Dread Journey (22 page)

He’d never loved her, no. He loved beauty and she was plain. Yet she had meant more to him than any he had loved. He had been willing always to do without them but never without Mike. She was his flaw, his weakness. If he’d got rid of her long ago, when he first realized she knew him too well, she wouldn’t have been here to condemn him tonight. To hand him over to his motley judges. He hadn’t rid himself of her because he had believed he needed her, because he hadn’t been able to see his way without Mike.

She said, “I thought I’d lose you when those dreams became actuality. I didn’t. I learned how to keep you. By living only through you. It was enough.”

If she were gone, he could handle the others. They were weaklings, all of them. Money was all he needed to take care of them; he had plenty of money. Mike was their strength, without her word and knowledge, the little four had nothing.

She said, “It would still be enough for me, Viv. Even now when you’ve failed.”

“Failed?” The word was whiplash and he started from its thong.

“Yes, failed.” That sad smile was across her eyes. “No one else knows yet. The first thing you lost was ambition. You traded the dream of your masterpiece for cheap affairs. The Viv Spender I first knew wouldn’t have done that.”

She didn’t understand, she couldn’t understand a man’s search for perfection. He took up his highball and drank from it. Perhaps he had made some mistakes. Maybe he’d seen Clavdia Chauchat where she couldn’t possibly be. He could be allowed a few errors. He hadn’t made many.

“Faith? You lost your faith long ago. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe too much money does that to a man. You stopped believing in yourself; you believed only in things. There’s nothing left but your pride. I hope you haven’t lost your pride.” She was beginning to break, her voice caught for a moment. He barely heard the name. “Doumel.”

He was shaken by rage. His tongue was thick. “I’m not a Doumel. That mangy French tomcat. I threw him off my lot.”

Her words had a dreadful inevitability. “There was only one girl in the case of Doumel. She didn’t die. It was unfortunate she was so young. Perhaps he didn’t know any better, he hadn’t been in this country for long. Do you remember the trial? The hideous long trial, the testimony in the newspapers? Do you remember his face when the sentence was pronounced? He’s in prison now. He’ll be there a long time. When he comes out, no one will remember him. He might as well be dead.”

He drained his glass, set it down. She couldn’t force him to listen any longer. He could silence her too.

She said, “He had dreams once. I wonder what he dreams of now.” Her face had no expression. “Comfortable clothes? His car? Going into a restaurant and ordering whatever he wants? Or just of being free.”

He knew the hideousness of men shut away from everything that made life decent. He had visited prisons before he made the first big picture of prison life. He remembered the dead face of one man who was shut in for life, a man who had killed his wife, a murderer. He wasn’t a murderer! What he had done couldn’t be called murder! It was justice.

He scoffed, “If you’re afraid of ghosts, I’m not. Nor of Augustin and his friends. They can’t do anything to me. When I get through with them, they’ll be sorry they started anything.”

There was pity in her, pity for him! A pity that was scorn. “You can’t laugh off judgment day, Viv. It’s been a long time coming but it’s at hand now. You can face it any way you choose. I hoped you’d choose to face it proudly.” Her mouth was stern. “This time you can’t escape. You’ll have to pay.”

She believed her words. She expected him to believe. She’d forgotten that he was Vivien Spender. Pity and scorn, mockery and tears were for little men. For weak men. Not for Vivien Spender. He said, “If you’re through, I’d like to tell you my plans. For Gratia.” He paused to give her his smile.

She was unsmiling. “If you go in to Chicago tomorrow, you can’t escape, Viv.” Her breath came slowly. “That’s why I had to turn against you. To save you. To let you die as you’ve lived, a great man. So that the legend of Viv Spender wouldn’t die too.”

She was dispassionate as stone. The monstrous horror of her suggestion suddenly smote him. If her voice had trembled, if she’d been touched with tears, he wouldn’t have believed. She was turned to stone. She meant he should end his life.

His eyes blurred with that horror. The police. They couldn’t arrest him. They could hold him. They wouldn’t dare. They would dare because they would call it murder. He couldn’t make them understand; even Mike did not understand.

Panic stirred in him. If the police held him, if the poison was found both in the body and on the splintered glass, if the prescription was traced to him—men had been condemned to die on such stupid trifles. They couldn’t put him to death! He faced the eternity of prison. The humiliation of being caged like an animal, of being demeaned to the stature of Doumel. If he were in time pardoned, to come broken into a hostile world. A world with no sympathy for failure. Too old to fight upward again. Kitten had pulled the pillars down about him. He was eaten by his fury but he could not vent it on her because she was dead. Dying she had destroyed him.

He wasn’t destroyed! He wouldn’t be destroyed. There was too much to live for. He had lawyers, he was Viv Spender. He was not to die.

His hand was shaking. He steadied it about the empty glass. He needed another drink. He needed to fix another for her. But there was a lethargy in him that kept him seated, listening to her lies.

“There is no choice,” she said. “There is nothing left but death.” Her voice was shattered. “The unknown is better than the known of living death.”

He would fix the drink for her, force it down her lying throat. He started to rise, but he couldn’t rise.

The cold of the glass sped through his fingers into his heart. Frantically he tried to recall. He hadn’t been watching her; he didn’t know what she had done to her glass. He hadn’t seen the sleight of her hand when she took up his, left for him the one she had made lethal. She too had boarded the Chief with a vial of death.

The emptiness of the glass was heavy in his hand. It slipped away, but the sound it made falling was dull, muffled. Gratia…
Gratia!
That was the bitter cup, to have found Clavdia after long years of search, to have found her and lost her in the space of brief time. The dream would die with him. It would never be fulfilled because there would never be another Spender.

Mike’s eyes were motionless on him, desert dry in her stone face.

His head drooped. Through his heavy lids he saw again a spill on the white paper. There would be no agony, only the anguish of his tortured heart crying out to live. He had too much pride to let Mike know. With painful slowness he took his handkerchief from his pocket. His hand crawled out to blot the stain…

She heard the slump. She didn’t see because her eyes had been without focus since he had drained the glass she had placed for him. She had kept words moving, her apologia. It would be easier for him if he understood why.

She forced herself to look. The massive head was bowed over the table. She whispered, “Viv.” The cry broke from her, “Viv!”

She could be silent now. Be silent and wait. Wait alone as she would always be alone now, the living death. The train clacked and whinnied through the long night into the bleak of dawn.

She could no longer hear his tired breath. She had killed him. She pushed out from the table. Her untouched glass she carried into the bathroom. She poured out the contents, rinsed it, dried it and placed it on the serving tray. She walked to the door and opened it.

James Cobbett was sitting patiently in his place. His eyes turned up to her. He might have been waiting all the night long for this.

She said quietly, “Will you call a doctor? Mr. Spender has had a heart attack.”

The world would believe he died in grief. She waited there, watching as Cobbett swayed with the rushing train until he was out of sight. She went then to the door of Leslie Augustin’s room. She opened it and stood in the doorway, harsh in her bitter triumph. The four were there, silenced, waiting. They looked up at her the same way James Cobbett had, as if they knew what she was about to say.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1945 by Dorothy B. Hughes

Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons

978-1-4804-2699-3

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