Dread Journey

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  Mike’s voice was ragged. “Don’t fight him, Kitten.” It broke. “For God’s sake, why would you want to marry him? He’d be a rotten husband.”

  He’d told Mike. And Mike had brought up the subject. Kitten said, “I wanted to be the first Mrs. Spender.” Now that the opening was made, Kitten was almost afraid to move towards it. She was forced to; she must know. But she was awkward, the shadow of death lay there. “I didn’t know there’d been one.”

  Mike didn’t help; she sat motionless as the desert air outside.

  Kitten spoke hushedly, as if he were listening. “Why does he never talk about it? Why does no one ever talk about her?”

  Mike said heavily, “She’s dead.”

  “You told me that. But why is it she’s—” She finished slowly, “It’s as if she never existed.”

  “He doesn’t want to be reminded of her.”

  Kitten stood there, trying to control curiosity that was more, and less, than curiosity. Not wanting to ask, not wanting to know, yet having to seek the answer. “How did she die?” Her whisper was terrible.

  Mike said in that monotone, “An overdose of sleeping tablets.”

  There was no implication beyond the statement, not in Mike’s face nor in her shoulders nor her quiet hands and feet. There was nothing said or unsaid to frost Kitten’s fingertips. Nothing to diminish her voice to whisper. “Why? Why?”

  Mike touched her tongue to her lips. The words came hard. “She wasn’t happy.”

  Kitten took a small breath. “You knew her.” She realized that now. Mike had been his secretary since he first started in pictures, while he was yet an unknown. Mike had been his secretary when there was a Mrs. Spender. “What was she like?”

  Before Mike answered the room was so quiet you could hear the beat of your heart.

  Mike said, “She was just an ordinary woman. She liked her home and meeting friends for lunch and going shopping, having her hair done and driving out in the Valley on Sunday afternoons. She wasn’t ambitious, she just wished to be happy. She wanted children. She was very much in love with her husband.”

  He killed her. Kitten hadn’t spoken aloud but it screamed from her throat. He killed her! She knew it now. Knew it in the way Mike had shrunk, diminished to a green pinpoint before her eyes, it was what Mike had tried to tell her yesterday. Tried but failed, because the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. The horror was like a fog before Kitten’s face. She repeated, “Why, why?”

  The Chief stirred. It crept away from the station so quietly it might not be moving, only giving the illusion of moving. But the faces were going away.

  “It was Rosaleen.” Mike didn’t look at Kitten, her fingers twisted together. “He isn’t like other men. He sees everything through a dream.”

  Kitten’s voice was hard. “His dream.” Bitter and hard as green fruit. “For once he’s going to have to pay. Pay through the nose. He’s not going to kick me out the way he did the others. Maybe you can wake him up long enough to tell him that.”

  She began penciling the pages rapidly.

  Mike picked up the blotch from the floor, smoothed it out. She said, “I wish I could tell him.”

  Kitten thrust the sheaf at her. She wasn’t going to think about it longer now. She knew enough to keep away from Viv Spender. There’d be no overdose of sleeping tablets for her. She rose from the seat.

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  “Kitten—”

  She turned back at the door.

  Mike said only, “Be careful.” It wasn’t what she’d started to say.

  Kitten smiled, lifted her hand in salute. But there was no smile on her face as she stood in the corridor outside the compartment. She stood a moment, then fled back to the next car as if the hooded shadow were falling over her head.

  THREE

  HE HAD PLANNED AND KITTEN HAD ELUDED THE PLAN. He sat in the car tearing paper into small neat pieces. He didn’t know where the paper had come from but he tore it down, across, across again until the palm of his hand was filled with the small particles.

  He had watched them as they passed through the club car on their way to the diner. None of them saw him; they were too busy laughing together. In the lead Leslie Augustin and the lovely Gratia Shawn. Following the two, Kitten and a tall, seedy-looking fellow who was obviously drunk.

  Gratia had no business being with Augustin. Augustin was an arrogant young whipper-snapper who played the piano or drums and who mocked at a Spender motion-picture contract. Augustin was too well known. The petty gossip spies who crawled through the train would be checking up on the girl now.

