The Outsider (48 page)

Gingerly, he stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket, then paused. No; it was not safe to put the handkerchief in his pocket like that. He withdrew the spotted handkerchief and then pulled forth his clean, freshly-laundered one. Yes, he would wrap the spotted handkerchief in the clean one; in that way, if he happened to pull out his handkerchief, he would not run the risk of dangling the bloody one carelessly in the face of some stranger. He tightly balled the bloody handkerchief and then wrapped the clean one around it, squeezing and crumpling the clean one so that it would look
used and natural, so that no one would think that anything was wrong…

He rummaged further in the dresser drawers. Ah—A gun! A .32 and fully loaded…He took it and broke it and emptied the bullets into his palm and pocketed them. Now, he was ready to face Hilton. Where was he? Had he gone to the headquarters of the Communist Party? If he had, why had he not taken the handkerchief with him? Or did he have some other devious idea in mind? Anyway, it seemed that Hilton had not acted against him yet. Well, Hilton had had his chance; he would not act, not
now
. What a fool he had been! These Communists were so intelligently tricky that it was hard to cope with them. When Hilton came, he would have to be on his guard each second, for the man was dangerous. How calm he had acted this morning! A disciplined man, cold, precise, farseeing, ruthless. Hilton was free of such infantile stupidities as racial hatred; he was no frightened, white American dope worried about a white girl who slept with a colored boy…Hilton was after power and his keeping his mouth shut about Cross's guilt was but one more step along the road to getting hold of a bright young man whose life he would own and whose talents would serve him in his struggle for power…

Cross looked further in the room and found nothing of interest. He saw a little radio on the night table at the bedside. He looked at his wrist watch; it was nearing five o'clock. Where was Hilton? Had he gone to the police? No; if he had, he certainly would have taken the handkerchief with him as evidence…He sat in a chair near the bed and turned on the radio, softly, and listened to the low, surging beat of jazz music. He kept his hand in his pocket on his gun and waited…

Half an hour later he jerked alert. A key turned with a
click in the lock of the door. Cross quickly twirled the knob on the radio, leaving the radio still turned on, going in a soft hum. His hand was on his gun and the gun was jammed deep in his overcoat pocket. The door swung in and Hilton, with a toothpick slanting downward from one corner of his thin lips, came into the room and stopped short, blinking his eyes at the sight of Cross. Hilton's body twitched as from an electric shock; he rushed to the dresser and yanked open the drawer that had held his .32…How quick the man was, Cross thought. He smiled at Hilton, stepped past him and shut the door to the corridor. Hilton was pawing frantically in the dresser drawer, then he was still for a second. He spun around and faced Cross, his eyes bulging, his hands empty and trembling.

“I've got your gun, Hilton,” Cross told him matter-of-factly.

Cross pulled out the .32 with his left hand and at the same time he drew his own .38 with his right.

“Say,” Hilton began in a whisper. “What's wrong?”

“Are you asking me?” Cross mocked him.

Hilton's face was grey, his eyes like brown, flat discs of metal. He moved nervously, backing away from Cross one moment and advancing the next, his mouth working spasmodically. Cross could see that he was about to give vent to some sound.

“If you shout, Hilton, I'll just have to shoot you,” Cross told him, accenting the gravity of his words. “Anything you do to attract attention of other people to this room, will be a sign for me to kill you. Now, man, have some sense. I'm in danger, and I'd not hesitate to shoot, see? I was a fool to underestimate you once, but I'll not do it twice. You're clever, intelligent, and I shall treat you as such.”

Cross could almost see the rapid calculations spinning
around in Hilton's brain. He had backed off to a wall now and stared at Cross with parted lips; sweat began to gleam on his forehead.

“What do you want, Lane?” Hilton asked.

“Why didn't you tell me you knew what I'd done?” Cross asked.

“What you'd done?” Hilton pretended amazement. “What are you talking about?”

“Quit stalling, Hilton,” Cross said. “Look, I found the handkerchief…You got it out of the incinerator—”

“Oh,” Hilton said, turning pale.

