Bertha Cool dropped me within a block of Ashbury’s place at ten twenty-five. It was drizzling a bit. I walked the block with my suitcase banging against my legs. It was a big place out in millionaire row with a gravel driveway, ornamental trees, roomy architecture, and servants.
The butler hadn’t heard any taxicab drive up. He looked at the rain which had fallen on the brim of my hat and asked if I was Mr. Lam. I told him I was.
He said he’d take my suitcase up to my room, that Mr. Ashbury wanted to see me right away in the library.
I went in. Ashbury shook hands and started performing introductions. Mrs. Ashbury was considerably younger than her husband. She had the big-breasted, big-hipped, voluptuous type of beauty. She was carrying about fifteen pounds too much weight to make the curves smooth and voluptuous. Here and there the contours broke into bulges. Apparently she couldn’t keep still. Her body was always in motion, little undulations, swayings and swingings. Her eyes sparkled with animal vitality. She looked me over, and I felt as though she’d rubbed her hands over me. She gave me her hand and started pouring out words. “I think it’s the most wonderful idea Henry has ever had. I suppose I should do something like that, too. I’ve really been putting on far too much weight the last two years. I wasn’t like that until this high blood pressure came along, spells of dizziness, and a pain over my heart. The doctor told me I shouldn’t exercise. But if the doctors can ever get this condition cleared up, I’ll exercise, and I lose weight very rapidly. You seem to be in marvelous shape, Mr. Lam. You don’t have any weight at all.”
She stopped talking long enough to let Ashbury introduce a man named Bernard Carter. He was a fat, jovial chap in the middle forties. He had fish eyes which were badly filmed, fat, pudgy hands, and a back-slapping manner. He was nicely tailored and was the sort of salesman who would show a customer a sample, tell him a smutty story, show him another sample, tell him another story, and get the order. Keep them laughing was his motto. He had three chins, and when he laughed they all quivered with mirth. The fat on his cheeks would push up under his eyes so that you could only see narrow slits when he was laughing, but if you watched those slits closely, you saw that the eyes behind them hadn’t changed expression a bit. They were filmed and watchful and fishy. Mrs. Ashbury watched him with beaming approval. He was very attentive to her.
I gathered Carter must be related to Mrs. Ashbury in some way. They seemed to have a lot in common — a pair who liked the good things in life, who lived to enjoy themselves.
Mrs. Ashbury couldn’t seem to take her eyes off me. She said, “You don’t seem to have an ounce of fat on you. You’re little, but you must have a wonderful body.”
“I try to keep in shape,” I said.
Carter said thoughtfully, “Henry, I guess I’ll have to become one of your first clients. I weighed myself the other day — wouldn’t believe how much weight I’d put on.”
Mrs. Ashbury said, “You’re all right, Bernard. Of course, a little exercise would tone you up a bit. Yes, it’s a splendid idea, and as soon as my blood pressure goes down, I’m going to exercise. It must be wonderful to be slim and hard like Mr. Lam — only you’re rather light for a professional wrestler, aren’t you?”
“Instructor,” I corrected.
“I know, but you must be good. Henry tells me you took on a Japanese jujitsu wrestler and made him look like thirty cents.”
Henry Ashbury stared steadily at me.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be modest for me to comment,” I said.
Her throat, shoulders, and diaphragm rippled as she gave a high-pitched, delighted laugh. “Oh, I think that’s priceless. That’s just absolutely priceless! Bob would get an awful kick out of that. Bob’s modest, too. Did Mr. Ashbury tell you about Robert?”
“Your son?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s a wonderful boy. I’m so proud of him. He started in right at the bottom, and through diligent application and hard work, he’s been made president of the corporation.”
I said, “That certainly is remarkable!” Ashbury’s eyes stared at me over the tops of his glasses.
Bernard Carter said, “I’m not just throwing any bouquets when I say that Bob’s a business genius. I’ve never seen a man who could grasp things as quickly.”
“Doing all right, is he?” Henry Ashbury asked noncommittally.
