The Institute

by James M. Cain

  “But, Senator, I have—”

  “Lloyd, we have only a few minutes, so let me finish. He’s a master cross-examiner, so I beg you, whatever he does, keep your cool. Don’t slug it out with him. Don’t for one second try! He knows all the dirty tricks in the book, and I doubt that you know any. He’ll give that crazy writer his head, and—”

  “Is he going to be at these hearings, too?”

  “He’ll be the star witness, and he’ll be coddled along, encouraged to ‘tell it in his own words,’ allowed to gabble his head off, so all sorts of things can be put in the record, so Pickens can have them reprinted at government expense and distributed all over Georgia. But when it comes your turn to testify, you’ll be put in a straitjacket of ‘did you or did you not?’—which will restrict you to yes or no answers. And if there’s the least discrepancy between what you say and what somebody else says or between what you say at one point and what you said a few minutes earlier, you’re going to hear the word perjury until you’re climbing the wall with frustration—or worse yet, rage. So, once more, cool it.”

  Mr. Garrett said: “There may be something I can do.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” the senator said. “I doubt that you’ll get the chance to do anything. You’ll be handled with kid gloves as a distinguished, public-spirited citizen whose confidence has been abused by a radical, nigger-loving extremist.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The door opened and the senator’s secretary brought in Miss Snyder, Mr. Garrett’s Washington girl who handed him two large manila envelopes. He slipped out what was in them part way, to check them. In one envelope were photographs and in the other what looked like Xeroxes. Miss Snyder whispered to him: “I’ll be there at the hearing, behind you, if you need me.” This was stuff on Pickens Mr. Garrett had in reserve. As it turned out, it wasn’t needed.

  Senator Hood waited, then at two minutes to ten escorted us into the committee room which was on the same floor as his office. By then it was full of spectators who eyed us as though we were animals in the zoo. He took us to the chairs reserved for us with a bunch of tables between them and the dais where two or three senators were already seated. Then he left and went up to the dais. In the chair beside me, looking at us sideways, was the writer who had caused all the trouble. Off to one side on tripods were TV cameras and their crews.

  Suddenly everyone rose, and Senator Pickens came in. It was the first time I had ever seen him, though, of course, I had seen pictures of him. He looked about the same, except for his color, which didn’t show in the pictures: a bright, purple red. Otherwise, in a coarse, John C. Calhoun way, he was impressive enough, with gray hair and craggy, beetling eyebrows. He rapped with a gavel and announced that the hearing was to “inquire into alleged abuses on the part of the Hortense Garrett Institute of Biography, a foundation enjoying exemption from federal taxes.” He then called the writer, had him sworn, and after asking his name, place of residence, and occupation, got down to business. I must have tensed, because Mr. Garrett leaned over and patted me on the knee. Once more, I fought off the feeling it gave me—of having a friend who would stand by me through thick and thin.

  “The daily papers,” Senator Pickens began, addressing the writer, “have reported a conversation between you and Lloyd Palmer, director of the Hortense Garrett Institute of Biography, on or about March 18 of this year. Did such a conversation take place?”

  “It did, yes, sir.”

  “Is Mr. Palmer here in this room today?”

  I raised my hand.

  “Will you please stand, Mr. Palmer?”

  I stood, feeling as though in a pillory.

  “Is this the Lloyd Palmer with whom the conversation took place?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “Will you tell the sense of this conversation?”

  That left me standing there, and in a moment I sat down. Apparently, that was what the senator was hoping for.

  “Mr. Palmer,” he bellowed, “I will say when you may sit down. I asked you to stand. You may stand!”

  I didn’t move.

  “Mr. Palmer, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, Senator, I did.”

  “Then why don’t you do as I order you?”

  “Senator,” I heard myself say, “for your information and in case you have forgotten it, I hold the highest rank this country knows: I’m a citizen of the United States. You’re not ordering me to stand up, and nobody else is. Upon your request, I will stand. I did stand. But I will decide when I sit down, not you. I suggest that you remember that. I can’t make you do it any more than you can make me take orders from you. I can make you goddam well wish you had.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes.”

