Chocolate Cobweb Page 16

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” said Kelly. “What the hell?”

  “I dunno,” said Gene. “Lights just went on. Maybe you’d better …”

  The car seemed to pussyfoot backward, withdrawing daintily as a cat. “Thought I saw somebody come outa the house,” murmured the driver as he turned his head.

  “Yeah?” Kelly peered upward. Whatever it was, he’d missed it. “Gimme the story,” he demanded.

  “Mandy—Amanda Garth—”

  “I know her.”

  “—called me,” said Gene, swallowing surprise. “There’s something screwy going on up there. Woman wants to—uh—do in this son. Or so she told me.”

  “Son, eh?”

  “Yeah. In the garage. I£ the motor’s running I’m supposed to—”

  “I know all about that.”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Gene. “Mandy thinks they’re going to catch her in the act or something.”

  “Goddamn crazy kids!” said Kelly in disgust. “What are you going to do?” It wasn’t a question. It was a remark.

  Gene shrugged. They looked up toward the glow.

  “Wait a while,” said Kelly to his driver. “Then we’ll run up closer and take a look. Wait and see if those lights go out. Meantime, better douse ours.”

  The driver turned the switch. The car settled in darkness. Gene leaned on the fender. “Maybe I oughta work back a little nearer,” he said nervously.

  “Hold it.”

  “What?”

  “She’s supposed to come down here and fix the doors.”

  “Oh.”

  “So let her,” said Kelly grimly, “if she’s going to. Personally, I’d be surprised.”

  From this distance, their three pair of eyes watched the faint white shimmer of those double doors. The night was quiet. Once they thought they heard something unnatural. But sound behaved oddly, down here. They looked up the slope behind them. And there was nothing there, of course.

  Mandy came out of the lower door. She shivered in the night air. Her face felt hot—no, not hot. Cold. Her brain felt fuzzy. The sudden relief, she thought, was making her feel so queer. She tried to catch her breath and hurry along. She couldn’t seem to draw air in, not deep enough.

  But the rest was simple. All she had to do was just go down, do as she was told, make all the motions, go all the way to meet whatever was coming. Maybe even, at some well-chosen moment, pretend to faint? She thought, Oh, God, I’m terrified. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Yet her heart was not fast. It seemed, instead, slower and slower.

  She bit her lips. She must get there. It would never do to faint, really, faint too soon from this sickening fear. It would never do to collapse now. Weakly, out of plain terror. No. It will pass, she told herself. It will pass.

  The way to conquer it was to do what she must do and ignore the feelings. She concentrated. The path was clear in the light. She did not stumble.

  CHAPTER 24.

  THONE PUT THE GLASS OF LIQUEUR on the table. Let it stand there, ready to accuse her when the time came.

  Right now, in the next few minutes, was the time to watch. This was the crucial time. She must act. She must complete the pattern.

  What would Ione do? Would she remember some letters to mail? Would she go for a handkerchief? Would she excuse herself and state no reason and let them assume it was unmentionable?

  She was still out beyond the kitchen. Or was she?

  He wished he could go to the arch and peer across. He could not move from the chair, of course. His foot … No reason. He sent Fanny a grin but he scarcely saw her.

  Mandy was on her way down through the gardens now. Right now. He thought, That chemist of hers better be there. Minutes beat past.

  Where was Ione? What was she doing? Had she slipped out of the house already? Was it going to be as simple as that?

  He had to know. He got out of the chair.

  In the service porch, Ione strained with her cheek on the pane to see past the bulge of the dining room, looking down. That brief flash of the red skirt, crossing the slope there. That was she! How lucky that color! There, it crossed again, zigzagging the other way. She was moving down steadily. She was drawing near.…

  All that was necessary, now, was that she go through that door, that first door.

  All that was necessary, now. And it flew on the rim of the wheel of chance. The wheel would soon settle to a stop. Would the drug pull her down too soon? Or would she first reach and go through that door? Ah, let there be one last bit of smooth going, one last acquiescence of fate, and then …

  She saw the red of the skirt, far down. She saw it vanish. She did not draw breath until she thought she could discern, across the back of the workshop, a pale gleam outlining and squaring the corners of the band of glass brick, from inside.

