“Why?”
“Don’t worry about Candy,” I said. “You’re wrong about his not liking you. And I was wrong to say nobody did. I was trying to jar Eileen, make her mad.”
“She pulled one faint already tonight.”
“I can always do that—drunk or sober—up to a point anyway.”
He shook his head slightly. “Eileen never faints.”
“Uh huh. I’m surprised you remember. It’s pretty crazy writing. Funny thing, it’s clearly typed.”
“Then it was a phony.”
“Yes.” He was still looking away. “Did you do what I asked you— that stuff in the typewriter?”
He didn’t like that either.
“Nobody can stop you from killing yourself, if you really want to. I realize that. So do you.”
“What did you mean—a good man died for you?” I asked.
“More or less.” He turned his head away. “I guess I was lightheaded.”
He frowned, thinking about it. “Just rubbish. I told you I had a dream—”
“Did I hit right about that shot? It was just a crazy bit of acting?”
“I’m talking about that guff you typed out.”
“No thanks. It doesn’t matter whether I sleep. I feel a lot better.”
He looked at me now, turning his head on the pillow as if it had enormous weight. “Another dream.”
“More pills?”
“I’ll try again. What’s Candy got on you?”
She gave him a long look and went out of the room. When the open door was empty of her I sat down on the side of the bed where she had been sitting.
“Shove it, Jack,” he said, and closed his eyes.
I didn’t pay any attention to that. I was still watching her. She looked exhausted now, and frail, and very beautiful. The moment of flashing anger was gone. I put a hand out and touched her arm. “It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t do it again. Go back to bed.”
I got up and closed the door. “You can’t run forever, Wade. Candy could be a blackmailer, sure. Easy. He could even be nice about it—like you and lift your dough at the same time. What is it—a woman?”
He almost grinned. “Yeah, call the police,” he said, “like you did on Terry Lennox.”
“You believe that fool, Loring,” he said with his eyes closed.
“Go on back to your room. Unless you want me to call the police. These things are supposed to be reported.”
“Not exactly. What about the sister—the one that’s dead?”
Her blue eyes flashed. “How dare you—”
It was a wild pitch in a sense but it happened to split the plate. His eyes snapped wide open. A bubble of saliva showed on his lips.
“Go on back to your room.”
“Is that—why you’re here?” he asked slowly, and in a whispering voice.
“This is not the time to tell him.”
“You know better. I was invited. You invited me.”
“He wants to be sick. I’m just reminding him of what it would cost him.”
His head rolled back and forth on the pillow. In spite of the Seconal he was eaten up by his nerves. His face was covered with sweat.
Eileen stood up suddenly. “That’s enough,” she said sharply. “He is sick, and you know it.”
“I’m not the first loving husband who has been an adulterer. Leave me alone, damn you. Leave me alone.”
“It matters like this. They’d put you in the psycho ward, and believe me, the people who run that place are about as sympathetic as Georgia chain-gang guards.”
I went into the bathroom and got a face towel and wiped his face off. I grinned at him sneeringly. I was the heel to end all heels. Wait until the man is down, then kick him and kick him again. He’s weak. He can’t resist or kick back.
“I’m sick,” he said. “But you could be right. Does it matter?”
“One of these days we’ll get together on it,” I said.
“Nuts. You meant to kill yourself. You didn’t have any nightmare. You were swimming in a sea of self-pity. You didn’t have any gun in the drawer or under your pillow either. You got up and got the gun and got back into bed and there you were all ready to wipe out the whole messy business. But I don’t think you had the nerve. You fired a shot not meant to hit anything. And your wife came running—that’s what you wanted. Just pity and sympathy, pal. Nothing else. Even the struggle was mostly fake. She couldn’t take a gun away from you if you didn’t want her to.”
“I’m not crazy,” he said.
I looked up. There seemed to be a hole in the ceiling plaster all right. I went where I could look up at it. Yes. The kind of hole a bullet might make. From that gun it would go on through, into the attic. I went back close to the bed and stood looking down at him, giving him the hard eye.
“You just hope you’re not crazy.”
“Or under the pillow,” he added. “I’m vague about it. I shot once—” he lifted a heavy hand and pointed—“up there.”
“I’ve been living in hell.”
“Night table. In the drawer.” He turned his head and met my stare. There hadn’t been any gun in the drawer, and he knew I knew it. The pills had been in there and some odds and ends, but no gun.
“Oh sure. That’s obvious. The interesting point is why. Here—take this.” I had another Seconal out of the night table and another glass of water. He got up on one elbow and grabbed for the glass and missed it by a good four inches. I put it in his hand. He managed to drink and swallow his pill. Then he lay back flat and deflated, his face drained of emotion. His nose had that pinched look. He could almost have been a dead man. He wasn’t throwing anybody down any stairs tonight. Most likely not any night.
