Murder in Black Letter by Poul William Anderson (classic novels to read txt) 📕

than he likes. However, eventually the police will learn a few things, and in Chicago they'll be prepared to arrest Silenio and Larkin for questioning. So he'll have to give Silenio and Larkin a prolonged vacation somewhere, till the whole affair has blown over.

"On the other hand, if I am keeping O'Hearn, I can be expected to get rough. Therefore Clayton and his friends will have to act in an awful hurry. But if they succeed, all will be well for them: because I and any associates of mine will have been eliminated, in the course of rescuing O'Hearn, and no clues at all will be left for the police."

"Games theory," murmured the telephone. "You plan your strategy on the basis of the strategy your opponent would plan on the basis of the information you believe him to have. But this game is for keeps. What do you think we ought to do?"

"Throw out a dragnet, of course," said Kintyre. "As for the news angle, the knowledge we admit having—"

"That's an obvious one. The police can handle it. Though frankly, events will probably move so fast that our news releases won't influence them one way or another. Sorry, Bob, it had to be said.

"One more item. Now that their house is unsafe, have you any idea where they'll go?"

Kintyre groaned. "That's the one thing I can't even guess."

"You've done pretty well so far," said the gentle tone. "Need any help?"

"Yes," said Kintyre. "Get out there and find her."

"I'll do what I can," said Trygve Yamamura.

Kintyre hung up. Guido sat knotted about a kitchen chair. "Well?" he asked raggedly.

"You were listening," said Kintyre. "They've got her. Give me a cigarette."

"My sister," mumbled Guido.

Kintyre barked an obscenity. "Hell of a brother she's got," he said.

He lit up and stalked the kitchen floor. The clock said after eleven. Corinna had been taken—when? Three-plus hours ago, at a guess. But they would have had to find a place to question her. That would give a little time. They could conceivably be en route this minute.

"We're being a pair of prize schtunks," said Guido.

"Hm?" Kintyre threw him a look.

"Sitting here calling each other hard names. I mean, we ought to be out searching for her."

"Where?"

"Any place!" Guido's face was drawn taut; there was a tic over his right eye. "Every address we eliminate is something."

"How many houses in the Bay Area?" Kintyre flopped onto a chair. Through the doors he had locked in himself, the horror hooted.

"Well, for Chrissake, man," said Guido, "I don't mean to search the bishop's! We can think of some possible places, can't we?"

"I don't know."

"Ah, spit. We're doing nobody any good. Let's go for a ride. It might clear our brains some."

"The great American solution. Let's go for a ride."

Guido regarded Kintyre for a moment or so.

"Does it help you to feel superior, cat?" he asked quietly.

Kintyre's head jerked up. After a few seconds:

"Okay. I'll just phone in to let the police know we're going."

They left the cottage and Guido took the wheel of Kintyre's old black sedan. "Any special route, Doc?" he inquired.

"Oh, I don't know. The coast highway, southbound."

"State One? It's a bastardly slow drive beyond the freeway."

"What have we to hurry for?"

Guido slid the car into smooth motion. One-handed, he lit a fresh cigarette. "My solitary trick," he said wryly.

"You sing pretty well," said Kintyre.

"Not as well as I might. That takes work, and I'm not that interested."

"What are you interested in?" Kintyre responded mechanically.

"Right now, getting her back unhurt," said Guido. "Think there's a chance?"

"I thought we were going to clear our brains," rapped Kintyre.

They remained silent past the tollgate. Once they were on the bridge, with the quicksilver sheet of the Bay under them and San Francisco thinly misted ahead, Guido nagged:

"Where could they go? It'd have to be some place nobody would hear them, no cops would come around to. Pretty short notice to rent a house again. I mean, especially when an alarm might go out with their descriptions. Of course, they could just bust into a house offered to let."

"The police will be checking that."

"Uh-huh. Only Doc, wouldn't they expect it and try to outsmart the police? Dig me? Let's turn off at the ramp. I'm a waterfront kid, I know some old places where you could get in and—"

"Would they know about it?" snorted Kintyre.

"I suppose not." Crestfallen, Guido held the car in the middle lane. When they got onto the southbound freeway, he opened up.

Kintyre, a conservative driver, had never pressed his car to the limit. Now he saw the needle hover at ninety; wind snapped by the doors. "You want a ticket?" he asked.

"I don't much care," said Guido roughly. "Man, I got to do something, don't I? If I can't help her, I got to do something."

The minutes passed. No patrol car sirened at them. There was not, indeed, much traffic at this time of a Thursday. As they fled south, onto the old two-lane highway, the sky grew overcast.

"Nuts," said Guido. "There'll be fog along the coast. We'll have to crawl. Let's turn back."

"No," said Kintyre. "Keep going."

Guido stole an indignant look at him. "Wait a second," he began.

"Keep going, I said!" Kintyre roared it.

Guido started. Then, shrugging, he gave his attention back to the road. "Is it that important?" he asked.

Kintyre didn't answer because he didn't know. He sat hunched into passivity, not caring how fast they went or if they crashed. It shouldn't matter to him where he was taken. But it did. He couldn't tell why—damn that fouled subconscious of mine, anyway! But it was like a hand upon him.

Perhaps it was only that he had to get back for a while to the great shouting decency of the ocean.

