Black-Eyed Stranger

by Charlotte Armstrong

“Yes, see here,” broke in the father. “We must be very careful that nothing like this does happen.”

  “Aaaah,” said Sam on a deep indrawn groan of satisfaction. “That’s right. That’s it. Let me ask,” he turned hopefully to Salisbury, “have you any idea how easy it would be for them to get hold of her? Do you realize you got to lock her up? You got to have somebody with her every minute, somebody capable—”

  Dulain crossed his legs. “You suggest that we, as you put it, lock up Miss Salisbury for how long?” His ankles swung.

  Sam’s hair stirred. “What do you want for a nickel? How do I know how long?”

  “If we promise to do this, will you reveal the names of the conspirators?”

  “What’s this? A bargain?”

  “So that the law can …” Alan hesitated.

  “Can do what?”

  “Act … deter …”

  “You got a lot to learn about the law, sonny,” Sam said. “What kind of case you going to make out of an intuition of an intention? And don’t rely on me to testify. What I could testify has holes in it, plenty. Besides I may not be around.”

  Salisbury straightened. “I don’t know what to make of this.” He slid into the chair behind the desk.

  “Nor do I, sir.” Alan frowned.

  “It is possible? Is he putting himself in danger?”

  “I can’t see how,” said Alan, “since he really isn’t telling us anything.”

  Sam, feeling as if his hair were rising from his head again, nevertheless took hold of himself. He tried to speak calmly. “You can’t believe me and disbelieve me at the same time,” he said. “It’s all one piece. I’m telling you there is a plan. I’m also telling you, if you’re warned and take action and she stays safe, and it gets known who told you, I am liable to sudden death. Now, make up your minds. Either, I’m plain crazy, all the way through. Or I’m up here doing you one hell of a big favor. Don’t forget, I’d like to be safe, too. Nothing to argue. And no bargains. Believe it all or nothing. But let me know.”

  He turned his back to look blindly out the window. Behind him, he thought, eye must be crossing eye, hand signaling to hand. For the moment, he didn’t care. His vision cleared, and he looked out on the glowing city and to him it was a moving, changing, clashing tangle of men, passionate and violent. And he thought to ask for safety at all was somewhat mad.

  Then he heard Dulain’s tenor, high and crisp. “Oh, well. A favor. What do you consider a proper reward for this … favor?”

  Sam faced around, blazing, and then he closed his eyes. The dark skin around them trembled. “Well,” he said in a dead voice, “that’s that. Okay. I guess you sold me the idea. To mind my own business.” He opened his eyes, not to look at them, just to see his way out of here.

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Get out of my way, you God-damned social worker.” Sam raised one hand. He let it fall. “She was a cute kid,” he said.

  The father whimpered. “No, no, tell us. You can’t go.”

  “Do you believe me?” Sam asked him, almost as if this were light curiosity.

  “I don’t know.” The father’s hand moved pleadingly, “As you say, that hardly matters. We must surely take all precautions. But, Mr. Lynch, you must see how indefinite, how impossible … And unnerving. After all, what can we do? And for how long?”

  “I can see that it’s unnerving,” Sam said. “I can’t help it.”

  “But what solution?” The gray man craved order. “Is there no way to apprehend these people?”

  “No way that I know.”

  “And no way to prove they exist, either,” said Alan Dulain. His face was red.

  Sam’s whole head was red inside.

  “Unless Lynch is willing to be a little more helpful,” Dulain went on, “give us names, dates, places. At least something to check. Something besides a word of his, based on his intuition.”

  Sam said, thickly, “I’ll give no names. And it can’t be checked. And I was never here. Excuse me for intruding.”

  “Lynch.”

  Sam had reached the door, somehow. He turned to the father. “Call the police. Say you’ve had a tip. And if you’ve got any charity, don’t say where you got it. But first of all, get her a bodyguard. Do something. Because it won’t be a kidnaping for long. It’ll be murder.” Then he flung himself out of the room with an after-image of the gray stunned face on his retina.

