I am not a fanciful or figurative man; I can watch symbolic dancing from Pavlova and Ukrainsky up and down and, unless I hold my programme in a good light, the performance never brings to me any pervading sense of “Dawn” or “Death,” of “The Swan” or “Wild Pansies.” But that dance of Shirley Scofield’s gave me a thrill.
It was a dance, almost, as she tossed and flung herself to the lilt of the song I could not hear. Perhaps you say I took my thrill from the programme which Jerry had furnished to me. Let it go at that; anyway, I got it. Youth was set on snapping her chains to-night; and it was not to be nice snapping. Not at all! Youth was wild, orgiastic, reckless and bent on being free.
I thought her over while I stood out there after her dance was done and she had disappeared. Beyond any doubt, she was Christina. For her appearance to me in that room beside the river, she’d assumed yellow hair and a different dress and changed several other things; yet I was sure of her. I wondered what was her place in the plot afoot to-night.
I was looking in on a last act, I knew; the first had started long ago when Win Scofield met her in some cabaret and she decided to marry him. She might have been Keeban’s woman then, I thought; and he, hearing her plan, had told her to go ahead. Or perhaps he had made the plan for her, marking up Win Scofield on his board then; and to-night old Win’s number had come to the top.
I went down the street to my car and started the engine and kept it going to be ready while I watched. Ten minutes past eleven, I saw a light in Win Scofield’s garage; a black car came out and a girl got into it. I waited until it was in the street and then, stepping on my gas, I charged up the road and gave that black car all I had.
It went into the curb and smashed a wheel and bent the axle too. I wrecked my front, naturally. Shirley Scofield’s driver was out yelling at me; he turned and opened the door of his car and switched on the light and I saw Christina sitting in a corner. Youth snapping her chains wasn’t there. A scared girl was, you’d think; but she wasn’t scared. Not she! She was merely pretending to be frightened, while she sat there mighty quiet and trying to size me up.
She was wondering whether I recognized her from that room by the river, I thought; she must have been wondering several other things. For one, how did I happen to run into her just at this moment? For another, how much did I know?
One thing about me, I’m slow but I’m not expressive. I may be gradual about getting a fact from somebody else but not many learn much from me. In bridge, when I bid my hand, nobody’s sure whether I have the cards or whether I’m just trying to force the other fellow up. To-night I stepped up to the car as though I’d no idea who might be in it.