“You think we’re pretty damned square, I know,” Detweiller cut him off, no longer bothering to curb his temper. “You’ve made that clear. You’ve filled Chicky up with your smark-aleck opinions. Everything’s a joke to you. Homes, religion, children... it’s all gag material for you and your pansy friends in Greenwich Village.”
“Det, stop it!” Chicky said. She looked contritely at Baldwin and put a hand on his arm. “Please don’t take all this too seriously.”
Baldwin smiled at her; he seemed confident and at ease with her slim hand resting against the black sleeve of his suit. “Thanks, Chicky,” he said. “I’ll chalk it up to the high alcohol content in the blood stream.”
Detweiller raised his voice and said, “Don’t chalk it up to anything but the truth, Baldwin. I’m cold sober. I’m sick of your gags and cracks. Is that clear enough?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Baldwin said. “If you want me to leave, I’ll go quietly. If not, let’s have a drink and forget it.”
“Your first idea suits me fine.”
“Det, I’m ashamed of you,” Chicky said, and moved closer to Baldwin. To Farrell it seemed a tactless display of allegiance; in apologizing for her husband she had destroyed any chance of an armistice. And she must have known it.
“Don’t be upset,” Baldwin said, and gave her hand a little pat. “I’ll toddle along. The lord of the manor has spoken.” He removed his glasses, rubbed them nervously and replaced them over his mild, near-sighted eyes. He was very pale. “Det, let me say one thing. Perhaps my levity was out of place. If that’s so, I’m sorry. I apologize. But for your own good try to get this one thing clear. For better or worse you’re a little chip that floated down a stream from places like Greece and Rome, through the Italian Renaissance and a tennis court in Paris and, closer to home, through Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry.” Baldwin’s voice was steady but there were spots of color in the thin pale face. “The idea of due process of law wasn’t evolved because somebody thought it would look nice chiseled over the doorway of a court house. When and if you pick up a rock to settle your problems you’re starting back upstream, you’re denying everything we’ve collectively learned in a two- or three-thousand-year-old fight against barbarism and bigotry. Keep that in mind. If you pick up that rock you’ll pay like hell for it.”
“Spare me the speeches,” Detweiller said. “What the hell do I care about Rome and Gettysburg? They haven’t a damn thing to do with this issue.”
Baldwin said, in a serious voice, “Det, I’m actually sorry for you. You’re dumber than I suspected.”
Detweiller slapped him sharply across the face. Farrell moved when he saw Detweiller raise his arm but he was too late to block the blow; it sounded with a hard flat noise on Baldwin’s cheek, and when he retreated, covering his face with his hands, his heel caught on the raised hearthstone and he tripped and fell awkwardly to the floor. His glasses hung crazily from one ear, and he fumbled at them with trembling hands, unable to get them back in place.
Farrell wrestled Detweiller across the room and pinned him against the wall. Janey Norton began to cry in a soft hysterical voice. Sam Ward said loudly, “Well, damn it, he asked for it.”
Chicky knelt beside Baldwin and held his head against her knees. His face was a sickly white against her yellow slacks. A little dribble of blood ran from his mouth.
Chicky stared up at her husband, her eyes dark with angry tears. “Goddamn you,” she said, in a low, desperate, bitter voice. “You had to prove it, didn’t you? You just had to.”
Chapter Five
Ат home Farrell changed into slacks and a sweater, thinking he might do an odd job or two around the house. He went downstairs and glanced into the study. Angey was watching television with two of her friends, the overhead lights on and the record-player spinning silently in the comer. They had been playing dress-up and wore high heels, slips of Barbara’s pinned up under their armpits, and vivid, inexpertly applied eyeshadow and lipstick. Farrell went down the hallway to the kitchen. Barbara was checking the freezer. “Are you playing golf?” she asked him.
“I don’t think so. Look, how about telling Princess Angela to turn off the damned lights and record-player when she’s watching television. She and her pals are the electric company’s best friends. They all look like miniature street walkers, incidentally!”
“Oh, let’s don’t pick on her today. Everyone seems crabby lately. Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly.”
“We’re having soup and salad for lunch, a roast for tonight. All right?”
“Fine.” He lit a cigarette and looked out at the back lawn. Jimmy’s wagon lay on its side and one of the chains on the swing was broken; the wooden seat turned slowly with the wind, dragging back and forth on the ground.
“I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for Det,” she said. “He is dumb but Baldwin can be awfully hard to take. Did you ever notice how he looks when anyone tries to make small talk with him? You know what I mean? He kind of grins as if to say, ‘Oh come off it now. Do you seriously expect me to discuss traffic and weather with you? Really!’ He’s just so above all that, he lets you know.”
“I feel kind of sorry for everybody,” Farrell said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just a philosophical generalization,” Farrell said. “In the original Latin it has more bite.”
“Ho, ho,” Barbara said.
Farrell drifted back to the living room. He was in a restless, uneasy mood; the scene at the Detweillers’ had been ugly enough, but even worse had been the raw excitement generated by Detweillers proposal to form something in the nature of a vigilante committee. Everything seemed set for an explosion.
Farrell picked up the telephone book and looked up Duke’s address. There it was, prosaic and respectable in the columns of neat agate type: Resnick, Thomas, 324 Royal Street, Ohio 6-7845. Frowning he put the book down. He wandered about the room for a few seconds, stared out the windows, straightened a pile of magazines. Finally he made up his mind; he went into the hallway and put on his topcoat. He called casually to Barbara: “I’m going to run down to the village for the paper.”
“Do you want to take jimmy? He’s moping around upstairs.”
“No, I’ll be right back.”
She came to the kitchen door. “Anything on your mind but deep philosophical generalizations?”
“Not a thing,” he said.
Farrell hesitated with a hand on the door of his car, then changed his mind and walked down the block to Wayne Norton’s home. Norton’s son answered his knock. He told Farrell that his mother was resting and that his father was working in the basement. “Do you want me to call him?”
“No, I’ll go on down,” Farrell said, and tousled the boy’s hair.
Norton had changed to jeans and a T shirt. He had a paint brush in his hand and was working on a chest of drawers, a dark and ugly piece of furniture with ball-and-claw feet and elaborate carving around the brass handles and keyholes. There were newspapers spread on the floor to catch spatterings of paint remover, but everything else was clean and tidy; shelves of canned goods were ranged against one wall, and the tools above Norton’s workbench were lined up as neatly as rows of tin soldiers.
Norton smiled at him in surprise. “I thought you’d be out with the golfers.”