The innocent Mrs Duff

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

  “Have it your own way,” said Nolan. “After what I thought was a frame-up, I began to change my mind about you.”

  I’ve got to be careful. Duff thought, extremely careful with this fellow. I must not let him go too far. He’s—I don’t know what to call him.

  “So,” said Nolan, “after the episode that I thought was a frame-up, I got the idea you might be interested in fixing a genuine frame-up.”

  “I certainly should not!” said Duff.

  “Well, here we are,” said Nolan.

  He stopped the car before a big, old-fashioned frame house on a tree-lined side street; in a front window was a sign. Alexander L. Hearty, M.D.

  “I don’t know…” Duff said. “I don’t know if I’ll bother…”

  But he wanted, he needed to feel better than this. There was thinking to be done, action to be taken; he needed to be at his best. If this doctor was one of the kindly, old-fashioned sort, he might help him. He got out of the car and went up the steps to the veranda. He rang the bell and presently the door was opened by a stout grey-haired woman in a green print dress.

  “Is Doctor Hearty in?” asked Duff.

  “Well, his office hours don’t begin till eleven.”

  “My name is Duff,” said Duff, and his tone impressed her. “I’m on my way to my office in New York, and I’d hoped I could see the doctor for a few minutes.”

  “Well, I’ll see…” she said, and went off, leaving him in the hall.

  She returned promptly.

  “The doctor’ll see you, Mr. Duff,” she said. “Step right in.”

  This is a mistake. Duff thought, looking around him with distaste at the ugly, shabby waiting-room. A doctor with a place like this couldn’t possibly be successful.

  “Come in, sir! Come in!” said Doctor Hearty from the doorway of his office.

  He looked. Duff thought, like a country doctor on a calendar, lean and grizzled, with spectacles before his deep-set grey eyes, and thin lips rather oddly pursed.

  “Sit down! Sit down!” he said. “Now, then, sir, what do you complain of?”

  Queer way to put it, Duff thought.

  “It’s nothing very definite,” he said. “It’s what you might call a general malaise.”

  “Let’s see your tongue,” said the doctor,

  A mistake, ever to have wasted time over this preposterous old hick, thought Duff. He felt like a fool, sitting there and sticking out his tongue.

  “How’s your appetite, sir?”

  “That’s one of the things that bother me,” said Duff. “I have practically no appetite.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “No. Poorly.”

  “Now take off your coat, sir, and open your shirt,” said the doctor.

  He did the usual things with a stethoscope; he took Duff’s blood pressure.

  “Hold out your hands, sir,” he said.

  Duff did not move.

  “Hold out your hands, sir. Arms’ length.”

  “Well, they won’t be very good,” said Duff, with a laugh. “I took two or three drinks last night to get some sleep.”

  “Hold ’em out, sir,” said the doctor, patient and inexorable.

  Hot with resentment. Duff did so.

  “All right,” said the doctor. “You can put your coat on, sir. What’s your age?”

  “Forty-four,” said Duff, curtly.

  The doctor leaned back in his chair behind the desk.

  “How much d’you drink, Mr.—?”

  “Duff is my name. I’ve been taking a few drinks lately at bedtime, to get some sleep.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Three, perhaps four.”

  “It hasn’t done you any good,” said the doctor.

  Damn fool! thought Duff. He hasn’t even written down my history. Doesn’t make any attempt to understand my psychology.

  “Are you under any particular strain just now, Mr.—?”

  “DUFF. Yes, I am. Big contracts. Surgical and dental instruments.”

  “Not Hanbury, Mardin and Duff?” cried the doctor.

  “Yes,” said Duff.

  “Upon—my—word…!” said the doctor.

  Wonderful, isn’t it? thought Duff.

  “Well…” said the doctor, coming out of a trance, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do for you, Mr. Duff. I’m going to prescribe a sedative, for a short period. One capsule at bedtime. But no liquor. I want you to remember that, Mr. Duff. If you take any liquor at all, along with this sedative, you’ll be worse off than ever.”

  “What’s wrong with me?” asked Duff.

