Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (6 page)

     
She patted his shoulder, rising as the
train gave a tentative jerk preparatory to starting. "I wouldn't worry
about it, darling."

     
He watched her go up the car. She was
doing something to her coat, buttoning it, and he felt a small pulse of
apprehension begin to throb in his ear. Then the train began to move slowly and
she was running for the door.

     
He started up as the open door let in with
a rush the slowly accelerating rhythm of the train, and ahead of him a
middle-aged woman had got up and was running forward. The door closed and
opened again. Branch pushed himself across the seat, thinking, don't. Don't,
you'll hurt yourself, darling and then he saw Jeannette
Lalevy
through the window, already having jumped, on hands and knees at the end of the
platform. As the motion of the train brought her abreast of the window she was
rising, brushing at her gloves and her coat, and, turning in the seat he saw
her, a moment before the window frame shut her off from him, part her coat and
raise her skirt to examine her stockings. He remembered the small brown bag in
her pocket and found himself laughing in spite of his indignation at knowing
that she had planned this escape far in advance, but had not trusted him enough
to tell him. Stockings, he thought, my God.

     
The middle-aged woman re-entered the car
with a slightly breathless air. He watched her as she came down the aisle. Her
face was very narrow, wedge-shaped towards the strong, bony nose, and her skin
had a white lifelessness, and, in spite of its pallor, looked leathery. She was
wearing a shapeless navy blue dress speckled with round white dots the
approximate diameter of a lead pencil. Branch noticed her hands, both gripping
the large bag she carried: they were long, strong,
almost
beautiful. You could easily picture her playing the harp, with those hands, or
the piano, or strangling somebody. She did not stop at her seat but continued
through to the car behind without looking at Branch, but he felt her eyes touch
him
glancingly
as she went past.

     
It occurred to him suddenly that if he
were smart he would take the best connection he could make to Indianapolis and
get out of this; and it war disconcerting to realize that Jeannette
Lalevy
had estimated accurately the mixture of curiosity
and adventurousness, of stubbornness and perhaps loyalty, and certainly of
expectation, that would make him take the traveling bag she had left behind to
the place she had told him to go and wait there for her as long as there was
any reasonable chance of her coming. He did not love her, there were too many
questions yet to be answered, but he could not by his own action cut himself
off from any chance of ever seeing her again. There was certain fascination
about a girl who had the courage and recklessness to throw herself off a moving
train and the forethought to bring along a spare pair of hose when she did it.

     
It was only a little annoying to know that
she had told him where to go, even the hotel where he was to register, so
certain of him that she had left her bag in his charge with, probably,
everything she had in the world except what she was wearing. After a moment's
thought he decided that this, too, had been calculated. She had left the bag as
a hostage for her return, something tangible of hers for him to touch to
reassure himself that he war not making a fool of himself, if the waiting got
tiresome.

     
"Is this seat taken?"

     
A little startled, he looked up and saw
the small girl he had met before, when she had called herself Constance
Laflin
. She stood in the aisle, waiting a little
uncertainly for him to answer.

     
"No" he said, "No, It's not
taken," and he moved aside to give her room to sit down. Then he sat there
smoking and watched the landscape roll by in the sunlight outside the dirty
window of the car. You could see that it was fall out there, and the wind was
strong enough to send swirls of dust across the dirt road that for a
little,
paralleled the tracks. The single houses stood naked
among the bare fields and did not look like places where people lived.

     
Well." said the girl beside him
presently. "Well, hello."

     
He turned his head to look at her.
"Hello."

     
"Where did she go?" the girl
asked.

     
"How would know?" It annoyed him
that they should send a girl to question him, as if they considered him a
sucker for women. Perhaps they were right. "How's your husband?" he
asked. "Does he like the Navy?"

     
She smiled a little. He was demobilized
yesterday." She laughed.
"Demobilized all the way
around."

     
"Not only demobilized but
divorced," Branch said.

