Alec took away his shoulder and my heels came down hard on the ground. I felt disemboweled and stuffed with kapok. A goblin monotone in the howling wilderness of my brain began to recite brisk little rhymes about what a four-letter day it was for me, and repeated them like a cracked record. Phut shut blut slut rut gut mut.
Alec had pulled himself up to the window and I chinned myself beside him on the wide sill. The kiss was still going on, far beyond the Hays office maximum. A charming scene. A charming couple, Peter Schneider and Ruth Esch. I couldn’t see too much of them.
Dr. Schneider made a sudden appearance in the doorway at the far end of the room. He seemed interested in the scene, too. He stood glaring.
Then his mouth opened so that his false teeth glittered in his beard. He said in German in a loud voice: “Stop that!”
The young lovers sprang apart like the two halves of an apple separated by a knife. I couldn’t see Peter’s face, but Ruth’s face looked pale and angry as she turned to face him.
Dr. Schneider walked towards them ponderously and quickly, his black beard shaking on his chest. With a grunt he stooped and picked up the woman’s sabre and brought the flat of it down across her shoulders. I heard it swish in the air and he raised it for a second blow.
Peter, in a voice like the yap of a dog, said a German word which implied that his father’s sexual practices improved on nature’s simple plan. Without waiting for a further development of the theory, I dropped to the grass and sprinted around the back of the house and onto the porch. I heard Alec pound up the steps behind me as I ran in the open back door.
When I reached the door of the fencing room, Dr. Schneider was lying on the floor on his back. Peter was kneeling on his father’s outstretched arms and briskly slapping his face. Just a family party.
“This will teach you to mind your business,” Peter said in German. The old man’s curses were muffled and he gasped for breath.
The woman was standing above the two men, looking down at them. She glanced up and saw us and I stepped into the room with Alec at my shoulder. She fell back a pace and her hand flew to her mouth, but she said quite calmly then:
“Peter, you have guests.”
Peter came to his feet facing us in a single fluid motion. His face was scarlet with fury and for a moment he crouched slightly with his shoulder muscles bunched under his sweater as if he would leap at us. I wish he had.
The woman touched his arm and said, “Please.”
Peter drew a hand across his rage-puffed lips. Then he said, “Dr. Branch.”
I heard the woman take a short, hard breath. She looked at me with wide green eyes in which bewilderment moved like water under wind. Had I changed so much?
Before I could speak, Peter said, “Forgive me for being found in such an undignified position. My father is in his manic phase again. Happily it never lasts long, but I sometimes have to act decisively in order to avoid a Dostoevsky climax. Prince Myshkin, you know.”
Dr. Schneider was getting to his feet, his face contorted with effort and indignation. “It is you who are insane!” he exploded in German. “You are insane and corrupt.”
“Hold thy noise, pig-dog,” Peter said in German. “Or thou wilt be made to regret it.’
“I regret begetting you. You are twisted and insane. And as for this thing–” The old man pointed at the woman with a stubby finger that vibrated in the air “–you will take this thing out of my house.”
“Your house?”
“Out of my house. To-night. I cannot stand it.”
Dr. Schneider stamped to the door with his shoulders hunched as if in despair. I wondered what he despaired of. The woman stood straight and watched him go past us out of the room. Her eyes flared with hate like the green flame of copper foil.
Peter turned to me and said, “My father is temporarily insane, as I said. But pardon me, I believe you know my fiancée, Dr. Branch? Miss Ruth Esch.”
She said, “Do you remember me, Bob? I’ve changed, I know. Though I said I would remain myself.” Her voice was harsher than it had been.
“You haven’t changed at all,” I said. “I knew you right away.”
But she had changed. Anyone changes in six years, and she had been in prison. Her hair was as bright as ever but her green eyes were not so clear. The bones of her face were more prominent and there were faint hollows in her cheeks and along the line of her jaw. Her skin was ravaged by time and the hardships she had undergone, and she looked older than she was.
Yet the strong and delicate shape of her head was the same and her body was as I remembered it. Slim and straight as a boy’s, with small, high breasts and narrow hips and firm legs like a dancer’s. I stood and looked at her and wondered if I had dreamed I saw her kiss Peter Schneider. But he said she was his fiancée and she had not denied it. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Alec had not spoken till now. He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know Miss Esch, and Mr. Schneider.”
“Mr. Judd,” I said to them.
Ruth bowed stiffly and Peter clicked his heels. Alec’s frown deepened at that.
My story was ready. “I came to inquire if Miss Esch had arrived safely. Mr. Judd was good enough to drive me out. We were just going to knock on the front door when we heard the sound of fighting. We came in without knocking.”
Peter coolly looked me up and down. “Unwisely, perhaps? Do you frequently intervene in family crises with which you have nothing to do?”
“I dislike patricide,” I said. “I dislike homicide of any kind.”
Peter turned red again. He was turning red as regularly as a traffic light. But he spoke very calmly and precisely. “Good evening, Dr. Branch. And Mr. Judd. You have seen that Miss Esch has arrived safely and now, I believe, there is nothing to detain you.”
I looked at Ruth and she turned away. There was a red weal across the back of her neck where the sabre had struck her. I said, “Ruth,” but she didn’t look at me.
Suddenly, I felt like a romantic boy. Six years is a long time. The six years from 1937 to 1943 were a very long time in Europe. Much water had flowed under the bridge, and much blood, and then the bridge was blown up. I had known her for one month and she had made no promises.
I turned and walked out of the room and Alec followed me to the front door. It was locked but I turned the key in the lock and we stepped out onto the driveway. We had nothing to say to each other as we went down the road to the car. At least I had nothing to say, and Alec held his peace.
We found the car and drove back into Arbana. My head was buzzing, not with ideas. Ruth Esch had changed all right. She had changed from my girl into Peter Schneider’s.
Yet she had probably saved my life. It was pretty clear that she had been in Schneider’s house all evening: I remembered Dr. Schneider’s phone-call when I first mentioned Ruth to him in the German office, the lipstick on Peter’s face, the woman in the doorway who had shaken her head at Beau Sabreur. A queer thought dragged through my head and left a narrow slime of doubt: had she objected to my decapitation because an automobile accident is a less dangerous way to commit murder?
“Drop me at my apartment, will you, Alec? I’m going to have a drink and go to bed.”
“No more housebreaking to-night?”
“Not for me. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Right.” He stopped the car at my corner and I got out.
Before I slammed the door, I said, “Good luck.”
He needed it.
CHAPTER V
THE STEAM HEAT WAS on and the apartment was stuffy. I took off my suitcoat and threw it on the chesterfield and went out to the kitchen. With boiling water and lemon juice and rum I made myself a large toddy to take the rasp out of the buzzing in my head. As I drank the toddy, the buzzing sank to a murmur like water lapping with low sounds by the shore. But my brain was not yet the complete blank I wanted it to be.