Unafraid, unafraid.
The hanger that she had replaced a while ago lost its grip, slipped off, and fell to the closet floor with a trifling little clack.
She knew what it was, the sound was self-explanatory, so she didn’t even turn her head. They were apt to do that. If you didn’t set them quite straight, or if they swung too freely after you took your hand off them.
She was considering lipstick. Whether or not to use it. Tonight was gala. She knew she would suit him as she was, but they would be in public tonight. It was a social convention to use it, nowadays, rather than an attempt to mislead the onlooker as to the coloring of one’s lips, as it had once been. On that ground, she decided to put it on. No one would have believed that she, a blind woman, could have successfully applied it without producing an overlapping smear, but she already had in the past and she knew she could.
A few careful moments and it was done.
She stood up now. All through. Nothing more to do. Nothing but wait for him.
She recalled the fall of the hanger she had heard before. She went over to the closet to pick it up from the floor and put it back in place, simply from the age-old feminine instinct for tidiness, having things back in their right places; simply from not having anything else to do for the moment.
The door stood out at right angles from the frame, as she had left it just now, when she was last there. She reached down to the floor, just inside it, and within a moment had found the recumbent hanger, restored it where it belonged.
Then she closed the door tightly, so that the latch tongue clicked into place, the knob recoiled slightly in her grasp, as it was supposed to do.
She turned and started back toward her dressing tab—
At right angles from the frame, as she had left it.
But she hadn’t. Her fingers had pushed it back, then let it go. She had heard it graze the frame, stop there.
Night came on in her heart. One by one, all the lights went out. It got cold, and a wind from nowhere knifed at her. Her step didn’t falter; outwardly there was nothing to show that, within her, the whole world was going down into blackness. Her hand found the back of the dressing-table bench, and she sank down upon it, rather too heavily, that was all.
In here with her. There was somebody in here with her. It, he, was in here with her at this very moment. He hadn’t come in, he had been in already, from the very first. First in the closet, now out in the very room itself.
But where? Over which way? Not a sound. Not a stir to show.
Her lips flickered tremulously. “Allen,” they murmured without voice.
The door? The outside door, in the next room? Perhaps if she could get near enough to it, be near enough to it, Allen would suddenly unlock it, come in again in time to—
She was putting on cologne again. Too much cologne. A thin trickle of it ran down the side of her neck, from just under her ear.
Not a sound. Not a stir. She bowed her head, held it that way, very intently. Listening with every fibre of her being. Every fibre of her trained faculties, that could hear things others could never hope to.
Uncanny cleverness, not even to draw breath. Or draw it so subtly that it left no trace upon the sound waves reaching her. Yet somewhere within this room, this square of space, another heart was going. Another, beside hers.
Where was he standing? Where?
If he wouldn’t move, if he wouldn’t come to her, then she must go looking for him, she must find him. There is a certain form of suspense so terrible, so pitched above ordinary range, that it cannot be borne passively. This was of that kind. If its source would not reveal itself to her, then she must find it.
She went looking for it.
As the filing is drawn toward the magnet. As the bird is supposedly drawn to the snake.
She rose, went toward the wall first. When she had reached that, she began to follow it, with her left side, her heart, nearest to it. Tracing it with her hands, hand over hand; making circular wheel-like patterns upon it.
Tears were in her sightless eyes, and spilling slowly, one by one, down her cheeks. Her lips kept fluctuating. Saying low, over and over, the same one word. “Allen. Allen. Allen.” She could not scream. Something had happened to her. She knew she would not be able to even at the end, if there was to be an end. Fright, like a searing flash of flame, had short-circuited her vocal cords, burned them out.
She had a strange feeling, and it might have been true she was already dying, slowly, even before a hand had been laid to her. Was already in the earlier stages of expiration; the process was already under way.
A chest of drawers broke the continuity of the wall, the one with Allen’s things in it, and she went out and around it, and then back in to the wall again. Swimming, swimming with her hands; a dying swimmer who knows she will never make the shore.
Beyond, just ahead, there was coming the door to the bath, and though she had not thought of this before, it occurred to her now that if she could get in there quickly enough and pull the door to—
Air fanned past her face, and the door crunched shut. It must have just missed the tips of her oncoming fingers, in its arc. Hope had a miscarriage, and left a residue of pain gnawing at her vitals. A key wrangled, was taken out of it. When her hand had found the knob, it was still slightly warm against her skin. Warm from some other hand.
Her tongue flickered, moistened her searing lips. “Allen,” they breathed quietly.
She extended her arms full length before her now, trying to discover him. He must be within a foot or two of her, to have closed that bath door that way.
But he must be retreating as she came on. Her twitching fingers kept finding only empty space.
Danse macabre, with the partners keeping an even distance, never joining. Saraband of death.
On she went, step by step, along the wall. She boxed the corner of it, and started out along the new side.
Halfway along it the bed broke its straightness of progression, jutting out head to wall.
She came to that, and arms out before her like a sleepwalker, turned to follow and to round it.
