CLUMLY: This is all very long-winded, you know. And confusing.
SUNLIGHT: Pure chaos.
CLUMLY: Hard to follow, I mean.
SUNLIGHT: A veritable labyrinth!
(Pause.)
Listen.
I was once a famous French-horn player.
CLUMLY: That’s ridiculous!
SUNLIGHT: My word of honor! Have I ever lied to you? I graduated from the Eastman School of Music, studied with Arkady Yegudkin, first horn in the orchestra of Czar Nicholas. Fled Russia in 1918, on a railroad flatcar, with his wife. Played all over Europe. Famous for what’s known as the “smiling embouchure.” Affectionately called “the General” by his students. You can check. I’ll give you even more detail—I’m not unaware that my time is running out. I played first horn for seven years with the Dallas Symphony. It was there, by the way, that I first began to dabble in magic. Learned from the famous
Thurston. You’ve heard of him?
CLUMLY: Never.
SUNLIGHT: You’re difficult to reason with, you know that?
CLUMLY: I’m sorry.
SUNLIGHT: Well, to make a long story short, I fell in love. A dancing girl in her thirties … No, I remember now … An operatic singer.
CLUMLY: Good God.
SUNLIGHT: You’re distracting me.
CLUMLY: I’m sorry.
SUNLIGHT: NO, I’ll tell you the truth. She was a striptease dancer. I saw her first in an obscene movie, one of those things in obscenacolor. She was beautiful, truly breathtaking. Naked, of course. They had a Kodiak bear strapped to a table, muzzled …
CLUMLY (violently): That’s enough! I’m an old man. I’m tired.
Open the door. Do you hear me? Kozlowski!
SUNLIGHT: Shut up. Sit down.
CLUMLY: I’m telling you—
SUNLIGHT: But that’s absurd. I’ve got the gun!
CLUMLY: Then shoot. (Shouting:) Kozlowski!!
SUNLIGHT (wearily): All right. Take it easy. I was lying. There was no bear.
CLUMLY: You make me sick.
SUNLIGHT: It’s because I’m a criminal.
(Silence.)
That stops you, doesn’t it.
(Silence.)
You think, “The waste of it!” (Pause.) But is it waste? Shall we be honest, Clumly? I’ll tell you a story that’s absolutely true. You’ll know it at once, no need whatever to check it. I was once a policeman.
CLUMLY: Stop it!
SUNLIGHT (patiently): I was once a policeman. I got old, out of touch. The plain truth—I knew it as well as I knew my own name-was that I was about to be fired, there was absolutely no hope. And then one day I arrested a kind of nut, a man with a beard. A sort of crazy idea came into my head. I could use him. I had a feeling in my bones that the man was destructive, somehow fundamentally evil—you know what I mean? No one believed me, but I knew. The man was dangerous—whether because of something he’d done already or because of something he was capable of doing, I couldn’t say. Nevertheless, I was never more sure of anything in my life. Besides, he was my only chance.
CLUMLY: You’re wrong!
SUNLIGHT: Not quite. I began to hound him, think of nothing but getting him and thus vindicating myself, clear myself with the Mayor—who was a fool anyway—and, more important, clear myself with my men. They were like sons to me. The thought that they might have to pityingly let me go was more than I could bear. I was proud, in short. Hubris of the specially deadly, Christian kind. And yet on the other hand, I was right: the man was evil. He hounded me as cruelly as I hounded him. It was his pride, it came to me. His incredible ego. A twisted kind of ego that wasted itself on idiotic, spectacular tricks. I pretended to myself that he was what they would call in those old-fashioned thrillers “a Fiend,” but I knew the truth all along. He was merely a queer duck, a crackpot philosopher who’d slipped out of the society he lived in and detested it for surviving without him, yet he couldn’t really act, blow it up, destroy it; too feeble. He made me his sounding board, tried to use me, as I used him, to save himself. I thought: “Nobody can save himself. Salvation has always come from outside—from prophets, from wives, from children.” And then I thought: “But he doesn’t know it.” And then I knew I had him. He could outsmart me, trick me, mock me until he was blue in the face. Finally he was the mouse, and I was the tiger. And then one night—we were talking about towers—he stupidly gave me the gun. I knew who he was, by that time, and I knew that, as far as the law was concerned, he was a thief, public enemy, accessory to a killer. I could be vindicated. What do you suppose I did?
