The Institute

23

Then back to the cards and the nothingness for several days, maybe a week. One night when I answered the phone, a familiar voice said: “Lloyd?”

“Mr. Garrett!” I croaked, sounding shaky.

“Is Hortense there?”

“No, she’s not.”

“Where is she? Do you know?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. She disappeared one night, just walked out on me. Since then, I haven’t seen her. And you may as well know: I’d see her in hell before I’d lift one finger to find her.”

“Lloyd, I have to find her.”

“O.K., but if you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t.”

“Also, I have to see you. Can you come in tonight?”

“Mr. Garrett, it’s true I’ve done nothing to find her, but at the same time, she might call me, and I feel I should be here in case she does. If it’s that important, why can’t you come out here?”

“O.K., O.K., I’ll do that.”

He arrived in less than an hour. I waited for him out in the hall. When he stepped out of the elevator, we shook hands. We went inside and I hung up his hat and coat and followed him into the living room. He wandered around, looking. Then he mentioned that he was just back from Europe, “from Brussels where I was setting up a new outfit to bid on NATO hardware. I shouldn’t have gone, with Hortense playing it wild, but when something like this comes up, you more or less have to be there.” Then after looking at more pictures, he said: “Lloyd, when I was here before and you threw the headlock on me, I didn’t tell you quite all of it. There was no need to, and I left part of it out, a shameful, terrible part. The night Hortense had her miscarriage, I carried her down to the ambulance and went to the hospital with her. But when I got back, I could hardly straighten up, and I knew I had strained myself. Inga was there, of course, so she took over. She brought me back to her room where she had a vibrator already plugged in, and she put it on my back. It was the first I knew what a mean little place we’d given her to live in. But, Lloyd, it had a smell. It smelled like her. While she was working on me, that smell was working, too. We just melted together — the first time, the first time in my life that a woman responded to me. It stood me on my ear... I’m still standing on it. But she had an ear, too, so she began dreaming dreams — of marrying me. And when I stalled and sidestepped, and waffled and said how tough that would be, how Hortense would never consent, so I couldn’t get a divorce, I suddenly knew that she believed me and that soon I would be free.”

“Free? How?”

“As a widower, free.”

“Could you make that a little plainer?”

“She meant to kill Hortense.”

“Are you serious, Mr. Garrett?”

“There’s a balcony outside one of the bedroom windows of the Wilmington apartment, and I caught her out there — imagining things! One push was all it would take, and what could anyone prove?”

“What did you do?”

“Fired her, sent her to London and kept on meeting her there. I told Hortense she’d been called back to Stockholm. Then you entered the picture, Hortense moved down with you, and I brought Inga back. But now Hortense is in it again. She was in Wilmington week before last, staying at the Du Pont but seeing Inga at the apartment. Then she went to New York and Inga went with her. Then back to Wilmington, the two of them still together, and then down here to Washington at the Watergate apartment. That’s where he lost her tonight, this gumshoe I got to watch her. And that’s when I called you on the chance she was here. Incidentally, I gave him your number so he’d know how to reach me in case he had something to report. Oh, I forgot to mention: the Watergate place has a balcony much like the one in Wilmington. Lloyd, I’ve got the shakes. I feel that something is up, but I’m helpless to do anything.”

He stopped talking but kept walking around. I opened my mouth to say it fit what Teddy had told me, but changed my mind.

Pretty soon he sat down on the sofa across from me. I must have showed the strain because he said: “I’m sorry, Lloyd; it’s hard for me to realize that someone else — meaning you — can be just as concerned as me. To me, there is only one Hortense—”

“There couldn’t be two.”

Then I added: “However, what’s going through my head right now is an angle you seemed to have overlooked. You’re concerned about Inga’s interest in balconies. Try that in reverse — for Hortense.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“By one little push, Hortense could also—”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Of course, it wouldn’t really be like Hortense.”

“The hell it wouldn’t. It would be exactly like her.”

We sat there awhile, studying our feet. He started to say something, but I held up my hand. I had just heard the freight elevator speak. It was now after midnight and a most unlikely time for anyone to be using that elevator — except one person. It creaked and creaked and creaked. Then it stopped. From the sound it made, I could tell that it had stopped at the seventh floor, my floor. Then came the sound of a key and the door to the hall opened. The person who came in was a dumpy little woman, maybe forty years old, with a halfway good-looking face, a black winter coat, and a little black hat. She was kind of foreign-looking. Behind her, closing the door, was Hortense in her mink coat, without a hat. My heart skipped a beat as the coat broke in front in a way that suggested the bulge of her belly. She led the way into the living room, but when she got as far as the sofas, the other woman stopped and made two “knicks.”

