The Second Ardath Mayhar Read online

  I shot past him through the fence, heading toward Eddy and our waif. With a pale line showing that dawn was not far off, we had to get the child under cover, if there was such a thing out here in the boonies. I smelled Eddy, then, and headed toward the source of the stink. He was shuffling along cautiously, holding the boy over his shoulder and peering at the dark, uneven ground. I nudged his leg, then got in front of him so he could guide his steps by the white tip of my tail. I hoped he remembered that nip in the boxcar and would keep recognizing that I was real.

  There had been cows on that ground—I stepped neatly around a cow-pat that proved it. This didn’t mean people lived nearby. I’d traveled a bit in my time, and I knew that, but maybe we’d get lucky.

  The dawn was brightening behind us, and now Eddy could see to walk, so he no longer needed to believe I was real. I had to move aside, because he would step on me, when he was in that mood.

  The little boy had gone silent. I hoped he was all right, but I kept an eye on the back trail, too, in case the kidnapper had followed in our steps. Soon I relaxed, as there was no sign that anyone else was moving in our area. Killdeer rose and circled as we passed, shrilling their sad cries, but there was no sound of them back toward the railroad, which was now out of sight.

  Eddy was so much taller that he saw the house first. I knew he’d spotted something when he turned off at an angle and stepped up his pace. Frustrated, I climbed his back and looked over his free shoulder, hearing him curse me as a delusion as I stared ahead. The dawn light was stretching long shadows across the grass and bushes ahead of us. Beyond a line of trees a window caught the sun and shone brightly. I jumped down and sped forward, hearing Eddy pounding along behind me. There was a board fence around the house, and I went under the gate and into a neat yard with a vegetable garden on one side and a winter-killed flower garden on the other.

  Chickens clucked in a pen as well, and an old lady was scattering grain from a bucket, while they scrambled and quarreled over their food. I dashed to her side and rubbed against her ankle. She looked down, her round face showing surprise. “Well, Tomcat, where did you come from? I haven’t had a cat on the place since the coyotes ate poor old Tabby.”

  Again I wished fervently that people understood Cat, but by that time Eddy was fumbling with the gate and saved me a lot of effort at pantomime. As soon as the old lady saw the little boy he held out to her, she dropped her bucket and took him. They talked all the way into the house, questions smothered by answers, exclamations drowned out by the sobs of the child. By the time we were all settled in the kitchen, Eddy and our hostess with coffee, the boy and me with milk, Eddy had explained as much as he could, considering that he hadn’t really understood what was happening until he grabbed the boy and jumped off the train. Even then his wits were so befuddled he had a hard time making her understand.

  “A train, we wuz on, y’see. I wuz asleep but somethin’ woke me up an’ I heard the kid cry. B’fore I could think I jumped at the sound. Next thing I knowed, I wuz fallin’ out of the boxcar with the kid in my arms. I dunno where he come from. Dunno where I come from either, comes to that. But one thing I know, this boy didn’t belong to the guys what had him. They wuz talkin’ about killin’ him.”

  “I’m Mrs. Abbot,” the old woman said, filling his cup again. “What’s your name? And, by the way, your cat’s name?”

  Eddy looked even dimmer than usual. “’m Eddy,” he mumbled. “Cat? You see ’im? When I see ’im, I call ’im Bozo. Figured he wuz my ’magination.”

  “I see him quite clearly,” she said. “He looks like a scrapper to me. Seems to understand what’s going on, too. I wish he could talk; I’ll bet he could tell us what happened.”

  She was right, of course, but she was also a very bright lady. Once she got the boy settled on the couch with an afghan over him, she got on the phone with the sheriff’s office. By the time the law arrived, Eddy had revived enough, under her strict supervision, to give a fairly clear account of where he got the child and why he had taken off with him. Then they waked the boy, very gently and carefully. The sleep had carried him through the last of the drug he’d been given, so he could talk with the deputies.

