The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime

The Chink and the Child THOMAS BURKE

Original publication: Colour, October 1915; first collected in Limehouse Nights (London, Grant Richards, 1916)

Sydney Thomas Burke (1886–1945) was born in the London suburb of Clapham, but when he was only a few months old his father died and he was sent to the East End to live with his uncle until the age of ten, when he was put into a home for respectable middle-class children without means. He sold his first story, “The Bellamy Diamonds,” when he was fifteen. His landmark volume, Limehouse Nights (1916), collected romantic but violent stories of the Chinese district of London. It was enormously popular and, though largely praised by critics, there were objections to the depictions of interracial relationships, opium use, and other “depravities.”

Lucy Burrows, a beautiful child, lives with her brutal, drunken, prizefighting father, who incessantly abuses her. In one of his rages, he throws her out of their home after beating her and she finds refuge in the apartment of a gentle Chinese shopkeeper who cares for and falls in love with her. When her father discovers her whereabouts, he drags her back home in a drunken fury, resulting in tragedy.

Title: Broken Blossoms, 1919

Studio: United Artists

Director: D. W. Griffith

Screenwriter: D. W. Griffith

Producer: D. W. Griffith

• Lillian Gish (Lucy Burrows)

• Richard Barthelmess (Cheng Huan)

• Donald Crisp (Battling Burrows)

The story line of the silent film closely follows that of the story, though the hero, Cheng Huan, has been made more palatable for movie audiences. In Burke’s story, he is a dirty, lazy former sailor from Shanghai who is now living in London’s Chinatown where he spends his meager funds in opium dens and whorehouses.

Griffith, known for his efforts to battle intolerance, changes Cheng Huan into a Buddhist priest who came to England to teach Westerners the gentle spirituality of his religion.

Broken Blossoms was only the second film ever released by the new movie company United Artists and it proved a financial bonanza as critics praised it and audiences flocked to theaters to see it. Its production and subsequent success are all the more remarkable considering that there was a strong anti-Chinese sensibility in both England and the United States following the Boxer Rebellion and fears of the Yellow Peril, inflamed by William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers.

The film was remade in 1936 by Twickenham Studios in England, opening in May of 1936 in England and in the United States early in 1937. It was directed by John Brahm, produced by Julius Hagen, and had a screenplay by Emlyn Williams, who also starred as Cheng; Dolly Haas played Lucy Burrows and Arthur Margetson was Battling Burrows.

THE CHINK AND THE CHILD Thomas Burke

It is a tale of love and lovers that they tell in the low-lit Causeway that slinks from West India Dock Road to the dark waste of waters beyond. In Pennyfields, too, you may hear it; and I do not doubt that it is told in far-away Tai-Ping, in Singapore, in Tokio, in Shanghai, and those other gay-lamped haunts of wonder whither the wandering people of Limehouse go and whence they return so casually. It is a tale for tears, and should you hear it in the lilied tongue of the yellow men, it would awaken in you all your pity. In our bald speech it must, unhappily, lose its essential fragrance, that quality that will lift an affair of squalor into the loftier spheres of passion and imagination, beauty and sorrow. It will sound unconvincing, a little... you know... the kind of thing that is best forgotten. Perhaps...

But listen.

It is Battling Burrows, the lightning welter-weight of Shadwell, the box o’ tricks, the Tetrarch of the ring, who enters first. Battling Burrows, the pride of Ratcliff, Poplar, and Limehouse, and the despair of his manager and backers. For he loved wine, woman, and song; and the boxing world held that he couldn’t last long on that. There was any amount of money in him for his parasites if only the damned women could be cut out; but again and again would he disappear from his training quarters on the eve of a big fight, to consort with Molly and Dolly, and to drink other things than barley-water and lemon-juice.

Wherefore Chuck Lightfoot, his manager, forced him to fight on any and every occasion while he was good and a money-maker; for at any moment the collapse might come, and Chuck would be called upon by his creditors to strip off that “shirt” which at every contest he laid upon his man.

Battling was of a type that is too common in the eastern districts of London; a type that upsets all accepted classifications. He wouldn’t be classed. He was a curious mixture of athleticism and degeneracy. He could run like a deer, leap like a greyhound, fight like a machine, and drink like a suction-hose. He was a bully; he had the courage of the high hero. He was an open-air sport; he had the vices of a French decadent.

It was one of his love adventures that properly begins this tale; for the girl had come to Battling one night with a recital of terrible happenings, of an angered parent, of a slammed door... In her arms was a bundle of white rags. Now Battling, like so many sensualists, was also a sentimentalist. He took that bundle of white rags; he paid the girl money to get into the country; and the bundle of white rags had existed in and about his domicile in Pekin Street, Limehouse, for some eleven years. Her position was nondescript; to the casual observer it would seem that she was Battling’s relief punch-ball — an unpleasant post for any human creature to occupy, especially if you are a little girl of twelve, and the place be the one-room household of the lightning welter-weight. When Battling was cross with his manager... well, it is indefensible to strike your manager or to throw chairs at him, if he is a good manager; but to use a dog-whip on a small child is permissible and quite as satisfying; at least, he found it so. On these occasions, then, when very cross with his sparring partners, or over-flushed with victory and juice of the grape, he would flog Lucy. But he was reputed by the boys to be a good fellow. He only whipped the child when he was drunk; and he was only drunk for eight months of the year.

For just over twelve years this bruised little body had crept about Poplar and Limehouse. Always the white face was scarred with red, or black-furrowed with tears; always in her steps and in her look was expectation of dread things. Night after night her sleep was broken by the cheerful Battling’s brute voice and violent hands; and terrible were the lessons which life taught her in those few years. Yet, for all the starved face and the transfixed air, there was a lurking beauty about her, a something that called you in the soft curve of her cheek that cried for kisses and was fed with blows, and in the splendid mournfulness that grew in eyes and lips. The brown hair chimed against the pale face, like the rounding of a verse. The blue cotton frock and the broken shoes could not break the loveliness of her slender figure or the shy grace of her movements as she flitted about the squalid alleys of the docks; though in all that region of wasted life and toil and decay, there was not one that noticed her, until...

Now there lived in Chinatown, in one lousy room over Mr. Tai Fu’s store in Pennyfields, a wandering yellow man, named Cheng Huan. Cheng Huan was a poet. He did not realize it. He had never been able to understand why he was unpopular; and he died without knowing. But a poet he was, tinged with the materialism of his race, and in his poor listening heart strange echoes would awake of which he himself was barely conscious. He regarded things differently from other sailors; he felt things more passionately, and things which they felt not at all; so he lived alone instead of at one of the lodging-houses. Every evening he would sit at his window and watch the street. Then, a little later, he would take a jolt of opium at the place at the corner of Formosa Street.

He had come to London by devious ways. He had loafed on the Bund at Shanghai. The fateful intervention of a crimp had landed him on a boat. He got to Cardiff, and sojourned in its Chinatown; thence to Liverpool, to Glasgow; thence, by a ticket from the Asiatics’ Aid Society, to Limehouse, where he remained for two reasons — because it cost him nothing to live there, and because he was too lazy to find a boat to take him back to Shanghai.

So he would lounge and smoke cheap cigarettes, and sit at his window, from which point he had many times observed the lyrical Lucy. He noticed her casually. Another day, he observed her, not casually. Later, he looked long at her; later still, he began to watch for her and for that strangely provocative something about the toss of the head and the hang of the little blue skirt as it coyly kissed her knee.

Then that beauty which all Limehouse had missed smote Cheng. Straight to his heart it went, and cried itself into his very blood. Thereafter the spirit of poetry broke her blossoms all about his odorous chamber. Nothing was the same. Pennyfields became a happy-lanterned street, and the monotonous fiddle in the house opposite was the music of his fathers. Bits of old song floated through his mind: little sweet verses of Le Tai-pih, murmuring of plum blossom, rice-field and stream. Day by day he would moon at his window, or shuffle about the streets, lighting to a flame when Lucy would pass and gravely return his quiet regard; and night after night, too, he would dream of a pale, lily-lovely child.

And now the Fates moved swiftly various pieces on their sinister board, and all that followed happened with a speed and precision that showed direction from higher ways.

It was Wednesday night in Limehouse, and for once clear of mist. Out of the colored darkness of the Causeway stole the muffled wail of reed instruments, and, though every window was closely shuttered, between the joints shot jets of light and stealthy voices, and you could hear the whisper of slippered feet, and the stuttering steps of the satyr and the sadist. It was to the café in the middle of the Causeway, lit by the pallid blue light that is the symbol of China throughout the world, that Cheng Huan came, to take a dish of noodle and some tea. Thence he moved to another house whose stairs ran straight to the street, and above whose doorway a lamp glowed like an evil eye. At this establishment he mostly took his pipe of “chandu” and a brief chat with the keeper of the house, for, although not popular, and very silent, he liked sometimes to be in the presence of his compatriots. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he slid through the door and up the stairs.

The chamber he entered was a bit of the Orient squatting at the portals of the West. It was a well-kept place where one might play a game of fan-tan, or take a shot or so of li-un, or purchase other varieties of Oriental delight. It was sunk in a purple dusk, though here and there a lantern stung the glooms. Low couches lay around the walls, and strange men decorated them: Chinese, Japs, Malays, Lascars, with one or two white girls; and sleek, noiseless attendants swam from couch to couch. Away in the far corner sprawled a lank figure in brown shirting, its nerveless fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe. On one of the lounges a scorbutic nigger sat with a Jewess from Shadwell. Squatting on a table in the center, beneath one of the lanterns, was a musician with a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody of six repeated notes.

The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many growings, opium, betel nut, and moist flesh allied themselves in one grand assault against the nostrils.

As Cheng brooded on his insect-ridden cushion, of a sudden the lantern above the musician was caught by the ribbon of his reed. It danced and flung a hazy radiance on a divan in the shadow. He saw — started — half rose. His heart galloped, and the blood pounded in his quiet veins. Then he dropped again, crouched, and stared.

O lily-flowers and plum blossoms! O silver streams and dim-starred skies! O wine and roses, song and laughter! For there, kneeling on a mass of rugs, mazed and big-eyed, but understanding, was Lucy... his Lucy... his little maid. Through the dusk she must have felt his intent gaze upon her; for he crouched there, fascinated, staring into the now obscured corner where she knelt.

But the sickness which momentarily gripped him on finding in this place his snowy-breasted pearl passed and gave place to great joy. She was here; he would talk with her. Little English he had, but simple words, those with few gutturals, he had managed to pick up; so he rose, the masterful lover, and, with feline movements, crossed the nightmare chamber to claim his own.

If you wonder how Lucy came to be in this bagnio, the explanation is simple. Battling was in training. He had flogged her that day before starting work; he had then had a few brandies — not many, some eighteen or nineteen — and had locked the door of his room and taken the key. Lucy was, therefore, homeless, and a girl somewhat older than Lucy, so old and so wise, as girls are in that region, saw in her a possible source of revenue. So there they were, and to them appeared Cheng.

From what horrors he saved her that night cannot be told, for her ways were too audaciously childish to hold her long from harm in such a place. What he brought to her was love and death.

For he sat by her. He looked at her — reverently yet passionately. He touched her — wistfully yet eagerly. He locked a finger in her wondrous hair. She did not start away; she did not tremble. She knew well what she had to be afraid of in that place; but she was not afraid of Cheng. She pierced the mephitic gloom and scanned his face. No, she was not afraid. His yellow hands, his yellow face, his smooth black hair... well, he was the first thing that had ever spoken soft words to her; the first thing that had ever laid a hand upon her that was not brutal; the first thing that had deferred in manner towards her as though she, too, had a right to live. She knew his words were sweet, though she did not understand them. Nor can they be set down. Half that he spoke was in village Chinese; the rest in a mangling of English which no distorted spelling could possibly reproduce.

But he drew her back against the cushions and asked her name, and she told him; and he inquired her age, and she told him; and he had then two beautiful words which came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again and again:

“Lucia... li’l Lucia... Twelve... Twelve.” Musical phrases they were, dropping from his lips, and to the child who heard her name pronounced so lovingly, they were the lost heights of melody. She clung to him, and he to her. She held his strong arm in both of hers as they crouched on the divan, and nestled her cheek against his coat.

Well... he took her home to his wretched room.

“Li’l Lucia, come-a-home... Lucia.”

His heart was on fire. As they slipped out of the noisomeness into the night air and crossed the West India Dock Road into Pennyfields, they passed unnoticed. It was late, for one thing, and for another... well, nobody cared particularly. His blood rang with soft music and the solemnity of drums, for surely he had found now what for many years he had sought — his world’s one flower. Wanderer he was, from Tuan-tsen to Shanghai, Shanghai to Glasgow... Cardiff... Liverpool... London. He had dreamed often of the women of his native land; perchance one of them should be his flower. Women, indeed, there had been. Swatow... he had recollections of certain rose-winged hours in coast cities. At many places to which chance had led him a little bird had perched itself upon his heart, but so lightly and for so brief a while as hardly to be felt. But now — now he had found her in this alabaster Cockney child. So that he was glad and had great joy of himself and the blue and silver night, and the harsh flares of the Poplar Hippodrome.

You will observe that he had claimed her, but had not asked himself whether she were of an age for love. The white perfection of the child had captivated every sense. It may be that he forgot that he was in London and not in Tuan-tsen. It may be that he did not care. Of that nothing can be told. All that is known is that his love was a pure and holy thing. Of that we may be sure, for his worst enemies have said it.

Slowly, softly they mounted the stairs to his room, and with almost an obeisance he entered and drew her in. A bank of cloud raced to the east and a full moon thrust a sharp sword of light upon them. Silence lay over all Pennyfields. With a birdlike movement, she looked up at him — her face alight, her tiny hands upon his coat — clinging, wondering, trusting. He took her hand and kissed it; repeated the kiss upon her cheek and lip and little bosom, twining his fingers in her hair. Docilely and echoing the smile of his lemon lips in a way that thrilled him almost to laughter, she returned his kisses impetuously, gladly.

He clasped the nestling to him. Bruised, tearful, with the love of life almost thrashed out of her, she had fluttered to him out of the evil night.

“O li’l Lucia!” And he put soft hands upon her, and smoothed her and crooned over her many gracious things in his flowered speech. So they stood in the moonlight, while she told him the story of her father, of her beatings, and starvings, and unhappiness.

“O li’l Lucia... White Blossom... Twelve... Twelve years old!”

As he spoke, the clock above the Milwall Docks shot twelve crashing notes across the night. When the last echo died, he moved to a cupboard, and from it he drew strange things... formless masses of blue and gold, magical things of silk, and a vessel that was surely Aladdin’s lamp, and a box of spices. He took these robes, and, with tender, reverent fingers, removed from his White Blossom the besmirched rags that covered her, and robed her again, and led her then to the heap of stuff that was his bed, and bestowed her safely.

For himself, he squatted on the floor before her, holding one grubby little hand. There he crouched all night, under the lyric moon, sleepless, watchful; and sweet content was his. He had fallen into an uncomfortable posture, and his muscles ached intolerably. But she slept, and he dared not move nor release her hand lest he should awaken her. Weary and trustful, she slept, knowing that the yellow man was kind and that she might sleep with no fear of a steel hand smashing the delicate structure of her dreams.

In the morning, when she awoke, still wearing her blue and yellow silk, she gave a cry of amazement. Cheng had been about. Many times had he glided up and down the two flights of stairs, and now at last his room was prepared for his princess. It was swept and garnished, and was an apartment worthy a maid who is loved by a poet-prince. There was a bead curtain. There were muslins of pink and white. There were four bowls of flowers, clean, clear flowers to gladden the White Blossom and set off her sharp beauty. And there was a bowl of water, and a sweet lotion for the bruise on her cheek.

When she had risen, her prince ministered to her with rice and egg and tea. Cleansed and robed and calm, she sat before him, perched on the edge of many cushions as on a throne, with all the grace of the child princess in the story. She was a poem. The beauty hidden by neglect and fatigue shone out now more clearly and vividly, and from the head sunning over with curls to the small white feet, now bathed and sandaled, she seemed the living interpretation of a Chinese lyric. And she was his; her sweet self, and her prattle, and her birdlike ways were all his own.

Oh, beautifully they loved. For two days he held her. Soft caresses from his yellow hands and long, devout kisses were all their demonstration. Each night he would tend her, as might mother to child; and each night he watched and sometimes slumbered at the foot of her couch.

But now there were those that ran to Battling at his training quarters across the river, with the news that his child had gone with a Chink — a yellow man. And Battling was angry. He discovered parental rights. He discovered indignation. A yellow man after his kid! He’d learn him. Battling did not like men who were not born in the same great country as himself. Particularly he disliked yellow men. His birth and education in Shadwell had taught him that of all creeping things that creep upon the earth the most insidious is the Oriental in the West. And a yellow man and a child. It was... as you might say... so... kind of... well, wasn’t it? He bellowed that it was “unnacherel.” The yeller man would go through it. Yeller! It was his supreme condemnation, his final epithet for all conduct of which he disapproved.

There was no doubt that he was extremely annoyed. He went to the Blue Lantern, in what was once Ratcliff Highway, and thumped the bar, and made all his world agree with him. And when they agreed with him he got angrier still. So that when, a few hours later, he climbed through the ropes at the Netherlands to meet Bud Tuffit for ten rounds, it was Bud’s fight all the time, and to that bright boy’s astonishment he was the victor on points at the end of the ten. Battling slouched out of the ring, still more determined to let the Chink have it where the chicken had the ax. He left the house with two pals and a black man, and a number of really inspired curses from his manager.

On the evening of the third day, then, Cheng slipped sleepily down the stairs to procure more flowers and more rice. The genial Ho Ling, who keeps the Canton store, held him in talk some little while, and he was gone from his room perhaps half-an-hour. Then he glided back, and climbed with happy feet the forty stairs to his temple of wonder.

With a push of a finger he opened the door, and the blood froze on his cheek, the flowers fell from him. The temple was empty and desolate; White Blossom was gone. The muslin hangings were torn down and trampled underfoot. The flowers had been flung from their bowls about the floor, and the bowls lay in fifty fragments. The joss was smashed. The cupboard had been opened. Rice was scattered here and there. The little straight bed had been jumped upon by brute feet. Everything that could be smashed or violated had been so treated, and — horror of all — the blue and yellow silk robe had been rent in pieces, tied in grotesque knots, and slung derisively about the table legs.

I pray devoutly that you may never suffer what Cheng Huan suffered in that moment. The pangs of death, with no dying; the sickness of the soul which longs to escape and cannot; the imprisoned animal within the breast which struggles madly for a voice and finds none; all the agonies of all the ages — the agonies of every abandoned lover and lost woman, past and to come — all these things were his in that moment.

Then he found voice and gave a great cry, and men from below came up to him; and they told him how the man who boxed had been there with a black man; how he had torn the robes from his child, and dragged her down the stairs by her hair; and how he had shouted aloud for Cheng and had vowed to return and deal separately with him.

Now a terrible dignity came to Cheng, and the soul of his great fathers swept over him. He closed the door against them, and fell prostrate over what had been the resting place of White Blossom. Those without heard strange sounds as of an animal in its last pains; and it was even so. Cheng was dying. The sacrament of his high and holy passion had been profaned; the last sanctuary of the Oriental — his soul dignity — had been assaulted. The love robes had been torn to ribbons; the veil of his temple cut down. Life was no longer possible; and life without his little lady, his White Blossom, was no longer desirable.

Prostrate he lay for the space of some five minutes. Then, in his face all the pride of accepted destiny, he arose. He drew together the little bed. With reverent hands he took the pieces of blue and yellow silk, kissing them and fondling them and placing them about the pillow. Silently he gathered up the flowers, and the broken earthenware, and burnt some prayer papers and prepared himself for death.

Now it is the custom among those of the sect of Cheng that the dying shall present love-gifts to their enemies; and when he had set all in order, he gathered his brown canvas coat about him, stole from the house, and set out to find Battling Burrows, bearing under the coat his love-gift to Battling. White Blossom he had no hope of finding. He had heard of Burrows many times; and he judged that, now that she was taken from him, never again would he hold those hands or touch that laughing hair. Nor, if he did, could it change things from what they were. Nothing that was not a dog could live in the face of this sacrilege.

As he came before the house in Pekin Street, where Battling lived, he murmured gracious prayers. Fortunately, it was a night of thick river mist, and through the enveloping velvet none could observe or challenge him. The main door was open, as are all doors in this district. He writhed across the step, and through to the back room, where again the door yielded to a touch.

Darkness. Darkness and silence, and a sense of frightful things. He peered through it. Then he fumbled under his jacket — found a match — struck it. An inch of candle stood on the mantel-shelf. He lit it. He looked round. No sign of Burrows, but... Almost before he looked he knew what awaited him. But the sense of finality had kindly stunned him; he could suffer nothing more.

On the table lay a dog-whip. In the corner a belt had been flung. Half across the greasy couch lay White Blossom. A few rags of clothing were about her pale, slim body; her hair hung limp as her limbs; her eyes were closed. As Cheng drew nearer and saw the savage red rails that ran across and across the beloved body, he could not scream — he could not think. He dropped beside the couch. He laid gentle hands upon her, and called soft names. She was warm to the touch. The pulse was still.

Softly, oh, so softly, he bent over the little frame that had enclosed his friend-spirit, and his light kisses fell all about her. Then, with the undirected movements of a sleep-walker, he bestowed the rags decently about her, clasped her in strong arms, and crept silently into the night.

From Pekin Street to Pennyfields it is but a turn or two, and again he passed unobserved as he bore his tired bird back to her nest. He laid her upon the bed, and covered the lily limbs with the blue and yellow silks and strewed upon her a few of the trampled flowers. Then, with more kisses and prayers, he crouched beside her.

So, in the ghastly Limehouse morning, they were found — the dead child, and the Chink, kneeling beside her, with a sharp knife gripped in a vice-like hand, its blade far between his ribs.

Meantime, having vented his wrath on his prodigal daughter, Battling, still cross, had returned to the Blue Lantern, and there he stayed with a brandy tumbler in his fist, forgetful of an appointment at Premierland, whereby he should have been in the ring at ten o’clock sharp. For the space of an hour Chuck Lightfoot was going blasphemously to and fro in Poplar, seeking Battling and not finding him, and murmuring, in tearful tones: “Battling — you dammanblasted Battling — where are yeh?”

His opponent was in his corner sure enough, but there was no fight. For Battling lurched from the Blue Lantern to Pekin Street. He lurched into his happy home, and he cursed Lucy, and called for her. And finding no matches, he lurched to where he knew the couch should be, and flopped heavily down.

Now it is a peculiarity of the reptile tribe that its members are impatient of being flopped on without warning. So, when Battling flopped, eighteen inches of writhing gristle upreared itself on the couch, and got home on him as Bud Tuffit had done the night before — one to the ear, one to the throat, and another to the forearm.

Battling went down and out.

And he, too, was found in the morning, with Cheng Huan’s love-gift coiled about his neck.

A Retrieved Reformation O. HENRY

Original publication: Cosmopolitan, April 1903 (under the title “A Retrieved Reform”); first collected under its more familiar title in O. Henry’s Roads of Destiny (New York, Doubleday, Page, 1909)

It is reasonable to suggest that for a number of years, soon after the turn of the nineteenth century, William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), known as O. Henry, was the most popular and beloved author in America. His beautiful, heartwarming tales featured ordinary people who, when confronted by difficult situations, behaved generously and selflessly.

It was an uncommon O. Henry story that didn’t make a reader shed a tear or break into a grin — often with the surprise ending that became the author’s trademark. His stories touched such a wide readership that it was almost inevitable that scores of plays, motion pictures, and radio and television programs were soon based on his work.

Many of his more than six hundred stories have been criticized by some for being overly sentimental, but they remain staples of the American literary canon — notably such classics as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Last Leaf,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” and “A Retrieved Reformation.” The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, a prestigious annual anthology of the year’s best short stories named in his honor, has been published since 1919.

Title: Alias Jimmy Valentine, 1928

Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director: Jack Conway

Screenwriters: Sarah Y. Mason, A. P. Younger, and Joseph Farnham

Producer: Irving Thalberg

• William Haines (Jimmy Valentine)

• Lionel Barrymore (Doyle)

• Leila Hyams (Rose)

Seven years after “A Retrieved Reform” was first published in 1903, it began a successful Broadway run with the title that remains familiar more than a century later, Alias Jimmy Valentine. It was adapted by Paul Armstrong and starred H. B. Warner as the world’s greatest safecracker, now retired because of his love for a woman. The play, and the films that followed, all closely adhere to the story line that places Jimmy in a hopeless dilemma, having to choose between allowing a child to die in a locked “foolproof” safe and continue his happy life or crack it open and go back to jail. A 1921 stage revival, also successful, featured Otto Kruger in the title role.

The first film version starred Robert Warwick in a 1915 silent. A bigger budget 1920 silent version featured Bert Lytell. But it was the landmark 1928 version that was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s first partially talking film. The groundbreaking film for the studio had been produced as a silent but, as the new era of sound films was beginning, the producer had Barrymore and Haines return to repeat their scenes, adding sound for the last two reels.

The first dramatic version with a title different from Alias Jimmy Valentine was The Return of Jimmy Valentine (1936) with Roger Pryor, in which a reporter writes a series of articles speculating about whether the legendary safecracker is still alive. He thinks he has tracked down the old criminal who now is a respected bank manager in a small town. The last film (though there were numerous later radio and television adaptations) was Affairs of Jimmy Valentine (1942), starring Dennis O’Keefe, in which the advertising agency for the Jimmy Valentine radio program offers $100,000 to anyone who can find the real Valentine, who now is a middle-aged newspaper editor played by Roman Bohnen.

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION O. Henry

In the prison shoe-shop, Jimmy Valentine was busily at work making shoes. A prison officer came into the shop, and led Jimmy to the prison office. There Jimmy was given an important paper. It said that he was free.

Jimmy took the paper without showing much pleasure or interest. He had been sent to prison to stay for four years. He had been there for ten months. But he had expected to stay only three months. Jimmy Valentine had many friends outside the prison. A man with so many friends does not expect to stay in prison long.

“Valentine,” said the chief prison officer, “you’ll go out tomorrow morning. This is your chance. Make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop breaking safes open, and live a better life.”

“Me?” said Jimmy in surprise. “I never broke open a safe in my life.”

“Oh, no,” the chief prison officer laughed. “Never. Let’s see. How did you happen to get sent to prison for opening that safe in Springfield? Was it because you didn’t want to tell where you really were? Perhaps because you were with some lady, and you didn’t want to tell her name? Or was it because the judge didn’t like you? You men always have a reason like that. You never go to prison because you broke a safe.”

“Me?” Jimmy said. His face still showed surprise. “I was never in Springfield in my life.”

“Take him away,” said the chief prison officer. “Get him the clothes he needs for going outside. Bring him here again at seven in the morning. And think about what I said, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning, Jimmy stood again in the office. He had on some new clothes that did not fit him, and a pair of new shoes that hurt his feet. These are the usual clothes given to a prisoner when he leaves the prison.

Next they gave him money to pay for his trip on a train to the city near the prison. They gave him five dollars more. The five dollars were supposed to help him become a better man.

Then the chief prison officer put out his hand for a handshake. This was the end of Valentine, Prisoner 9762. Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

He did not listen to the song of the birds or look at the green trees or smell the flowers. He went straight to a restaurant. There he tasted the first sweet joys of being free. He had a good dinner. After that he went to the train station. He gave some money to a blind man who sat there, asking for money, and then he got on the train.

Three hours later he got off the train in a small town. Here he went to the restaurant of Mike Dolan.

Mike Dolan was alone there. After shaking hands he said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t do it sooner, Jimmy my boy. But there was that safe in Springfield, too. It wasn’t easy. Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Is my room waiting for me?”

He went up and opened the door of a room at the back of the house. Everything was as he had left it. It was here they had found Jimmy, when they took him to prison. There on the floor was a small piece of cloth. It had been torn from the coat of the cop, as Jimmy was fighting to escape.

There was a bed against the wall. Jimmy pulled the bed toward the middle of the room. The wall behind it looked like any wall, but now Jimmy found and opened a small door in it. From this opening he pulled out a dust-covered bag.

He opened this and looked lovingly at the tools for breaking open a safe. No finer tools could be found any place. They were complete; everything needed was here. They had been made of a special material, in the necessary sizes and shapes. Jimmy had planned them himself, and he was very proud of them.

It had cost him over nine hundred dollars to have these tools made at a place where they make such things for men who work at the job of safe-breaking.

In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the restaurant. He was now dressed in good clothes that fitted him well. He carried his dusted and cleaned bag.

“Do you have anything planned?” asked Mike Dolan.

“Me?” asked Jimmy as if surprised. “I don’t understand. I work for the New York Famous Bread and Cake Makers Company. And I sell the best bread and cake in the country.”

Mike enjoyed these words so much that Jimmy had to take a drink with him. Jimmy had some milk. He never drank anything stronger.

A week after Valentine, 9762, left the prison, a safe was broken open in Richmond, Indiana. No one knew who did it. Eight hundred dollars were taken.

Two weeks after that, a safe in Logansport was opened. It was a new kind of safe; it had been made, they said, so strong that no one could break it open. But someone did, and took fifteen hundred dollars.

Then a safe in Jefferson City was opened. Five thousand dollars were taken. This loss was a big one. Ben Price was a cop who worked on such important matters, and now he began to work on this.

He went to Richmond, Indiana, and to Logansport, to see how the safe-breaking had been done in those places. He was heard to say: “I can see that Jim Valentine has been here. He is in business again. Look at the way he opened this one. Everything easy, everything clean. He is the only man who has the tools to do it. And he is the only man who knows how to use tools like this. Yes, I want Mr. Valentine. Next time he goes to prison, he’s going to stay there until his time is finished.”

Ben Price knew how Jimmy worked. Jimmy would go from one city to another far away. He always worked alone. He always left quickly when he was finished. He enjoyed being with nice people. For all these reasons, it was not easy to catch Mr. Valentine.

People with safes full of money were glad to hear Ben Price was at work trying to catch Mr. Valentine.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his bag arrived in a small town named Elmore. Jimmy, looking as young as a college boy, walked down the street toward the hotel.

A young lady walked across the street, passed him at the corner, and entered a door. Over the door was the sign, “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgetting at once what he was. He became another man. She looked away, and brighter color came into her face. Young men like Jimmy did not appear often in Elmore.

Jimmy saw a boy near the bank door, and began to ask questions about the town. After a time the young lady came out and went on her way. She seemed not to see Jimmy as she passed him.

“Isn’t that young lady Polly Simpson?” asked Jimmy.

“No,” said the boy. “She’s Annabel Adams. Her father owns this bank.”

Jimmy went to the hotel, where he said his name was Ralph D. Spencer. He got a room there. He told the hotel man he had come to Elmore to go into business. How was the shoe business? Was there already a good shoe-shop?

The man thought that Jimmy’s clothes and manners were fine. He was happy to talk to him.

Yes, Elmore needed a good shoe-shop. There was no shop that sold just shoes. Shoes were sold in the big shops that sold everything. All business in Elmore was good. He hoped Mr. Spencer would decide to stay in Elmore. It was a pleasant town to live in and the people were friendly.

Mr. Spencer said he would stay in the town a few days and learn something about it. No, he said, he himself would carry his bag up to his room. He didn’t want a boy to take it. It was very heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer remained in Elmore. He started a shoe-shop. Business was good.

Also he made many friends. And he was successful with the wish of his heart. He met Annabel Adams. He liked her better every day.

At the end of a year everyone in Elmore liked Mr. Ralph Spencer. His shoe-shop was doing very good business. And he and Annabel were going to be married in two weeks. Mr. Adams, the small-town banker, liked Spencer. Annabel was very proud of him. He seemed already to belong to the Adams family.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room to write this letter, which he sent to one of his old friends:

On the Monday night after Jimmy sent this letter, Ben Price arrived quietly in Elmore. He moved slowly about the town in his quiet way, and he learned all that he wanted to know. Standing inside a shop, he watched Ralph D. Spencer walk by.

“You’re going to marry the banker’s daughter, are you, Jimmy?” said Ben to himself. “I don’t feel sure about that!”

The next morning Jimmy was at the Adams home. He was going to a nearby city that day to buy new clothes for the wedding. He was also going to buy a gift for Annabel. It would be his first trip out of Elmore. It was more than a year now since he had done any safe-breaking.

Most of the Adams family went to the bank together that morning. There were Mr. Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel’s married sister with her two little girls, aged five and nine. They passed Jimmy’s hotel, and Jimmy ran up to his room and brought along his bag. Then they went to the bank.

All went inside — Jimmy, too, for he was one of the family. Everyone in the bank was glad to see the good-looking, nice young man who was going to marry Annabel. Jimmy put down his bag.

Annabel, laughing, put Jimmy’s hat on her head and picked up the bag. “How do I look?” she asked. “Ralph, how heavy this bag is! It feels full of gold.”

“It’s full of some things I don’t need in my shop,” Jimmy said. “I’m taking them to the city, to the place where they came from. That saves me the cost of sending them. I’m going to be a married man. I must learn to save money.”

The Elmore bank had a new safe. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and he wanted everyone to see it. It was as large as a small room, and it had a very special door. The door was controlled by a clock. Using the clock, the banker planned the time when the door should open. At other times no one, not even the banker himself, could open it. He explained about it to Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer seemed interested but he did not seem to understand very easily. The two children, May and Agatha, enjoyed seeing the shining heavy door, with all its special parts.

While they were busy like this, Ben Price entered the bank and looked around. He told a young man who worked there that he had not come on business; he was waiting for a man.

Suddenly there was a cry from the women. They had not been watching the children. May, the nine-year-old girl, had playfully but firmly closed the door of the safe. And Agatha was inside.

The old banker tried to open the door. He pulled at it for a moment. “The door can’t be opened,” he cried. “And the clock — I hadn’t started it yet.”

Agatha’s mother cried out again.

“Quiet!” said Mr. Adams, raising a shaking hand. “All be quiet for a moment. Agatha!” he called as loudly as he could. “Listen to me.” They could hear, but not clearly, the sound of the child’s voice. In the darkness inside the safe, she was wild with fear.

“My baby!” her mother cried. “She will die of fear! Open the door! Break it open! Can’t you men do something?”

“There isn’t a man nearer than the city who can open that door,” said Mr. Adams, in a shaking voice. “My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child — she can’t live long in there. There isn’t enough air. And the fear will kill her.”

Agatha’s mother, wild too now, beat on the door with her hands. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of pain, but with some hope, too. A woman thinks that a man she loves can somehow do anything.

“Can’t you do something, Ralph? Try, won’t you?”

He looked at her with a strange soft smile on his lips and in his eyes.

“Annabel,” he said, “give me that flower you are wearing, will you?”

She could not believe that she had really heard him. But she put the flower in his hand. Jimmy took it and put it where he could not lose it. Then he pulled off his coat. With that act, Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place.

“Stand away from the door, all of you,” he commanded.

He put his bag on the table, and opened it flat. From that time on, he seemed not to know that anyone else was near. Quickly he laid the shining strange tools on the table. The others watched as if they had lost the power to move.

In a minute Jimmy was at work on the door. In ten minutes — faster than he had ever done it before — he had the door open.

Agatha was taken into her mother’s arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, picked up the flower and walked toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a voice call, “Ralph!” He did not stop.

At the door a big man stood in his way.

“Hello, Ben!” said Jimmy, still with his strange smile. “You’re here at last, are you? Let’s go. I don’t care, now.”

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

“I guess you’re wrong about this, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “I don’t believe I know you, do I?”

And Ben Price turned and walked slowly down the street.

The Death Watch EDGAR WALLACE

Original publication: The Thriller, February 13, 1932; first collected in Sergeant Sir Peter (London, Chapman & Hall, 1932)

The prolific Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) reputedly wrote more than 170 novels, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and elements of numerous screenplays and scenarios, including the first British sound version of The Hound of the Baskervilles; an astounding 160 films, both silent and sound, have been based on his books and stories. The most famous film based on his work is King Kong (1933), for which he, along with Merian C. Cooper, came up with the idea and wrote the story, though Wallace received no credit when the film was released.

In “The Death Watch,” Peter Dunn is an aristocratic Scotland Yard police sergeant who is on holiday but has a busy week, falling for a young woman and catching a gang of bank robbers who had spent nine years in prison and returned to retrieve their long-hidden loot.

Title: Before Dawn (1933)

Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

Director: Irving Pichel

Screenwriter: Garrett Fort

Producer: Merian C. Cooper (executive); Shirley Burden (associate)

• Stuart Erwin (Dwight Wilson)

• Dorothy Wilson (Patricia “Mlle Mystera” Merrick)

• Warner Oland (Dr. Paul Cornelius)

The story line of Before Dawn follows that of the short story only slightly, the only plot element to be retained being the search for money that had been stolen years before. It is now set in the United States and involves a clairvoyant who helps solve the case.

The planned title for the film was Death Watch but RKO offered a fifty-dollar prize for a new title. Both Ginger Rogers and Betty Furness had been announced for roles in the film but neither made an appearance.

THE DEATH WATCH Edgar Wallace

Night Without Sleep ELICK MOLL

Original publication: Cosmopolitan, June 1949. Note: Moll later expanded the story into a full-length novel with the same title (Boston, Little, Brown, 1950)

Mainly known as a screenwriter for television and motion pictures, Elick Moll (1901–1988) also wrote short stories for such major publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Redbook, Story, and Cosmopolitan. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought one of his stories in 1942, he was hired by Samuel Goldwyn to write for the screen so he moved from New York to Hollywood and lived there until his death.

The first full-length film on which he worked (though Moll did not receive screen credit) was the classic Passage to Marseille (1944), which starred Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains. Other films for which he wrote the screenplay were Wake Up and Dream (1946), You Were Meant for Me (1948), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), Night Without Sleep (1952), Storm Center (1956), and Spring Reunion (1957).

He also wrote teleplays for such prestigious and popular television series as Playhouse 90, Four Star Playhouse, I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers.

His successful Broadway comedy, Seidman and Son (1962), based on his 1958 novel of the same title, featured such familiar stage and screen stars as Sam Levene, Vincent Gardenia, Diana Muldaur, and Nancy Wickwire.

Moll wrote the novella “Night without Sleep” for Cosmopolitan in 1949, apparently rewrote it as a novel that was published the following year, then cowrote the screenplay for the film released in 1952. Although, it is possible he wrote the screenplay after the novella, then novelized the screenplay to produce the manuscript for the book.

It is the story of Richard Bowen, once a successful novelist, now living on his wife’s bounty. He wakes one night after a terrifying nightmare with a fierce hangover. Fearfully, he tries to recall the events of the preceding afternoon and evening, gradually reconstructing the scenes with his wife, with his mistress, and with Phillipa, who has revered him since his first novel. Somewhere in this vague tale is a blind spot — the moment of blackout — which he cannot avoid.

