MURDER MEANT LITTLE TO FLESHMAN. Not nearly, any more as much as it once had. The thrill of it was no longer crisp, bitter, stimulating, like a shot of acid. What bother there was came only at the time and was quickly put away. It was a job he did. Something to be done carefully, of course, for the one treasure he really had was his life, the one he was living here and now. He did not believe in God or a hereafter—when he died the worms would simply get him, or some ganglion-hunting medical student. Eternity was here on earth; that was all there would be, there wasn’t any more. He did not wish it terminated prematurely by an electrode on his ankle and another on his head.
He said, “We’re coming into the station.”
Walheim said a brassy-faced nothing.
Having passed 125th Street Station without stopping, the train had been for some time running in the tunnel, going as gently as a fish-worm in its hole. There was a difference in the sounds, a change in the whole spirit of the train. It was not, of course, tired, but it seemed so, weary and cranky as well, for presently it began to be affected by a succession of jerks and starts which, while they did not stop progress, gave the train the air of stumbling, of fussing, perhaps, with other trains for a favorable spot on one of the many tracks beneath the great city terminal. Beyond the window, all about, were grubby dimness and redoubtable concrete and steel columns supporting the roof and the street above it. There were other trains, but only passenger trains now. Their windows were strung together like geometrically square beads ornamented with little pictures of diner tables without cloths, seats upholstered in deep blue or green, the faces of passengers—seated and composed on outgoing trains; on their feet and strung out in aisles on incoming trains. There was more cantankerous jerking, louder clanking; the pullman gave little jumps of tired rage.
Fleshman drew his eyes from the window, sighing. “A nasty feeling, being underground,” he remarked. “Nothing makes me feel more creepy. The result, I imagine, of not having any ancestors who were miners.”
Walheim asked woodenly, “You going to wait?”
“I believe it best.”
“Why?”
Fleshman’s hands spread palms upward placidly. “The odds are not too good.”
“And the luck is damned bad,” Walheim amended.
Fleshman moved to the berth. He stood looking down at Julie Edwards.
“Do you understand what we’re talking about?” he asked her.
“The same thing, I suppose,” she said. She seemed to hear a voice saying this, a detached voice that could hardly be her own.
“Oh no.” Fleshman shook his head slowly. “It is not quite the same thing. You see, we have decided you intend to be stupid. So-o-o-o.” He ducked his head and raised his shoulders lazily. “So-o-o-o, I must kill you.” _
The voice that was hardly hers said, as it had said many times before during the last thirty minutes: “Martha did not send me anything to keep for her.”
“A lie.”
“No, Martha did not sen ...” The words stopped. What was the use?
Walheim strode over, bent down, said harshly, “Listen, damn you, if you don’t talk—” His hand came up in front of his chest and the fingers spread, then clenched.
“I think she knows that as soon as we’re in the station I’m going to kill her,” Fleshman said. “She knows that—so what more is there to say?”
“She’s a crazy fool!”
“True.”
Walheim scowled at Julie. “Tutz, how far do you think you can ride your luck?” he asked bitterly.
“A couple of minutes, we’ll be there,” Fleshman said.
Walheim stepped back. “While the passengers are leaving the train—that’ll be the best time.”
The train went very slowly now. There had just been a fusillade of jerks and coupling crashes; this, one knew instinctively, was the final display of temperament before the train came to rest. There were soiled gray platforms outside, a redcap running beside the train.
Julie Edwards had great fortitude. The ability to take shock and pain without showing outward stress had been natural equipment for her as long as she could remember, but for the last year or two she had had the idea that it was a symptom of the inwardness which she was becoming alarmed about, so she had stopped regarding it with pride and instead had begun viewing with resentment.
This matter of ingrowth had become increasingly important in a rather crawling fashion over a period of time. It was her first impression that the thing was taking hold of her at about the same pace as and along with her dissatisfaction over being stuck with a dull life and a mediocre job, but this theory didn’t hold up under analysis. It did not take much reflection to realize that the tendency had been present for as long as she could remember.
