Waltz Into Darkness

44

Increasingly uncomfortable, and extremely bored in addition, feeling that all eyes were on him, he paced back and forth in the modiste’s anteroom, and at every turn seemed to come into collision with some hurrying young girl carrying fresh bolts of goods into a curtained recess behind which Bonny had disappeared an interminable length of time previously. These flying supernumeraries always came out again empty handed; judging by the quantity of material that he had already seen go in the alcove, with none ever taken out again, it should have been filled to ceiling height by this time.

He could hear her voice at intervals, topping the rustles of unwound fabric lengths and carefully chosen phrases of professional inducement.

“I cannot decide! The more you bring in to show me, the harder it becomes to settle on one. No, leave that, I may come back to it.”

Suddenly the curtains parted, gripped by restraining hands just below the breach, so that it could not spread downward, and her head, no more, peered through.

“Lou, am I taking dreadfully long? I just remembered you, out there.”

“Long, but not dreadfully,” he answered gallantly.

“What are you doing with yourself?” she asked, as if he were a small boy left for a risky moment to his own devices.

“Getting in everyone’s way, I’m afraid,” he admitted.

There was a chorus of polite feminine laughter, both from before and behind the secretive curtain, as though he had said something very funny indeed.

“Poor thing,” she said contritely. Her head turned to someone behind her. The grip on the curtain slit slid slightly downward for a moment, and the turn of an unclad shoulder was revealed, a tapelike strip of white ribbon its only covering. “Haven’t you any magazines or something for him to look over, pass the time with?”

“Only pattern magazines, I’m afraid, madam.”

“No, thank you,” he said very definitely.

“It’s so hard on them,” she said patronizingly, still in conversation with someone behind her. Then back to him once more. “Why don’t you leave and then call back for me again?” she suggested generously. “That way you needn’t suffer so, and I can put my whole mind to this.”

“How soon shall I come back?”

“I won’t be through for another hour yet at the very least. We haven’t even got past the choice of a material yet. Then will come the selection of a pattern, and the cutting, and the taking of the over-all measurements—”

“Unh,” he groaned facetiously, and another courtier-like laugh went up.

“You had best give me a full hour and a half, I shall need that much. Or if you tire in the meantime, go straight back to the house, and I’ll follow you there.”

He took up his hat with alacrity, glad to make his escape.

Her bodyless face, formed its lips into a pout.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to me?”

She touched her lips to show him what she meant, closed her eyes expectantly.

“In front of all these people?”

“Oh dear, how you talk! One would think you weren’t my husband at all. I assure you it’s perfectly proper, in such a case.”

Again a chorus of flattery-forced laughter went up, almost as if on cue. She seemed to make quite an opéra bouffe entertainment of the making of a new dress, taking the part of main luminary surrounded by a doting, submissive chorus. There should have been music, he couldn’t help reflecting, and a tiered audience surrounding her on three sides.

He stepped over to the curtains, coloring slightly, pecked at her lips, turned, and got out of the place.

Strangely, in spite of his embarrassment, he had a flattered, self-important feeling at the same time; he wondered how she had been able to give him that, and whether she had known she was doing it when she did. And secretly decided that she had.

She knew every cause, she knew every effect, she knew how to achieve them. Everything she did, she knew she did.

There must have been other times, in other modistes’ fitting rooms, when the man waiting was not legally obligated to shoulder the expense she was incurring, that this glow of self-esteem had had an intrinsic value of its—

He put that thought hurriedly from mind, and set out to enjoy the afternoon sunlight, and the blue Gulf reaching to the horizon, and the crowd of strollers drifting along the shoreline promenade. He mingled with them for a while, taking his place in the leisurely moving outermost stream, then turned at the end of the structure and came back with them, but now a part of the inside stream going in the opposite direction.

The slow baking warmth of the sun was pleasant on his shoulders and his back, and occasionally a little salty breeze would come, just enough to temper it. Clouds that were thick and unshadowed as egg white broke the monotony of the sky, and on everyone’s face there was a smile — as there must have been on his, he at last realized, for what he was seeing was the unthinking answer to his own smile, offered by face after face in passing; without purpose or premeditation, without knowing they were doing it, simply in shared contentment.

He had money enough now for a long while to come, and she loved him — she had shown it by inducing him to kiss her in front of a shopful of girls. What more was there to wish for?

The world was a good world.

A little boy’s harlequin-sectioned ball glanced against his leg in rolling, and the child himself clung to it for a moment in the act of unsteady retrieval. Durand stopped where he was and reached down and tousled still further the already tousled cornsilk thatch.

“Does your mother let you take a penny from a strange man?”

The youngster looked up, open-mouthed with that infantile stupefaction that greets every act of the grown world. “I ’on’t know.”

“Well, take this to show her then and find out.”

He went on again without waiting.

The world was a good world indeed.

After two complete circuits of the walking space provided, he stopped at last by the wooden rail flanking it, and rested his elbows on it, and stood in contemplation with his back to the slow-moving ambulators he had just been a member of.

He had been at rest that way for perhaps two or three minutes, no more, when he became conscious of that rather curiously compelling sensation that is received when someone’s eyes are fixed on one steadfastly, from behind.

There was no time to be warned. The impulse was to turn and seek out the cause, and before he could check it he had done so.

He found himself staring full into the face of Downs, the St. Louis investigator, just as Downs was now staring full into his.