  “I’m Robbie,” he told them. “My daddy is David Sherman, and we live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mama puts the address on the labels in my clothes.” And she had, too. Before noon they had taken the boy to town, where his folks met him a bit later in the day. They asked Eddy where he wanted to go, and didn’t seem too surprised when he just pointed toward the highway. They could have made problems for him, if not for me, but they were so glad he’d been where he was and saved that boy they hadn’t any notion of making a fuss about his hopping the freight train.

  They ignored me, which is the best thing about being a tomcat. So now we’re moving down the road toward the river and Texas. Eddy has his overcoat collar turned up around his ears, and his new wool scarf, the gift of Mrs. Abbott, leaves nothing but his eyes showing.

  I’m plugging along behind him, my tail as straight as I can manage, my fur fluffed up to ward off the cold wind. Now and again I find myself thinking about the stove in that old lady’s house and the china bowl she put my milk in. She’d have kept me, if I’d showed her I wanted to stay.

  But Eddy and I are independent as hogs on ice. Whether he remembers I’m real or not, I’m the only friend he has.

  THE FACE IN THE FOG

  This tale came as a sort of waking dream, and the fog was very real and chilling.

  The night was miserable. Left to myself, I would have settled down by the gas log in my study, opened one of the new books from the parcel just received from Blythe and Jenkins, and spent a comfortable evening. Before I could unpack my books, however, I was interrupted by a message from my brother Lionel.

  When Effie, my housekeeper and friend, tapped on the door at nine-thirty, I could tell she was upset. She had never liked Lionel, with good reason, and her warnings against mixing into his affairs had been frequent over the years. Just her expression told me who had called.

  I had never allowed a telephone in my study or my bedroom. My few friends knew never to call after nine o’clock, so when one came I knew it concerned something of importance—or Lionel! When my brother calls, it is always a matter of life and death, of course. Sometimes that has even been true. Usually, however, it has to do with bookies who demand money or blood. More often it means a loan to finance a panicked retreat into hiding, and many a plane ticket I have contributed, along with walking around money.

  If Lionel had been disinherited, or otherwise deprived, I might have resented his pleas less, but that was not the case. Our grandmother’s estate had been divided meticulously among her grandchildren, and neither Lionel nor I should ever have lacked what we needed or even simply desired. My habits being conservative, I invested mine cautiously and lived extremely well. My twin, being similar to me only in appearance, blew his entire fortune on a couple of hare-brained schemes that a child should have avoided. Once I reached the parlor, I could hear his voice on the phone, all but hysterical. I let him run down a bit, for he was incoherent.

  Then I said in my most patient tone, “Go over it all again, Len. You left me behind completely. Or perhaps it might be easier just to tell me how big a check you need and to whom to make it out.”

  “No, no, no!” he shrilled. “This time money can’t fix things. I haven’t time to go over it again...you have to meet me. Far from your house, mind you. Someplace where nobody would dream of looking for us.”

  “On this kind of night, with fog as thick as it is, nobody should dream of finding us anyplace but at home,” I objected.

  He coughed, as if the fog tickled his throat. Then he said, “The warehouse. I suppose you still own it and have the key?” I agreed to go, but I was tired after a long day at the office of our family’s shipping company. The thought of walking long blocks in the fog was dismal, but driving throug
h the muck would be worse.

  “Bring me a suitcase,” Lionel said. “Your stuff still fits me. Pack enough to do me for a week or so, would you? And put in Grandfather Morton’s sword-cane.”

  “What sort of nonsense...?” I began, but there was only a click, and he was gone. To say I was angry would be an understatement. The old biblical question about being your brother’s keeper had plagued me all my life. I’d reached the point of refusing, some time ago. And yet letting him wait in this bitter cold fog, at the mercy of whatever enemies he had roused against himself, was too painful to consider. Like it or not, I must go this one last time, if only to make it clear that this would never happen again.

  I rang for Effie and asked her to pack as directed. She nodded. “Got himself into something he can’t handle,” she said. But she went upstairs and did as I asked.

