Fritz Leiber - The Sinful Ones

“How can you know,” Carr asked, half humorously, “if they only do it when they’re sure they’re alone?”

“I know,” said Jane simply. For a moment they were silent. Then Jane moved nervously. “Let’s have another drink.”

Carr filled their cups. It was rather shadowy where they were. Jane reached up and tugged a cord. Light spilled around them. There was another pause.

Carr said, “Well, since you won’t tell me about yourself yet…” He made it half a question; she shook her head, turning away, “…I have something to tell you.” And he told her how he had spied on Miss Hackman and Mr. Wilson at General Employment and in the tobacco store.

That captured her attention, all right. She sat tensely.

“You’re sure they didn’t spot you?” she pressed when he was done. “You’re sure she meant it when she said she’d found nothing suspicious?”

“As sure as can be,” he told her, “knowing as little as I do. Anyway, I was bothered and I wanted to warn you. I went to the place where I’d left you the night before. Of course, it knocked me for a loop to see a ‘for sale’ sign, but then by the merest luck I found a paper you’d dropped, which happened to have your right address on it…”

“I know.”

“How?” He looked at her.

She hesitated. Then, “Because I was watching you,” she admitted, dropping her eyes. “I hadn’t intended to tell you that.”

“You were watching me?”

“Yes. I thought you might go back there, trying to find me again, and I was worried.”

“But where were you?” He still hardly believed her.

“Inside. Watching through a crack in one of those boarded-up windows. I found a way in.”

He stared at her. “But if you came back on my account, why didn’t you come out when you saw me?”

“Oh, I didn’t want you to find me,” she explained naively. “I’m doing my best to keep you out of this, though I know it doesn’t exactly look that way. I’m afraid there’s an unscrupulous part of my mind that’s working against me and keeps trying to draw you in.” Again she looked down. “I suppose it was that part of my mind that made me accidentally drop the envelope with the address where you’d remember it And before that, write that silly note about the lion’s tail and the five sisters.”

He looked at her a while longer. Then, with an uncomprehending sigh, he continued. “So I went over to your place.”

“I know,” she interrupted. “I followed you.”

He dropped his hands on his knees, leaned forward. “And still you didn’t—”

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I didn’t want you to see me. I was just anxious.”

“But then you must know all the rest,” he expostulated. “How I finally went upstairs and how Miss Hackman and Mr. Wilson came and…”

“Yes,” she said. “As soon as that happened I ran around and went up the back stairs. I found Fred and you…”

“Fred?”

“The small dark man with glasses. I found you in the bedroom. He’d just hit you. Miss Hackman and Mr. Wilson were killing Gigolo in the front hall…”

“Your cat?”

She shut her eyes. “Yes.” She went on after a moment. “I told Fred who you were and we carried you down the back way to his car and…”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “How did your friend Fred happen to be there in the first place? I got the impression you hadn’t been in that room of yours for months.”

“Oh,” she said uncomfortably, “Fred has very queer habits, a sort of morbid sentimentality about me. He often goes to my room, though I’m not there. Don’t’ ask me any more about that now.”

“All right, so you carried me down to your car,” he said. “Then—?”

“We found your address in your pocketbook and drove you back to your room and carried you up, using your key and put you to bed. I was worried about you, I wanted to stay though I know I shouldn’t, but Fred said you’d be all right, so…”

“…you departed,” he finished for her, “after writing me this charming little note.” And he fished it out of his pocket.

“I asked you to burn that,” she said.

“How do you suppose I felt, waking up?” he asked her. “Happy about it all? Oh yes, and you left those powders too—no, I didn’t bring them with me—those powders I was supposed to swallow so trustfully…”

“You should have,” she cut in. “Really you should have. Don’t you see, Carr, I’m trying to keep you out of this? If you only knew what I’d give to be in a position where I could still keep out of it.” She broke off.

He refused to be moved by the intensity of feeling she had revealed. “You’ve talked a lot about ‘this,’ Jane,” he said deliberately, leaning back. She looked at him frightenedly. “Now it’s time you really told me something,” he continued. “Just what is ‘this’?”

A bell clanged. They both started.

She relaxed. “Closing time,” she explained.

Carr shrugged. The fact they were in the stacks of the Chicago Public Library had become inconsequential to him. “Just what is ‘this’?” he stared to repeat.

“How did you get down here tonight?” she interrupted quickly, looking away.

“All right,” he said, meaning that he was patient and his own question could wait. He refilled both their cups. Then, without hurrying, he told her about going back to the apartment on Mayberry and meeting Fred. Revisualizing the ride shook him, though its details were beginning to seem incredible.

And it seemed to shake Jane too. Though when he finished he realized it was anger which was making her tremble.

“Oh, the coward,” she breathed. “The awful coward. Pretending to be gallant, pretending to sacrifice his own feelings ,even to the point of bringing you to me—but really just doing it to hurt me, because he knew I had done my best to keep you out of this. And then on top of it all, taking chances with your life, hoping that you would both die while he was being noble!” Her lips curled. “No, he doesn’t love me any more, unless morbidness and self-torment count for love. I don’t think he ever did.”

“But why do you go with him then?”

“I don’t,” she replied unhappily. “Except that he’s the only person in the whole world to whom I can go and…” Again she broke off.

“Are you sure of that, Jane?” His voice was low. His hand touched her sleeve.

She pulled her arm away. “Why don’t you go away, Carr?” she pleaded, eyeing him with a kind of wild fright. “Why don’t you drink the powders and forget? I don’t want to drag you down. You’ve got a job and a woman and a life, a path through the world laid out for you. You don’t have to walk into the darkness, the meaninglessness, the chaos, the black machine.”

The lights in the stacks began to wink off, all but the one above their heads.

“Another drink?” she asked in a small voice.

There wasn’t much left in the bottle when he’d filled the cups. She accepted hers absently, looking beyond him. Her face seemed incredibly tiny now, as she sat hunched on her stool, her brown suit shading into the background. The stacks were silent; the mutter of the city was inaudible. In all directions the aisles stretched off into darkness, from their single light. All around them was the pressure of the hundred of thousands of books. But always the gaps between the books, the tunneling slits, the peepholes.

“Look at it from my point of view, Jane,” Carr said. “Just how maddening it seems. I know you’re running away from something horrible. Fred is, too. I know there’s some kind of organization I never dreamed of loose in the world, and that it’s threatening you. I know there’s something terribly wrong with your parents. But what? I can’t even make a guess. I’ve tried to make things fit together, but they won’t. Just think, Jane—you coming to me in terror…that slap right out in the open…your warning…Miss Hackman searching my desk…the words I overheard about ‘checking on you’ and ‘having fun’…” Jane shuddered. He went on, “Those crazy notes you’d made on the envelope…the queer piano in your folks’ place…your mother crazily pretending you were there or whatever it was…your father humoring her, or crazily pretending to…Miss Hackman and Mr. Wilson busting in, ignoring them, acting as if they weren’t alive…more talk about ‘checking’ and ‘fun’ and a ‘beast’ and some sort of threatening ‘other groups’—all the while acting as if the rest of humanity were beneath contempt…and then the cat…and Fred almost killing me…and his wild, fatuous talk tonight about ‘deadly peril’ and so on…and that insane ride…and now you hiding here in the stacks of the Chicago Public Library…”