"Yes." She was not laughing at him; she was answering simply and helplessly.
"Haven't you ever been kissed before?"
"Yes. Many times."
"Do you always act like that?"
"Always. Just like that."
"Why did you want me to kiss you?"
"I wanted to try it."
"You're not human, Dominique."
She lifted her head, she got up and the sharp precision of the movement was her own again. He knew he would hear no simple, confessing helplessness in her voice; he knew the intimacy was ended, even though her words, when she spoke, were more intimate and revealing than anything she had said; but she spoke as if she did not care what she revealed or to whom:
"I suppose I'm one of those freaks you hear about, an utterly frigid woman. I'm sorry, Peter. You see? You have no rivals, but that includes you also. A disappointment, darling?"
"You ... you'll outgrow it... some day ..."
"I'm really not so young, Peter. Twenty-five. It must be an interesting experience to sleep with a man. I've wanted to want it. I should think it would be exciting to become a dissolute woman. I am, you know, in everything but in fact.... Peter, you look as if you were going to blush in a moment, and that's very amusing."
"Dominique! Haven't you ever been in love at all? Not even a little?"
"I haven't. I really wanted to fall in love with you. I thought it would be convenient. I'd have no trouble with you at all. But you see? I can't feel anything. I can't feel any difference, whether it's you or Alvah Scarret or Lucius Heyer."
He got up. He did not want to look at her. He walked to a window and stood, staring out, his hands clasped behind his back. He had forgotten his desire and her beauty, but he remembered now that she was Francon's daughter.
"Dominique, will you marry me?"
He knew he had to say it now; if he let himself think of her, he would never say it; what he felt for her did not matter any longer; he could not let it stand between him and his future; and what he felt for her was growing into hatred.
"You're not serious?" she asked.
He turned to her. He spoke rapidly, easily; he was lying now, and so he was sure of himself and it was not difficult:
"I love you, Dominique. I'm crazy about you. Give me a chance. If there's no one else, why not? You'll learn to love me--because I understand you. I'll be patient. I'll make you happy."
She shuddered suddenly, and then she laughed. She laughed simply, completely; he saw the pale foam of her dress trembling; she stood straight, her head thrown back, like a string shaking with the vibrations of a blinding insult to him; an insult, because her laughter was not bitter or mocking, but quite simply gay.
Then it stopped. She stood looking at him. She said earnestly:
"Peter, if I ever want to punish myself for something terrible, if I ever want to punish myself disgustingly--I'll marry you." She added: "Consider it a promise."
"I'll wait--no matter what reason you choose for it."
Then she smiled gaily, the cold, gay smile he dreaded.
"Really, Peter, you don't have to do it, you know. You'll get that partnership anyway. And we'll always be good friends. Now it's time for you to go home. Don't forget, you're taking me to the horse show Wednesday. Oh, yes, we're going to the horse show Wednesday. I adore horse shows. Good night, Peter."
He left and walked home through the warm spring night. He walked savagely. If, at that moment, someone had offered him sole ownership of the firm of Francon & Heyer at the price of marrying Dominique, he would have refused it. He knew also, hating himself, that he would not refuse, if it were offered to him on the following morning.
XV
THIS WAS FEAR. THIS WAS WHAT ONE FEELS IN NIGHTMARES, THOUGHT Peter Keating, only then one awakens when it becomes unbearable, but he could neither awaken nor bear it any longer. It had been growing, for days, for weeks, and now it had caught him: this lewd, unspeakable dread of defeat. He would lose the competition, he was certain that he would lose it, and the certainty grew as each day of waiting passed. He could not work; he jerked when people spoke to him; he had not slept for nights.
He walked toward the house of Lucius Heyer. He tried not to notice the faces of the people he passed, but he had to notice; he had always looked at people; and people looked at him, as they always did. He wanted to shout at them and tell them to turn away, to leave him alone. They were staring at him, he thought, because he was to fail and they knew it.
