Black-Eyed Stranger Page 9

  She felt as if he were shaking her, as if her head bobbed.

  “That’s the good you can do, sister. And I was a darned bright audience, I was really that, and maybe I never should have left my seat.” His voice rose from the mumble. “All right. But I know it’s doing no good, sitting up, telling all the other little people how they should behave. No, no. Rehabilitating the poor dumb clods. And how do you know when they are rehabilitated? It’s when they think just like Alan thinks. Otherwise, they’re out of line. See it?

  “Yes, yes, sure,” he snatched it out of her mind, “he wants to be a teacher. And we got to have them, and some men are teachers and that’s what they’ve got to give. But let me tell you this, sister. A decent teacher listens. If he can’t listen, he goes out of date so fast it knocks him silly. He has respect.

  “But Alan, he doesn’t listen. He can’t hear. He’s got no respect.” Sam pounded the table. “I tell you, you’ve got to have respect,” he shouted. “How can a man set himself up, he knows all the answers. How can he? He can say to me, ‘this I’ve found,’ or, ‘this seems to me.’ And maybe he can sell something. But not to me, unless he’s got respect. Respect, I say. That he might hear something out of the other people.”

  “But, Alan—”

  “Doesn’t even respect you, sister.” Sam sagged. “Oh no, he doesn’t. He tells me, me, you understand, behind your back, confidentially, how young and foolish you are.”

  “I suppose you respect me,” she cried, startled and angry.

  “I do. Yes, I do. I tell you you’re a fool kid. That’s my opinion. But I listen. Sister, you can tell. Some things, you’ve got. I’m tuned. I hear.”

  His hand moved toward hers but didn’t touch. She thought, he hasn’t touched me, and marveled, not counting the violence long ago.

  “Things I … say?” she faltered.

  “Not with the voice.” He rose, stumbling. “So I should weep over you.” He rubbed his eyes. “Because you’re cute or something. I think I’m delirious. Going to sleep. Don’t try to get the key. Don’t run away. I’ll sleep. Then, think. You know? Think better. Think of something.”

  “It’s a good idea,” she said mechanically.

  He slept, at once, with no transition. He lay on the bunk, heavy and gone. She felt a little lost, a little lightheaded, as if some steady drag were cut away.

  She moved softly back into the kitchen and worked a little more at the task of putting it in order. Her mind was absent. Her mind was trying out the idea that all Sam told her was true. If he had heard Ambielli in the restaurant, if he had told her father and Alan and beenuncertain of their belief, if he had been so frightened for her, and she so patently a fool, and if Ambielli was so dangerous, then, of course, he was confused and frightened now.

  She wondered, as he wondered, how could he take her home? She thought, those cruel and revengeful men will be like hornets, watching my house, all ready to swoop and sting us both to death. Especially Sam. Or, she thought, they are looking for Sam. They know he knew. Maybe he is the only one who could have stepped between.

  She, too, began to think they might have callers, here. She looked up at the narrow kitchen window, and a shudder shook her all up and down and her heart swelled lest she see a face, eyes peering through the grasses from the high ground.

  She thought, but I needn’t be Katherine Salisbury. I don’t look very much like her. If I’m some other girl, then Sam didn’t do it. She thought, that’s crazy. That’s impossible. And she knew what Sam had meant. If they were to come after him, then she must run away and hide herself.

  In a little while it occurred to her that since she looked so different, it would be simple and safe for her to go home by herself. She thought she would tell Sam when he woke. Perhaps he hadn’t thought of it.

  Then she knew he had thought of it, but not until she tried out belief in him, tried listening, could he trust her.

  But now he would. And, rubbing an old rag over the worn sink, dreamily, she fell to thinking. They always teach us patterns. But they should tell us. There are odd things, and inconsistent things, and things that do not fit. They can lead to unpredictable deeds, done for unguessable reasons, by unexpected people. You never know, she reflected, when you may meet a black-eyed stranger. Around the corner, at a party, in a crowd, looming up, breaking the pattern open, warping all the threads.

  Why, Ambielli, who had his plans, thought he knew his fortune. But there was a black-eyed stranger in his cup.

  And even Sam. Even, she thought, a wild, stray turn of your own heart, that you can’t explain, can be like a black-eyed stranger, the upsetting chance.

  Chapter 11

  FRIDAY wore away. Alan was told that Martha Salisbury had collapsed. Actually, she walked in her room, up and down and around, and she was only wearing Friday through.

  No one was told what Charles Salisbury’s errands were, that day. Quietly he went about them, doing what he had to do. His losses would cut deep.

  Martha did not receive Alan Dulain, and Salisbury took care to cross the boy’s path only briefly. The father was irritable with strain, and he knew, vaguely, that he contributed to a picture of a disintegrating despair. But he could not help that. When Alan left him for the last time, in early evening and marched away, face pinched, head high, shoulders squared, Salisbury thought, poor kid. But he did not think it long.

  At nine o’clock, having sent for the car but driving himself, he set out on the journey. He did not think that the men Alan called his private people would be watching the apartment. Nevertheless, he did his amateur best to note whether or not he were followed and concluded not.

