Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

Then I shrugged and tossed the blackened bits of metal back on the rubbish. This wasn’t accomplishing anything. Sure, he’d burned the suitcase; but what he done with the money? I went on back into the timber and began making long sweeps through it with my eyes on the ground.

Around ten o”clock I heard his motor again as he returned from fishing. Hardly knowing why, I came back toward the clearing. Perhaps it was curiosity. Here was the man who was the key to the whole thing, and I knew next to nothing about him; I’d seen him twice from a distance, and had spent one long and terrible minute staring at the seat of his overalls. I cautiously circled the open space until I could see the door in front of the cabin. Well screened by underbrush, I lay down to watch. Smoke issued from the stove-pipe, and in a short while he came out and sat down in the doorway with a cup of coffee. I still couldn’t see his face clearly because he was almost as far away as he had been those two times he’d passed me in his boat, but I had an impression of a pudgy and ineffectual little man made ridiculous by that gun-belt strapped about his waist. He put down the coffee cup after a while and walked out into the yard, moving with what he apparently considered the deadly crouch of the Western gunman. His hand shot down to the holster and came up with the .38, the cold-eyed and implacable frontier marshal facing his man in the street at sundown and beating him to the draw. Take that, you varmint! He repeated this several times, practicing the blazing wizardry with the Colt that had made him the scourge of the bad ones. The poor barmy little bastard, I thought.

He went back in the cabin, and when he emerged again he was carrying a magazine. He sat down in the doorway with his feet on the step, and began to read. It was probably cooler there than inside. He held the magazine very close to his face, not more than twelve inches away at most, and I noticed he had on a pair of the glasses I had seen while ransacking the place. Apparently his eyesight was considerably below the minimum standard for eagle-eyed lawmen; judging from where he was holding the magazine he wouldn’t be able to read it at all without those cheaters.

Oh? I frowned reflectively; an idea was beginning to nudge me.

Wait. Don’t go off half-cocked, I warned myself. Try to remember. He hadn’t had them on either of the times I’d seen him in his boat, nor just now while practicing his draw. I was certain of the latter, and reasonably sure of the former. Then he could and did get around without them, when he wanted to. Probably they were solely for reading. Could he read without them? I went on studying him, watching the way he labored at it with his face right up against the page and remembering the thickness of those lenses. There wasn’t a chance. I felt a tingle of excitement as all the parts of it began to fall into place. He’d take me right to it, and then never tell anybody else that he had.

When he finally tired of reading and went inside, I slipped backward and faded into the trees. Returning to the station wagon, I ate the sandwich and drank some coffee, and then sat smoking and thinking about it. The first thing I had to do was get back in the cabin. Today, if possible, for it would save a trip, and I was afire with impatience. Maybe my luck would hold and he’d go out fishing again in the afternoon. I returned to the point and waited. Hours went by. Finally, a little after five in the afternoon, I heard his motor start and he came out of the cove. He went on up toward the bend at the far end of the reach; maybe he’d found good fishing there this morning. I slipped through the timber, and when I reached the clearing I could still hear his motor fading away in the distance.

I entered the cabin, beginning to feel at home in the place now. The glasses he’d had on were atop the chest of drawers, where they had been before. I stepped quickly over to the trunk, lifted off the piles of magazines, and opened it. The others were still in the tray, inside their case. I slipped them out, and compared them. As far as I could tell, they were exactly alike; the ones in the trunk were merely a spare set in case he broke the others. They each had the same thick lenses that gave terrific magnification. Without them, he’d see ordinary print as a grayish and chaotic blur. So far, so good. I returned the spare set to their case, shoved them in my pocket, and closed the trunk. Leaving the other pair on the chest of drawers, I went out. On the way back to the car, I threw the ones I’d taken into the lake, case and all. They sank out of sight. I drove on back to town.

When I got home Jessica was out somewhere. Probably at a movie, I thought. I didn’t care; we were finished, and the hell with it. Once I got my hands on the late Mr. Haig’s enticing legacy . . . No, I cautioned myself, not so fast. Not until some of the heat had cooled down and they’d written this area off as a fluke. I might have to stick around as long as six months, just to be sure.

I showered, shaved, and changed clothes, and then began searching through a trunk full of personal gear for what I’d need. I found an old passport photograph that would do, and a slim black wallet I’d had for use with evening clothes. What else? Oh, yes; a piece of clear plastic. I couldn’t find any that would serve; that on my driver’s license was too small. Well, there should be something around the shop.

I drove over. It was dark now. I let myself in, re-locked the door, and went into the office, switching on the light over the desk. I drew the blind over the single window. Now, what about the plastic? The answer occurred to me almost instantly; I went out into the showroom and got a fly box out of the showcase, one of the small ones without compartments in it. Taking out my knife, I cut the bottom out of it. After rounding the corners slightly, I had a flat and transparent sheet nearly three inches by four. I studied it. Maybe it was too clear. Taking it back to the shop, I rubbed one side of it with steel wool to scratch it up a little. It was just right.

Back in the office, I went to work on the wallet with the knife, cutting a window in the inner flap just slightly smaller than the plastic. Then I slipped the latter under it, and stuck it in place with cement. I put the whole thing under the desk dictionary to set up while I prepared the card.

What, exactly, had it looked like? I couldn’t remember, and then realized that that in itself was the answer. It made no difference at all as long as it had a picture and a signature of sorts. I located an inventory card, rolled it into the typewriter, and pecked out a little form attesting that the following

Mr. _________ was a paid-up member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and was permitted to solicit on the streets after examination by a competent physician. Then I typed in George U. Ward as the name of the individual in question, signed his name in the lower left corner, and scrawled something flourishing and indecipherable in the lower right. I stuck the photograph to it with some more of the cement. Very impressive, I thought, studying it critically. I didn’t have anything I could use for a seal, but it didn’t matter. I trimmed it to the right size, tucked it in behind the plastic window in the wallet, and cemented it in place, wondering what the penalty was for impersonating a Federal officer, even with something like this. It didn’t matter, however; who would ever know?

The warrant was easier. I took one of the finance company’s standard mortgage forms from the desk, filled in Cliffords’ name, and signed it William Butler Yeats in another burst of calligraphic frenzy. Gathering up the scraps of leather and plastic left over from the operation, I disposed of them in the garbage can at the rear of the building. I sealed the warrant and the do-it-yourself credentials in an envelope, shoved it in my pocket, and went back to the house. Jessica still hadn’t returned. So much the better; I didn’t want her watching and wondering.