Waltz Into Darkness

28

He found Bertha Russell, coated, gloved and bonnetted, a spectral figure in the unrelieved black of full mourning, waiting for him in the open doorway of her house, early as it was, when he drove up shortly before nine the following morning to keep their appointment prearranged the night before. Whatever grief or bitterness had been hers during the unseen hours of the night just gone, she had mastered it now, there were only faint traces of it left behind. Her face was cold and stonelike in its fortitude; there were, however, bluish bruises under her eyes, and the transparent pallor of sleeplessness lay livid upon her features. It was the face of a woman bent upon retribution, who would show no more mercy than had been shown her, whatever the cost to herself.

“Have you breakfasted?” she asked him when he had alighted and come forward to join her.

“I have no wish to,” he answered shortly.

She closed the door forthwith and made her way beside him to the carriage; the impression conveyed was that she would have served him food if obliged to, but would have begrudged the time it would have cost them.

“Have you anyone in mind?” he asked as they drove off. She had given an address, unfamiliar to him as all addresses up here were bound to be, on entering the carriage.

“I made inquiries after you left last evening. I have had someone recommended to me. He was well spoken of.”

They were driven downtown into the bustling business section, the strange pair that they made, both so tight-lipped, both sitting so stark and straight, with not a word between them. The carriage stopped at last before a distinctly ugly-looking building, of beefy red brick, honeycombed with countless windows in four parallel rows, all with rounded tops. A veritable hive of small individual offices and businesses. Its appearance did not bespeak a very prosperous class of tenantry.

Durand paid off the carriage and accompanied her in. A rather chill musty air, far cooler than that outside on the street, immediately assailed them, as well as a considerable lessening of light, in no wise ameliorated by the bowls of gaslight bracketed at very sparing intervals along its corridors.

She consulted a populous directory-chart on the wall, but without tracing her finger down it, and had quitted it again before he could gain an inkling of whose name she sought.

They had to climb stairs, the building offered no lift. Following her up, first one flight, then a second, at last a third, he received the impression she would have climbed a mountain, Everest itself, to gain her objective. They were, she had told him, ancestrally of Holland-Dutch stock, she and her sister. He had never seen such silent stubbornness expressed in anyone as he did in every move of her hard-pressed laboring body on those stairs. She was more dreadfully inflexible in her stolid purpose than any passionate, quick-gesturing Creole of the Southland could have been. He couldn’t help but admire her and, for a moment, he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of wife the other one, Julia, would have made him.

At the third landing stage they turned off down endless reaches of arterial passageway, even more poorly lighted than below, and in sections that were not of one level, some higher than others, some lower.

“It doesn’t indicate very much prosperity in business, would you say?” he remarked idly, without thinking.

“It bespeaks honesty,” she answered shortly, “and that is what I seek.”

He regretted having made the observation.

She stopped at the very last door of all but one.

On a shield of blown glass set into its upper-half was painted in rounded formation, to make two matching arcs:

Durand knocked for the two of them, and a rich baritone, throbbing with its own depth, vibrated “Come in.” He opened the door, stood aside for Bertha Russell, and then entered behind her.

The light was greater on the inside, by virtue of the street beyond. It was a single room, and even less affluent in aspect than the building that housed it had promised it would be. A large but extremely worn desk divided it nearly in two, with the occupant on one side of it, the visitors — all visitors — on the other. On this other side there were two chairs, no more, one of them a negligible cane-bottomed affair. On the first side there was a small iron safe, its corners rusted, its face left ajar. Not accidentally, for several ledgers which protruded, and an unsorted mass of papers which topped them, seemed to have rendered it incapable of closing.

The man sitting in the midst of this rather unappetizing enclave was in his early forties, Durand’s senior by no more than two or three years. His hair was sand colored, and still copious, save for an indented recession over each temple, which heightened his brow and gave his face somewhat of a leonine look. He was, uncommonly enough for his age in life, totally clean-shaven, even on the upper lip. And paradoxically, instead of lending an added youth, this idiosyncrasy on the contrary seemed to increase his look of maturity, so strong were the basic lines of his face and particularly of his mouth. His eyes were blue, and on the surface there was something kindly and humane about them. Yet deeper within there was an occasional glint of something to be caught at times, some tiny blue spark, that hinted at fanaticism. They were at any rate the steadiest Durand had ever met. They were sure of themselves and attentive as those of a judge.

“Am I speaking to Mr. Downs?” he heard Bertha say.

“You are, madam,” he rumbled.