  What I was threatening him with I didn’t exactly know, but before he could ask me, crackling applause broke out—for me, not him. He turned furiously to the writer and asked him for the second time to give the “sense of that conversation,” and the next thing I knew, here it came in a diatribe I could hardly believe. It polished off Douglas Southall Freeman, what a heel he was to accept assignments writing up Longstreet, “knowing all the time that he didn’t dare tell it fairly or he would show up Robert E. Lee and what a mess he made of Gettysburg, when he disregarded Long-street and sent Pickett in anyway and proved what a phoney he was.”

  “Oh come, come,” the senator interjected.

  “Senator,” this military expert shot back, “Robert E. Lee is the most overrated, overpraised, and overwritten military commander in American history. He fought one great battle—Fredericksburg—which was set up and delivered to him on a platter by a Union general under pressure from Washington. But it was a purely defensive battle. Offensively, Lee had two assets, one named Stonewall Jackson, the other James Longstreet. His one great offensive attempt—Gettysburg—I can prove to you was copied step by step and shot for shot from Joseph Hooker’s Chancellorsville plan, which had left Lee doomed before he was saved by Jackson. That’s right. I mean to say: Lee copied his whole campaign from the one his enemy had used against him. Yes sir, I said phoney, and now, I repeat that word.”

  “Did you make this point to Palmer?”

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  “And what was Palmer’s reaction?”

  “He agreed with what I said and told me to go ahead—once I made it clear that I would not be dictated to.”

  “Did Palmer try to dictate to you?”

  “Not in so many words, no.”

  “Then in what words. Please tell us, if you recall them.”

  “Senator, he had me down for a hundred a week, and that gave him the right to dictate if I submitted to it.”

  “And you refused to submit to it, is that right?”

  “I did refuse. Yes sir.”

  “In so many words?”

  “In those words.”

  He repeated himself quite a lot as other senators got in it, each time making somewhat incredible remarks about Lee. At last Senator Pickens asked him to step down, and then the senator called my name. I took the seat the writer had sat in, the one by the microphone, and Mr. Garrett moved to the seat beside me.

  To say I was nervous as I took the oath and gave my name would be an understatement. I sounded queer and my voice had a tremor in it. The reason, of course, was that I was terrified at the direction the questions might take. I couldn’t be sure that Hortense and I had not been under surveillance, and in spite of lying awake at night, I hadn’t come up with anything to do about it. However, I sounded a bit more natural after the first few questions which focused on Harvey’s Restaurant and Robert E. Lee.

  “Did he or did he not,” roared Senator Pickens, “traduce Robert E. Lee to you?”

  “He criticized General Lee, yes.”

  “Stigmatizing him?”

  “He took exception to Lee’s generalship.”

  “And what was your reaction?”

  “I had none. I’m not an expert on Civil War gen
eralship.”

  “You did not defend General Lee?”

  “Defend him? Why should I have defended him?”

  “A great soldier, a great educator, a great man—and you let these slurs be passed on him without uttering one word in his defense?”

  “It wasn’t up to me to defend him.”

  “But you accepted this man’s characterization?”

  “I did not. He didn’t tell you the truth. He had some idea—he seemed obsessed with it—that I was trying to dictate to him, to block him from the approach he had in mind, to keep him from writing a biography of Longstreet. I kept telling him that I was not. I told him to write his book as he saw it and if that involved derogatory reflections on General Lee, then that was his conception of it, and the Institute had no objection.”

  “In other words, you did agree?”

  “In no other words but yours, Senator. I told him to write his own book—not my book or the Institute’s book or your book, for that matter.”

  “I’ll thank you to leave me out of it.”

  “And I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth.”

