Laughter in the Dark (5 page)

“See that you are a very good little girl today,” whispered Albinus to his daughter. With a smile Irma disclosed a fistful of marbles.

She was not at all pretty; freckles covered her pale bumpy forehead, her eyelashes were much too fair, her nose too long for her face.

“By all means,” said Elisabeth, and sighed with relief as she hung up.

Albinus prepared to go on with the letter. Elisabeth held her daughter by the wrists and was telling her something funny, laughing, kissing her and giving her a little tug after every sentence. Irma went on smiling demurely, as she shuffled with her shoe on the floor. Again the telephone rang. This time Albinus attended to it.

“Good morning, Albert dear,” said a feminine voice.

“Who—” began Albinus, and suddenly he had the sickening sensation of going down a very fast lift.

“It was not particularly nice of you to give me a false name,” pursued the voice, “but I forgive you. I just wanted to tell you—”

“Wrong number,” said Albinus hoarsely, and crashed back the receiver. At the same time he reflected with dismay that Elisabeth might have
heard something just as he had heard the Baroness’ minute voice.

“What was it?” she asked, “Why have you turned so red?”

“Absurd! Irma, my child, run along, don’t fidget about like that. Utterly absurd. That’s the tenth wrong call in two days. He writes that he’ll probably be coming here at the end of the year. I’ll be glad to see him.”

“Who writes?”

“Good God! You never get what one’s saying. That man from America. That fellow Rex.”

“What Rex?” asked Elisabeth unconcernedly.

T
HEIR
meeting that night was a tempestuous one. Albinus had stayed at home all day because he was in a panic that she might ring up again. When she emerged from the “Argus” he greeted her incontinently with:

“Look here, child, I forbid you to ring me up. It won’t do. If I did not give you my name, I had my reasons for it.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’m through with you,” said Margot blandly, and walked away.

He stood there and stared after her helplessly.

What an ass he was! He ought to have held his tongue; then she’d have fancied she had made a mistake, after all. Albinus overtook her and walked along by her side.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Don’t be cross with me, Margot. I can’t live without you. Look here, I’ve thought it all over. Drop your job. I’m rich.
You shall have your own room, your own flat, anything you like …”

“You’re a liar, a coward and a fool,” said Margot (summing him up rather neatly). “And you’re married—that’s why you hide that ring in your mackintosh pocket. Oh, of course, you’re married; else you wouldn’t have been so rude on the ’phone.”

“And if I am?” he asked. “Won’t you meet me any more?”

“What does it matter to me? Deceive her; it’ll do her good.”

“Margot, stop,” groaned Albinus.

“Leave me alone.”

“Margot, listen to me. It is true, I have a family, but please, please, stop jeering about it … Oh, don’t go away,” he cried, catching her, missing her, clutching at her shabby little handbag.

“Go to hell!” she shouted, and banged the door in his face.

“I’
D LIKE
my fortune told,” said Margot to her landlady, and the latter took out from behind the empty beer bottles a decrepit pack of cards most of which had lost their corners so that they looked almost circular. A rich man with dark hair, troubles, a feast, a long journey …

“I must find out how he lives,” thought Margot, her elbows resting on the table. “Perhaps after all he is not really wealthy, and it’s not worth my while to bother about him. Or shall I risk it?”

The next morning at exactly the same time she rang him up again. Elisabeth was in her bath. Albinus spoke almost in a whisper with his eye on the door. Although sick with fear, he was madly happy to be forgiven.

“My darling,” he murmured, “my darling.”

“Say, what time will wifey be away from home?” she asked laughing.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” he answered with a cold shiver. “Why?”

“I’d like to drop in for a moment.”

He was silent. Somewhere a door opened.

“I can’t go on talking,” murmured Albinus.

“If I come to you I might kiss you.”

“Today, I don’t know. No,” he stammered, “I don’t think it’s feasible. If I suddenly ring off don’t be surprised. I shall see you tonight, and then we’ll …” He hung up and sat for some time motionless, listening to the pounding of his heart. “I suppose I am a coward,” he thought. “She’s sure to dawdle in the bathroom for another half hour.”

“One small request,” he said to Margot when they met. “Let’s take a taxi.”

“An open one,” said Margot.

