The glow in the sky was high and spreading and growing every moment more shot with orange. Otto did not say anything. He took her by the arm and led her to the car and put her into it. She went stiffly, like an automaton. He climbed in beside her and turned the car and then stopped it and got out to open the fence and very soon was on the Hudson road again and driving, as fast or faster than the twisting narrow road allowed, away from the glare behind them.
They drove the eight miles to the far highway in nine minutes—and nothing followed them. In the back of his mind, Otto was concerned about this: he did not know whether it was matter for relief or added reason for apprehension.
Clare sat stiffly beside him, silent and immobile. She spoke only once, when they were on the last three-mile straight-away which runs downhill to the main road. She said:
“It was such a lovely house.” But her voice was still the same, stiff, stranger’s voice.
Otto did not speak at all. His mind was working—very fast. A new plan must be made—and, moreover, its making would keep his mind from sick dwelling upon the thought of the harm he had brought to her.
He slowed for the highway turning and swung out on to it. His breathing stopped as he saw a car pulled up at the corner with three men standing by it. But as he passed, cutting over to the other side of the wide main road, he saw that there was another man, in light-coloured overalls, who was changing a wheel.
There was very little southward traffic. He took the outer lane and kept his right foot down and hurtled at over eighty miles an hour back towards San Francisco.
For he had decided that the main base of the new plan should be the same as that of the old—he would go in a direction, taking San Francisco as the starting point, directly opposite to that of Washington. And, as in the careful scheme which he had been forced to abandon, he would stay in hiding until nearly the end of the ten-day time-limit and then make one dash for the goal.
But he must not take the car too near to San Francisco. They knew this car and would be watching for it everywhere. He wondered how he had managed to escape pursuit for this length of time, and then reflected that it was a very short length of time: probably they were still near the burning house, searching for Clare.
She spoke again suddenly, still in the dead voice.
“Where are we going?” she said.
He eased the pressure upon the accelerator. He looked carefully into the rear-mirror and saw only one car behind him and let this pass and waited until the speedometer-needle pointed to sixty-five and then spoke. He did not know how he was going to say what he had realized he must say—but he plunged. He said:
“I must go to somewhere—any where—to the other side of San Francisco. I cannot drive in the car much longer. They will be watching for it—but I can stop in the next town and see that you go safely to the police, if that is what you want to do.”
She said: “No. I will stay with you if you can take me.” She did not move her head as she spoke to him: she was straight and stiff and motionless, and the voice was still untinged by any shade of feeling. “If I go to the police, I would have to say too much and that would spoil what you’re doing.”
He let the car slow still further and turned his head towards her.
“That . . . that is . . .” He found himself stammering. “You are sure?” he said shortly. He did not know how to speak to her. He did not know her.
She said: “Since you went, father and I have been talking. I understand everything.”
Her voice did not even pause at the word ‘Father.’ “What you’re trying to do is too important to be spoilt by little, ordinary things.”
She was silent again, sitting in the same rigid posture, looking straight before her, but not, he knew, seeing the road.
A surge of feeling made speech impossible for him—but he did not know what he felt.
They left the car some thirty miles out of San Francisco. Otto turned off the highway on to a dirt road and bumped along it for half a mile and then turned into a field of tares and stopped and they got out. Clare obeyed at once everything he told her. She did not speak.
He left the car facing north. He took out the duffel bag and the rolled coat and three packets of cigarettes from the glove-compartment. He separated the coat from the bag and gave it to Clare: she must carry it, folded, over her arm. He looked at her, and the set, blank pallor of her face frightened him, but he did not want to show the fear. He said:
“We must now go on a bus. We will walk back to the highway for a little while together, but when we get there we are not together. You will go first. Turn to the right on the highway and walk along to the petrol-station which is about a quarter of a mile. It is at the edge of a small town, and the Oakland buses halt there. When the first bus comes get into it and take a seat as far in front as you can find. I will get on the bus too. But I am not with you. You understand?” He had to keep looking at the white face—but it frightened him.
She nodded her head, but she did not speak. He knew that she understood, and he knew that she would do as he told her. He said:
“There are more things you must do,” and gave further orders, slowly and clearly and stiffly. . . .
It was after four when their second bus reached its final destination in Monterey. There were, unusually for this hour, several other passengers. They seemed to be one party, though, and Otto, who had studied them for long hours from behind a newspaper bought in Oakland, had decided that they were what they seemed and nothing more. He should have been delighted and eased in his mind by this certainty—but he was not: there was something unexpectedly and irrationally terrifying in the utter absence of pursuit.
The party dragged itself off the bus, yawning and chattering. Otto himself got off. He did not look behind him, but walked out of the yard to a corner of the white, steep street and paused there and took a long time to find and light a cigarette. At the bottom of the hill the sea gleamed greenish in the greying light. The air was sharp and smelt sharply of salt water. He shivered a little. He heard behind him the footsteps he had been waiting for and turned around for one reassuring glance and saw her. She was twenty yards away. She did not look at him. She was still moving stiffly, like an automatic doll. He could not see her face. She had put the coat over her shoulders in the bus, but now she had folded it again and was carrying it over her arm.
He walked on, up the hill. He did not know where he was going. He was looking for some point where he could speak to Clare; some point where he could see all about him and know, beyond all possibility of error, whether or not they were observed.
He walked up the steep street. On either side it was lined by small white houses. Their outlines were growing sharper all the time as the pre-dawn greyness encroached upon night.
He found a place, just past the first street intersection which crossed his path up the hill. It was a narrow alleyway between two of the white buildings. He turned into it and stopped. In the whole length of the steep street, he had seen before he left it, were no human figures save himself and Clare.
She joined him. It was much lighter now, and he could see her clearly as she came steadily along, between the high white walls, towards him.
She spoke before he could. She said, in the flat, emotionless voice:
“Why have we come here—to Monterey?”
He was still staring at her. She frightened him.
“It was the furthest place which the bus went,” he said. “And it is not a large place, I think. And perhaps we can go quickly away from it and into some wild country and find a place to hide. If we do this for one week. . . .”