Highsmith, Patricia (35 page)

“Except a stool-pigeon,” Guy said. “I suppose a stool-pigeon would inform.”

“That’s right,” Owen agreed. “A dirty, stinking stool-pigeon.” He gave a loud, relieving laugh.

Guy was staring into space, frowning. He was trying to find solid ground that would carry him to something he had just seen as if by a flash, far ahead of him. The law was not society, it began. Society was people like himself and Owen and Brillhart, who hadn’t the right to take the life of another member of society. And yet the law did. “And yet the law is supposed to be the will of society at least. It isn’t even that. Or maybe it is collectively,” he added, aware that as always he was doubling back before he came to a point, making things as complex as possible in trying to make them certain.

“Hmm-m?” Owen murmured. His head was back against the chair, his black hair tousled over his forehead, and his eyes almost closed.

“No, people collectively might lynch a murderer, but that’s exactly what the law is supposed to guard against.”

“Never hold with lynchings,” Owen said. ‘“S not true! Gives the whole South a bad name—unnec’sarily.”

“My point is, that if society hasn’t the right to take another person’s life, then the law hasn’t either. I mean, considering that the law is a mass of regulations that have been handed down and that nobody can interfere with, no human being can touch. But it’s human beings the law deals with, after all. I’m talking about people like you and me. My case in particular. At the moment, I’m only talking about my case. But that’s only logic. Do you know something, Owen? Logic doesn’t always work out, so far as people go. It’s all very well when you’re building a building, because the material behaves then, but—” His argument went up in smoke. There was a wall that prevented him from saying another word, simply because he couldn’t think any further. He had spoken loudly and distinctly, but he knew Owen hadn’t been hearing, even if he was trying to listen. And yet Owen had been indifferent, five minutes ago, to the question of his guilt. “What about a jury, I wonder,” Guy said.

“What jury?”

“Whether a jury is twelve human beings or a body of laws. It’s an interesting point. I suppose it’s always an interesting point.” He poured the rest of the bottle into his glass and drank it. “But I don’t suppose it’s interesting to you, is it, Owen? What is interesting to you?”

Owen was silent and motionless.

“Nothing is interesting to you, is it?” Guy looked at Owen’s big scuffed brown shoes extended limply on the carpet, the toes tipped inward toward each other, because they rested on their heels. Suddenly, their flaccid, shameless, massive stupidity seemed the essence of all human stupidity. It translated itself instantly into his old antagonism against the passive stupidity of those who stood in the way of the progress of his work, and before he knew how or why, he had kicked, viciously, the side of Owen’s shoe. And still, Owen did not move. His work, Guy thought. Yes, there was his work to get back to. Think later, think it all out right later, but he had work to do.

He looked at his watch. Ten past 12. He didn’t want to sleep here. He wondered if there was a plane tonight. There must be something out. Or a train.

He shook Owen. “Owen, wake up. Owen!”

Owen mumbled a question.

“I think you’ll sleep better at home.”

Owen sat up and said clearly, “That I doubt.”

Guy picked up his topcoat from the bed. He looked around, but he hadn’t left anything because he hadn’t brought anything. It might be better to telephone the airport now, he thought.

“Where’s the John?” Owen stood up. “I don’t feel so good.”

Guy couldn’t find the telephone. There was a wire by the bed table, though. He traced the wire under the bed. The telephone was off the hook, on the floor, and he knew immediately it hadn’t fallen; because both parts were dragged up near the foot of the bed, the hand piece eerily focused on the armchair where Owen had been sitting. Guy pulled the telephone slowly toward him.

“Hey, ain’t there a John anywheres?” Owen was opening a closet door.

“It must be down the hall.” His voice was like a shudder. He was holding the telephone in a position for speaking, and now he brought it closer to his ear. He heard the intelligent silence of a live wire. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Haines.” The voice was rich, courteous, and just the least brusque.

Guy’s hand tried unavailingly to crush the telephone, and then he surrendered without a word. It was like a fortress falling, like a great building falling apart in his mind, but it crumbled like powder and fell silently.

“There wasn’t time for a dictaphone. But I heard most of it from just outside your door. May I come in?”

Gerard must have had his scouts at the airport in New York, Guy thought, must have followed in a chartered plane. It was possible. And here it was. And he had been stupid enough to sign the register in his own name. “Come in,” Guy echoed. He put the telephone on the hook and stood up, rigidly, watching the door.

His heart was pounding as it never had before, so fast and hard, he thought surely it must be a prelude to his dropping dead. Run, he thought. Leap, attack as soon as he comes in. This is your very last chance. But he didn’t move. He was vaguely aware of Owen being sick in the basin in the corner behind him. Then there was a rap at the door, and he went toward it, thinking, wouldn’t it have to be like this after all, by surprise, with someone, a stranger who didn’t understand anything, throwing up in a basin in a corner of the room, without his thoughts ordered, and worse, having already uttered half of them in a muddle. Guy opened the door.

“Hello,” Gerard said, and he came in with his hat on and his arms hanging, just as he had always looked.

“Who is it?” Owen asked.

“Friend of Mr. Haines,” Gerard said easily, and glancing at Guy with his round face as serious as before, he gave him a wink. “I suppose you want to go to New York tonight, don’t you?”

Guy was staring at Gerard’s familiar face, at the big mole on his cheek, at the bright, living eye that had winked at him, undoubtedly had winked at him. Gerard was the law, too. Gerard was on his side, so far as any man could be, because Gerard knew Bruno. Guy knew it now, as if he had known it the whole time, yet it had never even occurred to him before. He knew, too, that he had to face Gerard. That was part of it all, and always had been. It was inevitable and ordained, like the turning of the earth, and there was no sophistry by which he could free himself from it.

“Eh?” Gerard said.

Guy tried to speak, and said something entirely different from what he had intended. “Take me.”

The End