About two o’clock in the afternoon I found Louie. He was sitting at a table in the back room of one of the cheaper side street places. A bottle half full of bar whisky was on the table in front of him. The knuckles of the hand which held the glass were skinned and bleeding. His eyes were heavily glazed and staring with fixed intensity. He was mumbling as I came up to the table.
He looked up at me. “Oh, there you are,” he said thickly.
I pushed the bottle of whisky to one side. “How about coming home, Louie?”
He frowned. “Say, thash right. I got a home, ain’t I? I— Oh, my God.” He stood up and plunged his hand into his trousers pocket, brought out two one-dollar bills and some chicken feed.
“You know what I done, buddy?” he asked, his glazed eyes surveying me with that fixed glassy stare. “I shpent that money you gave me — all that was left from the groceries ’cept this — booze. That’s my failin’. I feel the cravin’ comin’ on every so often, and when it hits me, I can’t—”
“Who was it you socked, Louie?” I asked.
He looked down at his knuckles and scowled. “Now thash funny. I thought I hit somebody, and then I thought it was jusht sort of an idea a man’ll get when he’s been drinkin’. It might ‘a’ been the last time. Wait a minute. Let me think.
“I’ll tell you who it was. It was Sid Jannix. Was in line for a title once. A good boy — plenty good, but I give him the old one-two. Lemme show you how it goes, the old Hazen shift. I won the championship in the Navy — it must have been the championship — sure, it was in Honolulu inlet me see now. Was it—”
“Come on, Louie, we’re going home.”
“You ain’t sore about that money, kid?”
“No.”
“You understand how it is?”
“Sure.”
“You’re the besh pal a guy ever had. The first time I socked you, I knew I liked you, jush like shakin’ hands with a guy, shock him on the jaw an — awrigh’, let’s go home.”
I got him out to the sidewalk, steadied him down the street, and into the jalopy. Halfway out to the cabin, the enormity of his embezzlement struck him. He wanted to get out of the car. “Lemme out, buddy. I ain’t fit to ride in the same car with you. I can’t face Miss Helen. Know what I did? I stole your money. I knew you didn’t have much, too — just some money you’d saved up — an’ I stole it. I wanna get out — serves me right if I hit my head and die. I ain’t no good. I been hit too much anyway. I ain’t got no — ain’ got no self-control.”
I put my hand on the arm that was over on the side nearest the door. His hand was fumbling with the catch. “Forget it, Louie,” I said, driving the rattling car with one hand. “We aren’t any of us perfect. I’ve got my faults, too.”
“You mean you forgive me?”
“Sure.”
“No hard feelings?”
“No hard feelings.”
He started to cry, then, and was immersed in lachrymose repentance when I got him to the cabin. Helen and I put him to bed. “Well,” she said, after we’d tucked him in and put a big pitcher of water beside the bed, “now what?”
“I’ll stay with him,” I told her. “You take the car, go uptown, and get your hair fixed at that beauty shop you were talking about.”
She looked at me, hesitated a moment.
I said, “I’ll have to give you a traveler’s check. I—”
She laughed up at me. “Forget it. I’ve got money.”
“All you need?”
“Sure. I lit out with Pug’s bank roll. And listen, Donald, if you get short, I can stake you. I know you’re paying for this show, and I know you’re going to come out on it all right when you’ve finished up, but in case you find the shoe pinching, just let me know.”
“Thanks, I will.”
“ ’By,” she said.
“Be seeing you.”
She started for the door, turned back to me, took my face in her hands, looked down into my eyes, and then kissed me. “The landlord was over while you were gone,” she said casually. “He was calling me Mrs. Lam. So don’t destroy his illusions. By-by.”
She breezed out of the door. I sat down at the kitchen table, took a telephone directory, and made up a list of the places I wanted to call. I found some old magazines, read for a while, and then began to feel the effects of my unaccustomed exercise. I dozed off into a light sleep, waking occasionally just enough to realize that I should go in and see how Louie was getting along. But getting up out of the comfortable chair seemed too great an effort, and I’d drift off to sleep again.
I finally woke up enough to look in on Louie. He heard the door open. He opened bloodshot eyes, looked up at me and said, “Hello, buddy, how about some water?”
“In that pitcher right by your bed.”
