"Fully as much right as I had in the first place, when I took up the assignment on your behalf. The only difference being that now I'll turn my findings over to them direct, when I'm ready, instead of through you."
Durand, his feet clogging, had stumbled around and to the far side of the large bulky table desk present in the room, pacing his way along its edge with both hands, as if in momentary danger of collapse.
"Now wait-- Now listen to me--" he panted, and fumbled with excruciating anxiety in the pockets of his waistcoat, one after the other, not finding the right one immediately. He brought out a key, turned it in the wood, pulled out a drawer. A moment later a compact ironbound box had appeared atop the desk, its lid standing up. He grubbed within it, came back toward Downs with both hands extended, paper money choking them.
"There's twenty thousand dollars here. Downs, open your hand. Downs, hold it a minute; just hold it a minute."
Downs' hands had retreated into his trouser pockets at his approach; there was nothing there to deposit the offering in.
Downs shook his head with indolent stubbornness. "Not a minute, not an hour, not for keeps." He switched his head commandingly. "Take it back where you got it, Durand."
"Just hold it for me," Durand persisted childishly. "Just hang onto it a moment, that's all I'm asking--"
Downs stared at him imperturbably. "You've got the wrong man, Durand. That's your misfortune. The one wrong man out of twenty. Or maybe even out of a hundred. I took the case professionally in the beginning, for a money payment. I'm on it for my own satisfaction now. I not only won't take any further money to stay on it, but no amount of money could make me quit it any more. And don't ask me why, because I can't answer you. I'm a curious johnny, that's all. You made a mistake, Durand, when you came to me in St. Louis. You should have gone to somebody else. You picked the one private investigator in the whole country, maybe, that once he starts out on something can't leave off again, not even if he wants to. Sometimes I wonder what it is myself, I wish I knew. Maybe I'm a fanatic. I want that woman, not for you any more, but for my own satisfaction." He drew his hands out of his pockets at last, but only to fold his arms ifintily across his chest and lean back still farther against the chair he was propped against.
"I'm staying here until she comes in. And I'm taking her back with me."
Durand was back beside the money box again, hands bedded atop its replaced contents, pressing down on it in strained futility.
Downs must have seen him glance speculatively toward the doorway. He read his mind.
"And if you go out of here, to try to meet her on the outside and warn her off, I'm going right along with you."
"You can't forbid me to leave my own house," Durand said despairingly.
"I didn't say that. And you can't prevent me from walking along beside you. Or just a step or two behind you. The streets are public."
Durand pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, held it there a moment, as though there were some light overhead that was too strong in his eyes. "Downs, I can raise another thirty thousand in New Orleans. Inside twenty-four hours. Go with me there, keep me in sight every step of the way; you have my promise. Fifty thousand dollars, just to let us alone. Just to forget you ever heard of--"
"Save your breath, I made my speech on that," Downs said contemptuously.
Durand clenched a fist, shook it, not threateningly, but imploringly, at him. "Why do you have to blacken her name, ruin her life? What good-- ?"
Downs' mouth shaped a laugh, but no sound came. "Blacken the name of that wanton? Ruin the life of that murdering trollop?"
The impact left physical traces across Durand's face, blanching it in livid streaks across the mouth and eyes, yet he ignored it. "She didn't do anything. The whole thing's circumstantial. She just happened to be on the same boat, that's all. So were dozens of others. You can't say for certain what happened to Julia Russell. No one can, no one knows. She just disappeared. She may have met with an accident. People have. Or she may still be alive at this very hour. She may have run off with someone else she met on the boat. All Bonny is guilty of, was passing herself off on me under another name, in the very beginning. And if I forgive her for that, as I have long ago--"
Downs suddenly left his semirecumbent position on the chair arm. He was on his feet, facing him alertly, eyes glittering now.
"Here's something you don't seem to know yet, Mr. Durand. And I think you may as well know it now, as later. You're going to soon enough, anyway. There isn't just a disappearance involved any longer. And I can say for certain just what happened to Julia Russell! I can now, if I couldn't the last time you saw me!"
He was leaning slightly forward in his intensity, in his zeal; that zeal of which he had spoken himself a few minutes earlier.
"A body drifted ashore out of the eddies at Cape Girardeau on the tenth of this month. You can get white, Mr. Durand; you have reason. A body that had been murdered, thrown into the water dead. There was no water in the lungs. I took Bertha Russell down to look at it. And badly decomposed as it was, she identified it. As that of Julia Russell, her sister. Triply fortified, even though there was no face left any more. By twin moles high on the inner side of the left thigh. That no other human being ever saw since early childhood, practically. By the uncommon fact that both end-teeth on both jaws, all four in other words, bore gold crowns. And lastly by the fact that her side bore peculiar scars in a straight line, from the teeth of a garden rake; again from her childhood. The rake had been rusty and the punctures had had to be cauterized by a hot iron."
He stopped for lack of breath, and there was a moment of silence.
Durand was standing there, head bowed, looking downward before himself. Perhaps to the floor in implicit capitulation, perhaps to the outthrust drawer from which the strongbox had come. He was breathing with difficulty; his chest rose and fell with visible labor at each intake and expulsion.
"Do the official police know about this ?" he asked finally, without raising his head.
"Not yet, but they will when I get her back there with me."
"You'll never get her back there with you, Downs. She's not going to leave this house. And neither are you."
Now his head came up. And with it the pistol his hand had fallen upon, long ago, long before this.
Shock slashed across Downs's face; it mirrored fear, collapse, panic, for a moment each, in turn; all the usual and only-human reactions. But then he curbed them, and after that he bore himself well.
He spoke for his life, but his voice was steady and reasonable, and after the first abortive step back, he held his ground sturdily. Nor did he cringe and bunch his shoulders defensively, but held himself tautly erect. He did not try to disguise his fear, but he mastered it, which is the greater bravery of the two.
"Don't do anything like that. Keep your head, man. You're still not involved. There's nothing punishable as yet in your taking up with this woman. The crime was committed before you met her. You were not a party to it. You've been foolish but not criminal so far-- Don't, Durand-- Stop and think before it's too late. For your own sake, while there's still time, put that down. Put it back where you got it."
Durand, for the first time during the entire interview, seemed to be addressing, not the investigator, but someone else. But who it was, no one could have said. He didn't know himself. "It's already too late. It's been too late since I first met her. It's been too late since the day I was born. It's been too late since God first created this world!"
He looked down, to avoid seeing Downs's face. He looked down at his own finger, curled about the trigger. Watching it with a sort of detached curiosity, as though it were not a part of him. Watching as if to see what it would do.
"Bonny," he sobbed brokenly, as though pleading with her to let him go.