Title: Night Without Sleep, 1952

Studio: Twentieth Century Fox

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Screenwriters: Elick Moll, Frank Partos

Producer: Robert Bassler

• Gary Merrill (Richard Morton)

• Linda Darnell (Julie Bannon)

• Hildegarde Neff (Lisa Muller)

• June Vincent (Emily Morton)

• Hugh Beaumont (John Harkness)

Elick Moll’s third version of Night Without Sleep, apart from being in a different medium, is extremely close to the works on which it was based. It is a noir film of psychological suspense in which a Broadway composer with a vicious temper wakes up from a particularly intense and troubling blackout in which tiny moments come to the front of his brain. He hears a woman’s screams but does not see her face. He remembers yelling in fury. He fears he may have killed someone.

That night he had a date with his mistress, but he also had met an actress and cannot remember what happened during the course of his alcohol-fueled night. He calls each of them to see if they are okay, only to have a surprise thrust on him before the sun comes up.

The working title during filming was Purple Like Grapes, which references describe as the title of the original appearance in Cosmopolitan, but that is bogus; it was titled “Night without Sleep” in Cosmopolitan.

Tyrone Power had been announced as the star of the film; a few months later, Richard Basehart was reported to have the top role.

NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP Elick Moll

Roger woke from the dream with his heart pounding thickly. His first thought was that he’d been running and had tripped and banged his head. It ached terribly. Then he realized that the running had been part of a nightmare. He could feel the horror of it still, all around him in the cloudy, monstrous dark.

He blinked his eyes, unable for the moment to complete the bridge between dreaming and reality. Where was he? He listened for some sound or movement. There was none. The silence seemed absolute, like the dark. It was so complete that listening made his ears roar faintly. He comprehended, for a ghastly moment, the terrible aloneness of being adrift at sea, or buried alive in a small and airless tomb.

He put a hand up beside him experimentally, and felt wood. It made no connection in his mind. He moved his hand, half fearfully, along the somehow menacing smoothness. Maybe he had died, was lying in a cask somewhere, like buried treasure. An antic thought. But it didn’t stop the sweat from coming out on his face. The dark moved in on him, thickening; it suddenly seemed difficult to breathe.

Panic seized him. He sprang up convulsively, his hands clawing at the weight on his chest. Then horror exploded in all the pores of his body, rose screaming into his throat. There was a body lying across him — he’d felt it, an obscenely hairy body, still warm, sprawled across his chest, dead, murdered—

He flung it off and stumbled to his feet, reaching out wildly for a window, a door. Things fell. His hand struck a wall and unwilled, following some familiar, neuron trail he himself bore no conscious knowledge of, moved up to a switch. The room swam suddenly before him, yellow as gold but more precious. He stared, dissolving inside, at the familiar pattern of his study, deranged only by the lamp and telephone he’d knocked down in his wild, hysterical scramble for light.

He let out his cramped breath in what was almost a sob of relief. He’d been asleep on his own couch, in his own study, in his own house (I beg your pardon, he thought, Emily’s house) with Fred, his setter, across his chest.

The dog stood now, observing him, his fringed tail moving in a slow inquiring arc, not yet sure of his state of grace with the god before him. “Come here, you old fool,” Roger said. The dog came to him slowly, head down, shambling in a little ballet of love and propitiation. “What are you so sheepish about? You think you’re so lucky because I let you come in here with me last night, climb into bed with me, and enjoy listening to my drunken snoring?”

The dog jumped up, put his forelegs against Roger’s chest, his tail going like a metronome set to “Presto.” Roger tugged gently at the silky ears. “You’re no corpse, are you? You’re just a great, big, stupid valentine, with a tail.” Sudden weak tears stung Roger’s eyes. “Yes. You know what kind of a prize you’ve got yourself addressed to? You know what kind of man this is you’ve given your big foolish heart to?”

I blacked out, he thought wonderingly. The thing I said could never happen to me. I said it just the other day to my analyst. “Don’t try to make a lost week-end character out of me,” I told him. And now I’ve done it. With my little hatchet.

“Yes, Fred,” he said aloud. “Out like a light. I don’t know where I was last night, how I got home, or anything else. And how do you like that?”

The dog lifted his muzzle, tried to lick his face. Roger turned his head aside from the rough, seeking tongue, and the slight, sharp movement set up a murderous throbbing in his head. He stood for a moment with his face screwed up and his shoulders hunched a little, waiting for it to subside. God, those Martinis. They always came to the ball with this anvil chorus in tow. When would he learn? Why didn’t some protective mechanism inside him sound a warning after the third? He must really have poured it on in quarts last night.

He went to his desk, feeling blindly for the bottle of Empirin he knew he had around. He found the bottle where he expected to, on the tray behind the silver water jug. Apparently some things were still in place in his memory. There were four tablets in the bottle. He put them in his mouth. The water jug was empty. He started for the lavatory adjoining his study, thinking suddenly, I’ll never make it. He didn’t turn on the light but reached for the faucet in the dark, then stood with one hand propping himself up from the wall, his head hanging like a tired horse, splashing wearily and ignominiously in the soothing dark.

He drank water from the tap until his stomach hurt. Then he went back into his study and picked up the telephone, his hands still trembling. He’d made quite a racket. Emily must surely have heard him, she’d be down in a moment, patient, long-suffering, bringing him some warm milk, weaving her solicitude around him like a ritual dance — which always irritated him.

Wait a minute. Something had jogged his memory. Emily wasn’t home. Emily had gone to Boston yesterday to visit her family and make a speech at the Annual Charity Ball at Brookline for the displaced children of Upper Moldavia. He sighed with relief. Thank God for small favors. Dear Lord, for Thy blessing bestowed this night — or morning — or afternoon — on me, a displaced child from Ridgefield, Connecticut, I humbly give thanks.

He sat down in the beautiful battered French provincial chair before his beautiful battered French provincial desk and looked up at the homely battered face of a French peasant painted by van Gogh, a gift from Emily on his thirtieth birthday. “Work alone is noble.” Who said that? Emily? Or Carlyle? Or both. That was the maddening thing about Emily’s homilies, they always kept such impeccable company. She quoted only the very best authors — like his mother had done.

But it was true, alas, alas for poor Roger. Work alone was noble, and Roger had lost his tools. Lost, strayed, or stolen. The poor demented man who’d painted that picture above his desk had thrashed about all over the French landscape like a strangling carp — a poor, crazy, haunted wight who cut his ear off and sent it with Christmas wrappings to a girl who’d once said no; he was ridiculous and tortured all the days of his life but he was somehow noble in the mind because he’d suffered the slings and arrows and left these relics of his work, his sweat, his torment; these childlike wide-eyed blues and yellows, these fields of wheat that Adam might have sown and reaped in God’s morning of the world. Yes, the dealers traded in them now, like cheeses; the baccalaureate junk dealers — who’d got fat on two wars, collected them along with their stamps, and coins, and dividends. But there was a little brotherhood of the pure in heart who still gathered in the galleries and the museums on Fifty-Seventh Street, on Fifth Avenue on Michigan Boulevard, in Sans Souci, on the Champs Elysées, in Belgrade, in Gdynia. They still came through the bomb-shattered streets, less than ever now could they buy, more than likely they couldn’t even buy their breakfast — but they could look, they could go down on their knees, inside knowing suddenly that what they believed in, against all the odds, was true, true — life was important and sacred, in spite of all the blood, horror, and nothingness.

Something far off stirred in Roger’s thoughts: sad rain outside a window, the desolate sound of a train whistle enclosed in the gray of afternoon...? He pressed his palms against his temples. The anodyne was taking effect and for a while before the pain eased there would be this concerto for the foot pedals in his head. After that it would be better. He would live. But there was a deeper sickness in him now, a kind of nausea of the spirit not to be relieved, he knew, by coal-tar derivatives or vomiting. This was one of those milestones again — like turning thirty and realizing you were a failure. Until now, whenever Emily or the doctor started harping about his drinking he’d always had an answer. He drank because he enjoyed it. When it got so he couldn’t handle it any more, he’d quit. But he’d never believed it would happen. Blacking out — that was something that happened to someone else, adolescents, personality cripples who ran to alcohol like sniveling brats to their mamas, because someone had called them a bad name. You spoke of them with contempt, or at best with a kind of humorous pity. And now, here it was, in his own lap, and it wasn’t funny. To have a darkness clamp down on a piece of your life, even a few hours of it — it was like being lost, a lost soul, no longer quite human, no longer a creature of dignity and reason...

What would Dr. Baume say about this? “Don’t fool yourself, Bowen. Nobody can handle the kind of drinking you do, least of all you. Give it up. It’s dangerous for you, more dangerous than you’ve any idea...”

The memory of the dream returned suddenly, filled with shadowy violence and confused movement. Dr. Baume had been in it, and Emily, and Lila too. It had been some sort of play, a tragedy, in which Roger had played the leading role. Afterward, still dreaming, and full of an uneasy sense that he’d left something vital undone which would surely return to plague him, he had sat down at his typewriter to get the whole thing down on paper.

Roger shuddered. He saw himself, with the curiously refracted movements of nightmare, typing out a title on his portable: PURPLE LIKE GRAPES. A NEW PLAY BY ROGER BOWEN. As he struck the final key, blood spurted out on the page. He saw himself jump up, gagging, and run out of the house. But the horror was not ended. The words were after him. He’d created them, endowed them with a loathsome propulsive life of their own and now they followed as he ran deeper and deeper into the dark, brushing against him, pawing him, whispering hideous, unbelievable things.

What a dream! The words stood in his mind now empty of meaning, empty of everything but the memory of terror being hauled, like a bloody carcass, across his mind. PURPLE LIKE GRAPES. What in the world was that? Was it really the title of something, he’d once thought of writing? No — what could he be thinking of? It was gibberish. But from what dark alley of consciousness had it come, mouthing, to make hideous the night?

He could take it up with Dr. Baume, of course. Gibberish was Dr. Baume’s special province. The good doctor would take that moronic phrase and hurry it back and forth across the Dark Continent of the Unconscious, skin it alive, haul and stretch and lop it until it fitted finally into one of those shopworn psychoanalytic backdrops that even the movies were beginning to boggle at. You’d once seen your father, in a rage, tear a grape to tatters and ever since, the sight of purple gave you the screaming meemies. You’d once surprised your mother in the greenhouse, with the second gardener, sawing a grape in half and ever since, etc. The possibilities were endless and at twenty-five dollars an hour Dr. Baume would doubtless be willing to explore them all.

Only — he remembered — he was no longer seeing Dr. Baume, as of Saturday afternoon last. Cured? No. Enlightened? No. Neurosis just disappear one night? Not at all. His “neurosis” was still flourishing mightly, according to Dr. Baume. It seemed, however, the good doctor had decided finally that Roger was immune to the gospel according to St. Sigmund Pity. He would miss those afternoon sessions. The man was fundamentally an ass, of course, but there had been a certain fascination in watching him juggle his little bag of tricks, like a witch doctor with his fetishes.

Aggression, obsession, regression, traumatic, psychosomatic... What a pattern! It was doing the rounds of all the cocktail bars in town. You could hardly step around a potted palm these days without running into someone’s id, all done up in that intellectual pig Latin which for conversational bounce had the handy-andys of a few years ago backed off the boards.

What a bomb that man Freud had thrown at language! And above all at the concept of personality. That ancient, tragic, comic, eternally various, and imponderable battleground of God and the devil, now reduced to just a dreary little museum with perhaps a dozen exhibits. “Oh look, here’s Mrs. Forsythe’s little problem. And this would be Mr. Culpepper’s alter ego. We met him at his daughter’s coming-out party, he was wearing tails, three of them apparently, and a paternal smile. The nasty man... Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With private hells, and stifled yells, and incest all in a row.”

Well he was through with psychoanalysis and with Dr. Baume. So much for that. He hadn’t told Emily yet — or had he? Now he thought of it, it seemed to him that they’d had some words about it yesterday, before she left. Well, anyway, there wouldn’t be any words about it today. She was gone, to Boston, God bless her, and God bless the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad too and all trunk lines going west, east, north, and south with Emily on them. God bless the displaced children of Lower Slobbovia, too. By now Emily was ensconced in the Burgundy-colored, early morning gloom of her family’s fine old Early American house, in the fine old Early American spool bed, where Amy Lowell had composed “Lilacs,” or Betsy Ross had stitched the flag, or something. Presently, at seven-fifteen, she would be roused from slumber to go down to breakfast with her father, who had some stringy, New Englandish notion that he still had to show up at his office at eight o’clock, because the office boy got there then, and of course he must have his family around him at the breakfast table. And Emily would answer all their questions dutifully. What was Roger doing now? Was he writing something new? “Dear, me, still gathering material! It certainly took a great deal of time to plan a book. Let’s see, it was more than five years since his last.” And at this point, Mr. Selkirk would bring his hand down on the fine old Tudor table at which Emerson had sat, and maybe Cotton Mather, and possibly St. Paul himself. And he would say, “Why in heaven’s name don’t you leave the rotter, Emily?” And Emily, dear Emily, would surely say something impossibly quaint and lavenderish, like “Because I love him, Father.”

Roger almost wished he were there. It was probably the only place left on earth where one could hear such dialogue.

He looked at his watch. Quarter to six. He went to the window, pulled back the drape, and looked out. Night was paling there, the bare, proud forms of the trees came up out of the purplish dark as he watched. Quarter to six of a Monday morning and he was home in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Alone in the house, if he remembered correctly. Emily had let the servants go for the week end, they wouldn’t be back for an hour or more. By then he ought to have some rough idea of what he was in for today, whom he’d insulted, what apologies he had to make, what repairs to authorize. He would be lucky if it was only smashed bric-a-brac he had to clean up.

At least Emily would be gone for a few days, which would be pleasant. He could spend the time with Lila in town, without having to arrange things. Say what you would, the need for those small habitual lies did something nasty to a relationship...

Wait a minute. An unpleasant realization nudged his thoughts. He’d had a date to meet Lila in town last night. For dinner. Had he gone into town? After Emily left? He must have. He seemed to remember now walking into the Baroque and seeing Lila at their accustomed table, wearing a tiny minaret of tulle on her distinguished head and long black gloves almost to the sharp little elbows... and two spots of color on those tantalizing shadowed cheeks, always the danger signal... Oh, Lord. Now it came back. No wonder he’d been ducking it. He’d been late, hours late, and Lila had been furious with him. And when he’d tried to joke about it she’d picked up a glass of water and flung it in his face. And he’d reached over and slapped her!

Roger stared unbelievingly at the recollection.

Emily just gone to Boston, making him a present of the little island of days he and Lila were always hoping for, secure against interruption, free of the nagging little precautions and lies that somehow gnawed away the laughter — and they’d sat brawling over it, in public, like a pair of Hollywood characters. It wasn’t possible. He must have dreamed it. He couldn’t have been that drunk.

Or could he? He groaned, half humorously. The dog raised his head and glanced at Roger, blinking, instantly anxious. Yes, I know, Fred. You’d like to help me. If you could take my headache and wear it in that dumb skull of yours you’d regard it as a privilege. You’d have all my hang-overs for me, gladly, you’d go get analyzed for me, you’d do my writing for me if you could. Anything to oblige. I know, I know.

He rubbed the dog’s ears. The dog sighed, puffing out his dewlaps with a little wind of happiness, and put his head heavily down onto Roger’s knee, burrowing a little into his clothes. If you could only get into my skin, Roger thought. How happy you’d be. You think!

He went back, like a weary accountant, to the ledger marked Sunday. It promised to add up to quite a day when he got it all tallied. There’d been something with Emily, before she’d left, he was sure of that now. Something about the analysis? Was that why he’d got drunk? If only he could remember what it was she’d said, or done. The trouble was that the dream kept coming up on him now like an undigested dinner so it was hard for him to know what belonged to fact and what to fancy.

“Bring in one of your dreams, let’s have a look at it,” the good doctor had kept urging him, much as, once upon a time, in the dear, dead days beyond recall, he might have asked Roger to bring in a specimen of urine. The only trouble was that Roger, even after six months of analysis, had never been able to see himself stretched out on a couch, talking about a dream. There were some things a grown man just didn’t do. Baiting the doctor was something else again. That had been amusing, even enjoyable, to lie back for an hour, toying with the man, observing the famous analyst, almost predictably, hold out one after another of his little stock of inflated cliches, for Roger to puncture. Hostility, aggression, rejection, inhibition — “Step right up, folks. Tell you what I’m gonna do. Not one, not two, but thirty-seven complexes, and one island of undigested experience, all for the price of a small yacht, a mere ten thousand dollars.”

Gone, gone, the days when Nana took you to Dr. Lamb’s office on Elm Street, the big, soiled, friendly house, the big, soiled man who smelled so pleasantly of carbolic and Sen-Sen. “He’s been having nightmares again, doctor, can you give him something?...” And the dear, innocent man would thump your chest and feel your pulse. “Been eating before you go to bed? — stomach feel upset? — let’s see that tongue...”

Ah, the simple-hearted days when nightmares first in the dooryard bloomed, no more mysterious than a green apple or a coated tongue. What would Dr. Lamb say of his tongue now? Or his larynx for that matter? Or the treacherous little sinuses; or the trachea, more or less fouled by industrial vapors; or the lungs that drew breath more or less gaspingly; or the non-mechanical heart that galloped and staggered, paused and then staggered on again; or the little glands that manufactured terror — trade name, Adrenalin. He would not even pause at any of the way stations of heartburn and malaise. His was the dark bourne of the Medulla, home of the Unconscious — that deep flowing river, one whose wavery shores one’s Aggressions slithered, like adders, in primordial mist.

Work with your dreams, the good doctor had urged. There were all the mysteries contained, and there too the key to the mysteries. As if there was any mystery, really — unless you wanted to call Buchenwald a mystery, or Hiroshima. The real mystery was how so-called “normal” people went briskly about their “un-neurotic” concerns — working, writing, wenching, blithely acquiescing in their own imminent and horrible destruction. The mystery was that you didn’t have nightmares every night.

The dream rose in his mind again, threw a momentary shadow, shapeless and huge over his thoughts. There was that sense of violence, of uncontrollable rage, and then running, running with those words after him, that idiotic phrase, filled with menace... There was a new wrinkle to the chase motif. Like a Walt Disney cartoon. Pandora’s box. Of course, Dr. Baume would have an explanation for that too. He’d always harped on the fact that words had a special significance for Roger.

“One of the reasons you can’t write any more, Bowen, is that words have lost their proper function for you.” That had been the theme of one of their first discussions — or “consultations” as they appeared on the bill. “Words are no longer instruments of communication for you, but weapons — of revenge and destruction.”

The words in the dream, of course, had been after him, trying to destroy him. But a little irrelevance like that wouldn’t trouble the good doctor. Like the Delphic oracle, he was never left voiceless by any arrangement of chicken bones and entrails, however senseless it might appear to anyone else. The good doctor had a pipeline to the source of all mystery, and all light.

“Words have always been weapons, Doctor,” Roger had said in a bored voice. “That’s what they’re supposed to be. Weapons against smugness, hypocrisy, bigotry, stupidity, ignorance. If that’s neurotic, then every man with a conscience and a voice who ever lived was a neurotic.”

“You’re no longer using them for that purpose, Bowen. You’ve stopped writing. You’re like a small boy who’s walked away from the feast because you’re hurt or angry, and you’re going to get back at everybody now by not eating.”

Roger had yawned elaborately. “I suppose we’ll have the one about my mother next. I’m really revenging myself on her because when I was two years old she used to forsake me regularly to go and have long talks with the gardener under the peony bush.”

“What’s your actual recollection of your mother?”

“Almost none. She either wasn’t there, or she was smothering me in fake tenderness.”

“You don’t think it’s possible you still carry a feeling of resentment toward her?”

“Oh, anything’s possible, I suppose. Maybe I’m revenging myself on God for showing me a glimpse of paradise and then banishing me to hell.”

“That may be part of it — if you substitute ‘father’ for ‘God.’ We don’t know what your hostility stems from yet. These things sometimes go very far back into infancy—”

“Further than that too, I fancy. Into absurdity.”

“You’re a sick man, Bowen. Don’t you want to get well?”

“I’m probably the healthiest man you know.”

“Why have you stopped writing?”

“I’ve nothing I want to write about.”

“Why do you drink?”

“For the best reason in the world. I enjoy it.”

And so round and round it had gone. Why don’t you write, why do you drink, why do you think... He shook his head violently, grimaced with pain. He’d never get things straightened out if he didn’t settle down now, organize his thoughts, separate the wheat from the chaff.

Let’s see. Emily had left on the four o’clock train, and he’d got dressed and gone into town. That much seemed clear. He seemed to recall, too, stopping in at the Coulters sometime during the evening. Was that last evening? Or was it a week ago Sunday he was thinking about? No, there was a girl he’d been talking to, he couldn’t be mistaken about that — an English girl, quite young. Surely he hadn’t dreamed her up. He could see her quite clearly, blonde, small, with a very short upper lip — very attractive in a sec sort of way. Nobody could tell him he hadn’t actually seen that girl somewhere, talked to her? What about? He couldn’t remember now. But he did remember thinking that only a Frenchwoman could look chic with short legs and only an Englishwoman attractive with buck teeth...

If he’d got into a conversation with her at the Coulters it was quite possible, as he knew from past experience, that he’d been late for dinner with Lila. As a matter of fact, he seemed to remember the girl dropping him at the Baroque. That’s right, she was stopping at the Savoy and she’d offered to give him a lift — good Lord! It wasn’t possible she’d been a witness to that Grand Guignol at the Baroque?

He rubbed a palm over his damp forehead. Anyway, it was beginning to make some sort of sense. But what had happened after Lila blew her top? That was a complete blank. How had he got home? There was a nice little problem in aerodynamics. He must have driven himself home, no one else was going to drive him forty miles from New York, certainly not Lila in a rage, or an English girl he’d never met before in his life. He must have been at the wheel himself. But it wasn’t possible. How could he have gone those forty miles, past two toll stations, without remembering anything, without having run off the road, or hit something, or somebody?

For that matter, how did he know he hadn’t hit somebody? Well, it was fairly obvious he hadn’t, or he’d be in a ditch somewhere right now, or in a hospital, or in a police station. But suppose it hadn’t been a collision? Suppose it had been just a lonely figure on the road, a child crossing the street...

He hanged his fist down on the desk. Damn it all, it was all very well to be lighthearted about hangovers but this was no joke. He might have killed somebody driving in that condition. Whatever else he might be he certainly was no murderer...

He paused, in his thoughts, and grimaced. At least not in his own estimation. Dr. Baume seemed to have other ideas on the subject.

“You don’t believe in psychoanalysis, do you, Bowen?”

“Believe in it? I believe it’s a phenomenon of our time. Like vitamin pills, bebop, and singing commercials.”

“Why do you continue to come here? Waste your time and money?”

“My time, doctor. Emily’s money. She’s keen about the stuff, has some quaint notion it’ll bring us closer together. I don’t mind humoring her.”

“You don’t believe it can benefit you?”

“Frankly, no. But don’t get self-conscious about it. I don’t expect any benefit from movies either, and I go quite regularly. I’ve a certain curiosity in observing how far the lunacy and vulgarity of my contemporaries can go. I’m able to report that the possibilities seem endless.”

“Analysis could help you, Bowen. If you really wanted to be helped.”

“How?”

“By helping you to understand your neurotic problems. Find out who it is you’re revenging yourself on, and for what. Who it is you fear and hate. Then you could give up killing people and get back to work.”

“Killing people. You’re not getting touchy, are you doctor? It was you who urged me to speak my mind—”

“I’m merely trying to point out to you that behind your carefully modulated behavior, Bowen, you’re actually a very aggressive man. Would it be news to you to know that you spend about fifty-nine minutes out of every hour you’re here, killing me?”

“Would it be news to you to know that you kill me too, Doctor — though not in the way you mean?”

“Bowen, you’re a man of talent, imagination, sensibility, conscience. And you’re engaged almost twenty-four hours a day in violating your deepest impulses. Because you’re a neurotic and there are drives in which you don’t understand. You’re a writer. You know the power of words, to wound, to nullify, to destroy. When you take away my validity as a doctor, an analyst, in effect you’re killing me.”

“I see. The figure-of-speech murders. Very gruesome.”

“There aren’t two kinds of murder, Bowen. It’s always the same impulse, whatever form it takes. Are you sleepy?”

“Don’t mind me, Doctor. I always yawn when I’m fascinated.”

“Well, we’ll have to stop now...”

“Good. I can’t wait to get home and stab me a grape.”

“I’d stay away from grapes for now, particularly fermented ones. Also rye, corn, and barley...”

It was always the same with these doctors. Quit drinking, they’d say, pouring themselves a little Scotch over ice. And better give up smoking too, bad for you, have you got a light.

All the same, he was through drinking. There’d been no real reason for him to stop before, he always had the stuff under control. But when you started blacking out it was time to quit. He’d done it, with smoking, ten years back, just to prove he could do it. And he could do it with alcohol overnight. From now on his drinking would be confined to beer, or maybe a light wine at dinner.

There was only one thing he really regretted about the decision. Emily would be sure it was a victory for her patience and understanding. The holy light in her eyes would be too much to be borne.

What was it they’d quarreled about before she left. Was it about his quitting the analysis? He seemed to recall saying, “One analysis in the family is enough. I’ll get mine by osmosis.” If he hadn’t said that he should have. Anyway, they’d had words about something, he was certain of that. At least he’d had words, Emily having lately assumed the role of one of Psychoanalysis’s Early Martyrs who understood all and forgave all. He could remember being vastly annoyed with her — was it something about his shirts? Yes, it was coming back now — he’d ploughed through his entire chest of drawers without being able to find a single dress shirt without pleats. Clara was gone, Emily had stupidly let her and Malcolm leave for the week end without consulting him, and there was no possible way for him to get a fresh shirt for the evening except to iron it himself.

He’d told Emily what he thought of the way she handled servants and the household in general, with a few additional notes on the nature of her involvement with the foster children of Mittel Euremia, in whom she was taking such a motherly interest lately. Then he’d gone into the bar and fixed himself a pearl onion with a Martini around it. He’d really intended to have just the one drink. He remembered that clearly. He’d decided to cut down and lose some weight. Lila had been twitting him about it lately. “Jowly,” she called it, and she’d taken to resurrecting some old snapshots from that summer in Stockton when he was still a “promising” writer, and she was still a “promising” actress. “You looked so boyish and intense,” she said wistfully, “every time I look at one of these I fall head over heels in lust with you all over again.” That was Lila’s subtle way, he supposed, of taking him down. Lila was not infrequently wistful about him these days.

Well, he’d meant to settle down with his drink and the Sunday paper, turn on the symphony at three and to hell with Emily, and Lila too for that matter. He had thought that he might not even go into town that night. She could fall in lust with the doorman. One day he’d be through with them, altogether, all the blonde and brunette jailers with the soft hands, and the keys that jingled like music and the rawhide whips they called, mellifluously, I-love-you. Put them all together they spelled Mother, somehow.

There must have been, of course, a miscarriage of his original plan about one drink. He’d always had a fatal weakness for those little pearl onions, and he could recall now some very fuzzy. Brahms on the radio. He’d even thought vaguely, he remembered, about new condensers. But Emily’s condensers had been fine. She’d been in excellent voice. Lord, how that soft-spoken girl he’d once called his white Iseult could make the Connecticut welkin ring with her plaints. (As a matter of fact, it was at Tanglewood they’d first met, the Berkshire festival, and he’d missed a natural opportunity, he realized now, one of those that only come once in a lifetime. He should have called her Pandora. Or Medusa...)

Medusa. The lady with the purple hair. Purple like snakes. Purple like grapes. Was that it? Could he ever, in some dim recess of his mind, have thought of using that as a title? It had a kind of misty relevance with the title of his novel. The Vintners. And Dr. Baume was always probing for hidden significances in these relationships, no matter how far-fetched or idiotic they seemed. When was it they’d first talked about the book?

“I read your novel the other night, Bowen.”

“Really? You take your work very seriously, don’t you, Doctor.”

“Very. You see, I don’t expect to live twice. I don’t want to waste a moment of this one.”

“You know, Doctor — you strike me as something of an intellectual Rover Boy.”

“Perhaps that’s fortunate for you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you’re in rather a vulnerable situation right now. If I were an intellectual Jack the Ripper for example. I might choose to conk you on the head with a vase.”

“Ah,” (gleefully). “Is this the imperturbable Dr. Baume speaking?”

“Let’s get back to you. It’s an interesting title: The Vintners. Have you any notion why you chose it?”

“Oh... something about the master vintner, I suppose. Grapes of wrath and so on. I don’t remember really. ‘All that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.’ ”

“I’ve also noticed that you identify quite often with The Waste Land. Have you any idea why?”

“Why does Eliot identify with it? Why does everyone who can see or feel? We’re all identified with The Waste Land, Doctor. Willy nilly.”

“Is that what you think your book is about?”

“Yes. What do you think it’s about?”

“Let’s pass that by far now.”

“Let’s not. I’d like to know what you think about the book. Come on, Doctor. I can take it.”

“Why do you want my opinion? Do you value it?”

“All right, skip it, if you’re going to be coy. I was merely curious.”

“I’m not qualified to judge the literary merit of your book, Bowen. You’ve had other opinions more to the point on that score. I understand the book made quite a stir.”

“Yes. A few bright people liked it, and a lot of fools were afraid to say they didn’t.”

“Speaking as an analyst, I found the book fascinating. I think I understand better now why you’re afraid to write another one.”

“Afraid?”

“That’s what I said, Bowen.”

“And just why do you think I’m afraid to write another book, Doctor?”

“For the same reason that you’re afraid of analysis.”

“And just why am I afraid of analysis?”

“Because you’re afraid I’ll discover your secret.”

“Have I a secret, Doctor? How jolly. Are we going to discover it together?”

“I want you to discover it for yourself.”

“I doubt it’s there, Doctor. I never keep secrets from myself.”

“You’ve got to keep this one. Otherwise you’d have to throw away your teething rings and get to work.”

“Teething rings, Doctor. How quaint.”

“I’m talking about drinking, Bowen. And adultery. And self-indulgence.”

“Adultery! Oh, really, Doctor. You’ve got me all confused now. Are you an analyst or a preacher?”

“The history of man, Bowen, is a struggle toward light away from darkness. Religion is one phase of that journey. Psychoanalysis is another.”

“Very interesting. And in your mind I’m arrayed with the forces of darkness.”

“Not you. Your neurosis. You’re a sick man, Bowen.” Baume looked serious.

“Are we back on that again? It’s the world that’s sick, Doctor, not me.”

“The world is you, Bowen. The only world that matters. And I can’t help you, if you don’t want to be helped.”

“I’ve told you before. I’m one of the healthiest people you know. What you persist in calling my neurosis is plain old-fashioned disgust with what goes on.”

“Yes. You’re a man of conscience, too, Bowen, which is where your conflict arises, and the world’s. But why don’t you do something about that disgust? Why aren’t you writing?”

“Because I’ve lost faith in my kind. I know in my heart they’ll never change. They’re a murderous, ravening breed, and they’ll never give up murder as a way of life. They’ll never stop killing each other until they’re wiped off the face of the earth.”

“What about you?”

“What do you mean what about me?”

“Why aren’t you writing?”

“Oh, Lord, you’re as bad as Emily. I’ll tell you, Doctor. Let’s say the world is a garden filled with a thousand delights for the eye and ear, a thousand sweet tasks for the head and hand and heart. That’s why. I’m too busy to write.”

“There was a garden named Eden once. A man named Cain turned it into a charnel house.”

“I thought I said that just now.”

“You said it about the world.”

“That’s right.”

“Let me ask you something else. Why do you feel you must drink?”

“Here we go again. All right. I drink to forget. Is that what you want me to say? To forget that I’m a failure. That I’m living on Emily’s money. To forget that I’m alive. To forget that Emily’s alive. Okay?”

He put his head back against the now bearable ache in the back of his neck. It was murder, trying to fit things together like this with your stomach in a knot and your brain turning to cottage cheese. Murder. There was that word again. Well, it was murder. How could he tell whether what he seemed to remember now was really so, or whether it had happened some other time, or whether it had got scrambled up with something in the dream? Maybe he’d never know. It was a sickening thought.

He put his elbow on the desk, closed his eyes and hammered on his forehead with his clenched fist, as if he half expected a door to open and the truth to come walking out. Minerva from the forehead of Zeus. Zeus in a business suit...

“Bowen, you’ve been coming to me for six months now. You resist me at every turn, with every resource of a brilliant man, you deny my validity entirely, yet you keep coming back. Why?”

“It’s not complicated, Doctor. Emily wants me to continue. And I’ve got nothing better to do with this hour. Have you?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ve decided to give up your case.”

(Roger hadn’t quite expected it. For just an instant he felt a flicker of emotion which passed off before he could identify it.) He said sardonically: “Can’t take it, eh, Doctor?”

“I’m one of those dull individuals who wants to earn his keep. I tell you frankly, Bowen, you’ve stopped me cold. At best an analysis takes a long time, years. In your case I’ve come to the conclusion that neither of us will live long enough.”

“I’m flattered.”

“From the beginning you’ve made this a contest. Well, you’ve won. I wish I could congratulate you on your victory against insight.”

“I’ll try to struggle along with the faint glimmer that now and again filters through my darkness. I’m sorry you feel we must give up these little sessions, though. I’ve found them not infrequently stimulating.”

“Slight case of murder, eh, Bowen?”

“There you go, using that nasty word again. Who are the fragile people I’ve been murdering, Doctor? Outside of yourself, of course.”

“All the women you’ve ever known, I imagine.”

“Indeed. They seem to thrive on it.”

“Do they? You’ve driven your wife to an analyst.”

“She’s driven me to one too, hasn’t she?”

“But she couldn’t make you drink.”

“Touché, Doctor. I’m going to miss you. And I’ve news for you. Emily’s having the time of her life. She’s only happy when she’s miserable.”

“How would you know? Have you ever tried making her happy instead of miserable?”

“Why doesn’t she leave me, if she’s miserable?”

“She’s in love with you, I imagine. A little device of the devil known as the dove-tailing neurosis. But I hear from my colleague that she’s making progress. She may surprise you one of these days, Bowen. Walk out on you.”

(Despite himself Roger had felt a twinge of annoyance with the doctor at this point. He hoped his tone hadn’t betrayed it.) “So much the better. I’ve other fish to fry.”

“An interesting phrase. You’re speaking of your current mistress, I presume.”

“There’s a fleur-de-lis in your voice when you say that word. Mistress. You’re really an antedeluvian character, Doctor. You charm me.”

“I wish I could return the compliment, Bowen. You frighten me. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen Miss Carmody in the theatre, and admired her very much. She was quite a successful actress when you met her, several years ago. What has happened to her since?”

“Why, don’t you know? I’ve murdered her.”

Roger reached for a cigarette, lit it with fingers that shook noticeably. You’d better pull yourself together old boy, he thought, or you’re really for the booby hatch... What had made him say such an idiotic thing, though? Of course the doctor was always bleating about it — murder, murder with adjectives. Murder by pronoun. To listen to him Roger ought to be in jail right now. A nice semantic jail with Funk and Wagmalls as his warders... How had he led up to that again?...

“Why is it necessary for you to have two women, Bowen?”

“Look. Doctor, are you an analyst or a preacher?” (No. That was another time. He knocked on his forehead with his knuckles. Oh, yes.) “Necessary, Doctor? I don’t know that it’s necessary. But it’s cozy.”

“You mean it makes it easier for you to hurt both of them.”

“Oh, look, do we have to go through that again? I told you. Lila and I met up in Stockton right after the war. I wrote a play for her. She’s a beautiful girl. We had something to give each other, apparently. It was strong, good. It made sense where there was no sense. It still does. Nobody’s going to tell me that’s criminal.”

“I’m not interested in the morals of your situation, Bowen. I’m a doctor. I’m only concerned with your relationships as they affect, and are affected by your neurosis. Lila Carmody was a successful young actress when you met. She’s had nothing but failures since. Knowing your problem with women I find it difficult not to make a connection.”

“What is my problem with women, Doctor? No wait. Don’t tell me. I ought to know by now. Murder.” (That was it. That was how it had gone.) “I suppose I killed Lila’s talent. With my little dictionary. The critics had nothing to do with it.”

“I’m not your accuser, Bowen. I’m here to help you understand yourself. Don’t you feel that an unhappy love affair with you may have had something to do with Miss Carmody’s recent failures?”

“No. An unhappy love affair, if that’s what ours is, might have made her a great actress. It’s happened before. If you want to know, the trouble with Lila is she’s not an actress. She’s a personality. Her problem is like yours, Doctor, in reverse. She’s got to find the right vehicle for her personality. You’ve got to find the right personality for your vehicle. Otherwise, it doesn’t go. It just stands there, with the wheels going round and round.”

“Yes. Well, it’s time for me to get a new passenger and get moving again. I wish you luck with your neurosis, Bowen. I hope it doesn’t prove too much for you.”

“When I’m done in, Doctor, it won’t be by my neurosis. It’ll probably be by an atom bomb.”

“All the same, take my advice and stop drinking. You’ve got an atom bomb of your own locked up inside you. When you’re conscious your will keeps it under control. But alcohol is a solvent for the will. It dissolves the inhibitions. If you continue to drink you may find one day that your neurosis and your will have become indistinguishable. Those sharp little words you’ve used so tellingly all your life may turn to real daggers in hand.”

Oh, nuts, Roger thought impatiently. Why did he keep rehearsing those dreary little dialogues. He was all through with Dr. Baume and his pronouncements. The man was an entertainer, primarily. He’d served his purpose, and that was that. The point was to go on and get things straightened out in his head. He’d been making some progress. Pretty soon he would have the whole story, then he could start writing apologies. “Dear Dick (Coulter). I’m sorry I bit your dog and insulted your mother. I thought it was my mother.” “Dear Lila. I’m sorry I was late. In fact I’m sorry I came at all. I should have stayed home and taken a regulation, full-size bath.” “Dear Emily. I’m sorry. That’s all. Just sorry.”

How had their quarrel started? He couldn’t seem to get it clear in his mind. He’d been listening to the symphony, waiting for Emily to finish her last-minute packing. It was Brahms, he remembered, the First. The grave passionate music had ended, and, thinking of Lila now and the few days they would have together with Emily gone, hearing, in his skin, that other soundless music that was all the memories he had of Lila, he’d felt suddenly eager and youthful again, very “unjowly” as it were, the lethargy, that numbing ennui of the bones slipping away from him in a wash of exuberance. He’d gone up the stairs, three at a time, to get out his dress things for the evening. And—

He winced. Good Lord. It wasn’t possible for a thing like that to throw him off! A dress shirt! He saw himself, all too vividly, hauling out drawer after drawer, flinging shirts around the room, yelling for Clara. Clara wasn’t there, of course, but Emily had come in after a moment, dressed for the train, in a gray-green suit, looking cool, almost prim, yet with that elusive tang-of-sensuality he’d always found so attractive.

“What on earth,” she said.

Something in her tone turned him completely unreasonable. “Why can’t I have a clean white dress shirt when I want one,” he declaimed. “It doesn’t seem like a great deal to ask.”

“There must be fifteen clean white dress shirts on this side of the room alone,” she said.