There was nothing ingratiating about his manner. Intentionally so, that is. It was as if he were withholding himself from commitment, to see whether the clients met with his approval, rather than he with theirs.

And so Durand was looking for the first time at Walter Downs. Out of a hundred lives that cross a particular one, during its single span, ninety-nine leave no trace, beyond the momentary swirl of their passing. And yet a hundredth may come that will turn it aside, deflect it from its course, alter it so, like a powerful cross-current, that where it was going before and where it goes thereafter are no longer recognizably the same direction.

“There is a chair, madam.” He had not risen.

She sat down. Durand remained standing, breaking his posture with a shoulder occasionally against the wall to ease himself.

“I am Bertha Russell and this is Mr. Louis Durand.”

He gave Durand a curt nod, no more.

“We have come to you about a matter that concerns both of us.”

“Which one of you will speak, then?”

“You speak for the two of us, Mr. Durand. That will be easiest, I think.”

Durand, looking down at the floor as if reading the words from it, took a moment to begin. But Downs, who had now altered the position of his head to direct his gaze upon him exclusively, showed no impatience.

The story seemed so old already, so often told. He kept his voice low, left all emphasis out of it.

“I corresponded with this lady’s sister, from New Orleans, where I was, to here, where she was. I offered marriage, she accepted. She left here to join me, on May the eighteenth last. Her sister saw her off. She never arrived. Another person altogether joined me in New Orleans when the boat arrived, managed to convince me that she was Miss Russell’s sister in spite of the difference in their appearances, and we were married. She stole upward of fifty thousand dollars from me, and disappeared in turn. The police down there inform me that they cannot do anything about it for lack of proof that the original person I proposed marriage to was done away with. The impersonation and the theft are not punishable by law.”

Downs said only three words.

“And you want?”

“We want you to obtain proof that a murder was committed. We want you to obtain proof of the murder that we both know must have been committed. We want you to trace and apprehend this woman who was a chief participant in it.” He took a deep, hot breath. “We want it punished.”

Downs nodded dourly. He looked thoughtfully.

They waited. He remained silent for so long that at last Durand, almost feeling he had forgotten that they were present, cleared his throat as a reminder.

“Will you take this case?”

“I have taken it already,” Downs answered with an impatient off-gesture of his hand, as if to say: Don’t interrupt me.

Durand and Bertha Russell looked at one another.

“I made up my mind to take it while you were still telling me of it,” he went on presently. “It is the kind of a case I like. You are both honest people. As far as you are concerned, sir—” He raised his eyes suddenly to Durand; “You must be. Only an honest man could have been such a fool as you appear to have been.”

Durand flushed, but didn’t answer.

“And I am a fool, too. I have not had a client in here for over a week before you came to me today. But if I had not liked the case, nevertheless I would not have taken it.”

Something about him made Durand believe that.

“I cannot promise you I will succeed in solving it. I can promise you one thing and one only: I will never quit it again until I do solve it.”

Durand reached for his money-fold. “If you will be good enough to tell me what the customary—”

“Pay me whatever you care to, to be put down against expenses,” Downs said almost indifferently. “When they outrun whatever it is, if they should, I’ll let you know.”

“Just a moment.” Bertha Russell interrupted Durand, opening her purse.

“No, please — I beg you— It’s my obligation,” he protested.

“This is no matter of parlor gentility!” she said to him almost fiercely. “She was my sister. I am entitled to the right of sharing the expense with you. I demand it. You shall not take that from me.”

Downs looked at them both. “I see I was not mistaken,” he murmured. “This is a fitting case.”

He picked up a copy of that morning’s newspaper, first shook it to spread it full, then narrowed it once more to the span of a single perpendicular column. He traced his finger down this, a row of paid commercial advertisements.

“This boat she sailed on from here,” he said, “was which one?”

“The City of New Orleans,” Durand and Bertha Russell said in unison.

“By a coincidence,” he said, “here it is down again, for the company’s next sailing. Its turn has come about once more, it leaves from here tomorrow, at nine o’clock in the forenoon.”

He put the paper down.

“Do you propose remaining here, Mr. Durand?”

“I’m returning to New Orleans at once, now that I’ve put this matter in your hands,” Durand said. Then he added wryly, “My business is there.”

“Good,” Downs remarked, rising and reaching for his hat. “Then we’ll both be sailing together, for I’m going down there now and get my ticket. We will begin by retracing her steps, making the same journey she did, on the same boat, with the same captain and the same crew. Someone may have seen something, someone may remember. Someone must.”