“You’re utterly ridiculous. I don’t love him, but I can’t hate him. I pity him.”
Their eyes met angrily. Mark said, “This helpless little baby of yours tried to kill me last night. Did he happen to lisp that boyish prank of his into your ear?”
“Oh no, Mark.”
“Oh yes, Linda,” he said, repeating her inflection deliberately. “Early this morning, when I left your apartment, he tried to run me down in his car. That, I suppose, is the sort of activity you’d call willful and rebellious.”
“Oh, stop it, Mark,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t stand there mocking me. Why are you doing it? Can’t you see I have to help him? Can’t you understand that?”
He shrugged his shoulders tiredly. “I’m sorry, Linda. I didn’t mean to be sarcastic about it. But I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”
Linda put her hand on his arm impulsively. “Mark, I want you to understand it. It’s important to me that you do. Barny’s made a symbol of me. He’s put me on a ridiculous pedestal. He’s got me confused with success and security and love, and all the things he’s missed in life. I represent a cure-all for his mistakes, shortcomings, tough breaks. I didn’t see that until tonight. Now I simply can’t throw him back on his resources. Not right away, not brutally, Mark.”
Mark paused a moment, then looked down at the floor. “That’s up to you, Linda,” he said in an even voice.
“But I don’t want it that way, Mark. I want you to understand.”
“Why?”
She shrugged and sat down slowly at her dressing table. Studying herself in the mirror, she said: “Why? I don’t quite know, Mark. Perhaps I’ve got a lost-kitten complex and wanted to share it with you.”
“Nolan is no lost kitten, believe me, baby.”
She met his eyes in the mirror. “I suppose you’re right, Mark. I’m sure that when you say a thing it’s bound to be a dead-sure fact, cold, accurate and final.”
“How the hell did we get onto this?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice tired. “Would you excuse me now, please? I have to freshen up for my next show.”
“Sure,” he said. He stared at her bare shoulders and the clean line of her throat, for an instant; and then he turned and walked out of the room.
When the door slammed, Linda picked up a lipstick from the table and started to do her lips; but her hands were trembling and it was no use. She put her head down on her arms and began to cry.
14
August Sternmueller was in an unusually reflective mood as he prepared his simple but hearty breakfast. Normally August was a cheerful person, not given to moods, and for that reason his present concern was additionally disturbing.
The thing that was bothering August was this: Three days before he had seen a murder committed, and he didn’t know quite what to do about it. Oh, he knew he should go directly to the police, but the fear of getting involved in the matter was strong enough to suspend him in a state of guilty inaction.
August was sixty-three, a native-born German, who, after thirty years in the U.S. Postal Department, had been retired on a pension that was more than ample for his needs. He lived in a two-room flat whose front windows overlooked the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Three nights ago August had been sitting at those windows, smoking a goodnight pipe and idly watching the dark and shining street. He had been thinking of an interesting addition to his timetable collection that had arrived that morning from Johannesburg, Africa. It was from the chap he’d sent the early Reading schedule to; and the prize that had come by return mail practically was a perfectly preserved timetable of a spur line that Kimberly interests had operated fifty years ago.
August’s entire day had been brightened by the gift, which he had immediately and with maternal care added to his collection of more than four thousand railway schedules he had gathered from all over the world.
But while he had been sitting there at the windows, smoking his pipe and thinking of that prize from Africa, he had noticed two men walking along the darkened street.
They had stopped at Ellens Lane and, after a bit of conversation, one of the men had walked into the Lane, slowly and to judge from his backward glances, reluctantly. The other man, the larger of the two, had drawn a gun from beneath his armpit, and when the walking man stopped, he had fired two shots into his body.
August had leaped to his feet in the darkened room, an involuntary “No!” bursting from his lips. People had rushed into the street, and a bit later police cars arrived with their sirens screaming.
August had watched breathlessly, waiting for the police to arrest the man who had done the shooting. But nothing of the sort happened. The dead man was taken away in a wagon, and the police went off, leaving only a few of the curious on the scene.
The next morning he had scanned the papers eagerly to find out what happened. And that was when he learned that something was very decidedly wrong. The papers said a detective had shot an escaping prisoner. August knew that was a lie. The man hadn’t been trying to escape. It was ridiculous.
August was not a particularly clever man but he was able to perceive that he might get in trouble by volunteering information to the police. They were apparently satisfied to do nothing about this murder; and they might resent a lowly civilian interfering with their affairs. On the other hand, August thought, it was his plain duty to bring this matter to their attention. This was one of the obligations implicit in his allegiance to the United States: to do his duty, to report the truth to the authorities.
But it was a hard decision. August led a full and contented life. He ate well, he slept well, he enjoyed simple pleasures. His time-tables were his one mild passion. He might jeopardize all this by getting involved with Officialdom and Authority, which, to August’s Teutonic soul, were the twin horns of a dangerous, unpredictable monster.
August took his customary walk to Rittenhouse Square that morning. He fed peanuts to the squirrels and played grave games with the children who were brought there by nurses. The children all knew him and ran to him with accounts of what had happened since their last meeting, which had been on the previous morning. At noon he left the park and strolled to the Suburban station of the Pennsylvania Railroad where he glanced with a connoisseur’s eye at the timetables. There was a new Philadelphia-Paoli schedule, he saw, so he pocketed it with a small feeling of triumph. It wasn’t an important one, like the Kimberly, for instance, but it was a pleasant little catch.
August had a late lunch at the Farmer’s Market in Reading Terminal, surrounded by the aromas of sausages, cheeses and briny soaked fish. A bowl of snapper soup, a plate of vegetables with sour cream, a few jokes with the old counter man, and he was off for home, comfortably tired and ready for his afternoon nap.
When he stretched out on his couch with a cup of tea beside him and a well-drawing pipe in his hands, he reflected that he must not evade his responsibility. This country had given him everything, friends, security, comforts for his old age. And so, he decided, as he put his pipe aside, he would do his duty. He would go to the police this afternoon. Right after his nap when he would be rested and alert.
Mark Brewster called Linda that same afternoon at three o’clock. He asked if he could see her and she said, of course.
She was wearing a beige sports dress with brown-and-white spectator pumps when she met him at the door. Her hair was brushed and shining, and her make-up was fresh, but she seemed tired.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked him, as they sat down.
“No, nothing, thanks.”