Halfway House (23 page)

“Who?”

“The Senator. I once saw a drawing of Tolstoy that reminded me of him. That obscene beard! He takes better care of it than a woman does of her new permanent. Of course you know what
he
has in his veins?”

“Tomato juice?”

“No! Pure formaldehyde. If he ever felt an honest emotion, it’s been pickled stiff for forty years. And that,” she sighed, “is the end of the story. What shall we talk about now?”

“Wait a minute,” said Ellery. “How about friend Jones?”

She was very quiet for a moment. “I’d rather not… I haven’t seen Burke for two weeks.”

“Good heavens. If I’ve been the cause of breaking up the social alliance of the century—”

“Please. I’m not fooling. Burke and I are—” She stopped and rested her head against the top of the seat, staring down the road.

“Definitely?”

“Is anything definite in this world? Once—I was so sure. He seemed everything a girl could wish for in a man. Big—I’ve always had a weakness for big men—not too handsome, built like Max Baer, perfect manners…”

“He didn’t impress me,” said Ellery dryly, “as a prince of breeding.”

“He—he was a little upset. Good family, loads of money…”

“And utterly devoid of gray matter.”

“You would say something nasty. Well, I suppose it’s true. I see now that all that was a silly girl’s notion. Those things don’t count, do they?”

“I don’t believe they do.”

“Once—” she smiled a queer, pained little smile—“I wasn’t much better myself, you see.”

Ellery drove for some time in silence. Andrea’s lids drooped again. The miles slid into the gullet of the Duesenberg and spewed out behind in a smooth and soporific stream. Ellery stirred. “You’ve forgotten yourself.”

“What?”

“If someone—Bill Angell, for example—should step on you, to continue the nauseating metaphor…”

“Oh.” After a moment she laughed. “I may as well judge myself nobly; no one else does. The milk of human kindness.”

“Slightly curdled?” asked Ellery in a gentle voice.

She sat up swiftly. “Now, just what does that mean, Ellery Queen?”

“Don’t you know?”

“And why Bill Angell?”

Ellery shrugged. “I beg your pardon. I thought we were playing according to the established rules of honesty, but I see I was mistaken.” He kept looking at the road. She kept looking at his calm, immobile profile. And finally her lips quivered and she looked away. “Corking day, isn’t it?” observed Ellery at last.

“Yes.” Her voice was low.

“Sky blue. Countryside green. Road oyster-white. Cows brown and red—when you see ’em.” He paused. “
When
you see ’em.”

“I don’t——”

“I said. When you see ’em. Not everybody does, you know.”

She was so quiet that he thought she had not heard; he glanced quickly at her. Her cheeks were whiter than the road. The strands of blond hair curling madly about her face seemed to be straining away from the wind. And her fingers plucked steadily at the hat in her lap.

“Where,” she asked in a thick undertone, “are you taking me?”

“Where would you like to go?”

Her eyes flashed. She half rose in the seat; the wind clutched at her, and she grasped the top of the windshield for support. “Stop the car! Stop the car, I say!”

Obediently the Duesenberg rolled toward the soft shoulder of the road and, after a while, came to a stop.

“Here we are,” said Ellery gently. “Now what?”

“Turn around!” she cried. “Where are you going? Where are you taking me?”

“To visit someone,” he said in a quiet way, “who hasn’t your visual advantages. I doubt if this unfortunate can glimpse a bit of sky larger than you could cover with this small palm of yours. I thought it might be kind if someone played the vicarious eye today… for her.”

“For
her
?” she whispered. He took her hand; it lay limp and cold between his palms.

They sat that way for many minutes. Occasionally, a car rushed by; once a large young man in the horizon-blue uniform of the New Jersey State Police slowed up as his motorcycle whizzed past, looked back, scratched his head, and sped on again. The sun was hot in the motionless car; a film of perspiration sprang up on Andrea’s forehead and little nose. Then her eyes fell, and she pulled back her hand. She did not speak.

Ellery threw the Duesenberg into gear again and the big car moved off, continuing in the direction in which they had been going. There was a faint and anxious line between his brows.

The Amazon in uniform stared at them, heaved aside, and motioned to someone in the dark corridor with a hand as large and abrupt as a traffic officer’s.

They heard Lucy’s feet before they saw her. The sound was a dreadful shuffle, slow, scraping, funereal. They had to strain their eyes as the shuffle became louder. In their nostrils was an indescribable, disagreeable odor: it seemed composed of fragments of smells coarsely blended: carbolic acid, sour bread, starch, old shoes, and the stench of wash.

