27
I stopped outside Eileen’s door and listened. I didn’t hear any sound of movement inside, so I didni knock. If she wanted to know how he was, it was up to her. Downstairs the living room looked bright and empty. I put out some of the lights. From over near the front door I looked up at the balcony. The middle part of the living room rose to the full height of the house walls and was crossed by open beams that also supported the balcony. The balcony was wide and edged on two sides by a solid railing which looked to be about three and a half feet high. The top and the uprights were cut square to match the cross beams. The dining room was through a square arch dosed off by double louvered doors. Above it I guessed there were servants’ quarters. This part of the second floor was walled off so there would be another stairway reaching it from the kitchen part of the house. Wade’s room was in the corner over his study. I could see the light from his open door reflected against the high ceiling and I could see the top foot of his doorway.
I cut all the lights except in one standing lamp and crossed to the study. The door was shut but two lamps were lit, a standing lamp at the end of the leather couch and a cowled desk lamp. The-typewriter was on a heavy stand under this and beside it on the desk there was a disorderly mess of yellow paper. I sat in a padded chair and studied the layout. What I wanted to know was how he had cut his head. I sat in his desk chair with the phone at my left hand. The spring was set very weak. If I tilted back and went over, my head might have caught the corner of the desk. I moistened my handkerchief and rubbed the wood. No blood, nothing there. There was a lot of stuff on the desk, including a row of books between bronze elephants, and an old-fashioned square glass inkwell. I tried that without result. Not much point to it anyway, because if someone else had slugged him, the weapon didn’t have to be in the room. And there wasn’t anyone else to do it. I stood up and switched on the cornice lights. They reached into the shadowy corner5 and of course the answer was simple enough after all. A square metal wastebasket was lying on its side over against the wall, with paper spilled. It couldn’t have walked there, so it had been thrown or kicked. I tried its sharp corners with my moistened handkerchief. I got the red-brown smear of blood this time. No mystery at all. Wade -had fallen over and struck his head on the sharp corner of the wastebasket—a glancing blow most likely—picked himself up and booted the damn thing across the room. Easy.
Then he would have another quick drink. The drinking liquor was on the cocktail table in front of the couch. An empty bottle, another three quarters full, a thermos jug of water and a silver bowl containing water which had -been ice cubes. There was only one glass and it was the large economy size.
Having taken his drink he felt a little better. He noticed the phone off the hook in a bleary sort of way and very likely didn’t remember any more what he had been doing with it. So he just walked across and put it back in its cradle. The time had been just about right. There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadgetridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.
Any normal man would have said hello into the mouthpiece before hanging up, just to be sure. But not necessarily a man who was bleary with drink and had just taken a fall. It didn’t matter anyhow. His wife might have done it, she might have heard the fall and the bang as the wastebas. ket bounced against the wall and come into the study. About that time the last drink would kick him in the face and he would stagger out of the house and across the front lawn and pass out where I had found him. Somebody was coming for him. By this time he didn’t know who it was. Maybe the good Dr. Verringer.
So far, so good. So what would his wife do? She couldn’t handle him or reason with him and she might well be afraid to try. So she would call somebody to come and help. The servants were out, so it would have to be by the telephone. Well, she had called somebody. She had called that nice Dr. Loring. I’d just assumed she called him after I got there. She hadn’t said so.
From here on it didn’t quite add up. You’d expect her to look for him and find him and make sure he wasn’t hurt. It wouldn’t hurt him to lie out on the ground on a warm summer night for a while. She couldn’t move him. It had taken all I had to do that. But you wouldn’t quite expect to find her standing in the open doorway smoking a cigarette, not knowing except very vaguely where he was. Or would you? I didn’t know what she had been through with him, how dangerous he was in that condition, how much afraid she might be to go near him. “I’ve had all of it I can take,” she had said to me when I arrived. “You find him.” Then she had gone inside and pulled a faint.
It still bothered me, but I had to leave it at that. I had to assume that when she had been up against the situation often enough to know there was nothing she could do about it except to let it ride, then that would be what she would do. Just that. Let it ride. Let him lie out there on the ground until somebody came around with the physical equipment to handle him.
It still bothered me. It bothered me also that she had checked out and gone into her own room while Candy and I got him upstairs to bed. She said she loved the guy. He was her husband, they had been married for five years, he was a very nice guy indeed when sober—those were her own words. Drunk, he was something else, something to stay away from because he was dangerous. All right, forget it. But somehow it still bothered me. If she was really scared, she wouldn’t have been standing there in the open door smoking a cigarette. If she was just bitter and withdrawn and disgusted, she wouldn’t have fainted.
