I picked a spot in the shadows and sat down on the edge of a big stone tub full of petunias and waited. From where I sat I could see into the room and I could see Mills, sure he couldn’t see me.
Twenty minutes dragged by. I knew it was twenty minutes because I kept looking at my watch, and thinking how nice it would be to go home and get some sleep. It wasn’t much fun watching Mills taking it easy in an armchair while I sat on the edge of a stone tub with an ache in my head and a pain in my back. But I was playing a hunch, and I was obstinate, so I waited, and after a while he tossed aside the magazine and stood up.
I was hoping he was going to lock up for the night, but instead he went over to the bottles on the walnut table and freshened his drink. Watching the whisky run out of the bottle made my throat twitch with envy. I was hot and tired, and I could have done with that drink.
Then as he returned to his chair, I saw him pause and cock his head on one side and listen. I listened too.
The sound of a car coming fast disturbed the quiet of the night. Mills put down his glass, went over to the big mirror above the fireplace and took a look at himself, then he stood, waiting.
The car drew up outside the garden gate, a car door slammed and the latch of the gate clicked up.
By now I was on my feet. I stepped back into the darkness made by the shadow of the house. I heard the gate swing to, and footsteps come along the path: quick, light steps of a woman.
I waited, squeezed against the wall, looking from the darkness into the brilliantly lit garden. A woman came round the corner of the house: a woman in fawn linen slacks and an apple-green sports shirt, worn outside the slacks. She was bare headed and carried a handbag made of fawn linen to match her slacks.
She passed close to me, and I caught the fragrance of her perfume. The moonlight was harsh on her white, pinched face. There was an unhappy little sneer on her lips.
She walked briskly across the verandah and into the room. As soon as she was out of sight, I took out my handkerchief and mopped my face and hands. I wasn’t tired anymore. My head no longer ached. I felt pretty pleased with myself. It’s always good to play a hunch and prove yourself right.
The woman in the fawn linen slacks and the apple-green sports shirt was, of course, Natalie Cerf.
III
It was very quiet out there in the shadows and the heat. Somewhere in the far distance I could hear the sound of the ocean breaking on the reef out at East Beach: a whisper of sound that seemed loud in the silence around me.
And while I stood in the darkness waiting for something to happen, I tried to remember what Paula had said about Natalie Cerf. Two years ago there had been a motor accident. Natalie’s mother had been killed and Natalie crippled. She had been treated, X-rayed and examined by every doctor worth a damn in the country. But none of them had done anything for her. Cerf had paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars: none of them could make her walk.
It looked as if medical science had missed a miracle healer in Caesar Mills. What the brains of the best medical men in the country had failed to do, apparently he had done, for Natalie couldn’t have walked more briskly into the room where he was, not if she’d been a competitor in the Olympic Games.
I heard Mills say in his lizard, grating voice, ‘You didn’t say you were coming out. I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you phone?’
Under cover of his voice I moved forward so I could look into the room.
Mills was standing in the doorway; as if he had just come into the room. There was a sulky frown on his face and his pale eyes were hard.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ Natalie asked politely.
She was sitting bolt upright on the arm of the chesterfield, her thin hands folded on her handbag, an alert look on her face.
‘I was going to bed.’
‘Were you? It’s not very late. Is that the reason why you look so sulky?’
He came into the room and closed the door.
‘It’s not that. I don’t like you busting in like this. I might have had a guy here or someone.’
He picked up the drink he had left on the table. She watched him, her face suddenly as expressionless as the face of a shop-window dummy.
‘I didn’t think I had to ask permission to come to my own house,’ she said quietly. Although the words were hostile, her tone, if anything, was conciliatory. ‘I’ll know next time.’
Mills didn’t like this, but he didn’t say anything. He returned to his armchair and sat down. There was a long — overlong — pause.
She said lightly, ‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’
He didn’t look at her.
‘This is your house. They’re your drinks. Help yourself.’
She slid off the arm of the chair and walked over to the table. I watched her pour three inches of whisky into a glass, drop a chunk of ice into it. Her narrow, thin back was straight and her hands were steady, but her lips were trembling.
‘What’s the matter, Caesar?’ she asked, without turning. She still tried to keep the light, bantering tone, but it wasn’t convincing.
‘How long do you think this is going on?’ he asked.
She turned swiftly to face him.
‘How long is what going on?’
‘You know: this—’ He waved his hand at the room. ‘How long do you think I’m going to fool outside those gates, saluting like a lackey? How long do you think I’m creeping into your bedroom, side-stepping Franklin who knows what’s going on, and pretends he doesn’t?’
‘But what else can we do?’ she asked, frowning.
‘We can get married, can’t we? How many more times do I have to say it? We can live here, can’t we? You have your own money. Cerf can’t do anything about it.’ He drained his glass and set it down angrily on the edge of the fire-kerb. ‘We can get married,’ he repeated. ‘That’s what we can do.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can get married,’ he said again. ‘You can tell Cerf the truth. You don’t think he cares, do you? Maybe he cared when it happened, but not now. A guy can’t live with that kind of thing for two years without getting used to the idea. You’re kidding yourself if you think he cares anymore. He doesn’t.’
‘Yes, he does,’ she said, her eyes big in her white, pinched face.
He got up and stood with his hands thrust into his dressing-gown pockets, his head a little on one side, a faint, sneering smile on his pale lips.
‘I tell you he doesn’t,’ he said.
They both spoke quietly, but there was a tenseness about them that told me they were holding themselves in as if they knew that so long as they kept their tempers the situation was under control. And it was easy to see that because they both had something to lose, they didn’t want the situation to get out of control.
‘And I’ll tell you why,’ Mills went on. ‘Look at the way he treats you. How often does he come to see you? Twice a day.’ He broke off as she made an impatient little movement, said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘What am I thinking?’
“You think because he only sees you twice a day it’s because he can’t bear to come more often. You have a cockeyed idea that his conscience troubles him. You think every time he comes into the room and sees you sitting in your chair or lying in bed with that hurt, lonely look on your bitchy little face he gets a stab in the heart. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
‘There’s no need to be coarse,’ she said, and behind her back her hands clenched into fists.
‘Isn’t it?’ he repeated.