Darker Than You Think (29 page)

He
felt the receiver vibrate and listened again.

"—all
he had," Nora's shaken voice was saying, "I think you're
his best friend, Will. He's been waiting for two years in that little
newsstand for Rex to come home. He's bound to take it pretty hard. I
think you ought to break the news. Don't you think so?"

He
had to swallow twice.

"All
right," he gasped huskily. "I'll do it."

He
hung up the telephone and stumbled back into the bathroom and took
three long gulps out of a bottle of whisky. That took hold of him and
steadied his quivering hands. He finished shaving and drove downtown.

Old
Ben Chittum lived in two small rooms behind the newsstand. He was
already open for business when Barbee parked at the curb, arranging
magazines in a rack outside the door. He saw Barbee and gave him a
cheery, snaggle-toothed grin.

"Hi,
Will!" he called brightly. "What's new?"

Barbee
shook his head, gulping mutely.

"Busy
tonight, Will?" Noticing nothing, the old man ambled across the
sidewalk to meet him, digging his pipe out of a bulging shirt pocket.
"Reason I ask, I'm cooking dinner tonight for Rex."

Barbee
stood swaying, feeling cold and bad inside, watching the spry old man
strike a light for the pipe.

"Haven't
seen much of Rex since he got back from over the water," old Ben
went on. "But I reckon he'll have his work caught up by now, and
I know he'll want to come. He always liked my beef mulligan, with hot
biscuits and honey, ever since he was a kid, and I remember you used
to eat with us now and then. Welcome, Will, if you'd like to come.
I'm going to call Rex—"

Barbee
cleared his throat harshly.

"I've
got bad news for you, Ben."

The
man's spry vitality seemed to drain away. He gasped and stared and
began to tremble. The pipe dropped out of his gnarled fingers, and
the stem broke on the concrete sidewalk.

"Rex?"
he whispered.

Barbee
gulped, and nodded again.

"Bad?"

"Bad,"
Barbee said. "He was driving over the mountains on some business
for the Foundation late last night. The car went out of control on
Sardis Hill. Rex was killed. He—he didn't suffer."

Ben
Chittum stared a long time, blankly, out of slowly filling eyes. His
eyes were dark like Rex's, and when they went out of focus, staring
vaguely past Barbee, they were suddenly Rex's own, as they had been
in that dreadful dream, peering with a fear-shadowed vacancy through
the crouching saber-tooth.

Barbee
looked hastily away, shivering.

"I've
been afraid," he heard the old man's broken whisper. "They
just don't seem quite right—none of them—since they got
back from over the water. I tried to talk to Rex, but he wouldn't
tell me anything. But I'm afraid, Will—"

The
old man stopped painfully to pick up the pipe and the broken stem;
his quivering fingers fitted the pieces awkwardly back together.

"I'm
afraid," he muttered again. "Because I think they dug up
something in that desert that should have stayed under the ground.
You see, Rex told me before they ever left that Dr. Mondrick was
looking for the true Garden of Eden, where the human race came from.
I'm afraid they found it, Will—and things they shouldn't have
found."

Wearily,
he stuffed the pieces of the pipe back in his pocket.

"Rex
ain't the last that's going to die."

His
dark, unseeing eyes came back into focus, looking at Barbee. He
seemed to become conscious of his tears and wiped at them with an
angry sleeve. He shook his head and limped heavily back to move his
rack of magazines inside the door.

Barbee
stood watching, too shaken even to offer any aid.

"Rex
always liked my beef mulligan," the old man murmured softly.
"Especially with buttered hot biscuits and honey. You remember
that, don't you, Will? Ever since he was just a kid."

Dazedly,
he locked up the newsstand. Barbee drove him to the morgue. The
ambulance hadn't come back with the body—Barbee felt mutely
grateful for that.

He
left the stunned old man in the kindly hands of Parker, the county
sheriff, and turned automatically toward the Mint Bar.

Two
double slugs of bourbon, however, failed to stop the throbbing in
Barbee's head. The daylight was too bright, and that queasy sickness
came back to his stomach. He couldn't forget that vacant blankness of
unseeing horror in Rex's eyes, and a frenetic tension of terror crept
upon him from that dark recollection.

Desperately,
he fought that terror. He tried to move deliberately, tried to smile
disarmingly at the casual witticisms of another early drinker. He
failed. The man moved uneasily to a farther stool, and Barbee saw the
bartender watching him too keenly. He paid for his drinks and
stumbled back into the glare of day.

He
had the shakes, and he knew he couldn't drive. He left his car where
he had parked it, and took a taxi to the Trojan Arms. The front door
through which April Bell had slipped so easily in his dream was
unlocked now. He staggered through it and lurched straight to the
stair, before the clerk could stop him.

A
card hung on the doorknob of
2
-C
said "Don't Disturb," but he knocked vigorously. If the
Chief's still here, he thought grimly, let him crawl under the bed.

