Up a Winding Stair

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Up a Winding Stair Page 8

by Dixon, H. Vernor


  It was a bad way to concede a game and the crowd felt let down. No one said anything as they all moved slowly up the eighteenth fairway toward the club. Clark gradually fell to the rear of the crowd to join Ione, with Eric walking at her side, frowning, lost in thought.

  Clark told Ione, “Sorry he blew like that. I didn’t think he was that temperamental.”

  She, too, was thoughtful, but she said, “His temper always comes out when he’s losing.”

  “Too bad. I like Ricki. I hope he doesn’t hold it against me for winning.”

  “That was the object, wasn’t it, to win?” Then she smiled. “But don’t worry about it. He gets over these things in a hurry and feels pretty silly.”

  Eric stepped around Ione, grabbed Clark’s arm, and came to a dead halt. “Wait a minute, fella. Let the gang go ahead. You and I got something to talk about.”

  They stood in the middle of the rolling, uphill fairway and Clark looked ahead to where the crowd was filtering through the trees and up to the club. Only Joey had paused and was waiting, looking back at them. Clark looked back at Eric with twin lights of danger burning in his eyes, knowing what was coming and liking the taste of it.

  “So?”

  Eric saw that the last of the gallery had disappeared and looked sharply into Clark’s eyes. “O.K.,” he said. “I think this was a setup. You made two wild gambles when you didn’t have to. Only a top pro would have even dreamed of playing those two woods the way you did.”

  Ione said, “Be careful what you say, Eric. He had to play them that way. It was his only chance to take that first nine.”

  Eric grunted, “Maybe. I had a hunch, but I thought well, O.K., the fella’s got lots of guts and is willing to gamble. But then we came to that eleventh. You’re supposed to have a slice. In fact, it’s really the best way to play that eleven for a man who can depend on a slice. But, of course, if you can also depend on a nice hook it’s even better. So that’s the way you played it, with one of the most beautiful slow-fading hooks I’ve ever watched.” His lips thinned and he asked, “What I mean, Clark: How come?”

  Clark said softly, “I don’t like your attitude, Eric, but I’ll explain, anyway. When I feel right I try to play it that way and sometimes I succeed. That’s all there was to it. I was feeling right for about four or five holes and I played them that way. It didn’t last long, if you’ll remember. Right after that the slice came back.”

  Eric said flatly, “You’re a liar.”

  He stood squarely before Clark, his barrel chest expanded, legs apart, elbows cocked at his sides, a rugged physique that seemed capable of taking care of itself under any conditions. Clark hit him in the face with a looping left that was so hard the pleasant shock of it traveled up his arm, through his shoulders, and into his spine. Eric was knocked sprawling on the grass. He wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand and came to his feet with a roar, swinging his great sledge-hammer fists. He never had a chance, though it took him a minute or so to realize it. Clark was not only faster, but his deceptively slender physique was more powerful and even more rugged. Eric’s blows skidded off his arms, shoulders, and chest with seemingly no effect whatever. Clark’s blows, on the other hand, found their target every time. He could have knocked Eric out in the first minute, and Eric soon knew it, but he preferred slashing him to pieces first. The vicious streak in him that was never far below the smooth surface was now in the open. Even when Ione screamed and tried to interfere he shoved her away so hard she fell on the grass. He slammed lefts and rights into Eric’s face at will until it looked like a broken tomato, then cracked three of his ribs with vicious punches that simply seemed to explode. When Eric could no longer hold up his arms and was staggering about blindly, then Clark measured him carefully and exploded a bone-breaking upper cut on his jaw. A low moan came from Eric’s battered mouth. He slumped forward, fell to his face on the grass, and was still.

  Ione got to her feet and cried at Clark, “You didn’t have to do that! You didn’t have to do it!” She looked down at the bloody mess of Eric and tears came to her eyes. “Oh, God, what you’ve done to him!”

