The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

  “There’s no reason you should believe it,” John said. “But she’s right.”

  “If she’s wrong,” Phillips said, “it will be a very bad thing. For everybody. And, most of all for you.” He turned back to Barbara. “You are quite sure?” he said.

  “Yes,” Barbara said. “There isn’t any possible doubt.”

  For some seconds, then, father and daughter looked at each other. Finally, Phillips slowly nodded his massive head.

  “It’s nothing we can go beyond, apparently,” he said. “And—nothing I would want to change if I could.” He turned again to John. “You’re very lucky,” he said. “I hope not luckier than you deserve.”

  He said, “Good night,” then, and went out of the room. They could hear him climbing the stairs, steadily, not rapidly ….

  On his way home in a cab, John thought of a tree—a tree seen distantly, in full leaf, hazy in a background. If I could remember the tree, he thought. I have to remember the tree. Methodically, he tried to picture the places where, the summer before, he had gone to play tennis. Or—had dressed as if for tennis. Because a tennis shirt did not necessarily mean—

  The telephone was ringing when he went into his apartment.

  “The green dress,” Barbara said. “You remember? The one the label wasn’t cut out of?”

  For a moment he did not. Then he said, “Yes.”

  “I remember it,” she said. “I almost bought it. And—it was late in August. Last August. Fall things were just beginning to come in. Do you see?”

  “Before the apartment was rented,” he said. “Yes, I see. It’s—it’s a little thing, though.”

  “Big or little,” she said. “It’s a thing. We need things. Listen—”

  He listened.

  VII

  Mme. Jacques’ was “a little place on Madison Avenue.” All New York women know little places on Madison Avenue; many of them know several. Mme. Jacques’ had a single dress in its single window. It had a narrow door and the door was curtained. It was, John Hayward thought, quite irrelevantly, the sort of door at which one felt one should knock. It seemed discourteous, intrusive, merely to open the door and walk in. John opened the door and walked in.

  Barbara was not yet there. A middle-aged woman with beautifully ordered, and slightly blueish, gray hair advanced delicately on the carpeted floor. She was a substantial woman, but corsets allowed her figure no nonsense. She said, “Yes?” on a rising note.

  “I’m meeting Miss—” John began, and Barbara Phillips came in.

  “Miss Phillips!” the middle-aged woman said, to one long-awaited, highly prized.

  The woman was not Mme. Jacques. Mme. Jacques was Max Jackman, who was roly-poly, uncorseted, and backstage. The woman was Mary Callahan.

  “Such a long time we haven’t seen you,” Mary Callahan said, with reproach not to be taken seriously. “You’re looking so lovely, my dear.”

  But she was not looking so much at Barbara as at Barbara’s spring coat; at the bright print under it.

  “Such a gay little frock, too,” Mary Callahan said, proving herself generous, since the dress was not a Mme. Jacques’. She felt she could afford to be generous—when pretty young women of notable financial standing brought young men, probably of the same, with them—“Well,” Mary Callahan thought. “Boy. Oh boy!” “We have some lovely things,” Mary Callahan said. “Only this morning I was saying, ‘That’s the very thing for Miss Phillips. Something not everybody could wear, but on her—’”

  She stopped with the air of one who, in the throes of uncontrollable enthusiasm, feels she is talking too much.

  “But I’m rattling on,” Mary Callahan said. “I know you must have something special in mind.” She looked quickly at John. “She has such wonderful taste,” she said. “But I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”

  “Um-m,” John Hayward said.

  “Mary,” Barbara said, “I want you to help me. I’ll buy your very nicest frock tomorrow. Or day after tomorrow.”

  Mary Callahan raised her eyebrows a little, with the air of one who listens. Mary Callahan’s face changed. It seemed to John Hayward to become more really a face.

  “Late last summer,” Barbara said. “August, I think it was. You had a dress—a little woolen dress. It came in green and blue and, I think, in black.”

  Mary Callahan listened. She waited. It would, John thought, be hopeless. Nobody would remember a single dress out, he supposed, of hundreds.

  “I almost bought it,” Barbara said. “But then, instead, I decided on a suit dress—gray and blue. With lovely detail on the jacket. Little tucks?”

  “It was charming on you,” Mary Callahan said. “You didn’t make a mistake.”

  “Lovely,” Barbara said. “But then, all your things are.”

  Mary Callahan’s face looked more than ever like a face.

  “The one I didn’t get,” Barbara said. “The little woolen thing. Here it went—”

  Barbara had taken off her spring coat. Now, her quick, slender hands moved. They moved at her neck and breast, describing a pattern in the air in front of her. “And there—” now her hands moved closer to her hips. “Tucked, just a little,” Barbara said. “But the thing I liked best—” She turned, and her quick hands seemed to smooth the air in the area of her small, neat buttocks. “None of that pull-in,” Barbara said.

