The Outsider (55 page)

“But why are you crying so, my dear?” Menti asked. “Are you surprised?”

“But I shouldn't take it,” Eva evaded his question. “I've no right to it.”

“The Party is loyal to you,” Menti pointed out.

“Yes,” Eva gulped.

“And don't you want to be loyal to the Party?”

Eva did not reply; she turned her fear-filled eyes questioningly upon Cross's face, seeking his guidance. And Cross noticed that Eva's appeal for his advice was not
lost upon Menti's smilingly observant eyes, eyes that traveled cryptically from Eva's face to Cross's, and then back to Eva's again…

Cross found himself paraphrasing a Biblical passage:

“
Thou shalt not depend upon others, nor trust them: for this your Party is a jealous Party, visiting the suspicions of the leaders upon the members unto the third and fourth friends of the friends around the Party…
”

He was now sure that Menti was reporting back to the Party every nuance which he could observe between him and Eva. He hated the money that the Party was offering, but he could not afford to tell Eva not to accept it. He must make them guess at what he knew and felt.

“Why not, honey? It's for you…”

“But I don't
want
it, Lionel,” she whispered; she was still afraid that the Party would try to dictate her life.

Cross cursed himself. Each step he took carried him deeper into a morass of lies and deceit.

“The Party feels an obligation,” Cross said, trying to make his lie sound genuine. “If you refuse, they'll wonder what reasons you could have.”

“Exactly,” Menti said.

Cross did not believe what Menti had said, and he knew that Menti knew that he did not believe it.

“Oh, all right,” Eva sighed. “But I'm young and I have my painting!”

“As soon as you're rested and settled, the Party wants you to paint,” Menti told her hurriedly. “Now, tomorrow's Sunday. I'll pick you up in the morning at nine and take you to the union hall, hunh?”

Eva nodded her head. Menti shook hands with her and left. Sarah, who had overheard it all from the back of the room, came forward with a tight and angry face.

“Well, I'll be goddamned,” Sarah swore.

“What's the matter?” Eva asked.

“They pay you, but
me
…? I lost Bob, but do they give me one red cent? They took Bob from me, but do they
care?
” Bitter tears welled in her eyes.

“Oh, Sarah,” Eva protested guiltily. “Here, you take this money. You need it.” She held out the envelope with a gesture of childish generosity.

“I don't want it!” Sarah shouted.

“But, Sarah,” Eva wept, “I didn't
ask
the Party for it…”

“I ain't mad at you,” Sarah stormed. “I'm mad at them! I'm convinced that there's something fishy behind this. They don't give a good goddamn about what happens to you. They're trying to buy your loyalty for some reason.” Sarah turned to Cross. “What do you think, Lionel?”

“I don't know, Sarah,” he lied helplessly; he agreed with Sarah, but he could not tell her so, at least not yet.

Cross wondered if he was underestimating the Party. Though the Party was not an official adjunct to the police department, it did have wide powers of an effective and peculiar nature; it had its own underground apparatus and special methods of investigation. But what could they do with their findings? And he was convinced that he would have more than ample warning of their movements before they got too close to him.

Late that evening, immediately following dinner, Cross knew that the Party was adamantly on his trail, for Menti showed up accompanied by a short, dark Negro who hovered silently behind him, keeping on his hat and overcoat. This man, known as Hank, had a black, blank mask for a face, a greyish scar that went diagonally across his lips and chin, eyes that held a look of chronic hate whose origin seemed to go back to some inaccessible past. Cross knew that the Party had given
Menti assistance in the form of this thug to help in spying upon him and Eva. This meant that the Party had not acted because it had not quite made up its mind. But what were the leaders thinking? Did they regard him as a spy? If so, for whom? And would they ever be able to fathom his motive in killing Gil? Or would they in the end just create some imaginary crime and try to brand him with its guilt? He knew that they were fully capable of that…

Menti pretended that the Party had asked for papers of an urgent political nature that Gil had left behind in his desk. Eva willingly surrendered to Menti the keys of the apartment on Charles Street. Cross had no fear of the Party finding anything incriminating in Eva's apartment, for he had brought his only suitcase with him. Before leaving, Menti lingered at the door, smiling, looking thoughtfully off into space. Hank stood behind Menti, morose, his eyes darting about.