“No, that’s too dangerous. I promise you I’ll behave,” he added as he gazed lovingly at her childishly upturned face which looked very white in the blaze of the street lamp.

“Listen,” he began when they were seated in the cab. “First I am not angry with you, of course, for ringing me up, but I beg you, I implore you, not to do it again, my darling, my precious.” (“That’s better,” thought Margot.)

“And secondly, tell me how you found out my name?”

She lied, quite needlessly, telling him that a woman she knew had seen them in the street together and knew him too.

“Who was it?” asked Albinus with horror.

“Oh, just a working woman. I think one of her sisters was once cook or housemaid in your family.”

Albinus racked his memory despairingly.

“Anyway, I told her she was wrong. I’m a smart little girl.”

The darkness inside the taxi slid and swayed as quarters and halves and whole squares of ashen light passed from window to window across it. Margot was sitting so near that he felt the blissful animal warmth of her body. “I shall die or go off my head if I can’t have her,” thought Albinus.

“And thirdly,” he said aloud, “find yourself lodgings, say two or three rooms and a kitchen—that is, upon condition that you let me visit you occasionally.”

“Albert, have you already forgotten what I suggested this morning?”

“But it’s so risky,” groaned Albinus. “You see … Tomorrow, for instance, I’ll be alone from about four to six, but one never knows what may happen …” and he pictured to himself how his wife might come back for something she had forgotten.

“But I’ve told you I’d kiss you,” said Margot softly, “and then, you know, there’s not a thing in the world that can’t be explained away somehow.”

So next day, when Elisabeth and Irma had gone out for tea, he sent Frieda the maid (it was cook’s day out, luckily) on a good long errand with a couple of books to deliver miles away.

Now he was alone. His watch had stopped some minutes ago, but the clock in the dining room was exact and then, too, by craning out of the window he could see the church clock. A quarter past four. It was a bright windy day in mid-April. On the sunlit wall of the opposite house the fast shadow of smoke ran sideways from the shadow of a chimney. The asphalt was drying patchily after a recent shower, the damp still showing in the form of grotesque black skeletons as if painted across the width of the road.

Half past four. She might come at any minute.

Whenever he thought of Margot’s slim girlish figure, her silky skin, the touch of her funny, ill-kept little hands, he felt a rush of desire which was almost painful. Now, the vision of the promised kiss filled him with such ecstasy that it seemed hardly possible it could be still further intensified. And yet beyond it, down a vista of mirrors, there was still to be reached the dim
white form of her body, that very form which art students had sketched so conscientiously and so badly. But of those dull hours in the studio Albinus suspected nothing, although, by a queer trick of fate, he had unwittingly seen her nude form already: the family doctor, old Lampert, had shown him some charcoal drawings which his son had made two years ago and among them was a girl with bobbed hair, her feet curled under her on the rug where she sat, leaning on her stiff arm, her shoulder touching her cheek. “No, I think I prefer the hunchback,” he had remarked, turning back to another sheet on which a bearded cripple was depicted. “Yes, it is a great pity he has given up Art,” he had added, closing the portfolio.

Ten minutes to five. She was already twenty minutes late. “I’ll wait until five and then go out,” he murmured.

Suddenly he saw her. She was crossing the street without coat or hat, as though she lived round the corner.

“Still time to run down and tell her it’s getting too late now,” but instead of doing so Albinus tiptoed breathlessly into the hall, and when he heard the childish stamping of her footsteps coming up the stairs he noiselessly opened the door.

Margot in her short red frock with bare arms smiled into the mirror and then twirled round on her heel, as she smoothed the back of her head.

“You do live in style,” she said, her beaming eyes roaming over the hall with its large rich pictures, its porcelain vase in the corner and that cream-colored cretonne instead of wallpaper. “This way?” she asked and pushed open a door. “Oh!” she said.

He laid one trembling hand round her waist and with her he looked up at the crystal chandelier as though he himself were a stranger. But he saw it all through a swimming haze. She crossed her feet and rocked gently as she stood there, her eyes roaming.

“You are rich,” she said as they entered the next room. “Heavens, what rugs!”

She was so overcome by the sideboard in the dining room that Albinus was able to finger her ribs stealthily and, above them, a hot soft muscle.

“Let’s go on,” she said eagerly.

