“Look, my friend, I’m not going to drag you in there by the hair. The thing isn’t worth it. I’m going inside a minute and call the Hazzard house from here, and tell them the whole story right now. Then I’ll drive you back and they can have you — if they want you any more.” He leaned toward her slightly across the door. “Take a good look at me. Do I look as if I were kidding?”
It might be a threat that he would prefer not to have to carry out, but it wasn’t an idle threat. She could see that in his eyes, in the cold sullenness in them, the dislike of herself she read in them.
He turned and left the car and went up the plank walk again, more forcefully, more swiftly, than before.
“Excuse me, but I wonder if I might use your phone for a minute—” she heard him say as he entered the open doorway. Then the rest was blurred as he went deeper within the room.
She struggled out, clinging to the flexing car door like a woman walking in her sleep. Then she wavered up the plank walk and onto the porch. The ivy rustled for a minute as she brushed against it. Then she went on toward the oblong of light projected by the open doorway, and inside. It was like struggling through knee-deep water.
A middle-aged woman met her in the hallway.
“Good evening. Are you Mrs. Hazzard? He’s in here.”
She took her to a room on the left, parted an old-fashioned pair of sliding doors. He was standing in there, with his back to them, beside an old-fashioned telephone box bracketed to the wall.
“Here’s the young lady. You can both come into the study when you’re ready.”
Patrice drew the doors together behind her again. “Steve,” she said.
He turned around and looked at her, then turned back again.
“Don’t — you’ll kill her,” she pleaded.
“The old all die sooner or later.”
“Has it gone through yet?”
“They’re ringing Caulfield for me now.”
It wasn’t any sleight-of-hand trick. His finger wasn’t anywhere near the receiver hook, holding it shut down. He was in the act of carrying out his threat.
A choking sound broke in her throat.
He looked around again, almost casually. “Have you decided once and for all?”
She didn’t nod, she simply let her eyelids drop for a minute. The ultimate defeat.
“Operator,” he said, “cancel that call. It was a mistake.” He replaced the receiver slowly and smiled at her.
She felt a little sick and dizzy, as when you’ve just looked down from some great height and then drawn back again.
He went over to the sliding doors and opened them vigorously.
“We’re ready,” he called into the study across the hall.
He crooked his arm toward her, backhand, contemptuously tilting up his elbow for her to take, without even looking around at her as he did so.
She came forward and they went toward the study together, her arm linked in his.
Chapter Nine
Not a word passed between them during the drive back. He didn’t say anything, for he was content. She didn’t say anything, for she felt completely destroyed.
Nothing was left, no recourse remained. Even flight with the child, that was futile, meaningless now. Her withdrawal from the scene would abet his purpose, rather than hinder it. He would remain behind, to batten on those she had turned over to his mercies. He didn’t need her any more; she was his legal accessory now, whether present or absent.
She didn’t even feel much pain, any more. Struggle was ended. She was numb.
She rode with her eyes held shut, like a woman returning from a funeral at which everything worth keeping has been interred. They stopped, and she heard the car door open. She raised her eyelids. He was sitting there, waiting for her to get out. They were two blocks down from the house. He was being tactful, letting her out at distance far enough from it to be inconspicuous.
She stepped down.
The door closed.
He spoke then. He tipped his hat. “Good night, Mrs. Georgesson,” he said ironically. “Pleasant dreams to you.”
The car went on. Its red tail light coursed around a lower corner and disappeared.
She was at her own door now. She must have walked up to the house, though she couldn’t remember doing so.
She opened her handbag and felt inside it for her door-key. Hers, was good. The key they’d given her. It was still there. For some reason this surprised her. Funny to come home like this. To still come home like this.
My baby’s asleep in this house, she thought. I have to go in here.
She put on the lights in the lower hall. It was quiet, so quiet in the house. People sleeping, people who trusted you. People who didn’t expect you to bring home treachery and blackmail to them.
She got as far as the foot of the stairs. Then the last desperate strength that had brought her from the car to this point died out. She stood there immobile.
Nothing left. Nothing. No home, no love, no child. She’d even forfeited her child’s love, tarnished it for a later day. She’d lose him too, when he was old enough to know this about her.
This had to end. This couldn’t go on. This had to end, right tonight. Now. There was one way left of stopping it—
She turned aside and went into the library, and lighted that. She wondered why. She didn’t know yet. She thought she didn’t know yet, but there must have been something making her do it, already guiding her subconscious mind.
They’d signed the will in here, she remembered that. The table where the lawyer sat. The chairs they’d sat in. She in this one. The desk over there, the drawers in it. Father Hazzard sitting under the reading-lamp here one night, lingering late over a book.
No, I won’t forget to lock up. But don’t be nervous, there’s a revolver in one of the drawers here. We keep that for burglars. That was Mother’s idea, once, years ago—
Now she knew why she’d come in here.
She opened the upper drawer. Some papers were in a confused mass on top. But then she found it; it was under them.
This was the way. This was what you got for waiting so long. This was the price of earlier indecision. This was the compounded interest for cringing, for cowardice, in the past. This was the ultimate. This was the pay-off.
She wondered if the revolver would fit into her handbag. She tried it side-wise, the flat way, and it did. She closed the handbag, pushed the drawer shut, and came out of the room.
She put out the hall light, and went on out of the house.
She could see the thin line the light made under his door. She knocked again, softly as she had the first time. But clearly enough to be heard.
They said you were frightened at a time like this. They said you were keyed-up to an ungovernable pitch. They said you were blinded by fuming emotion.
They said. What did they know? She felt nothing. Neither fear nor excitement nor blind anger. Only a dull, aching determination.
He didn’t hear, or he wasn’t answering. She tried the knob, and the door was unlocked; it gave Inward. Why shouldn’t it be? What did he have to fear from others? They didn’t take from him, he took from them.
She closed it behind her.
The room was warm with occupancy. The coat and hat he’d worn with her in the car just now were slung over a chair. A cigarette that he’d incompletely extinguished a few short moments ago was wrinkled and bent into a V, but one end of it was still stubbornly smouldering in a dish. The drink that he was coming back to finish in a moment, the drink with which he’d celebrated tonight’s successful enterprise, stood there on the edge of the table. But he wasn’t in the room. He must have stepped into the next one, beyond, just as she arrived outside at the door. He must be in there now, offside light was coming through the open doorway.