Jealous Woman

5

Of course it didn’t quite run straight down Hotsy Totsy Drive, not with Keyes around it couldn’t. Next day, when the New York wire cleared everything he called Delavan from my office to tell him it was O.K. Then he began to stall, and then he hung up. And then, after studying the wire some more, he said: “Ed, I think I’m disapproving this risk.”

“And why, if I may ask?”

“Concealment.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. But he was surprised.”

“At you okaying something?”

“I told him I’d heard from New York, that his application was approved, and he was surprised. He thought it wouldn’t be, and there’s nothing he’s told me or I’ve told him that should make him think it wouldn’t be. That means there’s something he expected me to find out. I’ve got to know what that is.”

Now I know why he was surprised. After Jane had told him his application would be disapproved, to be told five days later that it had been passed was enough to surprise anybody. But what I had told her and what she had told him I regarded as completely outside the scope of a company investigation, and if Delavan still wanted to accept his insurance I didn’t mean to be blocked off from my cup on some crazy hunch by a guy trying to find stuff that would make headlines in the newspapers. I just calmly got up and walked into the outer office and told Linda to get Mr. Norton on the telephone. Norton’s president of the company. He’s not quite the man his father was, that founded our company and a couple of other companies and built them up and formulated most of the policies we’ve got, but he’s a nice guy just the same and what I wasn’t forgetting in any way, he was a little fed up with Keyes. I spoke to Linda good and loud, so Keyes heard me. When I came back we just sat there, he smoking his cigar and thinking. I smoking mine and burning.

“Mr. Norton?”

“Hello, Horner, what’s on your mind?”

I gave him enough of it, even if it was a long distance call, for him to get what it was about. “Now, Mr. Norton, I’ve got some cups on my bookcase that say I’m one of the best agents you’ve got. I’ve got my eye on another, maybe you know about that. But here’s something that maybe you don’t know. I’ve got three letters in front of me, three letters as yet unanswered, from other companies, offering me territory, with general agent rank, in cities a lot bigger than Reno, cities that—”

“Now, Horner!”

“Could mean, to me—”

“Will you let me talk? If you’ll meet that afternoon plane, I’ll have somebody aboard that I think can straighten things out. Now just take it easy. Play some golf. And let me talk to Keyes.”

Keyes hated it, but he had to stand there and say “Yes, sir” every ten seconds, and when he hung up his face was so red it looked like a Technicolor gag. Then he put on his coat and went out.

I expected H. P. Davis, senior vice-president, or maybe Vic Rose, chief of underwriters, but I almost fell over backwards when Norton himself came down the ladder. Oh yes, he did. An insurance company puts first things first, and it knows what the first things are. What brings in its business is agents, and when one of them blows his top even the President’s not too proud to jump on a plane. He was just like any other guy as I drove him in, and we went direct to my office, as he was taking the sleeper back and wouldn’t need a room at the hotel. “What do they call you, Horner — Ed?”

“My friends do, yes.”

“And my name is Jason — Jace if you like me.”

“I’d feel funny about that.”

“Oh, this is the West.”

“Yeah, but a corporation president, he ought not to have people getting familiar. J.P., though, I’d like that all right.”

Well, that made him laugh, so by the time we hit town we were getting along fine. Keyes was there when we came in, looking pretty thick, but we went all over it, and then Norton took charge: “Keyes, you knew my father pretty well?”

“Better than you did, perhaps.”

“On insurance, I’m sure you did. But I knew him too, and on questions like this, I’ve heard him say a thousand times: ‘Insurance is the assumption of risk. Pig-iron under water is a perfect risk, but nobody takes out a policy on it. That’s what the underwriter must always bear in mind: if the applicant weren’t in some way uneasy, he’d never buy insurance. The risk must be there for the surety to be sought and the mere presence of risk is not in itself sufficient reason for rejection of the business.’ Do you recall his saying that?”

“No.”

“I do, distinctly.”

“He never said it.”

“He said it forty times a day for forty years.”

“What he said was: ‘Insurance is the assumption of a calculated risk.’ He was, as you probably recall, opposed to conservatism in the acceptance of business. He accepted business that most companies turned down, but it was in no way a gamble with him, except as all of it is a gamble. He brought the calculation of a risk to a science that was way ahead of his time, with a department of investigation that brought in stuff that hadn’t even been heard of then. Yet the ratio of his losses was as sound as any in the business. I’ll recommend no risk I can’t calculate, and in this case there is concealment. There is concealment on the part of the beneficiary, of the assured, and I think on the part of the agent.”

