Darker Than You Think (12 page)

"Well,
Barbee—does that shatter my precious illusion enough to suit
you?"

Barbee
shook his head.

"That
hardly dents it. Please go on."

Her
white expressive face looked troubled.

"Please,
Will," she begged softly. "I'd rather not tell you any more
about me—not tonight, anyhow. That illusion is my shell. I'd be
helpless without it, and not very pretty. Don't make me break it. You
might not like me without it."

"No
danger." His voice turned almost grim. "But I do want you
to go on. You see, I'm still afraid."

She
sipped her daiquiri, and her cool green eyes studied his face. That
secret laughter had left them. She frowned a little, and then smiled
again with that air of warm accord.

"I
warn you—it gets a little sordid."

"I
can take it," he promised her. "I want to know you—so
that I can like you more."

"I
hope so." She smiled. "Here goes."

Her
mobile face made a quick grimace of distaste.

"My
parents didn't get on together—that's all the trouble, really."
Her low voice was forced and uneven. "My father—but
there's no use digging up the unpleasant details. The year I was
nine, Mother took me to California. Father kept the other children.
It's that cheap, ugly background that I built my illusion to hide."

She
drained her glass nervously.

"You
see, there wasn't any alimony." Her flat voice turned bitter.
"Mother took her own name back. She worked to keep us.
Hash-slinger. Salesgirl, stenographer, carhop. Movie extra. Finally
she got a few character bits, but it was pretty rough sledding for
her.

She
lived for me, and tried to bring me up to play the game a little
shrewder.

"Mother
had a poor opinion of men—with reason enough, I'm afraid. She
tried to fit me to protect myself. She made me—well, call me a
she-wolf." Her fine teeth flashed through an uneasy little
smile. "And here I am, Barbee. Mother managed to put me through
school. Somehow, all those years, she kept her insurance paid up. I
had a few thousand dollars when she died. By the time that's gone, if
I do as she taught me—"

She
made a wry little face, and tried to smile.

"That's
the picture, Will. I'm a ruthless beast of prey." She pushed her
empty glass aside abruptly—the gesture seemed nervous, somehow
defiant. "How do you like me now?"

Shifting
uncomfortably before the penetrating keenness of her faintly Oriental
eyes, Barbee was grateful for the waiter's approach. He ordered two
more daiquiris.

In
a lower voice that seemed to hold a faint bitter mockery—perhaps
of herself—April Bell asked, "Does the ugly truth behind
my poor, torn illusion make you any less afraid of me?"

Barbee
contrived to grin.

"As
a beast of prey," he said as lightly as he could, "your
equipment is splendid. I only wish that reporters on the Star's
payroll were fair financial game." A hard earnestness came back
into his uneasy voice. "But it's something else that I'm afraid
of."

He
stared at her. For he thought her white, perfect body had
imperceptibly tensed. He thought her long greenish eyes had narrowed
alertly. Even the faint, fragrant scent of her now carried a subtle
warning, it seemed to him—as if she had been an actual thing of
prey, crouching beyond that tiny black table, wary and deadly. Her
instant smile didn't quite erase that startled impression.

"Well?"
Her voice seemed hoarse with tension. "What
are
you
afraid of?"

Barbee
gulped the rest of his own drink. His fingers drummed nervously on
the table—he noticed how large and gnarled and hairy his hand
seemed, beside hers. His mind had rebelled against the intolerable
conflict of frantic hope and desperate doubt, and a reckless impulse
told him to blurt out the truth.

"April—"

He
checked himself, and caught his breath. Because her white oval face
had turned remote and cold. Her long greenish eyes had narrowed
alertly—almost as if she had already heard what he was going to
say. He made himself go on.

"April—it's
about what happened at the airport." He leaned across the little
table. Something made him shiver. His voice turned suddenly hard,
accusing. "You killed that black kitten—I found the body.
You did it to cause the death of Dr. Mondrick."

Barbee
had expected a violent denial. He had prepared himself to face her
slashing anger. A bewildered lack of comprehension was what he had
hoped for—if some youthful assassins had really kidnapped and
destroyed little Fifi. He was completely at a loss when the girl
covered her face with her hands, elbows propped on the little table,
and began sobbing silently.

He
stared at the red splendor of her hair, and bit his lip. Her despair
and pain were terribly real, and a sharp knife of contrition twisted
in his breast. He couldn't endure tears. All his cruel suspicions
became utterly fantastic. He had been a complete fool, even to
mention Aunt Agatha's kitten.

"April—really—"
he floundered. "I didn't mean—"

He
subsided while the stony-faced waiter set down two fresh daiquiris
and went away with his two dollar bills and the empty glasses. He
wanted desperately to touch April Bell's white trembling shoulder,
somehow to soothe her hurt. Suddenly he didn't care what she was or
what she had done. Instead, a tremendous excited curiosity to know
how and why she had done it rose in him.

