Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01
Read Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 Online
Authors: Date,Darkness (v1.1)
Date with
Darkness
By DONALD
HAMILTON
Rinehart
&: Company, Inc.
New York
TORONTO
Copyright,
1947, by Donald Hamilton
Printed
in the
United States of America
American
Book-Stratford Press, Inc.,
New York
All rights reserved
HE
TOOK DOWN her suitcase and her fur coat. She said she did not have a hat. She
let him put the coat over her narrow shoulders, like a cape, and sat down
beside the suitcases on the seat to wait out the uncomfortable last minutes
while be braced himself, in the aisle, against the people crowding past.
Daylight was snatched from the windows as, slowing, they entered the station.
He followed her along the platform with
the two suitcases and they climbed the stairs into the rotunda where, stepping
out of the flood of people into an eddy behind a pillar, she stretched out her
hand for her bag. "Can't I
... ?
" he asked.
"No, I'm taking a taxi. This is
fine," she said. "Thanks an awful lot." Even in the low-heeled
pumps she reached to a level with his eyes. He could just see over her and no
more.
"Well," he said, "thanks
for the company.
"I'll call you if I can," she
said.
"The Cooper.
I'm sorry to be so
indefinite."
"That's all right," he said.
"Well," she said, "so
long."
He watched her, tucking the purse under
her arm, carry the small black suitcase away from him. Her name, she had said,
was Janet Haskell. He did not for a moment believe she would call him. He felt
very lonely and thrust his unlighted pipe into his mouth for company.
It made him feel a little better to walk
into the hotel bar with the two gold stripes on his sleeve in a city where
nobody knew him. It made him feel a little reckless and carefree, and he was
pleased to be six feet tall even if
underweight,
and
to have the uniform fit him seventy-seven dollars and fifty cents worth, and to
have fifteen days leave, even if he did not know what he intended to do with
it. He ordered Scotch and, tasting it, leaned his elbow on the bar and looked
about the dark, crowded, low-ceilinged room. His mind started absently to work
on a plausible letter to his mother explaining why he had not spent this leave,
probably his last in uniform, at home like the others.
"Pardon me, sir," said a voice
behind him.
He turned to see a large young man in an ill-fitting
ensign's uniform. His glance touched the left breast of the blouse and was
relieved to find no ribbons. It put them on the same footing, and he had the
extra stripe.
"Weren't you on the train, sir?"
the large young man asked.
"Well, I was on a train," he
said.
I thought I recognized you, sir," the
ensign said.
f
wondered if you could tell me where we
could get a room. My wife's with me and we don't know
New York
at all."
"Frankly, neither do I," said
Phillip Branch. "You've tried the desk?"
"Oh, yes," said the ensign.
"And we've called every hotel in town.
Constance
is calling some friends,
but..."
"Well, I'm sorry," Branch said
uncomfortably. I really don't know...."
"There's
Constance
now," said the younger
man, and a small girl wearing a heavy green skirt and a limp white cotton shirt
came between the tables to
them :
"Nothing," she said tiredly,
pushing back her hair.
they've
moved." She spoke
to the ensign, ignoring Branch in her weariness. "Have you got a drink for
me" she asked.
Branch felt a slow, trapped resentment as
he looked from one to the other of them. He watched the girl taste her drink
and thought, I wonder at what rummage sale she picked up that skirt? The
bulkiness of the skirt, the ill-fitting looseness of the shirt, and the
low-healed flatness of her laced brown oxfords gave her a dumpy look that
annoyed him because she was quite a nice looking girl. She caught him watching
her and smiled at him uncertainly. The ensign apologized quickly, and they
introduced themselves. They were Paul and Con stance
Laflin
,
from
New Orleans
.'
"Anyway," said the girl
bitterly, "that's the last place we're from."
"Oh, cheer up, darling," said
Paul
Laflin
. "It's not that bad."
"Well, first it was indoctrination,
at
Parkhurst
, and then," she said, ticking them
off on her fingers, "there was that course you took in
Philadelphia
, and then
New Orleans
, and now here. Not bad for
nineteen months." Branch glanced at the ensign, a little surprised.
"Nineteen months"
"Just about," said the younger
man.
"How about you, sir?"
"A little over three years,"
Branch said.
"All in
Chicago
, except
indoctrination."
"Some people have all the luck."
The girl smiled quickly to erase the sharpness of her tone.
The man asked hastily, "Where did you
go, sir"
"
Tucson
,
Arizona
," Branch said. He
grinned. "And did we sweat. How was it at
Parkhurst
"
As they talked he tried to remember what
someone had told him about
Parkhurst
, but he could not
remember it. You heard a little about all of them, and they were, after three
years, all the same. There was always the signal drill where someone was very
clever, and the fouled-up navigation lesson, and the day when half the section
passed out in ranks from the typhoid shots. After three years, indoctrination
school was a faintly pleasant memory of a time when you felt you were really a
naval officer, or would be when you got through, and not merely a civilian in
disguise. You never felt that way again.
