The Devil's Cook

6

Fan slept so soundly that she woke the next morning with a hangover. On her stomach, her face buried in her pillow, she raised her head heavily and squinted at her alarm clock. If she were seeing right, and if the clock were not telling a lie, she had exactly fifteen minutes to bathe and dress and get to work — clearly an impossibility, even if she skipped breakfast.

Her own alarm system began ringing dire warnings of an irate employer and immediate dismissal. Fan bounced out of bed and sprang wildly for the bathroom. She was standing there with her pajama pants in a limp little heap around her feet before she remembered that this was Saturday morning, no work today, and to hell with alarm clocks and employers.

Weak with relief, she hoisted her pants and retied the string and strolled back to her bed and sat down on the edge of it. She had been shocked so widely awake that it was now hopeless to try to go back to sleep.

She began to think in terms of a leisurely shower and breakfast. The soft and silken feeling of having two whole days with nothing to do was nicely developing when all at once the events of the previous evening returned to her clearing head.

Had Terry come home in the night?

And where the devil was Ben?

Fan put coffee on in the kitchen and returned to the bathroom for her shower. Dressed and brushed, she boiled an egg, toasted a slice of bread, and ate the egg and toast with two cups of black coffee and strawberry jam. She washed her breakfast things and put them away, and then she was ready to apply herself to the problems at hand. A minute later she was rapping briskly on Farley’s door downstairs.

No answer — clearly, Farley was still asleep or had gone out. Of these alternatives, the former was more likely. This conclusion called for repeated and louder knocking, which Fanny was prepared to administer; but then it occurred to her that the best policy, when you wanted information, was to go to the horse’s mouth. So she moved across the hall to Jay Miles’s door and, stooping to plant an ear close to the panel, listened shamelessly. She was rewarded by the faint sound of movement within, and Fan knocked. After a moment the door was opened by Jay, who had been interrupted in the act of tying a knot in a black string tie.

“How do you do that without a mirror?” Fanny said. “It looks hard.”

“It’s easy,” Jay said. “What do you want, Fanny? I’m in a hurry.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I have a Saturday morning class.”

“Oh, then Terry got home all right last night.”

“Your concern is commendable, but your assumption is wrong. Terry didn’t get home last night, or this morning either.”

“Well, are you just going off calmly to meet a ridiculous class when your wife is missing and unaccounted for?”

“Exactly. What alternative would you suggest?”

“Did you call the hospitals last night?”

“I did. As I predicted, quite needlessly.”

“If she were my wife, I’d call the police this instant.”

“If you were and did, Terry would have your scalp. Believe me, the last thing Terry would want is the police messing around in this. How can I make you understand, Fanny? I don’t want to appear churlish, but I’d appreciate it if you would stay out of my personal affairs.”

“Oh, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.”

“I’m sorry. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to finish dressing.”

He shut the door quietly in Fanny’s face; and Fanny, ignored at one door and rejected at the other, climbed upstairs to her own apartment and had a third cup of the coffee. She felt by no means deflated. If Terry was Jay’s business, Ben was hers, and she was not prepared to relinquish her rights in the old devil so long as there was even a suggestion of his involvement. Or the least hope of rescuing him from his delinquency. On second thought, it was probably just as well, everything considered, to delay notifying the police.

The Personal was what made things so confused. If Ben was involved, the Personal made no sense. Besides being too devious for Ben’s tastes, it was susceptible to detection and correct interpretation, and thereby risky. And why the ‘O.’ instead of ‘B.’, inasmuch as ‘T.M.’ was used instead of something deceptive? It made no sense whatever. Could it be, as Jay insisted, that the Personal was just a coincidence? It would surely be enlightening, Fanny thought, to know who had placed it in the paper.

The thought became instantly a resolution to find out. It would give her something to do while Farley snored and Jay taught his class. Something constructive might come of it, although Fan had reservations. It did not do to expect too much, she had learned, because it only increased your disappointment when you got too little — or nothing.

She was not sure that newspapers divulged the identity of users of their Personal columns. They might consider it confidential information like doctors and lawyers and the clergy. There was no point in speculating about it, however. She could learn by trying, and that was what she was going to do.

The Personal had appeared in The Journal, the only paper in town with considerable circulation. Fanny happened to know where its offices and plant were located, for she passed the building every day going to work on the bus. She put on hat and coat and gloves and went down to the bus stop on the corner and caught a bus going downtown.

At the Journal building, Fan was directed to Classified Ads. She found it without difficulty. Behind a high counter, a breasty woman asked her crisply, in a voice that defied her to do so, if she wished to place an ad.

“I don’t wish to place one,” said Fanny, “but I’d like to find out the name of someone who did.”

“Wasn’t the name published with the ad? Can you tell me the kind of ad it was?”

“It appeared in the Personal column of the Thursday evening edition.”

The woman’s expression immediately said that she had just been asked to commit treason.

“I’m sorry. The identity of Personal placers is not revealed.”

“It’s important.”

“No, no. It’s quite impossible.”

“Well,” said Fanny, stretching the facts to fit the occasion, “it is probable that whoever inserted that ad is some kind of criminal. Well, I suppose you’re honor bound to protect him.”

