Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery (14 page)

Ingham was pleasan
tl
y mellow on food and drink. His anger and irritability had gone, at least superficially, and for this he was grateful to Miss Kathryn Darby of Pennsylvania. What did they say there?
‘
Shoo fly pie and apple pan dowdy
.’

Back in his bungalow, he read Ina
’
s letter again, hoping now to read it without caring a damn, without a twinge of resentment He did not quite succeed. He dropped the letter on his table, put his head back, and said:

‘
God, bring Jensen
’
s dog back.
P
lease!’

Then he went to bed. It was not yet midnight.

Ingham did not know what awakened him, but he pushed himself up suddenly on one elbow and listened. The room was quite dark. His doorknob gave a squeak. Ingham sprang out of bed and instinctively moved behind his work-table, which was in the centre of his room. He faced the door. Yes, it was opening. Ingham crouched. My God, he
’
d forgotten to lock it, he realized. He saw silhouetted a somewhat stooped
figure: a light, the street-light on the bungalow lane, gave a milky luminosity beyond. The figure was coming in.

Ingham se
iz
ed his typewriter from the table and hurled it with all his force, shoving it with his right arm in the manner of a basket-ball-player throwing for the basket
—
but the target in this case was lower. Ingham scored a direct hit against the turbaned head. The typewriter fell with a painful clatter, and there was a yell from the figure which staggered back and fell on the terrace. Ingham sprang to his door, pushed the typewriter aside with one foot, and slammed the door. The key was on the windowsill to the right. He found it, groped with fingertips for the keyhole, and locked the door.

Then he stood still, listening. He was afraid there might be others.

Still in the dark, Ingham went to his kitchen, found the Scotch
bottle
on the draining-board, nearly knocked
it over but grabbed it in time, and had a swig. If he had ever needed a drink, it was now. A second small swallow, and he slammed his palm down on the squeaking cork, replaced the bottle on the draining-board, and looked in the darkness towards his door, listening. Ingham knew the man he had hit was Abdullah. At least, he was ninety per cent sure of it.

There were faint voices, coming closer. The voices were muted, excited, and Ingham could hear that they were speaking in Arabic. A small beam of light swept past his closed shutters and vanished. Ingham braced himself. Were these the man
’
s chums
—
or the hotel boys investigating?

Then he heard bare feet slapping on the terrace, a grunt,
the
sweeping sound of something being dragged. The damned Arab, of course. They were dragging him away. Whoever they were.

Ingham heard a whispered
‘
Mokta
.’

The sounds of feet faded, disappeared. Ingham stood in the kitchen at least two minutes more. He could not tell if they had spoken about Mokta, or if Mokta, with them, had
been addressed. Ingham started to run out to speak to them. But was he
sure
they were the hotel boys?

Ingham gave a deep, shuddering sigh. Then he heard again soft footfalls in sand, a sound as soft as cotton. There was another faint slap, different. Someone was wiping the tiles with a rag. Wiping away blood, Ingham knew. He felt slightly sickened. The soft tread went away. Ingham waited, made himself count slowly to twenty. Then he set his reading lamp on the floor, so its light would not show much through the shutters, and turned it on. He was interested in his typewriter.

The lower front part of the frame was bent. Ingham winced at the sight of it, more for the surprising appearance of the typewriter than for the impact it must have made against the forehead of the old Arab. Even the spacer had been pushed awry, and one end stuck up. A few keys had been bent and jammed together. Ingham flicked them down automatically, but they could not fall into place. The bend in the frame went in about three inches. That was a job for Tunis, all right, the repairing.

Ingham turned his lamp out and crept between the sheets again, threw the top sheet off because it was hot. He lay for nearly an hour without sleeping, but he heard no more sounds. He put the light on again and carried his typewriter to his closet, and set it on the floor beside his shoes. He did not want Mokta or any of the boys to see it tomorrow morning.

Ingham
was interested in what Mokta
’
s attitude would be when he brought his breakfast But it was another boy who brought his breakfast at ten past nine, a boy Ingham had seen a couple of times, but whose name he did not know.

‘
Merci,
’
Ingham said.

‘
A votre service, m
’
sieur.
’
Calm, inscrutable, the boy went away.

Ingham dressed to go to Tunis. The typewriter went into its case still. It crossed his mind to bring his car outside the bungalow, then put his typewriter into it, because he felt shy about being seen by one of the boys carrying his typewriter up the lane. But that was absurd, Ingham thought. How would anyone know what the old man had been hit with?

At 9.3
5 a.m., Ingham locked his bungalow and left it He had put his car far up the lane, almost at Adams
’
s bungalow, because last night he had thought to knock on Adams
’
s door, if he had seen a light, but Adams
’
s lights had been off. Ingham
’
s car was on the extreme left, under a tree, and there were two other cars to the right of him, and parallel. Ingham wondered if the old Arab, not perhaps seeing his car, had assumed he was out? But how would the Arab have known what bungalow was his? Unless one of the boys told him? and that was unlikely, Ingham thought The Arab had probably gen
tl
y tried the door of every bungalow where he saw no light.

Mokta was not around.

Ingham flinched a
little
at the sight of Adams, coming barefoot, spear and flippers in hand, up from the beach towards his bungalow.

