Black Alibi (25 page)

The reeds hissed a little, over one way, stilled again. The leafy branches of a tree rustled a little, over the other way, as Manning hoisted himself up among them, shifted about for a moment or two, settling his weight. Then they too became silent, motionless.

There wasn’t a sound about the shadowy lake. The Bosque all around it was as silent and as lifeless as though it were an actual wilderness, instead of a great natural park on the outskirts of a big city. A breathless hush hung over everything, awaiting the arrival of the greatest killer of them all—

It was the going-out hour, when Ciudad Real answered the call of night life heart and soul. She stepped out of the hotel entrance, looking so glittering, so frivolous, in her crystal-beaded white gown, a silver poppy in her hair, a looped silver evening pouch dangling from’ her wrist, pulled a little out of shape by something heavy resting in it—perhaps opera glasses—that it was obvious there could be nothing more serious on her mind than dancing and champagne. People passing on the sidewalk turned and smiled a little in sympathy as they saw her emerge, she looked so festive and so carefree. They may have even envied her, some of them.

Lights were flashing everywhere, and she was one with them, and with the mood they conjured up. A fiery monkey high against the night sky kept disappearing and returning again, once with its eyes covered, the next time with its ears, the next with its mouth, proclaiming “Anis del Mono.” A rooster with green tail feathers, more steady, urged without interruption: “Cinzano Vermouth.” The sidewalks were like noon under this flashing, blinding, man-made constellation. Every table at every café was taken, and taxis swarmed through the streets with a furious twittering of their horns.

The going-out hour; now let’s relax, now let’s have fun, now let’s forget there’s such a thing as work and care.

She stood there, the tiny silver wedges of her slippers poised at the brink of the curb, and stopped the hotel doorman as he was raising the looped whistle about his neck. “No, not a taxi. Carriage with a horse.
Caballo
, understand?”

He ran down to the next corner to get her one personally, came back poised on the step of it, one leg swinging free.

She got in. “To the Madrid.”

The coachman and the doorman exchanged a glance. Indistinct Spanish phrases passed between them.

“You tell her.”

“No, you tell her.”

The doorman leaned solicitously into the carriage. “Excuse me, is the senorita going there alone? No disrespect intended, but—” He smiled placatingly, as if not knowing how to go ahead. “It’s—it’s that it’s a little far out for these nights.”

She knew what he meant by “these nights.” He was evidently unaware that she was the identical girl who had been out there with a companion only a few nights ago, and whom it had last happened to.

She put a small coin into his hand, to show that she had taken no offense. “To the Madrid,” she repeated firmly.

The grizzled coachman touched his cap. “Si, senorita.”

“And drive slowly, I want to enjoy the air before I dine.” She said it over in her mind. Dine? Die? They sounded so much alike; in English, anyway.

She saw them look at one another again and shrug helplessly, as if to say, “What can you do with these Americans?”

The hotel starter closed the carriage door for her. He glanced curiously at her face, as though it struck him she had on too much powder. It probably did look chalky white, she realized, but not from powder.

She sank back on the upholstered seat; the hotel and the safety it offered glided slowly backwards, like a lighthouse on a receding shore, and the ride began.

It came to her that, somewhere else in the city, at about this same time, perhaps at this very minute, somebody else might be starting out too. Somebody whose path, evil, horror-laden, would slowly, surely draw nearer to hers through the hours, until at last the two would cross—and after that there would only be one, hers would have ended.

Strange rendezvous! Yes, somewhere, in some noisome alley, from some hidden unguessed lair, a cloaked form, faceless to the night, was emerging, to keep an appointment with her: lady in a white and crystal dress, silver-shod, raven-haired, waf ting scented traces of a perfume whose trade name was, ominously enough, “Je Serai Seule a Minuit,” on the soft evening air about her, as her carriage took her from her lighted hotel. And no one’s heart, going to any other rendezvous, had ever beat any harder than hers was now, as she lolled there in the back of the carriage, so gracefully at ease. Silver-tipped feet crossed before her on the floor, the curve of one arm negligently resting on the curve of the seat around her; the hand of the other—down out of sight—clenched into a tormented little lump close at her side that no instrument could have pried open, it had frozen so solid.

