by Todd Downing
He had his own door open in time to see the glimmer of candle-light blotted out by the closing of Biggerstaff’s.
He went back to the bed, tore from the newspaper the section which interested him and put it and the envelope into his coat pocket.
That pocket would have bulged had its contents possessed size relative to their importance. He enumerated them as he went down the hall:
The two extortion letters and the letter of credentials which he had brought from the embassy.
Two empty envelopes, one bearing a specimen of typing from Voice’s machine, the other the series of numbers.
The scrap of newspaper which explained those numbers.
He came to Monica’s door and knocked. When Cornell opened it and let him enter, he commented mentally upon the fact that it had not been locked.
“Was that you who went out to the coach house a few minutes ago, Mr. Rennert?” she asked as soon as he was inside.
“Yes.”
“I saw the light. I wondered if anything was wrong.”
“There was, Miss Faudree. Diego Echave, the Mexican inspector, was murdered there tonight.”
“Echave!” She covered her face with her hands, and a shudder went through her. “Oh, isn’t this ever going to end, Mr. Rennert?”
“I think the end is near now.”
She lowered her hands suddenly, to expose a face gone white and rigid. “What time was Echave killed?”
“Sometime between eight and nine, I believe.”
“Do you know who killed him?”
“I have no proof yet.” Rennert was confirming the suspicion which he had had when he entered—that there was a faint bluish haze of cigarette smoke in the air.
She must have observed this, for she turned hastily and went to the window. She opened the lower sash several inches.
“It’s stuffy in here, isn’t it?” she said as she came back. Then, without a pause, “Monica’s all right now. I think we’d better let her sleep until morning.”
Rennert looked at the bed, from which came a thin, regular snore. Indeed the woman seemed, to all appearances, sunk into a deep and natural slumber.
“Has she wakened?” he asked.
“No.” She spoke jerkily, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. “But I know there’s nothing wrong with her.”
“How do you account for her sudden sleepiness then?”
She looked away. “I think she took a sleeping powder.”
He regarded her for a moment in silence.
“Did she have sleeping powders here?”
“I—I suppose so,” she faltered.
“Or did she take one of John Biggerstaff’s?” he asked quietly.
Her laugh was indecorously loud in that room whose stillness was broken only by the snoring and a drip from the gutter which struck the window ledge at regularly spaced intervals.
Her eyes met his levelly. “Mr. Rennert, it’s nonsense—our talking at cross purposes in this way. Please take my word about John, won’t you?”
His smile was pleasant. “I’ll be inclined to if you will answer my question.”
“Very well, I will answer it. She took one of John’s powders.”
“By accident?”
“Yes.” The girl was a poor prevaricator. Her eyes fell and darted, as nearly as he could tell, from his chin to the knot of his tie, to the top button of his vest, then back. “You see,” she went on hurriedly, “I got one of those tablets from John’s room. I felt nervous, didn’t think I could sleep tonight. I had it in my room, in a glass of water. Monica came up and drank it without knowing what it was. That’s all.”
“Simple enough,” he said kindly. “Thank you.”
“Yes.” She was in haste to change the subject. “Where’s Delaney?”
“He went back to Mexico City.”
“You gave him my message?”
“Yes. This is what he said: ‘Tell Cornell she’s better off not seeing me any more.’”
She turned her head so that her eyes were in shadow.
“I’m sorry he feels that way,” she said in a low voice. “He shouldn’t. Do you know Delaney very well, Mr. Rennert?”
“I only met him this afternoon.”
“Then you don’t know about his life nowadays?”
“No.” Rennert was interested. “He has your picture in his office.”
Her eyes were troubled as they came back to his face. “He has?”
“Yes, I saw it before I saw you. In fact it was the second I had seen. John Biggerstaff carries one in his billfold.”
“That snapshot!” She laughed weakly. “I didn’t know he’d kept it. I didn’t know that Delaney had kept my picture either. It was an old one, wasn’t it?”
“So I would judge.”
Her eyes almost closed, and her voice, when it came, was soft and meditative:
“It seems such an incredibly long time since I gave Delaney that. In another life almost. It’s hard to believe it was less than ten years ago and that I was so foolish. It was after the Revolution was definitely over, and things had settled down, so that we could see what the fighting had been about. What the bloodshed and the suffering had accomplished. I suppose it’s the same after every war. My grandfather got the aftermath of one. He came to Mexico because he couldn’t adjust himself when it was finished. You felt the same disillusionment in the United States after your last war, I know. The same bitterness toward the ideals that you’d waved flags for. The same hectic efforts to keep from having ideals. The same facile talk about self-expression and all that.”
She paused. “Mr. Rennert, do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“I understand very well.”
“We didn’t have another country to escape to, like my grand father. And it was easier for us to go the full length of the wave. Everything’s done by extremes in Mexico. I was attending art school in Mexico City then. Not very conscientiously, but because Lucy thought a girl ought to be exposed to that sort of thing in order to become a lady. I was rather at loose ends, so I got caught up with a young crowd like myself. Delaney was one of us. He had just come back from college in the United States. He had all the highest honors the school could give and a brilliant future. My memories of those days are mostly vague. Rooms stuffy with cigarette smoke and alcohol. People sitting around on the floor. Somebody half drunk and reading French poetry. A phonograph blaring out American jazz.”
