A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

His Name Was Jack

The room was adorable, a dainty boudoir all in coral and gray. The girl waiting there in the room was adorable. The tea-rose moon that shone outside the window was adorable. Everything was adorable but one thing — the way those two hands on the clock were pointed, at 3 and at 6. Half-past three in the morning.

Three-thirty isn’t necessarily a tragic hour. But when you’ve been waiting alone since midnight for a husband that doesn’t come home, it isn’t exactly a consoling hour either. And when the husband’s an almost new one, dating only a year or so back, it’s more than tragic. It’s catastrophic. At any rate you don’t feel like laughing about it. Sharlee Milburn wasn’t laughing; she was prone across the bed crying her poor little nineteen-year-old heart out. The tangerine satin negligee rippled as her childish shoulders shook under it; one pomponned mule had fallen off, the other clung by just one toe. A Madame Pompadour doll perched at the head of the bed looked commiseratingly down on her as if it too would have liked to cry. This was her fifteenth crying spell since twelve o’clock, and still he didn’t come.

The first one had started in almost the minute she closed the door on the last of the gay housewarming guests. A fine housewarming of the new apartment that had been — without a husband! Why, she’d had to smile and lie to them through the long endless hours, keeping the tears back. “Oh, Craig’ll be here any minute now. He — he had to go out on business.” Gulp. “At least that’s what he said.” Which wasn’t what he really said at all.

What he said, when she timidly asked him where he was going, was “That’s my business!” There is, you will notice, a slight difference between the two statements, but it was the best she could do; she wasn’t very good at deceit. And at that it failed to be very convincing. She saw them all look at one another and change the subject. She knew they must think it strange. But she didn’t care what they thought if only they’d go. If only they’d go and leave her alone! She couldn’t hold out much longer; that glazed smile was cracking her lips and any minute the tears were going to come. Then finally they went, with their banter and their laughter and their good wishes and their noise, and she got the door closed after them. She tore into an adorable but empty boudoir, bounced on the bed, and cried as she’d never cried before.

Then right in the middle of it Stella Hart had to come back for something she’d forgotten and caught her at it. She knew it wasn’t Craig; he had his key; he wouldn’t have knocked. She just had time to powder her nose and snatch a cigarette for an alibi before she let Stella in. Stella was a funny sort of person, cynical and hard-boiled, wearing her divorces like beads around her neck, a sort of up-to-date rosary which she told off with the least encouragement and absolutely no embarrassment. She’d been watching Sharlee closely all through the evening; maybe that was why she’d purposely left her gloves behind.

“Oh, it’s you again, Stella,” Sharlee managed in a strangled little voice at the door.

“Forgot my gloves,” said Stella. But she didn’t seem in any hurry to look for them. Instead she kept scrutinizing Sharlee’s tear-bright eyes and nodding to herself as if she’d expected that.

Sharlee tried to bluff it out. “I–I just had a coughing fit on this cigarette,” she explained feebly, holding it up to show Stella.

“Peculiar,” said Stella, “seeing it isn’t lit at all. What do you do, chew them like gum? Who do you think you’re fooling?” she said harshly. Harshly but with an undertone of kindness. She didn’t wait for Sharlee to answer. “Not me anyway. Now just say the word and I’ll butt out again. I know this is none of my business, but I’m ten years older than you, and I hate to see anything as good-looking as you suffer on account of one of those things that wears a necktie and goes around talking way down deep. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Me, I’ve made ’em suffer. I’ve got nothing coming to me. I’ve collected. But I’d like to help you. I’m great for sex-solidarity. Why don’t you tell sister what he’s doing to you? Sister’ll put a few bees in his bonnet!”

Sharlee tried to be loyal to her year-old husband to the bitter end.

“Help me?” she tried to say coolly. “Why, I don’t know what you mean!” Instead all that came was a new gush of tears, and before she knew it, Stella’s arm was around her consolingly and she was sobbing out the whole story. “Why does he treat me like this? I don’t know what I’ve done to him! Comes home at all hours, blind drunk! I think he must have married me to spite somebody else, that’s what I think!”

“But you’ve only been married a year!” Stella gasped.

