He kept them closed only for a moment. When he shut out sight, he knew he was drunk. It was too early in the clay to pass out. It was a waste of good booze to pass out now. He’d be awake again by midnight. Awake and sober. Awake and agonizing. He shook his head and groaned, “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” The voice was vaguely amused.
The swirling hammers quieted. He focused his eyes on the man in the seat across. He scowled, “I know who you are. Leslie Augustin.” His tongue was thick on the Leslie and he sampled it again with odd pleasure.
“And this is my compartment.” The slight voice was still amused.
“Yeah. And how a guy like you rates a compartment and all I got is a lousy upper is what makes proletariats out of honest bourgeoisie.”
“I’m the great Augustin,” Augustin said pleasantly.
“Yeah? You got a compartment. I got an upper. Can’t do any honest drinking in an upper. The fat dame below says the guggle-guggle keeps her awake. I’ll stay.”
“You’ll sleep in the upper if you do,” Augustin smiled. “It’s my compartment.”
Cavanaugh yawned. “You’re selfish, Augustin. You Goddamn, lousy, selfish prostitute, you.”
Leslie Augustin yawned back at him. “It’s my compartment.”
Hank Cavanaugh looked out the window. He’d grabbed the window side. The landscape was going too fast and it was jiggling. He shuddered. “Ugh.” The landscape was too much like other landscape, barren wasteland. He was thankful his eyes were bleared. He turned them again on Leslie Augustin. Yeah, it was the same Augustin, still looking undernourished though he was undernourished now in a handwoven dust-colored lounging suit, not shiny serge pants. The fair-haired Augustin, an élégant today, the patina of success gold-dusted all over him. Once he’d been skinny, now he was slender; once he’d been unwashed, now he was immaculate; the broken nails had mended, they tapered in a discreet manicure. He still looked like a tall young angel, but his narrow cobalt eyes weren’t vengeful as once, they were merely cynical.
“How’d you do it?” Hank Cavanaugh demanded.
“How did I do what?” Leslie lifted a bored cigarette to his thin mouth. He shouldn’t be smoking; he had a cigarette cough that would kill a horse.
“What? What do you think? Last time I saw you, you were a stinking poor fiddler—”
Leslie interrupted mildly, “I wasn’t a poor fiddler. I was a magnificent fiddler.”
“I suppose you can tell me you weren’t poor when I fed you out of my own plate weeks on end.”
“Yes, I was poor but not a poor fiddler.” The thin mouth thinned then curved. “I was poor. And I’d rather be a rich prostitute.”
“How’d you do it?” Hank started to shake his head, remembered in time to hold it rigid. “How?”
“I realized,” and this time Leslie Augustin didn’t bother to put the curve in his mouth, “I wasn’t a Menuhin or a Heifetz. Nor a Beethoven nor Tchaikovsky. I’d better give the public what it wanted.” He moved his beautiful tapered fingers. “I wrote a stomp.”
“A what?”
“A stomp—”
“How d’ya spell it?”
Leslie stomped one foot languidly on the Pullman carpet. “Like that. Stomp.” He raised his fleet eyebrows. “My God, Hank, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Augustin stomp? Where have you been the last years?”
“Away.” The monosyllable was grim. It stopped foolish questioning. But he’d forgotten that Leslie resembled the fairy prince only in appearance. Beneath that beautiful head was a tight, shrewd nugget of a brain, lively as a monkey’s, insatiable for factual crumbs about his fellows, crumbs that kneaded together might turn into tasty pattycake for one Augustin. Hank Cavanaugh had despised the fiddler even when he kept him from starvation in New York. Leslie had been a crumb picker then. Plenty of yarns Hank had run down following the crumb trail.
Leslie said with mock humility, “I caught on. A good publicity man, the radio, platters, personal appearances…The war helped.”
Hank spoke in choked anger, “What about the war?”
Leslie’s eyes opened on him. “I’ve played the U.S.O. circuit.”
“Carrion.”
Leslie said appeasingly, “I’m sorry, Hank. It’s all I’ve been able to do. I have scars on both lungs.”
