The chuckling fingers (25 page)

There was the sound of a door being flung open, a slow silence, a click, a shout.

“Look out!” That was Jean shouting, but it wasn’t Jean who was coming at me, pell-mell. The light from the now-opened door above was behind the flying figure, silhouetting it unmistakably.

Carol Auden. Carol hadn’t met the Thing in the hood.

She didn’t stop when she saw me, although she gave a sobbing scream. I held out an arm to block her passage. Jean was right behind her. She reached me, flinging the full force of her weight and her impetus against me, knocking me over. Together we tumbled down the few steps I’d mounted. Again my breath was gone. She was fighting me like a wildcat, scratching and pulling. When Jean dragged her away from me she fought him as she had me and as silently; there wasn’t any sound except the gasping, panting breaths, the thud of bodies.

She couldn’t win against Jean; inexorably as the struggle continued he worked himself behind her, forcing her arms down to her sides, wrapping his arms around them at her waist. She became helpless in his grasp, still struggling but able to make almost no movement. On her face was the wildness of terror and despair.

Then suddenly and without warning she sagged limply down against the arms that held her, like a thinly stuffed rag doll.

JEAN EASED HER to the floor.

“Carol Auden!” His amazement was the same as mine. “Can you tell me what she’s doing, breaking into this office?”

“Water might bring her around.” I had some breath back now and I saw that making Carol talk was the next practical step.

“Water—there’s water in the back room. Wait—you watch Carol. I know where the light switches are.” Jean padded swiftly down the dimness of the hall toward a back room. I bent over Carol, shaking her shoulder, but the shoulder remained limp.

Aunt Harriet occasionally fainted; it helped to rub her wrists. Water was running at the back of the house. I reached for Carol’s wrist.

A fist was in my face—a fist with no limpness behind it. At the same instant Carol was rolling like a booted football toward the door, catapulting herself to her feet. We’d left the door open. She was through it, the screen slamming, before I was out of my stunned surprise.

I yelled, “She got away!” By the time I reached the front door feet were pounding behind me. From the foot of the porch steps I had a glimpse of a striped skirt flying like a flag at the rear of the house next door.

I ran, senselessly yelling, “Carol, stop!” Jean wasted no breath on calling; he was past me, back of the house, lost in what seemed like a dozen sheds. When I found him again he was dodging in and around them, swearing steadily under his breath. We ran all the way to the end of the block, back to the other end of the block.

As we paused to-stand, hot and panting, staring up and down a street that was murky at the middle and only dimly lit at the ends, a light flashed up in the corner house.

“Anything the matter out there?” A woman’s nervous voice.

“Nothing in the world,” I called bitterly back. “We’re just having a game of run sheep run.”

“Nerve!” The window slammed down.

The hum of car motors was all over town. Increasing, diminishing.

“She’s away by now.” Jean accepted defeat. “We left the office open. We’d better go back there and call Aakonen. He’ll have to know about this. Maybe we can still catch him at the hospital.”

“Carol, trailing her cloud of glory.” Fact still had a hard time becoming reasonable for me. “It had to trail fast to keep up, the rate she was going.”

No scurry met our ears now as we came back into the hall where light from above fringed into the shadows.

“I might just take a look around downstairs here before we go up.” Briefly Jean switched on lights to look over what must once have been a living room but was now the habitat of a stenographer-bookkeeper-filing clerk. Behind that was his own office and to the left the wash-and-storage room in what had been the kitchen. He pointed to the back door, standing open, the key in the lock inside, the glass panel above it broken.

“That’s how Carol got in.”

We went then up the stairs toward the lighted room on the second floor—a long room the width of the house. The first thing I saw there was the safe against the front wall, its door hanging open, a green steel box on the floor before it, papers strewn like chaff around a threshing machine.

Jean nodded at my amazement. “That’s what she was in, all right—the safe.” He walked toward the phone on the long table desk.

The moment he did so I was reluctant. “Wait. There must be some explanation. Because Carol was here rifling the safe, because she ran away—that doesn’t mean—”

“Doesn’t mean she’s the murderer. I know that. Just the same, we can’t let it slide.”

