The rest of the discussion was strictly ways and means.
102
The Unicorn Trade
Rain pursued Yamamura to the porch of the house. Right and left and behind was only blackness, the neighborhood slept. But here light spilled from the front windows, made his dripping coat shimmer and glistened on the spears that slanted past the rail. The wind howled too loudly for him to hear the doorbell.
But the man inside ought to
Yamamura grew aware that he had stood ringing for well over a minute. Perhaps the bell was out of order. He seized the knocker and slammed it down hard, again and again. Nothing replied but the storm.
Damnation! He tried the knob. The door opened. He stepped through and closed it behind him. “Hello,” he called. “Are you here, Mr. Cardynge?”
The whoop outside felt suddenly less violent than it wasdistant, unreal, like that voice over the wire. The house brimmed with silence.
It was a big, old-fashioned house; the entry hall where he stood was only dully lit from the archway to the living room. Yamamura called once more and desisted. The sound was too quickly lost. Maybe he went out, I’ll wait. He hung coat and hat on the rack and passed on in.
The room beyond, illuminated by a ceiling light and a floor lamp, was large and low, well furnished but with the comfortable slight shabbiness of a long-established home. At the far end was a couch with a coffee table in front.
Cardynge lay there.
Yamamura plunged toward him. “Hey!” he
DEAD PHONE
103
shouted, and got no response. Cardynge was sprawled full length, neck resting across the arm of the couch. Though his eyes were closed, the jaw had dropped open and the face was without color. Yamamura shook him a little. The right leg flopped off the edge; its shoe hit the carpet with a thud that had no resonance.
Judas priest! Yamamura grabbed a horribly limp wrist. The flesh did not feel cold, but it yielded too much to pressure. He couldn’t find any pulse.
His watch crystal was wet. On the table stood a nearly empty fifth of bourbon, a glass with some remnants of drink, and a large pill bottle. Yamamura reached out, snatched his fingers back possible evidence thereand brought Cardynge’s left arm to the mouth. That watch didn’t fog over.
His first thought was of artificial respiration. Breath and heart could not have stopped very long ago. He noticed the dryness of the tongue, the uncleanliness elsewhere. Long enough, he thought, and rose.
The storm hurled itself against silence and fell back. In Yamamura’s mind everything was overriden by the marble clock that ticked on the mantel, the last meaningful sound in the world. He had rarely felt so alone.
What had Cardynge said, in his call?
Yamamura started across the room to the telephone, but checked himself. Could be fingerprints. The police would soon arrive anyway, and there was no use in summoning a rescue squad which might be needed another place.
104
The Unicom Trade
He returned to the body and stood looking down. Poor Cardynge. He hadn’t appeared a suicidal type; but how much does any human know of any other? The body was more carefully dressed, in suit and clean shirt and tie, than one might have expected from a man baching it. Still, the room was neat too. Little more disturbed its orderliness than a couple of butts and matches in an ashtray on the end table next the couch. No day servant could maintain such conditions by herself.
Wait a bit. A crumpled sheet of paper, on the floor between couch and coffee table. Yamamura stopped, hesitated, and picked it up. Even dead, his client had a claim on him.
He smoothed it out with care. It had originally been folded to fit an envelope. A letter, in a woman’s handwriting, dated yesterday.
My dear Aaron
for you were very dear to me once, and in a way you still are. Not least, I suppose, because you have asked me to return to you, after all the heartbreak and bitterness. And yes, I believe you when you swear you will try to make everything different between us this time. Will you, then, believe me when I tell you how long and agonizingly hard I have thought since we spoke of this? How it hurts me so much to refuse you that I can’t talk of it, even over the phone, but have to write this instead?