Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (15 page)

"PHILIP?"
her voice said.

     
"Yes," he said. She did not
speak at once and he said lightly, "It's about time you called."
Then, she still not speaking, he asked, "How
are
you, darling?"

     
"I'm fine, Phillip," her voice
said. "How are you?"

     
"I'm fine too," he said.
"What's the matter?"

     
"Nothing's the matter," her
voice said quickly. "Why?"

     
Sitting on the side of the bed he frowned
a little, cradling the telephone in the crook of his shoulder while he filled
his pipe nervously.

     
"I just meant," he said,
"that I was waiting in the dining room until a quarter of."

     
Her voice, indistinct through the
instrument, said, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't get to a phone."

     
"Well, I'm just about ready to pull
out," he said. "If everything's all right...."

     
It was like talking to a stranger. He
could not bring it back at all, any of it. He lighted his pipe, waiting for her
to speak. Two distinct sets of footsteps went past in the corridor outside the
room.

     
"Are you there?" he asked.

     
"Yes, I'm here."

     
"Is there anything else?" She
was silent again and he said irritably, "Listen, what's the matter with
you, anyway?"

     
After a moment her voice said, "It
didn't work, darling."

     
The strangeness was gone with the term of
endearment, and it was as if she were in the room with him. He took his pipe
from his mouth and laid it gently on the bedside table.

     
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"What didn't work?"

     
"I need you, Phillip," she said.

     
He said mechanically, "Listen, we
were through all that last night." It did not matter what he said now and
he wished she would get to the point so that he could know how bad it was.

     
"But I ...".she began, and broke
off. In the silence he could hear a man's voice prompting her in a whisper,
"Parks knows where I am." Then she was speaking, "Parks knows
where I am, darling."

     
His eyes rested for a moment on the packed
suitcase beside him. I should, he reflected, have got the hell out while I had
the chance.

     
"Let me talk to them,
sweetheart," he said without expression.

     
"I don't know what you
... "

     
"Let me talk to them," he repeated.

     
"Oh," she said, and her voice
became indistinct, as if she had turned away from the phone, and said, "He
wants to talk to you." Then it became loud and cried, "I didn't
.. .
!" and he heard the sound of the blow and the brief
cough of pain very close to the telephone.

     
"
Laflin
here," said a man's voice.

     
"What goes on?" Branch asked.

     
"Come and find out," said the
large young man's voice.

     
"You've got her," Branch said.
"What more do you want?"

     
"Parks will tell you how to get
here," Paul
Laflin's
voice said.

     
"To hell with
Parks.
You tell me."

     
He listened as, after a moment's
hesitation, the other gave the directions, which he repeated back into the
instrument.

     
"That's right," Paul
Laflin's
voice said. "We'll expect you. I wouldn't
consider the police."

     
"I wouldn't consider them
either," Branch said wryly. "But if I come, what does it get
me?"

     
"That's for you to decide." The
telephone rattled as if put down on a hard surface and Paul
Laflin's
voice, a little muffled by distance, said, "Speak for the gentleman,"
as if talking to a dog; and suddenly Jeannette Duval screamed abruptly and very
loudly, locking the mechanism of the instrument in a brief sharp blare of
sound. Branch pulled the phone away from his head and heard, above the ringing
in his ear, the click of the circuit being opened. Presently he replaced the
telephone gently in its cradle.

     
He passed his finger slowly along the
smooth heavy leather of the suitcase that lay on the bed, making a clear streak
through the dust that had accumulated in the days it had stood in the wardrobe.
His parents had given him the suitcase on the occasion of his joining the Navy.
His mother had cried a little when she packed it. Those had been the days when
anything had seemed possible and he had been quite certain that he would
eventually get to sea. He sat beside the suitcase, remembering. Then he stood
up and looked at himself in the mirror. He had put on a gray shirt and his
second best uniform preparatory to traveling and he looked, in the mirror, rather
tall and thin, a little gawky in spite of the gold braid, and quite worried.
It's quite
pointless,
he told the long worried image
in the mirror, if I go it's just two of us. He picked up the telephone.

     
"I've changed my mind," he said
to the desk. "I'll be staying for another day or two. Sorry if I've caused
you any-"

     
"That's quite all right,
Lieutenant," the desk said. Branch grimaced and put down the phone. Oh,
you think so, he thought irritably. He picked up his cap and coat, and his
pipe, lying forgotten on the table, and went out.

     
Outside it was blowing fitfully,
occasional gusts of wind sweeping the dust along the pavements. He walked with
his eyes half-closed against the backwash of small gritty particles that
blurred his vision of the suddenly brightly sunlit streets. When he came to the
bridge the water was glittering below and the draw was open for a small white
motor cruiser to pass through. He could lean over the bridge railing and look
down on the yellow foredeck and the spray-flecked glass of the superstructure.
He called the boat a damned floating greenhouse in his mind and watched it pick
up speed and proceed up the river against the wind at a good eight knots,
pitching in the short chop and leaving a V-shaped wake.