  “Nothing to worry about, if you’ll follow my directions. I want you to eat six light meals a day.—Married man?”

  “Yes,” said Duff.

  “Well, you give your wife this list,” said the doctor, taking a mimeographed paper out of a drawer. “Get all the exercise, all the fresh air and sunshine you can. Take one of these capsules at bedtime. And no alcohol.”

  Damn horse-doctor, thought Duff. Absolutely no understanding of anyone who isn’t a phlegmatic yokel.

  “I want to see you in three days, Mr. Duff,” said the doctor. “After you’ve had three good nights’ sleep—and no alcohol.”

  They both rose, and the doctor put his hand on Duffs shoulder.

  “Carry on!” he said. “You did a fine job in the war, Mr. Duff.”

  Like a Boy Scout leader, thought Duff. Use your willpower and eat six meals a day. Be good and you will be happy. It was a relief to see Nolan, standing beside the car and smoking a cigarette. At least Nolan was not a Boy Scout. He drinks, Duff thought. He said so. He’d have some idea… Not like that blasted horse-doctor.

  “How did you like old Doc Hearty?” asked Nolan.

  “Not at all,” said Duff. “Still, I might as well try his damn pills. Take this to the Modern, will you?”

  He watched Nolan, straight, strong and alive, going into the Modern Pharmacy on Main Street. Remarkable fellow, in many ways, he thought. You can’t exactly call him impertinent. He’s— natural, that’s all. He’s free. No inhibitions.

  It was fifteen minutes before Nolan returned.

  “We’ve missed a couple of trains,” he said. “They could have given me this stuff at once. Standard brand. But they like their hocus-pocus. I see you’ve got some knockout drops.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  Nolan mentioned a brand name. “They gave me that in the hospital,” he said. “I liked it. Put me to sleep in half an hour. Now, whenever I go on a binge, I take that stuff for a couple of nights, and it straightens me out.”

  “You can’t get it without a prescription,” said Duff.

  “I can,” said Nolan.

  “Well…” said Duff. “When is the next train?”

  “Thirty-five minutes.”

  “I suppose we haven’t enough gas to drive down the line to the next station?”

  “I can get gas,” said Nolan.

  “You haven’t any too many scruples, have you?” said Duff.

  “Oh, plenty,” said Nolan.

  He stood there, still smoking, and he plainly didn’t care whether he got gas or didn’t get it.

  Duff leaned forward in the car, miserably irresolute. He did not want to go to the railroad station and sit there waiting, alone. He wanted to bring the conversation back to Captain Ferris, yet, in a way, he dreaded the idea. He could not quite remember what Nolan had said, but he knew it was dangerous, all of it. He had to remember; he could not tolerate this haziness in his mind.

  “Look here!” he said, suddenly. “D’you know any place around here where I can get a glass of beer? A—quiet place. These damn doctors upset you.”

  “Sure,” said Nolan, and got in behind the wheel.

  He drove for fifteen minutes or so, through the village, and out on to a highway unfamiliar to Duff, a flat and desolate road. He stopped the car before a one-storied wooden building with a broken windmill thrashing slowly about on the roof. Ol
de Dutch, the sign said.

  “Come in and have a drink, Nolan,” said Duff.

  It was a bleak place; nobody in it, nothing but chairs and tables around the four walls, leaving the center empty. A thin, insolent dark girl with a Dutch cap on the back of her head came in through a door at the back.

  “Yes?” she demanded, fiercely.

  “I think I’ll have a straight rye,” said Duff, frowning and thoughtful. “Better make it a double, and water on the side. What’s yours, Nolan?”

  “Coke, thanks,” said Nolan.

  This distressed Duff.

  “I suppose you think it’s a pretty bad idea, to take a drink at half-past nine in the morning,” he said.

  “If I wanted it, I’d take it,” said Nolan.

  The insolent girl brought the drinks and went away again; they were alone in this barnlike place with all the empty chairs and tables. The sun shone in at one end, and the dust seemed to rise there like a fog.

