Dread Journey (19 page)

He remembered to walk slowly, his head bent, until he was within his room.

Mike’s eyes lifted fearfully to his face. He smiled; he kept her waiting until he was seated, in punishment for her doubt. He said then, “Everything’s all right. How about some dinner?”

She shook her head dumbly.

The train was slowing again, the whistles hooting their mournful signals. Nine-thirty-five, Dodge City. Change to Central time. It was as well he hadn’t waited until after Dodge City. He wouldn’t have had appetite for dinner if the ordeal had been hanging over him. He’d always had a nervous stomach. It was over; now he could enjoy a meal.

H
E HAD TO GET THE
taste of Spender out of his mouth. He poured a double straight. Whatever he drank now wouldn’t warm him. He was washed in the icy water of just rage.

He had known it was to happen and he hadn’t prevented it. Even now he didn’t know how he could have prevented it.

Gratia’s voice was tremulous. “He didn’t kill her. He didn’t. Did he?”

“Yes, he killed her.” Les spoke as to a child.

The drink stayed down. Hank said it again, pounding his frustration against the accomplished fact. “I shouldn’t have let her go. I should have kept her away from him.”

“What good would it have done?” Les’s shrug was regretful. “He’s good at murder. He killed his wife, you know.”

Hank’s voice was deceptively quiet. “I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me that.” He began to curse. He saw Gratia’s shocked face but he didn’t care. He knew it wouldn’t have changed things if he had known. But the bitterness within him had to be wreaked in violence.

Les understood. He said, “I didn’t have a chance to tell you. Maybe I didn’t quite believe it. Mike knows it was murder. She knows this is murder.”

Sidney Pringle droned, “I thought she was sorry she didn’t speak to me. I thought she was being kind to me. But it was because she was afraid, afraid to be alone. It was after he left her room.” His breath quivered. “She was kind. She wanted to help me get started again.” He sat very still and a hard shell formed on his sadness. “Why did he go to her room this morning? What did he do there?”

It was taking shape, fiercely Hank forced it to take shape. He hadn’t saved Kitten; he would avenge her. Murder must be avenged. Between them, what they knew, each one his little knowledge, Viv Spender would face justice. Maybe it wouldn’t hold up in court. It didn’t need to. Spender might not pay with his eye and his tooth for hers; but he’d pay with living death, he’d pay in revulsion of human hearts, and after revulsion, oblivion. This case would be tried in the newspapers; Hank could attend to that.

Les read his silence, “It’s no good. He did it the safe way.”

“It’s going to be good.” Hank said, “He isn’t going to get away with it. We know enough. Together we know enough.”

Sidney Pringle said to himself, “She knew I was hungry. She had been hungry herself. She knew how it was. She paid for my lunch.” His eyes filled with little flecks of fear. “She signed the check. Maybe he won’t honor it now.” He shook his head. “He couldn’t be that niggardly. Not with her dead.”

No one paid any attention to him.

Hank said, “Cobbett was out there all afternoon.”

He acted. He swung open the door, called the name.

James Cobbett came out of compartment E. He held a pillow in one hand, a pillowcase in the other.

Hank said, “Come inside.” Cobbett was hesitant. He’d had enough of them, those who had been a part of Kitten’s last journey. He couldn’t escape that easily; he too was a part of it.

He followed because he hated to pretend that Hank’s need was a Pullman duty, although he knew it concerned Kitten’s death. He kept his hands busy with the pillow as he stood there waiting for Hank to make a request.

Hank asked it bluntly. “Did anyone go to Kitten Agnew’s drawing room this afternoon? I mean after she went there, after she left Vivien Spender’s room.”

Cobbett shook his head.

Les said, “I told you it’s no good, Hank. He’s careful.”

Hank refused defeat. He demanded recklessly, “Do you think Kitten Agnew died of heart trouble?”

He had no business asking it of James Cobbett; Cobbett had no business answering. Not answering as he did.

“I don’t know about that. But I know she was sick when she came out of Mr. Spender’s room. Dying.” He feared death, or the way Kitten had to die. “I should have called the doctor then. But I didn’t recognize it, and she didn’t ask for help.”

Cobbett spoke sadly. Remorse narrowed his face. Hank told him, “Don’t blame yourself. I was beside her and I didn’t know.” His mind clutched tightly the bit of mosaic Cobbett had contributed. The deed had been done before she left Spender’s room. The deed had been done in Hank’s presence.