“They’re all starched,” he shouted. “I’ve told Clara a hundred times—”

Roger shook his head with a wry grimace. The things a grown man could let himself in for. The situation had deteriorated rapidly, of course. He’d gone down to the bar for another drink and she’d followed and said, “Why must you start drinking at this time of day?” as if she really expected an answer.

“Because I didn’t get up in time to start earlier,” he’d replied, not very brightly, but he was too annoyed to care.

“You’re not spiting me, you know, Roger. You’re not two years old and I’m not your mother. I happen to be your wife, and I happen to love you, though heaven knows—”

“If you happened to quit nagging once in a while, maybe I’d love you too. Why do you have to go on a holy crusade every time I take a drink?”

“You promised to cut down,” she said. “You ought to have some standards. How do you expect to make any progress with your analysis, if you don’t co-operate, if you keep slipping back into these infantile regressions?”

“Look, Emily,” he’d said, “I realize you’re looking down at me now from a lofty eminence of superior psychological insight. I even heard from Dr. Baume that you’re making so much progress you might walk out on me some day.” (Funny — and amusing — to think that had rankled a bit.) “But please spare me these thumbnail psychoanalyses. I get enough of them from the doctor.”

“I have to go now, Roger,” she said after a moment in that patient forgiving tone he found harder to bear than her pre-Freud hysterics. “You’ll be alone here. Please don’t drink any more. I don’t want you to set yourself on fire.”

“Well, don’t you try it, dear,” he said, unable to forego the malicious little gibe. “It might take too long and I wouldn’t want you to miss your train.”

She’d given a pretty good imitation of a lady calmly drawing on a glove. “You can’t hurt me with your words anymore, Roger,” she said. “I know you love me. And I understand you better now, your aggressions and hostilities. I wish you understood them as well. Someday you will...”

Lord. It had come to this. Emily patronizing him. He’d really felt like letting go then. Imagine. She wished he understood as well. Honestly. It was hard to understand how a woman like Emily had reached the ripe old age of thirty without being paved to death with her own good intentions.

“I’m afraid not,” he’d said coldly. “I’m not seeing your Theosophist friend any longer. I’ve quit.”

She’d dropped the pose then and given him a stricken look. “Oh, Roger. You didn’t. You promised...”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Emily,” he’d said violently, “will you stop bleeding and go away?”

He reached for another cigarette. The dog raised his head, looked at Roger. There was a theme song in his eyes. “Guilty of Loving You.” Roger stroked his head. “Your boss is in Dutch, Fred. Pretty bad. Pretty bad.”

There was no use making a production of it, though. It wasn’t the first time. Emily was probably used to it by now. He’d make it up to her some way, when she got back. Tell her he was through drinking. That would please her. She’d be sure it was a victory for her patience and understanding. Poor Emily. So fragilely balanced between her pre-Raphaelite sensuality and her New England conscience.

And Lila. He’d forgotten about Lila for the moment. He was going to have to make it up to her, too. He’d really done it up brown. Great little Sabbath. Well, a spray of green orchids would work wonders. And maybe a bottle of that “Muguet des Bois” she was so fond of, if he could find it. It was the little things that touched Lila. Violets in August. Emeralds in December. Dear Lila. How far were the green fields of Ireland, and the clotheslines of Second Avenue and the Saturday night bath.

Well, so he must have been fairly well plastered by the time he took Emily to the station. The next thing he could remember was stopping in at the Coulters, for a drink. That was quite a gap. And why the Coulters, instead of some nice quiet bar? He’d never liked the Coulters, despised them as a matter of fact, together with their set of Almanac de Gotham friends who were neither snobbish enough to be really amusing or amusing enough to be really snobbish. They all gathered, or coagulated, on Sunday afternoons to beat each other to the draw with the latest funny story, to rehash the latest play.

Why had he gone there? Maybe it had been too early for dinner with Lila. Emily had left on the four o’clock and if he’d dropped her at the station at, say, quarter to four and gone on into town, even in the stale he was in he’d have got there by six at the latest. As a matter of fact, he could recall the late afternoon light which on fine days turned New York into some kind of an organ fugue of a city, scored with those first warm lamps of evening coming on in the softening gray stone. Though that remembrance could be from some other time or times certainly. Those lights were in his blood, a kind of benign infection which was what made you a New Yorker wherever you happened to be — like that rooted touch of fever that travelers bring home from the equatorial zones.

Well, he must have gone to Lila’s place at six. Or phoned and got no answer and concluded she might have gone over to the Coulters. Would he have gone there to pick her up? It was a little indiscreet perhaps — but then who were they fooling, really? It was hard to believe there was anybody left in New York — who was interested — who didn’t know about him and Lila. Except maybe Emily. Or did she know, too? Was that included in the Great Understanding that had come to her through analysis? Was that what the doctor had meant when he said that she was making progress and might walk out on him one day?

Anyway, it seemed he’d got to the Coulters and Lila wasn’t there but everybody else in New York was. He could remember how the big room hung suspended in that subway roar of voices that is known as the cocktail hour. Dick Coulter, hearty and effusive as usual, had insisted on mixing him a Martini, personally — two parts vermouth, one part warm gin, and the rest bright conversation; he’d been summoned presently to turn on his sun-lamp charm elsewhere and Roger had emptied the Martini in the aquarium and let Jason mix him another one, four to one.

It was then that he’d heard someone beside him say, “You people always make such a fuss about Martinis.” The accent was English, Mayfair not Berlitz, and the voice extraordinarily clear and ringing, as if it had just been dipped in fresh sleighbells. He’d turned and looked at the girl. “It’s very confusing,” she said, “because you ought to be decadent and fussy, and you’re not. You talk about baseball and equally vigorous things in the same breath. Americans are really very confusing.”

Could he have dreamed that? He could see her standing beside him, in the brightly lighted room, blonde and slight and very British somehow, with her short upper lip. “You’re Roger Bowen,” she said. “I remember your picture on the jacket of a book. A marvelous book that I was simply mad about.”

The extravagant phrasing somehow didn’t have the tinny overtone it would have had, coming from one of the usual habitués of the place. She made it sound eager and youthful, and he was touched and warmed.

“You read The Vintners,” he said. “You must be one of the three people in England who did.”

“You’re joking, of course. Everybody I know has read it. I was in school at the time—” she’d mentioned the name of the school — Miss Phlegm’s School for Filiae Agricolae Nautam Amant in Devonshire — or something equally improbable. Anyway, the book had made a profound impression on her. “So compassionate — so terrifying,” she said. “We’ve only one person over there who writes like that, Graham Greene. Do you know him?”

Roger had said no, and she told him how she’d looked and looked for more of his books, combed the book stalls in the East End and even in Paris when she’d been there, thinking he might be one of those remote, El Greco figures who lived on the fourth floor in some Montmartre garret.

“Perhaps I should have,” he said. “Maybe then there would have been more books.”

“You mean you haven’t written anything since?”

How perfectly shameful it was, such a marvelous, marvelous gift. “If you belonged to me I should never have let you stop. I’d have locked you in and made you work.” And watching her high-strung, beautiful controlled movements with the Martini glass and a cigarette, he had a swift, tingly intimation of what she’d be like in the dark, behind a closed door.

“Tell me,” he said, feeling the excitement of her drawing taut and singy within him, like a stretched string, “there’s something I must know that only you can tell me.”

“What?” she said eagerly. “Please.”

“Is it Sacheverell? Or Sacheverell?”

She looked startled for a moment, then she laughed. “Oh, Sitwell. Sasheverell. Soft c.”

“Thank God. It’s bothered me for years.”

She kept laughing, a lovely sound. “You’re not very enterprising, are you?”

“No. But even if I were, where do you go to find out a thing like that?”

“Well, you’re sure to remember me at least. Now you can read him in peace.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to go that far.”

He’d taken her Martini glass and filled it again and they’d stood talking, and it was exciting in a special sort of way, as it used to be with Lila, the first time, with that sense of something building, building between them, that wonderful sense of aliveness, of language taking on new dimensions, new meanings, elliptical, full of nuance, keenly — even dangerously — informed with secret wit.

It must have been longer than he realized because he became aware finally that the party was breaking up at the Coulters, people were leaving. Then he looked at his watch and saw it was nine o’clock, and he remembered suddenly his dinner date with Lila. It was very embarrassing because Phillipa (that was her name, Phillipa Soames) had told him she was leaving very early in the morning with her aunt, for San Francisco. They were going on to Hawaii or Australia, and she had to be up by six in the morning. He’d told her it was foolish in that case to go to bed at all and offered to take her to some place in Harlem where she hadn’t been. She’d seemed very excited about the idea and had called her aunt to say she wouldn’t have dinner with her, and now he had to tell her about his dinner date with Lila, and it was very embarrassing.

But she’d been sporting about it, rather cute in fact. “I might have known,” she’d said ruefully, “the really choice seats are always occupied.” And she’d given him a lift in her taxi to the Baroque. “It’s been wonderful meeting you,” she said, and he knew she meant just that. “You will write some more... No. I won’t make you promise. But you should, you know.”

She held out her hand to him with that mannish gesture that only a really womanly woman can manage, and her smile, with that fetching upper lip of hers, was comradely — and yet personal. He’d watched her go with genuine regret. There weren’t many people left in the world who thought writers were anointed. Not his world, anyway.

He’d walked into the restaurant then, with the spell of the girl’s personality very much on him, almost like a very dry, wonderful wine, and Georges with his battery of culinary commandos had picked him up at the door and they’d danced him down to the table where Lila was sitting, with those long, black gloves almost to the sharp little elbows. He realized with a little shock of physical pleasure at the sight of her, that there was a striking resemblance between her and the English girl. The girl was really, in a way, a younger Lila...

He should have known something was wrong. Georges was twittering around them like a Gallie sparrow.

“Hello, darling,” he’d said, coming to. “Am I late? Or are you early?”

It was the wrong thing to say, of course. Nonchalance was hardly the right note. But he’d not felt exactly on the ball, at that point. He’d taken on quite a load since early afternoon, and his feet suddenly felt too big for his shoes and he realized now that the girl, Phillipa, had got to him in a big way. He felt disturbed, wrought up, vulnerable somehow. The whole time of not writing, and that earlier time of The Vintners (that mezzotint of dedication and high purposes) had moved of its own propulsion out of the closed attic room where he kept it hidden. It was suddenly like what the lights did to you late at night, those selfsame Christmasy lights of early evening, when they turned so desolate and lonely, rustling all the dead leaves of hope and desire in your mind...

“You’re late,” Lila had said, rousing him again, and he’d tried to smile, tried to fight off the sudden weariness.

“I know,” he said. “Later than I think. I’m sorry, Lila.”

“You’re an hour and forty minutes late,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here like a fool.”

“Well, if you’ve got to sit like a fool, it’s much better to do it in pleasant surroundings. Have a drink, darling, you’ll feel better.”

“I don’t want a drink,” she said. “And you don’t need any more either. You’re disgustingly tight already. You were practically staggering when you walked in here.”

“Lila, please,” he said. “Be beautiful and still.” To Georges he said, “A double Martini.”

“I want to know why you’re an hour and forty minutes late,” she said.

“I couldn’t get away. Emily decided to take a later train.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “I saw you drive up in a taxi. Who was that girl?”

“What girl?”

“Don’t lie to me, Roger. I happened to see you get out of the taxi. There was a girl in it.”

“Oh. She’s just a girl. She was at the Coulters. She was going up to the Savoy, and she gave me a lift.”

“Stop lying. Who is she?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lila. Phillipa Something. I don’t know.”

“You kept me waiting for two hours. I want to know why?”

“Lila, darling,” he said, “a mistress is supposed to be good-humored, unpossessive, undemanding. A wife is supposed to be short-tempered, possessive, demanding. Do you have any idea why things should always get mixed up for me?”

Georges came up with the Martini.

“We were supposed to have a lovely evening tonight,” Lila said. “For a change. It was all arranged.”

“Man proposes and gin disposes. Happy days, darling.”

“You’re lovely,” she said. “You’ve got all the instincts of a killer. All you lack is the courage.”

“You sound just exactly like my analyst.”

He drained the glass Georges had set down before him, and as he set it down he saw that Lila was going to cry, and then it happened. The thing that had driven him to the analyst, really, not Emily’s importunities. The thing he’d never brought himself to talk about to Dr. Baume. Lila’s face went all to pieces as he watched, like an abstractionist painting. The eyes separated, the nose disappeared, the chin fell— This is what happens to the painters, he thought, Picasso, Chagall, only they put it together and make some larger sense. You could do it too, he told himself, pick up those blue eyes, those cunning hands, that lovely mouth that makes such sweet music in the dark, all you need is the talent. That’s all. You’ve got the nuclear fission department, the shadow that falls on the shadow, the paring knife that peels nuance from nuance, all you’ve lost is your talent. You can’t write any more. So what? Lots of people can’t write any more. Lots of people never could.

“Stop crying,” he said to Lila. “For pity’s sake, stop crying. Have a drink.”

“No, thanks,” she said. “But you have another.” And she picked up her glass of water and flung it in his face. He was too startled for a moment to move. Then he started futilely, to wipe himself with his napkin, trying desperately not to appear as ludicrous as he felt, there were people watching though they weren’t as important to him as that other one watching, himself, sneering at this buffoonish spectacle, but it wouldn’t do to make a scene now, pick up a plate and bang it down over her head, take her throat in his hands and squeeze until that demountable face of hers really came apart at the seams...

But instead he slapped her face. Hard.

Then Georges came up with a cruet of oil in his voice. “Madame is perhaps fatiguée,” he said.

“You said it,” Lila said, standing up with a slender viciousness. “Madame is sick and fatiguée. And it’s not madame, you grinning ape. It’s mademoiselle. Go get me a taxi.”

Grinning ape, Roger thought. The poor, tired man, with burning feet. Who will he pass it on to when he gets the chance? A bus boy? His wife. His own little boy. An endless chain, endless. Where did it start? Who trod on the first toe, spit in the first eye, drove in the first thorned insult and started the endless chain...

Well, she’d stormed out sad he’d gone to the phone and called the Savoy. Miss Phillipa Soames. She was there and half undressed but she was glad to get dressed again, or so she said, with enough eagerness in her voice to make him believe it. He could remember, dimly, picking her up at the Savoy, or some place. Then they were sitting together in a crowded room, with colored people all around them, extremely well-behaved, and they were listening to a band, six pieces or seven, the music strident, but very good, like new wine, too harsh and a bit clouded in color but essentially sound. Then there was a male dancer, very beautiful in gleamy bronze paint. He made stylized overtures to the men sitting around, but it was somehow not disgusting, it was all too good-humored for that.

Phillipa seemed enthralled. “Charming,” she said, “charming. Like children.”

“That’s what everybody says,” he told her. “I thought you’d be different.”

“Why? Because I’m British?”

“No. Because you’re you.”

A girl came out then and sang. Blue light shone on her cocoa-colored face, gave her a rapt, soulless look, almost expressionless.

There was a confused blur of movement in his mind, punctuated by lights, angles, music — like one of those early, arty movies. Much later they were in his car, parked somewhere by the river.

“What’s over there?” she asked. “Across the river.”

“Weehawken,” he said.

“Wee-hawken,” she repeated, childlike. “Is that where the little people live?”

“You’re adorable,” he said. He kissed her. Her lips were cool, petal-like; he put his hand up to her throat to feel the pulse beating there. She strained, pulled away from him. “Don’t you want me to make love to you?”

“I — you frighten me a little.”

“Frighten you?”

“You were hurting me.”

“Do you mind being hurt? That’s part of being loved.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

He tried to kiss her again but she turned her head aside. “That’s not the kind of thing you were saying with The Vintners. Love’s not being hurt. Love is goodness, and tenderness, and keeping one from being hurt.”

“Now you’re beginning to sound like Emily,” he said, feeling a little annoyed, despite himself. “ ‘You’re only hurting yourself, Roger.’ ”

“Who’s Emily?”

“Oh, a girl I know. Lady.” Great lady, he thought, suddenly. Really. It was odd.

“I seem to have lost you somewhere,” she said.

“Yes. You and God.”

“What do you mean? That sounds fearfully melodramatic.”

“I was thinking about my analyst. He says being neurotic is being lost. And being lost is dangerous.”

“Oh, neurotic,” she said. “You Americans love that word. It covers such a multitude of sins. All you have to do is behave, you know.”

“That’s right,” he said, laughing. “Like the profit motive. All you have to do is eliminate it, and everything becomes beautiful and simple.”

He reached for her, laughing, but she held him off. He wrestled with her, thinking, this is silly. She fought him off, slapped him finally. He let go of her then, startled and angry. He forced himself to laugh, heard the sound of it, theatrical and not calculated to fool anybody. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to kiss me then.”

“That’s the second time I’ve been slapped tonight,” he said. “Now I’m really going to have to hurt you.”

She stared at him, her face going pale. He reached for her, and she wrenched the door of the car open and ran. He was going to follow her, but suddenly it seemed too much trouble. Let her go. Let it all go. None of it was worth the trouble.

He felt deadly tired all at once. It came to him that the tiredness was something very deep inside him, as if he’d been dragging his feet, all his life, through a weight of possessive love, his mother, Emily, Lila, all the women he’d known. He could feel the weight of it pulling him down. That’s what was the matter. That’s why he couldn’t write.

He thought of Lila and decided to go there. There was another blank and then he saw himself in Lila’s room. It was in disorder, and he was dressing. There was a Martini on the dresser, king size, in a tumbler. He could see the way it caught the light — pale, cloudy topaz. He was knotting his bow tie, or trying to. “It’s almost four, Roger,” Lila said. “Must you go?”

(Why had he got up to go at such an unearthly hour? Had they quarreled some more?) He was trying to knot his tie and the blasted thing kept slipping through his fingers. Lila said finally, “You’d better let me. You can hardly see straight anymore,” and she’d come over and started to do it for him. But he was angry with her and moved away.

(They must have gone on quarreling. Good Lord.)

“Don’t start mothering me,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Roger,” she said. “Don’t be stubborn.” And she’d taken hold of the tie and started to fix it and he had slapped her hand away, hard.

Something about the remembered violence of that movement brought the nightmare back to Roger suddenly, with skin-crawling nearness. He saw himself — gesticulating, shouting, flinging the tie down on the floor and jumping on it, like Rumpelstiltskin...

He shook off the recollection, blinking as if the lights had gone on at a play he’d been watching. This was ridiculous. He wouldn’t go on with this charade. None of this was true. None of it had really happened. He was just rehashing something he’d dreamed, last night, or some other night...

Suddenly, like an exploding ratchet, full of dancing lights and shuttered movement, Lila’s room whirled back into focus in his recollection. He was stooping to pick up the tie. Lila was watching him, and as he straightened up, he saw that she was laughing at him. “You’re just like a child,” she said, “a stubborn little child—”

“Don’t say that,” he said. “I’ve had enough analysis today. Enough to last me a long time.”

But she’d kept on laughing. He took a step toward her and she backed away quickly, jarring into the dresser. “Roger,” she said, still laughing at him but there was a look of fear suddenly on her face, a telltale little greenish whiteness around her beautifully defined nostrils. “Roger, don’t,” she said, “you’re frightening me.” She kept backing away up to the wall and he’d taken the tie...

He jumped up, saying aloud, “No, no, no.” He stood with his fists clenched, his face gray. His thoughts had gone all misty and confused but in the center of it, as if caught in that cloudy, topaz gleam of the Martini glass and moving in on him with a terrible stereopticon clarity, he saw himself pulling his bow tie tight around Lila’s neck, heard her voice saying “Don’t, don’t,” go hoarse, strangled, her face grow...

He started back, knocking his chair over. The dog bounded up beside him. “Fred, Fred.” The dog moved in against his legs. He dug his hands in the scruff, hanging on for dear life, feeling as if he were drowning, all his life, his reason slipping away.

This is what Dr. Baume had meant, about the drinking. More dangerous than you’ve any idea, he’d said. You’ve an atom bomb of your own locked up inside you. Only your will, your conscience, keeps it locked up. Someday the sharp little words will turn to daggers in your hand...

“No, no,” he said agonizedly, “it’s not true. I never fired a gun in the war, two long years, without feeling sick about it inside every single time. I’m not a murderer. It’s just something I dreamed...”

He straightened up abruptly, want to the phone. There was a way to find out. He stood for a moment with his hand on the phone, feeling it grow wet under his grasp. Suppose it was true. Suppose when he called Lila’s number there would be no answer...

He picked up the phone, as one facing a firing squad might raise a cigarette to his lips. In an hour or so the maid would come in, and then there would be others in the room, lifting the dead weight of what had once been Lila, his beautiful Lila.

He heard his breath come out in a broken sob. And later in the morning — this morning, or some morning — there would be steps on the porch, out of that ridiculous movie, the heavy flat-footed tread. “Mr. Bowen here? District Attorney’s office.” And there would be no surging of music, as he walked to the door, no fade out, no coming attractions, no place in the house for him to run, hide. In the whole world there would be no place for him to hide.

He heard his voice say indistinctly but evenly, “Operator. I want New York. Butterfield...” He gave her the number, heard the faint interplanetary signaling, the astral voices making their mysterious commitments and connections. Then suddenly, so suddenly that he almost dropped the phone, he heard the ominous chirring begin. Once, twice, three times in the empty house. No, not empty. There was that thing lying on the floor by the dresser that had once been Lila... He bent forward with the unbearable sickness in him, rested his head against the wall. When he heard the voice he didn’t understand.

“Yes?”

I’m dreaming again, he thought. I’m back in the dream.

“Yes?”

It was Lila’s voice. Incredibly, miraculously, it was Lila’s voice, fuzzy with sleep and impatience. The feeling of relief was so intense that he almost lost consciousness. He sank down on the couch, unable for the moment to find his voice, to say a word.

“Hello. Who is it...”

“Lila,” he said. He managed to say the word, heard his voice saying it, far off, as if across water.

“Roger? Is that you, Roger?”

“Yes.” His voice was still a croak, unrecognizable in his own ears.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Roger,” she said. “It’s six in the morning. What’s the idea?”

“Lila,” was all he could say, “Lila.”

“Roger, are you drunk?”

“No, I had a nightmare, Lila. About you. I had to find out if you were all right.”

“Oh, you fool. You always get solicitous about me at the wrong time. Where were you last night?”

“Didn’t I... I mean, we had a date at the Baroque—”

“You’re telling me. I waited for you until almost ten o’clock.”

“You mean I never got there at all?”

“Are you kidding? Look, Roger, it’s too early in the morning—”

“No, Lila. Look. I’m just terribly confused. I had a nightmare and I can’t seem to get it out of my head, get things straight. It seemed to me I went into town and met you but I guess I didn’t.”

“Where are you now?”

“Home.”

“Can you talk?”

“Yes. Emily’s gone. I told you she was going up to Boston.”

“I know. I tried calling your house last night when you didn’t show up. I thought something might have happened to you. There was no answer.”

“I know. Emily sent the servants away before she left. And I guess I must have been dead to the world. I’d been drinking a bit.”

“Are you all right now?”

“I’m fine. I can’t tell you, Lila — how glad I am you’re all right.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Lila, will you have lunch with me today? We’ve got to talk. I can’t go on hurting both you and Emily this way. We’ve got to do something about it. Work it out someway. There must be some decent way out.”

“Yes, Roger.” Her voice went off somewhere.

“Lila. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’ve been worried about you, that’s all. When you didn’t show up last night. I was sure you’d done something crazy. You always drive so crazily when you’re drunk—”

“Lila. I’ve got news for you. I’m going on the wagon.”

“I seem to have heard that before.”

“No, really. I do mean it this time.”

“Oh, if you only would, Roger.” Her voice was suddenly nearer, vibrant. “And get back to work. I’d even let Emily have you back...”

“Don’t cry, Lila. Please. I’m not worth it. We’ll talk about it at lunch.”

He hung up, shaken to the roots. I’ve got to have a drink, he thought. He went out of his study and through the shadowy hall toward the bar. At the door he stopped. No, no drink. Some tomato juice, maybe. He started toward the kitchen, heard someone saying, distantly, “One, two, three, four...” His heart gave an involuntary bound. He went into the living room, saw that he’d left the radio on. He turned it off, saw the Sunday paper scattered around the armchair near by. He started to gather the paper together and his eye lit on something in the rotogravure section. He stared at it, the picture of a blonde, slight girl with a very short upper lip. “Miss Phillipa Soames,” he read, “who has been spending a few weeks at the Savoy with her aunt, leaves tomorrow for...”

Roger started to laugh, holding the paper, rattling it as he staggered against the wall, holding one hand out to Fred, who was observing his master’s newest fit of emotion with anxious eyes. “It’s all right, Fred,” Roger gasped. “It’s just that I’ve gone back to writing for the pulps.” He roared with helpless laughter, leaning against the wall. Oh God, how far can a man go, with his idiocies. He’d dreamed up that whole ridiculous episode with the girl. How real it had seemed. How dangerously real, all of it had seemed. A near thing, old boy, he thought. A near thing.

He walked to the French doors and stepped out on the veranda, breathing in the light damp morning air greedily.

He listened. No sound riffled the purplish gray silence that stood like a shapeless monitor over the landscape, holding a finger to its lips. No thread of sound raveling, no rustle of leaf or bud. He’d forgotten how still the world could be. Yet it was not tranquil, he knew. It was merely waiting. All the storms and violence were there, gray sky seared by flame, the spume and fury of driven water, the stretch and wrack of tree limbs writhing in the wind. All of it was there, in abeyance simply, waiting, waiting to spring, to tear, to rend, to destroy...

A surge of exultant, prayerful aliveness geysered up in his midriff. Not this time, you furies, not this time, he thought. Not ever. I’ve escaped you. I’m going on the wagon, and I’m going to write again. What do you think of that? I’m thirty-three years old and I’m going to write again. Dr. Baume, here I come. A convert. Help me, a penitent, smudged by the world’s filth, knee deep in vileness. I confess my sins. I want to be well, healed of the murder in my heart. I want to work again.

He stood gulping back the tears. A little late for a crying jag but he might as well get that in, too. Whole hog. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes with violence, feeling ashamed. He looked at his watch. Ten to seven. Malcolm and Clara would be back soon. He’d have a good breakfast. Then he’d put on a windbreaker and go for a long walk with Fred.

But first he must have a bath. He hadn’t been out of his clothes since yesterday afternoon and all at once he felt insufferably grimy. He went upstairs, through the mauve dark of the upstairs hall to the bathroom. He turned on the water in the tub, held his hand under the faucet, adjusting the spigots, watching the emerald whirlpool churning up below. How obliviously one walked through the treacherous bogs of everyday, the swift sudden vortices that gulped like fish mouths at your every step. He wished suddenly that Emily was back and realized that behind the wish was a hurtful thing that he would one day soon have to take to his bosom like the Spartan’s fox. Lila. The little doctor was right. There was no way to live in peace and dignity with two women. At least no way for him. There was no use talking about the Turks. He wasn’t a Turk. He really was, perhaps, much more of a Puritan at heart than Emily.

He turned off the water, reached to undo his tie and realized he didn’t have it on. He went to the mirror over the washbasin and looked at himself. He was a sight — his complexion gray green like blanched seaweed, deep rings under his eyes, his hair matted. And dressed for evening withal, he thought sardonically, dinner jacket, cummerbund, even the white carnation in his buttonhole, somewhat frazzled now — and no tie. What a spectacle. And how charming to recall what he’d done with the tie. Flung it on the floor, like a petulant child, when Emily had come over to fix it for him!

He went out of the bathroom, pulling his jacket off as he walked toward his own bedroom. The door was open slightly and a runnel of amber light spilled over into the purplish gloom of the hall. He must have switched it on when he was turning the room upside down, looking for a shirt. He felt thoroughly ashamed of his outburst now. He must have been terribly tight. And she’d come up and said quietly, “Here, let me do it. You can’t even see straight anymore.”

What had Emily ever given him actually, in return for his indifference and brutality, but love and loyalty and patience. And in his warped, perverse way he’d made of that very patience and loyalty something to use against her. And against himself. Because he realized now he’d loved Emily all along. Emily. He said the name over, with a surge of tenderness. Emily. Emily. How strange, how passing strange. It was true, what the doctor had tried so patiently to get him to see — in some mysterious way he didn’t yet understand he’d been revenging himself on her, making her pay — for what? He couldn’t say yet. That was Dr. Baume’s department. He was eager to get on with it now. And eager to make it up to Emily for all the wasted, warped years.

He stood in the doorway to his bedroom now, saw with disbelief the wild confusion he’d created, emptying the drawers. “Drinking is dangerous for you Bowen.” The doctor’s voice sounded in his mind, almost with the tonality of one of those echo chambers in the movies. “You don’t realize it, but your neurosis is an atom bomb locked up inside of you. When you’re conscious your will keeps it under control...”

Roger shook his head. Unbelievable that a grown man could blow his top like this, over a dress shirt. Like a child splashing cereal around a room. He started to enter the room and suddenly he had a moment of complete clarity, what the psychologists in their specialized jargon labeled “total recall.” He knew what it was he’d actually quarreled with Emily about. It was what Dr. Baume had said to him, on Saturday, “She’s making progress, Bowen, she may surprise you and walk out on you, one of these days.” That was why he’d slapped her. That’s why he’d turned on her, shouting, wild with rage, with fury that it seemed now he’d been choking down for years, all his life. “Yes, I know, you’re going up to Boston and you’ll sit there with your family commiserating with you about your hard life, what a rotter I am and how you ought to leave me, just like your analyst has been telling you to do. Don’t tell me, I know what he’s been putting into your mind. Well, I’m telling you now, you’re not going to leave me, the way you’ve been doing all your life, with chauffeurs and gardeners and who knows who else and then looking so holy about it: ‘Come here, dear boy, let me fix your tie. You can’t do without your Mummy for even a minute, can you.’ Well, you’ll not do it again, you hear, you’re not ever going to leave me again, never, never, never...”

He saw the bow tie on the floor where he’d thrown it. It lay describing a crude arabesque, like a child’s drawing of an S. It was somehow ribald, like the rest, the leftover trace of some high revelry that had struck the room and moved on. He didn’t see Emily until he moved into the room. Her face, too, was a caricature of carnival, a Halloween mask, the eyes wide open and protruding, staring up in a travesty of surprise, the tongue grotesquely swollen, sticking out of her mouth, bunched and purple, like grapes.

One Man’s Secret RITA WEIMAN

Original publication: Cosmopolitan, March 1943

Largely unknown today, Rita Weiman (1885–1954) once was practically a one-woman factory for producing books and stories that Hollywood gobbled up to make a huge number of films, mostly silent, including The Co-respondent (1917), Madame Peacock (1920), Curtain (1920) with Katherine MacDonald, Footlights (1921) with Reginald Denny, After the Show (1921) with Jack Holt and Lila Lee, The Grim Comedian (1921) again with Jack Holt, Rouged Lips (1923) with Viola Dana and Tom Moore, and The Social Code (1923) with Viola Dana and Huntley Gordon, among others.

Weiman also provided stories for films when the sound era began, including The Witness Chair (1936) with Walter Abel, Margaret Hamilton, and Ann Harding, The President’s Mystery (1936) with Henry Wilcoxon, Sidney Blackmer, and Evelyn Brent, and Possessed (1947) with Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, and Raymond Massey.

Weiman was one of six writers who wrote The President’s Mystery Story (1935), a novel based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea of a mystery plot: Could someone totally disappear, taking with him his wealth? The other writers were Anthony Abbot, Samuel Hopkins Adams, John Erskine, Rupert Hughes, and S. S. Van Dine. It did not provide a satisfactory solution and it was reissued in 1967 as The President’s Mystery Plot with a new final chapter by Erle Stanley Gardner.

She also was a playwright, with several of her plays serving as the basis for films, including The Co-respondent (1916), released on film under that title in 1917 and again as The Whispered Name (1924), and The Acquittal (1920), filmed with the same title in 1923 and again in 1953.

Title: Possessed, 1947

Studio: Warner Brothers

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Screenwriters: Silvia Richards, Ranald MacDougall

Producer: Jerry Wald

• Joan Crawford (Louise Howell)

• Van Heflin (David Sutton)

• Raymond Massey (Dean Graham)

• Geraldine Brooks (Carol Graham)

Told in flashback, Louise Howell, now in a mental hospital, tells her psychiatrist how she came to psychotically walk the streets of a strange city. Holding a responsible position as a nurse for the matriarch of a wealthy family, she secretly falls in love with David Sutton, a confirmed bachelor and roué who lives across the lake from her placement. They have an affair that he breaks off, tired of her obsessive, possessive love. When the wealthy old woman in Louise’s care is found drowned in the lake, the verdict is that she committed suicide but there are questions. Serious questions. As a trained nurse, Louise recognizes that she is having a breakdown that deteriorates over time, eventually leading to her present situation.

Producing the screenplay for Possessed was not a smooth ride. The first problem occurred when Joan Crawford and director Curtis Bernhardt sought to make the film as authentic as possible, so they visited several psychiatric wards in southern California to observe mental patients. When they watched, without permission, one woman undergoing electroshock treatments, she claimed her privacy had been invaded and sued Warner Brothers, which gave her a substantial settlement.

The first draft of the screenplay was written by Silvia Richards but Wald hired Ranald MacDougall to completely rewrite it. MacDougall had written the script for the wildly popular Crawford vehicle Mildred Pierce two years earlier and was brought in in an attempt to replicate its success. Mildred Pierce garnered Crawford an Academy Award for Best Actress, and she also was nominated for her role in Possessed.

Ever grateful, Crawford apparently threatened to walk off the set permanently unless twin brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein agreed to rewrite her part. As it happens, the Epsteins had been suspended by the studio so executive producer Jack L. Warner had no choice but to reinstate them and give them back pay. They wrote scenes to Crawford’s satisfaction but they did not get a screen credit. Crawford also insisted that cinematographer Sidney Hickox be replaced by Joseph A. Valentine, despite the fact that Hickox had already worked on the film for more than a month of shooting.

Oddly, Joan Crawford had already starred in a 1931 film titled Possessed that costarred Clark Gable, but the films were completely different with no connection to each other.

When Possessed was first announced by Warner Brothers, it was intended to star Ida Lupino, Paul Lukas, and Sydney Greenstreet.

ONE MAN’S SECRET Rita Weiman

It would not have occurred to Dean Steward that six months after his wife’s death, he could ask another woman to marry him.

He was standing at his study window when the knock came that proved to be destiny. At first it was lost in the splash of waves against the rocks, a rhythmic sound at once soothing and stirring. Or it may have been his absorption in the view, the swordlike streak of gold that followed sunset, the waters foaming where they hit below the window, the islands that dotted Long Island Sound glistening like amethysts in the afterglow. Today high tide was at twilight, the hour he loved best. He did not hear the knock at the door.

When he bought Rockland years ago as a summer home, he had had part of the wall in this room torn out and the huge stationary pane of glass installed as the frame for a changing picture he never tired of. And always he marveled that this scene of sweeping beauty, these cliffs, the fishing boats, the crescent of white beach curving off to one side of the sprawling comfortable house should be in Westchester within such short distance of New York.

From the time they were little children, Cara and Wyndham loved it. And Pauline, too, when the days were warm and the nights brief. Yet never had he been able to keep her here the year round. She was afraid of winter cold, the early darkness. At this season they would have been moving back to their New York apartment in the beating heart of the city. Pauline always longed for her sixteenth-floor bedroom balcony from which she could gaze down, fascinated, on cars and trucks reduced to miniature; as if from the illusion of their dwarfed size she could draw consolation for her own ineffectuality.

During those long years, those very long years of her intermittent illness, this place had been to Dean a haven where problems seemed less insurmountable. All the staccate events of his life, its tragedies, were centered in New York. In a New York hospital their third child had been born, the little girl who lived only a few hours and took with her into the unknown her mother’s health and peace of mind. And it was from New York that Pauline had been sent to various private sanitariums in the hope that change of scene would conquer the attacks of melancholia, only to write frantic letters pleading to be allowed to come home.

As he gazed into the soft twilight, Dean was thinking that it was here Pauline had found peace, although she never realized the fact. Here she had regained something of the laughter and the sparkle of their early years together. Here she had looked like her daughter’s older sister, with the same aura of red-gold hair as Cara, and Cara’s gentian-blue eyes. Last year this time, just before they returned to town, he had fancied improvement in her condition. He had watched for every little sign — her more frequent smiles; her reviving interest in Cara’s boy friends and Wynn’s ambition to study law. The twins, sixteen then, seemed to bring back their mother’s youth. Last year this time he had dared to hope.

For a moment his thoughts stumbled and he could not lift them to consciousness of the beauty the window framed. In spite of him, they struggled back to the night last May when he had sleepily lifted the receiver and heard the doorman’s panicked, “Mr. Steward, come quick!” After that night he had been unable to look from any of the sixteenth-floor windows of the apartment without having imagination summon the picture of Pauline’s frail body hurtling downward through the darkness. Pauline’s suicide...

The knock came again, louder this time, more imperative. Clouds closed over the streak of gold in the sky. The last bar of daylight sank quickly, coldly, as it does in late autumn.

Dean answered, “Come in.”

The woman who opened the door hesitated. “Do I disturb you?”

“Not at all. I was just mooning over the view. It hits me particularly at this hour this time of year. The sky and water coming together like steel doors closing. Suddenly they’re one. Come over here and take a look.”

But she did not look at the view. She studied Dean’s profile against the luminous background, dark, gaunt, fine, as if etched on the glass; a distinguished profile, gray-streaked black hair sweeping from the high forehead; a nose clean-cut, eyes with the tired, kind expression of a man who has been hurt but not embittered. They were singularly handsome deep-set eyes. A trim mustache touched with gray failed to conceal the sensitiveness of his mouth. It was the face of a scholar with the smile of a friend.

He turned to her, and she glanced quickly out of the window. “Yes, beautiful. But it’s frightening too. There seems to be no beginning and no end.”

“Probably that’s right. We see a beginning and an end because our view is limited. Well, actually, there is no horizon. None ever existed. Our eyes place it there, Gladys, because we can’t see beyond.”

They stood watching the sky darken until all the luminous quality was gone. The splash of the waves sounded heavier, as if giant arms were pounding on the rocks.

She moved away. He followed and switched on a lamp that gently flooded the room. “What time is it?”

“Long after six.”

Dean kept no clock in the study. In these war times he spent all day, every day, at the plant of the Steward Chemical Company located near by. Being a chemist as well as president of the company made his work intensive and exacting. When he came home to this room, he wanted no sense of time passing. “Is Cara home?” he asked.

“Not yet. She went into town for a matinee. I had to see you before she gets back.”

He noticed then for the first time that Gladys’s hands, strong and reposeful — hands always suggestive of sculpture to Dean — were clasped tightly. Any sign of nervousness in this woman who for three years had been his wife’s devoted companion was so unusual that Dean knew there must be something radically wrong.

He motioned to the lounge chair and knelt to light the fire. The flame reflection leaped up to her eyes. They were cool gray eyes ordinarily, with something of the transparency of that twilight water slapping against the rocks. Tonight they had a warmer glow. Yet their expression was troubled.

Dean had never learned her age, but he judged Gladys Mayden to be in her early thirties. She had an untouched virginal quality. There was petal smoothness on her olive skin and in the gloss of brown hair brushed back from her ears in soft wide waves. Her mouth, without a sign of rouge, was nevertheless crimson and firm, chiseled like her hands.