"You're a funny one, Doc," said Guido after a long time.

"Aren't we all?"

"You're crazy, even for a human being. I mean, you're the cat who's had the adventurous life, got the culture, made the big success—oh, yes, you don't get paid much, but you know damn well how far you've succeeded and how much further you can go—you're everything Bruce wanted to be. Hell, you're everything I wish I wanted to be. And you can't wait to die!"

Kintyre said, jarred: "That isn't true. I'm just in a bad mood."

"So am I, Doc, so am I. Think I dare let myself imagine about Corinna? Think I enjoy realizing how poorly I've shown up in the last few days? But I keep going. What is it makes you fold up?"

Kintyre turned his face from the bluffs now humping up around him, toward Guido. There was a radiation of vitality from the other man; something had disfigured it, so that his days ran out in pettiness, but he would always be more alive than most.

"Why do you stay around here?" asked Kintyre slowly.

"Man, I like it."

"Can't you see it's poison for you? As long as you stay where you were a child, you'll always be one. If you could get away, you'd have a chance to grow up."

Guido reddened. "Thanks, Mother Superior."

"I'm not trying to insult you. I'm only thinking, your trouble could be caused by a situation. A place. Did you get overseas in the Army?"

"No, unless you count Alaska."

"And of course it wasn't your kind of life. All you'd think about would be going home. But suppose you went somewhere else, someplace congenial—and stayed. I wonder if you mightn't feel like buckling down. You could still make a name for yourself, or at least a fair living, as an entertainer. If you'd try."

"Go where?"

"Well, Trig Yamamura has connections in Honolulu. Or via people I know, we could probably finagle a start in New York, if you'd rather. The main point would be, stay away from here! For a few years anyhow, till you got your feet well planted."

Guido said in a low voice: "I've thought the same from time to time. But Bruce was the only one who ever got behind me and pushed, and he didn't have any such contacts."

He smiled. "Could be, Doc, that blue funk of yours is also situational. If I need to get away, maybe you need to settle down. Dig? Pipe, slippers, a wife and a lot of runny-nosed kids to worry about, instead of whatever dead thing it was that happened years ago."

"Let's quit the personal remarks," said Kintyre.

They drove on. The sea came into view, tumbling at the foot of steep yellowish cliffs. It was a cold, etched gray, under a gray sky. There was no clear horizon, sky and water ran together in mist. Guido had to slow down somewhat on the curves, but he managed a dangerous speed. Tires squealed and once he passed another car on a hill and avoided collision only by some inspired steering.

When they had left Berkeley more than an hour behind, he asked: "How far do you want to go, anyway?"

"Go on," said Kintyre.

"How come?"

Kintyre didn't answer.

At Half Moon Bay, the beach was empty and the clustered cabins forlorn; fog had closed in until you could not see past the breakers. It was clammy out there.

"Never liked the coast myself," said Guido. "She did—does, God damn it! She's queer for beach picnics. Likes to play volley ball and make sand castles."

Kintyre unclenched his fists.

"If we don't get her back," said Guido, almost matter-of-factly, "of course I can't leave home. The old lady won't have nobody left but me."

He crammed his foot on the gas. The car spurted ahead. The ground climbed again.

Presently they were on a deserted stretch. The land fell too abruptly to attract visitors: most places had no way down to the water. Sere brown hills lifted on the east side of the highway, trees huddled along them in clumps. The fog came streaming over the road.

"Now what?" said Guido. "It'll be socked in farther south."

"Continue," said Kintyre.

"Like hell!" Mutiny leaped on the dark snub face. "I've gone far enough. How d'you know they don't need us back in town?"

Kintyre felt his muscles congeal.

"What's the matter?" Guido stamped on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt.

Kintyre shuddered. The horror screamed, once, and drained from him. He knew remotely that it was not conquered—not yet—but his disintegrated self had coalesced for at least the time during which all of him would be needed.

He said, hearing his voice like another man's:

"Can you push this car back up to ninety going onward?"

"Huh?"

"I think I know where Corinna is."

Guido's hands slackened on the wheel. Suddenly they tensed again. The car growled from the shoulder and began to accumulate speed.

"I don't want to pile us up," said Guido, "but I guess I could average fifty. Where is she?"

"Do you know Point Perro?"

"I don't believe so."

"It's a little privately owned cove. Not far to go now. It's fenced off, posted, and there's nothing from the road to indicate it even has a beach. You couldn't find a lonelier spot in a day's driving."

Cloven air bawled past the windows. Guido squinted into thickening fog. He could only see a few yards ahead before the gray curtain fell; he had to imagine when the turns were coming up, and take them on two wheels. All at once Kintyre was terrified of an accident.

"I mentioned it to Clayton a couple of days ago," he said. The words came out one by one. "I seem to have forgotten that—down underneath, perhaps, I didn't want to admit to myself I'd given him any help—but I don't think it was coincidence I chose this route. Never mind. Clayton is an Easterner. His time out here has been spent entirely in the respectable sections of the Bay Area. Silenio and Larkin are complete strangers. How would they know where to take her, except some such randomly learned-about spot as this? At least, it's one chance for us. One chance!"

Guido said above the wind, the engine, and the wheels: "If you're right, Doc, it's even a good chance. An Easterner would drive a lot slower than me along this route, especially when