The Scarlet Letters (16 page)

Dirk's right shoulder came up. Ellery slipped inside the punch and pushed. Dirk fell over backward, landing on his shoulder blades on the bed. As Dirk bounced up, Ellery pushed him back again. Without slowing his stride he went to the bureau and opened the top drawer. He heard Dirk's rush coming and he turned around with the .45.

“Sit down, Dirk.”

Dirk stood there, his dark eyes flaming. “Brother Queen!”

“All right, stand,” Ellery said. “She's meeting this actor on and off, and maybe it's what it looks like. But I can't see the point of this gun, Dirk. What would it prove? That you're a better man than he is?”

“Yes!” said Dirk.

“Or does that seem like a sensible way of getting Martha back? It's no good, Dirk. It's no solution. For you or for Martha.”

Dirk grinned. At least, it was a sort of grin. He drew his lips back, and the canines showed.

“Dirk, I'm going to take this gun away with me, and I want you to promise you won't buy another.”

“You sanctimonious jerk,” said Dirk. “Do you think you can sermonize me into turning the other cheek? Do you know what they did to me? Do you know what they're doing to me?
Me
! They're killing me, one piece at a time! And they're spitting on every last bloody piece! There's nothing left! Nothing!” He stopped, swallowing. Then he said, “You've got no right. Give me my gun.”

Ellery said, “No.”

“
Give it to me.
”

“No, Dirk.”

The dark face twitched. Then Dirk looked down, and Ellery, puzzled, followed Dirk's glance to its destination.

He was looking at his hands.

When Ellery looked up, Dirk was smiling. “The hell with a gun,” said Dirk.

He turned on his heel and walked out.

At three in the morning Inspector Queen was awakened by strange noises. He reached for his Police Positive and went into the living room on the run, his nightshirt flapping.

Ellery was sitting on the foyer floor.

“Greetings and salutations,” said Ellery.

His father stared. “Hi.”

“I'm sober,” said Ellery.

“Oh?” said his father. “Yeah. Yeah, son.” He went over and tugged.

“Gun,” said Ellery, pointing a wavering finger at the Police Positive. “No, that's not it. I buried his gun in the East River. Heaved it. No more gun, Daddy.”

“Come on, son, I'll get you to bed.”

“Know what I am?” said Ellery. “I'm a pooped-out poop. Believe in heaving guns. So what? So no guns. So there you are.” He waved his arms. “You
think.
But you know what you know in your heart? You're a pooped-out poop. Because you know something? He's right. Lot of people would say he's right. You know something?”

“Come on, son.”

“Maybe I'd say it myself. Guns!”

Ellery put his arms around his father and wept.

There were no letters for the
V
and
W
meetings. Ellery witnessed them because he shadowed Martha day and night. Apparently the appointments were made from a public telephone booth, for which he breathed a prayer of thanks. It meant that for these, at least, Dirk would not be on the trail.

Martha must have called the letter-code system off.

“She knows,” Nikki said. “She knows he knows.”

Ellery saw her meet Harrison on the sidewalk before the offices of
Variety
on West 46th Street. He was not interested in them. He had eyes only for the terrain.

It was all right. Dirk was not there.

Ellery let them go.

Again, they met among the booths in the main shed of Washington Market, surrounded by the perfect vegetables and immaculate meats and jarred delicacies of the world. Harrison kissed her perfunctorily and seemed more disposed to stroll about, but Martha hurried him off, and they left by the West Street entrance to cross to the parking space below the elevated express highway, get into Harrison's car, and drive away.

Ellery had parked his car nearby, and he followed. He kept looking behind him. Dirk's shadow lurked everywhere.

Harrison drove slowly, avoiding the highway for the crowded streets. The convertible bore gradually uptown. Again it was Martha who seemed to be doing most of the talking. Occasionally Harrison turned to her, and Ellery caught a scowl on the perfect profile.

But when the actor let Martha out at Eighth Avenue and 41st Street, he watched her for a moment, and then he drove off smiling.

Martha went the rest of the way on foot to the theater where her company was rehearsing. She did not look back. She walked like a middle-aged woman.