“Camille in fancy pants.”
Leslie flushed slowly. It went away leaving the tan of his cheeks pale. “It’s true. The doctors want me to go to Arizona for a long rest. But I won’t quit now. I won’t quit until I have…enough.”
“For diamond-studded caviar three times a day.”
Leslie smiled a little. “Maybe that’s it. I won’t stop until I’m sure I’ll never go back to a hall bedroom. And cadging meals.” The smile was like a knife. “The doctors say if I’d lived right I’d have skipped it. I should have stuck to plenty of fresh milk and green vegetables and twelve hours sleep a night when I was young.” The smile was deliberately amused. “For God’s sake, don’t tell Viv Spender. He’ll try to type cast me as Hans Castorp.”
“Who the hell is Viv Spender?”
Leslie coughed in amusement. “For God’s sake, don’t talk so loud! He’s in this car. Who is Viv Spender? Vivien Spender? The Gaekwar of Culver City! The Hearst of New Essany! The Zeus of America’s greatest industry!” His voice was good natured. “He’s a moving-picture producer.”
“You in the movies too?” Hank growled.
Leslie shook his head. “I’ve done a few. Not for Spender. For him I’m holding out for a million-dollar contract.” He took from his pocket a gold cigarette case. It was too long and too slender, thin as a ribbon, but the cigarette he took from it was un-crushed. There was engraving inside the cover.
Hank held out his hand. Leslie passed the case, “Sorry.” Deliberately Hank split it open, read the enscrolled message. “For the great Augustin with love, Valerie Van Houten.” He clipped the case together, said dryly, “Whew.”
“She wants to marry me.”
“Why not? There’s gold in them thar oil.”
“I’m not that kind of a prostitute.” Leslie replaced it in his pocket. His eye was shrewd, but not malicious. “What have you done for the war?”
Hank closed his eyes. He blanked memory but his tongue was vicious. “I’ve played carrion. Like you. I’ve wept crocodile tears on paper for suffering humanity. I’ve swilled while they starved.” He broke off. He’d realized. He wasn’t seeing pinwheels. He said, “I’m getting sober. Let’s have a drink.”
—5—
It had been years since she’d remembered Althea. Because he had forgotten, she had forgotten. Her life was that completely integrated with his.
She had known the first time she saw him that this was as it would be. Perhaps in that first meeting, she had dreamed it was to be the same with him. You are my life, and, you are my life. She had been young then, and the young dared dream even in the immutable face of realities. The young dared expect storybook perfection.
When she met him she still had faith in the old legends. Love would transform the ugly duckling into the exquisite swan. Beauty was not in the mask of a face, it was in the mind and the spirit and the grace beneath the mask. The legends were not without basic truth. Other men had cared for her. She could have married time over, married into love. But her love was given. And for him beauty was the beauty of flesh. Only by this beauty were his senses stirred.
She had learned him quickly; he wasn’t hard to fathom in those early years. He was too young, too intense to play a part. Of necessity he learned later to perform. When he learned he performed magnificently; everything he did was magnificent.
In those early years, she could have severed the cord that bound her to him. There would have been some bleeding, a resultant scar, but she would have had freedom. She deliberately chose to be a part of him. Deliberately, if there was deliberate choice. Perhaps a trace of the dream remained, would always remain. At any rate she chose him and
her serfdom.
She had never regretted. She had long ago accepted the fact that he would never love her. However, love, or what passed for love with him, the madness which afflicted him in cycles, was a minor part of him. The major portion was hers; the drive to greatness, the brilliance of his creations, the artistic integrity which consumed him, and whose flames blazed his path to glorious success. He was a great artist, an inspired artist. And she was the woman of his artistic life. By giving herself, by offering herself to be possessed by him, she alone possessed him. The legends thus were true. He was hers, all of him, save his love. The minute quality of love.
Althea had hurt. It was because she was still young then, still dreaming. Then came Althea.
