Bill closed his eyes and tried to relax, and then felt the seat jarred as a man sat down beside him. He turned and scowled at the guy. Maybe he ought to put up a turnstile and charge admission. The newcomer was a middle-aged character with a square red face and shoulders that crowded him against the side of the bus. He wore a rust-colored sports jacket and yellow sports shirt. Bill had noticed him a couple of times before, pointing out firmly to Holly Clark how arrangements for the trip could be improved.
“Heard you talking to that doctor,” the man said. “I’m just two seats ahead so I couldn’t help hearing. You did just right, telling him to mind his business.”
Bill said, “I get a lot of practice telling people that.”
“My name’s Blakeslee. George M. Blakeslee. I’m in lumber. No sir, once a man gets in the hands of a pill roller, it’s just too bad. Now take me. Never sick a day in my life. You know why? I stay away from doctors.”
“When they let me,” Bill said, “I stay away from people.”
“You don’t want to do that. Bad for a man. You ought to mix with people. Trip like this is the best thing in the world for a man. Get out. Meet new people. See new places. Travel gets a man’s mind off his troubles.”
“This trip’s starting to give me new ones,” Bill said, wondering if that would register. It didn’t, though.
“I admit it isn’t arranged perfectly. Not the way I’d handle things if I were running it. But it isn’t bad, though. I’ve been on worse. Last summer the wife and I took a trip through New England and . . .”
You couldn’t handle this guy gently. “Look, Blakeslee,” he said bluntly, “I’d like to rest. Do you mind letting me do it?”
“Sure, sure,” Blakeslee said. “Know just how you feel. Just thought I’d take a moment to cheer you up. Mark my words, in a few more days you’ll be back in the pink and sleeping like a baby.” He got up, slapped Bill on the shoulder and left.
This was going to be quite a trip if everybody on the bus had a pet recipe for cheering him up. Probably they all meant well, but he wasn’t likely to start sleeping like a baby in the near future. Not while he had an ugly little hunch that one of his pals knew he was on this bus, heading west.
Three
HE CLOSED the door of his tourist-court room and pulled the curtains across the windows so nobody could look in. The inside of his mouth tasted like an old inner tube and he could feel his heartbeat down to his toes. He was in Cheyenne, where Russ lived. Big dumb Russ, who might or might not talk. Who might or might not find out whether a guy named Bill Wayne could kill a man if he had to. Big dumb Russ.
Maybe he was overworking that word dumb. Let’s pretend Russ was the one who shot him that time in China. Then suppose that, a few weeks ago, somebody in Philadelphia sent Russ a newspaper clipping attached to a note saying, “Didn’t you know this guy?” Russ wasn’t so dumb he couldn’t read. The newspaper clipping would tell him Bill Wayne was alive and back home.
Maybe a brilliant guy would decide in five seconds that Bill Wayne might come around asking awkward questions and looking for trouble. Maybe it would take a brilliant guy all of a few hours to get started for Philadelphia, to head off the trouble before it began. It might take big dumb Russ a couple of days to get to the same point. But he would end up just as dangerous as the brilliant guy.
He unstrapped his suitcase and hauled out the automatic. It was a hunk of metal finished in rattlesnake gray. The thing sat up in his hand alertly, as if it were alive and had a mind of its own. He yanked back the slide and eased it forward and heard the solid snick of a cartridge seating itself in the firing chamber. Then he pulled the window curtain aside a few inches and peered out.
Across the way Holly Clark was talking to a couple of members of the Treasure Trip party. He heard her voice clearly. She was saying, “Yes, we’re really going to see a rodeo this afternoon. Of course it’s too early for the Cheyenne Frontier Days, which is the big rodeo, but one of the ranches near town will put on a riding and roping and shooting exhibition for us. We ought to start by two-thirty.”
He let the curtain fall back into place, looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He wasn’t going to the rodeo; he had told Holly he had a headache and wanted to rest. What he actually planned to do was wait until the Treasure Trip party got a good head start, and then scout around town to find out where Russ lived and worked. Meanwhile it might be nice to have the .45 handy. He wasn’t forgetting the nights he had lain awake recently, wondering if one of the gang knew he was on the bus heading west.
Hunches were queer things. Especially hunches that somebody was stalking you. Like the doc said that morning on the bus, it might be the result of your subconscious mind adding up tiny facts into a big one.
A guy shot at him and nicked his left side one night last month in Philadelphia. The gunman had to be one of his five former pals. The morning after the shooting he decided to get busy and settle things, and went to New York to shop for a packaged tour that visited the right places. He spent a couple of weeks in New York making his choice. Then he went to Chicago and waited for the tour to start. And all during that time, a hunch that he was being followed had grown stronger and stronger.
It wasn’t anything he could nail down. It might be a combination of tiny things: footsteps keeping pace with him too often, a vaguely familiar figure melting into a crowd, travel folders in his hotel room lying in a slightly different pattern than the way he had left them. The weird part of it was that he couldn’t imagine Russ or Ken or Frankie or Cappy or Domenic getting away with anything like that. He ought to be able to spot one of them a mile away.
He wasn’t going to take any chances, though. He had played target long enough and it was his turn to have the first shot. He stretched out on his bed and slipped the automatic under his pillow. It wouldn’t do any harm to relax before his trip into town.
He didn’t plan to go to sleep. And when he awoke he was ready to swear he hadn’t been sleeping. But a certain fact said he had been. The door was open. He couldn’t see the doorway without turning because it was on a line with the head of the bed. But he could see an extra splash of light on the rear wall and feel a faint stirring of air. He remembered he had failed to lock the door. It hadn’t blown open, though. It had a good latch. A hand had opened it softly and someone was standing in the doorway.
He moved slowly, like a man stirring in sleep, and let his right hand slide under the pillow and curl around the grip of the big automatic. He took a deep breath, helld it, leaped up. A girl was in the doorway. Not Russ or Cappy or Ken or Frankie or Domenic. A girl. He had to work it out slowly because his brain was churning along in a rut and didn’t want to leave it. A girl. Holly Clark.
She stared at the gun in his hand, shrank back. “Bill!” she gasped. “What’s the matter?”
He leaned down and shoved the .45 under the pillow. His hand was shaking a little. “You don’t want to walk in on me like that,” he said. “What’s the idea?”
“But I knocked,” she said weakly. “I knocked and called your
“Do you always walk into a guy’s room when he doesn’t answer? It must get you some interesting experiences.”
“I’m awfully sorry. I was telling Dr. Brown about your headache and of course he knows you haven’t been sleeping and I coaxed him to write out a prescription that might help. I came here to give it to you. When you didn’t answer, I scribbled a note and planned to leave it and the prescription in here.”
“I thought you were a big girl now and were going to stop tagging after me.”
“I don’t consider this tagging after you. It’s my job to run the tour, and keep everybody happy and healthy.”
“Yeah? Well, I