Time, and invented clocks to measure it, without the faintest idea what it was, and you went right on living in spite of the fact that nobody had ever come with an explanation for Life.
The sheer magnitude and the excitement of it began to catch up with me now, for the first time. Up until a few hours ago it had been an intriguing puzzle, an abstract sort of thing whose fascination was inherent in the problem itself rather than any concrete expectation of gain. You didn’t really believe it; you couldn’t. In your heart what you actually believed was that the separate scraps of evidence added up to an answer that was incompatible with the whole, and you were interested in learning why. But now . . .
It was money—tangible, real, concrete. A fortune. A fantastic amount of money. There was no longer any doubt he had it because I had seen the clinching argument—those ten-dollar bills. The twenties could have been merely thrown away by Haig because they were identifiable and hot. But Cliffords had it all; he had it hidden somewhere in something that was rusting. All I had to do was find it. Nobody would ever know I’d got it. I had the intelligence and the will-power to destroy any part of it that was even conceivably identifiable and to refrain from making any display of wealth too suddenly. I’d go to Florida and go into the boat business in a small way, expanding gradually. Boats I knew, liked, and understood; the business was booming all over the country. I’d own a marina. . . . I stopped.
That was what I owned now, wasn’t it?
Hah!
I swung off State 41, headed for the camp, my mind furiously at work. The thing couldn’t take too long; at any time Cliffords could go back and dig up some more of it, and when he did there was a chance he’d wind up with another bunch that could be identified. It was only a miracle he’d got by with it this long. He was erratic, too potty and unpredictable to be trusted with a thing like this. One slip would blow it up. He might talk, start bragging, or begin playing the girlie circuit in the sawmill towns around here. He was only forty-six, and with unlimited funds at his disposal he might decide to ditch the comic books for grown-up toys, just had to beat him to it, by finding it. Sure, that was all. But how?
* * *
It was four in the afternoon. I stood in dense timber a half mile behind his cabin and wearily fit a cigarette. Since seven this morning I’d been back here, searching, walking, crisscrossing, studying the terrain, and gradually having it brought home to me just what I was up against. Sweat drenched my clothes; the air was stifling, and all about me was the silence of the big woods. I sat down on a log and took the folded map from my pocket. It was roughly two miles this way; call it ten to twelve north and south. And that was only on this side of the first arm of the lake. Add in the country on the other side and the trackless maze of islands and swamp cut by the twisting channels of the waterways, and what did you have? At least fifty square miles of wilderness. It could be anywhere; he didn’t have to hide it under his pillow. And just how sure could you be that he hadn’t sunk it in a watertight container in the lake itself, somewhere in those God-only-knew how many thousands of acres of isolated inlets and sloughs and weedbeds?
Well, one way to locate it was to keep watch on him until he went to it himself; he would sooner or later. So? Just move out here? It could be weeks, or months. I was married; I was supposed to be running a business. If I could get out here once a week without arousing suspicion I’d be lucky.
There was always the third method, of course, but I shrugged it off impatiently. You could either do that sort of thing, or you couldn’t, and there was no point in considering something you wouldn’t have the guts to carry out. I wasn’t trying to take a bow; there was no moral issue involved. It was merely an appraisal. You had to be
The sheer magnitude and the excitement of it began to catch up with me now, for the first time. Up until a few hours ago it had been an intriguing puzzle, an abstract sort of thing whose fascination was inherent in the problem itself rather than any concrete expectation of gain. You didn’t really believe it; you couldn’t. In your heart what you actually believed was that the separate scraps of evidence added up to an answer that was incompatible with the whole, and you were interested in learning why. But now . . .
It was money—tangible, real, concrete. A fortune. A fantastic amount of money. There was no longer any doubt he had it because I had seen the clinching argument—those ten-dollar bills. The twenties could have been merely thrown away by Haig because they were identifiable and hot. But Cliffords had it all; he had it hidden somewhere in something that was rusting. All I had to do was find it. Nobody would ever know I’d got it. I had the intelligence and the will-power to destroy any part of it that was even conceivably identifiable and to refrain from making any display of wealth too suddenly. I’d go to Florida and go into the boat business in a small way, expanding gradually. Boats I knew, liked, and understood; the business was booming all over the country. I’d own a marina. . . . I stopped.
That was what I owned now, wasn’t it?
Hah!
I swung off State 41, headed for the camp, my mind furiously at work. The thing couldn’t take too long; at any time Cliffords could go back and dig up some more of it, and when he did there was a chance he’d wind up with another bunch that could be identified. It was only a miracle he’d got by with it this long. He was erratic, too potty and unpredictable to be trusted with a thing like this. One slip would blow it up. He might talk, start bragging, or begin playing the girlie circuit in the sawmill towns around here. He was only forty-six, and with unlimited funds at his disposal he might decide to ditch the comic books for grown-up toys, just had to beat him to it, by finding it. Sure, that was all. But how?
* * *
It was four in the afternoon. I stood in dense timber a half mile behind his cabin and wearily fit a cigarette. Since seven this morning I’d been back here, searching, walking, crisscrossing, studying the terrain, and gradually having it brought home to me just what I was up against. Sweat drenched my clothes; the air was stifling, and all about me was the silence of the big woods. I sat down on a log and took the folded map from my pocket. It was roughly two miles this way; call it ten to twelve north and south. And that was only on this side of the first arm of the lake. Add in the country on the other side and the trackless maze of islands and swamp cut by the twisting channels of the waterways, and what did you have? At least fifty square miles of wilderness. It could be anywhere; he didn’t have to hide it under his pillow. And just how sure could you be that he hadn’t sunk it in a watertight container in the lake itself, somewhere in those God-only-knew how many thousands of acres of isolated inlets and sloughs and weedbeds?
Well, one way to locate it was to keep watch on him until he went to it himself; he would sooner or later. So? Just move out here? It could be weeks, or months. I was married; I was supposed to be running a business. If I could get out here once a week without arousing suspicion I’d be lucky.
There was always the third method, of course, but I shrugged it off impatiently. You could either do that sort of thing, or you couldn’t, and there was no point in considering something you wouldn’t have the guts to carry out. I wasn’t trying to take a bow; there was no moral issue involved. It was merely an appraisal. You had to be
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