  By this time I was myself. I sounded civil, verging on oily, and my little crack got a laugh. But the senator wasn’t done yet. He reverted to his basic theme—that I was a faithless, unprincipled creep who had committed a fine institute to anti-Southern writing with his employer’s knowledge.

  “Did you or did you not,” he asked me, “discuss this blackening of General Lee’s name with Mr. Garrett?”

  “Not until you got in it, Senator.”

  “You withheld it from him?”

  “I had no reason to bring it up.”

  “But you discussed it with Mrs. Garrett?”

  “Did I?”

  “I am asking you, Palmer. Answer me!”

  “I thought you were telling me. No, not with her, either.”

  “You’ve seen quite a lot of her?”

  “Daily, almost.”

  “Where, Dr. Palmer?”

  “At her office, at my office, in the Garrett Building, and lately at our offices in the new Institute building. Also at lunch, and quite often, at dinner.”

  “And you didn’t mention this to her?”

  “Again, not until you got in it.”

  “Not even in your cups?”

  “In my what?”

  He picked up a sheet of paper. “I hold in my hand,” he said, “a copy of the restaurant check you paid on the evening of April 13 last, one week ago today—one the waitress penciled your name on, which shows a fifteen-dollar charge for one quart of champagne. You drank this wine, Palmer?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You mean to say, she did? Mrs. Garrett?”

  For a moment my head was spinning around, trying to locate myself on this bottle of champagne and figure out what in the name of God he was getting at. His question, though, gave me a clue. He was getting ready to line me up for more of his basic theme: that I had so little respect for Hortense, I’d get cockeyed drunk at dinner with, her, a continuation of what a worthless, respect-lacking employee I was—which, of course, would go down well in the teetotalling parts of Georgia. But mainly, I sensed that he knew nothing of what I had been dreading, which was my relations with Hortense, and my head suddenly cleared. I knew then that I would disregard all the warnings I had had from Senator Hood and let Pickens have it with both barrels, if God gave me the strength.

  “No, Senator,” I answered quite casually. “Mrs. Garrett doesn’t drink.”

  “Then you drank it, Palmer?”

  “No, Senator, I did not.”

  “Well, somebody must have!”

  “I would assume that the couple across the room did, the couple Mrs. Garrett sent the wine to. A girl at the Royal Arms got married week before last and was having dinner that night with her husband. Mrs. Garrett went over to congratulate them and give Lucy a kiss. Then she asked me to order the wine so she could send it over as a gift from her—which I did. She paid me for it ... which leaves you looking rather silly, Senator.”

  “Never mind how I look, Palmer. Now did you—”

  “Just a moment, Senator; I’m not finished yet.”

  “I’m asking the questions, Palmer!”

  “And I’m giving the answers. Senator, the mistake you made was to bring this subject of alcoholic refreshment up at a hearing you invited TV to cover, which will show on color film a witness named Palmer with the pasty-pale skin of the man who drinks only water, and a senator named Pickens, with a skin of the deep, crimson-red color that comes from only one pot. Senator, all over Georgia tonight they will see with their own eyes, which of us is sober and which the drunken sot!”

  He bellowed something, but the roar of applause I got drowned him out. Then he got another surprise. Mr. Garrett was suddenly there on the dais beside him, looking down at him like something carved out of granite. Then the toneless Garrett voice was coming through the mike.

  “Senator, you will expunge from the record all references to my wife—now. Do you hear me?”

  But the woman with the stenotype was already tearing up tape. The applause from the crowd bordered on an ovation, with people standing up. As Garrett came marching back, I was still on my feet, and he was extending his hand. I was so glad to take it that I wanted to cry. That handshake, that warm, wonderful grip, was the greatest moment I ever had, in my whole life, with another man.

