She stood in the spill of light in a posture of breathless waiting that seemed cataleptic in its strange rigidity, and the intensity of her excitement was something tangible that reached him and touched him and stirred within him an identical emotion. For a long moment they stared at each other across the narrow space that was all that was presently left of the separation, and then her breasts rose and descended, and he could hear the extended whisper of her breath.
“I got your message,” she said softly.
“I see. Come in.”
She came swiftly into the hall and turned as he closed the door.
“Is it all right?”
“Yes.”
“The servants?”
“Gone for the night. I saw to that.”
“Where’s the old man?”
“Upstairs in his room. In bed. Your death knocked him out, darling. I didn’t really anticipate his taking it quite so hard. Even the detective on the case noticed it. And was disturbed by it. He warned me to be on the watch for suicide.”
“That’s good. That’s very good.”
“I know. That’s why I sent you word to come. Right now everything’s favorable. It’s the psychological time. If we do it now, we’ve got everyone thinking the way we want them to think. You’ll just have to make it look like suicide, that’s all. You’ll have to be sure.”
“I’ll be sure, darling. I’ll be very sure.”
Then, as if they had been pressing all this time against invisible barriers that collapsed suddenly, they moved together and locked with an almost brutal impact of bodies, and it was a long time before she let her head fall back away from him, her bright dyed hair hanging.
She said dreamily, “And now it’s almost over, darling. After so long.”
“Almost. The big risk, one more time of waiting, and then nothing left.”
“No, darling. You and me left. You and me and what all the money will buy. How am I for a dead woman?”
“As good as you ever were alive. Lucky for us, since you have to stay dead. Have you seen anyone you know?”
“No. No one.”
“How did you come?”
“By bus. I took a taxi from the depot to an address about a mile away. I walked from there.”
“No one saw you approach the house?”
“No one at all. I’m sure of that.”
“All right.” He stepped back, her hands trailing off his shoulders and down his arms to hang quietly at her sides. “I’d better go now. I’m meeting a party at a club in half an hour. That’s my alibi in case I need one. I don’t think I will. You’d better allow me at least an hour.”
“Yes, darling. I’ll wait.”
“I’ve arranged everything so you won’t be disturbed. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I won’t worry.”
He turned and walked to a hall closet, from which he took hat and coat. He put them on and returned most of the distance to Etta, stopping a couple of feet away, the interval that would widen into the final separation that must still be endured.
“Good-by, darling. Last good-by.”
“Yes. The very last.”
He wanted to touch her, to feel again the assurance he gained from the touch of her flesh, but he didn’t. Turning away, he opened the door and paused, looking back for an instant before shutting himself out. She returned his look with dreamy eyes. On her bright lips was the small smile of a child who anticipates a pleasure assured and at hand.
CHAPTER 9.
It was strange, very strange, and he couldn’t understand it. It was all done, all over, the risks taken and survived, and now the tensions should have been relaxed, a sense of triumph and power dominant in his mood. But it wasn’t that way at all. He was depressed, afflicted with a deep anxiety that was much like fear.
In his room in the empty house, the night held back by stone and wood and glass, he turned in his mind to the beginning, which was Etta, and worked back in detail through the events that followed, and he could see again, for the thousandth time, that nothing had gone wrong, that everything had worked almost miraculously to plan, and that it was now, in the time of triumph, wholly irrational to submit to despondency.
Even the last most precarious detail of all had gone with incredible ease, the intended interpretation accepted without a shadow of suspicion that could be detected. He could see again the commonplace figure of the detective named Smalley, could hear as if they were actually repeated at the moment of his recollection the detective’s exact words and the monotonous inflections, or lack of them, with which they were spoken.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Roche. You’ll recall that I suggested this possibility.”
“Yes. I’m afraid I discounted the possibility too much. I never really felt that the old man would do it. I suppose there’s no chance of its having been anything else?”
“What else could it be?”
“I see what you mean. The only alternative is even more shocking. Even more incredible.”
“Well, I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with alternatives. It was suicide, all right. Open and shut, as I see it. The position of the wound, the presence of the gun, the motivation—all these make a convincing case.”
“All right. I guess I must simply accept it. Thank you for your consideration.”
“Not at all, Mr. Roche. I only wish I could have convinced you in time that this might happen.”
That easy. That fantastically simple. All things in order and moving smoothly toward the projected end—the funeral, the payment of the insurance, the business of the will. And now Etta. Due and past due, Etta and the far places.
In the hall, the upstairs extension began to ring, and he listened to it without moving, wondering if he should let it ring or go out to answer it, and when it continued to ring imperiously in long bursts, he submitted