“There is no certainty that we know the identity of the party. We often don’t in Personals, you know.” It was now evident in the woman’s face that rules and curiosity were at odds. “Do you have a copy of the newspaper with you?”

“No, I don’t, but I can quote the ad.”

Fanny quoted it verbatim, having a retentive memory. It was apparent at once that the woman remembered it. It was equally apparent, from the way honor rose above curiosity, that honor had won a cheap victory.

“I remember the item very well,” the woman said. “It came in the mail with cash payment enclosed. I know because it came to my desk, and I arranged myself for its publication. I haven’t, of course, the least idea who sent it. Sorry I can’t help you.”

When Fan left the Journal building, it was approaching noon and seemed a long time from her boiled egg. She decided to lunch downtown. But first she spent half an hour in, a department store resisting the temptation to buy several items she did not need. Then she went to the café in a hotel where the blue-plate special was corned beef and cabbage and little boiled potatoes sprinkled with parsley. After lunching on this, with just one martini beforehand to whet her appetite, she caught another bus and returned to The Cornish Arms.

From the vestibule she walked directly back to Farley’s door and began to knock on it loudly, convinced that it was high time Farley was getting up if he hadn’t already done so. As it turned out he had, but only recently, for he was, although dressed, still disheveled and surly. He glared at Fanny with animosity.

“Stop that damn banging!” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The order to stop banging was ex post facto, since it had necessarily stopped when he pulled the door away from her fist. So Fanny, ignoring it, slipped past into the room and turned to face him with disapproval.

“I think I’m doing things that need doing, that’s what I think. While you have been sleeping and Jay has been off doing inconsequential things, I have been busy trying to discover what’s become of Terry. How do you expect to accomplish anything by lying in bed?”

Farley fell into a chair and finger-combed his tousled hair with a temperate despair. His glare had diminished in animosity.

“Which means,” he said, “that you have been making a pest of yourself again. Fan, why don’t you have the common decency to mind your own business? What, precisely, have you been up to now?”

“I’ve been downtown to the newspaper office to see if I could find out who placed the Personal, but I couldn’t They have some kind of rule against telling. They didn’t know, anyhow, because the Personal was sent in the mail. My efforts went for nothing.”

“Serves you right. Maybe now you will butt out and stay out. Did you inquire before you left if Terry had come back or not?”

“I’m not as addle-headed as you seem to think, Farley. I asked Jay.”

“What did Jay say?”

“He said Terry hadn’t returned.”

“Did he also suggest that you quit meddling?”

“Well, yes, he did, as a matter of fact.”

“Good! I recommend that you comply.”

“You’re as bad as Jay, Farley, and that’s the truth. Neither of you is willing to take any action whatever in this matter. If you ask me, it’s not natural for a husband to be so indifferent to the unexplained absence of his wife.”

“Jay’s not indifferent. He’s stoic. He has become inured by constant repetition.”

“I don’t care a hang what you call it, it’s not natural. And, as I recall, you were kind of disturbed yourself in the beginning. What suddenly happened to make you change, I’d like to know?”

“Nothing happened. I merely decided to observe a period of quiet out of respect for the dead.”

“Dead!” Fanny gave a startled little leap. “Are you implying that Terry is dead?”

“Hell, no. I was referring to the Terry-Jay marriage. Surely you’re perceptive enough to see that it is, as the saying goes, as dead as last year’s bird nest.”

“Is that all?” Fanny relaxed. “I know you and Jay are convinced that nothing is indicated but a peccadillo, but I have been making an effort to learn the truth, and it’s my opinion that it’s time you did a little something to help.”

“Not I. I’ve withdrawn from the fray.”

“We’ll see about that. There is something helpful you can do without setting foot from this apartment.”

“Such as?”

“Such as calling the taxi companies. They must keep a record of calls, and one of them may be able to tell you if someone was picked up here, or near here, about three o’clock yesterday.”

“Like hell! I don’t intend to waste my time calling taxi companies.”

“Why not? Your time is largely wasted, anyhow. We could find out where Terry was taken, if she was taken.”

“If there’s anything to this Personal that’s got you so hot and bothered, she only went to the university library. The distance is easily walkable.”

“Because she went there is no sign she stayed there. She could have gone on in the taxi to some place else with whomever she met.”

“I simply won’t call any taxi companies. There’s no use asking me.”

“Very well. And next time you want five, or ten or twenty dollars, I simply won’t give it to you. There’ll be no use asking me.”

“So that’s the way it is!” Farley glared at her with a resurgence of his early animosity. “Blackmail!”

“I prefer to call it fair pay for services rendered. No services, no pay.”

“All right, damn it! If you’re going to be so nasty about it, I’ll have to humor you. Now get out of here, Fan. Go think of something else useless to do.”

He got up and, taking her firmly by an elbow, ushered Fanny to the door.

“Wait a minute,” said Fanny. “Not so fast, brother. I’m sorry to say that you can’t always be trusted to keep your word. When will you make the calls?”

“Just as soon as I’ve had some breakfast.”

“Breakfast! It’s past lunch time.”

“Breakfast, lunch, shmunch. As soon as I’ve eaten. Not before.”

“All right, then. But see that you do. If you don’t, I’ll make you sorry.”

Fanny permitted herself to be pushed into the hall. And at that moment, as luck would have it, there was Jay Miles, returning from the university.