  In a short while I found myself negotiating the wet blocks to the warehouse that had been built by my great-great-grandfather, when he started his shipping company back in the days of clipper ships. Most of the distance lay along a wide street, well lit even in the fog, but at last I must turn onto the narrow one leading to the warehouse. I could hardly keep clear of the garbage cans lining the way as I turned into the alley onto which our private entrance opened. I could hear a sound there. “Len?” I called softly. “It’s Anthony. I’ve brought what you need, but I want to tell you, face to face....”

  The words died in my throat. A face loomed through the fog, coming toward me in the muted glow of my flashlight. Not my brother’s face—this one was dirty, seamed with scars, villainous but in some strange way terrified.

  “Help me!” The words croaked from leathery lips, but before I could react the man sank forward onto his knees, then went flat.

  I fumbled at a shoulder clad in rough wool, finding a neck wound with a muffler. My gloved hand slid down to stop against the shape of a hilt protruding from his back. The thing felt like the haft of a fisherman’s knife.

  The rough breathing that had shaken the body went out with a groan and did not begin again. I turned my light fully onto the stricken man, though the fog seemed to dim it almost to uselessness. He was dead, I felt certain. But where was my brother? I picked my way around the still body toward the door to our private entrance. My light caught a gleam and I stared. A polished shoe...someone stood against the alley wall, waiting for me to pass. Only the fact that the shoes were buffed to a high gloss betrayed the one lurking there.

  I felt suddenly sick and dizzy. All our lives I had teased Lionel about what I called his shoe fetish. He never set foot outside without giving his shoes a brisk polish, and now he stood waiting for me to go past in darkness—or was he waiting for me to go within reach of another knife? I shuddered.

  I turned the beam fully onto the face of the waiting man. “Len?” There was no reply, and I stepped closer. “Did you kill that man?” I asked. “I’m afraid I know the answer, but I’d like to have some reason for what you did.”

  My own face looked back at me through the mist, my face as it would have been if I had subjected it to extremes of physical and moral dissipation for twenty years, as Lionel had done with his. The eyes were black pits, but I could see that his lip was curled in his old sneer.

  “Still the New England gentleman, Tony? Stiff upper lip, like our English great-great-whatsis? Walk the chalk line, or take your medicine like a good boy? All those Merriam customs got crammed down your tailor-made gullet, not mine. I got myself into this jam, I admit, but I’m getting myself out of it, and that’s your tough luck.

  “Big Wally had orders to drop me in the drink. Nothing to do with money, this time...I ran afoul of his boss. Now Wally is dead, and I’m going to be, for all anyone knows. You’re going back to your nice cozy house and your tidy income and your hellcat of a housekeeper, and nobody is going to know which one of us was found here, stabbed by a known enforcer, who was found dead nearby, killed by Grandfather’s sword cane. You think I can’t fool old Effie?”

  The light was fully in his eyes, and I knew he couldn’t really see me, but I nodded. In his own warped terms, it made sense. Who would think to check fingerprints against those on our school and military records? Here would be poor Lionel, dead at the hands of Big Wally, who couldn’t testify to anything. It was neat, with no loose ends. I never thought Len was stupid. Neither am I. I had put down the suitcase when I stooped over the stabbed man. When I rose, I retained the sword-cane in my left hand. Now I twisted the shank to free the blade. There was the slightest whisper of sound, and Len jerked his hand up, holding the twin to the knife in Big Wally’s back.

  As he lunged for my heart, I skewered him through his own. He fell at my feet, and I could find no sign of life in him, though his limbs twitched reflexively for a moment. Tears fell onto his coat and shone there in the beam of my flash, as I wiped the cane, closed it, and filled the wound in his chest with the knife taken from his lax hand.

  “You forgot the most important of the Merriam traditions, Len,” I whispered. “A pity you didn’t pay more attention. You’d have remembered the most important—when our family produces a real, dangerous wrong-un, we attend to him ourselves.”

  I had no blood on my clothing or my shoes—fastidiousness runs in our family. I dropped my gloves into a drain beside the main street, going beyond my home to do it. There was nobody at all on the streets, and I was grateful for that.

  When I returned to the house, Effie met me at the door and noted the suitcase I still carried. “Didn’t show up, eh?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “He told me to meet him in the park, the third bench from the rose garden. But he never came. I have a sad feeling that this time he called for my help a bit too late.”