Then Lucy came in. Her lifeless eyes flickered a little as she blinked at them standing behind the steel-mesh partition, clutching at the mesh like monkeys in a zoo but not chattering, so fixed and quiet that they might have been spectators at a play.

The shuffle quickened; she came to them in her clumsy prison shoes, hands outstretched a little. “I’m so glad. This is so good of you.” Her eyes, deep-set and framed in violet pain, touched Andrea’s set face almost shyly. “Both of you,” she said softly. It was hard to look at her. It was as if she had been run through a wringer and all the sap and vigor of her generous body squeezed out. Her dark skin was olive no longer, but slate, an earthy color that suggested death rather than life.

Andrea groped for her voice before she found it. “Hello,” she said, trying to smile. “Hello, Lucy Wilson.”

“How are you, Lucy? You’re looking well,” said Ellery, striving to make the lie sound natural.

“I’m all right, thank you. Very well. I—” She paused; a spasm of lightning terror flashed over her features like the shadow of a hunted thing. Then it was gone. “Isn’t Bill coming?”

“I’m sure he is. When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday.” Her bloodless fingers gripped the steel mesh; behind it her face looked like a poor engraving made from an already engraved photograph, overlaid with a double screen. “Yesterday. He comes every day. Poor Bill. He looks so badly, Ellery. Can’t you do anything with him? He really shouldn’t worry so.” Her voice drifted off. It was strange, as if everything she said were an afterthought, lying ready on the thin verge of her consciousness to be uttered as a defense against her real, her deeply hidden thoughts.

“You know how Bill is. If he hasn’t something to fret about he’s unhappy.”

“Yes,” said Lucy in a child’s tone. The ghost of a smile was on her lips, as remote from her as her voice. “Bill always was that way. He’s so strong. He always makes me feel”— the voice lifted, fell, lifted again as if in surprise at its own vitality—“good.”

Andrea started to say something but stopped before it was uttered. Her own gloved fingers were entwined in the mesh; Lucy’s face was very near hers. Her fingers contracted on the steel suddenly. “How are they treating you?” she asked, in a rush. “I mean…”

Lucy’s eyes sought hers slowly; deep eyes covered with glass, protected like her voice from the real, the free, the wide world. “Oh, quite well, thank you. I can’t complain. They’re very kind to me.”

“You have enough to…” Andrea’s cheeks began to burn. “I wonder if… Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Wilson? I mean, is there anything I can get for you, something you need, perhaps?”

Lucy looked surprised. “Need?” Her thick, vigorous, woman’s brows contracted, as if she were thinking it over. “Why, no. No, thanks.” Then, amazingly, she laughed. It was a pleasant little laugh, quite untouched by irony or scorn, naïve and full-toned. “There’s only one thing I want. But I’m afraid you couldn’t get that for me.”

“What?” pleaded Andrea. “Anything… Oh, I do want to help you. What is it you want, Mrs. Wilson?”

Lucy shook her head, smiling the faint, remote smile again. “My freedom.” The quick terror flashed over her face again and was gone.

The burn left Andrea’s cheeks; she felt Ellery’s elbow dig into her ribs and mechanically she smiled in return, “Oh,” she said. “I’m afraid—”

“I wonder where Bill is.” Lucy’s slow glance went to the visitors’ door. Andrea closed her eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching. After a while Lucy said, “I’ve fixed my—I’ve fixed the cell up so nicely. Bill brought me some flowers and pictures and things. It’s against the rules I guess, but he managed it. Bill’s so good about managing things like that.” She looked at them almost with anxiety. “Really, it’s not so bad. And then it’s only for a while, isn’t it? Bill says he’s sure that I’ll get—get off when my appeal…”

“That’s the spirit, Lucy,” said Ellery. “Chin up.” He tapped her dead fingers through the mesh. “Remember, you have friends who won’t stop working for you—ever, Lucy. You’ll remember that, won’t you?”

“If I forgot it for even a second,” she whispered, “I think I’d go mad.”

“Mrs. Wilson,” stammered Andrea. “Lucy—”

The black eyes went wistful. “How is it outside today? It looks so nice—from here.” There was a window high up in the wall, its thick squat bars straining the sunlight like a sieve. The rectangle of sky was blue there.

