"I"m sorry I spoiled your fun. I haven"t had anything to eat yet. Is there tune?"

"Fifteen minutes."

Stanger drove the city"s sedan hard. He took a confusing route through the back country, along small dirt roads. At last he stopped and got out at a place that looked like any other. He extended the aerial of a walkie-talkie and said, "Lew? You read me?"

"I read you, Al. No action yet. Nothing. Hey, bring that bug dope out of the glove compartment."

"Okay. We"ll be coming along now. Let me know if either one shows up before we get there."

He told me that he"d left Nudenbarger staked out with binoculars, a carbine, and the receiver-recorder end of the mike-transmitter unit he"d tied in the oak tree. He said we had a mile to go. He hadn"t wanted to put the car on any directly connecting road for fear Broon or Tom Pike would drive a circuit around the whole ranch to see if everything was clear before driving in.

We had to crawl under one fence and climb over another. The air was hot and still, but there was a hint of coolness whenever the breeze stirred. Stanger seemed to be plodding along listlessly, but he covered ground faster than one would think.

We came out onto a dirt road, crossed it, leaped a watery ditch on the other side. I followed Stanger into a clump of small pines, thick ones, eight to ten feet tall. He motioned me down, and we crawled the last dozen feet to where Nudenbarger lay on his belly close to the fence, staring through the binoculars. He turned and looked with a certain distaste at me and said, "Nothing yet, Al. Maybe they called it off, huh?"

Stanger ignored him. He said to me, "Ringside. Like it?"

We were sheltered on three sides by the pines. We could look under the bottom strand of wire and see the big oak tree about five hundred yards away. Stanger pointed out the gate they"d drive through. "Five after two," he said. "Ought to get some action along about now."

And we did. A dusty beetle-green Ford two or three years old appeared in the distance, trailing a long plume of dust. The rain of yesterday had dried quickly and completely.

"Broon," Stanger said. The car slowed as it approached the open gate with the cattle guard steel rails paving the entrance, and then went on past, accelerating slightly. In a tone of approval Stanger said, "Took a look to see if Pike was early and now he"ll swing around the place. About four miles to go all the way around it. He"ll come right down this here dirt road behind us."

We waited. It stirred old instincts, old training. Terrain, cover and concealment, field of fire. The brown pine needles underneath me had a faded aromatic scent. Skirr of insects. Piercingly sweet call of meadowlark. Swamp-smell of the ditch water nearby. Sway and dip of the gra.s.ses in the breeze. The motor sound became audible, grew, and it went by behind us, shocks and springs chunking as it hit the potholes in the clay road base. Faded off. A drift of road dust filtered the sunlight for a few moments.

Long minutes later we saw, far across the flat pasture-land, distant glints as he drove along the opposite road, the one that paralleled the road behind us. He was behind the hedgerow of scrub pine and palmetto, chrome winking through the few open places.

When he returned to the gate, he slowed and turned in and drove across the open pastureland, through the gra.s.s that had grown to over a foot high since the stock had been moved. The car rolled and bounced and he made a swing, a half circle and parked perhaps fifty feet beyond the lonely live oak.

When he got out, Stanger reached and took the binoculars away from Lew Nudenbarger. "Not now, you d.a.m.n fool! He"ll be looking every direction, and you pick up the sun just right on a lens, he"s gone."

"Sorry, Al."

We watched the man walk slowly over to stand in the shade of the oak. Five hundred yards was too far for me to get much more than an impression of a smallish man with a trim and tidy way of moving, pale hair, brown face, white shirt, khaki trousers.

I thought I saw him raise a hand to his mouth, and was suddenly startled by a small, dry coughing sound that came from the monitor speaker of the receiver. It stood on a level place between Stanger and Nudenbarger, a few feet back from the small crest.

"Do the talking right there," Stanger pleaded in a low voice. "Right there. Don"t, for G.o.d"s sake, set in the car and talk. We want you right there, you slippery little scut."

Minutes pa.s.sed. And then a red car appeared far away, pulling a high-speed dust tower. It braked and turned into the gate. It was the red Falcon wagon, and the last time I had seen it in motion, Helena"s daughters had been in it It followed the same route through the gra.s.s that Broon had taken. It made a wider circle around the tree, in the opposite direction, and stopped on our side but not in the line of vision.

Stanger was looking through the gla.s.ses. He lowered them and hitched down and turned on the old Uher recorder, now functioning on battery pack and jacked into the receiver. He took another look through the gla.s.ses. "Dave got a gun in his hand," he said.

Broon"s voice came over the speaker, resonating the diaphragm as he shouted across the sunlit s.p.a.ce. "Whyn"t you turn off the motor and get out?"

Pike was so far from the mike his answer was inaudible.

"Talk in the shade, brothers," Stanger pleaded. "Go talk in the shade of the nice big tree."

"I wanted you to see the gun right off, Tom," Broon called out to him. "So you wouldn"t get cute until I told you something. If I don"t make a phone call tonight to a certain party, an eight-page letter gets mailed special delivery to the state attorney. I spent half the night writing that letter. Now I"ll toss this here gun in my car and we can talk things out."