  She put a towel over her hand, and then the hand on the valve for gas. It turned hard. But it turned.

  Then she tossed the towel down the laundry chute, where it would sail to the washroom in the basement.

  She worked her fingers. She touched her amethyst earrings. Ah, poor Toby, she thought sadly. Ah, poor dear Toby. I must be strong for him. He will need me so desperately.

  She heard the crutch thud on the linoleum floor of the kitchen behind her. Her hand went to the switch for the floodlights. She turned her head, easily, to look at him in mild surprise, over her shoulder. He came on, in his limping rhythm. “A glass of water,” he said glumly.

  “Dear, you should have called,” she chided. She pushed the switch and the glow beyond the windows faded instantly. Light still shone from the workshop wall. All had gone well. She wrenched her attention, all of it, inside the house. She bustled from the service porch to the kitchen water cooler.

  “I can wait on myself,” said Thone irritably. “I’m not a cripple.” He came to the cooler.

  Ione withdrew, delicately. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I just like to fuss, you know.” He was so tall. She had to arch her neck. “It’s the way I am,” she sighed. Her fingers played with the amethysts around her throat.

  Thone, looking down, thought, What way are you?

  He couldn’t understand. He began to feel a strange declining, falling feeling, a definite letdown.

  Mandy tucked her purse under her arm and fumbled with the key case. She found a key of the proper size by its feel. Before she could try it, the door moved inward under the light pressure of her other hand on the knob. She had forgotten. She juggled the flashlight and found the button on it. If there was a light switch here in the workshop she didn’t know where. The beam came on and trembled over the floor.

  She stepped in and the door, pressed by its own spring as she stepped around it and let it go, fell softly and yet heavily shut behind her.

  She realized that the strange weakening terror in her veins had not departed. It was on her now. It was in her throat. It blurred her vision. She could not deepen her breath. It seemed to hiss in her ears.

  Her nostrils quivered. Surely there was a faint odor of gas in this place.

  The light wavered to the middle door. She went, weakly, shuffling like someone very old, across the small space. Her fear was, as yet, fixed on a point beyond that middle door. But it would not open. She put both hands on the knob and turned and tugged. It would not open. It must be locked. She worked at the key case. Her hands were shaking so that she almost could not hold it at all. She tried the key.

  She felt very queer. Something was hissing behind her. It was not in her head. The key wouldn’t fit. Nor would the only other key of the right size. There was no key!

  Go back! Get out!

  Fear, like a goblin, fear, like a ghost, seeped through the wall, oozed through the tight brick to this side of it. The fear was right here in the workshop. It was all around her.

  The hissing sound was gas escaping.

  Go back! Get out!

  She stumbled to the garden door. It had shut. It had locked.

&nbs
p; The keys chattered in her hand. She pulled herself together, sternly, with a surge of desperate courage.

  But there was no key. Among these keys, there was no right key. The keys in her hand were of no use at all.

  Locked in? Turn off that gas, then! Quickly! She followed sound to the corner. At the last she was crawling. But there was nothing to turn. The leak was not from a tap. Her hands were of no use. No way to stop it.

  She reached up to beat on the glass bricks with the flashlight. They were not window panes. They would not break under her feeble blows. No use.

  She screamed. She had little breath to scream.

  She tried to get to the garden door again to beat at it, to rouse the world, to make a noise. Something flooded up from within her body and overwhelmed her in a dark swift tide. She whimpered, once, softly, pitifully, like a tired baby.

  The flash lay on the floor beside her. It broke as it fell. So there was darkness, and no noise. Only the gentle continuing whisper of the gas.

  CHAPTER 25.

  “THERE GO THE LIGHTS,” SAID GENE. “Somebody just turned them off.”

  “Yeah. Hold it.”

  “Listen, you guys better get out and walk.”

