Waltz Into Darkness (40 page)

But
he was at his mercy anyway, he realized ruefully, whether he told him
or not.

Jardine
bridled a little, straightened up. "Lou, I don't take that
kindly. We're friends--"

"Friendship
stops short at what I'm about to tell you. There are no friends
beyond a certain point. The law even forbids it, punishes it."

The
tapping came again. "Mamma's getting put out. She says she's
going to sit down without you, Papa. It was a special duck--"

And
on that homespun domestic note, Durand blurted out, as if already
past the point at which he could any longer stop himself:

"Allan,
I've done murder. I can't stay here past tonight. I have to have
money."

And
dropped his head into his upturned, sheltering hands, as though the
hangman's noose had already snapped his neck.

"Papa
?" came questioningly through the door.

"Wait,
child, wait," Jardine said sickly, his face white as a sheet.

There
was a ghastly silence.

"I
knew it would come to this," Jardine said at last, dropping his
voice. "She was bad for you from the first. Auguste sensed it on
the very day of your marriage, she told me so herself; women are
quicker that way--"

He
was pouring himself a drink, as though it were his crime. "You
met her-- You found her-- You lost your head--" He brought one
to Durand. "But you're not to be blamed. Any man-- Let me find
you a good lawyer, Lou. There isn't a court in the state--"

Durand
looked up at him and gave a pathetic smile.

"You
don't understand, Allan. It isn't--she. It's the very man I engaged
to find her and arrest her. He did find her, and to save her I--"

Jardine,
doubly horrified now, for at least in his earlier concern there had
been, noticeably, a glint of vengeful satisfaction, recoiled a step.

"I'm
with her again," Durand admitted. And in an almost inaudible
whisper, as if he were telling it to his conscience and not to the
other man in the room with him, "I love her more than my life
itself."

"Papa,"
accosted them with frightening proximity, in a piping treble, "Mamma
said I shouldn't leave this door until you come out of there!"
The doorknob twisted, then unwound.

Jardine
stood for a long moment, looking not so much at his friend as at some
scene he alone could see.

His
arm reached out slowly at last and fell heavily, dejectedly, but with
unspoken loyalty, upon Durand's shoulder.

"I'll
see that you get your half of the business' assets, Lou," he
said. "And now--we mustn't keep Auguste waiting any longer. Keep
a stiff upper lip. Come in and have supper with us."

Durand
rose and crushed Jardine's hand almost shatteringly for a moment,
between both of his. Then, as if ashamed of this involuntary display
of emotion, hastily released it again.

Jardine
opened the door, bent down to kiss someone who remained unseen,
through the guarded opening. "Run in, dear. We're coming."

Durand
braced himself for the ordeal to come, straightened his shoulders,
jerked at the wings of his coat, adjusted his collar. Then he moved
after his host.

"You
won't tell them, Allan ?"

Jardine
drew the door back and stood aside to let him go through first.
"There are certain things a man doesn't take in to his
suppertable with him, Lou." And he slung his arm about his
friend's shoulder and walked beside him, loyally beside him, in to
where his family waited.

53

At
dawn he was already up, from a sleepless, worried bed, and dressed
and pacing the floor of his shabby, hidden-away hotel room. Waiting
for Jardine to come with the money--

("I
can't get you the money before morning, Lou. I haven't it here in the
house; I'll have to draw it from the bank. Can you wait ?"

"I'll
have to. I'm at the Palmetto Hotel. Under the name of Castle. Room
Sixty. Bring it to me there. Or as much of it as you can, I cannot
wait for a complete inventory.")

--fearing
more and more with the passing of each wracking hour that he
wouldn't. Until, as the hour for the banks to open came and went, and
the morning drew on, fear had become certainty and certainty had
become conviction. And he knew that to wait on was only to invite the
inevitable betrayal to overtake him, trap him where he was.

A
hundred times he unlocked the door and listened in the dingy corridor
outside, then went back and locked himself in again. Nothing, no one.
He wasn't coming. Only a quixotic fool would have expected him to.

Again
it occurred to him how completely at the mercy of his former partner
he had put himself. All he had to do was bring the police with him
instead of the money, and there was an end to it. Why should he give
up thousands of hard-earned dollars? And money, Durand reminded
himself, did strange things to people. Turned them even against their
own flesh and blood, why not an outsider?

Bonny's
remark came back to him. "And we're none of us very much good,
the best of us, men or women alike." She knew. She was wise in
the ways of the world, wiser by far than he. She would never have put
herself in such a false position.

No
friend should be put to such a test. A man without the law no longer
had a claim, no longer had a right to expect--

There
was a subdued knock, and he shrank back against the wall. "Here
they come now to arrest me," flashed through his mind. "He's
put them onto me-"

He
didn't move. The knock came again.

Then
Jardine's whispered voice. "Lou. Are you in there? It's all
right. It's me."

He'd
brought them with him; he'd led them here in person.

With
a sort of bitter defiance, because he could no longer escape, because
he'd waited too long, he went to the door and unlocked it. Then took
his hands from it and let it be.

There
was a moment's wait, then it opened of itself, and Jardine came in,
alone. He closed and relocked it behind him. He was holding a small
satchel.

He
carried it to the table, set it down.

All
he said, matter of factly and with utter simplicity, was: "Here
is the money, Lou. I'm sorry I'm so late."