There was something else. Another woman, perhaps. Then she had only just found out. Linda Loring? Maybe. Dr. Loring thought so and said so in a very public manner.
I stopped thinking about it and took the cover off the typewriter. The stuff was there, several loose sheets of typed yellow paper that I was supposed to destroy so Eileen wouldn’t see them. I took them over to the couch and decided I deserved a drink to go with the reading matter. There was a half bath off the study. I rinsed the tall glass out and poured a libation and sat down with it to read. And what I read was really wild. Like this:
28
The moon’s four days off the full and there’s a square patch of moonlight on the wall and it’s looking at me like a big blind milky eye, a wall eye. Joke. Goddam silly simile. Writers. Everything has to be like something else. My head is as fluffy as whipped cream but not as sweet. More similes. I could vomit just thinking about the lousy racket. I could vomit anyway. I probably will. Don’t push me. Give me time. The wbrms in my solar plexus crawl and crawl and crawl. I would be better off in bed but there would be a dark animal underneath the bed and-the dark animal would crawl around rustling and hump himself and bump the underside of the bed, then I would let out a yell that wouldn’t make any sound except to me. A dream yell, a yell in a nightmare. There is nothing to be afraid of and I am not afraid because there is nothing to be afraid of, but just the same I was lying like that once in bed and the dark animal was doing it to me, bumping himself against the underside of the bed, and I had an orgasm. That disgusted me more than any other of the nasty things I have done.
I’m dirty. I need a shave. My hands are shaking. I’m sweating. I smell foul to myself. The shirt under my arms is wet and on the chest and back. The sleeves are wet in the folds of the elbows. The glass on the table is empty. It would take both hands to pour the stuff n9w. I could get one out of the bottle maybe to brace me. The taste of the stuff is sickening. And it wouldn’t get me anywhere. In the end I won’t be able to sleep even and the whole world will moan in the horror of tortured nerves. Good stuff,- huh, Wade? More.
It’s all right for the first two or three days and then it is negative. You suffer and you take a drink and for a little while it is better, but the price keeps getting higher and higher and what you get for it is less and less and then there is always the point where you get nothing but nausea. Then you call Veriinger. All right, Verringer, here L come. There isn’t any Verringer any more. He’s gone to Cuba or he is dead. The queen has killed him. Poor old Verringer, what a fate, to die in bed with a queen—that kind of queen. Come on, Wade, let’s get up and go places. Places where we haven’t ever been and aren’t ever going back to when we have been. Does this sentence make sense? No. Okay, I’m not asking any money for it. A short pause here for a long commercial.
Well, I did it. I got up. What a man. I went over to the couch and here I am kneeling beside the couch with my hands down on it and my face in my hands, crying. Then I prayed and despised myself for praying. Grade Three drunk despising himself. What the hell are you praying to, you fool? If a well man prays, that’s faith. A sick man prays and he is just scared. Nuts to prayer. This is the world you made and you make it all by yourself and what little outside help you got—well you made that too. Stop praying, you jerk. Get up on your feet and take that drink. It’s too late for anything else now.
Well, I took it. Both hands. Poured it in the glass too. Hardly spilled a drop. Now if I can hold it without vomiting. Better add some water. Now lift it slow. Easy, not too much at a time. It gets warm. It gets hot. If I could stop sweating. The glass is empty. It’s down on the table again.
There’s a haze over the moonlight but I set that glass down in spite of it, carefully, carefully, like a spray of roses in a tall vase. The roses nod their heads with dew. Maybe I’m a rose. Brother, have I got dew. Now to get upstairs. Maybe a short one straight for the journey. No? Okay, whatever you say. Take it upstairs when I get there. If I get there, something to look forward to. If I make it upstairs I am entitled to compensation. A token of regard from me to me. I have-such a beautiful love for myself—and the sweet part of it—no rivals.
Double space. Been up and came down. Didn’t like it upstairs. The altitude makes my heart flutter. But I keep hitting these typewriter keys. What a magician is the subconscious. If only ‘it would work regular hours. There was moonlight upstairs too. Probably the same moon. No variety about the moon. It comes and goes like the milkman and the moon’s milk is always the same. The milk’s moon is always—hold it, chum. You’ve got your feet crossed. This is no time to get involved in the case history of the moon. You got enough case history to take care of the whole damn valley.
She was sleeping on her side without sound. Her knees drawn up. Too still I thought. You always make some sound when you sleep. Maybe not asleep, maybe just trying to sleep. If I went closer I would know. Might fall down too. One of her eyes opened—or did it? She looked at me or did she? No. Would have sat up and said, Are you sick, darling? Yes, I am sick, darling. But don’t give it a thought, darling, because this sick is my sick and not your sick, and let you sleep still and lovely and never remember and no slime from me to you and nothing come near you that is grim and gray and ugly.
