Terror in the Town Read online

  Edward S. Aarons

  Terror in the Town

  CHAPTER ONE

  A PALE moon shone on the water, and cold stars danced in the sky. Under the full moon, the tide along the Pelican River raced wide and deep, tumbling toward the sea.

  The hunted man, laboring through the underbrush, paused at the river bank and stood in a stiff attitude, listening. A night wind thrashed the scrub woods that studded the cape behind him. From over the sand dunes came the muffled boom and crash of the Atlantic surf.

  A mile to the rear, the wriggling lights of his pursuers were scattered on the flanks of Lookout Hill. The lights winked and danced and formed an implacable arc behind him, gathering him in between the crescent horns of the hunters. Manuel shivered and ran clumsy hands over his face. His body trembled with cold, and his dungaree shirt was dark with sweat. His lungs ached when he breathed—swift, stabbing needles of white pain that went deep into his massive chest.

  He regarded the river with exhausted, frightened eyes. He couldn’t swim, although all the thirty years of his life before this had been spent on the dark sea. If he could find a dory, his dulled thoughts ran, he could get across to the mainland; but his mind was aflame with fever and his chest ached; he could not think. Yet he had to get away. Those men on the hill would show no mercy, ask no questions if they caught him. They would shoot first, those hard, calloused fishermen of Easterly.

  “I must hide,” he thought. “I’m sick and I need rest.”

  Turning, he felt his way through the tangled undergrowth on the river bank. There was a highway beyond the rise of land behind him, but he knew the troopers were there, waiting for him. His heavy shoes made a whispering sound as he crossed a patch of coarse sand, white in the moonlight; then his heels crunched on outcroppings of glacial granite that studded the cape.

  He dodged once, with a convulsive shiver, as a fishing seiner chugged upstream from Ipswich Bay. The riding lights of the fishing boat tickled the dark water with long, yellow fingers. The rich throbbing of an accordion, playing Portuguese music, mingled with the steady rhythm of the seiner’s engine. The hunted man crouched in the brush until the vessel had passed.

  Afterward, he wasn’t quite sure when the other man first appeared. Sometimes his mind would sleep, even while he was walking, and he would forget things, even important things. His pursuers were safely behind him when he found the abandoned cottage on the banks of the Pelican River. It was a summer place, empty now in the October winds that swept from the North Atlantic. Its shingled roof looked black in the pale moonlight, and there were no lights in the windows. He watched the little house for a long time, shivering in the cold, trembling with his fever. The pain in his chest was worse, and sleep tortured his eyelids, confusing his brain. Perhaps he went to sleep there on the porch, unable to manipulate the locked door. He didn’t remember. But when he opened his eyes, there was the tall man, watching him, looking down at him from under the shadows of the porch roof.

  He was tall and broad of shoulder, and he wore a short leather jacket and riding boots. Manuel couldn’t see his face clearly; the moon was behind him, and his head was shadowed in the brim of his hat. But he caught a flash of pale eyes as the tall man glanced upstream, made a thoughtful whistling sound between his teeth, and then looked down at him again.

  The newcomer had a shotgun cradled under his arm.

  The hunted man tried to struggle up to a sitting position, there on the porch in front of the locked door; but there was a queer weakness in him and he sank back, exhausted, his eyes sullen under slyly lowered lids.

  “I did not do it,” he mumbled.

  The tall man said nothing, just stared down at him.

  Manuel tried to control his labored breathing.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” he asked.

  “I won’t shoot you,” said the man with the gun. His voice was quiet and friendly. “Don’t be afraid, Manuel.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Manuel repeated.

  “I know you didn’t do it.”

  “The others will shoot me,” Manuel said. “I am not bad, I am only sick, but they think I am bad.”

  He sat up, his back to the cottage wall, his long legs sprawled toward the tall man. The effort to get erect caused a fresh outpouring of cold sweat, all over his body.

  “I just want to go fishing again,” he said. “I keep thinking of the sea, how beautiful it is to fish on the sea, with all the others, my good friends. So I run away, that is all I did. I did not do that bad thing.”