To Central he said, “The hospital.” Then, “Is Aakonen there? … Good… . Please.”

I said, “She can’t hope to get away.”

“She’s got Brad’s car—don’t forget that. Hello. Aakonen? This is Jean Nobbelin, Miss Gay and I ran into a little disturbance here at the office.” Briefly he told what had happened, to the accompaniment of crackling questions. “All right,” he promised, “we won’t touch anything until you get here.”

He hung up. “Just caught him. He was at the door, leaving with Jacqueline and Myra. Whew!” For once there was an excuse for the mopping handkerchief.

“The blinds are pulled—Carol must have pulled them. That’s why the house looked dark on the outside.” I was beginning that recapitulation of the obvious when I caught his staring.

What he was looking at was the floor in front of the safe. He walked toward the spot, bent, picked up what a sheet of paper had half hidden and held out toward me a man’s black pin-seal wallet. Gold letters spelled his name on the back.

A scene flashed. “This afternoon Carol offered to hold your coat for you. She dropped it—fumbled with it… .”

He held the wallet open side up. Three or four bills were still in the bill section; he folded the leather back from them.

“She didn’t want the money. She wanted—this.”

Almost invisible against the blue-black leather, the faint shine of inked numbers—“3-7-4-8-6.” “That’s the combination of the safe.”

* * *

The slamming of the door below announced Aakonen’s coming; we went to the head of the stairs to meet him. He’d come alone.

“Here I ought to be out talking to Phillips Heaton and I have to stop for this. I’ve got an alarm out. We’ll have that Auden girl in half an hour. What was she after?” He wasn’t wasting time or words.

“Something in the safe apparently.” Jean pointed from the door.

Aakonen looked at the disorder. “Owens went through that safe. Gave me a list. There was a note for six thousand dollars in that safe, signed by Bradley Auden. That must have been what she was after. But I—” He dropped to his knees to pick up the scattered papers.

I suggested, “If we could help—”

“No—look!” He rose slowly, his eyes fixed on a sheet he’d picked up. “Here is the Auden note—among the papers thrown out of the box. I do not understand it.” As if helplessly, he held out the sheet to Jean.

I moved behind Jean. The sheet was a letterhead, with the Heaton—Nobbelin name at the top.

February 11, 1931

I promise to pay as I am able, or at the demand of William Heaton or his heirs, any part or the whole of six thousand dollars ($6000).

(Signed) Bradley Auden

Below were three notations:

Received $500 2/11/34 Wm. Heaton

Received $600 2/11/35 Wm. Heaton

Received $300 2/11/36 Wm. Heaton

“I talked to Mr Auden about that note.” Aakonen seemed lost. “Mr Auden said he’d had many expenses, due to his wife’s illness lately, and Mr Bill Heaton had suggested he let payments wait.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Jean answered. “Sounds just like Bill.”

“But Carol Auden must have seen this—it was out of the box.”

“Suppose this wasn’t what she was after?” Jean made a quick suggestion. “If you’ve still got that list Owens made of what was in this safe we could check against that. We’ve never had the office girl list the contents of that box—it was all personal stuff.”

“The list is at my office.”

While Aakonen went to get it Jean and I spent the time gathering up the rest of the scattered papers into a neat pile. Amazement grew as I worked.

“Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t owe Bill money?”

An annoyed rasp prefaced the answer. “You’d think Bill was the father of everyone in this town and for miles around it. Anyone want to start a business? Sure, he can get the dough from Bill. Anybody get sick? Sure, Bill will stake ‘em to an operation. Kid want to go to college? Sure, Bill will get ‘em summer jobs and loan ‘em money the rest of the year.”

“Are all his records of indebtedness in this box?”

“All? Heck! He holds notes on the grownups, but those college kids—he has a nice, fancy ceremony making ‘em sign notes to keep up the story it’s all a business deal. Then when they graduate he sends ‘em the notes for a present.”

He swallowed, and the bulge of annoyance-tightened muscles around his mouth relaxed.

“I ought to know. I was the first.”

* * *

When Aakonen came back we checked each sheet of paper from the floor and the box against the list Owens had made, working down until all that was left was a packet in a rubber binder in the bottom of the box. When we got that far Aakonen halted, frowning.