I flared up but Norton cut me off: “Ed, what is this?”

“I’m stuck on the beneficiary, J. P.”

“Mrs. Delavan?”

“I’m going to marry her.”

“Is that the matter that’s been concealed?”

“No, I wouldn’t say so. The main item of concealment is that Mr. Keyes is stuck on the wife of the lady’s first husband, but she’s not going to marry him — and that’s what this is all about, though what romance has got to do with the calculation of risk I don’t exactly see — though I’m willing to be shown.”

I guess it was a dirty crack at Keyes, but I was pretty sore. Norton’s mouth began to twitch and I could see he was having a hard time not to laugh. Keyes talked some more, and the trouble with him was that when he got that look in his eye, and told all the times before that he had been right when he smelled something wrong without even knowing what it was yet, he’d shake you, in spite of yourself. Away down deep in me, if I’d told the truth, he shook me, but I was getting bull-headed by then and nothing could change me. He shook Norton, I could see that, for a while we all three sat there, drumming our fingers on our chairs. I called to Linda to put through my New York call. It was the apartment of a big shot in a company that wanted me bad, and he was standing by, because I’d wired him to. Pretty soon it came through, but it was Norton that picked up the receiver. “He’s changed his mind, Linda. Doesn’t want the New York call.”

I took them to the Palm Room of the Club Fortune, but at eight Norton had to run for his train. He thought it funny Keyes didn’t go with him, and as I put him in his cab he asked if there was a little resentment around. “Romance, J. P. has to say goodbye.”

“Say, who is the dame?”

“A Mrs. Sperry, I believe her name is.”

“Not Constance?”

“You know her?”

“Boy, is that a twenty-minute egg!”

“Well, Keyes is carrying it in his Easter basket.”

“Ed, you don’t know how funny this is. Before she married this Englishman, there were at least six guys that thought they’d grab that fortune, but even they couldn’t take it. And now Keyes, the guy that can’t be fooled, is plunking a guitar under her window — say, that’s a real joke.”

When I got back inside, Keyes had kind of forgotten to be a celebrity for a while, and there seemed to be something on his mind. After a while he said: “Ed, do you think it would be proper for me to call on Mrs. Sperry before I leave, just to say goodbye?”

“Well, why not?”

“You think it would embarrass her?”

“Well, that all depends.”

“On what?”

“On what she’s told the husband.”

“I don’t quite understand you, Ed.”

“Well, on this earth we got all kinds. Some play around and figure they owe it to themselves on account of how short a time we have here anyhow, and they keep their mouths shut and it sounds wonderful but they’ve got a way of figuring what they owe themselves is nothing compared to what you owe them, so it’s not really quite as wonderful as it sounds. And then there’s others that play around, and they figure it’s right down sinful of them but they can’t help it on account of how wonderful you are, but you better watch them because they’ve got an unfortunate habit of getting remorse and telling friend husband all, just to square everything up and start over again, and I hear it works but going around to say goodbye depends mainly on the husband. Maybe he wants to shake hands, but on the other hand maybe he’s got a Colt automatic and just aching to use it. Personally, if you ask me, I’d kind of give her a ring and see how things stand before I came in range, like you might say.”

He sat there with a spoonful of coffee halfway up to his mouth, staring at me like I must be crazy or something. “But, Ed, you don’t mean you think there’s anything between her and me to tell, do you?”

“You mean you didn’t make passes?”

“I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

“Maybe you missed something.”

“Do you mean to make insinuations about her?”

“Hey, hey, hey, be your age.”

“But Ed — about that woman?”

Well, how do you tell a guy you think his lady friend would go for an insult right on the lipstick? “I was kidding you, Keyes. Just seeing if you could take a rib.”

“I’m glad to know it, Ed.”

But even with all that said between us, he still wanted to talk, and he opened up about how he thinks he got himself more emotionally involved with her than he had realized, and how he’d hate to leave town without going to see her, because he’s pretty sure she feels the same way. Then his face got red again, the way it had in the afternoon, and he kept saying over and over again she was a woman a man could love and not be ashamed of it, and then all of a sudden he was looking over my shoulder at something over near the door. I turned around, and Mrs. Sperry was just coming in with a short, stocky man, and she waved when she saw us. I gave Keyes kind of a kick on his shoe, so he wouldn’t look so glum. “It’s all right to be in love, but why advertise it?”

“Is he her husband?”

