Jealous Woman (4 page)

“Yeah, but what’s blocking the insurance got to do with it?”

“It’s not so dumb, once you meet the guy. She probably figures that if you take away his chance to look noble, the rest of it’ll be so raw that even he won’t have the gall to go through with it. Ed, he’s a silly guy. She knows him. She’s got her reasons. Of course, if there was somebody around that would plug him for what he’s doing, that would be different. Fortunately, we can eliminate that.”

“Oh, can we?”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”

“What have I got to do with it?”

“Well, you’re going around with her.”

“On business, a little.”

“Like a little necking in front of the hotel?”

“Says who?”

“I saw you. ... She was such a pretty girl I stopped at the desk and asked who she was. I think it can be assumed if she’s having hot smackeroos with you, she’s not having them with somebody else. He won’t get shot, in my humble opinion.”

“This all came after his application was in.”

“It’s O.K. with me.”

“I’m kind of stuck on her.”

“I don’t fall for them as a rule. I’ve got a superstition about it. Somehow, I feel that’s all it would need, for me to fall for one, and here it would come, all ready-made from up yonder, a chapter at a time. Stories are wonderful things—but from the outside looking in, Ed, every time. From the inside looking out, not so good.”

It crossed my mind, driving out to see one of the Count’s lessons in manners, could I be on the inside of something, looking out, and not know it?

Keyes had got the company to make it a rule that anything in six figures gets a special check, whether there’s anything questionable or not, so that meant he had to sit around till he got his report from New York. That meant I’d have to entertain him, but there was no help for it, so I rang her and said I’d meet her later. Around five o’clock he rang me at the office, and from the way he stuttered I began to wonder what
he
wanted. “Listen, Mr. Keyes, is there something else
you’d
rather do?”

“Oh, not at all, but—”

“Spill it.”

“There’s somebody I’d like to invite.”

“Hey, hey, hey. And ho, ho, ho. And ha, ha, ha.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that. She’s married and rich and wants nothing from me. Just the same, she’s a pretty good looker, and I thought—”

“Who is she?”

“Nobody you know. She’s from Bermuda.”

“If she’s getting it melted, watch out.”

“No. She’s here on business—cashing chips.”

“She won’t be rich long.”

“She can afford it.”

“She’s all yours.”

“Couldn’t we invite—your little friend, Ed?”

“I don’t think she’d go for it.”

“Ed, can I say something?”

“Shoot!”

“Personal?”

“O.K.”

“Watch out.”

“Well, the same to you and many of them.”

“Don’t worry about me, my young friend. But you, you could be starting something you can’t stop.”

That night I took Jane over to Carson, and she loved it, because it’s the tiniest state capital in the world, and she said it was like tiptoeing around in some doll’s house. After we had dinner at the Arlington we started up the Bridgeport Road, because over the California line, in the high country where there’s real forest, you often see deer and other big game, and she thought she would like that. She was feeling good, and before long I found out why. “I think my difficulty’s near an end. I think my problem is going to be solved, and soon. I think it’ll all get straightened out before I, or Tom, complete our six weeks’ period of residence.”

“Gee, that’s swell.”

“In town has arrived a lady.”

“You interest me strangely.”

“The present wife of my former husband.”

“To get Tom to lay off the annulment?”

“I can imagine no other reason.”

“Who is your former husband, by the way?”

“Richard Sperry.”

“I never heard of him.”

“He was well enough known when I married him. His scientific standing as a petroleum expert is good and solid. Backed up by her money, though, he’s become internationally eminent. And I imagine her money will tell the story here.”

“You mean—she’ll offer Tom?”

“I think so.”

“And Tom will take it?”

She talked along about society people, and what they will do for money, or even free booze, like indorse this, that, or the other brand of whiskey, and I got the idea friend Tom could be had, and maybe cheap. We saw a deer and a pair of eyes we decided was a puma, though if you ask me, most of those pumas along the road would yip like coyotes if you coaxed them with a rock. She took my hand and patted it. “Yes, I think we can assume that little Connie didn’t come all the way from Bermuda, as much money as
she
has, just to say please.”

