RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (4 page)

Number (and then a set of numerals that meant nothing any more)

Chartered by: Rod and Reel Club, Amateur Sporting

Organization

Destination:
Lake Star-of-the-Woods.

Rate:
$500.

Time of Departure: Six P.M., May 31st, 19--

Pilot:
Tierney, J. L.

And then these names, as passengers, each with an accompanying address as of that time:

Garrison, Graham.

Strickland, Hugh.

Paige, Bucky.

Drew, Richard R.

Ward, Allen.

On a map, by secret lamplight, card at hand for quick reference, a ruler and a pencil plot a careful straight line between the large city, where the flight had its origin, and the small star-shaped lake, where it had its terminus. The shortest line between the two. As the crow flies. Trains don't run that way on tracks, nor cars on the roads. They can't. But a plane can, in the unobstructed air.

And between the city and the lake, this pencilled guide line passes directly over a little place called--.

The pencil-point snapped off. The body of the pencil struck the map and bounced off again. A fist clawed at the map, and as it vengefully closed and squeezed and choked it, the map rippled into furrows, was sucked up into a crushed mass between its remorseless fingers.

"He's dead," the weary-looking woman in the doorway said without emotion. "Been dead two years now. He was my older sister's eldest boy. Better off, too. Ah, it was no life for any man, risking his neck in them rotten old crates held together by wires and spit. All for a few measly dollars. Carrying drunks to conventions and lodge meetings and fishing trips and what not. No, he didn't drink himself. But the passengers all brought bottles on board, he told us so often enough. They were not supposed to, but he had to shut one eye. What could he do? It was his living. They'd hide the bottles from him, and then when they were empty they'd throw them over the side. He never actually caught them at it, but they must have. They'd all be roaring, singing drunk when they got there, and not a sign of a bottle in the plane."

"How'd he die?"

"Like his kind do," she said simply. "Deep down under the ground, and only three blocks from his home. He was jostled off the edge of a subway platform, and a train cut him in two."

The list now read:

Pilot:
Tierney, J. L. [crossed out]

Passengers:
Garrison, Graham.

Strickland, Hugh.

Paige, Bucky.

Drew, Richard R.

Ward, Allen.

THE BLINDS WERE DOWN over all the windows. There was a wreath on the door. It was raining softly, and the red-brick, white-trimmed Georgian house looked cold and lonely. The drops falling from the trees that stood around it, more clearly visible than in the open for they were held back and thickened by the screen of leaves they had to filter through, made the trees all seem to be weeping in unison.

The blinds were down on the limousine too as it turned into the rain-polished driveway and slowed to a stop before the entrance steps. The driver alighted, opened, and held the rear door.

A man got down, his face solemn, turned to face the inside of the car, and extended his arm helpfully to someone else, who was yet to appear.

A second man emerged. His face was more than solemn, it was ravaged with grief. He accepted the supporting arm, and painfully made his way up the steps. The door had already been opened to admit them by the time they reached it. A butler stood behind it, his eyes decently cast down.

Inside, there was that hushed, brooding melancholy of a house in which a death has just taken place. The two men went into a library just off the main hail. The butler tactfully closed the door after them, left them in privacy.

The one helped the other into a chair. The sitter turned his head and looked up at him presently in a sort of pathetic appeal.

"She looked natural, didn't she?"

"She looked beautiful, Gray," his friend reassured him. He clutched him hard by the shoulder for a moment, turned his head away as he did so, let his hand trail away finally in helpless inability to do more than just that.

"Don't you want to go upstairs and lie down for awhile?" he asked him.

"No, I'm all right. I'll--I'll make it." He tried, rather bravely, to smile. "It comes to everyone, and whining or whimpering doesn't make it any easier to bear. She wouldn't have wanted me to take it that way, anyhow. I want to be like she wanted me to be."

"Do you want some brandy?" his friend said softly. "It was damp out there."

"No thanks."

"How about some coffee? You haven't eaten a mouthful all day today and most of yesterday."

"Thanks, no. Not right now. There'll be time enough for all that. I'll have all the rest of my life for food and drink."

"Do you want me to stay here with you tonight? Morgan can put me up in the guest room."

Garrison raised a protesting palm. "You don't have to do that, Ed. I'm really all right. It's pretty far out here for you, and you've got an office waiting for you tomorrow. You go home and get some sleep. You've earned it. You've been swell. Don't know what I would have done. Thanks for everything."

His friend gripped his hand. "I'll call you in the morning, see how you're making out."

"I'll go up to bed in a little while," Garrison promised. "I'll sit here first and look over some of these condolence messages Morgan's stacked up here. It'll take my mind off . . ."

"Good night, Gray," his friend said quietly.

"Good night, Ed."

The door closed.

He waited until he'd heard him leave the house. Then he waited a little longer, for Morgan's inquiring good-night tap that he'd known was coming, to sound upon the door.

He told him the same thing he had his friend when he opened the door and put his head in. "You can go up now, Morgan. Don't wait for me. I'm just going to sit here awhile and look over these messages. No thanks, I don't want anything. Good night."

He was alone now. The way he wanted to be. Even in grief, it's better to be alone than with someone else.

He cried a little, first. In the way of a man who is not used to crying, who has seldom if ever cried before. In a subdued, stifled way, head within his arms. Then that was over. He raised his head, and presently his eyes had dried of themselves. He sat there thinking of her for awhile. Her laughter out there in the hail; her voice, when she came home and asked Morgan, "Is Mr. Garrison here yet?"--the sight of her in the open door, all bustle and animation, "Oh, there you are! Hello there! Did you think I was lost?"

