Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (40 page)

“Scott,” Rona said impulsively, “why don’t you go home and get some sleep? Tomorrow, you could see Jon Tyson. Or is your father in town? He could help you.”

“No,” he said harshly. “And I don’t need help.”

“What about Nicholas Orpen?” she asked. It was an admission of her defeat.

“Orpen,” he repeated blankly. For a moment he halted.

“What made you say Orpen?”

“He’s your friend.”

“What made you say Orpen?”

“Perhaps he could help you. That’s all I meant.”

“But you hate Orpen.”

“I’ve distrusted him. He’s a twisted man. I was always afraid of what be could do to you. Perhaps I was jealous of him.” She tried to smile. It was a complete failure, disguising nothing.

“You hate him and yet you’d send me to ask his advice. No, Rona. Tell me the truth.”

“After all,” she said wearily, “you always defended him when I criticised him. So I suppose there’s some good in him, even if I can’t see it.”

They had come to Fifth Avenue, and it was she who stopped now. They stood on the broad sidewalk under the lighted windows of a large apartment house. Across the avenue, there was only the darkness of Central Park, trees massed in heavy shadows, paths lighted by lamps that seemed overpowered by its enormous secrecy.

“I’m tired, Scott.” She glanced down the avenue, stretched before her like a brilliant empty stage waiting for the play to begin, and then back at the quiet street which had brought them here. It was already asleep. A few parked cars. A man, who walked slowly. A speeding taxi. That was all. This part of the city seemed strangely lonely at night as if the silence of the Park reached out beyond its walls. “Which way? Down Fifth?” she asked.

But Scott didn’t move. He was watching her face. “What did I say in your apartment?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing. Nothing I could understand.”

“What did I say about Orpen?”

“Nothing.”

He mastered his anger. He took her arm, grasping it firmly, leading her across Fifth Avenue. “We can talk here,” he said, and he made toward the entrance to the Park.

“It’s silly to walk there at night.” She tried to draw him back from the entrance. “We can talk just as well out on the avenue.”

“Afraid?” he asked. “What are you afraid of? Thieves in the shadows?”

“Scott, it must be after eleven o’clock. We’d better—”

“Isn’t this one of your favourite places?” he asked bitterly. “You think it’s so perfect because it’s pretty to look at! You don’t trust it, do you? In spite of all your fine words, you don’t trust it.” Then he stared over his shoulder, looking across the avenue, back along Sixty-seventh Street. His hand tightened on her arm. “Is that man following us?” His eyes narrowed.

She turned to look. The man she had noticed a few moments ago was almost at the corner opposite them now. “He’s only searching for an address,” she said, watching his movements.

“He was outside your house when I rang your bell. He passed me as I waited,” Scott said quickly. “That was an hour ago.”

“You’re imagining things. Why should anyone follow us?”

“Quick, this way!”

“Scott, are you in some danger?” That would explain everything. Everything.

For his answer, he hurried her down the steps into the Park. “This way,” he said, urging her on.

“Let’s keep to the lighted paths, Scott.”

“This way!” Scott said, looking back over his shoulder as they started to climb a hill. “Yes, there he is—entering the Park now.” He pulled her roughly behind a group of rocks. Trees shadowed them. A thicket of bushes half-encircled them. She stumbled on the uneven ground as they ran. The lighted path was shut from view. Here, there was only darkness.

Scott let go of her arm. She couldn’t see his face clearly. It, too, was lost in the shadows. “What did I say about Orpen?” he asked in a cold hard voice.

She stared through the darkness. “That man who was following us—you lied. He wasn’t following us. You lied to get me here.”

“I’ve
got
to talk to you. Listen to me! What did I tell you tonight in your apartment?”

“And I’m getting good and mad,” she said bitterly. She moved away, but her heel twisted on a loose stone and a thorn branch tore her leg. She stopped. “Scott Ettley, you brought me here. Now take me out of it. I can’t even see properly.”

“I want to know what I said to you tonight. For God’s sake, tell me!”

“Don’t you remember, or is this more play-acting?”

“I must have told you something,” he said grimly. “I’ve got to know.”

“You talked of treachery. Of a man condemned to death.” Her eyes were not yet accustomed to the blackness around her. She made a careful step, and then another. The ground was rough and treacherous; her foot slipped on an outcrop of rock. “Oh, let’s get out of here!”

