Burgess sauntered in again, moved around after that as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. Finally he ended up at the window. He adjusted the shade a little, to get more light in. There was a bird on the sill outside. It quirked its head at him knowingly. He said, “C’mere a minute, Henderson. What kind of a bird is this, anyway?” And then when Henderson didn’t move the first time, “C’mere. Hurry up, before he goes away.” As though that were the most important thing in the world.
Henderson got up, and went over and stood beside him, and thus his back was to the room. “Sparrow,” he said briefly. He gave him a look as if to say: That wasn’t what you wanted to know.
“That’s what I figured it was,” Burgess said. And then, to keep him looking forward, “Pretty decent view you got from here.”
“You can have it, bird and all,” Henderson said bitterly.
There was a noticeable lull. All questioning had stopped.
Henderson turned away, then stopped where he was. There was a girl sitting there on the sofa, in the exact place where he’d just been himself until now. There hadn’t been a sound to mark her arrival. Not the creak of a door hinge, not the rustle of a garment.
The way the eyes of the three men dug into his face, all the skin should have peeled off it. He got a grip on it from the inside, held it steady. It felt a little stiff. Like cardboard, but he saw to it that it didn’t move.
She looked at him, and he at her. She was pretty. She was the Anglo-Saxon type, more so even than the Anglo-Saxons themselves are any more. Blue-eyed, and with her taffy colored hair uncurled and brushed straight across her forehead in a clean looking sweep. The part was as distinct as a man’s. She had a tan camel’s hair coat drawn over her shoulders, with the sleeves left empty. She was hatless, but was clutching a handbag. She was young, at that stage when they still believe in love and men. Or maybe she always would, was of an idealistic temperament. You could read it in the way she looked at him. There was practically incense burning in her eyes.
He moistened his lips slightly, nodded barely perceptibly, as to a distant acquaintance whose name he could not recall, nor where they had met, but whom he didn’t want to slight.
He seemed to have no further interest in her after that.
Burgess must have made some esoteric sign in the background. All of a sudden they were alone together, there was no one else in the room with them any more.
He tried to motion with his hand, but it was too late. The camel’s hair coat was already propped up empty in the corner of the sofa, without her inside it. Then it slowly wavered and collapsed into a huddle. She had flung herself against him like some sort of a projectile.
He tried to get out of the way, side-step. “Don’t. Be careful. That’s just what they want. They’re probably listening to every word—”
“I have nothing to be afraid of.” She took him by the arms and shook him slightly. “Have you? Have you? You’ve got to answer me!”
“For six hours I’ve been fencing to keep your name out of it. How did they come to drag you into it? How did they hear of you?” He smacked himself heavily on the shoulder. “Damn it, I would have given my right arm up to here to keep you out!”
“But I want to be in things like this with you, when you’re in them. You don’t know very much about me, do you?”
The kiss kept him from answering. Then he said, “You’ve kissed me before you even know whether or not—”
“No, I haven’t,” she insisted, breathing close to his face. “Oh, I couldn’t be that wrong. Nobody could be. If I could be that wrong, then my heart ought to be put in an institution for mental defectives. And I’ve got a smart heart.”
“Well, tell your heart for me it’s okay,” he said sadly. “I didn’t hate Marcella. I just didn’t love her enough to go on with her, that’s all. But I couldn’t have killed her. I don’t think I could kill anyone, not even a man—”
She buried her forehead against his chest, in a sort of ineffable gratitude. “Do you have to tell me that? Haven’t I seen your face when a stray dog came up to the two of us on the street? When a dray horse standing at the curb— Oh, this is no time to tell you, but why do you suppose I love you? You don’t think it’s because you’re so handsome, do you? Or so brilliant? Or so dashing?” He smiled and kept stroking her hair. And he’d interrupt the strokes, softly, with his lips. “It’s all inside you, what I love, where no one but me can see it. There’s so much goodness in you, you’re such a swell fellow — but it’s all inside, for me alone to know, to have to myself.”
She raised her face at last, and her eyes were all wet.
“Don’t do that,” he said gently, “I’m not worth it.”
“I’ll set my own price tags, don’t try to beat me down,” she rebuked him. She glanced over at the oblivious door, and the light on her face dimmed a little. “What about them? Do they think—?”
“I think it’s about fifty-fifty, so far. They wouldn’t have kept at me this long— How did they come to drag you into it?”
“Your message was there from six o’clock, when I got in last night. I hated to go to sleep without knowing one way or the other, so finally I called you back here, around eleven. They were already here in the place, and they sent someone right over to talk to me. I’ve had someone with me ever since.”
“That’s great, keeping you up all night long!” he said resentfully.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be asleep, knowing you were in trouble.” Her fingers swept the curve of his face. “There’s only one thing that matters. Everything else is beside the point. It’ll be straightened out, it’s got to be. They must have ways of finding out who actually did it— How much have you told them?”
“About us, you mean? Nothing. I was trying to keep you out of it.”
“Well, maybe that’s what the hitch has been. They could sense you were leaving out something. I’m in it now, so don’t you think it’s better to tell them everything there is to know about us? We have nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. The quicker you do, the quicker it’ll be over with. And they’ve probably already guessed, from my own attitude, we’re pretty off-base about each—”
She stopped short. Burgess was back in the room. He had the pleased look of a man who has gained his point. When the other two followed him in, Henderson even saw him give one of them the wink.
“There’s a car downstairs that’ll take you back to your own address, Miss Richman.”
Henderson stepped over to him. “Look, will you keep Miss Richman out of this? It’s unfair, she really has nothing—”
“That depends entirely on yourself,” Burgess told him. “We only brought her over here in the first place because you made it necessary for us to remind you—”
“Anything I know, anything I can tell you, is yours,” Henderson assured him earnestly, “if you see that she’s not annoyed by newspapermen, that they don’t get hold of her name and make a big thing of it.”
“Always providing it’s the truth,” Burgess qualified.
“It will be.” He turned to her, said in a softer voice than the one he’d been using, “You go now, Carol, Get some sleep, and don’t worry, everything’ll be all right in a little while.”
She kissed him in front of all of them, as though proud to show the way she felt toward him. “Will you let me hear from you? Will you let me hear from you as soon as you can — sometime right today if you can?”
Burgess went to the door with her, said to the cop posted outside it, “Tell Tierney nobody is to come near this young lady. No name, no questions answered, no information of any kind.”
“Thanks,” Henderson said fervently when he’d come back, “you’re a regular guy.”