Black Curtain (11 page)

There were a handful of forlorn, sleepy-looking travelers scattered about on the benches, idle redcap or two hanging about. Since he wasn't carrying anything, they didn't approach him.

He worked his way back along the gates, from the high numbers to the low. 23, 21, 19. There it was, 17, with the schedule of its next departure conveniently posted up alongside it. He sidled onto a bench opposite it, and studied the list of stops. No arrival hours were given, only the time of departure from here, 6 A. M., so he saw he'd have to work it out by a process of elimination.

He looked guardedly around, and when the entire marble floor of the huge place was at its clearest, no one crossing it, he got up again and went over to the gateman. He picked a name at random from the board, the exact middle one, the halfway point of the trip.

"What time does this train get to Clayburgh?"

"Six fifty-five."

A quarter of an hour too near. He dropped down to the next one.

"What time does it hit Meredith?"

"Seven-five."

Not it yet. It must be the next one.

"How about New Jericho?"

The gateman was getting restive. "Seven-ten," he said gruffly. His look said, "How much longer you going to keep this up?"

Townsend was through. He turned away. He'd hit the place. New Jericho was where she came and went from.

He was one step farther on the way. Now be must get out of here again as safely as he'd come in--

13

Thursday again. Two voices in the dark again. The game of love and tightrope walking again.

He'd charted his course ahead of time, before she came. The things he'd found out filled him with an insatiable passion to lift the curtain higher. He was like a man who has taken a long, tranquil voyage, and finds himself mad with impatience during the last hour before he will be home again.

There were two main things to be elicited tonight. Two things that must be kept in sight, like twin lanterns far down a tunnel, no matter what tortuous passages they went through. -Where- had it happened? -When- had it happened?

The place. The date. Then he could go on from there. Those were the two factors of the equation he needed, Once he had them, he could work out the answer. He must get them.

Even as his lips touched hers, his mind kept ticking off: -where- and -when?- -Where- and -when?-

She got up, crossed the room to lower the shade.

Where and when? Where and when? Where and when?.

When she came back, she hesitated a moment before rejoining him. As though some spark of resentment had fanned itself alight within her, during her brief absence. He could tell. Couples are almost telepathic at such times.

"What're you sore about?" he murmured in the dark.

"Who's Virginia?"

He swallowed, unseen. "I don't know. Where'd you get that name from?"

"From you."

"You're hearing things."

Where, and when? Where, and when? Where, and when?

"Somebody you horsed around with up at New Jericho?" she went on resentfully. "Or is it somebody you dug up for yourself since you been hiding out down here in the city?"

"I've been undercover the whole time down here--"

"Well you weren't undercover up there!" she Flashed back.

That gave him the answer. The one answer he had already guessed. Up there was where. New Jericho. Only one remaining lantern to steer for now. When? When? When?

Meanwhile she was still aggrieved. "Let her buy your groceries for you, then, if she's so hot! That's a fine thing! I've got to hear somebody else's name in my ear, even--"

"Sh! they'll hear you around this dump. Listen, there's no Virginia. I don't know any Virginia. To me it's a state--"

"-You- weren't thinking of geography just then!" the let him know seethingly.

He reached out and caught hold of her hand. She came back to him by diminishing zones of aloofness. First sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed, her back to him. Then reclining on the point of one elbow, face still averted. Then relapsing in full forgiveness, head to his shoulder once more.

When? When? When?

"Light one for me too. Like you used to.... Gee your eyes look shiny by matchlight, Danny.... No, don't blow it out! Save it for me, I want to make a wish.... There.... What was it? You ought to be able to guess. That they'll never catch up with you; that they'll let me keep you to myself like this, forever."

Forever. A time word. There it was, right there. Better grab it quick, he mightn't get another chance that night.

"Forever is a long time. How long has it been-- like this with me now? Any idea? I'm not so good at keeping track of time--"

"Nine months now, isn't it?" The question tricked her into some more of that audible counting up that is a weakness of those who are imperfectly schooled. "Let's see, August, September, October... yeah, it was nine months on the fifteenth. I don't know how you've been able to bold out that long--"

So it had happened, whatever it was, on August fifteenth, the year before.

Where, plus when, equals the past.

14

He was as timorous about entering the reading room of the library as he had been of venturing into the station, although it had a reassuring atmosphere of scholarly absorption, of seclusion from the everyday world. Still, who could tell what eyes might not suddenly look up, rest on him in explosive recognition?

He kept his head down as he approached the reservation desk, got in line behind several others.

"Do you keep any back numbers of newspapers from New Jericho on file here?"

The attendant looked it up for him. "No, I'm sorry, we don't."

Maybe none were published there. Who could tell how small a place it was? It might be just an unincorporated crossroads.

He tried another question. "Have you any idea, offhand, what the nearest large town to it is?"

The librarian didn't seem surprised, as though this was less erratic than many another question he bad been called upon to answer in his time. "I'm not sure, but I believe Meredith would be about the closest."

"Well, have you any Meredith back-number papers on file here?"

The attendant looked that up. "We have the Meredith -Leader-, but I don't know how complete a file we have on it. Fill out this card and then wait over there by the call board until your number comes up."

He filled it out "Meredith -Leader-, August i6th, 1940," and signed it "Allen." That would be about right, the day after.

When the paper was brought to him he handled it gingerly. Suddenly he wanted to drop it, never to look inside it. He wanted to escape from this room, from Tillary Street, from himself. The past Was here in his hands, and he was afraid of it. Frank Townsend and Dan Nearing were together at last.