“All right!” Carter exclaimed. “My God, he’s—” He looked across at Mrs. Ashbury, became silent, spread his palms in a little gesture, as much as to say, “Oh, what’s the use,” and exhaled his breath slowly.
“Glad to hear it,” Ashbury said without any show of enthusiasm.
Mrs. Ashbury had a low-pitched, throaty, seductive voice, but when she became excited, it jumped up an octave and bounced off the roof of her mouth as easily as hail off a tin roof.
“I think it’s absolutely mar velous, and, with it all, he’s just as modest as he can be. He hardly ever talks about his work. He feels that Henry isn’t interested in it. I’ll bet you don’t even know about their latest strike, Henry, or what Bob—”
“I have enough business at the office,” Henry interrupted.
“But you should get together more with Bob. You know, after all, in his position as president of the Foreclosed Farms Underwriters Company, Bob has opportunities to learn a lot of what’s going on in the business world. Some of that knowledge might prove very valuable to you, Henry.”
“Yes, my love, but I’m too tired when I get home to talk business.”
She sighed. “Oh, you businessmen! Bob is the same way. You just can’t get a word out of him.”
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Down in the billiard room with his sales manager, Parker Stold.”
Ashbury nodded to me. “Come on, Lam. We’ll go meet Bob and Stold.”
I said conventional things to Mrs. Ashbury, and she took my hand and held it for a minute. When I got away, Henry Ashbury led the way down a long corridor, down a flight of stairs, and into another corridor. I could see a playroom on one side, with a long Ping-pong table. On the other side was a room from which came the click of balls and a mumble of conversation.
Ashbury opened the door. A man who had been getting ready to make a shot, with one hip on the table, climbed down and said “Hello, Governor,” to Ashbury.
This was Robert Tindle, a chap with a sloping forehead, long, straight nose, and eyes the color of cheap glass marbles — a watery green, covered with a film that was like scum. You felt that if you looked at those eyes closely, you’d see lots of little air bubbles. His face didn’t have any particular expression, and all I could think of when I looked at him was the ad for the contented cows.
He wore a dinner jacket and shook hands without enthusiasm.
Parker Stold evidently had something on his mind. He regarded our visit as an interruption, and acknowledged the introduction to me with a quick “Please’-t’-meetcha” and didn’t offer to shake hands. His eyes were a little too close together, but his hair was wavy, and he had a nice mouth. I figured he was a little older than Bob.
The butler got me up at seven o’clock the next morning. I shaved, dressed, and went down to the gymnasium. It was a big, bare room on the basement floor just back of the billiard room. It had the smell of never having been used. There were a punching bag, horizontal bars, Indian clubs, dumbbells, weight-lifting machines, a canvas wrestling mat, and, at the far end, a squared ring for boxing. There were boxing gloves hanging on a rack. I went over and looked at them. The price tags, which had turned yellow with age, were still tied by a faded-green string to the laces.
I was wearing a pair of tennis shoes, slacks, and an athletic undershirt. When Henry Ashbury came in, he was bundled up in a bathrobe. He slipped it off and stood with nothing on but some boxer’s tights.
He looked like hell.
“Well,” he said, “here we are.”
He looked down at his watermelon paunch. “I suppose I’ve got to do something about this.” He walked over to the weight-lifting machine and began tugging away at the weights and puffing and blowing. After a minute he stepped aside and nodded toward them. “Do you want a workout?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Neither do I, but I’ve got to.”
“Why don’t you try sitting up straighter — get a better posture?”
“I sit down because I want to be comfortable. I’m most comfortable when I’m slumped down in a chair.”
“Go ahead and exercise, then,” I said.
He flashed me a quick glance and acted as though he was going to say something, but didn’t. He went back to the weight-lifting machine and did some more work. Then he went over and weighed himself on the scales.
He walked over to the canvas mat and said, “Do you think you could show me some of that stuff the Jap was showing you last night?”
I met his eyes and said, “No.”
He laughed and put on the bathrobe. After that we sat down and talked politics until it was time to take a shower and dress for breakfast.