(Silence.)
I said, what do you suppose I did?
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: Tell me what to do.
SUNLIGHT: How can I? We’re friends. I’ve told you that all along. But the fact remains, you are a policeman. You have a wife to think of—and more. Your feeling for your men. And for yourself. I’m an accessory to three murders. Not to mention other crimes of a lesser nature. Plenty. If you act on the side of the universe—if you follow my halfwit metaphor—you’ll blink, turn your face away. If you act for humanity …
CLUMLY: I don’t understand.
SUNLIGHT: You’re supposed to ask, at this point, what I do if I act on the side of the universe, and what I do if I act for humanity.
CLUMLY: Go on.
SUNLIGHT: If I act for the universe, I may kill you. If I act for humanity, I kill you and then myself.
(Silence.)
CLUMLY: There must be a choice. There’s always a choice!
SUNLIGHT : If only we weren’t so stubborn.
CLUMLY: I’m willing to listen.
SUNLIGHT: But I am stubborn. (Pause.) It’s time for my trick.
CLUMLY: Wait!
SUNLIGHT: Consider! I lie down in my casket. I close the lid.
CLUMLY: Wait! One more minute!
SUNLIGHT (muffled—inside the casket): Hark! A trumpet! (Sound of a trumpet, muffled. An instant later, sound of an explosion.)
CLUMLY: Wait!
While the smoke still billowed from under the coffin lid, he leaped toward the casket and opened it. Inside he found nothing but his revolver. To his left, the door of the crypt swung open.
“You ok, Chief?” Kozlowski said.
Clumly turned slowly, squinting. He closed the casket lid and dropped the pistol in its holster. “God knows,” he said. “You saw him?”
Kozlowski shook his head.
Clumly put his hand to his nose and pursed his lips. Three murders the man had said. He couldn’t be counting the woman killed by the car wreck. Someone else must have been killed, then. My fault, he thought. That’s it. Enough! His knees went weak. After a moment Clumly said, “Let’s head for home, Kozlowski.”
They started out. The crypt door closed, again by itself, behind them.
XVI
Love and Duty
1
who would gladly have spared him all this if I could (God knows, no lie) and was innocent once, full of mystery, magic, made cherryboughs bend (so it seemed to me once) in my father’s orchard when I stood squinting up with my milky-white eyes at where light bent the branches down lacy, sweetsmelling, and cherries fell ripe to my outstretched hand; yes, not a dream I think, perfectly real; and my father and mother stood back from me, watching and I think were smiling, too far in the wash of bright green for
No, a dream.
What right have I to set myself up as his keeper?
But he had no right.
She wipes away blindwoman tears, puts her sewing away in the woven basket, the ancient ruse of her long wait, house empty, barren of children lovers tradesmen friends, her husband still gone, vanished from the world like a sailor, no one knows where. She turns her virginal back to the room, gropes for the doorknob, opens the door, steps out. She walks quickly, fingers trembling, knowing she is perhaps wrong, turning on him, a false wife, but can no longer chance doing nothing, she may even now be too late. She moves down LaCrosse, head stiff
ly erect, drawn back a little, sharp elbows out like drawn-in wings. She comes to Lyon Street, turns hesitantly left. Miss Buckland calls for her cat. Birds warbling.
A momentous decision, she understands, though she does not know what hangs on it, has no way of guessing that time has stopped, hangs ready to reverse as old Hubble’s bubble prepares to collapse, a new stroke of the giant heart; or at any rate that human hearts, caught and locked in their wide thrombosis, hardening, dark with indecision, will tremble to the prick of her wellmeant revolt and life will move again, rush down its channels, roaring.
At the police station she asks to speak to Miller.