“Every night he leaves me upstairs alone and he’s down at the bar until they had to carry him up to our suite. When it began, I used to phone down, but he’d send back word that he’d come when he was good and ready. So I stopped that. Then he got a telegram; I think it was from her, whoever she is! Then we moved to this apartment Daddy and Mom had fixed up for us—”

“Do they know?”

“No, thank heavens, they couldn’t come to the housewarming tonight. I wouldn’t dare tell them either — Daddy would kill him!”

“Then what are you going to do?” asked Stella. “Are you going to buck this thing alone?”

“It’s my marriage so I guess I’ll have to.” Sharlee sighed. “I’ve never thought much of girls who ran home to mother the minute anything went wrong. I couldn’t face them at home. I want to be so proud of him — and he won’t let me!”

“To be proud of him,” said Stella acidly, “you’d have to have a helluva good imagination, if you’ll pardon my French.” She pondered for a while, puffing at a cigarette. “Suppose we try the old jealousy racket,” she said finally. “It works wonders, you’d be surprised! You know, what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, that sort of thing.”

“What would I have to do?” Sharlee looked sort of doubtful.

“Nothing, I’ll do it all for you; just leave it to me. I tried it on my third, no, I guess it was the second, and I had him eating out of my hand in no time! Now let’s see, we’ll start with— Does he smoke cigars?”

“No, never,” Sharlee assured her, mystified.

“Good, then we’ll start with that.” She went to the house phone and called the doorman. “Run out and get me a good ten-cent cigar,” she commanded. “Just one will do — and bring it up here, Mrs. Milburn’s apartment.” This must have surprised him a good deal, although apartment-house doormen usually expect anything and everything. Next Stella stalked into the dining-nook, studied it gravely, then decided. “This is as good a place as any. We’ll set the scene of your misdeeds in here. Got any champagne in the house?”

“No, but somebody brought a bottle of Scotch to the house-warming.”

“We’ll use that then. Bring two empty glasses in here — and two of everything else, plates, napkins, left-over sandwiches. Now, while I’m fixing the table so it will have that guilty, give-away look, you take a piece of stationery and scribble this on it: ‘Jack, darling, come back after the others have left and I’ll give you your answer. The door will be on the latch.’ Can you remember that?”

“Jack darling, come back after the others have left and I’ll give you your answer, door will be on the latch,” Sharlee repeated, looking at the ceiling.

“Better sign your name to it too, so there’ll be no mistaking who it came from,” the satanic Stella added. “Then bring it to me and I’ll show you what to do with it.”

“But I don’t know anyone named Jack!” protested Sharlee.

“Of course you don’t! But how does he know that? Go ahead and do what I told you.”

Sharlee flitted out and Stella arranged the table. Into one glass she poured a drop or two of Scotch, smearing it around so it would make it sticky and the odor would cling. That was “Jack’s.” Then into the other she poured a regulation highball and let it stand. That was Sharlee’s, who didn’t drink much whiskey but had poured herself one just to keep “him” company. She took a bite out of each sandwich, then dropped them on the plates that way, with half-moon dents in them. That meant they’d been too much in love to bother with food.

By the time she was through, the hallman had come to the door with a long black cigar wrapped in cellophane. She tipped him, then ordered crisply:

“Strip it, bite off the end, light it up, and pull on it until you’ve got it going.”

“Chee, thanks, lady,” he murmured gratefully.

“Wait a minute,” she forestalled, grabbing him by the arm. “Don’t go away. I’m not making you a present of it!” She withdrew it from his teeth, closed the door in his face, and carried it in with her to the table. His reactions to this strange behavior must have been highly informative had anyone been out there to listen.

Stella parked the smoking cigar in an ashtray beside “Jack’s” glass. It would burn undisturbed for hours, she knew, turning slowly to ash but not crumbling. Her fourth husband had been a heavy cigar-smoker; that’s how she knew.

Sharlee came in with the lover’s note and Stella proofread it, then instructed her:

“Now drop it just inside the door, written-side up, where he’s bound to see it when he comes in. The idea being that Jack dropped it out of his coat pocket as he was leaving. If it doesn’t work that way and he misses it, then here’s a surefire way to make it register. You give a little scream, snatch it up and hide it behind you, looking guilty, until he demands to know what it is.” Stella evidently knew how it was done.