  “I know there’s no harm in you, Manuel.”

  Manuel looked up at the man’s shadowed figure. His voice went sly.

  “Did you do it?” he whispered.

  The tall man didn’t answer. Manuel sank back again.

  “I am sick. I do not know what the matter is, but I have a weakness inside me, and I am very sick.”

  “Come inside,” said the tall man. He spoke suddenly, as if he had come to a decision. “Come in, amigo.”

  He had a key to the padlock on the cottage door. It was warm inside, the cottage holding the heat of the day that was past. There was a rustic brick fireplace, some wicker chairs, and a big couch in one corner. Mounted over the fireplace was a long, lethal-looking harpoon, a relic of dead whaling days. The dim light glinted wickedly on the sharp steel barb. The tall man moved inside with familiarity, gesturing Manuel ahead of him. He kept the shotgun under his arm, and pointed to the couch in the corner.

  “Sit down over there,” he said.

  The couch felt soft and infinitely restful to the hunted man. He sat down carefully, aware of his heavy, muddy shoes and his sweat-stained dungarees. He leaned his big head against the rough pine wall behind him, his crescent eyes cautious, watching the other as he struck a match to tinder in the fireplace and then went to the windows and drew the red curtains tight over the glass panes. From a cupboard next to the fireplace the tall man took out a coffee pot, a can of coffee, and a small can of milk. There were other cans of food on the cupboard shelves. Not once, as he moved about, did he put aside the shotgun.

  The flames flickered upward on the hearth and spread a warm glow throughout the room. The barb on the harpoon mounted over the fireplace glinted bloodily in the dancing light.

  The tall man had dark hair and a lean, youngish face, clear and hard and tanned. He wasn’t more than thirty. His pale eyes surveyed Manuel without expression.

  “You are sick,” he agreed. “You need a doctor.”

  “No, they will shoot me.” Manuel watched him with dim puzzlement in his little eyes. He licked his lips. “I know you,” he said. “I remember you.”

  “Do you?”

  “You were a little boy. Is before they put me away, in that bad place. You go on my fishing boat, the Three Queens. You remember my beautiful green fishing boat, boy?”

  “That was a long time ago,” the tall man said, quietly. He put the coffee pot on the fire and rummaged in the cupboard again. He had a small tin of white pills in his hand as he approached Manuel. The hunted man shrank back before his smile. “You’re really very sick, captain. You need these.”

  “Why do you help me?” Manuel asked.

  “Because I know you didn’t do it. You never hurt anyone in your life, amigo. And because I was a little boy and you took me fishing on the Three Queens. And the fishing was good.”

  “I am very sick,” Manuel sighed.

  He swallowed the white sulfa tablet and sank back on the couch, shivering with a new chill. The tall man threw a blanket over his sweat-stained body and stood there a moment, looking down at him. His eyes were strikingly pale in his tan face. There was a thin white scar that crossed his left cheek and vanished under his thick black hair. It was not an unp
leasant scar, but it glistened oddly against the brown of his lean face.

  “You can stay here,” he said. “They’ll never look for you here. There is food in the cupboard, if you get hungry. Take a pill every four hours, and your fever will get better. Do you understand?”

  “I cannot tell time,” said Manuel. “I have no watch.”

  “Just take four a day—until tomorrow night. You will be safe here, Manuel. I’ll come back tomorrow night, but you must stay inside here, and not go out where you can be seen. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand,” Manuel said.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise,” Manuel said.

  The tall man shifted his shotgun to his other arm. He pulled the window curtains even tighter, and walked to the door. His glance hesitated on the harpoon on the wall. He left it there and smiling a crooked little smile, he stepped outside to the cottage porch.

  The Pelican River gurgled as it flowed down to the sea, almost at his feet. There was no sign of the county sheriff and his men. Over the hill to the south was a glow of light from the little fishing port of Easterly. The night was full of dark wind, rushing through the woods from the sea. From far in the distance came the solitary hoot of a train and the clatter of iron wheels on the bridge that connected the cape to the Massachusetts mainland. It was the last train in from Boston.

