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He said: “Well, she’s on her way, but we still have plenty of time to get her welcome ready. Go to the kitchen, Duke. Walk backwards, and hold your hands out toward me.”

He snapped the kitchen light on, told me to turn on the spigot over the sink. I did, he snapped the light off, and we marched back, I taking my place on the sofa and holding my hands as before. He said: “I didn’t get the reason until after I left Lippert, but she’s been making me gauge. Climb up on the tank to gauge. Telling me you were lazy, and not running the pump as you should. Insisting I climb up and gauge, while you were dressing for dinner. I thought it was funny, until driving home just now it came to me, what you and she have been up to, what you’ve had in mind. Well, we’ll have some gauging soon. But of course we must have a reason — for the officers, when they come. The empty tank will explain it.”

We sat, I in his place on the sofa, he in mine on the love seat, the gun keeping us company, along with the splash of the water. He said: “Interesting sound, isn’t it? Like blood on a slaughterhouse floor. Very wasteful, that blood. On account of the law we have, covering tubercular cattle, no part of the carcass can pass till the inspector sees the lungs, and the blood goes down the drain — we use it in fertilizer only. Would make the best bouillon cubes, but we’re forbidden to use it for that. Still, society must be protected against disease, tubercles, parasites of all kinds.”

“Like bedbugs?”

“And jailbirds.”

Chapter XVI

The water kept running, until I thought I’d go nuts, and still he made me sit there, while he giggled along about blood. When her lights flashed in the window, I intended wonderful stuff, like warning her off, with yells, but all I did was lean back, the second he told me do it, fold my hands on one knee, and act natural. I’d heard of guys that broke, in the middle of the third degree, not from the rubber hose, but from what the cops asked them, stuff they couldn’t answer. It had all seemed so fine, the way she’d figured it out, to save me by using the tank, and the way I had shooed her off, that morning to keep it decent — so long as it was our little secret. But when he caught on to it all, dragged it out in the open, and smeared it and stank it and fouled it, I could hardly speak any more — from fear or whatever it was, but mostly I think from shame, that anyone would know but us.

She came in very cagey as he opened the door, keeping his right side from her, and holding the gun in his pocket. She looked from him to me and back, trying to get some clue to what went on. Because from her angle, if I looked slightly queer, I was supposed to put on an act, and if he looked slightly silly, he generally did anyway, so that didn’t prove a great deal. As to why I played it so quiet, I don’t deny I was scared, but at the same time, there was a hundred-to-one chance he might lose his nerve, now that he’d blown off his steam, as he had done on the way to Cheverly — provided I did nothing to steam him up again. And no hero act I could think of would top a forty-five gun.

She was still in the clothes she had worn when we said good-by that morning — slacks, tan coat, and red things — and as she stood pulling off her gloves, her face began to screw up at the sound of water gurgling. About that time it gave a yurp, meaning the pipe was empty, coughed once or twice, and stopped. She said, pretty annoyed: “Well, that’s nice. The second I turn my back, Val, you let the water run out. I hope we don’t have a fire, and I hope, before he goes, Duke will pump a few gallons up. I remind you this property’s mine.”

She went to the kitchen and he let her. While she was closing the spigot, he jerked the front door open and had a flash at her car, maybe to look for Bill. When she came back he was walking up and down, about the same as before. But she studied him sharper now, especially his jaw, which was getting red where I’d clipped him. She said: “Val, what have you done to your face?”

“Duke did it. He hit me.”

“...What for?”

“Trying to get the gun.”

He took it out then and stood with it half raised, so it all but pointed at her, and also covered me. She said: “Well. You can’t really blame Duke. Not much, at least. For not liking — a gun.”

“It’s his gun. It’s the same old gun.”

“And you’re the same old Val, I see.”

That did it, if it really needed any doing. He gave one of his yells and said he knew everything, everything, about what had been going on, but she yelled still louder. She said: “You hang on, don’t you? Like a leech, Val. After all your promises. About letting Duke go his way. About getting his paper for him — that shameful thing you extorted from Danny Daniel, that I’ve only today heard the details of, down there in Waldorf. You were going to act human, just once, but you can’t do it, can you? You can’t let go, you’re like a... a—”

“Say it, why don’t you? Bedbug!”

“They don’t let go, ever.”

That led to more yells, from him and also from her, because don’t get the idea the Hollis blood had hold of her, to make her act like a lady. She sounded like a hundred per cent trollop, and when I got in it, mumbling at her take it easy, that just made it worse, and then the three of us yelled. Then we cut, to get some breath. Then he took it: “Holly, there’s just one thing. Before we wind this up. You’re going to tell me the truth. I know what it is, but you’ll own it, if I have to shoot you to make you. If I have to half kill you right here, and then stand by while you say good-by to this rat. Dying, you’ll tell the truth, and then at last I’ll hear you.”

“You sure you do know the truth?”

“You bet I do, Holly.”

“You sure you want me to tell it?”

“I’ll make you tell it.”

“It may be worse than you think.”

“It couldn’t be, no.”

“Well see.”

She went over it step by step, from that first day in spring, when I saved her from the tree. She pushed the knife in his heart very slow, twisting it every inch. She said: “Those cuts weren’t from barbwire, as I felt compelled to say. They were from that tree you made Duke get out, and from that day I’ve been sealed to him.”

She played the whole record back, the party, the ankles, the diet, and the church, while he wilted into the chair by the telephone. She told how she called Lippert up, and the exact reason, which of course corresponded with what Lippert had just told him. She even told of the tank, the idea she’d had about it, and the exact reason for that.

She stopped, smiling at him, as he let out little moans, her eyelashes looking like hornets as she squinched them close together. Then: “That brings me to this morning, Val. This morning here in this room, after you went off to town, and I came in to get some things. To change my clothes and pack. And I was bound, Val, I must have one thing. I owed Duke what I was, my good-looking figure and all, and I was set he must see me. You asked for the truth, Val, and I’m telling it, all as it was. You know it’s the truth so far. Do you want to hear the rest?”