“Am I going to grow?” he asked, voicing the professional fear of all midgets.
“Maybe. That depends. Don’t go looking for Kay and that Armand creature until you’re ready for it.”
“How will I know when I’m ready?”
“You’ll know. Got your bankbook? Keep on banking by mail, the way you always have. Got enough money? Good. You’ll be all right, Horty. Don’t ask anyone for anything. Don’t tell anyone anything. Do things for yourself, or do without.”
“I don’t—belong out there,” he muttered.
“I know. You will, though; just the way you came to belong here. You’ll see.”
Moving gracefully and easily on high heels, Horty went to the door. “Well, good-by, Zee. I—I wish I—Couldn’t you come with me?”
She shook her glossy dark head. “I wouldn’t dare, Kiddo. I’m the only human being the Maneater talks to—really talks to. And I’ve—got to watch what he’s doing.”
“Oh.” He never asked what he should not ask. Childish, helpless, implicitly obedient, the exact, functional product of his environment, he gave her a frightened smile and turned to the door. “Good bye, honey,” she whispered, smiling.
When he had gone she sank down on his bunk and cried. She cried all night. It was not until the next morning that she remembered Junky’s jeweled eyes.
8
A DOZEN YEARS HAD PASSED since Kay Hallowell had seen, from the back window, Horty Bluett climb into a brilliantly painted truck, one misty night. Those years had not treated the Hallowells kindly. They had moved into a smaller house, and then into an apartment, where her mother died. Her father had hung on for a while longer, and then had joined his wife, and Kay, at nineteen, left college in her junior year and went to work to help her brother through pre-medical school.
She was a cool blonde, careful and steady, with eyes like twilight. She carried a great deal on her shoulders, and she kept them squared. Inwardly she was afraid to be frightened, afraid to be impressionable, to be swayed, to be moved, so that outwardly she wore carefully constructed poise. She had a job to do; she had to get ahead herself so that she could help Bobby through the arduous process of becoming a doctor. She had to keep her self-respect, which meant decent housing and decent clothes. Maybe some day she could relax and have fun, but not now. Not tomorrow or next week. Just some day. Now, when she went out to dance, or to a show, she could only enjoy herself cautiously, up to the point where late hours, or a strong new interest, or even enjoyment itself, might interfere with her job. And this was a great pity, for she had a deep and brimming reservoir of laughter.
“Good morning, Judge.” How she hated that man, with his twitching nostrils and his limp white hands. Her boss, T. Spinney Hartford, of Benson, Hartford and Hartford, was a nice enough man but he certainly hobnobbed with some specimens. Oh well; that’s the law business. “Mr. Hartford will be with you in a moment. Please sit down, Judge.”
Not there, Wet-Eyes! Oh dear, right next to her desk. Well, he always did.
She flashed him a meaningless smile and went to the filing cabinets across the room before he could start that part weak, part bewildering line of his. She hated the waste of time; there was nothing she needed from the files. But she couldn’t sit there and ignore him, and she knew he wouldn’t shout across the office at her; he preferred the technique described by Thorne Smith as “a voice as low as his intentions.”
She felt his moist gaze on her back, on her hips, rolling up and down the seams of her stockings, and she had an attack of gooseflesh that all but itched. This wouldn’t do. Maybe short range would be better; perhaps she could parry what she couldn’t screen. She returned to her desk, gave him the same lipped smile, and pulled out her typewriter, swinging it up on its smooth countersprung swivels. She ran in some letterhead and began to type busily.
“Miss Hallowell.”
She typed.
“Miss Hallowell.” He reached and took her wrist. “Please don’t be so very busy. We have such a brief moment together.”
She let her hands fall into her lap—one of them, at least. She let the other hang unresisting in the Judge’s limp white clasp until he let it go. She folded her hands and looked at them. That voice! If she looked up she was sure she would see a trickle of drool on his chin. “Yes, Judge?”
“Do you enjoy it here?”
“Yes. Mr. Hartford is very kind.”