     
The girl nodded. "You know.
These war marriages."

     
Branch grinned a little and made
himself
stop. "Well, what's your name today,
then?" he asked.

     
"It's still
Constance
," she said.

     
"
Constance
what?"
When she hesitated, he said. "That's right, pick a good one."

     
"Constance
Bellamann
"
she said.

     
"Oh, pick something easy to carry
around," he said. Smith, Jones, Brown, Green, Doe....
Bellamann
?"

     
She smiled at him. She looked fourteen
years old when she smiled, young and very helpless, and you expected to find
gold braces still on her teeth.

     
"It really is
Bellamann
,"
she said "Honest."

     
"All right," he said. "I'll
take your word for it."

     
"They wanted me to ask you to come
back in the other car," she said. "There's more room back
there."

     
He looked at her for a moment, and could
not see that it would do any harm, and rose.

     
"Thanks," she said, turning the
smile on him again. "I was afraid you wouldn't... "

     
"Well, I haven't anything else to
do," he said uncivilly, and watched her as, steadying herself against the
motion of the train, she made her way down the aisle ahead of him. She was
still wearing the green skirt and the low-heeled shoes and the same or another
ill-fitting white shirt that needed tucking in at the waist. After you became
accustomed to the idea you could recognize the slight, small-
waisted
young body through the disfiguring clothes. Her
ankles were quite good in spite of the shoes.

     
As they came into the car the woman with
the hands broke off what she was saying to the others and came up the car,
passing the two of them without speaking. The rather large young man with the
small boyish features in the wide square face, who had worn a Navy uniform when
Branch had last seen him, rose as they approached; but his companion remained
seated, a tall, very thin man, a little older, who wore a brief bushy mustache
over a chin that was little more than a deep wrinkle between his face and his
throat.

     
"This is Mr. Hahn," Paul
Laflin
said. Mr. Hahn nodded to
nodded
to Branch. Paul, reaching over the back of the seat ahead of him, gathered up a
purse, a brown jacket, and a magazine, gave them to the girl, and pushed the
seat over so that they could all sit together. "Make
yourself
comfortable, Lieutenant," the large young man said. "If you mind
riding backwards ..."

     
Branch shook his head that he did not mind
riding backwards.

     
The girl looked at the three of them.
"Do you want me to...?"

     
"Oh, no," said Paul
Laflin
. "No, you can stay,
Constance
." When they were all
settled he glanced at the chinless man beside him. "Well...P?"

     
Mr. Hahn was carefully filling a pipe.
"Try some of my tobacco, Lieutenant," he said, offering the pouch.

     
"Thanks, I ..." Branch
flourished his own pouch.

     
"Try it. I think you will like
it," the chinless man said, and Branch put away his pouch and led his pipe
with the tobacco that was, as he had feared, coarsely cut and aromatic.
"Where do you expect to meet her?" Mr. Hahn asked abruptly.

     
Branch glanced at him over the flame of a
match. "Queen's Harbor, 1 suppose
, "
he
said, returning the oilskin pouch.

     
He was aware of a sudden sharpening of
their attention on him, as if his frankness had caught them unready. He found
himself enjoying himself, a little uneasily. It was a little like playing
hookey
to go fishing. He did not have any business being
there, but it was becoming rather exciting, even if he could not make it seem
quite real.

     
The large young man with the boyish red
face laughed abruptly. "Oh, come, Lieutenant, w re not as simple as that
. "

     
Branch raised his eyebrows. "He asked
me. I told him. I don't know how simple you are."

     
"Why do you say you suppose,
Lieutenant?" Mr. Hahn asked.

     
"Well," said Branch, "I
asked her where we were going and she said Queen's Harbor. Then she jumped off
the train. For all I know she may be heading for
San Francisco
...."

     
The girl moved beside him and he glanced
at her. She was sucking at a cigarette, holding it inexpertly to her pursed
lips. She blew out the smoke with an air of achievement and said, "Didn't
she tell you?"