I had the captain do some sleuthing and he came back and said the gentleman was Mr. Richard Sperry. Keyes got glummer, then said: “Look at this.”

It was the same old report from the fellow assigned to keep track of her, and he read it again, the description of the man that went into her room and didn’t come out: “‘Age, 30–35, height around six feet, weight around 160, hair black with some gray.’ Ed, that man’s job depends on getting it right. Sperry over there is at least fifty, he’s not an inch over five feet eight, he can’t weigh over 140, and his hair is light red.”

“Probably some simple explanation.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

I rang Jane and told her I was hooked for the evening, but if I could make it later I’d call her. He and I went over to the hotel, and he said he’d be right down and went upstairs. He was gone quite a while, brushing himself up, he said, and then wanted me to drive him around, so he could think. I took him over into California on the road to Sacramento, and it goes over the Sierras but if it slammed him around a little I didn’t really mind. He lit a cigar, then threw it out the window, right in a fire zone. Then he pulled his legs up under him and sat with his heels kind of jammed over against me. So of course that made it nice, trying to drive. He wound down his window, stuck his elbow out, and leaned his chin on it. So of course that made it still better, with a draft blowing down my neck. Then he began clenching and unclenching his left hand, so it rubbed my brake leg. “Cut it out, will you, Keyes? How can I drive with—”

“Quit bothering me.”

“Then suppose it wasn’t her husband last night?”

”Ed, I’m trying to think.”

Sore as I was, the way he rapped it out I didn’t have much more to say. I took a peep at him, and something in the way he was staring at those tall trees going by let me see it, just once, whatever it was he had in him that made him the greatest wolf on a phony claim west of the Mississippi River, and maybe the greatest in the business. He wasn’t sore, or squint-eyed, or whatever you’d think he would be, trying to dope this out. He was just like a child that asked his mother why something made a noise like it did, and when he got an answer that didn’t make sense, he was trying to fit it together. That hurt little frown, with 1,000,000 watts of concentration back of it, was something I’ve often thought of since. After a while he put down his feet, wound up his window, and said: “Well, I’ve thought of one angle anyway. Thank God you haven’t delivered that policy.”

“How do you know what I’ve done?”

“Don’t tell me she’s got it?”

“While you were taking your own sweet time brushing up, and considering that when Norton left this was supposed to be signed, sealed and settled, it’s highly possible I slipped upstairs on the elevator and handed it to her, just to cheer her up. That could be. A lot of things could be. It would help a lot if you’d disconnect that assumer of yours and stop taking for granted what I do. I’m not under your orders, remember that.”

I was pretty disagreeable, and he raved and tore his hair and hooked it up big. I let him run on, maybe encouraged him a little. Of course, I hadn’t delivered any policy. I hadn’t had a chance for one thing, and I had to figure on it for another thing, what I’d say to her about it. Before the three of us had left the office Norton had O.K.’d it for Linda to deposit Delavan’s check, and she’d mailed it out with two or three others, her final job every night, or most nights anyway, as there weren’t many days we didn’t handle payments. Once we took the money, the policy was legally in force, which was one thing that gave me a pain in the neck about all this delivery stuff Keyes was handing out, because short of a trip to the post office in the middle of the night, and another at daybreak to get the check back, there was no way to stop the thing now. That all-night run-around I wasn’t for one second going to start, because all this needed was one more hang-up, and it could land in the soup. At that time, I have to admit, that while I thought I was doing Jane a favor, as I’ve said, the real thing on my mind was the cup and that $100,000 tilt on my company score. It may have been childish, but in my experience the more childish something is the stubborner you get about it. All this so you get it straight about that policy, and the sweats I went through over it later. I’ll try to make clear why I handled it like I did, and I think I’ll make sense, but how it stood then, on that ride back from the mountains, was like this: I had it, right in my office safe. It was paid for, and legally we were on the hook. But Keyes supposed, maybe because I deliberately misled him a little, that Jane had it.