“A most agreeable man. Most agreeable.” He waited until Kay felt so stupid, sitting there staring at her hands, that she had to raise her face. Then he said, “You plan to stay here for quite a while, then.”
“I don’t see why—that is, I’d like to.”
“The best-laid plans…” he murmured. Now, what was that? A threat to her job? What did this slavering stuffed-shirt have to do with her job? “Mr. Hartford is a most agreeable man.” Oh. Oh dear. Mr. Hartford was a lawyer, and frequently had cases in Surrogate. Some of those were hairline decisions on which a lot depended. “Most agreeable.” Of course Mr. Hartford was an agreeable man. He had a living to make.
Kay waited for the next gambit. It came.
“You really won’t have to work here more than two more years, as I understand it.”
“Wh—why? Oh. How did you know about that?”
“My dear girl,” he said, with an insipid modesty. “I naturally know the contents of my own files. Your father was most provident, and very wise. When you are twenty-one, you’ll be in for a comfortable bit of money, eh?”
It’s none of your business, you old lynx. “Why, I’ll hardly notice that, Judge. That’s earmarked for Bobby, my brother. It will put him through his last two years and a year of specialization too, if he wants it. And we won’t have to lose a wink of sleep over anything from then on. We’re just keeping above water until then. But I’ll go on working.”
“Admirable.” He twitched his nostrils at her, and she bit her lip and looked down at her hands again. “Very lovely,” he added appreciatively. Again she waited. Move Three took place. He sighed. “Did you know there was a lien on your father’s estate, for an old partnership matter?”
“I—had heard that. The old agreements were torn up when the partnership was dissolved in Daddy’s trucking business.”
“One set of papers were not torn up. I still have them. Your father was a trusting man.”
“That account was squared twice over, Judge!” Kay’s eyes could, sometimes, take on the slate color of thunderclouds. They did now.
The Judge leaned back and put his fingertips together. “It is a matter which could get to court. To Surrogate, by the way.”
He could get her job. Maybe he could get the money and with it, Bobby’s career. The alternative… well, she could expect that now.
She was so right.
“Since my dear wife departed—” (She remembered his dear wife. A cruel, empty-headed creature with wit enough to cater to his ego in the days before he became a judge, and nothing else) “—I am a very lonely man, Miss Hallowell. I have never met anyone quite like you. You have beauty, and you could be clever. You can go far. I would like to know you better,” he simpered.
Over my dead body. “You would?” she said inanely, stiff with disgust and fear.
He underlined it. “A lovely girl like you, with such a nice job, and with that little nest-egg coming to you—if nothing happens.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to call you Kay from now on. I’m sure we understand each other.”
“No!” She said it because she did understand, not because she didn’t.
He took it his way. “Then I’d be happy to explain further,” he chuckled. “Say tonight. Quite late tonight. A man in my position can’t—haw!—trip the light fantastic where the lights are bright.”
Kay said nothing.
“There’s a little place,” sniggered the Judge, “called Club Nemo, on Oak Street. Know it?”
“I think I have—noticed it,” she said with difficulty.
“One o’clock,”
he said cheerfully. He stood up and leaned over her. He smelled like soured after-shave. “I do not like to stay up late for nothing. I’m sure you’ll be there.”
Her thoughts raced. She was furious, and she was frightened, two emotions which she had avoided for years. She wanted to do several things. She wanted primarily to scream, and to get rid of her breakfast then and there. She wanted to tell him some things about himself. She wanted to storm into Mr. Hartford’s office and demand to know if this, this, and that were included in her duties as a stenographer.
But then, there was Bobby, so close to a career. She knew what it was to have to quit on the homestretch. And poor, fretting, worried Mr. Hartford; he meant no harm, but he wouldn’t know how to handle a thing like this. And one more thing, a thing the Judge apparently did not suspect—her proven ability to land on her feet.
So instead of doing any of the things she wanted to do, she smiled timidly and said, “We’ll see…”
“We’ll see each other,” he amended. “We’ll see a great deal of each other.” She felt that moist gaze again on the nape of her neck as he moved off, felt it on her armpits.