So far, Garrett hadn’t moved and neither had I. Suddenly Hortense was furious, blazing away at us: “It’s customary for gentlemen to rise when ladies enter the room — or are you gentlemen?”

“We do get up when ladies enter the room,” I said very loudly, “but when idiots enter a room, we’re all crossed up. What was the big idea, just walking out like that? Why couldn’t you call just once? Didn’t you have any money for a phone call? Why?”

“Don’t you talk to me that way!”

“It’s my place. I’ll talk as I please.”

“It’s my place, too, and—”

“That’s what you think, sister.”

She screamed, then came charging over in back of the sofa, and began slapping my face from behind. She yelped at Garrett: “Why don’t you get up?”

He still hadn’t moved. Now he yawned a big phoney yawn which he pretended to hide behind the back of his hand. “I would have got up,” he said, “except I wasn’t quite sure I was here. Thought perhaps I had died or turned into glass or something or into air like a ghost. No one has spoken to me since they came into this room or even noticed that I exist.”

“I did speak to you — just now.”

“Oh, yeah, but I mean, to greet me. I have feelings, and they’re tender, like young asparagus. And—”

“Then hello.”

She snapped it out, but Garrett got up. “And hello, yourself,” he said with a cold little smile. “What do you want?”

“From you, nothing. We’re calling on Lloyd Palmer, so keep out of it, please, until someone asks you in. As to what’s going to be said that concerns you, you’d better stick around so you’ll know what’s going to be done. Then perhaps we’ll talk.”

“I’ll sit down, if you don’t mind.”

After Hortense had glowered at him for a moment, she turned to me. “Lloyd,” she began very dramatically, “will you, for Inga’s benefit, repeat what you’ve said to me, that you want to marry me, that is, if you still want to?”

“This is Inga?”

“Yes, of course it’s Inga.”

“Then why don’t you introduce us?”

Shook as I was at seeing her, I was plenty annoyed, and I must have showed it, that she was treating Inga so rudely, not even bothering to introduce her, obviously for the same reason that Garrett had balked at marrying her: she was a servant. As far as I was concerned, though, she was a guest in my home, and there I had rules.

“Well!” she gasped, “if we have to be that formal about it — Inga, Dr. Palmer; Dr. Palmer, Inga.”

“Does Inga have a last name?”

“I just told you her name.”

“Her last name, I said.”

Hortense looked blank.

“It is Bergson,” Inga said.

“Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss, Dr. Palmer, it is Miss.”

“Miss Bergson, I am honored. Please sit down.”

“Sank you, sank you.” She got off another knick but remained standing. Apparently, if Hortense couldn’t forget what she was and Garrett couldn’t, then she couldn’t either. I didn’t argue about it, but instead stepped back to where Hortense was standing, by the bookcase next to the fireplace.

“Answering you question,” I said, “I want to marry you, of course, and the sooner the better.”

“Then why don’t you marry me?”

“Because you’re still married to Mr. Garrett.”

“By my choice or his?”

I hesitated before answering, and turned to Mr. Garrett. “Sir,” I said very stiffly, “we’ve shaken hands these last few days, and I’ve done all I knew how to prove the way I feel toward you. Nevertheless, I have to repeat now what you said to me here in this room the last time this subject came up: you refuse to set her free, to give her the divorce she wants, lest you yourself become free to marry Miss Bergson. You didn’t think you would, you said; but at the same time, you feared that you might and that you mustn’t let yourself on account of her being a servant. If she’d stolen money or committed some other high crime, you thought you could face that; but a servant you couldn’t accept. So you refused Hortense a divorce and promised her that if she sued for one, you would inform the court she was carrying another man’s child, my child, to be exact. I think I’m quoting you correctly.”

“Richard?”

Hortense barely whispered it, then waited while he turned the color of chalk. In a moment she went on, to Inga: “It’s not true, what he’s told you, that I’m blocking the divorce, that I meant to be Mrs. Garrett no matter whose child I’m carrying, and that if he sues for divorce, I’ll break the news to the court, about another woman — you. It’s a lie, what he’s told you. Are you convinced? Do you believe me?”

“Yiss, Mrs. Garrett. Sank you.”

But Mr. Garrett cut in a muffled, queer voice: “Why do you listen to them, Inga, to her or to him? It’s all a lie, what she said — and what Dr. Palmer says, too. It is she who is blocking me, in spite of what’s been said. It will all be unsaid tonight when she calls me later to say, O.K., I can sue for divorce but that, of course, she can’t deceive a court and will have to tell them about you. That’s all it needs, Inga. Now do you know who is lying?”