'Well, look," said the girl
presently, interrupting them, "look, I'm starving.
"Do they serve chow in here?"
asked the ensign. ""Would you care to join us for lunch, sir?"
Sure," said Branch. He had resigned himself to eventually giving up his
room to them, but he wished the ensign would not call him "sir" so
assiduously.
Paul
Laflin
turned from asking a question of the bartender. "He says go up the ladder
to the second deck. They don't serve down here."
Branch rubbed his face to smooth away a
grin as he followed them. When we've gone up the ladder, he thought, to the
second deck, I suppose we turn to starboard.
My God.
Salty as hell,
ain't
he? The younger man stood aside
to let him, by virtue of his superior rank, go first through the door after the
girl who dropped back to walk beside him as they mounted the stairs.
"Paul was sure you were
married," she said shyly. "We had a long argument about it."
He glanced at her. "You mean on the
train?"
"Yes, you were sitting with a girl,
weren't you?"
"Oh", he said, a little
embarrassed. "Yes. That's right, I was, but....."
She was all right, too," the younger
man said, walking on the other side of him.
"Was she a friend
Of
yours?" Constance
Laflin
asked.
He shook his head. "She just happened to
sit beside me." Paul
Laflin
grinned. "How
did you make out sir?"
"I don't know yet," Branch said,
laughing. "I didn't get her phone number. But she said she might call
me."
"There isn't much to do on a train
except talk about the people," Constance
Laflin
said a little apologetically." We just happened to notice you because of
the uniform. We were behind you in the car.
"You
don't realize how much army there is
Until
you start
to travel," her husband said. It maker you feel kind of lonely.
They turned into a small dining room that
had the functional and impersonal brightness of a well-kept washroom. The
change from the intimate dusk of the bar was almost embarrassing Phillip Branch
seated the girl and sat down beside her, the ensign sitting down opposite him,
and seeing them both clearly for the first time he had a momentary feeling of
being completely out of touch with them, as if there had been a pane of glass
between them and him. It was probably, he reflected, his knowledge that they
were deliberately working him for his room that gave him this sensation, and he
opened his mouth to tell them they could have the damned room but the girl
started to speak and they both stopped at once and laughed. "Go
ahead," he said.
"Oh, I was only going to ask you
where you're from, Mr. Branch."
"
Indianapolis
," he said.
"You don't talk quite like a
Midwesterner."
"Well, I lived in
Boston
till I was fifteen,"
Branch said.
"Are you on your way to visit your
relatives there the younger man asked.
Branch laughed. "Not if I can help
it:" After a moment he said, "I just thought I'd spend one leave away
from home while I still had a uniform to impress the girls with."
"You're staying in
New York
, then?" the girl
asked.
"Until I get tired of it," Brand;
said. "I've got fifteen days. If I get bored maybe I'll give the uncles
and aunts a break, later on··· He looked at the ensign's sleeve. There were
three kinds of braid: the silver-base that paled as the gold rubbed off; the
copper-base that turned red; and the nylon that, not being gold at all,
remained a bright garish yellow. The cheaper uniforms generally came with the
copper or nylon braid; and Paul
Laflin's
single
stripe was a dull rust color.
"Looks like you're about due for
another half stripe," Branch said, indicating the worn braid. He thought,
nineteen months; they're running longer all the time. He had made his half
stripe in fourteen.
"Well, it depends how my new C.O.
feels about it," Paul
Laflin
said.
Branch looked up at him sharply, a little
startled.
The younger man said, "Well, I was
sort of stuck down in
New Orleans
. That's one reason I asked
for a transfer. I didn't want to stay an ensign all my life."
"We were thinking of having a
baby," his wife said quickly. "And the way rents were down
there..."
Branch looked from one
to the other of them, and he could feel his heart beating heavily, and he saw
that he was about to make an officious ass of himself.
"You mean they wouldn't promote
you?" he asked the ensign.
Paul
Laflin
shrugged. "The whole place was full of
j.g.'s
already...."
"Look," said Branch slowly,
"look, would you mind
.. ."
He grinned
uncomfortably to make his request seem less arbitrary. "...
would
you mind showing me your
"I don't ..." The younger man frowned
across the table. "What's the matter, sir?"
"For Christ's sake," said
Phillip Branch. "For Christ's sake belay that Sir." will you?"
"What's the matter, Paul?" the
girl asked quickly, leaning forward.
Paul
Laflin
grinned and shrugged. "I don't know. He wants to see my identity
card."
She stared at Branch and, suddenly
throwing back her head, laughed delightedly. Then she stopped laughing.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!"
