Dread Journey (3 page)

She had learned him quickly; he wasn’t hard to fathom in those early years. He was too young, too intense to play a part. Of necessity he learned later to perform. When he learned he performed magnificently; everything he did was magnificent.

In those early years, she could have severed the cord that bound her to him. There would have been some bleeding, a resultant scar, but she would have had freedom. She deliberately chose to be a part of him. Deliberately, if there was deliberate choice. Perhaps a trace of the dream remained, would always remain. At any rate she chose him and her serfdom.

She had never regretted. She had long ago accepted the fact that he would never love her. However, love, or what passed for love with him, the madness which afflicted him in cycles, was a minor part of him. The major portion was hers; the drive to greatness, the brilliance of his creations, the artistic integrity which consumed him, and whose flames blazed his path to glorious success. He was a great artist, an inspired artist. And she was the woman of his artistic life. By giving herself, by offering herself to be possessed by him, she alone possessed him. The legends thus were true. He was hers, all of him, save his love. The minute quality of love.

Althea had hurt. It was because she was still young then, still dreaming. Then came Althea.

He met Althea at a party. He’d gone up a bit in pictures by then, he was mentioned as promising. It was beyond the days when his clothes were shabby when he was careful to keep his feet on the floor during an interview for a job lest the holes in his shoes be seen. By then he had a little car and a small apartment. Mike used to go over on Sundays and clean it. Sometimes she’d wash out his socks. There’d been girls during those first years; she’d find traces of them, lipstick on a towel, a forgotten handkerchief. They hadn’t hurt. They were girls the way any young man had girls; pretty, shallow, a momentary diversion.

It wasn’t that way with Althea. She had beauty, a strange, flower-like sort of beauty. The fragility of a spray of blossoms, of a slant of sunlight or the shimmering mist after spring rain. Mike wasn’t jealous of her, not after she knew her. Althea was real. She was in love with Viv, and if he ever loved, his love was given to her.

If Mike’s heart split it was in the darkness of solitude and no one knew. He never knew. She put it together neatly with friendship. She and Viv went on as before. Only she didn’t go to his apartment on Sundays to clean; Althea kept the apartment shining and polished. Surprisingly, she became Althea’s friend. There was no jealousy in either; between women who loved the same man there was an honest friendship. After Althea, Mike never had another woman for friend.

His star rose quickly in those years. If she didn’t see as much of them after they moved to a new and beautiful home, and to a more beautiful and larger home, it was because with success came not only a greater pressure of work, but of social necessity. Beneath it the bond was unbroken.

She didn’t know when he was done with Althea. To this day, she didn’t know. There was a succession of women moving through his life. That was his business, a procurer of women. For the pleasure of the millions whose drug was the moving pictures. Women whose stock in trade was the quivering of a man’s nerves, women ripe as sweet figs, lush as pomegranates.

Which one was first, she didn’t know. Until his sins were flagrant, she didn’t know. Even then, like Althea, she clung to belief that this was aberration, not the man.

When Althea died, Mike believed that Viv was saved. She was there that morning, called by him; she witnessed his tempestuous grief. It was she who raised his head from Althea’s motionless breast, who led him away to weep on her own unloved breast. In that moment there was dark shameful triumph in her which even her own regret for Althea could not overcome. She believed he would be done with love now, that all his energy would be given his work.

She didn’t really know Viv Spender until after Althea died. She learned him down the succession of years, and the succession of women; learned his ruthlessness, his negation of anyone and anything which interfered with his self-love and his pride.

He killed Althea. Not by neglect, not by love turned aside. By an overdose of sleeping tablets. Mike must have known that morning; even as she comforted him, she must have known she nursed a murderer at her bosom. She had known Althea. She had known Althea would not kill herself.

That she had not faced the knowledge in the days of his superb grief, was her guilt. She knew but the knowledge could not raise in her consciousness because she wanted Althea to go and him to remain. Because he was hers; for good or evil he was hers.

When she realized, it was too late. No one had suspected him, he planned too well for that. There was no one she could tell the story; she could do nothing but go on as before. She could even scoff at it as a story, an old tale dreamed by an old wife. But in the lucidity of her lone hours at night she knew. Until time faded the knowledge.