Slowly the peaceful, resonant clop-clop of the horse drew her toward the Puerta Mayor, the main outlet into the Bosque. And, as they went along, it was like leaving the stratified reflections of a vast central bonfire, with the street shine dimming progressively the farther away they got. First the holocaust of the downtown night-life district, bleaching everything with noonday brilliance, then the soberer luster of the intermediate sectors, with just their shops and occasional small electrified signs, finally the gloomy austerity of the outlying residential districts, streets lighted solely with the cool white of their own lampposts and the occasional yellow square of a window.

And then the Puerta Mayor, and darkness closed in, complete, triumphant, on both sides. Everywhere but overhead, where a long line of lonely center lights marked the double-laned main driveway that led back into the depths of the Bosque, toward the Madrid.

The long talcumed vistas of the city’s periphery avenues fell behind them, finally blotted out. The air became damper, cooler with a penetrating quality. An odor of ferns and foliage and dank wood crept up, worsting the gossamer perfume that still clung about her.

The main driveway was anything but empty, however. A constant procession of cars, some closed and lighted, others topless and open, went past her, going the other way. It was only being used in one direction tonight. “These nights,” as the hotel doorman had expressed it. Everyone was coming out, leaving. In to town—and safety. No one was going the opposite way. No one but she. Her coachman had his lane all to himself.

They had very little to fear, these others, seated in their lighted limousines in twos and threes and fours. But their machines didn’t loiter along the way, just the same. They all went by fast, maintaining a general level of accelerated speed that was not lost on her. As though, now that they had proved their courage to themselves and all their friends by dining early at the Madrid, they couldn’t wait until they got out of here, to continue their revels somewhere else with greater peace of mind. Even though it was general knowledge by now that
it
was no longer in here, had last been seen all the way across town by the Hippodrome race track.

So she went slowly by, counter to the stream, in lonely grandeur. A sheet of coruscating white flame licked over her form each time the carriage passed beneath an overhanging arc light, then dwindled again until the next one came along.

At last, through the darkness ahead, the lanterns of the Madrid began to show, like a bed of luminous, multicolored confetti lying scattered about under the trees. The ghostly echoes of accordion and violin notes seemed to drop down on them from those same trees like a fine, impalpable rain, as he turned in the short looped spur that led in toward the entrance and then out and around again.

An attendant helped her down and she stepped through the low box hedge that bordered the outside. dining place.

“You’ll wait, of course,” she ordered the coachman. There was a depleted line of cars still standing there along one side of the drive-in.

“But not too late, senorita,” he pleaded cravenly, “it’s not advisable these days.”

“You’ll wait until I’m ready,” she said severely. “See that he does,” she instructed the attendant.

A headwaiter had come forward to greet her. They were all inside the main building, an octagonal pavilion raised several steps above ground level. There were still people here, but in vastly diminished numbers. Last-standers, either trying to show how daring they were, or having had too much wine and too good a time to care very much any longer one way or the other. Even so, the few there were were banded together in large table groups, as if for mutual protection. So much the better, she thought; he can pick me out more easily this way than if the place were crowded. One or two couples were moving about on the black glass dance floor in the slow languor of the tango, each with its complementary pair reflected upside down, so that there seemed to be twice as many as there were.

“Is the senorita expecting anyone?”

She concealed the shiver this succeeded in eliciting. The senorita was, but not anyone to look forward to.

“No, dinner for one.” Then, as he started to precede her toward the entrance steps of the building, “I want a table outside here. All the way over, by the hedge.”

He gave her a look. “Are you sure you want to sit that far out?”

“I’m sure,” she cut him short. “I don’t like crowds.”

