"I wish more men had convictions," she said. "Even when I don't agree.
Everybody respects everybody else's sensibilities so much these days,
there's nothing left to talk about but football scores."
"You're very kind," he said. "Ah, here come the appetizers. Pay special
attention to the characteristically Dutch delicacy, Russian eggs, but
don't ask me how they came by that name."
* * * * *
Later, after much talk, some of it with enough laughter to tell him she
was a merry soul in better days:
A ruby spark lay in their glasses of Cherry Heering. "This isn't Dutch
either," said Kintyre. "However."
"Do you know," she said, "I begin to understand the old idea of a wake.
Getting the clan together and having one fine brawling celebration.
It's more an act of love, really, than drawing the parlor curtains and
talking in hushed voices."
"That's the Latin who speaks," he said. "We Protestant races are cursed
with the tradition that misery is a virtue."
"But you, you Bostonian Scot or whatever you are--I hear a trace of
accent--_you_ approve."
"I left Boston for the Pacific at the arthritic age of nine."
"What was the reason for that?"
"My father was a marine architect. He was laid off in, uh, 1930. Being
an imaginative man, he spent his savings on a schooner, hired a Mexican
crew, and we all lit out for the South Seas. For seven years we lived
on that schooner."
"Bruce told me you were a sailor." Her eyes were very bright upon him.
"But how did you make it pay?"
"Miscellaneously. Sometimes we carried cargo and passengers between
islands. The passengers were usually Kanakas, and those who didn't have
money would pay us in food and hospitality when we got where we were
going. Father wasn't after riches anyway. His main enterprise was to
gather and prepare marine specimens, for museums and colleges and so
on. Toward the end, he was making a name for himself. Well, we never
saw much cash money, but we never needed a lot either."
Kintyre held his glass to the light, tossed it off and followed it
with a scalding sip of coffee. Why was he speaking of this? He had
barely mentioned his youth to anyone else, except Trig, who was the
friend of a dozen years. Trig had led him into the dojo, hoping that
its discipline of mind as well as body would strangle the horror. But
Corinna had the story out of him in a matter of hours, not even knowing
what she did.
He had taken her for Morna last night.
"What happened?" she asked. Her tone said that he needn't answer unless
he wanted to.
"A typhoon and a lee shore," he said. "I was the only survivor."
He took out a cigarette. She folded her hands and waited, in case he
should want to say more.
"That was in the Gilbert Islands," he continued after the smoke was
curling down his tongue. "The British authorities shipped me home. The
guardianship was wished onto a cousin of my mother's. So I went to the
boarding school I spoke of, and summers I worked at a seaside resort.
Don't feel sorry for me, it was quite a good life."
"But a lonely one," she said.
He grinned with a single corner of his mouth. "'_He travels the fastest
who travels alone._'"
"I understand a great deal now." She held her cup so lightly that he
grew aware he was in danger of breaking his. Tendon by tendon, he
eased his fingers. "Yes," she said after a moment. "Bruce was always
puzzled by you. As I imagine most people are. You don't seem to belong
anywhere, to anything or anyone. And yet you do. You belong to a world
that foundered in the ocean."
It jarred him. Not given to self-analysis, he had imagined he lived a
logical, well adapted round of days.
"Sometime you'll build it again," she said. "Oh, not the physical ship,
you've more important things on hand, but a personal world."
And again it was a blow, to be shown himself as alien as a castaway
from Mars.
"Please," he said, more roughly than he had intended. "I don't find my
personality the most interesting object on earth."
She nodded, as if to herself. The long hair swept her flat high-boned
cheeks. "Of course. You wouldn't."
"Perhaps I'd better take you home now," he said, without noticeable
enthusiasm. "Are you working tomorrow?"
"Only if I feel like it, my boss told me. I'd planned to, but--Are you
in any hurry?"
"Contrariwise." _I don't think I would sleep much._
"Then could we go somewhere and talk? I'd like to ask you some things."
"I'd love to be asked. I know a place."
* * * * *
It was small, dark, and masculine, undegraded by jukebox or television.
Kintyre led Corinna into a booth at the rear.
"They serve steam beer," he said. "The only really good beer made in
this country."
"Oof! I couldn't. Another Irish, if I may. I promise to go slow." Her
tone was not as light as the words.
Nonetheless, he needed a little while to sense the trouble in her.
After much time she met his eyes, obviously forcing his own. "Dr.
Kintyre," she began.
He was about to ask her to use his given name; and then he thought how
little intimacy could be achieved in this American cult of first-name
familiarity with all the universe. "Yes?" he said.
"I would--I would have thanked you for a wonderful time, which helped
me more than you know. And then I would have gone home. But--"
He waited.
