“Like this? Without giving your victim a fighting chance?” His answer was a smile.

  I said, “Man isn’t the most dangerous game—not the way you hunt him. First you trap me, then you tell me the name of the game. At least an animal knows you’re his enemy.” I took a final drag on the cigarette, twisted it out in an ash tray. Then I leaned back and laughed. “Go ahead and kill me, Mr. Kadaver. Then, after you’ve gone through my pockets without finding that 500 dollar bill, ask yourself some questions.”

  Kadaver nodded approvingly. “A good try.”

  “It’s not just a try, pal. I did some thinking before I decided to come here. I—”

  “Wait,” Kadaver said over my words. “Let me tell you what you did.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “You put the 500 dollar bill in an envelope that you addressed to your lawyer. Also in the envelope was a note: ‘In the event that anything happens to me …’”

  “You’re almost right,” I said. “The envelope was addressed to a good friend.”

  “And you put it in the mail box before you came here, of course.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I dropped it in the mail chute outside my office,” I said.

  “In the hallway?”

  “Yes.”

  A slow smile creased Kadaver’s lean face. “Just before coming here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not according to my information. You see, there was someone watching you.”

  “Not in the hall.”

  “Think again, Mr. Kent.” His smile graduated to a chuckle. “I’m sure you remember the lady. A petite blonde. You admired her legs as she walked toward the elevator. You went down to the lobby together. She was wearing La Delia perfume. You complimented her on it.”

  I forced a smile. “That’s not fair, Mr. Kadaver. You led me to believe you hunted alone.”

  “The big-game hunter always has assistants. You know, Mr. Kent, I think that 500 dollar bill is in your wallet.”

  “There’s one way to find out.”

  “Yes ...”

  “But if it’s not on me—”

  “Then it’s in your office.”

  “If it’s not there you’ll be in trouble. There’s a mail box just outside this building. I could have dropped the envelope in that.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re behaving like a man with a good hole card.” His face went thoughtful. “Maybe I should ponder over this for a—”

  The gun seemed to jump in his hand. There was just a hissing sound, together with a needle jab of pain in my left shoulder. I turned my head, saw what looked like a small tuft of brown fur against the gray gabardine.

  “A ... dart,” I said stupidly.

  “Yes ...” He had his arms folded across his chest. The gun was pointed at the floor.

  Poison, I thought as my shoulder started to draw; it felt like a huge, angry-headed boil, pulling. He showed his teeth and hot anger burned to the pit of my stomach. My gun ... not the little one—the big one—the .45. One of the soft-nosed slugs would blow his face through the back of his skull and all over the wall. I started to lift my right hand to my chest. My hand felt like a cannonball at the end of my arm, but I managed to get it to my chest and under my coat and then to the butt of the .45.

  Kadaver was still flashing his teeth. Damn him! I tightened my grip on the gun butt, lifted, felt the muzzle slide slowly up the holster. All I had to do was get it out and press the trigger ... But it was heavy ... so heavy ...

  Kadaver spoke. His voice sounded like it came from the other end of a long tunnel. “What’s the matter, Mr. Kent?”

  His words echoed in my brain.

  “Can’t you lift it?”

  ... you lift it? ... lift it? ... it? Echoing.

  “Go to ...” I wanted to say hell, but the word just wouldn’t come out.

  “It’s heavy ...”

  ... heavy.

  I couldn’t lift the gun another inch. There was no strength left in me. Kadaver’s face wavered, like an image in suddenly-rippling water. One moment the weight of my body was an unbearable strain on my legs, then there wasn’t the slightest bit of feeling in my limbs. Kadaver spoke but his words were distorted, meaningless. I could still see his face, changing shape. Then his face got smaller and smaller as it moved away from me, and the floor came up and hit me across the back of the skull.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter 3 … the swamp girl …

  My eyes hurt. A bright, glaring hurt. I closed them. Much better. But in a little while the lids began to burn. I was on my back. Something hard was jabbing against my spine. If it weren’t for this and my burning eyes I’d have willed myself to drift off.