2
She found him, at last, in her husband’s office. “Hello,” she said. She stood listening, heart beating fiercely. It was already growing hot. The fan was on, but the air did not stir. As far as she could tell he was the only one there.
“Mrs. Clumly,” he said guiltily, as though she’d caught him at something.
She stood irresolute, mind racing. If it were merely that, another woman … At last she said, “Could I speak with you a moment—alone?” She waited.
“Why sure,” he said then, heartily. “Figlow, you’ll excuse us?”
It made her jump a foot. She was slipping. The man who’d been standing as quiet as a statue now crossed without a word and went past her. He smelled of stale cigarettes and sweat. The footsteps stopped a little behind her and she heard the door close. Then he went on. She heard the other door closing now. Then Miller said, “What can I do for you, Esther? ” It was all starting out wrong somehow. For the hundredth time she was unsure of herself, afraid her butting in would only mean embarrassment and trouble. She took a deep breath and closed her hand more tightly on the handles of the sewing bag. “Sit down, Mrs. Clumly,” Miller said, growing formal. He touched her arm—she had not realized he was standing so close—and guided her toward the chair.
“Thank you.”
They waited.
Miller said, “Long time no see, Mrs. Clumly.”
She laughed nervously. “That’s what you said the other night.”
He too laughed. “So I did.”
They waited again and eventually both spoke at the same time, apologized, waited. Esther balled up her hanky between her two hands to dry the perspiration. “Mr. Miller—that is, Officer—I had a visitor early this morning.”
“I see,” Miller said.
“Perhaps I should explain.” She paused, thinking where to begin. “Fred and I have been husband and wife,” she began carefully, “for a long time.”
“Yes.”
“We—understand each other, about many things.” She corrected the impression quickly. “We understand each other, but of course my husband doesn’t always tell me everything, naturally, being in the line of work he happens to be in. He doesn’t like to worry me needlessly, you know.”
“No, naturally.”
“I’m sure it’s the same with you.”
“Of course.”
She rolled the hanky more rapidly between her palms. “I have always been very grateful to Fred … to my husband. Because of course it’s difficult, you know … with my handicap. That is—”
“Yes of course,” he said. “Either way, that is, handicapped or not, as you say, a husband that’s a cop can be a problem.” He laughed.
“Yes.” She thought about it. “That’s true. But I meant, really, it’s not easy for him either, you know. He’s always been very patient and he never criticizes. I almost—forget myself.” She let the words hang in the air a moment, reverberating oddly in the room; then: “I’ve felt I could never deserve, that is, repay … I think you see what I mean.”
“Come now,” he said, “that’s a heck of a thing!”
“Yes. Well, in any case, I hear certain things—that is, certain rumors have come to my attention—and this morning a visitor …” She bit her lips and leaned forward. “Officer, I have reason to believe there is a plot against my husband. I’m going against his wishes in telling you, no doubt. But I must think of myself, too, mustn’t I? Don’t I have a right?”
She waited. Miller said nothing.
“I trust my husband implicitly, Officer Miller,” she said softly. “But I’m not sure he’s always as cautious as he might be. I’m not sure he’s aware of—the dangers. And at times I’ve felt he has a tendency to, well, go off on his own, as you might say—to do things without telling other people, so that if something were to happen, if he were to be, say—” She hesitated only for an instant, then plunged. “If he were to be shot in an alley, no one would know he was missing. That’s why I’ve come.”
“Now now now,” Miller said. “That’s ridiculous, Mrs. Clumly.”
“He’s been gone since last night,” she said in a rush. “When I called here this morning, no one had seen him. I realize he’s not away with some woman, of course.” She hurried on. “But that means …”
He laughed lightly and yet kindly, the way men are forever laughing at the fears of women. “He’s with Kozlowski,” he said. “He was just on the radio.” She felt a violent sense of relief, then uncertainty. Miller did not seem to her as confident as he wished her to believe he was, and she knew, suddenly, that she’d done the right thing in coming.