He picked up the pitcher, disdained the glass, and drank about half of the contents.
“You know I’m a heel,” he said, putting down the pitcher and avoiding my eyes. “An’ I know I’m a heel.”
“You’re all right.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so damn nice about it.”
“Forget it.”
“I’d like to do some little thing for you, buddy — like a murder or something.”
I grinned down at him. “How’s the head?” I asked. “Aching?”
“It always aches. I guess that’s why I take up the booze. I’ve had a headache so long now I’m used to it. I always tried to give the customers a run for their money. I’d stay in there and swap punches when I should have been down on the canvas, listenin’ to the birdies. And now here I am, a drunken bum with a headache all the time.”
“You’ll feel better after a while. Want to go back to sleep again?”
“No. I’m goin’ to get up and drink lots of water. What happened to the rest of that bottle of whisky?”
“I left it in there.”
“It was paid for,” he said regretfully.
“It’s better in the saloon than in you.”
“You’re right,” he said, “if I can get my mind off’n it, but I’m afraid I’ll be thinkin’ of that half bottle of whisky — you’d better kick me out, pal, before I get you in a spot. I ain’t worth it.”
“Snap out of it. You’ll feel better when you get your stomach back into shape.”
His bloodshot eyes stared up at me. “Tell you one thing,” he said, “I’m going to teach you everything I know, every little trick of the ring. I’m going to make you a fighter.”
“Okay. Now listen, I’m going to take a walk. Helen’s in town. She’ll be back in a couple of hours. You feel like keeping an eye on the place?”
“Sure.”
“You won’t leave?”
He said, “Where’s my pants?”
“Over there on the chair.”
“Turn the pockets inside out, take all the dough out, then I won’t leave.”
I said, “You gave me the change — what was left of it.”
He heaved a sigh. “Okay then, that’s fine. Go ahead.” He punched the pillows back into shape behind his head, said, “Gimme a cigarette, buddy, and I’ll be all right as soon as that water quits sloshin’ around in my stomach.”
I gave him a cigarette, and walked out to the highway. I hadn’t gone over half a mile when a car stopped and gave me a ride to town.
A newsstand featured papers from all the principal cities. I found a Las Vegas paper. The police made much over the disappearance of Helen Framley. They had finally traced her to an apartment where she had been in hiding since the night of the murder. She had disappeared, and police, checking up on the activities of one Donald Lam, a private investigator who had been employed on another angle of the case, were convinced that she, an ex-prize fighter by the name of Hazen, and Lam had all left town together. The police were inclined to believe that Helen Framley had either been implicated in the murder or had highly significant information, and that the private detective, seeking to steal a march on police, was offering her a chance to escape in return for such information as she could give. There was a strong intimation that the officials would consider this a serious matter, and that Lam might well find himself prosecuted for compounding a felony. Hazen, it seemed, was also implicated. He’d positively identified the body as that of a former pugilist named Sidney Jannix.
Evidently, the police hadn’t as yet linked me with the purchase of the secondhand automobile.
I rang up a few more places, handed them my regular line, cut out the article from the Las Vegas paper, left the rest of the newspaper in a telephone booth, and started back for the cabin.
I had to walk nearly a mile before I caught a ride.
Helen returned about an hour after I got back. Louie got the dinner, washed and wiped the dishes. The three of us went to a movie, and then went to bed.
Louie Hazen was pulling me out of bed before I hardly realized I’d been asleep. The air was filled with cold dawn.
“Come on,” he said. “Get this road work in while it’s cool. I don’t want you to sweat.”
I sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbed my eyes. “It’s not cool, it’s cold,” I protested.
“You’ll be all right when you get out.”
He slipped a hand under my arm, lifted me to my feet. My legs all but buckled, the muscles were so sore.
“Gosh, Louie, I can’t take it this morning. I’ll have to rest.”
“Come on,” he said, and started pushing me around.
“Oh, forget it, Louie. I’m not training for any fight or anything. After all, we can—”
He opened the window, pulled off the screen, dropped it to the ground, tossed out my running-shoes, pants, and light sweater, and then, before I realized what he was intending to do, picked me up as though I had weighed precisely nothing, and tossed me out after them. Then he closed and locked the window.
