The Dream Walker

by Charlotte Armstrong

“Don’t know when, either. I suppose you could find the driver. But I can’t tell how long I’d been out before he noticed. I came to and there was a policeman. You could ask.”

  “Don’t think we won’t,” Ned Dancer said.

  “I meant,” said Mildred, “where’s all this snow and stuff? Where did you think you were?”

  “I’d been there before,” said Cora in a low voice. “I think it was Aspen. Aspen, Colorado.”

  Charley got up jerkily and began to walk around.

  “Come now,” said Mildred gently.

  “Don’t believe it!” Cora cried. “Prove to me it isn’t so! I want you to! Please!”

  Ned Dancer went to the telephone. Charley said slowly, “We can fly out.…”

  Ned said, “I intend to.”

  Charley said, “To prove anything, Cora, you’ll have to go, too.” She looked terrified.

  “That’s quite right,” I said. “You can’t go to bed and hide your head. That is, if you want to prove anything. The man with the long jaw, if you can find him, will have to see you face to face. And so will Josephine Crain. And so will Angelo Monti.”

  Cora made moaning sounds. “Ollie, can you come?” she whimpered.

  “Ollie has work to do,” said Charley Ives quickly.

  “That’s true. I couldn’t possibly go,” said I.

  Cora looked up at Ned Dancer, who is a slim smooth-faced man with the coldest eye in the world. “Do I have to go? Mildred, are you going?”

  Mildred stood there, sucking a tooth. She had on a gray suit and a sharp black feather stuck at a jaunty angle in her hair. Mildred’s eyes were cold, too, and shrewd.

  “No use for me to go to the mountain,” she said phlegmatically. “Neddy, here, is going to have it on the front page before I could use it. I’ll have to sob about it, later. Cheer up, dear,” she said to Cora. “Charley will protect you. And how can you lose? If you weren’t walking in Colorado, why then you’ll feel better, won’t you? If you were, you’ll only be slightly notorious.”

  Cora was crying and carrying on and clinging to Charley. Dancer was on the phone. Mildred slipped out to speak quietly with the maid in the kitchenette.

  I sat with that piece of paper in my hand. For the first time, I was frightened. It seemed too much, somehow. Too elaborate. I suppose my mind was following the hint from Marcus. Expensive. Who could pay? Not Cora. She was always a lap behind her bills. (Certainly not Kent Shaw. Everyone knew how poor he was.) If it was a trick—someone was paying. And how was all this to be worth what it cost? What could be its purpose?

  They flew to Colorado. Charley Ives, Cora Steffani, and Ned Dancer. I taught my classes.

  Charlie told me, when they got back, that the first thing the Reverend Thomas Barron, clergyman, of Denver, said to them in his Irish Hit was this sentence, “Is there anything at all I can do for you?” Of course the dear man said it a thousand times a week. He had said it to Darlene Hite. Cora, in New York, had quoted him. You can see the power in that.

  Charley said to me, “Coz, do you realize that, up until now, there was no direct quotation from the other side? What Cora said, yes. But Cora never quoted directly a word Jo Crain said, or this Monti, either.”

  “I hadn’t realized,” I admitted. “But of course, you are right.”

  “This man in Colorado says it to everyone,” Charley explained. “What gets me is how could Cora Steffani know that?”

  “I don’t see how she could know it,” I said gravely. “She must be frightened.”

  Charley looked down at me with a sharp turn of his head. But I was shriveled in the cab’s corner. We were on our way to hear the tape recording that Ned Dancer had made in Colorado.

  The thing was, I’d been tossing while Cora and Charley were away. One night I sat up in my bed. I’d been seeing Cora tucked in against a plane’s window and Charley’s big body barricading all the world away. I sat up and had a session with myself in the dark. None of that, Olivia, I said to myself. Don’t be a snob, of all things. Cora was in the family once already, and if she is going to be in it again, remember it’s not up to you to wince. What’s the matter with you? You’re practically living vicariously. Tend to yourself. Live as you must. Be what you ought. So I had got myself in hand.

  “Ollie, you’re not beginning to think she walks in some astral body?” Charley looked incredulous.

