The Man in the Net (20 page)

A sound came behind them and they all turned to see Leroy wriggling through the hole. He ran to them, beaming with pride.

“I ran.” His chest, under the striped T-shirt, was heaving up and down. “I ran all the way there and all the way back and no one saw me and I snuck around and there’s a trooper there. Just one trooper with a car. He’s got the car there in front of the house and he was sitting in it and then, when I watched, he got out of the car and went around the house. But he’s the only one. Just him. Just one trooper.”

So they must have swallowed Emily’s bicycle story. They didn’t really believe he was in the neighborhood. There was only the formality of one trooper. Then it could be worked easily.

“Thanks, Leroy.”

“I did it.”

“You did fine.”

Which of them, then? Timmie with his “nerves” which had to be quieted before meals was out definitely. Buck? Buck didn’t have a nerve in his body and, due to the casualness of his family life, could slip away at any time. But Buck was Steve Ritter’s son. If possible, he should avoid that. Then it would have to be Emily, even though that meant pushing it all forward until after ten.

All the children except Angel were crowding around him, watching him.

He said, “Okay, this is what you do. All of you go back now to supper and all of you, the way I said, do nothing until tomorrow except”—he glanced at Buck—“I’ve got to have something to eat. How about it? Could you snitch something out of the ice-cream parlor?”

Buck’s grin broadened with delight. “Sure, sure. I can bring anything. They let me eat what I want all the time. They don’t pay attention. I can bring ice-cream and candy bars and coffee—I can bring coffee in a container and . , .”

“Okay, Buck. When you’re through with your supper and when it’s safe.” He turned to Emily. “Could you do something very important for me?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, John, yes.”

“Could you come back after your mother’s in bed? Bring a flashlight. It’s something … Maybe you’ll be scared. It’s to go to the barn.”

“The barn!” Emily’s face looked pinched. “The cow-barn where … ?”

“Yes. There’s something I think may be there. Something I want you to search for.”

Buck broke in, “Let me. She’s only a girl. Let me.”

“No, Buck. There’s a reason. It’s Emily I want. Emily, will you go?”

It was then that Angel ran up to them. She had dropped Louise. Her face was scarlet with fury.

“I’m going. I’m not going to let old Emily go. I’m going. I’m going to the barn. I’m the head of the gang.”

She stood in front of him, legs astride, glaring up at him defiantly. Angel! There was always Angel—the implacable fury, the threat. Suddenly, looking down at her, he felt his new self-confidence sag, and what he was trying to do seemed to be quite fantastically removed from reality. This insane conspiracy with the children would never work. His doom was as inevitable as it had always been. Who did he think he was kidding?

All the children were looking at Angel. Suddenly, with a whimpering cry, Emily said:

“Oh, yes, yes, John. Make Angel go. Please. Make Angel go. I’m scared. It will be terrible in the barn, in the dark, with the blood everywhere, the blood on the floor and the darkness and the bats and the ghost of Mrs. Hamilton. It will be there, the ghost of Mrs. Hamilton, crawling around, creeping and crawling, white as a sheet with clutching hands and with great starey peering eyes … And it’ll creep around and lurk in corners and wait and spring out suddenly. It will spring out …”

Angel was still standing in front of John. Her lower lip had started to bulge.

“The ghost,” said Emily. “Make Angel go to the ghost. Let the white, creepy, crawly ghost…”

Angel started to scream. She jumped up and down, banging her plump little feet against the dirt floor.

“No,” she screamed. “No, no. I won’t go to the bad, wicked old barn. I won’t … I won’t. Emily must go. Emily must go to the ghost.” She dashed away to her bed and threw herself down on it, shouting fiercely, “Emily must go. Emily must go.”

For a moment Emily’s eyes met John’s and she winked. It was a broad, adult, enormously incongruous wink. John smiled back at her.

“Okay. Then Emily goes to the barn. It’s all fixed. Timmie, Leroy, you’ll have something important to do, but not today, tomorrow. Get here as early as you can in the morning. Now all of you go back home. You know what to do. You all know …”

“Swear the oath,” broke in Emily. “All of you swear the oath.”

And the boys’ voices echoed in unison around the walls of the cave:

“We swear, cut our throats and hope to die …”

While they were chanting, John moved over to Angel and sat down cautiously on the floor by her bed.

“Angel.”

“Go away.”