The door was locked. It was cold out there on the ground. I picked up my clothes and moved around to the side of the house away from the highway, dressed in shivering silence, took a deep breath, and started jog trotting after Louie along the road. Every step was agony.
Louie kept watching me over his shoulder, looking at the expression on my face, the way I was moving my legs. He seemed to know exactly when the soreness began to leave me, and then again knew exactly when the breathlessness became acute.
We walked all the way back, taking deep breaths. I suddenly picked up Louie’s trick of breathing with my diaphragm, sucking air way down, squeezing out every last bit of it before taking another deep breath.
Louie, watching me, nodded approvingly.
We went back to the house and put on the stiff set of fighting-gloves. Louie said, “I’m going to train you to throw a hard punch this morning. Now swing one right at this glove. Put everything you’ve got right behind it. No, no, no. Don’t draw back.”
It seemed interminable hours that we worked out there in the sunlight, and then Louie had me under the shower, was kneading and pounding my muscles again, and by the time I was up and dressed, Helen Framley had the kitchen full of the fragrance of steaming coffee.
Later that morning I got a lead.
A retail-credit association member had delivered groceries to a Mrs. Sidney Jannix in an apartment on California Street.
I went out to the place, parked the jalopy, climbed stairs, and pressed a buzzer.
The woman who opened the door was Corla Burke.
“May I come in?” I asked.
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Helen Framley.”
She frowned at me. For a moment, there was quick alarm in her eyes. “How did you find me?”
“That,” I said, “is something of a story. Do I tell it out here, or inside?”
“Inside,” she said, and held the door open so I could come in.
I sat down by the window. Corla Burke, seated across from me where the light etched expression on her face, played into my hands by opening the conversation. “I, simply couldn’t have taken advantage of Miss Framley’s offer,” she said. “I wrote and told her so.”
I adopted an attitude of being somewhat aggrieved.
“I don’t see why.”
“It wouldn’t have been fair.”
“I think it would have been a lot better than what you did do.”
I could see that shot struck home. She said, “I didn’t know, of course, what— Well, I couldn’t, look into the future myself,” and she laughed nervously.
“Miss Framley felt she tried to do the square thing by you and that you hadn’t been — well, suppose we say appreciative.”
“I’m sorry. How did you happen to come here?”
“Why, this was the logical place to look for you.”
“Why did you want to find me?”
“I thought perhaps something could be done to straighten things out.”
“No, not now.”
“I still think so.”
“I’m afraid you’re overly optimistic. Please thank Miss Framley for me and tell her that I certainly don’t want her to think I was ungrateful, and I guess — well, I guess that’s about all there is to tell her.”
I glanced around, saw that a suitcase was open, that folded garments were placed on a table and on two of the chairs. On a small table in the corner by the window was a woman’s hat, gloves, and purse. A stamped envelope lay on the corner of this table.
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Certainly not. I’ll have one—”
I gave her a cigarette, held a match, managed to move so that I was at the edge of the table as I reached for an ash tray, and then grabbed for the letter.
She saw what was happening and flung herself at the table. I got my hands on the letter first. She clawed at it. I said, “If it isn’t postmarked Las Vegas I’m not interested. If it is, I’m going to read it.”
She redoubled her efforts, grabbed at my arm. I pushed her away. I managed to avoid her, pulled the sheet of paper out from the envelope.
It was a hasty scrawl and read:
Donald Lam a private detective is on the job. -He’s contacted Helen Framley. Helen’s boy friend, man by the name of Beegan, was murdered last night. You aren’t safe in Reno. Hunt a deep hole somewhere else.
The letter was signed simply with the initials “A. W.”
I said, “Let’s be frank with each other and save time. I’m Lam. Arthur Whitewell hired me to find you — and saw that Philip knew all about it, of course. Now suppose you tell me your story.”
She just stared at me, all of the fight had left her. She looked trapped and beaten.
I said, “I have a theory. I can outline it if it would help start the ball rolling.”
She still didn’t say anything, simply stood looking at me as though I was what was left behind after a cyclone.
I said, “I think Arthur Whitewell didn’t want his son to marry you. He thought Philip could make a more advantageous marriage. But Philip was very much in love with you, and Whitewell is something of a psychologist. He knew that, after all, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Philip was inexperienced and callow in some ways, but very much of a man in others. His father had never fully understood him, but he did realize there was a gap he had never been able to bridge. He knew that any attempt to come between you two would bring about a permanent estrangement. And then something happened to play right into his hands. He had the opportunity he’d been looking for. He manipulated things in such a way that you simply stepped out of the picture and left Philip to recuperate as best he could.