  “No. But I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, “and I’ve decided that until I do know more, I’m going to stand by. We’ve known each other a long time. Most people are going to draw away from her. I won’t be one of them, yet. I don’t think I want to talk behind her back, either.” I didn’t add that I thought it was outrageous that he did. I tried not to think it. That was his business.

  “Okay, Teacher,” said Charley in a stunned way. And then we were there, at Ned’s office.

  Cora wasn’t along. (Neither was Kent Shaw and nobody gave him a thought.) Yet Ned played the interview back for quite a group of us that evening. The affair was getting less and less private.

  “Dr. Barron,” Ned began on the tape, respectfully, “since we want to get this on record, today is the eleventh of February, is it not?”

  “It is.” (The moment I heard those two syllables in that rich voice I knew that here was a witness farther above suspicion than the Rockies are above the plains.)

  “You are the Reverend Thomas Barron of Denver. We are now in Aspen.”

  “I am and we are. Go ahead, lad.”

  “Now, yesterday, you were out for a walk, sir?”

  “I was.”

  Charley’s voice came in. “Pardon me. You go for these solitary walks pretty often? As a regular thing?”

  “I do. I come here, see, for the two weeks every winter. I’m not spry enough for the sports, long is the day, but I can still walk, praise God. So I do a good bit of walking alone and looking about and breathing the good air. Then, by night, I’m jolly with the younger ones around the fire. It all does me good, I believe, both the one and the other.”

  “Yes, sir.” Even Ned’s cold voice was softened. “Now, you met this lady yesterday on the path. Had you ever seen her before?”

  “I had not. What is it,” Dr. Barron said blithely, “the amnesia? Now, my dear, don’t you worry. It’s a prevalent thing, that, it seems to me, but no one the worse for it that I ever heard of. What is it you want me to say now?”

  “Just tell us what happened, sir,” Ned said resignedly.

  Charley prodded. “And the time.”

  “The time? Now, I was heading to the Lodge, so it would be near my noon meal. I can’t say closer. I was a mile off and coming up. This young lady was coming down. I don’t know if she stopped me or if it was only the look of her that stopped me. I had not seen her before in my life. I said to her, ‘Is there anyting at all I can do for you?’ I said.”

  Gasps came into the recorded sounds.

  “What is it? Eh?” No one answered so the minister went on. “And she said to me that she was lost. I think she also spoke of the snow. Then she wanted me to say where New York was lying. Before I could get my wits together—”

  “Did you point, sir?”

  “I may have pointed but I doubt it. I haven’t the head for geography. But she didn’t stay, see. She ran away then.”

  “Did you shout after her?”

  “I don’t remember that I did and I don’t remember that I didn’t. I did wish she had stayed so that I could find out what was the matter.”

  “You didn’t follow, sir?”

  “I’m not so fit for haring after a young woman in the snow, which is a pity. All I could do, I watched, and her running down that path. Then the man leaped from a bush.”

  “What man?”

  “How should I know what man? A big man, it was, although too far for to see clear. He took her roughly with his hands and I didn’t like the look of that and I would have gone down. But he stopped it and they slipped their arms around each other’s backs, do you see,
and off they went. And it was a friend, my dear, and you’re all right now?”

  “You didn’t mention a second man, Cora?” Ned’s accusing voice.

  “I know,” Cora’s was a terrified croak. “I can’t remember … not now.…”

  “Now whatever it is,” Dr. Barron said chidingly, “you mustn’t be pestering her.”

  “You will swear that this is the young lady you met on the path yesterday?”

  “I don’t know that I’ll swear at all,” the minister said.

  “But you—”

  Charley’s voice interrupted. “Can you tell us what she was wearing?”

  “Why, the very clothing she is now. The blue trousers and all. But she’d a scarlet cap on her head and very becoming, too.”

  “It’s at home,” Cora’s croak.

  “Now, I’ve said all I’m going to say.” Dr. Barren’s charming voice was stern again. “This young lady is in some trouble and it’s scaring the voice into her throat, and you’ll tell me the trouble and we’ll do what we can.”

  “We are all her friends, sir,” Ned Dancer said tensely. “If you can swear, one way or the other, it will put her mind at rest. Is this the same young lady?”

  “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” Dr. Barron said, “but it’s plain to me she’s more upset today than she was yesterday, and until you’ll tell me what’s the matter, I’ll do no swearing and that thing listening.”

