Nothing That Meets the Eye (45 page)

Penn pressed his palms against the cool wall of the cell. He was aware that Ginnie had left the station, but that was the only external circumstance of which he was aware.

A funny girl, Ginnie. She was mad about David, after all. She must worship David for his talent, for his discipline, and for his liking her. What was she, after all? A good-looking girl who hadn't succeeded as an actress (until now), who hadn't enough inner resources to amuse herself while her husband worked twelve hours a day, so she had started flirting with her husband's secretary. Penn remembered that Ginnie had said their chauffeur had quit five months ago. They hadn't hired another. Penn wondered if the chauffeur had quit for the same reason he had been going to leave. Or had David fired him? Penn didn't dare believe anything, now, that Ginnie had ever said to him.

A more nightmarish thought crossed his mind: suppose Ginnie really didn't love David, and had stopped on her way to Croydon and found David in the lodge and had shot him? Or if she had found him on the grounds, in the woods, had she shot him and left him to be discovered later, so that he would get the blame? So that she would be free of David and free of him, too? Or was there even a gun in Stonebridge that Ginnie could have taken?

Did Ginnie hate David or love him? On that incredible question his own future might hang, because if Ginnie had killed him herself . . . But how did it explain David's voluntarily disappearing last night?

Penn heard footsteps and stood up.

Mac stopped in front of his cell. “You're telling the truth, Knowlton?” he asked a little dubiously.

“Yes.”

“So, the worst that can happen is, you'll sit a couple of days till Ostrander turns up.”

“I hope you're looking for him.”

“That we are, all over the state and farther if we have to.” He started to go, then turned back.

“Thought I'd bring you a stronger light bulb and something to read, if you're in any mood for reading.”

There was no news the next morning.

Then, around four
P.M.
, a policeman came and unlocked Penn's cell.

“What's up?” Penn asked.

“Ostrander turned up at his house in Stonebridge,” the man said with a trace of a smile.

Penn smiled, too, slightly. He followed him out to the front desk.

Mac gave Penn a nod of greeting. “We just called Mr. Ostrander's house. He came home half an hour ago. Said he'd taken a walk to do some thinking, and he can't understand what all the fuss is about.”

Penn's hand shook as he signed his own release paper. He was dreading the return to the lodge to get his possessions, the inevitable few minutes at the Stonebridge house while he packed up the rest of his things.

David's convertible was at the curb where Penn had left it yesterday. He got in and headed for the lodge. There, he packed first his own things and closed his suitcase, then started to carry it and the tape recorder to the car, but on second thought decided to leave the tape recorder. How was he supposed to know what David wanted done with his stuff?

As he drove south toward Stonebridge, Penn realized that he didn't know what he felt or how he ought to behave. Ginnie: it wasn't worthwhile to say anything to her, either in anger or by way of asking her why. David: it was going to be hard to resist saying, “I hope you enjoyed your little joke. Are you trying to get a plot out of it?” Penn's foot pressed the accelerator, but he checked his speed abruptly. Don't lose your temper, he told himself. Just get your stuff quietly and get out.

Lights were on in the living room, and also in Ginnie's room upstairs. It was around nine o'clock. They'd have dined, and sometimes they sat awhile in the living room over coffee, but usually David went into his study to work. Penn couldn't see David's study window. He rang the bell.

Hanna opened the door. “Mister Knowlton!” she exclaimed. “They told me you'd gone away for good!”

“I have,” Penn said. “Just came by to pick up my things.”

“Come right in, sir! Mister and Missus are in the living room. I'll tell them you're here.” She went trotting off before he could stop her.

Penn followed her across the broad foyer. He wanted a look at David, just a look. Penn stopped a little short of the door. David and Ginnie were sitting close together on the sofa, facing him, David's arm on the back of the sofa, and as Hanna told them he was here, David dropped his arm so that it circled Ginnie's waist. Ginnie did not show any reaction, only took a puff on her cigarette.