“And then,” I said, “Philip took it so much worse than his father had anticipated that something had to be done. It wasn’t just an ordinary heartbreak. Philip is sentimental, sensitive, in his feelings and perceptions. He’s never learned that people sometimes can’t be taken at their face value. It was all too much for him.”
She was crying now, crying quietly. She didn’t try to say anything. She couldn’t have talked.
I walked over to the window, looking down on a drab back yard which was pretty well filled with a litter of old boxes. A clothesline sagged dispiritedly between two poles. Little puddles reflected sunlight. A child’s tin pail and shovel were standing on a pile of damp sand. I kept my back turned to the room so that she could have her cry out and regain her composure without feeling I was watching.
It was several minutes before she had herself sufficiently under control to speak. “Do you think that Mr. Whitewell expected you would find me?” she asked.
“I don’t know. All I know is that he employed us to find you.”
“But he stipulated with me that I must arrange my disappearance so that I could never be found. That was one of the things he insisted on.”
“Exactly.”
“Then hiring you would be just a gesture to pacify Philip?”
“That’s it.”
I could see she was clinging to a straw of hope. “But it costs real money to hire a good detective, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you must be good — skillful?”
It was her party. If she wanted to kid herself along, it was okay with me. I said, “We think we’re good.”
“Can’t you tell me something that would give me a clue as to how Mr. Whitewell really feels now?”
“Not until after you’ve told me what happened. Then I can put things together and perhaps find an answer.”
“But you seemed to know. You knew all about Helen Framley.”
“No, just that she’d written you a letter. I had to surmise what was in it.”
“What did you think was in it?”
“I thought it was a trap.”
“Set by this Helen Framley?”
“I don’t think Helen Framley ever wrote the letter.”
“But she must have.”
“Suppose you tell me everything you know, and let me draw my own conclusions.”
She said, “I suppose you know what caused me to leave.”
“Sid Jannix?”
She nodded.
“Tell me about him first.”
She said, “I was a little fool when I was a kid. I always had a savage streak in me. I liked fighting and fighters. I never cared much for baseball games, but loved football. Sidney was in school with me. He was on the football team. Then the school took up boxing, and Sidney was the best in our school. He became something of a hero. The boxing died out because there was too much parental opposition, but Sidney was the idol of every boy in school. And I guess he became the school bully. I didn’t realize it at the time. It was our last year in high school.
“Well, I kept up with Sidney, and my family didn’t like rt. Sidney took up professional fighting, and adopted the attitude that he was something of a martyr, and I— Well, when Sidney was making enough to support me, I ran away with him and we were married.” She shrugged wearily, then added, “Of course it was a ghastly, terrible mistake.”
She paused for a minute as though trying to find some way of detouring what lay ahead, then she plunged once more into the recital.
“We lived together for just about three months. The first two or three weeks I was completely hypnotized. And then, little by little, I began seeing him as he really was. He was a bully, and he was yellow. When he could handle anyone, he was ruthless in handing out punishment. When he couldn’t, he was full of alibis. He got good enough to get almost to the top, and then, as he began to meet the better men — however, that’s getting ahead of my story. At the time I married him, he was just coming up from the preliminary fighters, and beginning to attract attention. It went terribly to his head. He was emotional, intensely jealous. He began to treat me as though I were just so much personal property. I could have stood all that if it hadn’t been for the little things — little places where the veneer scraped off, and I could see what was underneath.”
“You don’t need to go into all that,” I said. “Just tell me what happened after you left him.”
“I’d had some business training in school. I got a job. I kept trying to perfect my secretarial work, and I had the satisfaction of knowing I was succeeding. I kept working up.”
“No divorce?”
“I thought Sid had got a divorce. That was the meanest trick he played on me. I told him I wanted to be free. He said that it would be better to wait for a year and get a divorce on the ground of desertion. He didn’t want to have a lot of allegations of cruelty in the record. He said it would hurt his career.