He was going to Heyer's house to save himself from the coming disaster in the only way he saw left to him. If he failed in that competition--and he knew he was to fail--Francon would be shocked and disillusioned; then if Heyer died, as he could die at any moment, Francon would hesitate--in the bitter aftermath of a public humiliation--to accept Keating as his partner; if Francon hesitated, the game was lost. There were others waiting for the opportunity: Bennett, whom he had been unable to get out of the office; Claude Stengel, who had been doing very well on his own, and had approached Francon with an offer to buy Heyer's place. Keating had nothing to count on, except Francon's uncertain faith in him. Once another partner replaced Heyer, it would be the end of Keating's future. He had come too close and had missed. That was never forgiven.
Through the sleepless nights the decision had become clear and hard in his mind: he had to close the issue at once; he had to take advantage of Francon's deluded hopes before the winner of the competition was announced; he had to force Heyer out and take his place; he had only a few days left.
He remembered Francon's gossip about Heyer's character. He looked through the files in Heyer's office and found what he had hoped to find. It was a letter from a contractor, written fifteen years ago; it stated merely that the contractor was enclosing a check for twenty thousand dollars due Mr. Heyer. Keating looked up the records for that particular building; it did seem that the structure had cost more than it should have cost. That was the year when Heyer had started his collection of porcelain.
He found Heyer alone in his study. It was a small, dim room and the air in it seemed heavy, as if it had not been disturbed for years. The dark mahogany paneling, the tapestries, the priceless pieces of old furniture were kept faultlessly clean, but the room smelt, somehow, of indigence and of decay. There was a single lamp burning on a small table in a corner, and five delicate, precious cups of ancient porcelain on the table. Heyer sat hunched, examining the cups in the dim light, with a vague, pointless enjoyment. He shuddered a little when his old valet admitted Keating, and he blinked in vapid bewilderment, but he asked Keating to sit down.
When he heard the first sounds of his own voice, Keating knew he had lost the fear that had followed him on his way through the streets; his voice was cold and steady. Tim Davis, he thought, Claude Stengel, and now just one more man to be removed.
He explained what he wanted, spreading upon the still air of the room one short, concise, complete paragraph of thought, perfect as a gem with clean edges.
"And so, unless you inform Francon of your retirement tomorrow morning," he concluded, holding the letter by a corner between two fingers, "this goes to the A.G.A."
He waited. Heyer sat still, with his pale, bulging eyes blank and his mouth open in a perfect circle. Keating shuddered and wondered whether he was speaking to an idiot.
Then Heyer's mouth moved and his pale pink tongue showed, flickering against his lower teeth.
"But I don't want to retire." He said it simply, guilelessly, in a little petulant whine.
"You will have to retire."
"I don't want to. I'm not going to. I'm a famous architect. I've always been a famous architect. I wish people would stop bothering me. They all want me to retire. I'll tell you a secret." He leaned forward; he whispered slyly: "You may not know it, but I know, he can't deceive me: Guy wants me to retire. He thinks he's outwitting me, but I can see through him. That's a good one on Guy." He giggled softly.
"I don't think you understood me. Do you
understand this?" Keating pushed the letter into Heyer's half-closed fingers.
He watched the thin sheet trembling as Heyer held it. Then it dropped to the table and Heyer's left hand with the paralyzed fingers jabbed at it blindly, purposelessly, like a hook. He said, gulping:
"You can't send this to the A.G.A. They'll have my license taken away."
"Certainly," said Keating, "they will."
"And it will be in the papers."
"In all of them."
"You can't do that."
"I'm going to--unless you retire."
Heyer's shoulders drew down to the edge of the table. His head remained above the edge, timidly, as if he were ready to draw it also out of sight.
"You won't do that please you won't," Heyer mumbled in one long whine without pauses. "You're a nice boy you're a very nice boy you won't do it will you?"
The yellow square of paper lay on the table. Heyer's useless left hand reached for it, crawling slowly over the edge. Keating leaned forward and snatched the letter from under his hand.
