Dead or Alive (6 page)

“I'm not in the least angry.”

Bill's hand pressed hers. He said,

“Liar!” And then, “Why does Della Delorne make you angry?”

“I'm not angry—I told you I wasn't.”

Bill pulled her round to face him.

“Look here, Meg, come off it! I want the woman's name and address for Garratt, not for myself. You're behaving as if I'd insulted you. If you hadn't known who she was, I should have had to find out some other way.”

“Let me go!” said Meg. And then all of a sudden she melted. “Bill, you don't know—”

“No, but you can tell me, my dear.”

It was she who was holding him now, one hand on his arm, the other on his wrist. Where her fingers touched his skin he could feel how cold they were.

“Bill, I'm sorry—I was a beast—but it came over me. That woman—I saw her—with Robin—twice. He wouldn't tell me who she was, but other people did. She calls herself an actress. I believe she's sometimes been in the chorus of a revue—I don't know. I told you I was going to divorce Robin. That was what I wanted to see Uncle Henry about. Why do you want to know about her?”

He hesitated. The hand on his wrist tightened.

“Was it because you'd seen her with Robin too?” Her eyes implored him. In the half light of the taxi they looked larger and darker than they were. “Did you see her with Robin, Bill—
did
you?”

Bill nodded, and at once her grasp relaxed. There was a feeling of relief from strain. It was only the old trouble, not a new one. She leaned back in her corner with a sigh. The taxi had come to a stop. There was a block of cars in front of them. Neither spoke until the block broke up. Then Meg said,

“When did you see them?”

“Please
, Meg.”

“I want to know.”

Well, it was better to tell her. No good letting her imagine things. He said,

“Well, that's the whole point, my dear—I saw Robin in a taxi with a woman at midnight on the fourth of October last year.”

“The fourth!” said Meg in a startled voice. And then, “But, Bill—that was after—he disappeared—”

“Yes, I know.”

“He was with Della Delorne?”

“Well, that's what I don't know, but I think so. When I told Garratt—”

“You told Colonel Garratt?”

“Yes, of course I did. Well, when I told him, I said I wouldn't know her again, but just now in the dining-room as soon as I saw that woman, something went click in my brain. I couldn't have sworn to her features, or her face, or anything. I only just had an impression of her beyond Robin in the taxi, but there was something that made me put her down for—well, for the sort of woman she is. I couldn't get hold of it when I was talking to Garratt, and I told him I wouldn't know her again, but when I saw her at the Luxe it came back and I remembered what it was.”

They were held up again at a cross road. The traffic streamed by in a blur of sound. Against this blur Meg said clearly,

“What was it?”

“Her lipstick. Did you notice it? A beastly sort of unnatural pink.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” Her voice was warm and eager.

“Well, that was what did the trick. So I had to find out who it was, because of course I must let Garratt know.”

The traffic ceased to flow past them. They moved again.

“You saw her with Robin four days after he—disappeared!” Meg leaned forward suddenly. There was a note of terror in her voice.
“Bill
—
where
—
is
—
Robin?”

The taxi drew up smoothly at the kerb. Bill put his hand on her shoulder for a moment.

“Robin's dead,” he said. “Garratt is quite sure he's dead.”

The driver got down from his seat and opened the door.

VI

The play flowed by very much as the traffic had flowed by, in a blur of sound. The people who went about the stage and spoke their words made as little impression on Meg O'Hara; the inner current of her thoughts moved in too full and bitter a tide. Once she looked at a woman who wept on the stage, and wondered what it was all about, and once it came to her that the play must have been going on for hours, and then she found that it was only nine o'clock. She had thought that she and Bill would have to sit there side by side in a hating, angry silence, but it wasn't like that at all. Bill didn't hate her. She had been horrid to him, and he had been kind and patient. But it all felt a long way off—the play, and Bill, and everything. It was a horrid, strange feeling, and it frightened her.

She made a great effort in the first interval, and Bill helped her. They talked about safe, comfortable things like the weather, and the new pedestrians' crossings, and Chile. Meg found Chile a most reassuring place to talk about. It was such a long way off, so remote from the closing circle of her fears.