     
The draw settled into place and the gates
opened and he walked slowly on, his feet crushing small particles of glass on
the cement sidewalk of the bridge. It was apparently a local sport to pitch
beer bottles from the windows of passing cars, low shots hitting the masonry of
the railing. He declined a lift from a man who was going to
Arnold
, five miles down the main
road, and walked on, thinking, if I wasn't a damned fool I would get to hell
out of here.

     
A
stationwagon
with the door stenciled "Wayside Farms" picked him up a quarter of a
mile up the river road and he sat beside the driver, feeling his feet aching
and watching the road slide past. He had the man drop him out of sight beyond
Parks' store. When the
stationwagon
had turned the
next corner he walked back to the bend and turned into a small road following
the edge of the fields, over which he could see the store at the crossroads. He
could see Parks' house down in the hollow, and the other houses, and, feeling
conspicuous in his uniform, hurried a little to get down to where the woods
would hide him. If something happens, he thought, if something happens and I
get out of it, I don't want to be connected with it. He could not think clearly
what could happen. The road went down the hillside at an angle so sharp that it
seemed unlikely that anything other than a horse or a jeep could use it. Once
he caught a glimpse of the river in the sunlight through the thin trees to his
left. He did not look around him more than casually as he walked.

     
Then Mr. Hahn's voice behind him said,
"That's far enough
Lieutenant
."

     
He turned and looked at the chinless man.
"Too damned far," he agreed. "My feet hurt."

     
Mr. Hahn said gently, "That is too
bad. That is really too bad."

     
He came forward between the trees, wearing
a closefitting gray overcoat with a black velvet collar, and a gray felt hat.
The gun in his
hand, that Branch had seen before,
was
of a more familiar shape than the gun the girl had kept under her pillow.
Madame
Faubel
stepped out of the bushes behind him
and brushed the twigs from her skirt and pulled a small pistol from the pocket
of her jacket. Mr. Hahn looked back over his shoulder to see if she were in
command of the situation; she nodded, and he put his gun away, stopping beside
Branch in such a position that he did not interfere with the woman's line of
fire. His narrow mustached face looked puzzled.

     
"You must be very fond of her,"
he said as he ran his hands expertly over Branch's body, feeling of the armpits
and the arms, the waist, the crotch and, squatting, the legs. "Or very
stupid," he said with a quick grin, looking up. He straightened up.
"Turn out your pockets."

     
He examined the objects Branch gave him
and returned everything except the small penknife, which he kept.

     
"Americans must be a very chivalrous
race," he said dryly, considering Branch for a moment. "I didn't
think you'd be fool enough to come."

     
Madame
Faubel
said, "All Americans are afraid of being thought afraid. That is why their
casualties are so high."

     
"With a population of a hundred and
thirty millions they can afford a few casualties," Mr. Hahn said.
"But why should he care what we think of him?"

     
Madame
Faubel
came forward. "They are always worrying what people think of them. He did
not even bring a gun?"

     
"Not unless he has it up his
youknowwhat
."

     
"I don't like it," the woman
said.

     
"You were the one who was sure he
would come."

     
"But with a gun," the woman
said. "With, at least, a knife ..."

     
Branch listened to them and heard also the
wind in the tops of the small trees on the hillside. Under the trees the
hillside was almost clear of brush and carpeted with damp dead leaves.

     
"Did you tell anyone that you were
coming?" the woman demanded.

     
Branch looked at her pale face.
"Don't ask silly questions," he said irritably. "If I had, I
would lie about it, wouldn't I?"

     
He stood and listened to them talk about
it some more, and shifted his feet in the ruts of the road and wished he could
sit down. He felt a little sleepy and he yawned; then knew he was very far from
sleepy by the way the yawn became incomplete in his throat.
 

     
"Go back to the road," Madame
Faubel
said at last to the chinless man. "See if there
is anyone waiting."

     
"I have told you," said Mr. Hahn
angrily, "He came in a
stationwagon
marked
'Wayside Farms.' The
stationwagon
went on. I followed
him down. There was no one."

     
The woman turned to Branch. "Who was
the driver?"

     
Branch shrugged his shoulders. "I
don't know.
Some farmer.
He picked me up just after I
turned off past the bridge."

     
"Go on," Madame
Faubel
said to the chinless man. "We will wait
here." When Mr. Hahn opened his mouth to protest further, she said
sharply, "Hurry up. We can't spend all day in this place."

     
They watched the narrow figure labor out
of sight along the ruts; then the woman sat down on the damp leaves and Branch
sat down beside her.

     
"May I take out my pipe and
smoke?" he asked her politely, glancing at the gun resting on the heavy
tweed of her skirt.

     
She nodded without speaking.

     
Presently be said, "I saw
Constance
this morning. She wasn't
feeling so good."

     
"She is not well," Madame
Faubel
said.

     
"Why don't you turn her over to some
relief?" Branch asked. "Get her fixed up a little. She'd be a nice
kid if she got straightened out a little.