“How are you getting on, Lane?” Menti asked.

“Oh, so-so,” Cross said.

“Only so-so?” Menti asked. “You need money?”

“No.”

Hank was listening so intently that his eyes glittered.

“The Party's curious about you,” Menti said.

“You've told me I'm under suspicion,” Cross said. “But you haven't told me what I'm suspected of.”

“Say, where were you born?” Menti asked suddenly. “I want to know.”

“You mean the Party wants to know—Tell the Party folks to come and ask me what they want to hear—”

“I'm the Party; I'm asking—”

“You think I'm with the police, don't you?” Cross evaded him.

Menti laughed, then playfully slapped Cross on the shoulder.

“Hell, Lane, we're not children,” Menti said. “You've no connections with the police; we've investigated and we know…Say, tell me, when did you last see Hilton?”

“I tried to see him yesterday afternoon. But he wasn't in.”

“What time was that?”

“Gosh, I don't know,” Cross smiled. “Is it important?”

“Could be.” Menti was baffled at Cross's casual manner. “Can you
prove
you didn't see 'im?”

“I haven't bothered to think about that,” Cross said.

“The hotel clerk said a guy of your description asked for Hilton around four o'clock,” Menti told him. “That must have been you, hunh?”

“Maybe. There are many Negroes who look like me,” Cross said; he knew that they were trying clumsily to link him with Hilton's death.

“Not likely,” Menti said. “At least they don't act like you. The hotel clerk remembers you because you acted self-assured, like a man who knows his way around.”

“I know my way around,” Cross laughed.

“Good-bye,” Menti said suddenly.

They left. Cross shut the door and at once Sarah came out of the living room and Cross could see that she had overheard the conversation.

“What are they after you for?” she asked.

“They are crazy,” Cross told her, laughing. “You know, they are trying to build up a case…They want to accuse me of killing Hilton…”

“Good God!” Sarah looked stunned. “Could it be because you're living with Eva? But the Party isn't interested in things like that. They're trying to put their finger on you for something and they're going about it
slow and easy. They know you're here with Eva and won't run off—”

“You think so?” Cross asked to test her intuitions.

“I
know
it; I
can
feel it…”

Cross forced a laugh and shrugged his shoulders.

Just before going to bed that night, when they were alone together, Eva came demurely to him with a package wrapped up in heavy brown paper. He saw a look of devotion and trust in her tranquil, hazel eyes. She knelt at his feet and caught hold of his hand.

“Lionel,” she whispered.

“Yes, darling.”

In her attitude was a mute giving of her life to him that sprang from a sense of her newly gained freedom.

“Lionel,” she began, “I'm going to let you know something that I once swore that I'd never divulge to anyone on earth. I want you to know the Party you're dealing with…They deceived me with Gil. Darling, here in this package are my diaries. They contain my hope and my despair…You must not let them make you a victim, too…They're clever. Menti's hounding you for something…Read these diaries and know the world in which I once lived…”

Cross's eyes fell; he tried to keep his sense of shame from showing.

“You must know the kind of woman with whom you've elected to go through life,” Eva continued bravely, her eyes full upon his face. “Life has made me akin to you. The world has treated me as it has treated you. You'll see that when you read this…”

Cross was a riot of impulses; he wanted to tell her that he had already read them; that he was not worthy of what she was doing; that he too had a past to tell of; that it was to her that he ought to kneel and not she to him…One impulse canceled the other and he said
nothing; then he seized her and crushed her to him in an outburst of despair that was so deep and sharp that it seemed to stop his breath.

“Until death, Lionel,” she whispered.

“Yes; until death,” he sighed and bit his lips. He clung to her and hid his face; he did not want her to see the tears that stood stingingly in his eyes. When she pulled herself free, she laughed and wiped his eyes with the tips of her fingers.

