Dread Journey (9 page)

The man was poor. How did he know Kitten? How did she know him? His eyes were begging recognition of her but she kept her back turned on him. When she moved away, resignation stoned him. He did not lift his hands to protect himself.

Kitten moved on and after her the tall man with the lined face, Hank Cavanaugh. Behind Cavanaugh came Gratia and Viv’s smile was pathetically real. “Having a nice trip, Miss Shawn?”

“Very nice.” Mike’s eyes fastened on the girl. There was something shining beneath the Shawn’s pale skin when she smiled. She didn’t hesitate, asking Spender’s further notice. She was as unlike one of Spender’s discoveries as a flesh and blood woman. She went quietly on. Les Augustin followed her, speaking, “Hello, Viv,” in passing.

Spender didn’t smile, he was forcedly courteous. “Hello, Les.”

Spender attacked his ice cream. The four were out of hearing before he spoke. “Who the hell is Hank Cavanaugh?”

Mike said, “He’s a newspaperman.”

Spender turned his head to her.

She said dryly, “He’s not a gossip writer. He writes literature. The kind that tears your guts.”

Spender ate again. “Maybe we could hire him.”

“Maybe you could,” Mike said. She didn’t sound promising.

“You might look into it.”

It was pure error that her eyes fell upon the pathetic man at that moment. Error because he should have been unseen in his hopelessness. He pushed away his dinner plate. His face was sick with pity as he crept away from the table seeking the small comfort of a hole.

Viv remarked, “He didn’t finish his dinner.” He eyed the chicken fricassee with distaste. “He should have ordered the steak.”

He said, “You can’t run fast enough or far enough.”

He closed the door of Les’s compartment. She was standing there swaying with the train but it wasn’t the motion of rushing wheels that trembled through her. She didn’t seem to know when he put her in the Pullman seat, sat down, opposite her. “Spill it,” he ordered.

She looked at him then, and he knew she’d lie. The intonation of her laugher was a lie. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “Give me a cigarette, darling.”

He didn’t give her a cigarette. He said, “I wasn’t talking. You must have been listening to clacking in your head.”

Her eyes narrowed under her displeasure. But her fingers trembled as she took a cigarette from her giant, expensive suede handbag. “You could give me a light,” she said.

“I could if I wanted to,” he told her flatly. He kept his hands in his pockets. Anger would strip off her sham. He’d forgotten that Gratia and Les would be following. They entered now and he spoke harshly to them. “Go away and leave us alone.”

Les pointedly refused the suggestion. He said, because it was expected of him to say things like that, “What are we doing, choosing up sides?” He came in and sat down beside Kitten.

Gratia stood, hesitant, on the outskirts. Hank couldn’t tell her what he would. That he wanted to be with her, alone and in peace. That what he was doing with Kitten was out of a compulsion, stronger than his want; that he must make this attempt to save Kitten in spite of herself. He could tell Gratia nothing. He held silence while in her eyes was the uncertainty of the unwanted. He turned on Les again. “Go away.”

“I might point out this is my compartment.”

Hank strengthened it, “Go away and be selfish,” but Les didn’t understand. Les hadn’t seen that sudden headlong panic with which Kitten was possessed as she left the diner.

Les’s smile invited Gratia. “He’s been fed. He won’t bite.” He toed Hank nearer the window. “Haven’t you any manners? Make room for Gratia.”

Gratia said, “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

“No.” Les’s refusal wasn’t acting. He was fleet, across the room beside her. “Not yet, darling.” Hank wanted to throw Augustin’s crawling hand off her arm but he only said savagely, “There’s no reason for you to go if Les is staying. He needs someone for company.”

Her eyes were on him as they had been throughout dinner. Reproaching him for getting her into this and then deserting her for the tarnished glitter of Kitten. He took it.

She insisted, “I really am tired. Would you mind if I had the room made up, Kitten?”

Les was pulling her gently to the seats. “Don’t think about Kitten. It’s your room too, isn’t it?”

She smiled at Kitten. “I’m just a guest.”

Kitten said expansively, “Have it made up whenever you choose.” She masked malice in chaff. “Ignore Les. He doesn’t care what you do. He’s only trying to play a scene. He fancies he’s an actor, don’t you, sweet?”

“I am an actor.” Les’s voice was tired. He looked tired, tired in his very veins. They stood thin and blue on his temples, his wrists. “But you’re wrong. I do care.” Hank saw it in that moment. Les too had found the peace of Gratia. He too feared losing it. He had need of it.