We watched the distant scene and saw them both walk slowly into the shade of the big oak. "Real nice," Stanger whispered.

Broon"s conversational voice over the speaker had a startling clarity and fidelity. His tone was mild. "I give you credit, Tom. You suckered me good. Never occurred to me there was something in that bottle different from what you were sticking into your wife. What the h.e.l.l was it?"

"Mostly nitric acid. I estimated it would eat through the lead stopper in about twenty-four hours."

"What made you so sure I"d put it in my lock box when you told me to keep it safe?"

"I wasn"t sure. If you hadn"t, I was no worse off, was I?"

"You sure to G.o.d made me worse off. Turned everything in my box to a mess of dirty brown stinking mush. Papers and tapes and photos and one h.e.l.l of a lot of good cash money. It even et a corner out of the box. That bank woman was real upset about the stink. Thing is, Pike, it ruined a lot of stuff that didn"t have a d.a.m.n thing to do with you and me."

"You forced me to do something, Dave."

"How do you figure?"

"You got too expensive. I couldn"t afford you."

"With folks standing in line to hand you their savings?"

"But with you taking so big a cut, I couldn"t show a return. Then the supply dries up. I had to cut down on your leverage."

"It didn"t work. I"ve got a good memory. I got a lot of facts in that letter I wrote. They can be checked out. Pike, you just made it harder on yourself, because I got to collect all that money you burned up with that d.a.m.ned acid stunt, and we"re starting with that thirty thousand you better d.a.m.n well have brought along."

"Things are too tight. I didn"t bring it."

"Then I"m going to pull the stopper, boy, and let you go right down the drain."

"I don"t think so."

"Now, just what gives you reason to think I won"t?"

"Because you"re only half bright, David. But you"re bright enough to understand the way things are now. And you"re going to keep right on working for me. But your rates have gone down."

"The h.e.l.l h.e.l.l you say!" you say!"

"If you were bright, you wouldn"t have left so suddenly. I knew from the way you acted that I"d destroyed the actual proof. You"d have made me believe you still had the edge. Now, letter or no letter, all you"ve got is your naked word against mine. Who will be believed, you or me? Think it over. With the Sherman tapes and the signed statement, you could destroy me, possibly. Now you"re only a potential annoyance. I brought along thirty-five hundred dollars for you, to show good faith. You"re bright enough to know I"m going to be a pretty good source of income for you. Nothing like before, of course. You"ll accept it."

"You sure of that? You sure I"ll settle for a little bit here and a little bit there?"

"As opposed to nothing at all, why not?"

"It won"t pay for the risk."

"What risk?"

"Maybe I"m only half bright, like you say, but I"m bright enough to know you"re not going to last. They"re going to grab you, and when they do, you"ll put me in it right up to the eyeb.a.l.l.s."

"Grab me for what?"

"For killing folks. Maybe with Doc Sherman it was your only way out. But I think you liked doing it. You told me they"d grab Janice Holton for stabbing that nurse. But it went wrong somehow and you went ahead anyway, without any real good reason. Pretty soon you"re going to set up that suicide deal on your wife and enjoy that too. Then you"ll start thinking about somebody else. Maybe me. No, thanks. You"ve turned into a bug, Pike. I"ve seen them like you and seen what happens. Maybe it makes you feel so big you have to keep doing it."

"My poor wife threw herself out a twelfth-story window last evening, David."

"What! What the h.e.l.l are you saying? There wasn"t a thing in the paper about-"

"Believe me, she went out the window. I heard the sound of the impact and I know she didn"t walk away. I thought the workmen would find the body, but it seems to be gone."

"What the h.e.l.l do you mean-gone?"

"Today I learned from Biddy that her old friend, Mr. McGee, told her at the party that he saw Maureen sneaking out alone. a.s.sume he knows the terms of the trust funds. So I think he"ll get in touch with me to sell me a little information. Your next job is to get to him first, David, and see if you can encourage him to tell you all about it."

Broon did not respond. I found it hard to relate the voices that came over the little speaker to the two men standing under a distant tree across the sunny pasture-land.

"You poor d.a.m.n fool," Broon said.

"It"s really quite imperative to get going on it," Tom Pike said, "because even if he hadn"t interfered, it will take several months before they"ll close out the trust and transfer the princ.i.p.al directly to Bridget."

"Somebody steals a body and you think it"s some kind of an inconvenience! You d.a.m.n fool!"

"Why get in an uproar, Broon? Body or no body, n.o.body can ever prove a thing."

"You don"t even realize it"s all over, do you? I"ll tell you, there"s only one way I can walk away from this one, partner."

Quite suddenly there was a grunt of effort, a gasp of surprise, over the speaker. The distant figures had merged abruptly, and as they spun around it looked, at that distance, like some grotesque dance. The taller figure went up and over and down, and we heard the thud of impact. Both of them were down and invisible. The gra.s.s concealed them. Dave Broon stood up, stared down for a moment. Stanger lowered the binoculars quickly. Broon made a slow turn, all the way around, eyes searching the horizon.