  “Kadaver?” I said.

  No answer.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  Silence. No. Birds were calling. Birds. I listened. Yes, birds ... I was vaguely surprised that my mind appeared to be in working order. But that damned thing was still prodding my spine. I scrabbled around with my hands. Then I called myself a damned fool for trying to reach under my back when I was lying down. I opened my eyes and closed them quick against the glare of the sun. The sun. Hell, I was getting downright brilliant.

  I rolled onto my stomach after making a couple of unsuccessful attempts. Now I could open my eyes. A sharp stone embedded in sun-baked earth had been sticking me in the back. I looked along the ground, saw dark shadow, lifted my eyes. A tree. I crawled to the shade, sometimes on hands and knees, more often like a snake.

  When I was fully in the shade I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I knew I’d slept. I worked myself to a sitting position. My stomach did a few turns and my head whirled, but I escaped being sick.

  The sun was much lower in the sky. There was more bird calling now. I sniffed, got the musky odor of swamp. I looked at the trees around me. Broad, sprawling trees with small leaves and dry-looking moss hanging from the trunks and limbs. But there was one tree not far away that was bright with blossom. White. I sniffed. Through the swamp smell came the perfume of magnolia.

  Hell, this wasn’t the east. I was in Georgia or South Carolina or maybe Florida or …

  Then I remembered an up-and-down feeling, and weightlessness. An airplane? And Kadaver’s voice. Then a needle. That was to keep me out. I lifted my left arm. I was wearing the same suit. My wristwatch. Not the time—the date. The sixteenth. It had been the fourteenth when I went to Kadaver’s apartment. Two days.

  I went through my pockets. Nothing was missing except Kadaver’s 500 dollar bill and my two guns. But there was money—and 2,000 dollars of it were in 100 dollar bills. I hadn’t been carrying that much.

  I didn’t figure this at all. It didn’t make—

  Wait a minute. Maybe Kadaver had read the same story I had. Its title was “The Most Dangerous Game”. It was about a Russian noble who’d grown tired of hunting so-called dangerous game, so he built a stone mansion on a Pacific Island. He rearranged the warning lights so ships would drive onto the reefs. Then, after showing survivors the hospitality of his retreat, he hunted them down, one by one.

  Was this the sort of thing Kadaver had in mind? Was I on his swamp-surrounded island? Would he suddenly show up with a hunting rifle? Well, I certainly wasn’t going to sit still for him. I pushed myself to my feet and my stomach and head began to circle in opposite directions. I leaned against a tree trunk, took some deep breaths, and after a few minutes felt well enough to start moving.

  But where?

  I looked around, saw the brownish-green of swamp water through the trees, then some reeds, bushes. I kept turning. When I saw the road I didn’t believe my eyes.

  It wasn’t much of a road. Just an upraised track, hardly wide enough for one car. It was a few hundred feet below me, at the bottom of a fairly steep grassy slope. I headed towards it. At first the going was easy; there were saplings and bushes to grab hold of. But then there was just grass, with bald spots furrowed by rain water run-off. I was doing fine until my foot slipped into one of the furrows. My foot was wedged there momentarily, throwing me forward.

  I made myself relax, because the easiest way to break a bone or two is to tighten up and try to fight a fall. I slid on my stomach, saw a clump of grass, made a grab and held on. But my momentum was too solid and the grass came out by the roots and then I went rolling down the hill.

  It was almost pleasant. I just let myself go. But I wasn’t counting on something getting in my way. There was the shock of contact and then black shutters slammed closed.

  Cool ... My forehead felt cool. But the voice in my ear was warm.

  “How do you feel?”

  I opened my eyes. Surprisingly, I was able to focus. She had a tanned, round face, wild black hair. Her eyes were dark blue and set wide apart. She had a small, full mouth; the lower lip protruded slightly, as though waiting for a kiss.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was accented with the music of the Deep South.

