Black-Eyed Stranger

by Charlotte Armstrong

  The father said, stiffly, “Perhaps, the music room.” The manservant went that way.

  Martha Salisbury unlinked her arm, tripped to the foyer phone, and trilled, “Hello? Oh, Phyllis? Just a minute, dear. Kay’s here somewhere.” She held the phone. Her eyes watched the stiff silhouettes of the two men, watched and widened.

  Alan said, “Why, I imagine she’s upstairs.”

  “She must be,” Salisbury said.

  Then Martha leaned and called, “I wonder if she could have gone down to mail her letter. Don’t you imagine …?”

  No one replied. The silhouettes were rigid. The manservant returned and stood still, rather at a loss.

  Alan said, “I’ll look upstairs.” He turned and went up very fast.

  Martha said rapidly into the phone, “She’ll call you back, Phyl, dear. I’m sorry.” She hung up.

  “Kay?” Alan’s voice came faintly from above. Then, higher, “Katherine?”

  “What’s the matter?” her mother said.

  Salisbury had begun to breathe in gasps. “Katherine?” he called. He started rather blindly toward the back regions of the apartment. He passed his wife without seeming to see her. “Katherine?”

  The manservant moved all the way down the room to the windows.

  “What’s the matter!” Martha teetered on her tiny feet. She ran on her silly heels toward the windows, veered toward the stairs.

  Phinney turned from the window. “I thought perhaps I could see her in the street, madam. But there’s no one near the mailbox now.”

  Mrs. Salisbury swayed. Alan, on the stairs, looking down, white of face, said, “Katherine?”

  Salisbury was in the foyer again. “Katherine?” he pleaded.

  Looking at her husband’s face, Martha Salisbury raised her hands. She called, “Katherine!” and in her high clear voice cracked the alarm. “Katherine!”

  It was dark. All around the board shack were night noises, lip-lap of lake water near the rotting porch, sigh of a tree, twinkling patter of a small creature across the thin roof.

  The place had plumbing and nothing else in the way of civilized convenience. Interior light came from a kerosene lamp with a dirty glass chimney. Windows that had been boarded over for the winter still wore their crude board barricade outside the glass. The room was higgledy-piggledy—bunks, chairs, a rack of books, a table, a small round iron stove. No curtains, no rug, no “gay” decorations. The two Indian blankets on the two bunks were bright enough but they did not match each other.

  Katherine Salisbury pulled a piece of one of the blankets over her freezing ankles.

  The foundations of the world had cracked, down on the street, near home, and for a long time she had felt as one who whirled in a void, where there were no solids at all.

  She had been shocked and frightened, of course, but at the same time, angered. And now it was that sense of outrage that predominated. She was no longer afraid that she would be hurt in the sense that she would suffer pain. But the outrage was that her parents and her lover did not know what had become of her, and she, by force, was prevented from telling them. She was anguished, thinking of their anguish.

  For herself, she felt young and healthy and confident of her youth, and she lay with her wet hair against the boards at the head of the bunk, with her coat huddled around her, and the blanket on her ankles, and she tried to think. To be quiet and think.

  He was as silent as she. They had talked too much. Her throat hurt from so many futile words, such useless arguments. He sat on the hard chair, elbows on the table, hands in his black hair, and what she could see of his face was bleak and exhausted. They had struggled, she against the crazy thing he had done to her hair, and they had argued.

  He was exhausted, this Samuel Lynch. This strange man. Yet, she mused, how shrewdly he had guessed that smug proprietory feeling, that I-am-the-exception-to-the-rule idea, that childish vanity in which she had felt so pleased with herself. How easily he had fooled her. How easily she had been led to think he had a puppy in his car, for her. Something small and living, down on the floor. She had been so sure. And had climbed in, because he wanted to shut the door (to keep the little living thing in, or so she’d thought).

  Then his rough hands descending over the back of the front seat, and the violence. The scarf around her throat, cutting off her power to make sound. The upside-down tumbled impossible tangle of her limbs as she was shoved down upside down on the floor, the narrow place. To be helpless in that outrageous way, bound and without balance, upside down with her mouth full. To struggle and kick only in inches and in the dark, under the old coat. It was all outrage.

