Jim looked at Aunt Annie and sighed. Far from finding Jerry Duprey, he was getting into further difficulties. It didn't make any sense to him, but it was going to.
He took Aunt Annie by the hand and led her to the door. "Do you remember Dupery’s room number?" She nodded. "Three twenty-eight, the room over mine. I haven't heard a noise from there since he went up, but even if the walls are thin, the ceilings and floors are not," she whispered co-spiritedly into Jim’s ear.
"Maybe Mr. Duprey has disappeared?" She sounded hopeful.
Maybe Jerry HAD disappeared. For Jim’s money Duprey could stay lost. He had cost Jim a grand because, after all, Mitchell said to keep the guy in Fort Worth. Jim could bet by now Mitchell knew Jerry wasn't in Texas. Bay St. Louis and Fort Worth were a couple of states apart. But there was something more curious about the present situation than Jim had imagined. He asked, "Is Leddon new on the job? What about George, the bartender?"
Aunt Annie frowned. "George came here with Leddon, or so Lena said. He isn't much of a bartender, is he?" Jim agreed he wasn't, then added, "But I'd make a bet he was a crack shot with a thirty-eight. You say the bellboy's been here for years?" She nodded.
"Look," Jim said, "I have no idea why anything we say to each other is important, but I intend to find out what's going on around here. No use playing games with the guy across the way. Both you and Lena need to stay in your rooms tonight. That's an ORDER!"
"But Bertha?" she protested. Aunt Annie looked worn out. He escorted her to her door.
"Forget Bertha and try the bed," he advised her.
"You'll be o.k. I have something else to do."
The bristly one opened the door across the way and just stared at them. Jim gave him a salute, extracted Lena from Aunt Annie's room and heard them both lock their doors. The Grand Manor seemed less and less a seaside resort.
There was something peculiarly sinister even in the looks of the place with its tall ceilings and damp dark halls.
He closed the door and waited five minutes before he turned off the light. In another five minutes, he heard the watchdog walk cautiously down the hall. The man might be back after he got the word from Leddon or George or whoever was in charge.
In the dark, Jim took off his shoes and put on tennis shoes and from a half light through the window picked out a dark shirt. The truth be told, Jerry had less of his attention than Leddon and the thirty-eight George the bartender had trained on him to give him a scare. He thought he might as well find another way out of this joint. It seemed he might need it, although what he was going to do with Aunt Annie and Lena he didn't know.
They had certainly made themselves his problem. For a minute he wondered again who Bertha was.
He walked down the hall to the back stairs and swung open the door under the light marked Exit. He started to stick his head out to survey the situation when he heard a creak on the stairs above. Half-closing the door, Jim looked up to the next landing. From the shape of the man in the dim light, it was Jerry Duprey.
Ordinarily he would have stopped Jerry as he went by. However, there were too many things about the Grand Manor he did not understand. So he let him go by, stepping back and flattening himself against the wall, just in case he would make a turn into the second floor door. But he didn't. As he creaked down the stairs, Jim could tell the man was not drunk, but secretive he was. Jim waited until the man made it around the next landing and then followed.
Rain streamed down the window on the door at the bottom of the stairs, as it hung slightly open. He could look through it without being seen because of an outside light. Duprey stood talking to the fat character, the epitome of bellboys. The pantomime was perfect even if he couldn't hear because of the strengthening wind and rain. The fat character handed Jerry a bunch of keys and disappeared around the building. Jerry went the other way, and Jim slid along the wall and waited until he heard a car start. Then he dashed to the rental car.
He waited until Duprey got to the first turn, flipped on the headlights and followed him.
On the straight road to Highway 90, Jim shut off the lights and cruised in blackness far behind. There were only two ways to go on 90, and Jim gave Duprey plenty of time because the headlights could tell which way he turned.
He liked Jerry even less for dragging him out on such a night, but he kept finding a larger sized bone to pick with him as time went on, and whatever he was up to right now appealed to Jim’s insatiable curiosity.
Jerry turned left on 90, heading toward New Orleans. One car bore down on him. Jim turned in back of it, and switched on his lights.
He kept his eyes on Dupery’s car and followed at a somewhat lesser speed, even when the car ahead passed Duprey and finally disappeared from view. Several more cars passed both of them. Jim was beginning to wonder if Jerry had a little high life in New Orleans in mind when the car slowed and turned right. Where he was going Jim didn’t have any idea, but he pulled off on the shoulder of 90 and waited.
