Waltz Into Darkness (30 page)

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Authors: Cornell Woolrich

BOOK: Waltz Into Darkness
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"Only
pattern magazines, I'm afraid, madam."

"No,
thank you," he said very definitely.

"It's
so hard on them," she said patronizingly, still in
conversation with someone behind her. Then back to him once more.
"Why don't you leave and then call back for me again ?" she
suggested generously. "That way you needn't suffer so, and I can
put my whole mind to this."

"How
soon shall I come back?"

"I
won't be through for another hour yet at the very least. We haven't
even got past the choice of a material yet. Then will come the
selection of a pattern, and the cutting, and the taking of the
over-all measurements--"

"Unh,"
he groaned facetiously, and another courtier-like laugh went up.

"You
had best give me a full hour and a half, I shall need that much. Or
if you tire in the meantime, go straight back to the house, and I'll
follow you there."

He
took up his hat with alacrity, glad to make his escape.

Her
bodyless face, formed its lips, into a pout.

"Aren't
you going to say goodbye to me?"

She
touched her lips to show him what she meant, closed her eyes
expectantly.

"In
front of all these people?"

"Oh
dear, how you talk! One would think you weren't my husband at all. I
assure you it's perfectly proper, in such a case."

Again
a chorus of flattery-forced laughter went up, almost as if on cue.
She seemed to make quite an opéra bouffe entertainment of
the making of a new dress, taking the part of main luminary
surrounded by a doting, submissive chorus. There should have been
music, he couldn't help reflecting, and a tiered audience surrounding
her on three sides.

He
stepped over to the curtains, coloring slightly, pecked at her lips,
turned, and got out of the place.

Strangely,
in spite of his embarrassment, he had a flattered, selfimportant
feeling at the same time; he wondered how she had been able to give
him that, and whether she had known she was doing it when she did.
And secretly decided that she had.

She
knew every cause, she knew every effect, she knew how to achieve
them. Everything she did, she knew she did.

There
must have been other times, in other modistes' fitting rooms, when
the man waiting was not legally obligated to shoulder the expense she
was incurring, that this glow of self-esteem had had an intrinsic
value of its--

He
put that thought hurriedly from mind, and set out to enjoy the
afternoon sunlight, and the blue Gulf reaching to the horizon, and
the crowd of strollers drifting along the shoreline promenade. He
mingled with them for a while, taking his place in the leisurely
moving outermost stream, then turned at the end of the structure and
came back with them, but now a part of the inside stream going in the
opposite direction.

The
slow baking warmth of the sun was pleasant on his shoulders and his
back, and occasionally a little salty breeze would come, just enough
to temper it. Clouds that were thick and unshadowed as egg white
broke the monotony of the sky, and on everyone's face there was a
smile-as there must have been on his, he at last realized, for what
he was seeing was the unthinking answer to his own smile, offered by
face after face in passing; without purpose or premeditation, without
knowing they were doing it, simply in shared contentment.

He
had money enough now for a long while to come, and she loved him--she
had shown it by inducing him to kiss her in front of a shopful of
girls. What more was there to wish for?

The
world was a good world.

A
little boy's harlequin-sectioned ball glanced against his leg in
rolling, and the child himself clung to it for a moment in the act of
unsteady retrieval. Durand stopped where he was and reached down and
tousled still further the already tousled cornsilk thatch.

"Does
your mother let you take a penny from a strange man?"

The
youngster looked up, open-mouthed with that infantile stupefaction
that greets every act of the grown world. "I 'on't know."

"Well,
take this to show her then and find out."

He
went on again without waiting.

The
world was a good world indeed.

After
two complete circuits of the walking space provided, he stopped at
last by the wooden rail flanking it, and rested his elbows on it, and
stood in contemplation with his back to the slow-moving ainbulators
he had just been a member of.

He
had been at rest that way for perhaps two or three minutes, no more,
when he became conscious of that rather curiously compelling
sensation that is received when someone's eyes are fixed on one
steadfastly, from behind.

There
was no time to be warned. The impulse was to turn and seek out the
cause, and before he could check it he had done so.

He
found himself staring full into the face of Downs, the St. Louis
investigator, just as Downs was now staring full into his.

He
was within two or three paces of Durand, almost close enough to have
reached out and touched him had he willed. His whole body was still
held in the act of an arrested footfall, the one at which recognition
had struck; one leg out behind him, heel clear of ground. Shoulders
still forward, the way in which he had been going; head alone
oblique, frozen that way at first sight of Durand.

Durand
had a sickening impression that had he kept his own place in the belt
line of promenaders, they might have gone on circling after one
another the rest of the afternoon, equidistant, never drawing any
closer, they might have remained unaware of one another. For Downs
must have been fairly close behind him, to come upon him this quickly
after, and so they would both likely have been on the same side of
the promenade at any given time. But by falling out of line and
coming to a halt, he had allowed Downs to overtake him, single him
out. Where everyone is at rest, a moving figure is quickly noted. But
where everyone is moving, it is the motionless figure that is the
more conspicuous.

"Durand,"
Downs said with a curious matter-of-factness.