After breakfast Ashbury went to the office. Along about eleven o’clock I met Alta, who had just got up for breakfast. She’d evidently heard all about me. “Come on in and keep me company while I eat,” she said. “I want to talk with you.”
It looked like a good chance to get acquainted. I went in and went through the routine of seating her at the table. I sat opposite her, and had a cup of coffee with cream and sugar while she had black coffee, three pieces of Ry-Krisp, and a cigarette. If I could have had a figure like hers by eating that sort of breakfast, I’d have done it myself.
“Well?” she asked.
I remembered what Henry Ashbury had said about being myself, and not trying to force things. “Well, what?”
She laughed. “You’re the new physical instructor?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look as though you were much of a boxer.”
I didn’t say anything.
“My stepmother tells me it’s not weight but speed. She says you’re so fast that you’re like a streak of lightning. I must see you work out some day.”
“I’m training your father. He isn’t doing any boxing.”
She eyed me critically and said, “I can see why you go in for jujitsu. That must be interesting.”
“It is.”
“They say you’re so good that it takes the best of the Japanese to give you any sort of a match.”
“That’s not exactly true.”
“But you do wrestle with the Japanese?”
“Some.”
“Didn’t Dad see you throwing a big Japanese wrestler last night?”
I said, “Can’t we talk about something else besides me?”
“What, for instance?”
“You.”
She shook her head. “I’m never an interesting subject of conversation at this time in the morning... Do you like to walk?”
“No.”
“I do. I’m going to take a long brisk walk.”
Instructions had been most explicit. I was to get acquainted with Alta Ashbury, win her confidence, let her feel that I was capable of whipping my weight in wildcats, and get her to open up and tell me what was bothering her. In order to do that, I had to make hay while the sun was shining.
I took a long brisk walk.
I didn’t learn anything on the first part of the walk except that she certainly had a swell figure, that her eyes were warm and brown and had a trick of laughing every time her lips smiled. She had the endurance of a marathon runner, a love of fresh air, and a scorn for most of the conventions. After a while, we sat under some trees. I didn’t talk. She did. She hated fortune hunters and men who “had a line.” She was inclined to think marriage was the bunk, and that her father was a fool for letting himself get roped into it, that she hated her stepmother, that her stepbrother was the apple of Mrs. Ashbury’s eyes, and that she thought the apple was full of wormholes.
I felt that was pretty good for one afternoon. I got back in time to ditch her and duck around the corner to where Bertha Cool was waiting. She took me up to the Jap. Hashita showed me a few more grips and holds, and made me do a lot more practicing. By the time I got done with him, the walk, the exercise of the day before, and the tumbles I’d taken made me feel as though I’d just lost a ten-round bout to a steam roller.
I explained to Bertha that Ashbury was wise, so it wasn’t going to be necessary to keep up the jujitsu lessons. Bertha said she’d paid for them, and I’d take them or she’d know the reason why. I warned her about continuing to take me back and forth to the house, and told her since Ashbury was paying for it, I’d better get a cab. She told me she was fully capable of running the business end of things, and got me back in time for dinner.
It was a lousy dinner. The food was good, but there was too much service. I had to sit straight as a ramrod and pretend to be interested in a lot of things Mrs. Ashbury was saying. Robert Tindle posed as the tired businessman. Henry Ashbury shoved in grub with the preoccupied manner of one who hadn’t the slightest idea of what he’s eating.
Alta Ashbury was going out to a dance about ten o’clock. She took an hour after dinner to sit out on a glassed-in sun porch and talk.
There was a half-moon. The air was warm and balmy, and something was worrying her. She didn’t say what it was, but I could see she wanted companionship.
I didn’t want to talk. So I just sat there and kept quiet. Once when I saw her hand tighten into a little fist, and she seemed all tense and nervous, I reached my hand out, put it over hers, gave it a little squeeze, said, “Take it easy,” and then, as she relaxed, took my hand away.
She looked up at me quickly, as though she weren’t accustomed to having men remove their hands from hers.
I didn’t say anything more.
