Darker Than You Think (40 page)

Samuel
Quain, another Foundation associate, is being sought for questioning
in connection with Spivak's death, according to police Chief Oscar
Shay and Sheriff T. E. Parker, who hinted that his testimony is
expected to throw new light on the oddly coincidental previous
deaths.

Laughing
at the curse theory, Shay and Parker hinted that a green-painted
wooden box which the explorers brought back from Asia may hold a more
sinister explanation of these three fatalities.

Quain
is believed to have been alone with Spivak in the tower room from
which Shay and Parker state that he fell or was hurled to his death—

The
paper dropped out of Barbee's cold fingers. Perhaps murder had been
done—he shuddered at the recollection of Dr. Glenn's diabolical
suggestions, and shook his bare head frantically. Sam Quain couldn't
be the killer—that was unthinkable.

Yet
a killer there must be. Rowena Mondrick made four dead—too many
for mere coincidence. Beyond the grotesque web of contradiction and
enigma,
he
thought
he could distinguish a ruthless brain working cunningly to bring
about these seeming accidents. The Child of Night—if that
phrase meant anything.

But
who—he shrank from that question, shivering in the first cold
sunlight; and he hurried on along the quiet streets again toward Sam
Quain's house, trying to look as if a morning stroll in a flapping
red robe were quite an ordinary event.

The
chill autumn air had a smoky crispness. The world, as it came to his
senses, was entirely normal and believable. A milk truck rattled
across the street in front of him. A woman in a vivid yellow wrapper
appeared briefly on a doorstep to pick up the morning paper. An
overalled man with a black lunch pail, probably a bricklayer waiting
for a bus at the corner, grinned amiably as Barbee came by.

Hurrying
on, Barbee nodded to the workman as casually as he could. His skin
felt goose-pimpled under the thin red robe, and he couldn't help
shivering to a colder chill than he felt in the frosty air. For the
quiet city, it seemed to him, was only a veil of painted illusion.
Its air of sleepy peace concealed brooding horror, too frightful for
sane minds to dwell upon. Even the cheery bricklayer with the lunch
pail might —just might—be the monstrous Child of Night.

His
heart stopped when a siren split the morning hush. A police car
lurched around the corner ahead and came drumming down the pavement
toward him. He couldn't breathe and his knees turned weak, but
he
set
his face in an empty grin and stumbled blindly on. He waited for the
cold official voice to hail him, but the car didn't pause.

He
shuffled swiftly on, his feet numb and aching in the thin felt
slippers. The police radio, he knew, must already be snarling out the
orders to pick him up. Probably his abandoned car had already been
reported, and that prowl car was racing to investigate. The hunt
would spread from there, fast.

He
walked two more blocks, and still the police car hadn't come back. He
limped breathlessly around the last corner into Pine Street, and
stopped when he saw the black sedan parked in front of Sam Quain's
small white house. Terror made a hard constriction in his throat, for
he thought the police were waiting for him here.

In
a moment, however, he saw the lettering on the car door—only
the name of the Research Foundation. He had almost forgotten Sam
Quain's grim predicament in the desperation of his own, but Sam was
also wanted. He must have come here, it occurred to Barbee, to wait
with his family for the law.

Barbee
managed to breathe again. A glow of hope thawed his consternation,
and he limped hurriedly up the walk to the door. Sam Quain would
surely talk to him now, in this hour of their mutual extremity.
Together, they might break the monstrous web that had snared them
both. He knocked eagerly.

Nora
came instantly to open the door. Her round freckled face was pale and
tear stricken, swollen for need of sleep. He shuffled quickly past
her, anxious to get off the street before that prowl car came back,
yet trying not to show his terror. He looked hopefully about the neat
little living room, and failed to see anything of Sam.

"Why,
Will!" A tired relief lighted her blue-circled eyes. "I'm
so glad you came—it's been such a dreadful night!" She
looked at his own haggard desperation, and gave him a wan little
smile of sympathy. "You look worn out yourself, Will. Come on to
the kitchen, and I'll pour you a cup of coffee."

"Thank
you, Nora." he nodded gratefully, aware that his teeth were
chattering with cold. He wanted that warming coffee urgently, but a
closer necessity made him pause. "Is Sam here?" he asked
breathlessly. "I've got to talk to Sam."

Her
swollen eyes turned away.

"Sam
isn't here."

"I
saw that Foundation car," he said. "I thought Sam would be
here."

Her
colorless lips tightened stubbornly.

"Sorry—I
didn't mean to pry." His shivering hands opened in a gesture of
appeal. "I just hoped Sam would be here—because I'm in
trouble too, and I think we could help each other. Please—may I
have that coffee?"

She
nodded silently, and he followed her back through the small house.
The shades were down, the lights still burning. He shivered to
something more than the aching cold in him as they passed the door of
Sam's study, where the deadly thing in that wooden box had almost
trapped him once.

His
human nostrils couldn't smell that lethal sweetness, however. He knew
the box was gone, and he could see that Nora's stiff mistrust was
melting. Tiptoeing as they passed the nursery door, she touched her
quivering lips—she was almost sobbing.