What had he been doing? Trying to anaesthetize his spirit. If he hadn’t taken a drink, if he’d stopped at just one? He knew it would have made no difference. Kitten had only one cocktail, the lethal dose was in that one.

Cobbett shook the pillow into shape. “You should eat something.” He was fatherly; he wanted to help their despair. “I can send Ben in when he comes to take Mr. Spender’s order.”

Gratia whispered, “I couldn’t eat.” Sidney Pringle swallowed saliva.

“Yes, send him in,” Hank said. He wasn’t thinking about it. There was something important to do, something more important than dinner. “The cocktail glasses. What happened to them? The glass she drank from?”

Cobbett said, “I don’t know if Charles has taken the tray yet.” He didn’t say, you thought of it too late. A murderer wouldn’t leave a glass to damn him. Hank was riddled with memory. It was the poison cup that had been smashed. Spender had made certain it was smashed.

He caught Cobbett’s arm. “Broken. Pieces of glass.”

Cobbett said, “There was glass on the floor when we met in Mr. Spender’s room to decide what should be done. I swept it up.”

Hank asked, “What happens to the sweepings?” He was holding it tight, clenching it, a scrap of hope.

“It’s in the trash,” Cobbett said, “It won’t be taken off until Chicago.” It didn’t matter if Cobbett believed; he understood. “Small pieces only, splinters.”

“Even a splinter.” The detection of modern scientific laboratories. He wondered who was yet in homicide that he had known. What police reporters were on the dailies. The same old legs?

Cobbett said, “I must finish the Shellabargers’ berths. They want to get to bed early.” It was an excuse, to get away. He went away.

Les said, “The Shellabargers.” If he laughed, he would cough and he mustn’t cough. But it was too funny to pass. His mouth tweaked. “The Shellabargers have had such a lovely trip. Rather dull, of course.”

Hank growled, “For God’s sake, Les.” But he was secretly exultant. Les was himself again. He needed Les to finish this. Not a Les gauzed within a strange dream. The monkey Les, biting, scratching, gibbering.

Les said, “I’d rather be a Shellabarger. I shudder to think about tomorrow. Questions bore me. When the other fellow asks them.”

Sidney Pringle gnawed his finger. “Questions?” His voice squeaked.

Pringle quivered anxiously, “I have nothing to say, I won’t say Vivien Spender is a murderer. I don’t think he is. A man like Vivien Spender wouldn’t kill.” He was running away now, as fast as his spindle legs could carry him. Before it had begun, he fled. He wouldn’t stand up to Spender power, no matter how he wanted Spender to grovel in the dust. He was conditioned to the strong grinding the weak, the rich battering the poor. Until the poor and the weak became the rich and the strong, he wouldn’t fight openly. He wouldn’t chance Spender’s disapproval; he was too certain. Spender would come out whole. Only an heroic fool risked his own skin throwing in his lot with a lost cause. Smart, he would call himself.

This miserable, stinking wretch; this porous, articulate lower animal form. Who was there to say that Pringle’s clay was not set here only to hold the mirror of self-portraiture to Hank Cavanaugh? To the cowardice of Hank Cavanaugh who had run out on a lost cause.

Hank’s upper lip curled. “You’ll tell the truth or you’ll go to jail for perjury. Whatever Spender pays you to be on his side.”

Pringle’s mouth was secret. That hadn’t occurred to him yet, the gratefulness of Spender. Grateful to his friends, even his unknown friends. The reward.

Hank was savage. “You’ll testify the right way at the inquest or you’ll—”

Pringle jumped out of his fantasy, back into the grimness of his reality. “An inquest? We’ll have to stay in Chicago for an inquest?” He shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

“Are you in that big a hurry for the necktie counter?” Hank was deliberately cruel. “Are you in that big a rush to go back to nothing?”

Pringle said, “I have no place to stay in Chicago. At least in New York I can sleep in my father’s apartment. It’s three flights up over a delicatessen.” He flagellated himself before these betters out of habit. “It smells of pickles and at night the rats gnaw at the boxes.” He bit his finger. That too was habit because he wasn’t sorrowing now; he was dreaming of his name coupled with the names of the great, Kitten Agnew, Vivien Spender, Leslie Augustin. He’d duck and feint but he wouldn’t run so far that his name wasn’t in the papers.