  The words penciled on the piece of brown paper, mysteriously found wrapped around the soft mass of Katherine’s scarf, were now engraved upon his brain. They were his hope. He knew exactly what he was to do and he intended to do it, exactly. He would act in good faith. Nothing would fail by fault of his, now.

  He was alone. He had told no one but Martha. He had the money exactly as he was supposed to have it, old bills, in a manila envelope, addressed to Smith, lying at his side on the seat, unsealed. He left on time and on the dot of the instructed hour he swung uptown. He drove slowly, careful to obey every least regulation, lest there be an unforeseen delay.

  It had been a long time, he reflected, since he had gone forth with his teeth biting his heart back, with the need to call out such reserve of strength merely to keep himself steady. It had to be done and done just so. This journey was his effort and his alone. If she were still alive, hope lay in obeying. If she were not, it made little difference that the police would come into it a little late. No, he would lock mind and imagination and emotion. He would meticulously obey.

  But if, as the note promised, all went well and she returned in eighteen hours, as it said, when he got his girl back, then how he would strike! With thunder and with lightning, with the Law, with all other grim power he could muster, he would rip them from whatever hole they thought to hide in, were it to take a hundred years!

  But not now. Lock down the lid of now against all that.

  He took the turn, up the hill, in Van Cortlandt Park. He came out on a broad avenue, rather bare of traffic. On this he kept northward, proceeding sedately but steadily down the inside lane, for he had a left turn coming, although he was still at least two miles below the designated side road. He pulled up for a red light and sat reading the note again, not from paper, but as it lay printed in his head.

  Somewhere a shadow shifted. Something loomed. The right door handle turned. The door opened. A huge shoulder, a head bent so that what lay black over the face might have been a shadow …

  A voice said, in a startling falsetto, “You Salisbury?”

  He could not nod. His neck was too stiff. But he said, “Yes,” and he thought, Alan’s man, oh no, no. He said, sharply, “Don’t keep me, please.”

  “This the money?” the voice chirped. A hand in a brown glove picked up the money.

  “Do
n’t!”

  The face had no features. There was cloth tied tightly over it, and the profile was all a black curve, hideously without the jut of a nose. The hand, the money, the head, the shoulder withdrew, dodging lightly away, and the door clicked.

  Utterly shocked, Salisbury found himself squirming across the front seat and half falling out the door. A car at the extreme right of the avenue took a skittering start and turned right. Its taillight bounded merrily away.

  A woman leaned out of a car behind his, that had only just, he realized, rolled slowly up. “Anything the matter?” She called boldly. The driver beside her was a man.

  Salisbury said, piteously, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  She turned her head. Then, like a go-between, she called, “Need a push?”

  “No. Thank you. No.”

  The car went into reverse and backed with an air of impatient disgust. It roared in a sharp twist around to the left of his car and its taillight went bounding away.

  He got back behind the wheel. He had to wait, having missed all the green. Then he drove slowly on.

  He did not know what to believe. It was out of order. Little use following all the instructions now. Nevertheless, he made the proper turn. He found the designated iron fence. He walked along the concrete base in which it was embedded to the tenth tall spike from the gate. There was no message in that designated spot. He hunted for a long time.

  He did not know whether this was good or bad. He did not, he realized in anguish, know whether or not he had accomplished his mission. He thought, if he had, if this had all along been their plan, then not to drop the one more word it would have taken to tell him so was as brutal, as cruel a thing, as he could conceive.

  He would tell Martha that he was hopeful. But he was terribly afraid. He was afraid he had made the wrong decision, from the beginning. With what, he wondered, had he been so meticulously keeping good faith?

  It said, in that square penciled printing, eighteen hours. As the night wore through, the Salisburys were hopeful. They asked each other, who could have known the money was there except he who had sent the instruction? And they said hopefully to each other, “Of course. It must be so.” As it grew light, their spirits lifted and when ten o’clock came, Saturday morning, they even toasted the passing of half a day, the dark half, in a little wine. She would come. She would call.

  When they began to brake time, to will it not to go so fast, neither knew. Or when each realized noon was too near. Saturday was racing across the calendar. Salisbury thought bitterly, he had kept faith, but with what? He didn’t say it aloud. The flying clock raced round.

  Chapter 12

  SATURDAY noon. Baby Hohenbaum was eating green grapes. He ate them steadily, one at a time, in rhythm. The boss sat, knees together, hands in his pockets, in a fat blue chair. His chin touched his collarbone. He was coiled there, wickedly, Baby knew, and from time to time, Baby rolled his eyes to look at him.

  Baby said, between grapes, “Nothing to worry about.”

  Ambielli, with his neck still twisted, turned his eyes balefully. “If somebody talked I’ll take his tongue out.”

  “Aw, boss,” Baby looked at the bunch of grapes lovingly as if it were money. “Why do you want to worry?”

  “I never worry. I never fail.” The head raised on the neck. “Look down, see if he’s there.”

  Saturday afternoon. They were in the big living room, and Salisbury, who had not been able to touch his lunch, was trying to eat a sandwich. Martha said he must.