  CHAPTER TWO

  VERITY FARLAND watched the tired-eyed conductor sway down the aisle of the ancient railroad coach, balancing against the jolts of the train as it rattled across the causeway. Beyond her reflection in the window, the first dim lights of Easterly were scattered like beads against the darkness of the sea and the land. There were only two other passengers from Boston, both men, wearily asleep on the hard green coach seats.

  The conductor slipped her ticket from the bracket of the seat ahead of her and leaned over to peer through the windows. He made a clucking sound and looked down at Verity. “Easterly,” he announced. “That’s your stop, lady.”

  “Thank you,” Verity said.

  The wheels clattered and clanged over the bridge, then they eased past the outlying houses of the little fishing port. The sharp tang of the sea crept into the stuffy air of the coach. The conductor’s voice turned on a dubious note.

  “Do you have anybody waiting here for you?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Verity. She smiled. “My husband.”

  “That’s all right, then. I was just wondering—this being Easterly, and it’s pretty late in the night.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Verity nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” said the conductor.

  The train jerked spasmodically and wheezed to a halt. There was nothing but darkness and a chill October wind beyond the coach windows. Verity was the only one who got off.

  She waited a moment under the platform lights to adjust the flimsy wrappings of the parcels she had purchased in Boston. There were three tiny manikins, half a dozen fresh brushes wheedled from Soames & Mayfair on State Street, and a thick roll of sketch paper. By the time she had everything secured in her arms, the last of the antiquated wooden coaches rattled around the curve in the single track, and left her alone on the platform.

  She was a tall, slender girl, and although no one except her husband had ever called her beautiful, the planes of her face were clear and clean and her hair was the smooth color of fresh honey. She wore a light blue wrap-around topcoat and a small blue hat perched precariously on the back of her head. She looked perplexed and uncertain as she studied the empty taxi stand beside the platform. Then the lights of the passenger shed flickered out abruptly. The shadows drew closer, like waves washing around her feet, and the night was full of dark wind that rushed pell-mell from the nearby sea.

  The door to the station shed opened and a yellow rectangle of light flattened at her feet. A small pudgy man in a gray linen jacket came toward her, hurrying over the warped planks. His face was round and pink and concerned.

  “That you, Mrs. Farland?”

  Verity sighed with relief. “Oh, hello, Mr. Hanna. I was beginning to think I’d been deserted.”

  Mr. Hanna was solicitous. He took the roll of sketch paper from her arms, and reproved her with his eyes.

  “You oughtn’t to come back so late, Mrs. Farland. Not on the last train, anyways.”

  “Jess is supposed to meet me,” Verity told him.

  “Well, he ain’t here.” The station master had a nasal, down-East drawl. “Don’t think he will be here, neither. He’s prob’ly out with the rest of them scatterbrains, over to the north side of the cape. Sheriff Needles went up there, too.”

  “Are they still looking for that man?”

  “Shouldn’t wonder, Mrs. Farland.”

  Verity sighed helplessly. “Well, I’ll just have to walk home, then. They’ve put the taxis to bed, I see.”

  Mr. Hanna said uneasily: “You can’t do that, child.”

  “What can’t I do?”

  “You can’t walk home alone. It’s not safe.”

  “That’s silly,” answered Verity. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Ain’t silly, neither.” Mr. Hanna’s eyes were bright under their heavy, pink lids. “Not after what’s happened.”

  “But I can’t wait here all night,” Verity said. “And it certainly looks as if Jess has forgotten me.”

  Still she didn’t step off the station platform. The wind rustled dry leaves across the wooden planks into the tall hedge on the far side of the track. There was a gravel square on the town side of the station, flanked by a row of dark houses and a closed taproom. There were three billboards advertising, in turn, “Henshaw’s Codfish Cakes—A Treat To Eat,” “The Fisherman’s Inn—North Shore Beer,” and a Chamber of Commerce welcome to Easterly, “Quaint, Delightful, the Heart of the Massachusetts Shore.”