“You think of everything,” Sharlee sighed admiringly.

“Now I’d better get out before he finds me here; he’s liable to show up at any minute—” Stella bustled toward the door, Sharlee trailing after her, mewing questions.

“But — but suppose he really believes I’ve done something wrong behind his back? Should I tell him then that it was all a trick?”

“Under no circumstances!” snapped Stella. “Anyway, not for days or even weeks! Until he’s stopped this business of staying out all hours of the night and treating you like a door-mat. Mind you, be careful not to admit there was anyone here, no matter how he storms and raves, but don’t deny it either — let him form his own conclusions. That ought to give him something to worry about, make him appreciate you a little more. If he gets too nasty about it, just throw this other woman up to him! That ought to hold him. It’s the swellest come-back you could want!”

“And if — if it doesn’t work, if he doesn’t seem to care?”

Stella threw up her hands. “Then it’s hopeless and you may as well give up. You’re nineteen and a raving beauty; there are other men in the world, thousands of ’em. I’d just walk out the door in that case and pitch your whole marriage over your shoulder if I were you.” She gave her a peck on the cheek. “Well, lots of luck, little Sharlee. Call me up sometime and let me know how it worked out.”

It was one by then. Sharlee closed the door on her fellow-conspirator and for a while felt considerably braced up. She went in, put on a dab of lipstick, touched a drop of Chypre to each ear, changed to one of her trousseau negligees, daringly pulled it down off one shoulder so she’d look flustered when he showed up. Then she just sat back and waited nervously while the note lay face-up just inside the door and the cigar filled the dining-nook with acrid fumes and the clock ticked on and on.

By two she was beginning to wilt again a little, now that Stella’s moral support was lacking. Not that little Sharlee Milburn was any dope or slouch herself under ordinary circumstances, but anyone very much in love is working under a terrific handicap. By quarter after two the tears were already playing a return engagement, and from then on they took nothing but curtain-calls until the clock reached three-thirty.

There was a lurch against the outside door; it banged open and there he was — the object of all the plotting. His hat was shoved to the back of his head, and he was in one of those “cold” drunks, that is, knew everything he was doing and saying and was ready to show his true colors. He wasn’t lovely to look at, but then he wasn’t handsome even when he was sober. His mouth had a sullen, cynical twist to it, and only the slight stagger with which he moved betrayed his condition.

Sharlee had gotten off the bed but had no time to dry her eyes before he was standing there looking in at her. He saw that she’d been crying — tactical error number one.

“Oh,” he said resentfully, “the water-works again, eh? I can see what kind you’re going to turn into in a couple years’ time, one of these cry-baby wives!”

He spotted the note when he turned back to close the door which he’d left open. She saw him pick it up and squint at it. She remembered Stella’s instructions; she squealed, ran out, jerked it away from him, tried to look properly guilty.

“Who the blazes is Jack?” he asked indifferently.

“Jack is — is Jack!” she stammered, looking at him with big round eyes. It didn’t seem to be going over any too well so far.

He sniffed the air, traced the odor to the dining-nook, went in. The cigar was mostly ashes. “Whew!” he said disgustedly. “Tell him I’ll treat him to a good cigar next time he comes around. This one smells like fried fish.” He dumped it out, noted the careful stage-effect on the table. “Little party, eh?” he commented. “Good for you! That’s the spirit!”

She nearly sank through the floor. Oh, something was wrong; didn’t he care at all? Wasn’t there even a spark of jealousy somewhere in his make-up for her? She averted her head, more bitterly humiliated than he could have guessed.

“It doesn’t seem to matter to you — what I do,” she said in a low voice.

“It’s all to the good,” he told her. “You have your little parties and I’ll have mine, and heigh-ho the merrio! But yours didn’t seem to turn out much of a success judging by the way you were bawling just now when I came in. Or is that the reaction you always get, moral indigestion after you’ve eaten your cake?”