“... Your husband lives in Bermuda?”

“Didn’t I say? He’s a geologist for the oil companies.”

“Didn’t know Bermuda had any oil.”

“Bermuda’s his base. You
can’t
live in Venezuela. It’s too hot, and they’ve got malaria.”

“How’d she find out about this annulment?”

“Through the frizzle-haired simpleton.”

“His fiancée?”

“Who’s reached the bragging stage now.”

“Would her bragging reach Bermuda?”

“It’s practically a suburb of New York.”

“She certainly got here quick.”

“What’s the matter, Ed?”

“Nothing.”

“Have I upset you, talking about Dick?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, something’s eating on you.”

“I said nothing’s the matter.”

We drove to the hotel, but Bermuda, the policy, and the pass at Keyes certainly seemed more than coincidence.

T
HEY SAY A ZEBRA
, as long as he can see the lion, goes on grazing without getting too much excited about it. But when he can’t see him, and can only hear him, and has no idea where the sound is coming from, he gets so nervous he can’t eat, can’t run, and can’t stand still. I was that way about Keyes. When he didn’t come in next day and he didn’t call, I stood it until noon, but by that time I had to find out what he was doing. I drove over to the hotel, and he was in the barber shop. The barber was working on his head, the shine boy on his feet, and the manicure girl on his paws. When I went bug-eyed he acted like nothing had happened, though you could tell from the way Marguerite had to cue him that he’d never had a manicure in his life, and I wouldn’t bet much he’d ever had a shine.

In the lobby, when the production job was done, so he shone and squeaked and smelled, he propositioned me about my car. “As there’s absolutely nothing I can do until I hear from New York, I’d kind of like to drive Mrs. Sperry around, and if you could accommodate me—”

“It’s yours. Here’s the key.”

“But if you need it I can rent one.”

“You? In a U-Drive jalopy?”

“Oh, I drive.”

“But you’re so valuable to the company.”

“I guess that’s right.”

He was pretty solemn about it, and I dead-panned, though I kind of liked the gag, and I filed it away so in case I had to make a speech at a company banquet I’d have something to tell the boys. Pretty soon he said: “She knows the country and is going to show me a lot of things, like the old mines in Goldfield and Tonopah and Virginia City—those are ghost towns, aren’t they?”

“They were, till fires burned the ghostly garments up.”

“Extraordinary woman, Ed. Wonderful mind. I was telling her about this problem of ours.”

“Yeah? I’m a little surprised.”

“Oh, I mentioned no names.”

“Then of course that makes it different.”

“She thinks, as I do, that on big things, you instinctively know what you think, with no evidential substantiation. Beautiful phrase, Ed.”

“Here we call it playing a hunch.”

“Her mind constantly parallels mine.”

“Or yesses it.”

“... What did you say?”

“I said what does she think of our problem?”

“Just what we think. She was wondering if she had any capacity for this clairvoyance of mine, as she calls it, and I laid it all out for her. She said, ‘Well, it would be terribly exciting if I could feel something steal up and touch me on the shoulder, but I don’t. All I see is a somewhat pathetic boy trying to make himself look big in a cheap, silly way.’”

“That makes three of us.”

“Got to run, Ed. Mrs. Sperry is waiting.”

“To say nothing of the former Mrs. Sperry.”

“Who?”

“Jane, waiting for me.”

“Mrs. Delavan was the former Mrs. Sperry?”

“Now you got it.”

He sat there a long time, sometimes asking me questions about who these people were, and I could see his mind racing up one part of it and down the other, putting everything together, checking what he had said to La Sperry, what she had said to him, and so on. Then he said: “It’s none of my business what she’s here for, is it, Ed?”

“That I couldn’t say.”

“And none of hers, what I’m here for.”

“That I couldn’t say either.”

“You know how I dope it out?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

“She had no idea what I was telling her.”

“What do you mean, telling her?”

“About Delavan’s policy.”

“Had no idea who you were talking about?”

“I never reject a
simple
explanation. Ed.”