A light on her switchboard glowed. “Mr. Hartford will see you now, Judge Bluett,” she said.
He pinched her cheek. “You can call me Armand,” he whispered. “When we’re alone, of course.”
9
HE WAS THERE WHEN she arrived. She was late—only a few minutes, but they cost a great deal. They were minutes added to the hours of fuming hatred, of disgust, and of fear which she had gone through after the Judge’s simpering departure from the Hartford offices that morning.
She stood for a moment just inside the club. It was quiet—quiet lights, quiet colors, quiet music from a three-piece orchestra. There were very few customers, and one she knew. She caught a glimpse of silver hair in the corner back of the jutting corner of the bandstand at a shadowed table. She went to it more because she knew he would choose such a spot than because she recognized him.
He stood up and pulled out a chair for her. “I knew you’d come.”
How could I get out of it, you toad? “Of course I came,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”
“I’m glad you’re sorry. I’d have to make you sorry, if you weren’t.” He laughed when he said it, and only served to stress the pleasure he felt at the thought. He ran the back of his hand over her forearm, leaving a new spoor of gooseflesh. “Kay. Pretty little Kay,” he moaned. “I’ve got to tell you something. I really put some pressure on you this morning.”
You don’t say! “You did?” she asked.
“You must have realized it. Well, I want you to know right away, right now, that I didn’t mean any of that—except about how lonely I am. People don’t realize that as well as being a judge, I’m a man.”
That makes me one of the people. She smiled at him. This was a rather complicated process. It involved the fact that in this persuasive, self-pitying speech his voice had acquired a whine, and his features the down-drawn character of a spaniel’s face. She half-closed her eyes to blur his image, and got such a startling facsimile of a mournful hound’s head over his wing collar that she was reminded of an overheard remark: “He’s that way through having been annoyed, at an early age, by the constant barking of his mother.” Hence the smile. He misunderstood it and the look that went with it and stroked her arm again. Her smile vanished, though she still showed her teeth.
“What I mean is,” he crooned, “I just want you to like me for myself. I’m sorry I had to use any pressure. It’s just that I didn’t want to fail. Anyway, all’s fair… you know.”
“—in love and war,” she said dutifully. And this means war. Love me for myself alone, or else.
“I won’t ask much of you,” he said out of wet lips. “It’s only that a man wants to feel cherished.”
She closed her eyes so he could not see them roll heavenward. He wouldn’t ask much. Just sneaking and skulking to protect his “position” in the town. Just that face, that voice, those hands… the swine, the blackmailer, the doddering, slimy-fingered old wolf! Bobby, Bobby, she thought in anguish, be a good doctor…
There was more of it, much more. A drink arrived. His choice for a sweet young girl. A sherry flip. It was too sweet and the foam on it grabbed unpleasantly at her lipstick. She sipped and let the Judge’s sentimental slop wash over her, nodded and smiled, and, as often as she could, tuned out the sound of his voice and listened to the music. It was competent and clean—Hammond Solovox, string bass, and guitar—and for a while it was the only thing in the whole foul world she could hold on to.
Judge Bluett had, it seemed, a little place tucked away over a store in the slums. “The Judge works in the court and his chambers,” he intoned, “and has a fine residence on The Hill. But Bluett the Man has a place too, a comfortable spot, a diamond in a rough setting, a place where he can cast aside the black robes, his dignities and his honors, and learn again that he has red blood in his veins.”
“It must be very nice,” she said.
“One can hide there,” he said expansively. “I should say, two can hide there. All the conveniences. A cellar at your elbow, a larder at your beck and call. A civilized wilderness for a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and—th-h-owoo.” He ended with a hoarse whisper, and Kay had the insane feeling that if his eyes protruded another inch, a man could sit on one and saw the other off.
She closed her eyes again and explored her resources. She felt that she had possibly twenty seconds of endurance left. Eighteen. Sixteen. Oh, this is fine. Here goes Bobby’s career up in smoke—in a mushroom-shaped cloud at a table for two.