A little before ten she went up to dress for the dance. I’d found out that she liked tennis and horseback riding, that she didn’t care for badminton, that she liked swimming, that if it weren’t for good old dad she’d pull out and leave the house flat on its foundations, that she thought her stepmother was poisoning her father’s disposition, and that someone should give her stepmother back to the Indians. I hadn’t said anything one way or another.
The next morning Ashbury started to lift weights, found his muscles were sore, said there was no use going at the thing too damn fast, put on his big lap robe, came over and sat down beside me on the canvas mat, and smoked a cigar. He wanted to know what I’d found out.
I told him nothing. He said, “Alta’s fallen for you. You’re good.”
We had breakfast, and about eleven o’clock Alta Ashbury showed up. Mrs. Ashbury always had breakfast in bed.
When we took our walk that afternoon, Alta told me more about her stepmother. Mrs. Ashbury had high blood pressure, and the doctor said she mustn’t be excited. The doctor was standing in with her, gave in to her, wheedled her and petted her. She thought her dad should kick Bernard Carter out of the house. She didn’t know what there was about me that made her talk so much, unless it was because I was so understanding, and because she was so worried about her dad she could cry.
She warned me that if Mrs. Ashbury ever wanted anything, no matter how unreasonable, I wasn’t to cross her at all, because, as surely as I did, the doctor would make an examination, find her blood pressure had gone up, blame the whole thing on me, and I’d go out on my ear. I gathered she didn’t want me to go out on my ear.
I felt like a heel.
At two o’clock Bertha Cool picked me up, and the Jap kneaded me as though I’d been a batch of bread dough. When I got away from those stubby fingers I felt like a shirt that had been put through a washing machine, run through a wringer, and dried on a mangle.
I staggered in to supper. It was the same as the previous night, only Alta looked as though she’d been crying. She hardly spoke to me. After dinner I hung around, giving her a chance to talk with me in case there was anything she wanted to confide.
Alta didn’t make any secret about how she felt about Bernard Carter. She said he was supposed to be working on a business deal with her stepmother. She didn’t know just what it was... No one seemed to know just what it was. Alta said both of them hated her, that she thought her stepmother was afraid of some woman whom Carter knew, that one time she’d walked into the library just as her stepmother was saying, “Go ahead and get some action. I’m tired of all this dillydallying. You can imagine how much mercy she’d show me if our positions were reversed. I want you to—” Carter had noticed she’d come into the room and had coughed significantly. Mrs. Ashbury had looked up, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and started talking about something else with the swift garrulity of one who is trying to cover up.
Alta was silent for a while after she told me that, and then said moodily she supposed she was telling me things she had no right to, but for some reason or other I inspired confidence, that she felt I was loyal to her father, and that if I was going in business with him, I’d have to watch her stepmother, Bob, and Bernard Carter. Then she added a few words about Dr. Parkerdale. He was, it seemed, one of the fashionable boys with a good bedside manner. Every time Mrs. Ashbury had a dizzy spell from eating too much, Dr. Parkerdale became as gravely concerned as though it were the first symptom of a world-wide epidemic of infantile paralysis.
She told me that much, then clamped her lips shut lightly.
I said, “Go ahead.”
“With what?” she asked.
“The rest of it.”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of the things I should know.”
“I’ve told you too much already.”
“Not enough,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m going in business with your father. He’s going to invest a bunch of money. I’ve got to see that he gets a fair return for his investment. I’ve got to get along with Mrs. Ashbury. I want to know how to do it.”
She said hastily, “You leave her alone. Keep out of her way, and listen... Don’t — don’t ever—”
“Don’t ever what?” I asked.
“Don’t ever trust yourself alone with her,” she said. “If she wants to take exercise in the gymnasium, be sure to have someone else there all the time she’s there.”
I made the mistake of laughing and said, “Oh, surely she wouldn’t—”
She turned on me furiously. “I tell you,” she said, “I know her. She’s a creature of physical appetites and animal cunning. She simply can’t control herself. All this high blood pressure business is simply the result of overeating and overindulgence. She’s put on twenty pounds since Dad married her.”
