Eight
The water stabbed me with novacained needles. I gulped, paddled, then dived. Silver pressed my eyeballs, but I could see through silver. I could see something dark and huddled, bobbing down there at the bottom of the pool.
I reached for it, tugged at it. Heavy. Heavy as the weight inside my lungs, my head. I went up for air, got it. Then I dived again, tugged again. This time I could lift. We came to the surface together, live and dead weight. Dead weight. He couldn’t be— I had to get him out.
“Help me lift him up!” I panted.
Lorna stared over the edge of the pool. Her lips twitched, and then her mouth tried to run away from her face. But she reached down and held Mike’s collar as I pulled myself over the side and then grabbed him under the arms.
I pushed and lifted. He was heavy as lead. Lead. Dead. No, he was all right. He had to be all right.
Then he was sprawled out on the grass, face down, and I was kneeling over him, pressing his back and lifting him, press and lift—
“Is wrong, perhaps?”
I jerked and Lorna jerked. Mike Drayton just lay there.
We stared up at the plumpness of Miss Bauer.
“What are you doing here?”
“She is with me.”
Professor Hermann emerged from the shadows of the walk. “What goes on here? We’ve been looking all over for you. When the party broke up, we left, and I called your apartment from a filling station. No answer, so I came back. Apparently it was wise that I did so.”
“We had a fight,” I said. “I hit him and he fell into the pool. I fished him out. But—”
The Professor pushed me aside. He knelt and took off his hat. The bald moon of his skull shone down over Mike’s face as he turned him over on the grass. A fat hand fumbled beneath the soggy wet shirt. It came to rest there, and it stayed forever.
The wind stopped moving. The grass stopped rustling. The stars stopped twinkling. The trees bent forward, listening...listening for a heartbeat.
“He’s dead,” said Professor Hermann.
Then everything was moving again, fast. Too fast.
“Steady up.” Miss Bauer was holding me.
“But he can’t be. We’ve got to work on his lungs, get the water out! He couldn’t have stayed under more than a minute or so—”
“He was unconscious,” the Professor said. “It is too bad.”
“Too bad?” We all looked at Lorna. Her mouth was twitching again, but this time a torrent of sound gushed out.
“I’ll say it’s too bad! Wait until the papers get hold of this, wait until Lolly finds out. I’m through! Himberg will tie a can to me. And the cops! God, somebody do something. You got to—”
I shook her. It only jumbled the sounds together.
“Oh God...Himberg...gotta...”
I slapped the mouth shut.
“Cut that out!”
The Professor put on his hat, rose and laid his hand on Lorna’s shaking shoulder. “He’s right. Hysteria will not help, now. We must be calm. We must think.”
“Think? What good will thinking do? Mike’s dead, and they’ll find out, they’ll get us—”
“No. Not if we’re calm.”
That stopped her for a moment. The Professor’s voice gained assurance as he went on.
“Listen to me, Miss Lewis. I may have a solution, but you’ll have to help me.”
“How?”
“By answering questions. Here.”
He gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. He watched it wobble between her lips, then steady a bit as she inhaled.
“Better? Now listen to me and answer. Are there any servants in the house now?”
“No. I told Frieda to clear out when the gang left. The rest were just hired for the party. They went home, all of them.”
“Good. Can you remember what Mike did at the party?”
“Mike—No—I don’t want to talk about him—”
“You must. It’s important. Your life, your career.”
He knew how to get to her, all right. Not with “life” but with “career.” She sobered at the word.
“What time did Mike go upstairs with his bottle?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I saw him. Miss Bauer saw him. Others must have seen him—that group on the stairway.”
“Yes, you’re right. Let me see, now. It was around eleven, I guess.”
“Was he drunk?”
“No more than usual.”
“He drank frequently?”
“He’s been lushed up, off and on, for the last six months now, like I told you the other day.”
“And people know that? Your friends?”
“Right.”
“Did they know why—the reasons he had for drinking?”
“Say, I don’t tell people everything. You know and Judd knows, because I told him tonight. But outside of that, nobody. I guess they all thought he was just a rummy.”
“But it is established generally that he drank a great deal. That he was moody, anti-social.”
“He pulled that stunt at every party I’ve given, or every one we went to. Not that he’d come with me very often, the louse. And when he did, he generally sneaked off in the middle of the evening and took the car with him.”
“You say he’d get drunk and then leave a party—drive off somewhere alone?”
“Sure. He wrecked the station wagon about four months ago. Drove it into a piling near Santa Barbara. How the hell he ever got way up there I don’t know. He didn’t know, he was that stiff. It was in the papers.”
“That time he wrecked the car—how long was he gone?”
“Two days, nearly. The cops picked him up. He wasn’t hurt, but I had a hard time helping him beat the rap. Himberg fixed it somehow.”
“Your friends know his habits. You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She gasped. “Please, Professor, don’t ask me anything more. I think I’m going to be sick.”
She weaved away and was sick—very sick—over by the trees. I turned and watched Miss Bauer as she worked silently, furiously, on Mike.
“Please,” said the Professor. “That is useless. Besides, I have a plan.”
He looked up at me. “Did anyone else know of your... visit here at the coach house?”
I shook my head. “I stopped in at a tavern below the hill here, but there was no one around except the bartender. I didn’t spill anything to him, of course.”
“Good. Then will you please take my car and drive yourself home? I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow.”
“But Mike—the police—”
“I am taking care of Mike. And there will be no police, if you do as I say. Go, now. I must talk to Miss Lewis alone.”
Miss Bauer tugged at the Professor’s sleeve. “I do not like this,” she said. “Let me continue. The water is leaving the lungs. If we send for a rescue squad, he may yet be alive.”
The Professor faced her. “That is for me to decide.”
It was more than a statement. It was a command. Miss Bauer bowed her head. The Professor went over to Lorna and took her arm. She sobbed against him and he began whispering to her. His voice was soft, soothing, gentle. I couldn’t hear anything he said, and they both ignored me.
Then I was walking, walking away from the swimming pool; walking away from the thing that lay on the grass, shining white and bloated in the moonlight, like a dead fish. I walked to the car, climbed in, drove away. I went up to the apartment, closed the door. I ripped off my wet clothes and fell down on the bed.
First I was sleeping and then I was watching. I watched my smart-aleck brother Charlie sneering as he read about the murder in the papers. I watched myself run from the cops. I watched them catch me, grill me. I saw myself stumbling up the iron stairs to the cell block. I gripped the rail with hands that left a trail of sweat and blood.