"Shouldn"t we-"

"Shut up, Lew," Stanger said.

Broon trotted out of the shade and across the sunlit gra.s.s to his car. He opened the trunk. Stanger put the gla.s.ses on him as he came back.

"Coil of rope," he said. "Tie him up and tote him away, maybe."

"But if he drives off-" Nudenbarger started to say.

"If I can"t punch that engine dead at this range with that there carbine, Lew, I"m not trying.".

Broon squatted over Tom Pike for a little while, then straightened and took Pike under the armpits and dragged him about fifteen feet. He dropped him there and went quickly to the tree, jumped and caught a limb, quickly pulled himself up and out of sight in the leaves.

"Son of a gun!" Stanger said.

"Why is he climbing the tree?" Lew asked plaintively.

"He took the end of the rope up with him. What do you think?"

Nudenbarger looked baffled. I comprehended the shape and the sense of it. And soon it was confirmed when Tom Pike sat up in the gra.s.s quite slowly, slumping to the side in an unnatural way.

Then he rose slowly up from a sitting position.

"Oh, G.o.d!" cried Nudenbarger.

"Keep your d.a.m.ned voice down to a soft beller!" Al snapped.

Over the speaker came a strange sound, a gagging, rasping cry. Pike ran a few steps in one direction and was snubbed to a halt. He staggered back. He tried the other direction and did not get as far.

Stanger said, not taking his eyes from the gla.s.ses, "Got the fingers of both hands into that loop now, holding it off his throat."

"Broon!" the deep voice cried, cracked and ragged.

He seemed to run in place and then he moved up a little bit. Straight up. And a little bit more. His legs made running motions. He began turning. Then his shoes were above the highest blades of gra.s.s. Dave Broon dropped abruptly into view. Nudenbarger raised the carbine and Stanger slapped the barrel down.

Broon got into the red wagon and swung it in a quick turn and parked it close to where Pike hung.

He got out, backed off, looked at Pike, and then ran for his car.

"Now!" Al Stanger said. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the carbine and vaulted the fence with an agility that astonished me. By the time we were over the fence, he had a twenty-yard lead. As the green Ford began to roll, picking up speed, Stanger stopped, went down onto one knee, and fired four s.p.a.ced, aimed shots. At the fourth one the back end of the car bloomed into a white-orange poof of gasoline, and as the car kept moving, Broon tumbled out the driver"s door, somersaulting in the gra.s.s. He got up and started to run at an angle toward the far side of the pasture but stopped quickly when Stanger fired his fifth shot.

He turned, hands in the air, and began to walk slowly toward the tree. The car had stopped in tall gra.s.s, tinkling, frying, blackening. He walked more quickly. And then he began to run back toward the tree.

"Head him off, Lew. Grab him."

Lew had good style. He loped in that loose deceptive stride of a good NFL end getting down for the long bomb. Stanger and I headed for the tree. He jogged. I started to run by him and he blocked me with the barrel of the carbine extended.

Thus we all got to the red wagon at about the same time. Nudenbarger was taking no chances with Dave Broon. He had one meaty hand clamped on the nape of Broon"s neck and had Broon"s arm bent back up and pinned between Broon"s shoulderblades by his other paw.

Broon was hopping up and down, grunting, struggling, yelling, "Cut down! Al! Hey, Al! Cut him down!"

We looked up at Tom Pike. He turned slowly toward us. His clenched fists were on either side of his throat, fingers hooked around the strand of rope that crossed his throat. He looked like a man chinning himself, face blackening with total effort.

I saw that I could swing him over and up onto the roof of the station wagon and get the pressure off his throat immediately. As I moved toward him quickly, Stanger clanked the carbine barrel against the back of my skull. The impact was exquisitely precise. It darkened the day without turning the sun out completely. It loosened my knees enough to sag me to a squat, knuckles against the turf, but not enough to spill me all the way. I turned and stared up at Al, blinking away darkness and the tear-sting of skull pain.

"Don"t go messing with the evidence, boy," he said.

"Don"t do do this to me, Al!" Broon begged. "Please, for G.o.d"s sake, don"t do it like this." this to me, Al!" Broon begged. "Please, for G.o.d"s sake, don"t do it like this."

Nudenbarger, with Broon firmly in hand, was staring slack-mouthed at Tom Pike. "Jesus!" he said softly. "Oh, Jesus me!"

And Tom Pike continued the slow turn. He lifted his right leg slowly, the knee bending. Cla.s.sic shoes, expensive slacks, navy socks of what looked like brushed Dacron. The leg dropped back.

"See him twitching any, Lew?" Stanger asked mildly.

"Well... that leg moved some."

"Just reflex action, Lew boy. Posthumous nervous twitch, like. Doesn"t mean a thing."

Broon said, "You"re killing me, Al. You know that."