  Gratia wasn’t to be mentioned until she was introduced with proper fanfare by Vivien Spender. Now he’d have to go to Mike, see what she could do to silence the gossips before they could speak in print. His knuckles where white and hard. He wasn’t going to have his plans for the girl upset. Not if he had to buy off every one of the scavengers of rumor.

  Kitten knew he didn’t want Gratia Shawn bandied around the Chief; she must have known. It was deliberate on her part, involving the girl with the adder-tongued Augustin and an unknown drunk. Mike would have to do something about it. He hadn’t suggested that Kitten keep Gratia undercover, he couldn’t very well do that. But he had counted on Kitten's natural meanness. The suggestion that she look out for the girl ordinarily would have been enough to keep Gratia a nonentity for the journey.

  Kitten wouldn’t have been smart enough to think this up alone; Augustin must have had a hand in it. He’d warned Kitten before about Augustin’s sly malice; unfortunately the band leader was fashionable and Kitten thought more of the latest fad than of good advice. Kitten evidently had told Augustin how the wind blew from Fisherman’s Wharf. The papers began to trickle from Viv’s hand. She wouldn’t have told Augustin the whole story; she wouldn’t have dared. She’d have to withhold her ammunition until the psychological moment; her crook lawyer would insists on that.

  It would be Augustin who would realize that flaunting Gratia openly would twist a knife in Spender. Not that Augustin had anything against Viv Spender; only that he enjoyed experimenting with knives. He’d break Augustin yet. There’d be a way; he’d find the way. The fair-haired boy was increasingly irritating.

  That much of the picture was clear. The drunk with Kitten wasn’t. Kitten was usually too proud in her public appearances. Yet she’d been looking up at that fellow as if he were someone important. Where had she found him? And where had she and Gratia been for the past hours?

  They’d been laughing. They’d walked by him as if he were a hardware salesman, without seeing him. He opened his hand and the confetti spilled to the carpet. He was ready to rise when he saw Mike winding through the aisle, skirting the long legs of someone on the couch by the entrance.

  Mike saw Viv and she stopped in front of his chair. Her face had been sober when she appeared in the car. The brightness that came to it when she saw him wasn’t natural. It was as if she’d pressed a button forcing it to light.

  She asked, “Whatever brought you in here, Boss?”

  He flashed a good smile. “I came down with claustrophobia. Took a walk at Needles and had to jump on. Have a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m after food.” She started away but he stopped her by rising.

  “How about joining me for dinner? Now that I’m here, I might as well try the diner.”

  “You won’t like it,” she warned. “It’s full of people.”

  “Tonight I like people. I’m observing them. Research.”

  They could smile at each other because they’d known each other a long time, long enough that each could respect the other’s cloak of pretense. Mike wasn’t easy; maybe she knew what Kitten was up to, was trying to spare him. She didn’t want him to go into the diner; even now that he was urging her forward, she was hesitating.

  He said, “I mustn’t lose the common touch, Mike. You can’t sit on Olympus and direct the American street scene.”

  “I thought you we
re planning to sit on the Schwarzhorn.”

  “Don’t quibble.”

  The steward didn’t know Vivien Spender. The steward was a small man, suave, impersonal. He said, “Two? This way.” The table to which he led them was already occupied by a middle-aged couple, facing forward. Mike slid into the window seat, Spender sat beside her. He’d asked for the common touch; he’d accept it gracefully, dining backwards opposite the dullness of strangers.

  Gratia’s face was framed for him through the intervening heads. He was gratified that she didn’t seem a part of her group. She smiled when their laughter rattled but she was silent otherwise, careless of Les Augustin at her side, watching Kitten and the man across the table. She didn’t see Viv Spender, she wasn’t looking in his direction. There was a table separating this table from that of Kitten’s party.

  The man across from Viv leaned forward confidentially. “That’s Kitten Agnew back there,” he said.

  Viv nodded. “Yes, I know.” He made himself look and sound interested.