  Clark filled his lungs with air, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped Eric’s blood from his hands. His eyes were still cold and viciously dangerous as he looked at Ione. “Did he ask for it, or didn’t he?”

  “You didn’t have to do this to him.”

  “He called me a liar. Am I supposed to take that?”

  “No, no.”

  “He thought he could take me. So the stupid lout got taken instead. Any character tries that with me had better have a baseball bat in his hands.” He glanced up at Joey, still standing farther up the hill, smiling, looking down at them, and that steadied him. He took another deep breath and said, “Sorry it happened, though, and sorry you had to watch it. I didn’t want it to happen.”

  Ione dropped to her knees to examine Eric and tears fell on his broken face. Clark squatted down on his heels and raised one of Eric’s eyelids. Eric was out and was going to remain that way for some time.

  Ione said breathlessly, “Better get a doctor.”

  “He’ll need more than a doctor. I’ll call one of the hospitals for an ambulance.”

  “Yes. Please. Hurry.” When he stood up she looked up at him and said, “I said before there was something dangerous about you. I’ve never seen anyone so vicious.”

  Clark shrugged. “Sorry I had to do it. Believe me.”

  He started up the fairway, but paused a moment to look back at her. She had twisted about and was staring at him, but no longer with anger in her eyes. That had faded, and as she stared at him and realized his terrible power her anger was gradually replaced with fascination. Tiny lights of beginning warmth appeared in her eyes. Clark turned away and went up the hill toward Joey.

  At the club they called the Peninsula Community Hospital to send an ambulance, then went into the men’s locker room, where Clark pulled off his blood-spattered sweater and washed his face and hands. Ricki stepped out of a shower and watched Clark while he toweled himself. When he asked what the blood was from, Clark told him the whole story verbatim, sparing none of the details, even emphasizing Eric’s accusation.

  Ricki colored with embarrassment. “Oh, for God’s sake! He really thought that?”

  “And then some.”

  “Oh, the poor damn fool.”

  Clark asked bluntly, “What do you think?”

  “I? I was a damn fool, too, acting the spoiled brat. I’m sorry about that. I apologize. Incidentally, you can pick up your check at the bar.”

  “Forget it. Tear it up.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “But if one person thought it was a setup, even one, then I don’t want the check.”

  Ricki came to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Clark. I was the one you were playing against, not Eric. You were lucky, sure, but no more so than yesterday. I just didn’t think you could do it two days in a row. On that last nine I whipped myself and got so mad at myself I couldn’t go on. But it had nothing to do with your game.”

  “How about the others?”

  “Oh, please. Eric’s the only one, and the reason he said it was because — well, I guess he thinks you and Ione may become a little friendly.”

  Clark scratched his chin and nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that. You’re probably right. O.K. I’ll take the check and turn it over to some charity.”

  Joey, who was standing listening in the doorway, chuckled quietly. The most favored charity was that of Holt and Malloy.

  They heard the ambulance arrive and saw it leave. They looked through the outer doorway just as it was pulling out of the parking area and saw Ione inside with Eric, who was trying to sit up. Clark tried to call to them, but the ambulance was already too far away and then it was gone.

  Clark went into the other room, picked up the check for fifteen thousand, tucked it away in his wallet, and received the congratulations of the people assembled a
bout the bar. All of them were friendly, none of them suspicious. He had his predinner drink a little early and thought of how the day had gone. Not badly. Not badly at all. And it could end even better, with Eric out of the way. He would certainly be in no condition to take Ione anywhere that night. He smiled happily.

  Then he turned and saw Faye coming through the door with a camera slung over her shoulder. He sighed and thought, What the hell, you can’t have everything.

