Into The Night (19 page)

She spoke in a breathless voice, as though she were whispering in confidence. "Don't! Cut it out!"

"You overstayed your margin of safety."

"I'm going to have you arrested for this!"

Again he came after her. She tried to overturn the table toward him, but it had too wide a base to tilt easily. Then she remembered what he'd told her about the wrench, fled over into the corner, picked it up, and swung it in a long, shattering arc against the standpipe. The sound of it was brazen in its intensity, and it seemed to go echoing up through the house high over their heads, playing back upon itself section by section.

She only had time for the one blow, he came in at her too fast. She threw it at him and it hit him, but only on the protective arm he'd thrown up before his head. Again he penned her in his arms, but this time forward, not from in back, and she could feel the heat of his breath stirring her hair like some kind of an ill wind. She tried to kick him in the ankle with the sharp point of one of her shoes, and did, but the blow couldn't have hurt much, he hardly flinched, it had been too foreshortened.

He lied, she thought frantically. He said the man would come.

"A little love is all I want," he was coaxing. "Just a little love--"

She saw the cigarette that he'd lit just before the thing began, still balanced there on the rim of the table. She strained one arm toward it behind his back, but it fell a finger-length short, for she could only use the forearm because the upper arm was pinned under his. She pushed forward against him unexpectedly, instead of pulling away as she had been doing. He wasn't expecting the impulse and had to take a couple of steps back to hold his equilibrium. Her flexing fingers snatched up the cigarette, and she jabbed it into the drum of his ear, coal-forward.

He didn't cry out, but he recoiled like a bounced ball and let go of her. He bent his head over to one side as though his neck had been broken, and kept pounding at his ear with one hand, and stamped his heel on the floor twice.

Then before she knew what was coming, he swung the flat of his hand around at her and gave her a terrific slap that covered one whole half of her face from eyebrow tojawline. The pain of it wasn't as bad as the force, or at least she had no time to experience it; she went back onto the cot, shoulders prone, rolled over once in a complete body turn, and landed on the floor at the foot of it, but with one arm out to break her fall.

She saw him pick up the monkey wrench from the floor where she'd thrown it before, and for a moment thought he was going to attack her with it, but before she could have moved or done anything to defend herself, other than just draw her legs defensively in underneath her, he turned and went the other way with it, and banged the standpipe, not just once but three or four times in urgent succession.

Then he flung it away from him, and settled onto a chair, head bowed down and held in both hands. Not from pain, from remorse.

The room was quiet by the time the half-running footsteps came along the passage outside and a key started to work in the door. Neither of them had moved. They were both emotionally exhausted. They weren't even looking at each other anymore.

A heavily built man with a shock of yellow-white hair came in. He had a massive neck, arms, and shoulders, and a sizable paunch under his blue denim work shirt. He had on a pair of peculiarly shaped glasses--they were either square or octagonal--that gave him an oddly benign, homespun appearance.

"What happened down here?" he demanded. "Vern, what have you been up to down here?"

"It's over," the man on the chair said apathetically.

The older man came over and stood looking down at Madeline. "What did he do to you?" he said. "The whole side of your face is red."

"He slapped me," she said, and began to cry from pent-up tension. "No man ever slapped me before in my life. Even my own father never slapped me."

"What took you so long?" the man on the chair said accusingly.

"I was up on the roof, doing a yob," the superintendent said.

He helped Madeline to her feet and brushed off the back of her dress with a heavy but well-meaning hand. "Sh-h, sh-h," he said consolingly, as if he were talking to a child. "It's all right now. Do you want a drink of water? I get you a drink of water."

She stopped crying abruptly. "I don't want a drink of water!" she said angrily. "I want to get out of here."

"Well, go," he told her matter-of-factly. "The door's open. Nobody stops you."

She went over and stood by it, but without leaving.

Jansen had turned his attention to Herrick, took no further notice of her.

"Get up," he said brusquely. "Get up and come over here." But she detected a paternal note in the brusqueness.

"I'm all right now," Herrick said docilely, looking up at him.

