Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'You're perfectly right,' said Henry.

'Can't you just call down there?' Charles said.

'Who'm I gonna call? The guy's unlisted and he doesn't hand out business cards, all right?'

Then how do you get in touch with him?'

'I have to call a third guy.'

'Then call him,' said Henry calmly, putting the handkerchief back in his pocket and hooking the glasses back over his ears.

'They're not going to tell me anything.'

'I thought they were such good chums of yours.'

'What do you think?' said Cloke. 'You think these people are running some kind of a scout troop down there? Are you kidding?

These are real guys. Doing real shit.'

For one horrible instant I thought that Francis was going to laugh aloud but somehow he managed to turn it into a theatrical battery of coughs, hiding his face behind his hand. With barely a glance Henry slapped him, hard, on the back.

Then what do you suggest we do?' Camilla said.

'I don't know. I'd like to get into his room, see if he took a suitcase or anything.'

'Isn't it locked?' Henry said.

'Yes. Marion tried to get Security to open it for her and they wouldn't do it.'

Henry bit his lower lip. 'Well,' he said slowly, 'it wouldn't be so very hard to get in in spite of that, would it?'

Cloke put out his cigarette and looked at Henry with new interest. 'No,' he said. 'It wouldn't.'

There's the ground floor window. The storm windows have been taken off.'

'I know I could handle the screens.'

The two of them stared at each other.

'Maybe,' Cloke said, 'I should go down and try it now.'

'We'll go with you.'

'Man,' said Cloke, 'we can't all go.'

I saw Henry cut his eyes at Charles; Charles, behind Cloke's back, acknowledged the glance. 'I'll go,' he said suddenly, in a voice that was too loud, and tossed off the rest of his drink.

'Cloke, how on earth did you get mixed up in something like this?' Camilla said.

He laughed condescendingly. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'You have to meet these guys on their own ground. I don't let them give me shit or anything.'

Inconspicuously, Henry slipped behind Cloke's chair to where Charles stood, and leaned over and whispered something in his ear. I saw Charles nod tersely.

'Not that they don't try to fuck with you,' said Cloke. 'But I know how they think. Now Bunny, he doesn't have a clue, he thinks it's some kind of a game with hundred-dollar bills just lying on the ground, waiting for some stupid kid to come along and pick them up…'

By the time he stopped talking, Charles and Henry had completed whatever business they'd been discussing and Charles had gone to the closet for his overcoat. Cloke reached for his sunglasses and stood up. He had a faint, dry smell of herbs, an echo of the pothead smell that always lingered in the dusty corridors of Durbinstall: patchouli oil, clove cigarettes, incense.

Charles wound the scarf around his neck. His expression was at once casual and turbulent; his eyes were distant and his mouth was steady, but his nostrils flared slightly with his breathing.

'Be careful,' Camilla said.

She was talking to Charles, but Cloke turned and smiled.

'Piece of cake,'he said.

She walked with them to the door. As soon as she shut it behind them she turned around.

Henry put a finger to his lips.

We listened to their footsteps going down the stairs, and were quiet until we heard Cloke's car start. Henry went to the window and pulled aside a shabby lace curtain. 'They're gone,' he said.

'Henry, are you sure this is a good idea?' said Camilla.

He shrugged, still looking at the street below. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I had to play that one by ear.'

'I wish you'd gone. Why didn't you go with him?'

'I would have, but this is better.'

'What did you say to him?'

'Well, it should be pretty obvious even to Cloke that Bunny isn't out of town. Everything he owns is in that room. Money, extra glasses, winter coat. Odds are that Cloke will want to leave, and not say anything, but I told Charles to insist that they at least call Marion over for a look. If she sees – well. She doesn't know a thing about Cloke's problems and wouldn't care if she did.

Unless I'm mistaken she'll call the police, or Bunny's parents at the very least, and I doubt Cloke will be able to stop her.'

'They won't find him today,' said Francis. 'It'll be dark in a couple of hours.'

'Yes, but if we're lucky they'll start looking first thing tomorrow.'

'Do you think anyone will want to talk to us about it?'

'I don't know,' said Henry abstractedly. 'I don't know how they go about such things.'

A thin ray of sun struck the prisms of a candelabrum on the mantelpiece, throwing brilliant, trembling shards of light that were distorted by the slant of the dormer walls. All of a sudden, images from every crime movie I'd ever seen began to pop into my mind – the windowless room, the harsh lights and narrow hallways, images which did not seem so much theatrical or foreign as imbued with the indelible quality of memory, of experience lived. Don't think, don't think, I told myself, looking fixedly at a bright, cold pool of sunlight soaking into the rug near my feet.

Camilla tried to light a cigarette, but one match and then another went out. Henry took the hox from her and struck one himself; it flared up high and strong and she leaned close to it, one hand cupped around the flame and the other resting upon his wrist.

The minutes crept by with a torturous slowness. Camilla brought a bottle of whiskey into the kitchen and we sat around the table playing euchre, Francis and Henry against Camilla and me.

Camilla played well – this was her game, her favorite – but I wasn't a good partner and we lost trick after trick to the others.

The apartment was very still: clink of glasses, ruffle of cards.

Henry's sleeves were rolled above his elbows and the sun glinted metallic off Francis's pince-nez.1 did my best to concentrate on the game but again and again I found myself staring, through the open door, at the clock on the mantel in the next room. It was one of those bizarre pieces of Victorian bric-a-brac that the twins were so fond of- a white china elephant with the clock balanced in a howdah, and a little black mahout in gilt turban and breeches to strike the hours. There was something diabolical about the mahout, and every time I looked up I found him grinning at me in an attitude of cheerful malice.

I lost count of the score, lost count of the games. The room grew dim.

Henry laid down his cards. 'March,' he said.

Tm sick of this,' said Francis. 'Where is he?'

The clock ticked loudly, a jangling, arrhythmic tick. We sat in the fading light, the cards forgotten. Camilla took an apple from a bowl on the counter and sat in the windowsill, eating it morosely and looking down at the street below. A fiery outline of twilight shone around her silhouette, burned red-gold in her hair, grew diffuse in the fuzzy texture of the woolen skirt pulled carelessly about her knees.

'Maybe something went wrong,' Francis said.

'Don't be ridiculous. What could go wrong?'

'A million things. Maybe Charles lost his head or something.'

Henry gave him a fishy look. 'Calm down,' he said. 'I don't know where you get all these Dostoyevsky sorts of ideas.'

Francis was about to reply when Camilla jumped up. 'He's coming,' she said.

Henry stood up. 'Where? Is he alone?'

'Yes,' said Camilla, running to the door.

She ran down to meet him on the landing and in a few moments the two of them were back.

Charles's eyes were wild and his hair was disordered. He took off his coat, threw it on a chair, flung himself on the couch.

'Somebody make me a drink,' he said.

'Is everything all right?'