The Collection (153 page)

“You bankers!” said Carl Harlow. “Got to know everything,
don't you? All right — and this is off the record.

Keefe is being hounded by creditors. They'll grab off
whatever he gets, if it shows. He might be able to give me a better price if
half of it goes under the table.

“I mean, we might make out the papers for four thousand, and
the other four on the side — where a referee in bankruptcy wouldn't find it. I
have a hunch he'd take eight thousand that way, rather than a check for ten
thousand. Now, I hope you're satisfied!”

“Um-m-m,” said Pryor. “Satisfied to the extent I wish I
hadn't asked you. That's hardly legal. Well—” he shrugged his shoulders — “it's
none of my business. Have you an appointment with Keefe?”

Carl Harlow shook his head. “I'll just run up there
tomorrow.”

“He's out of town a lot, weekends. Why not ring him up from
here and make a date? If he can't see you this weekend, then you won't have to
carry that cash out.”

“It's an idea,” Harlow agreed. He called up Keefe's home, and
a minute later put the phone back on Pryor's desk in disgust. “You were right,”
he said. “His brother says Roger's in New York till Monday.”

“Carl, that gives you the weekend to think this over.

Monday, if you still want to go through with it, I'll waive
the bank rules and let you have the money.”

“Okay, Tom.” Carl Harlow stood up and started for the door,
then turned around. “Oh, the check. You'd better—”

Pryor picked up the check lying on a corner of his desk and
held it out. “Here, tear it up and don't carry it around endorsed. Write a new
one Monday, if you still want to.”

Harlow tore the check twice across and dropped it into the
wastebasket. He said, “At that, maybe six thousand will be enough to take in
cash. We can use a check for the aboveboard part of the deal.”

“Damn it,” said Pryor, “quit telling me about that! I told
you I wished I hadn't asked you! Don't make me an accessory; forget you told
me. Have you talked this over with the other half of your family?”

“Nope. I'll tell Elsie if it goes through; otherwise, she
needn't know and then be disappointed. Well, so long, and thanks.”

He drove home slowly, wondering if maybe he
should
talk this over with Bill Owen. Well, he could see Bill after the golf this
afternoon and think it over meanwhile.

And then there was the empty house. With Elsie gone, it
didn't seem home at all, except for his own room. He wasn't hungry, but he made
himself a sandwich in the kitchen and then went up to change clothes for golf.

It was too soon to leave, and he had a quick one out of the
decanter of rye on his bureau to wash down the sandwich.

He even had time to sit down at the typewriter in his room
and bat out a copy idea for the Krebbs Hardware account. Not a brilliant one,
but worth putting on paper before he forgot it.

Then it was time to drive out to the golf club.

Nemesis was still after him, but it was Swender, the golf
pro, who met him in the doorway of the locker room. He said,

“Doc Millard phoned, Mr. Harlow. He tried to get you at your
office, but you'd left. He doesn't think he'll be able to get here.”

“Why not?” said Carl. “Did he say?”

“A baby case. Mrs. Nordhoff.”

“Nordhoff? Oh, Tom's cousin. These inconsiderate women,
breaking up a perfectly good golf date just because—

Say, how's about you playing around with me? You can give me
a lift on those chip shots.”

“Sorry, Mr. Harlow.” The regret in the pro's voice was
genuine. “Sprained an ankle yesterday and I'm on the shelf.

I'm a clubhouse fixture for about three days.”

Carl Harlow stared down the inviting fairway gloomily.

This course, like a lot of other small, private courses, was
never crowded Saturday afternoons, because Saturday afternoon was proverbially
busy and no one came around unless they'd made reservation. Like he and Doc had
done for two o'clock.

If he waited an hour, there'd be Owen and Pryor — but that
was a full foursome already and he could not butt in.

Well, now that he was here and dressed for it, he might as
well play around alone. The exercise would do him good.

Playing alone wasn't much fun; there's little satisfaction
in a beautiful approach, with just enough back spin to hold the green four feet
from the pin, when there's no one watching you make it. And, paradoxically,
it's even more disgusting to flub a would-be explosion shot out of a sand trap
when there's nobody around to tell you how lousy you are.