“Where was the gun?” I growled, watching her, not paying any attention to him.
When his eyelids got heavy I went out of the room. The weight of the Webley was against my hip, dragging at my pocket. I started back downstairs again. Eileen’s door was open. Her room was dark but there was enough light from the moon to frame her standing just inside the door. She called out something that sounded like a name, but it wasn’t mine. I stepped close to her.
She turned her head swiftly. “Please—please don’t talk like that. He didn’t know. He had a dream—”
“Keep your voice down,” I said. “He’s gone back to sleep.”
“Nobody likes you,” I said brutally.
“I always knew you would come back,” she said softly. “Even after ten years.”
“He’s a Mex. They all have knives,” Roger said in the same remote impersonal voice. “They like knives. And he doesn’t like me.”
I peered at her. One of us was goofy.
“Of course not, darling,” she said softly. She left the dressing table and sat down on the side of the bed. She put her hand out and began to stroke his forehead. “Candy has gone to bed long ago. And why would Candy have a knife?”
“Shut the door,” she said in the same caressing voice. “All these years I have kept myself for you.”
He was staring straight up at the ceiling now. “I had a nightmare,” he said slowly. “Somebody with a knife was leaning over the bed. I don’t know who. Looked a little like Candy. Couldn’t of been Candy.”
I turned and shut the door. It seemed like a good idea at the moment. When I faced her she was already falling towards me. So I caught her. I damn well had to. She pressed herself hard against me and her hair brushed my face. Her mouth came up to be kissed. She was trembling. Her lips opened and her teeth opened and her tongue darted. Then her hands dropped and jerked at something and the robe she was wearing came open and underneath it she was as naked as September Morn but a darn sight less coy.
He stared owlishly, licked his lip, and said nothing. She went and leaned against the dressing table. Her hand moved mechanically and threw the hair back from her face. She shuddered once from head to foot, shaking her head from side to side. “Roger,” she whispered again. “Poor Roger. Poor miserable Roger.”
“Put me on the bed,” she breathed.
“Roger,” she said in a voice not much more than a sick whisper, “did it have to be that?”
I did that. Putting my arms around her I touched bare skin, soft skin, soft yielding flesh. I lifted her and carried her the few steps to the bed and lowered her. She kept her arms around my neck. She was making some kind of a whistling noise in her throat. Then she thrashed about and moaned. This was murder. I was as erotic as a stallion. I was losing control. You don’t get that sort of invitation from that sort of woman very often anywhere.
I felt her go stiff. Then she pulled away. Her eyes were focused and clear. I let her go.
Candy saved me. There was a thin squeak and I swung around to see the doorknob moving. I jerked loose and jumped for the door. I got it open and barged out through it and the Mex was tearing along the hall and down the stairs. Halfway down he stopped and turned and leered at me. Then he was gone.
Then he opened his eyes and that weary smile played on his lips. “Nobody hurt,” he muttered. “Just a wild shot into the ceiling.”
I went back to the door and shut it—from the outside this time. Some kind of weird noises were coming from the woman on the bed, but that’s all they were now. Weird noises. The spell was broken.
She spun around as if it took that to make her realize I was there. Her eyes widened and her body sagged against me. She let go of the gun. It was a heavy clumsy weapon, a Webley double-action hammerless. The barrel was warm. I held her with one arm, dropped the gun in my pocket, and looked past her head at him. Nobody said anything.
I went down the stairs fast and crossed into the study and grabbed the bottle of Scotch and tilted it. When I couldn’t swallow any more I leaned against the wall and panted and let the stuff burn in me until the fumes reached my brain.
She stood there leaning against me, holding the gun with both hands pressed hard against her body. She was racked with panting sobs. I reached around her body and put my hand on the gun.
It was a long time since dinner. It was a long time since anything that was normal. The whiskey hit me hard and fast and I kept guzzling it until the room started to get hazy and the furniture was all in the wrong places and the lamplight was like wildfire or summer lightning. Then I was flat out on the leather couch, trying to balance the bottle on my chest. It seemed to be empty. It rolled away and thumped on the floor.
On the balcony two lighted doors were open now—Eileen’s and his. Her room was empty. There was a sound of struggling from his and I came through the door in a jump to find her bending over the bed wrestling with him. The black gleam of a gun shot up into the air, two hands, a large male hand and a woman’s small hand were both holding it, neither by the butt. Roger was sitting up in bed and leaning forward pushing. She was in a pale blue house coat, one of those quilted things, her hair was all over her face and now she had both hands on the gun and with a quick jerk she got it away from him. I was surprised that she had the strength, even dopey as he was. He fell back glaring and panting and she stepped away and bumped into me.
That was the last incident of which I took any precise notice.