He sulked then, and I turned around, and we started back. As we were coming in to Truckee he started up again. “Here, we’ve got a question of identity. What confused this, from the beginning, was that it was Delavan himself who applied for the policy, or appeared to. That made it O.K., even if his reasons were a little screwy, but we’re in that kind of business, and if we ever saw a perfect risk, they wouldn’t be wanting insurance — old man Norton’s pig-iron again. It won’t burn down, or fall on somebody, or steal the payroll, or collide with a truck, or blow away, or get hit by lightning, but who wants a policy on it? So all right. But there was one fishy thing about it? She opposed the idea. Ed, did you ever see a beneficiary, especially a wife, oppose insurance to mean it? I’m not talking about a little act she puts on. I’m not talking about when she says she can’t even bear to think about it, all that stuff. That looks good to the husband, but did she ever turn down a check when the agent takes it around? Not her, my young friend. Once she hears those words, ‘Till death do us part,’ she’s a solid prospect, and when she really goes to town on the other side of the fence, like this girl did, something cooks.”

“It does, and I told you what it was.”

“Ed, who says that was Delavan?”

What I said to him was nothing, because I’d had hunches about this thing too, as I think I told you. But he didn’t wait long. He went right on: “Ask that one question, and it all makes sense. Delavan’s in town, I’ve no doubt of that. He’s here, and any question of where he’s staying and all the rest of it’s all taken care of. He’s here for an annulment, and she’s in the soup, and he’s going to get killed, and all papers on the corpse are going to check up, because it’s really going to be Delavan that gets it. But how are we going to prove Delavan’s not the man that bought the policy?”

“Can’t we appear at the inquest, have a look at the corpse, and testify that he’s not?”

“What’ll that corpse look like?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“But I’m asking you — after, say, an auto accident?”

“Like hamburger, I guess.”

“They’ll laugh at us, testifying whether it’s the guy that bought the policy or who it is. It’s six-figure dough to us, and well they know it, and how much our testimony will be worth is exactly nothing at all, especially since even his own mother wouldn’t know him.”

“However, he’s not dead yet.”

“He will be. You remember Mrs. Peete?”

“Who?”

“California case. Killed a couple of people.”

“Oh, I remember. Kind of got the habit.”

“And when she was sentenced to die, she said a peculiar thing to the reporters. She said: ‘It is given to all to know the day they were born, but to very few the day they’re going to die.’ Funny idea, that was, Ed. Kind of reminds you how seldom that moving finger gives out an advance copy of what it’s going to write. Well, we’ve got one. Here we are, two guys in a car, and we know a man named Delavan is due to get it, that a woman is due to collect $100,000 insurance off us, that then she’s going to run off with a guy that’s been pretending to be the husband, and that we’ll have one sweet time finding.”

“Listen, Keyes, if your sweetie’s been two-timing you that’s unfortunate, but don’t take it out on me. Or on Delavan. Or on Mrs. Delavan. And don’t pull any more of that moving finger stuff. I’m just a little fed up.”

“Something funny is going on here.”

6

Back in Reno we headed for the Club Fortune, where he had forgotten to uncheck his briefcase, on account of being slightly upset when we left there. But we didn’t get to the Club Fortune. Because when we started past the hotel there was a terrific jam, with police swinging flashlights and an ambulance parked up Second Street, and I stopped to ask a cop that I knew what had happened. “We don’t exactly know yet, Mr. Horner, as we’ve been trying to save the guy that was standing under the accident when it fell on him — anyway whatever it was that fell on him. A fellow jumped, fell, or div out of one of the hotel rooms, and he landed on a taxi driver that had just set down a fare, and when the ambulance come we let the first guy lay and had them take him, the driver, I mean, but now they’ve come back I guess we’ll be sending the dead one to the morgue and maybe his papers’ll show more about it. Them suicides have generally got a note on them, pinned to their coat or somewhere.”

Keyes had been sitting there paying no attention, but now he sat up and began to look at the hotel and the ambulance and the crowd, where it was gathered around something on the pavement, and soon as the cop moved off he began to cuss at me in a mean, spiteful way, which was plenty unusual with him, because he was generally polite enough, even when he was setting you crazy with his foolishness. I said: “Well, for the love of Pete and Pete’s crazy brother-in-law, Keyes, what is it now?”

“You know what it is, Horner. That’s the deluxe tier they’re all standing under, the one you tried to get me into, and couldn’t, the one she’s in. Your little pal. Mrs. Delavan, that moved fast, once she got that policy. ‘Jumped, fell, div’ — or was pushed. And here I’ve got another one of those things on my hands, where whodunit is nothing and what-was-it is the whole thing and even when you know it how-can-you-prove-it will lick you, and all because you’re in love with a no-good trollop I warned you about from the beginning.” He looked me in the eye, then, and came out with some stuff I never thought I’d take from any man, and then he opened the door and got out.