  “It would be difficult to find a dress that—would on you,” Mary Callahan said. Then, “Wait. I think I remember. The sleeves—”

  And now she, less quickly, with less grace, but quite as decisively, made air patterns. She had pretty, plump hands, with short red nails. John supposed that, in this strange fashion, woman to woman, they communicated. It appeared they did.

  “That’s it,” Barbara said. “I knew you’d remember.”

  “A little dress,” Mary Callahan said. “Not important at all. Just a little thing you’d live in.”

  “Yes,” Barbara said, and nodded her head. “Oh—not over fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty-four ninety-five,” Mary Callahan said. “But—” She paused, seemed puzzled. “It’s nothing you want for now,” she said. “And by the time you do—”

  “No,” Barbara said. “I want to know who you sold them to.”

  Mary Callahan looked more puzzled than before; she looked doubtful.

  “Please,” Barbara said. “It’s—it could be important, Mary. Did other shops have the dress?”

  “Exclusive with us,” Mary Callahan said. “Not an important dress, but exclusive.” She paused. “In the area,” she added. “They went very fast, as I remember it. Of course, we never stock many of any number. You know that.”

  “Of course,” Barbara said. “It’s one reason so many of us— I mean, it does give one confidence.”

  “It’s something you can count on,” Mary Callahan said. “I don’t suppose—oh, more than four or five. In a dress of that type—a little dress. In something more important, it would be only the one, you know. Unless, that is, we made it a special order.”

  Barbara nodded. She waited.

  “I suppose I could find out,” Mary Callahan said. “Ordinarily—you say it’s important?”

  “Very important,” Barbara said. “Oh, very important. And—it doesn’t matter about the eighteens. Or even the sixteens. The one I’m interested in was a ten. In the green.” She paused, momentarily. “I’d appreciate it so much,” she said.

  “If it was a charge,” Mary Callahan said. “Or someone who’s a regular. If someone merely walked in off the street—” She raised plump shoulders. “But that seldom happens,” she said. “With us, you know.”

  It appeared that Barbara did know. John merely stood. It went on around him.

  “Wait,” Mary Callahan said, and went back through the shop—which had only two dresses on display, on figures; which was a very reticent shop. She pushed aside a curtain, and vanished.

  “Does she,” John said, “really know the dress yo
u mean?”

  He was looked at in surprise; a neat, small head was shaken in surprise.

  “Of course,” Barbara said. “I described it very clearly.” But for an instant, and for the first time since long before, there was laughter in her widely spaced brown eyes. She sobered instantly.

  “You’re all right?” she said. “There hasn’t been anything else.”

  “Nothing else,” he said.

  “About the photograph?”

  He could only shake his head.

  “It will come back,” she said.

  They waited, standing side by side, not touching—and as if their arms were about one another.

  Mary Callahan came back after about ten minutes; she smiled and nodded as she came through the shop, vouching for success. She said it had not taken her long, had it? She had a slip of paper, with names written on it.

  “Max was a little stuffy, just at first,” Mary Callahan said. “But I told him it was Miss Phillips, so of course—” She handed Barbara the slip of paper.

  “One of each size,” she said. “Ten through sixteen. It wasn’t made in eighteen, except on a special order. We did reorder on the fourteen—a green, as it happens. But, it’s all there.”

  Barbara looked at the names on the slip of paper.

  “The ten green,” she said. “Martha Blake. I know Martha.” This was to John. “The twelve—it might just have been a twelve, although I don’t think so. Mrs—” She hesitated over the name for a moment. “Mrs. Leroy Slipperton?”

  “One of our best customers,” Mary Callahan said. “Such a lovely little thing. Such a delightful figure. Like yours, my dear. Except just here.” She touched her own body in the area of the waist. “As it happens, they all went to very good customers. We didn’t show it to everyone.”

  Barbara handed the slip back. She shook her head.

  “It isn’t what you wanted,” Mary Callahan said. “Oh dear. I’m so sorry.”

  “I want,” Barbara Phillips said, “a girl with red hair. A—a girl who’s dead now, Mary.”

  “Not—” Mary said. “Then you’re—” She did not finish this, either. She looked at John Hayward. There was, he thought, nothing but curiosity in her blue eyes.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary Callahan said. “So dreadfully sorry. But—I know all these.” She fluttered the slip in plump fingers. “None of them is—is the girl you’re talking about.”