So sudden. So sharp. So swift.

It hurt much worse, even, than the crying had. It would never stop, either. It would always go on hurting, because he would always go on thinking of her.

He tried to dispel it, assuage it, presently, by turning his attention to the messages of condolence. He began to go through them one by one. "Our deepest sympathy," "our most heartfelt sympathy," "in your loss." There was something monotonous about them. But then, he realized, what could they say? What should they say?

He went ahead. The fourth one from the top said--.

He jolted a little and his eyes opened wider.

He sat staring at it for some time. Then he sat staring off into space, but still holding it tight in his hand. Then he returned to staring at it again.

He rose and stood there now, but still staring at it. He'd placed it on the table with his hands flattened, one on either side of it, and his head inclined, acutely, tautly, staring down at it from directly above.

Then, in some kind of swift decision, he strode for the door, flung it open, and went out into the hail. He went back to where the telephone was and taking it up, dialled with nervous haste. Then he stood there waiting.

When he spoke at last, his voice dropped to a bated urgency.

"Is this the police department? This is Graham Garrison. Sixteen Penrose Drive. Could you send someone over here? An investigator? Yes, right now. As soon as possible. Of a homicidal nature. I'll discuss that with the person you send. I'd rather not over the phone."

He hung up. He went back to the library, back to the table where he'd left it. He looked at it some more.

It was unsigned. It said simply:

Now you know what it feels like.

They sent Cameron over. It was his baby from then on.

Cameron was nothing too confidence-inspiring. Perhaps because there hadn't been anyone else there at that hour, or perhaps because, in their book, that kind of a call only rated that kind of a man. Or perhaps because the draft law was already beginning to be felt and standards were going down.

Cameron's first name was MacLain, through some odd ancestral switch from front to back. It was of no consequence to anyone but himself, anyway. He was too thin, and his face wore a chronically haggard look, probably due to this fact. His cheekbones stood out and his cheeks stood in. His manner was a mixture of uncertainty, followed by flurries of hasty action, followed by more uncertainty, as if he already regretted the just preceding action. He always acted new at any given proceedings, as if he were undertaking them for the first time. Even when they were old, and he should have been used to them.

There must have been times when his clothing had been at least passable, if nothing more than that. But he must have been entirely alone when that happened, because no one else could ever remember having seen him at such a time.

On the present occasion his shirt hadn't been changed in far too many days, and it wasn't only your eyes that told you that.

"Mr. Garrison?" Cameron asked. And then he told him who he was.

Garrison said deprecatingly, "I'm sorry I did that. I guess I lost my head for a minute."

Cameron just looked a question mark at him.

"As a matter of fact, immediately after I'd called the first time," Garrison admitted, "I thought better of it, and was going to call back and tell your office not to bother. But I was afraid of making even more of a fool of myself than I had already. I'm sorry you had your trip for nothing. . . ."

"Well, what was it that you thought it was, Mr. Garrison? Would you care to tell me?"

"It isn't anything. It's just that it hit me at the wrong time, tonight of all times. I'm jumpy, you know. Overwrought. And for a moment, when I first picked this up, I had a horrible impression . . ."

Cameron waited, but he didn't finish it.

"You see, I buried my wife today," he explained.

Cameron nodded sympathetically. "I saw the wreath on the door as I came in. What is it you say you picked up?"

"This. It came among the condolences."

Cameron took it from him, studied it.

Then he raised his eyes, looked at him rather steadily.

"It's nothing, of course," Garrison said finally. "Rather cruel; bad taste; perhaps from somebody who's brooded over a loss of their own too long; but outside of that--"

Cameron had sat down suddenly, without being invited to. As though he intended staying for some time.

"Let me ask you to finish something you started to say awhile back," he said. "What was the 'horrible impression' you say you had for a moment, when you first picked this up?"

Garrison seemed reluctant to answer that. "Why, er--my wife's death was from natural causes, of course. But for a moment, when I first read this, I thought maybe it--it hadn't been after all. Without my realizing it. It almost sounded as if--as if someone had had a hand in it, had had something to do with it. It was just a horrible, mistaken idea that flashed through my mind." He ended with an apologetic smile.

Cameron didn't return the smile. "It's an idea," he concurred sombrely. "And it's horrible. But whether it's mistaken or not--that's what we're going to try to find out, starting in right now."

He picked up the note once more and balanced it, unfettered, across the tips of his upturned fingers, as though he were testing it for weight. It wasn't its physical weight that he was interested in.

"I think you did the right thing, in calling us in on this," he said.

"I'm not a patient," Cameron told Dr. Lorenz Muller's receptionist. "I don't mind waiting until the doctor can give me his full and undivided attention. In fact I'll even come back later if I have to."

"There's a gentleman here from the police department to see you about Mrs. Garrison--" And she repeated the rest of the message.

The doctor seemed to possess his full share of normal human curiosity. "You can go right in now," she relayed. A barrage of black looks from a number of stylishly-gowned women who had preceded him in the waiting room followed him as far as the inner door.

The doctor seemed to like the idea of chatting with a non-patient for a change. He even seemed to like the idea of chatting with a member of the police force, as a novelty. He lit up a cigar, offered Cameron one, and leaned back comfortably at his desk.