“I’m not sorry for — for whatever I may have done tonight,” she flung at him defiantly. She would have died now rather than have him find out the whole thing was a frame-up. “Can you look me in the face and say the same, with somebody’s face-powder all over your shoulders and a lipstick-smear at the corner of your mouth and one of your garters trailing down over your shoe top?”

“Yes, I can say the same!” he bellowed angrily. “I can go even further than that! I was not only with someone just now, but I’m going to be tomorrow night and the night after and every night! How do you like that?”

“What did you marry me for?” she fairly screamed.

“On the rebound!” he said callously. He picked up “Jack’s” highball-glass and took a gulp from it. He sneered at her over the rim. “Who do you think you’re fooling anyway? I wasn’t born yesterday! I’ve had this tried on me before — it’s a racket with your sex! You should have a lover — you, married a year and crying every time I step out the door! There isn’t any Jack and you know it! You cooked up the whole thing yourself to try and get under my skin. Tell you how I know — if you’d really been guilty, you wouldn’t have been so damn careless, leaving things around wholesale like this! That cigar alone, you can smell it all the way down in the vestibule. The first thing you would have done would be to air the place if there’d really been a man here. Your technique,” he said scornfully, “is lousy.”

But she wasn’t in the room any more with him; her face was white now, and she didn’t look nineteen any more, and she was in the boudoir, getting dressed at a mile a minute.

“I’ll show him!” she panted. “I’ll show him whether there was someone or not! I’ll throw myself at the first man I meet outside that door tonight! Heigh-ho the merrio is right!”

Off came the tangerine satin negligee, splitting down its seam in her hurry; off came the pomponned mules with a vicious kick. There remained practically nothing to speak of for a moment, but friend husband wouldn’t have been interested even if he had been in the room at the time; he liked them thirty, experienced, and well-rounded — as he might have put it himself. Not nineteen and straight up-and-down like willows. On went what she considered the suitable costume for a young wife leaving her home in the small hours to throw herself away on the “first man she met”: a little blue tailored suit, pumps, a jabot, a funny little hat with a feather, and a purse with thirty-five cents in it.

He had finished “Jack’s” highball by the time she got the front door open but was still in the same derisive mood.

“Going home to mother, eh?” he called out to her. “Give her my regards.”

“I am not!” she wailed. “I’m — I’m going to him! And you’ve driven me to it! You’ve made your own wife into a — a two-timer!”

“Hah!” he laughed insultingly. Below them somebody began rapping on the steam-pipe. “You’ll probably wind up at the nearest Y.W.C.A. Be sure to look under the bed before you turn the light out; that’s your speed! Well, come back when you’re tired of play-acting, you little lame-brain! I’m going to bed, and I’m not getting up to answer any doorbells either so you better take your key with you!”

She closed the door with a shattering boom and stood there with her finger on the elevator push-button, heaving with anger. “The first man I meet!” she kept hissing. “The first man I meet!” A moment later, as the car came up for her, she realized there would have to be amendments. For instance, people like this hallboy — who was cross-eyed and had pimples — didn’t count; she’d better rule out all — er — employees and people like that, such as taxi-drivers, news-vendors and milkmen, or there was liable to be some kind of a catastrophe in no time at all. So the lift-man was eliminated, and she marched out into the before-dawn street head up and with a determined look in her eyes. She’d show him; she’d get even! Lame-brain, was she?

But the streets were not only deserted, they were chilly and misty and depressing as well. Still, she couldn’t show up at her parents’ at this hour, and she wasn’t going back so he could have the laugh at her. She could have gone to Stella’s, she supposed, but Stella was probably asleep hours ago, and she had a husband, and it seemed like an imposition. I suppose, she thought, the best place to — to throw myself at someone would be a night-club. But that was out too, for several very good reasons, the chief one of which was she only had thirty-five cents with her. And then she couldn’t think of any night-club offhand, and even they were probably closing down by now too.

She began to wonder as she walked briskly along, getting further and further away from the apartment-house, what they meant by always saying it was so easy for women and young girls to go wrong, go to the dogs, become a prey to temptation. Here she was out looking for it, and it seemed to be avoiding her.