“We started out to wait for that year to elapse. It was a big year for Sidney. He came a long way up for about seven or eight months of that year, and then he went all the way down in three months. I don’t know all that happened, but his manager came to the conclusion he was yellow. He’d been a terror in the ring with the men he could master, but — oh, I don’t know. It’s a long story, and I think he did some crooked work — sold out his manager and threw a fight or something. I don’t know enough of what happened to talk about it. I just heard rumors, but, anyway, about ten months from the date of our separation, he came to me. He was desperate then. He said that he’d never been able to get a grip on himself after I’d left. He said I’d taken the inspiration out of his life.”
“That was after ten months?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was bitter. “All the time he was going up, he was very patronizing toward me; but when the bottom fell out, he started begging for sympathy. Well, anyway, he told me that he was the sort of man who needed some woman to be his inspiration, that he knew he could never get me to come back, that he had met another girl, that he could never feel toward her as he felt toward me, but that she was desperately in love with him, and he sort of liked her.” She laughed bitterly. “That was Sidney all over. She loved him desperately, and he sort of liked her.”
“And what did he want?” I asked.
“He wanted to go to Reno and get a divorce.”
“And suggested that you pay for it?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I did,” she said. “And he told me the divorce went through.”
“And the girl?”
“He married her. That’s why I didn’t bother to check the divorce records.”
“And he hadn’t got the divorce?”
“No. As it turned out, he’d simply taken the money I’d given him to make an impression on this other girl. He got her to marry him. She had some money saved. Sidney got that.”
“That wasn’t Helen Framley?” I asked.
“No. Her name was Sadie something. I’ve forgotten the last name, but I remember he kept talking about Sadie, and I was curious as to what sort of a girl she was.”
“All right. Then what happened?”
“Absolutely nothing for years. I had entirely lost track of him, and I hardly ever even thought of him. He quit his ring career. I think the Boxing Commission had some evidence on him that made it impossible for him to fight again. I don’t think he wanted to, anyway. He wasn’t the type to stand up under punishment in a ring.”
“And you met Philip?”
“Yes. I’d taken the name of Corla Burke so I could wipe out the past and begin all over. You see, my father—”
“I understand about the name now,” I said. “Let’s go on from there.”
“At first, I—”
“You don’t need to go into that. Just come to the Helen Framley part.”
“I got this very queer letter from Helen Framley. She said that she had read in the paper I was planning to get married almost immediately, that she was friendly with Sidney, and had heard Sidney speak of me, that she wondered if I knew Sidney had never got a divorce. She went on to say that Sidney was very much changed from what he was when I had known him, that he had steadied down a lot and really wanted to make something of himself in the world. She didn’t think he had the money to get a divorce right away, but if I didn’t want to wait, she could fix things up so that I could go ahead with the marriage, and after I had married Philip, Sidney would go ahead and get a divorce. She said he’d had some bad luck, but within a few weeks he’d be in the money again. I could then pretend to my husband there had been some irregularity in stating my age or something of that sort in the license, and get him to marry me all over again, or just keep on living with him and it would be a common-law marriage.”
“ ‘Queer’ is right. How much money did he want?” I asked.
“She didn’t even mention anything like that. Not as coming from me. She simply said that she thought that if he could get enough to set himself up in some business, it would be all he’d want, and I’d never hear from him again.”
“Did you gather the impression that she was writing you at his request?”
“No. She told me that he didn’t know anything about the letter she was writing, that he was intending to write to Philip Whitewell if it appeared that the marriage was going through, that he didn’t want Philip to be placed in the position of making a bigamous marriage.”
“Very considerate about Philip, wasn’t he?”
“Well — oh, it was about what you’d expect of Sidney. This Miss Framley seemed very nice. She looked at it from my viewpoint.”
“How had she found out you were really Sidney’s wife? How had she found you under the name of Corla Burke?”
“She didn’t say — just wrote this brief letter.”
“I see. Now when the proposition was all boiled down, unless you promised Sidney Jannix enough money to start up in business, he was going to prevent your marriage. If you’d promise to take care of him from money you could get from your husband, he was going to sit back and let you become the goose that would lay his golden eggs.”
“Well, if you want to look at it that way.”
“It’s the only way to look at it.”
“Then you think this Helen Framley was—”
“I don’t think Helen Framley ever wrote the letter.”
“But she told me to reply to her.”
