“Your hand’s cold,” he said.
She pulled her hand away. Her voice was not loud: intensity made it shrill. “Aren’t you ever human?” she demanded. “Are you always like this? Or is it a pose?” She drew herself far back in a corner of the taxicab. “Are you a damned corpse?”
“I don’t know,” the dark man said. He seemed mildly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She did not speak again, but sulked in her corner until they reached her house. Guild sat at ease and smoked until the taxicab stopped. Then he got out, saying: “I’ll stop long enough to see if he’s home.”
The girl crossed the sidewalk and unlocked the door while he was paying the chauffeur. She had gone indoors leaving the door open when he mounted the front steps. He followed her in. She had turned on ground-floor lights and was calling upstairs: “Charley!” There was no answer.
She uttered an impatient exclamation and ran upstairs. When she came down again she moved wearily. “He’s not in,” she said. “He hasn’t come.”
Guild nodded without apparent disappointment. “I’ll give you a ring when I wake up,” he said, stepping back toward the street door, “or if I get any news of him.”
She said quickly: “Don’t go yet, please, unless you have to. I don’t – I wish you’d stay a little while.”
He said, “Sure,” and they went into the living-room.
When she had taken off her coat she left him for a few minutes, going into the kitchen, returning with Scotch whisky, ice, lemons, glasses, and a siphon of water. They sat on the sofa with drinks in their hands.
Presently, looking inquisitively at him, she said: “I really meant what I said in the cab. Aren’t you actually human? Isn’t there any way anybody can get to you, get to the real inside you? I think you’re the most” – she frowned, selecting words – “most untouchable, unreal person I’ve ever known. Trying to – to really come in contact with you is just like trying to hold a handful of smoke.”
Guild, who had listened attentively, now nodded. “I think I know what you’re trying to say. It’s an advantage when I’m working.”
“I didn’t ask you that,” she protested, moving the glass in her hand impatiently. “I asked you if that’s the way you really are or if you just do it.”
He smiled and shook his head noncommittally.
“That isn’t a smile,” she said. “It’s painted on.” She leaned to him swiftly and kissed him, holding her mouth to his mouth for an appreciable time. When she took her mouth from his her narrow green eyes examined his face carefully. She made a moue. “You’re not even a corpse – you’re a ghost.”
Guild said pleasantly, “I’m working,” and drank from his glass.
Her face flushed. “Do you think I’m trying to make you?” she asked hotly.
He laughed at her. “I’d like it if you were, but I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” she said. “You’d be scared.”
“Uh-uh,” he explained blandly. “I’m working. It’d make you easier for me to handle.”
Nothing in her face responded to his bantering. She said, with patient earnestness: “If you’d only listen to me and believe me when I tell you I don’t know any more what it’s all about than you do, if that much. You’re just wasting your time when you ought to be finding Wynant. I don’t know anything. Charley doesn’t. We’d both tell you if we did. We’ve both already told you all we know. Why can’t you believe me when I tell you that?”
“Sorry,” Guild said lightly. “It don’t make sense.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after five. I’d better run along.”
She put a hand out to detain him, but instead of speaking she stared thoughtfully at her dangling wrist-scarf and worked her lips together.
Guild lit another cigarette and waited with no appearance of impatience.
Presently she shrugged her bare shoulders and said: “It doesn’t make any difference.” She turned her head to look uneasily behind her. “But will you – will you do something for me before you go? Go through the house and see that everything is all right. I’m – I’m nervous, upset.”
“Sure,” he said readily, and then, suggestively: “If you’ve got anything to tell me, the sooner the better for both of us.”
“No, no, there’s nothing,” she said. “I’ve told you everything.”
“All right. Have you got a flashlight?”
She nodded and brought him one from the next room.
When Guild returned to the living-room Elsa Fremont was standing where he had left her. She looked at his face and anxiety went out of her eyes. “It was silly of me,” she said, “but I do thank you.”
He put the flashlight on the table and felt for his cigarettes. “Why’d you ask me to look?”
She smiled in embarrassment and murmured: “It was a silly notion.”
“Why’d you bring me home with you?” he asked.
She stared at him with eyes in which fear was awakening. “Wh – what do you mean? Is there -?”
He nodded.
“What is it?” she cried. “What did you find?”
He said: “I found something wrong down in the cellar.”
Her hand went to her mouth.
“Your brother,” he said.
She screamed: “What?”
“Dead.”
The hand over her mouth muffled her voice: “K – killed?”
He nodded. “Suicide, from the looks of it. The gun could be the one the girl was killed with. The -“ He broke off and caught her arm as she tried to run past him toward the door. “Wait. There’s plenty of time for you to look at him. I want to talk to you.”
She stood motionless, staring at him with open, blank eyes.
He said: “And I want you to talk to me.”
She did not show she had heard him.
He said: “Your brother did kill Columbia Forrest, didn’t he?”
Her eyes held their blank stare. Her lips barely moved. “You fool, you fool,” she muttered in a tired, flat voice.
He was still holding her arm. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and asked in a low, persuasive tone: “How do you know he didn’t?”
She began to tremble. “He couldn’t’ve,” she cried. Life had come back to her voice and face now. “He couldn’t’ve.”
“Why?”
She jerked her arm out of his hand and thrust her face up toward his. “He couldn’t’ve, you idiot. He wasn’t there. You can find out where he was easily enough. You’d’ve found out long before this if you’d had any brains. He was at a meeting of the Boxing Commission that afternoon, seeing about a permit or something for Sammy. They’ll tell you that. They’ll have a record of it.”
The dark man did not seem surprised. His blue eyes were meditative under brows drawn a little together. “He didn’t kill her, but he committed suicide,” he said slowly and with an air of listening to himself say it. “That don’t make sense too.”
The End
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The book has been a long time in making its way to publication, and much is owed to the kindness and encouragement of friends and colleagues: Glenn Lord, Walker Martin, Robert Weinberg, Gordon R. Dickson, David Drake, T. E. D. Klein, Judy Zelazny, Isidore Haiblum, Richard Layman, Otto Penzler, Larry Segriff, William F. Nolan, and Kay McCauley.
We are also grateful to our good and patient agents, Kassandra Duane and Joy Harris; and to New York bookseller Jon White for his knowledgeable assistance in locating individual stories in rare old magazines and books.
We are indebted as well to Martin Asher of Vintage Books and Sonny Mehta of Alfred A. Knopf for their continued support of this book over the rather lengthy period of time from agreement to publication. Edward
