“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you credit me with any sense at all? You don’t have to rub it in.”
I got up from the bed and turned to Trudy Thompson, making a finger motion as if I were scribbling with a pencil. She nodded, and I pushed Thompson into my place. Very, very gently he began plying her with questions. And slowly, very slowly, he began getting answers. Trudy took them down.
I went out into the kitchen and raided the icebox again. When Doc Burbee’s cook came in in the morning she was going to be a chagrined old girl. I could follow the mumbling undertone of voices but couldn’t distinguish the words. I seated myself at the kitchen table, eating cheese sandwiches, drinking from a milk bottle, and adding up my sums. And I must admit that each time I arrived at an answer I grew more excited with the correctness of it. And more than somewhat depressed. If ever a guy was pulling his house down on top of him, I was.
I wondered if the hospital had discovered my absence, and if they had notified Dr. Saari. And I wondered what the good doctor would think, or say aloud, when they notified her. In spite of it all, I hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I had warned her I wouldn’t run out on a client.
With that I went back into the bedroom. Eleanor was finishing up. Thompson seemed extremely dissatisfied.
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re no farther along than we were before.”
“Hasn’t she told you what you want to know?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Then what’s eating on you?”
“Read that!” He pointed at his wife’s shorthand notebook. “Or, no, you can’t read shorthand. It wouldn’t do you much good if you could, there’s nothing there.”
“Maybe you’d better explain it in little words.”
“Damn it all, Horne, there’s nothing there we don’t already know. She’s told me everything she can but she hasn’t added one word we haven’t already found out, or surmised. She simply doesn’t know enough about the inner circle. Well—” he flung his hands in the air, “she would still make a first class state’s witness... if we had a case.”
That was my cue.
“I might provide that. If you’ll keep one eye shut.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Remember the caretaker’s cottage? Eleanor said it was empty at night, when the barn is running wide open...”
“And—?”
“And it won’t be breaking and entering.” I walked over to Eleanor and held out my hand. She looked at it, uncomprehending.
I said, “The key, baby.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
“No one. They keep it in a mailbox beside the door.”
Burbee and I burst out laughing. Thompson didn’t see anything funny in her statement.
“There’s no mailbox delivery out that way.”
“No. But there is a mailbox, and a key in it.” Eleanor stuck to her statement.
I asked Eleanor if she felt strong enough for a ride. She almost jumped at the suggestion, and Burbee jumped for me. I overrode his protests. I pointed out that I realized she had been shot, that she was weak and all that, but that for a very good reason she should go along with us. Thompson wanted to know the reason.
I said, well, there’s really more than one. In the first place, if Eleanor unlocked the door and asked us in, it wouldn’t be breaking and entering. That if there was anything at all incriminating in the house, she would know where to look for it. And lastly, I had once tried to prove to her without success that her sister had been murdered. If she went along now, I believed I could prove it beyond doubt.
Thompson silently turned over in his head the close juxtaposition of the cottage to the lake, and said, yes, if there is running water in the cottage, you may be right.
I said that wasn’t all. I said that, if no one else, I at least wanted to prove to myself the reasons behind the curious lapses of time between any act of mine and the subsequent reaction. I believed that proving one thing to Eleanor would prove the other to me. And to him, if he was interested. He was. Very much so.
I began wrapping blankets around Eleanor.
“Now wait a minute,” Burbee interposed. “If you insist on taking her along, she may as well get dressed. If we... uh, have to leave in a hurry, those blankets will impede her progress somewhat.” He fidgeted with his collar.
He had a point there. We left the room while Trudy helped Eleanor to dress. I asked them if they had guns. Doc Burbee said yes, there was an old horse pistol around the house. I said, get it. Thompson said he always carried one in the dash compartment of the car.
I put Eleanor in the front seat with me and told Burbee, Thompson and his wife to ride in back,
“Why?” Thompson wanted to know.
“Because when we get there, you three are going to lie on the floor and pretend you’re not there.”
“Why?”
“Remember your tapped wire? Someone out there is waiting for us. For me, I mean. They’ll figure Eleanor is either with me or has skipped the country. She’s been missing for twenty-four hours you know. If she’s with me, they