“And you did?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And that was the letter that Arthur Whitewell dictated?”
“He didn’t dictate it.”
“But he knew about what was in it?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know about that,” I said.
“Well, I had it coming to me. I deserved everything I got. I don’t suppose I can ever explain it to you. I could never explain it to anyone, not even myself. But — well, I just had crossed those three months when I had been married to Sidney Jannix out of my life. I wrote them off as a bad experience, and—”
“By that you mean you didn’t tell Philip anything about them?”
She nodded.
“And Philip knew nothing whatever about Sidney Jannix or about your having been married?”
“That’s right.”
“So this letter from Helen Framley dropped on you like a one-ton bomb making a direct hit?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do?”
“I took the letter and went to see Philip.”
“Where?”
“At his office. We had a date for that night.”
“But you didn’t see Philip?”
“No. He’d been called out on a deal that was very important, and he left a note telling me he was awfully sorry but he just had to ask me to forget about the evening, that he’d been trying to reach me on the telephone, and couldn’t. He said he’d give me a ring around eleven o’clock and see if I could have lunch with him the next day.”
“Arthur Whitewell was in the office?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And knew from the look on your face that something was wrong?”
“No. I don’t think so. He was considerate and very nice. He’d reconciled himself to the marriage. I’d known, of course, that he didn’t exactly approve of it, but he’d been very tactful.”
“But you did tell Arthur Whitewell the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“And,” I said, watching her narrowly, “I suppose it knocked him right off the Christmas tree?”
“It was a terrible shock to him,” she said. “But he was perfectly splendid. He told me that at first he hadn’t approved of me, but that he finally realized Philip was desperately in love with me, and that he had cared enough about his son so that he wanted him to have whatever would make him happy; that if Philip wanted me, then he had planned to take me into the family and had made up his mind that neither of us would ever know that he hadn’t exactly approved. He was frank enough to tell me that. I was more attracted to him then than I ever had been. He was simply splendid. He comforted me, and — well, he was so wise and understanding and tolerant, and yet he looked at the thing from such a common-sense angle.”
“What was his angle?”
“He said, of course, that now we couldn’t go ahead with the marriage, and he told me what I’d known already, that if Philip realized I’d been married, that there was another man living who had been — the first in my affections, who had been my husband, who had lived with me, who — well, if you know Philip, you understand how he might feel about that. He’s abnormally sensitive, and — his father confirmed my worst fears on that point.”
“Go ahead with the rest of it,” I told her.
“I showed him Helen Framley’s letter. He told me how much he appreciated my being perfectly honest about it all. He said that many a woman would have been tempted to go through with the marriage and do exactly as this Miss Framley had suggested. But he said that I’d better write her and tell her that now the marriage was absolutely out of the question, so that Jannix wouldn’t get in touch with Philip.”
“Why did he want to keep Jannix from getting in touch with Philip?”
“He didn’t want Philip to be disillusioned so brutally. That was the idea back of the whole thing. I was to save face, but it wasn’t on my own account. It was to protect Philip.”
“Who suggested it?”
“Why, it was something we worked out together, sort of a collaboration. He said that for the time being, at least, I must step out of the picture in some way so that Philip would never know what had happened until after he had accustomed himself to my absence, and then we could let it come out. He said that sometime in the future, if I secured a divorce from Jannix and there was no reason why I couldn’t marry, I could meet Philip again and explain everything to him.”
“You didn’t feel that you should go to Philip and tell him frankly—”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Lam, I did. That was why I’d gone to the office. I wanted to make a clean breast to Philip and explain things to him. I wanted to try and break it to him so it wouldn’t hurt him quite so much. But his father told me he understood Philip better than I did, and that the thing for me to do was to disappear under such circumstances that it would appear something very unusual had happened to me. I really think he was thinking as much of himself as of Philip. You see, the announcements of the engagement had all been made and the wedding date was set; and if— Well, you know how it is. You simply have to make some explanation under those circumstances. The Whitewell family was in a peculiar position.”
“In other words, Whitewell didn’t want to go to his friends at the club, and have one of them say, ‘Did your son get married today?’ and have to say, ‘No. After all, we found the woman had another husband living, so we called it off.’ ”
She winced.
I said, “I’m being brutal because I want you to see it from my angle.”