“Yiss, Mr. Garrett. You.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. He just sat there with his face hanging off his cheekbones while Hortense stared, Inga stared — and I, no doubt, stared. Then very briskly Hortense chirped: “So! Shall we get on with it?”

“Pliz, Mrs. Garrett, yiss.”

Hortense stepped past the sofa, the one on our side of the table, sat down on it, opened her bag, and took out what looked like a blank check. Turning to Inga, she said: “Now, we’ve been to New York. We’ve talked to Sven, and he’s willing to marry you, provided I kick in, which I’m willing to do from my own private fortune that my uncle bequeathed me, not from anything out of my marriage. I will pay you a quarter million in cash, $125,000 tonight and the rest when my stocks are sold by brokers in Chester. But there’s one small catch, Inga: the check I write you tonight will be payable to Inga Nordstrom, not Inga Bergson.”

There was an interruption at this point which really busted things up for a minute or two. Mr. Garrett sprang to his feet, acting downright hysterical, in a way that matched perfectly what Teddy had told me — about what Inga meant to him, the “thrall” she held him under.

“You’re not going to do it, are you, Inga?” he said, moving toward her, past the table and then trying to grab her. But she backed away with quick, defensive steps, holding her arm out all the while, like a football player when he stiff-arms a tackler. This went on for a minute or so, with him asking if it was true, what she meant to do, to which she gave him no answer, and if she believed what I had said — to which she kept saying: “Yiss, Mr. Garrett, yiss. I believe. I believe Dr. Palmer. You lie. You lie to me, yiss.”

“Knock it off,” I said to him, “and sit down.”

He went back to his chair and Inga to a chair I had pushed up for her, where she stood pursing her lips and swallowing. Hortense, who had watched the chase without saying anything, now turned to me and asked: “May I borrow your pen, Lloyd?”

“Oh, pliz, Mrs. Garrett, take my.”

Inga was unzipping her bag and reaching inside it. But what she came up with wasn’t a pen. It was a gun, a snubnosed, shiny thing, the kind known as a “Saturday night special.” She raised it, first dropping her bag on the chair, and aiming at Mr. Garrett.

“Now, sir, die — pliz,” and she popped him one last knick.

The gun spoke with the deafening roar of a shot fired indoors. There was a streak of yellow light and a sudden billow of smoke. He stood for one last moment, then vloomped down on the cocktail table and rolled onto the floor.

Hortense ran around, dropped down on her knees beside him, and began talking to him in low, vibrant tones. “Richard, Richard; no, no, no — don’t go; don’t let yourself. No, it’s me. Look at me. Oh, darling, darling, darling—”

There was more of this, what I would have wanted her to say and yet hated to hear, hated to overhear because of the intimacy of it. So as not to intrude, not to see such a personal moment, I turned away and glimpsed Inga as she stood there with the gun at her side, seemingly in a daze. Hortense went on and on. Then the change in her voice told me that it was all over, that Mr. Garrett was dead. Then her voice came, hard, bitter, and rasping: “You rotten little—”

But the way she broke off alerted me, and I wheeled around to see Inga aiming once more, this time straight at Hortense. Her back was to me, and I reacted automatically, as quickly as God would let me. I aimed a karate chop at that short little neck. It cracked as she collapsed at my feet, but the gun cracked first — and there was the love of my life, her eyes glazing over yet seeking me and at last finding me.

I reached her in two jumps and caught her before she fell. I had read somewhere that a person suddenly wounded should be stretched out flat and not prodded or twisted or lifted except by trained medical people. I pushed the table over to make room for her on the floor and then eased her down. I grabbed a pillow from a sofa and pushed it under her head, all the while speaking to her. She would answer, not by saying anything but by moving her head just a little as if she were trying to nod. I couldn’t see where she was shot, so there was nothing else I could do.

“Darling,” I said, “I have to call — call for an ambulance so we can get you to a hospital. I’ll be right back.”

She moved her head once more, and I sprang for the phone. By then, of course, Miss Nettie had left for the night and I hardly knew the night watchman. He was so dopey when I told him to get the police, so slow to snap out of his sleep, that I slammed the receiver down and called the police myself on the outside phone. I found the number on the emergency list the phone company prints in the front of the book.

“For God’s sake,” I said, “step on it, will you? There’s a woman here who’s been shot, and she can be saved if you—”

“Take it easy, pal,” said the voice at the other end. “We’ll be there. We’re on our way right now.”

I opened the hall door and then went back to Hortense. I kept talking to her, but her hand found mine, telling me to be quiet. So, for an eternity, we communed, hand in hand.