  “I’m not sure.” And I wasn’t. “Maybe I’d better try to stand up and see.”

  “I’ll help you.” It came out “hep”. “I’ll just take your arm.”

  I got up all right, and there wasn’t even any nausea. But I staggered a little and this brought her against my arm and made me realize there was quite a lot of woman under her rough shirt. Well, there was hope for me while I was still able to notice things like that.

  “You’re still kind of shaky,” she said.

  I didn’t tell her, but the way she was standing against me, with the three top buttons of her shirt undone, I’d have been a hell of a lot shakier if I was at full operating capacity.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “About twenty minutes that I know of. You were lyin’ there when I came along the road. Can you stand up on your own?”

  “I think so.”

  She let go of me and picked up a wet handkerchief from the ground. That was what had felt cool against my forehead. Suddenly the back of my head gave a few twinges that needled through my skull. I put a hand over the pain and winced as tender skin reacted.

  “You got a real big lump there,” the girl said. “From the look of things you rolled down that hill.”

  “Yes.” I looked back. “And hit my head on that pine trunk.”

  She put her hands in the hip pockets of old dungarees that she filled snugly. “It’s none of my business, o’ course, but—”

  She stopped.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Fire away. There are some questions I’d like to ask you, too.”

  “Well ... that suit of yours. It ain’t exactly the kind of clothes you wear in this country. Before you got it all mussed up, it must’ve looked real nice.”

  “I’ll tell you something, honey—”

  “Becky’s my name. Becky Andrews.” She smiled, showing small, even teeth. She was pretty. Damned pretty. “Not that I take exception to bein’ called honey so much.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Becky. My name’s Larry Kent.”

  “I’m right pleased to meet you, Larry. Now, you was sayin’ somethin’?”

  “I started to say that neither my suit nor I belong here. As a matter of fact, I don’t have the slightest idea where I am.”

  She blinked her dark eyes at me. “Sure ’nough?”

  “Honest.”

  “But how’d you get here?”

  “I’m not sure. That sounds crazy, I know, and I don’t blame you in the least if you don’t believe me.”

  Her mass of black hair moved back and forth. “Oh, I believe you. I do a lot of readin’, so I know about all the funny things that happen to you private—” She bit at her bottom lip.

  “Detectives,” I finished for her.

  She looked at the ground. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how bad you might be hurt, so I looked in your wallet. You know, to see if there was some next of kin, maybe a wife or somethin’, to get in touch with.”

  “Perfectly natural thing to do.”

  “Not that I could really do any contactin’, not without Daddy’s boat, anyhow. Unless’n I went to Miss Baines’ place and—” She moistened her lips, looked up from the ground and into my eyes. “But I didn’t take none o’ your money, honest I didn’t.”

  “I’m sure of that, Becky.”

  “Maybe you’d like to check to really make sure.”

  “That won’t be necessary. What’s this about your daddy and a boat?”

  “Well, Daddy took the boat to Fayette only this mornin’ with a load of furs and some ’gator hides. He won’t be back for three—maybe four days.”

  “Fayette, Louisiana?”

  “That’s right. This is bayou country.”

  “Where does this road lead?”

  “To a jetty this end.”

  “And the other end?”

  “Miss Baines’ place.”

  “And who might Miss Baines be?”

  “Well, that ain’t rightly her name. It used to be before she married a feller from up in Nashville, Tennessee. That was some six—seven years back. I don’t think the marriage turned out too well, though, ’cause she’s been back here on Montelie for the last three years or so—”

  “Montelie?”

  “Well, that’s the name of this place. Leastways, it’s what we always called it, though you won’t find no Montelie Island on a map. Some folks just say Montelie ’cause they claim you can’t rightly call a spot of dry land an island just ’cause it’s got swamp all around it.”

  I was feeling dizzy again. I grabbed at a bough of the pine tree for support, then I said, “Tell me more about this Miss Baines.”