Les said, “Don’t feed him out of your plate, Hank. He might turn into an orchestra leader.”

Pringle complained, “I’m a writer. I don’t want to be an orchestra leader.”

Gratia’s eyes were made of glass, dark glass. You could see through them to the bottomless depth of her, but it was too dark to know what you saw there. She turned them on Les. Her throat was sore. “Why did he want to kill Kitten?”

Les said, “Darling,” and the word was honey on his tongue as it had been last night. But he had no other words for her. He was saved by Ben at the door.

“Want to order your dinner now, Mr. Augustin?”

Les said, “We do, Ben.” He asked softly, “What is Mr. Spender eating tonight?”

Ben was fat and smooth as coffee cream. He was professional in pride and he didn’t even know that Kitten was said to be ill. He grinned. “The steak dinner. It’s the best.”

Silence crackled louder than the rush of the train.

Les pricked the order. “Bring us four steak dinners. We too want only the best.”

Ben bowed his bulk out, he was whistling as he closed the door on them.

Les said mildly, “May he have good appetite.”

Gratia’s voice cut like a knife. “Why did he kill Kitten?”

“Because—” If he didn’t look at her, if he clattered the words, Hank could say them. “Because he wanted you in her place.”

The Chief cantered on into the cold night.

Mike sat alone in her tiny walled cell. Until the metronome of the train’s wheels rose to crescendo, until the wail of the train whistle across the flatlands had crushed her heart to pulp. Wondering at the loneliness of the new dead, remembering Kitten and Kitten’s need for light and life. She had no sorrow for Kitten dead; she had pity that scalded.

She couldn’t endure her own loneness longer. She must look on a human face, must know that she was still among the living.

She didn’t dare go to the club car. She couldn’t conceal her agony from those who would be watching her, watching Viv Spender’s secretary. They would know at once something was wrong; gossip writers’ intuition was developed to the soundness of knowledge. She couldn’t go to him; she no longer could play a part before him. If she went, she must accuse.

She hadn’t known with Althea. She’d only feared it had been he. No one else had been suspicious of him. Not at that time. How could she alone accuse? Yet she had known, known out of her knowledge of him and of Althea, known and remained silent.

There was no doubt in her mind this time. She had knowledge of what he was. She had knowledge when his head fell on Kitten’s breast. He was a murderer.

She had led him away because it was expected of her, because he expected it. With the dull mobility of a drugged person, she had remained with him until the ordeal was over, until with genial expansiveness he discussed dinner with Ben. She fled then, fled from the honor of this evil being who had taken possession of the man she had known as Viv Spender.

She didn’t want to return to him. Yet she knew she must. She must return and accuse him. Her heart was ragged in her breast. Not because she feared for herself; because she feared for him; she didn’t know what was to become of him.

With even steps, Mike walked out of the narrow room. It took all of her strength to open the vestibule door. The biting cold air scratched her lungs. There was no indecision as she pushed into the dim corridor of the death car. She felt her way past the door of Kitten’s room, loath to continue forward but impelled. Past doors of honest people, to Les Augustin’s door.

Why couldn’t Les have been the one who killed Kitten? Les who had come to her last night, prying out the story of the first Mrs. Spender’s death. It could have been Les. Or Hank Cavanaugh or Sidney Pringle. Even Gratia Shawn. All had opportunity. It had been Viv Spender’s hand. The others hadn’t ordered a sleeping draught in Kitten’s name.

She didn’t stop at Les’s door. She slowed but her steps moved on. She stopped at Viv’s room because that was the end of the corridor. She couldn’t enter. No place to go now but back to the cell, to sit alone with the nightmare. She realized suddenly that she was not alone. James Cobbett had come around the corner, from the linen closet. He was standing there looking down at her.

He looked at her with the objectivity of a judge on the bench. He was like Viv Spender in a strange way, a handsome figure of a man, tall, commanding. The likeness was surface. This man was honest, it was his solid core. And he was kind, despite the cruelty he must have known, he was not embittered. He suffered with the suffering, he suffered with her now although he could not know the reason for her anguish. He was the man Viv Spender should have been, if Viv had not become warped by his power.

Her knees buckled and she laid her hand against the cold metal wall for support. He said, “Can I help you, Ma’m?”

He could help her. He could tell her what to do. She shook her head. “No.” She turned and started slowly to retrace her path back to herself.