  21

  A CROAK CAME OVER the loudspeaker system: “This hearing’s adjourned,” and the people were swarming around us, shaking hands and aiming cameras. Then we were back in Senator Hood’s office with everyone gloating over what we’d done—Mr. Garrett “for teaching the bastard manners,” and me “for really settling his hash—that cooks his goose in Georgia, make no mistake.” Well, it did cook his goose, as we know, but I didn’t much care at the time. I wanted out of there. Then I found myself down on the street with Mr. Garrett. He was patting me on the back and saying: “Lloyd, as you know, this stuff that Hood peddles—discretion and going along—I’m for most of the time. I practice it myself. But every so often the one thing that fills the bill is a sock on the snoot, and boy, did you give him one today. I’m still exulting over it. I glory in what you did. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Then I was home lying in bed with no idea how I got there. I had to be alone, to face up to this thing in my life, not the clobbering of Pickens, because that was something I had to do but took no interest in. It was that handshake and how it made me feel that I had to face up to now, especially what it meant in my life. One thing was clear, and it kept hitting me: once that handshake was given, once I felt as it made me feel, I couldn’t lie anymore. I had to come clean, with no fiddling or foodling or faddling around. So where did that leave me? I wrestled with it, hating to face up to what it was leading to.

  Sometime during the afternoon I realized that I hadn’t heard from Hortense and thought it very odd. She must have heard about what had happened. It seemed peculiar that she wouldn’t have called me. A few other people did, those who had my number, with congratulations for what I had done. But she didn’t. Then in the early evening I heard her key in the lock and then she was calling me.

  “I’m in here,” I called out, sounding thick.

  She came in and without saying hello lay down beside me in the dark but without taking off her clothes. I was dressed, too, with the spread pulled over me. There we lay for several minutes, the first time, I suppose, we’d ever stretched out that way. But she acted so strangely that I asked: “Is something wrong, Hortense?”

  “Wrong? I’ll say there is.”

  Then, almost at once: “Lloyd, it’s not that Teddy creature, the one I thought it was. It’s Inga.”

  “Who?”

  “The housekeeper, the Swedish housekeeper.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s so, just the same. The woman detective reported today, at last. Lloyd, she got in there by going up in the eleva
tors, the way I told her to, pretending that she wanted a job when Inga came to the door. And when she spoke Swedish, Inga let her in. She had no work for her but gave her coffee and the names of some places she might apply at. Then she apologized for running the woman out, but said her boss was coming and she had to give him lunch. Then when the woman was leaving, Inga called out: ‘Oh, no, not here! We have a hideout downstairs, a little place with two rooms where no maid is on duty to see. My boss mixes love with lunch’—and she flipped up her skirt to show she had no pantyhose on ... Lloyd, how could he?”

  “Easy, just stretch her out and—”

  “It’s no laughing matter!”

  “I didn’t say it was. I just said it’s easy.”

  “Well, if that’s how you feel about it!—”

  “Ask me what’s new, why don’t you?”

  “You? What are you talking about?”

  “They had a hearing today. Remember?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Well? What happened?”

  “I clobbered the senator—and your husband finished him off.”

  “So?”

  “Then we shook hands.”

  “And the sun stood still—or what?”

  “It changes things.”

  “In what way?”

  If she couldn’t see in what way, I didn’t know how to tell her. I didn’t even try. She started all over again, telling me what Inga had said. It seems that there was quite a bit more—how loving her boss was at night, and how he liked auser, as Inga called it in Swedish, meaning extra, at lunchtime, for which they needed the hideaway so the maid wouldn’t catch them at it. Then she raised up on one elbow and announced: “Lloyd, I have to know what this means! I can’t fool around any longer, playing it in the dark.”

  “Nobody asked you to.”

  “And my waist is an inch bigger than it was this time last week. It’s beginning to show!”

  “You’re six months gone. That’s why.”

  “I have to talk to him!”

  She reached him not at the hotel but at the ARMALCO offices. It took some arguing to get him to come, but finally she snapped: “Richard, do you think I’m playing games? I said get out here to Lloyd’s apartment in College Park—and come now!”