“If it happened,” Hank said soberly, “it wouldn’t be funny, and God help the man who laughed at it. It would shake your confidence like nothing else could. You’d think of it suddenly in a bus, at a board meeting, in the composing room. You’d think of it when you were tramping up and down the office dictating. You’d remember that when it happened it came without warning and there was nothing you could do about it until it was over. It would be the kind of thing that just couldn’t happen—and forever after you’d be afraid of its happening again.”
“And the last place in the world you’d go back to is the place where it happened.”
“I’d go through hell first,” he said, his voice thick, like taking a vow. “And … just to cap it, that damned Beck—”
“He laughed?”
“He did not,” said Hank viciously. “All he did was meet me at the door when I was escaping, and tell me I’d do just as well not to come again. He was polite enough, I guess, but he meant it.”
I dunked the handkerchief again and leaned over the glass desktop, where I could see my reflection. I mopped at my chin. “This Beck,” I said. “He certainly makes sure. Hank, all the other people who used to go to Beck’s and don’t any more … do you suppose Beck told them all not to come back?”
“I never thought of it. Probably so. Except maybe Klaus. He wasn’t going anywhere after what he did.”
“I saw Willy Simms,” I told him. “He acted mad at Beck, and said something about going there again being as impossible as writing another song. He’s tone deaf, you know.”
“I didn’t know. What about Miss Falsehaven? Did you see her?”
“She wouldn’t be seen dead in the place. She’s half crazy with the memory of what she did. To you or me, that would be nothing. To her it was the end of the world.”
The end of the world. The end of the world. “Hank, I’m just dimly beginning to understand what you meant about … Opie. That what she did wasn’t her doing.” Suddenly, shockingly—I believe I was more startled than Hank—I bellowed, “But it was in her to do it! There had to be that one grain of—of whatever it took!”
“Maybe, maybe …,” he said gently. “I’d like to think not, though. I’d like to think there is something there at Beck’s that puts the bee in people’s bonnets. An alien bee, one that couldn’t under any other circumstances exist with that person.” He blushed. “I’d feel better if I could prove that.”
“I got to get out of here. I’m meeting Beck,” I said, after a glance at his desk clock.
“Are you now?” He sat down again. “Give him my regards.”
I started out. “Tom—”
“Well?”
“I’m sorry I had to hit you. I had to. See?”
“Sure I see,” I said, and when I grinned it hurt. “If I didn’t see, they’d be mixing a cast for your busted back by now.” I went out.
Beck was waiting for me when I rushed into Kelly’s. I picked up his drink and started back to the corner.
“Not a table,” he bleated, following me. “I have a train to catch, Tom. I told you that.”
“Come on,” I said. “This won’t take but a minute.” He came, grumbling, and he let me maneuver him into the upholstered corner of a booth. I sat down where he’d have to climb over me if the conversation should make him too impulsive.
“Sorry I’m late, Beck. But I’m glad you’re in a hurry. I won’t have to beat about the bush.”
“What’s on your mind?” he said, irritatingly looking at his watch and, for a moment, closing his eyes as he calculated the minutes.
“Where’s your money come from?” I asked bluntly.
“Why, it—well, really, Tom. You’ve never—I mean—” He shifted gears and began to get stuffy. “I’m not used to being catechized about my personal affairs, old man. We are old friends, yes, but after all—”
“Shove it,” I said. “I’m the boy who knew you when, remember? We roomed together in college, and unless my memory fails me it was State College, as near to being a public school as you can find these days. We had three neckties and one good blanket between us for more than two years, and skipped forty-cent lunches for date money. That wasn’t so long ago, Beck. You graduated into pushing a pen for an insurance company—right? And when you left it you never took another job. But here you are with a big ugly house full of big ugly furniture, a rumpus room by Hilton out of Tropics, and a passion for throwing big noisy parties every week.”
“May I ask,” he said between his protruding front teeth, “why you are so suddenly interested?”
“You look more than ever like a gopher,” I said detachedly, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to make him mad. He always blurts things when he’s mad enough. “Now, Beck—working around a magazine like ours, we get a lot of advance stuff about things that are about to break. I’m just trying to do you a favor, son.”
“I don’t see—”
“How would you make out,” I asked, “if they dragged out your income tax returns for the last four years and balanced them against your real property?”
“I’d make out nicely,” he said smugly. “If you must know, my income comes from investments. I’ve done very well indeed.”
“What did you use for capital in the first place?”
“That’s really none of your business, Tom,” he said briskly, and I almost admired him for the way he stood up to me. “But I might remind you that you need very little capital to enter the market, and if you can buy low and sell high just a few times in a row, you don’t have to worry about capital.”
“You’re not a speculator, Beck,” I snorted, “Not you! Why I never figured you had the sense to pour pith out of a helmet. Who’s your tipster?”
For some reason, that hit him harder than anything else I’d said. “You’re being very annoying,” he said prissily, “and you’re going to make me miss my train. I’ll have to leave now. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Tom. I don’t much care for this kind of thing, and I’m sure I don’t know what this is all about.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said, “and explain the whole thing.”