  “What you told me about this Ferris…” said Duff. “It’s upset me very much, Nolan.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Nolan.

  “I’d like to hear anything more you’ve got to say about the man.”

  “I haven’t got anything more that you could use,” said Nolan.

  “What d’you mean ‘use’?”

  Nolan gazed down into his little glass and said nothing. He looked young, healthy, and happy, nothing more.

  “You said you’d like to see this man in trouble,” said Duff. “Well, did you have any ideas about how that could be done?”

  “Yes, I had ideas,” said Nolan. “But I couldn’t work them out, alone.”

  “Well, what ideas?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Nolan.

  “I can’t quite see why you’ve got it in for Ferris, this way,” said Duff.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Nolan. “The last time I saw him, this was. I was talking to Mrs. Duff in the driveway; we didn’t notice Ferris come out of the house until he stood behind me. ‘Nolan!’ he said, in that damn parade-ground voice of his. He told me he didn’t like my ‘tone’; he said I needed a ‘sharp lesson’. He went on like that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” said Nolan. “That’s what three years in the Army did to me. I’d got so damn well trained in taking that sort of talk that I took it that time, too. If I’d knocked him down, I’d have forgotten the whole thing in a couple of hours. But I didn’t. And I haven’t forgotten it.”

  “I have no use for violence, in any form,” said Duff.

  “Then you’re lucky you weren’t drafted,” said Nolan. “There was quite a lot of violence around, in those Pacific islands.”

  We’re getting nowhere, thought Duff, and a great impatience came over him, almost desperation. It was as if this were his last chance, and he could not seize it. He could not even seize upon the idea that had been forming in his mind before he had gone into the doctor’s office.

  “Think you could get hold of that girl, Nolan?” he asked. “I’d like another drink. A double. They’re very small here.”

  Nolan rose promptly and went off to the door through which the girl had come. He stood there, speaking to someone invisible to Duff, and presently he came back to the table, with two little glasses of whiskey.

  “Thanks,” said Duff. “Sorry you won’t take anything.”

  He took a few sips of neat whiskey, and he was beginning to feel better; his head was clearer. No more after today, he thought. I’ll start on those pills tonight. Knockout drops… Of course, that’s just a figure of speech. But there is something they call knockout drops. They put it into drinks, for sailors, and people like that.

  “A man like Ferris…” he said. “Skulking into another man’s house, behind his back. Hanging’s too good for a fellow like that.”

  “I’d settle for hanging,” said Nolan.

  “I’d like to see him disgraced,” said Duff, hotly. “Publicly disgraced. Ruined. I’d like to see him caught in some compromising situation. Trapped.”

  Now it was said. His hand was shaking, and he started on the other little glass.

  “That wouldn’t be so easy,” said Nolan.

  “Why not? In his hotel, for instance…”

  “I don’t like the hotel,” said Nolan. “Too many chances for a slip-up. And they might meet downstairs in the lounge. That happened before.”

  Duff finished the drink.

  “There’s the shack,” he said.

  A great relief came flooding through him, as if at last, after a long and desperate effort, he had remembered a forgotten and vitally necessary fact.

  “That would be better,” said Nolan. “Only that has drawbacks, too. We’d have to get both of them out there.”

  “Yes,” said Duff. “That’s almost impossible.”

  “Not impossible. Just hard.”

  “How could it be done?”

  “Letters, maybe.”

  Duff’s mind was cool and alert now.

  “No,” he said. “That means making two perfect forgeries.”

  “Forgeries don’t have to be perfect,” said Nolan. “It’s not so hard to imitate anyone’s handwriting, and you can count on the fact that it’s not going to be studied. People don’t notice much. Didn’t you ever forge an excuse for absence or tardiness, when you were in school?”

  “Never!” said Duff. “Never thought of such a thing.”

  “Plenty of kids get away with it,” said Nolan. “Or there could be one letter and one telephone call.”

  “Disguised voice? No. That wouldn’t work.”

  “Could work,” said Nolan.

  The dust looked golden in the shaft of sunlight; it was very pretty. Duff thought. He felt quiet, strong, relaxed, here with Nolan.