He'd just flubbed that explosion shot — with a sweet new No.
9 iron which, for its effectiveness at that moment, might as well have been an
umbrella handle — when the bullet came.

The first sensation was like somebody drawing a sharp-edged
piece of ice across his side. He jerked involuntarily and said, “What the—” And
looked down and saw the horizontal rip in his sweater, along the course of the
rip, begin to turn red instead of white.

Then, and only then, did he realize that he'd heard the
sound of the shot.

He looked up in the direction from which the shot had seemed
to come — up on the hillside that flanked the fairway ahead, past the green
he'd been approaching out of the trap.

Up there near the top, in among the scrub pine maybe two or
three hundred yards away, he thought he caught a gleam of sun on metal that
might have been a rifle barrel.

Somebody up there was being damned careless with a rifle,
shooting out over the golf course! Some fool hunter, and that wasn't hunting
land, anyway. Carl Harlow yelled, “Hey!

You with the gun—” wondering if his voice would carry that
far.

And then that second bullet whined somewhere between his
shoulder and ear, and he knew that he was being shot at.

Deliberately! Probably by someone with a gun with telescopic
sights, if they were shooting at that distance.

The first bullet, the one that had raked his side, could
have been an accident. But that second shot was something else again.

Carl Harlow had never been shot at before, but it didn't
take him long to figure out the best thing to do. He dropped flat into the
sand. There wasn't a bunker to duck behind, but the sand trap itself was a
slight depression, maybe eight inches in the center below the fairway.

He dropped down flat, trying to accomplish two things.

First, to fall naturally, as though that second bullet had
been a fatal hit, and second, to fall so that most of him would be in the
deepest part of the trap and would present as poor a target as possible to the
distant marksman.

There were two more shots, but he didn't know where the
bullets went except that they didn't hit him. Then, for a space of time that
was probably twenty minutes but seemed like hours, nothing happened and there
weren't any more shots.

Carl Harlow lay there, not daring to move, scarcely daring
to breathe. His side hurt him, but not badly. The bullet had taken off a streak
of hide and ruined a good sweater, but that was all.

Then there was a yell, “Carl!” and there was Doc Millard
running toward him. Doc's golf bag lay a couple hundred yards back along the
fairway, where he'd dropped it when he'd seen the prone figure in the sand
trap.

Then Doc saw the crimson streak on the sweater, and he said,
“What the hell?”

Carl Harlow got up slowly. His first glance was at the
hillside, but there was no gleam of sun on metal, and there was no further
shot.

Millard said, “Stand still,” and pulled up the sweater and
the shirt underneath it, and looked at the wound and said, “I'll be a monkey's
uncle!” Then he commandeered Harlow's handkerchief and his own to improvise a
bandage. The story and the bandage got finished about the same time.

“Superficial,” said Doc. “Have to clean it and put on a
decent bandage when we get back to the clubhouse, but—

You say you heard four shots? Listen, Carl, it must have
been some kid up there with a twenty-two, whanging at a target on a tree or
something. You stroll on in to the clubhouse; I'll go over there and take a
look around.”

“No,” said Carl Harlow, who was getting his nerve back,

“I'll go with you. This scratch doesn't amount to anything,
and it certainly doesn't stop me from walking. Besides, the guy's gone.”

Then he looked at Millard strangely. “Doc, I don't know
anything about guns, but would a twenty-two carry that far?”

“A twenty-two long rifle'll carry a mile, would kill at
about two hundred and fifty yards. That's what it must have been. And you could
have imagined hearing that second bullet whiz so close. Maybe it was a bee or a
hornet or something you heard. And the third and fourth shots might have been
fired in the opposite direction.”

“Can't you tell from the wound what size bullet—?”

Doc shook his head. “If it'd gone in, sure. But not from
just a scrape.” He stopped suddenly, looking at Carl Harlow.

“Say, is there any reason why somebody would be taking pot
shots at you?”

Harlow shook his head. It did seem absurd when you put it
that way, particularly now that he was almost at the fence that bounded the
course and within a hundred yards of where he thought the rifleman had been.
Hell's bells, why
would
anybody be taking pot shots at him?

