''You were out of the house, perhaps?'
'Sure.'
''Downtown?'
'Naw.'
'Where, then?'
'In the bam.'
'Alone?'
''Sure.'
'See the accident?' Duff surrendered to the staccato and tried sharpness.
'What accident?'
'To the car.'
'Naw.'
'Where were you then?'
'In the bam.'
'Alone?'
'Sure.'
'What were you doing?'
'Nothing.'
'Alone?' Duff tried it softly.
Mr. Johnson spat.
Duff said a few words in a strange tongue. The black eyes betrayed no light, although they were not uncomprehending.
'What about it?' said Mr. Johnson.
MacDougal Duff said, ''Thank you. I won't keep you,' in a tinny voice and stood aside to let him by.
Mr. Johnson went by.
Duff stood on the back stoop for a few minutes, gnawing on his own thumbnail. After a while he took his thumb out of his mouth and looked at it, wiped it twice across his other sleeve, put his hands in his pockets, and commanded himself to stroll aroimd the house toward the front door.
One who knew Duff well would have remarked that he seemed upset.
14
Alice woke up with her cheek on the bare mattress, her tweed coat scratchy under her chin, sat up under the mass of muddled bedclothes, and looked at her watch. Ten o'clock, Saturday. And the real significance of that was that Art Killeen must have been here in this house for nearly two hours.
She began to dress in a hurry, with a guilty sense of being late to a rendezvous. Her eyes, she saw in the glass, were puffy with weariness and her hair was wild. In her skirt and blouse, she snatched a towel and her make-up I box and fled through the deserted hall to the bathroom. |
When she came out, she was on the surface a self-possessed and fairly well-groomed young woman who might have taken the wild goings-on of the middle of the night in her stride. She'd made herself seem refreshed by sheer skill, and she had beaten down her excitement. She was ready when Innes's door opened and Art Killeen came out.
Ready or not, her heart jimiped, and she choked it back when she saw with a litde shock how fair he was, how white his skin, appreciated his well-washed look and the clean line of his nose and chin.
'Good morning!' he said with the surprised pleasure that was so familiar.
'Hello, Art,' said Alice, and her own voice was tired.
He was tall, and she had to look up. He was smiling radiantly. He said in a hushed voice, 'Innes has been telling me. My dear, I think it's swell! Just swell!'
Alice felt sick. She knew the word 'swell' in his vocabulary. She knew his convention of wholehearted rejoicing in another's success. The code, the gentleman's law. But this radiance turned her a little sick.
'Thanks, Art,' she said wearily. She knew weariness didn't attract him. How was it that she sounded so tired and was so tired of the whole idea of marrying Innes? If this was triumph, if this was revenge, it had no taste to it. It was flat. The excitement she'd been struggling to conceal died of itself. It disappeared and left her weary.
He had a brief case imder his arm, and he patted it.
'Where can I go to do a little work?' he asked, still smiling.
'I don't know,' she said.
'You know what it is I have to do, don't you?' His voice was colorless, deliberately, but she knew there was secret congratulation behind it.
'Yes,' she said.
'He's very fond of you, Alice.'
