Dark Tunnel by Ross MacDonald

twice.
    Peter’s voice answered: “Professor Schneider’s residence.”
    “May I speak to Miss Ruth Esch?” Alec asked.
    “Miss Ruth Esch?”
    The line was silent for five seconds. Then Alec repeated, “Miss Ruth Esch.”
    “One moment, please,” Peter said.
    Alec put down the receiver and replaced the phone on the shelf. “Come on. My car’s out front.”
    In six or seven minutes we reached the base of the road that climbed Bingham Heights. Alec drove up a side road a few yards and parked the car in a shallow ditch.
    “We’ll sneak up on the bastards,” he said as we got out, “and see what we can see.”
    He went up the road to the heights like a locomotive on a grade, steady but puffing. I had less weight to carry but I felt the pace he set, and my heart had two reasons for pounding.
    He stopped at the cliffhead to look at the smashed fence. The cables were still down and two of the white posts were jagged like broken teeth. The front windows were lighted in the house across the road, but there was nobody in sight.
    “It looks as if he wanted to get through that fence quite badly,” Alec said.
    “He did get through.”
    “I suppose he figured he could jump out into the bushes and let you go over with the car. You said the door on your side wouldn’t open?”
    “It wouldn’t open. I think he jammed it when he shut it for me.”
    “We should have a look at that car to-morrow. I want to look at the door. And I want to look at the steering-gear, just to make sure that it wasn’t an accident.”
    “We’ll have to wade a creek to look at it, unless the wreckers can get it out.”
    “I can wade a creek. That sabre business sounds fantastic, and this accident on top of it sounds more fantastic.”
    “The Schneiders have fantastic personalities,” I said. “Shall we join them?”
    We walked beside the road under elms and maples. The drying grass rustled faintly under our feet, and the wind whispered in the trees with the autumnal voice of an old woman.
    “What in hell made you want to fence with young Schneider?” Alec said. “You’re not Sir Lancelot.”
    “Wait till you meet Peter. He makes your adrenal glands play like fountains. Incidentally, you’re not Edgar B. Hoover but I understand you’re hot on the spoor of some spies.”
    “Shut up,” Alec retorted pleasantly.
    We turned into the Schneider driveway, walking on the grass in the shadow of the arching trees. We avoided the open triangle of concrete in front of the house and walked quietly under the trees to the side. We stayed out of the fluorescent light that fell from the uncurtained windows and glared on the grass-blades of the lawn like white alkali dust.
    There was a light on the screened porch at the back and I crept forward a few feet and craned my neck to look into the porch. Dr. Schneider was sitting there in a deck-chair reading a newspaper.
    I moved back into the deep shadow where Alec was standing. Suddenly he put his hand on my arm and said, “What’s that?” in a hissing whisper.
    From the house came a ringing clash, repeated once and twice and three times in regular time, like the sound of harsh cymbals. I knew the sound—foils have a duller ring—and ran across the lawn on tiptoe towards the lighted window of the salle d’armes. Before I reached it, the clashing sabres ceased.
    I put my hands on the sill and stood on tiptoe to look into the room. The window was open but there was no sound.
    Then the harsh cymbals rang again, once and twice and three times and four in steady beat. I could see the sabres moving above the sill, so quickly that their flashing seemed to hang in the air like solid wheels of thin silver.
    I chinned myself on the sill to see the swordsmen and felt Alec’s heavy shoulder moved against the back of my thighs to take part of my weight. One of the swordsmen was Peter Schneider. His back was to me but I saw his blonde hair and the way he stood.
    The other swordsman was bareheaded, too, and