Росс Макдональд - The Dark Tunnel

WHEN I FINISHED HUNTER said, “And that’s the end of the story, eh?”

“I hope not,” I said. “It’s beginning to look as if it isn’t. But I haven’t heard anything of Ruth for six years.”

“I suppose you tried to get in touch with her–”

“I did what I could. They wouldn’t let me back into Germany but I wrote letters to everyone I could think of. The Repertory Theatre, Frau Wanger, the manager of her apartment building. I even called her father in Köln by long distance but I couldn’t get in touch with him. All I ever found out was that she wasn’t in her apartment any more, and she wasn’t at the Repertory Theatre.”

“Maybe they concentrated her,” Hunter said.

“That’s what I was afraid of. I even thought they might have killed her. It was the uncertainty that got me more than anything. It still gives me nightmares. You’re walking across a bridge with a girl and she falls through a trap-door into dark water and disappears. You’re dancing with a girl in a bright ballroom and the lights go out and when they come on she’s dead in your arms with her scalp peeled off and hanging into your face.”

“Christ you’ve got a grisly imagination. Skip the horrible details, eh?”

“That night in Munich wasn’t imagination,” I said. “Nor the six years of wondering what happened to her.”

“But it’s over now. What did Schneider say?”

“I didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him. I’m going out to Schneider’s for dinner to-night and then we’re going to meet her at the station. She’s coming on the nine o’clock train from Detroit.”

“So it’s a romance with a happy ending.”

“I hope so. Six years is a long time but I know how I feel about her.”

“Good luck to you. We need an Héloise and Abelard love-story around here. The faculty gets more and more bourgeois every year, more and more like a flock of insurance company employees. You’ll be Prometheus the Firebringer if you can show us a little grande passion. Why, this town hasn’t had a spot of the pure flame since the Assistant Dean of Women went to Australia and had a baby on sabbatical leave.”

“I can’t promise anything like that. My intentions are strictly honorable. In fact, I can’t promise anything and I prefer not to talk about it.”

“No doubt that’s why you’ve been talking about it for an hour,” Hunter said with a lopsided smile. He looked at his watch and got up to go. “It’s nearly six. I’ll be looking forward to meeting Ruth Esch.”

“You’ll meet her,” I said. “Thanks for lending an appreciative ear. And don’t use it against me if she’s already married.”

Hunter flicked his hand at me and left the shop. I finished drinking my final cup of coffee and got up to follow him out. When I was paying my check, an elegant grey suit mounted on whalebone and plush came through the door on elegant painted legs. Helen Madden’s figure was the kind that makes other women look vulpine when they pass it in the street. Her face was not so stunning but it was pleasant enough: a wide, amiable mouth, a straight nose, intelligent brown eyes, and hair that must have cost her seven percent of her salary.

“Hello, Bob,” she said. “I’m glad you happened to be here. There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

“I’m sorry I can’t stay. I’ve got a dinner engagement. But let me be the first to congratulate you.”

She blushed and looked happy. “Did Alec tell you?”

“Yes. It’s the second-best news I’ve heard this year.”

“What’s the best?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow when I’m sure. There’s many a slip between cup and lip, especially when the cup runneth over.”

“Don’t be so mysterious. You’re just like Alec.”

“Has he, too, been whispering cryptic nothings into your ear?”

“It’s past a joke.” Her voice had a faint hysteric screech which I had never heard in it before. “Come and sit down for a minute.”

She sat down in a booth and I sat opposite her.

“What’s bothering you, Helen?” This was the first time I had ever spoken to her like an uncle, but our relations were always shifting. Friendship between the sexes is invariably complicated, even when it is not impossible. Helen and I had gone around together a bit but it came to nothing by mutual agreement. We hated each other a very little, because we couldn’t forget that we might have loved each other.

“I suppose it’s nothing really,” she said. “But Alec has seemed strange lately. He hardly noticed me when he came into the office this afternoon.”

“I can’t understand why.”

“Bob, is something on his mind? I know he’s anxious to get into the Navy, but that hardly accounts for the way he’s been looking. He’s been terribly grim the last few days. And he never used to be that way at all.”

“He’s over-working,” I said. “There’s a lot of business to clean up before he leaves. And he’s got his ups and downs like anybody else.”

“Not Alec. I’ve been working with him every day for nearly two years. Alec is the original vitamin-fed personality, and when he acts grim he has a reason.”

I couldn’t tell her what I knew just then so I introduced a diversion. “There’s been no trouble between you, has there?”

“None at all. And there won’t be.” Her voice was warm and firm again, the voice of a woman sure of her man.

“Why should you worry, then? He has a tough job. Forget you’re engaged to him in the office. Outside of the office, forget that you’re his secretary.”

“And end up with schizophrenia,” she said with a smile. “You don’t know of any special trouble he’s having then?”

“Of course not,” I lied. “And if I did know of anything I wouldn’t tell you. Alec can handle any trouble he’ll ever get into. Watch him when he gets into the Navy. He’ll be the terror of the seas.”

“Run along to your dinner engagement, Bob. You’ve made me feel better. Alec’s secretive about his feelings, you know, and I guess it’s been getting me down. Heavens, I’ve been acting like a calf.”

“Not a bit. I’m sorry I can’t stay.”

“I told you to run along. Good-bye.”

I looked at my watch on the way out, and made a bee-line for my apartment. It was nearly six-fifteen and my engagement with Schneider was for seven. But if I was going to meet Ruth at the station, I had to shave and change my clothes.

My livingroom-bedroom-kitchenette was ten minutes from McKinley Hall, but I made it in less. By the time the tower clock rang the half-hour, I had finished shaving. Two minutes later I was tying my tie when the phone rang.

I picked it up and said, “Branch speaking.”

“Hello, Dr. Branch, this is Dr. Schneider. I tried to get you before but you were out.”

“I just got in a few minutes ago.”

“I merely wished to suggest that I pick you up in my car. Save gas, you know. I have to run into town anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but it’s a fine fall evening and I think I’ll walk. I’ll see you shortly.”

“Oh, of course, if you’re going to walk – We can drive down to the station together. Good-bye.” He hung up.

I looked at the clock on the mantel. I had twenty-five minutes to walk out to Schneider’s place, a distance of about a mile and a half, and I put on my coat and started immediately. Germans like trains and guests to run on time.

He had bought the house on Bingham Heights when he first came to Midwestern. I had never seen it from the inside, because Schneider was not usually hospitable to his academic inferiors, but I had seen it from the road. What made it interesting was the university grapevine report that it had cost Schneider most of the small fortune he had brought with him out of Germany.