He didn’t move. “To death?” he asked.

“I can’t remember exactly. You said ‘condemned,’ I know... But doesn’t that mean death?”

He still didn’t move. An animal rustled in the bushes behind her. The trees stirred in the night breeze.

And then she knew. She said slowly, “Is Orpen the traitor?”

She waited, but he didn’t speak. “A traitor to what?” she asked fearfully. She was remembering Scott’s words in her living-room. Suddenly, sense came out of them. A sense that was nonsense. It’s the darkness, she thought, this blackness that blots us out. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. She turned to run.

An arm caught her neck, choking her. A knee twisted her body to the ground, forcing her over on her back. “Scott!” she tried to scream, but the hand that fell over her mouth wasn’t Scott’s. She struggled violently. A strange rough voice said, “She’s a wildcat,” and someone behind her laughed. “More fight than he has,” the laughing voice said.

She let herself fall limp. Then she bit the hand that held her lips, bit savagely and screamed as it fell away from her mouth for a brief moment. The man cursed and tightened his grip on her throat. Someone had seized her arms, pinning them back to the ground. There was a weight on her legs that she couldn’t shift. The smell of sweet hair oil and rancid sweat suffocated her.

And then, suddenly, there was a shot. Shots repeated, echoing, splitting the shadows. A cry of warning. The weight was lifted from her body. The hands had left her. Feet were running. Shouts. A whistle blew, piercing, shrill.

She lay in the darkness, crying. Then she sat up slowly. Someone helped her. A man said kindly, “You’re all right now. You’re safe. Take it easy. Easy. That’s it.”

“Sick—I feel sick,” she said. The smell of hair oil and sweat, the groping hands...

“Take it easy,” the man’s voice said gently. And then, later, “Now, here’s your coat.” He tried to fasten the torn coat round her bare shoulders. “You’re all right now,” he said again. He waited until she had covered herself, and then he switched on a flashlight, turning the beam away from her.

“Scott...” she said. “Scott?”

“He’s all right, too,” the voice said, but there was a subtle change in it. Slowly, painfully, she looked up. Scott was sitting near her, motionless, his head bowed, his face covered by his hands.

Then she looked at the stranger who knelt beside her. His grey hat was pushed to the back of his head, his dark-browed face was watching her anxiously.

A clatter of feet came over the rocks, and a man in filthy tattered clothes appeared, carrying a heavy flashlight and Rona’s handbag.

“Don’t worry. He’s a disguised cop,” the man beside her said. “He’s the one who fired the shot.”

“We got one. The other two we’ll get later,” the Park policeman said. “They dropped this.” He held up the handbag, smiling reassuringly. “Guess they didn’t have enough time to take anything.” He turned the light he carried on Scott Ettley. “Next time you want some necking stay where it’s safe, will you?”

“Yes,” the man beside Rona said. “If she hadn’t screamed, we’d never have reached her.”

Scott Ettley raised his head and stared at him. “So you were following me?” he said.

“I wasn’t following you a goddamned bit,” the man said. He glanced at Rona, and helped her to rise. “Okay?” he asked her, steadying her.

She nodded.

“That’s the way,” the man said encouragingly. Goddammit, he thought, I nearly mucked up this assignment. Keep an eye on her, they said. So I did. Three days and nothing happens. And then this boy-friend comes along and practically ends her career for her. What would that have looked like on my report?

Scott Ettley rose slowly. “Rona,” he said.

She only looked at him.

“Are you all right, Rona?”

She began to laugh. And then, just as suddenly, she fell silent. “Yes,” she said at last. “I’m all right. Are you disappointed?”

The two men beside her exchanged glances. Hysterical, they seemed to say.

“Are you disappointed, Scott? Isn’t this what you wanted?” She turned away from him. “Please take me home,” she said to the strangers.

Scott Ettley moved over to stop her. “Rona...”

“What he can’t have he destroys,” she said, looking at him and yet talking of him as if he weren’t there.

“Look, Bud, let us handle this,” the policeman said quietly to Ettley. “I guess you aren’t too popular around here at the moment.” Not even hurt, he thought as he watched the young man’s white face, not even a scratch on him that shows. What the hell had he been doing? You couldn’t blame this girl for the bitterness of her words. “We’ll get to the station and you can give us a description of your wallet. I don’t suppose you could identify the men?”