Harrison's departing smile kept hectoring Ellery. It had seemed curiously contented.

When Nikki phoned that night, Ellery shouted at her.

Nikki did not shout back. She crept into bed and pulled the sheet over her eyes.

X· Y·

Nikki had seesawed through so many crises that, by the close of that first week in September, she was conscious of nothing more vital than a dizziness and a roaring in her ears. She could not have said what she was typing or even what day it was. Her life these days had the shimmer of a half-remembered dream.

Martha and Dirk floated in and out of a jumble of disconnected sequences. In all that week Nikki could recall no word or look between them. What went on in their bedroom at night she did not know, but in the waking hours their paths crisscrossed without touching, like the orbits of distant stars. Nikki was vaguely grateful. A collision would have sent her screaming into the night.

Remotely, she thought she knew what was happening. Dirk was ignoring Martha in order to control the direction of his life. He could not attend her and survive. And Martha … About Martha, Nikki was in total darkness. Martha got up early and bathed and dressed and fled. She came home, usually after midnight, and crept into bed.

Dirk drove hard toward the climax of his book. Nikki heard him sometimes, long after she had gone to bed, pecking at the typewriter between clinks of a bottle on a glass. It was only toward the end of the week–just before the onset of nightmare–that Nikki realized he was no longer sleeping in the bedroom but was bedding down on the living-room sofa without taking his clothes off. When Martha left in the morning, he went into the bedroom and shut the door.

So matters stood until Friday, the fourth of September–Red Friday, as Nikki ever after remembered it.

On Thursday night, when Martha had got home, she tapped on Nikki's door.

“No, Mar, it's all right,” said Nikki. “I wasn't asleep.”

Martha had not crossed the threshold. “It's Saturday night, Nikki.”

“What's Saturday night?”

“The opening. In Bridgeport.”

“Oh! Yes.” Nikki had forgotten all about the opening in Bridgeport. She had forgotten all about the Greenspan play.

“I'm leaving some tickets for you and Ellery and anyone else you'd like to have along. They'll be at the box office.”

“Aren't you excited? Thanks, Mar!”

“Will you tell Dirk?”

“Tell him what?”

“About the opening. I'll leave a ticket for him, too.”

“You mean Dirk doesn't know–?”

But Martha was gone.

Nikki gave Dirk the message Friday morning, after Martha left. His heavy brows came together painfully, and he said, “Opening?” Then he nodded and turned away.

Martha returned to the apartment just after four.

“Martha, something wrong?” It was so long since Nikki had seen Martha at home in mid-afternoon that she could only think of trouble.

“No,” said Martha coolly. “We're having the final dress tonight, and I've got to change and get up to Bridgeport.”

Martha disappeared in the bedroom and locked the door. Nikki waited until she heard the tub running, then she went back to the study.

“Who was that?” asked Dirk.

“Martha. She's holding the final rehearsal tonight.”

“In Bridgeport?”

“Of course. The scenery's all up there and everything, I suppose, and they've got to become familiar with the stage–” Nikki knew just what was going through his mind. On the road to Bridgeport lay Darien.

Dirk turned away and after a moment he resumed dictating.

At a few minutes past five the telephone rang. The extension was at her elbow and Nikki picked it up and said absently: “Lawrence residence. Hello?”

“Let me speak to Mrs. Lawrence, please.”

It was Van Harrison.

A sub-Arctic cold gripped Nikki's throat. She swallowed frantically. “She's … she's gone for the day!” She hung up, keeping her hand on the phone. “Go on, Dirk.”

“Who was that?”

“Somebody for Charlotte. Let's see, now …” As she blindly scanned the lines of typing, she gave silent thanks to the fates that had decreed Friday as Charlotte's afternoon off. “I don't know, Dirk, this last paragraph doesn't seem right to me. How about looking it over while I go out and powder my nose and stuff?”

Before Dirk could say anything, Nikki went out of the study. She closed the door.

She had just reached the foyer when the telephone rang again. She sprang at it before the ring could be repeated.

“I told you–” she began in a fierce undertone.

“Hello?” said a voice.

It was Martha, on the bedroom extension.