  “Maybe you’re right, at that. No cover down here, though.”

  “You’d make a hell of a noise on that hillside.”

  “Keep on the road, then. Take the inside. Stick to the wall.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here goes.”

  They darted, one after the other, across the bare road. They stood close under Tobias’ wall. They listened. Nothing.

  Kelly went first. He walked very softly on the harsh ground, his feet scrabbling as little as was humanly possible. Gene came next, tiptoe and not so steady. The driver was behind. They piled up on each other behind a wild shrub.

  No sound from the garage. It was there as it had been there, pushed into the hill and squat, with the half-story hump of the workshop silent on its back.

  Nothing to see. Nothing to hear.

  Kelly muttered impatiently and walked boldly around the bush. He went directly to the doors of the garage and tried them. They were locked and firm. They didn’t budge. He leaned his head on the painted surface. There was no sound. No car motor was running behind these doors or he was deaf all of a sudden.

  His face soured in the dark. “Nah,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s too soon.” Gene’s breath fluttered.

  “Changed their minds, eh?” said the driver. “Nothing doing?”

  “Nuts!” said Kelly. He walked off down the road toward the car. The others followed. The driver stolidly, Gene hopping.

  “Listen.”

  Kelly stood still but he wasn’t listening. Considerations of his full duty, a vague feeling of abuse, floated in his mind. “You can stick around if you want to,” he said.

  “I guess I—guess I will,” said Gene. He felt nervous. He didn’t know why. He didn’t want them to go. But he could think of no reason why they should stay.

  Kelly put his foot on the running board. He said broodingly, “Maybe we’ll take a run back here, half hour or an hour. You’ll—uh—stick around, you think?”

  “Yeah,” said Gene, “for a while.” He swallowed.

  “O.K. It’s all yours.”

  The police car moved. It went on to the dead end of the canyon, swung around, came back, passed Gene again. The headlights went on as it proceeded, more nimbly now, toward the canyon mouth.

  “What d’ya say?” asked the driver.

  “Nuts!” said El Kelly. “I’m going to get hold of those kids tomorrow, both of them, and see what the hell they thought was going to happen.”

  “Didn’t happen,” said the driver cheerfully.

  “Nah,” said El Kelly. “Whatever it was they expected, they had it figured wrong.”

  Gene stood on one foot. He wished he could telephone. He thought maybe he could sneak up on the hill the front way and peek in the windows. Then he thought no, he’d better not. Better stick around. This was where she’d said to be. He went back to the sycamore. He thought, Darn her hide! When I get hold of her … Her and her cops and robbers!

  In the big studio, above, the four of them were grouped around the fire.

  Ione, in her sofa corner, had taken up her knitting. Her fingers were busy. Her little feet swung from time to time as she would glance over the spectacles that looked so delightfully absurd on her cute little nose. She would glance at Tobias. She seemed to watch him, covertly.

  He was not drinking his milk. The new glass rested on the arm of his chair with his hand around it. He seemed to have forgotten it. Well, she would not remind him. For he would need it, most desperately, a little later.

  She nodded to herself. She went on knitting, placidly.

  Fanny was rigid. Her voice tumbled on. She was telling some rambling tale. It went on without her attention, like a phonograph record she’d set under the needle. Her shrewd eyes were well aware of Thone. She didn’t understand, but she loved him. So she held in abeyance, in tight control, the growing fright she felt. The doubt, wonder, the blend of memory and shock, the hideous impossible suspicions. She watched him covertly. He was so tense, as if he were waiting!

  She forced herself not to hear her own question. What—oh, what!—was Thone waiting for?

  Tobias lay in the chair. He felt that if he tried, he could not lift his head. He could not lift his hand, with the glass. He would never move again. He was undermined, his strength all drained out. His head was turned enough, as it lay, to see the liqueur glass near Thone’s right hand. Thone had not taken any of it. Not yet.