In a passing mirror he saw a pale grave gentleman walking beside a schoolgirl in her Sunday dress. Cautiously, he stroked her smooth arm and the glass grew dim.

“Come on,” said Margot.

He wanted to get her back into the study. Then, if his wife came back earlier than he expected,
it would be simple: a young artist in want of help.

“And what’s in there?” she asked.

“That’s the nursery. You’ve seen everything now.”

“Let me go,” she said, moving her shoulders.

He drew a deep breath.

“It’s the nursery, my darling. Only the nursery—there’s nothing to see.”

But she went inside and suddenly he felt a strange impulse to shout at her: “Please, don’t touch anything.” But she was already holding a purple plush elephant. He snatched it away and shoved it into a corner. Margot laughed.

“Your little girl is in clover here,” she said. Then she opened the next door.

“That’s enough, Margot,” Albinus pleaded, “we are getting too far from the hall, we shan’t hear the front door. It’s dreadfully dangerous.”

But she shook him off like a naughty child and slipped through the passage into the bedroom. There she seated herself in front of the mirror (mirrors were having plenty of work that day), turned a silver-backed brush in her hand, sniffed at a silver-stoppered bottle.

“Oh, don’t!” cried Albinus.

She swerved by him neatly, ran to the double bed, and seated herself on the edge. She pulled up
her stocking like a child, made the garter snap, and showed him the tip of her tongue.

“…  and then I’ll kill myself,” thought Albinus, suddenly losing his head.

He lurched toward her, his arms open, but she bounded past him with a chirrup of glee and bolted out of the room. He made a belated dash after her. Margot slammed the door and, panting and laughing, turned the key from outside. (Oh, how the poor fat woman had banged and thumped and yelled!)

“Margot, open at once,” said Albinus softly.

He heard her footsteps dancing away.

“Open,” he repeated in a louder voice.

Silence.

“The little vixen,” he thought, “what an absurd situation!”

He was frightened. He was hot. He was not used to bouncing about rooms. He was in an agony of thwarted desire. Had she really gone? No, someone was walking about the flat. He tried some keys he had in his pocket; then, losing his temper, shook the door violently.

“Open at once. Do you hear?”

The footsteps drew near. It was not Margot.

“Hullo. What’s the matter?” asked an unexpected voice—Paul’s! “Are you locked in? Shall I let you out?”

The door opened. Paul looked alarmed. “What has happened, old man?” he repeated and gaped at the hairbrush lying on the floor.

“Oh, a ridiculous thing … Tell you in a moment … Let’s have a glass of something.”

“You gave me the devil of a shock,” said Paul. “I could not think what on earth had happened. Lucky I came along. Elisabeth told me she’d be home about six. Lucky I was rather early. Who locked you in? Not your maid gone mad, I hope?”

Albinus stood with his back to him and busied himself with the brandy.

“Didn’t you meet anybody on the stairs?” he asked, trying to speak distinctly.

“I took the lift,” said Paul.

“Saved,” thought Albinus, his spirits reviving considerably. (But how dangerously foolish to have forgotten that Paul, too, had a key to the flat!)

“Would you believe it,” he said, as he sipped the brandy, “a burglar broke in. Don’t tell Elisabeth, of course. Thought there was no one at home, I expect. Suddenly I heard the front door behaving oddly. I came out of my study to see what it was clicking—and there was a man slipping into the bedroom. I followed him and tried to grab him, but he sort of doubled back and locked
me in. It’s a great pity he escaped. I thought you might have met him.”

“You’re joking,” said Paul aghast.

“No, not at all. I was in my study and heard the front door clicking. So I went to see what it was and …”

“But he may have stolen something, let’s look. And we must inform the police.”

“Oh, he hadn’t time,” said Albinus, “it all happened in a second; I scared him away.”

“What did he look like?”

“Oh, just a man with a cap. A largish man. Very strong-looking.”

“He could have hurt you! What a very unpleasant experience. Come on, we must have a look round.”

They went through the rooms. Examined locks. Everything was in order. It was only at the end of their investigations, as they were walking through the library, that suddenly a pang of horror shot through Albinus: there, in a corner between the shelves, just behind a revolving bookstand, the edge of a bright red frock was showing. By some miracle Paul did not see it, although he was nosing about conscientiously. There was a collection of miniatures in the next room and he pored over the inclined glass.