“What about the girl?”
“He … I didn’t like him, Mr. Raglan, and I am afraid I lied. I told him I saw no girl, that it was a man who brought it.”
“And … ?”
“You should have seen his face! It was livid! ‘A man?’ He yelled it, Mr. Raglan, and then he rushed outside and got into a van.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You couldn’t have handled it better. Thank you.”
For a moment he stood by the bar, thinking. Maybe he had lived too long with doubts and suspicions, but at this point he had no idea what was going on or how Erik was involved, if at all. Until he knew more he must move with caution. Erik was, he gathered, in serious trouble, but what kind of trouble? And over what? What kind of trouble could a man get into in the desert, miles from anyone?
Opening the packet he discovered what he had half-expected to discover, Erik Hokart’s daybook. Erik had long kept a record of his work when a step-by-step record of an experiment might be very important indeed. Tossing the book to the bed, he took up a copy of an Eric Ambler mystery he had finished reading and rewrapped it with the same paper and string, leaving it in plain sight at the end of the bar.
A few minutes later he was in bed with the daybook under his pillow and his .357 close to his hand. A light snow was falling at the time he dropped off to sleep. It was his last memory for several hours.
When the years have accustomed a man to danger there are some feelings that remain with him; one is a subconscious awareness. Exhausted as he was, a surreptitious stirring awakened him. Somebody or something was in the room!
Ever so slightly he lifted his head. A broad-shouldered man, his back toward Mike, had just moved up to the bar and picked up the brown-wrapped package. The man turned toward the window.
With the .357 in his hand Mike said, “I can’t imagine why a man would risk his freedom to steal a book he could buy on any newsstand for a couple of dollars.”
“Book?”
“Erik Hokart and I have exchanged books for years. If he reads one he likes he sends it to me and I do the same with him. But if you want it that bad, please take it.”
“Book?”
“Get out! If you come here again I’ll kill you. I don’t like thieves.”
The man ducked through the slit where the curtain joined and through the glass doors, which stood open. Mike heard the sound as the man dropped to the ground—no great drop for an active man. Walking to the window Mike drew it shut and locked it, watching the man crossing toward the highway. Headlights came on and a white van moved off toward Durango.
Taking the daybook and his gun, he went into the bathroom and showered and shaved. As he shaved he thought about Erik. That the man believed himself in serious trouble was obvious from his letter. Even from his first message it had been clear that something was wrong, and Erik was not given to sudden notions or apprehensions.
Erik’s telephone call had been brief and to the point. “I need,” he said, “somebody with your particular interests, somebody with your brand of thinking. I will cheerfully pay all expenses and for your time.”
“It’s impossible right now, Erik. I’ve started something that must be finished.”
Erik had been silent, then had said, “Come as soon as you can, all right? I don’t want to talk to anybody else about this.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Again that hesitation. Was he speaking from a public phone? Were there others around, perhaps listening? “Tell you when you get here. You’d think I was off my rocker.” He hesitated again. “At least, anybody else would.”
They had said their good-byes and then Erik had said, quickly. “Mike? Please! I’m desperate!”
Mike remembered how he had hung up, startled, staring at the phone. That was so unlike Erik Hokart. The man must truly be in trouble, but at that time he had not connected it to his own knowledge of the country. Somehow the two ideas had not come together in his mind. Had he realized …
Then he got the letter. The writing was erratic, totally unlike Erik’s.
For God’s sake, come at once! I need you, Mike, if ever I needed anyone. If it’s money, I’ll pay, but come! And be careful. Trust no one. No one at all.
Meet me on the Canyon road, you know the one. If I am not there, for God’s sake, find me!
If anyone can handle this it will be you. I am sending the record as far as it goes. Get us out of this, Mike, and I’ll be forever indebted.
III
Us? Was someone with him then? Mike had worried about that plural more than once since the letter arrived, and during his flight west. None of it made sense. Erik had always been a loner, attractive to women but seemingly not attracted by them.
Mike Raglan turned the idea over in his mind while dressing. Then he made coffee and seated himself at a table where he could see both the glass doors and the front entrance. He put the .357 on the table in front of him. He was not expecting trouble, yet they had gone so far as to force an entry to his condo in the night. What might follow he did not know.
He opened the daybook, and using his thumb as a marker he sat back, curiously reluctant to delve into its contents. Men had taken the country too much for granted. The obvious dangers and benefits tended to obscure much else, and most people had thought of the West in terms of fur, buffalo, gold, silver, cowboys, Indians, and cattle, rarely looking beyond the surface.
The Indians the white man met were no more the original inhabitants of the country than were the Normans and Saxons the original inhabitants of England. Other peoples had come and gone before, leaving only their shadows upon the land. Yet some had gone into limbo leaving not only physical artifacts but spiritual ones as well. Often, encroaching tribes borrowed from those who preceded them, accepting their values as a way of maintaining harmony with the natural world.
There were ancient mysteries, old gods who retired into the canyons to await new believers who would bring them to life once more. Who has walked the empty canyons or the lonely land above the timber and not felt himself watched? Watched by what ghost from a nameless past? From out of what pit of horror and fear?
The Indian had always known he was not alone. He knew there were others, things that observed. When a man looked quickly up, was it a movement he saw or only his imagination?
The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?
We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?
Each year our knowledge progresses, each year we push back the curtain of ignorance, but there remains so much to learn. Our theories are only dancing shadows against a hard wall of reality.
How few answers do we possess! How many phenomena are ignored because they do not fall into accepted categories!
Ours is a world that has developed along materialistic, mechanistic lines, but might there not be other ways? Might there not be dozens of other ways, unknown and unguessed because of the one we found that worked?
Mike Raglan refilled his cup and put the daybook on the table. He did not know the answers. He had seen things and heard things that made him wonder. In a lifetime devoted to exposing fraud and deception, investigating haunted houses, mediums, and cult religions, he had come upon a few things that left him uneasy.
That man now? The one he had found in his condo, stealing his book. Who was he? Why did he want the daybook? Did he want it for himself or was he sent by someone to find it?
Why Mike had the impression, he did not know but he did believe the man was sent by others. He had obviously come to secure the daybook, and he might return.
He agreed with the girl at the desk that there was something about him, some aura of strangeness. Yet he also had the look of a professional, a man who knew his job and how to go about it.