"Yeah," said Antony, "I know what you mean."

"Well, perish the thought, gentlemen," said Schell, "because I think our best bet of finding Miss Shaw will be to stake this place out. We might be here for a while."

"Boss, I better go hide the car," said Antony. "She knows it, and if she sees it, she'll run."

"Good idea," said Schell.

After Antony left, I took a seat on the desk chair and Schell settled down on the bed, the springs of which squealed unmercifully beneath his weight. "The yellow curtains are a nice touch," he said.

I nodded. We sat in silence, and I listened to the sound of the wind quietly whistling through a small crack in the corner of the window, the boughs of the trees outside creaking. I could imagine how cold and lonely it must get there late at night and began to feel a measure of sympathy for our quarry. It also struck me, as I looked around, just how well Schell had provided for me from the time I had first come to stay with him.

Antony returned after a few minutes and closed the door behind him. Seeing Schell on the bed, he turned to me and pointed his thumb over his shoulder, evicting me from the only other seat. "Curtain call, junior," he said. I got up and sat on the floor in the middle of the musty rug, crossing my legs Indian style. As Antony eased into the chair, I told him I hoped the legs broke.

"You look like a real swami now," he said.

Schell looked over and smiled vacantly, then turned his gaze back out the window. He had a silver dollar in his left hand that he was rolling across his knuckles from pinky to thumb and back again.

"One thing I want to know," said Antony, "is what we are going to call Lydia Hush now. I'm confused."

"We'll ask her what she prefers when she shows up," said Schell.

That was the last thing any of us said for a long time. An hour, passed, and eventually I lay down on my side and used my turban as a makeshift pillow. Closing my eyes, I was heading for a catnap when I heard something odd, something very faint below the whisper of the wind and the soughing of the branches. It was slow and regular, like the sound of someone breathing. I sat up and looked over at Antony but soon realized that the noise wasn't coming from him, nor was it coming from Schell.

"Have a bad dream?" asked Antony, who sat leaning back in the chair with his hat pulled down over his eyes.

I lay back on the floor, and after a moment or two heard the rhythmic sound again. This time I could place it. There was something or someone under the rug. I got slowly to my feet and kicked Antony in the bottom of his shoe. He sat up and looked at me, was about to speak, but I motioned for him to be quiet. Schell turned around, and I put my finger to my lips. With my other hand, I pointed at the floor. He gave me a quizzical look, so I walked over to him and whispered in his ear, "There's someone under the floor. I heard them breathing."

Schell stood up. Antony was already on his feet. I stepped off the rug, and each of them leaned over and took a corner. They folded it back to reveal the outline of a small trapdoor. At the midway point, along the edge on the left-hand side, was a brass ring handle sunk into a small recessed metal square that lay even with the level of the floor. Schell moved around the folded rug, crouched down, and pulled on the handle. As the trapdoor opened, Antony and I stepped closer to look in.

There, in a four-foot-by-four-foot square shallow depression in the ground, lay Lydia Hush. A blanket covered the bare dirt beneath her, and she rested on her side, her knees gathered up close to her chest, her head bent forward so that her chin touched her knees. She wore nothing but a man's flannel shirt. The paleness of her long legs and the brightness of her hair seemed to glow in the dark hole.

"Okay, Miss Hush, or should I say, Miss Shaw, come on out of there," said Schell.

Her eyes opened. She turned her head to look up at us, and she smiled. "Gentlemen," she said.

Schell reached a hand down to her. She grasped it and with a little maneuvering managed to stand up. Antony went over to the bed and stripped the cover off. As she emerged from underground, stepping up into the light, he draped the quilt around her as if she were royalty preparing for a procession. She thanked him and then stepped over to the chair and sat down. After I had closed the trapdoor and replaced the rug, we stood around her like three children waiting to hear a story.

"Perhaps we should start at the beginning," said Schell.

Morgan Shaw's bottom lip began to tremble and tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

NOTHING TO HIDE

Schell handed her his handkerchief, and we stood by while she vented her sorrow. Antony looked like he was on the verge of tears himself by the time she finally stopped crying and began to dry her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just that things have been so hard lately. I'm scared."

"You've got nothing to be frightened of with us," said Schell.

"They're after me," she said.

"Who's after you?" I asked.

"I don't know, but since the Barnes thing, some men have been after me. They've come here, looking for me. I live so far back from the road, I can hear when someone's coming and I hide."

"How many times have they been here?" asked Schell.

"Three times," she said. "I thought you were them."

"What do they want?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head.

"If you don't mind my asking," said Antony, "how do you manage to get in the floor and have the rug lie down on top of the secret door?"

"Oh, I worked that out a while ago," she said. "I figured out a way to roll the rug back halfway and lightly tuck it under the edge. I only open the door enough to just about slip in, and when I let it fall back down, the impact loosens the rug and it rolls down flat."

"Ingenious," said Schell. "But now let's get to the real question. How did you know where the Barnes girl would be?"

"Yes, the real question," she said. Even wrapped in that blanket with her hair a tangle from having been under the floor, she was beautiful. She turned to Antony and put her first two fingers up to her lips.

The big man reached into his jacket pocket and took out his cigarettes. With a flick of his wrist, one slid a quarter of the way out of the pack. She took it, put it in her mouth, and he had the lighter ready. She took a drag, flicked an ash onto the floor, and said to Schell, "You don't know the half of it."

"I'll settle for any part of it," he said.

"Charlotte Barnes wasn't the first child killed," she said. "Two years ago there was a little boy down in Amityville who was found murdered too. You can check it out with the newspapers, but it wasn't on page one. In fact it wasn't even on page three. It was buried back in the paper, in a tiny little article. The kid's father was a Negro, so he was picked up and charged with the murder. I don't think he was guilty. It was at that time that I got the first note."

"About the murder?" asked Schell.

"Not the murder but where the body was going to be. I had just moved into this dump, after leaving the city. I was here no more than two weeks when, one night, I heard someone moving around outside the cabin. I can't tell you how scared I was. From then on, I slept with a butcher knife I stole from the kitchen at the nursing home.

"I asked my neighbor if she ever heard strange noises at night. She told me it was probably just deer-but deer don't leave bouquets of wildflowers on your doorstep now do they? Sometimes I'd find flowers, or little broken toys or pennies. It was bizarre. I couldn't go to the police because there were certain people from my past who I didn't want to find me. Then one morning, I found a piece of paper with a scrawled map on it and some words. The words made no sense, but the map had a crude picture of an old house, busted windows, door hanging off, and a three-digit number written with two backward numeral. Okay, just strange, right?