  The woman beside the man, the woman in the dowdy, expensive dress, smiled complacently. “She’s Dad’s favorite actress.”

  “What I like about her,” the man defended, “is she’s a real American girl.” He went on about it in many words. The look on Viv’s face was a listening one. He supplied a variety of sounds when the monologue demanded it. God, the public really believed that stuff! The publicity department had told Viv so but he’d never quite credited it. One look at Kitten and you knew her beginnings and her probable end if she lived to that end. But the public wasn’t as discerning as Viv Spender.

  And how would the public accept Kitten’s death before the end? They wouldn’t like it. How would they accept her producer going on to New York, making sure the show would go on as Kitten wanted it to go on? They’d accept it; they’d accept it because the whole sticky sweet mess would be spoon fed them by the boys in Publicity. He had no intention of missing the premiere. His fingers tightened and he said, “Yes indeed,” to the man across the table.

  “Did you see her in Fancy That?” The garrulous fellow was launched again. He was even humming tunelessly the theme song, “Fancy That.” Kitten had done it well. It had been a good picture, a picture she could do. The story of a girl who wanted to be a successful singer, who almost got there, but who decided she didn’t really want it after all. Who turned her back on fame and fortune when it was within her grasp. Who chose instead the boy she loved and a little rose-covered cottage. Pure hoke and the public loved it. As far from Kitten’s nature as simple goodness and the public loved her.

  The picture had grossed a mint. Kitten could go on doing that sort of thing until she became a character actress and keep on grossing six figures. If she only had brains enough to realize that hoke was her fortune, not want to mangle Clavdia Chauchat. He’d made a mistake thinking she was Clavdia; he admitted it, why couldn’t she? He wouldn’t have dropped Kitten if she’d been reasonable. He’d have kept her on; she could have remained right there at the top for years to come.

  It was too late now. She’d refused reason; she’d threatened. And she’d mouthed the unforgivable insult, she’d demanded marriage.

  Mike touched his arm. “What are you ordering, Viv?”

  He looked at the menu, quieting the twitch of his hands. It might have been that Mike knew his mind. He smiled secretly. She couldn’t this time. He hadn’t told her anything. She didn’t know anything about Gratia Shawn, nothing except the dictation she’d taken this afternoon, the announcement that Gratia Shawn would play the part of Clavdia Chauchat in Vivien Spender’s production. Mike hadn’t even seen the girl. He’d got her aboard without Mike knowing. Mike wasn’t as indispensable as she thought.

  She said, “I’ll take the steak.”

  He ordered for them. The couple across left the table. It brought Gratia’s face into frame. He couldn’t resist. He said quietly, “That’s Gratia Shawn.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Yes, she knew. He’d just congratulated himself that she didn’t know and she knew. He was pricked and he scowled at her. “How is it you know? She’s never been on the lot.”

  “I met her this afternoon.”

  He was sharp. “How?”

  Mike was removing a cigarette from her black handbag. Her voice was easy. “I went to ask Kitten to o.k. the publicity for New York. That girl was in the drawing room.”

  He wanted Mike to talk about her, to react to her, but she was silent.

  He was forced to ask, “Lovely, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Mike said.

  He burned silently. Mike mustn’t be allowed to think he had any interest in the girl save professionally. Actually he hadn’t. He’d treated her like a daughter. If within him he felt those stirrings, wanting to speak her name, to hear her mentioned, no one else must know. Not yet. Not while Kitten was in the way. He’d made a mistake allowing himself to be discussed publicly with Kitten. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  He said, “I have plans for her. I don’t want Kitten exposing her to her cheap friends.”

  “Les Augustin isn’t cheap.”

  “Who’s the other man?”

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “I never saw him before.”

  “Some drunken bum she picked up. You tell her I want her to leave Gratia Shawn out of her bouts.”

  Mike looked at him. “You’d better tell her yourself. Kitten isn’t very friendly to suggestions these days.”

  Mike didn’t know. If she had any idea, she wouldn’t ask him to speak to Kitten. She didn’t know what was between them was beyond grace of words, acts alone remained. He’d fooled her completely. If he could fool Mike, he could fool anyone, including the police. Mike knew him.