‘
Morning!
’
Adams called.

‘
Morning, Francis!
’
Ingham had put his typewriter in the back of his car on the floor. Now he closed the door.

‘
Taking off somewhere?
’
Adams was coming closer.

‘
I thought I
’
d go to Tunis to get a couple of typewriter ribbons and some paper.
’
He hoped Adams wouldn
’
t want to come along.

‘
Did you hear that scream last night?
’
Adams asked.
‘
Around two? Woke me up.
’

‘
Yes. I heard
something?
Ingham suddenly realized, forcibly, that he might have killed the Arab, and that this was what was making him so uneasy.

‘
It came from your direction. I heard a couple of the boys go out and see what was up. They didn
’
t come back for an hour. I hear everything they do, being so close.
’
He gestured towards his bungalow, ten yards away.
‘
There
’
s a little mystery there. One boy came back to
the
house here
’
—
a gesture towards the headquarters building
—
‘
then ran out again after a minute.
’

Had he come to get the cloth, Ingham wondered. Or a shovel?

‘
The funny thing is, the boys won
’
t say what it was. Maybe a fight, you know, somebody hurt. But why were they gone for an hour, eh?
’
Adams
’
s face was lively with curiosity.

‘
I dunno what to say,
’
Ingham said, opening his car door.
‘
I
’
ll ask Mokta.
’

‘
He won
’
t tell you anything.
—
Are you in the mood for a drink and dinner tonight?
’

Ingham was not, but he said,
‘
Yes, fine. Come to my place for a drink?
’

‘
Come to mine. Got something I
’
d like to show you.
’
The squirrel face winked.

‘
All right. At six-thirty,
’
Ingham said, and got into his car.

Ingham had to go through Hammamet t
o
get on to the Tunis road. In Hammamet he glanced around at the post
office corner, at the outdoor tables of the Plage, for the old Arab in the red pants. He did not see him.

It took him forty minutes in Tunis, on foot, to find a repair shop, or the right repair shop. One or two said they could do it, but that it would take at least two weeks, and they did not sound convincing either about the repair or the time. At last, in a busy commercial street, he found a rather efficient-looking shop, where the manager said it could be done in a week. Ingham believed him, but regretted the length of time.

‘
How did this happen?
’
the man asked in French.

‘
A maid in my hotel knocked it off a windowsill.
’
Ingham had thought of this beforehand.

‘
Bad luck! I hope it didn
’
t fall on someone
’
s head!
’

‘
No. On a parapet of stone,
’
Ingham replied.

Ingham left the shop with a receipt. He felt weightless and lost without the typewriter.

On the Boulevard Bourguiba, he went to a
café
to have a beer and to look at the
Time
he had bought. The Israelis were standing firm with their territorial gains. It was easy to foresee a growing Arab hatred against the Jews, a worse resentment than had existed before. Things would be seething for quite a time.

He went to have lunch at a ceiling-fan-cooled restaurant on the other side of the Boulevard Bourguiba, one of the two restaurants that John
Castlewood
had mentioned. His scallopine milanese was well-cooked, he should have welcomed it after Hammamet fare, but he had no appetite. He was wondering if the Arab were possibly dead, if the boys had reported it to the hotel, the hotel to the police
—
but if so, why hadn
’
t the police or someone from
the
hotel arrived early this morning? He was wondering if the boys had become frightened at finding the Arab dead, and had buried him in the sand somewhere? There were quite dense clumps of pine trees on the beach, fifty yards or so from the water. No one walked through those groves of trees. People walked
around them. There was good burial ground there. Or was he influenced by Jensen
’
s fears about his dog?

It crossed Ingham
’
s mind to tell Jensen about last night
’
s adventure. Jensen, at least, would understand, Ingham thought. Ingham was now regretting that he hadn
’
t opened the door, when he heard the boys. Or when he had heard the one mopping up the tiles.

He was back at the Reine by two-forty-five. The interior of his bungalow felt actually cool. He took off his clothes and got under a shower. The cold water was chilling, but it was also blissful. And it could not last long. Two minutes, and one became bored, shut the water off, and stepped out once more into the heat. He might ask Adams tonight how to go about getting an air-conditioner. Ingham got naked between his sheets and slept for an hour.

He awakened, and immediately thought of where he was in the chapter he was writing, a scene that was unfinished, and sat up and looked towards his typewriter. The table was empty. He had been very soundly asleep. A week with no typewriter. To Ingham, it was like a hand cut off. He disliked even personal letters with a pen. He took another shower, as he was again sweaty.

Then he dressed in shorts, a cool shirt, sandals, and went out to find Mokta. One of the boys at the headquarters, languidly sweeping sand from the cement before the doorway, said that Mokta had gone on an errand to the main building. Ingham ordered a beer, sat on the terrace in the shade, and waited. Mokta came in about ten minutes, a huge stack of tied-together towels balanced on one shoulder. Mokta saw him from a distance and smiled. He was in shirtsleeves and long dark trousers. A pity, Ingham thought, that the boys weren
’
t allowed to wear shorts in this heat.

‘
Mokta!
—
Bonjour! Can I speak with you a moment, when you have time?
’