RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (29 page)

"Then the moment they set eyes on me--"

"No," he said. "They have no exact description to go by. Cameron evidently figured we could change that too easily. They don't know what you look like. The steward tells me he overheard them admit that to one of the officers. They're just relying on the one main thing; he must have thought that would be sufficient, that there was no way we could get around that. They're looking for a man and a sightless woman traveling together. They're not even sure of the ship, it could be any ship coming in right about now. They've been searching every ship that's come in within the past twenty-four hours. So we have that much of a chance."

He plunged his fist into his opposite palm like a tormented baseball catchier.

"They must see you, but they mustn't know you're blind ."

She stood up, suddenly resolute. "Then they shan't!"

"Can you do it?" he asked doubtfully.

"For you," she said, "I can do anything. To stay with you-- To keep them from taking me away from you. Hurry! you've got to help me. Did you see them at all? There are things I must know."

"The steward pointed them out to me just as they were going in two doors down, and I had a chance to make a good quick study of them."

"Then these are the things you've got to tell me. And be sure, because you won't have time to tell me more than once. First, how many?"

"There are two of them, accompanied by two policemen, but the two policemen won't come into the room."

"And the two who will?"

"One of them's Hawaiian, dark-skinned, short, stocky. The other's a Saxon-American, tall, lean, fair. His skin's peeling a little from sunburn, I noticed."

She made a hectic grasping motion toward him with both hands. "Their voices, quick--so I can place them."

"The Anglo-Saxon's is barrel deep. About like this--" He dropped his own. "The other's considerably higher, just short of piping."

"Their clothes, now quick!"

"The islander's all in white. Spotless. The other in gray, and pretty winkled. He seems to perspire a lot, not used to the heat."

"He takes a handkerchief to his face?"

"The back of his neck."

"Then clear your throat when you see him do that in here. Only the first time, not after that. Their neckties.

"The Hawaiian has on a loud green thing. The other's I didn't notice."

"Then it's quiet. Were they smoking anything? What?"

"The short one, no. The Yank emptied out a pipe just before he stepped into that other stateroom, and I saw him stick it into his breast pocket up here."

"Stem showing?"

"Stem showing."

There was an indistinct murmur just outside their door, as if several persons were gathering there in that one spot.

"Can you do anything with all that?"

"I shall," she promised. "I have to. Help me; put everything out on this dressing table, all the cosmetics from that travel kit I never use."

"What are you going to do?"

"Make-up. It will keep me seated in one place and it will keep my eyes fixed on one place, the mirror." She sat down.

The knock had already come on the door.

"Can you get away with it?" he breathed. "Suppose you put the wrong thing on, or too much in one place?"

"My fingers know all the little jars and pencils by heart. Men can't follow the intricacies of it, anyway. A woman might catch on, but men won't."

The second knock came, more insistent.

"Don't be frightened, love," she whispered. "Just do your part, and I won't let you down. Forget about me; I'm Louise, or somebody else." She , instilling courage into him! She raised her voice suddenly, to a stridency he had seldom if ever heard her use before. "Joe!" she wailed, as if summoning him from the adjacent bathroom. "Somebody at the door! See who it is for me, will you please?"

The door opened. She took a deep breath, raised her eyes into the impenetrable darkness, and carefully began to stroke the tip of her little finger across her upper lip, then taste and tongue it, then stroke some more.

A high-pitched voice said, "Mr. Breuer?"

Allen said, "Yes?"

"Sorry to bother you. We're from the Honolulu police. Just checking up on the passengers."

"Come in," Allen said. The door closed. Feet scuffed about on the carpet.

"Sit down," Allen said. A chair crunched very slightly. A second chair crunched quite heavily.

A very deep voice, from the second chair, said, "You're Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Breuer?"

"Yes."

"You embarked at San Francisco?"

"Yes."

"Your destination is--?"

"Yokohama, first of all. Then we may go on to--"

There was a sudden silence. They were watching her with typical masculine awe. She had taken a small crescent of isinglass, somewhat resembling a half optical lens, inserted it carefully under the lower lashes of one eye, and was carefully stroking them black with a small paint brush.

"Cigarette?" she heard Allen offer.

She didn't give them a chance to answer. "Never offer a pipe smoker a cigarette, Joe. You're wasting your breath."

Allen gave an impressive gasp. "How do you know the man's a pipe smoker."

"I can see it sticking up in his breast pocket from all the way over here."

Pause, while the owner must have looked down at his own breast pocket in surprised confirmation.

She said suddenly, speaking as if via the mirror, "You haven't been out here long, have you?"

The deep voice said, "As a matter of fact, no. How'd you know that?"

"I can tell your skin's still sensitive to the sun."

"You're very observant, ma'm."

Allen cleared his throat a little.

She turned her head slightly, toward where the second chair was. "I don't see you mopping your neck," she said playfully. "You don't seem to mind the heat as much as your colleague does. Why doesn't he wear white like you?"

"An' look like a bottle of milk?" the deep voice from the other direction growled half audibly.

"I can also tell you're an islander by that cheerful tie you're wearing," she went on. "Sunny climate, sunny necktie."

Almost at once, as though the remark had had the effect of a lever on them, she heard them both get up. "Let's go," one murmured to the other. The tone used was the rather flat, disgusted one of two men who find they have just made a complete waste of their time.

Allen shepherded them toward the door. "Were you looking for anyone in particular?" she heard him ask as he prepared to close it after them.

"Yes. A blind woman. We have orders to take her into custody for her own protection."