“Come on in, Penn!” David called, smiling. “What're you so shy about?”

“Nothing at all.” Penn stopped at the threshold now. “I came to get my things, if I may.”

“If you may!” David mocked. “Why, of course, Penn!” He stood up, holding Ginnie's hand now, as if he wanted to flaunt before Penn how affectionate they had become.

“Tell him to get his things and go,” Ginnie said, smashing her cigarette in the ashtray. Her tone wasn't angry, in fact it was gentle, but she'd had a few drinks.

David came toward Penn, his lean, wrinkled face smiling. “I'll come with you. Maybe I can help.”

Penn turned stiffly and walked to his room, which was down the hall. He went in, dragged a large suitcase out of the bottom of a closet, and began with a bureau drawer, lifting out socks and pajamas. He was conscious of David watching him with an amused smile. The smile was like an animal's claws in Penn's back. “Where'd you hide that night, David?”

“Hide? Nowhere!” David chuckled. “Just took a little walk and ­didn't answer you. I was interested to see what would happen. Rather, I knew what would happen. Everything was just as I'd predicted.”

“What do you mean?” Penn's hands trembled as he slid open his top drawer.

“With Ginnie,” David said. “I knew she'd turn against you and turn to me. It's happened before, you see. You were a fool to think if you waited for her she'd divorce me and come to you. An absolute fool!”

Penn whirled around, his hands full of folded shirts. “Listen, David, I wasn't waiting for Ginnie. I was clearing out of this—”

“Don't give me that, you sneak! Carrying on behind your employer's back!”

Penn flung the shirts into his suitcase. “What do you mean, it's happened before?”

“With our last chauffeur. And my last secretary, too. I'd get a girl secretary, you see, but Ginnie likes these little dramas. They serve to draw us together and they keep her from getting bored. Your dream gave me a splendid idea for this one. You see how affectionate Ginnie is with me now? And she thinks you're a prizewinning sucker.” David laughed and lifted his cigarette to his lips.

A second later, Penn landed the hardest blow he had ever struck, on David's jaw. David's feet flew up in the wake of his body, and his head hit a wall six feet away.

Penn threw the rest of his things into his suitcase and crushed the lid down as furiously as if he were still fighting David. He pulled the suitcase off the bed and turned to the door.

Ginnie blocked his way. “What've you done to him?”

“Not as much as I'd like to do.”

Ginnie rushed past him to David, and Penn went out the door.

Hanna was hurrying down the hall. “Something the matter, Mr. Knowlton?”

“Nothing serious. Good-bye, Hanna,” Penn said, trying to control his hoarse voice. “And thanks,” he added, and went on toward the front door.

“He's dead!” Ginnie cried wailingly.

Hanna was running to the room. Penn hesitated, then went on toward the door. The little liar! Anything for a dramatic kick!

“Stop him!” Ginnie yelled. “Hanna, he's trying to get away!”

Penn set his suitcase down and went back. He'd yank David up and douse his head in water. “He's not dead,” Penn said as he strode into the room.

Hanna was standing beside David with a twisted face, ready for tears. “Yes—he is, Mr. Knowlton.”

Penn bent to pull David up, but his hand stopped before it touched him. Something shiny was sticking out of David's throat, and Penn recognized it—the haft of his own paper knife that he'd neglected to pack.

A long, crazy laugh—or maybe it was a wailing sob—came from Ginnie behind him. “You monster! I suppose you wiped your fingerprints off it! But it won't do you any good, Penn! Hanna, call the police at once. Tell them we've got a murderer here!”

Hanna looked at her with horror. “I'll call them, ma'am. But it was you that wiped the handle. You were wiping it with your skirt when I came in the door.”

Penn stared at Ginnie. He and she were not finished with each other yet.

A GIRL LIKE PHYL

J
eff Cormack stood looking through a thick glass window onto a field of Kennedy Airport, drawing on a cigarette that he hoped would be his last before he boarded. Twice they had announced delays that had caused the passengers to disperse, humping hand luggage back to the departure lounge or to one of the bars for a drink. It was a foggy day in November.

