The empty carpeted hallway had that dry, sour, starched, Chinese-laundry smell which seems peculiar to all hotels. The door to room 202 was slightly ajar. I knocked softly and Mary Pilant let me in.
“Good evening, Mr. Biegler,” she said, smiling gravely and briefly shaking my hand. She led me in to a sort of darkened sitting room, the most striking feature of which was a large picture window overlooking Lake Superior. Through this window flowed a golden torrent of moonlight. I stopped in my tracks.
“How incredibly beautiful,” I murmured, looking out across the vast lake. Whole rivers of liquid moonlight seemed to be coursing and flowing across the broad expanse of glittering lake; the scene was invested with a kind of awesome otherworldly grandeur.
“Beautiful,” she said. “I never tire of it.” She paused pensively for a moment to watch and then took my hat and rumpled raincoat. “And now,” she went on, “what can I bring you to drink? You must surely be ready for one after your long late driveâ” she paused “âand your other activities about which I have lately been reading.”
“After drinking in this moonlight,” I thought, “no man in his right mind should ever want to drink whisky again.” “Whisky in a tall glass with lots of ice and water, please,” I said gratefully.
As she left to prepare the highball I stood staring out at the lake. I wondered what my strategy would be. Strategy? There was only one possible strategy left now, the purest of allâthat of unvarnished truth. This was no time for any lawyers' tricks or sly deceits.
Mary Pilant came in with two drinks. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head and she wore a ruffled peignoir over some sort of silk lounging pajamas which reached high at the throat, Mandarin fashion, along with matching wedge-soled slippers with discreet pompons on the toes. It was hard to equate this poised and beautiful girl with the picture of hard and grasping womanhood she had compelled me to build up in my mind.
“Thank you,” I said, taking my drink. “This was very thoughtful of you.” I fought back a yawn. “I sure needed it.”
She indicated a settee facing the window and herself took a chair nearby, resting her glass on a small table between us, sitting straight as a little girl. I gratefully sat down and then guiltily arose and nodded and took a big swallow of my drink, my first since I had given up being a non-union drummer boy.
“And now, Mr. Biegler,” she said coolly, “tell me how you expect me to help your case?”
“You see, Biegler,” I said to myself. “How can a mere man expect to outwit a clever dame like this?” I took another gulp of my drink and, with her nodded assent, lit a cigar. Then mentally holding my breath I took the plunge. “I'll try to tell you ⦔ I began.
In a rush of words I told her about the problems of my case and the mortal danger I still believed Lieutenant Manion to be in. I told her of my earlier interview with her bartender at Thunder Bay, about which she of course knew, and of my conviction that he was then being evasive and holding back; and, worse yet, how that now in court he was being even more evasive and still holding back. I explained why I considered it so necessary and pressing that we be able to get before the jury the true story of Barney's drinking and possession of pistols and all the rest; I explained how, because of the will contest, I thought I understood why she had been so reluctant to let word of Barney's behavior and drinking get abroad and how I hoped the apparent need for all that had now passed. I told her how old Parnell had worked to brief the subject; how he had gone on alone to Green Bay and broken the case wide open; how he had got home, wet and dog-tired, just before I had phoned her; and how only an hour ago I'd tucked him away in my rumpled bed. I even told her about the coyote and nine deer I had seen on my wild moonlit drive to Thunder Bay.
Mary Pilant sat listening thoughtfully, occasionally sipping her drink. The thought occurred to me that if she was in league with the prosecution and Claude Dancer that surely the stuff was now in the fan; that this could, in fact, be the little man's biggest break of the case. But it was too late for that now, there was no holding back, and I took another drink and pressed on with my story as though I were pleading to a jury of one. I told her how important I considered the proof of the rape to the proper defense of the case; that in my opinion the biggest remaining element of doubt of the rape was that a sober man could have gone out and done what Barney had done.
She got up quietly and, nodding, took my empty glass away while I relit my forgotten cigar and paced up and down in the golden path of streaming moonlight. I felt suddenly old and saddened that I should be here on such a night, bent on such an errand, instead of paying earnest court to this dark and secretive creature. “Steady,
Polly,” I thought. “The moonbeams'll get you if you don't watch out.”
“Thank you,” I said huskily, my hand trembling as she brought me a fresh drink but none for herself. She sat down and lighted a cigarette. Thoughtfully she blew the smoke across the path of moonlight, where it hung in a streaming moted haze of pure gold.
“How,” she said quietly, “how can you be so sure that Barney”âshe pausedâ“that he did this thing to this woman?” She looked at me curiously. “Has it never occurred to you that he might not have?”
I looked at her. She sat very still and white in the moonlight, staring out over the lake. Good God, I thought, can it possibly be that this woman still cherishes the notion that he didn't? Or possibly the hope? “Play it true, Polly,” I thought. “Play it true.” I spoke slowly. “At first I did have my doubts,” I said soberly. “And grave ones. I no longer have.”
She was looking at me now, studying me. “Why?” she said in a low voice. “Please tell me why?”
Once again I was away. I told her about the caretaker and his story of the Ohio tourists being awakened by hearing a woman's screams at the main gate just before midnight. Then, taking a gulp of my drink, I told her of the lie-detector test Laura Manion had taken and how I was morally certain that it showed she had told the solemn truth about the rape.
Mary Pilant crushed out her cigarette and finished her drink. Did her hand tremble ever so little or was it a trick of the moonlight? “Then,” she said evenly, “if you have all this information why should you need anything from me?”