Heyer looked at him, his head bent to one side, his mouth open. He looked as if he expected Keating to strike him; with a sickening, pleading glance that said he would allow Keating to strike him.
"Please," whispered Heyer, "you won't do that, will you? I don't feel very well. I've never hurt you. I seem to remember, I did something very nice for you once."
"What?" snapped Keating. "What did you do for me?"
"Your name's Peter Keating ... Peter Keating ... remember ... I did something nice for you.... You're the boy Guy has so much faith in. Don't trust Guy. I don't trust him. But I like you. We'll make you a designer one of these days." His mouth remained hanging open on the word. A thin strand of saliva trickled down from the corner of his mouth. "Please ... don't ..."
Keating's eyes were bright with disgust; aversion goaded him on; he had to make it worse because he couldn't stand it.
"You'll be exposed publicly," said Keating, the sounds of his voice glittering. "You'll be denounced as a grafter. People will point at you. They'll print your picture in the papers. The owners of that building will sue you. They'll throw you in jail."
Heyer said nothing. He did not move. Keating heard the cups on the table tinkling suddenly. He could not see the shaking of Heyer's body. He heard a thin, glassy ringing in the silence of the room, as if the cups were trembling of themselves.
"Get out!" said Keating, raising his voice, not to hear that sound. "Get out of the firm! What do you want to stay for? You're no good. You've never been any good."
The yellow face at the edge of the table opened its mouth and made a wet, gurgling sound like a moan.
Keating sat easily, leaning forward, his knees spread apart, one elbow resting on his knee, the hand hanging down, swinging the letter.
"I ..." Heyer choked. "I ..."
"Shut up! You've got nothing to say, except yes or no. Think fast now. I'm not here to argue with you."
Heyer stopped trembling. A shadow cut diagonally across his face. Keating saw one eye that did not blink, and half a mouth, open, the darkness flowing in through the hole, into the face, as if it were drowning.
"Answer me!" Keating screamed, frightened suddenly. "Why don't you answer me?"
The half-face swayed and he saw the head lurch forward; it fell down on the table, and went on, and rolled to the floor, as if cut off; two of the cups fell after it, cracking softly to pieces on the carpet. The first thing Keating felt was relief to see that the body had followed the head and lay crumpled in a heap on the floor, intact. There had been no sound; only the muffled, musical bursting of porcelain.
He'll be furious, thought Keating, looking down at the cups. He had jumped to his feet, he was kneeling, gathering the pieces pointlessly; he saw that they were broken beyond repair. He knew he was thinking also, at the same time, that it had come, that second stroke they had been expecting, and that he would have to do something about it in a moment, but that it was all right, because Heyer would have to retire now.
Then he moved on his knees closer to Heyer's body. He wondered why he did not want to touch it. "Mr. Heyer," he called. His voice was soft, almost respectful. He lifted Heyer's head, cautiously. He let it drop. He heard no sound of its falling. He heard the hiccough in his own throat. Heyer was dead.
He sat beside the body, his buttocks against his heels, his hands spread on his knees. He looked straight ahead; his glance stopped on the folds of the hangings by the door; he wondered whether the gray sheen was dust or the nap of velvet and was it velvet and how old-fashioned it was to have hangings by a door. Then he felt himself shaking. He wanted to vomit. He rose, walked across the room and threw the door open, because he remembered that there was the rest of the apartment somewhere and a valet in it, and he called, trying to scream for help.
Keating came to the office as usual. He answered questions, he explained that Heyer had asked him, that day, to come to his house after dinner; Heyer had wanted to discuss the matter of his retirement. No one doubted the story and Keating knew that no one ever would. Heyer's end had come as everybody had expected it to come. Francon felt nothing but relief. "We knew he would, sooner or later," said Francon. "Why regret that he spared himself and all of us a prolonged agony?"