Here it came again, the droning female voice, “Passengers on TWA Flight eight-oh-seven to Paris are kindly requested . . .”

A collective groan, mumbles of impatience drowned out the voice, so that people asked others, “Did she say half an hour?” The answer was yes.

Jeff picked up his attaché case, and was turning toward the doorway when he saw a face some five yards away that made him stop and stay motionless for a few seconds. Phyl. No, it couldn't be. This girl looked hardly twenty. But the resemblance! The light brown eyes with the sharp upward slant at the outer corners, the fresh pink at the cheekbones, the soft abundant hair of the same dark brown as Phyl's. And the lips! The girl was like Phyl at the time Jeff had met her. Jeff tore his eyes away and reached for his black case, which was somehow on the floor again.

He felt shattered, and noticed that his hands trembled a little.

He mustn't look at the girl again, he thought, not try to find her again. She was evidently on the same flight. He walked slowly toward the bar, not caring where he walked, because he had no purpose in doing anything except to kill the next half hour. He'd be quite late getting to Paris at this rate, after midnight certainly before he got to his hotel. He would still try to reach Kyrogin by telephone tonight, and he envisaged staying up all night, because he didn't know and his office scouts hadn't been able to find out exactly when Kyrogin was arriving in Paris and where he was staying. At least it wouldn't be at the Russian Embassy, Jeff thought. Kyrogin was an engineer, an important man but not a Communist deputy. Jeff knew that Kyrogin's mission was semi-secret, that he was in search of a bargain, and Jeff wanted to get to him first, meaning before any other American firm, or maybe an English firm, got to him. Jeff had to convince Kyrogin that his company, Ander-Mack, was the best possible one for setting up oil rigs.

Thinking of the job he had to do in the next twenty-four hours gave Jeff a sense of solidity, of definite time and place.

The girl's face had whisked him back eighteen—no, twenty—years, to the year he had met Phyl. Not that he had stopped thinking about Phyl during all that time. They had been together for a little over a year. Then, after they had parted, he had thought about her a lot for the next two years, the Awful Years, as he called them. Then had come a three- or four-year break, in a manner of speaking, when he had not thought about her (not with the same intensity), when he had worked even harder at his own work in order to keep Phyl out of his mind, not to mention that during that period he had met someone else and got married. His son Bernard was now fifteen, going to Groton and not doing too well. Bernard had no idea of what he wanted to be as yet. Maybe an actor. And Betty, his wife, lived in Manhattan. He'd said good-bye to her this morning, and said he would be back in three days, maybe sooner. Just three hours ago. Was it possible?

Jeff found himself stirring his usual one lump of sugar into his coffee. He didn't remember ordering coffee. He stood with one leg over the seat of a stool, his topcoat folded over his arm. And his black case was at his feet, he saw. In it was the informal contract that he wanted Kyrogin to sign, or agree to. He'd make it. Jeff downed the last of his coffee and, feeling more sure of himself, surveyed the people at the little tables along the glass wall. He was looking deliberately now for the girl who resembled Phyl.

There she was, seated at a table with a young man in blue jeans and denim jacket, and Jeff judged from their attitudes that they were not together. The girl was neatly dressed (as Phyl would have been) in a well-cut navy blue coat, an expensive-looking scarf at her neck. Suddenly it crossed Jeff's mind that she could be Phyl's daughter. How else could there be such a resemblance? Phyl had married—nineteen years ago, Jeff remembered with painful accuracy—a man called Guy. Guy what? Fraser or Frazier, something like that. Jeff had deliberately tried to forget how to spell it, and had succeeded.

The girl looked at him, happened to lift her eyes straight toward him, and Jeff felt as if he had been shot.