"Joe," she called out sweetly just then, from the depths of the stateroom, "tell the gentleman he dropped the rubber band from his notebook."

Steps came forward again toward one of the chairs, stopped.--"Much obliged, ma'm; here it is, I see it here"--withdrew once more; the door closed and the key went home.

Allen hurried back to her, dropped down beside her on one knee, tipped her chin with his fingertips. "How did you know?" he marveled. "How?"

"I heard it snap when he stretched it and took it off the notebook. I didn't hear it snap a second time, so I knew it had never gone back on again. I took a wild guess and figured it had fallen either to his chair or to the floor without his noticing it. It was a gamble, too. He might have just stuffed it into one of his pockets, or wound it around a finger. But I won my gamble."

He clasped her hand in both of his.

"Swell performance," he congratulated her ardently.

Later in the day he made another brief investigatory foray. She was safe now, she was immune--at least as far as they were concerned--but he wanted to confirm it.

"They've gone," he reported on his return. "They went ashore fifteen minutes ago. One of the big President liners is just coming in past Diamond Head, and they received a radio report there's a blind woman accompanied by a seeing-eye dog aboard. Or so my all-knowing friend the steward tells me. By the time she's cleared herself we'll be miles at sea. Out of reach. With the next stop Yoka.

"Funny thing, though," he added. "They left one of the two policemen behind. I just happened to see him now, on my way back. He's standing there on duty at the upper end of the corridor. Very inconspicuously."

They got under way again at five that evening. The grinding and pulsing of the engines, always more noticeable in still water, came on again and a slow gliding motion became perceptible, as steady at its inception as that of a train leaving a station. The breeze freshened, the clanking of dockside machinery faded off.

He made another quick trip out and back that happened to almost synchronize with this slow-moving process of departure.

"Is that policeman still posted there?" she asked him when he came in again.

"He still was when I went out," he said, "but when I went by the second time just now, on my way in, I didn't see him any more. He must have gone. I've brought you down a lei. I wanted you to have one. They're given to everyone who leaves Hawaii and you weren't up there to receive one for yourself."

But the pulsing and the gliding and the commotion of departure had just preceded, not followed his issuing from the stateroom. They were too elated to notice the discrepancy, if there was one, in the rearguard policeman's quitting of his post. Or perhaps, for all they knew, his orders had been to remain aboard until the last moment, until the outermost limits of police jurisdiction had been reached outside the harbor, and then to be dropped off by a pilot boat or some such.

All that mattered, all that counted, was: she was safe, she'd been rescued. She'd been saved from--safety. Rescued from--rescue.

Midnight on a chromium-plated sea. They were together in' the semidarkness, their heads pressed together, each with an arm about the other's back, waiting, tense, immobile, breathless, starry-eyed.

They had all the lights out in the suite. But chromium gleams would glide across the walls, and then ebb back again, from the moon-glowing sea outside the windows.

Two small flecks of light marked where they were and these too were constantly turning over, turning back again out of sight, though in a different, quicker way than the liquid gleams upon the wall. One was a red dot, and one was a cluster of pale-green dots. They moved together each time, one just above the other. A cigarette in his nervous hand, and the radium numerals of the watch upon his wrist.

And in the silence the tiny whispers of two babes in the woods. Babes who are at the very edge of the woods now, almost out.

"Now what is it?"

"Eleven fifty-eight. Sh, be patient."

Back go the red and the green glints.

"Is it--now?"

"Not yet. Eleven fifty-nine. Just a minute more. Just a minute. Don't breathe, don't speak."

Like children cautioning one another, "You'll break the spell."

Her hand goes up and seals his mouth. His hand goes up and seals hers.

Their hearts go tick, tick, tick, tick, sixty times; not his watch, but their hearts. Together, in perfect time, as one.

His hand drops away from her lips. He raises the little diadem of luminous numbers.

"Now?" she whispers.

"Now!" At first he whispers it. Then he speaks it. Then he shouts it. "Now! Now! NOW!"

They jump to their feet together in the dark.

"Twelve midnight. The first of June. The date is past. He's missed the date. Marty, Marty, do you understand? Do you hear what I'm saying? We're safe. It's over. We've won. We've won."

He runs all around the place, touching here, touching there. All the lights flame up, every light in the place, kindling into a blinding blaze of incadescence.

They kiss. He drags into view a little gilt bucket of ice, hidden until now behind the settee, waiting for them in case they--lived. He hoists a bottle of champagne. They kiss. He brings two glasses. They kiss. He twists the cork. They kiss. The cork pops. Foam trickles down the sleeve of his coat. They laugh. They kiss, and kiss again, and laugh, and kiss again.

They touch their glasses high above their heads.

"Here's to life!"

"To life! Lovely, lovely life!"

They crash their glasses in the corner, fill two more. She's crying a little, but out of joy, sheer ecstasy. "We're having a party. Just you, just me. Like living people do."

"We are living people now."

"I know, I know." She holds out her arms toward him. "Dance with me. It's been so many years. . . . Any step, I don't care how hard, and I'll follow. Dance with me, like the living do."

He turns on the little battery portable. Faintly, on short wave, from some far off shore, faltering music comes in, strengthens, steadies. Voices are singing in chorus, in a hymn of gladness. The waltz from Traviata .

He sweeps her around and around the room in his arms in delirious abandon, her unbound hair flying loose. Then without stopping, catches up her halfemptied goblet, hands it to her on the wing. On the next time around, catches up his own.