  The steward had set two other persons across the table. He didn’t see their faces, he smiled amiably at their anonymity. “Did you know Kitten Agnew is sitting back there?” He mimicked the middle-aged man’s voice. One of these men craned over his shoulder, the other one looked down into his plate. Mike’s heel caught his shin. He turned his amiable smile on her. “Good steak,” he commented.

  Did you know I’m going to kill Kitten Agnew? I had planned it for tonight. The Albuquerque police don’t know much. They’d take an accident. They wouldn’t doubt Vivien Spender’s sad regret. But maybe it’s better I’ll have to wait until tomorrow night. Maybe it’s better that Chicago will have to handle it. Sometimes tanktown cops get pretty officious. They might want to hold all of us for an inquest. Chicago will cooperate. There’s movie money there. The real issue will be so confused by the power of money and the industry, by the clutter of attorneys and advisers and officials and flacks and sob sisters, no one will suspect.

  Mike said, “Just rare enough.”

  —2—

  Les said, “Don’t look now, darling, but the King of the May is behind you.”

  She controlled the lick of fear that might have curled in her eyes. What difference did it make if Viv were there? It was none of his business now with whom she dined. He was through with her; she was through with him. He couldn’t hurt her as long as she was protected by a diner filled with civilized beings.

  Hank growled, “Who’s the King of the May?”

  Kitten lilted sheer laugher. “Darling, who else could it be?”

  “Spender.” Les explained.

  Kitten looked under her eyelids at Les. “I wonder what drove him out among the peasants.” It couldn’t be because he was stalking her. It wasn’t that.

  Gratia’s voice was kind. “Perhaps he was lonely.”

  Kitten gurgled. The glance she slanted was as at a country cousin, a particularly gawky one. “Darling, he’s never lonely. He always has Vivien Spender with him. What else could anyone want?” She trilled laughter again, hoping it reached his ears.

  Les said, “Quite.”

  Gratia remained untouched by Kitten’s laughter. She sat there watching Hank with her great eyes the way she’d been watching him all through t
he dinner. As if he were something important to her, as if she were a lovesick school girl worshiping at an unattainable shrine. Kitten’s nails clawed the napkin across her lap. Hank wasn’t for Gratia. Gratia couldn’t hold him for ten minutes; he was a man who’d want meat, not a cold turnip.

  Gratia wasn’t going to get Hank. She’d thieved Vivien Spender, beyond that she should not trespass. Hank was the first man in years that Kitten had wanted out of emotion, not mind. She had no intention of allowing Gratia to spoil things. Let her have Viv. If she encroached on Hank, she’d regret.

  He wasn’t paying any attention to the girl. He ate and he drank. Kitten looked at him now with warm eyes. She spoke gaily, “You’re eating as if you didn’t ever expect to see food again.”

  At his expression, she drew back. His face had gone suddenly blank and hostile. He ordered, “Shut up.”

  Les sighed, “Don’t start again, Hank.”

  Hank pushed away his plate. “Let’s get out of here. I’m getting sober.”

  She didn’t understand what had happened but she didn’t want to leave. Not until after Viv left. She didn’t want to pass his table, to meet his eyes, his scheming brain. She refused. “Gratia wants some ice cream. Don’t you, Gratia?” She wasn’t scoffing at Gratia now; she was Kitten Agnew, the warmhearted American girl.

  Gratia shook her head almost in horror. “Oh no.” Her eyes whimpered against Hank’s face.

  Kitten said almost angrily, “Well, I do. And demitasse.” She covered her annoyance with a quick moue at Hank. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  His hostility had gone. He said, “Why not?” She didn’t know what had engendered that moment of terrible, unspoken rage. It had passed. But he didn’t touch his plate again; he lit a cigarette and gloomed with it.

  She and Les ate ice cream. Gratia’s melted into a sweet, milky puddle while her eyes watched Hank. Kitten spooned slowly; she couldn’t ask if Viv were still there; she didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She feared a backwards glance as if she were being pursued.