Durand
couldn't answer for a moment, turned away, overcome.

"What's
the matter, Lou? Why, your eyes--!" Jardine looked at him as
though he couldn't understand what was amiss with him.

Durand
knuckled at them sheepishly. "Nothing. Only, you came as you
said you would--You brought it as you said you would--"
Something choked in his throat and he couldn't go ahead.

Jardine
looked at him compassionately. "Once you would have taken such a
thing for granted, you would have expected it of me. What has changed
you, Lou? Who has changed you?" And softly, fiercely, through
his clenched teeth, as his knotted hand came down implacably upon the
table top, he exhaled: "And may God damn them for it! I hate to
see a decent man dragged down into the gutter."

Durand
stood there without answering.

"You
know it's true, or else you wouldn't stand there and take it from
me," Jardine growled. "But I'll say no more; each man's
hell is his own."

(I
know it's true, Durand thought wistfully; but I must follow my heart,
how can I help where it leads me?) "No, don't say any more,"
he agreed tersely.

Jardine
unstrapped and stripped open the bag. "The full amount is in
here," he told him, brisk and businesslike now. "And that
squares all accounts between us."

Durand
nodded stonily.

"I
cannot have you at my house again," Jardine told him. "For
your own sake."

Durand
gave a short, and somewhat ungracious, syllable of laughter. "I
understand."

"No,
you don't. I am trying to protect you. Auguste already suspects
something, and I cannot vouch for her discretion if you return."

"Auguste
hates me, doesn't she?" Durand said with detached curiosity, as
though unable to account for it.

Jardine
didn't answer, and by that confirmed the statement.

He
gestured toward the contents of the satchel, still withholding it. "I
turn this over to you under one condition, Lou. I ask it of you for
your own good."

"What
is it?"

"Don't
turn this money over to anyone else, no matter how close they are to
you. Keep it safe. Keep it by you. Don't let it out of your
possession."

Durand
laughed humorlessly. "Who am I likely to entrust it to? The very
position I'm in ensures my not--"

Jardine
repeated his emphasis, so that there could be no mistaking it. "I
said, no matter how close they are to you."

Durand
looked at him hard for a minute. "I'm in good hands, I see,"
he said bitterly at last. "Auguste hates me, and you hate-- my
wife."

"Your
wife," Jardine said tonelessly.

Durand
tightened his hands. "I said my wife."

"Don't
let's quarrel, Lou. Your word."

"The
word of a murderer?"

"The
word of the man who was my best friend. The word of the man who was
Louis Durand," Jardine said tautly. "That's good enough for
me."

"Very
well, I give it."

Jardine
handed him the satchel. "I'll go now."

There
was a constraint between them now. Jardine offered his hand in
parting. Durand saw it waiting there, allowed a full moment to go by
before taking it. Then when at last they shook, it was more under
compulsion of past friendship than present cordiality.

"This
is probably a final goodbye, Lou. I doubt we'll ever see one another
again."

Durand
dropped his eyes sullenly. "Let's not linger over it, then. Good
luck, and thank you for having once been my friend."

"I
am still your friend, Lou."

"But
I am not the man whose friend you were."

Their
hands uncoupled, fell away from one another.

Jardine
moved toward the door.

"You
know what I would do in your place, of course? I would go to the
police, surrender myself, and have it over once and for all."

"And
hang," Durand said sombrely.

"Yes,
even to hang is better than what lies ahead of you. You could be
helped, Lou. This way, no one can help you. If I were in your place-"

"You
couldn't be in my place," Durand cut him short. "It
wouldn't have happened to you, to start with. You are not the kind
such things befall. I am. You repel them. I attract them. It happened
to me. To no one but me. And so I must deal with it. I must do--as I
must do."

"Yes,
I guess you must," Jardine conceded sadly. "None of us can
talk for the other man." He opened the door, looking up along
its edge with a sort of melancholy curiosity, as if he had never seen
the edge of an open door before. He even palmed it, in passing, as if
to feel what it was.

The
last thing he said was: "Take care of yourself, Lou."

"If
I don't, who else will?" Durand answered from the depths of his
aloneness. "Who is there in this whole wide world who will ?"

54

He
only breathed freely again when the train had pulled out, and only
looked freely from the window again when the last vestiges of the
town had fallen behind and the dreary coastal sand flats had begun.
The town that he had once loved most of all places in this world.

The
train was a rickety, caterpillar-like creeper, that stopped at every
crossroads shed and water tank along the way, or so it seemed, and
didn't deposit him at his destination until well onto one in the
morning. He found the station vicinity deserted, and all but
unlighted; carriageless as well, and had to walk back to their hotel
bag in hand, under a panel of brittle (and somehow satiric) stars.

And
though the thought of surprising her in some act of treachery had not
been the motive for his arriving a half night sooner than he'd said
he would, the realization of how fatally enlightening this unheralded
return could very well prove to be, slowly grew on him as he walked
along, until it had taken hold of him altogether. By the time he had
reached the hotel and climbed to their floor and stood before their
door, he was almost afraid to take his key to it and open it. Afraid
of what he would find. Not afraid of conventional faithlessness so
much as her own characteristic kind of faithlessness. Not afraid of
finding her in other arms so much as not finding her there at all.
Finding her fled and gone in his absence, as he had once before.