Snare of the Hunter Read Free Page B

helping you with the typing?”
    “I’m alone.”
    “Good.” There was another pause. (He is consulting with someone else, thought David.) “I’ll see you about eight o’clock.”
    “You’re driving a hundred and ten miles in two hours?” That wasn’t Bohn’s style. “You know,” David added, “there are other cars—not to mention trucks—on the highway. I think you’ve a fixation on accidents today.” And what’s so urgent that he’d even suggest this idea? “What’s it all about?”
    “I’ll see you around eight, perhaps half-past. I’d like to find your cottage before it’s too dark to judge what turn I make at the potato fields. Last time I visited you, I came down the Montauk Highway, made a sharp left at the pond, passed the village green, kept on going along Main Street—old houses and big trees, then some shops, et cetera, and then a windmill. And then what?”
    “Bear right and take the next turn on your right. Follow that until you reach the golf course. Then turn left keep on going for half a mile.”
    “And then the potato fields. Are they still there?”
    “Mostly. Take the second lane on your right towards the ocean.”
    “And there you’ll be, among the honeysuckle, thornbushes, and dunes. See you.”
    David was left staring at a dead receiver. He replaced it thoughtfully. Mark Bohn’s telephone calls were usually brief. Bohn liked his comforts, and five hours of driving (here and back to New York) wasn’t his idea of bliss. Bohn never did anything without a purpose. So what was bringing him out all the way here? Urgent, he had said. It must be damned urgent.
    David put one of his long-playing tapes into the machine, adjusted the volume and tone, went back to his typewriter. He had the work completed by half-past seven, with a varied selection of Vivaldi and Albinoni keeping him cheerful company. The special thing about that kind of music, he thought as he changed into his swimming trunks, was that it didn’t add to your aggravations and annoyances. It didn’t jar your spine, set your teeth on edge. And the miracle was that it didn’t cloy either. Small wonder that people were still listening to those clever old Venetians after two hundred and fifty years.
    He went into the porch, waited for the last movement of an Albinoni concerto to end. You couldn’t walk away from that interweave of strings with the trumpet dominating the intricate background. Just the finest trumpeter in the world, he thought as Maurice André let his last notes ripple and soar. Soar as high as these white clouds, tinging now with gold, over the immense sea. Then there was only silence and the steady beat of breaking waves.
    He walked over the short stretch of rough grass, followed the path between beach-plum bushes and dog roses, came to the big dunes that blocked his cottage from winter storms. The path went round one side of them—Long Islanders didn’t approve of breaking down dunes by trampling over them—but tonight David went straight over, running now as he jumped on to the deep soft sand. His pace increased as he reached the harder stuff, packed and smoothed by the tide’s reach. He let out a long war whoop as he raced for the edge, running slow-motion until the water was waist-high. Then came the big ones rolling in from the Atlantic. He dived at the base of an upcurling wave, got safely through before it smashed downward. Another dive and he was beyond this line of surf and swimming strongly. It was almost calm tonight, by Atlantic standards, but it was wiser to turn back before he reached the second line of breakers which rose and fell over some unseen reef or sand bar. This was far enough from the shore: he might enjoy taking a risk, but he was not foolhardy. The return was easy, with the ocean helping him tonight: the spasms of the hidden waves floated him in. Some days, he almost had to fight his way back; other days, he wouldn’t put an ankle into this water.
    He flopped down on