Jealous Woman (13 page)

“Then why don’t you take her up?”

“Ed, first let’s let Keyes do his stuff.”

“Yeah, but will he?”

“Well, Keyes, what about it?”

“Put somebody else on it if you want.”

I said: “If you’ve got any sense you
will
put somebody else on it, and put us
both
on suspension. I’m telling you, La Sperry killed Delavan, as she killed her husband. She killed her husband so she could marry some X guy not identified yet, and I don’t think it’s Keyes. She killed her husband after an annulment idea fell through and as he wouldn’t give her a divorce she had to use a little direct action, or thought she did. What she killed Delavan for I don’t know, and how she killed him I don’t know, but if you’d only hold everything a day or two until I locate an English maid that seems to know more than she’s told, I think I can fill in whatever it is we don’t know. I’ve got detectives trying to find her, and I don’t think they’ll be so long.”

Keyes had listened to this with a face like it was cut out of stone, and what he felt about it he didn’t say. But he had Norton over a barrel, because back of it all was the fact that Keyes had been trying to block this policy, and there wasn’t much Norton could do now but let him have his way. He thought quite a while, and went out in the ante-room and sat in the spare chair and in a minute Linda came in with me and Keyes to leave him alone. Then after a while he was back. “All right, Keyes, take over. Ed, I’ll walk home with you.”

We went out and started down the street and in a different tone of voice asked me for the lowdown on Mrs. Sperry, and why I was so sure she had done it. I said: “There’s no low-down, nothing I could prove in court, just something she pulled when she was talking to me last night, kind of a pass she made at me, that only a desperate woman would make, and I’ll be damned if I believe people get that desperate over something like scandal. If that was all, couldn’t she leave town? She’s got the dough to go to Siam, if she wants to. Keyes, he’s awfully proud of himself that he knows, most of the time, without knowing how he knows. O.K., that’s how I know now.”

“That, I confess, shakes me.”

“However, we’ve got other things to talk about. I still have that policy.”

“Our policy? On Delavan?”

“That’s it.”

We walked on, as far as my apartment, and went up there, and I talked and kept on talking. I told him what had happened on the policy, just as I’ve told it here, but on certain points I told them over two or three times so there couldn’t be any question I was trying to make myself look good. I told it like it was, and he didn’t often interrupt. Then I said: “But that’s not all. I mailed it to myself, but I won’t tell you to what address, and I won’t tell you where it is now. Until this thing happened, Delavan’s death, I mean, it was a question of something I wanted, the company cup; something I thought was good for her, the protection that I meant to get for her even if she was acting silly about it; and Reyes’s nonsense, that got under my skin, and plenty. But it’s moved past any of that. It’s a question of her—Jane Delavan, I mean, and cops and charges and things I can’t even anticipate. It just so happens she prefers not to see me at the moment, and maybe never will again. But on how I feel about it, if it costs me my job, if it costs you $100,000 or $1,000,000, or it costs Keyes his mind, if he’s got one—I put her ahead of any of that and all of that. And you might as well know it. I think if anything is done about that policy now, it could boomerang on her—I mean if I took it somewhere, if I turned it in to you, if I sent it to her, if I joggled it in any way. I’m sorry. The company’s been swell to me and you have and allowing I don’t think he’s all there in the head, Keyes has. But on this, I’m rock.”

He took a minute or two after I stopped, and I’m proud to set it down here, word for word as well as I remember it, and I think it’s engraved in my mind pretty good, what he said, which was: “I can see, Ed, why you attach importance to this, and in fact seem to be pretty well rung up about it. However, there are two questions in connection with it, and I think you’ve got them pretty thoroughly confused. The first one is: What should you have done, after you and Keyes came in from the mountains and he had given you his dress rehearsal of the moving finger’s drama—when you heard what the cop said about the death at the hotel, and were faced with a decision as to what should be done, about the policy and Delavan’s check. I don’t in any way follow you as to the horrendous nature of your decision. If you had got Delavan’s check back from the post office certainly you would have held onto the policy pending more details on the death, and just as certainly when you found out it was not Delavan who was killed, as Keyes thought, but Sperry, you would have sent the check on again, without Delavan’s being any the wiser, and the result wouldn’t have been in any way different. For my part, when I was trying to work the thing out I think if there was any doubt in my mind I would have held things up. But on the basis of things as they stood then, I’m not at all sure that I wouldn’t have done just what you did, considering I had given you a green light, as I did, and considering how little importance was to be attached to Keyes at the moment, moving-finger previews or not, on account of his imbecile infatuation with Constance Sperry, and the silly monkeyshines he was indulging in on account of it. That, I think, takes care of the first question.

