Darker Than You Think (24 page)

"But
I can't forget it, Chief," he protested. "I've got to find
out what Sam Quain is hiding in that box. It haunts me. I dream about
it"

"You'll
have to work at that on your own time— and at your own risk."
Troy's voice was flat and cold. "And not for publication."
He studied Barbee with penetrating eyes, rolling the thick perfecto
back across his mouth. "Another thing—just keep in mind
you aren't a fish. Better lay off the booze."

He
opened the desk humidor, and his hard face thawed.

"Have
a cigar, Barbee." His voice turned easily genial. "Here's
the Walraven file. I want a biographical series. His early hardships,
his military heroism, his secret philanthropies, his happy domestic
life, his public-spirited service in Washington. Play down anything
the voters wouldn't like."

That
would be plenty, Barbee thought.

"Okay,
Chief."

He
went back to his desk in the noisy city room, and began to finger
through the pile of clippings. But he knew too much the clippings
didn't say, about the sewer bonds and the highway department scandal
and the reason the Colonel's first wife had left him. It was hard to
keep his mind on the unsavory task of whitewashing such a man for the
Senate, and he found himself staring over his typewriter at the
picture of a lean wolf howling at the moon on a calendar, thinking
wistfully of the splendid freedom and power he had enjoyed in that
dream.

To
hell with Walraven!

Barbee
knew suddenly that he had to get the facts behind the bizarre riddles
of Mondrick's death and Rowena's madness and April Bell's queer
confession. If he were only building haunted castles out of whisky
and coincidence, he wanted to be certain of it. If not— well,
even insanity would break the monotonous grind of a legman on the
Star.

He
stuffed the Walraven papers into his desk, got his coupe out of the
parking lot, and drove out Center Street toward the university. He
still couldn't understand why the Mondrick case didn't fit the
editorial policy of the
Star
—nothing
had ever been too sensational for Preston Troy before. Anyhow, for
print or not, he had to know what was in that box.

Sam
Quain must have moved it already, he supposed, from his study to the
place he was arranging on the top floor of the Foundation building.
He wondered what those carpenters and welders had been doing
there—and realized that once more he was accepting the dream as
fact.

He
turned right at the traffic light, and left on Pine Street, and
parked in front of Sam Quain's little white bungalow. It looked
exactly as it had in the nightmare —even to the same rusted tin
bucket and toy spade on Pat's sand pile in the back yard. He knocked,
trying to ignore an uneasy tingling sensation, and Nora came from the
kitchen to open the door.

"Why,
Will—come in!"

A
mild astonishment widened her blue eyes—they looked dull, he
thought, and the lids a little swollen, as if she hadn't slept well.

"Is
Sam at home?" A sudden pang of icy dread halted him inside the
door, as if this quiet and friendly seeming dwelling had concealed
some deadly trap. He couldn't help sniffing, as that panic caught his
breath, for the seeping, lethal malodor of the thing in Sam Quain's
box. His nostrils found nothing more noxious, however, than the
pleasant aroma of a roast in the oven; and he saw Nora's faintly
puzzled expression.

"I'm
looking for Sam, for another interview," he told her. "I
want to ask more about the Foundation expeditions, and what they
found at those sites in the Ala-shan."

Her
tired face frowned.

"Better
forget it, Will." Her hurried voice seemed dry and uneasy. "Sam
won't talk about it, not even to me.
I
don't
know what they brought back in that mysterious box, and there isn't a
chance Sam would let you see it. He kept it here in his study the
last two nights—and woke up this morning dreaming about it."

"Huh?"
Barbee gulped. "He did?"

"He
thought somebody was trying to take it." Nora shivered a little,
and her blue eyes looked dark-shadowed with worry. "I guess the
thing is getting on my nerves as well as Sam's because we both had a
bad night. It seems I almost remember—"

She
checked herself, looking sharply at Barbee.

"A
funny thing," she added, without saying what she almost
remembered. "The telephone receiver in Sam's study was off the
hook this morning. I'm pretty sure it wasn't last night, and Sam had
the door locked. I can't imagine how that happened."

Barbee
offered no solution for that puzzle. He looked away from her troubled
face, trying to swallow the sudden tightness in his throat, and asked
abruptly: "Where is Sam now?"

"Down
at the Foundation," she said. "He has had a crew of men
working day and night there since he got back—installing the
fixtures in a new lab, he told me. He telephoned them when he woke up
this morning, and Nick and Rex came in a station wagon for him and
the box. He didn't even have time for his breakfast."

Her
tired eyes looked appealingly at Barbee.

"Sam
told me not to worry," she said, "but I just can't help it.
He telephoned just a few minutes ago that he won't be home tonight. I
suppose it is a really big discovery, that will make them all famous
when it's announced, but I don't quite understand the way they act.
They all seem so—frightened!"