He was within two or three paces of Durand, almost close enough to have reached out and touched him had he willed. His whole body was still held in the act of an arrested footfall, the one at which recognition had struck; one leg out behind him, heel clear of ground. Shoulders still forward, the way in which he had been going; head alone oblique, frozen that way at first sight of Durand.

Durand had a sickening impression that had he kept his own place in the belt line of promenaders, they might have gone on circling after one another the rest of the afternoon, equidistant, never drawing any closer, they might have remained unaware of one another. For Downs must have been fairly close behind him, to come upon him this quickly after, and so they would both likely have been on the same side of the promenade at any given time. But by falling out of line and coming to a halt, he had allowed Downs to overtake him, single him out. Where everyone is at rest, a moving figure is quickly noted. But where everyone is moving, it is the motionless figure that is the more conspicuous.

“Durand,” Downs said with a curious matter-of-factness.

Durand tried to match it: nodded temperately, said, “You, eh?” Try not to show any fear of him, he kept cautioning himself, try not to show any fear. Forget that she is in such terrible proximity at this very moment, or you will betray that to him by the very act of trying not to. Don’t look over that way, where the shop is. Keep your eyes off it. Above all, move him around, circle him around the other way so that his back is to it. If she should happen suddenly to emerge—

“Are you alone here?” Downs asked. The question was idly turned, but following it, for a long moment, his eyes seemed to bore into Durand’s, until the latter could scarcely endure it.

“Certainly,” he said somewhat testily.

Downs lazily reared one palm in protest. “No offense,” he drawled. “You seem to resent my asking.”

“Can you give me any reason why I should take offense at such a question?” He realized he was speaking too quickly, almost on the verge of sputtering.

“If you cannot, then I cannot,” Downs said with feigned amiability.

Durand gave the railing a slick smack of quittance, moved in away from it, drifted in an idle saunter past Downs and to the rear of him, closed up to the railing again, and came to rest against it on a negligent elbow. Downs automatically pivoted to face him where he now was.

“And what brings you here, in turn?” Durand said, when the adjustment had been completed.

Downs smiled with special meaning. Special meaning he, Durand, was intended to share, whether he would or not. “What brings me anywhere?” he countered. “Not a holiday, rest assured.”

“Oh,” was all Durand could think to say to that. A very small, limp “oh.”

In the modiste shop entrance, in the middle distance, but still close enough at hand to be only too visible, a lengthwise streamer of color suddenly peered forth, as some woman, about to leave, lingered there half-in half-out in protracted farewell, probably talking to someone behind her. Durand’s heart thrust hard against the cavern of his chest for a moment, like a pointed rock. Then the figure came out: tall, in blue; someone else.

His attention swerved back to Downs, to overtake what he had been about to miss. “I had heard reports,” the latter was saying, “of a flashy blonde who has been creating a stir down here with some man. They even got back to New Orleans.”

Durand shrugged, a little jerkily. The point of his elbow slipped a trifle on the rail top, and he had to readjust it. “There are blondes wherever there are women.”

What fools we’ve been, he thought bitterly. Lingering on here week after week; we might have known—

“This was a flashy blonde, almost silver in her lightness,” Downs took pains to elaborate, eyes on him intent and unmoving. “A fast woman, I understand.”

“Someone has fooled you.”

“I don’t think anyone has fooled me,” Downs emphasized, “because: this was not intended for my ears at all in the first place. They just happened to overhear it, to pick it up.” He waited a moment. “Have you happened to note any such pair? You have been down here longer than I, I take it.”

Durand looked down at the planks underfoot. “I have been cured of blondes,” he murmured grudgingly.

“A relapse can occur,” Downs said drily.

How did he mean that? thought Durand, startled. But — don’t quarrel with it, or you will make it worse.

He took out his watch. “I must go.”

“Where are you staying?”

Durand thumbed back across his shoulder, misleadingly. “Down that way.”

“I’ll walk back with you to your stopping place, wherever it is,” Downs offered.

He wants to find out where it is; I’ll never lose him! thought Durand, harassed.

“I’m a little pressed for time,” he managed to get out.

Downs smiled calmingly. “I never force myself on a man.” Then he added pointedly, “That is, in sociability.”

“Which way are you going?” Durand asked suddenly, seeing that he was about to turn and go back the other way, toward and past the modiste’s. She might emerge just as he neared there—

He took Downs by the arm all at once, pressing him. As insistent now as he had been reluctant a moment ago. “Come with me, anyway. Can I offer you a schooner of beer?”

Downs glanced overhead. “The sun is warm,” he accepted. “Your own face, for instance, is quite moist.” There was something faintly satiric in the way he said it, Durand thought.

They walked along side by side. At every pace Durand told himself: I’ve drawn him a step farther away from her. She is that much safer.

“Here’s a place; let’s try this,” he said presently.

“I was just going to suggest it myself,” Downs observed. Again there was that overtone of satire to be detected.

They went in and seated themselves at a small wicker table.

“Two Pilseners,” Durand told the mustachioed, striped-shirted waiter. Then before he could withdraw again. “Where is the closet?”

“Straight back.”

Durand rose. “Excuse me for a moment.” Downs nodded, ironically it seemed to him.

Durand left him seated there, went out through the spring door. He found himself in a passage. Ignoring the intermediate door to the side, he followed it to the rear, let himself out at the back of the place. He began to run like one possessed. He was possessed; possessed with the thought of saving her.