He met Althea at a party. He’d gone up a bit in pictures by then, he was mentioned as promising. It was beyond the days when his clothes were shabby when he was careful to keep his feet on the floor during an interview for a job lest the holes in his shoes be seen. By then he had a little car and a small apartment. Mike used to go over on Sundays and clean it. Sometimes she’d wash out his socks. There’d been girls during those first years; she’d find traces of them, lipstick on a towel, a forgotten handkerchief. They hadn’t hurt. They were girls the way any young man had girls; pretty, shallow, a momentary diversion.
It wasn’t that way with Althea. She had beauty, a strange, flower-like sort of beauty. The fragility of a spray of blossoms, of a slant of sunlight or the shimmering mist after spring rain. Mike wasn’t jealous of her, not after she knew her. Althea was real. She was in love with Viv, and if he ever loved, his love was given to her.
If Mike’s heart split it was in the darkness of solitude and no one knew. He never knew. She put it together neatly with friendship. She and Viv went on as before. Only she didn’t go to his apartment on Sundays to clean; Althea kept the apartment shining and polished. Surprisingly, she became Althea’s friend. There was no jealousy in either; between women who loved the same man there was an honest friendship. After Althea, Mike never had another woman for friend.
His star rose quickly in those years. If she didn’t see as much of them after they moved to a new and beautiful home, and to a more beautiful and larger home, it was because with success came not only a greater pressure of work, but of social necessity. Beneath it the bond was unbroken.
She didn’t know when he was done with Althea. To this day, she didn’t know. There was a succession of women moving through his life. That was his business, a procurer of women. For the pleasure of the millions whose drug was the moving pictures. Women whose stock in trade was the quivering of a man’s nerves, women ripe as sweet figs, lush as pomegranates.
Which one was first, she didn’t know. Until his sins were flagrant, she didn’t know. Even then, like Althea, she clung to belief that this was aberration, not the man.
When Althea died, Mike believed that Viv was saved. She was there that morning, called by him; she witnessed his tempestuous grief. It was she who raised his head from Althea’s motionless breast, who led him away to weep on her own unloved breast. In that moment there was dark shameful triumph in her which even her own regret for Althea could not overcome. She believed he would be done with love now, that all his energy would be given his work.
She didn’t really know Viv Spender until after Althea died. She learned him down the succession of years, and the succession of women; learned his ruthlessness, his negation of anyone and anything which interfered with his self-love and his pride.
He killed Althea. Not by neglect, not by love turned aside. By an overdose of sleeping tablets. Mike must have known that morning; even as she comforted him, she must have known she nursed a murderer at her bosom. She had known Althea. She had known Althea would not kill herself.
That she had not faced the knowledge in the days of his superb grief, was her guilt. She knew but the knowledge could not raise in her consciousness because she wanted Althea to go and him to remain. Because he was hers; for good or evil he was hers.
When she realized, it was too late. No one had suspected him, he planned too well for that. There was no one she could tell the story; she could do nothing but go on as before. She could even scoff at it as a story, an old tale dreamed by an old wife. But in the lucidity of her lone hours at night she knew. Until time faded the knowledge.
It had been years since she remembered Althea. Until yesterday with Kitten, when the name came to her lips. She sat now in her neat, compact compartment and she remembered. Remembered and was afraid.
—6—
The bride whispered to the bridegroom, “It’s a beautiful world, darling.”
He said, “Yes, darling, it’s a beautiful world.”
—7—
Mrs. Shellabarger said to her knitting and Mr. Shellabarger, “Did you see that girl who got on just ahead of us? The one with the blonde hair and mink coat? That was Kitten Agnew.”
Mr. Shellabarger said to the Readers’ Digest and Mrs. Shellabarger, “Mmph.”
TWO
THE BUZZER WOKE JAMES Cobbett. He’d been sleeping with his eyes open; he’d learned how long ago. He looked up at the call box. Drawing room A. It was Vivien Spender. Too early for drinks. He rose without haste, walked the few steps to the door, tapped quietly. “Porter, sir.”
“Come in.” Spender didn’t shout; his voice was raised just loud enough to carry. Everything in proper proportion even his voice.
