She remembered something he had just said. “You went to my room last night.”
“Yes. It was a simple matter to walk in. No one looks twice at a priest in this country. God, how I loathe them! Like crows in their black garb. Evil crows. I was raised by Jesuits. Not in this country. On the Continent. A bunch of evil crows. A flock of them. ‘God, S.J.’ Hah!”
“Why did you go to my room?”
“To look around. And I had another errand there, child.”
“Sara Trevelyan...”
He smiled. She had never seen such a hideous smile in her life. “Sara Trevelyan,” he echoed. “Yes, I’m afraid so. Not a car accident at all, as it happens. That made a good story, don’t you think? But a bit inconvenient to arrange. It was much easier to go to her room.” He smiled the same evil smile again. “She let me in without a second thought. Why? Because I was a priest. Who would shut the door on a priest? She had no idea who I was or why I had come to her, but she let me in.”
He was lost in the memory. He held his hands out in front of her and studied them intently. “I twisted her neck,” he said slowly. “Like a chicken.”
“Oh, God!”
Still smiling, he went on, “She fought me. She struggled well for so old a person. But I have very strong hands, and I strangled her slowly, very slowly. And all the while I looked into her eyes, and they were wide-open in terror, and then, do you know, they glazed over. It’s remarkable the way that happens. The light went right out of her eyes, and the life went right out of her, and that was all. All.”
She could barely breathe. The look in his eyes, the smile, the infinite calm with which he could speak so viciously. She had never met an utterly evil man before, had never experienced such a personality at close range. Only in books or at the movies — Richard Widmark pushing an old lady’s wheelchair down a flight of stairs, that sort of thing. She had never really believed such scenes, had never honestly thought that there were people on earth who could kill in such a chilling, coldblooded fashion.
But she was standing before one now.
She said, “And David?”
“No. No, I went looking for him. He was never alone long enough. I walked home behind him, to his rooming house. I had a knife for him, a very sharp knife. But there were people in the streets.”
“Thank God!..”
“Oh, don’t give thanks, Ellen. It’s a short reprieve at best. He knows little enough, but he knows you, and that means he knows too much. Dr. Koenig will be keeping him company today, and later this afternoon or evening the knife will find its mark. But you won’t even know about it by then, will you?”
“If you kill me, how will you get the microfilm to Berlin?”
“Koenig’s woman will take it in.”
“His wife?”
“Not exactly his wife. A partner, let us say.”
“Why didn’t you have her take it in the first place?”
“I’m afraid they know her too well in Berlin. But with your passport I don’t suppose she’ll have much trouble. She fits your description rather well, you know. Doesn’t look at all like you, but a passport description isn’t a very precise thing, is it? Height and weight and that sort of thing. And passport photos never look like anyone very much, do they? It would have been more convenient to use you, Ellen. That’s why we thought of it in the first place. But” — he shook his head sadly — “you’ve made that quite impossible, I’m afraid.”
He took a step toward her. Again she backed away. His hands, his awful hands — she pictured them around poor Sara Trevelyan’s neck, squeezing, and the picture made her sick to her stomach.
“You can’t kill me.”
“Oh, but I can. I have to, you see.”
“No...”
“I’ve no choice.” He smiled that smile again. He was enjoying this. Well, let him enjoy it, she thought fiercely. As long as he talked, as long as he went on talking, she was still alive. When she stopped talking and he grew bored, she would be in danger. It was like a cat with a mouse, she thought. As long as the mouse fought and scampered and struggled, the cat went on playing with it and the mouse went on living. But as soon as the mouse ceased to struggle, the cat would grow bored with the whole affair and end the game by eating the mouse.
He was the cat and she was the mouse and he was playing with her, enjoying her fear, her desperate attempts to talk herself free. And as long as he kept enjoying the game...
But mice never escaped, she thought. That was the only trouble. The game always ended the same way, with the cat devouring the mouse. The mouse never won.
“How shall I kill you, Ellen?”
