He closed the door behind her and led her down the hall to the den. An unscreened fire was burning in the grate, its flames reflected in the silver box on the coffee table. He saw her glance at the box, but briefly and without interest. There was no danger here. She couldn’t possibly know anything about the box.
“Sit down, Miss Burton.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, what’s troubling you?”
“I — well, I went to dancing class tonight at the Kent Academy. I always do on Thursdays. Not that I’m a good dancer or anything, it’s just a way of passing time and meeting people. Usually the people are O.K., nothing special but O.K. Nothing sneaky about them, I mean. If you meet someone there and he says he’s an engineer, that’s what he is, an engineer. So you’re not suspicious, I mean.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him about the dancing classes for fear he would laugh at her, but the words just came tumbling out of her mouth like blown bubbles. He didn’t laugh at her, though. He seemed very grave and interested.
“Go on, Miss Burton.”
“Well, tonight I met this man. He’s a terrible man. He said things, suggested things.”
“I’m sure you know how to deal with improper suggestions, Miss Burton.”
She flushed and looked down at her hands. “They weren’t suggestions like the kind you mean. They were about you. And Mrs. Kellogg.”
“Who was the man?”
“His name’s Dodd. He’s a private detective. Oh, he didn’t let on he was a private detective. He tried to palm himself off as a new student, but I have this friend at the Academy, he’s a lawyer...”
“What did this man Dodd say about Mrs. Kellogg?”
“That she was missing. Under mysterious circumstances.”
“She is not missing. She is in New York.”
“I told him that. But he just smiled — he has the nastiest smile, like a camel’s — and said New York was a big place with a lot of people in it but he didn’t think one of them was Mrs. Kellogg.” Before the warmth of the fire Miss Burton’s suspicions of Rupert were evaporating like fog under the heat of the sun. “If I were you I’d sue him for slander. It’s a free country but people can’t go around saying anything in their heads when it does harm to other people.”
“Well, don’t get excited.”
“I’m not excited. I’m good and mad. I said to him, ‘Listen, you keyhole cop. Mr. Kellogg’s the finest man in this city, and if Mrs. Kellogg is missing it’s not his fault, it’s hers, and why don’t you put the blame on the right person?’ And he said, as a matter of fact, he’d been thinking along those same lines himself.”
She waited, expecting his approval and his gratitude for her support. What she had no reason to expect was his quiet, malevolent whisper: “You imbecile.”
Her face crumpled under the surprise attack. “What — what did I do?”
“What didn’t you do!”
“But I was only sticking up for you, I was only trying...”
“You tried. All right. Let’s leave it like that.”
“I don’t understand,” she wailed. “What did I say wrong?”
“Probably everything.” He went over to the window, lengthening the time and space between them so that he might have a chance to regain control of himself, and, consequently, of her. He had no doubt of her loyalty. But what was loyalty? Would it break under pressure, bend under heat? How much of the truth would it take?
He could see her reflection in the window, her eyes wide with bewilderment and pain: What did I do? She looked young and simple. He knew she was neither.
“I’m sorry, Miss Burton,” he said, addressing her reflection because it was easier to lie to a reflection. “I had no right to speak roughly to you.”
“You did so have a right,” she said faintly. “If I did something wrong, even if I didn’t mean to, you’ve got a perfect right to check me up. Only I still don’t understand just what I...”
“You will, someday. For the moment we’d better both forget it.”
“But how can I stop doing something if I don’t know what I did?”
He closed his eyes for a moment. He was too weary to talk, to think, to plan, but he realized that he couldn’t allow her to leave without some explanation or instruction. It would be all right if she remained as she was now, contrite, meek, low in energy. But what of the difference in her after a night’s rest, a time to think, a good breakfast?
He could visualize her bouncing into the office in the morning (with some of the loyalty rubbed off like fuzz off a peach) and greeting Borowitz with the news: “Guess what, Borowitz? Last night I met a real private detective and he was asking me all kinds of questions about the boss’s wife disappearing.” And Borowitz, who was by nature and habit a gossip, would relay it to his girlfriend, and the girl friend to her family, and within days it would cover the city, spread by mouth like a morbid virus. The initial carrier must be stopped. It no longer mattered how.
“Miss Burton, I have great faith in your discretion, as well as your loyalty and good will. I depend on them.” He despised the false tone, the false words. They wouldn’t even have fooled the little dog Mack, but Miss Burton was breathing them in like oxygen. “I am going to take you into my confidence, knowing you’ll respect it.”
“Oh, I will. My goodness, I certainly will.”
“My wife is missing, in the sense that I’m not sure where she is. I’ve told people she is in New York because I had a letter from her postmarked New York and because I have to tell them something.”
“Why doesn’t she let you know where she is?”
“It was part of our agreement before she left. For lack of a better term, call it a trial separation. We were to let each other strictly alone for a period of time. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law, Mr. Brandon, doesn’t believe in letting anyone alone. He hired a private detective to look for Amy. Well, I hope he finds her, not for her sake or mine, but for Mr. Brandon’s. He’s making a terrible fool of himself. His wife knows it and has tried to stop him. Failing that, she came and told me all about it.”
“Was that the day she came to the office all dressed up?”
Rupert nodded. “Somewhere along the line Mr. Brandon picked up the idea that I wanted to get rid of my wife because I’m interested in another woman.” He turned to face her. She was leaning forward in the chair, tense and excited, like a child listening to a fairy tale. “Do you know who the woman is, Miss Burton?”
“Why no. Why, my goodness...”
“You.”
Her mouth fell open so that he could see the silver fillings in her bottom row of teeth. Silver, he thought. Silver box. I must get rid of the silver box. First, I must get rid of her.
He said, patiently, sympathetically, “I’m sorry this comes as a shock to you, Miss Burton. It did to me, too.”
She had dropped back into the chair, pale and limp. “That — that awful man. To say, even to think, such a terrible thing — trying to ruin my good name...”
“Not yours. Mine.”
“And all these years I’ve been a good Methodist, never even thinking about carnal things!” But even as she spoke the words, she knew they were not true. Rupert popped up too often in her mind, in her dreams, as father, as son, as lover. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he could read it in her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and repeated in a high muffled voice, “Always a g-g-good Methodist.”
“Of course. Of course you are.”
“I — just because I touch up my hair. Nothing in the Bible says you can’t change the color of your hair. I went to the minister and asked him. I always ask the minister for advice when I’m worried.”
He looked down at her stonily, without compassion, seeing her not as a woman but as a threat, an unexploded bomb whose firing pin had to be removed with the most meticulous care. “Are you worried now, Miss Burton?”