“You silly-billy,” she said.

“You make me feel that way,” he told her truthfully.

“Look, let's go to a midnight movie,” she suggested. “I'm tired of being cooped up.”

“Okay.”

No sooner was he upon the street with Eva than he saw Menti and Hank lurking in a shadowy doorway near a corner. And he knew that Menti had seen him, for the man lowered his head and walked off quickly, pulling Hank after him. He did not call Eva's attention to Menti, feeling that it would only worry her. With Eva clinging to his arm, he moved on over patches of snow and ice, wondering what the Party knew and when it planned to act.

He was now under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Did they think he was going to run off? Were they working with the District Attorney? He felt that he could handle the Party, but Houston was another matter. He damned the day he had met the man who knew so well the spiritual malady that had plagued and undone him—the dilemma of the ethical criminal, the millions of men who lived in the tiny crevices of industrial society completely cut off from humanity, the teeming multitudes of little gods who ruled their own private worlds and acknowledged no outside authority. Hating that part of himself that he could not manage, Cross
must perforce fear and hate Houston who knew how close to crime men of his kind had by necessity to live.

After the movie they returned to the apartment to find that Sarah was not in. Eva was worried; it was past two o'clock in the morning and she lamented that they had not had the foresight to invite Sarah along with them, and Cross agreed with her, but for reasons of his own. He suspected that Sarah was with Menti…

Sarah arrived around three o'clock accompanied by Menti, Hank, and another elderly, portly, white-haired, well-dressed man. Sarah, slightly tipsy from drink, came straight to Cross with a knowing look in her eyes. They've been pumping her, Cross thought.

“Lionel, I want you to meet Menti's friend, Mr. Blimin,” Sarah said.

“How are you?” Cross said.

“I'm glad to meet you, Lane,” Blimin said.

They shook hands. Menti at once went to Blimin and Hank and took both of them by their arms.

“Say, you two wanted to find that little room, didn't you?”

“Oh, yes,” Blimin said, looking around the room at Cross, Eva, and Sarah. “Will you excuse me?”

Menti herded the two of them into the hallway. It did not look natural. Cross knew that Menti had gotten Blimin and Hank out of the room in order to say something to them of a confidential nature. The moment Menti's footsteps had ceased to sound in the hallway, Sarah rushed to Cross and Eva and burst out in a loud whisper:

“You should have heard what they were asking me about you—”

“Yes? Tell me,” Cross urged her.

“Blimin wanted to know your age, your background,
how you spoke, who your mother was, who your father was, what school you came from, what organizations you belonged to…”

“Good God!” Cross forced himself to laugh.

“But,
why?
” Eva stood and indignation blazed in her eyes.

“I don't know,” Sarah said.

Eva turned to Cross and said: “What do they mean? You've got to tell them off, Lionel.”

“I'll do that,” he said.

“If you don't tell them, I will,” Eva swore with anger.

“But this just started today, honey,” he reminded her. He had to keep this thing to normal proportions in her mind. “I'll see them as soon as the ceremony for Gil's over.”

“And tell them to keep out of our life,” Eva demanded.

“But, wait—I haven't told you everything yet,” Sarah said. “That Blimin wanted to know what kind of books you read, what kind of mail you received, if you spoke any foreign languages, if you had any secret appointments, if a lot of telephone calls came for you, how large were the bills you spent, what kind of people came to see you, if I could hear you typing late at night, if you mailed any big envelopes…Lord, he was like a lawyer.”

“Don't worry, Sarah,” Cross told her. “They're worried about Gil and Hilton and they're trying to find out who killed them.”

“But why are they snooping around
us
?” Eva demanded.

“Listen, Lionel,” Sarah said with deep care. “I hope to God that you're not like Bob. Don't have a past for them to dig into. This is exactly how they were acting before they turned Bob over to the Immigration author
ities…Oh, God, I hate those people, I
hate
'em!” Tears of rage blinded Sarah.