“Your father,” I said, “is nobody’s fool.”
“Of course he isn’t, but she’s worked out a technique that no man can fight against. Whenever she wants anything and anyone balks her, she starts working herself up to a high pitch of excitement, then she telephones for Dr. Parkerdale. He comes rushing out as though it were a matter of life and death, takes her blood pressure, and starts tiptoeing around the house until he’s created the proper impression. Then he takes whoever is responsible off to one side and says very gently and with his best professional manner that Mrs. Ashbury really isn’t herself, that she simply mustn’t become excited, that if he can only keep her perfectly calm for a period of several months, he can cure her blood pressure, that then she can start taking exercise and reduce her weight and be her normal self, but that whenever there’s an argument and she becomes excited, all the good that he’s done is wiped out, and he has to go back and begin all over again.”
I laughed and said, “That seems to be a hard game to beat.”
She was furious at me because I’d laughed. “Of course it’s a hard game to beat,” she said. “You can’t beat it. Dr. Parkerdale says that it doesn’t make any difference whether she’s right or wrong, that one mustn’t argue with her. That means you have to give in to her all the time. That means she’s becoming more selfish and spoiled every minute of the time. Her temper is getting more ungovernable. She’s getting more selfish, more—”
“How about Bernard Carter?” I asked. “Does he get along with her?”
“Bernard Carter,” she snorted. “Bernard Carter and his business deal! He’s the man who comes around when Father goes away. She may fool Dad with that business talk, but she doesn’t fool me a darn bit. I–I hate her.”
I observed that I thought Henry Ashbury was quite capable of handling the situation.
“He isn’t,” Alta said. “No man is. She has him hamstrung and hogtied before he starts. If he accuses her of anything, she’ll throw one of her fits and Dr. Parkerdale will come rushing out with the rubber tube he puts around her arm and take her blood pressure... Oh, can’t you see what she’s doing is simply laying the foundation for filing a suit for divorce on the ground of mental cruelty, claiming that Father was so unreasonable and unjust with her that it ran up her blood pressure and ruined her health and kept Dr. Parkerdale from curing her. And she has the doctor all primed to give his testimony. The only thing Father can do is efface himself as much as possible and wait for something to break. That means he has to give in to her... Look here, Donald. Are you pumping me or am I just making a fool out of myself talking too damn much?”
I felt like a heel again, only worse.
She didn’t talk much after that.
Someone called her on the telephone, and she didn’t like the conversation. I could see that much from the expression on her face. After her party had hung up, she telephoned and broke a date.
I went out finally and sat on the sun porch. I felt more like a heel than ever.
After a while she came out and stood looking down at me. I could feel her scorn, even though it was too dark to see the expression in her eyes. “So,” she said, “that’s it, is it?”
“What?” I asked.
She said, “Don’t think I’m entirely a nitwit... You, a physical instructor... I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you I’d take the licence number of the car that calls for you every afternoon, and look up the registration... B. Cool, Confidential Investigations. I suppose your real name is Cool.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s Donald Lam.”
“Well, the next time Dad tries to get a detective who’s going to pose as a physical instructor, tell him to get someone who looks the part.”
She stormed out of the room.
There was an extension phone down in the basement. I went down and called Bertha Cool. “All right,” I said, “you’ve spilled the beans.”
“What do you mean, I’ve spilled the beans?”
“She wondered who was calling for me afternoons, waited around the corner, got the licence number of your car, and looked it up... It’s registered in the name of the agency, you know.”
I could hear Bertha Cool’s gasp over the telephone.
“A hundred bucks a day thrown out of the window just so that you could chisel a taxi fare,” I said.
“Now listen, lover,” she implored, “you’ve got to find some way out of this. You can do it, if you’ll put your mind on it. That’s what Bertha has you for, to think for her.”
I said, “Nuts.”
“Donald, you must. We simply can’t afford to lose that money.”
“You’ve already lost it.”
“Isn’t there something you can do?”
I said, “I don’t know. Drive the agency car out here, park it at the place where you usually meet me, and wait.”