“The next question is what you should do about the policy now. You seem to have some idea I expect you to turn it over to me, apparently under the impression that now Delavan’s dead, and the beneficiary has never had the policy, I can escape liability, or that no claim can be made, or whatever it is that’s in your mind. In the first place, when we took Delavan’s money, the policy’s in force, and we’re liable. In the second place, if I attempted to avoid liability, it would cost me more than I could possibly gain. It would cost me you, for one thing. Let me do that and you can’t sell for General Pan, that I’ll promise you. You’re an idealist, a fanatic, on insurance in general and this company in particular. But let this happen and you’ll have to move to another company, as you’ve once or twice told me you might do—simply because as a fanatical idealist you wouldn’t believe in this company any more. In the third place, you can rest quite assured that if any fact disclosed by the investigation relieves me of liability, on a suicide clause, complicity of the beneficiary in homicide, as Keyes insists may be the case, or anything else, I am going to deny liability and refuse to pay until a court compels me. I may wish I didn’t have to, but I have stockholders to think of, and don’t you get the idea I’ll be soft-hearted in any way. I’ll be tough, down to the last comma of the bond. In the final place, however, which is the main place, so far as I’m concerned—are you listening, Ed?”

“I am, J. P.”

“I pay what I owe, period, new paragraph.”

His face tightened, as he said that, and I knew that maybe paying what he owed had cost him something now and then, but as I say, I felt proud of him. I didn’t feel much better about most of it, because we were talking about terrible things, at least as far as Jane was concerned. But at least I knew I could still call my friend one man that meant something to me. We sat there a few minutes, and he said:

“I’d like you to know, Ed, I had to humor Keyes after his efforts to block that policy, which of course would have saved us the rap, if we’d listened to him. But I came here prepared to pay on the nail, as I’ve told you I make a practice of doing. He doesn’t know it, but there’s a cashier’s check for $100,000 in my pocket right now, made out to Jane Delavan. I have it with me.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“I wanted you to know.”

“That pleases me.”

I ate lunch somewhere, maybe the Bonanza. It seemed funny not to be with Jane, and pretty soon I called her. A woman answered. She said Jane wasn’t in. I asked who she was and she said she was taking all Mrs. Delavan’s calls. It turned out later she was a nurse that had been called in on account of a crack-up Jane had had, but it hit me in the stomach to be given a brush-off. I left word I had called and went on out to the Scout Ranch, changed into riding clothes, and went on back for the Count. At least I could exercise him, now the situation had changed but there was no way to tell him so. I found him out back, tied up to a-post, with Jackie wiping him off. She said hello and to get Red, one of their trail horses, out of the first stable, or she’d do it for me if I could wait a minute. I said: “Well, thanks, he’s O.K., but I’ve got one of my own or have I?”

“You mean—
him
?”

“I do—unless we’ve all gone crazy.”

“Well maybe we have—or one of us, anyway.”

She stared at me, and certainly looked like she thought I was slightly off my nut at least. Then she said: “He’s had his workout—all he wants for one day.”

“You mean you worked him?”

“Who do you think worked him?”

My heart gave a jump. There was no reason why Jackie should know about the mess things were in, or what was in the envelope she had, or anything that would cause her to fit two and two together. It did something for me, to know Jane had been there, and really was out when I called, and had worked the Count, even if she was busted up with me. But after a while, riding Red up in the hills, I slipped down again, my morale, I mean. She wouldn’t let the Count down, whatever happened, or any animal that needed her, so what it proved about me was practically nothing.

When I got in Jackie propositioned me about buying Red and using him. I asked why. “Well, that horse of yours is coming around so pretty, on manners and all, he’s practically a sure bet for five gaits in any show from San Diego on up the coast, and it sure seems a shame for you to begin all over again, and ruin him. Red’s a nice horse. You could do with him.”

