The woman's eyes passed fearfully from the gun in my hand to the masked Harris, who appeared beside me. "What-what do you want?" she whispered.
"Call your husband," I said in a normal tone. "But carefully. No panic. No one's going to get hurt."
She moistened dry lips. "He-he can't hear me if I call him from here."
"Then let's go where he can hear you. Carefully," I said again. She dropped the ladle into the pot. I followed her from the kitchen in gradually diminishing light through a dining room to a flight of stairs at the front of the house. I could hear her clear her throat. "George!" she called huskily. There was no response. "George!" There was an edge of panic in her tone until a muffled voice answered from upstairs. "Please bring my robe down to the kitchen."
She led the way back into the lighted area of the house. I heard footsteps on the front stair treads, and Harris moved to one side to widen the distance between us. Slippered feet shuffled through the dining room. "You know it's your turn to get the meal, Shirley," George Mace was complaining as he entered the kitchen with his wife's robe over his arm. "Why did you-"
His plaintive query choked off as he focused on Harris and me. His startled glance took in Harris's mask and my automatic. "What's going on h-here?" he said in a tone he tried to make forceful but which quavered in spite of him.
His wife held out her hand for the robe. He handed it to her automatically. She slipped it on as Harris spoke for the first time. "Do what you're told and nothing will happen, Mace."
"You know my name?" Bewilderment took over from fear.
"You and your boss are going to take us down to the bank in a couple of hours," Harris informed him. "In the meantime, just behave yourself."
"Whatever it is you're planning, you'll never get away with it!" Mace said sharply.
I was looking at the tray on the kitchen table with its wooden bowls and spoons. "Who's the meal for?" I asked Shirley Mace.
She swallowed. "M-me."
"You wouldn't need a tray. Who else is in the house?"
"N-nobody."
"She was bringing the tray up to me," George Mace said quickly. "I haven't been feeling-"
"Shut your mouth," I told him. I looked at the woman. "Tell me. Right now."
"It's for my-our daughter," she got out painfully.
"You haven't any kids!" Harris said at once. His tone was brittle. A stubby-barreled Colt appeared in his right hand. He took two long strides toward Mace and placed the gun against his head. "Who else is in this house?"
"It's the truth!" Shirley Mace burst out. "It's-it's the truth, that's all!"
I gestured for Harris to step away from the ashen-faced assistant bank manager. "Then take the meal to her," I said to the woman. Shirley Mace stared at me blankly. "I said take the tray to your daughter."
She looked at her husband. I had never seen such an expression on a grown man's face. George Mace looked as if he were going to cry. "Do-do what they say, Shirley," he said. His voice broke.
"And no tricks," Harris added, his tone hard.
Shirley Mace turned back to the stove. She ladled the bowls on the tray full of a rich-looking stew. Considering the hour of the morning and the soggy temperature outside, it was a heavy meal. Mrs. Mace went to the refrigerator and removed a large plastic glass of milk. She placed this in a slot on the tray, added half a dozen cookies, and picked up the tray. "Open the door, George," she said in a dull tone.
Her husband stepped forward and opened a door I had thought led to a pantry. Steps were visible leading down to a basement. Mace leaned forward and snapped on a light. Mrs. Mace started down the stairs. I moved in behind her. "You go, too," Harris said from behind me to George Mace. I could hear their footsteps coming down the stairs behind me.
The basement was well lighted. At first glance I thought it was small. Then I realized that what appeared to be a foundation wall was actually a high wooden fence. The area inside the fence took up most of the space in the basement. Mrs. Mace went to a door in the fence, balanced the tray on one arm, and pulled a wooden pin that latched the door.
The opening of the door disclosed that the interior was actually a stockade. It, too, was brightly lighted. Floor and walls were padded with mattresses. A tubular-steel jungle gym like the type seen in playgrounds stood in one corner. Seated on the floor mattress was a naked girl. She was stocky, with wide shoulders and good, clear skin. She had long black hair streaming down her back, and she was smiling at us with the childlike smile of a five-year-old welcoming visitors to a pretend tea party. Physically, she could have been twenty-five.