He gathered his feet under him and rose. “You’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, not quite clicking his heels. He made a little joke about powder rooms, and obviously being human. He turned away and turned back and pointed out that this was only the first of the little intimacies they would come to learn of each other. He turned away and turned back and said “Think it over. Perhaps we can slip away to our little dreamland this very night!” He turned away and if he had turned back again he would have gotten a French heel in the area of his watchpocket.
Kay sat alone at the table and visibly wilted. Anger and scorn had sustained her; now, for a moment, fear and weariness took their places. Her shoulders sagged and turned forward and her chin went down, and a tear slid out onto her cheek. This was three degrees worse than awful. This was too much to pay for a Mayo Clinic full of doctors. She wanted out. Something had to happen, right now.
Something did. A pair of hands appeared on the tablecloth in front of her.
She looked up and met the eyes of the young man who stood there. He had a broad, unremarkable face. He was nearly as blond as she, though his eyes were dark. He had a good mouth. He said, “A lot of people don’t know the difference between a musician and a potted palm when they go to pour their hearts out. You’re in a spot, Ma’am.”
Some of her anger returned, but it subsided, engulfed in a flood of embarrassment. She could say only, “Please leave me alone.”
“I can’t. I heard that routine.” He tossed his head toward the rest rooms. “There’s a way out, if you’ll trust me.”
“I’ll keep the devil I know,” she said coldly.
“You listen to me. I mean listen, until I’m finished. Then you can do as you like. When he comes back, stall him off for tonight. Promise to meet him here tomorrow night. Make it a real good act. Then tell him you shouldn’t leave here together; you might be seen. He’ll think of that anyway.”
“And he leaves, and I’m at your tender mercies?”
“Don’t be a goon! Sorry. No, you leave first. Go straight to the station and catch the first train out. There’s a northbound at three o’clock and a south-bound at three-twelve. Take either one. Go somewhere else, hole up, find yourself another job, and stay out of sight.”
“On what? Three dollars mad-money?”
He flipped a long wallet out of his inside jacket poc
ket. “Here’s three hundred. You’re smart enough to make out all right on that.”
“You’re crazy! You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. Besides, I haven’t anything up for sale.”
He made an exasperated gesture. “Who said anything about that? I said take a train—any train. No one’s going to follow you.”
“You are crazy. How could I get it back to you?”
“You worry about that. I work here. Drop by some time—during the day when I’m not here, if you like, and leave it for me.”
“What on earth makes you want to do a thing like that?”
His voice was very gentle. “Say it’s the same thing makes me bring raw fish to alley-cats. Oh, stop arguing. You need an out and this is it.”
“I can’t do a thing like that!”
“You got a good imagination? The kind that makes pictures?”
“I—suppose so.”
“Then, forgive me, but you need a kick in the teeth. If you don’t do what I just told you, that crumb is going to—” and in a half-dozen simple, terse words, he told her exactly what that crumb was going to do. Then, with a single deft motion, he slipped the bills into her handbag and got back on the bandstand.
She sat, sick and shaken, until Bluett returned from the men’s room. She had an unusually vivid pictorial imagination.
“While I was gone” he said, settling into his chair and beckoning to the waiter for the check, “know what I was doing?”
That, she thought, is just the kind of question I need right now. Limpidly, she asked, “What?”
“I was thinking about that little place, and how wonderful it would be if I could slip away after a hard day at court, and find you there waiting for me.” He smiled fatuously. “And no one would ever know.”
Kay sent up a “Lord-forgive-me, I-know-not-what-I-do,” and said distinctly, “I think that’s a charming idea. Just charming.”
“And it wouldn’t—what?”
For a moment she almost pitied him. Here he had his lines flaked out, his hooks sharpened and greased, and his casting arm worked up to a fine snap, and she’d robbed him of his sport. She’d driven up behind him with a wagon-load of fish. She’d surrendered.
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