At the office I sat staring at the four cups, where they were shining in the light of the desk lamp, trying to figure what I was going to do about that policy, if anything, and what I was going to do about Delavan’s check, which was in the mail, on the way to the bank. I could get it, as I’ve said, by taking one of our office envelopes up to the night window, signing a stop slip, and then in the early morning taking another trip there to claim it. I mean, they require a piece of stationery identical with the piece of mail wanted, and while it was a lot of trouble, it was possible. And I thought a long time. And it kept beating in my head I wasn’t going to be cheated out of what I had my mind set on, by Keyes or anybody, just on account of some brainstorm he’d had, even if it all turned out exactly the way he figured it. If there’d been fraud, O.K., it wasn’t the first time it had happened, and let him prove fraud. That was his job, and if he was so slick at it, he could put us in the clear and get his name in the paper. I might as well put this part right on the line: Somewhere in that cogitation was a guy that made up his mind he was going to take a chance. I wish I could say, that had made up his mind he was going to do what was right come hell or high water. Maybe it was right, I don’t know. I’ve tried to tell myself it was right plenty of times. But why I did it was: I wanted what I wanted, and I was willing to take a chance. Right there was where I skated out where the ice was thin, and it was quite a while before it got thicker, and in between, it got quite a lot thinner.

What I actually did do was put in a call for Jackie, at the

Scout ranch, and tell her I was mailing myself a legal paper there, and to hold it for me until I called for it. She was a little short at being waked up, but an important customer was an important customer, so she said O.K. she’d receive it, and put it in a safe place. Then I put the policy in an envelope, stamped it, went over to the post office, and mailed it.

When I rang Jane on the house phone, she sounded nervous and said some police officers were there in connection with something that had been found on the body, and could I call a little later. I sat in the lobby a half hour, and when a couple of cops came out of the elevator I rang her again and she said come up. I was hardly in the room before she was in my arms, holding onto me, not like we’d done before, with romance in it, but like a scared child does when its father comes around. “It did things to me, to hear your voice. The first I heard of it was from the officers, and I felt as though my face and hands had turned to splinters. And then all of a sudden there you were on the line, my big, solid, dependable Ed.”

“Thought you might need me.”

“After all — he was my husband.”

“You can’t laugh that off.”

“You want a drink, Ed?”

“I could stand one, if coaxed.”

“I need something.”

She went into the dinette and made a couple of highballs and after we both had a sip she sat down beside me on the sofa and kept holding onto my hand. “They were awfully nice. The officers, I mean. They hadn’t wanted to bother me at all, but there was an unmailed letter in his pocket, addressed to me, and they wanted my permission to read it. It seemed they could have anyway, but in that case it would have come out in the papers, and they didn’t want me to see it first that way. It was terribly sweet.”

“And said?”

“Nothing. Only what had been said before. Over the telephone. About the divorce. But it was friendly. And it shook me up.”

It didn’t make sense. Because, remember all that Keyes had said was on the assumption that she had the policy. She didn’t. It was safely in the U.S. post office, and would be until it was delivered at the Scout the next day, though it was technically in force, if some lawyer told her. And yet there was the dead man, that landed right under her window. And here she was, shaking like a leaf. And here were her hands that felt like ice. I may as well admit it. I never loved her more than I loved her that minute, and never suspicioned her more, either. And the rest of what I’ve got to tell you, just so you get it all straight and not fall for some fancy stuff I may put in here and there, to make myself look better, is simply about a guy that kept suspicioning a woman, and getting rid of his hex and then suspicioning her some more, and every time he’d suspicion her he’d fall for her again, until finally he admitted to himself he would go for her no matter what she did, and no matter how much of a heel he had to make of himself to help her do it.

I sat there, trying to square it all up with what Keyes had said, and specially about what he had said about the fellow that told us he was Delavan being nothing but a fake to cover being her lover, when the buzzer rang and when she opened the door that guy, the one I knew as Delavan, walked in. For one second I could feel this throb in the back of my throat, and I wanted to go over and kill them both. But she acted natural, and he said hello to me, and then half took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Jane. Is there anything I can do?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“You haven’t heard anything?”

“About what, Tom?”

“...Why he did it?”

“He did it?”

“Well — I would suppose so.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“I’m sorry. I just — supposed—”

“That’s what the officers meant, wasn’t it?”

“They’ve been here?”

“With his letter he wrote me. But there was nothing in it that remotely suggested anything like that. Just a friendly letter. Just—”

“But they — think so too?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m sorry I said anything, Jane.”