Jeff dropped his own eyes, closed them, heard his heart catching up, and he slowly reached for his wallet and put a dollar bill on the counter. That had been like the first time he had seen Phyl, in that room full of other people. Worse now, because he knew Phyl. He knew also that he still loved her. He had come to terms with that years ago, he reminded himself. A man didn't commit suicide, didn't ruin his career, just because he was in love with a girl he couldn't have. There was such a thing as trying to forget, which really meant trying not to dwell upon it, or let it become an obsession. His love for Phyl was now something he had to live with, he had decided. But he had to admit that not a month, not a week went by, even now, when he didn't think of Phyl, didn't imagine being with her—in bed, out of bed, just existing, with her. And now he was married, the outer trappings were there, solid, tangible as his son Bernard, real as the ugly brown formica bar under his fingers now, or as a bullet that might penetrate his forehead and kill him.

He hoped he would not be seated next to the girl on the seven-hour flight to Paris. If that happened, he'd ask for his seat to be changed on some pretext. But with two hundred or so passengers, it wasn't likely.

Twenty minutes later, Jeff was being borne at increasing speed across the airfield, and then came the lift, the wonderful lightness as the air took over and the ground dropped below and the roar of the motors became fainter. On Jeff's left was a window looking out on a gray wing, and on his right a plump woman with a midwestern accent, and next to her a man who was probably her husband. From where he sat, Jeff ­couldn't see the girl, and he had avoided looking for her when the scores of passengers had been boarding.

Jeff unfastened his seat belt and lit a cigarette. A stewardess made slow progress up the aisle, and when she arrived, Jeff ordered a scotch on the rocks. Then came lunch. Then the sky began to darken as they raced in the same direction as the earth turned. A film made its appearance at the end of the plane's aisle. Jeff had declined the use of earphones. He wanted to snooze if he could. He lowered the back of his seat, closed his eyes and loosened his tie.

Kyrogin, Jeff was thinking, might not be difficult. Kyrogin had showed a sense of humor on the telephone last week. “Our seas are not made of vodka,” Kyrogin had said, his accent heavy in a baritone voice. Meaning it was not pleasant to fall into the White Sea in winter or any other time. That was a crack against Ander-Mack's safety laws. Jeff's company avoided unions. They hired roustabouts for dangerous work at high wages. The Russians were not famous for unions or for respect for life and limb, so Jeff wasn't worried. If he could only show Kyrogin the contract, then the deal was clinched, Jeff thought. Jeff envisaged Russian labor plus some Scots and English dropouts from the British North Sea oil operations. The boys were tough, they got injured, or killed, they became bored, a lot quit. But no one could deny that the pay was good. That was what counted for them, and what counted for the Russians was speed.

As a matter of fact, Jeff thought as he looked down the dimly lit aisle of the plane, there might be a representative of a rival firm on this flight. If so, Jeff didn't know what man, even what type of man to look for. Young or old, conservative or—the opposite, he'd be carrying the same kind of papers as Jeff, carrying the same kind of hope. Jeff slumped in his seat, and tried to relax and doze off.

You haven't any time for me anymore. . . .

Jeff sat up again. Through the gentle hum of the jets, Phyl's voice had come, straight into his ears. Jeff rubbed his eyes, deliberately yawned, and lay back again. He locked his fingers across his waist, and was about to close his eyes when the girl who looked like Phyl, coatless now and in a light-colored blouse, dark skirt, walked toward him in the aisle. She was going to stop and say something to him, he thought. Absurd! He was half asleep. But he sat up just as the girl passed his seat row, as if to brace himself, as if there weren't two people between him and the girl.