“I’ll think about it.”

It left me kind of wilted. As property, the Count was mine whenever I claimed him. As horse, he had passed over, and didn’t belong to me any more.

Around 9:30 the outside phone rang in my apartment and it was Norton, wanting to know if he could come over. I said come on and put out highball makings but when he got there he didn’t want a drink. He said: “Keyes has found that maid.”

“Just for curiosity, how? I couldn’t.”

“Gas turn-on.”

“Gas—?”

“The turn-on slip, on her gas. He figured your detective had probably covered rooming houses, filling stations, hotels, bus depots, and other places people leave tracks when they think they fade out. When there was no sign of her he concluded she was really dug in, in a hideout somewhere, so she wouldn’t run into people. That meant a house, an apartment, or something like that. But one thing she’d have to have would be gas. So, as they only get four or five new applications a day at this little company here, it was duck soup for him. She was using a phony name but the turn-on clerk remembered her right away by the Cockney accent.”

“Simple, but I never thought of it.”

“I never thought of it either, but if it was a needle in a haystack he’d have some simple magnet sent over and five minutes later Mr. Needle would be hanging to it. You heard of Faith Converse?”

“Delavan’s ex-fiancée?”

“She’s in it now.”

“How?”

“Possible murderess, accomplice, or both.”

“Boy, oh boy, J. P., is that one on Keyes?”

“It’s thrown Keyes back on his heels, but good, because of course if she did this Delavan job we pay. But I don’t mind telling you Keyes is under my skin a little just now, and any little thing that gave him his come-uppance would come under the head of good news, even if it did cost us $100,000.”

“Yeah, but say something. About this Converse.”

“Delavan gave her the air.”

“That’s what brought her here.”

“Keyes found out all about that as soon as he got Delavan’s family on the telephone, to see what they knew, or maybe thought. They knew a little and they thought plenty, and most of it centered on this girl—”

“Known also as Penny.”

“That’s it. So he’s been trying to get in touch with her. But after he called the gas company about the turn-on slips, and I helped out with some comsha so the little turn-on girl would forget the rules and let him have a look, he stepped over to the police department to see the reports on the sale of firearms. The stores turn them in, and he’s found that generally, on a real hideout, the party of the first part likes a gun around the house, just in case. So he didn’t find anything that looked like it might be Harriet Jenkins in blackface, but he did find Faith Converse.”

“
She
bought a gun?”

“A nice little .38 automatic.”

“What do you make out of it?”

“Nothing, but I wish I’d never heard of Thomas Delavan.”

“That I can understand.”

He began walking up and down my apartment, poured himself a spoonful of Scotch, walked up and down some more. The phone rang. I answered, and my heart skipped a beat when I heard the same old Cockney voice drop the H off my name. “Yes, Jenkins, what is it?”

“I’d call a doctor if I was you, sir, accant Mr. Keyes. ’E acts very ill. ’E acts seriously ill, sir.”

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing, sir, but ’e’s not ’imself.”

“Where are you?”

“At ’is office, sir.”

“You mean my office?”

“ ’E said ’is office.”

“I’ll be over.”

Norton was there beside me, close enough to hear all of it, I hung up and started to call a doctor, but he stopped me. “Let’s see what it is, first.” That made sense, and in about two seconds flat we had on our hats and coats and were on our way over there.

I
T WAS JENKINS, ALL
right, but I don’t think her own mother would have known her. Instead of the bombazine uniform and run-over shoes she used to wear she had on a mink coat, a good-looking black dress, green shoes, green alligator bag, and green hat, and her face was washed and had nice make-up on it, and even her hands were clean. I’ve told you about the shape. Now, for the first time, she looked like a really pretty girl, and about five years younger than I had taken her for. She was in the ante-room, where Linda sits, when we got there, but she took us back in the private office, where Keyes was stretched out on the couch, with his coat off and only the desk light lit. But he said he didn’t want any doctor, and would be all right if we’d just let him alone a few minutes. We went out in the ante-room again and I closed the private office door and asked Jenkins what went on. “As I told you, sir, nothing.”