  That was the end of the tape.

  I asked them what Dr. Barron had thought of Cora’s side of the story. Charley smiled. “The old gentleman didn’t turn a hair. Said the Lord would make it all clear if and when He felt like it, and in the meantime, people should not pester each other.” I had to smile, too.

  “But did he swear it was Cora?” demanded Mildred.

  “No, he never did swear.”

  “This second man,” I mused, “surely he should turn up once he sees the papers.”

  Mildred Garrick said sourly the second man was no doubt Cora’s demon lover.

  He didn’t turn up.

  The story was in the papers, all right, but it was, at first, treated gingerly and briefly. The news magazines picked it up for an oddity. Then came Mildred’s column, making the most of it. Sobbing, as she’d promised. Dream Walker in the snow! Finally, Ned Dancer plastered it, complete, over two pages of a Sunday supplement, with dialogue and pictures. The captions were impressive. “First lady of the American theater, Josephine Crain.”

  “Well-known musician, Angelo Monti.” “Beloved Clergyman, Thomas Barron.” “New York Publisher, Charles Marcus Ives.” And even, “Olivia Hudson, 34, teacher in fashionable girls’ school.” Oh, plenty of class this story had!

  And Cora Steffani couldn’t have swallowed a gnat without it being known, so closely was she watched after that.

  I went down to stay with her again because she said she was afraid to be alone. Charley Ives wanted to hire a nurse, or the like. I said she needed a friend. He said impatiently that he was her friend as much as I was and he’d see she was taken care of. I said she’d asked for me. He said, “You don’t want to get mixed up in it.” I said whether I wanted to or not, I seemed to be mixed up in it. We almost fought.

  But I had to go.

  Oh, I should have known, if I hadn’t been so busy with my conscience, that Cora asked for me, and mixed me up in it, and wanted to use my unimpeachable testimony to hurt a dear old gentleman I adored, for much the same reason I had to let her do it.

  Chapter Seven

  It was February. The plot was working up splendidly.

  Was it?

  The trouble was, Darlene Hite had to tell Ed Jones. She had hoped to slip away from him to do the Colorado bit. She knew something would have to be done about him, but she was caught by the appointed day, and she thought she could get back to the Texas place before anything broke. But he followed her. He was suspicious and had nothing to do but indulge his suspicions, and he was in a mean mood. Been teased, I suppose, more than he could bear. Although he was a mean person, I should think. So there was that scene in the snow. And she told him.

  She said, “Don’t, Ed. It’s only my job. I’ll tell you all about it.” And she slipped her arm around his back (as Dr. Barron said). “I’m not supposed to tell a soul,” she said, “but I’ll tell you.”

  She told him it was a publicity stunt because that’s what she thought it was.

  Ed Jones knew at once that he was in a position to spoil the fun. Darlene knew he knew and faced up to this as one does in the jungle. She gave him money. She said her boss would realize what a good idea this was. She said if Ed would be quiet she’d speak to her boss and see if she could get him a job, too.

  Ed Jones had a little money—not enough, of course. He was a drifting person, not steadily employed. He thought he’d stumbled into an easy job, “helping” Darlene. He must have known perfectly well that it was blackmail of a kind. He rather liked being backstage. He was interested in money, but he wasn’t reliably devoted to money and Darlene knew this. She had to manage as best she could.

  The two of them started for San Francisco in his car. The whole scheme now rode on whether Ed Jones would stay sober or be able to bear reading the papers without boasting that he knew a thing or two. Darlene managed him, somehow.

  Now, possibly Raymond Pankerman was pleased at what he read and heard and thought it was going well. Maybe he sat among his lawyers, fighting his paper battles, and out of the side of his eye he watched his chance of revenge, as it grew. And maybe Cora simmered inside with mirth and excitement. But Kent Shaw must have been frantic!

  What about that man in Chicago? Who was that second man in the snow? Kent Shaw was the writer-director-producer. Not to know must have driven him wild!

  On the fifth of March, Darlene Hite called, at a prearranged hour, the assigned number of the phone in the booth of the mediocre little bar where Kent took care to be every third evening. When he stepped into the booth, nodded to the barman that this call was his, he must have thanked whatever gods he had to hear her voice.

