Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (11 page)

     
She nodded dumbly.

     
" Well
he
said, "we'd better get back before it gets dark."

     
She said, "Phillip-"

     
"Yes?"

     
She put her hands on his wrists and looked
up at him. Then her hands were holding him tightly and there was movement among
the trees behind him. He tried to break free of her and she buried her face in
his uniform raincoat and braced herself to hold him, throwing her slight weight
against him and losing her footing in the ruts; and with sudden desperation he
brought his knee up sharply and felt her gasp and release him, falling. He
crouched, bent and turned, driving his elbow backwards against the man who was
there; then; backing away, he stepped on and fell over the girl.

     
When he scrambled to his feet, Paul
Laflin
was on him, striking at him with a short length of
wood that knocked his cap off; and, closing his eyes, he charged bodily into
the heavier man, butting him in the chest so that Paul
Laflin
tripped in the ruts and fell backwards. Someone else was telling him to stop or
they would shoot, but he followed the large young man to the ground and rolled
free and, on his feet before the other, kicked at the face. Paul
Laflin
turned his head and the impact caught the bone
behind his ear. Branch stood over him, waiting for him to move, but he did not
move.

     
"All right," said the voice of
Mr. Hahn. "All right, that's enough of this nonsense."

 
FROM THE SCREENED PORCH that ran the front of
the bungalow one could look down through the trees into a small cove where a
rambling long narrow wooden pier on pilings jutted far out into the water. From
the end of the pier a line led to the stern of a motorboat moored to a
white-painted conical buoy; the boat lying quite still between the two lines on
the sheltered water of the cove, covered from cabin to stern by a dingy gray
tarpaulin. The wind that drove through the trees about the bungalow reached
down to make small dark darting cat's-paws on the water.

     
Branch turned to look at the chinless man,
who said, "All right go on in," and he went inside. Inside there was
the musty summer-cottage smell.

     
Beside the door Constance
Bellamann
stood hugging herself with cold; and Madame
Faubel
, who had been waiting for them, had pulled away the
screen of the fireplace at the end of the long room, and was pushing crumpled
newspapers under the logs that were already laid for a fire. The large young
man had dropped into a wicker rocking chair and, oblivious of everyone else,
was rocking himself minutely back and forth, bent forward to hold his head in his
hands. Except for the rocker, the furniture was of heavy varnished wood and the
upholstery of coarse cloth, simulating home-spun.

     
"There is some more kindling in the
kitchen, Constance," Madame
Faubel
said,
watching the fire flicker dubiously.

     
As the girl started to cross the room,
Paul
Laflin
raised his head and said, "And
bring
me a glass of water.

     
"The water is turned off,"
Madame
Faubel
said. "So
is
the electricity and the gas." She rose from her knees and began to walk
slowly around the windows, closing the Venetian blinds. She glanced at the
injured man, and turned to Mr. Hahn, who sat carelessly on the arm of a chair
by the door, holding his pistol loosely pointed at Branch.

     
"There was to be no violence,"
she said.

     
"When our Paul gets an idea,"
Mr. Hahn said, "there is no arguing with him. I told him the gun would be
sufficient." He laughed. "The Lieutenant showed a well-developed
sense of self-preservation, when given a little time to think. But his reflexes
were rather violent, not to say
unchivalrous
."

     
The woman glanced at Constance
Bellamann
, returning with an armful of kindling and a dusty
open bottle of Coca-Cola. There was mud on the girl's knees, on her dress, and
on the elbow of her jacket, and a small triangular tear in the thin material of
the skirt of the dress.

     
"So I see," the woman said
dryly.

     
"I wouldn't." Mr. Hahn said
gently to Branch.

     
"Just getting my pipe," Branch
said, halting the movement of his hand.

     
"Slowly," Mr. Hahn said.

