trunk, using all three rolls of the tape. He even got down on the road, heedless of clothes and scratches, and sealed each little crease in the bottom of the trunk that might let in air.
The whimpering went on and on while he worked. And words came, cracked and crazy, from his twisted mouth.
"Damn you! There. And there. Now whine! Go on, it won't be for much longer. Whine, damn you—damn you."
The whimpering got fainter and fainter. But that was because the tape was sealing in sound as well as air, not because the cat was already suffocating. However, the thing couldn't live much longer now.
"Should have thought of it first thing," Opper's cracked voice sounded. "Then—wouldn't have had to worry so—now it'll go down into the swamp muck with Martia—down and down—for ever."
Wearily, he climbed back into the car.
4
"One o'clock. Be at the swamp before many more hours. The swamp."
He drove along the highway, a big man with a drawn, white face in which eyes like dull glass were sunk in deep hollows. He was no more like the George Opper who had met his wife with a silenced gun nine hours before than—than Martia Opper was like Lois Blye.
"Lois," mumbled Opper. "Lois!"
He realized suddenly that the car was weaving back and forth across the road under his unsteady hands.
"Can't do that. Suspicious. Mustn't act suspicious."
He stopped mumbling, and listened intently, driving slowly so that the motor noise was at a minimum. Had that been a whimper he'd heard? A faint whimper sounding from the trunk?
It was. It came to him faintly but distinctly, like the ghost of a scream for mercy.
"Oh, God!"
That thing, clawing back and forth in there
Why hadn't he had sense enough to shut the trunk on its grim contents before going back to drive the cat from the house? He should have realized it might jump to the trunk; it had certainly stuck by its dead mistress closely enough before that. Why hadn't he used his head? . . .
But the whimpering died down as miles and minutes slowly passed. Died down—and at last sounded no more. Opper laughed maniacally as he stopped the car, got up, put his ear to the trunk and heard nothing. It was dead at last. Dead. . . .
Almost like a dead thing himself, he got once more behind the wheel. The swamp. He only lived to reach that, now. To reach it—if he were not stopped at last with its green, tropical foliage almost in sight. . . .
It was at three o'clock that he began to hear the roar of a motor behind him, one that spelled a clear message—the fast-turning roar of a motorcycle engine. He glared into the rear-vision mirror.
Down the road behind him came a State trooper. Opper could not help but see that his eyes were glued on the back of the sedan. On the trunk.
And suddenly, like a rift of clear blue sky in black and pressing cloud, Opper caught in his chaotic mind a sharp comprehension of all the suspicious things he had done since discovering that he
