“Didn’t you see him?” I asked.
“No. How could I, I just came in.”
“Well, he went to the Cotheal Settlement house, trying to find you.”
“Down there?” Stanley sounded surprised and interested. He looked at me intently, letting himself down into a chair at the side of the desk. He leaned forward, plainly puzzled. “Why would he look for me there? Why wouldn’t I come to the office, as usual?”
I glanced at Haley, who was going through a stack of Refuge photographs, and then back at Stanley. It felt as though I had a couple of ice cubes in my mouth. And yet I couldn’t manage to open it. Then I did, but all I said was:
“Well, Lillian said you were due there. So that’s where he went.”
“But why?” Stanley pressed the question, insistently, and with apparent amazement. “Couldn’t he wait until I reached the office?”
I knew that I was frowning, deeply, and probably staring, because the muscles over my eyes ached and felt cramped.
“I said it could wait, but he didn’t think it could,” I carefully told him. “It was rather important. Seemed so, I mean.”
Stanley said, half to himself:
“I did leave word with my sister that I might drop in at the settlement house this morning. But that was before I met some friends and we all spent the night down in Englewood. They took me to dinner at the Commonwealth, then when I put them on the train at Penn Station they talked me into going out there with them. Well,, anyway, I’m here now, and what was it, this matter that’s so important?” Before I could even begin to form a reply to that, Stanley made one unnecessary. “When will Jay be back? Maybe I’d better phone him at the settlement house.”
I made a map of the city in my imagination, and took some bearings. Penn Station was very much south of the hotel, Central Park was north. If Stanley had gone there, and then on out to Englewood, he hadn’t been anywhere near the place of the accident.
But we had seen him just outside the hotel, with Talcott, both of them getting into a car probably Talcott’s. Or had we? That may have been merely the impression one of us received, and from that, somehow, all of us might have built it up. Now, though, I tried to bring back in detail exactly what I had seen, personally, and while I had been looking directly at it. I had made out Stanley and the other fellow just outside the side door of the hotel, standing next to the car, no doubt about that.
But had I been watching, actually, while Stanley stepped into the car? That, I couldn’t bring back. The feeling was strong, though, that he had.
“I like these,” said Haley, putting down three glossy prints of teen-age kids, all in backgrounds and poses giving the impression they were relatively harmless delinquents now on the prowl for some real delinquency. He tapped his finger on one of them, a girl stepping through a wire-meshed gate held open for her by a jowly, uniformed matron, and labeled: Paroled—to what? Actually, although the girl herself was a Refuge case, the fence was around a school playground I happened to notice near the agency when we were taking the shots. “This one particularly,” said Haley. “There’s a good balance, between the girl and the steel screen.” I nodded, scarcely hearing him. “What’re they for?”
“A mailing folder,” I said. “Posters, maybe a subway poster.”
He nodded.
“Let’s have some layouts soon, Vince. I’d like to have something strong to show them. They can sell it better, if they’re sold themselves. Well, gentlemen. I’m off.”
When Haley had gone, I began a methodical search through all of my pockets, at last finding some cigarettes but taking my time about lighting one, carefully not looking at Stanley while I tried to sort out the details of this situation in which there was suddenly the promise of relief, but also still a lot of confusion.
Throughout this, Stanley said nothing. He waited until I finally gave him my full regard through a haze of cigarette smoke. Then he seemed interested, unconcerned, extremely patient, almost sympathetic, as he casually remarked:
“I hear you and Jay and that girl of his were eyewitnesses at a bad accident in the park last night.”
“Yes, we were.” I didn’t take my eyes from his. They didn’t move or change, there was nothing in them, or in his face. I added, “A fatal accident.”
“So I understand. What did you see?”
“Not much. We saw the car hit him, and then we stopped.”
I deliberately let it hang right there. That really said it all, for one thing, and for another, I had no idea where to take it next. After a long pause, Stanley said:
“And the other car didn’t stop?” I shook my head. “You should have followed it. In the park there, you could easily have caught up with it. Why didn’t you?”
“We didn’t think of it,” I said, impatiently.
“That’s odd. I would have. Who was driving?”
“Jay, of course. We were in his car, taking me home.”
Stanley shook his head, slightly disapproving, and not at all understanding.
“Well, didn’t you see anything? What did you tell the police, when they took your statements?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Or rather, just the general type of the car. That was all we saw.”
He sounded a little incredulous.
“All three of you?” I nodded. “Didn’t any of you get even part of the license number?”
I shook my head, irritated with Stanley, but more so with myself. I was not satisfied with his story, as yet, and to make it more difficult, I could see that even if it should be as simple and solid as he made it, there would still be some awkward loose ends to last night’s horrid crash. They might always be around, unless something drastic was done about it, and right now. But so far I hadn’t accomplished much. It was as though I had been grasping at wisps of fog. I decided this wouldn’t do, I would have to close in on it, no matter what.
“Stanley, we saw you last night, outside the Hotel Commonwealth.”
He smiled, faintly puzzled.
“I know. We saw each other. You were at the Inner Light dinner. How did that come out, by the way? What did they raise?”
