“I’ll drive you.”
“I wouldn’t think of it. There’s a cabstand across the street.” She added over her shoulder: “Call me at the hospital if you see Hugh,”
I went down the stairs to the parking lot. Hilary Todd was still polishing the hood of his convertible, though it shone like a mirror. His shoulders were broad and packed with shifting muscle. Some of the ballet boys were strong and could be dangerous. Not that he was a boy, exactly. He had a little round bald spot that gleamed like a silver dollar among his hair.
“Bonjour,” I said to his back.
“Yes?”
My French appeared to offend his ears. He turned and straightened. I saw how tall he was, tall enough to make me feel squat, though I was over six feet. He had compensated for the bald spot by growing sideburns. In combination with his liquid eyes, they gave him a Latin look. Pig Latin.
“Do you know Hugh Western pretty well?”
“If it’s any concern of yours.”
“It is.”
“Now why would that be?”
“I asked the question, sonny. Answer it.”
He blushed and lowered his eyes, as if I had been reading his evil thoughts. He stuttered a little. “I – I – well, I’ve lived below him for a couple of years. I’ve sold a few of his pictures. Why?”
“I thought you might know where he is, even if his sister doesn’t.”
“How should I know where he is? Are you a policeman?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not at all, you mean?” He regained his poise. “Then you have no right to take this overbearing attitude. I know absolutely nothing about Hugh. And I’m very busy.”
He turned abruptly and continued his polishing job, his fine useless muscles writhing under the leotard.
I walked down the narrow alley which led to the street. Through the cypress hedge on the left, I caught a glimpse of umbrella tables growing like giant multicolored mushrooms in a restaurant patio. On the other side was the wall of the gallery, its white blankness broken by a single iron-barred window above the level of my head.
The front of the gallery was Greek-masked by a high-pillared porch. A broad flight of concrete steps rose to it from the street. A girl was standing at the head of the steps, half leaning on one of the pillars.
She turned towards me, and the slanting sunlight aureoled her bare head. She had a startling kind of beauty: yellow hair, light hazel eyes, brown skin. She filled her tailored suit like sand in a sack.
“Good morning.”
She pretended not to hear me. Her right foot was tapping the pavement impatiently. I crossed the porch to the high bronze door and pushed. It didn’t give.
“There’s nobody here yet,” she said. “The gallery doesn’t open until ten.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I happen to work here.”
“Why don’t you open up?”
“I have no key. In any case,” she added primly, “we don’t allow visitors before ten.”
“I’m not a tourist, at least at the moment. I came to see Mr. Western.”
“Hugh?” She looked at me directly for the first time. “Hugh’s not here. He lives around the corner on Rubio Street.”
“I just came from there.”
“Well, he isn’t here.” She gave the words a curious emphasis. “There’s nobody here but me. And I won’t be here much longer if Dr. Silliman doesn’t come.”
“Silliman?”
“Dr. Silliman is our curator.” She made it sound as if she owned the gallery. After a while she said in a softer voice: “Why are you looking for Hugh? Do you have some business with him?”
“Western’s an old friend of mine.”
“Really?”
She lost interest in the conversation. We stood together in silence for several minutes. She was tapping her foot again. I watched the Saturday-morning crowd on the street: women in slacks, women in shorts and dirndls, a few men in ten-gallon hats, a few in berets. A large minority of the people had Spanish or Indian faces. Nearly half the cars in the road carried out-of-state licenses. San Marcos was a unique blend of western border town, ocean resort, and artists’ colony.
A small man in a purple corduroy jacket detached himself from the crowd and bounded up the steps. His movements were quick as a monkey’s. His lined face had a simian look, too. A brush of frizzled gray hair added about three inches to his height.
“I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, Alice.”
She made a nada gesture. “It’s perfectly all right. This gentleman is a friend of Hugh’s.”
He turned to me. His smile went on and off. “Good morning, sir. What was the name?”
I told him. He shook my hand. His fingers were like thin steel hooks.
“Western ought to be here at any minute. Have you tried his flat?”
“Yes. His sister thought he might have spent the night in the gallery.”
“Oh, but that’s impossible. You mean he didn’t come home last night?”
“Apparently not.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” the blond girl said.
“I didn’t know you were interested.”
“Alice has every right to be interested.” Silliman’s eyes glowed with a gossip’s second-hand pleasure. “She and Hugh are going to be married. Next month, isn’t it, Alice? Do you know Miss Turner, by the way, Mr. Archer?”
“Hello, Mr. Archer.” Her voice was shallow and hostile. I gathered that Silliman had embarrassed her.
“I’m sure he’ll be along shortly,” he said reassuringly. “We still have some work to do on the program for the private showing tonight. Will you come in and wait?”
I said I would.
He took a heavy key ring out of his jacket pocket and unlocked the bronze door, relocking it behind us. Alice Turner touched a switch which lit up the high-ceilinged lobby and the Greek statues standing like frozen sentinels along the walls. There were several nymphs and Venuses in marble, but I was more interested in Alice. She had everything the Venuses had, and the added advantage of being alive. She also had Hugh Western, it seemed, and that surprised me. He was a little old for her, and a little used. She didn’t look like one of those girls who’d have to settle for an aging bachelor. But then Hugh Western had talent.
She removed a bundle of letters from the mail box and took them into the office which opened off the lobby. Silliman turned to me with a monkey grin.
“She’s quite a girl, is she not? Trust Hugh to draw a circle around the prettiest girl in town. And she comes from a very good family, an excellent family. Her father, the Admiral, is one of our trustees, you know, and Alice has inherited his interest in the arts. Of course she has a more personal interest now. Had you known of their engagement?”
“I haven’t seen Hugh for years, not since the war.”
“Then I should have held my tongue and let him tell you himself.”
As we were talking, he led me through the central gallery, which ran the length of the building like the nave of a church. To the left and right, in what would have been the aisles, the walls of smaller exhibition rooms rose halfway to the ceiling. Above them was a mezzanine reached by an open iron staircase.
He started up it, still talking: “If you haven’t seen Hugh since the war, you’ll be interested in the work he’s been doing lately.”
I was interested, though not for artistic reasons. The wall of the mezzanine was hung with twenty-odd paintings: landscapes, portraits, groups of semi-abstract figures, and more abstract still lifes. I recognized some of the scenes he had sketched in the Philippine jungle, transposed into the permanence of oil. In the central position there was a portrait of a bearded man whom I’d hardly have known without the label, “Self-Portrait.”
Hugh had changed. He had put on weight and lost his youth entirely. There were vertical lines in the forehead, gray flecks in the hair and beard. The light eyes seemed to be smiling sardonically. But when I looked at them from another angle, they were bleak and somber. It was a face a man might see in his bathroom mirror on a cold gray hangover morning.