“I think,” said Andrea in a choking voice, “it’s going to rain. It’s really not—”

The Amazon leaning against the far stone wall said, without inflection, like an inhuman and detached metallic vocal chord, “Time’s up.”

The terror came again, but this time it did not go away. It made the muscles of Lucy’s jaw quiver as if a blunt finger had poked a raw wound. The glass shivered away from her eyes, revealing the profound and liquid agony beneath. “Oh, so soon,” she whispered, and tried to smile and then frowned and bit her lip and finally, without warning, with a devastating alteration of features, like the bursting of a dam, she began to weep.

“Lucy,” muttered Ellery.

She cried, “Oh, thank you, thank you!”, and her fingers came away from the steel screen crisscrossed with livid marks. And she turned and stumbled toward the yawning dim doorway with its grim bulk of sexless guard.

They heard her shoes scraping on the stone floor long after nothing was left behind the mesh but the woman’s scent of her hanging in the still fetid air. There was a spot of bright blood on Andrea’s lower lip.

“What the devil,” demanded a harsh voice from the visitors’ doorway, “are
you
doing here?”

Ellery came about like a startled cat. He had not wanted this. Bill Angell’s big right hand was clenched about the paper-covered butt of a bouquet of flowers whose blossoms drooped toward the floor.

“Bill,” he said swiftly. “We’ve come to—”

“Well,” growled Bill; his eyes were fixed on Andrea with a remorseless glare. “How do you like it here? Swell, eh?”

Andrea groped for Ellery’s arm; he felt her fingers tighten on his biceps. “Oh,” she said faintly. “I—”

“It’s a wonder to me you don’t collapse of sheer shame. The damned brazenness of it!” The words were arrows, bitter to the mark. “Coming here! To gloat? Well, you’ve seen her. Do you think you’ll sleep comfortably tonight?”

Ellery’s biceps hurt. Her eyes were so wide they looked unnatural. Then she released him and ran toward Bill. Her stride broke as she reached him. Reluctantly he stepped aside, still glaring. She sped past with her head lowered.

“Bill,” said Ellery quietly. Bill did not answer. He looked down at the flowers and deliberately turned his back on Ellery.

Andrea was waiting at the end of the corridor, leaning against the blank wall and sobbing. “All right, Andrea,” said Ellery. “Stop that.”

“Take me home,” she choked. “Oh, take me away from this horrible place.”

Ellery knocked at the door and Bill Angell’s weary voice said: “Come on in.” Ellery opened the door on one of the Astor’s long, old-fashioned rooms to find Bill bent over the brass bed packing a bag.

“The prodigal returns,” he said. “Hello, you fool.” He closed the door and set his back against it. Bill’s hair was tousled and there was a defiant jut to his chin. He continued packing as if no one had been there. “Don’t be an ass, Bill. Stop fiddling with those socks and listen to me.” Bill did not reply. “I’ve chased you over three States. What are you doing in New York?”

Bill straightened up then. “Isn’t this a peculiar time to be showing an interest in my affairs?”

“My interest has never flagged, old boy.”

Bill laughed. “Look here, Ellery. I don’t want any trouble with you. I don’t blame you. Your life is your own; it certainly isn’t mortgaged to me or Lucy. But since you’ve chosen to step out, please stay out. You’ll oblige me by getting the hell out of here.”

“Who says I’ve stepped out?”

“Don’t think I’m blind to what’s been going on. You’ve been rushing that Gimball girl ever since Lucy’s conviction.”

Ellery murmured, “Have you been spying on me, Bill?”

“Call it what you like.” Bill flushed. “I think it’s damned funny. I wouldn’t think so if I thought you were working on her, if your interest was professional. But I never heard of a professional interest in a woman that manifests itself by taking her to clubs and dances and dives night after night for weeks. What do you think I am, anyway—a damned fool?”

“Yes.”

Ellery pushed away from the door, tossed his hat and stick on the bed, and poked Bill so hard in the stomach that Bill gasped and fell back on the bed. “Now stay there and listen, you idiot.”

Bill jumped up, his fists flailing. “Why—”

“Pistols at dawn, eh?” Bill flushed more deeply and sat down. “In the first place,” continued Ellery calmly, lighting a cigaret, “you wouldn’t be acting such a twerp if your brain were functioning normally. But it isn’t, and so I forgive you. You’re madly in love with that girl.”

“Rot. You’re crazy yourself.”

“The mental battle to reconcile your passion with your conscience and sense of duty toward Lucy has addled your wits completely. Jealous of
me!
Bill, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”