Waltz Into Darkness (15 page)

Suddenly
she seemed to become aware of him. She halted for a moment and was
looking straight across at him. Or seemed to be. He heard the
high-pitched bleat of her laughter, in all that din, at sight of his
comic face. She flung her arm out at him derisively. Then turned and
went on again.

He
plunged into the maelstrom, and like a drowning man trying to keep
his head above water, was engulfed, swept every way but the way he
wanted to go.

At
last a Viking in a horned helmet, one of the links in the impeding
chain, took pity on him.

"He
sees someone he likes," he shouted jocularly. "It's Mardi
Gras, after all. Let him through." And with brawny arms raised
like a drawbridge for a moment, let him duck under them to the other
side.

She
was still intermittently in sight, but far down ahead. Like a light
blue cork bobbing in a littered sea.

"Julia!"

She
turned ful'y this time, but whether at sound of the name or simply
because of the strength of his voice could not have been determined.

He
saw her crouch slightly, as if taunting him to a mock chase. A chase
in which there was no terror, only playfulness, coquetry, a
deliberate incitement to pursuit. A moment later she had fled away
deftly, slipping easily in and out because of her small size. But
looking back every now and again.

It
was obvious she didn't know who he was, but thought him simply an
anonymous pursuer from out of the Mardi Gras, someone to have sport
with. Once when he thought he had lost her altogether, and would have
had she willed it so, for she purposely halted aside in a doorway and
remained there waiting for him to single her out once more. Then when
he had done so, and there could be no mistake, she drew out her
clown-like suit wide at the sides, dipped him a mocking curtsey, and
sped on again.

At
last, with àne more backward look at him, as if to say:
"Enough of this. I've set a high enough price on your
approaching me. Now have your way with me, whatever it is to be,"
she turned aside from the main stream of the revelers and darted down
a dimly lighted alley.

He
reached its mouth in turn moments later, and could still see the
paleness of her light blue garb running ahead in the gloom. He turned
and went in. There were no more obstacles here, nothing to keep him
back. In a minute or two he had overtaken her, and had her back
against the wall, his raised arms, planted against it, a barrier on
either side of her.

She
couldn't speak. She was too winded. She leaned back against the wall,
in expectation of dalliance, the fruits of the chase now to be
enjoyed alike by both of them. He could make out the pale blue mask
shimmering there before him in the dark.. The red and yellow glare of
torches was kept to the mouth of this side street, this byway; it
couldn't reach in to where they were. It was twilight dim. It was the
very place for it--

He
tried to lift the mask from her face and she warded him off, shunting
her head aside. She tittered a little, and fanned herself limply with
her own hand, to create additional air for breath.

"Julia,"
he panted full into her face. "Julia."

She
tittered again.

"Now
I've got you."

He
looked around where the light was, where the crowd was still
streaming by, as if in measurement.

Then
his hand fumbled under his clothing and he took out the bone-handled
pistol he'd carried with him throughout the Mardi Gras. She didn't
see it for a moment, it was held low, below the level of their eyes.

Then
he pulled at his own false face, and it fell to the ground.

"Now
do you know me, Julia? Now do you see who I am?"

His
elbow backed, and the gun went out away from her, to find room. It
clicked as he thumbed back the hammerhead.

It
came forward again. It found that empty place, where in others a
heart was known to be.

Then
he ripped ruthlessly at the eye-mask and pared it from her. The hood
went back with it, and the blonde hair was revealed. She saw the gun
at the same time that he saw her face fully.

"No,
doan', mister, doan'--" she whimpered abjectly. "I din'
mean no harm. I was jes foolin', jes foolin'--" She tried to
grovel to the ground, but the taut closeness of his arms kept her up
in spite of herself.

"Why,
you're a--you're a--"

"Please,
mister, I cain't help it if I doan' match up right--"

There
was a sodden futile impact as the bone-handled gun fell beside him to
the ground.

24

The
room was a still life. Forget-me-nots on pink wallpaper in the
background. In the foreground a table. On the table a reeking
tumbler, an overturned bottle drained to its dregs, a prone head.
Nothing moved. Nothing had feeling, or awareness.

A
still life entitled "Despair."

25

The
Commissioner of Police of the city of New Orleans was the average man
of his own métier, no more, no less. Fifty-seven years of age,
weight two hundred and one pounds, height five feet ten, silver-black
hair, now growing bald, caracul-like beard, parted in two, a poor
dresser, high principled, but not beyond the point of normalcy, a
hard worker, married, obliged to use spectacles only when reading,
and subject to a mild form of kidney trouble. Not brilliant, but not
dull; the former certainly more of a disqualification in a public
civil servant than the latter.

His
office, in the Police Headquarters Building, was not particularly
prepossessing, but since it was not for social usage but strictly for
work, this doubtless was of no great moment. It had a certain fustian
atmosphere which was perhaps inescapable in an administrative
business office of its type. Ivory wallpaper rapidly turning brown
with age (and unevenly so) adhered to the walls, with pockets and
bulges where it had warped; it dated at least from the Van Buren
administration. A green carpet, faded sickly yellow, covered the
floor. A gaslight chandelier of four burners within reversed
tulipshaped soapy-iridescent glass cups hung from the ceiling. The
commissioner's desk, massed with papers, was placed so that he sat
with his back to the window and those he interview&j had the
disadvantage of the light in their faces.

