In the basement, you could dance and make moderate love and get drunk, if you wished, on expensive drinks. In the restaurant, you did not get drunk or dance or make love or look at naughty murals. In the game rooms, you gambled quietly with no limit except your own judgment and bank account, and you saved everything else for some other place and some other time. Patrons passed as they pleased from one level to another, but the atmosphere was never permitted to go with them. The basement never climbed the stairs, nor did the upper floors descend.
Silas Lawler was, in brief, not a man to be taken lightly, or a man who would take lightly any transgression against himself or his interests. It was, I reflected, wholly incredible that he would be indifferent to the disappearance of a brother. Whatever the reason for the disappearance, whatever the technique of its execution, Silas Lawler knew it, or thought he knew it, and he might be prevailed upon to tell me in confidence, or he might not. But in any event it would be necessary for me to talk with him as soon as I could, which would probably be tomorrow. I would see Graham Markley at two, and later I would try to see Silas Lawler. If nothing significant came of these two meetings I would go again to see Faith Salem, which would be a pleasure, and terminate our relationship, which would not.
Having thought my way back to Faith Salem, I closed my eyes and tried to find her, but the sun had left the terrace, and so had she. Opening my eyes, I lowered my feet and stood up. I had determined an agenda of sorts, and now there seemed to be nothing of importance left to do on this particular day. Besides, it was getting rather late, and I was getting rather hungry, and so I went out and patronized a steak house and afterward spent one-third of the night doing things that were not important and not related to anything that had gone before. About ten o’clock I returned to the room and bath and hot plate that I euphemistically called home. I went to bed and slept well.
3
I woke up at seven in the morning, which is a nasty habit of mine that endures through indiscretions and hangovers and intermittent periods of irregular living. In the bathroom, I shaved and necessarily looked at my face in the mirror. I like you, Mr. Hand, Faith Salem had said. I like your looks. Well, it was an ambiguous expression. You could like the looks of a collie dog or a pair of shoes or a shoebill stork. It could mean that you were inspired by confidence or amusement or the urge to be a sister. Looking at my face, I was not deluded. I decided that I was probably somewhere between the dog and the stork. I finished shaving and dressed and went out for breakfast and arrived in due time at my office, where nothing happened all morning.
Two o’clock came, but Graham Markley didn’t. At ten after, he did. I heard him enter the little cubby-hole in which my clients wait when there is another client ahead of them, which is something that should happen oftener than it does; and when I got to the door to meet him, he was standing there looking antiseptic among the germs. His expression included me with the others. “Mr. Hand?” he said.
“That’s right. You’re Mr. Markley, I suppose?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to be late. I was detained.”
“Think nothing of it. In this office, ten minutes late is early. Come in, please.”
He walked past me and sat down in the client’s chair beside the desk. Because I felt he would consider it an imposition, I didn’t offer to shake hands. I felt that he might even ignore or reject the offer, which would have made me indignant or even indiscreet. Resuming my place in the chair behind the desk, I made a quick inventory and acquired an impression. He sat rigidly, with his knees together and his hat on his knees. His straight black hair was receding but still had a majority present. His face was narrow, his nose was long, his lips were thin. Arrogance was implicit. He looked something like the guy who used to play Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Maybe he looked like Sherlock Holmes.
“Precisely what do you want to tell me, Mr. Hand?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “that isn’t quite my position. What I want is for you to tell me something.”
“Indeed? I gathered from our conversation on the telephone yesterday that you were in possession of some new information regarding my wife.”
“Did I imply that? It isn’t exactly true. What I meant to suggest was that the available information isn’t adequate. It leaves too much unexplained.”
“Do you think so? The police apparently didn’t. As a matter of fact, it was quite clear to everyone what my wife had done. It was, as you may realize, an embarrassing affair for me, and there seemed to be no good purpose in giving it undue publicity or in pursuing it indefinitely.”
“Is that still your feeling? That there is no purpose in pursuing it any further?”
“Until yesterday it was. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t wish to interfere with whatever kind of life my wife is trying to establish for herself, nor do I wish to restore any kind of contact between her and me, but since our telephone conversation I’ve begun to feel that it would be better for several reasons if she could be located.”
“Are you prepared to help?”
“Conditionally.”
“What conditions?”
“Are you, for your part, prepared to tell me who initiated this investigation?”
“What action would you take if I told you?”
“None. The truth is, I’m certain that I know. I merely want to verify it.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Miss Salem? I thought so. Well, it’s understandable. Under the circumstances of our relationship, she’s naturally concerned. She urged me once previously to try again to locate my wife, but I wasn’t inclined to reopen what was, as I said, an unpleasant and embarrassing affair. Apparently I underestimated the strength of her feeling.”
“You don’t resent her action, then?”
“Certainly not. I’m particularly anxious to settle any uneasiness she may feel. I’m even willing to assume the payment of your fee.”
“That’s between you and her, of course. Will you tell me why, in your opinion, your wife disappeared?”
“As to why she disappeared, I can only speculate. As to why she left, which is something else, I’m certain. She was having an affair with a man named Regis Lawler. They went away together. The relationship between my wife and me had deteriorated by that time to such an extent that I really didn’t care. I considered it a satisfactory solution to our problem.”
“Satisfactory? You said painful and embarrassing.”
“Painful and embarrassing because it was humiliating. Any husband whose wife runs away with another man looks rather ridiculous. I mean that I had no sense of loss.”
“I see. Did she give you any idea that she was leaving before she went?”
“None. We didn’t see each other often the last few months we lived together. When we did see each other, we found very little to say.”
“You said you could only speculate as to why she disappeared instead of leaving openly. I’d like to hear your speculation.”
“You would need to have known her before you could understand. She was, to put it kindly, rather unstable. Less kindly, she was neurotic. She may have been almost psychotic at times. I don’t know. I don’t understand the subtle distinctions between these things. Anyhow, she had had a bad time when our child died. At first, after the initial shock, she became withdrawn and depressed, totally uninterested in living. Later there was a reaction. A kind of hysterical appetite for activity and experiences. It was then that she met Regis Lawler. It’s my opinion that she disappeared because she wanted to cut herself off completely from the life that had included our marriage and the death of our child. It’s difficult to believe, I know.”