You’re a louse, Wade. Three adjectives, you -lousy writer. Can’t you even stream-of-consciousness you louse without getting it in three adjectives for Chrissake? I came downstairs again holding on to the raiL My guts lurched with the steps and I held them together with a promise. I made the main floor and I made the study and I made the couch and I waited for my heart to slow down. The bottle is handy. One thing you can say about Wade’s arrangements the bottle is always handy. Nobody hides it, nobody locks it up. Nobody says, Don’t you think you’ve had enough, darling? You’ll make yourself sick, darling. Nobody says that. Just sleep on side softly like roses.
I gave Candy too much money. Mistake. Should have started him with a bag of peanuts and worked up to a banana. Then a little real change, slow and easy, always keep him eager. You give him a big slug of the stuff to begin ‘with and pretty soon he has a stake. He can live in Mexico for a month, live high wide and nasty, on what it costs here for a day. So when he gets that stake, what does he do? Well, does a man ever have enough money, if he thinks he can get more? Maybe it’s all right. Maybe I ought to kill the shiny-eyed bastard. A good man died for me once, why, not a cockroach in a white jacket?
Forget Candy. There’s always a way to blunt a needle. The other I shall never forget. It’s carved on my liver in green fire.
Better telephone. Losing control. Feel them jumping, jumping, jumping. Better call someone quick before the pink things crawl on my face. Better call, call, call. Call Sioux City Sue. Hello, Operator, giv( me Long Distance. Hello, Long Distance, get me Sioux City Sue. What’s her number? No have number, just name, Operator. You’ll find her walking along Tenth Street, on the shady side, under the tall corn trees with their spreading ears… . All right, Operator, all right. Just cancel the whole program and let me tell you something, I mean, ask you something. Who’s going to pay for all those snazzy parties Gifford is throwing in London, if you cancel my long distance call? Yeah, you think your job is solid. You think. Here, I better talk to Gifford direct. Get him on the line. His valet just brought in his tea. If he can’t talk we’ll send over somebody that can.
Now what did I write that for? What was I trying not to think about? Telephone. Better telephone now. Getting very bad, very, very …
That was all. I folded the sheets up small and pushed them down into my inside breast pocket behind the note case. I went over to the french windows and opened them wide and stepped out onto the terrace. The moonlight was a little spoiled. But it was summer in Idle Valley and summer is never quite spoiled. I stood there looking at the motionless colorless lake and thought and wondered. Then I heard a shot.
29
On the balcony two lighted doors were open now — Eileen’s and his. Her room was empty. There was a sound of struggling from his and I came through the door in a jump to find her bending over the bed wrestling with him. The black gleam of a gun shot up into the air, two hands, a large male -hand and a woman’s small hand were both holding it, neither by the butt. Roger was-sitting up in bed and leaning forward pushing. She was in a pale blue house coat, one of those quilted things, her hair was all over her face. and now she had both hands on the gun and with a quick jerk she got it away from hini I was surprised that she had the strength, even dopey as he was. He fell back glaring ‘and panting and she stepped away and bumped into me.
She stood there leaning against me, holding the gun with both hands pressed hard against her body. She was racked with panting sobs. I reached around her body and put my hand on the gun.
She spun around as if it took that to make her realize I was-there. Her eyes widened and her body sagged against me. She let go of the gun. It was a heavy clumsy weapon, a Webley double-action hammerless. The barrel was warm. I held her with one arm, dropped the gun in my pocket, and looked past her head at him. Nobody said anything.
Then he opened his eyes and that weary smile played on his lips. “Nobody hurt,” he muttered. “Just a wild shot into the ceiling.”
I felt her go stiff. Then she pulled away. Her eyes were focused and clear.! let her go.
“Roger,” she said in a voice not much more than a sick whisper, “did it have to be that?”
He stared owlishly, licked his lip and said nothing. She went and leaned against the dressing table. Her hand moved mechanically and threw the hair back from her face. She shuddered once from head to foot, shaking her head from side to side. “Roger,” she whispered again. “Poor Roger. Poor miserable Roger.”
He was staring straight up at the ceiling now. “I had a nightmare,” he said slowly. “Somebody with a knife was leaning over the bed. I don’t know who. Looked a little like Candy. Couldn’t of been Candy.”
“Of course not, darling,” she said softly. She left the dressing table and sat down on the side of the bed. She put her hand out and began to stroke his forehead. “Candy has gone to bed long ago. And why would Candy have a knife?”
