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“
What’s
that?” Tilly bid. “Who’d you say he is?”

“
Adam
Breen. What the hell’s he doing here?” '

Voices
exploded, but they did not belong to Molly or me. The super-salesmen
had run out of the ultimate argument. I looked at her. Her head was
bent far over as she pulled on her second stocking.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

They
put us in a hole in the ground. It was somewhat roomier than a grave,
but as dark and dank and airless and lonely.

We
were under the barn. The floor was hard dirt, the ceiling was the
floor of the barn, the walls were jagged field stone. The wooden
ladder by which we had descended had been drawn up and the trap door
shut and locked. They had left us without food or water or light,
without anything, to lie on or sit on, and with only the air which
had come down with us through the trap door. Years ago this hole must
have been. a storeroom. Now it was a dungeon to cause resistance to
crumple and the mind to die.

I
stopped walking the six steps from wall to wall and stood watching
the glow of Molly’s cigarette. She sat on the damp floor and
nursed the last cigarette either of us had left. Her face leaped out
of blackness when she drew on it— a ghost face flickering
across my vision and vanishing. If not for that dot of light, I would
have lost the feeling that she was here with me. She had no tears, no
words, not even, I thought, fear. The darkness was a shell into which
she had drawn herself.

Two
matches remained. I struck one and looked at my wristwatch. It was
not possible that only four hours had passed since they had forced us
to descend into this hole. I held the watch to my ear and in that
silence the ticking was like a pounding heart.

“
Twenty
after two,” I said. “Hungry?”

Her
voice was toneless. “No, but I’m terribly thirsty. At
eleven last night I had my last drink, and it was beer.”

“
We
won’t die of thirst,” I said. “We’ll
suffocate first.”

I
found myself breathing with my mouth open. We had recklessly burned
up much of our air with our cigarettes, but all the same I regretted
that there were no more to smoke.

The
tip her cigarette brightened, and I could see the nails of her thumb
and forefinger cling to the last half inch. She took a final drag and
then tossed it to the ground. Wistfully I watched that feeble light
struggle against the blackness and succumb.

Overhead
ancient hinges creaked.

Slowly
the trap door lifted, sending a growing layer of daylight down to us
and a gush of breathable air. Rufus Lamb’s bald head and long
jaw appeared inverted above us.

“
Had
enough?” he asked.

I
gulped down dryness. “You’re not so smart, Rufus,”
I said. “Tilly killed Moon. She wants to become the boss. If
you’re in the way, she’ll kill you too.”

“
Never
mind Tilly. All you got to worry about is giving me the bag.”

“
Are
you going to let her get away with murdering your boss?”

He
grinned mirthlessly. “You’re a slick talker, you and the
girl, but all the talk I want to hear from you is about the bag.
You’re in a spot, Bert — I mean Breen. What good will the
bag do you down there? Let’s have it and we’ll forget you
knifed the boss.”

“
I
told you Tilly did it”

“
You
told me lots of things except what I want to know.”

“
I
explained this morning that whoever killed Jasper Vital must have
taken the bag.”

“
Don’t
make me laugh,” he said. “The boss had all the answers.
One answer was that you’ve got the bag.”

It
was the same merry-go-round I had been on for days, and there was no
way off. The back of my neck hurt from looking up. I removed my gaze
from Rufus and put it on. Molly. She hadn’t moved. She sat with
her back against the rough field stone and her knees drawn up to her
chin. In the light her face was still a ghost face, as static as a
portrait.

I
said to Rufus: “All right, let’s suppose I have the bag.
But she can’t tell you anything about it. Why not let her go?”

“
Who
is she?” he demanded. “She ain’t Clara Darby. She
fooled me neat, but I know she ain’t Clara Darby.”

Molly
didn’t answer. This morning in our room she hadn’t
answered that question either after Ed Weaver had exposed me.
Woodenly she had said that it made no difference who she was. And it
didn’t. Whoever she was, she was in this with me and would die
with me.

“
I
picked her up on the road,” I said. “I know nothing about
her.”

“
Fooey!
You signed the register husband and wife. You were both in the same
room.”

“
Why
not?” I said. “She’s pretty and didn’t object
to spending a night with me. She never heard of the bag till she came
here.”

Rufus
sighed. “You and her can both go if you stop being a dope. A
smart guy makes a deal when he’s on a spot. Maybe there’ll
even be a few grand in it for you.”

“
I
haven’t got it.”

He
stood up. All I could see of him were his legs and I noticed for the
first time that he was knock-kneed. That was a tremendously
unimportant fact, like everything else now but how hard death would
come. He said somewhat regretfully: “Looks like you need more
time to think it over.” The trap door closed.

I
put my tired shoulders against the sweating wall. Across the
blackness I heard Molly draw in her breath. That was all, that small
sniffle which in any other woman might have been a prelude to tears.
But she did not weep. Perhaps she had exhausted a very small capacity
for tears last night.

When
she spoke, her voice was as lonely as the darkness. “They say
dying of thirst is a horrible death. How long does it take?”

“
They’d
kill us even if I had the bag to give them,” I said. “We’ve
seen too much.”

“
But
it would be a quick death.”

A
raw scream welled up in my parched throat. I choked it off. “You
still don’t believe I haven’t got it. Nobody does. That’s
why we’ve got to die.”

I
started to walk again — six steps, turn, six steps. The other
direction, toward Molly’s wall, was seven steps, but I didn’t
go that way.

In
the darkness something touched me. I stood very still. Her arm went
around my waist. “Hold me, honey!” She said. “Don’t
ever let me go!”