She was a good swimmer and played a nice game of golf, scoring in the eighties or occasionally in the high seventies. She danced well, if precisely. In fact in everything she did which involved muscular activity, her approach was thoughtful and intense, with the result that she was usually excellent, or if not, her grasp of the form and fundamentals was good. She had a passive dislike for bridge, poker, in fact all games in which luck rather than thought and skill was a decisive factor. Her fondness and understanding of music were considerable, yet she had never been able to sing—due, she realized acutely, to inability to relax and overcome self-consciousness—and she could play no musical instruments, for the same reason. She was learning to fly and had eighteen hours solo and twelve dual. She had soloed in the usual eight hours. She felt she had never yet made a really perfect landing, although around the airport the talk was that she had never made a bad one. Her flight instructor considered her the safest student he had ever had.
A small town is very social, and she took her part. For parties, socials, town projects, she was sought after more than she sought. She had great prestige, embarrassing, as a source of miscellany and obscure facts. From parties she drew a deep enjoyment which was not exhibited, for it was the pleasure of being exposed to and warmed by the joy of the others rather than headlong participation herself. As a small girl, she had been a wallflower. She still was, but it was better covered.
Actually she had an acute need for affection, from the lack of which she suffered. The need—for attention, love, appreciation, coddling—hit her in attacks and was not continuous. Loneliness came suddenly, with smashing effects, yet she seemed constitutionally unable to do anything about it. There were an ample number of acceptable and willing men, but she had not fallen in love with any of them. She was not glacial. Her impulses were quick, intense, climactic, but of short duration.
There were plenty of long-standing traits indicating restraint, inhibition, the desire sedulously to avoid attracting attention to herself. When she excelled at parties and sports it was in an effort to be one of the crowd and blend. She was inclined—much more lately—to analyze herself, and things which she had taken to be habits, once she put her coldly suspicious eye on them, proved not to be habits. Small things, when she dissected them, could be exceedingly disturbing. An example was her system of eating several times a day, light snacks; her hunger was always quick in onset and intense in quality. When she examined this, noting that almost no one else ate that way, she stopped doing it only to find she had an actual need to eat that way. This was definitely evidence of forebrain control of the digestive tract, not just a habit. It was as difficult to change, almost, as it was to grow short after you had grown tall.
Fortunately she was not neurotic, and certainly there was no pathology. She was healthy and always felt physically fine, although there was a tendency toward tonsillitis which disappeared when she had her tonsils out. Being intelligent, she had not resigned herself to increasing inwardness. She was fighting it. As the battle progressed her alarm grew, one of the most disturbing incidents coming when she attempted to use plain will power. The will-power treatment distinctly added to the ability of stubborn resistance which her forebrain already had.
Now, here on the train, faced with real danger, violence, connivance, suspense—now murder—she was internally adequate. Outwardly she was, if not calm, able to show a glacial self-sufficiency. But it did not change fundamental nature—such as the fact that she did not want to die.
The train stopped. There was no sensation; the platform merely no longer moved past. In the corridor passengers were stirring, crowding against each other, luggage was banging against the walls. A few glittering particles of snow, unmelted by the thin rain, dislodged from the roof and sifted past the window. Somewhere a porter began shouting for business, and from the vestibules there came slapping and scraping sounds of suitcases being unloaded.
“We’re in.” Walheim leaned forward and laid a hand on his suitcase. His face had a slight shine of perspiration that had come out in a film rather than in droplets. “This is it,” he added.
Fleshman slid his limpid eyes across Walheim’s face. “Is there a hurry?”
“You expect to stay here?”
“That is a nice thought.” Fleshman nodded appreciatively; his lips moved as if he were tasting the idea. “Stay here, make the policemen feel silly. They’ll be at the exit gates of course. With waiting arms.” His sigh was regretful. “Too bad we can’t stay in these fine quarters awhile. But I think the porters will soon come. They go through the train hunting oversleeping passengers, I seem to remember.”
“Ah!” Walheim swung on Julie Edwards. “Hold up your arms, tutz!”
