The Man in the Net by Patrick Quentin Page A

established author.
    “We didn’t find anything, dear. But it’s impossible in the dark. Quite impossible.”
    Roz turned to Steve, who stood, large and relaxed, a little apart from them all with the suitcase in his hand.
    “What are we going to do? How do we know what’s happened to her? We’ve got to do something.”
    Linda’s my wife, thought John, and already they’re treating me as if I didn’t exist.
    “Look, Buck. Look,” Timmie’s voice piped. “I’m not a Martian any more. I’ve taken off my head.”
    “But we can’t just do nothing,” said Roz. “Not if she’s left the house, without a car, with the suitcase on the dump, with …”
    “Okay, Mrs. Moreland,” Steve jerked his head toward her car. “You’d better take Timmie home. It’s past his bedtime. Your husband and me and John, we’ll go back to my place for a while and figure this out.”
    “But…” Roz swung around, her silver earrings flashing. “But—I’m a witness too. If there’s to be any discussion with the troopers …”
    She wants to be in on it, thought John, an unexpected, preserving irony trickling through him. She’s not going to miss a minute of it.
    Steve Ritter merely shrugged her aside. “There’ll be plenty of time for that, Mrs. Moreland. You take Timmie home. I’ll drive your husband back later. Okay, Mr. Moreland, want to come in the car with me?” He started toward his own car, calling, “Follow us, John. Back to my place. Hey—Buck. Enough of that. Car—home.”
    Steve’s car started off. John followed in his. Roz was left standing stiff, outraged, by the Mercedes.
    John reached the gas-station immediately behind the first car. He got out and joined the others. A mambo was pulsing on the juke-box inside the ice-cream parlor. They all went in. Betty Ritter was behind the fountain. A boy and two girls sat on stools, drinking pop. An elderly man alone—someone John knew vaguely by sight—the Town Clerk?—sat behind an empty Coca-Cola bottle at a table. They all turned to look at them.
    “Hi, Mom.” Steve grinned at his wife and at the customers. “Here’s your wandering Martian. Off to bed, Buck.” He stood a moment in the middle of the room with the suitcase in his hand, swaying his hips voluptuously to the rhythm of the mambo. He was completely changed from the quiet figure on the dump. Steve Ritter—the village card again. One of the girls at the fountain laughed and called out, “Hi, Steve, you been on a trip?”
    “Sure, Arlene. A monkey-business trip. Just plain monkey business like always.” Steve swung around to John and Gordon, watching them both with that veiled sardonic appraisal of his. “Well, boys, how about a popsicle on the house? No? Okay, then let’s get down to it.” That’s his way of stalling the village, thought John. He knows his Stoneville; he knows how gossip can smell something out almost before it’s happened. He felt reluctant gratitude, as if Steve were doing it for him.
    They went into a tiny room just off the ice-cream parlor. Steve shut the door behind them. It was the office where he handled the gas-station’s monthly accounts. There was nothing but an old studio couch, a desk with a wooden chair, and a telephone on the wall.
    “Sit down, boys. Make yourselves at home.”
    Steve put Linda’s suitcase on the floor and slumped on to the couch. Gordon Moreland hovered importantly. John sat down in the wooden chair.
    Steve lit a cigarette, watching John over the trail of smoke from eyes which were quite unfathomable now. Hostile? Or not hostile? Knowing more than they were admitting? Or knowing nothing at all?
    “Okay, John. Let’s hear it. Skip the fight with Linda for right now. Just let us know what happened when you got back from New York.”
    John made himself bring out once again the bald facts which, even to the Careys, his friends, had sounded so improbable, so false.
    When he told about the slashed pictures,