Keating's manner was calmer than it had been for weeks. It was the calm of blank stupor. The thought followed him, gentle, unstressed, monotonous, at his work, at home, at night: he was a murderer ... no, but almost a murderer ... almost a murderer ... He knew that it had not been an accident; he knew he had counted on the shock and the terror; he had counted on that second stroke which would send Heyer to the hospital for the rest of his days. But was that all he had expected? Hadn't he known what else a second stroke could mean? Had he counted on that? He tried to remember. He tried, wringing his mind dry. He felt nothing. He expected to feel nothing, one way or another. Only he wanted to know. He did not notice what went on in the office around him. He forgot that he had but a short time left to close the deal with Francon about the partnership.
A few days after Heyer's death Francon called him to his office.
"Sit down, Peter," he said with a brighter smile than usual. "Well, I have some good news for you, kid. They read Lucius' will this morning. He had no relatives left, you know. Well, I was surprised, I didn't give him enough credit, I guess, but it seems he could make a nice gesture on occasion. He's left everything to you.... Pretty grand, isn't it? Now you won't have to worry about investment when we make arrangements for ... What's the matter, Peter? ... Peter, my boy, are you sick?"
Keating's face fell upon his arm on the corner of the desk. He could not let Francon see his face. He was going to be sick; sick, because through the horror, he had caught himself wondering how much Heyer had actually left....
The will had been made out five years ago; perhaps in a senseless spurt of affection for the only person who had shown Heyer consideration in the office; perhaps as a gesture against his partner; it had been made and forgotten. The estate amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, plus Heyer's interest in the firm and his porcelain collection.
Keating left the office early, that day, not hearing the congratulations. He went home, told the news to his mother, left her gasping in the middle of the living room, and locked himself in his bedroom. He went out, saying nothing, before dinner. He had no dinner that night, but he drank himself into a ferocious lucidity, at his favorite speak-easy. And in that heightened state of luminous vision, his head nodding over a glass but his mind steady, he told himself that he had nothing to regret; he had done what anyone would have done; Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it; he had merely been luckier than most; he had been, because he was better than most; he felt fine; he hoped the useless questions would never come back to him again; every man for himself, he muttered, falling asleep on the table.
The useless questions never came back to him
again. He had no time for them in the days that followed. He had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition.
Peter Keating had known it would be a triumph, but he had not expected the thing that happened. He had dreamed of a sound of trumpets; he had not foreseen a symphonic explosion.
It began with the thin ringing of a telephone, announcing the names of the winners. Then every phone in the office joined in, screaming, bursting from under the fingers of the operator who could barely control the switchboard; calls from every paper in town, from famous architects, questions, demands for interviews, congratulations. Then the flood rushed out of the elevators, poured through the office doors, the messages, the telegrams, the people Keating knew, the people he had never seen before, the reception clerk losing all sense, not knowing whom to admit or refuse, and Keating shaking hands, an endless stream of hands like a wheel with soft moist cogs flapping against his fingers. He did not know what he said at that first interview, with Francon's office full of people and cameras; Francon had thrown the doors of his liquor cabinet wide-open. Francon gulped to all these people that the Cosmo-Slotnick building had been created by Peter Keating alone; Francon did not care; he was magnanimous in a spurt of enthusiasm; besides, it made a good story.
It made a better story than Francon had expected. From the pages of newspapers the face of Peter Keating looked upon the country, the handsome, wholesome, smiling face with the brilliant eyes and the dark curls; it headed columns of print about poverty, struggle, aspiration and unremitting toil that had won their reward; about the faith of a mother who had sacrificed everything to her boy's success; about the "Cinderella of Architecture."
Cosmo-Slotnick were pleased; they had not thought that prize-winning architects could also be young, handsome and poor--well, so recently poor. They had discovered a boy genius; Cosmo-Slotnick adored boy geniuses; Mr. Slotnick was one himself, being only forty-three.
Keating's drawings of the "most beautiful skyscraper on earth" were reproduced in the papers, with the words of the award underneath: "... for the brilliant skill and simplicity of its plan ... for its clean, ruthless efficiency ... for its ingenious economy of space ... for the masterful blending of the modern with the traditional in Art ... to Francon & Heyer and Peter Keating ..."