     
The girl gave the bottle to Paul
Laflin
. "I found it in the pantry," she said.
"It's warm." She went to the replace and dropped the kindling on the
hearth, brushed herself off, and walked across the room to a sofa under a print
of a hunter in a duck-blind. Presently she took a handkerchief from her pocket
and began to scrub at her knees.

     
The room was beginning to smell of smoke.
Paul
Laflin
drained the Coca-Cola bottle and swore
loudly in French, rising.

     
"Open the damper, for God's
sake!" he said to the woman. "Do you want to stifle us?"

     
He stood unsteadily by the wicker chair,
watching as she went to the fireplace; then, as the smoke, instead of welling
into the room, began to draw up the chimney, he walked across the bright rag
rug to Branch and knocked the pipe from his mouth.

     
Branch stood quite still. The heavier man
put his foot on the pipe with deliberate violence and the shank snapped off the
bowl; and Paul
Laflin
trod out the glowing tobacco
and, moving carefully sideways, herded the ashes and the parts of the broken
pipe with his foot across the rug to the fireplace and kicked them into the
fire.

     
Constance
Bellamann
rose from the sofa and walked quickly out of the room.

     
"Take off your coat," Mr. Hahn
said to Branch. "Stay a while."

     
Branch walked to the sofa and stripped off
his raincoat and cap and laid them down.

     
"Make yourself comfortable,"
said the chinless man. "Don't be formal, Lieutenant. Take off your jacket
and make yourself at home."

     
Branch laid his uniform blouse on top of
the other clothes and turned, cold in his shirt sleeves, to face Paul
Laflin
. The large young man regarded him for a moment and
swung a fist at his face. Branch stepped back, letting the blow go past, and
felt the sofa against the calves of his legs. Paul
Laflin
swung again, and he took the blow on his raised arms and let it throw him
backwards into the corner of the sofa, bracing himself to roll aside, but the
heavier man stepped back, his wide, small-featured, boyish face suddenly drawn
with pain brought on by the exertion. He turned away and lowered himself into
the wicker rocking chair that creaked woodenly upon receiving his weight; and
he put the heels of his hands against his eyes.

     
It was almost dark inside and the only
light in the room was the light of the fire. Branch sat up in the corner of the
sofa and watched Madame
Faubel
touch a match to the
candles in one of the double pewter candlesticks on the mantelpiece. He could
hear the wind outside and he was cold. There was a dull anger inside him but it
was of no importance. If you insisted on playing with people who were
irrational you could expect something like this. It was no time to be angry.
Later you could be angry, but now anger was irrelevant. Now there was only to
wait for it to be over. Madame
Faubel
carried the
branched candlestick to the clumsy table in front of the sofa.

     
"Better to tie him," she said to
Mr. Hahn, and to Branch, "Move to that chair, please.

     
He got up and walked to the chair and sat
down; and Madame
Faubel
went out and returned with a
length of clothesline and tied his arms to the back of the chair, the chinless
man watching with the gun resting easily on his knee as he sat on the side of
the table. Madame
Faubel
kneeled in front of Branch
and removed his shoes and socks. She rose again and went past him and he heard
her shoes on the bricks of the hearth. He opened his mouth to say something
flippant and brave and closed it again. It was better to be silent. He could
feel the warmth of the fire against his back.

     
Madame
Faubel
returned with a blackened poker, the end of which was smoking.

     
"We do not like to use these
methods," she said, the chinless man with the gun sitting silent on the
table beside the candles behind her, his leg, swinging a little. The woman
said, "But there is no cure for stupidity."

     
"Don't apologize," Branch said.

     
Presently he found himself sitting alone
in the room, still tied to the chair and, turning his head he saw the fire
burning down in the grate behind him. His outer clothes still lay on the sofa
where he had put them. He tried his bonds but they were still tight and he sat
quite still for a space of time. The room had become measurably warmer through
the fire and he did not feel cold although his shirt was wet across the back
and under the armpits with perspiration. His feet throbbed steadily and when he
rubbed them against each other he could feel the pain shoot up again. He sat
watching the candles burning on the table. When a gust of wind went by outside
the flames felt a sympathetic draft. Some shack, he thought, the wind goes
right through it.