“It went over. But what I wanted to say was, we saw you outside the hotel, after the dinner, talking to a fellow named Talcott?”
Stanley nodded, pleased.
“That’s right. I didn’t know you knew Charley. Why didn’t you come over and say hello?”
“I don’t know him, and neither does Jay, except slightly. But the point is, Stan, well, didn’t you and Talcott get into his car and then drive off together?”
He did not appear to understand me at once. A tiny wrinkle gathered on his forehead, either of surprise or concentration.
“Why, Vince? Did it look as though I did?”
“That’s what we thought. And now I’m asking you.”
“You sound as though it mattered. I don’t get this.”
“It does matter. I want to know. Did you?”
“Of course I didn’t. I didn’t go anywhere with Charley, I just brought him out to the street for a word in private. We talked a second or two and then I went back into the hotel. I told you that. I had some friends with me, in the bar, and we all went over to Penn Station.” He stared at me curiously, as I shut my eyes hard then opened them again, a rescued man gazing at the same yet nevertheless a much, much brighter world. “Why? What is all this? What’s Talcott got to do with anything?”
I reached down and opened the big side panel in the desk, brought out a bottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. I slid a glass across the desk toward Stanley, but poured for myself first.
“Brace yourself for some bad news, Stan,” I said, my voice slightly hoarse. “But at least, thank God, you weren’t in that car.”
“The one Talcott drove, you mean? No, but what difference does it make?” I drank, at the same time gesturing toward the glass beside him, and he said, “No thanks. But why? What bad news?”
I carefully drained my own glass and set it down, t
hen I told him, in a cold, even tone:
“Your friend Talcott drove that hit-and-run car.”
Stanley jumped to his feet.
“Talcott? I can’t believe it.” His voice was shrill and high. “How do you know? What makes you think it was his car?”
“We were behind it, all the way up to Central Park. We followed it into the park. No other car cut in between us. That was his car.”
Stanley stared at me for a long time, motionless beside the chair, before giving any sign he realized and accepted what I had told him as unmistakably a fact. Then he slowly sat down again, his face hardening.
“You’re sure? All three of you?”
“Yes. No question.”
“But I don’t understand,” he said, with a jagged edge to the high, rapid voice. “None of you identified that car. That’s what you told the police, that’s what you told Haley, and that’s what you told me not five minutes ago. Didn’t you?”
I gave him a tired look.
“Use your head. We thought you were in that car. We didn’t know what happened, and we thought we’d better cover up for you until you had a chance to iron out the trouble, yourself.”
Stanley appeared to turn this over from every angle, for several wordless moments. Then he burst out in a loud, bitter voice:
“Say, what kind of people are you, anyway? You know me, you know my character, and yet you thought I’d actually be a party to a hit-and-run killing, just like that. And then, as a favor to a fellow-scoundrel I suppose, you simply shrugged it off. Kept it quiet. That’s good. That’s perfect.” He gave a short, yelping, grotesque laugh. “Wait till Haley hears about this. Or was he in on this hilarious little secret of the manslaughter, too?”
My own fury was so sudden and bitter I could taste it. Last night, I had foreseen there might be some such outburst from Stanley, smarting under the insult, if our suspicions were groundless, and he learned of them. But this was deeper than the resentment I had imagined. This was rabid. It carried the menace of a grievance still worse,, with even further dangers.
“Listen you underdone sophomore,” I began, then choked it off. This had to be on a dead serious level. Instead I told him, stiffly, “Control yourself, Stanley. And get this. There was no secret. We thought we might be wrong, and so we gave you the benefit of the doubt. We didn’t tell anyone. Not even Haley.”
Stanley’s perfectly round blue eyes were unwavering, his expression gradually lost that look of bitter reproach and became tinged with stubborn, deaf, impersonal severity.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s tell him now.”
It was the last reaction I had expected.
“What for?”
“So he’ll know what’s been happening around here. What kind of a fool do you take me for? What kind of a game are you two, Jay at least, trying to play on Haley and myself? Where did you get the idea I needed to be covered up for anything? Whose idea was it, not to tell Haley? Let’s get him in here and tell him now.”
This had been coming so fast, like something inside of Stanley that had been on the boil for a long, long time, a brew of lava never hinted at before, that I began to lose track of all the twists and turns and loops in whatever logic lay behind it. It was crazier and faster than last night’s jumble of disaster.
I had been moving my mouth, and at last I managed to put in a few words.
“Wait a minute. What are you driving at? Let’s take these things one at a time.”
Stanley gave instant agreement, with something like pity showing in his face, his staccato voice.
“Sure, let’s do that. But let me tell you, I don’t think you’re to blame for this, Vince.”
Dizzy, I yelled:
“To blame for what?”
“Who told you I was in that car Talcott drove last night? Where did you get that idea, in the first place?” If I ever did know, it was gone now, and I said nothing. Stanley nodded, as though satisfied at having made a point. “How did it happen you followed that car all the way from the hotel up to Central Park, through a lot of heavy after-theater traffic, and who put the idea into your head that it was the same car? Who had the chance to overtake it, after the hit-and-run accident, but didn’t? Who deliberately failed to report the people he thought were passengers in that car, or pretended to think were in it?”