She
shuddered a little, and added hopefully: "Maybe Rex will tell—"

She
caught herself.

"Tell
what?" Barbee demanded.

Her
soap-reddened hands twisted uncertainly at the corner of her kitchen
apron.

"Sam
warned me not to say anything about it." Freckles stood out from
the worried pallor of her round face. "I know I can trust you,
Will—but I didn't mean to mention it. Please don't let your
paper get hold of it." Her eyes were afraid. "Oh, Will—I'm
so upset—I don't know what to do."

Barbee
patted her plump shoulder.

"I
won't print anything you tell me," he promised.

"It's
nothing much, really." Her sleepy, uncertain voice seemed
grateful. "Just that Sam sent Rex back, after they left this
morning, to get our car. I was going to take it to have the brakes
tightened this morning. But they were in such a hurry. Rex is going
to take it, Sam told me on the phone, to drive to State College
tonight to make a radio broadcast."

"What
about?"

"I
don't know—Sam just told me the Foundation is buying time for a
special program tomorrow. He asked me to listen. But not to speak
about it. I hope they explain some of this horrid mystery." Her
voice turned anxious. "You won't say anything, Will?"

"I
won't," he promised. "Good morning, Pat—how are you?"

Little
Patricia Quain came slowly from the nursery and clung to Nora's soapy
hand. Her blue eyes were redder than Nora's, and ringed with grime.
Her pink, square-jawed face seemed stubbornly set against any more
tears.

"I'm
all right, thank you, Mr. Will." Her low voice struggled not to
break. "The tragedy is poor little Jiminy Cricket. He was killed
last night."

Barbee
felt a frigid breath blow out of the darkness of his mind. He turned
and coughed in an effort to cover his terrified start.

"That's
mighty bad." His voice rasped huskily. "How did it happen?"

Pat's
wet blue eyes blinked.

"Two
big dogs came in the night," she told him soberly. "One was
white and one was gray. They wanted to take Daddy's box out of the
study. Little Jiminy ran out to stop them, and the big gray dog bit
his back and killed him."

Mute
and shaken, Barbee turned to Nora.

"That's
what Pat says." Her own tired voice seemed bewildered. "Anyhow,
her little dog is dead. We found it lying on the sand pile this
morning—right where she told me to look, when she woke up
crying."

Her
plump shoulder shrugged vainly at the inexplicable.

"I
really think a car struck the little dog," she insisted
resolutely. "Some of those college boys drive so recklessly at
night. Probably he crawled back to the sand pile before he died, and
Pat must have heard him whining."

Pat
set her pink, grimy jaw.

"Please,
Mother—no!" she protested stubbornly. "That big gray
dog did it with his long, ugly teeth. I did too see him, and the
pretty white dog with him, like I do in dreams. Didn't I, Mother?
Didn't Daddy believe me?"

"Maybe
he did, darling." Nora turned her round, troubled face to
Barbee. "It's true Sam turned white as a sheet when Pat told
about her dream. He wouldn't go with us to look for Jiminy—just
ran to see about his box in the study."

Her
tired eyes were suddenly concerned.

"You
look pale, Will—do you feel all right?"

"I
had a funny dream myself." He tried to laugh. "Something I
ate, maybe. I'm going to run on over to the Foundation now and talk
to Sam." He put his hand around the child's small back. "That's
too bad about Jiminy."

The
child shrank from his hand, and hid her stained face in Nora's apron.

"I
don't think Sam will tell you anything," Nora was saying. "If
he does, Will—won't you let me know?" She walked outside
the door with him, and dropped her voice below Pat's earshot.
"Please, Will-I'm so afraid, and I don't know anything to do
about it."

CHAPTER
TEN

A
Friend
of
April Bell

Autumn-fire
still burned in the trees on the campus and the adjoining grounds of
the Humane Research Foundation, and all the lawns were red and gold
with fallen leaves. Barbee recalled the scents that had been so vivid
in his dream and sniffed the cool air. All he could smell was a faint
pungence of leaves burning in some back yard.

He
met six freshmen marching down University Avenue, escorted by six
sophomores with paddles and burdened with the cage that held the
Clarendon tiger— this was homecoming week, he recalled, and the
daily march of the tiger was part of the traditional preliminary
ceremonies before the football game with State College.

That
mascot was the life-size model of a saber-tooth, complete with tawny
stripes and ferocious snarl, which had been merely an exhibit in the
university museum until it was first abducted years ago by raiders
from State College. The sight of it brought back wistful memories to
Barbee.

For
the Muleteers had been the four heroes who crossed the mountains west
of Clarendon in Rex's ancient, stripped-down Cadillac on the eve of
another homecoming game, disguised themselves successfully with the
red war paint of the State College Indians, and snatched the stolen
tiger out of the very midst of a State war dance.