  Chapter 7

  CHARLES SALISBURY clenched his hands. “What must we do? What do you think? Who is he, Alan?”

  Alan was still flushed. “Told you, sir. Lynch is a cheap writer, a sensationalist. He is supposed to be on friendly terms with some very crooked people. That type. No good. Intelligent, yes, but absolutely no good.” His face grew grimmer.

  “But, Kay said he was a friend.”

  “My fault, sir. I took her to a place I should never have taken her and … well … they met.”

  “I won’t have her in contact …” began the father angrily.

  “I know it, sir. I know it too well. She begged me. I thought if once she saw how cheap and flashy such a party could be—” He began to pace. “What concerns me, you see, it’s possible he would know. He is just the man who might know.” Charles Salisbury’s hand was on the phone. “What I do not get, is why … why! He is not the type to tell, sir. Now, whether Kay appeals to him … Frankly, I don’t see … The place was full of flashy women. This could be a nasty kind of hoax. Lynch writes for these hideous junk magazines.”

  Salisbury took his hand off the phone and clenched it again. He was a decent man and he had thought that, on the whole, his world was a fairly decent one. “I won’t forgive you, Alan, if because you took Kay somewhere …”

  “I can’t fit it in,” said Alan. “The only thing that happened, in the fifteen minutes she was there, is that she met Lynch. I can’t help wondering if Lynch is back of all of it.”

  “How could that be?”

  Alan shook his head. “A twisted, a devious type. God knows what he thought he might get out of you. You had no way of knowing his background. Suppose I hadn’t been here?” He made this sound a serious speculation, nothing vain.

  But the older man said, gravely, “Suppose his story is a bare fact and the man is acting in common decency? You dislike him. I could see that.”

  “It’s true, I have no patience with his type. He’s intelligent, and yet, to me, he makes a mockery of the whole effort … well … of men to combine and … well … rise. For some reason he violently dislikes me. Oh, I react to that.” The blond boy smiled ruefully. “It’s difficult to be fair. Meantime …”

  “Yes. Yes, what?”

  Alan reached for the phone and the book. “A guard, of course. There’s a very competent firm … private investigators. I think it’s imperative to have a guard. But we had better go about it as quietly as possible, sir.”

  “I know some people,” said Salisbury suddenly, “in the Police Department. If influence—”

  “I think this is a better way, sir.” Alan dialed. Salisbury sat, watching, with that stunned look still on his face. “I know the man, sir,” Alan explained. “I know his reputation. People just do not step entirely out of character without some powerful motive. I’d hate to expose her to some nasty publicity … if this isn’t true.”

  Salisbury said, reluctantly, “I suppose you are right.”

  “Oh, I know the type, sir.” Alan shifted phone to ear. “We must explain to Kay. Poor darling. A pity to frighten her.”

  Salisbury bit his lips. “Or Martha,” he said, heavily. “What a hideous thing to do to us, if it isn’t true!”

  Sam Lynch went down the passage, his heels thumping hard on the carpet. He came to the big room where he had been before, crossed it, but when he had passed through into the foyer he stopped and looked behind him.

  There was no one in the big room, no one in the foyer, no one to be seen. The vast place was warm and silent, and it smelled faintly and pleasantly of
furniture wax. He looked through to the stairway but there was no one on the stairs.

  He took hold of the carved back of a chair; there in the foyer and toward the wall, standing against a green drapery, he leaned on his hands. A conviction of failure gathered silently around him. There was more to this business of taking part than he had thought. You could fluff it. You could make a mess of it. He couldn’t feel satisfied.

  He told himself that Salisbury would act, would surely do something. The father would go at the problem in some competent orderly fashion. Of course he would.

  Nevertheless, he stood still and realized that he was listening. For what? Why, for an effect, a consequence. For something to be done.

  But it was warm and still in the empty rooms and he could hear no footsteps and no voices. His hand sweated on the mahogany.

  Way down at the side of the building his shabby little car was docile at the curb. It had been there too long. Whatever these people were going to do, they would not tell the clerk downstairs to cover up Sam’s name. It wouldn’t occur to them. No, he was vulnerable. He was not very safe, from here on out. No matter what happened to her.