Sitting there by the fire, in a round-necked brown sweater that hugged her breasts, a tan tweed jacket swung around her shoulders, and that anxious look in her eyes, she seemed more human than he had ever seen her.

“What’s bothering you, Gladys?”

She leaned forward. “It’s awfully hard to say this, Mr. Steward, but I can’t stay on any longer.”

“You can’t stay on?” For a second it was impossible to grasp what she meant.

“No. My things are packed. If you can let me go tomorrow, I’d appreciate it.”

“But Gladys, why? Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. You didn’t expect me to stay indefinitely?”

“I never thought about it.”

“I did. I’ve thought about it a lot these past six months. I came out here because I wanted to help you and Cara—” she broke off, fumbling for words. “I wanted to get you settled. But you don’t need me any more.”

“Of course we need you. Why, you’ve taken charge of this household for three years. You’re part of it.”

Her eyes filled, and now he understood the reason for their blurred look. Tears had been near the surface. “I tried to do what I could to make things a little easier for you. I... I loved Mrs. Steward, and I love Cara. But — forgive me — I’m not a housekeeper, and I can’t go on living here in that capacity.”

“Certainly not. I never expected you to. But you’re Cara’s companion now. She depends on you.” In his confusion, he was on the point of adding, “So do I.” The panicked realization hit him that life had just begun to move smoothly with a woman’s presence filling it. Through the years of Pauline’s illness there had been no other woman. Pauline loved him, and loyalty to her love had barred such a possibility. Work had been the substitute for passion. Work had been his release. He had devoted himself to laboratory experiments which resulted in his great success at forty. He had cut himself off from social contacts; from the temptation of women.

“Cara is seventeen and very independent,” Gladys was saying. “She has a lot of friends. She has her art studies. When Wynn is home from college, she has him. She doesn’t need anyone else.”

“She loves you. No one else can take your place. It’s utterly absurd for you to think of going.” His mind, his lips held to Cara. He told himself it was for her sake. Cara had been through enough — too much for a young girl. In these past few months he had seen her lovely young face change from a too-old expression to the gaiety which had been hers as a child. That elfin charm, regained last summer, he felt sure was due to Gladys. Often he had noticed the two of them, swimming together, streaking through the waters, glistening like mermaids, dashing out, their tanned bodies almost bare to the sun. Gladys had a beautiful figure whose perfect proportions were lost in the austere clothes she habitually wore. In a bathing suit she had the supple flowing muscles and strength of a boy. It struck him suddenly that he could not recall having seen her before in the clinging sort of sweater she had on tonight. Perhaps this, too, made her seem more human, more feminine. His gaze held to her, frankly seeing her as a woman. “You can’t go, Gladys.”

But her eyes avoided his. “I must go, Mr. Steward. It’s out of the question even to consider staying.”

“Why?” Dean insisted. “Don’t you like us any more?”

“Like you? Like you—” she said, and her voice caught and stopped.

“Well, then,” he put in quickly. “I take it you do like us. That settles any further argument.”

“What I want or what Cara wants doesn’t matter.” He wondered if she purposely avoided including him. “If I stayed it would do Cara more harm than good.” She was on her feet now, slowly pacing the floor. “It’s so hard to tell you — I wish I didn’t have to. But there’s been talk. Oh, won’t you see? I’m a woman alone, and I’m living here with a widower. It’s gossip, unfair to us both — to you, to me. And to Cara, too.”

He leaned an elbow on the mantel, staring down into the fire. Of course, it would be like him not to think of that; to get no inkling of what the populace of a small community would say. The neighbors — naturally! A handsome young woman and an unattached man! The thing was inevitable. He had not realized the injustice to Gladys. His selfish blindness placed her in a position that had the ugly odor of scandal. As long as she decently could, she had stood it without a word. And now she said she must go...

His eyes were on her again. Hungrily. Was the fear that gripped him fear only of another vista of aloneness? Or was a chemical change taking place after all these years of monastic living? The woman before him, tempting him, was this the answer? Or did he actually need her in every way? Without his knowledge had she become necessary to him? Had she quietly entered his life and taken possession? He was not a man of quick decision, so he could find none of the answers. She was going tomorrow. Tomorrow!

“Why didn’t you tell me long ago,” he demanded, unable to account for the flare of anger, “instead of breaking it to me suddenly like this? You might at least have given me a chance to handle the situation.”

“There’s no way — except the way I’ve worked out.” She paused at the window, her back turned. “Don’t think it’s easy.” In the silence Dean heard a low sob, instantly smothered.

“I’m sorry Gladys, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you hurl this thing at me—” He stopped short, his throat closing. “Think it over, won’t you?”

“It’s best to leave quickly.” She still stood with her back to him. “Please believe — this is worse for me than for you. Much worse. And forgive me, won’t you?”

Abruptly he asked, “Where will you go?”

“Home.”

“Home?” he repeated. “You know that place isn’t home. You know how miserable you were.”

“I can’t afford to choose.”

“But you can’t go back to helping your mother run a boardinghouse,” he protested.

He thought of her as he had first seen her five years ago on the lawn of her widowed mother’s house, her pallor emphasized by a black dress, looking older than she did tonight. He had taken Pauline for a motor trip through the Adirondacks. They had inquired in a village where to get a good lunch and Mrs. Mayden’s was recommended. Gladys was cutting June roses for the table when they arrived. He remembered distinctly how she came forward to greet them; how she selected a table with a view of the garden.

He remembered how afterward on the porch Pauline sank back, sighing. “I like it. I like that girl. Can’t we stay awhile?” When they were leaving a week later Pauline had wished hopefully, “If only I could take Gladys. If you’d let Gladys live with us, Dean. Her mother makes her a slave and she isn’t happy. She told me.” He remembered the slender black figure on the lawn as they drove away; the strange pleading look in her gray eyes that Pauline couldn’t forget. All — all of it, he recalled vividly. “Let her live with us, Dean.” And so he had gone back the following winter and asked Gladys to come to them.

“I won’t let you go!” he said suddenly, hearing himself say it, wondering... He went over and put his hands on her shoulders and swung her around. “I can’t. Do you hear, Gladys? I can’t let you go.” Her lips were unsteady. He bent down and his closed over them...

Dean held the telephone waiting for Wynn’s, “Swell, Dad.” It was the boy’s usual way of greeting good news. The clear ringing voice had answered his call to Dartmouth with, “ ’Lo, Dad. What’s up?”

But when Dean announced that he and Gladys were going to be married, no answer came. He thought the connection must have been cut. “Wynn, are you there? Do you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“Well, is that all you have to say?” Of course it must be the shock. After all, he couldn’t quite realize the thing himself, so why shouldn’t the boy—?

“Okay, Dad.”

“Wynn, aren’t you glad? I’ve been pretty lonely, you know.”

“Sure, I know. I hope you and Gladys’ll be happy.”

“Can you come down next week end?”

“Can’t make the grade. I’m in a jam — exams soon, and I—”

Dean said, without attempting to hide his disappointment, “Make it whenever you can, son. Sorry you can’t come soon.”

“Me too. S’long, Dad. Good luck.”

That “S’long” — was it imagination that gave it a note of finality? Gladys had come in while he was at the telephone, and now she said, “Wynn isn’t pleased.” It was not a question. She must have gathered the truth from his end of the conversation.

“Unpreparedness, rather,” Dean tried to put it lightly.

“He’s not coming down?”

“No.” Dean swung around. “Don’t let it worry you, dear. He’ll get used to the idea.”

“Cara is happy about us, isn’t she?”

Yes, Cara was happy. The night before she had whirled into Dean’s arms. “Oh, Daddy, it’s so right. Gladys is such a darling!” Then her gentian-blue eyes brimmed over. “And you’ve been so terribly alone, I’d almost made up my mind never to marry. You need a woman to adore and spoil you.”

“Cara has no reservations,” Dean smiled. “But then she’s a congenital romantic. She’s never had inhibitions. Wynn is inarticulate — like me, I dare say. Wynn doesn’t find readjustment easy. Neither do I.” He smiled again. “That’s by way of warning.”

Gladys bent over his shoulder, her arm slipping about his neck. “Will you feel unhappy about Wynn’s not being here? Shall we wait — would you rather have it that way?”

“We settled on next Saturday, and that’s the way it is.” He drew her down to him and whispered, “That’s the way I want it.”

After a moment she said softly, “We don’t want any fuss. Cara will be here. There’s no need for anybody else.”

“Yes, Max Conrick. He’s my lawyer and best friend — I’d like to have him. And you’ll want your mother.”

Gladys drew away, her gray eyes clouding. “I’m afraid Mother couldn’t stand the trip. She isn’t well, you know.”

“Your cousin, then. He takes the place of a brother. You ought to have someone.”

“Barclay doesn’t mean anything to me.” The pale olive of her skin flushed. “Actually, I don’t like him. I never did. You must have noticed. Mother depends on him, that’s all.”

Now that she spoke of it, Dean had noticed her lack of interest in this second or third cousin — whichever it was — Barclay Haggart, a blond young man with features sculptured somewhat like hers. He had lived with the Maydens, looking after their finances, ever since Mr. Mayden’s death when the widow had been forced to turn the homestead into a boardinghouse. On Haggart’s brief business trips to New York, he always took Gladys to the theater or concerts. Yet she never welcomed his visits.

“I don’t want anybody. Just to be married quietly and go away with you,” she said presently. “To be in your arms — that’s all I want. I don’t need anybody. Except you, Dean.”

They were married the following Saturday. The soft lap of waves against the rocks was like an organ accompaniment. The stream of sunlight through the oblong window made a pool around the small bridal party: Cara with hair and eyes shining; Max Conrick with his gentle expression of understanding.

This was what Pauline would have wanted; Dean felt sure of it. If she could have chosen for him, it would be this girl. Only Wynn was missing, and that still hurt. Until the last minute he had hoped the boy would change his mind and come.

No one spoke of Wynn’s absence that day. Earlier, Cara had seen through his alibi of impending exams. “He’s a crab,” she pronounced. “He’s jealous and doesn’t know it. I’m going to call him.”

“No, dear,” Dean said, “don’t, please. I know you and Wynn understand each other. But don’t interfere. If he doesn’t want to be with us, you mustn’t try to force him.”

There came no word. Not even a telegram. Nothing...

Before they went away that night Dean stood with Gladys at the window in the study. Moonlight silvered her, the satin-smooth olive skin, beige crepe dress, the long spray of orchids trailing along the low neckline, the turban twisted around her hair, hiding it — all merged mystically until she seemed part of the shimmering waters, as if she had risen from them.

“We can see the horizon tonight. That silver line,” he said, “there’s a new world on the other side.” She went into his arms, and he murmured, “You’re beautiful, my darling. I never dreamed how beautiful...”

Following their return from the honeymoon, Dean went up to Dartmouth to see Wynn. Whatever the boy had on his mind must be met and overcome. In this long lanky son of his were glimpses of himself at the same age. It was not so much marked physical resemblance as Wynn’s laconic manner of expression, his easy embarrassment, the sensitivity he refused to admit. The bond between these two was close.

“I thought you’d come back with me. Just the week end,” Dean suggested.

“Can’t yet.”

“You’re coming for Christmas, of course.”

Wynn frowned. While his lips were silent, his fine dark eyes told too much. They told Dean he was searching for means of evasion. “Can’t tell. Thought I’d spend the holidays in New York with Ned Conrick. He’ll be home on leave. Chances are he’ll be overseas soon after. Might not see him again.”

“Ned is coming to us for Christmas. He and Cara, you know — just a pair of kids, but in these times I haven’t the right to stand in their way.”

“Sure, I know. Ned told me. They ought to be married straight off.”

Dean studied the set face and hard jaw. There was something more to Wynn’s insistence than the haste of wartime romance. Max Conrick’s nephew had grown up with the Steward twins. Entering Harvard at seventeen, he had quit his law studies at twenty, immediately after Pearl Harbor, to enlist in the Air Corps. Ned frankly stated to the world at large that he couldn’t remember when he wasn’t in love with Cara; a pity she knew him too well. Until the Air Corps thing came along she had treated him exactly like Wynn, like a brother. The war certainly held great compensations!

“Plan to be with us, son,” Dean urged. “You can’t stay away from a family party.” And finally breaking through the boy’s stubborn silence: “What makes you dislike Gladys?”

“You like people or you don’t,” came harshly. “You just like them or you can’t.”

“Not you! I never knew you to reach any conclusion without some logical reason.” Then Dean added, to convince himself, “Are you sure it’s not because Gladys has taken your mother’s place?”

A streak of fire shot across Wynn’s eyes; came and went, leaving somber resentment. “Maybe that’s it.”

“No one can take your mother’s place, Wynn. But I’ve been a very lonely man. All the years Pauline was so ill—” He stopped, unable to go on, embarrassed.

Wynn asked suddenly, “You’re satisfied now? You’re happy?”

“Very.” What was the boy driving at? “Come to Rockland with me for the week end. Convince yourself. For my sake — for everybody’s.”

They arrived next day in time for lunch. In the entrance hall, Cara was playing with Red, her sad-eyed spaniel. She plunged over the dog into Wynn’s arms. “You old crab, taking such ages to crawl home!”

Anxiously Dean watched Gladys extend a welcoming hand. “Wynn, this is nice. Thank you for coming.”

Wynn shook hands. Quickly, Dean thought; too quickly.

The meal went along smoothly. They talked about the weather, it looked like snow. Skiing possibly tomorrow. Small talk. With everyone except Cara, forced talk despite attempts at quips and gaiety, and the superficial air of reunion. Every so often Dean caught Wynn’s brooding glance straying toward his stepmother.

Suddenly it hit him with a shock: Can the boy imagine he’s in love with Gladys? Is this pose of dislike camouflage? A youngster might very readily fall for an attractive woman he’s seen day in, day out for years. But no, that was absurd. Wynn would not have been able to hide it. Sometime or other he would have slipped up in word, in look.

“How about skating this afternoon, Wynn?” Gladys asked. “Cara and I tried the lake. It’s perfect.”

“Think I’d rather stay here with Dad. Have to trek back tomorrow. Doesn’t give us much time. But you and Cara go ahead.”

Dean pushed back his chair. “Let’s have coffee in my study.”

The coffee table was placed below the picture window. Dean watched Gladys’s white hands move gracefully among cups and service. Why were her hands always a focal point?

For a while no one spoke. The stillness was restful. It was Cara, feeling none of the strain, Cara whose laughing voice applied the spark to dynamite “Isn’t Gladys a knockout since we acquired her? What do you say, Wynn? Wouldn’t she put Garbo out of business?”

“I’d say she could put any other woman out of business.” There was no enthusiasm in the way he said it. His voice had an edge.

“Praise from Sir Hubert,” Gladys smiled.

“You know we almost didn’t get her,” pursued Cara, her gentian eyes traveling from Gladys to her father. “That sweet old babe-in-the-wood over there didn’t know he was in love until she was all packed to go.”

“What d’you mean — go?” Still that edge to Wynn’s voice.

Hastily, trying to head off an explosion, Dean put in, “That’s all in the past. We’ve got her now.”

“She wouldn’t have gone,” came as if Wynn couldn’t hold it back.

The cool gray eyes of the woman at the coffee table were on him, wide and questioning. She asked softly, “Why do you say that, Wynn? I felt I wasn’t needed here any more. I was ready to go.”

“You had no idea of going,” burst from him. “You were set to stay the rest of your life.”

“Wynn, shut up!” Cara tried to head him off.

But now he couldn’t stop. “You put the screws on Dad. Told him you were quitting so he wouldn’t let you quit. I got wise to it last summer. I got the whole blueprint.”

Gladys was on her feet, hand outstretched as Dean sprang up. “Dean, don’t say anything, please. If he believes that, better have him tell you than hide it. I won’t come between you. I won’t hurt you through him.”

“You’re a selfish cruel beast, Wynn.” Cara took hold of his coat lapels, trying to shake him. “Apologize to Gladys. Tell her you were crazy to say such dreadful things.”

But Gladys was on her way to the door, handkerchief to her eyes. Then the door closed and she was gone.

Wynn loosened his sister’s hands from his coat, gripped them tight. “Wish to God I’d cut my tongue out first!” He turned to Dean helplessly, pathetically. “Sorry, sir. Why did you make me come home? I didn’t want to. It’s too late to make up for what I said. But one thing I can do. Quit for good.”

“No, there’s another thing, son. You can come clean and tell me what’s on your mind. I knew something was wrong. From the day I told you Gladys and I were going to be married, I knew. You’ve got to clear this up.”

Wynn’s fists pressed to his forehead. “I can’t. I’ll get out of your way.”

Cara gave a low cry, “Wynn!”

“You don’t mean that,” Dean hastened to say. “Cara is your twin, part of you, just as you’re both part of me. Nothing has ever come between us. Nothing ever will. I understand why you prefer not to stay here,” Dean added. “Suppose you and I go into town for the night.”

He tried to remember what his reaction would have been at seventeen. Shyness, a false armor, determination not to involve others in his emotions.

When they were settled in a hotel suite, he decided to get in touch with Max Conrick. The boy had tremendous admiration for Max. His ambition had always been to study law, to enter the Conrick office like Ned.

It was a stroke of luck to learn from Max that Ned — Lieutenant Edward Conrick, to be exact — had arrived in town that morning on leave possibly to take the place of Christmas.

Dean sent the boys out to dinner, to be followed by a musical comedy and a night club. He wanted to be with Max alone. They dined in the living room of the suite and he poured out the whole story. “You see the impossible situation. He won’t come home again until we can clear up whatever stumbling block is between him and Gladys.”

“It’s a delicate job,” Max observed. Known in court for his quiet manner that covered piercing shrewdness, Max Conrick had a voice that held affection when he chose. “In the three years Gladys took care of Pauline, did Wynn ever quarrel with her?”

“Never to my knowledge.”

Max hesitated, slow color seeping under his sallow skin. “I hate to ask this, old man, but youngsters of that age are up against mental confusion most of the time—”

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Dean broke in. “Did Wynn ever fancy himself in love with her?”

“Exactly that.”

“No. Wynn and I were close companions from the time his mother became ill. I had his complete confidence. He hates Gladys, Max. It’s bound to smash us — smash Wynn and me.”

“Not that bad,” Max assured him. “We’ll get at causes tonight.”

In the end, it was neither of them who made Wynn talk. It was Ned, who had shared Wynn’s triumphs and defeats since they were kids.

“How was the show?” Max inquired when they came in.

“We didn’t go to a show.” Ned shut the door, backed against it. “We walked the streets after dinner. Fun in a dim-out! I led Wynn to a couple of bars, but he couldn’t get plastered. He hasn’t learned how to forget. It’s an art.”

Wynn dropped in a chair, very pale, lighting a cigarette with a shaky hand. “I’m okay.”

“Go on,” Ned directed. “Give your Dad a square deal. Quit the Spartan-boy pose; quit letting this thing tear your guts out. If you don’t tell him what you told me, I will.”

Wynn said nothing for a time. Finally: “I said what I did — that she hadn’t any intention of going — because I used to hear her and Mother talking. My room in the apartment was next to theirs. I had my window open one warm evening. Mother was sitting on her balcony.” Wynn wheeled around to face his father. “I shouldn’t tell you this, sir. I haven’t any right.”

“Go ahead. I can take it.”

“Gladys was inside. They were talking back and forth — you know how — but I got every word Mother said. She said, ‘Of course Dean loves you. Why shouldn’t he? I’m only a shell of a woman.’ ”

Dean started to protest the suggestion as sheer madness.

Max raised a hand. “Did you hear Gladys answer?”

“Not clearly. But Mother said, ‘I know it’s only natural. He’s still a young man, and you’re strong and healthy, Gladys.’ She began to cry. Gladys came out on the balcony, and I heard distinctly, ‘Be brave, dear. Don’t cry.’ ”

Max said, “Remember, your mother wasn’t well. She might have imagined anything.”

“You couldn’t make a mistake, sir. You could tell by the way Gladys answered, she wanted Mother to believe Dad was in love with her. She didn’t deny it. She just said, ‘Be brave, dear,’ as if Mother had to take it.”

“Was anything more said?”

“Not that night.”

“Other nights?”

“Plenty. I got so I believed it too.”

“You mean you thought we were lovers?” Dean demanded.

“That’s what Mother thought.”

“I swear I never thought of Gladys in any way except to be thankful for the help she gave Pauline.”

“Help she gave Pauline?” burst from Wynn. “Help her to want to die — that’s what she did.”

“Good God, Wynn!” Dean’s hands were on the boy’s shoulders.

“I can’t help it. All last summer while she was making a play for you and you didn’t know it, I kept thinking how people subject to melancholia — how easy it must have been for Gladys to convince Mother she wasn’t wanted.”

Dean’s hands gripped tighter. Then they dropped, and he turned helplessly to Max. “You talk to him.”

But again it was Ned who did the talking. “Listen, kid, you think your Dad is tops, don’t you?” The look Wynn gave his father answered. Ned hurried on, “Sixteen — that’s all you were when this nutty idea got you. Well, you’ll be eighteen soon, and in uniform. Two years make a lot of difference to a guy. The way he thinks; the way he reasons. Fight this thing out with yourself before you tackle the fight with your enemies.”

Max added, “You overheard snatches of conversation which led you to certain conclusions. The intonation of a person’s voice isn’t admitted as evidence in court. Did you ever see any evidence in your father’s relationship to Gladys to justify these conclusions?”

“No,” Wynn admitted.

“Then, without justification, you were actually ready to believe your father would carry on an affair with a woman under his own roof.”

“No! I told myself that couldn’t be.”

“But you just said what you overheard made you believe it. You see how confused you must have been.”

“I think” — the look the boy now gave Dean was heartbreaking — “you’ll never forgive me for this, but I’ve got to tell you what I think.”

“I want you to, son. What do you think?”

“That from the day Gladys came to take care of Mother, she meant to marry you.”

Dean said. “Wynn, all the years ahead of us are going to be decided tonight. If you leave me with this corrosion going on inside you, can’t you see we’re finished? I take it you still think something of me — my judgment, my integrity?”

“And how!”

“Leave the solution of this misunderstanding to me. Trust me to clear away all doubts. Just keep on having faith in me, son.”

Wynn said, “You know I will.” And relief was in his white face.

Before he returned to Dartmouth the following day, he told his father he was glad to have unburdened himself; it was like letting down prison bars. Not for a moment did Dean consider seriously the fragmentary bits with which Wynn had built his prison. His own boyhood had created tragedy out of less.

At Rockland once more, he went to his study and stretched in his favorite lounge chair. It was good to be alone for a while. He too had shed a burden.

Toward five Cara burst in, yesterday’s difficulties forgotten. Ned had telephoned from town. She had to dash for a train and have dinner with him. On the way out she flung over her shoulder, “Don’t think Gladys and I were alone last night just because you and Wynn deserted. Her good-looking cousin Barclay Haggart was here. I couldn’t make her ask him to stay over.”

Gladys came in from skating and pulled off her gloves, stretching hands toward the fire. More than ever they looked like marble against the flames. “I didn’t ask Barclay to stay,” she explained when Cara had gone. “I wouldn’t let him bother you.”

“Bother?”

“He came to borrow money — quite a sum.” She tossed her knitted beret on a chair. “The boardinghouse is terribly in the red. I didn’t mean you to know. I thought I’d manage to work it out with the little savings account I had.”

“How much does Mrs. Mayden need?”

“Several thousand. I don’t want to ask you for that much, Dean. It’s only because Mother is ill.”

He went to the desk. “I must arrange to give you enough in your own name to use as you please.”

“No, don’t do that. I don’t want any money of my own.” The fright in her voice amazed him. Then she said, “It’s a new and heavenly sensation to have a man pay my bills. Don’t stop doing it, darling.”

“But you’ll want to take care of your mother.”

“I’d rather have the money come from you.” Her hand swiftly covered the hand holding the pen. “Make the check payable to Mrs. George Mayden. Mother will enjoy the feeling of independence.”

“What do you say to delivering it in person? Would you like to pay her a visit?”

Gladys folded the check in a small square to fit the pocket of her blouse. “No, I want to stay here. With you.”

He got up and held her. He kissed her. “You’ll be happy to learn all the trouble with Wynn is behind us.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night because what he said and the look in his eyes haunted me.”

“Nothing but a sensitive youngster’s imagination.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me?” she prompted.

Dean looked out of the window. It was getting on toward twilight. Ice caked on the pane, and the view was blurred. The sound of waves came like a Greek chorus. Splash, silence, splash, silence...

“Will you feel better — knowing?”

“Yes. Of course, darling.”

“Well, then.” It was difficult to put Wynn’s suspicion into words that would not wound. “I don’t know how to begin.” Again he paused. “Wynn got a notion you and I were in love while Pauline was alive.”

She seemed stunned. “But such a mad idea, Dean!”

“He happened to overhear snatches of conversation and pieced them together.”

“What do you mean, pieced them together?”

“His room was next to the one you shared with Pauline, and he frequently heard you talking to her.”

“Didn’t he tell you what he heard?”

“We had a time getting anything out of him. He wanted to spare me—”

“We?” she interrupted. “Who else?”

“Dear, don’t be so upset. I called in Max Conrick to help straighten things out.”

“Max Conrick — a stranger!”

Her vehemence, like her fright, startled him. “Not a stranger by any means. My attorney, my friend for years, who has stood by as adviser in every problem I’ve had to handle.”

“Was Max the only one there?”

“Ned Conrick.”

“Ned — that boy! What business—?”

“Wynn confided in him. It was Ned who made Wynn speak up.”

“Everybody except me. Your lawyer, your son’s pal, everybody but your wife! You didn’t give me the chance to defend myself.”

Her eyes had changed from transparent gray to green with a curious glitter. The swift transition was like the effect of one chemical on another. How often he had seen the same metamorphosis take place in laboratory experiments.

“What reason have you to believe you had to defend yourself?”

“Your son makes an outrageous accusation before two other men, and you dare to ask what cause I had?”

“I haven’t begun to tell you all,” Dean continued, and he had an odd feeling of wanting to pull back, like a man walking toward a precipice. “I didn’t expect to tell you. I did my utmost to convince Wynn he was wrong. So did Max. So did Ned. I succeeded in convincing myself along with him, because what he told us appeared too horrible. Too fantastic. But since you’ve put yourself on the defensive...” Still he could not bring himself to speak.

“Tell me,” Gladys insisted. “Don’t torture me like this.”

Dean paused in front of her. “I don’t know how to say it, Gladys. It’s so inexpressibly cruel — to you; to me. Wynn said that you fed like slow poison to Pauline the idea that I loved you and she was in the way. He believes that was the cause of his mother’s suicide. Now you have the whole of it.”

She sat down, and for a second her eyes closed. Then: “You don’t believe it. You can’t believe it, Dean.”

“Until a few minutes ago I was ready to dismiss the whole thing. Completely.”

“Why do you say, until a few minutes ago?”

“Your own reaction — panic, Gladys — that came when I told you Max was present.”

“Isn’t it perfectly natural?” She caught his arm. He felt the pinch of her fingers. “Would I be human if I were willing to have anybody except you hear anything so foul? We know it’s not true, you and I. You said yourself it’s an insane notion. A phobia existing in Wynn’s mind and nowhere else. Dean, you agree, don’t you? Or do you hate me? Has Wynn made you hate me?”

He loosened her fingers. “We’ve been happy. But only one kind of happiness cannot be smashed. We’ve got to trust each other.”

“Dean, don’t you know I couldn’t possibly have done such a thing? Don’t you remember, Pauline was getting better? Why, we all thought she was going to get well.”

“Yes, those last months. I was sure she was going to get well. But she killed herself.”

“That’s why Wynn was eager to read a double meaning into anything I may have said. Oh, not consciously! But you and I married so soon afterward. He doesn’t realize why he hates me; why he’s willing to believe evil. Don’t you see, he’s young and impressionable, and he adored Pauline? Be patient, darling. I’ll make him believe in me.” Her face was against his, and he felt her tears. “You said — trust. Won’t you trust me, Dean?”

But that night, even with her in his arms, her body pressed to his, he kept seeing her eyes chemicalize from gray to green. He lay awake seeing them through the darkness.

Of his own accord Wynn came to Rockland the following Saturday. Until he left Sunday afternoon he was in the house scarcely at all, yet Dean knew how to translate unspoken words into “Okay, Dad.” He could feel it in the boy’s friendliness to Gladys.

For himself, it was not so easy. It was as though Wynn had stirred up a hornet’s nest of memories. He remembered Pauline’s sad way of repeating. “Are you sure you love me, Dean? We used to be everything to each other. I know I’m not much good any more, but do you still love me?” He remembered her blue eyes filled with tenderness and appeal; helpless appeal like a child’s. He remembered how often she had murmured, “This isn’t fair to you. I know it isn’t fair, but I’d get well, Dean, if only I knew how. I want to be your wife again — I love you so.” The way she clung to him. “I haven’t any right to spoil your life.” The way he had to reassure her. Constantly.

Memories of little things magnified, like looking through the end of an opera glass bringing the past close in gigantic proportions. This would never do! Obviously the chemicalization was in himself.

At Christmas, Wynn came home again. Ned had to remain in camp in Texas, and Cara went down to be with him. It was Gladys who skied and skated with Wynn. “I’ll make him believe in me.” This had been her promise.

One evening shortly after the New Year Barclay Haggart telephoned Gladys. Mrs. Mayden had had a heart attack in the early morning and, no doctor being available, he had rushed her to the nearest hospital through a snowstorm. Her condition was precarious. Would Gladys come at once?

The message came while they were reading in the study after dinner. Dean heard Gladys answer, “Take a private room. Never mind the money... Do you hear? Don’t talk about money. I’ll bring enough. And get a heart specialist. I’ll see what connections — probably the midnight if I can get into town in time.”

In less than half an hour she was gone. “I won’t stay away from you long, darling,” she said in Dean’s arms.

“You must stay until your mother is better.”

“I don’t believe she’s going to get well.” In her voice was fright, the same breathless thing he had been unable to fathom when she asked him not to give her any money of her own. Yet Gladys never appeared to worry about her mother.

“Dear, you’d better have me with you.”

“No — no! If I need you, I’ll send word. I’ll take a room at the hospital. Barclay can take care of everything.”

“What hospital is it?” And after he had written down the name: “You’ll phone me.”

“Every night.”

Toward midnight Dean stood at the window listening to waves slap against the rocks. Yet the sound was more disturbing than soothing. He realized why. He could not understand what had kept him from going with Gladys. Good Lord, here was her mother critically ill! This cousin, Barclay Haggart, why should he be the one to see her through a crisis? That was a husband’s job.

And so early next morning he boarded a plane. He did not notify Gladys. In a few hours they would be together...

But she faced the crisis alone. Dean arrived at the hospital to learn that Mrs. Mayden passed away in her sleep in the small hours of the morning. Mrs. Steward had gone out to the Mayden place, he was told, leaving Mr. Haggart to take charge of all arrangements.

Dean did not wait to telephone Gladys. Probably she had tried to reach him immediately on her arrival. She would know he was on his way to her.

It was late afternoon when he got out to the Mayden place. In the driveway tire tracks marked the hard-packed snow, but there was no sign of a car. He found the door to the porch on the latch and went inside.

At one side of the hall was the parlor and at the other a reception room, the front half of which was an office.

Before the hearth at the far end knelt Gladys. She did not hear him, and for a moment he stood in the doorway. She was feeding papers to the flames, gathering them in both hands from piles beside her, tossing them into the fire: eager, hurried, as if she wanted to get through quickly.

He stepped forward, and Gladys glanced sharply over her shoulder. She made an instinctive gesture as if to sweep the papers together, to cover them with her body. A foolish, futile gesture.

Then she stood up. The flames sent a flare around her. “You gave me a shock. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

“Didn’t you know? Didn’t you make any attempt to reach me at Rockland this morning?”

“Yes. Yes. I did. When I got here and they told me Mother was gone, I went straight to the telephone. I couldn’t get any connection — the storm.”

He knew she was lying. He looked down at the scattered papers and saw that some were letters with the engraved address of the Steward apartment on the envelope flap. He picked up one and turned it over. It was addressed to Barclay Haggart and the distinctive handwriting was unquestionably Gladys’s.

She reached out a hand and he put the letter in it. “I’m getting rid of a lot of old rubbish,” she said. “Barclay wants me to put the place on the market.”

“Have you the right to destroy your mother’s papers before her will is read?”

“Mr. Carruthers, her lawyer, has the will. Everything is left to me. I’m afraid the estate is largely debts.”

“Is Mr. Haggart aware that you’re burning letters addressed to him?”

“They’re nothing. They just have to do with Mother’s business.”

Dean bent to pick up another. And in that instant’s swift survey, he saw that some were from Rockland and others from New York. But all of those she had attempted to conceal bore Barclay Haggart’s name. “I see you and Haggart had quite an extensive correspondence.”

“Dean, give that to me!”

Panic again! The same panic as when she begged him to give her no money; the same that chemicalized her eyes from gray to green.

“Do you really believe I’d read any letter you wrote to another man?”

“I tell you, it’s nothing. I’ll make a package for Barclay. He can burn them himself.” She shuffled through the lot hastily and tied the package with a string. He saw that her hands were shaking. Those hands always so cool and poised!

“What are you afraid of, Gladys?”

“Afraid? Why do you ask? I’ve just been under a frightful strain, and you open the door and walk in like a — like a ghost.”

“I should have come with you last night,” Dean answered. “Now I’ll stay until all this business is settled.”

“But you can’t stay in this house. It’s too cold.”

“You intended to stay here. If you can stand it, I can.”

She made haste to dump the remaining papers on the fire, then locked up the Haggart letters in the office desk. With the key still in one hand, she linked the other through Dean’s arm. “You were good to come. I do need you.”

But Dean scarcely heard. He was listening to the hammering of his thoughts, like the hammering of the waters against the rocks...

The radium of his watch showed a few minutes after one when he suddenly awoke. It was as if something pulled him upright. The high-ceilinged bedroom had an arctic chill. He tugged on his dressing gown and hurried over to close the window.

But with one hand on the sill, he paused. A woman was sobbing, “No — no, I tell you. I won’t! You can’t make me do it.” The answer came too low to hear, yet he recognized a man’s rage. The voices came from the porch.

In a stream of moonlight, as he started for the door, Dean noticed the covers of the bed next to his pulled to the pillow and humped to give the appearance of someone snuggled underneath. He wondered when Gladys had stolen out and how she had managed to get in touch with the man who was downstairs. Or had it all been planned in advance? Had the man — it could be nobody but Haggart — expected to spend the night here?

The stairwell was dark and the stairs uncarpeted. Dean had to feel his way. He must have been overheard for as his foot touched the last step Gladys came in.

Before the flashlight in her hand turned full on him, he saw that she had flung a tweed topcoat over her lacy nightgown. He saw, too, that she was shivering.

“I wasn’t asleep and I heard a noise down here,” she explained. “But it’s all right. There isn’t anybody.”

“There was.” Dean found the switch and lights blazed on. Her face was stricken. “Is Barclay Haggart on his way down the drive now? Don’t lie to me any more. It’s no use. I heard you talking to him.”

She asked, “What did you hear?”

“You were refusing something he wanted you to do, Gladys; crying that you wouldn’t.”

She turned to go up the stairs, but he blocked the way. She sat down, the tweed coat hugged around her. “I’m so cold. Won’t you go up to our room?”

“You weren’t too cold outside when you were with Haggart. Are you in love with him?”

“I hate him.” She began to sob again, but Dean did not touch her. “He’s tortured me for years.”

“What does he want that you refused?”

“He wants me to divorce you and get a big settlement so we can be married.”

“What’s in those letters you’d have destroyed if I hadn’t come in? Are they love letters, Gladys?”

“No. No!”

“But you were in love with Haggart once and the affair resulted in terrific fear of him. Isn’t that so?” She sat looking up at him. He felt again she was searching for some way to avoid a direct answer. “Don’t try to lie. I won’t let you.”

She shook her head. “No, I won’t lie. I should have told you, I suppose. I was sixteen and I’d never been away from this place, Dean. You see how it was, don’t you? He came to my room one night—” She stopped. “I’d never known any other man.”

“And you’ve been lovers ever since.”

“No — I swear! — please believe me. He wouldn’t let go, but it wasn’t for myself. Money — that’s all he cares about. I wouldn’t let you give me any in my name because I was afraid he’d never leave me alone.”

“You hated him and this place. You always wanted to get out.”

“Yes, yes.”

“That was why you begged Pauline to take you with us, wasn’t it?” The mention of Pauline caught her off guard. She stiffened, and although her eyes were wet, they went green as he had seen them under stress. Should he go on; find out all there was to know? Wynn’s statement: “From the day Gladys came to take care of Mother, she meant to marry you.” An ambitious woman determined to change the color of her drab and disillusioned life, was this the woman he had married? This woman, his wife, was she completely unknown to him?

Events from the day she entered his house passed swiftly. Kaleidoscopically. He brushed a hand across his eyes as if the gesture could banish the vision. At last he was seeing Pauline’s death as Wynn saw it, and he knew how a drowning man felt.

Gladys was pleading that long before they met she had broken with Barclay Haggart.

He halted her with, “Was the scheme to marry me yours alone, or did this fellow have something to do with it? Is that his hold on you?”

“Dean, don’t say such frightful things. I love you.”

She had flung out her hands and he was staring down at them. Sculptured, muscular, unmarred as marble and — suddenly his lips found the word “ruthless” and said it aloud. Her eyes followed his. That was why she did not go on. Neither spoke. It was as if those hands held a key less tangible yet more real than the key which had locked up the letters.

“What did Haggart instruct you to do when you came to live with us?” Dean pursued.

“Nothing, nothing! Why do you suspect me?”

“If what I suspect is true,” he said very low, backing away, “if it’s halfway true, I could kill you here and now.”

Her answer came, and there was no life in it. None at all. “I almost wish you would.”

It was unbelievable that he could return to Rockland with Gladys and take up the daily routine as if nothing had blasted their life.

Actually, nothing cataclysmic had occurred except in his own mind. And looking back, it became clear that it had been happening ever since Wynn planted the first seeds. Except that he went far beyond the spot where Wynn had stopped; far beyond the belief that Gladys had goaded Pauline to suicide.

Useless to tell himself his nerves were shot to pieces. Pauline had been on the road to recovery; Pauline’s wish had been realized, she was getting better. Health, the possibility of being with the man she loved — his wife again! No, there was no motive for suicide. None whatever.

All the physical aspects of the household at Rockland remained those of order and calm. Outwardly, Gladys and himself, husband and wife, devoted as usual. But he made certain they were together only when others were present. He worked late in his study. He slept — when he slept — on the couch in his dressing room. He told the servants he was not feeling well and preferred not to disturb Mrs. Steward. He became a master of subterfuge. And he wondered what the finish would be.

He wondered too if Gladys had any idea of the nightmare he lived in. When she begged him to take her in his arms, did she guess why he could not bear to touch her? Did she realize he could not look at her hands? Whenever he did, it was to picture them seizing Pauline’s frail body in the darkness of night...

