There was 'an intimacy tincturing her next remark, a rapport, none of their love passages had ever had before.
"What'd you do it with? What'd you take?"
"The gun there," he said. "The one in the desk."
She turned and looked at the rug. And while she stood turned thus, she struck him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand. And the only thing he could read in the gesture was rakish camaraderie, a sort of flippant, unspoken bond.
Then she looked back at him, and looked him in the face long and well. Lazily half smiling the while, as if discovering in the familiar outlines of his face, for the first time, some new qualities, to be appreciated, to be admired.
"You need a drink," she said with brittle decisiveness. "I do too. Wait a minute, I'll get us one."
He watched her go to it, and pour from the decanter twice, and put the glass stopper back in, and give it a little twist as if it were a knob.
He felt as if he were venturing into a strange new world. Which had had its well-established customs all along, but which he was only now encountering for the first time. That was what you did after you took a life; you took a drink next. He hadn't known that, it wouldn't have occurred to him, but for her. He felt like a novice in the presence of a practised hand.
She put one of the two glasses into his hand, and continuing to clasp that same hand about the wrist, as if in token of affection, poked her other hand wildly, vertically, up into the air.
"Now you're a man after my own heart," she said with glittering fervor. "Now you're worth taking up with. Now you're my kind of man."
She smote his uncertain glass with hers, and her head went back, and she pitched the liquor in through those demure lips, that scarcely seemed able to open at all.
"Here's to us," she said. "To you. To me. To the two of us. Drink up, my lovey. A short life and an exciting one."
She cast her drained glass against the wall and it sprayed into fragments.
He hesitated a moment, then, as if hurrying to overtake her, lest he be left all alone, drained his own and sent it after hers.
46
The eye, falling upon them unwarned half an hour later, would have mistaken them for a pretty picture of domesticity; discussing some problem of meeting household expense, perhaps, or of planning the refurnishing of a room.
He sat now, legs outspread, head lolling back, in a chair with arms, and she sat perched on one of the arms of it, close beside him, her hand occasionally straying absently to his hair, as they mulled and talked it over.
He had been holding a glass, a succeeding one, in his hand. She took it away from him at last and placed it on the table. "No more of that just now," she admonished, and patted him on the head. "You. must keep your head clear for this."
"It's hopeless, Bonny," he said wanly.
"It's nothing of the sort." Again she patted him on the head. "I've been--"
She didn't finish it, but somehow he guessed what she'd been about to say. I've been in situations like this before. He wondered where, he wondered when. He wondered who had done it, who she'd been with at the time.
"To run flying out of here," she resumed, as if taking up a discussion that had been allowed to lapse some little time before, "would be the most foolhardy thing people in--our position--could do." As if hearing her from a great distance, he was amazed at how prim, how mincing, her words sounded; as if she were a pretty young schoolmistress patiently instructing a not-very-bright pupil in his lesson. She should have had some embroidery on her lap, and her eyes downcast to it as she spoke, to match her tone of voice.
"We can't stay, Bonny," he faltered. "What are we going to do? How can we stay?" And hid his eyes for a moment behind his own hand. "It's already an hour."
"How long was it before I came home ?" she asked with an almost scientific detachment.
"I don't know. It seemed like a long time-" He started up rebelliously from the chair. "We could have been far from here, already. We should have been!"
She pressed him gently but firmly back.
"We're not staying," she calmed him. "But we're not rushing off helter-skelter either, at the drop of a hat. Don't you know what that would mean? In a few hours at most, someone would have found it out, be on our heels."
"Well, they will anyway!"
"No they won't. Not if we play our cards right. We'll go in our own good time. But that comes last of all, when we're good and ready for it. The first thing is--" she hooked her thumb negligently across the room, "--that has to be got out of the way."
"Taken outside the house?" he suggested dubiously.
She gnawed her lips reflectively. "Wait, let me think a minute." At last she shook her head, said slowly: "No, not outside-- We'd be seen. Almost certainly."
"Then--?"
"Somewhere inside," she said, with a slight motion of her shoulders, as though that were to be understood, went without saying.
The idea horrified him. "Right here in the house--?"
"Of course. It's a lot safer. In fact, it's the only thing for us to do. We're here alone, just the two of us; no servants. We can take all the time we need--"
"Ugh," he groaned.
She was pondering again, worrying her lip; she seemed to have no time for emotion. She frightened him almost as much as the fact they were trying to conceal.
"One of the fireplaces ?" he faltered. "There are two large ones down on this floor--"
She shook her head. "That would only be a matter of days."
"A closet ?"
"Worse. A matter of hours." She stretched her foot out and tapped down her heel a couple of times. Then she nodded, as if she were at last nearing a satisfactory decision. "One of the floors."
"They're hardwood. It would be noticed the minute anyone came into the room."
"The cellar. What's the floor of that like ?"
He couldn't recall having seen it; had never been down there, to his knowledge.
She quitted the chair abruptly. The period of incubation had ended, the period of action had begun. "Wait a minute. I'll go down take a look." From the doorway, without turning her head, she warned: "Don't take any more of those drinks while I'm gone."
She came running back, squinting shrewdly. "Hard dirt. That'll do."
She had to think for the two of them. She pulled at him briskly by the shoulder. "Come on, let's get it down there awhile. It's better than leaving it up here until we're ready. Someone may come to the door in the meantime."
He went over to it and stopped, trying to quell the nausea assailing his stomach.
She had to think of everything. "Hadn't you better take your coat off? It'll hamper you."
She took it from him and draped it carefully over a chair back, so that it would not wrinkle. She even brushed a little at one of the sleeves for a moment, before letting it be.
He wondered how such a commonplace, everyday act, her helping him off with his coat, could seem so grisly to him, making him quail to his marrow.
He took it up by its middle, the furled rug, packed it underarm, clasping it overarm with his other. One end, where the feet presumably were, of necessity slanted and dragged on the floor, of its own weight. The other end, where the head was, he managed to keep upward.
He advanced a few paces, draggingly. Suddenly the weight had eased, the lower end had lost its restraining drag on the floor. He looked, and she was holding that for him, helping him.
"No, for God's sake, no!" he said sickly. "Not you--"
"Oh, don't be a fool, Louis," she answered impatiently. "It's a lot quicker this way!" Then she added, with somewhat less asperity, "It's just a rug to me. I can't see anything."
They traveled with it out of the room, and along the cellarward passage to its back. Then had to stop and set it down, while he opened the door. Then in through there, and down the stairs, to cellar bottom. Then set it down once more, for good.