  He ought to get down there and drive briskly far away, for his own sake. But he looked down at his hands and he remembered a thick dirty finger. And he thought, if they once lay so much as one finger on her, she won’t live. It’ll be that late. And he wondered if he ought to try to see the mother, now.

  Perhaps he could scare her, really scare her. Put her in the panic she ought to be in, and in which he was. This was a kind of castle, up in the air. He thought Martha Salisbury had probably never, never in all her days, been otherwise than clean and pretty. If she had ever so much as seen things dirty and ugly, they wouldn’t have touched her. Not in her place. Even, he thought, had she dealt with dirt or disease or any ugly trouble, it would have been by a magic wand called money. So she would never have really touched or been touched, for money was a long stick.

  The perfect cruelty of such a one as Ambielli, the fiery needs of such a one, the dirty hands of Baby Hohenbaum would be shadows to her. Rumors. Folklore. Tales told. She lived in half the world. As did they, those two, for they knew even less, he reflected, about her gentle lighthearted grace. But the twain would meet.

  He thought, yes, he could scare her. And if he did, she would turn at once to her brilliant son-in-law-to-be who studied crime and who was full of theory. He tried to be fair and believe that Dulain, no matter what kind of cracks he’d made, would of course do something.

  All was so still.

  He tried to tell himself that Sam Lynch had done his best. But he couldn’t listen to the argument because it wasn’t to the point. He couldn’t feel satisfied. Inside his head he was still crying no, no. And he could see the car coming and the big hand closing on the girl’s throat, and her fearless eyes turning sick at the end to know she was dying in a world she never knew.

  No! How could he take his place, go back to his seat on the aisle, and wait for the curtain?

  Time was distorted. He didn’t know whether he’d stood here a minute or an hour. Then his ear pricked. Something? The dancing rhythm of sure young feet on the stairs.

  She came across the long room, past him, into the foyer, and by the corner of her eye she suddenly knew he was there, and her mop of brown hair flew sideways.

  He said weakly, “Hi.”

  She had a coat around her shoulders, a bag under her arm, a letter in her hand. He stiffened his body, rising from that bent position. “Where are you going?”

  “Hm? I’m going to put my letter in the corner box. I want it to get off. It never does unless you—”

  “I’ll mail it for you,” he said angrily.

  “Thanks, but I don’t mind.” She kept the letter to her breast. She looked up a little slyly. “Is Daddy going to do what you wanted him to do?”

  He half closed his black eyes in pain. “I’m not sure. You haven’t seen him?”

  “Daddy? No.”

  “Or your friend Alan?”

  “No.” Then he heard her say, “Can I help you, Sam? Are you in trouble or anything?” And he took his hands from his burning eyes, and at the sweetness of her expression his heart turned over, and he groaned. He said, “You’ll be my death. Why is that? What’s about you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said gravely. “What’s wrong?”

  “If I told you would you believe me?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Don’t say that,” he raged. “Don’t trust every stray—”

  “Don’t trust you?”

  “You’re ignorant. Your uninformed. You’re not even half grown—”

  “Well, I like that!” she exclaimed indignantly. “If you’re trying to tell me not to trust you, all right. Say so. And maybe I won’t. But just because you don’t trust anybody …”

  “That’s so true,” he mumbled.

  “You don’t even trust me enough to tell me what in the world you’re so upset about.”

  “I know. Why don’t you get that tooth straightened?”

  “Because it would hurt,” she sparked at him. “And I don’t mind it that much. It isn’t important.” She stopped and folded her lips inward for a moment and then she laughed.

  Sam Lynch began to laugh, too. Because he had a vision. It was like looking from a brink across a gulf of horrors, fire and smoke and pain, and seeing before him the thin danger of one taut shining wire, on which, if he had the reckless nerve to place his feet, he might escape. He knew it was a wild idea. He said to himself, I’m crazy! But to trust yourself to sheer, mere balance, that silent and beautiful thing, carries a kind of joy, and so he smiled, and his black eyes were glowing.

