Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (50 page)

But Orpen didn’t move. He was still standing in the middle of the room, his face now calm, expressionless.

Paul looked at Rona. She was waiting on the narrow platform of the fire escape, shrinking back against the wall of the house as she stared down through the skeleton steps and the thin iron struts. He hauled himself through the window, and stood beside her.

“I’m scared,” she said, shutting her eyes for a moment, steadying herself against the railing. “It shakes,” she said, “Paul, it shakes!”

“I’ll go first. Don’t look down. I’ll count the steps for you. Here’s my hand.”

She slipped off her high-heeled shoes. “No good twisting an ankle,” she said, now keeping her voice equally calm. She put out her hand and grasped his.

There were men down in the yard. And Brownlee.

“Where’s Orpen?” Brownlee asked.

“Making up his mind. We’ll have to go back and pull him out.”

“Damn his eyes,” Brownlee said, and started on his way up the fire escape.

“Hey you, come back here!” a voice shouted from the courtyard, but Brownlee climbed on. From the street, came the clanging of fire engines. And now other men were mounting the fire escape, carrying axes.

* * *

In the street, the ladders were up and hoses were playing on the fourth floor and roof.

The superintendent, blackened and red-eyed, said wearily, “We held it back with extinguishers and sand and a stirrup pump. It didn’t get downstairs. But the top landing is a mess and the firemen are worried about the roof. These old houses are dry—they go up quickly.” He looked at the tenants grouped in a worried huddle beyond the fire engines. “No one hurt, thank God. They got enough warning. But there’s been a lot of damage. Who’s going to pay for it?” He cursed Orpen silently. Then he looked at Rona. “We’ll follow Orpen when he comes down,” he said to Paul. “We’ve got men out back and in front. Pity we hadn’t the goods on him so that we could have arrested him this morning.
And
picked up some of his papers. There must be some valuable stuff up there.” He looked at the fourth floor again and his mouth tightened.

Paul said, “I’m taking Miss Metford to her sister’s. Tell Brownlee when you see him. I hope to God he’s all right.”

“He can take care of himself.”

“Who started the fire, anyway?”

“We got
him
,” the superintendent said grimly. “He’s just another stooge. He lost his head. That fire was useless the moment we got suspicious of him.”

“Pretty drastic measure to make sure of Orpen,” Paul said. “There are other ways.”

“It’s my guess they wanted to destroy something he has got stored away in his room. After all, he could always walk down that fire escape. But there’s something up there that they don’t want to fall into our hands.” He turned to Rona. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the moment you went up there this morning, and stayed—well, that was when they decided they could take no more chances.” He half-smiled as he looked at the girl with the wide dark eyes. And I’m talking too much, too, he thought suddenly. There’s nothing like a fire and a fright to loosen up one’s tongue. “Did Orpen say much?” he asked more casually.

Rona shook her head.

“Later,” Paul said quickly to the superintendent. “Later.” He gave the man a nod, as much as to say
You know where to find us
. He made way for Rona through the curious crowd that had gathered so quickly and spontaneously.

“Oh, it isn’t much,” one woman said, disappointed. “Look, they’re winding up the hoses.”

“Some men are still on the roof,” her companion said hopefully. “They’ve got their axes. Ever seen the way they start swinging those axes when they think anything is smouldering? My God, they do as much damage as the fire. Last fall, September, no, it was October, my aunt’s kitchen caught fire. No, I’m a liar, it was September...”

* * *

They heard Brownlee calling “Paul!” as they neared Third Avenue. They turned to see him running along the street toward them, his suit stained and torn at the knee, his hair dishevelled, his excited face streaked with sweat and smoke. He caught up with them, looked at Rona and clapped his hand on Paul’s shoulder. He regained his breath painfully. “Paul—” he began, then as he looked at Rona he hesitated. He controlled his excitement. “I’ll ’phone you at the Tysons’?” he asked Paul. “That’s where you are taking her now?”

Paul nodded, watching Roger Brownlee carefully.

Rona was watching him, too. She said quietly, “Orpen is dead.”

Brownlee stared at her. Then he nodded.

Rona turned away and began walking to the corner. Once, she glanced over her shoulder at the house with its broken windows and blackened roof. “It was the telephone call,” she said. “He was so sure. So sure they’d believe his lie. He almost believed it, himself. When they didn’t, he admitted his guilt... To them. Not to us.”

