“You don’t have very good security at your house.”
“I have a right to protect myself, when people connive against me.”
“Your father thinks he’s protecting you.”
“Oh, certainly. By trying to destroy the only happiness I’ll ever know or want.” There was a lilt of hysteria in her voice. “Father pretends to love me, but I believe in his secret heart of hearts he wishes me ill. He wants me to be lonely and miserable.”
“That’s not very sensible talk.”
She shifted her mood abruptly. “But what you’re doing is very sensible, I suppose. Sneaking around other people’s houses pretending to be something different from what you are.”
“It wasn’t a good idea.”
“So you admit it.”
“I should have gone about it in a different way.”
“You’re cynical.” She curled her lips at me youngly. “I don’t know how you can bear to live with yourself.”
“I was trying to do a job. I bungled it. Let’s start over.”
“I have nothing to say to you whatever.”
“I have something to say to you, Miss Blackwell. Are you willing to sit in the car and listen to me?”
“You can say it right out here.”
“I don’t want interruptions,” I said, looking back toward the beach house.
“You don’t have to be afraid of Burke. I didn’t tell him who you are. I don’t like to upset him when he’s working.”
She sounded very much like a young wife, or almost-wife. I made a comment on this. It seemed to please her.
“I love him. It’s no secret. You can write it down in your little black book and make a full report of it to Father. I love Burke, and I’m going to marry him.”
“When?”
“Very soon now.” She hid her secret behind a hushed mysterious look. Perhaps she wasn’t sure she had a secret to hide. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you when or where. Father would call out the National Guard, at least.”
“Are you getting married to please yourself or spite your father?”
She looked at me uncomprehendingly. I had no doubt it was a relevant question, but she didn’t seem to have an answer to it.
“Let’s forget about Father,” I said.
“How can I? There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to stop us. He said so himself.”
“I’m not here to stop your marriage, Miss Blackwell.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
“Find out what I can about your friend’s background.”
“So Father can use it against him.”
“That’s assuming there’s something that can be used.”
“Isn’t that your assumption?”
“No. I made it clear to Colonel Blackwell that I wouldn’t go along with a smear attempt, or provide the material for any kind of moral blackmail. I want to make it clear to you.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you?”
“Why not? I have nothing against your friend, or against you. If you’d co-operate–”
“Oh, very likely.” She looked at me as though I’d made an obscene suggestion. “You’re a brash man, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying to make the best of a bad job. If you’d co-operate we might be able to get it over with in a hurry. It’s not the kind of a job I like.”
“You didn’t have to take it. I suppose you took it because you needed the money.” There was a note of patronage in her voice, the moral superiority of the rich who never have to do anything for money. “How much money is Father paying you?”
“A hundred a day.”
“I’ll give you five hundred, five days’ pay, if you’ll simply go away and forget about us.”
She took out her red wallet and brandished it.
“I couldn’t do that, Miss Blackwell. Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good. He’d go and hire himself another detective. And if you think I’m trouble, you should take a look at some of my colleagues.”
She leaned on the white guard rail and studied me in silence. Behind her the summer tide had begun to turn. The rising surge slid up the beach, and sanderlings skimmed along its wavering edges. She said to an invisible confidant located somewhere between me and the birds: “Can the man be honest?”
“I can and am. I can, therefore I am.”
No smile. She never smiled. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do about you. You realize this situation is impossible.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Don’t you have any interest in your fiancé’s background?”
“I know all I need to know.”
“And what is that?”
“He’s a sweet man, and a brilliant one, and he’s had a very rough time. Now that he’s painting again, there’s no limit to what he can accomplish. I want to help him develop his potential.”
“Where did he study painting?”
“I’ve never asked him.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Long enough.”
“How long?”
“Three or four weeks.”
“And that’s long enough to make up your mind to marry him?”
“I have a right to marry whom I please. I’m not a child, and neither is Burke.”
“I realize he isn’t.”
“I’m twenty-four,” she said defensively. “I’m going to be twenty-five in December.”
“At which time you come into money.”
“Father’s briefed you very thoroughly, hasn’t he? But there are probably a few things he left out. Burke doesn’t care about money, he despises it. We’re going to Europe or South America and live very simply, and he will do his work and I will help him and that will be our life.” There were stars in her eyes, dim and a long way off. “If I thought the money would prevent me from marrying the man I love, I’d give it away.”
“Would Burke like that?”
“He’d love it.”
“Have you discussed it with him?”
“We’ve discussed everything. We’re very frank with each other.”
“Then you can tell me where he comes from and so on.”
There was another silence. She moved restlessly against the guard rail as though I had backed her into a corner. The chancy stars in her eyes had dimmed out. In spite of her protestations, she was a worried girl. I guessed that she was mainlining on euphoria, which can be as destructive as any drug.
“Burke doesn’t like to talk about the past. It makes him unhappy.”
“Because he’s an orphan?”
“That’s part of it, I think.”
“He must be thirty. A man stops being an orphan at twenty-one. What’s he been doing since he gave up being a full-time orphan?”
“All he’s ever done is paint.”
“In Mexico?”
“Part of the time.”
“How long had he been in Mexico when you met him?”
“I don’t know. A long time.”
“Why did he go to Mexico?”
“To paint.”
We were going around in circles, concentric circles which contained nothing but a blank. I said: “We’ve been talking for some time now, and you haven’t told me anything that would help to check your friend out.”
“What do you expect? I haven’t pried into his affairs. I’m not a detective.”
“I’m supposed to be,” I said ruefully, “but you’re making me look like a slob.”
“That could be because you are a slob. You could always give up and go away. Go back to Father and tell him you’re a failure.”
Her needle failed to strike a central nerve, but I reacted to it. “Look here, Miss Blackwell. I sympathize with your natural desire to break away from your family ties and make a life of your own. But you don’t want to jump blindly in the opposite direction–”
“You sound exactly like Father. I’m sick of people breathing in my face, telling me what to do and what not to do. You can go back and tell him that.”