It had been years since she remembered Althea. Until yesterday with Kitten, when the name came to her lips. She sat now in her neat, compact compartment and she remembered. Remembered and was afraid.

The bride whispered to the bridegroom, “It’s a beautiful world, darling.”

He said, “Yes, darling, it’s a beautiful world.”

Mrs. Shellabarger said to her knitting and Mr. Shellabarger, “Did you see that girl who got on just ahead of us? The one with the blonde hair and mink coat? That was Kitten Agnew.”

Mr. Shellabarger said to the
Readers’ Digest
and Mrs. Shellabarger, “Mmph.”

T
HE BUZZER WOKE JAMES
Cobbett. He’d been sleeping with his eyes open; he’d learned how long ago. He looked up at the call box. Drawing room A. It was Vivien Spender. Too early for drinks. He rose without haste, walked the few steps to the door, tapped quietly. “Porter, sir.”

“Come in.” Spender didn’t shout; his voice was raised just loud enough to carry. Everything in proper proportion even his voice.

Cobbett opened the door. “Yes, sir.”

When he’d first gone to work on the Chief, he’d been cheerful on a call. It hadn’t been for economic reasons; it was because he liked people, clean, happy people, and most persons traveling were vacation-clean and happy. He was a friendly, happy person himself. Despite the grievous weight of evidence to the contrary, he had believed that this time his happiness would be met on its own level. The Chief would be different, because it was the Chief, the best train.

It was no different. The disappointment was greater this time because he’d expected better things. The bigoted, the vulgar, the ignorant, rode the Chief as well as the lesser trains. In his first hurt, he turned sullen. That too passed because he was not dispositionally attuned to the attitude. Just as many others before and with him, he adopted the safe measure. He patronized. Unless he knew the traveler from previous runs and had accepted him as worthy of acceptance, he did not lower the bars between attendant and client. He was as aloof as an English butler.

His eye rested on Vivien Spender now without reaction. The room was unused, even the newspaper Spender had brought aboard was still neatly folded. The man himself was seated by the window. He might have been seated behind a fine desk in a pristine office; he was as emotionless as Cobbett himself.

He said, “My secretary, Miss Dana, is in the next car rear, compartment E. Would it be possible for you to send word to her that I’d like to see her?”

Cobbett said, “Yes, Mr. Spender. I’ll do it.” This briefly he liked Vivien Spender. It was on face valuation, he liked the smile the man gave him, a straight smile and a straight thank you. Spender hadn’t come to his position through lottery. He was aware of human beings and of human values. Spender recognized his high place, Cobbett’s low one in the great scheme. But he recognized a person before a position.

Cobbett closed the door. He covered the long swaying corridor, went through the vestibules into the next car. Rufus Green, attendant, was standing at the linen closet. Cobbett said, “Vivien Spender wants his secretary, Rufe. She’s in E.”

Rufus had a toothy grin. “That’s the way the luck runs, James. You get Vivien Spender, I get the secretary.”

Cobbett grinned back.

“Awright boy. I’ll tell her.”

Cobbett returned to his leather seat. The desert was still passing outside the windows. Be time for dinner soon. He ate at four o’clock. That way he was back in time for the cocktail bell activity.

He lifted his eyes at the opening sound of the vestibule door at the other end of the car. His glance was reflex action, nothing more. Without expression he watched the woman approach. She was a homely woman, smartly styled. Her face was gaunt, her dark hair was pulled back with severity, her lipstick matched her nails. Her suit was dark, expensive, and her green-stoned pin at her collar was handsome. Her large black handbag was handsome. She wore slant green-rimmed glasses on her eyes. Her heels were high. She gave Cobbett a casual glance.

He wasn’t surprised that she knocked at Vivien Spender’s door. She had the look of a secretary, a high-priced secretary. The door closed behind her. James Cobbett looked out again at the monotony of landscape.

The opening click of a door again turned his eyes. It was the other drawing room and the blonde movie actress was coming out. She hesitated a moment when she saw him sitting there. His face didn’t express it but he was surprised when she knocked on the compartment next, F. That was the solitary man, the unpleasant little man. He must have called for her to enter because she opened the door and stepped in. The door didn’t close at once but Cobbett didn’t hear what was said. He was too far away.