"Yust the same, you do like I say," Jansen insisted. "You come and sit over here." He took the chair Herrick had just been on, and moved it over against the standpipe. Then he brought a table up against it, not the large round one in the middle of the room but a small unpainted one that had been against the wall. He opened a shallow drawer in it and took out a greasy deck of cards. "We play a few hands," he said, and he brought up another chair for himself and sat down across the table from Herrick. Then he took a small drawstring sack of pipe tobacco out of his breast pocket and placed that on the table also.

"We better put that on a few minutes," he said. "Yust to be on the safe side."

Herrick sheepishly extended his wrist, and Jansen snapped the open cuff around it. Then he began to deal the cards.

Madeline had watched the proceedings with incredulous eyes. "He's vicious!" she burst out. "He oughtn't to be allowed at large, a man like that. He's a menace. A maniac."

Jansen turned on her as fiercely as though she were the offender, not the man.

"He's not a maniac," he said severely.

"No? Well, what do you call it when he beats women--"

"He's just unfortunate, that's all. Well, go to the police, if that's what you want to do. Go and have him taken in, if it make you feel better."

She bit her lip. "For personal reasons of my own, which don't happen to have anything to do with this, I prefer not to. But he won't get off so easy if he ever tries it again, with somebody else, let me tell you."

"You're as much to blame as he is," he told her. "You didn't have to come into his room. You know better than that. You're not a child."

"Why are you so ready to defend him?"

This time he threw down his entire hand with vehemence. "He saved my son's life. He covered him with his own body when my son lay there helpless, unable to move, his leg caught in a booby trap. He didn't stop to ask questions then, did he? He didn't stop to argue if it was right or if it was wrong, did he? Why should I now? Today, thanks to him, Harald is a successful businessman in San Francisco. He has a lovely wife, three beautiful children, a fine house, a car. All because of this 'maniac,' as you call him. I'm a poor man, I work hard, but I have scruples--"

He probably meant to say morals, she surmised.

"I only know one thing. What you owe, you repay. When good is done you, you do good back."

Herrick had kept his eyes lowered throughout the whole discussion.

"How many drunken husbands come home and beat their wives? How many jealous lovers knock their sweethearts around?"

"That doesn't make it right, though," she said defensively, but in a minor key.

"No, that doesn't make it right. He and I both know that. That's why we made up this signal between us."

"And what about the time, the one time too many, when his control slips, he doesn't signal, he gets away from you? That time will surely come. You know it will. And some girl will pay with her life."

He didn't answer that. He just looked down.

"Will you hide him then?" she insisted. "Will you still protect him then?"

"We'll know what to do, if that time ever comes. We've talked about it. We've agreed. We'll handle it--between us two. Yust us two."

She saw an odd look pass between them, which she couldn't interpret. Something about it chilled her.

They took up their cards and started playing, but she still lingered there by the door, unable to tear herself away, though they seemed to have become oblivious of her.

"What was that you called him," she said tojansen, "when you first came into the room?" The passage of violence that had occurred between Herrick and herself made her self-conscious about addressing him directly.

"His name is Vernon," the older man said.

"What was his wife's name, the one that left him?"

"He only had one wife," Jansen answered. "Marika. She was Polish."

Madeline went "Hhhhhh" on a long, deflating note of disappointment.

"I don't blame her," Herrick said. "She did the right thing. She was only twenty then. It was better to walk out like that, make a clean break, than stay by me and cheat right and left right under my nose."

He played a card.

"I'm sorry what happened," he said to Madeline without looking at her. "I apologize."

"That's all right," she murmured almost inaudibly. "I understand how it was."

He suddenly lifted his head and looked directly over at her. "Good night," he said timorously.

"Good night," she answered. "Thanks for your contribution."

It only occurred to her afterward what an anticlimactic remark that was, coming after what had taken place between them.

Some sort of inner integrity prevented Madeline from discarding the unused contribution folders she still had left. After all, they had been given to her in good faith, no matter what her own purpose had been. She therefore slipped a couple of dollars into each one, wrote the names of fictitious donors on the outsides, and prepared to return them without, if possible, encountering the committeewoman a second time. An encounter that held very little appeal for her.