  “Fuss about nothing,” he muttered. “We’ll skip that.” Then he began, softly, “Sister, I did something foolish.”

  “Oh?” She was ready to be serious.

  But he stepped around the chair and he took her arm. “Yeah. Of all the dumb things to do, I brought you a present.”

  “Present? For me?” She let him turn her. She didn’t notice they’d begun to walk.

  “And then I came all over shy. I was hanging around wondering if I had the nerve to … It’s downstairs.”

  “What in the world?”

  “Well, I couldn’t very well bring it up without … uh … It’s not the kind of thing you can keep in your pocket. It’s in my car.”

  They went out through the door of the apartment. Her hands were careless and sure on the knobs and locks. “Well, I’m certainly not going to let you get away with it,” she said.

  Sam punched for the elevator. He fidgeted. “You’ll think it’s pretty silly. I fell for this, myself. How do I know, though, if you like—”

  “Like what?”

  “Would you let me go first?”

  “Why?”

  “I … got something to fix …”

  “About the present?” He nodded. “But you’re going to give it to me? Aren’t you?”

  “If you’ll come and get it. And, of course, if you fall for it, too.”

  “You mean come to your car?”

  “Well, yes, because—Would you?”

  “All right. Where is it?”

  “Down at the side. It’s getting toward dusk,” he said, stammering a little.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” She really had no least tinge of suspicion, no shield and no armor, no fear, and it fascinated him. It fascinated and terrified and challenged him.

  “Didn’t you ever hear,” he rattled along, “don’t go with a man who says he’ll give you candy?” His heart was excited. “Didn’t your mamma tell you?”

  “It can’t be candy,” she said emphatically.

  “Well, no. It’s sweeter than candy. That’s if you like them. I’d guess you do.”

  “Sam, you’ve got me so curious. Why all this mystery?”

  The elevator was there. “Oh, I’m a mysterious fellow,” he said, as if he were clowning. “Hsst. We are str
angers. Say nothing. But follow me.”

  The girl giggled.

  They stepped into the car. He didn’t look at her. Halfway down she said in a very aloof and remotely gracious manner, “Hasn’t it been a lovely day?”

  “Sure has,” he said, casually, not looking at her. He wished his heart would quit its racket before it shook his chest apart. At the street level, he saw the side way out. He went that way.

  He walked fast out of the building. He was too near the car. He thought, I don’t have to do it. But he knew he was going to do it.

  If she came. If she was such a little fool as to follow.

  He ducked into his car and in the glove compartment found the old scarf. He ripped it lengthwise once, then twice. He pushed the front seat over. The open door hid him, all but his feet, from the sidewalk before. Back of him, this was a dead end. He bent down. He listened. Then, on the sidewalk he could hear the gay rhythm of her feet.

  Chapter 8

  ALAN put down the phone. “How soon?” demanded Salisbury.

  “Be up right away. These are good people.”

  “Even so, we’ll keep her close at home, right here, for a day or two. Also, I think that in spite of what you say, I am going to call the police and put this whole situation before them. True or untrue, innocent people ought not to be—”

  “I don’t—”

  There came a tap on the door. And Martha, saying, “Are you there, Charles?” The two men looked at each other. Martha’s husband braced himself. He dreaded telling her. He wasn’t sure of her reaction. He couldn’t imagine it.

  As Salisbury called, “Come in, dear,” the phone rang.

  Alan picked it up and put it down. “For Kay. Phinney’s got it.”

  Martha Salisbury said, “Will you boys take tea or strong liquor?”

  “We’ll take strong liquor.” As Salisbury linked his arm with hers, she looked up at him oddly.

  Alan followed them into the big room. Phinney, the manservant, said to him, “Beg pardon. Telephone for Miss Katherine. Do you know where she can be, sir?”

  But her father turned and answered, “She’s upstairs.”

  “No, I think she came down,” said her mother. “I thought she was with you.”