Black Curtain (16 page)

As he stepped out into the darkness, she whispered after him reproachfully: "I can't for the life of me understand how you should come to get mixed up like that and not be able to find the way out."

He only answered that inwardly, after he was at a safe distance: "Because I was never in there before."

20

There was a certain tree down around the turn of the footpath which they had agreed upon as the safety zone beyond which he ought not to venture. They called it their meeting post. He used to go down and wait beside it for her to come along the path.

She'd come along a mottled tunnel of light and shade, one minute yellow disks of sunlight falling on her through the leaves, the next cool blue shade. He used to amuse himself by watching her. slow progress down this long alley. Whatever the old man in the chair got first, she would get a moment later as she passed under the same place in turn; they never both got the same thing at once, sunlight or shade.

She'd see him from way up ahead, since he wasn't trying to hide, was just standing there openly, and she'd always go through the same little performance. First a guarded look backwards to make sure she wasn't being followed or seen from a distance; then his greeting, a pendulumlike swing of her hand, a little over her head, two on three times. She could make a passage of her hand, like that, seem as tenderly adoring as a kiss somehow exchanged across yards of open distance. And then finally, as he'd take a step or two forward each time, she'd always warn him back with a forbidding shake of her head, and scold him for it when she'd reached him.

"I've told you -not- to do that! Even this is too far out for you to come! One of these days when we least expect it, there's going to be someone drifting around over there; it always happens that way!"

But he had no time to worry about that now; he had something on his mind.

First he scrutinized the old man carefully. The eyes kept flickering up at him. "He's still doing it," he said to her. There was relief in his voice,

"He doesn't do it to a soul back at the house. I've been watching him closely, ever since you first called my attention to it."

"You didn't mention it to any of them, did you?"

"Of course not, what do you think!"

When they had reached the shack entrance, he said: "Did you get me those things I asked you for?"

"I went down to the village this morning. I've got them here in the side of the chair." She passed them to him singly. "Here's a pad of paper, and here's a couple of pencils. And here's the little pocket memorandum book. Is this the kind you wanted? I looked them over very carefully, and this has all those things printed on the first few pages. The capitals of the forty-eight states and stuff about the tides and the moon and birthstones and what to do for sunstroke and snakebite--"

"Well, I don't want any of -that- stuff, but I do want--" He leafed through it hastily. "Yes, it's here. Now I'm going to take him inside with me. Let me know when your time's up. You stay out here until then and keep your eye on the path."

She had a disappointed look, as though--well, if it were at all logical for an attractive, ablebodied young girl to be jealous of a man of seventy paralyzed from head to foot, it would have been that kind of look. "But what're you going to do? You haven't even told me yet."

"I'm going to try something, and if it works out, I'll tell you what it is afterward. If it doesn't, then that wasn't it anyway, so what's the good of worrying you with it?"

He wheeled the chair in after him. From then on there wasn't a sound from within the shack. How could there be? Whatever the means of communication he was trying to open up with this living tomb, it had to be a silent one.

She stepped inside the doorway about an hour and a half later, stood watching the two of them for a puzzled moment. Townsend had the old man's chair turned around so that the light from outside fell full on his face. He had the stenographer's pad that she had got him open on his knee, was rapidly streaking marks on it, eyes attentively on the old man's, furling the pages around one by one as his jumping pencil got to the bottom of them.

"What're you doing, trying to take down his -winks- in shorthand?" she exclaimed. "Does it -work?- Are you getting anything out of them that way?"

"I can't tell yet. I'm just notching them down as they come."

"But how can you do that? Isn't every wink just like every other wink?"

"That's what I'm hoping to find out. If it is, then I'm just wasting my time. But he keeps on sending 'em; he hasn't stopped once since he's been in here. There must be -some- coherent message in them, and that's what I'm trying for. I'll work on this tonight, when I'm alone--"

"Dan, you'll have to let me have him now. I gave you as much time as I could, but I'm way overdue for lunch, and I don't want to get them suspicious, they'll wonder what's been keeping me."

He got up, wheeled the chair out to the open for her. "Try to get back with him this afternoon if you can."

"But even if you do get some kind of language out of his blinking at you--what good will that do?"

"Maybe none at all," he said. "But if there's anything he can tell me, I've got to know it."

"Don't come any farther than this. They might be out looking for me. I'm thirty minutes late now. Wait a minute, this'll be good for an out." She nipped at the stem winder of her cheap little wrist watch, set the hands back. "My watch was half an hour slow." She stroked her lips fleetingly across his, grabbed the handle bar of the chair from him. "Hang on tight, Mr. Emil! I'm afraid you're going to have a rough ride back."

Townsend stood there by the tree, watching her down the leafy alley. Now the disks of sunlight and patches of shade didn't gently alternate down on her; they streaked in one continuous, blurred line like a striped tiger pelt, she was running so fast.

Suddenly the end of the alley showed blank and she was gone.

She returned that afternoon, although so long after her usual time that he'd given up hoping for her. He could tell at sight that she was frightened, something was worrying her. He went out to her.

"What's the matter? Did something happen?"

"I don't like the way she's acting. I'm afraid we're going to be in for it. She's caught on there's something up, I could swear to it!"

"Why, did she say anything?"

"She doesn't have to. I know hen well enough by now. She wouldn't anyway. She's lived by her wits all her life herself. She knows all the signs. She doesn't give any warning. I wouldn't have dared come back here now, only I heard the shower going up in her room, and by the time she gets through putting on the last coat of shellac afterwards, it'll be another two hours. We'll have, to do something, Danny; you better clear out of here before--"

"Well just what makes you think she's suspicious?"