“You needn’t bother,” he snapped. He got up, and so did I. I let him out from behind the table and followed him to the door. The hat check girl rummaged around and found a pigskin suitcase for him. I took it from her before he could get a hand on it. “Give me that!” he yelled.
“Don’t stand here and argue,” I said urgently. “You’ll be late.” I barreled on out to the curb and whistled. I whistle pretty well. Cabs stopped three blocks in every direction. I shoved him into the nearest one and climbed in after him. “You know you could never catch a cab like I can,” I said. “I just want to help.”
“Central Depot,” Beck said to the driver. “Tom, what are you after? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Just trying to help,” I said. “A lot of people starting to talk about you, Beck.”
He paled. “Really?”
“Oh, yes. What do you expect: hidden income, big parties that anyone can come to, and all?”
“Lot of people have parties.”
“Nobody talks about them afterward the way they do about yours.”
“What are they saying, Tom?” He hated to be conspicuous.
“Why did you tell Willy Simms never to show his face at your house again?” It was a shot in the dark, but the bell rang.
“I think I was quite reasonable with him,” Beck protested. “He talks all the time, and he bored me. He bored everybody, every time he came.”
“He still talks all the time,” I said mysteriously, and dropped that part of it. Beck began to squirm. “Personally, I think you get something from the people who come to those brawls. And once you’ve gotten it, you drop them.”
Beck leaned forward to speak to the driver, but for some reason his voice wouldn’t work. He coughed and tried again. “Faster, driver.”
“So what I want to know is, what do you get from those people, and how do you get it?”
“Something happened to my wife last Saturday.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, dear.” Then, “Well, what do you suppose I got from her?”
I put my hands behind me, lifted up, and sat on them. “I know you awful well,” I grated, “which fact just saved your life. You don’t mean what you just said, old man, do you?”
He went quite white. “Oh, good heavens, Tom, no! No! It was what you said before—that I got something out of every one of these people. I’m more sorry than I can say about—about Opie—I couldn’t help it, you know, I was busy, there was a lot to do, there always is.… No, Tom, I didn’t mean that the way you thought.”
He didn’t, either. Not Beck. There were some things that were just not in Beck’s department. I took a deep, head-clearing breath and asked, “Why did you tell Hank not to come back?”
“I’d rather not say exactly,” he said, pleading and sincere. “It was for his own benefit, though. He … er … made rather a fool of himself. I thought it would be a kindness if he could be angry at me instead of at himself.”
I gave him a long careful look. He had never been very smart, but he had always been as glib as floor wax. The cab turned into the station ramp just then, so I came up with the big question. “Beck, does everybody who goes to your parties sooner or later make a fool of himself?”
“Oh dear no,” he said, and I think if he had not been looking at his watch and worrying, he would never have said what came out. “Some people are immune.”
The cab stopped and he got out. “I’ll take it,” I said when his hand went for his pocket. “You better run.” I hung my head out the window, watching him, waiting, wondering if it would come, even after all this. And it came.
From fifty feet away he called over his shoulder, “See you Saturday, Tom!”
“Kelly’s,” I told the cabbie, and settled back.
So. I couldn’t make Beck so mad he’d exclude me from one of his parties—and somehow or other the rich and dumb and smart and stupid and ugly and big and famous and nowhere people who came there became prone to making fools of themselves—and Beck got something out of it when they did—and what did he want out of me? And what did he mean by “some people are immune”? Immune … that was a peculiar word to use. Immune. There was something in that house—in that room—that made people do things that—Wait a minute. Hank and Miss Falsehaven and, if you wanted to be broad about it, Opie—they had indeed made fools of themselves. But the guy who killed the preacher with Beck’s poker—and Klaus the spy—that wasn’t what you’d call foolishness. And then Willy Simms. Is the creation of a hit song foolishness?
Lowest common denominator …
I paid off the cab and went in to Kelly’s to double the drink I’d missed because Beck had been in such a hurry. I was drinking the second one when some simple facts fell into place.
The next best thing to knowing what the answer is is to know where it is. Beck was on his way out of town.
There was only one single thing that connected all these crazy facts: Beck’s rumpus room.
A good thing I have credit at Kelly’s. I flew out of there so fast I forgot to leave anything on the bar. Except a half shot of rye.
It wasn’t quite dark when I reached Beck’s, but that didn’t matter. The house was set well back in its mid-city three acres. High board fences guarded the sides, and a thick English privet hid it from the street. Once I’d slipped through the gate and onto the lawn, I might as well have been underground. The house was one of those turn-of-the-century horrors, not quite chalet, not quite manse, with a little more gingerbread than the moderns like and a little less than the Victorians drooled about. It had gables and turrets and rooms scattered on slightly different levels, so that the windows looked like the holes on an IBM card.
I hefted the package I’d picked up at the hardware store on the way and, sticking close to the north hedge, worked my way cautiously around to the back.