After that she was able to follow the play—a little vaguely, a little hazily, rather as if she were watching it through an unfocussed glass, but still to follow it.

When it was over, Bill took her home. They went up to the third floor together in the little lift that you worked yourself. They had been rather silent in the taxi, and they were quite silent now.

When Meg took out her key and fitted it into the lock and the door opened upon the small dark hall, she felt a momentary chill. She had been coming back to this empty flat for a year, but tonight it seemed emptier than usual. A thought looked into her mind like a stranger looking in through the window. If Bill and she were coming home together, the flat would not be cold and empty, but welcoming and warm. That was the thought; but it wasn't her own thought, it was a stranger looking in. She stepped over the threshold and switched on the light—a bright light in the little closed-in space which was the hall. To her surprise and consternation she felt the colour come burning to her face. She said good-night quickly and shut the door.

Bill took himself down in the lift. He had seen that sudden startled colour, and it had sent his spirits soaring. He hadn't the slightest idea why she should have blushed, but he did know that she had never blushed for him before. It seemed to him that it was a very encouraging sign. But he did wonder what it was that had made her fly that scarlet flag. It wasn't as if she could possibly have known what he was thinking, or how hard it was to leave her and come away. Well, perhaps some day they would come home together and he wouldn't have to leave her. That was what he had been thinking, but of course she couldn't have known.

He came out on to the pavement and turned to the right. It was a dark night with a feel of rain in the air. He meant to walk to the hotel, and presently he crossed over and took a shortcut down a narrow side street. It was when he was about half way down this street that it occurred to him that there had been someone behind him ever since he had left the flat. It would be a good deal of a coincidence if someone else should at this hour be taking just his way through these unfrequented streets.

He turned at right angles into a paved alley with a row of posts across the mouth of it. When he came out at the other end, he knew beyond a doubt that someone was following him. It interested him a good deal. Did he look sufficiently opulent to tempt a thief to follow him on the chance of getting away with his wallet? But he was sure that the footsteps had been behind him all the way from the flat. Why should a thief have picked him up at the flat? It didn't seem very likely. O'Hara's name flared through his mind like a squib. O'Hara, tormenting Meg, spying on her.… No, it wasn't reasonable. There wasn't any motive. O'Hara was either dead or alive. Garratt said he was dead, and Garratt didn't say things unless he meant them. O'Hara was dead. But, for the sake of argument, if O'Hara was alive, he had deserted his wife. And then why should he spy on her. She had been his, and he had chucked her away. He had left her for a year without help, or comfort, or money. All this supposing him to be alive. But he wasn't alive—he couldn't be. Garratt said that he was dead. All the same, Bill turned out of the alley and made two quick strides of it to the nearest doorway, where he stood pressed up against the door to see who would come out after him.

There were posts at this end of the alley too. It was very dark. He could only just see them, but he thought if O'Hara came out, that he would recognize him. There was a way he had of walking, an impudent confidence, a turn of the head.

The place into which he had come was a narrow street of poor houses, crowding one upon another. He had come up three steps to the doorway where he was sheltering. There was no light in this house, nor in the half dozen houses that were nearest, whether on his own side of the street or on the other. There was nobody afoot the whole length of the street. He began to wonder whether he had been mistaken. If someone were really following him, where was he, and why didn't he emerge? And then he heard the footstep again, quite near, in a faint stumble as if the foot had slipped on a worn place or stubbed itself against one of the posts. Another moment and someone came cautiously out into the street.

Bill had said that he would know O'Hara, but here there wasn't anything to know—a shadow standing motionless just clear of the black alley-way, with the darkness confusing height, shape, and outline. There wasn't any outline. The shadow was one with the other shadows. When he stared at it, he was no longer sure that he could see it at all, but when he looked away and looked back again, it was there, quite motionless, just not merged in the blackness out of which it had come.

He made one step of it to the street level and spoke.

“Who are you—and what do you want?”