If the thing he was convinced of should ever come to light, what would Cara’s future be? Cara knew something was wrong. He could feel her studying him anxiously when she thought he was engrossed in a newspaper or book.

Then came Ned’s final leave before going to parts unknown. With Max Conrick, he was lunching one Saturday at Rockland and he broke the news in his casual way. “This is s’long, I guess, for a while, folks.” He glanced around the table before his eyes rested upon Cara.

“When, Ned?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say, baby.”

Cara gulped hard before words came. “You’re taking it like a — a soldier.”

Dean spoke up. “Why don’t you two see a parson before Ned goes?”

“I’ve proposed to him a dozen times.” Cara protested. “I’m just a washout. He won’t have me.”

Ned’s lips tightened. Then he blurted out, “I’d be a bum to tie her up with a guy who may not come back.”

“Time is of the essence in love as in everything else today,” answered Max.

Dean smiled. “Max is right. I want Cara happy. You’re her happiness, Ned. You should be together while you can.”

Ned bent to the girl beside him. “Hello, my bride,” he said.

“We’ll have the wedding in front of the window, the exact spot where Dean and I were married,” Gladys suggested. “That would be perfect, wouldn’t it, Dean?”

He did not answer but looked at Cara’s shining eyes, as she left the room with Ned. At last he had found escape for the child.

A few minutes later, the maid announced a visitor. She whispered the name to Gladys, but Dean did not need to be told. “If Barclay Haggart is calling” — he tried to give no hint of the sickness inside him — “I suggest that you introduce him to Max and me.”

Gladys was on her way out. “Yes, of course. He’s been wanting to meet you.”

“Why the excitement over Barclay Haggart?” Max inquired when they were alone in the study. “Gladys looks as though she were going to her execution.”

“Not hers,” Dean corrected. “Not hers, Max. Mine.”

Max waited. It was his habit to wait for confidences.

Dean said in a drained voice, “You probably know I’ve been holding back information you ought to have.”

“I do. You’ve looked like hell for weeks.”

“I’m living with an obsession, Max. You’ve got to cure me or it will kill me. I believe my wife is a murderess.”

Max tapped a steady tattoo on the arm of his chair. “So do I,” came finally.

Dean met the sympathetic gaze of the eyes that missed little. He might have known Max would be ahead of him. “How?” he asked.

“I credited every word that boy of yours told us. It was my business to appear not to. I had a bigger job than getting at the truth. I had to save your son for you.”

“How much do you know?”

“Suppose you tell me.”

The steady tattoo kept up as Dean related the history of his Adirondack trip. “The man with her now has knowledge of something that terrifies Gladys,” he ended. “That’s my reason for believing her guilt. But I can’t prove it, even to myself.”

“If I could prove it, would you find it possible to forgive me? Or do you still love her too much?”

“I think, Max, there’s only one woman I ever loved. Pauline.”

“I had an idea that was the case. You understand the science of chemistry, old man. My science is the chemistry of men and women.”

They waited a long time for Gladys. When she finally came in, she asked why they were sitting in the dark. Her voice sounded weary and hoarse. She switched on the lamps.

Dean inquired, “Where is Haggart?”

“Barclay apologizes. He had to get back to New York. Will Ned and Cara be in to dinner?”

Dean almost wished Max were not here and the thing could go unsolved. Gladys looked so frightened. “They’ve gone to see Ned’s mother. Max will stay.”

“I’ll tell cook.”

Max inquired. “What bad news did Mr. Haggart bring you, Gladys?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Come over here, my dear.” He pulled a chair so that, seated, she had to look directly up at him. “You don’t have to hold back anything. I know all there is to know about you and Barclay Haggart. He’s blackmailing you.”

“Did you tell him, Dean?” Her voice shook.

“I have ways of finding out,” Max went on. “You were corresponding with Haggart all the years you were with Pauline. Is he in possession of a letter from you telling exactly how Pauline died?”

“Why should I write him about that? It was all in the papers.”

“But suppose what, you told him wouldn’t look well in the papers. He’d be able to keep on blackmailing you.”

“He has nothing, I tell you.” She turned to Dean. “Don’t let him ask me any more questions. I know you hate me. But don’t let him do this to me. I’m so tired.”

“I want to help you, my dear,” Max said. “Surely if this fellow Haggart is making your life miserable we ought to get after him. The letter he has, you’ve been trying to get away from him, haven’t you? And his price isn’t money alone. It’s yourself.”

“You did tell him, Dean.”

“Yes, I told him. I had to.”

“Why did you have to tell him?”

“Because we can’t go on like this. There’s something horrible between us. Ever since Wynn—”

“Don’t!” She jumped up. “Don’t say it. I can’t bear any more.” Dean reached out as he might have reached to drag her away from oncoming wheels, for Max Conrick’s eyes had the eager tenacity that marked them in court when he cornered a witness. Gladys clung to Dean’s hand. “I love you. That’s my punishment. I love you and you hate me.”

“If you love him that much, help clear this up, Gladys. Help us get hold of that letter Haggart keeps on his person. Where can the police find him in New York?”

Like her hands, her eyes had been clinging to Dean. Now they slid away. But not quickly enough. He caught the swift change from gray to green that told him so much more than words or touch. At last he was able to interpret its meaning. Desperation. The glazed fright of a cornered criminal.

She backed to the shadows. “I don’t know where he is.”

“I didn’t imagine you’d tell us.” Max went to her. “Why won’t you?”

“I tell you. I haven’t any idea where Barclay is. There’s no use calling in the police.”

“You must leave that decision to me.”

“No, no.”

“But why, my dear? Why attempt to protect this man who threatens you?”

“Oh, won’t you leave me alone?”

“Max, let her alone,” Dean pleaded. “It’s too much—”

But Max apparently did not hear. There might have been no one else in the room, only the woman and himself, the criminal and the law. “We don’t need you, Gladys, to locate Haggart. We’ll catch him upstate. We’ll get him at home.”

She slumped down in a chair and bent almost double. “What do you think that letter would prove?”

“That Pauline Steward was murdered. Not psychologically, mind you, but cold-bloodedly and premeditatedly. That she was getting well, and all the plans you and Haggart made were being defeated. That one night she wasn’t sleeping well and you told her to go on the balcony for fresh air. Then you stole out behind her and lifted her in those strong, pretty hands of yours and let her fall.”

Gladys shivered. She held her hands under the lamp and examined them as if they were no part of her. “Is that why you won’t let them touch you, Dean?” she said. “Do you believe what he says?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I do.”

“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “I used to beg her not to go out on the balcony. I used to fear the very thing that happened.”

“You mean fear of the temptation to kill her?” Max leaned closer.

She shivered again. “Barclay said it would be so easy. From the minute he spoke of it, every time she went out there, I thought: He’s right and it could never be proved.”

“That,” said Max, “is the common belief of crime.”

“But he was right. Even though you force a confession from me, it could never be proved. You know that too, Dean. Only — I’d have to go back to Barclay. I could never stay here, could I?”

“No,” said Dean. “You must leave here.”

Max moved to the desk and picked up the telephone. “Give me New York—” he began.

“Not yet, Max!” Dean strode across the room. “We’ve got to talk it over first. There’s too much to consider. Cara — think what finding this out will do to her. Don’t call in the police. Not yet.”

“It’s not our job to play God. Not for your peace of mind, Dean, or Cara’s happiness. This thing is bigger than either of you. And my job is to see justice done.” But Max made no further move to put through his call. He looked past Dean toward the picture window. He was leaning forward as if listening for something. It came at last — a thud, a splash.

Dean wheeled around. The door was shut, and Gladys was gone.

Max hung up the telephone. “It’s what I expected she might do.”

There came only the rhythmic sound of waves against the rocks.

The Ghost of John Holling EDGAR WALLACE

Original publication: The Saturday Evening Post, March 8, 1924; first collected in The Steward (London, Collins, 1932)

During the height of his popularity in the 1920s as the most successful thriller writer who ever lived, Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) is reputed to have been the author of one of every four books sold in England. After dropping out of school at an early age, he joined the army and was sent to South Africa, where he wrote war poems and later worked as a journalist during the Boer War. Returning to England with a desire to write fiction, he self-published The Four Just Men (1905), a financial disaster, but went on to produce more than 170 books and 18 plays, earning him a fortune — reportedly more than a quarter of a million dollars a year during the last decade of his life, but his extravagant lifestyle left his estate deeply in debt when he died.

In “The Ghost of John Holling,” a series of thefts aboard an ocean liner seem to occur only when one of the stewards sees the ghost of a man whose throat had been slit on an earlier cruise.

Title: Mystery Liner, 1934

Studio: Monogram Pictures (US), Pathé (UK)

Director: William Nigh

Screenwriter: Wellyn Totman

Producer: Paul Malvern

• Noah Beery (Captain John Holling)

• Astrid Allwyn (Lila Kane)

• Edwin Maxwell (Major Pope)

• Gustav von Seyffertitz (Inspector Von Kessling)

The plot of Mystery Liner bears virtually no relation to the short story. A new process allowing the ocean liner to be controlled from a laboratory on land is being tested. A rival company attempts to steal the plans, killing the inventor of the process, so the police come aboard to solve the murder.

THE GHOST OF JOHN HOLLING Edgar Wallace

“There are things about the sea that never alter,” said Felix Jenks, the steward. “I had a writing gentleman in one of my suites last voyage who said the same thing, and when writing people say anything original, it’s worth jotting down. Not that it often happens.

“ ‘Felix,’ he said, ‘the sea has got a mystery that can never be solved — a magic that has never been and never will be something-or-other to the tests of science.’ (I’m sure it was ‘tests of science,’ though the other word has slipped overboard.)

“Magic — that’s the word. Something we don’t understand, like the mirror in the bridal suite of the Canothic. Two men cut their throats before that mirror. One of ’em died right off, and one lived long enough to tell the steward who found him that he’d seen a shadowy sort of face looking over his shoulder and heard a voice telling him that death was only another word for sleep.

“That last fellow was Holling — the coolest cabin thief that ever traveled the Western Ocean. And what Holling did to us when he was alive was nothing to what he’s done since, according to certain stories I’ve heard.

“Spooky told me that when the mirror was taken out of the ship and put in the stores at Liverpool, first the storekeeper and then a clerk in his office were found dead in the storeroom. After that it was carried out to sea and dropped into fifty fathoms of water. But that didn’t get rid of Holling’s ghost.

“The principal authority on Holling was the steward who worked with me. Spooky Simms his name was, and Spooky was so called because he believed in ghosts. There wasn’t anything in the supernatural line that he didn’t keep tag on, and when he wasn’t making tables rap he was casting horror-scopes — is that the way you pronounce it?

“ ‘I certainly believe in Holling’s ghost,’ said Spooky on this voyage I’m talking about now, ‘and if he’s not on this packet at this minute, I’m no clairvoyager. We passed right over the spot where he died at three-seven this morning, and I woke up with the creeps. He’s come aboard — he always does when we go near the place he committed suicide.’

“There was no doubt that Spooky believed this, and he was a man with only one delusion: that he’d die in the poorhouse and his children would sell matches on the street. That accounts for the fact that he hoarded every cent he made.

“Personally, I don’t believe in spooks, but I do admit that there is one magical thing about the sea — the way it affects men and women. Take any girl and any man, perfect strangers and not wanting to be anything else, put them on the same ship and give them a chance of talking to one another, and before you know where you are his wastepaper basket is full of poetry that he’s torn up because he can’t find a rhyme for ‘love,’ and her wastepaper basket’s top-high with bits of letters she’s written to the man she was going to marry, explaining that they are unsuitable for one another and that now she sees in a great white light the path that love has opened for her.

“I know, because I’ve read ’em. And the man hasn’t got to be handsome or the girl a doll for this to happen.

“There was a gang working the Mesopotamia when I served in her a few years ago that was no better and no worse than any other crowd that travels for business. They used to call this crowd ‘Charley’s,’ Charley Pole being the leader. He was a nice young fellow with fair, curly hair, and he spoke London English, wore London clothes, and had a London eyeglass in his left eye.

“Charley had to work very carefully, and he was handicapped, just as all the other gangs were handicapped, by the Pure Ocean Movement, which our company started. Known cardsharps were stopped at the quayside by the company police and sent back home again — to America if they were American, to England if they were English. About thirty of our stewards were suspended, and almost every bar steward in the line, and it looked as if the Western Ocean was going to be a dull place. Some of the crowds worked the French ships — and nearly starved to death, for though the French are, by all accounts, a romantic race, they’re very practical when it comes to money.

“So the boys began to drift back to the English and American lines, but they had to watch out, and it was as much as a steward’s place was worth to tip them off. Charley was luckier than most people, for he hadn’t got the name that others had got, and though the company officials loked down their noses every time he went ashore at Southampton, they let him through.

“Now the Barons of the Pack (as our old skipper used to call them) are plain businessmen. They go traveling to earn a living, and have the same responsibilities as other people. They’ve got wives and families and girls at high school and boys at college, and when they’re not cutting up human lamb they’re discussing the high cost of living and the speculation in the stock market and how something ought to be done about it.

“But on one point they’re inhuman: they have no shipboard friendships that can’t pay dividends. Women — young, old, beautiful, or just women — mean nothing in their lives. So far as they are concerned, women passengers are in the same category as table decorations — they look nice, but they mean nothing. Naturally, they meet them, but beyond a ‘Glad to meet you, Mrs. So-and-so,’ the big men never bother with women.

“That was why I was surprised when I saw Charley Pole walking the boat deck with Miss Lydia Penn for two nights in succession. I wasn’t surprised at her, because I’ve given up being surprised at women.

“She had Suite 107 on C deck, and Spooky Simms and I were her room stewards — we shared that series — so that I knew as much about her as anybody. She was a gold-and-tortoiseshell lady and had more junk on her dressing-table than anybody I’ve known. Silver and glass and framed photographs and manicure sets, and all her things were in silk, embroidered with rosebuds. A real lady.

“From what she told me, she was traveling for a big women’s outfitters in Chicago. She had to go backward and forward to London and Paris to see new designs, and by the way she traveled it looked as if no expenses were spared.

“As a looker, Miss Lydia Penn was in the deluxe class. She had golden hair, just dull enough to be genuine, and a complexion like a baby’s. Her eyebrows were dark and so were her eyelashes.

“I admire pretty girls. I don’t mean that I fall in love with them. Stewards don’t fall in love — they get married between trips and better acquainted when the ship’s in dry dock. But if I was a young man with plenty of money and enough education to pass across the line of talk she’d require, I shouldn’t have gone further than Miss Penn.

“But she wasn’t everybody’s woman — being a little too clever to suit the average young businessman.

“The day before we made Nantucket Lightship, Spooky Simms came to me as I was going off watch. ‘Remember me telling you about Holling?’ he said.

“As a matter of fact, I’d forgotten all about the matter.

“ ‘He’s on board — saw him last night as plain as you — if it’s possible, plainer. He was leaning up against Number Seven boat, looking white and ill. Plain! Why, I can see him now. There will be trouble!’

“And he was right. Mr. Alex McLeod of Los Angeles took his bag from the purser’s safe that night to save himself trouble first thing in the morning. He locked the bag in a big trunk and locked the door of his cabin, and wanted to give the key to Spooky, who was his steward. But Spooky was dead-scared.

“ ‘No, sir, you’d better keep it. And if you’ll allow me to say so, sir, I shouldn’t leave any valuables lying about tonight if I was you.’

“When Mr. McLeod went to his bag the next morning, three thousand dollars and a gold watch and chain were gone.

“ ‘Holling,’ said Spooky, and you couldn’t budge him. He was one of those thin, bald men that never change their opinions.

“The Central Office people investigated the case, but that’s where it ended.

“It wasn’t much of a coincidence that Miss Penn and Charley were on the ship when it turned round. Charley was on business, and so was she. I saw them together lots of times, and once he came down with her and stood outside her cabin while she dug up some photographs of the South Sea Islands.

“Charley’s partner was a fellow named Cowan, a little fellow with the biggest hands I’ve ever seen. They say he could palm a whole pack and light a cigarette with the same hand without the sharpest pair of eyes spotting it.

“One morning I took Cowan in his coffee and fruit, and I thought he was sleeping, but just as I was going away he turned round.

“ ‘Felix,’ he said, ‘who is that dame in the private suite?’

“I told him about Miss Penn.

“ ‘She’s got Charley going down for the third time,’ he said, worried, ‘and he’s sidestepping business. We’re eight hundred dollars bad this trip unless somebody comes and pushes it into my hand — and that only happens in dreams.’

“ ‘Well, it’s your funeral, Mr. Cowan,’ I said.

“ ‘And I’ll be buried at sea,’ he groaned.

“Cowan must have talked straight to Charley, because that same night the smoke-room waiter told me that Charley had caught an English Member of Parliament for a thousand dollars over a two-handed game this bird was trying to teach him.

“We got to Cherbourg that trip early in the morning, and I had to go down to lock up the lady’s baggage, because she was bound for Paris. She was kneeling on the sofa looking out of the porthole at Cherbourg, which is about the same thing as saying she was looking at nothing, for Cherbourg is just a place where the sea stops and land begins.

“ ‘Oh, steward,’ she said, turning round, ‘do you know if Mr. Pole is going ashore?’

“ ‘No, Miss,’ I said, ‘not unless he’s going ashore in his pajamas. The tender is coming alongside, and when I went into his cabin just now he was still asleep.’

“ ‘Thank you,’ she said, and that was all.

“She went off in the tender and left me the usual souvenir. She was the only woman I’ve met that tipped honest.

“There was some delay after the tender left, and I wondered why, till I heard that a certain English marquis who was traveling with us discovered that his wife’s jewel-case had been lifted in the night, and about twenty thousand pounds’ worth of pearls had been taken.

“It is very unpleasant for everybody when a thing like that happens, because the first person to be suspected is the bedroom steward. After that, suspicion goes over to the deck hands, and works its way round to the passengers.

“The chief steward sent for all the room-men, and he talked straight.

“ ‘What’s all this talk of Holling’s ghost?’ he said, extremely unpleasant. ‘I am here to tell you that the place where Holling’s gone, money — especially paper money — would be no sort of use at all, so we can rule spirits out entirely. Now, Spooky, let’s hear what you saw.’

“ ‘I saw a man go down the alleyway toward Lord Crethborough’s suite,’ he said, ‘and I turned back and followed him. When I got into the alleyway, there was nobody there. I tried the door of his cabin and it was locked. So I knocked, and his lordship opened the door and asked me what I wanted. This was at two o’clock this morning — and his lordship will bear me out.’

“ ‘What made you think it was a ghost?’ asked the chief steward.

“ ‘Because I saw his face — it was Holling.’

“The chief steward thought for a long time.

“ ‘There’s one thing you can bet on — he’s gone ashore at Cherbourg. That town was certainly made for ghosts. Go to your stations and give the police all the information you can when they arrive.’

“On the trip out, Miss Penn was not on the passenger list, and the only person who was really glad was Cowan. When he wasn’t working, I used to see Charley moping about the alleyway where her cabin had been, looking sort of miserable, and I guessed that she’d made a hit. We had no robberies, either; in fact, what with the weather being calm and the passengers generous, it was one of the best trips I’ve ever had.

“We were in dock for a fortnight replacing a propeller, and just before we sailed I had a look at the chief steward’s list and found I’d got Miss Penn again, and to tell you the truth I wasn’t sorry, although she was really Spooky’s passenger.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man who looked happier than Charley Pole when she came on board. He sort of fussed round her like a pet dog, and for the rest of the voyage he went out of business. Cowan felt it terribly.

“ ‘I’ve never seen anything more unprofessional in my life, Felix,’ he said bitterly to me one day. ‘I’m going to quit at the end of this trip and take up scientific farming.’

“He was playing patience in his room — the kind of patience that gentlemen of Mr. Cowan’s profession play when they want to get the cards in a certain order.

“ ‘What poor old Holling said about Charley is right — a college education is always liable to break through the skin.’

“ ‘Did you know Holling?’ I asked.

“ ‘Did I know him? I was the second man in the cabin after Spooky found him. In fact, I helped Spooky get together his belongings to send to his widow.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Holling did some foolish things in his time, but he never fell in love except with his wife.’

“ ‘Have you heard about his ghost?’ I asked.

“Cowan smiled.

“ ‘Let us be intelligent,’ he said. ‘Though I admit that the way Charley goes on is enough to make any self-respecting cardman turn in his watery tomb.’

“Two days out of New York we struck a real ripsnorting southwester — the last weather in the world you’d expect Holling to choose for a visit. At about four o’clock in the morning, Spooky, who slept in the next bunk to me, woke up with a yell and tumbled out onto the deck.

“ ‘He’s aboard!’ he gasped.

“There were thirty stewards in our quarters, and the things they said to Spooky about Holling and him were shocking to hear.

“ ‘He’s come on board,’ said Spooky, very solemn.

“He sat on the edge of his bunk, his bald head shining in the bulkhead light, his hands trembling.

“ ‘You fellows don’t think as I think,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got my spiritual eyesight. You laugh at me when I tell you that I shall end my days in the poorhouse and my children will be selling matches, and you laugh at me when I tell you that Holling’s come aboard — but I know. I absolutely know!’ ”

“When we got to New York, the ship was held up for two hours while the police were at work, for a lady passenger’s diamond sunburst had disappeared between seven o’clock in the evening and five o’clock in the morning, and it was not discovered.

“Miss Penn was a passenger on the home trip, and this time Charley wasn’t as attentive. He didn’t work, either, and Cowan, who was giving him his last chance, threw in his hand and spent his days counting the bits of gulf weed we passed.

“As I’ve said before, there’s one place on a ship for getting information and that’s the boat deck after dark. Not that I ever spy on passengers — I’d scorn the action. But when a man’s having a smoke between the boats, information naturally comes to him.

“It was the night we sighted England, and the Start Light was winking and blinking on the port bow, and I was up there having a few short pulls at a pipe, when I heard Charley’s voice. It wasn’t a pleasant kind of night — it was cold and drizzling — and they had the deck to themselves, he and Miss Penn.

“ ‘You’re landing at Cherbourg?’ said Charley.

“ ‘Yes,’ said Miss Penn, and then: ‘What has been the matter with you all this voyage?’

“He didn’t answer at once. I could smell the scent of his Havana. He was thinking things over before he spoke.

“ ‘You generally get off a boat pretty quick, don’t you?’ he asked in his drawling voice.

“ ‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m naturally in a hurry to get ashore. Why do you say that?’

“ ‘I hope Holling’s ghost isn’t walking this trip,’ he said.

“ ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

“And then he said in a low voice, ‘I hope there’ll be no sunbursts missing tomorrow. If there are, there’s a tugful of police meeting us twenty miles out of Cherbourg. I heard it coming through on the wireless tonight — I can read Morse code — and you’ll have to be pretty quick to jump the boat this time.’

“It was such a long while before she answered that I wondered what had happened, and then I heard her say, ‘I think we’ll go down, shall we?’ ”

“It was six o’clock the next morning and I was taking round the early coffee when I heard the squeal. There was a Russian count, or prince or something, traveling on C deck, and he was one of the clever people who never put their valuables in the purser’s safe. Under his pillow he had a packet of loose diamonds that he’d been trying to sell in New York. I believe that he couldn’t comply with some Customs regulations and had to bring them back. At any rate, the pocketbook that held them was found empty in the alleyway, and the diamonds were gone. I had to go to the purser’s office for something and I saw him writing out a radiogram, and I knew that this time nothing was being left to chance and that the ship would be searched from the keel upwards.

“ ‘They can search it from the keel downwards,’ said Spooky gloomily when I told him. ‘You don’t believe in Holling, Felix, but I do. Those diamonds are gone.’

“And then what I expected happened. The ship’s police took charge of the firemen’s and stewards’ quarters; nobody was allowed in or out and we were ordered to get ready to make a complete search of passengers’ baggage. The tug came up about nine o’clock and it was crowded, not with French police but with Scotland Yard men who had been waiting at Cherbourg.

“The police interviewed the Russian and got all they could out of him, which was very little, and then the passengers were called to the main saloon and the purser said a few words to them. He apologized for giving them trouble, but pointed out that it was in the interests of the company that the thief should be discovered.

“ ‘We shan’t keep you long, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘There is an adequate force of detectives on board to make the search a rapid one, but I want every trunk and every bag opened.’

“The ship slowed down to half speed, and then began the biggest and most thorough search I’ve ever seen in all my experience of seagoing. Naturally, some of the passengers kicked, but the majority of them behaved sensibly and helped the police all they knew how. And the end of it was — not a loose diamond was brought to light.

“There was only one person who was really upset by the search, and that was Charley. He was as pale as death and could hardly keep still for a second. I watched him, and I watched Miss Penn, who was the coolest person on board. He kept as close to the girl as he could, his eyes never leaving her, and when the search of the baggage was finished and the passengers were brought to the main saloon again, he was close behind her. This time the purser was accompanied by a dozen men from headquarters, and it was the Inspector in Charge who addressed the crowd.

“ ‘I want, first of all, to search all the ladies’ handbags, and then I wish the passengers to file out — the ladies to the left, the gentlemen to the right — for a personal search.’

“There was a growl or two at this, but most of the people took it as a joke. The ladies were lined up and a detective went along, opened each handbag, examined it quickly, and passed on to the next. When they got to Miss Penn, I saw friend Charley leave the men’s side and, crossing the saloon, stand behind the detective as he took the girl’s bag in his hand and opened it. I was close enough to see the officer’s changed expression.

“ ‘Hullo, what’s this?’ he said, and took out a paper package.

“He put it on the table and unrolled it. First there was a lot of cotton wool, and then row upon row of sparkling stones. You could have heard a pin drop.

“ ‘How do you account for having these in your possession, Madam?’ asked the detective.

“Before she could reply, Charley spoke.

“ ‘I put them there,’ he said. ‘I took them last night and placed them in Miss Penn’s handbag in the hope that her handbag would not be searched.’

“I never saw anybody more surprised than Miss Penn.

“ ‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘Of course you did nothing of the sort.’

“She looked round the saloon. The stewards were standing in a line to cover the doors, and after a while she saw Spooky.

“ ‘Simms,’ she called.

“Spooky came forward. As he came, Miss Penn spoke in a low voice to the detective.

“ ‘Simms, do you remember that I sent you down to my cabin for my bag?’

“ ‘No, Miss,’ he said, ‘you never asked me for a bag.’

“She nodded. ‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’ And then: ‘That is your man, Inspector.’

“Before Spooky could turn, the police had him, and then Miss Penn spoke.

“ ‘I am a detective in the employment of the company, engaged in marking down cardsharpers, but more especially on the Holling case. I charge this man with the willful murder of John Holling on the high seas, and with a number of thefts, particulars of which you have.’

“Yes, it was Spooky who killed Holling — Spooky, half mad with the lunatic idea he’d die in the poorhouse, who had robbed and robbed and robbed, and when he was detected by Holling, who woke up and found Spooky going through his pocketbook, had slashed him with a razor and invented the story of the face in the mirror. Whether he killed the other man I don’t know — it is very likely. One murder more or less wouldn’t worry Spooky, when he thought of his children selling matches on the streets. Was he mad? I should say he was. You see, he had no children!

“I didn’t see Miss Penn again until she came out on her honeymoon trip. There was a new gang working on the ship — a crowd that had been pushed off the China route and weren’t very well acquainted with the regulars that worked the Western Ocean. One of them tried to get Miss Penn’s husband into a little game.

“ ‘No, thank you,’ said Charley. ‘I never play cards these days.’ ”

The Gioconda Smile ALDOUS HUXLEY

Original publication: English Review, August 1921; first book appearance was in Mortal Coils (London, Chatto & Windus, 1922)

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was still in his twenties when he began to publish such cynical novels as Chrome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Point Counter Point (1928), and the most successful of his work, Brave New World (1932), a futuristic novel of a “Utopian” world that clearly illustrates his disgust with contemporary society.

Huxley had little involvement with the world of mystery fiction, his only contribution to the genre being this short story, “The Gioconda Smile,” a tale as enigmatic as its subject.

The story enjoyed so much success that it soon had the unusual distinction of being published in a separate volume in 1938 as number nine in the series of Zodiac Books published by Chatto & Windus, following such authors as William Shakespeare, John Donne, and John Keats.

Huxley then adapted it for the screen (as he had previously adapted Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice) for a 1947 motion picture directed by Zoltan Korda titled A Woman’s Vengeance.

Still not finished, he turned it into a three-act stage play in 1948, which also was published by Chatto & Windus; in the United States, Harper & Row published it as Mortal Coils.

The plot is based on intense human emotion, especially regarding the relationship between Hutton and his lover, Doris, who clearly is not from his class, as illustrated by her first line of dialogue, after which Hutton comments that “a touch of cockney caressed her vowels,” which he does not find charming.

Like most of his work, “The Gioconda Smile” is a viciously satirical attack on English society but, fortunately, the story remains compelling as a tale of suspense.

Title: A Woman’s Vengeance, 1948

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Zoltan Korda

Screenwriter: Aldous Huxley

Producer: Zoltan Korda

• Charles Boyer (Henry Maurier)

• Ann Blyth (Doris Mead)

• Jessica Tandy (Janet Spence)

• Cedric Hardwicke (Dr. James Libbard)

The story line of the film is an extremely close adaptation of Huxley’s story. Hutton’s name is changed to Maurier, probably to accommodate Boyer’s accent, but the three women in the scoundrel’s life remain the same: his wife, an understandably grumpy and neurotic invalid; his next-door neighbor, Janet Spence, who in her late thirties has fallen in love with Maurier; and Doris, his young mistress. When Emily dies of her chronic heart disease, Henry promptly marries Doris, to the chagrin and disgust of Janet. When her body is exhumed, a postmortem shows that Emily was poisoned.

The occasionally ponderous screenplay was salvaged by the performances of the first-rate cast. They did such an outstanding job that Lux Radio Theater broadcast a sixty-minute adaptation on March 22, 1948, with Charles Boyer and Ann Blyth again in their roles. Evidently it went well because a year later, on March 13, 1949, Theater Guild on the Air aired another sixty-minute adaptation with Boyer yet again reprising his role as the monstrous roué.

THE GIOCONDA SMILE Aldous Huxley

“Miss Spence will be down directly, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence’s parlormaid was so ugly — ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, malignantly, criminally ugly — that he could not bear to look at her more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes at the familiar objects it contained.

Photographs of Greek statuary, photographs of the Roman Forum, colored prints of Italian masterpieces, all very safe and well known. Poor, dear Janet, what a prig — what an intellectual snob! Her real taste was illustrated in that water-color by the pavement artist, the one she had paid half a crown for (and thirty-five shillings for the frame). How often he had heard her tell the story, how often expatiate on the beauties of that skillful imitation of an oleograph! “A real Artist in the streets,” and you could hear the capital A in Artist as she spoke the words. She made you feel that part of his glory had entered into Janet Spence when she tendered him that half-crown for the copy of the oleograph. She was implying a compliment to her own taste and penetration. A genuine Old Master for half a crown. Poor, dear Janet!

Mr. Hutton came to a pause in front of a small oblong mirror. Stooping a little to get a full view of his face, he passed a white, well-manicured finger over his mustache. It was as curly, as freshly auburn, as it had been twenty years ago. His hair still retained its color, and there was no sign of baldness yet — only a certain elevation of the brow. “Shakespearean,” thought Mr. Hutton, with a smile, as he surveyed the smooth and polished expanse of his forehead.

Others abide our question, thou art free... Footsteps in the sea... Majesty... Shakespeare, thou should be living at this hour. No, that was Milton, wasn’t it? Milton, the Lady of Christ’s. There was no lady about him. He was what the women would call a manly man. That was why they liked him — for the curly auburn mustache and the discreet redolence of tobacco. Mr. Hutton smiled again; he enjoyed making fun of himself. Lady of Christ’s? No, no. He was the Christ of Ladies. Very pretty, very pretty. The Christ of Ladies. Mr. Hutton wished there were somebody he could tell the joke to. Poor, dear Janet wouldn’t appreciate it, alas!

He straightened himself up, patted his hair, and resumed his peregrination. Damn the Roman Forum; he hated those dreary photographs.

Suddenly he became aware that Janet Spence was in the room, standing near the door. Mr. Hutton started, as though he had been taken in some felonious act. To make these silent and spectral appearances was one of Janet Spence’s peculiar talents. Perhaps she had been there all the time, and seen him looking at himself in the mirror. Impossible! But, still, it was disquieting.

“Oh, you gave me such a surprise,” said Mr. Hutton, recovering his smile and advancing with outstretched hand to meet her.

Miss Spence was smiling too: her Gioconda smile, he had once called it in a moment of half-ironical flattery. Miss Spence had taken the compliment seriously, and always tried to live up to the Leonardo standard. She smiled on in silence while Mr. Hutton shook hands; that was part of the Gioconda business.

“I hope you’re well,” said Mr. Hutton. “You look it.”

What a queer face she had! That small mouth pursed forward by the Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round hole in the middle as though for whistling — it was like a penholder seen from the front. Above the mouth a well-shaped nose, finely aquiline. Eyes large, lustrous, and dark, with the largeness, luster, and darkness that seems to invite sties and an occasional bloodshot suffusion. They were fine eyes, but unchangingly grave. The penholder might do its Gioconda trick, but the eyes never altered in their earnestness. Above them, a pair of boldly arched, heavily penciled black eyebrows lent a surprising air of power, as of a Roman matron, to the upper portion of the face. Her hair was dark and equally Roman; Agrippina from the brows upward.

“I thought I’d just look in on my way home,” Mr. Hutton went on. “Ah, it’s good to be back here” — he indicated with a wave of his hand the flowers in the vases, the sunshine and greenery beyond the windows — “It’s good to be back in the country after a stuffy day of business in town.”

Miss Spence, who had sat down, pointed to a chair at her side.

“No, really, I can’t sit down,” Mr. Hutton protested. “I must get back to see how poor Emily is. She was rather seedy this morning.” He sat down, nevertheless. “It’s these wretched liver chills. She’s always getting them. Women—” He broke off and coughed, so as to hide the fact that he had uttered. He was about to say that women with weak digestions ought not to marry; but the remark was too cruel, and he didn’t really believe it. Janet Spence, moreover, was a believer in eternal flames and spiritual attachments. “She hopes to be well enough,” he added, “to see you at luncheon tomorrow. Can you come? Do!” He smiled persuasively. “It’s my invitation too, you know.”

She dropped her eyes, and Mr. Hutton almost thought that he detected a certain reddening of the cheek. It was a tribute; he stroked his mustache.

“I should like to come if you think Emily’s well enough to have a visitor.”

“Of course. You’ll do her good. You’ll do us both good. In married life three is often better company than two.”

“Oh, you’re cynical.”

Mr. Hutton always had a desire to say “Bow-wow-wow” whenever that last word was spoken. It irritated him more than any other word in the language. But instead of barking he made haste to protest.

“No, no. I’m only speaking a melancholy truth. Reality doesn’t always come up to the ideal, you know. But that doesn’t make me believe any the less in the ideal. Indeed, I believe in it passionately — the ideal of a matrimony between two people in perfect accord. I think it’s realizable.”

He paused significantly and looked at her with an arch expression. A virgin of thirty-six, but still unwithered; she had her charms. And there was something really rather enigmatic about her. Miss Spence made no reply, but continued to smile. There were times when Mr. Hutton got rather bored with the Gioconda. He stood up.

“I must really be going now. Farewell, mysterious Gioconda.” The smile grew intenser, focused itself, as it were, in a narrower snout. Mr. Hutton made a Cinquecento gesture, and kissed her extended hand. It was the first time he had done such a thing; the action seemed not to be resented. “I look forward to tomorrow.”

“Do you?”

For answer Mr. Hutton once more kissed her hand, then turned to go. Miss Spence accompanied him to the porch.

“Where’s your car?” she asked.

“I left it at the gate of the drive.”

“I’ll come and see you off.”

“No, no.” Mr. Hutton was playful, but determined. “You must do no such thing. I simply forbid you.”

“But I should like to come,” Miss Spence protested, throwing a rapid Gioconda at him.

Mr. Hutton held up his hand. “No,” he repeated, and then, with a gesture that was almost the blowing of a kiss, he started to run down the drive, lightly, on his toes, with long, bounding strides like a boy’s. He was proud of that run; it was quite marvelously youthful. Still, he was glad the drive was no longer. At the last bend, before passing out of sight of the house, he halted and turned round. Miss Spence was still standing on the steps, smiling her smile. He waved his hand, and this time quite definitely and overtly wafted a kiss in her direction. Then, breaking once more into his magnificent canter, he rounded the last dark promontory of trees. Once out of sight of the house he let his high paces decline to a trot, and finally to a walk. He took out his handkerchief and began wiping his neck inside his collar. What fools, what fools! Has there ever been such an ass as poor, dear Janet Spence? Never, unless it was himself. Decidedly he was the more malignant fool, since he, at least, was aware of his folly and still persisted in it. Why did he persist? Ah, the problem that was himself, the problem that was other people...

He had reached the gate. A large, prosperous-looking motor was standing at the side of the road.

“Home, M’Nab.” The chauffeur touched his cap. “And stop at the crossroads on the way, as usual,” Mr. Hutton added, as he opened the door of the car. “Well?” he said, speaking into the obscurity that lurked within.

“Oh, Teddy Bear, what an age you’ve been!” It was a fresh and childish voice that spoke the words. There was the faintest hint of Cockney impurity about all the vowel sounds.

Mr. Hutton bent his large form and darted into the car with the agility of an animal regaining his burrow.

“Have I?” he said, as he shut the door. The machine began to move. “You must have missed me a lot if you found the time so long.” He sat back in the low seat; a cherishing warmth enveloped him.

“Teddy Bear...” and with a sigh of contentment a charming little head declined onto Mr. Hutton’s shoulder. Ravished, he looked down sideways at the round, babyish face.

“Do you know, Doris, you look like the picture of Louise de Kerouaille.” He passed his fingers through a mass of curly hair.

“Who’s Louise de Kera-whatever-it-is?” Doris spoke from remote distances.

“She was, alas! Fuit. We shall all be ‘was’ one of these days. Meanwhile...”

Mr. Hutton covered the babyish face with kisses. The car rushed smoothly along. M’Nab’s back, through the front window, was stonily impassive, the back of a statue.

“Your hands,” Doris whispered. “Oh, you mustn’t touch me. They give me electric shocks.”

Mr. Hutton adored her for the virgin imbecility of the words. How late in one’s existence one makes the discovery of one’s body!

“The electricity isn’t in me, it’s in you.” He kissed her again, whispering her name several times: Doris, Doris, Doris. The scientific appellation of the sea-mouse, he was thinking as he kissed the throat she offered him, white and extended like the throat of a victim awaiting the sacrificial knife. The sea-mouse was a sausage with iridescent fur: very peculiar. Or was Doris the sea-cucumber, which turns itself inside out in moments of alarm? He would really have to go to Naples again, just to see the aquarium. These sea creatures were fabulous.

“Oh, Teddy Bear!” (More zoology; but he was only a land animal. His poor little jokes!) “Teddy Bear, I’m so happy.”