  She shivered, now.

  “Cold?” he said, not looking up.

  She said, “Yes.”

  He got up wearily and took the top off the stove with the iron gadget and thrust a few more sticks inside. The rosy light played over his face, coming from below, marking the hollows of his cheeks and of his eye sockets. He looked exhausted, gaunt, tragic, and immovable.

  She pulled her coat collar to her chin.

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “I guess there’s beans,” he said indifferently. He sat down.

  At first she’d thought he meant to injure her, perhaps even to kill her. She’d been for a few bad moments in terror of her life. But now she knew what she thought and it explained everything.

  At first, his whole story about this Ambielli and his brutal companion had seemed to her pure fiction. When he began to tell her, she had thought he was making it all up.

  But now she believed that some of it might be so. But, she thought, Sam must be on the wrong side. She judged he was on the wrong side somewhat reluctantly. Harassed by some little feeling for her, yes. Nevertheless, he was compelled to obey this Ambielli. It seemed obvious. It explained everything. Ambielli has something on him, she told herself sagely. She had no idea what. She took it no further. Such things were possible. People “had things” on other people. She didn’t doubt that. Not any more.

  All his queer angry words, his warnings not to be so trusting were because he hadn’t wanted to obey. She should have taken warning. She hadn’t. She’d kept on feeling, in them, through them, that he cared about her, somehow.

  She still couldn’t help feeling that he did. Even this silly self-defensive story that he’d kidnaped her only to keep her safe, it was because he didn’t want her to realize he was on the wrong side. He cared what she thought of him, even now. Just the same, there was no leverage for her in this feeling he had … if he had it. She couldn’t budge him.

  There was no use in any more arguing. It was so clear, so logical to her that if all he wanted to do was keep her safe, then all he had to do was take her home again. It was nonsense to her that her people had been warned but that he mistrusted them. Alan would have known exactly what to do. And Alan would do exactly right. There wasn’t any question about it.

  No, there was something wrong with the premise. Must be. Her safety could be so easily accomplished. It must be something else Sam worried about. Well, he admitted he was afraid for himself. Yes, she concluded, he is afraid for himself and that’s what really worries him. He’s been made to do this, for Ambielli. He was afraid not to obey. He’d met me. He could get up to see me because I knew his name. So he was the one to do it, of course. Maybe he never wanted to do it. But he had to obey, and now he is afraid to let me go.

  She supposed the others were handling the other part of it. She believed, now, it would be (for her and for Sam) a matter of waiting in this hidden place until he got the word, the order to let her go. The anguish stabbed her. Oh, her poor people! And she thought angrily, I won’t wait. What if I can get away?

  She believed that Sam would try to hold her. But she couldn’t believe he would hurt her, and then the monstrous thing that had happened to her rolled like a film in her brain and shook the intuition through with doubt. She told herself not to be a vain silly little fool all over again. Probably
he would hurt her if he had to.

  “Hair dry?” He got up and came toward her. She tried not to flinch as he put his hand on her head, not too gently, and stirred her locks with his fingers. “Good enough,” he said. “You look like the devil.”

  She sat up and got out her comb and began to tidy her hair. It was difficult without a mirror. She said, “May I?”

  He turned his hand to the lamp, giving permission, and he nodded. She climbed off the bunk, picked up the lamp, and walked, stiff legged, into the bathroom. Shadows shook on the board walls.

  The shack backed up against an earthen bank, squeezed between it and the water. Across the back, a strip of space was cut into a narrow kitchen and this narrow bath. But there were no doors to the outside and the windows were nothing but flat slits at the top of the back wall, level with the land above the bank. There wasn’t any way, even for the young and strong and slim, to get out of either of those two shallow interior cubby holes.

  Kay combed her hair. As she did, she realized that this bleaching of her hair was a wild thing, a stray. She couldn’t fit it in. It was a fact not explained, not understood at all, in her theory.

