“Oh, sit down,” the girl said crossly. “Forget it.”
“Forget it?” But he did sit down. “Forget it, the devil! Do you think I want to wake up some morning with my throat cut? Or maybe poison in my coffee — I haven’t forgotten your beer.”
“Stupid. You’re not using your head.”
He ceased talking to use it. “Well, I’m not leaving my money to your dog hospital.”
She spat out a single, foul word. It was aimed at him and was supposed to describe his habits. He looked at her.
“Jack, I sometimes think you’re one of the dumbest clucks alive. How in the hell you ever managed to make a living as a detective is beyond me. Who you named beneficiary in your policy doesn’t mean a damned thing. We could get the check as soon as the company issued it. But as old lady Bridges pointed out, we couldn’t hope to collect from the same company at almost the same time death benefits on both you and Channy!”
Horne said, oh sure, and wondered where his mind was.
In the next second he knew where it was. It was chasing along the girl’s back trail of conversation, all her conversation since he had first come to know her, and it was picking out unintentional little words and phrases she had said, but should have left unsaid. When his mind stopped its lightning-like chasing from one revealed word to another, he sat up straight and stared at her. The answer startled him.
She had noticed something.
“What’s the matter, Jack?”
“Nothing,” he said evasively, “nothing at all.”
She misread his thoughts. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t intend to frighten you — honestly I didn’t. I couldn’t really kill you for money, no more now than before. I love you too much.”
She walked over to him and pulled his head onto her breast. Running her fingers lightly through his hair, she suggested, “Let’s have a party.”
He pulled away to stare into her face, suspiciously.
Betty laughed tenderly. “Oh, no, baby doll. We’ll send to town for something nice. What do you like? Bourbon?”
He said yes, bourbon. And how about a shirt?
“Then we shall have bourbon. Hilda is going into town this afternoon for supplies. We’ll send Bumble with her. Would you like that?”
“That’ll be absolutely swell,” he replied dryly.
Within an hour Hilda and Bumble had departed in the car. And within twenty minutes of their departure, Betty appeared in the bedroom door dressed for the afternoon. Betty knew men quite well and proved it to her own satisfaction once again when Horne’s jaw dropped at her appearance.
She was wearing full cut, dark blue slacks and a light blue turtleneck sweater. There was so much of her covered up that Horne couldn’t help but make the intended comparison with the girl who had been scantily dressed for the past several days. The hide and seek game.
For a second time her head lay on a pillow in his lap.
“Happy?” she asked him.
“I suppose so. Sometimes.”
He caught himself absently tracing with his finger the cut of a previous dress she had worn. He put his hand in his pocket quickly but the mark his finger had made across the face of the sweater remained for several seconds.
Betty smiled tantalizingly into his face.
Charles Horne awoke to someone pounding on a door.
He raised his head groggily, not quite awake. Darkness had fallen outside. Betty was walking across the room towards the kitchen. The dog was trotting along behind her, tail wagging. Horne shook his head to clear away the cobwebs and sat up.
The pounding on the kitchen door continued.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“It must be Hilda and Bumble.”
Abruptly then, Horne was on his feet, following the girl. Hilda and Bumble had keys, they didn’t need to knock. But the dog was showing no alarm. Horne stopped in the kitchen to watch Betty unlock the door. The dog sat down beside her.
Bumble rushed past Betty when the door swung open, almost stumbled over the dog in his eagerness to get in. Hate and savage intentness were stamped on the giant’s face. He ran at Horne.
Betty screamed and caught at Bumble’s back-thrust arm. She missed. Horne dodged the blow and tried to run.
A second blow caught him on the side of the head.
Betty hit Bumble on the chest as the enraged Negro was preparing to jump on the body he had knocked to the floor.
“Bumble! Stop it!” Her doubled-up fists beat on his chest. “Stop it.” He backed across the floor, sweating and shivering under the excitement. Betty’s hands pushed him against a kitchen wall. “Now what’s this all about?” she demanded.
Bumble looked at her mutely.
She held her hands out towards him, cupped palms upward. “Explain. Give.”
Bumble pointed at his shirt and at the body of Horne on the floor. He shook his fists wildly, grimacing. One bronzed finger leaped to his heart and he traced the outline of a five-pointed star, and then swung an imaginary nightstick. Reaching into his rear pocket, he pretended he brought out something, and seizing Betty’s wrists, made a show of clamping handcuffs on her. He pointed at the room he and Hilda had occupied, at his own shirt, and at Horne’s bare chest. He fairly danced with seething excitement.
Betty exploded. “They arrested Hilda — arrested her when she tried to buy a shirt for — for that sonofabitch!” She rammed a stiff little finger into Bumble’s shoulder. “How did you get away?”
He stared at her, unspeaking. She lifted her hands and grasped an imaginary steering wheel, watching him.
He nodded and ran to the door. The Buick coupe was in the drive. He reached into his pocket, took out a nickel, pretended he was inserting it in a slot and turning a handle. Then he folded his arms, waiting. In a few seconds he again made a star on his chest and started through the whole routine again.
“Never mind that — come on.” She grabbed the Negro’s hand and started for the door. In the opening she paused, turned to stare at Horne’s outstretched form, and suddenly snapped her fingers at the dog. His ears perked up.
“Watch him!” she commanded.
The dog took a position at Horne’s feet. Betty motioned Bumble outside. She slammed the door behind her. In short seconds the Buick’s motor gunned and the car leaped away.
The dog lay down on the floor, his nose across one trousered leg.
Thirteen
Horne braced his feet wide apart on the dew-covered grass to give him balance and searched the far horizon. A heavy, rich canopy of stars was motionless overhead. There was no moon.
He swung around in a slow arc, blinking away the burning sensation lingering behind his eyes. The merest movement of his mouth was painful. Far to the distant right, beyond the few lonely trees, a red haze of reflected neon hung low in the dark sky.
Horne re-entered the house, looking for a towel to wipe away the water dripping from his face. There was none in the kitchen so he used an apron. His drippings and splashing had left a trail across the kitchen floor from the sink to the open door, and a few moments later, from the door to the hook where he found the apron hanging.
Betty and Bumble were gone. He and the dog were in complete possession of the house.
Where along that road between the house and the city jail, he wondered, was the Buick which would be eating the miles? How much of a head start did they have?
He again passed the apron across his face and stared around him. Either drops of water remained in the corners of his eyes, or he was still suffering from the effect of the blow. The light hanging in the center of the ceiling had a curious rainbow aura about it.
Horne noticed the watchdog placidly lying at his feet, stared back at the open kitchen door and acidly remembered the bomb on which he had been laboring. The thought jerked his head up and his eyes focused on the closed door down the corridor. He strode towards it.