“He’s a Mex. They all have knives,” Roger said in the same remote impersonal voice. “They like knives. And he doesn’t like me.”
“Nobody likes you,” I said brutally.
She turned her head swiftly. “Please—please don’t talk like that. He didn’t knew. He had a dream—”
“Where was the gun?” I growled, watching her, not paying any attention to him.
“Night table. In the drawer.” He turned his head and met my stare. There hadn’t been any gun in the drawer, and he knew I knew it. The pills had been in there and some odds -and ends, but no gun.
“Or under the pillow,” he added. “I’m vague about it. I shot once—” he lifted a heavy hand and pointed—“up there.”
I looked up. There seemed to be a hole in the ceiling plaster all right. I went where I could look up at it. Yes. The kind of hole a bullet might make. From that gun it would go on through, into the attic. I went back dose to the bed and stood looking down at him, giving him the hard eye.
“Nuts. You meant to kill yourself. You didn’t have any nightmare. You were swimming in a sea of self-pity. You didn’t have any gun in the drawer or under your pillow either. You got up and got the gun and got back into bed and there you were all ready to wipe out the whole messy business. But I don’t think you had the nerve. You fired a shot not meant to hit anything. And your wife came running—that’s what you wanted. Just pity and sympathy, pal. Nothing else. Even the struggle was mostly fake. She couldn’t take a gun away from you if you didn’t want her to.”
“I’m sick,” he said. “But you could be right. Does it matter?”
“It matters like this. They’d put you in the psycho ward, and believe me, the people who run that place are about as sympathetic as Georgia chain-gang guards.”
Eileen stood up suddenly. “That’s enough,” she said sharply. “He is sick, and you know it.”
“He wants to be sick. I’m just reminding him of what it would cost him.”
“This is not the time to tell him.”
“Go on back to your room.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “How dare you—”
“Go on back to your room. Unless you want me to call the police. These things are supposed to be reported.”
He almost grinned. “Yeah, call the police,” he said, “like you did on Terry Lennox.”
I didn’t pay any attention to that. I was still watching her. She looked exhausted now, and frail, and very beautiful. The moment of flashing anger was gone. I put a hand out and touched her arm. “It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t do it again. Go back to bed.”
She gave him a long look and went out of the room. When the open door was empty of her I sat down on the side of the bed where she had been sitting.
“More pills?”
“No thanks. It doesn’t matter whether I sleep. I feel a lot better.”
“Did I hit right about that shot? It was just a crazy bit of acting?”
“More or less.” He turned his head away. “I guess I was lightheaded.”
“Nobody can stop you from killing yourself, if you really want to. I realize that. So do you.”
“Yes.” He was still looking away. “Did you do what I asked you—that stuff in the typewriter?”
“Uh huh. I’m surprised you remember. It’s pretty crazy writing. Funny thing, it’s dearly typed.”
“I can always do that—drunk or sober—up to a point anyway.”
“Don’t worry about Candy,” I said. “You’re wrong about his not liking you. And I was wrong to say nobody did. I was trying to jar Eileen, make her mad.”
“Why?”
“She pulled one faint already tonight.”
He shook his head slightly. “Eileen never faints.”
“Then it was a phony.”
He didn’t like that either.
“What did you mean—a good man died for you?” I asked.
He frowned, thinking about it. “Just rubbish. I told you I had a dream—”
“I’m talking about that gaff you typed out.”
He looked at me now, turning his head on the pillow as if it had enormous weight. “Another dream.”
“I’ll try again. What’s Candy got on you?”
“Shove it, Jack,” he said, and dosed his eyes.
I got up and dosed the door. “You can’t run forever, Wade. Candy could be a blackmailer, sure. Easy. He could even be nice about it—like you and lift your dough at the same time. What is it—a woman?”
“You believe that fool, Loring,” he said with his eyes closed.
“Not exactly. What about the sister—the one that’s dead?”
It was a wild pitch in a sense but it happened to split the plate. His eyes snapped wide open. A bubble of saliva showed on his lips.
“Is that—why you’re here?” he asked slowly, and in a whispering voice.
“You know better. I was invited. You invited me.”
His head rolled back and forth on the pillow. In spite of the seconal he was eaten up by his nerves. His face was covered with sweat.
“I’m not the first loving husband who has been an adulterer. Leave me alone, damn you. Leave me alone.”
I went into the bathroom and got a face towel and wiped his face off. I grinned at him sneeringly. I was the heel to end all heels. Wait until the man is down, then kick him and kick him again. He’s weak. He can’t resist or kick back.
“One of these days we’ll get together on it,” I said.
“I’m not crazy,” he said.
“You just hope you’re not crazy.”
“I’ve been living in hell.”