She already lay on the berth, which they had searched. Walheim snapped the blanket over her, up under her chin. “Arms down!” he ordered. Then he tucked the outer edges of the blanket around her arms so that she would probably become entangled in it if she tried to move swiftly. “You’ve been asleep. Get it? You’re our sister, and you overslept—in case a porter looks in.”
She shuddered. The man had a raw animal force that she could almost smell. Walheim she had sized up as an assertive, fierce, heartless man, one who might have a superficial popularity but who never had an emotional interest in the desires of another person. Fleshman was more difficult to index. He was temperamentally greedy and comfort-loving, but with something left out of his make-up so that he was far the more terrible of the two.
Chance Molloy would have a lot of Walheim’s assertiveness and—on provocation—fierceness, but beyond that there was no resemblance. Molloy’s power stood a shining thing, not to be feared; his fierceness was a keen blade held by a knowing, just hand; he was in his way, she stood ready to believe, a far more relentless man than either Walheim or Fleshman, and certainly a man with greater mental values.
She waited. She had, she imagined, a pallid look and a beaten desperation, like one who had struggled far against a hard, cold wind. Her fingers were not numb, but when she moved them one against the other they were dry and unnatural and smooth, as if they were feeling a piece of silk. Sounds were loud, or seemed so. The passengers had moved out of the car. Some still passed the window, carrying baggage. A baggage hand truck went grinding and hammering past, a redcap pushing, another pulling. A mountain of miscellaneous baggage, rounded, precariously wedged, loaded the truck.
The train, this car anyway, was becoming emptied and inert, with an air of urgency spent and gone. Even the litter of passage, match stumps, empty wadded cigarette packages, discarded newspapers, which had in a sense belonged earlier, was now scattered and ugly and looked exactly what it was, trash. Even the silence had a tired, hard-used quality.
A knock sounded ... In a moment another.
Fleshman sighed deeply. His soft face was shades paler ... Walheim, a hand suddenly at Julie Edwards’s throat, whispered, “Ask who it is!”
Her eyes lifted to Walheim’s in a detached way. She knew what she would do. This was no call for an instant decision sprung upon her; it brought no crash-bang disassociation of action from fact. She’d had time to decide, plan, to lay a direct course ... If this was Chance Molloy, she would warn him.
“Is it Dr. Williams?” she called.
“Yes, it is,” came an amiable male voice through the door. “How are you?”
“Oh, much better, doctor.”
“May I come in?”
“I—I’m not dressed yet. I’m sorry.”
“Well ... Okay. As long as you’re feeling all right, I won’t need to come in.”
“Thank you for checking up, doctor.”
“Don’t mention it ... Good-by—oh! Oh, by the way, I saw Mr. Molloy a moment ago. He and some policemen have been searching the train for a footpad. They watched the passengers and didn’t see the fellow disembark. They think he’s left the train along the line somewhere. But they’re searching the train again. Mr. Molloy asked me to tell you. He said not to worry ... They’re in the next car to the rear, just starting on it, I think. So Mr. Molloy will be here presently.”
“Thank you,” Julie said. “And good-by.”
“Right. Take care of yourself.”
Footsteps went away along the corridor.
Breathing, which had hung suspended in the stateroom, now resumed. Walheim slowly straightened from his crouch over Julie; his finger tips, dragging across the rough blanket, made a distinct sound. His thin-lipped mouth was open and fishlike.
Fleshman swung to Walheim a face that was, except for a lack of hearty color, not greatly discomposed. He said, “In the next car ....” He passed the tip of his tongue over his lips. He moved his gaze to Julie. “Huh-uh!” he said. “Not this way—not with johns in the next car. Maybe at the exit gate too. Huh-uh.” His eyes whipped back to Walheim. “I think she’s been lucky twice,” he said.
Stooping, bending legs rather than body the way fat men learn to do, Fleshman grasped his gladstone, lifted it, picked his topcoat from the hook where it was hanging, and left the compartment without a backward glance.
Walheim wrenched his head up, accepted, stunned, the fat man’s flight. His fingers, pressed hard against his thighs, slowly assumed a splayed position. Presently he secured his own bag and topcoat, then Julie Edwards’s bag, and went out.