She didn't take her eyes from his face. Drawing a cigarette from the pack, she put it calmly to her lips and dropped the pack back into her purse. 'I'm sorry,' she said coolly, tucking the purse under her left arm. 'I don't know what you're so touchy about.'
'Can't you understand? I knew the girl.'
She struck a match and held it to his cigarette, the orange glow lighting his face, showing the blue eyes simmering with about-to-break strain, the jaw muscles tight as piano wires.... One more jab, one more jab... She withdrew the match from his lighted cigarette, held it before his face. 'They never did say why she did it, did they?' His eyes closed painfully. 'I'll bet she was pregnant,' she said.
His face flared from flame orange to raw red as the match died and the tower light flashed on. The wire-tight muscles burst and the blue eyes shot open like dams exploding.... Now!-Ellen thought triumphantly-Now! Let it be something good, something damning!...
'All right!' he blazed, 'all right! You know why I won't talk about it? You know why I didn't want to come up here at all? Why I didn't even want to come into this goddamn building?'-he flung away his cigarette-'Because the girl who committed suicide here was the girl I told you about last night! The one you smile like!' His eyes dropped from her face. 'The girl who I~'
The words cut off guillotine-sharp. She saw his downcast eyes dilate with shock and then the tower light faded and she could see him only as a dim form confronting her. Suddenly his hand caught her left wrist, gripping it with paralyzing pressure. A scream pushed the cigarette from her lips. He was wrenching at the fingers of her captive hand, clawing at them.
The purse slid out from under her arm and thudded to her feet. Futilely her right hand flailed his head. He was thumbing the muscles of her hand, forcing the fingers open... Releasing her, he stepped back and became a dimly outlined form again.
'What did you do?' she cried. 'What did you take?' Dazedly she stooped and retrieved her purse. She flexed her left hand, her jarred senses vainly trying to recall the imprint of the object she had been holding.
Then the red light flashed on again and she saw it resting in the palm of his hand as though he had been examining it even in the dark. The matchbook. With the coppered letters glinting sharp and clear: Ellen Kingship.
Coldness engulfed her. She closed her eyes sickly, nauseous fear ballooning in her stomach. She swayed; her back felt the hard edge of the airshaft parapet.
'Her sister...' he faltered, 'her sister...' She opened her eyes. He was staring at the match-book with glazed incomprehension. He looked up at her. 'What is this?' he asked dully. Suddenly he hurled the matchbook at her feet and his voice flared loud again, 'What do you want from me?'
'Nothing, nothing,' she said quickly, 'nothing.' Her eyes darted desperately. He was standing between her and the stairway shed. If only she could circle around him... She began inching to her left, her back pulling against the parapet.
He rubbed his forehead. 'You... you pick me up... you ask me questions about her... you get me up here...' Now his voice was entreating: 'What do you want from me?'
'Nothing... nothing,' warily sidestepping.
'Then why did you do this?' His body flexed to move forward.
'Stop!' she cried.
The ball-poised feet dropped flat, frozen.
'If anything happens to me,' she said, forcing herself to speak slowly, evenly, 'there's somebody else who knows all about you. He knows I'm with you tonight, and he knows all about you, so if anything happens, anything at all...'
'If anything...?' His brow furrowed. 'What are you talking about?'
'You know what I mean. If I fall...'
'Why should you...?' He stared unbelievingly. 'You think I'd...?' One hand gestured limply towards the parapet. 'Jesus!' he whispered. 'What are you, crazy?'
She was a good fifteen feet from him. She began edging away from the parapet, cutting across to get on a straight line with the stairway door that was behind him and on his right. He pivoted slowly, following her cautious transverse path. 'What's this 'knows all about me'?' he demanded. 'Knows what?'
'Everything,' she said. 'Everything. And he's waiting downstairs. If I'm not down in five minutes he's calling the police.'
He slapped his forehead exhaustedly. 'I give up,' he moaned. 'You want to go downstairs? You want to go? Well go ahead!' He turned and backed to the airshaft parapet, to the spot where Ellen had been standing originally, leaving her a clear path to the door. He stood with his elbows resting on the stone behind Mm. 'Go ahead! Go on!'
She moved towards the door slowly, suspiciously, knowing that he could still beat her there, cut her off.
He didn't move.
'If I'm supposed to be arrested,' he said, 'I'd just like to know what for. Or is that too much to ask?' She made no answer until she had the door open in her hand. Then she said, 'I expected you to be a convincing actor. You had to be, to make Dorothy believe you were going to marry her.'
'What?' This time his surprise seemed deeper, painful. 'Now listen, I never said anything to make her believe I was going to marry her. That was all on her side, all her idea.'
'You liar,' she clenched hatefully. 'You filthy liar.' She ducked behind the shield of the open door and stepped over the high threshold.
'Wait!' As though sensing that any forward movement would send her running, he dropped back along the parapet and then cut out from it, following the same path Ellen had taken before. He stopped when he was opposite the doorway, some twenty feet from it. Within the shed Ellen turned to face him, one hand on the doorknob, ready to pull it closed.
'For God's sake,' he said earnestly, 'will you just tell me what this is all about? Please?'
'You think I'm bluffing. You think we really don't know.'
'Jesus...' he whispered furiously.
'All right,' she glared. 'I'll itemize it for you. One; she was pregnant. Two; you didn't want-'
'Pregnant?' It hit him like a rock in the stomach. He leaned forward. 'Dorothy was pregnant? Is that why she did it? Is that why she killed herself?'
'She didn't kill herself!' Ellen cried. 'You killed her!' She pulled the door shut, turned and ran.
She ran clatteringly down the metal steps, her heels ringing, clutching at the bannister and swinging round the turn at each landing and before she had gone two and a half flights she heard him thundering down after her shouting Evvie! Ellen! Wait! and then it was too late to take the elevator because by the time she ran all the way around the corridor and it came and took her down he would be waiting there already so there was nothing to do but keep on running with her heart beating and legs aching down the fourteen flights from roof to lobby which were really twenty-eight half-flights spiraling down through the gloomy stairwell with twenty-seven landings to swing out arm-pullingly banging against the wall with him thundering closer behind all the way down to the main floor half- slipping with the damn heels and coming out into a marble corridor and running around clattering echoing into the slippery floored cathedral of a lobby where the startled Negro head popped out of the elevator then pushing exhaustedly out through the heavy revolving door and down more steps of treacherous marble and almost bumping into a woman on the sidewalk and running down to the left down towards Washington Avenue down the smalltown night-deserted street and finally slowing with her heart hard-pumping to snatch one backward look before rounding the corner and there he was running down the marble steps waving and shouting Wait! Wait! She wheeled around the corner running again ignoring the couple that turned to stare and the boys in the car shouting Want a ride? and seeing the hotel down the block with its glass doors glowing like an ad for hotels getting nearer-he's getting nearer too but don't look back just keep on running-until at last she reached the beautiful glass doors and a man smiling amusedly held one of them open 'Thank you, thank you,' and finally she was in the lobby, the lobby, the safe warm lobby, with bellhops and loungers and men behind newspapers... She was dying to drop into one of the chairs but she went straight to the corner phone booths because if Gant went to the police with her, Gant who was a local celebrity, then they'd be more inclined to listen to her, believe her, investigate. Panting, she seized the phone book and flipped to the K's-it was five to nine so he'd be at the studio. She slapped away pages, gaspingly catching her breath. There it was: KBRI-5-1000. She opened her purse and hunted for coins. Five-one-thousand, five-one-
