Росс Макдональд - The Dark Tunnel

The sabres crossed and arced in the air. He struck at my head again and I riposted and tried to kill him by sinking my blade in his neck. He parried very easily and smiled at me. He struck at my head and I parried. A drop of sweat ran down my forehead and tickled the end of my nose. I was sweating with exertion and with the terror of death. The movements of my raised arm began to feel laborious and remote.

Two well-matched men can carry on unbroken play with sabres for minutes at a time, but we were not well matched. After the first few strokes, I could hardly meet his descending sword. My weapon became a burden too heavy to hold and the flashing metal dazzled my eyes.

He forced me back steadily towards the wall, his sabre falling like steady hammer-blows. The sweat ran into my eyes and clouded my glasses. Through them I saw the skull-grin shining in his face like a sign of death. My left heel struck hard against the wainscoting and ended my retreat. He struck at my head and I parried and he changed his tactics and thrust at my throat.

My nerve broke down and I forgot about everything but saving my neck. I dropped my sabre and moved sideways along the wall and his point crunched into the plaster. I started running across the bare room and his sabre came between my legs and tripped me. I went down hard on the concrete floor and my glasses fell off and smashed in front of my face. The back of my neck tingled for the final blow.

No blow came, and Peter’s footsteps went past me towards the doorway in the second that I lay breathless. I raised my head and looked towards the door. My eyes were dimmed and stinging with salt sweat, but between his moving legs I thought I saw a woman in the dark hall outside the open door. She was shaking her head from side to side, so violently that her loose hair fell across her face.

Before Peter closed the door behind him, I saw enough to make me think that Ruth Esch was standing there waiting for him. Then I thought that there were shadows in the hall, that Ruth had been in my mind for hours, that my imagination was wild with fear and anger, and I half-doubted what I had seen.

I was suddenly conscious of my position, crouched on my hands and knees like a beaten dog, and I stood up. I picked up the broken pieces of my glasses and wrapped them in a handkerchief and put them in my pocket. The knob of the door turned quietly and I picked up the sabre I had dropped and stood facing the door as it opened.

Dr. Schneider was standing in the doorway wearing a topcoat and holding his Homburg in his hand. He showed his false teeth in a smile under his moustache and said, “I hope you enjoyed your exercise, Dr. Branch. I can see that you are a true swordsman. You hate to relinquish a sabre even for a lady’s sake. But I’m afraid we must go now if we are to meet the train with any time to spare.”

“Isn’t Ruth here now?” I blurted.

“Why, no, it’s only twenty to nine. I thought you understood that we were to go together and meet her.”

“Of course,” I said, and laid the sabre on the table. The last fifteen minutes seemed unreal to me already. I was not sure what was real and what was imaginary. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had felt panic and had made a fool of myself.

I said, “Let’s go.”

There was nobody in the hall and I said, “Where’s Peter?”

“He asked me to excuse him to you. He suffers from migraine and the unaccustomed exercise brought on an attack. He has gone to his room.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. Will you give him a message?”

“Of course,” he said as he let us out the front door. “What message do you wish me to give him?”

“Tell him that the épée is an instrument of war as well as the sabre, and that I know the use of the épée. Tell him that I’d be very glad to instruct him in its use.”

“You are very kind, Dr. Branch. I’ll be sure to tell Peter.” He smiled with the deep irony I had seen in his smile before and left me at the door to get his car out of the built-in garage at the side of the house.

It was dark night now, and the stars were brilliant among the tall trees. The black Packard rolled up to the door like a gliding house, and Dr. Schneider got out and opened the right-hand door for me. I got in and he shut it behind me. He moved around the front of the car like a clumsy black bear in the headlights, and slid behind the wheel.

He shifted gears and we moved down the driveway in a cavern of elms.

I hadn’t heard the door on his side close, and I said, “your door’s open.”

He said, “Oh, thank you,” and banged the door, but when the car turned right into the road his door swung open a little and I saw that he was holding it with his hand. The beginning of a new, bewildered panic squirmed in my chest but I said nothing for fear of making a fool of myself again.

The car picked up speed as we approached the curve where the road dipped down the side of the escarpment. I saw the headlights glare on the white posts of the guard fence and the scrubby bushes on the other side. The headlights swept dark space beyond the head of the cliff, as black and empty as the space between burnt-out stars.

My hand found the inside handle of the door on my side and I tried to pull it up. Then I put my weight on it to push it down. It wouldn’t move. I looked at Schneider and he was staring straight ahead. The car was doing about forty and was heading for the guard fence.

His hand on the wheel jerked down and the car swerved to the right. I yelled, “Brakes!” but it was too late. The car crashed through the fence and plunged into the bushes towards the edge of the cliff.

Schneider cried, “Jump!” and tumbled sideways off the seat. His door swung open under his weight but I hadn’t time to reach it. The big car was tearing through the bushes like a half-track.

I knew I couldn’t find the brake with my feet in time to stop it, so I wrestled the wheel with my left hand and reached for the brake with my right. The car veered and bucked and came to a halt at an angle.

I got out on the driver’s side and looked at it. One wheel was over the edge and the car seemed to tremble there like a balance on a knife-blade. Its headlights stared blindly out into the empty darkness like a stupid animal. I was angry and elated at the same time, and I put my shoulder against the front fender and heaved.

The Packard rolled over the edge of the cliff and I listened to hear it strike. For three seconds it was as if the two tons of metal had dissolved in air, and then I heard the rending crash of its fall into the shallow creek at the foot of the cliff. For two more seconds I listened to the water it had splashed up falling like heavy rain into the stream.

I felt better now. Schneider had tried to kill me and though I probably couldn’t prove it, I had given him an accident that he’d have to report to the police. And they weren’t making Packards for civilians any more. After five years of sedentary life broken only by hunting and hand-ball and an unsatisfactory duel with sabres, it felt good to push a valuable automobile over a cliff with a clear conscience.

I heard scramblings in the low bushes behind me and I turned quickly with my fists clenched. I could see Dr. Schneider’s shadowy bulk coming towards me in the darkness.

“I’m sorry that I was unable to save your car, Dr. Schneider–”

“But thank God you are safe, my dear boy–”

“And don’t come any nearer,” I said, “or I’ll be tempted to throw you down after it.”

“What is that? What do you mean?” But he stood still.

A light went on in the front windows of the house across the road and a moment later the porch-light went on. A man came out the front door in a dressing-gown and trotted across the lawn towards us.