Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (19 page)

     
He stared at the fire. Presently, no one
having spoken, he went on, "I don't give a damn what side you're on, if
you have to preface a simple question with a kick in the puss you're a
sonofabitch
in my vocabulary. The papers may think
different. The Navy may think different. That's why I don't mind taking you,
much. But after having my feet burned and my face slapped and watching a girl I
was once kind of fond of being knocked around till she looked like a rag doll
even if she wasn't hurt.... All I can say is I think you're all a bunch of
bastards and if I ever meet any of you afterwards when nobody's looking I'll do
a little beating up of my own, if I have to use a baseball bat to do it. Or are
you going to shoot me when we get back?" He glanced at Mr. Hahn's gun and
at the woman. "Or are you just going to roll me over the side? Figuring
you can beach the boat by yourself once you've got the poor sucker
... ."

     
"Why should we?" The woman
shrugged her shoulders. "You will not dare to talk about it
afterwards."

     
Branch gave her a tired look. "There
you go again. I won't dare. God, are you asking me to run to the authorities?
Telling me what I dare do and what I don't dare do.
Like a
little tin goddess because Andy Gump is holding a gun on me....
No," he said, "I won't talk about it afterwards. I wouldn't want
people to know I'd had any part in lynching a man." He stared at her
angrily as she started to speak. "Don't give me that justice routine at
this time of night. I couldn't stand it."

     
"He is a traitor," she said.
"He stood against his own people."

     
"I don't know," said Branch.
"After all this I'm not throwing stones at anybody. It's too damned easy
to get on the wrong side once you get started...." After a moment, moved
by a vague curiosity, he asked, "You haven't got a picture of him around
that I could see?"

     
He took the snapshot that the woman,
smiling a little, produced. Looking at it, he felt suddenly a little cold in
spite of the heat of the fire. You got to rationalizing it to yourself; you got
to talking in vague magnanimous generalities. Then you saw what you were really
talking about: a dapper, dark, rather small man of about thirty with a
full-lipped, sensuous face and a head too large for his body. She was with him
in the photograph, wearing a fur-trimmed dark suit and a small absurd hat; she
taller than the man by several inches, looking young, long-legged, overdressed
and unsure of herself; somewhat round-shouldered with the effort of reducing
her height to that of the man standing small and polished, erect and certain,
beside her. Beneath the images was written on the glossy emulsion in red wax
pencil: Louis Montclair Duval, Jeannette
Lalevy
Duval,
3/7/41
,
Vichy
.

     
"There is your martyr,
Lieutenant," the woman said softly.

     
Branch returned the photograph. It had not
really changed anything.
   
"Thanks,"
he said. "I've been wondering what the bastard looked like."

     
Mr. Hahn said, "He made money from
it. They made him rich...."

     
Nothing was changed, and Paul
Laflin's
footsteps were ascending the outside stairs with a
rush. They were all silent, waiting. The large young man came in.

     
Madame
Faubel
asked softly, "Well, did you catch her, Paul?"

     
The man in the doorway glanced quickly at
Branch, puzzled by his presence. It was clear that he had seen and drawn
certain conclusions from the open window. Branch allowed his head to move in an
almost imperceptible nod. Paul
Laflin
drew the door
closed and threw a mass of brown fur on the nearest chair: Jeannette Duval's
coat, torn and clotted with mud and wet leaves.

     
"No," he said. "I didn't
catch her. I found her coat where she had dropped it...."

     
"What good is a coat, Paul?" the
woman whispered "You said the cellar would hold them. You said ...
" Her
voice rose. "You said, let them try to
escape,
they would not try more than once. You would be
watching. You would like to see them try, you said, so that you could
discipline them." She rose and walked to where he stood. "Well,
Paul?"

     
The large young man stood looking down at
her. He was feeling very good, guilty but very good, like a puppy that had robbed
the kitchen table. He could hardly keep from grinning. His sweater and trousers
 
were muddy and his face was scratched and he
was quite happy. The woman slapped his face.

     
"Don't, Madame," he said,
rubbing his cheek. "It was my fault, Madame, but ..." He caught her
wrist as she struck at him again and held her effortlessly. "Please don't,
Madame," he pleaded. He caught her other wrist and, suddenly angry, threw
her away from him so that she caromed off a chair and came to hands and knees
on the floor. "She is gone," he said harshly. "She is gone, and
you cannot catch her, so what is the use of fighting about it?"

     
The woman picked herself up, breathless,
looked at him and whirled towards Mr. Hahn. "He has not even had the
decency to remove the lipstick from his face, she whispered
.
"
He let her
go,
Georgesl
He caught her and let her go!" Her hands were clenched into fists and she
was trembling. "He is a traitor, Georges. Shoot him!"

     
Mr. Hahn looked uncomfortable. "Don't
be silly, Madame," he said.

     
The woman looked from one to the other of
the men and stumbled to the couch and, burying her face in the cushions, began
to cry. Presently Paul
Laflin
moved, took the
mistreated fur coat from the chair, brushed the loose dirt from it, and carried
it to the couch and threw it negligently over her.

     
"Well," said Mr. Hahn as he
straightened up, "Well, did you find her ... compatible, Paul?" His
eyes watched the younger man calculatingly.

