This time when the sign appeared ahead, she halted in the middle of the road, looking both ways, torn between a desire to run ahead and catch a glimpse of the town’s edge and an equal desire to flee back to the familiarity of the house.
“It can’t be,” she said aloud, and was shocked at the undisciplined break in her voice. “I’ve walked along this road a thousand times! There’s no way to get lost . . . ”
The sound of the word “lost,” with its implication of incompetence, had the effect of rousing a renewed surge of healthy indignation. Lost indeed! A sober, God-fearing, respectable adult woman didn’t get lost in broad daylight, like some drunken hobo! If she was confused, it was because the road had been changed! And now that she thought of it, that was no doubt the explanation: during the night, the road people had brought in their equipment and cut a new road through—everybody knew how quickly they could do it these days—without even telling anyone. The idea! And the new sign fitted in with it. Her jaw set determinedly, Mrs. Withers turned and started for home with a firm tread. This time she’d call the sheriff, and give that self-satisfied old fool a piece of her mind.
The busy signal went on and on. After dialing five times, Odelia Withers went into the kitchen, rigidly holding her expression of righteous disapproval, opened the icebox door, and began mechanically setting out lunch. Fortunately there was food on hand; it wasn’t that she had to shop today. Carefully holding her thoughts from her aborted walk to town, she prepared a sandwich from the last of the boiled ham and poured a glass of milk, seated herself in a ray of sunlight streaming past the ruffled curtains, and ate, listening to the tick of the clock in the hall.
She tried the telephone ten times in all during the afternoon. First the sheriff’s office, then the Highway Patrol, then the city police. The lines were all busy; probably a flood of complaints about the road. Then, on impulse, she dialed Henry, the mechanic at the station in town. Another busy signal. She tried the numbers of two of her friends, then the operator. All busy.
She turned the radio to her favorite program, a harrowing drama of small-town PTA politics, and busied herself cleaning the already spotless house until the shadows of late afternoon lay across the lawn. After dinner she tried one more call, hung up as the instrument emitted its impersonal zawwp, zawwp, zawwp . . .
The next morning she walked as far as the sign before returning home, filled with frustrating desire to complain to someone. Without thinking, she went to the icebox, took out the ham and the milk.
She frowned at the meat on the plate. Three slices. But she had eaten the last of the ham yesterday, two slices for lunch, the other in a salad at dinnertime. And the milk: she had finished it, put the empty bottle by the door . . .
She went to the cupboard, took down the jar of mayonnaise she had opened yesterday, removed the lid. The jar was full, untouched.
Odelia Withers proceeded to prepare lunch, eat, and wash the dishes. Then she put on a sun hat and went into the garden to cut flowers, an expression of determined disapproval on her face.
3
“It’s a kook item,” Bill Summers, the “Personalities” editor of Scene magazine, said in his usual tone of weary disparagement. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not news.”
“Some guy goes poking around in the off-limits section of an Arab town and gets a mob after him,” Bud Vetch, Scene’s number one field man, said. “Maybe that’s a hot item to the local U.S. Embassy, but what’s it to the public?”
“Didn’t you look at the pics?”
Vetch yawned as Summers passed the three five-by-eight glossies across to him. “So some tourist had a Brownie with him,” he said. “Amateur photo hounds . . . ” His voice faded as he looked at the top picture. It showed a tall, ungainly, stoop-shouldered man with a hollow face, deep-set eyes, a short black beard, a prominent wart, dressed in a dowdy black suit and a high hat. In the background were visible a crowd of white-robed men around a merchant’s stall. Vetch looked at the next shot. It showed the man seated at a table under an awning, bushy head bared, fanning himself with the hat, apparently deep in conversation with a khaki-uniformed native policeman. The third photo was a close-up of the lined face, looking back, with a slightly surprised expression.