And it was then, midway along the length of the bed going from head toward foot, that two other hands, reaching across from its opposite side, joined themselves to her own at last; claimed them, as it were; clasped and partly enfolded them, and began to draw her with them, almost gently yet with remorseless insistence, causing her to veer in her direction so that now the bed lay directly before her, and the pull came across it from its far side.
It was like a grisly game of London Bridge Is Falling Down, with the bed between them.
Yet somehow she wasn’t even frightened any more, didn’t recoil nor cringe nor stiffen. All that was behind her already, far behind her, back in life. To know fear, you have to be still fully alive. It was as if she knew that this must be, and no struggle could evade or alter it.
Listlessly, her lids dropped shut over her eyes. She knew that Allen wouldn’t come in time. That was her last thought, as the darkness changed only to another darkness.
When the needle had stilled his hoarse cries at last, and just before sleep came to release him for a while, he caught at the sleeve of the ship’s doctor, and pulling and dragging at it as if he were trying to tear it off him, whispered hopelessly, “But they told me—Cameron, the police—they promised me it was only the thirty-first we had to watch out for, he only did it then. And the thirty-first ended last midnight— I stopped watching her, got careless—Why did they fool me? What went wrong?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the bearded ship’s doctor as gently as he could. “I know it was the thirty-first all day yesterday, from midnight to midnight. But today it was also the thirty-first, all day long, from last midnight to this coming one. The date repeated itself. You see, as we sail westward toward the International Date Line we gain a day. We hit it exactly on the thirty-first. So the thirty-first lasted for forty-eight full hours. Didn’t anyone tell you that? Didn’
t you know?”
Cameron expected rage, a volcanic upheaval, bellowings, thunders and lightnings, a smashing of the office furniture. Instead he got— invisibility. He simply couldn’t be seen. It was as though something had happened to the chief ’s eyes.
It took him twenty minutes to summon up enough courage to approach the office door. This included standing across the street from the building before crossing over, loitering out on the front steps before going in, monkeying around with the water cooler in the hall and drinking water that he didn’t really want before approaching the dread door.
Finally he knocked.
No answer. Whether the chief knew he was due to report, or recognized the knock, or had an uncanny sixth sense that told him who it was, no answer.
Cameron knew he was in there, because he could hear his voice on the telephone.
He waited, then he knocked again.
No reaction. It was like being a ghost.
Finally he opened the door, went in.
The chief was there big as life, scanning reports.
Cameron closed the door, stood waiting.
Somebody came in, somebody went out. The chief spoke to him all right, had no difficulty seeing or hearing him.
Cameron cleared his throat.
The chief ’s eyes just wouldn’t go up, he couldn’t hear a thing.
Cameron went over to the desk and stood there right in front of him.
The chief snapped on a desk light. “Gets dark early,” he mumbled indistinctly to himself.
Finally in desperation Cameron said, “Chief, I’m standing here. I’m waiting to speak to you.”
The chief got through with one report. He rummaged looking for another, found it, started on that.
“Chief,” said Cameron, “you’ve got to hear my side of it at least.”
The chief stuck the tip of his little finger in one ear, and shook it out, as though something in the air bothered him.
“There was a slip-up, that was at least as much the fault of the Honolulu police as mine! I was in Frisco, I wasn’t even there. When the ship got to Yokohama the captain wired back a report to the Honolulu authorities, but it was too late by then. They forwarded it to me. Two police detectives and one policeman boarded the ship at Honolulu at nine A.M. that day to search for her. Fifteen or twenty minutes later a second policeman showed up, as if to join them. He wasn’t stopped, wasn’t questioned, they thought it was just police routine. When the detectives went ashore again, they still just had one policeman with them. The second stayed behind in full sight of everyone, on guard duty. It was done so openly it never occurred to anyone to check up on it. He was never seen to leave, but then once the ship was under way, he was no longer seen aboard either, so everyone thought he’d left.”
The chief didn’t hear a word. He was signing something. Now he was blotting it. He looked right through Cameron at the clock on the wall, then he looked down again.
“A new mess boy was signed on at Honolulu. I went out there myself and checked, and he was a legitimate replacement. But—here’s the angle, Chief—several of the other crew members claimed later that he looked different to them afterwards than when he first came aboard. Like two different people. Nobody investigated, nobody did anything about it. There was a half-breed Hawaiian mess boy’s name down on the list, and there was a half-breed Hawaiian mess boy to match up with the name, and that satisfied them. Then he jumped ship at Yokohama anyway, so it was too late to investigate by that time. Chief, a second murder occurred on that ship, and a police uniform was quietly dropped overboard, somewhere between Honolulu and the International Date Line. I knew I made a hash of it. But all I can say in my own defense is—”
He brought his hand down on the desk despairingly. “Chief, say something, will you? Cuss me out if you have to! But don’t just let me stand here like this—”
“Harkness!” the chief called stridently.
A desk sergeant stuck his head in.
“Harkness, what’s the matter with you?” the chief bawled him out roundly. “Don’t let people walk in here unannounced. This is a police station. Don’t let just anybody walk in off the streets that feels like it. The first stranger, the first passerby that happens along. The public at large isn’t supposed to be admitted, you know. You should take care of that down at the desk at the end of the hall. Now will you please clear this place out for me; I’ve got a lot of paper work to do and I only want members of the division in here.”