A policeman strolled past just then, and she could feel him turning around to stare after her as she went by. But she quickly ruled him out, he was a sort of city employee, wasn’t he, and he hadn’t looked like a very flirty sort either, in fact rather suspicious and hard-hearted if anything. After that she didn’t meet anyone for several blocks until suddenly, of all things, she came upon a woman walking alone just as she was. They were coming toward one another, and as they drew abreast the other party addressed her.

“Pardon me, dearie,” she said, “could I touch you for a cigarette?”

Sharlee stopped and murmured politely, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t think I have any with me.”

“Skip it,” said the other girl philosophically. Then she surveyed Sharlee from head to foot. “How are tricks?” she demanded, not unkindly.

“Terrible!” Sharlee blurted out without stopping to think twice. “I’m so sore and disgusted — I’ve just about got things up to my neck!”

“Tell me what your trouble is,” the other commented critically. “You’re going around looking like somebody’s pet corn. Y’wanna flash a big smile, see — like this, give ’em the bridgework. And what’s the matter with your war-paint, did you run out of it? No wonder you’re not getting any breaks! Here, come on over by this street-light; I’ll lend you some of mine and fix you up. Now stand still—” She proceeded to take out a well-worn lipstick and an eyebrow pencil and began grinding them in on Sharlee’s delicate features. What emerged was a terrifying mask of red, white and black that could be seen a mile off.

“And there’s no flash to your clothes at all,” she went on. “You look like you’re going to a wake. Where’d you ever get that rig from? Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll trade this garden-hat for yours and that pocketbook, whaddye say?”

“All right,” said Sharlee, “if you think they’d be more attractive on me.”

“Think? I know what I’m talking about. Empty your purse and here goes!” She saw the thirty-five cents, shook her head, offered with sudden sympathy: “Want a loan of fifty cents? I’ll never miss it.”

“Thanks,” said Sharlee, “but I don’t think I’ll need it.” But she was grateful.

“Yeah, you’ll be in the money in no time now,” the other agreed. “I’ve improved you a million per cent.” They parted and the girl went her way with the noble feeling of someone who has just performed a good deed.

Sharlee tipped the gigantic threadbare black velvet cartwheel over one eye and proceeded in the opposite direction. Wasn’t she nice, she thought gratefully. I wonder what she was doing out so late?

For about five minutes more nothing happened, and then things began to happen with great rapidity. She was practicing the “bridgework flash” the other had suggested and not thinking much about her surroundings at all when suddenly a loud jovial voice assailed her:

“Well, look who’s here! Come to poppa!” and a sailor was lurching toward her with both arms extended in an intended bear-hug. Where he came from she never afterwards found out; he seemed to have sprung from the ground at her feet. Instantly he was ruled out. She seemed to be doing nothing but ruling people out, but he was an employee, an employee of the government or something like that, and he’d been drinking too much beer, and — she turned with a squeak and tried to flee but the bear-hug closed around her and he deposited a loud loving “smack” squarely between her eyes. The squeak turned to a loud screech and she squirmed and tried to kick at him. He seemed hurt by her lack of cordiality.

“Don’t you ’member me?” he said thickly. “Don’t you ’member your old flame Bilge Braddock? And after I had your name tattooed on me all the way from here to here! That’s a woman for you!”

“I never saw you before!” she wailed. “I’m not your old flame!”

“I’d know your face anywhere! What’re you trying to do, throw me down?” Hurt turned to indignation. “Deny that you’re Lily from Honolulu! Stand up there and deny it to my face!”

“I do!” she howled, struggling to get away from him at a forty-five-degree angle. “I’m Sharlee from New York and I was never in Honolulu in my life!”

“So I ain’t good enough for you any more!” he shouted wrathfully. “So you ain’t been true to me, after I bought you them earrings with real imitation poils and brought you back a live humming-bird from Bonus Airs! Well, this is what I do to broads who try to ritz me—”

He swung one powerful arm back over his shoulder and got ready to pound some affection into her.

“Here, you!” a voice said sharply. They both looked around. A taxicab had halted nearby and a young man in evening clothes was leaning out of the open door, eyes fixed threateningly on the nautical Romeo. “Don’t you let me catch you hitting her while I’m around,” he added.