“What is your angle?”
“I don’t know just yet, but I think I know.”
“What?”
“Don’t you see? Philip would have forgiven you. He’d have insisted that it wasn’t your fault, that you go ahead and get a divorce and his marriage with you would merely be postponed.”
“I don’t think Philip could ever have forgiven me for not having told him about my first marriage.”
“I think so.”
“Well, I don’t, and I know him better than you.”
“His father knows him pretty well,” I said, “and his father thought so.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because his father used the opportunity to get you out of the picture, and to have you do something for which Philip never would forgive you. Don’t you see? If you ever came back to Philip and tried to explain to him you’d be sunk. Philip could never forget the suffering he’d experienced when you disappeared under such circumstances that he didn’t know and couldn’t know what had happened to you. He’s been tortured by thoughts that perhaps you’d been abducted and were in some danger. That — I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start you crying again, but I just want you to understand.”
“But Mr. Whitewell promised he’d tell Philip if it turned out that Philip became too worried about—”
“That,” I said, “is all I wanted to know.”
“What?”
I said, “That means Whitewell took you for a ride.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Don’t you understand? If he’d ever explained it to Philip, he’d necessarily have to tell Philip how he knew, and in order to do that, he’d have to admit to Philip thathe’d been a party to the deception, that he’d talked with you, that he was the one who had kept you from waiting to see Philip and telling him the whole story. Philip would probably have forgiven you — and something could have been worked out. Arthur Whitewell could have had some so-called important New York business deal take Philip back east. The wedding could have been postponed until he returned, and Whitewell could have explained to his friends that it was just a postponement. And during that time, you could have secured your divorce from Jannix. Philip will never forgive his father for handling the situation in this way. And if he knows the real facts now he’ll never forgive you.”
She said, “I can’t understand. Why, I thought you were working for Mr. Whitewell.”
“He employed me.”
“Well?”
“But,” I said, “he employed me to find you, to discover why you’d left, and what had happened to you. That was all I had to do, and I’ve done it.”
She sat looking at me as though she were just recovering from a terrific punch on the jaw.
“But what are you going to do?”
“ I’m not going to do anything. You’re the one that’s going to do it.”
“Do what?”
I said, “You’re going to trump the old man’s ace.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You disappeared,” I said, “under such circumstances that you might have had a sudden attack of amnesia.”
“Yes. That was the way he wanted it to appear.”
“He, of course, suggested you write Helen Framley, so Sidney wouldn’t write Philip?”
“Yes.”
“And gave you a sheet of paper and furnished you with a stamped envelope?”
“Yes.”
“And while you may have thought you were collaborating, the essential scheme of this disappearance of yours was thought up by him?”
“Well — yes, I guess so. He told me I had to save the family’s honor, and that it would be better and more beautiful to have Philip keep on loving me and always cherish the memory of our love, than to be brutally disillusioned and perhaps hate me.”
“All right. You did just what you seemed to do.”
“What?”
“Suffered a loss of memory.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Go right through with it. You suffered a complete loss of memory. You were in the office. You reached for a pencil and — bingo. Your mind went blank. You found yourself out on the street without any idea of who you were or what your name was or how you happened to be there.”
“What good would that do? How would that help?”
“Don’t you see? You’re picked up, suffering from amnesia. You’re taken to a hospital, and the Bertha Cool Detective Agency finds you. You can’t remember who you are. Your mind is a blank, but the good old Cool Detective Agency has tracked you down, and Philip comes to identify you. The minute you look on Philip’s face, the shock of seeing the man you love brings back your reason and—”
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it! I can’t stand it.”
“Why not?”
“You’re tearing my heart to ribbons!”
“You’re goofy,” I told her. “I’m talking sense. Cut out the damn sentimentalism and get down to bedrock.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely impossible! It’s out of the question. I couldn’t deceive Philip that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be — it would be unfair.”
“No, it wouldn’t. You’ve already done the unfair part. This would be just straightening it out. You should see the way Philip looks, the lines of suffering about his mouth, the shadows under his eyes, the hollow cheeks, the—”
“Will you please stop?”
“Not until you promise me to do what I’ve outlined.”
“But I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s Sidney Jannix. Philip and I couldn’t be married because—”
“Because what?”
“Because I’m a married woman.”