“Hey!” Vetch said. “This looks like—”
“Yes,” Summers cut him off. “I know all the wise remarks you’re going to make. I don’t know what this bird’s angle is, but if he wanted to attract attention, he did it with bells on. The locals don’t have a very good idea of chronology. An official inquiry came through to Washington this morning from their Foreign Office, and State had to send them a formal reply, confirming the man in question was dead. That’s when the chili really hit the fan. The Tamboolans say they’ve seen pictures and they have a positive ID on this character, and that he’s very much alive. Either that, or he’s an afreet. Either way, it’s a problem. I want you to get there before the bubble bursts and interview this fellow.”
Vetch was still studying the photos. “It’s uncanny,” he said. “If this is makeup or a mask, it’s a top-quality job.”
“What do you mean, ‘if’?”
“Nothing—I guess,” Vetch said. “By the way, did this fellow give a name?”
“Sure,” Summers growled. “He told them he was Abraham Lincoln.”
4
“I’m glad to see the last of that sin-killer,” Job Arkwright growled, standing at the cabin door, watching the slight, dandified figured in the incongruously elegant greatcoat and boots disappear along the snow-blanketed path into the deep shadows of the virgin forest.
“It were a mean trick, Mr. Arkwright, making poor Fly help you cut all that cordwood—and then sending the poor slicker out in this weather,” Charity Arkwright said. “After all, he’s a preacher—even if he does have that sweet little mustache.”
“I’ll sweeten his mustache!” Arkwright glowered at his mate, a young, large-eyed woman with an ample bosom and slim waist. “If you’d of went ahead and fattened up like I ast you, you wouldn’t have no trouble with them kind of fellers!”
“No trouble,” Charity murmured, and patted her hair. “All the while you were out hunting rabbits, he set by the fire and read scripture to me. My, didn’t I learn a lot!”
“Well—just so he didn’t get no idears.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee! I didn’t give him a chance to.”
“I wisht I knew jist how to take that,” Job muttered. “Looky here, girl, did he—”
“Hark! What’s that?” Charity cupped a hand to her ear. “Somebody coming?”
Job grabbed his muzzle-loader down from its place and swung the door open. “Can’t be no hostiles,” he said. “They don’t make that kind o’ racket!” He stepped outside. “You stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll have a look-see.”
He moved to the corner of the cabin. The crashing sounds from the underbrush approached steadily from the deep woods to the rear of the house. The brush parted and a bedraggled figure emerged from the last entangling thicket and halted, staring across toward the cabin.
“Who’s that?” Job barked.
“Why—’tis I, Fly Fornication Beebody,” a breathless voice came back. “Brother Arkwright—is it thee, in sooth?”
“Who else? Ain’t nobody else in these parts. How’d you get around back? And what the devil are ye doing there? I thought you was headed for Jerubabbel Knox’s farm when you left here.”
“Don’t take the name of the Fiend lightly,” Fly gasped, coming up, his round face glowing with sweat in spite of the bitter cold. “I warrant, Brother Arkwright, I see his foul hand in this! I struck due east for Knox’s stead, and the treacherous path led me back to thy door.”
“Fly, you got a bottle hid?” Job demanded. He leaned toward the itinerant parson and sniffed sharply.
“Would I play thee false in that fashion?” Beebody retorted. “What I’d not warrant for a goodly sup of honest rum at this moment!”
“Come on; I’ll set ye on the trail,” Job said. He went into the cabin for his coat, then led at a brisk pace with Beebody panting at his heels. The trail wound around a giant pine tree, skirted a boulder, angled upward across a rise. Arkwright paused, frowning about him, then went on. The trail dwindled, vanished in a tangle of dead berry vine.”
“Arkwright—we’re lost!” Fly Beebody gasped. “Beelzebub has set a snare for us—”
“Have done, ye fool!” Arkwright snapped. “The path’s overgrowed, that’s all!” He forced his way through the dense growth. Ahead, the trees seemed to thin. He made for the clearing, stepped into the open—