"I don't know how to say it," she stumbled. "I knew you were
Bruce's--Bruce's brother, the one he should have had. But only tonight
could I _feel_ it." She searched for a phrase. Finally: "I don't
believe I could hurt myself by being serious with you."
"I hope not," he said, as grave as she. "I can't promise it."
"Why did you go to the Michaelises last night?"
"I'm not quite sure."
"You want to discover who killed Bruce? Isn't that it?"
"I am not a self-appointed detective. The police can do that job
infinitely better than I. But I have been thinking."
"What do you think?" she persisted.
"I certainly wouldn't go accusing someone who--"
"Can you realize what Bruce meant to me?" She asked it quietly, as a
meaningful request for truth. "We were more than siblings. We were
friends, all our lives, in a way they haven't made words for."
"I do know," he said, and he would have told it to few other creatures
that lived. "I had a younger sister myself."
"Even after he left home--can you imagine the way he continued to watch
over me? How often he stepped in and used a word or two to straighten
out a lonesome, confused, unhappy girl whom nobody else liked; how he
steered me toward the kind of people I can feel at home with; how he
healed the breach with my parents, when I _had_ to get away and they
didn't understand; how he got me out of a wretched business office and
into the museum, where I can like what I'm doing and believe it has
some value. You knew Bruce, did you know that side of him?"
"No," said Kintyre. "He wouldn't have talked about it. Still, yes, I
can imagine."
"And he was lured somewhere, and tortured, and murdered," she said. The
lacquered fingernails stood white where she caught the table edge.
Kintyre didn't touch her himself, but he held out his hand. She gripped
it for a while. Her face was lowered. When she let go and looked up
again, he saw tears.
"I'm sorry," she gulped. "I promised not to bawl, and then--"
Kintyre let her have it out. It didn't take long, nor was it noisy.
She said at last, in a wire-thin voice: "Why was it done? Who would do
it, to him of all people in the world?"
"I don't know," said Kintyre. "I just don't know."
"But you can guess, can't you? You know everyone concerned. That writer
he was having the fight with. That businessman who owns the thesis
manuscript. Gene Michaelis. You could be wrong! Even his girl, God help
me for saying it. Who?"
"Why must you know?" he asked.
"Why?" It took her aback. "To know! To understand--"
"Do you want to be reassured the murderer won't strike at you next? I
hardly think you need fear that."
"Of course not!" she flared. "I want to know so the world can make some
sense again."
"That's too metaphysical to be true," he said.
Briefly, she shivered with tension. Then, leaning back, she picked up
her whisky glass and sipped of it and asked coldly:
"Where did you go last night after you left the Michaelis place?"
"Home," he said.
"Guido was badly shaken today. He hadn't slept at all, I could see that
in the morning. He stayed around the apartment like a hurt animal. I
know him, he's terrified." Corinna spat as if at an enemy: "What did
you do to him?"
"Nothing!" said Kintyre.
Her lip caught her teeth.
"I didn't think of it till just now," she breathed. "But it all fits.
You do know something. In God's name, tell me!"
He said, with an overpowering compassion: "I see. You're afraid Guido
is involved."
"Yes," she said dully.
"Why should he be?"
"Oh--I don't know--jealousy? Who can tell? Guido always seemed like the
wild, reckless one and Bruce a mama's boy. Yet it was Bruce who left
home and Guido never has."
"Let's have no half-digested psychological theory," he said, purposely
astringent. "Stick to facts. What leads you to suspect your brother is
involved?"
"I might as well tell you," she sighed. "Last week he was dropping
all kinds of dark hints about a big job which would take him out of
town over the weekend. He's like that, has to sound important, mostly
there's no harm in it. But he came back Monday evening with a good deal
of money. I knew he was broke before. He had even been forced to sell
his car. He came in loaded with expensive presents for all of us, and
had a fat roll in his wallet. Of course, when we told him about Bruce,
that more or less made us forget it. But then today, how frightened he
was--
"What happened last night?"
Kintyre took out a cigarette. "Excuse me while I think," he said. He
made a ceremony of lighting it.
"Guido is in trouble," he admitted. "I don't know how closely related
to the murder it is."
"Don't misunderstand me." Her face could have been modeled in chalk. "I
never thought Guido would--would dream of--no! But he could have been
drawn into something. And what would the police think?"
"Uh-huh. The same notion occurred to me."
"What happened, then?"
He told her.
"Oh, no." Her eyes closed.
"You see my dilemma," he said wearily. "I'll protect Guido if
my conscience will let me, even though it's already led me into
lawbreaking. But I don't know, I can't tell--"
She opened her eyes again. They blazed.
"Thank You," she said, not to Kintyre.