There was no one out here at all, in all this sea of tables, as she took her seat. The hedge that ran beside her was low; even seated she was visible almost from the waist up, for the tables were set on a platform in order to assure an evenness that the natural ground lacked. The trees, and the impenetrable darkness below them, looked uncomfortably close, close enough for someone to reach out through them and snatch her bodily away, in an unguarded moment when everyone’s back was turned. Suppose—suppose something happened right here, where he and Belmonte weren’t expecting it to, couldn’t help her?

She turned her eyes away, remembering what Manning had warned her: not to show strain or awareness; studied the bill of fare. A bill of fare that vibrated slightly in her hand, so that the printed words on it all showed double, as if seen through the beveled edge of a thick slab of glass.

“You recommend?” she said in a smothered voice.

“The purée of mango.”

“Very well, the purée of mango.” How could she get anything down her throat, the way it felt now? To swallow, something inside the throat had to open, didn’t it?

“And at the end, an ice and coffee.”

She had been in many restaurants. She had never yet been anything but slightly relieved to have the ordering done with and the headwaiter take himself off, viewing it as a minor annoyance at best. Now she found herself regretting having reached the end of it so soon, reluctant to see him go in and leave her there alone. She even deliberately held him there a moment or two longer beside her, repeating a redundant instruction or two.

Her eyes followed him all the way in when he finally left. She felt so alone, so cut off out here. True, there was a chasseur over there by the break in the hedge, to open car doors for arrivals, but he looked awfully far away, and these trees immediately about her were awfully close. She opened the little bag on her lap, pretended to fumble for a handkerchief, and touched the butt of the gun Manning had given her. She felt a little better after that.

Just as she finished her soup, a vermilion lantern directly over her,
hers
in view of the table she occupied, went out without any warning, and a pall of gray shadow was cast over her in its place. She closed her eyes dismayedly. Was that some kind of omen?

As soon as it had been noticed, two of them came hurrying out with a short stepladder, one of them climbed up on it behind her chair, fitted a new bulb into place, and in a moment it went on again brighter than before, so that was all right.

It was hard to eat. And when not eating, it was even harder still. She kept her eyes away from the direction of the trees by sheer will power. Sometimes she was sure she could feel other, malign eyes boring steadily into her from the shadows beyond the hedge. Sometimes she was sure it was just her imagination.

Once a small animal, perhaps a squirrel or a chipmunk, scurried along the ground on the outside of the hedge. Luckily her napkin happened to be in her hand at the moment. She got it up to and partly into her mouth before the scream had a chance to come. She dug the nails of her other hand into its palm, nearly piercing the flesh, until she had conquered the spasm. The next time the waiter approached after that, she said a little breathlessly: “Ask them to play a little louder. I can’t hear them very well out here.”

“Certainly, senorita. Any favorite selection?”

She felt like saying, “Nearer My God to Thee,” but it would have been in earnest, not in jest, the way she felt, so she didn’t.

“And bring me some champagne,” she added. “It’s dull here.”

If she was being watched—and she was almost certain by now that she was—that would create a desirable impression. Of nonchalance and celebration. What she really wanted it for was to keep from fainting here in her seat.

They brought it and the cork popped and it foamed out in cheery beaded strings. She raised her brimming glass high up over hedge level, so it couldn’t fail to be seen. She felt like turning toward the trees and holding it out in an ironical toast—“Here’s to you and me”—but it would have been too ghastly.

She touched it to her lips, set it down again. A mouthful or two was enough, to warm the lining of her throat. She didn’t want to dull her senses, they were the only armor she had tonight. After a while she surreptitiously emptied it Out on the floor, on the inner side of the table, where she couldn’t be seen doing it, and conspicuously refilled her glass.

Her request for champagne and louder music must have misled the management into thinking it had been remiss in attentiveness. A tall young fellow with a telltale white carnation in his jacket came down the steps and over to her place of exile. He bowed ingratiatingly. “May I have this tango?”

“Thank you, I’m not dancing.”

He wasn’t easily discouraged. “Then does the lovely senorita mind if I sit down and keep her company?” He had already drawn out the chair opposite hers.