Doorways in the Sand Read online

  I picked up a coffee and doughnut before I made my way to the phone, realizing after thirteen years that all it took to make the Union’s brew palatable was a reversal of every molecule in it, or in the drinker. I saw Ginny at a table off in the corner and my good intentions evaporated. I halted, started to turn in that direction. But then somebody moved and I saw that she was with a guy I didn’t know. I decided to catch her another time, went on into the alcove. All the phones were in use, though, so I sipped my coffee and waited. Pace, pace. Sip, sip.

  From behind my back I heard, “Hey, Cassidy! Come on, it’s the guy I was telling you about!”

  Turning, I saw Rick Liddy, an English major with an answer for everything except what to do with his degree come June. With him was a taller version of himself in a Yale sweatshirt.

  “Fred, this is my brother Paul. He’s come slumming,” he said.

  “Hi, Paul.”

  I put my coffee on the ledge and started to extend the wrong hand. I caught myself, shook hands, felt foolish.

  “He’s the one,” Rick said, “like the Wandering Jew or the Wild Huntsman. The man who will never graduate. Subject of countless ballads and limericks: Fred Cassidy—the Eternal Student.”

  “You left out the Flying Dutchman,” I said, “and it’s Doctor Cassidy, damn it!”

  Rick began to laugh.

  “Is it true about you being a night climber?” Paul said.

  “Sometimes,” I said, feeling a peculiar gulf opening between us. That damned sheepskin was already taking its toll. “Yeah, it’s true.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “That’s really great. I’ve always wanted to meet the real Fred Cassidy—the climber.”

  “I’m afraid you have,” I said.

  Then someone hung up and I grabbed for the phone.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Yeah. See you later, Fred. Pardon me—Doc.”

  “Nice meeting you.”

  I felt strangely depressed as I wandered through the backward digits of Hal’s number. As it was, the line proved busy. I tried the Nadler number then. An answering-service girl asked me for the number where I could be reached, for a message or for both. I gave her neither. I tried Hal’s number again. This time I got through—within a fraction of a second, it seemed, from the time it commenced ringing.

  “Yes? Hello?”

  “You couldn’t have run all that far,” I said. “How come you’re out of breath?”

  “Fred! At last, damn it!”

  “Sorry I didn’t call sooner. There were a lot of things—”

  “I’ve got to see you!”

  “That’s what I had in mind, too.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Student Union.”

  “Stay there. No! Wait a minute.”

  I waited. Ten or fifteen seconds fell or were pushed.

  “I’m trying to think of someplace you’ll remember,” he said. Then: “Listen. Don’t say it if you do, but do you recall where we were about two months ago when you got in an argument with that med student named Ken? Thin guy, always very serious?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t remember the argument, but I remember the ending: You said that Doctor Richard Jordan Gatling had done more for the development of modern surgery than Halsted. He asked you what techniques Doctor Gatling had developed and you told him that Gatling had invented the machine gun. He told you that wasn’t funny and walked away. You told me he was an ass who believed he was going to get the Holy Grail when he finished rather than a license to help people. Do you remember where that was?”

  “Now I do.”

  “Good. Go there, please. And wait.”

  “All right. I understand.”

  He hung up, then I did. Weird. And troubling. An obvious attempt to circumvent an eavesdropper’s discovering where we were going to meet. Who? Why? And how many?

  I departed the Union quickly, since I had mentioned it in our conversation. Headed north from the campus, three blocks. Then two blocks over and part way up a side street. It was a little bookstore I liked to visit about once a week, just to see what new titles had come in. Hal used to go along with me every now and then.

  I browsed for perhaps half an hour, regarding the reversed titles in the backward shop. Occasionally, I paused to read a page or so of text for the practice of doing it that way—just in case things stayed topsy-turvy for any great length of time. The first sentence in one of by took on a peculiar, personal meaning:

  And I began thinking of the pieces of myself, scattered all over, from dronehood to raisinhood and thereafter. Was it worth it to stalk the mirror? I wondered. I had never really tried. But then—

  I was considering buying the book when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Fred, come on.”

  “Hi, Hal. I was wondering—”

  “Hurry,” he said. “Please. I’m double-parked.”

  “Okay.”

  I restored the book to its rack and followed him out. I saw the car, went to it, got in. Hal climbed in his side and began driving. He did not say anything as he worked his way through the traffic, and since it was obvious that length of time. The first sentence in one of Songs Dream was ready to tell me about it. I lit a cigarette and stared out the window.

  It took him several minutes to get us out of the sprawl and onto a more sedate stretch of road. It was only then that he spoke.

  “In the note that you left you said that you had had a peculiar idea and were going to check it out. I take it that this involved the stone?”

  “It involved the whole mess,” I said, “so I guess the stone figures in, somehow. I am not at all sure how.”

  “Will you start at the beginning and tell me about it?”

  “What about this urgent business of yours?”

  “I want to hear everything that happened to you first. All right?”