“Easy now,” the man with the grey hat was saying. His arm was round Rona, helping her toward the path. The policeman in the tramp’s clothes hurried ahead to shine the flashlight on the ground before her feet. “I’ve sent a patrol car,” he said. “We’ll get you home soon, miss. See, there it is down at the gate.”

Then he turned to make sure that the young man was following. But there was no one behind them. He swung his lamp back over the hillside. There was nothing to see except the dark stretches of the Park, now silent, innocent.

22

That Friday evening was a quiet one at the Tysons’, for the end of the term was approaching, and Jon’s students were putting in a few last despairing hours at their lecture notes. Paul Haydn was the only visitor to arrive. He came at nine o’clock as he had promised, and tried to hide his disappointment when he discovered that Rona wasn’t going to be there.

“She had some work to finish,” Peggy explained.

“Did you tell her I was coming up to see you?” Paul asked with a smile.

“Of course not,” Peggy said, but she didn’t lie expertly. She looked round for help. There was none—Jon had gone through to the kitchen to struggle with the ice tray. She watched Haydn’s face for a moment. Then she said, “Paul, did you ever think that Scott Ettley might blame you for the end of his engagement to Rona?”

“I’m flattered.” He looked at Peggy with amused disbelief.

“But Scott always has to blame something. I’ve never yet heard him blame himself. And Rona wouldn’t want to encourage any suspicion he has about you.”

“In case we had a fight on Fifth Avenue?” Paul asked.

“Well, Scott can be very hot-tempered.”

“He’s a cold fish to me.”

“You’re prejudiced, I’m afraid.”

“Sure, I’m prejudiced.” And this is one prejudice I’m not going to lose, either. He said suddenly: “Do you like Ettley?”

“This isn’t a good time to ask me that. At the moment, I’d like to shake him until his teeth rattled.”

“He has a fine set of teeth to rattle,” Paul said. “Or to have knocked down his throat.”

Peggy began to laugh. “You and Jon agree, then. I’ve never seen Jon so mad as he has been this last week.” She paused, and the smile left her face. “But perhaps this will all blow over, perhaps this will all come out right in the end.” She studied the rug at her feet. She reached down and picked up a forlorn alphabet block that was hiding at the edge of the couch.

Paul said, “You mean they may still get married?” He hadn’t thought of that. Yet it could happen. If Ettley had any good sense, it would happen. He searched gloomily for a cigarette and seemed to be concentrating on lighting it.

“I don’t know,” Peggy said frankly. “After all, you don’t love a man for almost three years of your life and then slip away from him in one week. I suppose you keep thinking that it’s all wrong for three years of your life to mean nothing at all. And so you keep hoping that everything can be changed back to the way it was when you were happy.”

“But can people change back?”

Peggy didn’t answer. She was listening intently, her head tilted slightly, her brow worried. Then, reassured, she said, “Sorry—I thought that was Bobby calling. What did you say, Paul?”

“I wondered if people could change back.” He marvelled at the way a woman could worry on two different planes at the same time while she carried on a conversation at a third level.

“No, I suppose they can’t,” she admitted. “Not unless they can unthink all the thoughts they’ve had, or undo all the actions they’ve taken.”

“Or untie all the knots in your oratory, honey,” Jon said, carrying a tray of drinks into the room. “What’s this all about anyway?”

“Scott Ettley, mostly,” Peggy said.

“Oh!” Jon looked around for a place where he might set the tray. “How do you like Peggy’s new dress, Paul? She put it on when she heard you were coming here tonight.”

“Now, Jon,” Peggy said, embarrassed, rising to clear a space on the coffee table. “We’ve always got so much stuff lying around here,” she added, almost to herself.

“Sorry, I forgot,” Jon said, rescuing his books and periodicals to carry them to his desk. “But what’s a table for, anyway, if it isn’t to dump things on?”

“It’s a very smart dress,” Paul said tactfully. “Green suits you.”

“It used to,” said Peggy, “but one of the depressing things tonight was that I’ve decided I look awful in green now.” And I worked so hard on this damned dress, she thought. Nine dollars and seventy-five cents for the material. Nearly ten whole dollars.

“Well,” Paul said, looking round the quiet room, stretching himself comfortably in his chair, and trying to look as undepressed as possible, “this is a cosy place. I envy you both. And you’re wrong about green, Peggy. You look good in it.” He raised his glass.