Эллери Куин - The Devil To Pay

“Walter. How did you get in?”

Walter placed his right forefinger to his lips. “Shh. Sh — snuck up. Sh — swiped housh-key. Deshk.”

He glared up at her from the armchair in an indignant, almost a resentful, way.

“Well?” said Val again. “Haven’t you anything to say to me, Walter?”

“’Bout what? Tell me that. ’Bout what?”

“You know very well,” said Val in a low voice. “About — this afternoon.”

“What ’bout ’sh afternoon?” said Walter belligerently, trying to rise. “You lemme ’lone!”

Val closed her eyes. “Walter, I’m giving you your chance. You must tell me. What happened today? Where’s pop’s coat? Why did you—” she opened her eyes and cried— “why did you lie, Walter?”

Walter’s lower lip crept forward. “None o’ y’r bus’ness.”

Val ran over to him and slapped his cheek twice. The marks of her fingers surged up in red streaks through the pallor beneath the stubble.

He gasped and tried to rise again, but collapsed in the armchair.

“You drunken bum,” said Val passionately. “Coward. Weakling. I never want to see you again!”

Val ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

“I’ll handle him,” said Pink. Rhys quietly sat down on the sofa without removing his coat. He just sat there drumming on the cushion.

Pink hauled Walter out of the chair by his collar, half strangling him. Walter sawed the air feebly, trying to fight. But Pink pushed his arm aside and dragged him into Rhys’s bathroom. Rhys heard the shower start hissing and a medley of gaspy human sounds.

After a while Walter lurched back into the living-room, the shoulders of his plaid jacket drenched, his bandaged head and face dripping. Pink tossed a towel at him and went into the kitchen while Walter dropped into the armchair and tried with ineffectual swipes of the towel to dry himself.

Rhys drummed softly.

“Put this away, big shot,” said Pink, returning with a tall glass. “What a man!”

Walter groped for the glass and gulped down the tomato juice and Tabasco, shuddering.

Pink lit a cigaret and went back to the kitchen. Rhys heard the clangor of clashing pans.

“I think,” said Rhys politely, “I’ll go down to the drug store for a cigar. Excuse me, Walter.”

Walter said nothing. After a moment Rhys rose and left the apartment.

Alone, Walter inhaled deeply and stared fog-eyed at the dusty tops of his suède sport shoes. Pink was slamming dish-closet doors in the kitchen, growling to himself.

Walter got up and tottered to Val’s door. “Val,” he said thickly.

There was no answer. Walter turned the knob and went in, shutting the door behind him.

Val lay, still in her hat and coat, on the bed, staring numbly at the Van Gogh on the opposite wall. Her hat, a toque, was pushed over one eye rakishly; but she did not look rakish. She looked cold and remote.

“Val.”

“Go away.”

Walter reached the bed by a heroic lunge and dropped. His eyes, bleared and shadowed, peered anxiously at her through a haze. He put his right hand clumsily on her slim thigh. “Know ’m drunk. Coul’n’ help it. Val. Val, don’t talk t’me ’at way. I love you, Val.”

“Take your hand off me,” said Val.

“I love you, Val.”

“You’ve a fine way of showing it,” said Val drearily.

Walter sat up with a jerk, fumbling to button his collar. “Aw right, Val. Aw right, I’ll get out. ’M drunk.”

He rose with an effort and stumbled toward the door.

Val lay still, watching his weaving progress across the room... She jumped off the bed and flew past him to the door, setting her back against it. Walter stopped, blinking at her.

“Not yet,” she said.

“’M drunk.”

“You’re going to answer me. Why did you lie to Inspector Glücke? You know you were in that house at 5.35 this afternoon!”

“Yes,” muttered Walter, trying to stand still.

“Walter,” Val’s heart sank. Her hands, spread against the door, gripped it harder. She could almost see past him through the rubbed aspen-crotch panel of her Hepplewhite bureau, where a certain automatic pistol lay hidden under a layer of chemises. She whispered: “Walter, I must know. Did you kill your father?”

Walter stopped rocking. His lower lip crept forward again in a curiously stubborn way. At the same time his bloodshot eyes shifted, almost with cunning.

“Lemme go,” he muttered.

“Did you, Walter?” whispered Valerie.

“Goodbye,” said Walter in a surprisingly sharp tone. He put his arm out to push her aside.

“If you didn’t,” cried Val, running to the bureau and digging into the drawer, “why were you carrying this?” She held up the automatic.

Walter said contemptuously: “Going through m’ pockets, huh? Gimme!” Val let him take the pistol away from her. He looked at it, snorted, and dropped it into his pocket. “Threat — threat’ning letters. Dozen of ’m. Son of man who ruined thousan’s. So I bought a gun.” His shoulders hunched and he said painfully: “I love you, but min’ y’r own bus’ness.”

This wasn’t Walter. Not the Walter she had known for so many years. Or was it? Wasn’t it always a crisis like this that showed a man up in the true ugliness of his naked self?

“You let that Inspector think my father went to Sans Souci this afternoon,” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell him that you were the one Frank saw sneaking up the drive — that you were wearing pop’s coat?”

Walter blinked several times, as if he was trying to peer through a week’s collection of Hollywood’s evening mists. “Gotta trus’ me,” he mumbled. “Don’ ask questions, Val. No questions.”

“Trust you! Why?” flared Val. “After the way you’ve acted? Haven’t I the right to ask questions when your silence implicates my own father?” But then she grasped his sodden lapels and laid her head on his chest. “Oh, Walter,” she sobbed, “I don’t care what you’ve done, if you’ll only be honest about it. Trust you! Why don’t you trust me?”

It was queer how humble he could be one moment and how hard, how frozen hard, the next. It was as if certain questions congealed him instantly, making him impervious to warmth or reason or appeal.

He said, trying to control his lax tongue: “Mu’n’ fin’ out I was in father’s house. If you tell’m... Don’ you dare tell’m, Val, y’un’erstan’ me?”

Then it was true. Pop! goes the weasel.

Val pushed away from him. Faith was all right in its place, which was usually in drippy novels. But a human being couldn’t accept certain things on faith. Appearances might be deceptive in some cases, but usually they were photographic images of the truth. Real life had a way of being harshly unsubtle.

“Apparently,” she said in a remote voice, “the fact that Glücke suspects my father of murder, that one word from you would clear him, doesn’t mean a thing to you. Not when your own skin is in danger.”

Walter was quite steady now. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he closed it without having uttered any sound whatever.

“So you’ll please me,” said Val, “by getting out.”

He did not know, could not know, that Rhys had an alibi for the time the crime was committed.

“Aw right,” said Walter in a low tone.

And now he would never know — not through her! If she told him, how easy it would be for him to crawl out, to say he had known about her father’s alibi all the time, that Rhys had never been in real danger and that it was necessary to him to protect himself. When he sobered up, he might even invent some plausible story to account for his damning actions. Walter was persuasive when he wanted to be. And in her heart Val knew she could not trust herself.