The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

  “Yes,” John said, and stood up. There hadn’t been any miracle. There hadn’t been anything.

  “You’ll want a lawyer,” Phillips said. “Or, have you one?”

  “A man named Still,” John said. “Richard Still. However, he doesn’t feel it’s his kind of case.”

  Martin Phillips heard him.

  “It would be preferable,” he said, “if the bank’s firm were not involved. You agree to that?”

  “Yes,” John said. “I understand, sir. I—is there anything else?”

  For some seconds, Phillips looked at him from impervious gray eyes.

  “One thing, John,” he said, and the use of given name was warning. “About Barbara. I’m afraid that her name can hardly avoid being brought in. From what Detective Grady let drop. But—can I rely on you not to involve her further? In any way?” He stood up behind the desk. “You understand what I mean?”

  “Yes,” John said. “Quite clearly. Stay away from her.” His eyes met those of the older man. “Did you think I’d drag her into a thing like this?” he asked.

  “It is hard to know what to think,” Phillips said. “There are a good many considerations.”

  “Yes,” John said, “there are, Mr. Phillips.”

  Then he turned and went out. He spent half an hour bringing Roberts up to date. He felt, as he talked, sitting in the chair at the end of Roberts’s desk, that many eyes were on him. The world was very full of eyes—of unbelieving eyes. For an instant, John felt they were all around him, that he was ringed by eyes which were flat with disbelief.

  He went out through the office where there was just room to walk, carefully, between many desks, and through the public concourse. Few of the tellers were in their cages. They would be checking in, balancing out, for the night.

  Barney opened the employees’ door and said, “Good night, Mr. Hayward,” and closed the door after him.

  The Phillips Cadillac was parked a few feet down the street. Clay, in uniform, was at the wheel. Barbara was in the back of the car, in the corner farthest from the curb. He thought she slid across the seat, but he turned and walked away from the car, as if he had not seen her. He had agreed to that.

  And, he did not want to see what was in Barbara Phillips’s eyes.

  He walked to the corner and turned into Williams Street. He went the way the crowd was going. At the newsstand by the subway kiosk he bought a copy of the World-Telegram and Sun. He started into the subway and changed his mind, and bucked his way out again and, after a little waiting, got a cab. In the cab, he read the World-Telegram and Sun, the paper jiggling in front of his eyes.

  There was a three-column picture on the front page and under it a picture of John Hayward, smaller than the other, and, balancing that, a photograph of the outside of the apartment house on Eleventh Street. The photograph of John had been taken as he left the courtroom, and he looked, he thought, more than ever like everyone else. But the three-column picture was not a photograph. It was the reproduction of a drawing. The drawing was of Nora Evans. Above the picture were the words: “Murdered Girl: Who Was She?” and below, “‘Nora Evans,’ mystery victim of Village murder.”

  John read the news story then, in the joggling cab, the print jumping before his eyes.

  “Police investigating the strangulation murder Saturday of ‘Nora Evans,’ whose almost nude body was found in her Greenwich Village apartment by a cleaning woman, concentrated today on an effort to trace the girl’s background, about which they have so far been able to discover little,” John read. “It is probable, the police say, that the name by which she was known was assumed to disguise her real identity.

  “Meanwhile, John Hayward, of—East Thirty-sixth Street, an executive of the Cotton Exchange Bank, was arraigned as a material witness in the case before Magistrate Silverman in Felony Court and released in $20,000 bail. The police assert that Mr. Hayward, a Harvard graduate and assistant to the bank’s senior vice president, Martin Phillips, was an associate of the murdered girl.

  “In response to questions, Mr. Hayward denied categorically that he had known ‘Miss Evans’ or visited her apartment in East Eleventh Street. The police allege that the rent of the apartment was paid by a man, whom they refuse to identify.”

  The implication, John realized, was obvious—and only an implication. There was no statement that John Hayward was the man the police refused to identify. One was hardly needed. John read on. The account reverted to the “mystery” of Nora Evans’s identity.