What had Dan Nearing done? He took the paper over with him to one of the tables and sat down in front of it with desperate resignation. He opened the paper.

The name "Dan Nearing" leaped out at him. He huddled forward, began to read within a sort of protective barricade formed by his extended arms.

    KILLS BENEFACTOR

BRUTAL SLAYING AT SUBURBAN ESTATE

NEW JERICHO, Aug. 15th--Turning on the man who had given him shelter and employment during the past two years, Daniel Nearing shot and killed Harry S. Diedrich, member of a well-known local family, at his country home near here early yesterday afternoon. The victim's wife, Alma, his younger brother, William, and a neighbor, Arthur Struthers, were horrified eyewitnesses to the crime, having returned unexpectedly for a book of commutation tickets they had overlooked on leaving a few moments before. They narrowly escaped sharing Mr. Diedrich's fate. The enraged assailant pursued them from the house when he caught sight of them. They managed to regain the highway in their car and telephone for help from Mr. Struthers' house. By the time police, under the direction of Constable E. J. Ames, had reached the scene, the slayer had made good his escape. The weapon used, a shotgun, was found lying where the killer had discarded it. The slain man's father, Emil Diedrich, a helpless invalid, was found unharmed in his wheel chair in another room of the house.

Nearing, whose antecedents are unknown, had been taken in and given work by the murdered man against the advice of other members of the household. Originally he worked as handy man about the premises, engaged to look after the grounds. For the past few months, however, he had been placed in charge of Mr. Diedrich's invalid father and had occupied a room within the house itself, replacing a former attendant who had been dismissed.

Other members of the household, at the time of the tragedy, consisted of Mr. Diedrich's sister, Adela, secluded in an upstairs room due to a nervous disorder, a cook, Mrs. Mollie McGuire, and a housemaid, Miss Ruth Dillon. The two servants were not present at the time of the tragedy, having left shortly before on their afternoon off.

According to the story pieced together by Constable Ames, Mrs. Diedrich during luncheon had expressed a wish to go to the city on a shopping trip. Her husband suggested that his brother drive her in to New Jericho to take the train. They set out shortly before two for the drive to the station. Mr. Diedrich, meanwhile, had retired to a conservatory at the side of the house where he habitually took an afternoon nap. Mrs. McGuire and Miss Dillon left within a few moments after that, and took the bus together. Nearing, when last seen, was sitting beside his charge, apparently dozing.

Mrs. Diedrich and her brother-in-law, on their way to the station, encountered Mr. Struthers, whom they knew by sight, and offered to take him in with them. A moment later Mrs. Diedrich discovered she had mislaid her train tickets, and they turned back to enable her to get them. As they drove up before the house, a gunshot sounded from the conservatory. Before they could get out of the car, Nearing had come rushing out of the conservatory brandishing the still-smoking shotgun. Horrified, they drove down to the highway again, pursued by him.

Mr. Diedrich, when the police arrived on the scene, was found to have been killed instantly. The victim's head had been partly blown off by the blast. A small safe in the library near by was discovered forced open, with its contents scattered about on the floor. Whether any money was missing could not immediately be learned. Mr. Diedrich had complained of missing small sums in cash from time to time over a period of several weeks past, and the police are inclined to the belief that he set a trap for the thief, discovered Nearing in the act of ransacking the safe, attempted to call for help, and was driven back into the conservatory by the enraged malefactor at the point of the gun and there shot to death.

According to the description furnished Ames, the killer is of medium height, about twenty-seven or -eight years of age, with lightbrown hair and eyes, and with a deceptively mild appearance. He has a small blue anchor tattooed on the back of his left wrist.

The police are watching all main roads leading into the city, and an arrest is expected momentarily.

He let his cuff slide forward again, and the little blue anchor ebbed from sight under it.

Murder! It lit up his mind like a rocket. One of those flashing things that hang suspended against the night at a fireworks display and light up everything a pale, ghastly green.

He brushed the back of his hand across his mouth, as if to wipe off some sort of foul taste. He was one of them now. He could be hunted down. He could be killed by law. He was a murderer.

There was no refuge for him, no mercy. Earthly laws only fulfilled what divine law itself sanctioned. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

He was a murderer. Outcast, taboo.

Now he knew, now he understood; the meaning of the man in gray, the silent grim pursuit, that raid in the dead of night on his home. Now the curtain had lifted and he saw what lay before him. No personal vengeance, no private enemy stalking him from out the miasmas of the past. That had been organized society itself. That man must have been of the police. Who else would have dared draw a gun on a crowded subway platform and shatter a car panel?

A hand fell on him lightly, and the touch of it went to his heart like electricity. "No sleeping in here, please," a voice murmured tactfully.

He raised his head again from between his arms. His eyes were haunted. He'd been watching a man--twenty-seven or twenty-eight, light-brown hair and eyes, medium height--come rushing out of an enclosed room, holding a smoking shotgun in his hands.

15

There was a difference now. They weren't alone any more. There was a ghost there in the room with them. In the very bed with them. No matter how close he pulled her to him, it was still in the way. And when he tried to kiss her, he was kissing its cold, grinning face instead.

"Why are you so quiet tonight? What's the matter, Danny?"

He knew he had to do one of two things. Go up the steps into some building with green lamps at its entrance and say, "I'm Dan Nearing." Or--

He couldn't live with the thought any more.

"Ruth, do -you- believe I did that? You know."

She hid her face against him. "Three people saw you with their own eyes. I've -tried- not to--"