“That explanation, I’d say, verges on the simple-minded. If you think, after what you told her, she had no idea who you were talking about—that is, if you told her all about the coal company, the—”

“Ouch, I forgot that.”

“It’s not possible she didn’t guess. ... Mr. Keyes, if you told her about it, as you say, it wasn’t up to her to tip it she knew who you were talking about if she didn’t want to. Maybe she’s a well-mannered dame that doesn’t tip things because she was brought up not to. But that’s not all. You didn’t only tell her. She pumped it out of you. She—”

“No, no, Ed. Nobody could. Not out of me.”

“O.K. You’re a clam.”

He sat another ten minutes thinking. “But what
interest
could she have? What could it mean to her whether Delavan gets his insurance or didn’t? She hasn’t tried to influence me in any way.”

“She’s here to block that annulment.”

“O.K., now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Just where?”

“If she’s here to block the annulment, by whatever suasion she cares to use—”

“On checks.”

“You mean she’ll
bribe
Delavan?”

“Why, Mr. Keyes, such language!”

“It’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“You think he’s too refined to accept?”

I took him out to where the car was parked, and he stood beside it, thinking some more. “I think we’ve got it, Ed. Mrs. Delavan got that thing they use all over the British Empire, one of those cut-and-dried, found-him-with-an-unknown-woman, in-and-out-in-ten-minutes divorces, and they’re perfectly good—so long as everybody plays ball. But God help you if somebody kicks the beans in the fire. An English court will reopen the case sure as God made little apples, and remember, if they wanted to call it on them, this would involve perjury, contempt of court, manufacture of evidence, collusion, everything that mocks the dignity of the court, and that it can’t have publicly proved. Delavan thinks he’ll kick over the beans. Mrs. Sperry has other ideas, because she doesn’t propose to have her marriage ruined by a playboy’s caprice. So far as I’m concerned, that accounts for everything, her trip here, all of it.”

I made sure he knew where the starter was and went off and left him. Why I had talked so tough I don’t know, as the hand as it was dealt said I ought to have talked the other way. But somehow, even if it is against your own interest, you can blow your top a little when you see a guy kidding himself and shutting his eyes to what he ought to be seeing. Because, tough talk or not, ramming the probe in, pretending to go into it from the company angle or however I played it, there was stuff going on here I didn’t understand, and my stomach was telling me it was no good.

Going into the week-end it was high, wide and handsome, with Jane and me out with the horses most of the time, and he running the roads with Mrs. Sperry. But when he brought her in Saturday morning, to pick up tickets for the football game over at the University, I didn’t exactly like her, but I could see what he’d fallen for. She was a little older than Jane, maybe a little under thirty, small and stocky, but not fat. But in the blue dress with white spots on it that she was wearing, with tan shoes, hat and bag and fur coat, you could hardly miss that trim, pretty shape, with nice legs that reminded you somehow of a cat. Or maybe it was her eyes that did that. Her face was round, with puffy, dimpled cheeks, rosebud mouth and small, perky nose and light hair; but her eyes were the diamond shape you see in a leopard, and light gray.

But she didn’t look like anybody else, you had to say that for her, and when she smiled at me and clucked over the cups and made herself friendly with Linda, you couldn’t exactly kick her in the teeth. She made my skin prickle a little, and yet I’m human and it wasn’t just to be nice to Keyes that I put myself out for her. After some talk about the football game she said: “I hear you see little Jane Delavan.”

“Yes, we ride a little.”

“Lovely girl.”

“... You know her?”

“Well—that would be a little complicated. But I’ve seen her and heard a lot about her—and I know a lot of people that she knows.”

“Shall I remember you to her?”

“I think it would please her that I spoke pleasantly of her. But if you mention it, don’t say anything as coming from me.”

“O.K.”

But how I was going to do it at all was what worried me, because to mention it would mean I would have to mention what Keyes had to do with it, and what was he doing here all this time? But I could have saved myself the trouble of thinking about it, because by dinner Jane already had it. “Ed, I ask you once more what that man is doing here.”

“He has business.”

“And what’s he doing with her?”

“Maybe he likes her.”

“What’s she doing with him?”

“Vice versa, maybe.”