  Chapter Six

  HE TOOK FAYE TO HIS HOME, where she waited while he changed clothes. Then they went to the airport, got out the Bonanza, and cruised lazily about the Peninsula until sunset. Clark needed to investigate his attitude toward Ione, and he could do that better in the air. Though they had yet to have their first date, there was no doubt in Clark’s mind that each had a strong attraction for the other and that they were inevitably being drawn toward each other. His experience in such matters was wide and varied and he never kidded himself concerning his standing in any woman’s eyes. Ione, he thought, was already a bit fascinated by him and could easily become more so if he wanted it that way. But did he want it?

  Physically and emotionally there was no doubt about what he wanted. She was everything he desired in a woman and was the only woman he had ever known who had excited him at first sight and whom he could not get out of his mind. Her background, too, offered profitable potentials for him. But there was that long span of five years to consider before she came into her own wealth. He had learned that meanwhile she was completely dependent on her mother’s generosity. That was not so good. He had yet to meet Mrs. Ranson, but he had heard that she was a shrewd woman and one not given to distributing her largesse over a wide area. In all likelihood, she was the kind who would expect a son-in-law to be more than normally provident and to maintain his wife and household on the Ranson scale, with no help from the Ransons.

  For five years, then, if Ione did turn out to be sufficiently attracted to him to marry him — and he doubted if there could be any other arrangement she would consider — he would have to continue plucking pigeons for his livelihood. That could not be done. A wife would be a handicap in his game, and besides, she would soon see through his little act. There was but one answer. He would become better acquainted with Ione — that he knew he could not help — but he would have to stifle all thoughts of regarding her seriously. She was not the answer to his gnawing hunger for a bigger and better way of living.

  He turned to look at the woman at his side. Faye was enjoying the lazy flight. She took the camera from its case, set it at infinity, and had a wonderful time snapping very bad pictures of the most beautiful scenery on the Pacific coast. She wanted to talk, of course, she was fairly bursting with all sorts of splendid things that had to be said, but Clark had purposefully turned up the volume of the radio in the cabin ceiling so that conversation was impossible. She concentrated on her photography and ran out of film as they were coming in for a landing.

  Clark had had Faye leave her car at the Lodge and had taken along his own in case she decided to do some serious drinking, which started as soon as they landed. They stopped at the Copa and at Barreto’s for double Gibsons, then decided to dine at the Carousel and headed up the highway into Carmel Valley.

  Faye nestled her great frame close to Clark’s side and listened eagerly as he talked. He told her about the game with Ricki and how it had gone and about various exploits in the air, with himself in the modest role of hero, and a truly beautiful and colorful lie about his export business in South America. By the time they reached the Carousel, Faye, who wanted to be impressed, anyway, was convinced that the man at her side was the most dashing and romantic person she had ever met. She fairly bubbled with joy as she plodded ahead of him into the Carousel’s colorful dining room.

  Faye chewed her way through every morsel of a large steak dinner in her usual bovine silence, then gave her smiling attention to Clark. “You talk so beautifully,” she said. “It’s nice having someone to listen to for a change.”

  He was already bored with Faye, but his expression was one of intense interest. “Isn’t Hibbard much of a conversationalist?”

  She shook her close-clipped blonde head and said disgustedly, “That souse! The only thing he can think of any more is to order another drink. His vocabulary is getting pretty simple: ’Let’s have another.’ ”

  “Why didn’t he come down with you this time?”

  She smiled and said coyly, “Don’t you think you’re the answer to that? I didn’t want him to come. And he’s just as happy getting plastered at home. When he’s really boiled he bawls out the servants and that makes him feel like a big man again.” She sighed and said, “Of course, I’ll have to bail out one of the cars when I get back.”

  Clark looked puzzled. “You’ll have to do what?”

  “Well, any time I leave him alone and he wants money, he takes a loan on one of the cars and then I have to buy it back. They’re really all in my name, but the loan company he does business with knows I’ll pay the notes rather than have a legal battle about it, so they let him do it. He used to get pretty cute about pawning my jewelry, too, but now I don’t let him know the combination of the wall safe.”

  “Sounds like a desperate man.”