“Angel, dear, would you do me a big favor? When Emily comes back to go to the barn, would you come with her and you and I can stay here together while she’s away. You can keep me company.”

Better this way. Leaving her at home without Emily would be asking for trouble.

She stirred on the bed, looking sideways at him.

“You and me alone?”

“That’s right.”

“Without old Emily. Emily must go up to the barn. The ghost will eat her.”

“Maybe.”

“You and me,” she said and her voice was as sanctimonious as a kitten’s purr. “It’s me you love, isn’t it?” “Yes.”

“Me and Louise. Me and Louise.” She got up, patting her blue jeans to smooth out creases. “Yes, I’ll come. And we’ll send old Emily away and we’ll be together.”

Emily was crossing to them. Just as she joined them, Angel looked up at John with languishing coyness.

“Lift me up, John. Lift me up.”

He bent and picked her up. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately on the cheek. But, as she did so, her eyes slid sideways to watch Emily with malicious excitement.

“I love John,” she said. “I love him. And he loves me. And he hates Emily. Say it, John. Say you hate Emily.”

Over her small dark head, he looked at Emily. To his astonishment, her lips had tightened into a hard, jealous line.

“John doesn’t hate me,” she said.

“He does so,” said Angel. “Say it, John. Say you hate Emily.”

“I hate Emily,” he said.

He tried to catch Emily’s eyes, but the moment he said the words she turned abruptly away.

The boys had dropped to the floor. One after another they were wriggling out of the cave. He thought with a stirring of alarm: Surely Emily can’t believe I meant that. She had been handling Angel so expertly herself it seemed unbelievable that she could still be child enough to misinterpret so transparent a ruse.

He put Angel down.

“Emily …” he began.

But she had dropped to the floor too and was scrambling out through the hole.

“She’s mad.” Angel giggled. “She’s terribly mad. Now she hates me and she hates you.”

She tripped away from him to the hole and, pausing before she flopped down, waved her fat little hand at him.

“Goodbye, John. Goodbye, dear, dearest John.”

She disappeared through the rock wall.

IT WAS six-thirty when Buck came with the food. Not long after the children had gone, John had found the cave unendurably oppressive. He had slipped out through the hole and the hemlocks and cautiously explored the surrounding terrain. The cool evening air revived his spirits and the late sunlight, slanting down through the trees, gleaming on the rock-faces, the ferns, the rolling carpets of ground pine, created a tranquil world where children’s games seemed far more real than the horrors which had taken place in his life. He lay on the ground close to the hemlock wall. A hermit thrush was singing high above him in a beech tree, its song as watery and lyrical as the distant gurgle and splash of the creek. Suddenly he heard the sharp warning chirp of a chipmunk and then somewhere ahead of him a dead twig cracked under a foot. He ducked back into the hemlocks and, peering out, saw Buck running toward him.

As he emerged from the hemlocks again, Buck came up to him. His arms were loaded with cartons and packages.

“Hi, John. Hi.”

His voice was loud and cheerful. With a tensing of nerves, John said:

“Quiet, Buck. Voices carry in the woods. Maybe they’ll hear up at the house.”

“Gee! Sorry.” Buck’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I said could we have a picnic? Leroy and I, I said. I said Leroy’s parents had said it was okay and could I bring a picnic for two, and Mom was tickled because she didn’t want to bother fixing anything so she said yes and to take what I wanted and I brought …”

He sat down on the ground pine next to John and started to arrange the packages between them.

“I brought strawberry ice-cream and pistachio ice-cream and coffee for you and milk and a couple of Mars bars and … oh, lots of junk, and we can eat together. We can have a picnic.” He looked up anxiously. “Can we eat now? Gee, I’m dying of hunger. Can we eat?”

“Sure,” said John.

“It’s in the papers.” Buck was gobbling strawberry ice-cream out of a carton with a cardboard spoon. “Gee, it’s all over the front page of the
Eagle
. You should see. Stoneville woman found murdered in cow-barn; artist husband flees. And there’s your description and everything and it’s to be relayed all over everywhere. Anyone who gave a ride to a man answering the following description … And all that about the town meeting, all that about putting the hotel on the lake they were all so het-up about—there’s only a little bit about how old Mr. Carey wanted it voted against and they voted for it anyway. All the rest’s about you. Surprise arrival of John Hamilton at town meeting. Boy! And Pop’s half crazy. You should see him. They’re out of their minds, all of ’em, running around, gabbing, yakking, everyone in Stoneville. It’s a nuthouse. That’s what it is—a nuthouse.”