“Officer Miller,” she said, “doesn’t it strike you as odd that a maniac such as this Sunlight Man should be able to elude you all for so long, and stores be robbed and people murdered and none of you able to stop it—you, I mean, people of proven ability? Doesn’t it seem that there might be more than meets the eye? Officer Miller, suppose there were a plot—suppose people of influence were involved in these …”
She waited, hanging in space, but he only cleared his throat. He too was worried, she saw. She closed the hanky in her right hand and came out with it. “Officer—Officer Miller—I believe the Mayor knows something about all this.” Tears came, and she struggled against them. “I believe he’s behind it,” she said fiercely. “I have reason to think so. Anyway, I have reason to think my husband has been secretly investigating some mysterious goings-on at the Mayor’s house, some kind of political I-don’t-know-what, not Communists, perhaps, but something. And Will Hodge is in on it. That’s who came to visit, and he asked a lot of questions that sounded very suspicious, it seemed to me—he came when Fred was away, you know, and he knew Fred was away, and in fact it wasn’t the first time, either, because when he drove away afterward I realized I’d heard that car before, prowling around, sometimes in the middle of the night, you know. What kind of people prowl around in the middle of the night, I ask you?”
“You’re excited, Mrs. Clumly,” Miller said. “Take it easy, now. Stay loose.” He touched her hand, and again she was startled to find he was so close.
“I have reason to—” She stopped and swallowed and did not continue until she was sure she could control her voice. “I think I have reason to be excited,” she said. “I haven’t told you the worst. He wasn’t alone.”
“Who?” Miller said.
“Mr. Hodge, the lawyer. He came and asked these questions, and he pretended he was all by himself, but right outside the door, right on the porch, or beside the porch, I’m not sure, there was someone listening—taking it all down, I think.”
“Taking it down? How could you tell?”
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “But I had the distinct impression. Sometimes people in my situation—” Again her voice failed her and she waited, swallowing. He patted her hand. “And there have been other things,” she said. “Someone came from the Federal Government, late at night. Or anyway they said that’s what they were, if I remember. He sounded Russian, a little. He left a message, a strange one. I hardly dare—”
“Strange?” he said.
“Well, it was written on a paper airplane.” She waited for Miller to laugh, but he was silent. It frightened her.
At last he said, “I’ll look into all this, Mrs. Clumly. I give you my word. I’ve been so blasted busy … M
eanwhile, don’t fret. All right? Go home and take a hot bath—or buy yourself a hat—take your mind off all this. It’s nothing, I know that already, but I’ll check. Ok?”
“I’m not finished,” she said.
After a while he said, “All right, go on.”
She drew the tapes from the sewing bag. “I found these. They’re his. I think they’re the evidence. I don’t know. I thought since he trusts you—since you’ve always been a very loyal, well—I thought you should know they exist.”
Again the frightening silence. At last he sighed. “Mrs. Clumly, if the Chief wanted me to hear these things he’d bring them to me.”
“Yes I know. But as I said—”
Miller shifted in his chair. “I can’t take them. I’m sorry. I understand how you feel, but it’s impossible. Really.”
“Then listen to them at least,” she whispered. “Please, Mr. Miller. Then if anything happens—if the people behind all this do something awful to him—at least there will be someone who knows. I beg you.”
“I can’t. That’s final. As a policeman—”
“As a friend! That’s all I ask. Just listen.”
“Look,” he said. He thought a moment. “If I believed in this plot, as you put it, then all right, that would be something else. But I don’t. You see? You found them hidden in the house, right? He didn’t want you to see them, or me, or the Mayor, or Jesus, or anybody. Right? How can I just plug in the machine and—”
“Please,” she said.
She heard him getting up, moving away from her. After that, silence. He was staring at her, or staring out the window, or standing with his eyes shut, she couldn’t tell. At last, quietly, but like an explosion, he said, “All right.” She listened to him moving toward her, and without a word she held up the tapes to him. He took them, and after a moment she heard him putting the first of them in the tape recorder on the desk. She heard the button jump in, and then the whirring, a sort of groaning noise, several sharp thumps. Now the tape ran quietly, and there were voices, far away and muffled. Miller made them louder.