  But the thatch of black hair moved back and forth again. “We ain’t goin’ to do any more talkin’ standin’ here like this. Your face has gone all pale and you’ve got sweat risin’. You come to the shack with me. What you need is a dose of Daddy’s private medicine. Come on. It’s only a short ways from here.”

  I let her lead the way. She stood close by, ready to grab my arm if I faltered.

  “I’m glad you didn’t say it was a long hike,” I said after we’d gone half a mile or so.

  “Just around the next bend,” she smiled.

  We were walking on what appeared to be a game trail that wound around clumps of thick brush. Here and there were towering swamp elms. Suddenly Becky grasped my arm. We stopped.

  “Just stand still,” she said, then she bent to pick up a stick that she tossed onto the path about ten feet in front of us. A fat snake slithered across the path and into brush.

  “Cottonmouth,” she said. “One of us may’ve stepped on him.”

  That was all I needed, some cottonmouth moccasin venom. We left the path a little further on, walked around some bush clumps and there was the cabin, just off the edge of a lagoon.

  It wasn’t much, just a box of a place built of rough-planed wood. There was a tar-paper roof and a pipe chimney that leaned at an acute angle. We climbed two rickety wooden steps to a small back porch that swayed under our weight. There were two rooms. One, which covered most of the floor space, had an old-fashioned fuel stove at one end and a bed at the other. There was a table and two unpainted wooden chairs, a chintz-covered armchair that looked lumpy, an ancient radio cabinet that had one leg off and was propped up with a two-by-four.

  “Set yourself down, Larry.” She indicated the cot. “I’ll get you some of Daddy’s medicine.”

  I sat down heavily. The long walk had taken a lot out of me. If the date on my watch was correct, I’d been unconscious for all but a few hours out of the last fifty-four. I got out my cigarettes, lit one. The Camel smoke tasted extra-strong in my throat, brought on some more dizziness.

  “Here we are,” Becky said.

  She had a glass in each hand. She gave me one that held three fingers of a yellow-tinted liquid. There was only one finger of the stuff in her glass. I sniffed and sharp alcohol fumes cut through my nostrils.

  “This’ll make you feel better, Larry.” She raised her glass. “Daylight on the swamp.”

  I threw back my head and took down half of the stuff in a gulp. It burned all the way and gave a sort of kick when it hit my stomach. I looked at Becky through watery eyes. She’d drained her glass and now she made a face and gulped a few times.

  “Your daddy,” I said, “must have an iron-lined throat. What does he make this stuff from?”

  “Out of things that grow here in the swamp.”

  “He must go to Fayette to get his throat relined.”

  She half-smiled. “I don’t think he worries too much about his throat when he goes to Fayette. Y’see, my mother died three years ago. He’s got a gal in Fayette. Leastways, she’s his gal while he’s in Fayette, if you know what I mean.”

  I lifted my glass, said, “Daylight on the swamp.” I forced the rest of the stuff down and did some coughing.

  She placed a shallow dish on the cot. I put my cigarette on it. She took the empty glass.

  “I’d offer you some more, but this stuff ain’t like ordinary whisky.”

  She had no need to tell me. The fumes had already reached my brain and I felt that all I had to do was flap my arms and I could fly around the room.

  “It’ll make you sleep.” she said. “When you wake up in a few hours, you’ll feel a heap better. Daddy was bit three times by cottonmouths. He swears that if he didn’t have this swamp medicine that first bite would’ve been the last.”

  “I can believe it,” I said, and my words were already slurring off my thick tongue. “Hell, a couple of belts of that and you’re ready to go out looking for snakes.”

  “It’s the sleep that does it. Leastways, that’s Daddy’s claim. He says that somethin’ happens to you inside while you’re asleep after drinkin’ a bit of swamp medicine. When you wake up, you’re feelin’ just fine.”

  “Sure ’nough, honey chile?”

  She smiled. “Sure ’nough.”

  Her face was starting to go out of focus, and I felt a wonderful kind of weariness in every bone.

  “You look just about ready to sleep,” she said.

  It was the last thing I heard.

 

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