“So am I,” said Mr. Hutton. Was it true?

“But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or wrong?”

“Ah, my dear, that’s just what I’ve been wondering for the last thirty years.”

“Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it’s right that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me.”

“Right? Well, it’s certainly good that you should have electric shocks rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil.”

“Oh, you don’t help me. Why aren’t you ever serious? If only you knew how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it’s not right. Perhaps, you know, there is a hell, and all that. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I think I ought to stop loving you,” she said sadly.

“But could you?” asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his seduction and his mustache.

“No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn’t. But I could run away, I could hide from you. I could force myself not to come to you.”

“Silly little thing!”

“Oh, dear. I hope it isn’t wrong. And there are times when I don’t care if it is.”

Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges towards it.

“Goodbye, goodbye.”

The car moved on, gathered speed, vanished round a curve, and Doris was left standing by the sign-post at the crossroads, still dizzy and weak with the languor born of those kisses and the electrical touch of those gentle hands. She had to take a deep breath, to draw herself up deliberately, before she was strong enough to start her homeward walk. She had half a mile in which to invent the necessary lies.

Alone, Mr. Hutton suddenly found himself the prey of an appalling boredom.

Mrs. Hutton was lying on the sofa in her boudoir, playing Patience. In spite of the warmth of the July evening a wood fire was burning on the hearth. A black Pomeranian, extenuated by the heat and the fatigues of digestion, slept before the small blaze.

“Phew! Isn’t it rather hot in here?” Mr. Hutton asked as he entered.

“You know I have to keep warm, dear.” The voice seemed breaking on the verge of tears. “I get so shivery.”

“I hope you’re better this evening.”

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

The conversation stagnated. Mr. Hutton stood leaning his back against the mantelpiece. He looked down at the Pomeranian lying at his feet, and with the toe of his right boot he rolled the little dog over and rubbed its white-flecked chest and belly. The creature lay in an inert ecstasy. Mrs. Hutton continued to play Patience. Arrived at an impasse, she altered the position of one card, took back another, and went on playing. Her Patiences always came out.

“Dr. Libbard thinks I ought to go to Llandrindod Wells this summer.”

“Well, go, my dear.”

Mr. Hutton was thinking of the events of the afternoon: how they had driven, Doris and he, up to the hanging wood had left the car to wait for them under the shade of the trees, and walked together out into the sunshine of the chalkdown.

“I’m to drink the waters for my liver, and he thinks I ought to have massage and electric treatment, too.”

Hat in hand, Doris had stalked four blue butterflies that were dancing together round a scabious flower with a motion that was like the flickering of blue fire burst and scattered into whirling sparks; she had given chase, laughing and shouting.

“I’m sure it will do you good.”

“I was wondering if you’d come with me, dear.”

“But you know I’m going to Scotland at the end of the month.”

Mrs. Hutton looked up at him entreatingly. “It’s the journey,” she said. “The thought of it is such a nightmare. I don’t know if I can manage it. And you know I can’t sleep in hotels. And then there’s the luggage and all the worries. I can’t go alone.”

“But you won’t be alone. You’ll have your maid with you.” He spoke impatiently. The sick woman was usurping the place of the healthy one. He was being dragged back from the memory of the sunlit down and the quick, laughing girl, back to this unhealthy, overheated room and its complaining occupant.

“I don’t think I shall be able to go.”

“But you must, my dear, if the doctor tells you to. And, besides, a change will do you good.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But Libbard thinks so, and he knows what he’s talking about.”

“No, I can’t face it. I’m too weak. I can’t go alone.” Mrs. Hutton pulled a handkerchief out of her black silk bag, and put it to her eyes.

“Nonsense, my dear, you must make the effort.”

“I had rather be left in peace to die here.” She was crying in earnest now.

“O Lord! Now do be reasonable. Listen now, please.” Mrs. Hutton only sobbed more violently. “Oh, what is one to do?” He shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room.

Mr. Hutton was aware that he had not behaved with proper patience; but he could not help it. Very early in his manhood he had discovered that not only did he not feel sympathy for the poor, the weak, the diseased, and deformed; he actually hated them. Once, as an undergraduate, he spent three days at a mission in the East End. He had returned, filled with a profound and ineradicable disgust. Instead of pitying, he loathed the unfortunate. It was not, he knew, a very comely emotion, and he had been ashamed of it at first. In the end he had decided that it was temperamental, inevitable, and had felt no further qualms. Emily had been healthy and beautiful when he married her. He had loved her then. But now — was it his fault that she was like this?

Mr. Hutton dined alone. Food and drink left him more benevolent than he had been before dinner. To make amends for his show of exasperation he went up to his wife’s room and offered to read to her. She was touched, gratefully accepted the offer, and Mr. Hutton, who was particularly proud of his accent, suggested a little light reading in French.

“French? I am so fond of French.” Mrs. Hutton spoke of the language of Racine as though it were a dish of green peas.

Mr. Hutton ran down to the library and returned with a yellow volume. He began reading. The effort of pronouncing perfectly absorbed his whole attention. But how good his accent was! The fact of its goodness seemed to improve the quality of the novel he was reading.

At the end of fifteen pages an unmistakable sound aroused him. He looked up; Mrs. Hutton had gone to sleep. He sat still for a little while, looking with a dispassionate curiosity at the sleeping face. Once it had been beautiful; once, long ago, the sight of it, the recollection of it, had moved him with an emotion profounder, perhaps, than any he had felt before or since. Now it was lined and cadaverous. The skin was stretched tightly over the cheekbones, across the bridge of the sharp, bird-like nose. The closed eyes were set in profound bone-rimmed sockets. The lamplight striking on the face from the side emphasized with light and shade its cavities and projections. It was the face of a dead Christ by Morales.

Le squelette était invisible

Au temps hereux de l’art paien.

He shivered a little, and tiptoed out.

On the following day Mrs. Hutton came down to luncheon. She had had some unpleasant palpitations during the night, but she was feeling better now. Besides, she wanted to do honor to her guest. Miss Spence listened to her complaints about Llandrindod Wells, and was loud in sympathy, lavish with advice. Whatever she said was always said with intensity. She leaned forward, aimed, so to speak, like a gun, and fired her words. Bang! the charge in her soul was ignited, the words whizzed forth at the narrow barrel of her mouth. She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess with sympathy. Mr. Hutton had undergone similar bombardments, mostly of a literary or philosophic character — bombardments of Maeterlinck, of Mrs. Besant, of Bergson, of William James. Today the missiles were medical. She talked about insomnia, she expatiated on the virtues of harmless drugs and beneficent specialists. Under the bombardment Mrs. Hutton opened out, like a flower in the sun.

Mr. Hutton looked on in silence. The spectacle of Janet Spence evoked in him an unfailing curiosity. He was not romantic enough to imagine that every face masked an interior physiognomy of beauty or strangeness, that every woman’s small talk was like a vapor hanging over mysterious gulfs. His wife, for example, and Doris; they were nothing more than what they seemed to be. But with Janet Spence it was somehow different. Here one could be sure that there was some kind of a queer face behind the Gioconda smile and the Roman eyebrows. The only question was: What exactly was there?

“But perhaps you won’t have to go to Llandrindod after all,” Miss Spence was saying. “If you get well quickly Dr. Libbard will let you off.”

“I only hope so. Indeed, I do really feel rather better today.”

Mr. Hutton felt ashamed. How much was it his own lack of sympathy that prevented her from feeling well every day? But he comforted himself by reflecting that it was only a case of feeling, not of being better. Sympathy does not mend a diseased liver.

“My dear, I wouldn’t eat those red currants if I were you,” he said, suddenly solicitous. “You know that Libbard has banned everything with skins and pips.”

“But I am so fond of them,” Mrs. Hutton protested, “and I feel so well today.”

“Don’t be a tyrant,” said Miss Spence, looking first at him and then at his wife. “Let the poor invalid have what she fancies; it will do her good.” She laid her hand on Mrs. Hutton’s arm and patted it affectionately.

“Thank you, my dear.” Mrs. Hutton helped herself to the stewed currants.

“Well, don’t blame me if they make you ill again.”

“Do I ever blame you, dear?”

“You have nothing to blame me for,” Mr. Hutton answered playfully. “I am the perfect husband.”

They sat in the garden after luncheon. From the island of shade under the old cypress tree they looked out across a flat expanse of lawn, in which the parterres of flowers shone with a metallic brilliance.

Mr. Hutton took a deep breath of the warm and fragrant air. “It’s good to be alive,” he said.

“Just to be alive,” his wife echoed, stretching one pale, knot-jointed hand into the sunlight.

A maid brought the coffee; the silver pots and the little blue cups were set on a folding table near the group of chairs.

“Oh, my medicine!” exclaimed Mrs. Hutton. “Run in and fetch it, Clara, will you? The white bottle on the sideboard.”

“I’ll go,” said Mr. Hutton. “I’ve got to fetch a cigar in any case.”

He ran in towards the house. On the threshold he turned round for an instant. The maid was walking back across the lawn. His wife was sitting up in her deck-chair, engaged in opening her white parasol. Miss Spence was bending over the table, pouring out the coffee. He passed into the cool obscurity of the house.

“Do you like sugar in your coffee?” Miss Spence inquired.

“Yes, please. Give me rather a lot. I’ll drink it after my medicine to take the taste away.”

Mrs. Hutton leaned back in her chair, lowering the sunshade over her eyes, so as to shut out from her vision the burning sky.

Behind her, Miss Spence was making a delicate clinking among the coffee cups.

“I’ve given you three large spoonfuls. That ought to take the taste away. And here comes the medicine.”

Mr. Hutton had reappeared, carrying a wine-glass, half-full of a pale liquid.

“It smells delicious,” he said, as he handed it to his wife.

“That’s only the flavoring.” She drank it off at a gulp, shuddered, and made a grimace. “Ugh, it’s so nasty. Give me my coffee.”

Miss Spence gave her the cup; she sipped at it. “You’ve made it like syrup. But it’s very nice, after that atrocious medicine.”

At half-past three Mrs. Hutton complained that she did not feel as well as she had done, and went indoors to lie down. Her husband would have said something about the red currants, but checked himself; the triumph of an “I told you so” was too cheaply won. Instead, he was sympathetic, and gave her his arm to the house.

“A rest will do you good,” he said. “By the way, I shan’t be back till after dinner.”

“But why? Where are you going?”

“I promised to go to Johnson’s this evening. We have to discuss the war memorial, you know.”

“Oh, I wish you weren’t going.” Mrs. Hutton was almost in tears. “Can’t you stay? I don’t like being alone in the house.”

“But, my dear, I promised — weeks ago.” It was a bother having to lie like this. “And now I must get back and look after Miss Spence.”

He kissed her on the forehead and went out again into the garden. Miss Spence received him aimed and intense.

“Your wife is dreadfully ill,” she fired off at him.

“I thought she cheered up so much when you came.”

“That was purely nervous, purely nervous. I was watching her closely. With a heart in that condition and her digestion wrecked — yes, wrecked — anything might happen.”

“Libbard doesn’t take so gloomy a view of poor Emily’s health.” Mr. Hutton held open the gate that led from the garden into the drive; Miss Spence’s car was standing by the front door.

“He’s only a country doctor. You ought to see a specialist.”

He could not refrain from laughing. “You have a macabre passion for specialists.”

Miss Spence held up her hand in protest. “I am serious. I think poor Emily is in a very bad state. Anything might happen — at any moment.”

He handed her into the car and shut the door. The chauffeur started the engine and climbed into his place.

“Shall I tell him to start?” He had no desire to continue the conversation.

Miss Spence leaned forward and shot a Gioconda in his direction. “Remember, I expect you to come and see me again soon.”

Mechanically he grinned, made a polite noise, and, as the car moved forward, waved his hand. He was happy to be alone.

A few minutes afterwards Mr. Hutton himself drove away. Doris was waiting at the crossroads. They dined together twenty miles from home, at a roadside hotel. It was one of those bad, expensive meals which are only cooked in country hotels frequented by motorists. It revolted Mr. Hutton, but Doris enjoyed it. She always enjoyed things. Mr. Hutton ordered a not very good brand of champagne. He was wishing he had spent the evening in his library.

When they started homewards Doris was a little tipsy and extremely affectionate. It was very dark inside the car, but looking forward, past the motionless form of M’Nab, they could see a bright and narrow universe of forms and colors scooped out of the night by the electric head-lamps.

It was after eleven when Mr. Hutton reached home. Dr. Libbard met him in the hall. He was a small man with delicate hands and well-formed features that were almost feminine. His brown eyes were large and melancholy. He used to waste a great deal of time sitting at the bedside of his patients, looking sadness through those eyes and talking in a sad, low voice about nothing in particular. His person exhaled a pleasing odor, decidedly antiseptic but at the same time suave and discreetly delicious.

“Libbard?” said Mr. Hutton in surprise. “You here? Is my wife ill?”

“We tried to fetch you earlier,” the soft, melancholy voice replied. “It was thought you were at Mr. Johnson’s, but they had no news of you there.”

“No, I was detained. I had a breakdown,” Mr. Hutton answered irritably. It was tiresome to be caught out in a lie.

“Your wife wanted to see you urgently.”

“Well, I can go now.” Mr. Hutton moved towards the stairs. Dr. Libbard laid a hand on his arm. “I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Too late?” He began fumbling with his watch; it wouldn’t come out of the pocket.

“Mrs. Hutton passed away half an hour ago.”

The voice remained even in its softness, the melancholy of the eyes did not deepen. Dr. Libbard spoke of death as he would speak of a local cricket match. All things were equally vain and equally deplorable.

Mr. Hutton found himself thinking of Janet Spence’s words. At any moment — at any moment. She had been extraordinarily right.

“What happened?” he asked.

Dr. Libbard explained. It was a heart failure brought on by a violent attack of nausea, caused in its turn by the eating of something of an irritant nature. Red currants? Mr. Hutton suggested. Very likely. It had been too much for the heart. There was chronic valvular disease: something had collapsed under the strain. It was all over; she could not have suffered much.

“It’s a pity they should have chosen the day of the Eton and Harrow match for the funeral,” old General Grego was saying as he stood, his top hat in his hand, under the shadow of the lych gate, wiping his face with his handkerchief.

Mr. Hutton overheard the remark and with difficulty restrained a desire to inflict grievous bodily pain on the General. He would have liked to hit the old brute in the middle of his big red face. Monstrous great mulberry, spotted with meal! Was there no respect for the dead? Did nobody care? In theory he didn’t much care; let the dead bury their dead. But here, at the graveside, he had found himself actually sobbing. Poor Emily, they had been pretty happy once. Now she was lying at the bottom of a seven-foot hole. And here was Grego complaining that he couldn’t go to the Eton and Harrow match.

Mr. Hutton looked around at the groups of black figures that were drifting slowly out of the churchyard toward the fleet of cabs and motors assembled in the road outside. Against the brilliant background of the July grass and flowers and foliage, they had a horribly alien and unnatural appearance. It pleased him to think that these people would soon be dead too.

That evening Mr. Hutton sat up late in his library reading the life of Milton. There was no particular reason why he should have chosen Milton; it was the book that first came to hand, that was all. It was after midnight when he had finished. He got up from his armchair, unbolted the French windows, and stepped out on to the little paved terrace. The night was quiet and clear. Mr. Hutton looked at the stars and at the holes between them, dropped his eyes to the dim lawns and hueless flowers of the garden, and let them wander over the farther landscape, black and gray under the moon.

He began to think with a kind of confused violence. There were the stars, there was Milton. A man can be somehow the peer of stars and night. Greatness, nobility. But is there seriously a difference between the noble and the ignoble? Milton, the stars, death, and himself — himself. The soul, the body; the higher and the lower nature. Perhaps there was something in it, after all. Milton had a god on his side and righteousness. What had he? Nothing, nothing whatever. There were only Doris’s little breasts. What was the point of it all? Milton, the stars, death, and Emily in her grave, Doris and himself — always himself...

Oh, he was a futile and disgusting being. Everything convinced him of it. It was a solemn moment. He spoke aloud: “I will, I will.” The sound of his own voice in the darkness was appalling; it seemed to him that he had sworn that infernal oath which binds even the gods: “I will, I will.” There had been New Year’s days and solemn anniversaries in the past, when he had felt the same contritions and recorded similar resolutions. They had all thinned away, these resolutions, like smoke, into nothingness. But this was a greater moment and he had pronounced a more fearful oath. In the future it was to be different. Yes, he would live by reason, he would be industrious, he would curb his appetities, he would devote his life to some good purpose. It was resolved.

In practice he saw himself spending his mornings in agricultural pursuits, riding round with the bailiff, seeing that his land was farmed in the best modern way — silos and artificial manures and continuous cropping, and all that. The remainder of the day should be devoted to serious study. There was that book he had been intending to write for so long — The Effect of Diseases on Civilization.

Mr. Hutton went to bed humble and contrite, but with a sense that grace had entered into him. He slept for seven and a half hours, and woke to find the sun brilliantly shining. The emotions of the evening before had been transformed by a good night’s rest into his customary cheerfulness. It was not until a good many seconds after his return to conscious life that he remembered his resolution, his Stygian oath. Milton and death seemed somehow different in the sunlight. As for the stars, they were not there. But the resolutions were good; even in the daytime he could see that. He had his horse saddled after breakfast, and rode round the farm with the bailiff. After luncheon he read Thucydides on the plague at Athens. In the evening he made a few notes on malaria in Southern Italy. While he was undressing he remembered that there was a good anecdote in Skelton’s jest-book about the Sweating Sickness. He would have made a note of it if only he could have found a pencil.

On the sixth morning of his new life Mr. Hutton found among his correspondence an envelope addressed in that peculiarly vulgar handwriting which he knew to be Doris’s. He opened it, and began to read. She didn’t know what to say; words were so inadequate. His wife dying like that, and so suddenly — it was too terrible. Mr. Hutton sighed, but his interest revived somewhat as he read:

“Death is so frightening, I never think of it when I can help it. But when something like this happens, or when I am feeling ill or depressed, then I can’t help remembering it is there so close, and I think about all the wicked things I have done and about you and me, and I wonder what will happen, and I am so frightened. I am so lonely, Teddy Bear, and so unhappy, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t get rid of the idea of dying, I am so wretched and helpless without you. I didn’t mean to write to you; I meant to wait till you were out of mourning and could come and see me again, but I am so lonely and miserable, Teddy Bear, I had to write. I couldn’t help it. Forgive me, I want you so much; I have nobody in the world but you. You are so good and gentle and understanding; there is nobody like you. I shall never forget how good and kind you have been to me, and you are so clever and know so much, I can’t understand how you ever came to pay any attention to me, I am so dull and stupid, much less like me and love me, because you do love me a little, don’t you, Teddy Bear?”

Mr. Hutton was touched with shame and remorse. To be thanked like this, worshipped for having seduced the girl — it was too much. It had just been a piece of imbecile wantonness. Imbecile, idiotic: there was no other way to describe it. For, when all was said, he had derived very little pleasure from it. Taking all things together, he had probably been more bored than amused. Once upon a time he had believed himself to be a hedonist. But to be a hedonist implies a certain process of reasoning, a deliberate choice of known pleasures, a rejection of known pains. This had been done without reason, against it. For he knew beforehand — so well, so well — that there was no interest or pleasure to be derived from these wretched affairs. And yet each time the vague itch came upon him he succumbed, involving himself once more in the old stupidity. There had been Maggie, his wife’s maid, and Edith, the girl on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London, and others — there seemed to be dozens of them. It had all been so stale and boring. He knew it would be; he always knew. And yet, and yet... Experience doesn’t teach.

Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he wouldn’t see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old bailiff was more irritating than usual...

Five days later Doris and Mr. Hutton were sitting together on the pier at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated happiness; Mr. Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was hopeless, hopeless.

For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The girl stirred in her sleep. Mr. Hutton turned over and looked in her direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.

The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.

“Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?” The question came faintly from distant worlds of love.

“I think I know somebody who does,” Mr. Hutton replied. The submarine laughter was swelling, inside him rising, ready to break the surface of silence and resound.

“Who? Tell me. What do you mean?” The voice had come very close; charged with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate world.

“A... ah!”

“Who?”

“You’ll never guess.” Mr. Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow tedious, and then pronounced the name: “Janet Spence.”

Doris was incredulous. “Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?” It was too ridiculous. Mr. Hutton laughed too.

“But it’s quite true,” he said. “She adores me.” Oh, the vast joke! He would go and see her as soon as he returned — see and conquer. “I believe she wants to marry me,” he added.

“But you wouldn’t...”

The air was fairly crepitating with humor. Mr. Hutton laughed aloud. “I intend to marry you,” he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had ever made in his life.

When Mr. Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers.

The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda.

“I was expecting you to come.”

“I couldn’t keep away,” Mr. Hutton gallantly replied.

They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place — a little old stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della Robbia plaque.

“I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn,” said Mr. Hutton. He felt like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling excitement.

“Italy...” Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. “I feel drawn there too.”

“Why not let yourself be drawn?”

“I don’t know. One somehow hasn’t the energy to set out alone.”

“Alone...” Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing! “Yes, traveling alone isn’t much fun.”

Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still closed. Mr. Hutton stroked his mustache. The silence prolonged itself.

Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr. Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr. Hutton sat on in the growing darkness.

Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively:

“I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don’t you?”

“Most certainly.” But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes generalizations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy — happier than most men. And now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the secret of gaiety. He was about to say something of his happiness when Miss Spence went on speaking.

“People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our lives.”

“Me?” said Mr. Hutton, surprised.

“Poor Henry! Fate hasn’t treated either of us very well.”

“Oh, well, it might have treated me worse.”

“You’re being cheerful. That’s brave of you. But don’t think I can’t see behind the mask.”

Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked on, shouting against the noise.

“I have understood you so well and for so long.”

A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed her.

“You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathize with you in your solitude. Your marriage...”

The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence’s voice became audible once more with the words:

“...could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a soul mate.”

A soul mate — he! a soul mate. It was incredibly fantastic. “Georgette Leblanc, the ex-soul mate of Maurice Maeterlinck.” He had seen that in the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted him in her imagination — as a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he was what? — Who knows?

“My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too.” Miss Spence laid her hand on his knee. “You were so patient.” Another flash. She was still armed, dangerously. “You never complained. But I could guess — I could guess.”

“How wonderful of you!” So he was an âme incomprise. “Only a woman’s intuition—”

The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalized. Flash and crash, there it was again.

“Don’t you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this storm?” He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. “Passion makes one the equal of the elements.”

What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said, “Yes,” and ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr. Hutton suddenly took fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was serious — terribly serious. He was appalled.

Passion? “No,” he desperately answered. “I am without passion.”

But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapidly, however, and in such a burningly intimate whisper that Mr. Hutton found it very difficult to distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn’t it rather George Robey?

He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, pretending he had seen a burglar — Stop thief! stop thief! — and dash off into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart attack? or that he had seen a ghost — Emily’s ghost — in the garden? Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to Miss Spence’s words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his thoughts.

“I honored you for that, Henry,” she was saying.

Honored him for what?

“Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect you and admire you, and — shall I dare say the word?—”

Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late.

“...yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we’re free now, Henry.”

Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the floor by his chair.

“Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too.”

Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy.

“You mustn’t Janet,” he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. “Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed.” He patted her shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been sitting.

Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr. Hutton splashed along blindly, not caring if he got wet.

How heart-rendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why couldn’t she have played the game that he was playing — the heartless, amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, play the game; he had known and persisted.

What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black-bosomed and charged with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining that his toy had drawn the lightning.

She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying.

Buy why hadn’t he been able to keep up the game? Why had his irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned steady and luminous in his mind — the idea of flight. He must get away at once.

“What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?”

“Nothing.”

There was silence. Mr. Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands; looking down over Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one looked down a long fertile valley onto the town and beyond it to the bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in the September sunshine.

“Are you worried about anything?”

“No, thank you.”

“Tell me, Teddy Bear.”

“But my dear, there’s nothing to tell.” Mr. Hutton turned round, smiled, and patted the girl’s hand. “I think you’d better go in and have your siesta. It’s too hot for you here.”

“Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?”

“When I’ve finished my cigar.”

“All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear.” Slowly, reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards the house.

Mr. Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good to be alone.

He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it, not without reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something unpleasant — nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it was composed. The words “indecent haste,” “social suicide,” “scarcely cold in her grave,” “person of the lower classes,” all occurred. They were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr. Hutton found himself trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling names — he cursed the woman.

Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid.

A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen of the classical type — a little debased. Her profile might have been taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the caligraphic hand of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad temper. Under her hideous black clothes, Mr. Hutton divined a powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a vague interest and curiosity. Today the curiosity defined and focused itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, alas, was not precisely like a goat-herd on the volcanic hills. He called to her.

The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so easy a virtue, that Mr. Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once more — on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it was too late. The girl continued to look up at him.

“Ha chiamato?” she asked at last.

Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

“Scendo,” he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to the terrace. Mr. Hutton counted them. Down, down, down... He saw a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the next — from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of stinking mud.

For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this tale of murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so notable because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. For months he had lived in sin and fancied security — only to be dashed at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had been vague, but persistent, rumors in the neighborhood; the police had taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the post-mortem examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of the coroner’s jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food of a whole season.

Mr. Hutton’s first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action of malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the Spence woman for slander.

The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they were of the opinion that the late Mrs. Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning.

Arsenic poisoning... Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, Mr. Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated insecticide in his greenhouses to poison an army.

It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a tangled forest.

When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, about lunch-time. Clara, the parlormaid, was called. Mrs. Hutton, she remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr. Hutton had volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence — ah, the memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all! — Miss Spence confirmed Clara’s statement, and added that Mr. Hutton had come back with the medicine already poured out in a wine glass, not in the bottle.

Mr. Hutton’s indignation evaporated. He was dismayed, frightened. It was all too fantastic to be taken seriously, and yet this nightmare was a fact — it was actually happening.

M’Nab had seen them kissing, often. He had taken them for a drive on the day of Mrs. Hutton’s death. He could see them reflected in the wind-shield, sometimes out of the tail of his eye.

The inquest was adjourned. That evening Doris went to bed with a headache. When he went to her room after dinner, Mr. Hutton found her crying.

“What’s the matter?” He sat down on the edge of her bed and began to stroke her hair. For a long time she did not answer, and he went on stroking her hair mechanically, almost unconsciously; sometimes, even, he bent down and kissed her bare shoulder. He had his own affairs, however, to think about. What had happened? How was it that the stupid gossip had actually come true? Emily had died of arsenic poisoning. It was absurd, impossible. The order of things had been broken, and he was at the mercy of an irresponsibility. What had happened, what was going to happen? He was interrupted in the midst of his thoughts.

“It’s my fault — it’s my fault!” Doris suddenly sobbed out. “I shouldn’t have loved you. I oughtn’t to have let you love me. Why was I ever born?”

Mr. Hutton didn’t say anything, but looked down in silence at the abject figure of misery lying on the bed.

“If they do anything to you I shall kill myself.”

She sat up, held him for a moment at arm’s length, and looked at him with a kind of violence, as though she were never to see him again.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” She drew him, inert and passive, towards her, clasped him, pressed herself against him. “I didn’t know you loved me as much as that, Teddy Bear. But why did you do it — why did you do it?”

Mr. Hutton undid her clasping arms and got up. His face became very red. “You seem to take it for granted that I murdered my wife,” he said. “It’s really too grotesque. What do you take me for? A cinema hero?” He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against her. “It’s all such damned stupidity. Haven’t you any conception of a civilized man’s mentality? Do I look the sort of man who’d go about slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand that one isn’t insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won’t allow one to have. I don’t know what the devil ever induced me to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go about saying I’m a murderer. I won’t stand it.”

Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he knew — odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn’t. He closed the door behind him.

“Teddy Bear!” He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. “Teddy Bear!” The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonized. Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was halfway down the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly — throw herself out of the window or God knows what! He listened attentively; there was no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace. How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-story window of the Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should he go back? He was damned if he would; he hated her.

He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with tears; he wanted so passionately to live. “Just to be alive.” Poor Emily had wished it too, he remembered: “Just to be alive.” There were still so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet southern wines — Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas — others would drink them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes between the bookshelves in the London library, sniffing the dusty perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God existed after all.

He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. “God bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen.” They were all dead now — all except Cissie.

His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris’s forgiveness. He found her lying on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a blue bottle of liniment, marked Not to be taken internally; she seemed to have drunk about half of it.

“You didn’t love me,” was all she said when she opened her eyes to find him bending over her.

Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any serious consequences. “You mustn’t do this again,” he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the room.

“What’s to prevent me?” she asked defiantly.

Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. “There’s nothing to prevent you,” he said. “Only yourself and your baby. Isn’t it rather bad luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you want to go out of it?”

Doris was silent for a time. “All right,” she whispered. “I won’t.”

Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had become nothing but a tired and suffering carcass. At six o’clock he undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours’ sleep. In the course of the same afternoon the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of “Willful Murder,” and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial.

Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She talked to him a great deal — mostly about the Hutton case. Her moral indignation was always on the boil. Wasn’t it extraordinary that one could have been for so long mistaken about the man’s character? (But she had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off with — so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby — the posthumous child of a condemned and executed criminal — revolted her; the thing was shocking — an obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed bromide.

One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. “By the way,” he said in his soft, melancholy voice, “I suppose it was really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton.”

Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, and then quietly said, “Yes.” After that she started to cry.

“In the coffee, I suppose.”

She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain pen, and in his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping powder.

The Ghost Patrol SINCLAIR LEWIS

Original publication: The Red Book Magazine, June 1917; first collected in Selected Short Stories of Sinclair Lewis (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, Doran, 1935)

One of the most important American writers of the early twentieth century, Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His first great success was Main Street (1920) and he went on to write several novels that became so iconic that their names have become part of English language usage.

With Babbitt (1922), Lewis skewered the American businessman, personified by George F. Babbitt, an intellectually empty, immature man of weak morals, and his name has become synonymous with similar reviled types. Elmer Gantry (1927) is an assault on religious hypocrisy, exemplified by the titular character’s morals; the novel was the basis for the Oscar-nominated 1960 film starring Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, and Shirley Jones. For decades, if a televangelist was referred to as an Elmer Gantry, it was unlikely to be complimentary.

Another novel, Arrowsmith (1925), is the name of a young doctor who battles to maintain his dignity in a dishonest world in which the medical profession is not spared. It was offered the Pulitzer Prize but Lewis refused the honor because the terms of the award required that it be given not for a work of value, but for a work that presents “the wholesome atmosphere of American Life,” which it most assuredly did not.

After a mere decade as the most popular and critically lauded author in the United States, Lewis’s reputation was superseded by such contemporary authors as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Lewis’s later works were not very successful and he even found it difficult to find a publisher after World War II.

Title: The Ghost Patrol, 1923 (silent)

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Nat Ross

Screenwriter: Raymond L. Schrock

Producer: Carl Laemmle

• Ralph Graves (Terry Rafferty)

• Bessie Love (Effie Kugler)

• George Nichols (Donald Patrick Dorgan)

It is stretching the definition a little to regard this film as a mystery. There are petty crimes, to be sure, and the major figure is a policeman, but the action takes place in an idyllic town that is patrolled by that wise, gentle policeman who helps people who need one thing or another. When he reaches retirement age and is forced to retire, he dons his old-fashioned police uniform and continues to patrol his former beat, often described as “a ghost policeman,” helping to catch criminals and assisting two young lovers kept apart by the girl’s father.

THE GHOST PATROL Sinclair Lewis

Donald Patrick Dorgan had served forty-four years on the police force of Northernapolis, and during all but five of that time he had patrolled the Forest Park section.

Don Dorgan might have been a sergeant, or even a captain, but it had early been seen at headquarters that he was a crank about Forest Park. For hither he had brought his young wife, and here he had built their shack; here his wife had died, and here she was buried. It was so great a relief in the whirl of department politics to have a man who was contented with his job that the Big Fellows were glad of Dorgan, and kept him there where he wanted to be, year after year, patrolling Forest Park.

For Don Pat Dorgan had the immense gift of loving people, all people. In a day before anyone in Northernapolis had heard of scientific criminology, Dorgan believed that the duty of a policeman with clean gloves and a clean heart was to keep people from needing to be arrested. He argued with drunken men and persuaded them to hide out in an alley and sleep off the drunk. When he did arrest them it was because they were sedately staggering home intent on beating up the wives of their bosoms. Any homeless man could get a nickel from Dorgan and a road-map of the doss-houses. To big bruisers he spoke slowly, and he beat them with his nightstick where it would hurt the most but injure the least. Along his beat, small boys might play baseball, provided they did not break windows or get themselves in front of motor cars. The pocket in his coattail was a mine; here were secreted not only his midnight sandwiches, his revolver and handcuffs and a comic supplement, but also a bag of striped candy and a red rubber ball.

When the Widow Maclester’s son took to the booze, it was Don Dorgan who made him enlist in the navy. Such things were Don’s work — his art. Joy of his art he had when Kitty Silva repented and became clean-living; when Micky Connors, whom Dorgan had known ever since Micky was a squawking orphan, became a doctor, with a large glass sign lettered J. J. Connors, M.D., and a nurse to let a poor man in to see the great Doctor Connors!

Dorgan did have for one boy and girl a sneaking fondness that transcended the kindliness he felt toward the others. They were Polo Magenta, son of the Italian-English-Danish jockey who had died of the coke, and Effie Kugler, daughter of that Jewish delicatessen man who knew more of the Talmud than any man in the Ghetto — Effie the pretty and plump, black-haired and quick-eyed, a perfect armful for anyone.

Polo Magenta had the stuff of a man in him. The boy worshipped motors as his father had worshipped horses. At fourteen, when his father died, he was washer at McManus’s Garage; at eighteen he was one of the smoothest taxi drivers in the city. At nineteen, dropping into Kugler’s Delicatessen for sausages and crackers for his midnight lunch, he was waited upon by Effie.

Thereafter he hung about the little shop nightly, till old Kugler frowned upon them — upon Polo, the gallantest lad in Little Hell, supple in his chauffeur’s uniform, straight-backed as the English sergeant who had been his grandfather, pale-haired like a Dane, altogether a soldierly figure, whispering across the counter to blushing Effie.

Kugler lurked at the door and prevented Polo from driving past and picking her up. So Effie became pale with longing to see her boy; Polo took to straight Bourbon, which is not good for a taxi driver racing to catch trains. He had an accident, once; he merely smashed the fenders of another car; but one more of the like, and the taxi company would let him out.

Then Patrolman Don Dorgan sat in on the game. He decided that Polo Magenta should marry Effie. He told Polo that he would bear a message from him to the girl, and while he was meticulously selecting a cut of sausage for sandwich, he whispered to her that Polo was waiting, with his car, in the alley off Minnis Place. Aloud he bawled: “Come walk the block with me, Effie, you little divvle, if your father will let you. Mr. Kugler, it isn’t often that Don Dorgan invites the ladies to go a-walking with him, but it’s spring, and you know how it is with us wicked cops. The girl looks as if she needed a breath of fresh air.”

“That’s r-r-r-right,” said Kugler. “You go valk a block with Mr. Dorgan, Effie, and mind you come r-r-r-right back.”

Dorgan stood like a lion at the mouth of the alley where, beside his taxi, Polo Magenta was waiting. As he caught the cry with which Effie came to her lover, he remembered the evenings long gone when he and his own sweetheart had met in the maple lane that was now the scrofulous Minnis Place.

“Oh, Polo, I’ve just felt dead, never seeing you nowhere.”

“Gee, it hurts, kid, to get up in the morning and have everything empty, knowing I won’t see you any time. I could run the machine off the Boulevard and end everything, my heart’s so cold without you.”

“Oh, is it, Polo, is it really?”

“Say, we only got a couple minutes. I’ve got a look in on a partnership in a repair shop in Thornwood Addition. If I can swing it, we can beat it and get hitched, and when your old man sees I’m prospering—”

While Dorgan heard Polo’s voice grow crisp with practical hopes, he bristled and felt sick. For Kugler was coming along Minnis Place, peering ahead, hunched with suspicion. Dorgan dared not turn to warn them.

Dorgan smiled. “Evening again,” he said. “It was a fine walk I had with Effie. Is she got back yet?”

He was standing between Kugler and the alley-mouth, his arms akimbo.

Kugler ducked under his arm, and saw Effie cuddled beside her lover, the two of them sitting on the running-board of Polo’s machine.

“Effie, you will come home now,” said the old man. There was terrible wrath in the quietness of his graybeard voice.

The lovers looked shamed and frightened.

Dorgan swaggered up toward the group. “Look here, Mr. Kugler: Polo’s a fine upstanding lad. He ain’t got no bad habits — to speak of. He’s promised me he’ll lay off the booze. He’ll make a fine man for Effie—”

“Mr. Dorgan, years I have respected you, but — Effie, you come home now,” said Kugler.

“Oh, what will I do, Mr. Dorgan?” wailed Effie. “Should I do like Papa wants I should, or should I go off with Polo?”

Dorgan respected the divine rights of love, but also he had an old-fashioned respect for the rights of parents with their offspring.

“I guess maybe you better go with your papa, Effie. I’ll talk to him—”

“Yes, you’ll talk, and everybody will talk, and I’ll be dead,” cried young Polo. “Get out of my way, all of you.”

Already he was in the driver’s seat and backing his machine out. It went rocking round the corner.

Dorgan heard that Polo had been discharged by the taxi company for speeding through traffic and smashing the taillights of another machine; then that he had got a position as private chauffeur in the suburbs, been discharged for impudence, got another position and been arrested for joy-riding with a bunch of young toughs from Little Hell. He was to be tried on the charge of stealing his employer’s machine.

Dorgan brushed his citizen’s clothes, got an expensive haircut and shampoo and went to call on the employer, who refused to listen to maundering defense of the boy.

Dorgan called on Polo in his cell.

“It’s all right,” Polo said, “I’m glad I was pinched. I needed something to stop me, hard. I was going nutty, and if somebody hadn’t slammed on the emergency, I don’t know what I would have done. Now I’ve sat here reading and thinking, and I’m right again. I always gotta do things hard, booze or be good. And now I’m going to think hard, and I ain’t sorry to have the chanst to be quiet.”

Dorgan brought away a small note in which, with much misspelling and tenderness, Polo sent to Effie his oath of deathless love. To the delivery of this note Dorgan devoted one bribery and one shocking burglarious entrance.

Polo was sentenced to three years in prison, on a charge of grand larceny.

That evening Dorgan climbed, panting, to the cathedral, and for an hour he knelt with his lips moving, his spine cold, as he pictured young Polo shamed and crushed in prison, and as he discovered himself hating the law that he served.

One month later Dorgan reached the age-limit, and was automatically retired from the Force, on pension. He protested; but the retirement rule was inviolable.

Dorgan went to petition the commissioner himself. It was the first time in five years, except on the occasions of the annual police parades, that he had gone near headquarters, and he was given a triumphal reception. Inspectors and captains, reporters and aldermen, and the commissioner himself, shook his hand, congratulated him on his forty-five years of clean service. But to his plea they did not listen. It was impossible to find a place for him. They heartily told him to rest, because he had earned it.

