Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 by The Steel Mirror (v2.1) Page B

He remembered what he had been told. “A young fellow at the
party sent you off, Dr. Kaufman said. Everything was going fine until you
talked to him.”
                 “Yes.”
                 “And
Georges died in 1944 or thereabouts, but you just got the picture yesterday.”
                 “Yes.”
She caught her breath and said quickly, “He couldn’t reach me before, don’t you
see? I was in the sanatorium when he came out of the army last year.”
                 “What
did he have to say to you?”
                 “He
said—” She hesitated. “He was the one… the aviator whose life Georges saved. He
gave me the picture and said that… that Georges wanted me to know… to know he
hadn’t blamed me. That he had forgiven me.”
                 He
tried to see the expression on her averted face, but she would not turn. At
last he said, “Then Georges believed you’d done it.”
                 Her
head moved in a tiny nod.
                 “Then
you do know,” he said. “You said you—”
                 She
whirled to face him. “I said I didn’t remember,” she gasped. “I didn’t lie. I
didn’t! Even Georges could have been mistaken, couldn’t…?” Her voice ran out
abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.
                 “And
the lad who carried the message?” Emmett asked. “What else did he say?”
                 “I’ve
told you what he said.”
                 Emmett
watched her with wary objectivity. It was like catching a mouse in a closed
room; you had it, you would get it eventually, but it always found something to
hide behind. “No,” he said, “you’ve told me what the message was from Georges.
Didn’t—?” He cleared his throat, “—didn’t the guy have anything to say for
himself? After all, he’d gone to some trouble to look you up personally, when
he could have stuck the picture in the mail with a note, and forgot about it.
Did he just hand you the picture and quote Georges’ dying words and walk out?”
                 She
took the picture from his hands and ripped it in two along the crease, and
dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. Then she faced him stiffly.
                 “No,”
she said flatly, her head well back. “No, you’re perfectly right, Mr. Emmett.
That wasn’t all he said. He gave me the picture, folded like that, as if he had
not wanted to be contaminated by looking at it. He told me what Georges had
said as if it hurt him to say it. Then he made a little speech. I don’t have to
tell you what it was, do I? You can guess, can’t you?”
                 Emmett
said slowly, “I think so.”
                 “He
said he was going to take the story to the newspapers,” she whispered. “I
wanted to die. I always want to die, but I never have the courage. I tried
once, in the camp, with a knife… I couldn’t even manage to cut myself!”
                 “And
then?”
                 “That’s
all,” she whispered. “I ran away. I knew I had to… to see Dr. Kissel. To make
sure. If he could just say something that would make me remember… To be told
you’ve done something like that and not know —”
                 He
had been in the little room too long. He could no longer feel anything for her;
she had made too many demands on his emotions already, and it was too hot. When
she buried her face in her hands, he found himself wondering whether or not she
were peeking through her fingers to see how the gesture affected him. He could
not help remembering that a man had been murdered in Chicago . He could not help the dreadful suspicion
that he now knew who the victim must have been. After a time he looked away.
                 He
turned to the papers on the bed, but as she moved behind him he found himself
suddenly concentrating on tracing