Mystery

This was how it worked, Tom thought. The Redwings gobbled up food, drink, real estate, other people—they devoured morality, honesty, scruples, and everybody admired them. Sarah Spence could not resist them because nobody could.

Buddy was waving a fork, talking, and Fritz stared at him as adoringly as a little dog. A greedier, more adult version of the same expression came into Mrs. Spence’s face whenever she turned to Ralph Redwing. Sarah’s right hand, a slimmer, whiter starfish, rested between Buddy’s shoulder blades.

Tom sat on the deck and watched them finish their dinner. There were two more bottles of champagne, coffee, desserts. At last they all stood up and drifted away from the window. A few minutes later, Tom saw them moving slowly on the track between the clubhouse and the compound, calling out good-byes loud enough to be heard across the water.

Lights came on in the upper windows of the lodges in the compound. A light switched on in the second floor of the Spence lodge. Birds called to each other, and a frog splashed in the reeds at the narrow end of the lake.

A car started up behind the compound, then another. The beams of headlights swept across the track between the compound and the club, and then shone upon the trees on the club’s far side. A long black car came around the clubhouse, its headlights angled down the narrow road. It circled the top of the lake, and as it swung to go up the hill, Tom saw two heads side by side on the front seat, one dark, one blond. Another long car followed, this, too, with a dark and a blond head in the front seat.

The lights in the club dining room went out, and long blocks of yellow vanished from the surface of the lake. Tom walked the long way back to his lodge.

He cut across Roddy Deepdale’s lawn and came up to his dock along the shoreline. He sat on the wood and swung his legs up, then took off his shoes. The shoes in his hand, he moved up to the deck, knelt in the darkness before the back door, found the lock with his fingertips, and slid in the key. He turned the knob and opened the door as softly as possible. Inside, he closed the door and turned the lock. Cold moonlight lay across the desk and washed the colors from the hooked rug.

Tom moved to the open door into the sitting room, and crouched over. Holding his breath, he slid into the big room, and stood, crouched and motionless, listening for any movement. The sitting room was dark as an underground cave. Tom waited until he was sure he was alone, and then he straightened up and took another step into the room.

The beam of a flashlight struck his eyes and blinded him.

“If I were you, I’d be careful too,” a man said. “Just stay there.”

The flashlight went off, and Tom instantly went into a crouch and began to rush into the office. A floor lamp snapped on. “Not too bad,” the man said.

Tom slowly straightened up and turned around to face him. All the breath left his body at once. His hand still on the chain of the floor lamp, wearing a dark blue suit and gloves that matched his grey double-breasted vest, Lamont von Heilitz smiled at him from a couch.

“You’re here!” Tom said.

The Shadow pulled the lamp chain, and the room went dark again. “It’s time we had another talk,” he said.

Tom groped forward. He bumped against the back of a chair, felt his way around it, and sat down. His own breathing sounded as loud as Fritz Redwing’s on the telephone that afternoon. “When did you get here? How did you get in?” As Tom’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, the long slender shape of von Heilitz’s body took form against the paler couch. The detective’s head stood out against the curtains behind him like a silhouette.

“I got in about an hour ago, by slipping the lock. You didn’t go to dinner at the club, I suppose?”

“No. I went to your dock and looked through the windows into the dining room. I didn’t want Jerry Hasek to find me here, and I wanted to know what was going on—I’m really glad you’re here. If I could see you, I’d say that it was great to see you.”

“I’m relieved to see you too, at least as well as I can. But I owe you an apology. I should have come for you long before this—I wanted you to find out whatever you could, but I underestimated the danger you’d be in. I never thought they’d shoot at you through windows.”

“So you got my letters.”

“Every one of them. They were excellent. You’ve done very good work, Tom, but it’s time to get back to Mill Walk. We’re flying back at four in the morning.”

“Four in the morning!”

“Our pilot has to file his flight plan and get everything ready, or we’d leave earlier than that. We can’t take the risk of staying another night.”

“You don’t think a hunter shot a stray bullet through the window.”

“No,” von Heilitz said. “That was a deliberate attempt on your life. And you upped the ante by looking into that machine shop. So I want to take you to a safe place now, and make sure you stay alive until we get on that plane.”

“How do you know about the machine shop? I haven’t even mailed that letter yet.”