  He’d been frantically anxious to do it. So anxious he’d even left her, tied, tumbled, and wedged as she’d been in his car, long enough to buy the chemical. And he had been ready to tie her down to a chair and bleach her hair by force, had she not given up the struggle. She couldn’t see how it mattered much. Her hair was a mess, blotched and stiffened, streaked with paler shades, and that was all. But she certainly didn’t look like herself with it so streaked and drab and her face so colorless.

  He’d said, “Never mind why, sister. I can’t tell you why. I can say, but you can’t take it in. Not yet. Put it this way. I’m trying to figure out how not to die for you. Or put it this way. I’m studying how to keep you alive, if I do. Thing is, I have a hunch we could have a caller. So I’m looking ahead. That is really funny. Sam Lynch looks ahead. Funniest thing I’ve said today. Never mind. You can’t take it in. You will, when the time comes. But I got to do this now because you can’t do it in five mimutes. Never mind, sister. Put it that I’m crazy and you can’t go wrong.”

  Then, after that, he’d made her go over her clothing and take off cleaners’ tabs and name tapes, and he’d made her empty her purse. He’d burned all the papers, even her driver’s license, and he’d banged at her compact with a hammer, destroying the monogram on the outer case before he threw it in the lake.

  “But why?” she’d cried.

  But he had thrust her down on the bunk and said, “Be quiet.” And he’d sat down, holding his head. After a while he’d said, carefully, “If anyone comes, you are to get away. You are not Katherine Salisbury and you mustn’t admit it, until you get yourself home.”

  “But, Sam, why?”

  “You’ll understand, when it happens.”

  “When what happens?”

  “Something, to me.”

  “Oh …” She was exasperated.

  “All right. Let me breathe. Quit arguing. I’ve done the most damn foolish thing I ever did in my life, so far. It’s so foolish, I’m dizzy. Dizzy looking at it. I’m going in circles. I think I’m thinking but I’m not any more sure of it than you are. Maybe a wheel’s busted in my head. So I mind my own business for a million years!”

  And then he looked at her, furious, hair mussed, eyes blazing, and he shouted, “Who are you?” And she had trembled down under her coat and kept quiet.

  And, in the quiet, she built up her fine theories so that she thought she understood almost everything. But now, looking at herself, she thought, he meant to disguise me, to hide who I am. What can the reason be? And she thought, with a creeping warmth, there can’t be any reason but the one he said. To hide me from harm.

  She came out of the bathroom. His head lay on his arm. He didn’t move. She was well aware that he knew where she stood. She put the lamp down softly, and in the descending glow she could see, plainly, that there were a few pure white hairs at his temples and before his ears.

  She said, “Sam, you’re getting gray.”

  He said, “I’ll be white by morning. Go to sleep.”

  “But …” Her throat hurt with all the arguments.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I can’t say because I don’t know.”

  “Sam, take me home.”

  “I know what I’m not going to do with you. I’m not going to throw you back to the wolves. Be quiet.” His head rolled on his arm.

  She went over to the bunk, curled under her coat, and pulled the blanket over her feet. She was rigid. How far were they from a telephone? Would he sleep, she wondered. Where was the key? Could she be silent at the door? Could she hide out there in the dark?

  The lake licked at the shore. Little feet tapped two arcs around the shingles. The trees whooshed and hooshed in the night wind and the lamp flickered.

  Chapter 9

  LIGHTS burned all Wednesday night in the Salisbury apartment. Then it was Thursday. It was incredible that Thursday could come, and go. It was a day so full of tension, and so empty.

  At the Starke School, Katherine Salisbury was not in attendance. She missed her music lesson.

  Sam Lynch was not seen in his town haunts.

  Alan Dulain did not appear at his office.

  Charles Salisbury stayed away from his club. His wife, Martha, begged off from her luncheon.

  Excuses were made, but the reason was not told. Charles Salisbury made the decision. He announced coldly that he would not call the police. Not now. Alan was sure that there would soon be some communication. It was the classical pattern. Salisbury made the decision to wait for it. He said, and said it only once, “I want my girl.”