Paul Haydn didn’t even try to make sense of what she was saying. He must make her think of something else.

“Barbara,” he said suddenly, “we’ll go and collect Barbara.”

“Barbara? Oh, yes...” Then she said, half to herself, “There’s always a Barbara, isn’t there?” Her pace quickened.

He hailed a taxi on Third Avenue. The streets were alive with traffic. People dressed in fresh bright clothes filled the sidewalk.

“And Bobby...” Rona was saying. “We must call the hospital.” She was entering her own world again.

“Yes, we’ll do that,” Paul said reassuringly. “By the way, did you get a doctor for that throat of yours? What did he say?”

Rona almost smiled. “I wasn’t to talk much,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll do the talking for the rest of today,” he said. He smiled, too. But as he lit a cigarette, his hands were unsteady, and he found he couldn’t talk. All he could do was to sit silently beside Rona in the taxi, to pretend not to be watching her face.

As they approached the street where Rona’s apartment lay, she looked at him. “I’ll need some clothes,” she said. “I can’t go on borrowing Peggy’s.”

He redirected the cab driver. “Shall I wait down here?” he asked her, as the taxi drew up at her door. “Or shall I come up and telephone the hospital while you pack?”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want to go up alone.” She looked at the steps and hesitated. She thought, this is the first memory I destroy, this is the first piece of self-pity to be discarded. She went up the front steps, opened the door, and started climbing the stairs. Last night, she began to think in spite of herself, last night... But Paul’s voice was behind her, making small jokes, asking questions, forcing her to listen to him, drawing her thoughts away from everything except the present.

Even his voice, telephoning in the hall, reassured her. She snapped the lock of the small suitcase quickly, made certain that she had packed everything she needed, and then went to join him in the hall. I’ll sub-let this apartment, she was thinking, I never want to sleep here again.

“It’s good news?” she asked Paul, seeing the relief on his face, the real smile in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “The worst is over, now.” He took the suitcase.

She stood for a moment, looking at the hall. It’s all over, she was thinking, the worst and the best. All over. Then under the shadow of the hall table, she saw something. She picked it up. It was Scott’s hat. This was where he had dropped it last night...

“Will it ever be over?” she cried suddenly, her face tense, her body stiff with fear. She threw the hat away, and turned and ran into the kitchen. She began to cry, at first quietly and then with a deep terrifying sobbing.

Paul dropped the suitcase. He followed her, and halted at the door. I may lose her forever, he thought. If I do what I want to do, I may lose her forever. He remembered the fear in her arm as he had held it in Orpen’s room, the way she had taken her hand so quickly from his as they reached the foot of the fire escape, the refusal of all physical help, all physical touch.

I may lose her forever, he thought again. But he stepped forward and took her in his arms. He felt the warmth of her slender body, saw the soft dark hair and the white brow, the curve of the smooth cheek. He stood, holding her, until the sobs had quieted. And even when she had stopped crying, they stood together in silence.

At last, she drew back. She looked up at him, then. She saw the worry in his eyes, the drawn lines at the side of his mouth. He turned away abruptly and went into the hall. He stood waiting for her at the door, the suitcase in his hand. He avoided her eyes. And when he spoke, his voice was studiedly impersonal.

You’re a fool, he was thinking, a fool to be afraid you might lose her. You never had her to lose.

By the time the long ride to the Tysons’ apartment was over, he believed that. But he had control of his emotions again, and he could force a smile and even make a joke or two.

I’ll wait at the apartment, he decided, until Jon arrives to take charge. And then I’ll fade out. But this time—and he was thinking of that morning—this time, I’ll stay out.

27

“It will take about six weeks,” Jon was saying to Roger Brownlee and Paul Haydn. “Then Bobby will be up and around. If all goes well,” he added. But it’s got to go well, it’s got to... At least, Bobby now had a chance. Last night, he hadn’t even that. Only twenty hours ago—Jon glanced at the clock disbelievingly. And then he became aware again of his visitors. “Sorry,” he said, “I’ve been talking ever since you got here. I guess I’m sort of lightheaded.” He smiled apologetically and brought over the drinks he had poured. “God!” he said suddenly. “A disaster hits like a cyclone, doesn’t it?” And when you get through it, you can’t quite believe that this was really you, in a certain place, at a certain time. He looked at the clock again and shook his head.