     
After a while he started without
enthusiasm to work on the ropes. He felt weak and a little nauseated and the
effort of trying to feel and, craning his neck, to see the pattern
of the knots sent a wave of nervous irritation through him, so that he had to
stop working and sit motionless and tell
himself to get a grip on
himself. The bastards, he thought, sitting there, the stupid sadistic bastards.

     
The porch door slammed. Telling
himself
that it was only the wind he sat unmoving,
listening, knowing himself to be afraid they were returning to start it again.

     
The front door opened and
flickered
the candles on the table. Constance
Bellamann
came in and pressed the door quietly closed
behind her and stood for a moment with her back against it, catching her
breath. Her short soft hair was windblown and she shook it back abruptly and
went through the automatic motions of drawing out the loosened silver barrettes
and setting them into place again. She came across the room to him.

     
"I'm sorry," she said after a
little pause. Looking up at her he could recall how expertly she had decoyed
him here, he preoccupied with the money as in New York he had been preoccupied
with the room. It annoyed him to have twice fallen blindly for the same
technique.

     
"You're sorry?" he said,
"What do you think I am?" She bent down and he said quickly,
"Don't monkey with them. If you want to be helpful, get these ropes
off."

     
She hesitated, biting her lip, and looked
at the blank Venetian blinds of the windows. "All right," she
whispered, "But you mustn't tell them."

     
He said savagely, "Anything I tell
them, I'll tell them with a shotgun." Then he forced a grin and said,
"Untie me, will you? I'm getting the screaming
meemies
sitting here."

     
She went around the chair and he could
feel her tugging at the clothesline. She straightened up and bit at a broken
fingernail.

     
"You've pulled them too tight,"
she whispered. "I can't
... ."

     
"Penknife," he said.
"In my right pants pocket."
He felt her find the
knife and then he was loose and he sat rubbing the reddened welts on his
wrists. He started to get up.

     
"No!" The girl caught his arm in
protest.

     
"Oh, to hell with them," he
said, shaking her off; and he rose and the pain blazed through his legs and he
made himself walk to where his shoes and socks lay on the floor under the table
and bend over to pick them up, his fingers clumsy from the bonds, and walk
deliberately without hurrying to the sofa and sit down. God, he thought, how
far is it back to the hotel, anyway? He could feel the sweat on his face. He
bent over to draw on his socks. The girl stopped him.

     
"They'll stick," she said.
"Let me look in the bathroom. Perhaps they have some
vaseline
."

     
He looked up at her small face.
"You're being awfully good to me," he said ironically.

     
Her mouth tightened. "You're being
very heroic," she said, "and very stupid. How would you like to have
it happen every night for a week? For two weeks?
For months?
Anybody can stand it once."

     
He watched her go out of the room and
after a little be grinned and felt better. Waiting for her, he examined his
feet. They had not yet begun to blister. He wondered how long they would take
to heal.

     
Constance
Bellamann
returned with a small canvas covered first aid kit such as you buy in a
drugstore for seventy-five cents. She sat down on the floor, crossing her legs
under her thin full skirt, and fished out a small tube of burn ointment.
Everything in the kit was diminutive in size except for a bottle of iodine
that, not belonging to the assortment, had been squeezed in later. Branch held
out his hand. "I can do it."

     
She glanced at him. "If you want
to," she said.

     
"Oh, all right," he said and
after a moment she began to apply the salve to the bottom of his right foot.
"You dry them with your hair, afterwards," he said through his teeth.
"Me and Jesus Christ."

     
She looked up again. "It would be
rather sticky, wouldn't it?"

     
"What did you come back for?" he
asked.

     
"I don't know," she said.
"I just ..."