Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

“Hey, ain’t there a John anywheres?” Owen was opening a closet door.

“It must be down the hall.” His voice was like a shudder. He was holding the telephone in a position for speaking, and now he brought it closer to his ear. He heard the intelligent silence of a live wire. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Haines.” The voice was rich, courteous, and just the least brusque.

Guy’s hand tried unavailingly to crush the telephone, and then he surrendered without a word. It was like a fortress falling, like a great building falling apart in his mind, but it crumbled like powder and fell silently.

“There wasn’t time for a dictaphone. But I heard most of it from just outside your door. May I come in?”

Gerard must have had his scouts at the airport in New York, Guy thought, must have followed in a chartered plane. It was possible. And here it was. And he had been stupid enough to sign the register in his own name. “Come in,” Guy echoed. He put the telephone on the hook and stood up, rigidly, watching the door.

His heart was pounding as it never had before, so fast and hard, he thought surely it must be a prelude to his dropping dead. Run, he thought. Leap, attack as soon as he comes in. This is your very last chance. But he didn’t move. He was vaguely aware of Owen being sick in the basin in the corner behind him. Then there was a rap at the door, and he went toward it, thinking, wouldn’t it have to be like this after all, by surprise, with someone, a stranger who didn’t understand anything, throwing up in a basin in a corner of the room, without his thoughts ordered, and worse, having already uttered half of them in a muddle. Guy opened the door.

“Hello,” Gerard said, and he came in with his hat on and his arms hanging, just as he had always looked.

“Who is it?” Owen asked.

“Friend of Mr. Haines,” Gerard said easily, and glancing at Guy with his round face as serious as before, he gave him a wink. “I suppose you want to go to New York tonight, don’t you?”

Guy was staring at Gerard’s familiar face, at the big mole on his cheek, at the bright, living eye that had winked at him, undoubtedly had winked at him. Gerard was the law, too. Gerard was on his side, so far as any man could be, because Gerard knew Bruno. Guy knew it now, as if he had known it the whole time, yet it had never even occurred to him before. He knew, too, that he had to face Gerard. That was part of it all, and always had been. It was inevitable and ordained, like the turning of the earth, and there was no sophistry by which he could free himself from it.

“Eh?” Gerard said.

Guy tried to speak, and said something entirely different from what he had intended. “Take me.”

The End