     
"I let her go, didn't I?" Paul
Laflin
said truculently.

     
"That could have two interpretations,"
Mr. Hahn murmured. "Either she was very good or she was so bad as not to
be worth keeping."

     
"Or perhaps he killed her,"
Branch suggested, eyeing the larger man.

     
Paul
Laflin
licked the lips of his small mouth. "No," he said. "No, I didn't
kill her."

     
Madame
Faubel
continued to cry chokingly. It made Branch nervous to listen to her, and
embarrassed him. He did not like to know that a middle-aged,
grayhaired
woman could cry like that. When you were that
old you should have learned to do almost everything with a reasonable amount of
dignity. A bunch of screwballs he thought, looking from one to the other of the
three of them, just a bunch of screwballs. Mr. Hahn and Paul
Laflin
were talking together in whispers and laughing. He
did not like the sound of their laughter. It was enough to know that it had
happened without hearing it laughed about. He pulled his cap over his eyes and
stretched out his legs and pretended to fall asleep. Paul
Laflin
awakened him, wanting the chair by the fire. He found another chair and put it
where Mr. Hahn directed and tried to sleep in it, but it was not as comfortable
as the first chair.

     
In the morning, without having looked once
at any of the men, Madame
Faubel
went into the
kitchen and, presently, announced that breakfast was ready. They went in to
cold cereal and milk and coffee.

     
It would be wisest," the woman said
suddenly as they were eating, "It would be wisest to go to the boat
now." She sat very stiffly as she spoke, red-nosed and frowsy, the torn
expensive fur coat pulled tightly about her shoulders. Her eyes did not look at
anyone. Paul
Laflin
glanced at her. "She won't
talk," he said.

     
The woman smiled gently. "Did she
promise you, Paul?"

     
Mr. Hahn said, a little uneasily,
"Why should she talk, Madame? The police would take her, also. She has not
so far acted like a young lady with an instinct for martyrdom."

     
"But if they catch her," the
woman said. "Look at this coat. Picture her. After a night in the woods
she is an object; she cannot dare show herself in daylight...."

     
"She did not look so badly," the
younger man said quickly. "The coat had protected her...."

     
"From you
also?"
Madams
Faubel
asked stiffly.

     
Paul
Laflin
flushed. "I say she did not look badly and she was almost to the road and
she will not talk; and I say that with this wind and this temperature I do not
intend to spend an entire day freezing on a boat." He spooned up the last
of his cereal and went out, the opening and closing of the door admitting a
flash of bright sunlight and a draft of cold air.

     
"Paul certainly has a great deal to
say this morning," the woman told Mr. Hahn with an abrupt laugh. After a
pause, the chinless man not smiling, she said, "I suggest that you, after
you have finished, go up to the store and telephone
Constance
if it is not yet too late.
Warn her that she may expect trouble over the suitcase...."

     
"How would Duval know that
Constance
had the suitcase?" Mr.
Hahn objected.

     
"The Lieutenant told her, did you
not, Mr. Branch?"

     
Branch nodded.

     
"You see," Madame
Faubel
said. "She was already planning
... ."

     
'What do you think, Mr. Branch?"

     
The woman dropped her spoon into her bowl
with a clatter. "What does it matter what he thinks,
Ceorges
?"

     
Mr. Hahn did not look at her. "Answer
me, Mr. Branch."

     
"Georges
... !"

     
Branch said carefully, "I think that
she won't talk. But she may go to the hotel, all right, for her clothes."

     
Madame
Faubel
caught the chinless man's wrist. "Listen to me,
Ceorgesl
To
be married to a collaborationist is not officially
a crime. If the police take her she can fear no more than to be deported. And
even if she is deported she will meet no more on the other side than a measure
of unpopularity, as Duval's wife and
Lalevy's
daughter...."

     
"Why do you say she wouldn't talk,
Lieutenant?" Mr. Hahn asked, turning to Branch.

     
"She wouldn't," Branch said.
Then he said, "Well, she might, if she got to her suitcase or got some
fresh clothes somewhere. But not in the clothes she's wearing. It would hurt
her pride to turn up in a police station with runs in her stockings," he
said bitterly. He poured more cereal from the bright cardboard carton and
helped himself to the milk, not looking at either of the other people at the
table.

     
He heard the woman sigh. "Well, so it
is decided she will not talk. But you will warn
Constance
?"

     
"I will stay here and watch this
one," Mr. Hahn said.
"While you go."
Then he said sharply, "Don't Madame. I have my hand in my pocket."

     
Branch glanced up and saw the woman
looking at a small
nickeled
pistol in her hand. She
lifted the gun deliberately and laid it on the table. Her face was gray and
shiny.

     
"Do you wish to keep the gun,
Georges?"

     
"Oh, no!" exclaimed the chinless
man, shocked. "No, I..." He looked uncomfortable and
embarassed
.

     
"I might shoot you in the back."
Madame
Faubel
put the gun away and pushed at her
straggling hair. "Well, if I am going to the store I had better make
myself a little tidy," she said, and went out of the room.

     
Branch watched the chinless man dry his
mustache of milk with a handkerchief and light a cigarette; and he reached into
his pocket for his pipe.

     
"There's too much waving of
guns," he said presently. "I draw the line at guns for breakfast.
My God."