I
pulled her against me. My mouth groped for hers and found it seeking
mine, and we were no longer alone in that sightless, tragic world of
ours. After a while we sat on the ground on my jacket. My back was
against the wall and her head on my shoulder. There was thirst and
hunger and darkness and so little time left, but there was also the
feel of her in my arms, and that was good. That was the only good
left.

Time
had remained above ground with the sun and the stars. An hour or ten
hours passed before either of us spoke. Then she said: “Adam?”

“
Yes?”

“
Are
you thinking about your wife?”

“
About
Carol mostly. I’ve had years with Esther — not enough,
but we’ve had lots of good times together. But Carol —
she’s hot yet seven and I’ve known her only half her
life. I’ve missed all those years when she was changing from an
infant to a grown child. It’s hard to put into words. You’ve
got to be a parent yourself to understand.”

“
I
understand, honey.”

“
When
I was in the army here, and then overseas, I wanted Esther all the
time, but not as much as I wanted Carol. I don’t mean that I
loved Esther less: It was different. I would return to Esther the way
I’d left her. But Carol — “ I licked dry lips with
a dry tongue. “The biggest thing in life is watching your
children grow up. Maybe in this rotten world of ours it’s the
only big thing there is.”

“
Poor
Adam.” Her warm hand touched my cheek.

“
Damn
it, don’t pity me!” I said. “I’ll only die
and it will be over for me, but Carol won’t have a father and
Esther a husband. They won’t even be able to put flowers on my
grave because they’ll never know if I’m alive or dead.”

My
voice trailed off. I was no longer aware of her in my arms. I had
left the hole for an ugly red-brick house in Brooklyn.

“
We
had plans,” I heard myself say. “We made them when Carol
was born. There would be three children. Then the war came and we put
it off. That was a mistake; we should have had one of the children
anyway, but we didn’t. Then when I returned, there weren’t
any cars to sell and I hadn’t much income and we put it off.
Then last week Esther decided that it was time. I was making pretty
good money again. If we were lucky, we would have one child next year
and the other two years later. Neatly planned parenthood, the way the
books tell you to do it. We wanted our second child to be a boy. The
sex of the third wouldn’t matter. In fact, if they were all
girls I wouldn’t care. Three girls like Carol . . .”

Abruptly
I tore myself away from Molly and crossed to the farther wall and
stood there breathing hard. I heard her follow me. Her hands slid up
under my armpits. I stood rigid, unyielding.

“
Adam,
it’s all right. You can hold me and tell me about your wife.”

“
Listen,”
I said. “I love Esther.”

“
She’s
in the world outside, we’ve nothing left but each other. Hold
me.”

I
wanted to and I did. In my arms she was firm and soft and strong and
weak. Presently we sat on the floor. The air was better down there —
comparatively better.

“
You
haven’t asked me about myself,” she said with her mouth
on the side of my jaw.

“
Do
you want me to?”

She
took a long time replying. “There’s nobody who’ll
miss me — not even my father, I think. That’s even worse
than having people who’ll be hurt when you’re gone.”

“
You
don’t have to tell me anything.”

“
I’m
a girl who made the mistake of not meeting a decent boy like you
years ago. That’s all there is.”

We
were quiet then. Perhaps she dozed off. She was so still against me
that she could have been asleep or, like me, staring into the
darkness.

When
the trap door opened, it was night in the outer world. A flashlight
beam knifed down and crawled over the floor until it found us. The
unaccustomed light hurt my eyes. I did not look up or even shift my
position. All I could see of Molly was her hair in my face.

“
Ready
to talk?” Rufus said.

Crooked
Nose, I thought. By. the process of elimination, he was the only one
who could have taken the bag. I had mentioned him this morning, but
Tilly had insisted that I was trying to make a red herring out of
somebody I’d happened to see eat in the lunchroom a couple of
times. Bringing up his name again would be as useless as asking for
water. My parched throat was too tired for unnecessary speech.

“
He’ll
talk plenty when he gets thirstier,” Rufus said.

Tilly
was up there with him. I heard her snort. “What’s the
sense waiting? Maybe it’ll take days before he breaks. For all
we know, he told somebody he was coming here. My way will get it out
of him right away.”

“
It’s
too early,” Rufus said doubtfully.

“
We
can wait three hours. That’ll be just about midnight.”

The
light leaped out of the hole and the trap door banged shut. I felt
the tightening pressure of Molly’s embrace.

The
brilliance of the midnight moon swept the stars from the sky.
Greedily our lungs drew in crisp September air. It was a good night
for living and loving. No night was good for dying.

Tilly
and Ed Weaver led the procession up the hill behind the barn. Molly
and I followed, flanked by Rufus and Beezie. Milton and his rifle
brought up the rear. Our wrists were tied behind our backs. They were
taking no chance that Molly would run for it as Larry had last night,
or that I would put up a fight in spite of their guns. They did not
want to kill either of us except in a special way.

“
See
that hump up there?” Rufus said when we were half way .up the
hill. “That’s our private reservoir for the house and
lot. We pump the water up into it from a gravel well near the barn
and gravity brings it down again. Milton says the tank is half-full
now. It’ll take maybe three hours of pumping before the water’s
over your nose. Less for the girl.”

Behind
us Milton gave the dry snicker of an evil old man.

Molly
stumbled. Rufus, whose hand was on her elbow, yanked her upright.
Everybody paused. She stood trembling, waiting for strength to return
to her legs.

Tilly
impaled us with her flashlight. “Why don’t you two get
smart?” She wheezed from the climb. “We’re not
anxious to pollute our water supply.”

I
said without hope of getting anywhere; “You’re the one
who’s stupid. Can’t you see that I wouldn’t have
held out this long if I had it?”