“It’s all right.”

“Well — if I can do anything.”

“I’ll let you know.”

He went and we sat down again and she lay in my arms with her eyes closed. “That hadn’t even once occurred to me. Ed, do you think he did do it? Kill himself, I mean?”

What I said to that I don’t know. I held her close, but things were spinning until Keyes rang up. I went in to talk to him and he began apologizing for what he had said. “O.K., Keyes, but what’s it all about?”

“It wasn’t Delavan that got it.”

“...What?”

“It was Sperry.”

“Hold on while I drop dead, will you?”

“Amazing, isn’t it, Ed?”

“Well, Keyes, we all make mistakes.”

“Now, Ed, I’m really going to surprise you.”

“What, again?”

“I don’t feel I’ve made a mistake.”

“O.K., but I’ve seen Delavan.”

“Do you fool with mathematics, Ed?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I do a little. And sometimes, when you’ve made a gigantic calculation, and you know you’ve got hold of something that means a lot, you come out with infinity equaling zero, or something like that. Well, so you’re crazy, aren’t you? Not as a rule you’re not. You go back and you check your transformations and you find you came in with a minus px instead of plus, and you make your changes, and all of a sudden there it is, just the way you knew it should be. Ed, I only wish I had something to do with it, beyond the group policy we wrote for the taxi company which I’ll have to look into. There’s something funny here, and I may say Mrs. Sperry agrees with me.”

“Oh, you’ve seen her?”

“Well, Ed, naturally.”

“Well hey, hey, this changes things. She’s a marriageable widow now.”

“Ed, don’t be silly!”

“I’m not being silly.”

“You’re being pretty silly.”

“Except, of course, there’s the midnight Romeo.”

“That’s been cleared up. He was a drunken valet of Sperry’s. When he came to her with a message, she saw the condition he was in and locked the door to report him to Sperry, who had taken the suite down the hall until the hotel could open up the single in between so they could have the big five-room suite that they wanted. While she was at the phone the valet slipped out on the ledge that runs around the building and popped in one of the corridor windows and out to a gambling place before she could stop him. And I’d like no more references to it.”

“O.K., pal.”

“And, Ed?”

“Yes?”

“Will you remember what I said. That we both drink—”

“Will you kindly go jump in the river?”

It was sweet, all right, to stay late, and hold her in my arms, and feel her tremble a little, because she was a nice girl and if the guy had once been her husband that’s how a nice girl ought to feel about it. And yet, driving home, it all came back to me how Keyes had sat there and checked it off about the Moving Finger. We hadn’t had an advance copy, but we’d got a whiff of some queer-smelling ink.

7

Track of arrivals, and next morning I drove out to the Cinnabar Ranch to tackle three shots from New Jersey that had flown out for some shooting in their private plane. Sometimes, after their first introduction to a Western trail horse, they’re not so hard to sell, and I was doing all right. Two of them had no time for me, but the one that was manager of a Newark sheet and tube plant walked over to the stables with me and he didn’t say much, but I had that feeling you get, that he was my onion if I peeled him right. I mean, just keep on talking and first thing you know he’ll cut in with whatever it is that’s on his mind, generally some question about cost. You get out your rate book, and if you’re any good you should book him for his medical right there, and next day have his check. So I did and he did, and then I lost him. How, don’t ask me. I had him and I didn’t have him, and when I got back to the office I knew I wasn’t right. It was eating on me a little more than I had thought, whatever it was I wasn’t buying about the death of Richard Sperry, geologist. And when Jane rang me, around noon, and asked me to step over, as the police had some questions they wanted to ask her, and she didn’t want to be alone with them, Bo-Bo the Butterfly did a couple of fronts in my stomach.

But when they came up to her suite, a patrolman and a sergeant, they treated her fine, and said all they were trying to do was check for their report where he fell from, or jumped from, whatever it was that he did, and they were pretty certain it had to be from this apartment. They hadn’t been able to find anybody that saw him fall, but they had questioned everybody on this tier, and three of them had seen him go by the window. But as one of them was the man in the apartment just below hers, it pretty well let any other apartment out, as hers was on the top deck. The sergeant looked at her, then said: “Not to upset you any more than I can help, ma’am, there’s things people do when they fall that a police officer knows about and not many other people do, and the way these people tell it sounds O.K. to us, and specially it sounds O.K. the way this fellow just below you tells it. It don’t sound to us like stuff he might be making up just to get his name in the paper.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“A man falling, he moans. It’s a pitiful sound.”