"Please,
April," he begged faintly. "I'm very sorry."

She
lifted her head, and looked silently at him out of her wet, slightly
slanted eyes—or was it only that her thin brows had been
artfully plucked to make them look oblique? Her eyes were huge and
dark and solemn, and tears had smeared the smooth makeup on her
cheeks. Her red head nodded slightly—in a hopeless little bow
of tired defeat.

"So
you know." It was a statement, bitterly final.

Barbee
reached impulsively to take her slender hands, but she drew them back
and dropped them wearily in her lap. She sat looking at him, waiting,
defiantly submissive, almost haggard with her ruined makeup, for once
not building any illusions—or was this just a new one?

"I
don't know anything." His hurried voice was anxious and
bewildered. "This is all a nightmare—too many things I
can't believe, or understand. I—" He blinked, and
swallowed hard. "I didn't mean to hurt you so. Please,
April—believe that. I like you
...
a very great deal. But ... well, you know how Mondrick died."

Her
wet eyes dropped wearily. She found a handkerchief in the green
leather bag that matched the gown and lent its color to her eyes. She
dabbed away her tears, and unobtrusively flicked powder on her cheeks
again. She sipped deliberately at her cocktail, and he saw the glass
quivering in her long, slender fingers. At last she looked up
solemnly.

"Yes,
Will." Her voice was low and grave. "You've found me out—I
guess it's no use trying to fool you any longer. The truth is hard to
say, and I know it will upset you.

"But
I'm a witch, Barbee."

Barbee
half rose, sat down again, and nervously tossed off his daiquiri. He
blinked at her hurt, earnest face and shook his head savagely. He
caught his breath and opened his mouth and shut it again. At last he
demanded breathlessly: "What the devil do you mean?"

"Just
what I said," she told him soberly. "I didn't tell you what
my parents quarreled about—I couldn't. But that was the cause.
I
was
a witch child, and my father found it out. My mother had always
known, and she stood by me—he'd have killed me if she hadn't.
So he drove us both away."

CHAPTER
FIVE

The
Thing Behind the Veil

April
Bell leaned across the little eight-sided table, her strained white
face floating close to his in the thick haze of hot blue smoke and
alcohol that the Knob Hill's patrons paid so well to breathe. Her
husky voice was very low, and her long eyes watched his startled
expression with a painful intensity, as if to estimate the impact of
her words.

Barbee
had a queer, numbed feeling in the pit of his stomach; it was
amazingly like the effect of a tremendous slug of whisky—he was
numbed, yet with a foreknowledge of warmth to come. He gulped and
breathed again and nodded anxiously. He didn't quite dare speak—he
didn't want to challenge the girl's confession, nor could he yet
accept it.

Her
white, troubled face smiled slightly, relaxing to a faint relief.

"You
see," she told him slowly, "Mother was my father's second
wife. Young enough to have been his daughter. I know she never loved
him—I never really understood why she married him. Such a
disagreeable brute, and he never had any money. Certainly she wasn't
following the rules she laid down for me."

Barbee
reached for a cigarette. He didn't want to interrupt the girl, and he
thought she would stop if she knew the agonized intensity of his own
interest. He needed something to do with his nervous hands. She shook
her head when he offered the worn case to her, and her slow, hushed
voice went on.

"But
Mother had been in love with some other man —she never told me
his name. Maybe that explains her marriage and the way she felt about
men. My father never did much to make her love him. Perhaps he knew
something about that other man. I know he suspected that I wasn't
really his."

Careful
not to let his fingers tremble, Barbee lit his cigarette.

"Father
was a stern man," the girl went on. "A Puritan, really—he
belonged back in old Salem. He was never actually ordained—he
couldn't quite agree with any denomination—but he used to
preach his own harsh faith on street corners here in town on market
Saturdays, whenever he could get a few idlers to listen. He
considered himself a righteous man, trying to warn the world away
from sin. Actually, he could be monstrously cruel.

"He
was cruel to me."

Old
pain made a shadow on the girl's pale face.

"You
see, I was a precocious child. Father had older children, by his
first marriage, who were not. I could read a little by the time I was
three. I understood people. Somehow, I could just sense what people
would do, and things that would happen. My father wasn't pleased to
see me more clever than my older brothers and sisters—the ones
he knew were his own."

She
smiled faintly.

"I
think I was pretty, too—my mother always told me so. No doubt I
was spoiled and vain, and sometimes nasty to the others. Anyhow, I
was always in some quarrel with the older children, with my mother
taking sides with me against them and my father. Of course they were
all much bigger, but even then I think I was pretty clever in finding
ways to hurt them."