Читать книгу They All Ran Away - Edward Ronns - Страница 4

BARNEY FORBES had been dreaming of Lily when he awoke knowing that someone had quietly entered his room. He did not move. He did not open his eyes. He heard the sound of the mountain wind in the screens, and he smelled the pines beyond the hotel window.

Someone breathed with heavy, laborious regularity, not too far from his bed.

His dream of Lily faded, like the diminishing echoes of a sorrowful song. Even while he listened to the other’s breathing, he thought, It’s getting better. It’s over a year now, and at last it’s getting better. There was a time when he had awakened in a cold sweat, shouting her name. There were other times when he had reached out for her, had felt the emptiness of the bed beside him and known she would never be there again, and those were the worst times.

He let her fade out of his mind, and listened.

He heard the snap of the catches being opened on his luggage, the rustle of his shirts being turned over, the muted rattle of paper, the creak of a leather belt. And the heavy breathing.

Barney opened his eyes to darkness.

A dim shape loomed over the luggage rack to his right, a pencil torch an island of glowing light in an invisible hand.

He had made no secret of his arrival in Omega, here in the far Adirondacks. No secret about his intentions, either. To hell with the old man’s timid warnings. If you know there’s a snake somewhere under the rocks, you start kicking the rocks around. If all the doors are closed against you, you have to start hammering on them. If you’re looking for a dead man, you have to cry murder.

The only train available from New York had dropped him in Omega at eleven o’clock at night. His reservation at the resort hotel overlooking the lake was honored, somewhat to his surprise. But when he went to the police station at midnight, the sergeant’s face froze; Barney all but heard that first door slam against him. At the Hunter estate, the big iron gates were not even opened. It did not bother him. He called it quits and turned in.

Now he judged by moonlight coming through the tall windows that it was about two o’clock in the morning. The man searching his luggage had his back to him. Quietly, silently, Barney moved his hand up from his side and under the pillow, seeking his gun.

His fingers touched the butt of the .38 Special—and then he froze as the intruder straightened up with a soft grunt. He was a big man, with slightly bowed shoulders, gray hair that looked silvery in the moonlight. The wind whined in the screens. There was a faint lapping sound of water from the lake shore. The pine trees thrashed. It was August, but here in the mountains the air was cold.

He closed his hand around the gun.

The intruder had ears like a cat—and a calm voice.

“Take it easy, Mr. Forbes.”

Barney sat up, the gun in his hand. “Don’t mind me. Just tell me what you’re looking for.”

“Nothing special,” the man said easily. “I’d know it if I found it.”

“Who are you?” Barney asked.

“Cops.”

“The hell you say. Sit down over there. Fold your hands on the back of your neck. Don’t move too fast.”

Barney heard the sound of heavy breathing. The pencil flash snicked out. The intruder didn’t like his orders. In the dim moonlight, his face was a graven mask, blank, the eyes darkly studying him. The moonlight ran a liquid finger along the barrel of the gun in Barney’s hand. The wind rattled the screens again. A lone cricket began to chirp out on the hotel lawn, making a cold and forlorn sound.

“You’re mighty touchy,” the big man said.

“And you’re wide open,” Barney said. “Cop or no cop. You picked the lock or used a key, it doesn’t matter. It adds up to breaking and entering. How would you like a slug in your belly?”

“I wouldn’t like that at all.”

“Then sit down.”

The man sat.

Barney reached out with his left hand and turned on a lamp. The Omega Hotel had no use for modern decor or streamlined frills. Its rooms were barren caverns furnished with the original heavy walnut of the General Grant era. The rocking-chair brigade that habitually took possession of the veranda facing the lake never objected. Some of them, from Barney’s brief glimpse in the lobby, probably had started summering here along with General Grant.

“All right,” Barney said. “Talk about it.”

“You’re Barney Forbes?”

“That’s why you were rifling my bag, wasn’t it?”

“I reckon.”

“You said you’re a cop.”

“Chief Jacobus Hendrycks. You’ll find a lot of Hudson Valley Dutch around here. Put down the gun. I got a wife and eight kids.”

Barney sat on the edge of the big bed. He was a tall man, not quite thirty. He had thick dark hair, dark blue eyes that seemed black when he was angry, a competent nose and mouth. He was quietly and completely his own man. It was expressed in the way he carried himself, in everything he did.

Chief Hendrycks was also a tall man, but he had gone to fat around the edges, and not even the piney mountain air could help his asthma. His face was long, sad, and a little frightened. The fear showed in the slow flicker of his pale eyes, in the tight corners of his mouth, in the way he breathed. But Barney knew that this man was not afraid of him. The chiefs fear was a general thing, perhaps habitual, something that was much bigger than any one man or the town itself.

“What’s so important about me that you break into my room and check my luggage?” Barney asked.

“You’re looking for Malcolm Hunter, aren’t you?”

“I’m here to find him.”

Hendrycks spread his hands, as if no further answer was necessary. “Well, then.”

Barney was annoyed. “You don’t think I’ll find him?”