She squared her shoulders. “I snapped out of it pretty quickly. With a feeling of disgust. Not for the people I’d been associated with—although I seldom have seen any of them again—but for the senselessness of the whole thing. It may have been my own common sense or merely a weak constitution, I don’t know. It didn’t hurt me any. I didn’t even learn to smoke during the orgy. A sort of declaration of my solitary independence. That’s why Delaney acted the way he did this afternoon with those cigarettes. Poor Delaney, I’m afraid he hasn’t recovered from those years. This is the first time I’ve seen him lately, but from what I’ve heard he’s still living that life. Keeping head over heels in debt, ruining his prospects for a career. I thought I’d like to see him again; show him that I don’t blame him for anything.”
She was silent for a moment, staring past Rennert at the low three-tiered bookcase, on top of which rested a white sea shell.
“Maybe you’ll understand now, Mr. Rennert, why meeting John meant so much to me. He’s so clean and healthy and—well, I suppose wholesome is the only word. I know I’ll always be safe with him.”
Rennert moved slightly, and his gaze fell, quite naturally, on the shell. In it lay a crushed cigarette stub, from which still coiled a tiny thread of smoke.
Cornell’s teeth sank into her lip. She looked up at him and saw that he had noticed it.
Her laugh was brittle. “You can see I wasn’t telling the truth about cigarettes, Mr. Rennert. I do smoke.”
Rennert regretted afterward what he did then. He took out a package and offered her on
e.
She took it without hesitation, inserted it in the center of her lips and held it up to the match which he struck.
“I don’t know why I’ve been talking away to you like this.” She spoke indistinctly, the white tube wavering. “Baring my life to you while Monica snores peacefully away.”
He was watching her as smoke began to curtain her face. “I’m glad you have, Miss Faudree. You’ve told me several things I wanted to know.”
“Have I? I—” The words were choked off by a paroxysm of coughing.
Rennert was at her side instantly, removing the cigarette from her fingers.
“That was cruel of me,” he said sternly as he crushed it out. “I ought to be kicked for calling your bluff.”
She was gasping as her eyes blinked to force back the tears, “I’m all right. I just choked.”
“I know,” he said. “Shall we say good night on that?”
She nodded and preceded him from the room. By the time he had extinguished the guttering candle she had closed her door.
He crossed at once to Biggerstaff’s room. This time he did not dim the light.
The young man lay in the bed, eyes closed and one hand on his chest. His breathing came faintly and irregularly.
Rennert pulled up a chair and sat down, the flashlight resting on his knee.
For perhaps two minutes he sat there, his watch ticking dispassionately in the stillness.
Then Biggerstaff said, “I’m not asleep.”
Rennert said, “I know you’re not.”
23
Name
Biggerstaff raised his head and wadded a pillow beneath it.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Rennert held the light so that it illuminated the bandaged hand and the hump of bedclothes that was the young man’s chest.
“I came in here and found you gone. Do you mind being told that you were a damned fool—in more ways than one?”
“Not at all,” was the cheerful reply. “I know it.”
“I’ve just come from Monica’s room.”
“Cornell still there?”
“She left a moment ago.”
“I suppose she told you about the sedative?”
“She told me her version. Let’s hear yours.”
“I’m awfully sorry it happened. I didn’t know about it till it was too late. It didn’t hurt Monica, did it?”
“No. It enabled someone to hide in her room and make way with a letter which would have helped me. That’s all.”
“Oh say, Mr. Rennert—I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be helped now. Tell me how it happened. No, keep that head down.”
“All right.” Biggerstaff obeyed. “Well, Monica came in here just after you and Mr. Roark left. I hadn’t drunk the sedative. I thought I’d get a short nap, then see Cornell. I wanted to talk to her alone for a few minutes. So I left the glass there on the table. Monica sat where you’re sitting. Looked at me and—and brushed my forehead a little.” He seemed embarrassed. “I kept my eyes closed and pretended I was asleep. I thought she’d go. But she didn’t. She stayed for about an hour, until the dinner chimes rang. Then I saw that she had drunk that water with the sedative in it. I started to call her back, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt her.” His lips parted in a wide grin, so that his teeth gleamed whitely against his dark skin. “I thought it was a rather good joke on her.”
“Then you went to Cornell’s apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And when I called her to Monica’s room you followed her down?”
“Yes. I felt to blame, you see.”
Biggerstaff was silent for several seconds, his eyes fixed on the fingers of his left hand, which moved spiderlike over the covers, supporting their tiny crests of dark hair.
“Were you ever in love, Mr. Rennert?” he asked finally, in a serious, confidential voice.
Rennert kept his face sober. He knew that the question required no answer.
“Well, I am,” Biggerstaff announced.
“I judged that,” Rennert said.
“It’s the only thing that makes life worth while, Mr. Rennert.” The young voice was magisterial. “But … it makes it awfully hard sometimes, too.”