     
Branch shook his head. "Not a damned
thing and I've still got her suitcase. I figured the only thing to do was go
down to Queen's Harbor and wait for her to turn up"

     
Mr. Hahn said, "You are not really
trying to tell us, are you, that on the off-chance of being able to deliver a
cheap suitcase you are willing to make a totally unnecessary trip down into
Maryland
."

     
Branch pulled at his pipe and found that
the borrowed tobacco had gone out. He took the pipe from his mouth and sat
toying with it.

     
"You're making things very
complicated," he said. "You think that I have to be lying because I'm
answering your questions instead of trying to stall you. Let me ask you this,
suppose you had fifteen days leave and you met a reasonably good-looking and
cooperative young lady. ... Well," he grinned, "what more can you ask
of a leave? Sure, I'm willing to run down to
Maryland
. Hell, I'd ride clear to
Florida
. I've got plenty of money
saved up and I haven't been out of
Chicago
in three years except to go
home."

     
The girl beside him said sharply, "It
doesn't matter to you if she
... ?"

     
Paul
Laflin
silenced her with a look. "It doesn't bother you," he said to Branch,
"that she felt it necessary to jump off this train?"

     
"Oh, listen," protested Branch,
"I'm not a dope, I know something's going on, so what? After all, I'm not
going to marry the girl, you
Know
."

     
"The chinless Mr. Hahn said dryly,
"Well, that's fortunate.
Since she already has a
husband."

     
Branch looked down at the pipe in his
hands.
After a moment be pushed at the charred tobacco with a
forefinger, not speaking.

     
"Didn't you know?" he heard the
girl beside him asking softly.

     
"No." he said. Then he looked
up. "Well, so what?"

     
"The great American attitude of so
what," said Mr. Hahn.

HE
STOOD ON THE DOCK at Queen's Harbor and watched a single-
masted
oyster boat tack into the river under reefed mainsail and small
spitfire
jib, keeping between the channel buoys that showed
as distant black dots among the darting reflections of the sunlight on the
broken water. He could feel the wind behind him, causing him to lean a little
backwards, and he could see that even in the sheltered water of the river mouth
the oysterman was taking spray aboard. He thought, Christ, I bet it's cold out
there, and watched a small motorboat come into sight astern of the larger boat
he had been watching, coming around the point and heading up the river with a
fine disregard for all buoys and channel.

     
The open water from which it had come was,
on the chart pinned to the post-office wall, was still considered as
Stigman
River
, and
Chesapeake Bay
was to the right behind the
point of land. He felt a momentary sense of deceit and treachery in the
remembered knowledge, gained from the chart, that through most of the
glittering expanse stretching from the river mouth to the
recurving
shoreline in the distance, and out of sight behind the point of land to the
right, the water was no more than waist or armpit deep. Where he had sailed as
a boy you could drown twenty feet offshore.

     
There had been no word from her and, after
reaching the town, he bad not seen any of the others except the girl, one day,
sitting in the lobby of the hotel, waiting. He had managed to learn from them
that the name of the girl they were all waiting for was actually Duval.
Lalevy
had been her maiden name. That made three names she
had had in three days, and he summed up what be knew about her, damningly: her
father had been a wealthy businessman who had come to terms with the Nazis, she
had entered the country, probably illegally, under the auspices of a man who by
her own admission was a black-market specialist if not worse. Probably
Jeannette Duval was not the first questionable refuges who had been taken care
of by the smooth-working wartime organization, reminiscent of the underground,
in operation if not in motive, that Mr. Sellers was now so eager to have
forgotten. Probably Branch reflected grimly, when he learned with whom she had
stayed in
Evanston
he would get another shock. Everything new
he learned about her was a shock.