  “Who’d get the note?” he asked.

  “Ferris.”

  Gazing intently at the shimmering dust, Duff had something like a vision. He could see the shack, in the setting sun; a taxi drew up, and Reggie came out on the porch, not pale and strange, but happy, with her wide smile.

  “It wouldn’t be too hard to get them there,” said Nolan, thoughtfully. “The trouble is, to keep them there.”

  “What?”

  “As soon as they start talking, they’ll know it’s a frame-up.”

  “Of course,” said Duff, stricken.

  “But it could be worked,” said Nolan. “Those pills of yours—”

  “No!” said Duff, mechanically.

  “If there was some whiskey left out…” said Nolan, as if talking to himself. “If it was well loaded… The Captain would never pass it up. He could be sound asleep when she got there.”

  “Then she’d leave, at once.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t.”

  “What would stop her?”

  “If the telephone didn’t work, and she couldn’t get a taxi—?”

  “She’d walk. She’d see that something was wrong with the man, and she’d walk, to get help.”

  “Why wouldn’t she just think he was drunk?”

  “She wouldn’t stay there with a drunken man. She feels very strongly about things like that.”

  He remembered that scene in the shack, when she had come into his room and picked up the glass of gin. Oh, Jake! she had cried.

  Anger rose and rose in him. Absolutely inexcusable meddling, he thought. She’s always interfering, always knocking at the door… Now she wants to leave me, desert me, make a fool of me. Absolutely unwarranted. She’s been giving my money to this man. She went to his hotel. And now she thinks she can walk out and leave me, for everyone to laugh at.

  Well, she won’t. She’s not going to walk off, like a blameless victim. Only, my God, how complicated this is!

  “It won’t work,” he said, bitterly.

  “Oh, I think so,” said Nolan. “It takes about two hours to drive out to the beach. If she took a little dose before she left the house, she’d be too sleepy when she got to the shack to go righ
t out again.”

  “But don’t you see—?” said Duff, angrily. “If they’re to be found there together, they can’t be drugged. How d’you think that would look? No. It’s no good.”

  “I could turn on the gas,” said Nolan.

  “Good God!” cried Duff. “What are you saying?”

  Their eyes met for a moment.

  “I could turn on the gas,” said Nolan, “and ten minutes later— before any harm was done—you could come along and find them, and turn it off. Suicide pact.”

  “They’d deny it.”

  “Who’d believe them?” asked Nolan.

  “No,” said Duff. “I couldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “All right,” said Nolan. “Look here! You’ve missed your train. The next one’s at ten-twenty.”

  I can’t go to the office, Duff thought. I’m sick. I’ve had too many drinks. I’ll go—

  Where? Home! he said to himself, I’ll say I was taken ill, and I’ll go to bed. I’ll make her let me alone. I have every right in the world to go home, to my own house, whenever I feel like it.

  But that white-faced, secret girl would not let him alone; he was sure of that. She wouldn’t believe in his illness. She would come mocking at the door. She might even send for a doctor, without consulting him. Doctor Hearty, even.

  And what if he was really ill? He would be helpless then, and she would find the empty bottles; she would find the wet clothes. She would disgrace him, ruin him. She would tell everyone that he had killed the old maniac and dragged him into the sea.

  I’d like to drive out into the country somewhere,” he said. “Stop somewhere for lunch, and take it a little easy. If you’ve got enough gas—”

  “I can get it,” said Nolan,

  Duff took up a paper napkin from the table and wiped his face.

  “All right,” he said, coldly.

  Chapter 16

  At five o’clock he had a few more drinks. He had them, sitting at a little iron table, on the lawn outside a roadhouse fronting the Sound. Nolan sat with him, drinking another coke.

  “No whiskey, thanks,” Nolan said. “After a binge, it takes me two or three days to dry out, and then I’m all right.”

  “Two or three days?” Duff repeated. “I suppose they’re pretty unpleasant…?”

  “Well, no,” said Nolan. “But then I’m in pretty good shape.”