The shadow receded a little. There was no answer.

Bill Coverdale came on, but even as he came, there was a flash in the dark, and a report that was deafeningly loud in the narrow place. The wind of the explosion came against his face, acrid with the smell of burnt powder. The top of his left ear stung, and as he clapped his hand to it, the blood ran hot between his fingers. The shadow was gone, and Bill went pelting down the alley after it in a fury of anger. The fellow had tried to kill him. He had the blanketing dark and a sideways stumble over a pot-hole to thank for his life. The pistol had been fired from not more than a yard away.

He came to the posts at the far end, and saw by the light of a distant lamp that the street was empty. He had enough sense not to emerge upon the pavement, faintly though it was lit. Instead he flattened himself against the wall of the right-hand house and looked back, listening. There was nothing either to see or hear. Nobody moved, threw up a window, or concerned himself with the shot which had come within half an inch of achieving a murder.

Bill began to feel that he was uncommonly lucky to be alive. He also began to wonder whether he was going to be able to stay alive, or whether the shadow would have a second shot at him as soon as he came out into the light. He didn't think the fellow had got away in front of him. No—most likely he had stood against the wall, let Bill charge past him, and then made his get-away up at the other end. Of course he might not have been bothering about getting away. A really persevering assassin would be all out for that second shot. On the other hand, he couldn't have banked on the neighbourhood having absolutely no reactions to midnight murder. Personally he thought the swab would have cleared out.

He waited five minutes, heard nothing, saw nothing, slipped out of the alley between the end post and the wall, and walked home to his hotel without further incident.

VII

When Meg had shut the door on Bill Coverdale she went into the sitting-room and put on the light there. That is to say, she pulled down the switch, and the light
should
have come in, but it didn't. She remained standing just inside the door, frowning at the dark room, with the one bright shaft slanting in from the hall to a spot about a yard in front of her. She pushed the switch up, and then down again. There were two little clicks, but nothing happened.

She went back into the hall, opened her bedroom door, and tried the switch there. Again nothing happened except the click. Her frown deepened. It seemed odd that both these lights would go wrong together, when the hall light was all right. She tried the bathroom and the kitchen and found both light were gone. Well, she hadn't got a spare bulb, and she hadn't got any candles, so she would just have to make the best of it and feel her way to bed in the dark. Of course she might take the hall bulb and see if it would work in her room, but if she did that, she would have to make the change in the dark. A little cold shiver ran over her. She didn't like the idea. If there was anything wrong with the fuse, it might spoil the new bulb and leave her without any light at all. That was a definitely unpleasant thought.

She left her door open, and found that she could see well enough. Besides she didn't want to see. She wanted to undress as quickly as she could and get to bed and sleep, a long, long, dreamless sleep. She didn't need a light for that.

She kept all her thoughts on the surface as she undressed. Her dress hadn't looked too bad—she must find the right hanger—she could do that by feeling for it—it was a little colder tonight—the wind was this way—she couldn't be bothered to fill her hot water bottle—nice to slip into bed and lie down—nice to feel sleep waiting for you—Nice to stop thinking and go down into forgetfulness.…

But after all she dreamed. Sleep betrayed her and she dreamed. At first it was pleasant enough—a mere hazy sense of being amongst trees, and the sound of a stream flowing somewhere out of sight. She was walking on pineneedles. That was her first really clear impression—thick, soft pine-needles which gave out an aromatic smell when her feet bruised them. She must be walking under pinetrees, but she couldn't see them, only the smooth drifted needles at her feet. And then she knew that she wasn't alone in the wood. There was someone walking behind her with a step that kept pace with her own, so that she could not hear when it fell. She began to run, and the thing that followed her ran too, faster and faster, faster and faster, until with a little click the dream broke off short and she was awake in the dark. Her heart was racing, her mouth was dry. She pushed the bed-clothes away from her shoulders and got up on her elbow to listen. The click which she had heard—had it been in her dream, or here? It had broken the dream, but had it broken it from within or from without? She stared into the even darkness. It was everywhere.