"Little
Pat's asleep," she whispered. "I thought she'd surely wake
when the police were here—they stayed for hours, trying to make
me say where Sam went." She must have seen his apprehensive
start. "Don't you worry, Will," she added softly. "I
didn't tell them anything about you phoning me to warn Sam."

"Thanks,
Nora." He shrugged wearily in the loose red robe. "Though I
don't suppose it matters—the police are hunting me for
something more than that."

She
didn't ask any questions. She just nodded for him to sit at the
white-enameled kitchen table and poured strong hot coffee from the
percolator on the stove and brought cream and sugar for him.

"Thank
you, Nora," he whispered huskily. He gulped the fragrant,
scalding bittersweetness, his eyes blurred with tears of gratitude
and pain. His solitary desperation thawed, and a sudden impulse made
him blurt the thing he hadn't meant to say: "Rowena Mondrick's
dead!"

Her
swollen eyes looked at him, dark with shock.

"She
escaped from Glennhaven." A numb puzzlement dulled his voice.
"She was found dead on Deer Creek bridge. The police think I ran
her down. But I didn't." His quavering voice went on too high.
"I know I didn't!"

She
sat down heavily across the little white table. Her dark weary eyes
dwelt upon his wild face for a long time. She nodded at last, with a
faint, tear-blotted smile.

"You
sound just like Sam did," she whispered. "He was so
frightened, and he couldn't understand, and he didn't know what to
do." Her dark-shadowed eves searched his own drawn face again.
"Will, I think there's something very dreadful behind all this.
I think you're the innocent victim of it, as much as Sam is. Do
you—do you really believe you can help him?"

"I
think we can help each other, Nora."

Barbee
tried to stir his coffee again, and had to lay down the spoon and
fold his hands to stop their shuddering when he heard a siren
wailing. Nora frowned at that noise; she went to listen at the
nursery door, and silently poured more coffee for him. That droning
scream receded at last, down some other street, and he dared to pick
up his spoon.

"I'm
going to tell you about Sam." She tried to swallow, as if agony
choked her. "Because he does need help—so terribly!"

"I'll
do all I can," Barbee whispered huskily. "Where is he?"

"I
don't know—really." She shook her blonde, disheveled head,
her reddened eyes dull with a hopeless bewilderment. "He didn't
trust me to know—that's the dreadful thing." She gulped
again, and whispered: "I'm afraid I'll never see him again."

"Can
you tell me what happened?"

Her
plump shoulders quivered and then stiffened angrily, as if in vain
defiance of her sobs.

"I
called him right back," she said. "Right after I talked to
you. I told him you said the police would be looking for him to
explain how Nick was killed." She watched Barbee with a brooding
puzzlement. "His voice sounded funny, Will, when I told him
that. He wanted to know how you knew anything about it." Her
tight voice sharpened uneasily. "How did you, Will?"

Barbee
couldn't meet her tortured eyes.

"Just
my usual newspaper connections." He shifted uncomfortably,
repeating that feeble lie. "I've got to protect my sources."
He tried to lift his cup, and brown coffee splashed in his saucer.
Desperately he muttered: "What else did Sam say?"

Nora
lifted the corner of her white apron to daub at her wet eyes.

"He
said he had to go away—and he couldn't tell me where. I begged
him to come home, but he said he hadn't time. I asked why he couldn't
just explain to the police. He said they wouldn't believe him. He
said his enemies had framed him too cunningly." A puzzled dread
hushed her sobbing voice. "Who are Sam's enemies, Will?"

Barbee
shook his head blankly.

"It's
a frightful plot, Will!" A stricken, uncomprehending terror was
in her whisper. "The police showed me some of the evidence
they've found— trying to make me talk. They told me what they
think. I—I just won't believe it!"

Barbee
rasped hoarsely, "What evidence?"

"There's
a note," she murmured faintly. "It's written on a piece of
yellow paper in Nick's handwriting —or a good imitation. It
tells how they quarreled on the way back from Asia over the treasure
they brought in that green wooden box. Sam wanted it for himself, and
tried to make Nick help him get it—that's what the note says,
Will."

Her
head shook in frantic protest.

"It
says Sam gave Dr. Mondrick an overdose of his heart medicine, to kill
him at the airport—just to keep him from putting that treasure
in the Foundation museum. It says Sam tinkered with the brakes and
steering gear of our car so that Rex Chittum would be killed on
Sardis Hill—it does seem funny Sam would have him borrow our
old car, when the Foundation has better ones." Her dry, dull
voice was horror-haunted. "And finally it says that Nick was
afraid Sam was going to kill him, to keep the secret of the other
killings and get all the treasure for himself."

Nora
gulped, and her voice turned high.

"The
police think he did. They believe Nick really wrote that note. They
say Sam and Nick were alone in the room. They found a broken chair
and a trail of blood to the window. They think Sam killed him and
threw him out—but you know Nick used to walk in his sleep."
Her voice was flat with horror, unconvinced. "You surely
remember that?"