Dorgan nagged them. He came to headquarters again and again, till he became a bore, and the commissioner refused to see him. Dorgan was not a fool. He went shamefacedly back to his shack, and there he remained.

For two years he huddled by the fire and slowly became melancholy mad — gray-faced, gray-haired, a gray ghost of himself.

From time to time, during his two years of hermitage, Dorgan came out to visit his old neighbors. They welcomed him, gave him drinks and news, but they did not ask his advice. So he had become a living ghost before two years had gone by, and he talked to himself, aloud.

During these two years the police force was metropolitanized. There were a smart new commissioner and smart new inspectors and a smart new uniform — a blue military uniform with flat cap and puttees and shaped coats. After his first view of that uniform, at the police parade, Dorgan went home and took down from behind the sheet-iron stove a photograph of ten years before — the Force of that day, proudly posed on the granite steps of the city hall. They had seemed efficient and impressive then, but — his honest soul confessed it — they were like rural constables beside the crack corps of today.

Presently he took out from the redwood chest his own uniform, but he could not get himself to put on its shapeless gray coat and trousers, its gray helmet and spotless white gloves. Yet its presence comforted him, proved to him that, improbable though it seemed, the secluded old man had once been an active member of the Force.

With big, clumsy, tender hands he darned a frayed spot at the bottom of the trousers and carefully folded the uniform away. He took out his nightstick and revolver and the sapphire-studded star the Department had given him for saving two lives in the collapse of the Anthony building. He fingered them and longed to be permitted to carry them... All night, in a dream and half-dream and tossing wakefulness, he pictured himself patrolling again, the father of his people.

Next morning he again took his uniform, his nightstick and gun and shield out of the redwood chest, and he hung them in the wardrobe where they had hung when he was off duty in his days of active service. He whistled cheerfully and muttered: “I’ll be seeing to them Tenth Street devils, the rotten gang of them.”

Rumors began to come into the newspaper offices of a “ghost-scare” out in the Forest Park section. An old man had looked out of his window at midnight and seen a dead man, in a uniform of years before, standing on nothing at all. A stranger to the city, having come to his apartment-hotel, the Forest Arms, some ten blocks above Little Hell, at about two in the morning, stopped to talk with a strange-looking patrolman whose face he described as a drift of fog about burning, unearthly eyes. The patrolman had courteously told him of the building up of Forest Park, and at parting had saluted, an erect, somewhat touching figure. Later the stranger was surprised to note that the regulation uniform was blue, not gray.

After this there were dozens who saw the “Ghost Patrol,” as the Chronicle dubbed the apparition; some spoke to him, and importantly reported him to be fat, thin, tall, short, old, young, and composed of mist, of shadows, of optical illusions and of ordinary human flesh.

Then a society elopement and a foreign war broke, and Ghost Patrol stories were forgotten.

One evening of early summer the agitated voice of a woman telephoned to headquarters from the best residence section of Forest Park that she had seen a burglar entering the window of the house next door, which was closed for the season. The chief himself took six huskies in his machine, and they roared out to Forest Park and surrounded the house. The owner of the agitated voice stalked out to inform the chief that just after she had telephoned, she had seen another figure crawling into the window after the burglar. She had thought that the second figure had a revolver and a policeman’s club.

So the chief and the lieutenant crawled nonchalantly through an unquestionably open window giving on the pantry at the side of the house. Their electric torches showed the dining room to be a wreck — glass scattered and broken, drawers of the buffet on the floor, curtains torn down. They remarked “Some scrap!” and shouted: “Come out here, whoever’s in this house. We got it surrounded. Kendall, are you there? Have you pinched the guy?”

There was an unearthly silence, as of someone breathing in terror, a silence, more thick and anxious than any mere absence of sound. They tiptoed into the drawing room, where, tied to a davenport, was the celebrated character, Butte Benny.

“My Gawd, Chief,” he wailed, “get me outa this. De place is haunted. A bleeding ghost comes and grabs me and ties me up. Gee, honest, Chief, he was a dead man, and he was dressed like a has-been cop, and he didn’t say nawthin’ at all. I tried to wrastle him, and he got me down; and oh, Chief, he beat me crool, he did, but he was dead as me great-grandad, and you could see de light t’rough him. Let’s get outa this — frame me up and I’ll sign de confession. Me for a nice, safe cell for keeps!”

“Some amateur cop done this, to keep his hand in. Ghost me eye!” said the chief. But his own flesh felt icy, and he couldn’t help looking about for the unknown.

“Let’s get out of this, Chief,” said Lieutenant Saxon, the bravest man in the strong-arm squad; and with Butte Benny between them they fled through the front door, leaving the pantry window still open! They didn’t handcuff Benny. They couldn’t have lost him!

Next morning when a captain came to look over the damage in the burglarized house he found the dining room crudely straightened up and the pantry window locked.

When the baby daughter of Simmons, the plumber of Little Hell, was lost, two men distinctly saw a gray-faced figure in an old-time police helmet leading the lost girl through unfrequented back alleys. They tried to follow, but the mysterious figure knew the egresses better than they did; and they went to report at the station house. Meantime there was a ring at the Simmonses’ door, and Simmons found his child on the doormat, crying but safe. In her hand, tight clutched, was the white cotton glove of a policeman.

Simmons gratefully took the glove to the precinct station. It was a regulation service glove; it had been darned with white cotton thread till the original fabric was almost overlaid with short, inexpert stitches; it had been whitened with pipe-clay, and from one slight brown spot it must have been pressed out with a hot iron. Inside it was stamped, in faded rubber stamping: Dorgan, Patrol, 9th Precinct. The chief took the glove to the commissioner, and between these two harsh, abrupt men there was a pitying silence surcharged with respect.

“We’ll have to take care of the old man,” said the chief at last.

A detective was assigned to the trail of the Ghost Patrol. The detective saw Don Dorgan come out of his shack at three in the morning, stand stretching out his long arms, sniff the late-night dampness, smile as a man will when he starts in on the routine of work that he loves. He was erect; his old uniform was clean-brushed, his linen collar spotless; in his hand he carried one lone glove. He looked to right and left, slipped into an alley, prowled through the darkness, so fleet and soft-stepping that the shadow almost lost him. He stopped at a shutter left open and prodded it shut with his old-time long nightstick. Then he stole back to his shack and went in.

The next day the chief, the commissioner, and a self-appointed committee of inspectors and captains came calling on Don Dorgan at his shack. The old man was a slovenly figure, in open-necked flannel shirt and broken-backed slippers. Yet Dorgan straightened up when they came, and faced them like an old soldier called to duty. The dignitaries sat about awkwardly, while the commissioner tried to explain that the Big Fellows had heard Dorgan was lonely here, and that the department fund was, unofficially, going to send him to Dr. Bristow’s Private Asylum for the Aged and Mentally Infirm — which he euphemistically called “Doc Bristow’s Home.”

“No,” said Dorgan, “that’s a private booby-hatch. I don’t want to go there. Maybe they got swell rooms, but I don’t want to be stowed away with a bunch of nuts.”

They had to tell him, at last, that he was frightening the neighborhood with his ghostly patrol and warn him that if he did not give it up they would have to put him away some place.

“But I got to patrol!” he said. “My boys and girls here, they need me to look after them. I sit here and I hear voices — voices, I tell you, and they order me out on the beat... Stick me in the bughouse. I guess maybe it’s better. Say, tell Doc Bristow to not try any shenanigans wit’ me, but let me alone, or I’ll hand him something; I got a wallop like a probationer yet — I have so, Chief.”

The embarrassed committee left Captain Lucetti with him, to close up the old man’s shack and take him to the asylum in a taxi. The Captain suggested that the old uniform be left behind.

Dr. Davis Bristow was a conscientious but crotchety man who needed mental easement more than did any of his patients. The chief had put the fear of God into him, and he treated Dorgan with respect at first.

The chief had kind-heartedly arranged that Dorgan was to have a “rest,” that he should be given no work about the farm; and all day long Dorgan had nothing to do but pretend to read, and worry about his children.

Two men had been assigned to the beat, in succession, since his time; and the second man, though he was a good officer, came from among the respectable and did not understand the surly wistfulness of Little Hell. Dorgan was sure that the man wasn’t watching to lure Matty Carlson from her periodical desire to run away from her decent, patient husband.

So one night, distraught, Dorgan lowered himself from his window and ran, skulking, stumbling, muttering, across the outskirts and around to Little Hell. He didn’t have his old instinct for concealing his secret patrolling. A policeman saw him, in citizen’s clothes, swaying down his old beat, trying doors, humming to himself. And when they put him in the ambulance and drove him back to the asylum, he wept and begged to be allowed to return to duty.

Dr. Bristow telephoned to the chief of police, demanding permission to put Dorgan to work, and set him at gardening.

This was very well indeed. For through the rest of that summer, in the widespread gardens, and half the winter, in the greenhouses, Dorgan dug and sweated and learned the names of flowers. But early in January he began to worry once more. He told the super that he had figured out that with good behavior Polo Magenta would be out of the pen now, and needed looking after. “Yes, yes — well, I’m busy; sometime you tell me all about it,” Dr. Bristow jabbered, “but just this minute I’m very busy.”

One day in mid-January Dorgan prowled uneasily all day long — the more uneasy as a blizzard blew up and the world was shut off by a curtain of weaving snow. He went up to his room early in the evening. A nurse came to take away his shoes and overcoat, and cheerily bid him go to bed.

But once he was alone he deliberately tore a cotton blanket to strips and wound the strips about his thin slippers. He wadded newspapers and a sheet between his vest and his shirt. He found his thickest gardening cap. He quietly raised the window. He knocked out the light wooden bars with his big fist. He put his feet over the windowsill and dropped into the storm, and set out across the lawn. With his gaunt form huddled, his hands rammed into his coat pockets, his large feet moving slowly, certainly, in their moccasinlike covering of cloth and thin slippers, he plowed through to the street and down toward Little Hell.

Don Dorgan knew that the blizzard would keep him from being traced by the asylum authorities for a day or two, but he also knew that he could be overpowered by it. He turned into a series of alleys, and found a stable with a snowbound delivery wagon beside it. He brought hay from the stable, covered himself with it in the wagon, and promptly went to sleep. When he awoke the next afternoon the blizzard had ceased and he went on.

He came to the outskirts of Little Hell. Sneaking through alleys, he entered the back of McManus’s red-light-district garage.

McManus, the boss, was getting his machines out into the last gasps of the storm, for the street-car service was still tied up, and motors were at a premium. He saw Dorgan and yelled: “Hello there, Don. Where did you blow in from? Ain’t seen you these six months. T’ought you was living soft at some old-folks’ home or other.”

“No,” said Dorgan, with a gravity which forbade trifling, “I’m a... I’m a kind of watchman. Say, what’s this I hear, young Magenta is out of the pen?”

“Yes, the young whelp. I always said he was no good, when he used to work here, and—”

“What’s become of him?”

“He had the nerve to come here when he got out, looking for a job; suppose he wanted the chanst to smash up a few of my machines too! I hear he’s got a job wiping, at the K.N. roundhouse. Pretty rough joint, but good enough for the likes o’ him. Say, Don, things is slow since you went, what with these dirty agitators campaigning for prohibition—”

“Well,” said Dorgan, “I must be moseying along, John.”

Three men of hurried manner and rough natures threw Dorgan out of three various entrances to the roundhouse, but he sneaked in on the tender of a locomotive and saw Polo Magenta at work, wiping brass — or a wraith of Polo Magenta. He was thin, his eyes large and passionate. He took one look at Dorgan, and leaped to meet him.

“Dad — thunder — you old son of a gun.”

“Sure! Well, boy, how’s it coming?”

“Rotten.”

“Well?”

“Oh, the old stuff. Keepin’ the wanderin’ boy tonight wanderin’. The warden gives me good advice, and I thinks I’ve paid for bein’ a fool kid, and I pikes back to Little Hell with two bucks and lots of good intentions and — they seen me coming. The crooks was the only ones that welcomed me. McManus offered me a job, plain and fancy driving for guns. I turned it down and looks for decent work, which it didn’t look for me none. There’s a new cop on your old beat. Helpin’ Hand Henry, he is. He gets me up and tells me the surprisin’ news that I’m a desprit young jailbird, and he’s onto me — see; and if I chokes any old women or beats up any babes in arms, he’ll be there with the nippers — see! so I better quit my career of murder.

“I gets a job over in Milldale, driving a motor-truck, and he tips ’em off I’m a forger and an arson and I dunno what all, and they lets me out — wit’ some more good advice. Same wit’ other jobs.”

“Effie?”

“Ain’t seen her yet. But say, Dad, I got a letter from her that’s the real stuff — says she’ll stick by me till her dad croaks, and then come to me if it’s through fire. I got it here — it keeps me from going nutty. And a picture postcard of her. You see, I planned to nip in and see her before her old man knew I was out of the hoosegow, but this cop I was tellin’ you about wises up Kugler, and he sits on the doorstep with the Revolutionary musket loaded up with horseshoes and cobblestones, and so — get me? But I gets a letter through to her by one of the boys.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“Search me... There ain’t nobody to put us guys next, since you got off the beat, Dad.”

“I ain’t off it! Will you do what I tell you to?”

“Sure.”

“Then listen: You got to start in right here in Northernapolis, like you’re doing, and build up again. They didn’t sentence you to three years but to six — three of ’em here, getting folks to trust you again. It ain’t fair, but it is. See? You lasted there because the bars kep’ you in. Are you man enough to make your own bars, and to not have ’em wished onto you?”

“Maybe.”

“You are! You know how it is in the pen — you can’t pick and choose your cell or your work. Then listen: I’m middlin’ well off, for a bull — savin’s and pension. We’ll go partners in a fine little garage, and buck John McManus — he’s a crook, and we’ll run him out of business. But you got to be prepared to wait, and that’s the hardest thing to do. Will you?”

“Yes.”

“When you get through here, meet me in that hallway behind Mullins’s Casino. So long, boy.”

“So long, Dad.”

When Polo came to him in the hallway behind Mullins’s Casino, Dorgan demanded: “I been thinking; have you seen old Kugler?”

“Ain’t dared to lay an eye on him, Dad. Trouble enough without stirrin’ up more. Gettin’ diplomatic.”

“I been thinking. Sometimes the most diplomatic thing a guy can do is to go right to the point and surprise ’em. Come on with me.”

They came into Kugler’s shop, without parley or trembling; and Dorgan’s face was impassive, as befits a patrolman, as he thrust open the door and bellowed “Evenin’!” at the horrified old Jewish scholar and the maid.

Don Dorgan laid his hands on the counter and spoke.

“Kugler,” said he, “you’re going to listen to me, because if you don’t, I’ll wreck the works. You’ve spoiled four lives. You’ve made this boy a criminal, forbidding him a good, fine love, and now you’re planning to keep him one. You’ve kilt Effie the same way — look at the longing in the poor little pigeon’s face! You’ve made me an unhappy old man. You’ve made yourself, that’s meanin’ to be good and decent, unhappy by a row with your own flesh and blood. Some said I been off me nut, Kugler, but I know I been out beyont, where they understand everything and forgive everything — and I’ve learnt that it’s harder to be bad than to be good, that you been working harder to make us all unhappy than you could of to make us all happy.”

Dorgan’s gaunt, shabby bigness seemed to swell and fill the shop; his voice boomed and his eyes glowed with a will unassailable.

The tyrant Kugler was wordless, and he listened with respect as Dorgan went on, more gently:

“You’re a godly man among the sinners, but that’s made you think you must always be right. Are you willing to kill us all just to prove you can’t never be wrong? Man, man, that’s a fiendish thing to do. And oh, how much easier it would be to give way, oncet, and let this poor cold boy creep home to the warmness that he do be longing so for, with the blizzard bitter around him, and every man’s hand ag’in’ him. Look — look at them poor, good children!”

Kugler looked, and he beheld Polo and Effie — still separated by the chill marble counter — with their hands clasped across it, their eyes met in utter frankness.

“Vell—” said Kugler wistfully.

“So!” said Patrolman Dorgan. “Well, I must be back on me beat — at the asylum... There’s things that’d bear watching there!”

The Letter W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Original publication: Hearst’s International, April 1924; first collected in The Casuarina Tree (London, Heinemann, 1926)

Famously one of the greatest English fiction writers of the twentieth century, William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was actually born in Paris and his first language was French, learning English only after he moved to Kent to be raised by a strict clergyman uncle when his parents died. He suffered from tuberculosis and a pronounced stammer, a physical affliction he treated autobiographically in his most famous novel, Of Human Bondage (1915), with its club-footed protagonist.

Although he studied accounting and medicine, qualifying as a physician, Maugham wanted to be a writer and, when his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), was an immediate success, he gave up medicine to be a full-time writer and knew he had made the correct decision when his play, Lady Frederick, triumphed in 1907.

After his marriage to Lady Wellcome in 1915, he served in the Red Cross and a British ambulance unit in France early in World War I but was soon transferred to the Intelligence Department and traveled to Russia. He also served in World War II with the British Ministry of Information, stationed in Paris. He had bought a villa in southern France in 1928, shortly after his divorce, and made it his permanent home until his death.

Maugham enjoyed travel and frequently went to the Far East, sometimes to do research for his novels, such as The Moon and Sixpence (1919), based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, who had gone to live and work on a South Pacific island, and often for the sheer pleasure of the trip. Probably his most famous short story “Rain” (1921, originally published as “Miss Thompson”), is set on an island off the coast of Asia and inspired several film versions, beginning with a 1928 silent titled Sadie Thompson (with Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore), followed by the memorable Rain (1932), with Joan Crawford and Walter Huston, and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), a semimusical version in 3-D with Rita Hayworth and José Ferrer.

Set in Malaysia, “The Letter” is based on a real-life incident that occurred in 1911. A headmaster’s wife in Kuala Lumpur was arrested after she shot the manager of a local tin mine when, she claimed, he had come to her house while her husband was away and tried to kiss her. He turned off the lights, she told the courtroom, and when she reached for the light switch to turn it back on, she inadvertently grabbed a revolver and shot him six times. A jury found her guilty but public sympathy was with her, extolling her for protecting her virtue, and she received a pardon, even though the prosecutor presented evidence that she previously had been on intimate terms with her victim.

Maugham added only one element to the real-life murder, introducing a damning letter that leads to blackmail.

Title: The Letter, 1940

Studio: Warner Brothers

Director: William Wyler

Screenwriter: Howard E. Koch

Producer: Hal B. Wallis

• Bette Davis (Leslie Crosbie)

• Herbert Marshall (Robert Crosbie)

• James Stephenson (Howard Joyce)

• Frieda Inescort (Dorothy Joyce)

• Gale Sondergaard (Mrs. Hammond)

The plot was too perfect for Hollywood to tinker with it too much and, apart from the very last scene, the screenplay is utterly faithful to Maugham’s story. The Hays Office, formally known as the Production Code Administration, would not permit a murderer to go unpunished so scriptwriter Howard E. Koch added a final scene that punished the wayward wife. Lost to Hollywood censors is the recognition that no one in the Maugham story had any hope of happiness when all was said and done. The film is no darker than the story, simply more obvious.

The story was successfully adapted for the theater by Maugham, opening both in London and in New York in 1927. In London, Gladys Cooper produced and starred in it, with Nigel Bruce (later famous as Dr. Watson in all the Basil Rathbone — starring Sherlock Holmes films); it enjoyed a sixty-week run with theatrical icon Gerald du Maurier as the director. In the United States, Katharine Cornell starred in the Broadway run of 104 performances. It has since been revived on more than one occasion.

In addition to the 1940 Bette Davis vehicle, The Letter was also a film in 1929 with Jeanne Eagels as the adulteress/murderer. Herbert Marshall, who appeared as her lover, also was in the 1940 version as the cuckolded husband. Eagels, a great silent film star, died just a few months after the film was shot. Although she was deceased, she nonetheless was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress. The National Board of Review named The Letter one of the Top Ten Films of 1929.

Just as Jeanne Eagels had died shortly after filming the 1929 version of The Letter, James Stephenson also died within months after filming the 1940 version; he was only fifty-two.

“The Letter” also has been adapted for television on at least six occasions, the role of Leslie Crosbie being so juicy that major stars have taken the role, including Madeleine Carroll, Sylvia Sidney, Celia Johnson, and Lee Remick. In 1956, William Wyler again directed The Letter, this time as his first television drama; it starred Siobhan McKenna, John Mills, Michael Rennie, and Anna May Wong.

The story also was a radio staple, most interestingly as sixty-minute dramas on Lux Radio Theatre productions in 1941 and 1944 with Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall starring.

In a memorable scene from the film, Robert Crosbie, the disillusioned but hopeful husband, tells his cheating wife that he wants to go on as before, if she’ll promise to love him forever. “If you love a person,” he says, “you can forgive anything.”

Having agreed, and now in his arms, Leslie cries out, “No. With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”

The film received numerous awards and nominations. While it did not win an Academy Award, it was nominated for seven: Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Bette Davis), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (James Stephenson), Best Director (William Wyler), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Tony Gaudio), Best Film Editing (Warren Low), and Best Music, Original Score (Max Steiner).

THE LETTER W. Somerset Maugham

Outside on the quay the sun beat fiercely. A stream of motors, lorries, and buses, private cars and hirelings, sped up and down the crowded thoroughfare, and every chauffeur blew his horn. Rickshaws threaded their nimble path amid the throng, and the panting coolies found breath to yell at one another; coolies, carrying heavy bales, sidled along with their quick jog-trot and shouted to the passerby to make way. Itinerant vendors proclaimed their wares.

Singapore is the meeting-place of a hundred peoples, and men of all colors — black Tamils, yellow Chinks, brown Malays, Armenians, Jews, and Bengalis — called to one another in raucous tones. But inside the office of Messrs. Ripley, Joyce, & Naylor it was pleasantly cool; it was dark after the dusty glitter of the street and agreeably quiet after its unceasing din. Mr. Joyce sat in his private room, at the table, with an electric fan turned full on him. He was leaning back, his elbows on the arms of the chair, with the tips of the outstretched fingers of one hand resting neatly against the tips of the outstretched fingers of the other. His gaze rested on the battered volumes of the Law Reports which stood on a long shelf in front of him. On the top of a cupboard were square boxes of japanned tin on which were painted the names of various clients.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

A Chinese clerk, very neat in his white ducks, opened it.

“Mr. Crosbie is here, sir.”

He spoke beautiful English, accenting each word with precision, and Mr. Joyce had often wondered at the extent of his vocabulary. Ong Chi Seng was a Cantonese, and he had studied law at Gray’s Inn. He was spending a year or two with Messrs. Ripley, Joyce, & Naylor in order to prepare himself for practice on his own account. He was industrious, obliging, and of exemplary character.

“Show him in,” said Mr. Joyce.

He rose to shake hands with his visitor and asked him to sit down. The light fell on him as he did so. The face of Mr. Joyce remained in shadow. He was by nature a silent man, and now he looked at Robert Crosbie for quite a minute without speaking. Crosbie was a big fellow, well over six feet high, with broad shoulders, and muscular. He was a rubber-planter, hard with the constant exercise of walking over the estate and with the tennis which was his relaxation when the day’s work was over. He was deeply sunburned. His hairy hands, his feet in clumsy boots, were enormous, and Mr. Joyce found himself thinking that a blow of that great fist would easily kill the fragile Tamil. But there was no fierceness in his blue eyes. They were confiding and gentle, and his face, with its big, undistinguished features, was open, frank, and honest. But at this moment it bore a look of deep distress. It was drawn and haggard.

“You look as though you hadn’t had much sleep the last night or two,” said Mr. Joyce.

“I haven’t.”

Mr. Joyce noticed now the old felt hat, with its broad double brim, which Crosbie had placed on the table, and then his eyes traveled to the khaki shorts he wore, showing his red, hairy thighs, the tennis shirt open at the neck, without a tie, and the dirty khaki jacket with the ends of the sleeves turned up. He looked as though he had just come in from a long tramp among the rubber trees. Mr. Joyce gave a slight frown.

“You must pull yourself together, you know. You must keep your head.”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“Have you seen your wife today?”

“No, I’m to see her this afternoon. You know, it’s a damned shame that they have arrested her.”

“I think they had to do that,” Mr. Joyce answered in his level, soft tone.

“I should have thought they’d have let her out on bail.”

“It’s a very serious charge.”

“It is damnable. She did what any decent woman would do in her place. Only nine women out of ten wouldn’t have the pluck. Leslie’s the best woman in the world. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why, hang it all, man, I’ve been married to her for twelve years — do you think I don’t know her? God, if I’d got hold of the man I’d have wrung his neck. I’d have killed him without a moment’s hesitation. So would you.”

“My dear fellow, everybody’s on your side. No one has a good word to say for Hammond. We’re going to get her off. I don’t suppose either the assessors or the judge will go into court without having already made up their minds to bring in a verdict of Not Guilty.”

“The whole thing’s a farce!” said Crosbie violently. “She ought never to have been arrested in the first place. It’s terrible, after all the poor girl’s gone through, to subject her to the ordeal of a trial. There’s not a soul I’ve met since I’ve been in Singapore, man or woman, who hasn’t told me that Leslie was absolutely justified. I think it’s awful to keep her in prison all these weeks.”

“The law is the law. After all, she confesses that she killed the man. It is terrible, and I’m dreadfully sorry both for you and for her.”

“I don’t matter a hang,” interrupted Crosbie.

“But the fact remains that murder has been committed, and in a civilized community a trial is inevitable.”

“Is it murder to exterminate noxious vermin? She shot him as she would have shot a mad dog.”

Mr. Joyce leaned back again in his chair and once more placed the tips of his ten fingers together. The little construction he formed looked like the skeleton of a roof. He was silent for a moment. “I should be wanting in my duty as your legal adviser,” he said at last, in an even voice, looking at his client with his cool brown eyes, “if I did not tell you that there is one point which causes me just a little anxiety. If your wife had only shot Hammond once, the whole thing would be absolutely plain sailing. Unfortunately, she fired six times.”

“Her explanation is perfectly simple. In the circumstances, anyone would have done the same.”

“I daresay,” said Mr. Joyce, “and of course I think the explanation is very reasonable. But it’s no good closing our eyes to the facts. It’s always a good plan to put yourself in another man’s place, and I can’t deny that if I were prosecuting for the Crown that’s the point on which I could center my inquiry.”

“My dear fellow, that’s perfectly idiotic.”

Mr. Joyce shot a sharp glance at Robert Crosbie. The shadow of a smile hovered over his shapely lips. Crosbie was a good fellow, but he could hardly be described as intelligent.

“I daresay it’s of no importance,” answered the lawyer, “I just thought it was a point worth mentioning. You haven’t got very long to wait now, and when it’s all over I recommend you go off somewhere with your wife on a trip and forget all about it. Even though we are almost dead certain to get an acquittal, a trial of that sort is anxious work and you’ll both want a rest.”

For the first time, Crosbie smiled, and his smile strangely changed his face. You forgot the uncouthness and saw only the goodness of his soul.

“I think I shall want it more than Leslie. She’s borne up wonderfully. By God, there’s a plucky little woman for you.”

“Yes, I’ve been very much struck by her self-control,” said the lawyer. “I should never have guessed that she was capable of such determination.”

His duties as her counsel had made it necessary for him to have a good many interviews with Mrs. Crosbie since her arrest. Though things had been made as easy as could be for her, the fact remained that she was in jail, awaiting her trial for murder, and it would not have been surprising if her nerves had failed her. She appeared to bear her ordeal with composure. She read a great deal, took such exercise as was possible, and by favor of the authorities worked at the pillow lace which had always formed the entertainment of her long hours of leisure.

When Mr. Joyce saw her, she was neatly dressed in cool, fresh, simple frocks, her hair was carefully arranged, and her nails were manicured. Her manner was collected. She was able even to jest upon the little inconveniences of her position. There was something casual about the way in which she spoke of the tragedy which suggested to Mr. Joyce that only her good breeding prevented her from finding something a trifle ludicrous in a situation which was eminently serious. It surprised him, for he had never thought that she had a sense of humor.

He had known her off and on for a good many years. When she paid visits to Singapore, she generally came to dine with his wife and himself, and once or twice she had passed a weekend with them at their bungalow by the sea. His wife had spent a fortnight with her on the estate and had met Geoffrey Hammond several times. The two couples had been on friendly, if not on intimate, terms, and it was on this account that Robert Crosbie had rushed over to Singapore immediately after the catastrophe and begged Mr. Joyce to take charge of his unhappy wife’s defense.

The story she told him the first time he saw her she had never varied in the smallest detail. She told it as coolly then, a few hours after the tragedy, as she told it now. She told it connectedly, in a level, even voice, and her only sign of confusion was when a slight color came into her cheeks as she described one or two of its incidents.

She was the last woman to whom one would have expected such a thing to happen. She was in the early thirties, a fragile creature, neither short nor tall, and graceful rather than pretty. Her wrists and ankles were very delicate, but she was extremely thin and you could see the bones of her hands through the white skin, and the veins were large and blue. Her face was colorless, slightly sallow, and her lips were pale. You didn’t notice the color of her eyes. She had a great deal of light-brown hair and it had a slight, natural wave. It was the sort of hair that with a little touching-up would have been very pretty, but you couldn’t imagine that Mrs. Crosbie would think of resorting to any such device. She was a quiet, pleasant, unassuming woman. Her manner was engaging, and if she was not very popular it was because she suffered from a certain shyness. This was comprehensible enough, for the planter’s life is lonely, and in her own house, with people she knew, she was in her quiet way charming. Mrs. Joyce, after her fortnight’s stay, had told her husband that Leslie was a very agreeable hostess. There was more in her, she said, than people thought, and when you came to know her you were surprised how much she had read and how entertaining she could be.

She was the last woman in the world to commit murder.

Mr. Joyce dismissed Robert Crosbie with such reassuring words as he could find and, once more alone in his office, turned over the pages of the brief. But it was a mechanical action, for all its details were familiar to him. The case was the sensation of the day, and it was discussed in all the clubs, at all the dinner tables up and down the Peninsula from Singapore to Penang.

The facts that Mrs. Crosbie gave were simple. Her husband had gone to Singapore on business and she was alone for the night. She dined by herself, late, at a quarter to nine, and after dinner sat in the sitting room, working at her lace. It opened onto the verandah. There was no one in the bungalow, for the servants had retired to their own quarters at the back of the compound. She was surprised to hear a step on the gravel path in the garden, a booted step which suggested a white man rather than a native, for she had not heard a motor drive up and she could not imagine who could be coming to see her at that time of night. Someone ascended the few stairs that led up to the bungalow, walked across the verandah, and appeared at the door of the room in which she sat. At the first moment, she did not recognize the visitor. She sat with a shaded lamp and he stood with his back to the darkness.

“May I come in?” he said.

She did not recognize the voice.

“Who is it?” she asked. She worked with spectacles, and she took them off as she spoke.

“Geoff Hammond.”

“Of course. Come in and have a drink.”

She rose and shook hands with him cordially. She was a little surprised to see him, for though he was a neighbor neither she nor Robert had been lately on very intimate terms with him, and she had not seen him for some weeks. He was the manager of a rubber estate nearly eight miles from theirs and she wondered why he had chosen this late hour to come and see them.

“Robert’s away,” she said. “He had to go to Singapore for the night.”

Perhaps he thought his visit called for some explanation, for he said: “I’m sorry. I felt rather lonely tonight, so I thought I’d come along and see how you were getting on.”

“How on earth did you come? I never heard a car.”

“I left it down the road. I thought you might both be in bed and asleep.”

This was natural enough. The planter gets up at dawn in order to take the rollcall of the workers, and soon after dinner he is glad to go to bed. Hammond’s car was in point of fact found next day a quarter of a mile from the bungalow.

Since Robert was away, there was no whisky and soda in the room. Leslie didn’t call the boy, since he was probably asleep, but fetched it herself. Her guest mixed himself a drink and filled his pipe.

Geoff Hammond had a host of friends in the colony. He was at this time in the late thirties, but he had come out as a lad. He had been one of the first to volunteer on the outbreak of war and had done very well. A wound in the knee caused him to be invalided out of the Army after two years, but he returned to the Federated Malay States with a D.S.O. and an M.C. He was one of the best billiard players in the colony. He had been a beautiful dancer and a fine tennis player, but, though able no longer to dance, and his tennis, with a stiff knee, was not so good as it had been, he had the gift of popularity and was universally liked. He was a tall, good-looking fellow, with attractive blue eyes and a fine head of black, curling hair. Old stagers said his only fault was that he was too fond of the girls, and after the catastrophe they shook their heads and vowed that they had always known this would get him into trouble.

He began now to talk to Leslie about the local affairs, the forthcoming races in Singapore, the price of rubber, and his chances of killing a tiger which had been lately seen in the neighborhood. She was anxious to finish by a certain date the piece of lace on which she was working, for she wanted to send it home for her mother’s birthday, and so put on her spectacles again and drew toward her chair the little table on which stood the pillow.

“I wish you wouldn’t wear those great horn-spectacles,” he said. “I don’t know why a pretty woman should do her best to look plain.”

She was a trifle taken aback at this remark. He had never used that tone with her before. She thought the best thing was to make light of it.

“I have no pretensions to being a raving beauty, you know, and, if you ask me point-blank, I’m bound to tell you that I don’t care two pins if you think me plain or not.”

“I don’t think you’re plain. I think you’re awfully pretty.”

“Sweet of you,” she answered ironically. “But in that case, I can only think you half witted.”

He chuckled. But he rose from his chair and sat down in another by her side. “You’re not going to have the face to deny that you have the prettiest hands in the world,” he said. He made a gesture as though to take one of them.

She gave him a little tap. “Don’t be an idiot. Sit down where you were before and talk sensibly or I shall send you home.”

He did not move. “Don’t you know I’m awfully in love with you?” he said.

She remained quite cool. “I don’t. I don’t believe it for a minute, and even if it were true I don’t want you to say it.”

She was the more surprised at what he was saying, since during the seven years she had known him, he had never paid her any particular attention. When he came back from the war, they had seen a good deal of one another, and once when he was ill Robert had gone over and brought him back to their bungalow in his car. He had stayed with them then for a fortnight. But their interests were dissimilar and the acquaintance had never ripened into friendship. For the last two or three years, they had seen little of him. Now and then he came over to play tennis, now and then they met him at some planter’s who was giving a party, but it often happened that they didn’t set eyes on him for a month at a time.

Now he took another whisky and soda. Leslie wondered if he had been drinking before. There was something odd about him, and it made her a trifle uneasy. She watched him help himself with disapproval.

“I wouldn’t drink any more if I were you,” she said, good-humoredly still.

He emptied his glass and put it down. “Do you think I’m talking to you like this because I’m drunk?” he asked abruptly.

“That’s the most obvious explanation, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s a lie. I’ve loved you ever since I first knew you. I’ve held my tongue as long as I could, and now it’s got to come out. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She rose and carefully put aside the pillow. “Goodnight,” she said.

“I’m not going now.”

At last she began to lose her temper. “But, you poor fool, don’t you know I’ve never loved anyone but Robert, and if I didn’t love Robert you’re the last man I should care for.”

“What do I care? Robert’s away.”

“If you don’t go away this minute I shall call the boys and have you thrown out.”

“They’re out of earshot.”

She was very angry now. She made a movement as though to go onto the verandah, from which the houseboy would certainly hear her, but he seized her arm.

“Let me go!” she cried furiously.

“Not much. I’ve got you now.”

She opened her mouth and called, “Boy! Boy!” but with a quick gesture he put his hand over it. Then, before she knew what he was about, he had taken her in his arms and was kissing her passionately. She struggled, turning her lips away from his burning mouth. “No, no, no!” she cried. “Leave me alone! I won’t!”

She grew confused about what happened then. All that had been said before she remembered accurately, but now his words assailed her ears through a mist of horror and fear. He seemed to plead for her love. He broke into violent protestations of passion. And all the time he held her in his tempestuous embrace. She was helpless, for he was a strong, powerful man and her arms were pinioned to her sides. Her struggles were unavailing and she felt herself growing weaker — she was afraid she would faint, and his hot breath on her face made her feel desperately sick. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks, her hair. The pressure of his arms was killing her. He lifted her off her feet. She tried to kick him, but he only held her more closely. He was carrying her now. He wasn’t speaking any more, but his face was pale and his eyes hot with desire. He was taking her into the bedroom. He was no longer a civilized man, but a savage. And as he ran, he stumbled against a table that was in the way. His stiff knee made him a little awkward on his feet, and with the burden of the woman in his arms he fell.

In a moment, she had snatched herself away from him and ran round the sofa. He was up in a flash and flung himself toward her. There was a revolver on the desk. She was not a nervous woman, but Robert was to be away for the night and she had meant to take it into her room when she went to bed. That was why it happened to be there. She was frantic with terror now. She didn’t know what she was doing. She heard a report. She saw Hammond stagger. He gave a cry. He said something, she didn’t know what. He lurched out of the room onto the verandah. She was in a frenzy now, she was beside herself. She followed him out, yes, that was it, she must have followed him out, though she remembered nothing of it, she followed, firing automatically shot after shot till the six chambers were empty. Hammond fell down on the floor of the verandah. He crumpled up into a bloody heap.

When the boys, startled by the reports, rushed up, they found her standing over Hammond with the revolver still in her hand, and Hammond lifeless. She looked at them for a moment without speaking. They stood in a frightened, huddled bunch. She let the revolver fall from her hand and without a word turned and went into the sitting room. They watched her go into her bedroom and turn the key in the lock. They dared not touch the dead body, but looked at it with terrified eyes, talking excitedly to one another in undertones. Then the head-boy collected himself — he had been with them for many years, he was Chinese and a level-headed fellow. Robert had gone into Singapore on his motorcycle and the car stood in the garage. He told the seis to get it out — they must go at once to the Assistant District Officer and tell him what had happened. He picked up the revolver and put it in his pocket.

The A.D.O., a man called Withers, lived on the outskirts of the nearest town, which was about thirty-five miles away. It took them an hour and a half to reach him. Everyone was asleep and they had to rouse the boys. Presently Withers came out and they told him their errand. The head-boy showed him the revolver in proof of what he said. The A.D.O. went into his room to dress, sent for his car, and in a little while was following them back along the deserted road.

The dawn was just breaking as he reached the Crosbies’ bungalow. He ran up the steps of the verandah, and stopped short as he saw Hammond’s body lying where he fell. He touched the face. It was quite cold.

“Where’s mem?” he asked the house-boy.

The Chinese pointed to the bedroom. Withers went to the door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. “Mrs. Crosbie!” he called.

“Who is it?”

“Withers.”

There was another pause. Then the door was unlocked and slowly opened. Leslie stood before him. She had not been to bed and wore the tea-gown in which she had dined. She stood and looked silently at the A.D.O.

“Your house-boy fetched me,” he said. “Hammond. What have you done?”

“He tried to rape me and I shot him.”

“My God! I say, you’d better come out here. You must tell me exactly what happened.”

“Not now. I can’t. You must give me time. Send for my husband.”

Withers was a young man, and he did not know exactly what to do in an emergency which was so out of the run of his duties. Leslie refused to say anything till at last Robert arrived. Then she told the two men the story, from which since then, though she had repeated it over and over again, she had never in the slightest degree diverged.