  Darlene told him the San Francisco incident was out. George Jocelyn, the writer, had taken off unexpectedly on a trip. What they had planned with him couldn’t be done. Kent Shaw would tip Cora?… Yes, yes, but what about this man? … So Darlene told him all about Ed Jones.

  “Told him!” Kent shrieked. And pressing for an end that Darlene didn’t even know about, the ruin of John Paul Marcus, he must have rummaged for and found the inspiration. How he could save his beautiful scheme, that was going so beautifully well. How he could not only save it but improve it. And gamble everything. All in the world Kent Shaw had left to put on the table.

  So he said, “Give him more money. As much as you have to. Tell him, if he opens his mouth, there will be no more money. For you or for him. Keep him close to you and quiet. Skip San Francisco. But meet me in Los Angeles earlier. March twenty-fifth.” He told her where. “I’ll have a job for him. In the meantime, lie low somewhere. Fly to Honolulu. It’s a quick flight from where you are. You can have a nice time in the islands. No matter what you do, keep him quiet and tell him nothing more. I’ll see you myself in L.A. The twenty-fifth of March.”

  So Kent Shaw hung up and now the brain had to gather the wavering shadow of his solution and bring it out of nothing into solid plan. He had to incorporate Ed Jones usefully into the plot. He did it brilliantly, I suppose. Certainly, the one thing Kent Shaw could not bear was to see his work spoiled now. Now that the plot was rolling, it had gone this far with such success. Impossible for Kent Shaw to accept exposure and defeat, now, in the glow of achievement. For an Ed Jones? A man who had happened to be in a tavern in Chicago? A character rung into the cast by that bad playwright, coincidence?

  It was too bad. But perhaps it was not necessarily bad, at all. Perhaps it was good. Perhaps it supplied a missing element of strength, of depth. Why, yes, it did. It could.

  Kent Shaw saw ahead. But I wonder how far.

&nbs
p; Los Angeles is murky. It is still murky. But first I can tell you how Cora and Kent Shaw had a conference. Kent Shaw managed this by, outrageously, breaking a taboo.

  I was living with Cora through February and into March. I went back and forth to my school. But she gave up working almost entirely. So far the affair had not helped her employability. Perhaps because those who employed her saw as yet no fierce public curiosity. The strong interest, the lively talk, was still more or less within the trade. Therefore, there were too many interruptions in the studios and too much time lost because of the curious who wanted to speak to her or anyhow look at her. The role she played lasted twenty-four hours a day. Every evening people came in.

  Sometimes I think the ones who would not talk kept the talk alive. Josephine Crain refused to see Cora and to speak of it at all. Even Angelo Monti’s good nature had its limits. He saw Cora and rather reluctantly identified her and thereafter would not discuss it. Dr. Barron became, I understand, sweetly adamant and not a word would he say. I didn’t talk, Lord knows. And Cora found a masklike look, very sweet and sad and meek, a pawn-of-fate look that she put on. She wouldn’t talk very much. Just enough.

  Charley Ives would turn up some evenings and sit there in Cora’s big room for an hour or two, keeping his eye on. Oh, Cora was watched from all sides. I watched her. So there was argument and speculation and baffled curiosity around the town, but nobody watching saw anything.

  February went into March and March went along. Nobody noticed that Cora went to a certain tea roomish eating place not a block from her apartment in a kind of pattern. She’d go Monday and Thursday. The next week, Tuesday and Friday. The following week, Wednesday and Saturday. This had been going on since December and the pattern was inconspicuous. The place was convenient and a habit. Yet, if Kent Shaw were to come in while she was there, and if he made any occasion to tuck his napkin into his collar, it was a signal. It meant that the next planned incident must be discarded.

  On March 8, Cora and I were in this place, having a bachelor-girl kind of evening meal. When Kent Shaw came in, I saluted him, and Cora nodded, but he simply glowered. He didn’t come over to speak to us. I thought he was still either superstitious or envious and didn’t bother to decide which. Kent Shaw seemed to me to be the same shabby relic of himself he’d been for years. Oh, I saw him put the napkin up and tuck it around his collar and pick up the supremely dry and unjuicy bit of fried chicken in his fingers. I didn’t wonder. It meant nothing to me.