Her timing was faulty. By one of those flukes which are impossible to guard against, just as she straightened up from sliding the envelopes underneath the door, Mrs. Fairfield appeared at the upper end of the corridor, coming from the elevators, and caught her in the act.

"How are you making out with your legwork?" she greeted Madeline jauntily.

"I just now finished up," Madeline said lamely.

"Come in a minute and we'll tally up."

"I'm afraid I have to run," Madeline demurred.

"But I have to enter the amount and give you credit."

"You take the credit yourself, I don't mind."

"But we're not allowed to do that!" Mrs. Fairfield gasped, as horrified as though she'd been asked to participate in an embezzlement.

By this time she had the door open and one persuasive hand under Madeline's elbow, so Madeline followed her in with a private sigh of frustration, prepared to submit with as good grace as possible to a retelling of her hostess's past triumphs, in the mankilling and marital fields.

Mrs. Fairfield, seating herself at the desk to do a little lightweight bookkeeping, asked her if she wanted additional contribution forms. Madeline no-thanked her, explained she'd used up all the spare time she had, and a shudder flickered through her as she thought of last night's incident on St. Joseph Street.

Mrs. Fairfield had more than her fair share of narcissism, as all women have who have once been beautiful. "I've just had some new pictures taken," she said, indicating a sheaf of large oblong folders stacked on the desk. "I suppose you think it's silly at my age."

Madeline tractably said what she knew Mrs. Fairfield wanted to hear her say. "You're not old enough to stop having your picture taken."

"Friends of mine kept asking me--" Mrs. Fairfield got up and brought two of them over to show Madeline.

"I like this one best," she said. "But I want your opinion. Which one do you think does me the most justice?"

"This," said Madeline in a stifled voice. But her eyes weren't on the subject's face. They were on the signature in sepia ink that ran diagonally across the lower right-hand corner: "Vick's Photo Studio."

"Vick," she said. "Is that the photographer's first name or his last name?"

"His first name," the woman said. "Although that's an unusual way to spell it, isn't it? With a K."

"I had a friend once who spelled it that way," Madeline said. "I don't suppose you remember the photographer's last name."

"I'm afraid I don't." The woman frowned in thought. "But I'm sure I received a receipt, and I'm sure I kept it. Let me see if I can find it."

And, a few minutes later, Madeline was holding the receipt in her hand. Vick's Photo Studio, with the street address and phone number. And, at the bottom, the signature: Vick Herrick.

It had all the appointments of a business office, she thought curiously as she stepped in from the hall. There was a small reception room first, with a desk, a girl at the desk, paperwork for her to do on the desk. Even an intercom.

"I'm Miss Chalmers," Madeline said. "I phoned in for an appointment."

"Oh, yes," the girl remembered. "You asked for the last appointment of the day, if possible. Well, I have you down for it. Won't you have a seat? Mr. Herrick will be ready for you in just a few minutes."

He had framed samples of his work displayed on the walls. They did him credit, she thought, looking them over. He was more than an expert craftsman at his work, he was an artist. One was more arresting than the next.

He was almost a surrealist in portrait photography, she told herself. There was one haunting study of a young girl that, once you had looked at it, you couldn't keep your eyes off from then on. He had achieved the impossible by violating all the laws of photography. The light was -behind- the subject, not in front of it. A dazzlingly bright light, almost explosive, almost like a chemical reaction. He must have had a large bare-faced bulb hanging concealed in back of her head. You could almost see the rays streaking out from it, like sun rays when the sun is embedded in a tangle of cloud. As a result, the face itself was in shadow, of course, only a contour, a silhouette. Then he had taken some reflective surface, possibly a narrow strip of mirror, and centered it on the face from in front, so that the eyes were lighted up in misty suffusion, a narrow line ran down the center of the nose, and the curve of the underlip was faintly traced. No more than that. It was like a sketch of a face done in chalk on a blackboard. It was like a negative, where all the white area shows black. And yet all the girl's delicacy of feature managed to come through, and with it something of the loneliness and awe of youth. It was a cameo of grace, a camera chiaroscuro.