  She sighed sadly. “It had to come,” she agreed. “I’ve heard things I never told you, knowing how it distresses you. He’s a bad one, Master Tony. And just in case he has been particularly bad tonight, we’ll just say you never left the house. Is that all right with you?”

  I looked intently into her wise old eyes. She knew me very well, did Effie.

  My smile was a poor effort, but I replied, “Just as well, perhaps. I shall be in the study very late, if anyone should call.”

  She plodded away to unpack the suitcase, leaving me to clean the sword cane carefully and put it into its unobtrusive place in Grandfather’s collection of unusual weapons. It took me a long time to wash my hands, and even then they didn’t feel quite clean. Probably never would again, I thought.

  Now I am sitting before the gas log, a glass of port in hand, a pristine book in my lap. I cannot read, however. I am waiting for Effie’s tap at the door.

  I expect another call before the night is over.

  NORTHER

  Although never faced with the problem this character had, I was the dairyman who did all the work described here. I loved walking that trailer tongue, as it seemed wonderfully dangerous, with a pair of trick knees.

  The norther slammed in like a great gray fist, flattening the grass and wrenching at the trees. Gustav Berg shuddered as the tractor topped the hill and caught the full strength of the icy wind. Huddling down into the slight protection of his denim jacket, he headed for the belt of wood-lot on the south slope. Followed by a solemn procession of cows, he set the tractor in its lowest gear, walked the tongue of the trailer back to the loosened bales of hay, and began to fork big blocks of fodder onto the gravelly hillside.

  Berg worked alone, lived alone, ate, slept, and, infrequently, laughed alone. Now, his hands busy, he felt, behind his wind-burned face, the ache of loss. But the tractor neared a row of trees, and he turned, with almost a dancer’s grace, to run back up the wagon tongue, lean forward, and turn the wheel of the tractor to avoid the obstacles.

  Now he swung into the metal seat and guided the machine into a narrow track leading into the woods. Here the wind was only a roar overhead, a gentle ruffling in the dry leave
s on the ground. He stopped the tractor and began carrying forkfuls of hay in as large a circle as he could manage. The ghost of a whistle murmured from his lips as he trudged back and forth among the hungry animals.

  Finished, he drove back up the hill toward home. He realized he must start a fire before he changed to his heavy coat, so the house would begin to warm up. He would be chilled when he was through with the second haying and the milking. Coming into a toasty-warm house was always a comfort.

  “Maybe tonight I’ll finish carving the puppet for the boy,” he chuckled, heading toward home.

  The morning had begun fair and warm, but it had turned into a raw and overcast noon. The wind no longer came in gusts, but swept steadily from the northwest, bitingly cold. Berg was now feeling the chill painfully, sitting still on the tractor, his hands going numb and rheumatism striking into his wrists. He shifted into fourth gear and bumped down the hill toward the house. Pulling into the tractor shed, he sat for a moment, easing his hands and waiting to regain breath in his chilled lungs. He stripped off his work gloves and moved out of the shed, entering the house through the back door.

  It was cold already, even in the short time the norther had been blowing. Berg frowned. “An empty house seems emptier in cold weather,” he muttered. His fingers felt thick and dead, tokening more rheumatic problems. He fumbled with kindling and paper, wasted several matches, but at last a blaze flickered amid the kindling in the fireplace. Settling back on his heels before the spark of warmth, he watched the flames grow larger, eating into fat pine splinters, and burst into vigorous life. How Martha had loved that wood fire, he remembered. She had not minded feeding the ravenous fireplace.

  He felt nearer to her when he watched a fire burning. It was so much more like her nature than the stiff, unflattering pictures she’d had taken over the years. Steady warmth, occasional sparks, and cracklings—those mirrored her personality. He sighed and glanced around the room she had created for him and their son. Even after her death, it still spoke of her. Her clock ticked on the work table, where his carving tools waited, her strange little paintings lit the rich pine walls with vivid color, and her hand-loomed fabrics hung at the windows and cushioned the ladder-back chairs.