I said, “No, you’re not. You’re a widow.”
“I’m — what?”
“A widow.”
“Then it wasn’t true, that letter from the Framley girl? Sidney isn’t living? He—”
“He was at the time the letter was written. He isn’t now.”
She studied me for a few seconds. “Look here,” she said, “if this is some kind of a racket—”
“It isn’t. I’ve come prepared to prove what I’m saying.”
I took from my pocket the piece I’d cut from the Las Vegas newspaper and handed it to her. “Helen Framley’s boy friend,” I said, “was Sidney Jannix. You’re not married to anyone. You’re a widow.”
She read it through carefully. I watched her eyes moving back and forth as she shifted them from one line to the other. After a while, they quit moving, but she kept them focused on the paper, pretending still to be reading, gaining time to think before she had to look up and face the situation.
Abruptly she looked up at me. “He was murdered then?”
“Yes.”
“Who— Who did it?”
“They don’t know.”
“But you know, don’t you?”
“I have an idea.”
Her eyes shifted again. She pulled her lower lip in under her teeth, moved it slowly while she made biting motions. “Have you been employed to solve the murder?” she asked abruptly.
“No.”
“Would you — well, if you knew who did it, would you necessarily have to—”
“No.”
Abruptly she gave me her hand. “Mr. Lam,” she said, “I think you’re wonderful.”
“And you’ll do what I ask you to?”
“Yes.”
“All right, remember you’ve had this apartment as Mrs. Sidney Jannix. You don’t want to have any connection with this apartment. They must never be able to trace you to it. That would be fatal. Clean out of here. Ship your baggage or buy a ticket to San Francisco, check your baggage, and have the baggage checks in your purse. I suppose Whitewell gave you money enough to see you through, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He insisted that I accept that so that I could leave all of my own money behind when I left. That was a part of the stage setting.”
“If Philip had used his brain,” I said, “that would have been the one clue which would have convinced him your disappearance had been planned in advance and financed. All right now, clear out of here. I want it so that no one can ever connect you with this apartment. Go out on the streets and start wandering around. Find a policeman. Ask him what town this is. Keep doing goofy things until someone picks you up, but whatever you do, don’t take a drink of anything.”
“Why?”
“Because if you have liquor on your breath, they’ll throw you in as a drunk. If you’re cold sober, and still act goofy, they’ll call in a doctor. The doctor may try to trap you. He may smell a rat. You’ve got to carry it through. Think you can do it?”
“I can try. I’d do anything.”
“Luck to you,” I said, and shook hands with her again.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to wait until you land in the hospital, and then I’m going to discover you. After that, I’m going to Las Vegas and report to Whitewell.”
She said, “You’re giving me a swell break, aren’t you?” I said, “I see no reason for throwing you overboard if I can bring the ship into port.”
Her eyes were searching mine, and she was smiling somewhat wistfully. “You’re trying to be tough and hard-boiled — and you’re just a romanticist at heart. You remind me of Philip.”
I started for the door. “Okay, try and be in the hospital by dark.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I walked down the stairs and out to the street. The high elevation gave the shadows a slightly purplish hue. All about me the life of Reno flowed by in a steady stream. Reno claims to be the biggest little city in the world, and it might also claim to be the most distinctive. There’s an individuality about Reno which hits you right between the eyes: cowpunchers clumping along the sidewalks in high-heeled riding-boots, disillusioned, bitter women waiting for their period of residence to expire, voluptuous cuties who are playing tag with life, and have dropped in on Reno during a period of transition, boldly looking for some temporary masculine contacts and not being overly particular. Gamblers rub elbows with tourists. Cowpunchers pass the time of day with the owners of dude ranches. Sunburned vacationists, enjoying the healthful climate, mingle with pale-faced tourists who are gawking about at the sights of the divorce capital.
I wanted a few moments in which to think things out before I went back to the cabin. I drifted with the crowd through the doors of one of the more popular casinos, stood in a corner absently watching the expressions of the faces grouped around the wheel of fortune. Behind me, I could hear the steady whir of a slot machine. Intermittent. ly, there’d be the tinkle of coins spilling into the cup.
I turned around to look.
Helen Framley, her back turned toward me, was busily engaged in milking one of the two-bit machines.
I walked quietly to the door and out into the street.