Rennert watched the intent face and thought of the things one couldn’t put into words: the lotus flower out of which the pages of some books are made; the fellowship of the sawdust floor; the warming ecstasy which comes when a man chances upon a place where, instantly, he knows that he belongs, as if in another existence his feet had walked there. Things constant and compatible only with a free if solitary body. Futile and unkind to try to explain them to this youngster, who was continuing:
“You see, Mr. Rennert, it’s the question of money. I hadn’t realized how important that was going to be. Cornell and I—well, we’ve been sort of engaged for a long time. We didn’t say anything about it because of—well, because of her aunt Lucy. Lucy never seemed to like me very much.”
“Although you tried to pretend you were from the South?”
“Yes. I suppose I didn’t do that very well. I thought that if I said ‘you-al? and dropped my rs and told her I was of a Confederate family she’d think it all right for Cornell to marry me. Of course we were going to be married anyway, when I got a permanent job, but I thought it’d be better if family relations were congenial for Cornell. Well, when I got back here I found this letter from the museum, saying I had the job. I thought everything was fixed then. That Cornell and I could be married right away and live in San Antonio. That’s why I went up to see her tonight. To ask her. She told me just what the situation here is. Lucy and Monica don’t have any money. Cornell herself didn’t realize until lately just how hard up they are. They’ve sold all the valuable old furniture and substituted cheap imitations. Why, they don’t even have money enough …” He hesitated.
“To pay the light and telephone bills?” Rennert supplied.
“Yes. The arrangement is to divide up the household expenses. Lucy is supposed to pay for the lights, Monica for the telephone and Cornell for the water. Well, this is the second month the other bills haven’t been paid. Last month Lucy pretended that she’d forgotten. Cornell went ahead and paid them without saying anything. But now it’s happened again. And Cornell says she can’t go off to the United States and leave them here helpless. She doesn’t have any money of her own, but can always rent rooms or get a job. If I only had enough to support all three of them it’d be different. But I don’t. I only have this job with the museum, and it’ll be years before I have enough to support two establishments. And in the meantime there’s nothing to do but wait, with a thousand miles between us.”
Rennert waited. His suspicions about several things had been confirmed: the furniture in the parlor, the inopportune failure of the lights and telephone. He thought of Lucy’s elaborate casualness over the food and wine supplied for his benefit at dinner.
“There’s an alternative,” Biggerstaff said, very low. He turned in the bed so that he faced Rennert. “Mr. Rennert, I want to ask your advice. Do you object?”
“Not at all. I thought you had something else on your mind.”
Biggerstaff started to raise himself up on an elbow. “May I get a cigarette? I’ve got some in my dressing gown.”
“Here’s one.” Rennert supplied him.
The young man lay back, slowly inhaling smoke. “My name isn’t Biggerstaff,” he said.
“It’s Biggers, isn’t it?”
“Yes. How did you know? Did Karl tell you?”
“No.” Rennert told him of the additional syllable stamped on the billfold and of the transcript of credits at Southwestern University.
Biggerstaff listened, frowning. “You must have thought I was a suspicious character. A man with a past.”
“I admit I wondered about you. Know the old song of the South-west? ‘What was your name back in the States?’”
“Well, I’m something like those fellows who came to a new country. M
y name’s Biggers, all right. My father’s T. J. Biggers, of Chicago. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of him or not, but he’s a rather important banker. We were one of the first families there. Dad owns a lot of property in the Loop district and’s on the boards of a lot of corporations and civic committees. Mother’s one of the patrons of the Chicago Civic Opera. The society columns keep her picture set up. You know, all that sort of thing.”
He dismissed it with an airy wave of the hand and was silent for a moment, a reminiscent smile playing about his lips.
“You’re probably expecting to learn that I’m the disinherited son. It’s not that. Somewhat of a black sheep, but nothing more. Did you ever read Jack London’s Star Rover, Mr. Rennert?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that book made a hell of an impression on me when I was a kid. I’ve often tried to imagine that I could relive another incarnation. I’ve picked out periods of history I’d like to ‘ve lived in, the kind of person I’d like to have been. My favorite is one of Cortez’ soldiers. A young fellow who was disgusted with court life in Spain, where everyone was born to a certain rank and where life was regulated by convention. I’ve imagined myself throwing all this up and sailing to a new world, where one man was as good as another as long as he had a good sword arm. That’s how I used to feel. I was fed up with having my life laid out for me, with being told what people I could know and what I could study in school. I was supposed to go into a bank of my father’s in Chicago. No one thought of asking me whether I wanted to be a banker or not. The men of our family have always been, so that was that. But I thought different. I wanted to do something else, I didn’t know just what. I’d always been fascinated by archaeology, so after I finished prep school I told my father I wanted to study archaeology and not banking.”
He reached out to knock the ash from his cigarette. “But, hell, I’m boring you with all this, Mr. Rennert.”
“Not at all,” Rennert said, in much the same tone he had used with Cornell. “You’re telling me a lot of things I want to know. Go ahead.”