     
But the girl herself had carried a certain
conviction
There
was something about the way she had
never taken the trouble to explain or apologize; he could help her or not as he
damn well pleased. He knew that if, when he met her again, he were to accuse
her of concealing a husband she would simply ask him if it would have made any
difference to him that night in
New York
, and he would have to admit
that it would not. If he were to insist on her telling him just what it was
they were all after she would say, flatly, that if he had to know or leave, he
could leave. She did not ask for help, she merely gave you the opportunity to
help her if you wanted to. Branch grimaced and turned away from the sunlit
water, remembering that she also paid well for assistance. It did not look so
nice when you put it like that.

     
But he had wasted two days of his leave on
her already and, like a man waiting for an overdue bus, he could not bring
himself to throw away the investment of time and boredom by giving up. Besides,
it was unlikely that the others would let him go. They would follow him in the
hope that he was on his way to meet her. He could not take the chance of having
them following him back to
Indianapolis
where everyone knew him.
And, in the final analysis, four of them, plus the man Sellers and his
detective, against one girl did not seem quite fair. But it would, he reflected
wryly.
he
nice of her to turn up and get things
settled, one way or the other.

     
When he returned to the Manor House the
clerk said there was no message for him. He started for the stairs,
then
turned back with sudden inspiration.

     
Look," he asked the man, "do you
have a Miss
Bellamann
staying here? Miss Constance
Bellamann
?"
Them
was really no sense in being bored
to death.

     
The clerk looked it up automatically.
"Yes, Lieutenant.
Room ?
14. Do
you want me to call her?"

     
"No," he said.
"Maybe later."
He climbed the stairs to the third
floor and unlocked the door of his room and stepped inside letting the door
close behind him while he without moving examined the room with his eyes. Then
he reached gently back and pulled the door tight and walked to the bathroom and
looked in, pulling back the shower curtain; then crossing the bedroom again to
the closet and pushing the clothes along the rack to look at her suitcase on
the floor. It was still there and nothing had been moved anywhere. He threw his
cap and raincoat on the bed in a gesture of irritation and walked around the
bed to retrieve the cap when it rolled of to the floor.

     
Listen, he thought, brushing the cap off
against his sleeve, Listen, I can't spend my whole leave in this graveyard. As
he walked across the floor to the dresser the ancient brown-painted boards
creaked under his feet. He pulled off his tie and the gray shirt he had been
wearing and, looking at it, reflected that pretty soon he would have to do
something about laundry. He put on a white shirt that he had worn once before,
the collar buttons and cuff links still in place, and found a clean collar.
With his blouse on again he looked at himself in the mirror. The white shirts
were almost worth the discomfort and trouble of the stiff collar. It made him
feel better to look at himself in the uniform and the white shirt, and he
brushed himself off with a small whisk-broom and went out into the hall,
determined the way the numbers ran, and followed them to ?14.

     
The door opened quickly to his knock, and
the girl stood there in her stocking feet, a little surprised to see him.

     
"May I come in?" he asked.

     
"Yes," she said after a moment.
"Of course."

     
He entered and closed the door behind him,
watching her turn away from him to put her feet into her shoes. She was wearing
a black wool skirt that needed brushing and a white cotton shirtwaist with a
round collar. She went to the dresser and picked up a comb. Her short, soft
brown hair was a little untidy, as if she had been lying down.

     
"How did you know I was here?"
she asked suddenly, looking at him in the mirror.

     
"Well," he said, "I was
real bright, like Sherlock Holmes. I asked at the desk." After a moment he
added, "Besides, I saw you sitting in the lobby."

     
She turned slowly to face him after
touching her hair indifferently with the comb. When it was apparent that she
was not going to speak, he said, "I don't know about you, but I'm getting
bored. What about taking in a show with me tonight?"

     
She moved her lips as if to speak, but
changed her mind. He said quickly, "Call them if you like. It's not a
trick, but you call them. Let me know what you decide. I'm
in
?
05."

     
"Yes," she said, "I
know."

     
"Well, give me a ring," he said.
"I'11
be
waiting." He turned and went out.

