Grant came with them to the door. “You want me to go along?”
“Hell, no.” Duke’s tone was amiable, but there was a challenge in his eyes. “You need some rest, I think.”
“Rest, that’s good. I can’t go back to New York now. You know that, I guess?”
“Why not?”
“You and Belle can’t handle your brother and the nurse. We’ll have to let Creasy pick up the money.”
Duke smiled gently. “Don’t you want to go back, Eddie?”
“That’s not it. You two can’t stay awake every minute.”
“We’ll talk about it when I get back.”
“Creasy knows the pickup plan perfectly. There’s nothing to it.”
“You trust him, eh?”
“Yeah. Sure I do.”
“All right.” Duke’s smile was gone; he was studying Grant with a skeptical frown. “While we’re away take a look around for guns, knives, pokers, that kind of stuff. I want ’em all locked up. And nail the upstairs windows shut. Every room. Understand? This joint is going to be a jail, so make it a maximum security job. You should know how to go about that.”
“Sure, I’ll get at it. Don’t be gone any longer than you have to.”
“I thought the kid and I might stop for a few beers.”
“Cut the clowning,” Grant said, in a voice tightening with strain. “This isn’t a comedy hour.”
“Relax, relax,” Duke said, patting his shoulder. “Do some push-ups. It’s only Saturday morning. Nobody knows the kid is gone yet. We don’t have to start worrying until Sunday afternoon. That’s when the Bradleys get home...”
Six
At five o’clock on Sunday afternoon the traffic approaching the Triborough bridge was fairly light. Three hours later every lane would be clogged with streams of cars, winding their way in from Long Island to Manhattan. It would take a full hour then to cross the bridge, and the pleasant memories of the week end would dissolve into the city-hard realities of blasting horns, exhaust fumes and irritable traffic cops.
Dick Bradley was thinking along these lines as he slowed down to pay his fare at the toll house. Ellie was probably right, after alclass="underline" check out early, avoid the tedious drive back to the city. He glanced at her as they started up again under a smooth rush of power. They hadn’t spoken since leaving the Kimbles’, and she showed no evidence of recovering her normal good humor. His own irritation quickened again; her peremptory insistence on leaving had embarrassed everyone at the party. They had all known something was wrong. Frank Kimble had been fine about it, of course, tactful and casual, taking Ellie’s side against him with comic belligerence, and shooing them off with cheerful good-bys. Trust old Frank, he thought, smiling slightly.
Well, it was over and done with. And it wasn’t as if she’d made a scene — that idea deepened his smile — she had simply insisted they leave. And no one could talk her out of it.
As they swept into the wide concrete curve that led them down to the river drive, he found himself admiring the warm sun on the surface of the water, and the clean, precise tracery of the bridge against the blue sky. Sunday was the best day of the week in New York. Everything was so blessedly quiet and peaceful. In spite of Ellie’s withdrawn silence, his mood was benign and cheerful; the sun and exercise had been a magnificent tonic. He enjoyed feeling in shape, and he always got out of sorts if he were cooped up in the city too long.
He glanced at his wife. They were only a few minutes from home; it was time for a truce.
“You look nice and rested, honey,” he said.
“Have I been so noticeably haggard lately?”
“No, of course not,” he said, grinning at her set profile.
She was coming around, he knew; her sarcasm was usually a token shot fired just before the white flag was run up. All he’d have to do now was jolly her up a bit.
“You’ve got to learn how to sail though,” he said. “That’s the main reason for a week end at Frank’s and Polly’s.” He remembered with pleasure how excellent she had looked in white shorts and one of his shirts — very slim and chic and elegant. “We’ll put you in training this summer,” he said. “Polly is a great sailor, you know.”
“I’m sure she does everything magnificently.” Ellie said. “Sailing, hunting, wrestling — all the feminine virtues.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say.” His voice was formal and stiff, and she realized that she had hurt him deeply; loyalty was an intense business with him. “Polly happens to be en excellent sailor,” he said. “It’s odd that should annoy you.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she sail well? It’s about like playing an oboe, I imagine. If you keep at it you’ll get the hang of it. And she’s kept at it for about thirty years.”
“Some people never leant to sail,” Dick said, in a stubborn, deliberate voice. “There’s a thing to it, a spirit, that you either have or—” He frowned and took out his cigarettes. “Perhaps you don’t understand this at all.”
“You either have it or you don’t,” Ellie said dryly. “We used to say that back home about playing a game called duck-on-the-rock. You either had it or you didn’t.”
“I hate it when you start being cute and advertising gameish,” he said. “Things matter. Period. You can’t pretend they don’t by making wisecracks about them.”
“All right. I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at the frown that had settled above his clear, direct eyes. “Polly’s an angel. You know I adore her.”
“Maybe I’m being stuffy,” he said. His voice was still odd and stiff. “But I think it’s bad form to carp at someone who’s tried her best to make you feel at home with our crowd.”
“Bad form? Yes, that’s a little stuffy, Dick.”
“All right then, I am stuffy.” He knew he was being cranky and censorious — but that couldn’t be helped; he was prudish, and he couldn’t pretend a Bohemianism that he didn’t believe in. He felt (as his father had taught him to feel) that narrow-mindedness was preferable to a wishy-washy, indiscriminate tolerance. To not have convictions, and strong ones, about behavior, dress and language — that was surrendering to anarchy out of sheer timidity or laziness.
“My father always said a house guest should leave two things behind him: one, a tip for the servants, and second, anything he might have seen or heard that would reflect discredit on his host.”
“Your father has mentioned that to me,” Ellie said. “Several times, in fact.”
“It’s a good point, don’t you think?”
“Oh, damn it. I don’t care what your father says.”
Ellie felt close to tears; normally she admired Dick’s tribal loyalty to his father and friends. It was a sweet, old-fashioned virtue, and she respected him for not covering his feelings with layers of brittle irreverence. But occasionally she was hurt by the lack of an equal loyalty to her. And there were so many old friends, a great free-masonry of them, initiated at birth into the cabalistic rituals of the Unionville Hunt, the horse shows in Raleigh, the skiing at Stowe, the sailing and swimming and fishing here, there and everywhere — so many of them, she thought, bound together by nostalgic memories of dancing schools and prom dates, or foolish old camp songs, of football games and tennis matches, of poor old Jerry who got the Navy Cross posthumously, and old Tim who dove into an empty swimming pool one night without so much as spraining a finger — memories that drew a magical circle around and kept out the new friends, the new wives, the squares in general. The old days were best. And what of the new days?
Dick made the light at 42nd Street with a burst of speed, and there was anger in the smooth, reckless way he handled the car. “I hope I haven’t bored you talking about my father,” he said.