“Martha.” Harrison sounded peevish. “Who the devil was that just told me …?”

Nikki heard Martha's gasp. Then Martha said in a voice so harsh Nikki was confused, “It's for me, Nikki. Hang up.”

“Oh. Sorry, Mar.” Nikki depressed the bar of the phone. The pulse in her throat was annoying her. Very slowly, she released the bar.

“–knew damn well you were home,” Harrison was complaining. “I phoned you at the theater–”

“Van, are you crazy? Are you
crazy?”
The harshness was hoarseness now, an ugly sound. “I'm going to hang up–”

“Wait. I want you to come up to the house.”

“I can't. I've got to be in Bridgeport. Van, for God's sake, hang up!”

“Not till you say you'll stop in at Darien.” Harrison sounded tender, and amused, too. “Otherwise–”

“All
right!”
With a whimper, Martha slammed the phone down.

Nikki hung up. She was conscious of no thoughts, just a fear of great dimensions.

She went into the living room and paused to compose herself before opening the door to the study.

While she stood there she heard the clatter of Martha's high heels crossing the foyer, the quick door, the secretive little snick.

Martha was gone.

Nikki opened the door. “I hope I wasn't too long–”

Dirk still had the study extension to his ear.

Nikki thought she was going to die. His features held in the rigid expressionlessness of a bronze casting; for one blank moment Nikki thought he was dead.

But then he moved. He took the receiver from his ear and turned his head to look at it. The bronze shattered as he frowned. The phone dropped and dangled over the side of the desk, bumping against a drawer.

Dirk got up, pushing himself from the heels of his hands.

“Dirk. Dirk, wait.”

Nikki heard the voice clearly. She almost turned to look behind her. But then she realized it had been her own.

He came around the desk, striking his thigh against the sharp corner but paying no attention.

“Dirk, where are you going?”

He came soberly across the study, with a sort of thoughtful purpose, as if to touch her, or say something important. When he was one step away, Nikki realized that he did not even know she was there.

“Dirk!” She seized his arm.

He simply walked through her and the doorway and the living room. Nikki hung on. The arm in her grip was swollen and quivering.

He went into the bedroom and over to the bureau and opened the top drawer. After a moment he looked puzzled and hurt.

“Oh, yes,” he said. His face cleared. “He took it.”

“I'll phone Ellery, Dirk,” Nikki heard herself babbling. “You just wait here. Just one minute. When Ellery gets here–”

His arm moved and Nikki felt something flat and solid come up against her spine and the back of her head with a crash. Dirk wavered and became fluid and then the whole room went under water and after a while Nikki opened her eyes to find herself staring straight up at the plaster cupids around the ceiling fixture.

She scrambled to her feet, looking around wildly.

“Dirk!”

He was not in the bedroom.

“Dirk!”

Or the bathroom.

“Dirk!”
Nikki scampered through the apartment, shrieking his name.

But Dirk was gone, too.

The next thing Nikki knew she was railing at the telephone operator in a haughty voice for not hurrying the Darien call, and a woman's voice was saying in her ear far away, “But the line is busy. Shall I try the number again in a few minutes?”

“Oh, no, damn it,” Nikki heard herself sob, and then, somehow, there was Ellery's voice, and she was sobbing. “No, Dirk's left, he's left, and I can't get a connection with Darien–the line is busy, busy–I wanted to warn Harrison, head off Martha–he's probably left the phone off the hook so he won't be disturbed, damn his soul to hell … he's getting ready to play the great lover, he's setting his cheap little stage …”

“Nikki,” said Ellery, “wait, wait.”

But Nikki sobbed: “If he knows about Harrison, he knows where Harrison lives. He's bound to have looked it up. He's after them, Ellery, he's gone after them. He acted so–so–”

“Nikki! Nikki, listen to me,” said Ellery. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” Nikki sobbed.

“We'll have to take the West Side Highway as the shortest route–if I came east and south to pick you up we'd waste time. Get into a cab and come right over here. I'll be in front of the house in the car. Do you understand, Nikki? Come just as you are. This minute.”

Ellery drove up the West Side Highway at a carefully calculated pace, fast and slow by turns, weaving the car in and out of traffic like a tailor plying his needle.

