Waltz Into Darkness

53

At dawn he was already up, from a sleepless, worried bed, and dressed and pacing the floor of his shabby, hidden-away hotel room. Waiting for Jardine to come with the money—

(“I can’t get you the money before morning, Lou. I haven’t it here in the house; I’ll have to draw it from the bank. Can you wait?”

“I’ll have to. I’m at the Palmetto Hotel. Under the name of Castle. Room Sixty. Bring it to me there. Or as much of it as you can, I cannot wait for a complete inventory.”)

— fearing more and more with the passing of each wracking hour that he wouldn’t. Until, as the hour for the banks to open came and went, and the morning drew on, fear had become certainty and certainty had become conviction. And he knew that to wait on was only to invite the inevitable betrayal to overtake him, trap him where he was.

A hundred times he unlocked the door and listened in the dingy corridor outside, then went back and locked himself in again. Nothing, no one. He wasn’t coming. Only a quixotic fool would have expected him to.

Again it occurred to him how completely at the mercy of his former partner he had put himself. All he had to do was bring the police with him instead of the money, and there was an end to it. Why should he give up thousands of hard-earned dollars? And money, Durand reminded himself, did strange things to people. Turned them even against their own flesh and blood, why not an outsider?

Bonny’s remark came back to him. “And we’re none of us very much good, the best of us, men or women alike.” She knew. She was wise in the ways of the world, wiser by far than he. She would never have put herself in such a false position.

No friend should be put to such a test. A man without the law no longer had a claim, no longer had a right to expect—

There was a subdued knock, and he shrank back against the wall. “Here they come now to arrest me,” flashed through his mind. “He’s put them onto me—”

He didn’t move. The knock came again.

Then Jardine’s whispered voice. “Lou. Are you in there? It’s all right. It’s me.”

He’d brought them with him; he’d led them here in person.

With a sort of bitter defiance, because he could no longer escape, because he’d waited too long, he went to the door and unlocked it. Then took his hands from it and let it be.

There was a moment’s wait, then it opened of itself, and Jardine came in, alone. He closed and relocked it behind him. He was holding a small satchel.

He carried it to the table, set it down.

All he said, matter of factly and with utter simplicity, was: “Here is the money, Lou. I’m sorry I’m so late.”

Durand couldn’t answer for a moment, turned away, overcome.

“What’s the matter, Lou? Why, your eyes—!” Jardine looked at him as though he couldn’t understand what was amiss with him.

Durand knuckled at them sheepishly. “Nothing. Only, you came as you said you would— You brought it as you said you would—” Something choked in his throat and he couldn’t go ahead.

Jardine looked at him compassionately. “Once you would have taken such a thing for granted, you would have expected it of me. What has changed you, Lou? Who has changed you?” And softly, fiercely, through his clenched teeth, as his knotted hand came down implacably upon the table top, he exhaled: “And may God damn them for it! I hate to see a decent man dragged down into the gutter.”

Durand stood there without answering.

“You know it’s true, or else you wouldn’t stand there and take it from me,” Jardine growled. “But I’ll say no more; each man’s hell is his own.”

(I know it’s true, Durand thought wistfully; but I must follow my heart, how can I help where it leads me?) “No, don’t say any more,” he agreed tersely.

Jardine unstrapped and stripped open the bag. “The full amount is in here,” he told him, brisk and businesslike now. “And that squares all accounts between us.”

Durand nodded stonily.

“I cannot have you at my house again,” Jardine told him. “For your own sake.”

Durand gave a short, and somewhat ungracious, syllable of laughter. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I am trying to protect you. Auguste already suspects something, and I cannot vouch for her discretion if you return.”

“Auguste hates me, doesn’t she?” Durand said with detached curiosity, as though unable to account for it.

Jardine didn’t answer, and by that confirmed the statement.

He gestured toward the contents of the satchel, still withholding it. “I turn this over to you under one condition, Lou. I ask it of you for your own good.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t turn this money over to anyone else, no matter how close they are to you. Keep it safe. Keep it by you. Don’t let it out of your possession.”

Durand laughed humorlessly. “Who am I likely to entrust it to? The very position I’m in ensures my not—”

Jardine repeated his emphasis, so that there could be no mistaking it. “I said, no matter how close they are to you.”

Durand looked at him hard for a minute. “I’m in good hands, I see,” he said bitterly at last. “Auguste hates me, and you hate — my wife.”

“Your wife,” Jardine said tonelessly.

Durand tightened his hands. “I said my wife.”

“Don’t let’s quarrel, Lou. Your word.”

“The word of a murderer?”

“The word of the man who was my best friend. The word of the man who was Louis Durand,” Jardine said tautly. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Very well, I give it.”

Jardine handed him the satchel. “I’ll go now.”

There was a constraint between them now. Jardine offered his hand in parting. Durand saw it waiting there, allowed a full moment to go by before taking it. Then when at last they shook, it was more under compulsion of past friendship than present cordiality.

“This is probably a final goodbye, Lou. I doubt we’ll ever see one another again.”

Durand dropped his eyes sullenly. “Let’s not linger over it, then. Good luck, and thank you for having once been my friend.”

“I am still your friend, Lou.”

“But I am not the man whose friend you were.”

Their hands uncoupled, fell away from one another.

Jardine moved toward the door.

“You know what I would do in your place, of course? I would go to the police, surrender myself, and have it over once and for all.”

“And hang,” Durand said sombrely.

“Yes, even to hang is better than what lies ahead of you. You could be helped, Lou. This way, no one can help you. If I were in your place—”

“You couldn’t be in my place,” Durand cut him short. “It wouldn’t have happened to you, to start with. You are not the kind such things befall. I am. You repel them. I attract them. It happened to me. To no one but me. And so I must deal with it. I must do — as I must do.”

“Yes, I guess you must,” Jardine conceded sadly. “None of us can talk for the other man.” He opened the door, looking up along its edge with a sort of melancholy curiosity, as if he had never seen the edge of an open door before. He even palmed it, in passing, as if to feel what it was.

The last thing he said was: “Take care of yourself, Lou.”

“If I don’t, who else will?” Durand answered from the depths of his aloneness. “Who is there in this whole wide world who will?”