Durand
tried to match it: nodded temperately, said, "You, eh ?"
Try not to show any fear of him, he kept cautioning himself, try not
to show any fear. Forget that she is in such terrible proximity at
this very moment, or you will betray that to him by the very act of
trying not to. Don't look over that way, where the shop is. Keep your
eyes off it. Above all, move him around, circle him around the other
way so that his back is to it. If she should happen suddenly to
emerge--

"Are
you alone here ?" Downs asked. The question was idly turned, but
following it, for a long moment, his eyes seemed to bore into
Durand's, until the latter could scarcely endure it.

"Certainly,"
he said somewhat testily.

Downs
lazily reared one palm in protest. "No offense," he
drawled. "You seem to resent my asking."

"Can
you give me any reason why I should take offense at such a question
?" He realized he was speaking too quickly, almost on the verge
of sputtering.

"If
you cannot, then I cannot," Downs said with feigned amiability.

Durand
gave the railing a slick smack of quittance, moved in away from it,
drifted in an idle saunter past Downs and to the rear' of him, closed
up to the railing again, and came to rest against it on a negligent
elbow. Downs automatically pivoted to face him where he now was.

"And
what brings you here, in turn ?" Durand said, when the
adjustment had been completed.

Downs
smiled with special meaning. Special meaning he, Durand, was intended
to share, whether he would or not. "What brings me anywhere?"
he countered. "Not a holiday, rest assured."

"Oh,"
was all Durand could think to say to that. A very small, limp "oh."

In
the modiste shop entrance, in the middle distance, but still close
enough at hand to be only too visible, a lengthwise streamer of color
suddenly peered forth, as some woman, about to leave, lingered there
half-in half-out in protracted farewell, probably talking to someone
behind her. Durand's heart thrust hard against the cavern of his
chest for a moment, like a pointed rock. Then the figure came out:
tall, in blue; someone else.

His
attention swerved back to Downs, to overtake what he had been about
to miss. "I had heard reports," the latter was saying, "of
a flashy blonde who has been creating a stir down here with some man.
They even got back to New Orleans."

Durand
shrugged, a little jerkily. The point of his elbow slipped a trifle
on the rail top, and he had to readjust it. "There are blondes
wherever there are women."

What
fools we've been, he thought bitterly. Lingering on here week after
week; we might have known--

"This
was a flashy blonde, almost silver in her lightness," Downs took
pains to elaborate, eyes on him intent and unmoving. "A fast
woman, I understand."

"Someone
has fooled you."

"I
don't think anyone has fooled me," Downs emphasized, "because:
this was not intended for my ears at all in the first place. They
just happened to overhear it, to pick it up." He waited a
moment. "Have you happened to note any such pair? You have been
down here longer than I, I take it."

Durand
looked down at the planks underfoot. "I have been cured of
blondes," he murmured grudgingly.

"A
relapse can occur," Downs said drily.

How
did he mean that? thought Durand, startled. But--don't quarrel with
it, or you will make it worse.

He
took out his watch. "I must go."

"Where
are you staying ?"

Durand
thumbed back across his shoulder, misleadingly. "Down that way."

"I'll
walk back with you to your stopping place, wherever it is,"
Downs offered.

He
wants to find out where it is; I'll never lose him! thought Durand,
harassed.

"I'm
a little pressed for time," he managed to get out.

Downs
smiled calmingly. "I never force myself on a man." Then he
added pointedly, "That is, in sociability."

"Which
way are you going ?" Durand asked suddenly,' seeing that he was
about to turn and go back the other way, toward and past the
modiste's. She might emerge just as he neared there--

He
took Downs by the arm all at once, pressing him. As insistent now as
he had been reluctant a moment ago. "Come with me, anyway. Can I
offer you a schooner of beer ?"

Downs
glanced overhead. "The sun is warm," he accepted. "Your
own face, for instance, is quite moist." There was something
faintly satiric in the way he said it, Durand thought.

They
walked along side by side. At every pace Durand told himself: I've
drawn him a step farther away from her. She is that much safer.

"Here's
a place; let's try this," he said presently.

"I
was just going to suggest it myself," Downs observed. Again
there was that overtone of satire to be detected.

They
went in and seated themselves at a small wicker table.

"Two
Pilseners," Durand told the mustachioed, striped-shirted waiter.
Then before he could withdraw again. "Where is the closet ?"

"Straight
back."

Durand
rose. "Excuse me for a moment." Downs nodded, ironically it
seemed to him.

Durand
left him seated there, went out through the spring door. He found
himself in a passage. Ignoring the intermediate door to the side, he
followed it to the rear, let himself out at the back of the place. He
began to run like one possessed. He was possessed; possessed with the
thought of saving her.

45

He
ran back and forth like mad between the gaping wardrobe and the
uplidded trunk, empty-armed on each trip to, half-smothered under
masses of her dresses on each trip fro. He dropped them into it in
any old way, so that long before the potential capacity of trunk was
exhausted, its actual capacity was filled and overflowing. This was
no time for a painstaking job of packing. This was get out fast, run
for their lives.

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