Mrs. Mace approached to within a couple of yards of the seated girl and stooped to place the tray in front of her. "Here's your dinner, Rachel," she said in a stifled voice. I noticed that she didn't get too close to the girl.
I looked at Preacher Harris. He was staring in horror at the mentally retarded Rachel, who had picked up one of the bowls of stew and was slurping down its contents without bothering with a spoon. Some of the greasy stew spilled over and ran down between her full breasts. She paid no attention.
I moved over to George Mace, who was standing in the open doorway with a wounded look on his face. "Twenty-two years in the same house and the same job," I said. "No vacations, no social life together. One of you stayed with her all the time?"
"Exactly," Shirley Mace said bitterly. For the first time she sounded as though she were coming out of the shock induced by our appearance in her kitchen. "He wouldn't have her put away."
"That's enough, Shirley," her husband said with the air of a man who has been over the same tired ground innumerable times. "She's ours."
I looked at the interior walls of the wooden stockade, which showed signs of reinforcement in several places. "She's dangerous?" I asked Mace.
"She's very strong," he replied. "Can we go upstairs now?"
Preacher Harris was tugging at my arm. When I turned to him, he drew me to one side. "Let's pack it in here," he said urgently. "Altogether." He was looking at Rachel stuffing whole cookies into her mouth and dribbling as much milk into her lap as into her mouth. "This-this-I can't-" Harris drew a deep breath. "We could never move her to the Barton house, anyway."
"Just take it easy," I said. "We'll work it out."
Shirley Mace reapproached her daughter when the girl set down the empty glass and beamed vacantly at us again. "Over to the shower now, Rachel," she said in a coaxing tone. The girl rose and shambled toward the corner where an open shower stall stood. En route she had to pass the jungle gym, and she reached upward and hand-walked the length of the overhead bars effortlessly.
The girl had a good figure although not a particularly feminine one. Her shoulders were extraordinarily broad, almost like a husky boy's. Her hips were boyishly small, too. With long hours of nothing to do except exercise on the jungle gym, it was no wonder she had developed the shoulders and upper arm musculature of a man.
Shirley Mace took a small hose and sluiced her daughter down from head to foot. Water splashed everywhere as the girl pirouetted, squealing happily. It was the first sound I had heard her make. When her mother turned off the hose, Rachel slapped herself on her bare stomach invitingly. "No more now, dear," Mrs. Mace said. She returned to us at the doorway. We went outside, and George Mace fastened the pin in the latch.
We filed up the stairs. "We'll turn it around," I said to Harris when we were in the kitchen again. "We'll bring the Bartons over here. Where is there a better place to keep everyone than in that basement stockade? Well-"
"No!" Shirley Mace exclaimed violently. She said it so loudly that her husband jumped. "I won't have the Bartons here to see-to see-"
"Quiet, you," Harris said to her. He appeared glad of the chance to sound off his frustration on someone. "Will it work?" he asked me.
"Better than we planned," I assured him. "You stay here while Dick and I round up the Bartons and bring them here."
"Right," Harris said. Removed from the disturbing presence downstairs, he was beginning to function again. He motioned with his gun at the Maces. "Sit down, you two."
"Well be right back," I said, and left the kitchen. After the bright lights in the basement, the night seemed triply dark outside. I went down the side walk and diagonally across the street to Dahl's car.
"Where's Harris? Where's the Maces?" he demanded.
"Change in the blueprint," I said as I opened the car door. "We're bringing the Bartons over here."
"No kidding? What the hell for?"
"Because it's a better setup. Drive slowly," I said to shut him up.
"But what-"
"Let's get ready to do the job we have to do."
I could tell he was sulking, but he drove to the Barton home, which was dark. We left the car and walked up the driveway to the rear of the house. When the first pass of the celluloid produced no result, I didn't feel I could wait. I took the pry-bar, inserted it between the sill and the edge of the door, and jacked the door away from the lock. The door sprang open with only a rasping squeak. Inside, I took Dahl's arm and pointed him toward the dining room. "The phone wires come in beneath the end window. Cut them."
I stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor until he returned from the mission. "Do we go up after 'em?" he wanted to know.
"Yes. The kids first. You have the tie-cords and gags?"
"Sure."
We climbed the stairs. They were well padded and well carpeted. We made no sound. The Schemer's diagram showed that the first bedroom at the top of the stairs was Tommy's, the fourteen-year-old son. His door was open. We could see him, face down, clad only in the bottoms of his pajamas, sleeping soundly.
"Let me handle this," Dahl muttered. He handed me two slip-knotted tie-cords. Approaching the bed, he flipped the boy onto his back, pinning him down at the same time as he clamped a hand over his mouth. "Ankles first," Dahl, said. I noosed them before Tommy had sufficiently roused from sleep to struggle. "Hands behind his back," Dahl continued, rolling the boy over while maintaining his hand gag. That was more difficult, but I managed.
"Reach in my right-hand pocket," Dahl went on. I found gauze pads and adhesive. It took only a moment to fashion a gag and apply it as Dahl removed his hand. Dahl then took the loose ends of the tie-cords and knotted them together, fastening wrists to ankles on a short tether. It prohibited much movement. The boy's flashing eyes glittered at us above the gag. He appeared more angry than afraid.
"That'll do for this one," Dahl assured me. He led the way to the bedroom of the eleven-year-old across the hall. The mechanics of the operation went exactly the same except that Dahl wasn't quite as rough. "Lie still, honey. Nobody's gonna hurt you," he whispered before we departed.
Ellen's room was next. I was afraid of this one. It was unlikely that the seventeen-year-old would be as heavy a sleeper as the younger children. The door to her room was closed. Dahl eased it open an inch at a time.
I was standing right behind him. I couldn't imagine why he kept opening the door wider and wider, far more than was necessary to slip inside. I put my lips to his ear. "What's the matter?" I murmured.
He opened the door all the way and moved to one side to let me see for myself.
Ellen Barton's bed was neatly turned down, but it hadn't been slept in.
And of Ellen Barton herself there was no trace.
13
"D'you think she's sleepin' at a girl friend's?" Dahl muttered.
"More likely a boyfriend's," I replied, thinking of the Schemer's report on the elder Barton daughter. "Let's make sure of the Bartons."
Ellen Barton's disappearance from her room was just one more thing gone wrong in a night notably full of same. We backed out of her bedroom and moved down the hall. The door to the master bedroom was closed, too. I could hear snoring.
There was no need for finesse now. There was no one left to be wakened by a scream. I opened the bedroom door and walked in. Behind me, Dahl flicked on the light switch. Dahl and I were standing on either side of the bed by the time Thomas Barton struggled from the depths of sleep to a sitting position. Thelma Barton snored on.
The bank manager blinked at Dahl's mask. "What- what-" he stammered.
"Quiet," Dahl ordered. His eyes on the sleeping Thelma Barton, he picked up the husband's pillow.
At the sound of Dahl's voice, the snoring stopped. Thelma Barton spoke with her eyes closed. "Put out that light, Tom," she said. "You shouldn't have had that last bottle of beer."
"Dear," her husband began.
I don't know what it was she thought she heard in his voice, but her eyes snapped open. I could see the scream starting from her toes. Dahl saw it, too. He dropped the pillow onto her face. The scream dissipated itself in a hissing sound. Dahl held the pillow in place till she stopped fighting it. "Quiet," he warned again, and removed the pillow.
Thelma Barton sat up. She was the picture of indignation. Her hair was in curlers and her nightgown had slipped off one shoulder, disclosing an undersized breast. "You two will go to the electric chair for this," she proclaimed, jerking the gown back into place. She had a jaw-line like a grenadier guard. "Where are my children?" she demanded, glaring at Dahl.
"In their beds," Dahl replied. I could tell from his voice he was enjoying himself. "Except Ellen."