  She had—if one could trust what the police told the press, which was perhaps not everything—appeared out of nowhere the October before, when she had first looked at the apartment. On her second visit, which ended with her agreement to rent the apartment, she had been accompanied by a man. She had moved in a few weeks later. Furniture had been delivered, new, from one of the city’s largest (and most expensive) stores. Police investigation had disclosed that the furniture had been purchased a few days before its delivery and had been paid for in cash. A salesman—who had been politely astonished at his own good fortune—remembered the pretty red-haired girl very well. He remembered the cash very well. And the only address she had given had been the Eleventh Street address.

  Since each apartment there had its own lock-box for mail, there was no way of knowing what mail the girl had received during the months she lived there. There had been some, not many, deliveries from specialty shops. She had bought groceries, sparingly, from a neighborhood store; she had bought liquor, also in small quantities, from another. She had paid in cash for both food and drink. The cost of electricity and gas had been included in the rent; she had paid the telephone bills in cash. The telephone company records showed no charges for out-of-town calls. There was no indication that she had had a bank account.

  And, so far, the police had found no picture of the dead girl in her apartment. They had been unable to locate anyone who “admitted” knowing her. (The word was, evidently, chosen as a reference word. The reference was to John Hayward, whom the police would not identify as the renter of “Miss Evans’s” apartment.)

  “Somewhere,” the reporter wrote, “a pretty girl with red hair grew up. Somewhere she went to school—made friends, no doubt went on dates with boy friends. Somewhere, before October, she lived—alone? sharing an apartment with another girl? perhaps with her husband? None of these questions can the police answer.

  “Medical evidence fixes her age as in the middle or early twenties. The color of her hair was its natural color. The Medical Examiner’s report describes her as ‘well nourished.’ Her nails were manicured; most of her clothing was of good quality, and much of it expensive.

  “Was she employed, as an office worker or perhaps as a model? The police have been able to find no social security card. She did not own a car, or if she did the registration certificate has not been unearthed. She was not licensed to operate a car. At least, no operator’s permit has been found. She had no charge accounts. If she received mail, she destroyed it after she had read it. The only key found among her effects was that to the apartment in which she lived and died.

  “Somehow, for some reason, the girl known as ‘Nora Evans’ stepped from a background which can only be guessed at into a new life, almost certainly with a new, but shadowy, identity, when, last November, she moved into a charming, newly-furnished, apartment in one of Greenwich Village’s better neighborhoods.”

  The reporter paused there, presumably to regain his breath. He went on, more prosaically:

  “The drawing reproduced in the World-Telegram and Sun was made by a police artist, after the girl’s death. The police hope it will be identified by someone who may have known ‘Miss Evans’ in the past.”

  “Here we are,” the cab driver said.

  John paid him, and got out, carrying the newspaper.

  “Hell of a thing,” the driver said. “Pretty girl like that. What would anybody want to kill a girl like that for?”

  “I don’t know,” John sa
id, and went into his apartment house. I don’t know, he thought, riding up in the elevator. I don’t know. He went into his apartment, which seemed emptier than he had ever known it—which seemed somehow strange—and put his hat on the closet shelf. He looked at the too-emphatic sports jacket on its hanger.

  Slowly, very carefully, he closed the closet door. He went, quite methodically, to the refrigerator and to his liquor cabinet, and made himself a drink. He felt only deep weariness.

  Instead of coming clear, he thought (standing as he sipped his drink) all of it was slipping into greater obscurity. Now there were two areas obscured, where there had been before only one—who had impersonated him to murder? Now there was this entirely unexpected question—who had been murdered?

  “We get nowhere fast,” John Hayward said, prosaically and aloud, to hear the sound of his own voice, to reduce things to simple, ordinary words. And he thought, then, it’s too much to try alone. He thought of Barbara, and forced his thoughts from her, so that there was only an emptiness where she had been.

