XVIII
Her voice died, and she shivered a little. The robe I had given her had fallen away from her white shoulders. Whether or not it was because she was so close against my shoulder, I shivered, too. And my fingers, fumbling in my pocket for a cigarette, brought it out twisted and mashed.
“That’s all there is to the part you promised to listen to,” she said softly, her face turned half away. “I wanted you to know. You’re a hard man, but somehow I—”
I cleared my throat, and the hand that held the mangled cigarette was suddenly steady.
“Now don’t be crude, sister,” I said. “Your work has been too smooth so far to be spoiled by rough stuff now.”
She laughed—a brief laugh that was bitter and reckless and just a little weary, and she thrust her face still closer to mine, and the grey eyes were soft and placid.
“Little fat detective whose name I don’t know”—her voice had a tired huskiness in it, and a tired mockery—“you think I am playing a part, don’t you? You think I am playing for liberty. Perhaps I am. I certainly would take it if it were offered me. But—Men have thought me beautiful, and I have played with them. Women are like that. Men have loved me and, doing what I liked with them, I have found men contemptible. And then comes this little fat detective whose name I don’t know, and he acts as if I were a hag—an old squaw. Can I help then being piqued into some sort of feeling for him? Women are like that. Am I so homely that any man has a right to look at me without even interest? Am I ugly?”
I shook my head.
“You’re quite pretty,” I said, struggling to keep my voice as casual as the words.
“You beast!” she spat, and then her smile grew gentle again. “And yet it is because of that attitude that I sit here and turn myself inside out for you. If you were to take me in your arms and hold me close to the chest that I am already leaning against, and if you were to tell me that there is no jail ahead for me just now, I would be glad, of course. But, though for a while you might hold me, you would then be only one of the men with which I am familiar: men who love and are used and are succeeded by other men. But because you do none of these things, because you are a wooden block of a man, I find myself wanting you. Would I tell you this, little fat detective, if I were playing a game?”
I grunted noncommittally, and forcibly restrained my tongue from running out to moisten my dry lips.
“I’m going to this jail tonight if you are the same hard man who has goaded me into whining love into his uncaring ears, but before that, can’t I have one wholehearted assurance that you think me a little more than ‘quite pretty’? Or at least a hint that if I were not a prisoner your pulse might beat a little faster when I touch you? I’m going to this jail for a long while—perhaps to the gallows. Can’t I take my vanity there not quite in tatters to keep me company? Can’t you do some slight thing to keep me from the afterthought of having bleated all this out to a man who was simply bored?”
Her lids had come down half over the silver-grey eyes; her head had tilted back so far that a little pulse showed throbbing in her white throat; her lips were motionless over slightly parted teeth, as the last word had left them. My fingers went deep into the soft white flesh of her shoulders. Her head went further back, her eyes closed, one hand came up to my shoulder.
“You’re beautiful as all hell!” I shouted crazily into her face, and flung her against the door.
It seemed an hour that I fumbled with starter and gears before I had the car back in the road and thundering toward the San Mateo County jail. The girl had straightened herself up in the seat again, and sat huddled within the robe I had given her. I squinted straight ahead into the wind that tore at my hair and face, and the absence of the windshield took my thoughts back to Porky Grout.
Porky Grout, whose yellowness was notorious from Seattle to San Diego, standing rigidly in the path of a charging metal monster, with an inadequate pistol in each hand. She had done that to Porky Grout—this woman beside me! She had done that to Porky Grout, and he hadn’t even been human! A slimy reptile whose highest thought had been a skinful of dope had gone grimly to death that she might get away—she—this woman whose shoulders I had gripped, whose mouth had been close under mine!
I let the car out another notch, holding the road somehow.
We went through a town: a scurrying of pedestrians for safety, surprised faces staring at us, street lights glistening on the moisture the wind had whipped from my eyes. I passed blindly by the road I wanted, circled back to it, and we were out in the country again.