Cameron’s head went down, way down, as if he’d never seen his own feet before and was trying to make out what they were.
“You heard the chief,” Harkness whispered ruefully, as if he hated to do this himself.
“I’ll be back,” Cameron muttered doggedly, and he turned on his heel and went out.
“Harkness,” said the chief, “there’s an old saying. They never come back.”
Letter from Garrison to Cameron, originally postmarked Tulsa, addressed to Cameron’s home station, forwarded to San Francisco, reforwarded to Honolulu, returned to San Francisco, returned to Cameron’s home station, readdressed to Cameron’s home address with notation in chief ’s handwriting, “Wrong address!”
. . . unable to help you when you were out here in July of last year, even though you hung around here for ten days. Well, anyway, to get to the point. Last night my wife and I were returning from the theatre in our car when a staggering drunk standing on the street corner threw a liquor bottle almost directly in front of us. I wasn’t able to brake quickly enough, we got a flat. I had him run in for disorderly conduct then and there, but it was a full three-quarters of an hour before I could get repair service and we could get under way again.
We were both pretty put out, as you can imagine, and my wife exclaimed bitterly, “People like that are dangerous! Imagine looping a liquor bottle up into the air like that! Why, it could have come down on someone’s head and killed them!”
I said, “I used to know a fellow that had a habit of dumping them out of planes,” and I went on to tell her about Strickland doing that on one of those plane trips we took when we both belonged to that fishing club. And then suddenly right while I was telling her, I realized that that might have been the very information you wanted when you were out here that time, and which I wasn’t able to give you then.
You may not want the information any longer. It may be stale by now, or maybe it was not what you were looking for in the first place, but ever since last night it has been bothering me, and so to get it off my mind . . .
Hope this reaches you, etc. . . .
Telegram, Cameron to Garrison:
Information still vitally important. Imperative you answer these questions without delay. Wire me collect. One. What was date of trip on which he did that? Was it May thirty-first? Two. What was plane’s destination on that trip? Three. At what time did plane leave airport? Four. Any idea what time bottle was thrown out? Five. Can you estimate plane’s average speed maintained during flight?
Telegram, Garrison to Cameron (sent prepaid, not collect):
One. Pretty sure it must have been Memorial Day. He always did his heaviest drinking on holidays. Two. Lake Star-of-the-Woods, near the Canadian line. Three. Six P.M. Can be positive of this because we always met at airport at the prearranged hour for take-off. Four. Impossible say exactly. Remember lights were already on below us, yet could still see by daylight, so must have been at onset of dusk. Five. Was an old crate. I’d give it 100 m.p.h., but this is sheer guesswork.
The rest took him ten minutes. Not even that. A large-scale master map of the entire state that showed every hamlet, every crossroads, almost every farmstead. Then a ruler-straight line from airport to lake, with the overall air-mile distance marked alongside it. Then an almanac for that year, the year of ’Forty-one, that told him the exact time of the sun’s setting, the exact time of nightfall along these latitudes, that day, that year.
Six P.M. marked off first of all at departure point. Then a suc
cession of notches stroked across the main distance line at hundred-mile intervals, to give him the plane’s theoretical position at subsequent hours, seven, eight, nine. Then each one divided in two again for the half-hours. Then again for the quarter-hours. Until he had it down to five-minute notches. All this only valid of course if the plane was maintaining an even hundred mile per hour speed. If the pilot had gone faster at certain times, slower at others, good-bye. But that was a chance he had to take.
Then a slashing arc, between the 7:50 and the 7:55 notches, to mark the setting of the sun. Then a second arc to mark the fall of darkness. And in the space enclosed between these two arcs, like parentheses, he had his bull’s-eye.
Within that whole immediate area, there was only a single hollow circle printed on the map, the customary symbol for a town. With its accompanying name. No other anywhere near it.
That was where. He knew now the “where” that went with the snapshot. At last—one life, two lives too late—he’d found out where.
The old lady sat in the rocking-chair beside the window and stared fixedly out to a great distance. With one hand she held back an edge of the lace curtain. The same lace curtain that had once crept into the background of a faded yellow snapshot, taken long ago.
“She’s dead now,” she said. “Was it yesterday? Was it many years ago? I don’t know, I’m not sure. My heart doesn’t tell time so good any more. I only know I’m alone. I only know she isn’t here.
“Yes, there was a boy. A boy she loved. She only knew one boy in all her life. She only wanted to know one. Yes, she was going to marry him. She had to marry him or die, I guess.” She stopped a moment, abruptly, as though she’d just recalled something. “She died.”
She rocked a little, stared out to that great distance.
“She used to meet him every night at eight. Down by the drugstore, down by the square. Well, nearly every night. Once in a great while, when it was raining too hard, or I was cross with her, I wouldn’t let her go. She was a good girl, she obeyed. When I wouldn’t let her out, he’d come up here instead, stand under her window and whistle, and she’d open it and talk to him, and they’d see each other anyway. I’d let them; I’d hear them, but I’d let them.
Rendezvous in Black Page 23