     
In ten minutes his telephone rang and he
heard her voice. "It's all right."

     
"Dinner?" he asked.

     
"If you want
to."

     
"I'll meet you in the lounge in half
an hour," he said.

     
He was sitting in the lobby when she came
down and he knocked out his pipe, rising and watching her thoughtfully as she
hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looking about her, not yet seeing him. She
had changed to a short-sleeved brown dress that fitted her loosely except where
the waistband drew the thin printed silk against her body. She looked small and
young and awkward. Seeing him, she gave him a brief vision of her trusting, defenseless
smile, and he thought, all right, sister, all right, we'll see, and went
forward.

     
"I didn't see you," she said,
smiling.

     
He took the brown wool jacket she was
carrying. "Where do you want to eat?" he asked. In spite of himself
his voice sounded a little harsh and abrupt.

     
"Oh," she said. "I thought
we were eating here."

     
"All right, well eat here," he
said. "I don't want to spoil any of the boys' plans."

     
As they went across the lounge to the
dining room he glanced at her and saw that she had stopped smiling and looked
unhappy. The headwaiter seated them at a table looking out on the porch that
traversed the rear of the building. They were early and the dining room was,
except for one group of three at a corner table, empty, but there were loud voices
in the bar across the hall.

     
"Do you want something to
drink?" Branch asked
..

     
She looked up from the menu and shook her
head quickly. "No. But you go ahead if you ..." She smiled. "I
don't drink."

     
He glanced at her and did not say
anything, wondering if she had forgotten that they had met in a bar in New
York. "How about some roast beef for a change?" he asked. "If I
eat any more fish I'll sprout scales behind the ears."

     
"All right," she said, laughing.

     
"And a shrimp cocktail," he
said, and gave the order to the waiter. When the man had gone, he asked,
"Who's going to watch the lobby?"

     
She looked away from him at the high,
pillared room with its ancient chandeliers. "Mr. Hahn," she said.

     
"How long does this go on,
anyway?" he demanded. She did not look at him. "Don't you know?"

     
"No," he said, and then
irritably, "Two days in this cemetery is about all I can stand."

     
After a moment she laughed abruptly and
looked at him. "It's not my fault, Lieutenant," she said demurely,
sitting back to let the colored waiter put an iced bowl of shrimp in front of
her. Branch watched her as she toyed with her fork. Her face looked unfinished,
the features a little crowded and a little indefinite in outline in the small
asymmetrical face. She had no makeup on except for a touch of inexpertly
applied bright lipstick, and hair was pinned up from her temples and allowed to
fall straight into a loose wave at the nape of her neck. She looked up to see
him watching her.

     
He said quickly, "Tell me about
something."

     
"About what?"

     
"Anything." he said.
"Anything that makes sense of this mess."

     
After a moment she glanced at him sideways
and asked, "Madame Duval?"

     
The title put the girl he had known in the
New York hotel room a thousand miles away from him. "All right," he
said. 'Tell me about her. Who's Duval?"

     
"Her husband," said Constance
Bellamann
.
"Louis Duval."

     
"What does he do?"

     
"Don't you know?"

     
He grinned briefly. "If I didn't know
she had a husband, would I know what he did?"

     
The girl put down her fork. "Why
don't you go back to Chicago?" she asked impulsively. "Why don't you
... ?"
She stopped.

     
"What?" he asked.

     
She shook her head.
"Nothing."

     
"Christ," he said.
"Everybody wants me to go back to Chicago."

     
Constance
Bellamann
did not look at him, but impaled a shrimp carefully on the tiny three-pronged
fork she held. He wanted to ask her again about Louis Duval and what he did,
but the feeling that she was expecting it restrained him. They ate their meal
in almost unbroken silence.

     
Presently she was putting on the rather
shabby brown jacket over her thin dress. He rose to help her, saying,
"Hadn't you better get a coat? You'll freeze to death."