His
secretary opened the door, closed it at his back, and then announced:
"There's a gentleman out here to see you, sir."

The
commissioner looked up only briefly from a report he was considering.
"About what? Have him state his business," he said in a
rumbling deep-welled baritone.

The
secretary retired, conferred, returned.

"It's
a personal matter, for your ears alone, sir. I suggested he write,
but he claims that cannot be done either. He begs you to give him
just a moment of your time."

The
commissioner sighed unwillingly. "All right. Interrupt us in
five minutes, Harris. Make sure of that, now."

The
secretary held the door back, motioned permission with two upraised
fingers, and an old man entered. A haggard, dejected, beaten old man
of thirty-seven.

The
secretary withdrew to begin his five-minute count.

The
commissioner put aside the report he had been consulting, nodded with
impersonal civility. "Good day, sir. Will you be as brief as
possible? I have a number of matters here--" He swept an arm
rather vaguely past his own desk top.

"I'll
try to, sir. I appreciate your giving me your time."

The
commissioner liked that. He was favorably impressed so far.

"Will
you have a chair, sir?"

He
would give him at least his allotted five minutes, if not more. He
looked as if he had suffered greatly; yet behind that there was
certain surviving innate dignity visible, conducive to respect rather
than mawkish pity.

The
visitor sat down in a large black leather chair, lumpy with broken
spring-coils.

"Now,
sir," prodded the commissioner, to discourage any inclination
toward dilatoriness.

"My
name is Louis Durand. I was married on May the twentieth, last, to a
woman who came from St. Louis and called herself Julia Russell. I had
never seen her before. I have the certificate of marriage here with
me. On the fifteenth of June last she withdrew fifty thousand dollars
from my bank account and disappeared. I have not seen her since. I
want a warrant issued for the arrest of this woman. I want her
apprehended, brought to trial, and the money returned to me."

The
commissioner said nothing for some time. It was obvious that this was
not inattention or disinterest, but on the contrary a sudden
excessive amount of both. It was equally obvious that he was
rephrasing the story, to himself, in his own mind; marshalling it
into his own thought-symbols, so to speak; familiarizing himself with
it, the better to have it at his command.

"May
I see the certificate ?" he said at last.

Durand
produced, tendered it to him.

He
read it carefully, but said nothing further in respect to it. In
fact, he asked but two questions more, both widely spaced, but both
highly pertinent.

One
was: "You said you had never seen her before; how was that ?"

Durand
explained the nature of the courtship, and added, moreover, that he
believed her not to be the woman he had proposed to, but an impostor.
He gave the reasons for that belief, but admitted he had no proof.

The
commissioner's second and final question, spoken through
steeple-joined fingers, was:

"Did
she forge your name in order to withdraw the funds?"

Durand
shook his head. "She signed her own. I had given her
authorization with the bank to do so; given her access to the
accounts."

The
five minutes' grace had expired. The door opened and young Harris
wedged head and one shoulder through, said: "Excuse me,
Commissioner, but I have a report here for you to--"

Countermanding
his former instructions, the commissioner silenced him with a sweep
of his hand.

He
addressed Durand with leisurely deliberation, showing that the
interview was not being terminated on that account, but for reasons
implicit in its own nature. "I would like to talk this matter
over with my associates first," he admitted, "before I take
any action. It's a curious sort of case, quite unlike anything that's
come my way before. If you'll allow me to keep this marriage
certificate for the time being, I'll see that it's returned to you.
Suppose you come back tomorrow at this same time, Mr. Durand."

And
turning, he enjoined his secretary with unmistakable emphasis:
"Harris, I'm seeing Mr. Durand tomorrow morning at this same
hour. Make sure my appointments allow for it."

"Thank
you, Mr. Commissioner," Durand said, rising.

"Don't
thank me for anything yet. Let us wait and see first."

26

"Have
a chair, Mr. Durand," the commissioner said, after having
offered his hand.

Durand
did so, waited.

The
commissioner collected his words, ranged them in mind, and at last
delivered them. "I'm sorry. I find that there's nothing we can
do for you. Nothing whatever. And by we, I mean the police department
of this city."

"What?"
Durand was stunned. His head went back against the spongy black
leather of the chair-back. His hat fell from his grasp and his lap,
and it was the commissioner who retrieved it for him. He could hardly
speak for a moment. "You--you mean a strange woman, a stray, can
come along, perpetrate a mock marriage with a man, abscond with fifty
thousand dollars of his money--and--and you say you can do nothing
about it--?"

"Just
a moment," the commissioner said, speaking with patient
kindliness. "I understand how you feel, but just a moment."
He offered him the certificate of marriage which he had retained from
the previous day.

Durand
crushed it in his hand, swept it aside in a disgusted fling.
"This--this valueless forgery--I"

"The
first point which must be made clear before we go any further is
this," the commissioner told him. "This is not a
counterfeit. That marriage is not a mock one." He underscored
his words. "That woman is legally your wife."