He had led Gratia to the seat and he placed her next to Hank. “You won’t go until you’ve had a brandy, will you? You can wait that long.”

“Just that long,” Gratia said. She was careful not to come into contact with even Hank’s coat sleeve. She sat quietly in the corner where she was placed. Yet, strangely enough, he was physically conscious of her in every membrane. So strong was the consciousness that there was no sense of touch for him in Kitten’s legs stretched out against his.

Les brought the small glass of brandy to Gratia. “To dream on,” he said.

Hank’s demand was too loud, too determined to destroy the fragile thread winding Gratia to Les. “For God’s sake, are we pariahs?”

“Yes,” Les smiled. “If you want one, the bottle’s there.”

Hank saw the maneuver and he laughed with real enjoyment for the moment. Laughed at the little change in Augustin despite the fact that the fellow was straddled on a high star. The same sly way of satisfying his will. Les intended to sit beside Gratia; but he wouldn’t request, he’d scheme.

It gave Hank honest if ugly pleasure to thwart him. He leaned back simulating comfort. “Pour us a drink, Kitten.”

She was petulant. Beneath the petulance was impotent fury. She was too feminine not to understand the undercover war for Gratia between the two men. She said, “If I have to pour it, I don’t want one. You don’t need one.”

“Hospitality,” Hank grunted.

Gratia lifted her eyes to Les. “I don’t want to drink alone.”

He moved then, gently.

Kitten’s words pricked blood. “Darling, this is wonderful! The great Augustin jumps through a hoop.”

Les bowed over her glass. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. It was more than rebuke. Its very quietness was devastation.

Hank slid his spine upright. Les Augustin, created without an honest emotion, transfigured. By a woman, a simple, quiet girl. His eyes pried into Les. But it wasn’t a pose. Les handed him a drink, held his own glass and sat down opposite Gratia again.

Hank gulped the burning drink, scarcely hearing Les’s remonstrance, “It’s brandy, my friend.” Les wasn’t good enough for her; God knew he himself wasn’t. The word was good and the word was right. Gratia was good; neither of them was fit to touch her.

Gratia put down her glass. “You don’t mind?” she asked, rising. She was ivory and shadow in the poor light.

Les said, “No—darling,” The darling didn’t come out something brittle. It was sweet on his tongue. He went with her to the door.

Hank watched them across the small box of the room. He didn’t answer her spoken, “Good night.” She wasn’t for him. She wasn’t for Les either but Les wouldn’t remember her long. There were no deeps in Augustin. Yet Hank was quickly resentful when Les left the room with her.

Kitten mocked, “And that is that.”

His hands clenched. He struck at her with his mouth. “Why did you run?”

She flared, “I didn’t.”

“You did.” He was brutal. “You ran because you were afraid. What were you afraid of?” He cursed aloud as Les returned almost at once. “I thought you were going to respect our privacy this time,” he said.

Les didn’t answer him.

Kitten said, “You were positively mawkish, Augustin. Are you ill?”

“Yes,” he said. He poured another thimble of brandy. “I want to go to bed.”

“What about us?” Hank demanded.

“I’m not going to bed yet,” Les told him. “There’s something I have to do first. I won’t be long.” He swallowed the drink and he went away again. Hank’s scowl wondered.

Kitten began, “She looks innocent—”

Hank cut her off sharply. He hammered, “Why are you afraid?”

He said, “Hello, Mike.”

He hadn’t knocked or if he had it was lost in the clank and clatter of train sound. He suddenly materialized in her doorway with his languid, “Hello, Mike.”

“Hello, Les.” She didn’t know him well; she didn’t know why he was here, only out of presentiment. She was curious and she was wary. She pushed aside the papers on which she had been working, being careful to cover them. His reputation had walked before him. She waited, her eyes alert behind the slant green glasses, as he closed the door and lounged down across from her.

He didn’t dawdle. He came at once to the reason for his seeking her. But he asked it idly. “What gives with Kitten?”

She was quick. “You mean that refugee from a lost week-end with whom she’s appearing? I thought you could tell me.”

She’d not sparred with him before; the flicker in his eyes savored her worth.

“I could.” He didn’t intend that she be allowed time to think. He struck. “I mean the first Mrs. Spender.”

“What about her?”

