— You and your precious inviolacy, my dear!
— Incidentally, don’t think any part of my hatred of S is jealousy. It’s not. He’s not the only one — I hate them all, the whole damned crowd. There isn’t a soul in this city that I wouldn’t willingly kill, they’re all alike.
He felt his bitterness rising, it came up from within him as if he were a deep well of venom and blackness, he must be careful not to go too far. At such moments it was only too easy to surrender to the vision, to give it its headlong freedom. The vision grew like a tree, like a tree-shaped world — he walked quickly to the window, turning his back, and looked down into the dark yard, across which fell oblique shafts of light from the windows of the Women’s Club. He added, without turning:
— There’s nothing abnormal about it.
— I wonder whether you dislike S because he is older—
— No!
— My dear, you are certainly very difficult. Do you mind if I turn on the light?
— Go ahead. It might change our tempo.
She switched on the table lamp, by the door, then came and stood beside him at the window. They both stood still. He thought again of Steinlen, but this time of the black cat on the farmyard wall, in the moonlight, the two peasants embracing under a dark tree. Something seemed to suffocate him, perhaps it was her nearness, like the nearness of the postman in the train: he felt as if he must move, or say something: Gerta might already have guessed too much. Certainly, there were elements in the situation which seemed to be unaccountable, a little incalculable—
— I suppose you don’t want to tell me, Jasper, why you suddenly have to quarrel with every one like this — and make things so hard for yourself—
— No. We’ve got to learn to be hard.
She gave a little laugh, which sounded half angry, half distracted, and walked away from him, putting her hands to the sides of her head: and laughing bitterly she thus crossed and recrossed the room several times, shaking her head, while he watched her. Then she sank down into her chair, as if she were suddenly very tired.
— I suppose I must wait, she said.
— Did you think I meant to kill some one? But I’m not as transparent as I sometimes look.
— Of course not!
— Not that it would matter much, would it. I’d like to play King Coffin!
She looked at him soberly, and he smiled. Her lips were parted, she seemed bewildered, perhaps a little apprehensive, she slid the silver bracelet up and down her arm.
— What on earth do you mean?
— I’ll tell you about it sometime. It was a doctor’s sign I saw somewhere — or thought I saw, or perhaps simply dreamed I saw — I could even swear it was in Commonwealth Avenue, near Massachusetts, on the south side. But it may have been in Saint Louis. Just the name King Coffin. It seemed to me a very good, and very sinister, name for a doctor — it sounds a little supernatural. It might not be a man at all, but a sort of death-principle. It would be nice to be King Coffin, don’t you think? I’ve often thought about it, I’ve thought I might make a story out of it. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari! But you needn’t be frightened. It’s just one of my crazy ideas, no crazier than anarchism, no crazier than absolute egoism, no crazier than the fact that we are here, or that Sandbach doesn’t know what we have arranged for him—
— Jasper, I’m very tired—
— I’m afraid I bore you—
— No, but it’s all rather a strain—
— I see.
— If we could talk about something else for a while—
— Oh, of course. Oh, of course. Of ships and shoes and sealingwax, and cabbages and coffins. Sandbach’s taste in shirts, for example.
She was silent, with lowered eyes.
— His socks, too. His one necktie, and his yellow shoes, his East Side shoes, by God! And always that little piece of nostril ingredient protruding from the left nostril—
He watched her blush, wondering how much of it was shame and how much was anger. He picked up his hat from the table and put it on.
— Well, I’ll go and make my plans, and communicate with you later. If I decide to communicate at all. You’ll of course consider how to deal with Sandbach, and how much to say to him, if anything. But you needn’t bother to report to me, for of course I shall know.
— You don’t need to be angry.
— I’m not — thanks for the taste of the future — dislocation number four.
He walked past her quickly, as she started to rise, ran down the stairs, heard her say Jasper but paid no attention, and on emerging into Walnut Street stood still on the brick sidewalk, thinking. The shape had not been exactly as foreseen, but on the whole the direction was correct, the huge structure was rising all about him, and himself borne upward with it, the arc of bright steel was beginning to threaten the sky. He breathed hard, ran his eyes along the row of dark eaves opposite, felt that with a simple gesture he could remove the tin gutters, making one sweep of the hand. Park Street Church was striking ten, Toppan would not be in till a little before eleven, there was still time for a further formulation before the plunge into sleep.
IV The Friends Who Might Be Murdered
He looked in through the wide window of the Merle as he passed, it was possible that Toppan would have returned there for his usual glass of orangeade and his perusal of the stock market reports and in the hope that he or Gottlieb might turn up; but the room was empty, the waitress was wiping a table, he saw the cocoanut on the shelf, it would soon be closing time. Toppan was probably at his law club in Church Street, after all there would be plenty of time, or even if he had returned it hardly mattered, the diary could be read another day. Better however if it could be done tonight, for Toppan himself could thus be considered: if only to be eliminated. And of course he would have to be eliminated, for in his case the dangers, even if one were going to accept the dangers, would be too immediate, and the actual result perhaps less rewarding. Might it not be better to employ Toppan as witness number two — a figure in the half background — as one who, for example, would know more than Sandbach but less than Gerta? The problem might be posed for him as if it existed entirely in the abstract, in the realm of pure supposition. Moreover, the mere technique of it, the detective aspect, would interest him. From this point of view, of course, it was fascinating to consider that Toppan might become: a necessity, even of the act itself.
But no, the idea was at once perceived to be secondary, it was already past, and on the level of mere observation, like the window of the Merle or the row of queer dresses hanging in Keezer’s: it was as still and lifeless as those dresses, which in the lamplight from the corner looked like a ghostly Madame Tussaud’s, as if the waxworks had stepped out of them for the night. Toppan would definitely be a stage-hand, useful but unimportant. And if at any time he became suspicious or pressing, that would merely add to the excitement, the pressure. He would simply be there, looking over Gerta’s shoulder, as in a photograph.…
He turned on the lights in his room, all three, the sitting room and bedroom and kitchenette, deposited his hat on top of the scarlet enamel Chinese cabinet, then went at once to the mirror. Jasper Ammen. With his long hands flat on the glass top of the dressing table, he surveyed himself with the usual and desirable calm and leisure: after an action, or series of actions, and especially as now in the presence of a prospect of an action, it was necessary to see oneself from outside. It was necessary to see and recapitulate what Gerta had seen, to study what Gerta had studied, and to judge himself through Gerta’s eyes. It was therefore Gerta’s Jasper whom he saw, mysterious, tall, a little languid perhaps, but with an obvious reserve of tremendous subtlety and power, not to say of cruelty. The eyes were enigmatic and lynxlike, and with that profound and inscrutable impersonality which looks out of eyes which themselves see too clearly for any counteranalysis: all they offered was an anonymity of depth and light. They were pure vision. The controlled mouth, and the Greek serenity of the forehead, accentuated the effect of philosophic essentialness: the face, the body, the hands (one of them surrounded by the tiny hexagonal wrist watch) were all one thing, they were a pure ego of unimaginable intensity, and it was this, above all, that Gerta had seen. She had felt the extraordinary virtue of this, it was this that always held her motionless and as if incapable of any separate action. Even in the act of moving toward Sandbach she was moving not to Sandbach but to himself.