  V

  Barbara Phillips said, “Never mind, Clay,” and reached the width of the car seat to open the door for her father. Martin Phillips said, “Good evening, Barbara,” without surprise. Nor was he surprised when, the door closed, his daughter leaned forward, in that quick, fluid way of hers, and rolled up the glass which separated them from the chauffeur. He sighed, faintly, but he was not surprised.

  Barbara heard the sigh. Briefly, she patted his nearest hand, as an act of comradeship. But then, as the car started, she leaned back in her corner and looked at him. She looked at him from widely spaced brown eyes, set in a pointed face. She’s the prettiest thing there ever was, her father thought and said, smiling a little, “Well, Barbara?”

  “John was in there,” she said, moving her close-cropped head a little toward the bank building. “I saw him when he came out. He very carefully didn’t see me.” She paused. Her father nodded his banker’s head. “It won’t do you any good, darling,” she said. “Not any good at all.” She waited. But he waited too, smiling faintly—in comradeship—but, she realized, letting her set the pace. He’s a very intelligent man, my father, she thought.

  “Because,” she said, “I won’t have it. You’ve worked on John. Appealed to his ethical sense. Oh, I know you both. It’s—it’s something out of the dim past.”

  “What is?” Martin Phillips permitted himself to say, and was told there was no sense in pretending.

  “I,” she said, “am to be shielded. To be kept above the battle. Look at me.”

  He did.

  “You,” she said, “should know better. You should know me better. I don’t expect him to, yet. Men have funny ideas about their women, particularly at first. Women—let them.”

  His face changed a great deal, when he really smiled. He said, “Thanks for telling me, Barbara,” and then, but very briefly, a smile widened her delicately cut, but entirely ample, mouth. I’ve always been, glad, Martin Phillips thought, that she hasn’t got a little rosebud mouth. She is very like her mother was. Only—quicker. “So, you’re Hayward’s woman, are you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Entirely. More than he knows—or needs to know.”

  “Although,” her father said, “you’re really a child. Twenty-three next September.”

  Her gesture dismissed that.

  “Then,” he said, “your man’s in a bad spot, Barbara. Do you know how bad a spot?”

  “I’ve read the papers,” she said.

  “Worse than that,” he said. “Considerably worse. The police came to see me, too. Listen—” He told her how bad a spot John Hayward was in. He told it with economy, dispassionately. He watched her dark eyes; could feel her quick mind ordering what he told her. He watched for doubt to grow in her eyes. It did not.

  “And with all that,” she said. “You—you what? Told him the bank would reserve judgment? That you would? And—that you trusted him not to bring me into so—so squalid—a situation?”

  But there was no reproach in her tone.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s approximately what I told Hayward.”

  “Taking advantage,” she said, “of being his boss. Taking advantage of the dignity of the bank. Taking advantage of being my father.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Taking any advantage I could, my dear.”

  “And of course,” she said, “the poor baby was—taken in. You knew he would be, because he’s that kind of person. You counted on that.”

  “Yes,” Martin Phillips said.

  “Knowing that,” she said. “Knowing the kind he is, you could still believe—or even half believe—he would kill a girl he’d—” She hesitated, seeking a term her father would not, on her lips, find inappropriate. “Been making love to?” she said.

  She is considerate of the conservatism of age, her father thought. It’s a long time between generations. She’s a very nice girl. He was sorry for her; sorrier than she would want him to show.

  “My dear,” he said, “there are a good many things you don’t know about. Ugly things—violent things.”

  “Are there?” she said.

  “I,” Martin Phillips said, “would certainly prefer to think so. As to John—I’ve always thought very highly of his character. And, for that matter, of his intelligence. But—”

  “You consider the evidence,” she said. “What on earth has the evidence to do with it? And—thinking he may be a murderer, because of all this evidence—you put him on his honor.” She looked intently at her father. “I suppose,” she said, “you didn’t really use that word?”