Just before her eyes went blank, they flecked fear. She hadn’t been on guard soon enough. He saw it. He mused, “How did she die?”

She struck back but she was afraid. She demanded, “What’s Kitten been saying?”

“Nothing.” He put on wings of seraphic innocence. “Nothing at all. I was just wondering.”

Mike’s voice was tight in her throat. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing, I just wondered, how did she die? An accident?”

Mike said flatly, “It was an accident. She took an overdose of sleeping tablets. I don’t think Kitten ought to be talking loosely about it. Viv wouldn’t like it.” Augustin hadn’t known. He hadn’t dreamed of its enormity. He was for all his tired worldliness a little fearful of the surface he’d scratched. She was sickened. She’d thought too much on it, now she’d given it away. Not in words spoken, in fear unspoken.

He was smiling under his eyelids. As if he could see her better that way, in perspective. She stiffened against what was to come, afraid to talk of it; afraid to think…

He said, “Come, Mike. We know Kitten and Viv are—no longer compatible, should I say?” He was deadly quiet. “Perhaps Kitten wants it widely known she doesn’t take sleeping tablets.”

It was said. Her color was gone, the rim of her lips was bleached as sulphur. She closed her eyes to her dread reflection, closing out Les Augustin, but he didn’t go away. He was there when her eyes opened again wearily. Whatever Viv was, he was hers; she would fight for him. She had always fought for him. She spoke slowly, firmly. “Kitten’s made some ugly allegations about Viv. But that one’s a little too much.”

He shrugged. “What has she said? You’re putting words in her mouth, Mike. I’m not.”

Her fingers were laced tight as stays. “Why did you come here?”

“Just to pass the time of day, Mike.”

She wanted to revile him for carrion; it was in her teeth. But she bit the words back from her lower lip. She was afraid of him. She said, “Kitten sent you.”

“Sorry to disillusion you, sweetheart. Kitten is far too busy entertaining Hank Cavanaugh to care where I am or what I’m doing.”

She set her lips with thin disgust. “Then you’ve been scavenging in old gossip scows. I don’t know what you want. Nothing from Viv, and there’s no reason for you to want to do anything to him. You aren’t any knight in shining armor for Kitten. Even if you wanted to be, she could tell you she doesn’t need you when she has Seager. You’d better forget it.”

“I’ll forget it.” He was agreeable but he didn’t move. He held the pause just long enough. “I don’t know about Cavanaugh.”

“What do you mean?”

Les opened his thin cigarette case. “Don’t you know about Hank? Wonderful fellow. The Augustin of the press.” He put the cigarette between his lips. The sharp closing of the case scraped Mike’s nerves.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Her mouth was rude.

“I’m talking about my friend, Hank Cavanaugh.”

“You needn’t. I know his reputation.”

“But Mike, my love, you’ve never seen him in action.” He blew smoke idly. “You ought to tell Viv about Hank.”

She understood what he inferred. But she forced indignation. “Viv knows about Hank. He’d like to hire him.”

Leslie’s laughter curled like a thin whip. “Oh, no.”

“Not everyone scorns the flesh pots as you do.”

“Oh, no,” he trickled. “Oh, no, Mike.” He was under her skin where he wanted to be. “I don’t scorn flesh pots, my sweet. To think you could put that connotation on my rejection of Viv Spender’s offers. I who was a starving genius so few years ago. I merely wait for a man of wit. Hardly Spender.”

He was deliberately trying for insult. But he meant it. That came as shock, hideous shock. Tears stung hotly behind her eyes. It was thus the younger artists saw Vivien Spender, a man of money-bags, not of artistry. She had known, not that anyone would dare tell her. But she had known in him, known and held her peace, known and refused to know. Her head was bent, her tears withheld. She said, “I wish you’d get out and let me work.”

“Mike!” His eyebrows were pained. “This is not the diplomacy of New Essany productions.”

“And this isn’t New Essany productions. It’s my room on the Chief.”

He sighed, “I’ll go.” But again he didn’t move. He merely stirred languidly. “First tell me what gives with Kitten? Second, tell me why the first Mrs. Spender who died accidentally is only mentioned accidentally? And lastly”—his eyes hardened beneath his lids—“what grandiose, if brief, plans does Viv have for Gratia Shawn?”

The barricade had been forced down. Because she was weary of the burden that weighted her shoulders alone. Because she wanted the release of talk. Because she wanted to be rid of him and knew this was the only way. But she would tell him only what he knew.