"She was at her melon already by the time I got him to the table. I gave her the stall about my watch being slow, and she didn't say a word. Then when she got up, she moved around the table on her way out of the room. Before I knew what she was doing she'd stopped by his chair and picked up that damn book I've been packing back and forth with me, pretending to read aloud to him all these days. It was a trap, and I'd never tumbled to it the whole time. I'd selected a good long one, -War and Peace-, to make my spending so much time out of the house with him seem plausible. It has one of those old-fashioned ribbon markers, you know the kind, that you pass between the pages to keep your place. Well, she opened it and looked. Then she said, 'You're a slow reader, Ruth. A remarkably slow reader.' And she sort of fixed her eyes on me, and honestly, Dan, they were like daggers pinning me down. 'Or perhaps,' she said, 'you're reading backwards,' and then she went on out of the room. I only caught on what it was when I opened it and looked myself, afterwards. There was a little dab of lipstick on the page, so small you could hardly see it. Her kind. She must have done it days ago, and like a fool I've let the marker stay in the same place ever since."

"That's not so good," he said slowly.

"What're we going to do, Dan? I don't think we're going to have very much more time. I'm scared about her and I think it's going to rain. Then I can't bring him out here."

"All right, I'll work fast, see if I can finish up what I'm doing this afternoon, at one more sitting."

He had barely touched pencil to pad, his eyes on the old man's face, when she came floundering in again, incoherent with sudden discovery. "Oh my God, Danny! Coming straight for here! I caught a flash of her through the trees! Give him to me! Give him to me, quick!" She almost overturned the chair, wrenching it out after her backwards. He started after her. "No, you haven't time to get out the door, she'd spot you through the trees, she's too close--"

He funneled up the litter of loose sheets of paper with a great double sweep of his arms, then opened his coat and buttoned it over them, holding them in place with both hands on the outside, as though he had a cramp in his middle. It was impossible to get up through that hole into the loft above, the ladder had been removed. He stepped in behind the door, which was folded back inward against the wall.

Ruth must have had just time enough to fling herself back on the campstool and split open the book that had pointed the way to suspicion, before the intruder came upon her.

Only a woman could have hit the exact right note of impromptu casualness. "Oh, here's Miss Alma, see?" she cooed for her patient's benefit. "Coming to find out what we're doing all the way over here."

There was a brief silence, then the familiar scratchy contralto sounded at Ruth's side. "Well, what -are- you doing, now that you mention it?"

"Oh, I found this place quite by accident one day, weeks ago," Ruth answered, then nervously elaborated. "D'you remember that fierce downpour we had? I'd strayed too far from the house to get back in time to avoid getting drenched, so I ran like anything to get in where the trees were good and thick--and here it was, just made to order. I've been coming back ever since." She ended rather lamely.

"It hasn't been raining ever since," the other voice mentioned dryly. "Or has it?"

He heard Ruth give a disarming little laugh, assuming a placid obtuseness that refused to take note of the veiled thrust. She had to, there was no other choice. "When it gets too hot, it comes in just as handy, I wheel him in there to get him out of the sun."

"There's plenty of shade around outside." The other voice was toneless. It waited a moment, then added: "What's the inside like?" It was an obvious challenge intended to test the girl's reaction. It worked.

He heard a dull thwack as the book suddenly toppled to the ground. The pitch of Ruth's voice was too strident at first, before she could iron it out. "Oh, there's nothing to see--"

The threshold creaked slightly, as with the pressure of a single step. Then nothing more. She was looking, but she already knew enough not to come in very far.

Ruth was still talking to her oblivious back, trying to anesthetize the discovery that was imminent. "I've been fixing myself up little snacks in there, with some things I brought out from the pantry." Another deprecating laugh that sounded hopeless. "I don't know why I get so hungry between meals! I must have a tapeworm."

"I've heard of that," the voice said, deadly level as ever. "That's when one person eats enough for two, isn't it?"

She was still standing there, her eyes taking in everything. And you don't look that long at the interior of a neglected shack unless you're sure there's something to be seen.

A whiff of gardenia filtered through the seam of the reversed door. The back of it was flattening his nose, and he daren't try to evade the pressure. Couldn't have even if he had wanted to.

So close it was a wonder they couldn't hear one another's breathing. What was she standing there so long for? Wasn't she ever going to move? Perhaps she had already decided that it was better not to see anything. That seemed even more dangerous.

She spoke again. Poised daggers for syllables. "Quite homey."

She nudged something with the toe of her shoe; it gave out a tinny sound. "You seem to have gotten quite a kick out of playing house out here by yourself."

Ruth's voice was completely self-possessed enough. It was the answer itself that sounded absurd. "It's sort of fun to fix up an old place and make believe it's your own--"

"Like Marie Antoinette at Trianon." And then with an almost imperceptible change of key, "I always did wonder whom she used to meet there."

Neither of the two women said anything more.

Only her breathing told him she was still there. Suddenly a pinkish scallop had adhered to the door edge, within a hair's breadth of his vised-in face. Four of her five fingers had curled about it, as if on the point of drawing it out.

The nails were like scarlet obsidian daggers. There was a ring on one of the fingers, and it was so close to his eye that the moderate-sized diamond it contained was blurred to the size of a walnut.

He couldn't get his head any farther away from them, the angle of the door joining the frame narrowed too much to admit it. Even in the mere act of flexing her fingers to withdraw them, there was a very good chance of their striking the skin of his cheek.