  That word out of antiquity, Martin Phillips thought. “No,” he said. “I spared him that, Barbara.” He reached out, petted her knee. “It’s a shocking thing,” he said. “I—I love you very much, my dear. I—”

  She put a slender hand on his large hand.

  “Oh,” she said. “I know. There’s no blame.” She patted his hand; sat back in the corner of the seat. “I’ve been trying to get him on the telephone,” she said. “I’m going to keep on trying.” She waited. She said, “You hear me, father?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Can’t you understand what’s happening to him?” she said, and for the first time her voice, so desperately kept matter of fact, faltered. “Can’t you—” Then she put both hands over her eyes, and her body trembled. “What kind of person do you think I am?” she said. “What kind of—of wax doll—do you think you have for a daughter?” Her clear voice, her very young voice, was smudged. She took her hands down from her face. “Look at me,” she said. “You—you loved mother. Can’t you see I love John? Can’t you—remember?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember, Barbara. But—you seem so young.” He hesitated. “It’s possible,” he said, “to fall in love with the wrong people. Not to know what kind of people they are. As you get older—” He stopped himself; the young are easily alienated from the old. He decided that, perhaps fortunately, she was not really listening.

  “He must,” Barbara said, “think I’m like all the rest. That—that all the facts in the world would make any difference.”

  He did not try to answer that. I don’t, he thought, really know the answer to that. All I know is, you have to act as if facts do make a difference, because there isn’t any other way to act. Not, he thought, as you get older.

  The car had been going up Park Avenue. It turned to the right off Park. Clay found a place to bring it to the curb. Clay did not, as under other circumstances he would have, get out and come around to open the door. He thought they might not have finished. He supposed it was about Mr. Hayward who had killed what appeared to be a damn’ good-looking girl. It was tough on Miss Barbara.

  “I’ll keep at it until I get him,” Barbara said. “I’ll make him let me help. However much he tries—” She did not finish.

  “Yes,” her father said, “I suppose you will, Barbara. I don’t suppose I can stop you.”

  She patted his hand agai
n.

  “In most respects,” she said, “you’re a very satisfactory father.”

  “As fathers go,” Martin Phillips said, and got out of the car and held his hand out to her, who needed no help, who came out of the car as light as a floating feather. How heavy the years make us, her father thought—how weighted down with facts.

  John Hayward paid the cab driver and crossed the sidewalk of Forty-fourth Street and went into the Harvard Club. He found the distance from the cab to club lobby far longer than he had ever known it to be; although he went quickly enough, his mind held back. Inside, he felt that he walked stiffly, conscious of inimical eyes. Actually, he encountered, on his way to the bar, only Pit Woodson, on patrol, as always, for bridge players. And Pit’s face—the regular-featured, well-cared-for face of his type, and John’s—lighted up and he came forward, with a hand out. “Johnny boy,” Pit said. “Good to see you.”

  John said, “’Lo, Pit,” and took the hand offered him. It appeared, at first, that the news had not penetrated to Pit Woodson. But then, looking more carefully into Pit Woodson’s slightly prominent brown eyes, he perceived there a flicker which he took to be of wariness. So Pit had heard. The news had permeated to the most remote bridge table. Which was to be expected; which John had expected.

  “Hows about—” Pit Woodson began, the flicker no longer in his eyes—in his eyes only the warm friendliness of a bridge player in search of three others.

  “Sorry, Pit,” John said. “Afraid I’m tied up.” He said this almost by instinct. Probably, he thought, he had said much the same thing Saturday afternoon. (And yet, when one felt like bridge, there was no man in the club, or anywhere else John could think of, better at it than Pit Woodson. The trouble was, presumably, that few felt quite so much like quite so much bridge as Pit did.) “Another time,” John said and Pit Woodson said, “Sure, any time,” which could be taken literally.