He glanced up, his broad, friendly face grinning around the ice-cream-laden spoon.

“Gee, if they knew you were here. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? Boy!”

“There’s still a trooper up at the house?”

“That’s what Pop says. They gotta keep a trooper up there. It’s the law, he said. But they don’t figure on anything happening. They don’t know, you see. They figure you’re off some place. Anyone who gave a ride to a man answering the following description…He dropped the empty ice-cream carton and leaned forward eagerly. “Gee, John, whatever it is you want looking for up to the barn—let me go. I can sneak up there easy and, even if they see me, it doesn’t mean a thing. No, sir. I know all them—those troopers. I can just go up to them, any of ’em, and say Hi, Bill, how’s tricks? How’s about a guy investigating this house of horror? I can walk right in, I bet. Man, it’s a cinch. It’s in the bag.”

As he listened, John asked himself: Why not? He knew it was largely the pressure of nervous impatience which made him find Buck’s offer so alluring. But didn’t it make sense anyway? Buck, as Steve’s son, was in a privileged position. It probably wouldn’t matter if he were seen. In fact, he might actually be able to stroll in right under the trooper’s nose. His earlier scruples no longer seemed to have any validity. Why be scrupulous with Steve Ritter? And even though he had allotted the task to Emily, he shouldn’t let himself be ham-strung by the protocol of the children. Emily wouldn’t mind. She’d probably be relieved that she had been spared the ordeal of a lonely, scary search after dark.

He said, “You know the cow-barn. You know where it is, under the studio at the back?”

“Sure I know it. Boy, you mean I can go?”

“If you think you can get away with it.”

“The cow-barn! With it all right there in the papers! Stoneville woman found murdered in cow-barn.”

“Listen, Buck, this is what I want. Right by the door there’s an old ice-chest …”

He told the boy what to look for, some sort of a box perhaps, or, if not a box, then anything that might be lying there loose. But he stressed the bracelet—the gold charm bracelet with the dangling gold initials: Linda.

“Maybe it all won’t be in the ice-chest, Buck. But that’s where I think it is. Look there first and if it isn’t there and you have any time, search the rest of the place. You think you can do it?”

“Sure, sure.” Buck had jumped up. “Don’t you worry. It’s in the bag. I’m this way with the troopers.” He raised a hand with two plump fingers crossed. “That’s the way I am. Boy, I can walk right in there … Well, be seeing you, boss-man.”

He started away and then, remembering the food, came back, grabbed up a Mars bar and dashed off through the trees.

For a while after he had gone John’s new mood of optimism remained. It would be all right. Buck would handle the trooper. He would find what there was to be found. In a few minutes, maybe, everything would be changed.

But gradually, as he sat by the hemlocks and the thrush sang and the creek babbled, the woodland landscape lost its serenity and became increasingly menacing. Anxiety tightened in him and morbid suspicions started to crowd into his mind. Had he been a fool to trust Steve Ritter’s son? What did he really know about Buck? What if he’d already told his father, what if this were just another trap … ? As he felt himself veering toward panic, memories returned of the men crashing after him through the woods and an almost irresistible urge came to run, to abandon this preposterously risky conspiracy of the cave. He should have got in touch with Vickie. That would have been the sensible thing. Why hadn’t he … ?

And then, when the excruciating indecision was reaching its climax, there was Buck strolling nonchalantly through the trees toward him. Incredibly, he was grinning his usual wide, uncomplicated smile and incredibly he was carrying under his arm a flat red-leather box.

The boy came up to him and held the box out to him with a bland, comic-strip-hero casualness.

“This what you want? It was right there in the ice-chest. I didn’t see it at first. I looked every place and I couldn’t see it. There wasn’t anything but an old liquor bottle with liquor in it. Then I saw there was a kind of metal lining in the top part and there was a gap behind the lining and I felt down and it was there. The bracelet’s there okay; the bracelet and lots of other junk. Man, there wasn’t nothing to it. I just went up there. The trooper was sitting in his car. It was George, old Georgie-Porgie, my pal, and he was eating his supper and he didn’t even see me. So I just snuck behind and into the cow-bam and there it was right in the ice-chest like you said.” He ran a hand over his spiky crew-cut hair. “Boy, was that a cinch. Nothing to it. No, sir.”