“You knew what I'd done. Why didn't you tell the cops?”

“Because I was glad that you'd done it,” Hilton said promptly, simply. “It solved a multitude of problems for me. Gil stood between me and one of the most important assignments on the Central Committee. Gil is gone and I've already got the job. I've wanted Eva for a long time; you freed her…Gil's death was like a gift dropped from the sky.”

Ah, Cross recalled how Hilton had spoken of Gil last night…But he had not thought that that much hate and cupidity had been behind those casual words!

“And when did you know I'd done it?”

“Your coolness made me suspect you right off,” Hilton explained without a trace of emotion. “I'm not so stupid a white man that I cannot tell the difference between fear and self-possession in a Negro. You were self-possessed. The cops thought you were just another scared darky. Okay, Lane. You got the handkerchief. Let's make a deal. Let's be reasonable. You wanted Eva. Well, you got her…Okay. Take off and let's call it quits—”

“So you think it was to get Eva that I did it?”

“Hell, yes. She's nuts about you and you're in love with her,” Hilton said.

“It wasn't because of Eva,” Cross told him.

“Then what was it?”

“You'll never know.”

“Another revolutionary group?”

“No.”

“You're with the police, then?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Cross laughed. Just as every man, perhaps, has his price, so every man, it seems, has a limit to his intelligence. Hilton knew that Cross was sincere and it bewildered him.

“I'll trade with you,” Hilton urged him. “I don't know what your angle is, but shooting's not going to help anybody…”

“It's not that easy, boy,” Cross told him. “You and your crowd are smart. I trust
nobody
now.”

“I'll not tell 'em, neither the Party or the police,” Hilton swore. “Look, I just left Party headquarters. I'm taking Gil's place, in addition to my other assignment. So everything's settled. I was after getting my hands on a quick boy like you, but, hell, you got away. Okay. No hard feelings. You go your way and I'll go mine. To hell with Gil. I don't care. I know you'll never speak of it, and God knows I won't. After all, I helped you with the D.A., didn't I? I kept making a racket about how Herndon was the murderer, didn't I? And Eva worships you…You got what you want, hunh? Things went your way.”

Hilton's voice had come in a low, urgent stream of words, all precise and straight to the point.

“What about Bob?”

“Bob?” Hilton blinked. “What the hell do you care?”
Hilton's eyes were round with surprise. “Was he your brother or something?”

“No. You sent Bob to Trinidad, to his death—”

“So what? There are a million Bob Hunters. What do they mean? They don't count…”

Cross smiled bitterly. How those quiet words riled him! He had to deal with this man in a way that would make him feel what he felt.

“Sit down, Hilton.”

Hilton hesitated; he did not know what was coming; his eyes darted and glittered. He licked his lips.

“Make no mistake, Hilton,” Cross warned him. “I'd kill you in a minute. If you've got any tricks in mind, forget 'em.”

“I've no tricks, Lane. I want to live…”

“So did Bob,” Cross said. “Now, sit down…In that chair there, where I can see you.”

Hilton sat and Cross sat on the edge of the bed and held his gun on Hilton.

“I want to know some things, Hilton,” he began.

“Let's be reasonable,” Hilton said. “Let's not be foolish about this. There's no sense in being drastic…”

The man had begun to plead for his life.

“How is it that you care so much for your life and nothing for Bob's?” Cross demanded.

“And what in hell do
you
care for life?” Hilton shot at him.

Cross smiled bitterly. It was a fair question.

“Who do you think
you
are to kill as
you
did?” Hilton demanded. “Herndon's no loss. But Gil was helping you, wasn't he? He took you into his home, trusted you, didn't he? And I shielded you from the cops, didn't I? What are you kicking about, Lane? Let's call it quits.”

“No,” Cross said thoughtfully. “There's something here I want to understand…I'm caught in these
quicksands of compulsive actions, just like you are. But, Hilton, I'm reluctantly in it. I don't like it. I want to get out of it…”

“But killing me isn't going to get you out of it,” Hilton reminded him eagerly, seizing upon every angle to save himself. “The only way out is to
stop
.”