A buzzer rang. Compartment D. It wasn’t too unexpected. A man carrying a load such as the man who’d come back with Augustin after lunch wouldn’t wait till five o’clock for another drink. Cobbett went to answer.

Within drawing room A, Mike Dana said, “You can’t do it, Viv.”

“I’m doing it.”

She knew danger signals, the stone in his voice, the tightening of his nostrils. Openly it did not disturb her. She repeated calmly, “You can’t do it. She’ll break you.”

“She won’t break me. She’ll never break me.”

Mike lit a cigarette from her pocket case. She said, “Listen to me. She has you cold. And she’s not bluffing. She has Seager behind her.”

He swore virulently.

“All right. He’s all of that. But he’s the hottest lawyer in Southern California and you won’t be able to beat the case.”

I warned you to be careful. I’ve warned you over and again that someday you’d have to face judgment. You can’t sin and not pay. If you sin, judgment may be delayed but not forever; the day of judgment is inevitable.

She said aloud, “Why don’t you let her play Clavdia!”

He interrupted viciously, “Let that rotten little slut play Clavdia!”

“You’ve taught her to act. When you get down to cases, what was Clavdia but a high class slut? Kitten is boxoffice—”

He closed the subject. “She will never touch Clavdia.”

And you’ll never produce your masterpiece. Not even now when it’s ready for production. You’ve waited too long. The search for the Grail was authentic at first; now it’s a hunting license. You won’t give up the hunt. You grow older, the Clavdias grow younger. You need their replenishment. This new one, whatever her name is, wherever you found her, will go the way of the others. She may play Cressida, she may play Corrinne Wintersmoon, but she won’t play Clavdia. Someone in pigtails who has never heard of you, who is sewing doll dresses at this moment, will be the new Clavdia when this new one is old.

Mike said, “You can’t take a chance on it, Viv. Not on the heels of L’Affaire Doumel.”

“I’m no Doumel.”

“No.” He wasn’t but he was. He was too close to himself to see his reflection. “The Doumel case would damn you even if she didn’t have documentary evidence.” Mike Dana had a calm exterior always. But she saw the frosting of his eyes and she put it away to plead, “Don’t do it, Viv. Don’t take a chance like that. You have too much to live for.” She realized almost with horror that she was pleading for him not to do what lay deep under the layers of his brain. Something that she had known he was considering when she saw the prescription bottle in his desk. She went on, “You’ll never get to produce it if you let her get up on a witness stand.”

He smiled now. “Just type the memorandum, Mike. That’s all you need do. Type it and bring it to me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She closed the small notebook, replaced it and her pencil in her envelope bag. “Suppose after she sees it, she still refuses your offer to buy the contract?”

He said, “If she’s fool enough to turn down an amicable cool million—” He shrugged.

Mike didn’t look at him. “You’ll let her take it to court.”

The smile was static on his lips. “She’ll never play Clavdia. Never.” His eyes opened wide on Mike. She backed away to the door as he ground the words, “She had the unmitigated gall to suggest I marry her.”

He didn’t even know when Mike opened the door, and closed it, leaving him alone, a murderer.

She stood outside a moment in the swaying corridor. There was something she ought to do. It wasn’t reasonable to go away as if evil were not in that room. She should go back in, tell Viv Spender she knew what he was planning, tell him he couldn’t get away with it. If he knew someone was conscious of his fearful plan he wouldn’t dare do it. For he wouldn’t attempt it unless he was certain he would not be detected, certain it could be foolproof. As it was the first time.

He wouldn’t dare repeat the first. One could be accidental. Two would rough in the pattern, two would accuse him after fourteen years. She should go to Kitten, warn her. Mike held no brief for Kitten. The girl was a self-centered nonentity who had come to her fame and fortune through accident of a certain gamin piquancy at a moment when Viv was surfeited with cool Grecian beauty. Kitten Agnew had used her luck solely to bediamond herself; if she’d ever had a generous impulse she’d been careful not to give way to it unless it was to her further advantage. All the stuff cooked up for her by the publicity department was accepted only because Kitten’s appearance on the screen was of a warm-hearted, lovable, American girl.