  Tobias would not move until he did. Until there was proof.… He was weak … weak.… He had no faith and no strength to reach for any. He needed—God pity his doubt!—to see Thone drink that stuff. He needed to see that when he did so, nothing would happen.

  He wished the boy would drink, would move and release him. He could not speak to suggest.… He lay in the chair.

  Thone thought, She’s called it off. What happened?

  He thought, If nothing’s happened, if Mandy just went down and took the car and is now halfway to Inglewood after those damned fuchsias—then what? Will it be later, when she comes back? No, for God’s sake. The drug would have worked in ten or fifteen minutes. It’s not going to wait two or three hours. Never. And Ione would know that.

  Whatever she had planned to do—and she had tried to drug Mandy—it must be now. It should have been before now!

  For all she knew, Mandy was unconscious down there, right now, this minute. And she sat knitting!

  Well, then, maybe she’d had the car running all afternoon. If that was possible. But Gene would have heard it. And Mandy herself, of course, would have heard it, and known. They’d make a move soon. They’d come in. Perhaps with Kelly.

  Perhaps any minute. They’d all walk in with the thing sewed up. Explained. And over.

  Meanwhile, Ione was knitting. He watched the yarn slip on the fingers.

  She couldn’t have had the car running all day. But she was down there this morning and only this morning!

  Still, what other way …?

  But why didn’t they come?

  No, she must have called the whole thing off. And Mandy and Gene had so decided and Gene had probably ridden along to the airport.

  But if she’d called it off, something had alarmed her. Maybe he hadn’t fooled her. Maybe he’d interrupted when he’d met her there below this morning.

  But, if so, why the dose of chloral?

  No, up to then, it had been cooking all right.

  Had he scared her off, just now, in the kitchen? Had he, by impatience, mere childish impatience, stopped her then, at the last minute, from going out, from going on with it? Had she thought she’d better not? Had the moment passed?

  Many moments were passing.

  But, if so, then she must believe that Mandy lay unconscious. Or—his heart jumped—had she somehow slipped out before he�
��d got to the kitchen at all, and …

  No, no. All was well. Because Gene was down there. And Mandy hadn’t had the drug, of course, and wasn’t going to be knocked out at all, and therefore …

  But why didn’t they come? Or call? Or somehow let him know? He ground his teeth. Suppose Gene hadn’t made it? And Kelly got no note? And Mandy had fallen and hurt herself. She must have walked in a fog of terror. He conquered and reined in the skittish flight of his thought down wild improbable alleys.

  Ione had called it off and Mandy was quite safe and bewildered, and had gone on the errand, not daring to communicate with him. How could she, after all? So uncertain, not knowing what to do except follow the path of normal action, she’d been forced to leave his fear dangling alive, although she knew, now, that it was unnecessary.

  Still, she could phone.

  Or they were having trouble with Kelly. Yes, it could be that. An argument, or a long confab, in which they were consolidating what each of them knew into one full story.

  But time beat past! Too much time! It was taking too long!

  He moved convulsively, and to cover it, picked up the glass of liqueur. Automatically, it began to rise to his lips. He had forgotten what was in it.

  Tobias’ body heaved in the chair. “No, Thone. No, son. Don’t …”

  Thone turned at the cry. He read the truth on his father’s anguished face.

  “Forgive …” Tobias read the look he got. Was this, then, the right glass? “Forgive me the doubt, my son.” Then, in an utterly different and terrible fear, he whispered, “Go ahead, drink it. Why don’t you drink it!” The whites of his eyes ringed his pupils all around. He stretched out his hand, pleading with fact to be otherwise. Milk spilled for the second time.

  Thone cried, “Ah, Dad,” in terrible reproach. He threw away the crutch. The sweep and thrust of his arms brushed glasses off the table. His body surged up. If there was pain to his damaged foot as he ran from the room he did not feel any.

  Ione stood up, trembling.

  “Look out! Toby!” cried Fanny. “Oh, Toby—look!”

  Ione looked. Tobias lay as if he had died. His white head slumped off the chair arm. His limp hand pointed down at the mess on the carpet.