Дэшил Хэммет: Woman in the Dark

“And?” she said softly.

“And what? Have I found out where I stand, what I want to do? I don’t know.” He was standing in front of her, hands in pockets, glowering down at her. “I suppose I’ve just been waiting for something to turn up, something I could take as a sign which way I was to go. Well, what turned up was you. That’s good enough. I’ll go along with you.”

He took his hands from his pockets, leaned down, lifted her to her feet, and kissed her savagely.

For a moment she was motionless. Then she squirmed out of his arms and struck at his face with curved fingers. She was white with anger.

He caught her hand, pushed it down carelessly, and growled: “Stop it. If you don’t want to play you don’t want to play, that’s all.”

“That is exactly all,” she said furiously.

“Fair enough.” There was no change in his face, none in his voice.

Presently she said: “That man — your little friend’s father — called me a strumpet. Do people here talk very much about me?”

He made a deprecatory mouth. “You know how it is. The Robsons have been the big landowners, the local gentry, for generations, and anything they do is big news. Everybody knows everything they do, and so—”

“And what do they say about me?”

He grinned. “The worst, of course. What do you expect? They know him.”

“And what do you think?”

“About you?”

She nodded. Her eyes were intent on his.

“I can’t very well go around panning people,” he said, “only I wonder why you ever took up with him. You must’ve seen him for the rat he is.”

“I did not altogether,” she said simply. “And I was stranded in a little Swiss village.”

“Actress?”

She nodded. “Singer.”

The telephone bell rang.

He went unhurriedly into the bedroom. His unemotional voice came out: “Hello?... Yes, Evelyn... Yes.” There was a long pause. “Yes; all right, and thanks.”

He returned to the other room as unhurriedly as he had left, but at the sight of him Luise Fischer half rose from the table. His face was pasty, yellow, glistening with sweat on forehead and temples, and the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand was mashed and broken.

“That was Evelyn. Her father’s justice of the peace. Conroy’s got a fractured skull — dying. Robson just phoned he’s going down to swear out a warrant. That damned fireplace. I can’t live in a cell again!”

Luise came to him with her hands out. “But you are not to blame. They can’t—”

“You don’t get it,” his monotonous voice went on. He turned away from her toward the front door, walked mechanically. “This is what they sent me up for the other time. It was a drunken free-for-all in a roadhouse, with bottles and everything, and a guy died. I couldn’t say they were wrong in tying it on me.” He opened the door, made his automatic pretense of looking out, shut the door, and moved back toward her.

“It was manslaughter that time. They’ll make it murder if this guy dies. See? I’m on record as a killer.” He put a hand up to his chin. “It’s airtight.”

“No, no.” She stood close to him and took one of his hands. “It was an accident that his head struck the fireplace. I can tell them that. I can tell them what brought it all about. They cannot—”

He laughed with bitter amusement, and quoted Grant: “‘The strumpet’s word confirms the convict’s.’”

She winced.

“That’s what they’ll do to me,” he said, less monotonously now. “If he dies I haven’t got a chance. If he doesn’t they’ll hold me without bail till they see how it’s coming out-assault with intent to kill or murder. What good’ll your word be? Robson’s mistress leaving him with me? Tell the truth and it’ll only make it worse. They’ve got me” — his voice rose — “and I can’t live in a cell again!” His eyes jerked around toward the door. Then he raised his head with a rasping noise in his throat that might have been a laugh. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll go screwy indoors tonight.”

“Yes,” she said eagerly, putting a hand on his shoulder, watching his face with eyes half frightened, half pitying. “We will go.”

“You’ll need a coat.” He went into the bedroom. She found her slippers, put on the right one, and held the left one out to him when he returned. “Will you break off the heel?”

He draped the rough brown overcoat he carried over her shoulders, took the slipper from her, and wrenched off the heel with a turn of his wrist. He was at the front door by the time she had her foot in the slipper.

She glanced swiftly once around the room and followed him out...

She opened her eyes and saw daylight had come. Rain no longer dabbled the coupe’s windows and windshield, and the automatic wiper was still. Without moving, she looked at Brazil. He was sitting low and lax on the seat beside her, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding a cigarette on his knee. His sallow face was placid and there was no weariness in it. His eyes were steady on the road ahead.

“Have I slept long?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “An hour this time. Feel better?” He raised the hand holding the cigarette to switch off the headlights.

“Yes.” She sat up a little, yawning. “Will we be much longer?”

“An hour or so.” He put a hand in his pocket and offered her cigarettes.

She took one and leaned forward to use the electric lighter in the dashboard. “What will you do?” she asked when the cigarette was burning.

“Hide out till I see what’s what.”

She glanced sidewise at his placid face, said: “You too feel better.”

He grinned somewhat shamefacedly. “I lost my head back there, all right.”

She patted the back of his hand once, gently, and they rode in silence for a while. Then she asked: “We are going to those friends of whom you spoke?”

“Yes.”

A dark coupé with two uniformed policemen in it came toward them, went past. The woman looked sharply at Brazil. His face was expressionless.

She touched his hand again, approvingly.

“I’m all right outdoors,” he explained. “It’s walls that get me.”

She screwed her head around to look back. The policemen’s car had passed out of sight.

Brazil said: “They didn’t mean anything.” He lowered the window on his side and dropped his cigarette out. Air blew in, fresh and damp. “Want to stop for coffee?”

“Had we better?”

An automobile overtook them, crowded them to the edge of the road in passing, and quickly shot ahead. It was a black sedan traveling at the rate of sixty-five or more miles an hour. There were four men in it, one of whom looked back at Brazil’s car.

Brazil said: “Maybe it’d be safer to get under cover as soon as we can; but if you’re hungry—”

“No; I too think we should hurry.”

The black sedan disappeared around a bend in the road.

“If the police should find you, would” — she hesitated — “would you fight?”

“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “That’s what’s the matter with me. I never know ahead of time what I’ll do.” He lost some of his gloominess. “There’s no use worrying. I’ll be all right.”

They rode through a crossroads settlement of a dozen houses, bumped over railroad tracks, and turned into a long straight stretch of road paralleling the tracks. Halfway down the level stretch, the sedan that had passed them was stationary on the edge of the road. A policeman stood beside it — between it and his motorcycle — and stolidly wrote on a leaf of a small book while the man at the sedan’s wheel talked and gestured excitedly.