“No,” Average said. “I don’t think so. It’s a high fence, eight feet at least, and we’d have seen him going over. Probably he’s hiding somewhere in this junk.”
“It’s not nice of him to cause us so much trouble,” Cupid said. “Why did he want to run away and hide and cause us so much trouble?”
“Never mind that,” Average said. “What we got to do is find him. If we don’t, we’re in big trouble. Chalk don’t like guys to fumble a job. It’s bad for business. You take one side of the yard, and I’ll take the other. He’s got to be in here somewhere.”
Obediently, Cupid started through the piles of scrap on the side of the sanctuary. His huge feet shuffled slowly, scraping against the hard ground and disturbing a piece of metal now and then with a sharp clatter. Coming closer and closer to the sanctuary, he began to talk in his soft, incongruous crooning way.
“Come out, Lover. This is Cupid, Lover. Come out to Cupid, Lover.”
The crooning voice was more terrifying than a curse as a threat of evil. Joe pressed his face against the ground and covered his ears with his hands, and then he could not hear the terrible soft threat any longer, could not hear the shuffle of feet coming nearer and nearer, and after a few moments in the silence and darkness achieved by hands and closed lids he began to have a strange sense of peace and security, and he was lying so, in the false security of the false sanctuary, when great hands took hold of him gently and lifted him up and held him erect.
“Here’s Lover,” Cupid crooned. “Poor Lover’s dirtied himself. It wasn’t nice of you to run away and hide and cause Cupid so much trouble, Lover. Cupid’s angry because you ran away.”
Average came across the aisle from the other side of the yard. Saying nothing, he took Joe by one arm and started immediately toward the street. Joe did not resist. He had no longer any desire to resist or to suffer again the unbearable ordeal of escape. In submission, he achieved a kind of miraculous detachment from whatever was happening or might happen to Joe Doyle, an emotional immunity to Joe’s fear and Joe’s pain and Joe’s ultimate end, whatever it turned out to be. In the car, he leaned back beside Cupid and closed his eyes and sank briefly into exquisite physical lethargy. Charity was waiting for him in the vast, illimitable night behind his lids. She smiled at him sadly, and he could see, shining like traces of phosphorous in the darkness, the paths of tears across her thin cheeks. He nodded and returned her smile and tried to make her understand without words the miracle of acceptance and submission that had made all right everything that had been, a few minutes ago, all wrong.
The sedan turned a corner and stopped at last, and Cupid, crooning again, took him by the arm with his incongruous, monstrous gentleness and helped him out onto the sidewalk. They were standing now near the entrance to an alley. Average got out on the street side and walked around the front of the sedan and went into the alley without looking back, as if he had forgotten entirely that anyone was with him. Cupid and Joe stood waiting on the sidewalk, Cupid crooning and Joe quietly with his head bowed in a posture of prayer or reflection, and after a minute or two Average returned.
“It’s all right,” he said.
Together, Joe between the two, they went into the alley and past a parked car and into an enormous room with a concrete floor. Small windows were glazed with faint light at the far end. At the rear, near the alley entrance, a weak bulb in a conical shade cut a circle of light in the darkness. Joe stood in the light under the conical shade, his arms hanging, his head still bowed in the prayerful posture. He thought he heard, somewhere in the room, a whisper of movement, a ghost of sound, but it was not significant, whatever it was, in his present vast indifference. Cupid had taken off his coat in the darkness and stepped into the light without it. He was smiling and saying something, and Joe raised his eyes and listened intently in an effort to hear clearly what was being said, but for some strange reason he could not quite understand. He saw that Cupid was wearing a pink shirt with very thin white stripes, and he thought that the shirt was silk, but he wasn’t absolutely certain of this, either. He saw also that Cupid’s eyes actually seemed to be red, and this struck him as extremely odd. He wondered if it was just a trick of light and shadow. The eyes of Siamese cats looked red in certain circumstances, he knew, but he had never heard of the eyes of a man looking red in any circumstances whatever. He was so fascinated by Cupid’s red eyes that he did not even see Cupid’s huge fist when it was driven at his face. He was only aware of splitting flesh and splintering bone. Not even precisely of these. Only of the monstrous, incredible pain of them. Crying out with the pain, he fell spiraling in an immeasurable thunderous night to the concrete floor.
Aware after an age that he was on the floor, he decided that the floor was a good place to be. He thought that he would simply remain forever on the floor. Someone, however, did not want him to stay there. Someone was asking him to get up, pleading with him in a crooning voice, but he knew perfectly well that this was only a trick, an effort to get him to do what he did not want to do, and he could avoid this simply by lying very still and pretending that he didn’t hear. This did not work, however, for whoever was talking was now also lifting him to his feet and holding him erect, and he was suddenly ashamed that he was not even capable of standing on his own feet without help. He spread his legs, trying to establish a balance. Deliberately, with a great effort, he raised his head and tried to focus his eyes. It was a foolish and painful thing to do, which would surely accomplish nothing, but he was compelled by an irrational conviction that it was somehow essential to pride and manhood to stand erect and see clearly in that instant.
It was the instant he died. Cupid’s second and last blow detonated above the bad heart that was ready to quit, and Joe collapsed again in a final recapitulation of pain and engulfing darkness. The. pain was as brief as the instant of dying, but the darkness endured with death.
Chapter 16
Oliver knocked and opened the door and came into the room. Charity was lying on her back on her bed. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t look at Oliver when he entered. She didn’t stir in the slightest.
“There’s a man here to see you, my dear,” Oliver said.
“I don’t wish to see anyone,” Charity said.
Oliver walked over beside the bed and stood looking down at her. She was fully dressed, wearing even her shoes. Her wide-open eyes were hot and dry and unblinking. They continued to stare at the ceiling.
“I’m afraid you had better see this man whether you want to or not,” Oliver said. “He’s a policeman.”
“Why does a policeman want to see me?” she said. “I’ve done nothing that should be of any interest whatever to a policeman.”
“Of course you haven’t, my dear. He’s only trying to get some information about a man who was killed. This man’s name was Joe Doyle. The policeman seems to have some evidence that you and the dead man knew each other. Naturally, he wants to ask you some questions.”
“Am I required to answer his questions?”
“I think you are. After all, he’s really being very considerate. He might have forced you to go to police headquarters.”
“All right. If I’m required to answer them, I’ll come.”
“I’d like to make a suggestion first, if you don’t mind. Please be very careful of what you say. There’s always a danger that an inexperienced person may incriminate himself or others in these things when there is really no need for it at all. It would be most unfortunate if you were so careless.”
“I know. You needn’t worry.”