  The road swept beyond the three sagging billboards, topped a rise flanked by a giant, twisted oak, then wriggled down toward the harbor and the fish wharves. There was no one in sight. The solitary street lamp was caged in a wire net that cast a spider’s web of shadow across its feeble pool of light. Beyond that, the road was swallowed in windy darkness.

  She was more annoyed at Jess for not meeting her than disturbed at the prospect of the long walk home through the outskirts of Easterly. It wasn’t like Jess, although she had to admit that she really had little idea of what he was like. They had been married for two years, but she had only known him, really, for the three weeks since he had returned from the Pacific, even counting the ten-day furlough during which he had wooed and won her, as he put it. From the first, he had impressed her as being different from all other men she knew, somewhat like he sea that bred him—placid and calm for one moment, stormy and bleak the next. There was a great deal she didn’t know about her tall, handsome husband.

  She felt relief when the headlights of a car swept across the rise in the road and swung toward the station. Hurriedly, she took the roll of paper from Mr. Hanna’s arms.

  “That’s Jess now,” she said gladly. “I knew he wouldn’t leave me stranded.”

  Mr. Hanna shook his head.

  “That ain’t Jess. Looks more like Ernie Sande’s old car.”

  The station master was right. A sign on the spare wheel of the dilapidated sedan read, “ERNIE SANDE—REAL ESTATE—MARITIME LAW—SHIP’S CHANDLER.” He was stout and ruddy, with a loud, genial voice and fat, restless hands. He wore an old corduroy hat pushed back on his bald head, a gray turtleneck sweater, and a pair of wine-colored slacks. His voice boomed as he confronted Verity.

  “What are you doing here this time of night, Mrs. Farland?”

  Mr. Hanna said reprovingly: “She just got off the 12:10 from Boston. She was planning to walk home, alone.”

  “She can’t do that,” declared Ernie Sande. “Lucky thing I came along.”

  “I’d be grateful for a lift,” said Verity.

  “Sure thing, honey. You just hop in—
I won’t be but a minute. Want Matt to send a telegram. Didn’t think I’d catch him before he closed up.”

  They were gone inside the depot only a brief moment. Ernie Sande came out alone, ponderous and jovial, chuckling as he squeezed behind the wheel beside Verity.

  Verity asked: “Would you mind going down Main Street? I’m wondering if Jess might be at the office.”

  “Not at all, honey.”

  The old car rattled uphill and under the giant oak, then rattled down toward the center of the sleeping town. The clock on the City Hall tower chimed a half hour after midnight. No one was on the streets. Ernie’s big figure billowed forward over the wheel as he peered along the cobbled road.

  “You oughtn’t to do things like this, Verity,” he said. “Not the way things are right now, anyway. You ought to be more careful, until we catch that fellow.”

  “Do you really think he did it?” Verity asked.

  “Well, I guess so. He’s a looney, ain’t he?”

  “That doesn’t prove he strangled that poor woman.”

  “No telling what a looney will do. Manuel broke loose from the asylum a week ago and was spotted heading for Easterly. Four days after he was free, what happened? They find Lavinia Anderson dead, strangled to death.”

  Verity shivered. “Yes, I know. She was playing bridge with Aunt Ivy just the day before.”

  “Stands to reason a looney did it,” Ernie boomed on. “Found her under the footbridge across the creek, didn’t they? And that business of stranglin’ her to death with bare hands—that’s a lunatic’s work. Nobody in the world had a reason for killin’ that woman. Reminds me of the saying, ‘Death aims with fouler spite at fairer victims.’ But not Manuel. Not that boy. He picks old maids, like Lavinia, who never had an enemy in all Easterly. Strangled her, too. Big hands did it. Like mine, Verity.”

  Involuntarily, Verity glanced at Ernie’s hands on the wheel. There were little pads of dark, furry hair between each knuckle, and a dark rim of dirt under the strong fingernails. A scent of earthy clay came from them.

  She clutched her parcels a little tighter and shifted away toward the window of the car.