“She’s Lily from Honolulu and she’s my woman, at least she’s my favorite one, and I can do what I want with her,” the sailor growled truculently. He let go of her, however, and turned to face the intruder.

“She may be all of that, and she certainly looks it,” commented the young man not very flatteringly, “but if you were any kind of a man at all—”

But Sharlee put in her two-cents-worth at this point. “I’m not Lily from Honolulu and I’m not his woman and I never want to see him again!” And she punctuated it by taking a vicious dig at his instep with her sharp-pointed slipper.

“O-woo!” he bayed, and began to hop around on one foot, holding the other up with both hands.

Sharlee fled toward the cab for sanctuary. “Let me ride with you,” she pleaded urgently. “Just a block or two, so I can get away from him.”

He helped her in, slammed the door and said: “Go ahead, driver.” They left Bilge Braddock staring mournfully after them and shaking his fist.

“Well,” smiled Sharlee’s rescuer, “you seem to have a taste for cave-men.”

“Why, I never saw him before in my life!” she said indignantly.

“I know, I know, you’re just misunderstood,” he purred. And he dug the point of his elbow jocularly into her ribs. “You’re really just a lady-picket or something, aren’t you, but you forgot your sign, and after he saw you walk back and forth in front of him about twenty times, he got the wrong impresh—”

She stared at him curiously from under the brim of the big floppy hat. What was he driving at anyway? He sounded vaguely disrespectful; in fact, plain disrespectful without any vaguely about it.

“I think this is far enough,” she said suddenly. “We’re a mile away from him by now.” And she reached toward the latch on the door.

His hand suddenly covered hers. “What’s your hurry?” he grinned. “Why not drop in for a while? I’m a bach, perfectly all right!” And he added: “I like you. I really mean it, something a little different about you, don’t know just what it is.”

The funny part of it was she liked him a little too. He was a gentleman, and although he was being altogether too familiar on short acquaintance, somehow she wasn’t afraid of him. Not like with that menace a few minutes ago, for instance. And anyway, wasn’t this what she’d threatened to do? He wasn’t an employee; there really didn’t seem to be any excuse for ruling him out this time.

“It’s awful late,” she condescended formally, “but I’ll drop in for a little while if you insist.”

A minute later she wondered why he slapped his knee that way and bent over double, roaring with laughter as though she’d just said something very funny.

“You’re cute!” he gasped. “No matter what you are, you’ve got personality — that’s what counts with me.”

Which didn’t make very much sense, but she let it go. They got out in front of a rather swank apartment building, and she saw him exchange a wink with the doorman as he ushered her in. The doorman just said “Good night, Mr. Herndon” very respectfully, and that told her his name.

He had really a very tasteful apartment, more expensive than hers and Craig’s in some ways, but more subdued of course on account of being a bachelor’s.

“Like it?” he grinned disarmingly.

“Do you live here all by yourself?” she wanted to know incredulously.

“The building furnishes maid-service,” he explained. “Take off your hat. What can I get you?” He opened one of those portable bars, and she’d never seen so many different decanters and flagons in her life.

“What’s that — that red one on the end?” She pointed blindly.

“Port,” he said, and she heard him comment to himself: “True to type all right.” He brought her a glassful and then perched on the arm of the big chair she was nestled in with a very weak and short Scotch in his own hand. He looked down at her and she looked up at him. “Poor kid,” he said suddenly, and rumpled her hair with his free hand. “You know, you’re much younger than I took you for at first.” He sighed and turned his head away. “I’ll be preaching at you in a minute if I’m not careful. Well, it’s your life, I suppose—” He got up and refilled his glass, brought her back another port. “You’d better drink this and go,” he said curtly. “I don’t feel right about the whole thing. Frankly, this isn’t my sort of stunt at all. I don’t go in for it, don’t know what got into me tonight, impulse I suppose.” Then he picked up her hand and folded something into it. When she tried to see what it was, he wouldn’t let her. “Skip it,” he said. “There’s something too damned innocent about your eyes.”

The port was making her sleepy. “First you ask me to drop in; then you ask me to drop out. You’re awfully funny, Herndon! I never had anyone treat me that way before.”