Down the aisle, a pair of horses galloped noiselessly, in color, straight toward the audience. Wide awake now, Jeff suffered a long minute of depression, as if his mind, somewhere unknown even to him, had taken a toboggan ride into a dark valley. He knew why he had gone over his current assignment, why he had reaffirmed his confidence in himself: his work was all he had. And yet he knew that because of his work he had lost Phyl. Phyl had been engaged to Guy. And Guy—or rather his family—had money. Jeff had wanted to compete, to prove himself, in the way he thought would count with Phyl, by making money, solid, big money. Oddly and ironically, Jeff thought, Phyl might have stayed with him if he hadn't made a lot of money, just a bit, and if he'd spent more time with her. Ironically, Phyl had drifted away, because she had thought he was drifting away. They'd had just thirteen months together, composed of a week snatched here and there, a few days in hotels in Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, happy moments when Jeff had clasped Phyl in his arms (in motels, hotels, in a certain apartment in Evanston rented in Phyl's name), when he had said to her, “Everything went great today! We're ten thousand dollars richer. Maybe more, I haven't figured it out yet.” But what had counted, it seemed, and against him, was the time he had spent away from Phyl, too many days, perhaps just three days at a time, but too many. That was how Jeff saw it, anyway. But the loss! When he had thought he had “succeeded” to find it a “failure”! For Phyl, he had summoned all his drive. He didn't regret that.

Wasn't the girl going to return down the aisle? Jeff slumped again and put his hand over his eyes, so he couldn't possibly know when she passed again.

At Roissy Airport, the passengers from Flight 807 trickled toward the passport control desks and became three solid lines. The girl, Jeff saw, was the second person in front of him. Then the man between them hailed someone behind Jeff and quit the line, and Jeff was right behind the girl. She had a white plastic carryall at her feet, and out of the top of it, beside an open carton of Camels from which one pack had been removed, poked the furry head of a toy panda. Jeff let the distance between him and the girl widen by a few inches. The passport stamps thumped, the lines crept. When the girl reached for the carryall, the panda fell out, and the girl didn't notice.

Jeff retrieved the panda. “Excuse me,” he said. “You dropped this.”

Phyl's eyes glanced at him, then the panda. “Oh, thank you! My good luck piece!” She smiled.

Even her teeth were like Phyl's, the eyeteeth slightly pointed. Jeff acknowledged her thanks with a slight nod. The line moved.

“I'd've missed that. If I'd lost it, I mean. Thanks very much,” the girl said over her shoulder.

“Not at all.” Was her voice like Phyl's? Not really, Jeff thought.

The girl, then Jeff, passed the control desk and walked into the freedom of Paris. Jeff's pulse slowed to normal. He did not look to see if the girl was being met by any of the people waiting, some of them waving to faces that they recognized.

Jeff was able to claim his suitcase quickly, and then he headed for the taxi rank. He asked the driver to go to the Hôtel Lutetia. It was just after one
A.M.
and raining slightly.

“Bon soir,” Jeff said to the clerk at the hotel desk, and continued in French, “I have a reservation since yesterday. Cormack.”

The clerk smiled as he greeted Jeff. Jeff didn't know this clerk, but the clerk evidently knew Jeff's name. “Monsieur Cormack! Yes, sir. You have an appartement, as your cable requested. That is number twenty-four, sir.”

The bar was still functioning, Jeff saw. He intended to send for a bottle of cold mineral water, maybe coffee also. In his room—a nice, spacious room adjoining a salon—Jeff hung up a dark blue suit and tossed folded white silk pajamas on the turned-down bed, washed his face and hands at the bathroom basin, then picked up the telephone. He had a sudden hunch, for no reason at all, that Kyrogin was at the George V, and he was going to try it.

There was a soft knock at the door. Jeff put the telephone down.

A bellhop stood outside the door with a message on a tray. “A cable for you, sir. We regret we forgot to give it to you downstairs.”

“Thank you,” Jeff said, and took the cable. He closed the door and tore the envelope open. The cable said:

EITHER INTER-CONTINENTALE OR GEORGE V.

Jeff smiled a little. He'd been right about the George V. That was a good omen. The cable was unsigned. Jeff knew it was from Ed Simmons. Ed had been pulling every string in New York and Moscow to find out where Kyrogin would be staying in Paris, in order to save Jeff some time.