I got out at the Circle instead of Fiftieth, telling myself it would save time if I walked four blocks down, instead of five up. Which was undeniable, if you took into consideration the two or three additional minutes it would have taken the train to reach the next station. I walked to her place instead of taking a cab, because it was still early, and because I wanted to see just how nearly ready she was before ordering a taxi and keeping it waiting at the door. It wouldn’t take the doorman a minute to do that for us, anyhow, once we had her grips ready at the door.
“I’ll leave this with you a minute,” I greeted him as I entered, transferring my valise into his kid-gloved and rather reluctant (I noticed) hand.
“Yessir,” he said snobbishly, “it’s Miss Pascal you want to see, isn’t it?” He spoke a purer English than I did myself, evidently had gone to college.
I didn’t like his airs, so I answered bellicosely: “You ought to know it is by now; you were the one telephoned me yourself a little while ago to come up here!”
“Nossir, not I,” he said urbanely, “you must be mistaken.”
This business of contradicting didn’t make me like him any better. “I ought to know!” I said. “Are you trying to tell me I’m crazy?” And I gave him a threatening look.
He bore up very well under it; his poise was the last straw — I had taken a decided dislike to him by now. “I didn’t say anything about you’re being crazy, sir; I said I didn’t telephone you, that was all.”
“You didn’t give me a ring at quarter of eight to the minute and let me know—?” I insisted aggressively.
“Quarter to eight?” he interrupted suavely, with a sort of a Harvard smile transplanted to his iodine-colored face. “Oh, that explains it. I only just went on duty a few minutes before you came in here. It must have been the relief man.”
“Is he a colored fellow too?”
“The same as I,” he said arrogantly.
“Well, that must be it, then,” I remarked lamely, and turned to the elevator.
“Shall I announce you, sir?” he continued. “It’s Mr. Wade, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s Wade, if you insist,” I sighed weariedly, “but Miss Pascal expects me more than she ever expected any one in her life.”
”I see, sir,” he remarked ironically, and didn’t move toward the switchboard at the back. Evidently, not knowing that we were going away, he had a mistaken impression that this was simply another of our “do-not-disturb” rendezvous.
I got out of the car, the door closed behind me, and I rang her bell. I cocked my head toward the panel and could hear the radio humming away inside. “Eat an apple every day, get to bed by three, take good care of y’self, you belong to me!” She didn’t come to let me in; evidently she was in the bedroom putting the finishing touches to her packing and hadn’t heard me ring through the noise the Ford was making. So I rang again and drummed lightly on the door with my nails, and rang again, and then again. She must have heard that; I had nearly pushed the mother-of-pearl button out of its socket.
But she didn’t come to the door. I rang until I was blue in the face, and the ball of my thumb went white with the long-sustained pressure I exerted on it. Still she didn’t come to the door. I moved back a pace or two, dug my hands into my pockets, and gazed at the door reproachfully as though it were doing this of its own accord. Then I remembered that I still had her key in my pocket. I had made it the excuse, once, for coming back to see her, but when I had gone away that day I had taken it with me again.
So I fished it out and dug it into the lock, and turned it, and tried the knob, and the door remained more firmly shut than ever. Then I turned it back the other way again, and that opened it. So I saw that it had been open all along, and I had simply locked it myself just now. I could have gone in long ago, instead of standing out there like a fool, but what was she doing, anyway, not to have heard me ringing away?
None of the lights were on in the living room, but the dial of the merrymaking radio over in the corner blinked across the dim room at me like a little gold star. And the lights were on in her bedroom and the door had been left ajar. “Bernice,” I called in to her, “hurry it up, will you! It isn’t early any more!” And I followed this admonition in there personally, pushed the bedroom door out of my way — and stopped. There was no one in there. She wasn’t in there.
I crossed the room and looked into the closet — not to see if she was there, but to see how much of her packing she had accomplished. Evidently she had carried it through to completion. Most of the rods were empty, and the few dresses and shoes remaining were lying haphazardly on the floor. Even my untrained eye could tell by that that they had been consigned to the discard. I prodded them idly with my foot and then turned back to the room itself again.
Our glasses were still standing around, the tray she had eaten her lunch from was still there, the striped-brocade chaise longue still flaunted the stain she had made on it when she spilled her drink that time, the very violet satin kimono she had been wearing all afternoon was still lying where I remembered seeing it fall when she threw it off — half over the side of the bed and half on the floor. She was leaving it behind because it had got stained too, I suppose. Only because I had been in the room as often as I had could I tell beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything was completely set for her getaway. Otherwise, it was even less disorderly than I had seen it looking many times before now — on awakening in the mornings for instance. But the fullest perfume bottle of the three was gone from the dressing table, and that photograph she used to have under the mirror looking like a cross between a prizefighter and a Mexican movie star had been torn once across and once up-and-down, and the four resulting pieces neatly piled one on top of the other and dropped into an empty drawer sticking out of its frame like a set of buckteeth. A couple of little touches like this were enough to tell me she was all in readiness to vacate. But then where the hell was she herself?
I knew by now that she was not in the apartment at all, but just to give myself something to do for a second or two, I stuck my head in the two remaining places — serving pantry and bathroom. In one, the gin and vermouth bottles were still side by side on the edge of the vanishing breadboard where I had balanced them when I poured out those last two; in the other, there were just a lot of tiles and dazzling light that was hard on the eyes.
Now it was beginning to trouble me a little; a moment ago it had been just perplexing. I would have phoned down to the doorman and asked him if he had seen her go out, only I knew that he hadn’t; he must have thought she was still up here or he wouldn’t have been so ready to announce me a while ago. But then he had only come on duty a few minutes before I had got here; the other man would have been the one to ask, and he had gone home now — or wherever doormen went when they were through dooring. But then, anyway, he was the very one had telephoned her message to me.
I went back to the bedroom again, lit a cigarette, sat myself worriedly down on the chaise longue, and told myself aloud that I would be a — well, something not very creditable to my mother. A disquieting suspicion settled on me, and then on top of that another that was more than disquieting, that was terrifying, paralyzing. One was that she had gone ahead to the station the way we had originally planned it and was waiting for me there — in which case, with me here and she at that end, the train would be gone by the time we located each other. But how was I supposed to know that? Hadn’t she told me herself to stop by here and call for her! And the worse thought was that she might have gone on to the station and might not be waiting there for me — in other words, might have taken an earlier train herself and given me the slip. “But she wouldn’t do a thing like that to me!” I wailed to myself. I knew, just the same, that if she wanted to badly enough, she could and would. And maybe had. She had had a persecution complex of one sort or another all along, I reminded myself, didn’t trust me any more than she did any one else; she had told me so to my face not once but several times. The very words rang in my ears: “I met you on the street; how do I know who sent you my way?” What more likely than that she had got leery of me too at the last minute and had made up her mind to play safe and go by herself?