“God damn it, I did. It was my idea as much as Jay’s.”
Stanley gave a shrewd, understanding nod.
“Sure. Pressured by Jay and that girl of his, two to one against you. Isn’t that right?”
“She didn’t open her mouth. She said maybe the other car had gone to get—”
I stopped abruptly, recalling Shana’s suggestion they may have gone to call an ambulance. At the time, it seemed like the only possible explanation, and a sensible proposal all around. It seemed reasonable even now. But there it was.
“Well?” Stanley sensed my uncertainty, and bore down on it. “Do you see it a little differently, now that you think about it some more?”
“You’re crazy, Stanley, nobody pressured me into anything.”
“All right,” he said, sounding kind and patient. “Maybe not pressured, perhaps unconsciously influenced. Anyway, there must have been something, to make you an accessory in a homicide. That’s pretty serious.”
“Make me a what?” I asked, not sure I’d heard, but at the same time knowing I had. “What did you say?”
“You concealed information about a fugitive in a hit-and-run homicide. Didn’t you?” I didn’t answer, I just stared at some weird, perfectly harmless, perfectly deadly-stranger I’d been seeing around the office every day for the last year. All I could think of was to wonder what had touched him off, and to wish to God that Jay were on hand to put this thing back in some glass jar. “All three of you, as a matter of fact,” Stanley went on, flatly. “What does that make you? You know, don’t you? And you know what it’s going to do to you and Jay, in fund-raising, when this story gets around. Well? Why don’t you say something?”
I said, speaking mildly, but feeling sick:
“Say what?”
Stanley picked up the direct, outside telephone-set on my desk and slammed it down beside me.
“Are you going to call up the cops right now and report that you’ve suddenly remembered who drove that hit-and-run car last night? Or do you think I’m going to wait for you and Jay to get together on this again, and come up with some other bunch of lies? Go ahead. I’m waiting.”
“Do it yourself,” I said, stunned.
“I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything. You were. You and Jay and that girl friend of his.” We sat for a long time in silence that seemed to gather depth and weight and solidity, estimating each other. At last Stanley reached out and drew the base of the phone back into the middle of the desk. “All right,” he said, with understanding, “I know how you feel about it, Vince. I don’t blame you. It does you credit. Maybe I’d feel the same way, myself. I don’t know. I’ve never been a sucker for Jay’s peculiar methods, myself.” He paused for another long moment, soberly watching me, then lifted the phone from the cradle. “But if you won’t, I will. I’ll have to.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, hoarsely.
“What for?”
“Wait until Jay gets here, can’t you?”
“Nothing doing.”
“Put that damn thing down, you fool You’ll sink us all.”
Calmly, without even looking at me, he started dialing. I reached across the desk, suddenly, and slammed down the connecting bar.
Chapter IV
Stanley Thornhill
The average man has been born to live and die a moral vagabond, content to falter into and then out of one set of exacting responsibilities after another, much as Vincent Beechwood did, persuading himself it was perfectly natural to be eight thousand dollars over in his drawing account with the firm, or feeling merely confused and helpless at the dilemma into which last night’s somber mischance had placed him. He h
ad no realization that he was always, literally always drifting, making little distinction between one set of problems and the next.
To men like Vincent, or Haley, or even Jay, no doubt all such experiences, met with makeshift expedients that result in the miraculous avoidance or postponement of disaster, come in time to seem normal, or better than normal, perhaps even as the essence of principle and success.
But I am not made that way. Compromise, irresolution, caprice, I must set a definite limit to the time in which they work themselves to a plain conclusion, and that limit had now been reached with these curious people who were my partners in a business sense, and with whom, in a human sense, I was still more closely involved.
Vincent’s pitiable confession of complete ethical bankruptcy, though he would never see it in that light, showed me that I must act, promptly and forcefully, if I were to save all of them from themselves. His half-considered excuses and explanations, transparently evasive, the very duplicity of them adding to his guilt, this whole grotesque farce coming at this time, after months of professional inertia mixed with sudden, wild, quixotic vagaries, proved that I could no longer allow the agency to drift without a policy, and a sure instinct to guide it.
Vincent had no grasp at all of the complex incident in the park, and his suspicions had a petty quality to match. Above all, the thin reason he gave for their having been present at the scene showed me how dangerous the situation already was. And at the same time, it showed me what to do about it.
The accident itself was one of those cosmic tragedies that simply happen, as though to remind us there is a dreadful lightning latent behind the veil of the commonplace, and that the stakes are always high. Apparently meaningless at the moment, there was no ignoring the fact that, having occurred, it then assumed a meaning, and that an entirely new situation had arisen from it, that still another one was arising now.
They had most certainly been following us, not by chance but by intention, at the very instant the distraught, self-absorbed, luckless stranger, unconsciously suicidal, had chosen to step in front of our car. Ravoc was surely the controlling hand there. He was the only one of them capable of initiating any sort of behavior outside the routine, and it fitted the deceptive indirection, the shrewd caution and the blunt arrogance that were his salient characteristics.
The Generous Heart Page 5