The side road Duprey took didn't look too inviting. However, after a few minutes Jim turned right and followed. He could see the lights far ahead on a straight, sandy road.
Then the lights turned to the left. Jim turned off his lights and drove slowly, trying to keep in mind how far it was before the turn.
The road was a dilly, the original of the corduroy roads, and it was a good thing it ran straight as far as it did. Jim could hardly see.
But he could feel the encroachment of tall, thick pines on either side of the road. Then, as the road turned slightly left it was open ground for probably a quarter of a mile. When he saw Jerry's lights, he stopped the car and squinted into darkness and rain. There were no houses with lights, and there were no lights anywhere because Jerry's lights suddenly turned off. For a moment the rain paused. To his left, along the glitter of a man-made canal revealed by half a moon that scudded out and then quickly into a cloud, he saw a sandy single-tracked path almost hidden by marsh grass. He drove the car a bit further down the main road from the highway, far enough so it couldn't be seen from the side road in case Duprey decided to leave suddenly.
Jim had been a lot of places, but there was a feeling about this particular spot that made him uneasy. Here he was, a mile or so from a main highway which crossed the southernmost part of the United States with a full compliment of traffic day and night, and there were no houses, no signs of humanity except for a deserted subdivision, Jerry, and his own damned curiosity, and more rain! It was as if somebody had turned the sky upside down.
But there was no wind. The rain came straight down.
It was hot and humid, but he shivered as he crawled out of the car and closed the door quickly. After a couple of brushes with prickly palmettos, he came upon the side road and trudged down it in the direction Jerry had parked his car. Already soaking wet, he felt the rain run down his back as he sloughed through an inch of water. It didn't make him any happier with Jerry. If this was his idea of celebrating his Aunt's death, it didn't appeal to Jim.
He was almost on Dupery’s car before he saw it outlined in a flash of lightning. The darkness worked both ways because Duprey couldn't see him either. He stepped to the side of the road and peered into the darkness. He saw the light, obviously a flashlight from the way it moved, about sixty yards ahead and fifty feet to the left of the road. He squatted down on his haunches, wishing he had a cigarette, and watching the light move. It moved in a square, which seemed most odd. Duprey seemed to be searching for something, but from the frantic sweeping of the flashlight beam, he was not successful. Duprey returned to his car, switching off the flashlight as he opened the door.
Jim scrambled past several tall pines and flattened out on the ground which was unwholesomely soggy. He silently cursed Jerry unmercifully. Of course he was only talking about himself for following Duprey to this God-forsaken place. Durprey reached inside the car and then lit a cigarette. Jim could see him plainly because for a long time Duprey sat on the edge of the car seat, ignoring the rain, shielding the cigarette with the car roof, and leaning back now and again to take a drag. He seemed to be staring into the direction from which he had come. Wallowing in water, Jim wished Duprey would start the ignition and get the hell out of there. His wish came true.
All of a sudden Duprey retreated into the car, slammed the door, and switched on the ignition. There was something of fright in the way he backed up across the road, spun his wheels in the sand, and turned around. Jim was glad it wasn't his car Duprey was driving.
Straightening it out, Duprey took off, bumping down the road at about fifty, which was too fast for this kind of road. Jim watched until he was out of sight, got to his feet, took out his flashlight, and walked in the general direction of the place where Duprey had been searching.
The flashlight beam was straight ahead about three feet off the ground so he didn't get a load of the fence. Falling flat on his face, he growled a curse before he found the flashlight turned face into the mud. Right next to it was a grave marker. If he had cracked his head on it, he might still be there.
He flashed his light around a small 25 foot square graveyard! Once it had been surrounded by a fence, but it was part up and part down, mostly the latter. Maybe the graveyard was originally well populated, but not now. There was a cross in one corner, and another cockeyed grave marker in the middle, and pine needles all over the place. Turning the light on the grave markers, he could see nothing but two simple stone crosses. If there had been any markings, they were long since gone. The ground around the markers was rich and black.
Jerry Duprey was never his favorite person, but he conceded he was not stupid. Jim had to give this graveyard business a couple of thoughts. But, at the moment, he felt he could do better with the thoughts back in his car.
Again, as he sloshed back down the road, he marveled while he was a little more than a mile off Highway 90, he felt as if he were in a strange, remote world. He didn't like the feeling at all.