  She was knitting. But something horrible was happening to the thing that came slipping from the needles. It was changing shape. The neat tight rows had loosened, each more than the last, and the garment that ought to have grown according to count, evenly, was spreading, and it was becoming crooked, too, sagging, and hanging off the coral needles lopsided and a little mad. As her hands worked, it kept mushrooming and distorting, silent and hideous; it was the outward and visible diagram-in-wool of panic.

  When she said, “More coffee, Charles?” her voice was all right.

  “No. No. This sandwich is very good. What’s in it?”

  “We must ask Phinney,” she said brightly. “I’m glad you like it, dear.” Neither of them would ever know what was in the sandwich.

  “Yes,” he said, choking, “it’s very good. Won’t you try a part of one?”

  “No, dear. I had lunch, really. I’m not hungry at all. Not yet.”

  “It’s early for tea,” he said.

  “Of course it is.” It was not.

  The room was very quiet when they were not speaking. “Isn’t it a little cool in here?”

  “Would you like a fire, Martha?”

  “Oh, no. No, thanks, dear.”

  “Going to be a late spring.”

  “It does seem so.”

  Their eyes met, and he thought, oh God, the bravest heart can break! He went and sat beside her and leaned close. “Show me how you do that, darling.”

  Her hands steadied. “Simple. You put the needle in, so.”

  “Yes.”

  “And loop the yarn, so.”

  “I see.”

  “And pull it through.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Not quite,” she said. “Sometimes, you see, there are variations.”

  The doorbell rang, and the same thrilled shock ran through their bodies as they leaned together and breath pulled into them both, in the same gasp. Before they could move, Phinney’s feet had hurried. Alan Dulain burst in.

  He seemed to run full tilt into their expectancy and, as if it were a barrier, he stopped and looked. It was as if all three of them cried out, What? What?

  Then Alan said, “Anything?”

  “Nothing.” Martha echoed, “Nothing,” and Salisbury saw the yarn slide off the needles, as it should not do, and the coral point dipped ahead, just the same, and he knew enough to understand there would be a great hole in the emerging fabric. And he thought, we are going to fall apart pretty soon. Just like that.

  “How are you, Mrs. Salisbury?” Alan pitied her.

  She said, “Alan, have you heard anything?” and her voice was all right.

  Alan was being cautious. He must be able to see, thought Salisbury, that we are falling to pieces. “Well, we’ve checked all hospitals again with no result. There is no chance it’s an accident or anything of the sort. I hoped you had heard something. By now.” His air accused them.

  “We hoped,” she said wanly.

  “Darling, won’t you lie down? Take something?”

  Salisbury thought, if she goes to pieces, so will I. Right here. I’ll fall on the carpet.

  But she said, letting her knitting fall at last, “It’s four o’clock, Charles. I think we must tell Alan.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “All day. Too long. Something is wrong.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Tell me what?” said Alan a little coldly.

  “There was a demand for ransom, Alan.”

  “When?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday! And you didn’t tell.” The boy’s face was hurt and angry, and at the same time it hinted, I thought as much. “Where is it?”

  “Here.”

  Alan snatched the brown paper. “What was the thing with it?”

  “Her scarf,” Martha took it out of the knitting bag. “This.”

  Suddenly Salisbury was glad they were telling. It felt like action. It felt like movement.

  “It’s her scarf,” Alan frowned.

  “Of course it is.”

  “None of her handwriting?”

  “No.” (Salisbury cried out; inside, don’t point that up!)

  “Do you think,” Martha sat straighter and her voice was clear. “Is that a stain on the scarf?”

  Salisbury felt his skin crawl. All this time. And she had not once said this to him, and he felt shaken. He had not thought he was being spared.

  Alan took the pretty th
ing in his hands and crushed it, not looking down. “For God’s sake, tell me what you did, sir.”

  “I did as it says.”

  “You went out … last night?” (You fool! You old fool! No one said it. Salisbury heard it.) “You found this place? You delivered the money?”

  “I didn’t get far with the money. A masked man took it off the seat.”

  “What!”

  “We think it was planned. I did drive on. I found the place. But there was nothing there.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing there.”

  “Do you mean you were stopped? Robbed of it?”

  “At a red light, Alan. He took it easily. He knew what it was. He even called my name.”

  (Ah, you foolish old man! Salisbury heard it.) “What did he look like?”

  “Seemed a big fellow. I was startled. I couldn’t see. He was masked. No face.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Car. Turned the corner.”

  “You didn’t follow!”

  “I reacted too late. Then I went on ahead. You see, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t think straight.”

  “If there only had been a trained observer hidden in your car. Or someone behind. Anything. If you’d only told me.”

  “I hoped …”

  Martha, looking at her work, said, “I dropped some stitches. Look, I dropped …” Salisbury held her closely in his arms.

  Alan snapped, “What time was this? Has it been the eighteen hours?”

  “It’s that, Alan.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Not here.”

  “No call.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  The father watched the other’s eyes, and he thought, oh, God, what statistic is he remembering? What is the rule in these cases?