“I won't stop; I can't stop as long as men like you keep playing your dirty, tricky games,” Cross said; and there was a genuine despair in his voice. “I won't ever feel free as long as you exist, even if you are not hunting me down. You and men like you are my enemies. Bob Hunters will go on being shipped to their deaths as long as you live…And don't give me this goddamn argument about your helping me. You help others when it
suits
you, and when it doesn't, you
don't
!”

“That's the law of life,” Hilton stated simply.

“It isn't,” Cross contradicted him in a frenzy that made Hilton's face turn still whiter. “Maybe you're trying to
make
it into a law—”

“It's what I've found, Lane; and it's what you'll find too.”

“I don't believe it,” Cross said, realizing that what Hilton had said was true from the past nature of his own experience. “And even if it's true now, we can change it. We can make it different; it
must
be different…”

“Why?” Hilton asked mockingly.

“Because—Because—”

“You're looking for paradise on earth,” Hilton told him, managing a soft smile. “You're confused, Lane. You're seeking for something that doesn't exist. You want to redeem life on this earth with so-called meaning—But what you see before your eyes is all there is. Get all that idealistic rot out of your head, boy—”

“I'm
not
idealistic,” Cross insisted.

“You are!” Hilton swore. “You're an inverted idealist. You're groping for some overall concept with which to tie all life together. There is none, Lane.” Hilton was struggling to master his fear; he was trying to get at Cross's feelings, trying to make him feel that he was his older brother, that they shared basically the same views of life, and that Cross should accept his guidance. “Living in this world, Lane, is what we make it, and we make what there is of it. Beyond that there's nothing, nothing whatsoever, nothing at all…To think that there's something is to be foolish; to act as if there is something is to be mad…Now, let's do business like rational men. Let's make a deal. You do what you want to do, and I'll do what I want. We'll leave each other alone. I don't give a
damn
what you do…”

But Cross was not moved. He still held the gun on Hilton, smiling a little, appreciating Hilton's tactics. Then he shook his head; he could not accept what he had heard. There was an anchorage somewhere to be found. The logic of Hilton reduced all actions of life to a kind of trading in death. And that was not his sense of it; he had killed, but not to exalt that. He had been trying to find a way out, to test himself, to see, to know; but not killing just to live…

“You don't feel that there is any real justification for anything, hunh, Hilton?”

“Hell, no! I am here, alive, real. That's all the justification there is and will ever be, Lane,” Hilton spoke earnestly, advancing arguments to save his life. “Let's start from that. I let you live and you let me live…”

“Why should I, if there's no justification? And suppose we break our contract?”

“Then one of us dies, that's all. What the hell is there so important about men dying? Tell me. We're not like the goddamn bourgeois, Lane. We don't make deals in
shoes, cotton, iron, and wool…We make deals in human lives. Those are the good deals, the important deals, the history-making deals when they are made in a big way. Sweep your illusions aside, Lane. Get down to what is left, and that is: life, life; bare, naked, unjustifiable life; just life existing there and for no reason and no end. The end and the reason are for us to say, to project. That's all. My wanting to live even in this reasonless way is the only check and guarantee you have that I'll keep my promise.”

“That's not
enough
!” Cross shouted.

“You're a romantic fool!” Hilton shouted in turn. “You're a kid! An idiot! You're just going about spilling blood for no reason at all, looking for what doesn't exist!”

“And what do
you
kill for?” Cross asked tauntingly.

“Practical reasons.”

“And Bob was betrayed to death for practical reasons?”

“Yes. For practical reasons.”

“But they were such trivially practical reasons,” Cross protested, remembering the agony on Bob's face. “Couldn't there be—?”

“A pretense? Why? Look at it simply, Lane. Why fool yourself? I'm speaking to you now out of the depths of my heart. You know and understand too much to go about looking for rainbows. Let's trade. I've no proof against you. If anything ever happens to you, I'll help you; I'll remember and will stand by you. After all, Lane, no matter what plan I had in mind, I wasn't going to kill you—”