  “All right. Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Just driving for now. Please, tell me everything, from the time you left my place through today.”

  So I did. I talked and I talked and the buildings all ran away after a time and the grasses rushed up to the roadside, grew taller, were joined by shrubbery, tentative trees, an occasional cow, boulders and random jack rabbits. Hal listened, nodded, asked a question every now and then, kept driving.

  “Then, say, right now, it looks to you as if I’m driving from the wrong side of the car?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Fascinating.”

  I saw then that we were nearing the ocean, moving through an area dotted by summer cottages, mostly deserted this time of year. I had gotten so involved in my story that I had not realized we had been driving for close to an hour.

  “And you’ve got a bona fide doctorate now?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Very strange.”

  “Hal, you’re stalling. What’s the matter? What is it that you don’t want to tell me?”

  “Look in the back seat,” he said.

  “Okay. It’s full of junk, as usual. You should really clean it out some—”

  “The jacket in the corner. It’s wrapped in my jacket.”

  I brought the jacket up front and unrolled it.

  “The stone! Then you had it all along!”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said.

  “Then where did you find it? Where was it?”

  Hal turned up a side road. A pair of gulls dipped past.

  “Study it,” he said. “Look at it carefully. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Sure looks like it. But I never really scrutinized it before.”

  “It has to be it,” he said. “Believe that I just found it in the bottom of a trunk I hadn’t unpacked till now. Stick to that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Stick to that’?”

  “I got into Byler’s lab last night and took it from the shelf. There were several. It’s just as good as the one he gave us. You can’t tell the difference, can you?
”

  “No, but I’m no expert. What’s going on?”

  “Mary has been kidnapped,” he said.

  I looked over at him. His face was expressionless, which was the way I knew it would be if something like that were true.

  “When? How?”

  “We’d had a misunderstanding and she had gone home to her mother’s, that night you stopped over . . .”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, I was going to call the next day and try to smooth things over. But the more I considered it the more I kept thinking how much nicer it would be if she called me first. I’d have some sort of little moral victory that way, I decided. So I waited. I came close to phoning a number of times, but I’d always put it off just a little longer—hoping she would call. She didn’t, though, and I had let it get fairly late. Too late, really. So I decided to give it another night. I did, and then I called her mother’s place in the morning. Not only was she not there, but she hadn’t been there at all. Her mother hadn’t even heard from her. I figured, okay, she has good sense. She had had second thoughts, didn’t want to turn the thing into a family issue. She had changed her mind and gone to stay with one of her girl friends. I started calling them. Nothing.

  “Then, between calls,” he went on, “someone called me. It was a man, and he asked if I knew where my wife was. My first thought was that there had been an accident of some sort. But he said that she was all right, that he would even let me talk to her in a minute. They were holding her. They had held her for a day to make me sweat. Now they were going to tell me what they wanted in return for her release, unharmed.”

  “The stone, of course.”

  “Of course. And also, of course, he did not believe me when I said I did not have it. He told me they would give me a day in which to get hold of it, and when they got in touch with me again they would tell me what to do with it. Then he let me talk to Mary. She said she was all right, but she sounded scared. I told him not to hurt her, and I promised to look for it. Then I started searching. I looked through everything that I have. No stone. Then I tried your place. I still have my key.”

  “Anybody there toasting the Queen?”

  “No signs of your visitors at all. Then I proceeded to look for the stone in every possible place. Finally, I gave up. It’s just gone, that’s all.”

  He grew silent. We twisted along the narrow road, occasional glimpses of the sea appearing through gaps in the foliage off to my left/his right.

  “So?” I said. “What then?”

  “He called again the next day, asked if I had it. I told him I did not—and he said they were going to kill Mary. I pleaded with him, said I’d do anything—”

  “Wait. You did not call the police?”

  He shook his head.

  “He told me not to—the first time that we talked. Any sort of police involvement, he said, and I would never see her again. I thought about calling the cops, but I was scared. If I called the police and he found out . . . I just couldn’t take the chance. What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But go ahead. What happened next?”

  “He asked me if I knew where you were, said you could probably help find it—”

  “Ha! Sorry. Go on.”

  “Again, I had to tell him I did not know but that I was expecting to hear from you soon. He said they would give me another day to find the stone or to find you. Then he hung up. Later, I thought about the stones in Paul’s lab, got to wondering whether any of them were still there. If they were, why not try to pass one off as the real thing? They were obviously good fakes. The man who made them had even been fooled by one himself for a time. I was able to force the lock and get into his lab later in the day. I was desperate enough to try anything. There were four of them on the shelf, and I took the one you are holding now. I took it home with me and I waited. He phoned me again this morning—right before you called—and I told him I had come across it in the bottom of an old trunk. He sounded happy then. He even let me talk to Mary again and she said she was still okay. He told me where to take the stone, said they would meet me and make the exchange—her for it.”

  “And that is where we are headed now?”

