police? I mean, that was always your impression, wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Why did you think so? Try to remember.”
She looked at me helplessly. “I don’t know, Jack. I—I guess it was just because I couldn’t think of anything else a man would run from. There couldn’t be many other things, could there?”
“Yes,” I said. “Probably dozens of them. A woman. Some man who was after him. The draft, during the war. A scandal of some kind. Blackmail. But the chances are that it was the police. Didn’t you tell me once that when you had to run like that, it was usually after he’d seen someone you thought he was afraid would recognize him, and that it wasn’t the same man each time?”
“Yes. That’s right. It happened at least three times. I mean, that many times that I saw the man myself. And it was always a different one.”
“Do you remember anything about these men? How did they look, and so on? I mean, was there anything special about them?”
“No-o. Except that they didn’t seem to be policemen themselves. The first one looked as if he might be a sawmill hand or something like that. Another time it was a better-dressed man standing in a line at the post office. And—oh, I don’t know, Jack. They looked just like anybody else.”
I tried to add it up. There wasn’t much to go on. These people he kept trying to dodge didn’t make much sense except that the chances were they were ex-cons. An ex-convict can be anybody, and you won’t know it or notice him unless, of course, you happened to be one yourself and were there with him and knew him. But why the running? Of course, a man who’s served time and is trying to forget it isn’t anxious to run into any of his old friends who might expose him to the community, but he’s not that afraid of them, at least not to the extent of throwing up his job every time and dragging his wife all over the country. If that was all it was, he’d have probably told her anyway. An escaped convict? A good chance, I thought. And there was still that impression I’d had that I had seen him somewhere before.
I sat still, thinking. My mind was perfectly clear now and I could see all the angles. It’ll have to do, I thought. There’s a good chance that he’s wanted for something pretty bad, in which case we’re in luck. And if he’s not on the lam from something, at least we’re not any worse off than we are now. The thing to do is go back to town and find out. And then, if he is, come back here after him. Killed, resisting arrest.
No, I thought. It won’t work; not that way. It would be tomorrow before I could get back, and by that time he’d have been dead too long. It’d never fool anybody. But I began to see it then, the other way, the perfect setup I’d been looking for. It was a long-shot bet, and it all depended on what he was wanted for and how badly, but if it worked we were out of the woods forever.
“What is it, Jack?” she asked, staring at my face. “What are we going to do?”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I think I know the way now. There isn’t anything you can do, so you just wait here for me, and when I get through we can go. I’m going back to the house.”
“Back there?” she asked with horror. “I have to,” I said. I leaned forward and kissed her, holding her face tightly between my hands. “I’ll be back before long.”
Without waiting for her to say anything. I got up and went back along the trail toward the cabin. As I neared it I saw the old hound lying under the porch, and suddenly I realized I had forgotten about him altogether, or had never thought of him at all. What were we going to do with him? We couldn’t just leave him here to starve on this island. Oh, hell, I thought, he can swim. He’ll get off.
I stepped up on the porch, dreading it. It had looked good when I’d thought of it back there at the boat landing, but it wasn’t going to be easy to do.
Twelve
Putting it off wasn’t going to help any. I stood in the center of the room looking down at the man I’d