Strangers on a Train

Charley

Guy picked up the penciled envelope from the Santa Fe hotel. There was only a small card inside. On the card’s back was printed: NICE TOWN METCALF Turning the card, he read mechanically: 24 HOUR DONOVAN TAXI SERVICE RAIN OR SHINE CALL 2-3333 SAFE FAST COURTEOUS Something had been erased beneath the message on the back. Guy held the card to the light and made out one word: Ginnie. It was a Metcalf taxi company’s card, but it had been mailed from Santa Fe. It doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t prove anything, he thought. But he crushed the card and the envelope and the package wrappings into his wastebasket. He loathed Bruno, he realized. He opened the box in the wastebasket and put the belt in, too. It was a handsome belt, but he happened also to loathe lizard and snake skin.

Anne telephoned him that night from Mexico City. She wanted to know everything that had happened, and he told her what he knew.

“They don’t have any suspicion who did it?” she asked.

“They don’t seem to.”

“You don’t sound well, Guy. Did you get any rest?”

“Not yet.” He couldn’t tell her now about Bruno. His mother had said that a man had called twice, wanting to talk to him, and Guy had no doubt who it was. But he knew he could not tell Anne about Bruno until he was sure. He could not begin.

“We’ve just sent those affidavits, darling. You know, about your being here with us?”

He had wired her for them after talking to one of the police detectives. “Everything’ll be all right after the inquest,” he said.

But it troubled him the rest of the night that he had not told Anne about Bruno. It was not the horror that he wished to spare her. He felt it was some sense of personal guilt that he himself could not bear.

There was a report going about that Owen Markman had not wanted to marry Miriam after the loss of the child, and that she had started a breach-of-promise action against him. Miriam really had lost the child accidentally, Guy’s mother said. Mrs. Joyce had told her that Miriam had tripped on a black silk nightgown that she particularly liked, that Owen had given her, and had fallen downstairs in her house. Guy believed the story implicitly. A compassion and remorse he had never before felt for Miriam had entered his heart. Now she seemed pitiably illfated and entirely innocent.