bridge boards clattered. He reached the turn, and when he was around it, skidding and throwing shell, he saw she was farther ahead. He swore again. She had seen his lights come on, and she was trying to run away from him. He ground on the throttle again. And then he saw it happen. It was sickening.
Her headlights slued crazily and then swung, tilted against the sky, as the car went out of control, skidded, and went over. For one terrible part of a second they were at right angles to the road, shattering light against the wall of grass, then they disappeared as if the car had been swallowed, instantly and entirely, by some huge monster of the swamp. There was no sound at all, not yet; nothing but the awful evidence of the lights and then the end of them, as he hit the brakes with pure reflex and began fighting his speed down just inside the margin of control. There was no time to wonder what had happened, until the sound did reach him, and then he knew. In the second before he heard the crash, he heard the other thing. It was a gun.
His car was skidding now. The rear wheels were yawing toward the ditch. He eased the brake and fought it back onto the crown of the road, and when he straightened out again he was almost on the spot. There was no Cadillac in his lights. He could see the road, and it wasn’t there. There was a canal, and a wooden bridge with one railing, and that was all he saw before he slashed down with one hand at the light switch, set the hand brake, arid was out and running even before the car had shuddered to a stop.
Darkness swallowed him. He ran bent over to keep from silhouetting himself against the-sky, and he could see nothing except the faintly luminous shell of the road. Then he felt the bridge flooring under his feet, and stopped. There was dead silence now except the pounding of his heart and the suck and slap of water as the wave the Cadillac had set up died away in the pads and grass farther along the bank of the canal. It was the left-hand railing that had been ripped off, and even as he jumped he could make out the dark shape of something that could be part of the car sticking out of the water.
The water came up to his shoulders, and he could feel mud suck at his feet as he threshed his way forward, groping for the car. It couldn’t make any difference, he thought bitterly; she’s dead anyway. Then his hand hit something. It was a tire. He raised his head and could make out all four of them, just sticking above the surface. The car was lying on its top. He went under, groping frenziedly along the side. His arm brushed broken glass, and he felt the pain of a bad cut. The door handle had to be just above that glass somewhere. Then he felt it. He pulled. It was jammed.
The other door, he thought furiously. God, how long had it been now? As he floundered around the end of the car and down on the other side, some part of his mind was still trying to guess what the man with the gun was doing. Where was he now?
The water was deeper here. He took a quick breath and went under. It took only a second to locate the door handle. He unlatched it and pulled, feeling the terrible need to hurry run through him like physical pain. It was stuck. He set his feet against the side and heaved, fighting it. The door moved a scant inch and stopped. He pulled himself down to his knees and felt along the doorframe, and then he knew what it was. The top of the car had settled so far into the mud that the only way the door could be opened would be to dig enough of the muck from in front of it to allow it to swing. And long before he could do that she would be dead, if she weren’t already.
Then he felt a surge of hope. The window was rolled down. There was opening enough for him to slide through by keeping his stomach flat against the mud. He was pulling himself down when he felt the car shift a little and settle again. He