“Now I understand.”

“These people, that’s what they noticed.”

“It couldn’t have been this suite.”

“Were you here?”

“No, that’s the point. I was out.”

“Where was you, if you don’t mind saying?”

“At a picture show.”

“Here in town?”

“The Rhythm Parade. At the Granada.”

“You come straight here?”

“I arrived at the hotel around a quarter to twelve, after starting down to Harold’s and changing my mind and coming here. When I got here the ambulance had arrived and the officers were making the crowd stand back, so I had some trouble getting by. I had no idea what had happened, or who it had happened to, until I got up here and the officers rang me, a few minutes later, and then came up and told me.”

“Did this man have a key to your room?”

“Not that I know of.”

“He come here often?”

“Never. I hadn’t seen him in three years.”

“How could he have got in?”

“I don’t know.”

“He in any trouble that you know of?”

“I know nothing of his recent affairs.”

“He sick or anything?”

“He was in good health when he was my husband.”

“Get along with his wife?”

“I don’t know.”

“You got any ideas about this? You understand, ma’am, we’re not charging anybody. It’s nothing like that. But we got to make a report. It’s got to be, the way we figure it, that he went out that window there. The first thing is why, and the next thing is, how.”

“I can’t imagine his doing a thing like that, or any reason he would have for doing it. Or how he could get in here, or why.”

“That window’s high, for one thing.”

“Didn’t he have a window of his own?”

“He had a wife of his own, too. Watching him, maybe.”

“One reason for suicide, no doubt.”

That’s what she said, but she kind of snapped it out and everybody laughed. After a minute she laughed. It was easy to see that the cops had put it together on a suicide basis, with some trouble going on between Sperry and Mrs. Sperry as the reason for it. Then the sergeant said: “Anybody else in the apartment at the time you was out?”

“No... Or, wait. I’ll see.”

She went in the bedroom and picked up the telephone. There was some talk and she came back. “I just happened to think that my maid may have been up, putting out my things for the night.”

“Had they been put out when you got in?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She coming?”

“She’s on her way up.”

So that was the third time I saw this Harriet Jenkins that you probably read about, but the first time I really had a good look at her. She was about the sloppiest-looking thing in the way of a woman I ever saw, and cheap, and 100 % servant girl from the cap on her head to the shoes on her feet. But if you have some little trouble understanding what came out later, I may as well tell you she was just about as sexy a number as you’re liable to see in a month of looking. She looked maybe twenty-six or — eight, and her face was coarse, her hair ratty red, and her neck that certain color that made you wonder how often she washed. But don’t let anybody tell you that under the ten-cent-store makeup, the cotton stockings, the bombazine uniform there wasn’t looks, shape and a way of handling her gum. There was also a droopy way of handling her eyes.

She came in with her own key and stopped when she saw the cops and shot a look at Jane like she wanted a cue. But Jane just said they wanted to ask her a few questions and told her she could sit down. Sitting down didn’t seem to be something she was very good at, anyway around Jane, but she pulled the chair out from in front of the writing desk, sat on the edge of it, pulled her dress down over her knees, and began looking from one to the other of everybody in the room. That went on for quite some time, because cops, they make a specialty of sitting there looking at you, so you get fidgety wondering what they’re thinking. But the sergeant got enough of it and sounded off: “You knew Mr. Richard Sperry?”

“Oh, yes, sir. ’E was my employer for some years.”

“When’s the last time you seen him?”

She looked away and kind of huddled up like some puppy dog that was getting a bawling out, and then she asked Jane: “Is it important, ma’am?”

“Quite important.”

“’E asked me not to say.”

“I’d tell it, if I were you.”

“’E gave me a tenner not to say.”

“Regardless of what he gave you, it’s desirable that you tell anything you know, and it may have very bad consequences, particularly to yourself, if you conceal anything you know. The police officer has asked you when was the last time you saw Mr. Sperry.”

“It was last evening, sir.”

“Where?”

“’Ere.”

“In the hotel?”

“In this room.”

“When?”

“Around eleven, sir.”

The cops looked at each other and Jane looked at me and then remembered not to look at me, and you could tell this was something nobody had expected. But the maid didn’t seem to think there was anything out of the way about it. “He came here looking for Mrs. Delavan?”

“’E did, twice.”

“Tell us about it.”

