed her eyes...
She came to with a start. They were off the Parkway, careening down a narrow twisting blacktop road at high speed.
“You slept.”
“I couldn’t have,” Nikki moaned.
“We’re almost there.”
Dirk’s Buick was up on Harrison’s perfect lawn at a crazy angle, a foot from the stone steps.
The Buick was empty.
The front door of the house stood open.
Ellery sprang up the steps and into Harrison’s living room. A small wiry man in a black suit and bow tie was rattling the telephone. His slant eyes bulged. “I call police,” he said excitedly. “I call police!”
By the time Nikki scrambled in, Ellery was three quarters of the way up the stairs. He was shouting, “Dirk, stop, stop!” Furniture, glass were breaking overhead.
Ellery streaked down the hall to the master bedroom.
Martha lay at the foot of the circular bed. One skirmish in the battle had flung her there. Her dress was disordered; she kept plucking at it witlessly. Her eyes were animal with horror.
Dirk and Van Harrison were fighting up and down the bedroom with fists and knees and teeth. Harrison’s toupee had been torn from his scalp; it hung crazily over one ear. One cheek was scraped and scratched. Dirk’s nose was streaming; some of his blood was on Harrison.
Harrison was in a dressing gown. It was ripped; it kept tripping him up.
The room was a shambles. The mirrored ceiling was smashed in two places; glass was strewn all over the black fur rug. They had been hurling the nude sculptures at each other; the oval picture window beyond the ebony desk was shattered where a nymph had gone through, and fragments of broken statuary littered the room. A chair lay in pieces. Two lamps had been knocked over, and some of the photographs had fallen from the walls.
Ellery lowered his chin and charged.
For a moment the struggle was three-cornered. He had managed to get between them and they were both tearing at him, snarling like dogs. They punched and strained and lurched and clawed across the room to the desk and knocked the portable typewriter to the floor. A fist hit Ellery and he stumbled over the typewriter and staggered backwards, trying to keep his balance. His head slammed against the wall and he slid to the floor, dazed, beside the bed.