For a long time he sat in the car smoking one cigarette after another, watching patches of low fog billow along the road in the car lights.
Jerry was up to something with determination.
With equal determination he was going to find out about it. But now he decided he would rather be back in the hotel and in bed. This had been a long day, and he needed a little shuteye. He backed the car into the side road, and headed to the highway.
There was traffic, but he was glad for the company. People around him took the strangeness off his trek to the graveyard.
When he left the highway and took the coast road to the Grand Manor, he felt almost human. He doused the lights and looked around. The place was spooky, but not as spooky as his last surroundings. If there were any lights in the building, he didn't see them.
He intended to head for bed in short order.
According to the experts on such matters, your hair stands on end and you get a warning tingling of the spine or a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach cluing you in on imminent danger. That's a bunch of hogwash, because he walked around the corner of the hotel and no such signals hit him. But something did, right square on the head.
When he came to, his nose was in the mud and the flashlight was broken. It was still pitch dark, and his head must have been harder than he thought because he had an idea he hadn't been out long. He felt like he had one swell hangover without the pleasure of the drinks.
He picked himself up and wobbled to the back door. Pushing it open, Jim sat down on the first step. He used a lighter and looked at his watch, and he was right. He hadn't been out for more than a few minutes. He stood up, still holding out the watch, but it started to rotate.
It trickled slowly through to him it wasn't the watch, but his head. So he sank down on the first step. He groped at the second step for balance and plunked his hand into a wet spot.
Well, it was wet as opposed to dry, but it was sticky. Even in his befuddled state it didn't occur to him it was jelly. Another flick of the lighter said it was red, but it wasn't jelly. It was blood and a pretty good sized puddle.
He shook some sense into his head and raised the lighter. There was a trail all the way up the stairs. He held his hand out to keep his blood stained fingers off the wall and eased up the side of the staircase. At the second floor, he could see the puddles went on to the third.
On the top landing a dim light appeared from under the third floor door. He guessed he was sort of a nut to go on up there, but at least he had his revolver. The guy who conked him had not bothered to take it. There were no inside noises, no creaks, just absolute and somewhat discomforting silence. And there was blood, but less of it than on the stairs.
Somebody seemed to have started running out of whatever it is that keeps us going.
Jim opened the door and saw nothing but the threadbare carpet in the third floor hall.
Walking quietly to the entrance from the front stairs, he started counting doors on Aunt Annie's side of the building. The light was too dim to show any numbers, and light he didn't need. Duprey's room was right over Aunt Annie's, so she said. Jim stood in front of the door for a minute and listened. There wasn't even a snore, if Jerry had time to hit the sack.
In fact, it was deadly quiet, and he didn't like the sound of the adverb that came to mind. He turned the knob and pushed. The door opened. He didn't turn on the light, but he didn't have to.
Even the dim light from the hall was enough to show the bed. On it was a hulk of a body. It couldn't have been anything else. From the size and shape, he guessed he was saying goodbye to Jerry Duprey. There was a whisper of a sound, like a sleeve scraping the wall. At least he had sense enough not to go into the room. He ducked and took off down the hall in record time.
Jim went down the front stairs, took a quick look at Lena and Aunt Annie's doors, slipped into his room and locked the door behind. He put a wooden chair under the knob just for fun. He had a lot of thinking to do, but he needed a drink, and he needed to do his thinking dry. Without turning on the light, he groped for the bottle and took a long drink.
He toweled his hair dry, wincing as he crossed the sore spot, pulled off his clothes, and stretched out on the bed. The bed was almost as uncomfortable as he had imagined.
The guy on the bed upstairs didn't bother him too much. From his acquaintance with him, he wondered how Durpey had lived so long. He supposed he could have rushed out through the downpour to announce the demise to the local police. It was most unethical not to do so.
However, the body would keep. Well, after a fashion it would, and morning was already here. He wondered sleepily what the late lamented Jerry Duprey was doing out in the middle of no place, running up and down a deserted and half obliterated graveyard with a flashlight. Obviously he was searching for something. His association with Duprey said it wasn't "hay"! Obviously, he could hardly ask Duprey now.
Within 24 hours Jim had indulged in a Mickey, traveled across a couple of states, taken on two half-zany females to protect, and been conked over the head. He had a few questions for Aunt Annie and Lena. But he had it for the day. He rolled over and went to sleep.