“Owens divided the contents of this box into what belonged to Mr Bill Heaton and into what belonged to you, Mr Nobbelin. Out of what belonged to Mr Heaton everything is now checked off. There is nothing missing.”

“Then Carol didn’t find what she came for!” The exclamation was mine.

“Gosh knows she can’t have come for anything of mine,” hastily from Jean.

“Unless it was the Auden note and she somehow missed it.” Aakonen rested the list on the desk as his stubby fingers verified each check mark. “Yet how could she? And there is nothing else here which seems at all related to the people concerned.”

Over his shoulder I read the names of the other debtors, all strangers.

Jean straightened. “It must have been something else she wanted—something not in the box.”

“But you yourself say nothing else is touched. It must be that you frightened her away before she got what she wanted. But to make sure I will check through these papers belonging to you.”

Jean objected, his face reddening and confused, but Aakonen wasn’t to be stopped. One by one Jean had to enumerate his possessions aloud for Aakonen to check from the list.

For the junior member of a firm, Jean hadn’t done a bad job in setting himself up as an easy mark, either.

But nothing was missing from that list.

* * *

As Jean scrambled the notes any which way back into the box Aakonen’s mind was already leaving. “I am anxious to talk to that Phillips Heaton. Maybe this will become unimportant… . Anyway, Carol Auden must soon be found. I will find out then what she was doing in this office.”

He made a call but found out Carol was still missing. Grunting, he turned from the phone.

“I see nothing else here. I’ll get on to the Fingers.” But then he paused, his stubby hand going toward a wire basket on the desk.

“Mail. I wonder if any of this has come in since Owens was here.”

“That’ll be Bill’s personal mail,” Jean said. “Firm letters are opened by the girl.”

Aakonen flipped down an envelope with the letterhead of a tailoring firm, one with the letterhead of an insurance agency. The last one he kept.

“From the First National, Duluth.”

Jean moved to stand behind him. “That’ll probably be canceled checks from last month. I just got mine.”

“Checks.” Aakonen brooded over the envelope. “I wonder …” His eyes flicked at me, then the thick forefinger moved along the flap.. “At such a time as this …” It was half apology.

Rapidly he leafed through the checks. Then he said, “Uh,” sorting one out. He took out another, another. The pack dropped in his right hand to the desk top as he frowned at the three he’d singled out.

I moved to stand with Jean behind him.

The three checks, each for a sum of twenty-five dollars and dated May 18. May 25, June 1, were made out to Cecile Granat.

* * *

Aakonen drove ahead to the Fingers, Jean and I following in Jean’s car. Aakonen had made no comments on the three checks. He had returned them to the envelope with the others. But my mind was busy.

“May 18 and 25 and June 1. Bill was in Bermuda during that time.”

“I don’t need it pointed out.” Jean was short.

“All for the same amount—as if they were a regular payment.”

“Yeh.”

“Dated a week apart. It looks as if—”

He yelled at me, “Don’t talk about it!” He was swelling into fury, like a balloon being blown up, but with a strong effort he got control.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that everything I find out makes me sicker.”

He was moody and restless all the rest of the way. Not until the car swung along the Fingers driveway did he emit a final growl.

“I hope Aakonen gets Phillips good and squeezed.”

The night was dark; there must still have been a moon, but clouds obscured it. Dimly I was later to remember that as Jean circled the lawn and we passed the bulk and sound of the Fingers I did notice a car parked at the east side of the house. But the wheels of my mind were grinding at their immediate concerns—Carol in that office, the checks, what Aakonen would get from Phillips, the renewed efforts I must make to find out how the fire had been started in that bed, the danger in which we all moved, the accelerating danger in which Jacqueline stood.

Two cars were parked on the driveway in front of the house —Myra’s and Aakonen’s.

Aakonen was waiting for us at the door. “I knocked. No answer.”

The living room beyond was entirely dark. I was grateful for two solid men beside me as we pulled open the unhooked screen door and stepped inside. Jean found a lamp switch, and the room swam into shadowy existence. I looked around; no light in the kitchen or dining room.