I hope to God you will come at once.
Very sincerely yours,
Charles Roche signed his name firmly, then reread what he had written. It seemed all right. It was the best he could think of. He had been trying for days to write this letter, but hadn’t been able to devise a way of phrasing it.
From a drawer he took out a checkbook and made out the check to Michael Shayne, tore it from the book, folded it inside the letter and placed it in an envelope. He addressed it in care of Timothy Rourke, then wrote “Urgent” and “Personal” in the lefthand corner, underscoring the words. He put an airmail and special delivery stamp on after sealing it. There was a mail plane that stopped at the Centerville airport at three o’clock. The letter should be in Miami by early morning if he drove to the airport now and deposited it in the box there.
He heard a car laboring up the slope in second gear. He listened acutely, feeling his pulse quicken, then hastily gathered up the crumpled beginnings of the first letters. There was a fireplace in the study, closed off for the summer by an ornamental, tin cover. He hurried across to it, the overflowing ashtray in one hand, set it down to remove the cover, dumped the cigarette butts in, followed by the sheets of paper, and set fire to them. While they burned, he went back and replaced his checkbook in the desk drawer.
Glancing out the window, he saw twin headlights slowly coming up the slope beyond his father’s house. It sounded like Seth Gerald’s Cadillac coupe. Elsa had gone to the Country Club dance with Joe and Maisie Warren. Seth was probably there, too, and it would be natural for him to offer to drive Elsa home, thus saving Joe an extra two-mile trip and a steep climb. Seth had done it before.
Charles didn’t mind, but he felt it was unwise for Seth to be seen at the dance. Not at a time like this, when the miners and their families had been hungry for weeks, and while there were rumors of strike-breakers being brought in. It was going to be touch-and-go for the next few days. Even such a routine as the general manager of the Roche Mines attending the Country Club dance and drinking champagne, while the miners’ wives went without food, might burst Centerville wide open. It didn’t matter so much what Elsa did. The miners forgave her, because she was a woman and a foreigner, a Bostonian. It was all right, Charles supposed, for her to go dancing, but under the existing circumstances, he had no desire to attend such occasions.
The fire had died down. He went back to the fireplace to replace the cover. Then, suddenly, the sound of the automobile stopped.
Snapping off the light as he went, Charles returned quickly to the window. The car had stopped down below the old Roche mansion. The night was clear and moonlit. If it had taken the sharp turn below, he could have seen the headlights and heard the heavier laboring of the motor up the steep, twisting road.
Could he have been mistaken? Could it have been someone turning off at the intersection a quarter of a mile down the hill? He didn’t think so. He was positive it had been much closer when it stopped. Yet, he hadn’t listened too carefully, in his eagerness to burn the crumpled letters. He had taken it for granted that Seth Gerald was bringing Elsa home.
He sighed and looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes before one o’clock. His fingers tightened on the envelope in his hand, and he put it in his hip pocket. Turning on the study light, he walked slowly around the room. Saturday night dances at the club stopped at midnight on the dot. He didn’t mind Elsa having a good time, but she knew very well he was worried when she didn’t return home promptly. He couldn’t expect her to sit around the house day and night and be bored during these times when urgent business required all his attention. Elsa had complained bitterly, and he had to admit the truth of her contention. She was young and beautiful and…
The ominous stillness of the night irritated him. It was as though a tremendous, unseen force lurked in the narrow gorge between the two mountainsides, as he stopped, in his pacing, to stare out the window again. A force that was gathering strength, tensing itself, waiting. Not an evil force, but a malignant one. Leaning forward with both hands on the window sill, he thought the two words over carefully. Evil had to do with morals, a thing that might be offset by supplying the good things of life. It was an emotion that might be dealt with. But malignancy was a thing alive and growing and destructive, boring into the vitals, killing, bringing violence and death to the sleepy mountain village. Hadn’t the whole world had enough of killing? He didn’t see why the miners…
Vague movement in the moonlit path caught his eye, the footpath leading between his father’s house and his. A figure walked slowly, moonlight glinting on the rhinestones in her hair and the silver sequins of her evening gown.
He could see more clearly as she came nearer. It was Elsa, picking her way carefully on highheeled dancing slippers, swaying a little, catching now and then at the low undergrowth.
Charles drew back from the window and leaned against the wall. He didn’t want her to think he was spying on her, but he listened for the sound of a motor starting up on the macadam road. When he didn’t hear anything, he grimly decided that her escort had swung around the circle below his father’s house, leaving his car headed down the slope before cutting the ignition and stopping to let her out. That way, he could later release the clutch and roll down silently.
Turning out the study light, he walked through the hall and into the huge and beautifully appointed living room. John Roche had designed this room especially to set off Elsa’s dark beauty. Pale rose-and-gold stippled ceilings merged into deep aquamarine walls, complimented by the enormous jade and rose Oriental rug on the floor. Soft lights from two table lamps were too dim for reading, but Charles sank into a chair and picked up an open book which he had been reading a few hours previously. He switched on a stronger light in the lamp. The book was “A Study of History” and he had worked his way almost half through the bulky volume. He lit a cigarette and stared at the words without seeing them.
He heard his wife come up the steps and cross the porch. He kept his eyes upon the book until the knob turned and the door was opened.
Turning in simulated surprise, he blinked as she swayed on the threshold. He could never look at Elsa without blinking at the perfection of her beauty. She was small and slender and vitally alive. Her upper lip was sensuously short, her skin dark, and gray-green eyes seemed always molten with passion beneath her long dark lashes and perfect brows.
She was drunk. She knew she was drunk, and gloried in the fact. Her voice was somewhat thick when she said airily, “Hi, stick-in-the-mud. Get all your work documented and filed?”
Charles didn’t get up. He closed the book with his finger marking the page and said gravely, “Yes. I finished. It’s late, Elsa.” He hadn’t meant to say it. She hated anything that sounded in the least like a reprimand. She giggled and lurched into a chair near the door. “What of it? I’ve been having fun.”
“Who brought you home?”
“People.” She waved her right hand on which a diamond and emerald dinner ring gleamed.
“I didn’t hear a car drive up.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and let her dark head sink against the back of the chair. “You never hear anything that goes on.”
Charles got up wearily. He wanted to shout that he wished to God she wouldn’t lie to him… that he wanted to know what was going on behind his back. Instead, he asked casually, “Was Seth at the dance?”
“Oh, sure. Seth… and lots of people. It was fun.” She sat up, her arms extended along the chair arms and looked pensively at the toe of one frail dancing slipper she was wiggling.
“I’m glad it was fun,” he said heavily. He laid the book on the table and went to the hall closet to get his hat. Elsa was still studying the toe of her slipper when he came back. “Now that you’re home all right, I have to go out.” He didn’t want to reprove her, but it was there, in the tone of his voice.
She glanced up sharply. “Out? At this time of night?”
“To look for Brand,” he told her. His hand touched the letter in his hip pocket.
“George Brand!” A shadow of fear was in her eyes, her face tense. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles.”
“What’s ridiculous about it?” He was irritable now.
“Please don’t.” There was real fear in her eyes. She was sitting forward, red-nailed fingers tightly gripping the upholstered chair arms. “Not… tonight. Please, Charles.”
He looked at her, puzzled, then said, “I believe you do actually care, Elsa… a little.”
“Of course I care,” she cried drunkenly. “How can you be so cruel,” but she didn’t move to go to him.
He went to her chair and looked down into her lovely face. “There’s nothing to fear,” he reassured her. “Brand is a sensible man, even if he is leading the strikers against us. He’s not a hot-blooded Communist like some