“The first time was around nine. I was lying down on the spare bed, ’aving a look at the illustrated magazines, as Mrs. Delavan was seeing a picture and there was no need for me to ’urry my work in any way. And the buzzer sounded and I got up and put on my cap and peeped out the pigeon ’ole, as they call it ’ere. And ’oo should be in the ’all but Mr. Sperry. And I welcomed ’im in, for I ’adn’t seen ’im since I left Bermuda. And ’e was most gracious to me, as we ’ave one or two personal memories, I think I may say. But ’e was deeply disappointed when I told ’im Mrs. Delavan would be late getting in, and shortly after that ’e left. And it was at this time that ’e gave me the tenner and asked me not to mention ’is visit to anybody. ’E repeated ’imself several times. ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Jenkins,’ ’e said. Tell nobody. Nobody.’”

“And who was nobody?”

“Mrs. Sperry, I think sir, but ’e made no exceptions.”

“And this was a little after nine?”

“’Is first visit, yes, sir. Then, around eleven I’d say it was, ’e came again. I invited ’im in to wait for Mrs. Delavan, and ’e began walking up and down ’ere, very nervous like, and often looking out the window for ’er, and leaning out and looking down at the street, until I ’ad to warn ’im it was dangerous as ’e could lose ’is balance and fall. Then ’e calmed down a little and I suggested ’e might prefer to wait for ’er alone. So I left ’im there, and left word with him for Mrs. Delavan I would remain dressed a little while if she needed me, and around twelve, as there was no call, I went to bed.”

“Well, that about clears it up.”

The sergeant said that to the patrolman, and the patrolman opened a portable typewriter he had beside him and stuck a piece of paper in and started to write. But Jane got up, lit a cigarette, and broke in on it. “Not quite... Jenkins, why have you let a whole morning go by without telling me this?”

“Ma’am, ’e asked me not to. ’E gave me a tenner.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you that under all the circumstances you’ve been carrying discretion a little too far?”

“I’ve accepted your suggestion, ma’am, to conceal nothing from the officers, but if I may say ’ow I feel, I’m not looking forward at all to my next meeting with Mr. Sperry, and it’ll cost me the tenner, I’ll ’ave you know, in connection with all your fine ethical ideas, for I can ’ardly keep it now I’ve broken the promise I made to him.”

“...Jenkins, haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve not been out, ma’am. I’ve been in my room all morning after making myself a cup of coffee, waiting for your call.”

“I didn’t ring you — I didn’t want to talk about it... Mr. Richard was killed shortly after you left him last night, in a fall from that very window.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, don’t tell me that!”

After the cops went and Jenkins quit her bawling, it was Jane that cracked up a little, and it took some little cheek-patting to get her calmed down. But when the phone rang I wouldn’t let her answer. I figured it was the reporters, and if she was that much upset to find out Sperry had had something friendly in mind when he came up there, I didn’t think facing a bunch of buzzards with lead pencils and notebooks would do her much good. We let the phones ring and I put on her coat and zipped her down to the basement and out the side way to my car and headed out of town with her and I had no idea where we were going, but we wound up at Sacramento. We had a swell dinner at the Senator and at last it seemed everything was cleared up and coming back she tucked her hand in mine and said she was falling in love, I said O.K. by me. She said O.K. by her. It’s funny the dumb things you say that mean so much to you you could remember them the rest of your life.

We got in late, and it must have been after two o’clock when my phone rang and on the line was Keyes. “Ed, have you seen the papers?”

“About that maid?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“No, but I was there when she talked to the cops.”

“Does it strike you as peculiar?”

“She hadn’t heard it. She hadn’t been out.”

“You know anything about English servants?”

“I don’t keep servants.”

“Neither do I, but young Norton’s always got three or four of them around, and now and then I go out there. Ed, they’re the most gossipy, curious breed of people I ever saw, and how that maid, with romance waiting upstairs, could sit there in her room without ever once ringing Mrs. Delavan’s phone I simply don’t see.”

“What romance?”

“The former husband.”

“I’m the romance in that household.”

“Yeah, but does the maid know it?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Ed, it won’t add up. The former husband shows up, hands her a ten-spot to keep her mouth shut, and on the second trip she leaves him there to wait for his former wife who’s her mistress. I’m telling you, she couldn’t wait to find out what it was all about. Her nose would be quivering for it. And yet she didn’t make one move to go after it — that is, if the papers have got it right. Or have they?”

“On that point, apparently they have.”

“Well, thank God it’s not my grief.”

“Mine either.”

“This is one time we can spectate.”

“That’s it. Just take it easy.”