He said, “Well — no. But, damn it, I
did
hear that
second bullet whiz by! It wasn't a bee!”

They were climbing the fence. Doc Millard said, “Well, if
you're that sure— But people don't go around shooting at other people without
some
reason.”

They were going up the hill now. Carl said, “Of course, the
guy could have taken two shots at a sitting bird and both of them missed the
bird but come pretty close together.”

They found nothing of interest or importance on the
hillside. Reaching the top, they saw that a side road wound by just beyond, but
there were no cars, parked or moving, in sight on it.

Carl said hesitantly, “Do you think we ought to report it,
just in case—?”

Doc Millard snorted. “Report it? You're darned well right
we'll report it! I'd lose my license if I treated a gunshot wound of any kind
without reporting it. Golf's off, of course, so we'll go back to the clubhouse.
Don't take any exercise for a few days. Walking's all right, but I mean nothing
that uses your arms.”

Carl Harlow grinned. “No two-fisted drinking, huh?

Well, it's my left side, and I guess I can make out with one
hand. Gosh, I could use a drink right now! My nerves are playing
ring-around-the-rosy!”

After the clubhouse and the inevitable explanations and not
too many drinks, because they'd have to go to the police station, Carl found
himself talking about it to Captain Wunderly.

By that time, Carl was sure it had been a kid with a
twenty-two and it sounded silly to admit that he'd been scared enough to lie
there doggo for nearly half an hour. But Captain Wunderly, just the same, sent
a couple of men out to look around.

And then Carl and Doc stopped in at a bar and had a few, and
Carl wanted to keep on going. But Doc Millard insisted that Carl was drunk
already — although it was only dusk —and that he should go home and sleep it
off. Especially because he was wounded, and that made him a patient.

Carl Harlow had argued, and then capitulated.

He really was feeling quite a bit woozy by the time he got
home. He'd forgotten that Elsie wouldn't be there, but the decanter of rye on
his bureau was still there. After a while, there wasn't much in it.

But that didn't matter. It was quite dark outside and he was
getting sleepy. He remembered about the clock and the cat, and decided he'd
better take care of them, just in case he dropped off and stayed asleep.

He couldn't find the cat. He stuck his head out of the back
door and called, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty—” and was pleased as Punch
that he could still articulate those rather difficult syllables. But no cat.

Lots of shadows on the lawn, though. Dark shadows.

Those shadows might have worried him, perhaps, had he
noticed the hole in his golf bag. An inconspicuous hole near the bottom, but
definitely the size of a thirty-thirty rather than a twenty-two. And kids don't
hunt squirrels or birds with thirty-thirty rifles. Old Lady Nemesis, maybe—

Yes, still on the job, this gal Nemesis. For twenty awful
minutes during the afternoon, Carl Harlow had felt her presence. Carl Harlow,
though, had forgotten. Nemesis hadn't.

It was Carl Harlow who shut the back door, but it might have
been Nemesis who left it unlocked. Not because murder pauses long before a
locked door, but its being unlocked would make things easier.

Carl went up the stairs, and the staircase was pitching
under him like the deck of a wallowing ship. The drinks were getting at him
now. This was the unpleasant stage; it had been pleasant up to now, and pretty
soon he'd feel better again. This was the in-between period — when things went
around and stood not upon the order of their going.

He got to his room with something of the feeling of a
storm-tossed ship reaching a safe harbor, a harbor in which the angry waves
still lapped, but less high, less deadly. Where the rocking of the ship becomes
almost a friendly thing, like the rocking of a cradle.

Being home. It's a lot different from being out in the open
of a field, with no cover and bullets whizzing around you. He sank into the
Morris chair and for a while seemed to live over again those terrible minutes
of dread out there under the dead-blue sky. The horrible open sky. There on the
flat
trap
of the ground, held by gravity as a fly is held upon flypaper.

And after a while he shook his head and remembered that it
had been a kid with a twenty-two.

Getting to feel better now. He got up, holding on to the arm
of the chair until he was sure he could walk without lurching, and crossed over
to the bureau. He had another drink; it was really wonderful rye, smooth and
mellow and golden.