One glance told me I couldn’t do business there. The house was built at the very back of its property, and behind it ran a small street or a large alley, whichever you like. The back of the house hung over it like a cliff, and there was traffic and neighbors across the way. No, it would have to be a side. I cursed, because I knew the rumpus room faced the back with its huge picture windows of one-way glass; then I remembered that the room was air-conditioned; the windows wouldn’t open and couldn’t be cut because they were certainly double-pane jobs.
I tried two ground-floor windows, but they were locked. Another was open, but barred. Then nothing but a bare, windowless stretch. On a hunch I approached it, through the flowerbed at its base. And sure enough, just at chest-height, hidden behind a phalanx of hollyhocks, was a small window.
I got out the pen-lite flash I’d just bought and peered in. The window was locked with one of those burglarproof cast-steel locks that screws a rubber ferrule up against the frame. I was pleased. I got out the can of aquarium cement and worked the stuff into a cone, which I placed against the glass. Then I got out the glass cutter and scribed around the cone. I rapped the cut circle once, and with a snap it broke out, with the cone of putty holding it. I reached down and laid putty and glass on the window sill, unscrewed the burglarproof lock, opened the window and climbed in. With my putty-knife I carefully removed the broken pane, and cracked it and the circle into small enough pieces to wrap up in the brown paper from the parcel I carried. I measured the frame and cut the one spare piece of window glass I’d brought along, and installed it using the aquarium cement. The stuff’s black and doesn’t glare at you the way clean, new putty does. I cleaned the new pane inside and out, shut and locked the window, and carefully swept the sill and the floor under it. I dumped the sweepings into my jacket pocket and stowed the tools here and there in my jacket and pants. So now nobody ever had to know I’d been here.
I was in a large storage closet which turned out to belong to the butler’s pantry. That led to the kitchen, and that to the dining room, and now I knew where I was. I went into the front hall and down toward the back of the house. The door to the rumpus room was closed. On this side it was all crudded up with carven wainscoting; golden oak and Ionic columns. It was a sliding door; I rolled it back and on the other side it was a flat slab of birch to match the shocking modern of the rumpus room. Again I had that strange feeling of wonderment about Beck and his single peculiarity.
I shut the door and crossed the dim room to the picture windows. There I touched the button that closed the heavy drapes. There was a faint hum and they began to move. As they did, all but sourceless light began to grow in the room, until when they met the room was filled with a pervasive golden glow.
And standing in the middle of the rug which I had just crossed, standing yards away from any door and a long way from any furniture, was a girl.
The shock of it was almost physical. And for a split second I thought my eyes registered a dazzle, like the subjective afterglow of a lightning flash. Then I got hold of myself and met her long, level, green-eyed gaze.
If a woman can be strong and elfin at once, she was. Her hair was blue-black with a strange reddish light in it. Her skin was too flawless, like something in a wax museum, but for all that it was real and warm-looking. She was smiling, and I could see how her teeth met edge to edge in that rarity, the perfect bite. Her low-cut dress was of a heavy gold and purple brocade, and she must have had a dozen petticoats under it. Sixteenth century—seventeenth century? In this room?
“That was nice,” she said.
“It was?” I said stupidly.
“Yes, but it didn’t last. I suppose you’re immune.”
“Depends,” I said, looking at the neckline of her dress. Then I remembered Beck’s strange remark.
She said, “You’re not supposed to be here. Not all alone.”
“I could say the same for you. But since we’re both here, we’re not alo
ne.”
“I’m not,” she said. “But you are.” And she laughed. “You’re Conway.”
“Oh. He told you about me, did he? Well, he never said a word about you.”
“Of course not. He wouldn’t dare.”
“Do you live here?”
She nodded. “I’ve always lived here.”
“What do you mean always? Beck’s been here three—yes, it’s four years now. And you’ve been here all this time?”
She nodded. “Since before that.”
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Good for Beck. I thought he didn’t like women.”
“He doesn’t need to.” I saw her gaze stray over my shoulder and fix on something behind me. I whirled. Clinging to the drape was a spider as big as a Stetson hat. I didn’t know whether it was going to jump or what. With the same motion which began when I turned, I snatched up a heavy ash stand made of links of chain welded together. Before I could heave it the girl was beside me, holding it with both hands. “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll break the window and people will come. I want you to stay here for a while.”
“But the—”
“It isn’t real,” she said. I looked and the spider was gone. I turned back to her. “What the hell goes on here?”
She sighed. “That wasn’t so good,” she said. “You were supposed to be frightened. But you just got angry at it. Why weren’t you frightened?”
“I am now,” I said, glancing at the drapes. “I guess I get mad first and scared later. What’s the idea? You put that thing there, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“What for?”
“I was hungry.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I know.”
She moved to the divan, rustling wonderfully as she walked. She subsided into the foam rubber, patted the seat next to her. I crossed slowly. You don’t have to know what a thing’s all about to like it. I sat beside her.
She cast her eyes down and smoothed her skirt. It was as if she were waiting for something.
I didn’t give her long to wait. I pulled her to me and clawed at the back of her dress. It slipped downward easily just as my cheek encountered the heavy stubble on hers.
A Saucer of Loneliness Page 25