“Better pray you don’t, son.” The chief smiled sadly. “You wouldn’t want to tangle with Malcolm Hunter, right or wrong, working for him or against him.”

“He’s as mean as that?”

“He runs things.”

“Does he run you?” Barney asked quietly.

Hendrycks thought about it. He was in no hurry. He wore an old Army surplus canvas jacket against the cold bite of the mountain wind. Under that was a faded flannel shirt that could never stand another washing. His shoes were heavy, serviceable, dusty.

“That isn’t a nice thing to suggest, Mr. Forbes. In a way, everybody in Omega gets pushed around a bit by the Hunters. They’ve been here a long time. They own the most land, own the bank, the newspaper, this here hotel. Malcolm Hunter likes to own things. That’s the way it is.” He paused, sighed. “I reckon you could say he owns a small piece of me, too.”

Barney said: “You haven’t shown me any tin yet.”

“Oversight. You rushed things.” Hendrycks pulled a wallet from his pocket, a battered badge. He wore a holstered Smith & Wesson under the canvas jacket. His hands were surprising, long and strong and fine. He smiled. “It ain’t often the chief of police gets the tables turned on him like this. Like to be my own fault. You look over the credentials, Mr. Forbes. Then we’ll get down to business and I’ll ask a few questions of my own.”

Barney returned the wallet. “What do you want to know?”

“Who hired you. Why you’re here. What you think you’re going to get done in Omega. And when you plan to take the train home.”

“Would you like it if I just packed up now?”

“Tomorrow morning will do,” Hendrycks said calmly.

“I’ll put it as simply as I can,” Barney told him. “I’ve been retained by the law firm of Peterman, Klassen, Smith, Woolley and Smith, of 98 Wall Street. I have a law office of my own in the same building, but nobody seems to know it. It’s a closet. Peterman, and so forth, handle nothing but gilt-edged trusts and estates. They don’t consider me quite respectable. I suspect they hired me because they didn’t know what else to do, and didn’t want to use anyone who might bring them publicity. They hate publicity like the Omega Chamber of Commerce would hate snow in August. They retained me because I used to be a detective, second grade, on the metropolitan police force, because I was an MP in the Army, because I was starving and willing to forget about my law practice for a time.”

“Go on.”

“One of their clients is Jan Stuyvesant Hunter. Do you know him?”

“Malcolm’s older brother. Much older.”

“Like a beaten-up eagle.”

“That fits,” Hendrycks nodded.

“Jan Hunter said his brother Malcolm had disappeared under what he chose to call a cloud. Last week. A certain guide and trapper here in Omega, one Alex Kane, also disappeared at the same time. Alex Kane’s wife has been screaming that Malcolm killed her husband and ran. The fight, she says, was over her own sweet self. Well, I’m supposed to find Malcolm Hunter and if he’s in trouble, I’m supposed to help him.”

“He’ll be found when he wants to be found. And he won’t appreciate your help.”

“I’ll do what I’m paid for,” Barney said. “Have I got the story straight?”

“Mostly.” Hendrycks sighed again. “Are you a married man, Mr. Forbes?”

“I was.”

Hendrycks looked alert. “Divorced?”

“My wife was killed in an auto accident two months after we were married,” Barney said. “Is it important to you?”

“I’m sorry, son. I was just thinking of Mrs. Hunter.”

“What about her?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.” Hendrycks stood up. His face was tired, gaunt, seamed. His hair looked white under the harsh light, like week-old snow on a city street. “I’ll see you at the station tomorrow morning.”

“Are you ordering me out of town?”

“You know I can’t do that. I’m just advising it.”

“Thanks. But I’m not going,” Barney said. “Do you know where I can find Malcolm Hunter?”

“If I knew where Hunter was, I’d keep it to myself.”

“I hoped you might help me,” Barney said.

Hendrycks paused at the door. “I’ve given you the best advice I can. Go back to your closet on Wall Street, son. Forget about Malcolm Hunter.”

“You make him sound dangerous.”

“He is.”

“Did he really chase after this trapper’s wife?”

“I wouldn’t know. He has the idea he’s got the right to chase any woman in Omega. Like one of them lords of the Middle Ages.”

“Do you think he killed Alex Kane, as Kane’s wife says?”

Hendrycks shrugged. He looked defeated. “We don’t have the body. Alex could be in the woods, hunting, or on a guide trip. He didn’t necessarily have to tell Ferne where he was going.”

“Ferne is Alex Kane’s wife?”

“Right.”

“Pretty?”

“Sexy.”

“Have you looked for either Kane or Hunter?”

“Better ask Straehle about that. He’s the D.A.”

“Straehle put the clamps on you?”

Hendrycks shrugged again. “Take that train in the morning, son. You won’t get anywhere in Omega.”

He started out. Barney said: “One thing, chief. What were you looking for in my bags?”

Hendrycks grinned. He had big, honest teeth. “When you told my sergeant you were here to help Mal Hunter, I thought maybe you might have something to tell me where to find him.”

He closed the door gently after him.