  “Yes. I would not have involved you needlessly, but they seemed so convinced that you were something of an authority on the thing that when you called it occurred to me that if you were there to corroborate my story there would be no question as to the stone’s authenticity. I didn’t like involving you this way, but it is a matter of life and death.”

  “Yeah. They may kill us all.”

  “Why should they? They will have what they want. It would be pointless to harm us.”

  “Witnesses,” I said.

  “To what? It would be our word against theirs that the incident even occurred. There is no record of it, no evidence of a kidnapping or anything else. Why jeopardize the status quo by killing people and starting a homicide investigation?”

  “The whole thing stinks, that’s why. We do not have sufficient facts to decide what may or may not be motivating them.”

  “What else was I to do? Call the police and take a chance they might not be bluffing?”

  “I already said that I don’t know. But at the risk of sounding ignoble, you might have left me out of this.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It was a quick judgment and maybe a wrong one. But I was not rushing you there blind. I knew I owed you an explanation, and that is what I have been giving you. We are not there yet. There is still time to drop you off if you do not want to be party to it. I intended to offer you the choice when I finished explaining things. Now that I have, you can make up your own mind about it. I had to hurry, though.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “When are we supposed to meet them?” I asked.

  “About half an hour.”

  “Where?”

  “Around eight miles, I think. I’m going by landmarks they gave me. Then we park it and wait.”

  “I see. I don’t suppose you recognized the voice, or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  I looked down at the pseudostone, semiopaque or semitransparent, depending on one’s philosophy and vision, very smooth, shot with milky streaks and red ones. It somewhat resembled a fossil sponge or a seven-limbed branch of coral, polished smooth as glass and tending to glitter about its tips and junctures. Tiny black and yellow flecks were randomly distributed throughout. It was about seven inches long and three across. It felt heavier than it looked.

  “Nice piece of work, this,” I said. “I can’t tell it from the other. Yes, I’ll go with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  We drove on, maybe eight miles. I watched the scenery and wondered what was going to happen. Hal turned down an ill-tended car trail—I could not really call it a road—very near to the beach. He parked the car at the edge of a marshy area, in a place where the trees screened us on all sides. Then we got out, lit cigarettes and waited. I could hear the sea from where we stood, smell it, taste it. The soil was gritty, the air was clammy. I rested my foot on a log and stared into the stagnant wash, spindled and mutilated by reeds and reflection.

  Several cigarettes later, Hal looked at his watch again.

  “They’re late,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Probably watching right now to make sure we’re alone,” I said. “I would—for a long while. I would probably have a spotter back on the road, too.”

  “Sounds likely,” he agreed. “I’m getting tired of standing. I’m going to sit in the car again.”

  I turned also, and we saw Jamie Buckler standing near the rear of the car, regarding us. He appeared to be unarmed, but then there was no necessity for him to flash a weapon. He knew we would do whatever he said without additional coercion.

  “Are you the one who called?” Hal asked, advancing.

  “Yes. Have you got it?”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. Have yo
u got it?”

  Hal halted and unwrapped the stone. He displayed it on his jacket.

  “Here. See?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Come on. Bring it along.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far. Do an about-face and head that way,” he said, gesturing. “There’s a little trail.”

  We moved off along the route he had indicated, Jamie bringing up the rear. Winding through scrub, it took us farther down toward the beach. Finally, I got a closeup view of the sea, gray today and white-capped. Then the trail took us away again, and before very long I thought I had spotted our destination—low, peaked, set back on a modest hillside, missing a shutter and a half—a beach cottage that had seen better seas before I was born.

  “The cottage?” Hal said.

  “The cottage” from behind us.

  We went on up to it. Jamie circled about us, rapped in a doubtless prearranged fashion and said, “It’s okay. It’s me. He’s got it. He brought Cassidy along, too.”

  An “Okay” emerged from inside, and he opened the door and turned to us. He gestured with his head and we moved past him and on in.

  I was not exactly taken by surprise to see Morton Zeemeister seated at the scarred kitchen table, a gun beside his coffee cup. Across the room beyond the kitchenette area, Mary was seated in what looked to be the most comfortable chair in the place. She was tied loosely, but one hand was free and there was a cup of coffee on the table beside her also. There were two windows in the dining area and two in the living room. In the rear wall there were two doors—a bedroom and a john or closet, I guessed. The overhead area had not been floored or ceiled, and there were only bare beams and lots of space, where someone had stashed fishing gear, nets, oars and assorted junk. There was an old sofa, a couple more rickety chairs and low tables and a pair of lamps in the living room. Also a dead fireplace and a faded rug. The kitchenette held a small stove, refrigerator, cupboards and a black cat who sat licking her paws at the far end of the table from Zeemeister.

  He smiled as we entered, raising the gun only when Hal began a dash toward Mary.

  “Come back here,” he said. “She is all right.”

  “Are you?” Hal asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “They didn’t hurt me.”