The point to which Mr. Joyce recurred was the shooting. As a lawyer, he was bothered that Leslie had fired not once but six times, and the examination of the dead man showed that four of the shots had been fired close to the body. One might almost have thought that when the man fell, she stood over him and emptied the contents of the revolver into him. She confessed that her memory, so accurate for all that had preceded, failed her here. Her mind was blank. It pointed to an uncontrollable fury, but uncontrollable fury was the last thing you would have expected from this quiet and demure woman. Mr. Joyce had known her a good many years and had always thought her an unemotional person. During the weeks that had passed since the tragedy, her composure had been amazing.

Mr. Joyce shrugged his shoulders. “The fact is, I suppose,” he reflected, “that you can never tell what hidden possibilities of savagery there are in the most respectable of women.” There was a knock at the door. “Come in.”

The Chinese clerk entered and closed the door behind him. He closed it gently, with deliberation but decidedly, and advanced to the table at which Mr. Joyce was sitting.

“May I trouble you, sir, for a few words’ private conversation?” he said.

The elaborate accuracy with which the clerk expressed himself always faintly amused Mr. Joyce, and now he smiled. “It’s no trouble, Chi Seng,” he replied.

“The matter on which I desire to speak to you, sir, is delicate and confidential.”

“Fire away.”

Mr. Joyce met his clerk’s shrewd eyes. As usual, Ong Chi Seng was dressed in the height of local fashion. He wore very shiny patent-leather shoes and gay silk socks. In his black tie was a pearl-and-ruby pin, and on the fourth finger of his left hand a diamond ring. From the pocket of his neat white coat protruded a gold fountain pen and a gold pencil. He wore a gold wristwatch, and on the bridge of his nose invisible pince-nez. He gave a little cough.

“The matter has to do with the case R. v. Crosbie, sir.”

“Yes?”

“A circumstance has come to my knowledge, sir, which seems to me to put a different complexion on it.”

“What circumstance?”

“It has come to my knowledge, sir, that there is a letter in existence from the defendant to the unfortunate victim of the tragedy.”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. In the course of the last seven years, I have no doubt that Mrs. Crosbie often had occasion to write to Mr. Hammond.” Mr. Joyce had a high opinion of his clerk’s intelligence and his words were designed to conceal his thoughts.

“That is very probable, sir. Mrs. Crosbie must have communicated with the deceased frequently, to invite him to dine with her, for example, or to propose a tennis game. That was my first thought when the matter was brought to my notice. This letter, however, was written on the day of the late Mr. Hammond’s death.”

Mr. Joyce did not flicker an eyelash. He continued to look at Ong Chi Seng with the smile of faint amusement with which he generally talked to him. “Who has told you this?”

“The circumstances were brought to my knowledge, sir, by a fliend of mine.”

Mr. Joyce knew better than to insist.

“You will no doubt recall, sir, that Mrs. Crosbie has stated that until the fatal night she had had no communication with the deceased for several weeks.”

“Have you got the letter?”

“No, sir.”

“What are its contents?”

“My fliend gave me a copy. Would you like to peruse it, sir?”

“I should.”

Ong Chi Seng took from an inside pocket a bulky wallet. It was filled with papers, Singapore dollar notes, and cigarette cards. From the confusion he presently extracted a half sheet of thin notepaper and placed it before Mr. Joyce. The letter read as follows:

“R. will be away for the night. I absolutely must see you. I shall expect you at eleven. I am desperate and if you don’t come I won’t answer for the consequences. Don’t drive up.

— L.”

It was written in the flowing hand which the Chinese were taught at the foreign schools. The writing, so lacking in character, was oddly incongruous with the ominous words.

“What makes you think this note was written by Mrs. Crosbie?”

“I have every confidence in the veracity of my informant, sir,” replied Ong Chi Seng. “And the matter can very easily be put to the proof. Mrs. Crosbie will no doubt be able to tell you at once whether she wrote such a letter or not.”

Since the beginning of the conversation, Mr. Joyce hadn’t taken his eyes off the respectful countenance of his clerk. He wondered now if he discerned in it a faint expression of mockery. “It is inconceivable that Mrs. Crosbie should have written such a letter,” said Mr. Joyce.

“If that is your opinion, sir, the matter is of course ended. My fliend spoke to me on the subject only because he thought, as I was in your office, you might like to know of the existence of this letter before a communication was made to the Deputy Public Prosecutor.”

“Who has the original?” asked Mr. Joyce sharply.

Ong Chi Seng made no sign that he perceived in this question and its manner a change of attitude. “You will remember, sir, no doubt, that after the death of Mr. Hammond it was discovered that he had had relations with a Chinese woman. The letter is at present in her possession.”

That was one of the things which had turned public opinion most vehemently against Hammond. It came to be known that for several months he had had a Chinese woman living in his house.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Indeed everything had been said and each understood the other perfectly.

“I’m obliged to you, Chi Seng. I will give the matter my consideration.”

“Very good, sir. Do you wish me to make a communication to that effect to my fliend?”

“I daresay it would be as well if you kept in touch with him,” Joyce answered with gravity.

“Yes, sir.”

The clerk noiselessly left the room, shutting the door again with deliberation, and left Mr. Joyce to his reflections. He stared at the copy, in its neat, impersonal writing, of Leslie’s letter. Vague suspicions troubled him. They were so disconcerting that he made an effort to put them out of his mind. There must be a simple explanation of the letter, and Leslie without doubt could give it at once, but, by heaven, an explanation was needed. He rose from his chair, put the letter in his pocket, and took his topee.

When he went out, Ong Chi Seng was busily writing at his desk. “I’m going out for a few minutes, Chi Seng,” he said.

“Mr. George Reed is coming by appointment at twelve o’clock, sir. Where shall I say you’ve gone?”

Mr. Joyce gave him a thin smile. “You can say that you haven’t the least idea.”

But he knew perfectly well that Ong Chi Seng was aware that he was going to the jail. Though the crime had been committed in Belanda and the trial was to take place at Belanda Bharu, since there was in the jail there no convenience for the detention of a white woman Mrs. Crosbie had been brought to Singapore.

When she was led into the room in which he waited, she held out her thin, distinguished hand and gave him a pleasant smile. She was as ever neatly and simply dressed and her abundant, pale hair was arranged with care. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning,” she said graciously.

She might have been in her own house, and Mr. Joyce almost expected to hear her call the boy and tell him to bring the visitor a gin pahit.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m in the best of health, thank you.” A flicker of amusement flashed across her eyes. “This is a wonderful place for a rest cure.”

The attendant withdrew and they were left alone.

“Do sit down,” said Leslie.

He took a chair. He didn’t quite know how to begin. She was so cool that it seemed almost impossible to say to her that thing he had come to say. Though she was not pretty, there was something agreeable in her appearance. She had elegance, but it was the elegance of good breeding in which there was nothing of the artifice of society. You had only to look at her to know what sort of people she had and what kind of surroundings she had lived in. Her fragility gave her a singular refinement. It was impossible to associate her with the vaguest idea of grossness.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Robert this afternoon,” she said in her good-humored, easy voice. It was a pleasure to hear her speak, her voice and her accent were so distinctive of her class. “Poor dear, it’s been a great trial to his nerves. I’m thankful it’ll all be over in a few days.”

“It’s only five days now.”

“I know. Each morning when I awake I say to myself, ‘one less.’ ” She smiled. “Just as I used to do at school and the holidays were coming.”

“By the way, am I right in thinking that you had no communication whatever with Hammond for several weeks before the catastrophe?”

“I’m quite positive of that. The last time we met was at a tennis-party at the MacFarrens’. I don’t think I said more than two words to him. They have the two courts, and we didn’t happen to be in the same sets.”

“And you hadn’t written to him?”

“Oh, no.”

“Are you quite sure of that?”

“Oh, quite,” she answered with a little smile. “There was nothing I should write to him for except to ask him to dine or to play tennis, and I hadn’t done either for months.”

“At one time you’d been on fairly intimate terms with him. How did it happen that you’d stopped asking him to anything?”

Mrs. Crosbie shrugged her thin shoulders. “One gets tired of people. We hadn’t anything very much in common. Of course, when he was ill, Robert and I did everything we could for him, but the last year or two he’s been quite well and he was very popular. He had a good many calls on his time and there didn’t seem to be any need to shower invitations upon him.”

“Are you quite certain that was all?”

Mrs. Crosbie hesitated for a moment. “Well, I may just as well tell you. It had come to our ears that he was living with a Chinese woman, and Robert said he wouldn’t have him in the house. I had seen her myself.”

Mr. Joyce was sitting in a straight-backed armchair, resting his chin on his hand, and his eyes were fixed on Leslie. Was it his fancy that as she made this remark her black pupils were filled, for the fraction of a second, with a dull red light? The effect was startling. Mr. Joyce shifted in his chair. He placed the tips of his ten fingers together. He spoke very slowly, choosing his words.

“I think I should tell you that there is in existence a letter in your handwriting to Geoff Hammond.”

He watched her closely. She made no movement, nor did her face change color, but she took a noticeable time to reply.

“In the past I’ve often sent him little notes to ask him to something or other, or to get me something when I knew he was going to Singapore.”

“This letter asks him to come and see you because Robert was going to Singapore.”

“That’s impossible. I never did anything of the kind.”

“You’d better read it for yourself.”

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She gave it a glance and with a smile of scorn handed it back to him. “That’s not my handwriting.”

“It’s said to be an exact copy of the original.”

She took it back and read the words now, and as she read a horrible change came over her. Her colorless face grew dreadful to look at. It turned green. The flesh seemed to fall away and her skin was tightly stretched over the bones. Her lips receded, showing her teeth, so that she had the appearance of making a grimace. She stared at Joyce with eyes that started from their sockets. He was looking now at a gibbering death’s head.

“What does it mean?” she whispered. Her mouth was so dry that she could utter no more than a hoarse sound. It was no longer a human voice.

“That is for you to say,” he answered.

“I didn’t write it. I swear I didn’t write it.”

“Be very careful what you say. If the original is in your handwriting, it would be useless to deny it.”

“It would be a forgery.”

“It would be difficult to prove that. It would be easy to prove it was genuine.”

A shiver passed through her lean body, but great beads of sweat stood on her forehead. She took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped the palms of her hands. She glanced at the letter again and gave Mr. Joyce a sidelong look. “It’s not dated. If I had written it and forgotten all about it, it might have been written years ago. If you’ll give me time, I’ll try and remember the circumstances.”

“I noticed there was no date. If this letter were in the hands of the prosecution, they would cross-examine the boys. They would soon find out whether someone took a letter to Hammond on the day of his death.”

Mrs. Crosbie clasped her hands violently and swayed in her chair so that he thought she would faint. “I swear to you that I didn’t write that letter.”

Mr. Joyce was silent for a little while. He took his eyes from her distraught face and looked down on the floor, reflecting. “In these circumstances, we need not go into the matter further,” he said slowly, at last breaking the silence. “If the possessor of this letter sees fit to place it in the hands of the prosecution you will be prepared.”

His words suggested that he had nothing more to say to her, but he made no movement of departure. He waited. To himself he seemed to wait a very long time. He did not look at Leslie, but he was conscious that she sat very still. She made no sound.

At last it was he who spoke. “If you have nothing more to say to me, I think I’ll be getting back to my office.”

“What would anyone who read the letter be inclined to think that it meant?” she asked.

“He’d know that you had told a deliberate lie,” answered Mr. Joyce sharply.

“When?”

“You have stated definitely that you had had no communication with Hammond for at least three months.”

“The whole thing has been a terrible shock to me. The events of that dreadful night have been a nightmare. It’s not very strange if one detail has escaped my memory.”

“It would be very unfortunate, when your memory has reproduced so exactly every particular of your interview with Hammond, that you should have forgotten so important a point as that he came to see you in the bungalow on the night of his death at your express desire.”

“I hadn’t forgotten. After what happened, I was afraid to mention it. I thought none of you would believe my story if I admitted he’d come at my invitation. I daresay it was stupid of me, but I lost my head — and after I’d said once that I’d had no communication with Hammond, I was obliged to stick to it.” By now, Leslie had recovered her admirable composure and she met Mr. Joyce’s appraising glance with candor. Her gentleness was very disarming.

“You’ll be required to explain, then, why you asked Hammond to come and see you when Robert was away for the night.”

She turned her eyes full on the lawyer. He had been mistaken in thinking them insignificant. They were rather fine eyes, and unless he was mistaken they were bright now with tears. Her voice had a little break in it.

“It was a surprise I was preparing for Robert. His birthday is next month. I knew he wanted a new gun and you know I’m dreadfully stupid about sporting things. I wanted to talk to Geoff about it. I thought I’d get him to order it for me.”

“Perhaps the terms of the letter are not very clear to your recollection. Will you have another look at it?”

“No, I don’t want to,” she said quickly.

“Does it seem to you the sort of letter a woman would write to a somewhat distant acquaintance because she wanted to consult him about buying a gun?”

“I daresay it’s rather extravagant and emotional. I do express myself like that, you know. I’m quite prepared to admit it’s very silly.” She smiled. “And, after all, Geoff Hammond wasn’t quite a distant acquaintance. When he was ill, I’d nursed him like a mother. I asked him to come when Robert was away because Robert wouldn’t have him in the house.”

Mr. Joyce was tired of sitting so long in the same position. He rose and walked once or twice up and down the room, choosing the words he proposed to say, then he leaned over the back of the chair in which he had been sitting. He spoke slowly in a tone of deep gravity. “Mrs. Crosbie, I want to talk to you very, very seriously. This case was comparatively plain sailing. There was only one point which seemed to me to require explanation. As far as I could judge, you had fired no less than four shots into Hammond when he was lying on the ground. It was hard to accept the possibility that a delicate, frightened, and habitually self-controlled woman, of gentle nurture and refined instincts, should have surrendered to an absolutely uncontrolled frenzy. But of course it was admissible. Although Geoffrey Hammond was much liked and on the whole thought highly of, I was prepared to prove that he was the sort of man who might be guilty of the crime which in justification of your act you accused him of. The fact, which was discovered after his death, that he had been living with a Chinese woman gave us something very definite to go on. That robbed him of any sympathy which might have been felt for him. We made up our minds to make use of the odium which such a connection cast upon him in the minds of all respectable people. I told your husband this morning that I was certain of an acquittal, and I wasn’t just telling him that to give him heart. I do not believe the assessors would have left the Court.”

They looked into one another’s eyes. Mrs. Crosbie was strangely still. She was like a little bird paralyzed by the fascination of a snake. He went on in the same quiet tones. “But this letter has thrown an entirely different complexion on the case. I am your legal adviser, I shall represent you in Court. I take your story as you tell it to me, and I shall conduct your defense according to its terms. It may be that I believe your statements, and it may be that I doubt them. The duty of counsel is to persuade the Court that the evidence placed before it is not such as to justify it in bringing in a verdict of Guilty, and any private opinion he may have of the guilt or innocence of his client is entirely beside the point.”

He was astonished to see in Leslie’s eyes the flicker of a smile. Piqued, he went on somewhat drily, “You’re not going to deny that Hammond came to your house at your urgent, and I may even say, hysterical invitation?”

Mrs. Crosbie, hesitating for an instant, seemed to consider. “They can prove that the letter was taken to his bungalow by one of the house-boys. He rode over on his bicycle.”

“You mustn’t expect other people to be more stupid than you. The letter will put them on the track of suspicions which have entered nobody’s head. I will not tell you what I personally thought when I saw the copy. I do not wish you to tell me anything but what is needed to save your neck.”

Mrs. Crosbie gave a shrill cry. She sprang to her feet, white with terror. “You don’t think they’d hang me?”

“If they came to the conclusion that you hadn’t killed Hammond in self-defense, it would be the duty of the assessors to bring in a verdict of Guilty. The charge is murder. It would be the duty of the judge to sentence you to death.”

“But what can they prove?” she gasped.

“I don’t know what they can prove. I don’t want to know. But if their suspicions are aroused, if they begin to make inquiries, if the natives are questioned — what is it that can be discovered?” She crumpled up suddenly. She fell on the floor before he could catch her. She had fainted.

He looked round the room for water, but there was none there, and he did not want to be disturbed. He stretched her out on the floor and, kneeling beside her, waited for her to recover. When she opened her eyes, he was disconcerted by the ghastly fear that he saw in them. “Keep quite still,” he said. “You’ll be better in a moment.”

“You won’t let them hang me,” she whispered. She began to cry hysterically, while in undertones he sought to quieten her.

“For goodness’ sake, pull yourself together,” he said.

“Give me a minute.”

Her courage was amazing. He could see the effort she made to regain her self-control, and soon she was once more calm. “Let me get up now.”

He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. Taking her arm, he led her to the chair. She sat down wearily. “Don’t talk to me for a minute or two,” she said.

“Very well.”

When at last she spoke, it was to say something he didn’t expect. She gave a little sigh. “I’m afraid I’ve made rather a mess of things,” she said.

He didn’t answer, and once more there was a silence.

“Isn’t it possible to get hold of the letter?” she said at last.

“I don’t think anything would have been said to me about it if the person in whose possession it is was not prepared to sell it.”

“Who’s got it?”

“The Chinese woman who was living in Hammond’s house.”

A spot of color flickered for an instant on Leslie’s cheekbones. “Does she want a lot for it?”

“I imagine she has a very shrewd idea of its value. I doubt if it would be possible to get hold of it except for a very large sum.”

“Are you going to let me be hanged?”

“Do you think it’s so simple as all that to secure possession of an unwelcome piece of evidence? It’s no different from suborning a witness. You have no right to make any such suggestion to me.”

“Then what is going to happen to me?”

“Justice must take its course.”

She grew very pale. A little shudder passed through her body. “I put myself in your hands. Of course, I have no right to ask you to do anything that isn’t proper.”

Mr. Joyce had not bargained for the little break in her voice which her habitual self-restraint made quite intolerably moving. She looked at him with humble eyes and he thought that if he rejected their appeal they would haunt him for the rest of his life. After all, nothing could bring poor Hammond back to life again. He wondered what really was the explanation of that letter. It wasn’t fair to conclude from it that she had killed Hammond without provocation. He had lived in the East a long time and his sense of professional honor wasn’t perhaps so acute as it had been twenty years before.

He stared at the floor. He made up his mind to do something which he knew was unjustifiable, but it stuck in his throat and he felt dully resentful toward Leslie. It embarrassed him a little to speak. “I don’t know exactly what your husband’s circumstances are.”

Flushing a rosy red, she shot a swift glance at him. “He has a good many tin shares and a small share in two or three rubber estates. I suppose he could raise money.”

“He would have to be told what it was for.”

She was silent for a moment. She seemed to think.

“He’s in love with me still. He would make any sacrifice to save me. Is there any need for him to see the letter?”

Mr. Joyce frowned a little, and, quick to notice, she went on. “Robert is an old friend of yours. I’m not asking you to do anything for me, I’m asking you to save a rather simple, kind man who never did you any harm from all the pain that’s possible.”

Mr. Joyce did not reply. He rose to go and Mrs. Crosbie, with the grace that was natural to her, held out her hand. She was shaken by the scene, and her look was haggard, but she made a brave attempt to speed him with courtesy. “It’s so good of you to take all this trouble for me. I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am.”

Mr. Joyce returned to his office. He sat in his own room, quite still, attempting to do no work, and pondered. His imagination brought him many strange ideas. He shuddered a little. At last there was the discreet knock on the door which he was expecting. Ong Chi Seng came in.

“I was just going out to have my tiffin, sir,” he said.

“All right.”

“I didn’t know if there was anything you wanted before I went, sir.”

“I don’t think so. Did you make another appointment for Mr. Reed?”

“Yes, sir. He will come at three o’clock.”

“Good.”

Ong Chi Seng turned away, walked to the door, and put his long, slim fingers on the handle. Then, as though on an afterthought, he turned back. “Is there anything you wish me to say to my fliend, sir?” Although Ong Chi Seng spoke English so admirably, he had still a difficulty with the letter “r.”

“What friend?”

“About the letter Mrs. Crosbie wrote to Hammond deceased, sir.”

“Oh! I’d forgotten about that. I mentioned it to Mrs. Crosbie and she denies having written anything of the sort. It’s evidently a forgery.” Joyce took the copy from his pocket and handed it to Ong Chi Seng. Ong Chi Seng ignored the gesture.

“In that case, sir, I suppose there would be no objection if my fliend delivered the letter to the Deputy Public Prosecutor.”

“None. But I don’t quite see what good that would do your friend.”

“My fliend, sir, thought it was his duty in the interests of justice.”

“I am the last man in the world to interfere with anyone who wishes to do his duty, Chi Seng.”

The eyes of the lawyer and of the Chinese clerk met. Not the shadow of a smile hovered on the lips of either, but they understood each other perfectly.

“I quite understand, sir,” said Ong Chi Seng, “but from my study of the case R. v. Crosbie I am of opinion that the production of such a letter would be damaging to our client.”

“I have always had a very high opinion of your legal acumen, Chi Seng.”

“It has occurred to me, sir, that if I could persuade my fliend to induce the Chinese woman who has the letter to deliver it into our hands it would save a great deal of trouble.”

Mr. Joyce idly drew faces on his blotting-paper. “I suppose your friend is a businessman. In what circumstances do you think he would be induced to part with the letter?”

“He has not got the letter. The Chinese woman has the letter. He is only a relation of the Chinese woman. She is an ignorant woman — she did not know the value of the letter till my fliend told her.”

“What value did he put on it?”

“Ten thousand dollars, sir.”

“Good God! Where on earth do you suppose Mrs. Crosbie can get ten thousand dollars! I tell you, the letter’s a forgery!”

He looked up at Ong Chi Seng as he spoke. The clerk was unmoved by the outburst. He stood at the side of the desk, civil, cool, and observant. “Mr. Crosbie owns an eighth share of the Betong Rubber Estate and a sixth share of the Selantan River Rubber Estate. I have a fliend who will lend him the money on the security of his properties.”

“You have a large circle of acquaintance, Chi Seng.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you can tell them to go to hell. I would never advise Mr. Crosbie to give a penny more than five thousand for a letter that can be very easily explained.”

“The Chinese woman does not want to sell the letter, sir. My fliend took a long time to persuade her. It is useless to offer her less than the sum mentioned.”

Mr. Joyce looked at Ong Chi Seng for at least three minutes. The clerk bore the searching scrutiny without embarrassment. He stood in a respectful attitude with downcast eyes. Mr. Joyce knew his man. Clever fellow, Chi Seng, he thought, I wonder how much he’s going to get out of it.

“Ten thousand dollars is a very large sum.”

“Mr. Crosbie will certainly pay it rather than see his wife hanged, sir.”

Again Mr. Joyce paused. What more did Chi Seng know than he had said? He must be pretty sure of his ground if he was obviously so unwilling to bargain. That sum had been fixed because whoever it was that was managing the affair knew it was the largest amount Robert Crosbie could raise.

“Where is the Chinese woman now?” asked Mr. Joyce.

“She is staying at the house of my fliend, sir.”

“Will she come here?”

“I think it more better if you go to her, sir. I can take you to the house tonight and she will give you the letter. She is a very ignorant woman, sir, and she does not understand checks.”

“I wasn’t thinking of giving her a check. I will bring banknotes with me.”

“It would only be waste of valuable time to bring less than ten thousand dollars, sir.”

“I quite understand.”

“I will go and tell my fliend after I have had my tiffin, sir.”

“Very good. You’d better meet me outside the club at ten o’clock tonight.”

“With pleasure, sir,” said Ong Chi Seng.

He gave Mr. Joyce a little bow and left the room. Joyce went out to have luncheon, too. He went to the club, and here, as he had expected, he saw Robert Crosbie. He was sitting at a crowded table, and as he passed him, looking for a place, Mr. Joyce touched him on the shoulder. “I’d like a word or two with you before you go,” he said.

“Right you are. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Mr. Joyce had made up his mind how to tackle him. He played a rubber of bridge after luncheon in order to allow time for the club to empty itself. He didn’t want on this particular matter to see Crosbie in his office. Presently Crosbie came into the card-room and looked on till the game was finished. The other players went on their various affairs, and the two were left alone.

“A rather unfortunate thing has happened, old man,” said Joyce, in a tone which he sought to render as casual as possible. “It appears that your wife sent a letter to Hammond asking him to come to the bungalow on the night he was killed.”

“But that’s impossible,” cried Crosbie. “She’s always stated that she had had no communication with Hammond. I know from my own knowledge that she hadn’t set eyes on him for a couple of months.”

“The fact remains that the letter exists. It’s in the possession of the Chinese woman Hammond was living with. Your wife meant to give you a present on your birthday, and she wanted Hammond to help her to get it. In the emotional excitement that she suffered from after the tragedy, she forgot all about it, and having once denied having any communication with Hammond she was afraid to say she’d made a mistake. It was of course very unfortunate, but I daresay it wasn’t unnatural.”

Crosbie didn’t speak. His large red face bore an expression of complete bewilderment, and Mr. Joyce was at once relieved and exasperated by his lack of comprehension. He was a stupid man, and Joyce had no patience with stupidity. But his distress since the catastrophe had touched a soft spot in the lawyer’s heart and Mrs. Crosbie had struck the right note when she asked him to help her, not for her sake but for her husband’s.

“I need not tell you that it would be very awkward if this letter found its way into the hands of the prosecution. Your wife has lied, and she would be asked to explain the lie. It alters things a little if Hammond did not intrude, an unwanted guest, but came to your house by invitation. It would be easy to arouse in the assessors a certain indecision of mind.”

Mr. Joyce hesitated. He was face to face now with his decision. If it had been a time for humor, he could have smiled at the reflection that he was taking so grave a step and that the man for whom he was taking it had not the smallest conception of its gravity. If he gave the matter a thought, he probably imagined that what Mr. Joyce was doing was what any lawyer did in the ordinary run of business.

“My dear Robert, you are not only my client but my friend. I think we must get hold of that letter. It’ll cost a good deal of money. Except for that, I should have preferred to say nothing to you about it.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“That’s a devil of a lot. With the slump and one thing and another, it’ll take just about all I’ve got.”

“Can you get it at once?”

“I suppose so. Old Charlie Meadows will let me have it on my tin shares and on those two estates I’m interested in.”

“Then will you?”

“Is it absolutely necessary?”

“If you want your wife to be acquitted.”

Crosbie grew very red. His mouth sagged strangely. “But—” He couldn’t find words, his face now was purple. “But I don’t understand. She can explain. You don’t mean to say they’d find her guilty? They couldn’t hang her for putting a noxious vermin out of the way!”

“Of course they wouldn’t hang her. They might only find her guilty of manslaughter. She’d probably get off with two or three years.”

Crosbie started to his feet and his red face was distraught with horror. “Three years!”

Then something seemed to dawn in that slow intelligence of his. His mind was darkness across which shot suddenly a flash of lightning, and though the succeeding darkness was as profound there remained the memory of something not seen but perhaps just descried. Mr. Joyce saw that Crosbie’s big red hands, coarse and hard with all the odd jobs he had set them to, trembled.

“What was the present she wanted to make me?”

“She says she wanted to give you a new gun.”

Once more that great red face flushed a deeper red. “When have you got to have the money ready?” There was something odd in his voice now. It sounded as though he spoke with invisible hands clutching at his throat.

“At ten o’clock tonight. I thought you could bring it to my office at about six.”

“Is the woman coming to you?”

“No, I’m going to her.”

“I’ll bring the money. I’ll come with you.”

Mr. Joyce looked at him sharply. “Do you think there’s any need for you to do that? I think it would be better if you left me to deal with this matter by myself.”

“It’s my money, isn’t it? I’m going to come.”

Mr. Joyce shrugged his shoulders. They rose and shook hands. Mr. Joyce looked at him curiously.

At ten o’clock they met in the empty club.

“Everything all right?” asked Mr. Joyce.

“Yes. I’ve got the money in my pocket.”

“Let’s go, then.”

They walked down the steps. Mr. Joyce’s car was waiting for them in the square, silent at that hour, and as they came to it, Ong Chi Seng stepped out of the shadow of a house. He took his seat beside the driver and gave him a direction. They drove past the Hotel de l’Europe and turned up by the Sailors’ Home to get into Victoria Street. Here the Chinese shops were open still, idlers lounged about, and in the roadway rickshaws and motor-cars and gharries gave a busy air to the scene.

Suddenly their car stopped and Chi Seng turned round. “I think it more better if we walk here, sir,” he said. They got out and he went on. They followed a step or two behind. Then he asked them to stop. “You wait here, sir. I go in and speak to my fliend.”

He went into a shop, open to the street, where three or four Chinese were standing behind the counter. It was one of those strange shops where nothing was on view and you wondered what it was they sold there. They saw him address a stout man in a duck suit with a large gold chain across his breast and the man shot a quick glance out into the night. He gave Chi Seng a key and Chi Seng came out. He beckoned to the two men waiting and slid into a doorway at the side of the shop. They followed him and found themselves at the foot of a flight of stairs.

“If you wait a minute, I will light a match,” he said, always resourceful. “You come upstairs, please.”

He held a Japanese match in front of them, but it scarcely dispelled the darkness and they groped their way up behind him. On the first floor, he unlocked a door and, going in, lit a gas-jet. “Come in, please,” he said.

It was a small, square room with one window, and the only furniture consisted of two low Chinese beds covered with matting. In one corner was a large chest with an elaborate lock, and on this stood a shabby tray with an opium pipe on it and a lamp. There was in the room the faint, acrid scent of the drug.

They sat down and Ong Chi Seng offered them cigarettes. In a moment, the door was opened by the fat Chinaman they’d seen behind the counter. He bade them good evening in very good English and sat down by the side of his fellow countryman.

“The woman is just coming,” said Chi Seng.

A boy from the shop brought in a tray with a teapot and cups and the Chinaman offered them a cup of tea. Crosbie refused. The Chinese talked to one another in undertones, but Crosbie and Mr. Joyce were silent.

At last there was the sound of a voice outside — someone was calling in a low tone — and the Chinaman went to the door. He opened it, spoke a few words, and ushered a woman in. Mr. Joyce looked at her. He had heard much about her since Hammond’s death, but he had never seen her. She was a stoutish person, not very young, with a broad, phlegmatic face. She was powdered and rouged and her eyebrows were thin black lines, but she gave the impression of a woman of character. She wore a pale-blue jacket and a white skirt. Her costume was not quite European nor quite Chinese, but on her feet were little Chinese silk slippers. She wore heavy gold chains round her neck, gold bangles on her wrists, gold earrings, and elaborate gold pins in her black hair. She walked in slowly, with the air of a woman sure of herself, but with a certain heaviness of tread, and sat down on the bed beside Ong Chi Seng. He said something to her and, nodding, she gave an incurious glance at the two white men.

“Has she got the letter?” asked Mr. Joyce.

“Yes, sir.”

Crosbie said nothing, but produced a roll of five-hundred-dollar notes. He counted out twenty and handed them to Chi Seng. “Will you see if that is correct?”

The clerk counted them and gave them to the fat Chinaman. “Quite correct, sir.”

The Chinaman counted them once more and put them in his pocket. He spoke again to the woman and she drew from her bosom a letter. She gave it to Chi Seng, who cast his eyes over it. “This is the right document, sir,” he said, and was about to give it to Mr. Joyce when Crosbie took it from him.

“Let me look at it,” he said.

Mr. Joyce watched him read and then held out his hand for it. “You’d better let me have it.”

Crosbie folded it up deliberately and put it in his pocket. “No, I’m going to keep it myself. It’s cost me enough money.”

Mr. Joyce made no rejoinder. The three Chinese watched the little passage, but what they thought about it, or whether they thought, was impossible to tell from their impassive countenances. Mr. Joyce rose to his feet. “Do you want me any more tonight, sir?” said Ong Chi Seng.

“No.” Joyce knew the clerk wished to stay behind in order to get his agreed share of the money and he turned to Crosbie. “Are you ready?”

Crosbie did not answer, but stood up. The Chinaman went to the door and opened it for them. Chi Seng found a bit of candle and lit it in order to light them down, and the two Chinese accompanied them to the street. They left the woman sitting quietly on the bed, smoking. When they reached the street, the Chinese left them and went once more upstairs.

“What are you going to do with that letter?” asked Mr. Joyce.

“Keep it.”

They walked to where the car was waiting for them and here Mr. Joyce offered his friend a lift. Crosbie shook his head. “I’m going to walk.” He hesitated a little and shuffled his feet. “I went to Singapore on the night of Hammond’s death partly to buy a new gun that a man I knew wanted to dispose of. Goodnight.”

He disappeared quickly into the darkness...

Mr. Joyce was quite right about the trial. The assessors went into court fully determined to acquit Mrs. Crosbie. She gave evidence on her own behalf. She told her story simply and with straightforwardness. The D.P.P. was a kindly man and it was plain that he took no great pleasure in his task. He asked the necessary questions in a deprecating manner. His speech for the prosecution might really have been a speech for the defense, and the assessors took less than five minutes to consider their popular verdict. It was impossible to prevent the great outburst of applause with which it was received by the crowd that packed the courthouse. The judge congratulated Mrs. Crosbie and she was a free woman.

No one had expressed a more violent disapprobation of Hammond’s behavior than Mrs. Joyce. She was a woman loyal to her friends and she had insisted on the Crosbies staying with her after the trial — for she, in common with everyone else, had no doubt of the result — till they could make arrangements to go away. It was out of the question for poor, dear, brave Leslie to return to the bungalow at which the horrible catastrophe had taken place.

The trial was over by half past twelve, and when they reached the Joyces’ house a grand luncheon was awaiting them. Cocktails were ready, Mrs. Joyce’s million-dollar cocktail was celebrated through all the Malay States, and Mrs. Joyce drank Leslie’s health. She was a talkative, vivacious woman, and now she was in the highest spirits. It was fortunate, for the rest of them were silent. She did not wonder, her husband never had much to say, and the other two were naturally exhausted from the long strain to which they had been subjected. During luncheon, she carried on a bright and spirited monologue. Then coffee was served.

“Now, children,” she said in her gay, bustling fashion, “you must have a rest, and after tea I shall take you both for a drive to the sea.”

Mr. Joyce, who lunched at home only by exception, had of course to go back to his office.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Joyce,” said Crosbie. “I’ve got to get back to the estate at once.”

“Not today?” she cried.

“Yes, now. I’ve neglected it for too long and I have urgent business. But I shall be very grateful if you will keep Leslie until we’ve decided what to do.”

Mrs. Joyce was about to expostulate, but her husband prevented her. “If he must go, he must, and there’s an end of it.” There was something in the lawyer’s tone which made her look at him quickly. She held her tongue and there was a moment’s silence. Then Crosbie spoke again.

“If you’ll forgive me, I’ll start at once so that I can get there before dark.” He rose from the table. “Will you come and see me off, Leslie?”

“Of course.”

They went out of the dining room together.

“I think that’s rather inconsiderate of him,” said Mrs. Joyce. “He must know that Leslie wants to be with him just now.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t go if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

“Well, I’ll just see that Leslie’s room is ready for her. She wants a complete rest, of course, and then amusement.”

Mrs. Joyce left the room and Joyce sat down again. In a short time, he heard Crosbie start the engine of his motorcycle and then noisily scrunch over the gravel of the garden path. He got up and went into the drawing room. Mrs. Crosbie was standing in the middle of it, looking into space, and in her hand was an open letter. He recognized it. She gave him a glance as he came in and he saw that she was deathly pale.

“He knows,” she whispered.

Mr. Joyce went up to her and took the letter from her hand. He lit a match and set the paper afire. She watched it burn. When he could hold it no longer, he dropped it on the tiled floor and they both looked at the paper curl and blacken. Then he trod it into ashes with his foot.

“What does he know?”

She gave him a long, long stare and into her eyes came a strange look. Was it contempt or despair? Mr. Joyce could not tell. “He knows that Geoff was my lover.”

Mr. Joyce made no movement and uttered no sound.

“He’d been my lover for years. He became my lover almost immediately after he came back from the war. We knew how careful we must be. When we became lovers, I pretended I was tired of him and he seldom came to the house when Robert was there. I used to drive out to a place we knew and he met me, two or three times a week, and when Robert went to Singapore he used to come to the bungalow late, when the boys had gone for the night. We saw one another constantly, all the time, and not a soul had the smallest suspicion of it. And then lately, a year ago, he began to change. I didn’t know what was the matter. I couldn’t believe he didn’t care for me any more. He always denied it. I was frantic. I made scenes. Sometimes I thought he hated me. Oh, if you knew what agonies I endured! I passed through hell! I knew he didn’t want me any more and I wouldn’t let him go! Misery! Misery! I loved him. I’d given him everything, he was my life!

“And then I heard he was living with a Chinese woman. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. At last I saw her, I saw her with my own eyes, walking in the village, with her gold bracelets and her necklaces, an old fat Chinese woman. She was older than I was. Horrible! They all knew in the kampong that she was his mistress. And when I passed her, she looked at me and I knew that she knew I was his mistress, too. I sent for him — I told him I must see him. You’ve read the letter. I was mad to write it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t care. I hadn’t seen him for ten days. It was a lifetime. And when last we’d parted he took me in his arms and kissed me and told me not to worry. And he went straight from my arms to hers.”

She had been speaking in a low voice, vehemently, and now she stopped and wrung her hands.

“That damned letter. We’d always been so careful. He always tore up any word I wrote to him the moment he’d read it. How was I to know he’d leave that one? He came and I told him I knew about the Chinawoman. He denied it. He said it was only scandal. I was beside myself. I don’t know what I said to him. Oh, I hated him then. I tore him limb from limb. I said everything I could to wound him. I insulted him. I could have spat in his face. And at last he turned on me. He told me he was sick and tired of me and never wanted to see me again. He said I bored him to death. And then he acknowledged that it was true about the woman. He said he’d known her for years, before the war, and she was the only woman who really meant anything to him, and the rest was just pastime. And he said he was glad I knew, and now at last I’d leave him alone. And then I don’t know what happened, I was beside myself. I seized the revolver and I fired. He gave a cry and I saw I’d hit him. He staggered and rushed for the verandah. I ran after him and fired again. He fell, and then I stood over him and I fired and fired till the revolver went click, click, and I knew there were no more cartridges.”

At last she stopped, panting. Her face was no longer human — it was distorted with cruelty, and rage and pain. You would never have thought that this quiet, refined woman was capable of such a fiendish passion. Mr. Joyce took a step backward. He was absolutely aghast at the sight of her. It was not a face, it was a gibbering, hideous mask. Then they heard a voice calling from another room, a loud, friendly, cheerful voice. It was Mrs. Joyce.

“Come along, Leslie darling, your room’s ready. You must be dropping with sleep.”

Mrs. Crosbie’s features gradually composed themselves. Those passions, so clearly delineated, were smoothed away as with your hand you would smooth a crumpled paper, and in a minute the face was cool and calm and unlined. She was a trifle pale, but her lips broke into a pleasant, affable smile. She was once more the well bred and even distinguished woman.

“I’m coming, Dorothy dear. I’m sorry to give you so much trouble,” she called.