I explained to her that the Ohio tourists were no longer here and that I might have grave trouble getting in the proof of the screams. I also told her that the results of lie-detector tests were not admissible in Michigan or indeed any Anglo-American courts and that I would doubtless encounter even more trouble trying to bring that out. “That's why I had to come to you,” I said quietly. “All that I want, all that the Manions want, is but a small measure of truth.” I paused. “As for the tourists hearing the screams and the lie-detector testâdidn't you know about them?”
She turned toward me and mutely shook her head, and her eyesâthere was no mistake of moonlight this timeâglistened with tears. “
Mary
âMiss Pilant,” I said, awkwardly half rising, “let me get you
a drink. IâIâ” She shook her head and quickly arose and took my glass and hurried from the room. I went over close to the large window and stood staring out upon the lake. After a time I heard the soft tinkle of ice and Mary Pilant was standing at my side, solemnly handing me my drink. I nodded and we stood there for a long time looking at the lake. She did not speak; I did not speak. I had said my pieceâwhat more was there to say? Finally I said, “I will go now if you prefer it that way.”
She laid her hand on my sleeve. “Wait,” she whispered. “Please wait. I want to think.”
We two stood there until Mary Pilant began quietly to speak. Her voice had the curious quality of a childâa small and lonely child. She told of how she had come to Thunder Bay as a vacationing schoolteacher; of how attracted she had been by the lake and the pines and the wild natural beauty of the place; of how kind and thoughtful Barney had been to her and her friends; of how run-down the hotel was becoming under the reckless and carefree Barney. She told how his dining-room hostess had quit during the height of the tourist rush and of how she had finally consented to fill the breach. She told how Barney had begged her to stay on when the summer was over, promising to raise her salary far above what she could ever earn as a country schoolteacher, promising her a free hand. She dropped her voice. “And he kept his promises.”
She again touched my arm lightly and I glanced down at her small white face. “Whatever you may have heard, Paul, and whatever Barney may have been with others, he was a perfect gentleman to me. Always. I regarded him almost as a father.”
I nodded and stared out at the flaming lake.
She quietly told me of how hard she had worked building up the hotel; of how well things had gone, despite Barney's occasional erratic behavior and bouts of drinking; of what a witch Barney's ex-wife had been; of how she had finally met Barney's daughter; of how attracted and deeply attached she had become to the shy and troubled child. She paused and was silent for a time. “Perhaps my heart went out to the child because I too came from a broken home.”
“I didn't know,” I said. “I didn't know any of these things.”
“And then this summer the Army came. It seemed to mark the beginning of the end.”
I looked at her questioningly and she motioned for us to sit down. I moved from the window and sat and sipped my drink and waited in wondering silence.
She continued to speak in a low voice. She told me that, as she said I doubtless knew, Barney had been the king pin of Thunder Bay until the advent of the Army; that with the coming of the crowd of young, handsome, hard-drinking, hell-for-leather soldiers and officers she had noticed a change come over Barney; that not only had he become increasingly difficult with his drinking and attentions to women, but that what had once passed for camaraderie and fairly excusable braggadocio had that summer taken on alarming overtones of outright neurotic behavior; that finally only he seemed able to reason with Barney, that he seemed to look up to her as his sole loyal champion, his one remaining grasp upon reality ⦠.
“I finally persuaded him to go to a doctor in Iron Bay,” she went on. “I thought perhaps there was something organically wrong with him. He went, but there was nothing wrong with his body.” She paused and shook her head. “What was wrong with Barney lay in his headâthere and in his terrible consuming ego ⦠. It was then that he took out two large insurance policies for his daughter and me. Perhaps he had a premonition of things to come.” Again she paused. “You will have to believe me when I tell you that I knew nothing of the insurance or of his will untilâuntil after that horrible night.”
“I believe you,” I said.
She smiled sadly. “I suppose you must have thought I was terribly grasping over this estate business. I can't much blame you. But my impulse was to flee the whole thing, especially when Barney's ex-wife started to make trouble. Then I thought of all the work I had done here and of how proud Barney was of the place. So when that really grasping woman started her will contest I determined to stay and fight, for Barney's daughter as much or more than for myself.”
“How do you mean?”
She glanced quickly at me. “It is my plan to share the estate with his daughter,” she said quietly. “I have already made arrangements for a trust fund that the child's mother can never reach.”
Things had been coming pretty fast and I felt clubbed into a sort of mental and emotional coma. I silently held out my glass and she took it and went away. I sighed and leaned back and groped for a cigar and lit the wrong end. I felt for and found another.
“Thank you, thank you,” I murmured as she handed me my drink.
“I guess there has also been a feeling of loyalty and gratitude to Barney,” she went on, “something that has made me shut my eyes to the possible truth of what he had done. How, I told myself, how
could such a kindly, generous man possibly have done such a thing.” She paused. “Then I guess there was a sense of guilt ⦠.”
“Guilt?” I said softly.
“Guilt that I may have been to blame or partly at least.”
“I don't quite understand,” I said, feeling glumly afraid that I did.
“Not only did Barney grow jealous of the Army,” she went on, “but finally of a young officer I occasionally dated. Hisâhis name was Sonny Loftus.”
“Did he have any reason?” I said, my heart pounding, finding myself suddenly interested above and beyond the call of duty. “Did Barney have reason to be jealous?” I held my breath for her answer.
She shook her head. “No. No, Paul. Not any real reason. But in the state he was in it was enough for Barney that I looked at another man. He could not see that Sonny was just a nice gangling boy from Georgia. And a lonely one. We danced mostly, down at Iron Bay, and occasionally picnicked and swam up along the beach. Poor homesick Sonny spent most of his time telling me about his sweetheart back home, whom I gathered was one of the outstanding belles of Atlanta since Scarlett O'Hara.”