He pitched his glass over his shoulder and it smashed somewhere in back of him. Suddenly both his arms had folded around her. “Hell,” he growled close to her face, “I was only trying to be noble, not to take advantage of you — or something. Don’t forget I’m only human too.” But she didn’t hear the rest of it; her head tilted against his starched shirt-front and a minute later she was soundly, childishly asleep.

He stared at her in amazement. “Well, I’ll be—” he ejaculated. Then he picked her up in both arms and carried her inside to the next room. “Maybe some guys would wake you up and throw you out,” he said softly, “and maybe some would wake you up and not throw you out, but I haven’t the heart either way.” And when he came out again, closing the bedroom door on her, he added: “I could like that little tramp an awful lot — worse luck!”

Sharlee opened her eyes in a strange room, in a strange bed — and with her clothes on under the covers. A clock staring her in the face said it was after eleven. She remembered Craig first of all. Then she remembered Stella. Then a very pleasant dream she’d had came back to her, about someone who’d put both arms around her.

She got up and looked at herself in the mirror and all but screamed. She looked a fright, her face was all cheap red and white. She bolted into the bathroom and there was a great sound of splashing and scrubbing. When she came out again, she was herself once more. She ran a comb through her hair a couple of times and then she opened the door and looked out into the other room. There was a form huddled on the sofa under a topcoat, dead to the world. She tiptoed over and looked closer. It hadn’t been a dream after all. But she was smiling as she straightened up again. The name came back to her suddenly, Herndon. So I did it after all, she thought elatedly. Even if nothing happened, I kept my word. And he was nice, from what I remember; I couldn’t have picked anyone nicer if I’d tried.

The usual thing to do in a situation of this kind, she recalled from somewhere or other, was to make breakfast for him and have everything all ready when he opened his eyes. But when she looked around, there wasn’t even a kitchenette in the place, or a crumb of bread. That, however, wasn’t going to keep her from showing the right spirit. She phoned down in an undertone and had breakfast for two sent up from the drugstore below. Then she shook him gently by the shoulder.

“Herndon, wake up!”

He took lots of shaking but finally he grunted, rolled over and sat up. When he looked at her, his eyes popped.

“Who — who are you?” Then: “My gosh, you can’t be! Not that little hustler I brought in here last night!”

She gave him a mildly rebuking look. “One lump or two?” she asked.

He waved the coffee-cup aside and caught her by the wrist. “I’ve got to talk to you. What is all this? What’s it all about?” Suddenly his face was flaming red. “I ought to have my face slapped! The things I’ve been saying! But why the masquerade, why the get-up? But why did you let me go ahead thinking what I did? Any fool can see you’re not!” And then, almost savagely, “D’you know what could very well have happened to you here last night? Haven’t you any brains at all?”

“If you’ll let me get a word in,” she protested, “and a mouthful of coffee, I’ll explain.” And she did.

“He oughta be shot!” he scowled when she was through. “And that woman-friend of yours oughta be horsewhipped. And you yourself — oughta be spanked!”

She went ahead spreading marmalade. “But if it hadn’t been for them, I — we wouldn’t have met each other. I’m not sorry I met you. Are you sorry you met me?”

He didn’t answer, he couldn’t, straining her to him the way he was. After a long time he said: “At midnight I didn’t even know you, and at noon I — don’t laugh at me — I very much think I love you.” He gulped. “Damned if I don’t!”

“I like you more than I ever liked anyone before,” she breathed. “And I guess they call that love — the beginnings of it anyway.”

Nestled there in his arms, somehow she knew what the ending of this was going to be. Oh, not today and not tomorrow but soon, someday very soon now. Craig and her marriage would be a thing of the past. An annulment or arrangement of some kind would take care of it. And then there’d just be herself and Hern.

“What’s your given name?” she murmured. “Here I am in your arms — and you haven’t even told me yet! Don’t you think I’d better begin practicing up on—”

“Jack,” he said. And then he looked at her in astonishment, the way she had thrown her head back against his shoulder and was laughing, laughing until the tears came. “What’s so funny?” he grinned. “You little feather-brain.”

But all he could get her to say was: “Doesn’t life play the craziest tricks on us sometimes?”