“I won’t stay long,” Brownlee said. “I only—”

“No, no. It wasn’t that,” Jon said quickly. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to twenty hours of my life. But there’s no answer to that, is there?”

“Except that you got through them,” said Brownlee. He glanced at Paul Haydn, who was silent. Ever since Brownlee had arrived, Paul had scarcely spoken. “I hope I didn’t trouble you by coming up here, but I decided against phoning my news to Paul. I thought I’d better see him to tell him what happened this afternoon. And frankly,” he admitted, looking at Paul, “I wanted to find out how Rona was. I’ve got a lot of guilt about her. She ran into more trouble than any one of us could have guessed.”

“Rona seems much better than I expected,” Jon said. “In fact, I’m a bit amazed. But women are...” Again he shook his head helplessly. He was thinking of Peggy.

“Yes,” Brownlee agreed. “I remember a Frenchman telling me during the war—he had been connected with the Resistance in occupied France—that the biggest surprise to him in the whole campaign had been the women. They could take more punishment than men. He’d send a girl on a dangerous mission—they did a lot of night courier jobs—and she’d run into trouble, nothing too serious but just enough to fray a man’s nerves into making a false move, and she’d not only get through her brush with the Gestapo, but next morning she’d be standing in her kitchen, trying to cook a dinner and blaming the Boches for the scarcity of vegetables.”

Paul Haydn said, half-angrily, “It isn’t as easy as that.” If the Frenchman had been in love with the girl, he wouldn’t have talked so glibly about her.

“The Frenchman didn’t say it was easy,” Brownlee said, watching Haydn. “He only admitted he wouldn’t have been in a state of mind to remember what went into a soup pot.”

Jon looked in the direction of the hall. “Listen!” he said gently. Barbara was having supper in the kitchen. She was laughing, that long series of rippling gurgles which drew a smile even at this distance to the faces of the men in the living-room. “Rona’s cooking seems kind of comic,” Jon said.

“She’s going to stay here meanwhile?” Brownlee asked. “What are your plans for the summer?”

“I’ve decided to take that job at summer school, after all.” Doctors’ fees, hospital bills—insurance was never enough, somehow. “Peggy can take the children to the country as we arranged. That will be the best thing for Bobby. It might be a good thing for Rona too. But then, there’s her job at
Trend
... It all depends on what she decides to do. She’s welcome to stay with us as long as she wants. In fact, we need her.”

“That sounds like a solution,” Brownlee said. One solution, he thought, as he looked at Paul Haydn. “What’s worrying you, Paul?” he asked frankly.

“Is she still in any danger? From Orpen’s friends?” That isn’t the only thing that’s worrying you, Brownlee thought. He answered evenly, “She might have been. But Orpen’s dead. And anything he told her won’t be important now. We know more than he had time to tell her. And they know that we know.”

There was a pause. Jon was looking startled, as if he hadn’t realised that there might still be danger for Rona.

Paul stared gloomily at a faded rose on the carpet.

“Judge for yourself, Paul,” Brownlee said. “Here’s the story I came to tell you. Perhaps it will stop you worrying. When I left you and Rona, I pounded my way up the fire escape. It took a little time, for I’m no good at heights, and it was a rickety kind of staircase. Normally, I wouldn’t have climbed it for a fifty-dollar bet.” He lit a cigarette and his face became serious, although there was still a touch of humour in his voice. “I reached the window, and scrambled in with some difficulty, and ruined a perfectly good suit. But Orpen didn’t seem to be appreciative of my efforts. He ignored me completely. He was rushing between the two rooms, selecting papers and books, thrusting them into a suitcase. I must say the humour of the situation struck me—here were his friends trying to smoke him out, and there was I, one of the people who hate his guts, trying to persuade him to get down that fire escape. The door was beginning to kindle, and little leaps of flame were running along the cracks. In a few minutes, the whole door would go up in a sheet of fire. But he didn’t see the funny side, at all. He didn’t even see that, if I had come to steal his damned suitcase, I should have knocked him on the head and made off with it down the fire escape. True, I was interested in the suitcase. But I was much more interested in Comrade Orpen himself. He was worth fifty suitcases. Perhaps he knew that.”