  At dawn, he called the three servants together and asked them to say nothing to anyone. He told them that he feared Miss Katherine might be in the hands of kidnapers. He warned them that newspaper publicity might be unfortunate. He used the word gingerly, because Martha was there. He emphasized the might be’s. He begged them to obey him.

  Meantime, he pretended to believe there was a real hope in checking the hospitals, but he did not believe it. He hoped Martha believed it. They kept up. It was good manners and it was, of course, fear. On top of all other fears, they feared for each other.

  They waited.

  Alan and his hired men spent the night checking the hospitals. And looking for Sam Lynch.

  This was the one thing they could do. They could find Sam Lynch, who knew all about it. The police could have found Sam Lynch, of course. But so could Alan’s men, and quietly. Sam Lynch could tell them more. When they knew more, they would know better what to do. How best to find Katherine.

  To himself, alone, her father added, if she is alive. To Martha, he pretended that of course she was. He would fall into the classical pattern of this crime; he would keep faith; he would pay; everything would come out all right.

  It was a pattern. But he was afraid. The pattern was false. Murder. Sam Lynch had said it, and Salisbury had the word burned into his brain. Less trouble. Well, he would make no trouble, no trouble at all. Just in hope. Time enough for the police, later. Police for revenge.

  Alan deplored the decision. Alan was for bringing in the organization, now. But he deferred to the father, and he was busy hunting for Lynch. If it had not been that they had this one line of action, Salisbury might not have been able to hold to his decision, or Alan to defer to it. Or Martha to bear up.

  The Salisburys built Sam Lynch into a great hope. He had warned them. He had known. Surely, now, he would tell them where to look for her. He must have been on their side. Alan said grimly that Lynch was on some side, all right, and he must be found.

  Thursday went by.

  Katherine Salisbury missed her music lesson. No one said why. Her name was not in the newspapers. Not on the police calls. The servants said nothing.

  Yet, in the tangled city, her name was
spoken.

  But not by Reilly, Alan’s man, who that morning went up and down the block in which the Salisbury apartment was located. He rang bells, he stopped a few people on the sidewalk, he showed photographs of Katherine Salisbury. “She’s eloped,” Reilly would say. “Her family’s having a fit.” He would wink. “You see her around here last evening? Get into a car? Anything like that?”

  No one seemed to know. Some were indifferent. Some were unsympathetic. Some were suspicious.

  That afternoon, in a room far downtown, where a little man sat at a table and a big man, on the bed, cringed against the wall, her name was spoken.

  “Katherine Salisbury either skipped out or was taken out,” Ambielli said, red-eyed.

  “They’re looking for her all right, boss,” Baby said in a monotone designed to soothe.

  “Don’t tell me what I know. I know that.” The little man got up and hit the big man viciously with the edge of his palm on the big forehead. “Be quiet when I’m trying to think,” he said, and all his soft-spoken shell was cracked away.

  “Yeah, boss.”

  The little man stood, flaming, and he was murder. “If she skipped out it’s coincidence,” he said, “but if she was taken, somebody’s in my way.”

  “Listen, boss,” Baby cringed lest there be a blow. “We don’t need to worry. We can set it up for somebody else.”

  Ambielli’s red eyes steadied. “This one’s set up,” he said contemptuously. “I never worry.”

  While the Salisburys waited, high in their apartment, people moved in the city.

  Late on Thursday, in with their evening paper, folded inside, a message came. The Salisburys took it, read it, and looked at each other with a fearful hope.

  When Alan came in, about nine o’clock on Thursday evening, he thought them so weary as to seem distraught and inattentive. When he told them there was nothing yet, no girl in any hospital under any false name, they seemed scarcely to admit to their minds this news.

  He took his drink and sat, tense, young, frowning with the responsibility, endeavoring to give of his special knowledge his best advice, to bear the weight of the problem on his competent shoulders. “There’s not much doubt she’s been hidden somewhere. We still can’t find Sam Lynch.” He looked grim. “That must be significant.”