April
Bell was slim and tall and lovely in a sea-green robe nearly as
revealing as that dream had been. Her long hair, brushed to a coppery
luster, was loose about her shoulders. Her face was a pale smooth
oval; she hadn't painted her lips. Her greenish eyes lighted as she
recognized him.

"Will—come
on in!"

He
came in, grateful that the clerk hadn't overtaken him, and sat down
in the big easy chair she pointed to beside a reading lamp. His
employer wasn't in sight, but he wondered if this weren't Troy's
chair— for April Bell would hardly be interested in the new
copy of
Fortune
on
the little table beside it, or care to smoke the cigars in that heavy
gold case he thought he must have seen somewhere before.

He
looked away from those things almost guiltily— they stirred a
hot, illogical resentment in him; but he hadn't come here to quarrel
with April Bell. She was moving, with the easy feline grace that he
remembered in the dream, to sit on the sofa across from him. It was
easy to picture her as she had ridden the racing saber-tooth, nude
and white and beautiful, her red hair streaming in the wind—and
he started to the uneasy impression that her flowing felicity of
motion concealed a very slight limp...

"So
you turned up at last, Barbee?" Her slow voice was huskily
melodious. "I was wondering why you didn't call again."

Barbee
pressed his hands against his thighs to stop their shaking. He wanted
to ask her for another drink —but he had already had too many,
and they didn't seem to help. He rose abruptly from the chair that
must be Preston Troy's, stumbling a little on the footstool, and
stalked to the other end of her sofa. Her long eyes followed him,
bright with a faintly malicious interest.

"April,"
he said hoarsely, "the other night at the Knob Hill you told me
you were a witch."

Her
white smile mocked him.

"That's
what you get for buying me too many daiquiris."

Barbee
clenched his cold gnarled hands together to stop their shuddering.

"I
had a dream last night." It was hard to go on. He peered about
uncomfortably at the quiet luxury of the room. He saw a framed
painting of a frail, gray, resolute little woman who must have been
April's mother; and he flinched again from the business magazine and
the gold cigar case beside the chair. His throat felt raw and dry.

"I
had a dream." He brought his aching eyes back to the long-limbed
girl; her silent smile somehow made him think of the white bitch's
grin in that first dream. "I thought I was a tiger." He
forced the words out, rasping and abrupt. "I thought you
were—well, with me. We killed Rex Chittum on Sardis Hill."

Her
dark-penciled brows lifted slightly.

"Who's
Rex Chittum?" Her greenish eyes blinked innocently. "Oh,
you told me—he's one of your friends who brought back that
mysterious box from Asia. The one who belongs in Hollywood."

Barbee
stiffened, scowling at her unconcern.

"I
dreamed we killed him." He almost shouted. "And he's dead."

"That's
odd." She nodded brightly. "But not so unusual. I remember
I dreamed of my own grandfather the night he died." Her voice
was lightly sympathetic, silk and cream and the chime of golden
bells, but he thought he heard a secret mockery within it. He
searched her greenish eyes again, and found them limpidly clear as
mountain lakes. "The road men ought to fix that curve on Sardis
Hill," she added absently, and so dismissed his dream.

"The
clerk told me you phoned yesterday morning." With
lazy
grace
she tossed back her shining hair. "I'm sorry I wasn't up."

Barbee
gulped down an uneasy breath. He wanted to sink his fingers into her
satin shoulders and shake the truth out of her—or was that
veiled mockery all his own imagining? He felt cold and tense with
terror of her—or was it the terror of some dark monster in
himself? He rose abruptly, trying not to show his shuddering.

"I
wanted to bring you something, April." Her long eyes brightened
expectantly, and she seemed not to notice the shaking of his hand as
he felt for the little jade pin still in his coat pocket. He held it
concealed, cold in his hand, and watched her face as he dropped it
into her extended palm.

"Oh,
Barbee!" She saw it, and the dark wonder in her eyes changed to
innocent delight. "That's my precious lost pin—the one
Aunt Agatha gave me. A family heirloom, and I'm so glad to have it
back."

She
moved the little running wolf upon her palm, and Barbee thought its
tiny malachite eye winked at him again, as subtly malicious as he
imagined her own. Eagerly she breathed: "Where did you ever find
it?"

Barbee
thrust his face at her, watching grimly.

"In
your lost bag," he rapped flatly. "Stuck in a dead kitten's
heart."

Her
long body shuddered in the green robe, as if with mock horror.

"How
gruesome!" Her low voice was warmly melodious. "You seem so
morbid today, Barbee." Her limpid eyes studied him. "Really,
you don't look well at all. I'm afraid you're drinking more than is
good for you."

He
nodded bitterly, ready to admit his defeat in the game they had
played—if the girl indeed had played a game. He searched her
sweetly sympathetic face for any sign of secret triumph, and
attempted one last feeble sally, asking: "Where is your Aunt
Agatha today?"