Cobbett opened the door. “Yes, sir.”
When he’d first gone to work on the Chief, he’d been cheerful on a call. It hadn’t been for economic reasons; it was because he liked people, clean, happy people, and most persons traveling were vacation-clean and happy. He was a friendly, happy person himself. Despite the grievous weight of evidence to the contrary, he had believed that this time his happiness would be met on its own level. The Chief would be different, because it was the Chief, the best train.
It was no different. The disappointment was greater this time because he’d expected better things. The bigoted, the vulgar, the ignorant, rode the Chief as well as the lesser trains. In his first hurt, he turned sullen. That too passed because he was not dispositionally attuned to the attitude. Just as many others before and with him, he adopted the safe measure. He patronized. Unless he knew the traveler from previous runs and had accepted him as worthy of acceptance, he did not lower the bars between attendant and client. He was as aloof as an English butler.
His eye rested on Vivien Spender now without reaction. The room was unused, even the newspaper Spender had brought aboard was still neatly folded. The man himself was seated by the window. He might have been seated behind a fine desk in a pristine office; he was as emotionless as Cobbett himself.
He said, “My secretary, Miss Dana, is in the next car rear, compartment E. Would it be possible for you to send word to her that I’d like to see her?”
Cobbett said, “Yes, Mr. Spender. I’ll do it.” This briefly he liked Vivien Spender. It was on face valuation, he liked the smile the man gave him, a straight smile and a straight thank you. Spender hadn’t come to his position through lottery. He was aware of human beings and of human values. Spender recognized his high place, Cobbett’s low one in the great scheme. But he recognized a person before a position.
Cobbett closed the door. He covered the long swaying corridor, went through the vestibules into the next car. Rufus Green, attendant, was standing at the linen closet. Cobbett said, “Vivien Spender wants his secretary, Rufe. She’s in E.”
Rufus had a toothy grin. “That’s the way the luck runs, James. You get Vivien Spender, I get the secretary.”
Cobbett grinned back.
“Awright boy. I’ll tell her.”
Cobbett returned to his leather seat. The desert was still passing outside the windows. Be time for dinner soon. He ate at four o’clock. That way he was back in time for the cocktail bell activity.
He lifted his eyes at the opening sound of the vestibule door at the other end of the car. His glance
was reflex action, nothing more. Without expression he watched the woman approach. She was a homely woman, smartly styled. Her face was gaunt, her dark hair was pulled back with severity, her lipstick matched her nails. Her suit was dark, expensive, and her green-stoned pin at her collar was handsome. Her large black handbag was handsome. She wore slant green-rimmed glasses on her eyes. Her heels were high. She gave Cobbett a casual glance.
He wasn’t surprised that she knocked at Vivien Spender’s door. She had the look of a secretary, a high-priced secretary. The door closed behind her. James Cobbett looked out again at the monotony of landscape.
The opening click of a door again turned his eyes. It was the other drawing room and the blonde movie actress was coming out. She hesitated a moment when she saw him sitting there. His face didn’t express it but he was surprised when she knocked on the compartment next, F. That was the solitary man, the unpleasant little man. He must have called for her to enter because she opened the door and stepped in. The door didn’t close at once but Cobbett didn’t hear what was said. He was too far away.
A buzzer rang. Compartment D. It wasn’t too unexpected. A man carrying a load such as the man who’d come back with Augustin after lunch wouldn’t wait till five o’clock for another drink. Cobbett went to answer.
Within drawing room A, Mike Dana said, “You can’t do it, Viv.”
“I’m doing it.”
She knew danger signals, the stone in his voice, the tightening of his nostrils. Openly it did not disturb her. She repeated calmly, “You can’t do it. She’ll break you.”
“She won’t break me. She’ll never break me.”
Mike lit a cigarette from her pocket case. She said, “Listen to me. She has you cold. And she’s not bluffing. She has Seager behind her.”
He swore virulently.
“All right. He’s all of that. But he’s the hottest lawyer in Southern California and you won’t be able to beat the case.”
Dread Journey Page 2