“Faster, Ellery!”

“No, we don't want to be picked up. A stop for a ticket might be fatal. Let Dirk take the chances. He's probably racing.”

“Oh, I hope they stop him, I hope they throw the book at him … You're sure, Ellery? You're sure it was still busy?”

“I kept at it until I had to go downstairs. Harrison left the receiver off the hook, all right.”

Traffic lightened after Ellery made the turnoff into the Cross County and Hutchinson River Parkways, but the Westchester police cars were numerous here and he could not step up his speed. Nikki, tearing her nails, kept wondering how he could be so calm. Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck … the signs moved by sluggishly, like a parade of old ladies.

“There he is!” Nikki screamed. A black Buick Roadmaster was drawn up on the grass; a New York State trooper was writing a ticket on the fender. But as Ellery braked past, Nikki saw that the man behind the wheel had an oystershell face and gray hair and fat fair hands with a diamond on one finger.

Then they were in Connecticut, on the Merritt Parkway.

It was interminable. Nikki closed her eyes …

She came to with a start. They were off the Parkway, careening down a narrow twisting blacktop road at high speed.

“You slept.”

“I couldn't have,” Nikki moaned.

“We're almost there.”

Dirk's Buick was up on Harrison's perfect lawn at a crazy angle, a foot from the stone steps.

The Buick was empty.

The front door of the house stood open.

Ellery sprang up the steps and into Harrison's living room. A small wiry man in a black suit and bow tie was rattling the telephone. His slant eyes bulged. “I call police,” he said excitedly. “I call police!”

By the time Nikki scrambled in, Ellery was three quarters of the way up the stairs. He was shouting, “Dirk, stop, stop!” Furniture, glass were breaking overhead.

Ellery streaked down the hall to the master bedroom.

Martha lay at the foot of the circular bed. One skirmish in the battle had flung her there. Her dress was disordered; she kept plucking at it witlessly. Her eyes were animal with horror.

Dirk and Van Harrison were fighting up and down the bedroom with fists and knees and teeth. Harrison's toupee had been torn from his scalp; it hung crazily over one ear. One cheek was scraped and scratched. Dirk's nose was streaming; some of his blood was on Harrison.

Harrison was in a dressing gown. It was ripped; it kept tripping him up.

The room was a shambles. The mirrored ceiling was smashed in two places; glass was strewn all over the black fur rug. They had been hurling the nude sculptures at each other; the oval picture window beyond the ebony desk was shattered where a nymph had gone through, and fragments of broken statuary littered the room. A chair lay in pieces. Two lamps had been knocked over, and some of the photographs had fallen from the walls.

Ellery lowered his chin and charged.

For a moment the struggle was three-cornered. He had managed to get between them and they were both tearing at him, snarling like dogs. They punched and strained and lurched and clawed across the room to the desk and knocked the portable typewriter to the floor. A fist hit Ellery and he stumbled over the typewriter and staggered backwards, trying to keep his balance. His head slammed against the wall and he slid to the floor, dazed, beside the bed.

From this position, as helpless as Nikki frozen in the doorway on the other side of the bed, Ellery watched the climax of the nightmare.

The collision of the three thrashing bodies with the desk had shoved open the flat middle drawer.

When Ellery could focus, he saw Van Harrison on the rug before the desk, clutching his groin, his lips curled in agony. Dirk was prone on the desk, where he had been flung in the last savage exchange. His right arm was stretched out and lay in the open drawer. His mouth was open and the blood from his nose dripped over his bruised lips and chin and stained his teeth.

Ellery saw Dirk's head come around and fix on something in the drawer which his hand was touching. His hand came up and his body came up after it, and he looked down at the thing he was clutching.

It was Harrison's .22.

Harrison lurched to his feet, plunged. Dirk shot five times. Red holes appeared at Harrison's throat, chest, abdomen. Two of the bullets dissolved the mirror over the bureau.

Martha screamed.

Dirk turned in a glassy way toward the bed. The gun went off again, and again, and again, and again. After the ninth shot there were no more explosions, but he kept squeezing the trigger.