  She ordered a double Scotch and soda and said, “All for booze. He never spends it for anything else. But, my God, what he can spend in that department! If he stays home he’s all right and soon passes out, but sometimes he likes to go pub-crawling. Then he thinks he’s a big shot and goes to all the better bars and buys drinks for the house all night long, or as long as his money lasts.” She said confidentially, “He can’t charge anywhere. I’ve seen to that.”

  Clark was thinking of the sixty-four-dollar question and finally asked her, “How come you don’t divorce him?”

  She lapsed into a brooding silence for a moment, then said petulantly, “I can’t.”

  “It seems to me you have sufficient grounds.”

  “Oh, yes, but that isn’t it.” She wrestled with herself for a minute, wondering whether or not to tell him the truth, then blurted out, “Daddy liked Hibbard. He was Daddy’s picture of the perfect gentleman. He could never really understand what Hibbard saw in me.” She giggled kittenishly. “Anyway, he began getting an idea that someday I might leave Hibbard, particularly after I got my inheritance.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, he never did credit me with much sense. Always thought I was flighty. He thought I might take all that money and just lose my head completely. Actually, I am the most levelheaded person in the world, but Daddy could never see that. So he worried about it and just before he died he changed his will.”

  Clark began to feel a chill. “Oh?”

  “Yes. He arranged the estate in such a way that if I divorce Hibbard I stand a good chance of losing all of it. So, naturally, I have to stay with him.”

  Clark felt as if he had been handed a lead balloon. It had looked so easy and now it was a dead issue. He swore under his breath, paid the check, and escorted Faye outside. She wanted to stop at Los Laureles for a few drinks, but he drove on by the resort in glum silence.

  When they reached the Lodge, Clark stopped under the darkness of the arch. He left the engine running and grunted, “See you again sometime.”

  She stared at him for a moment with her mouth open. “But aren’t you coming in? We could have a few drinks.”

  “Oh, don’t be a damn fool.”

  “Darling,” she cried, “what’s the matter? What have I done?”

  “Look, Faye. Let’s break it off. This is no good and you know it. After all, you are a married woman.”

  She was completely baffled. “But that didn’t seem to make much difference before.”

  Clark frantically searched his brain for a good reason to get rid of her, then said, “It did make a difference before. I assumed you were fed up with Hibbard. You certainly acted it. It was only natural for me to think that you were entertaining the idea of divor
cing him. Everything pointed that way. So I got interested in you myself, almost as if you were a single woman. Now I realize it was a mistake.”

  Faye was stunned into silence for some time, her brain slowly assimilating the implication of his words. She asked huskily, “You mean you were really interested?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean seriously?”

  “Yes.” He felt like laughing at her, but managed to control it.

  She stared at him, her mouth open and her eyes as round as a cow’s. That a man of his appearance and youth and virility and popularity and wealth too, evidently, would ever consider her seriously was something she would not have even dared dream about. It was staggering. It was breath-taking. It was cataclysmic. What little common sense she possessed was scattered to the winds.

  “Oh, my God!” she gasped, throwing herself wildly into his arms. “I never guessed! I didn’t realize! My darling,” she mooed, plastering a kiss on his face, “I didn’t know.”

  Clark tried to extricate himself, without success. “Take it easy, for God’s sake.”

  A blinding idea struck her and she cried, “To hell with the money! To hell with Hibbard! I’ll divorce him, darling. I’ll marry you any time you want. I’ll sacrifice everything. Oh, to think!” she moaned. “To think — ”

  Clark became alarmed and exerted more strength to get free of her arms. “Now, wait a minute. Now, let’s take it easy. You aren’t going to sacrifice anything and neither am I. Losing that fortune of yours would be the most ridiculous thing you could do. You aren’t that insane.”

  She wrung her hands and tears came to her eyes. “But what else is there to do?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

  “I can’t face it. There must be something. There has to be.”

 

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