A new twist for the game. “Oh, no,” she stammered. “You have to let me live, you have to. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll go to Berlin or disappear or hide or whatever on earth you want me to do. I’ll do anything at all.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” she said. Her hands moved, indicating her slender young body. His eyes traveled the length of her body, then moved upward again to her face.
And he began to laugh.
“Why, Ellen! I honestly think you mean it.”
“I do. Anything—”
“Shame on you, child. Seeking to tempt a holy father to indulge in the sins of the flesh. May the Lord forgive you, child.”
“Stop it!”
He roared with laughter. He came closer to her again. She backed away, and he circled to his right, hemming her in. The cliff was to her rear now. She could not back up much further or she would fall over its edge. And he was very close to her.
“But I think your charms are wasted on me, dear.” He smiled. “I’m afraid that women don’t interest me that way. The only way you can give me pleasure, dear Ellen, is by dying an interesting death.”
She shivered. He wasn’t human.
“And how shall I kill you? Help me decide.”
“Please...”
“I thought of the knife,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s a beautiful knife. It’s in the car, under the seat. A very long, very thin blade. Do you like knives, Ellen? Do you find them beautiful? A knife can be a very beautiful object, you know.”
“You’re insane!”
“Do you really think so?” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Perhaps. It’s been suggested before. I don’t let it bother me. I thought of the knife, Ellen, but I rejected it. There’s a great deal of variety with a knife. It can be fast or slow, painful or relatively painless. But I don’t think I like the knife, the more I think about it. Not for you. For David Clare, perhaps. Should I make it fast or slow for him?”
She didn’t want to answer, didn’t have the strength to answer, couldn’t stand to listen to the filth he was spewing, much less reply to it. But she knew what happened to the mouse the moment the game became dull for the cat. So she said, “You don’t have to kill him. He doesn’t know a thing, not a thing. You can let him live—”
“Oh, no. Because he knows you, and if you don’t turn up he’s going to find out why. And once he contacts the authorities, your passport won’t be much good to us, will it? No, he’ll have to die. With the knife. Quickly, I think. Why prolong it? We’re prolonging your death, Ellen, by standing here and talking about it. It’s not much fun, is it?”
“You’re horrid!”
“Horrid. That’s an interesting word. Like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. ‘When she was bad, she was horrid.’ That’s how it goes, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Could you sing it for me?”
“There’s no tune.”
“A pity. I’ve never heard you sing, Ellen. What song would you like to sing for me?”
She broke and started to cry. This seemed to delight him. He took another step closer.
“We haven’t finished talking about your death, Ellen,” he said. “Strangling, perhaps? I think that may be best. To strangle an old woman one night and a pretty young girl the next. Yes. I’ll do it very slowly and watch your eyes all the while. Yes. That’s better than shoving you over the cliff, don’t you think? I’ll do that later, after you’re quite dead, but I thought of throwing you off alive, and I don’t think that would do at all, do you? No, because there’s no guarantee. It would cripple you, but it might not kill you, and I simply can’t afford to have you left alive. This whole operation has taken very careful planning, dear. It has to be done properly, and so I think I shall strangle you after all, like your Cornish friend, and I think I’ve wasted enough time already, wouldn’t you say? I think it’s time for you to die, Ellen, and I’ll watch your eyes turn, just as I watched hers turn last night, and you’ll struggle, yes, yes you will, you’ll struggle, and you won’t really believe it’s going to happen. All the while you’ll think there’s a way out, you’ll think a bolt of lightning will come out of the clouds and strike me dead and you’ll live. You’ll invent all sorts of ways you can be saved, and while you go on dreaming of them my hands will be tightening, tightening, and I’ll be looking into your pretty eyes, Ellen, and my hands will tighten and it will hurt you, it will hurt very badly, Ellen, and then while you go on dreaming all of a sudden you will stop, everything will stop for you, the world will stop for you, Ellen, and your eyes will turn and you’ll go completely slack and you will be dead, Ellen, dear, dear child, little girl, dead—”