  “No,” Barbara said. “Well, I appreciate what you’ve done, Mary. We—it was just a chance. You’re quite sure the dress was exclusive?”

  “Yes,” Mary Callahan said. “Only with us. Of course, our Danbury shop—I think several did go up there.”

  We must look very carefree, Barbara Phillips thought; we must look very young and gay, in a young, gay car in a bright spring world. It isn’t—how did Grandfather Rickford use to phrase it? It isn’t seemly. (So many things had not been, for Grandfather Rickford.) She felt, for almost the first time in her life, that something might be said for the point of view. A black sedan, with the windows closed—that would be seemly. Not this bright, sleek little car, skimming the parkways, with the top down. A day of gray rain; that would be seemly. Not this sunny day of spring, with each forsythia bush along the Hutchinson River Parkway itself a little sun; not this day, with the world dressed up for spring.

  Beside her, John drove the Corvette. His face was set; he looked only at the road. Of course, he always drove with concentration. But usually he smiled as he drove—smiled at the road, and at the little car which skimmed it. Well, there was nothing to smile about. And yet, she thought again, we must, to people who look at us, look so carefree. Like a bright young couple in an advertisement. For a moment, and as a kind of escape from the anxiety which rode with them, she thought of the young people, the boys and girls, and the elder people of distinction, who were photographed for such advertisements—advertisements for whiskies, and clothes, and automobiles, all of distinction. The boys and girls in the photographs were notably carefree, the elder, at the least, notably contented. And they were, really, people who earned their livings by being photographed; people who must, often, wonder if they would stay young enough and gay enough, or distinguished enough, to go on earning.

  “Russ Norton,” John said, lifting his voice a little, because the rushing air tossed words away. “What sort is he?”

  “Not mine,” she said. “As it turned out. A little—” She paused for a word. “Well,” she said, “devious. In a straightforward, Ivy League way. But it wasn’t that, so much. He was so very—sure of himself.”

  “And,” he said, “of you?”

  “It was,” she said, “rather like being something he’d invented. Or—it would have been. It didn’t go far, John. There was no reason to drag things out.”

  He did not look away from the road. Even without looking at each other, she thought, we’re beginning to hear things not actually said. By the time we’ve been married years—ten years, fifty years—we’ll communicate entirely by osmosis. Which will be a little odd, but wonderful.

  “I barely know him,” John said. “He took it hard?”

  “Grimly,” she said. “The very stiff upper lip.”

  “Underneath?”

  “Annoyed,” she said. “But, only partly because of me, I’m afraid. The rest because father has such a pleasant amount of money. But—he’d know that getting rid of you wouldn’t make any difference. Not that kind of difference. Anyway, it’s—

  She did not finish. He waited for her to finish. But then he said, “Preposterous. I know. But the whole thing is.”

  For some time, then, he merely drove the little car through the brightness of spring. They stopped and paid toll, and the man in the toll booth smiled at them. Because, she thought, we look so young and gay. They drove on.

  “There has to be some reason,” John said. “It won’t ever seem good enough. Norton—of course it’s preposterous. Hank Roberts? Because one of us will, maybe, be a vice president some day, but not both, and he thinks ‘Better me than him.’ That’s preposterous. Al Curtis? I can’t think of any reason, preposterous or not. Dick Still? It’s the same thing.”

  He spoke with pauses; the wind tossed his words away. At times, the needs of driving interrupted him.

  “They’re the ones who might have known I couldn’t account for Saturday afternoon,” he said, and went around a slow-moving car. They were on the Merritt Parkway by then, shooting up and down hill on the wide, smooth pavement of that perilous highway.

  He was told he had forgotten Mr. Woodson and at that, for the first time, John laughed. It was brief laughter. “Because I took him out of a business double?” he said. “Or didn’t respond to a four no-trump?”

  After some time, he added that none of it made sense. And then, that, sense or not, it had happened—was happening.

  “The girl,” he said, “and a green dress—that maybe she bought last summer. Maybe in Danbury.”

  “A place to start,” she said. “If it’s wrong, we’ll find another.”

  They drove for some time in silence, then. We haven’t much, she thought; he’s right we haven’t much. A green dress. The outline of a tree in the background of a photograph. And they have so much—a name on a check and laundry marks on shirts and a fat man who says, “Yes, that’s Mr. Hayward.”

  (The car which followed closest was just such a black sedan as Barbara had thought would be more seemly than the small, bright Corvette. The car which followed the sedan was a several-year-old Jaguar, with the top up. But the Corvette followed many cars ahead; behind it, on the busy road, cars followed endlessly on. The stream of cars was without end or beginning. They reached the intersection with Route 7, and left the Parkway and went north. The black sedan turned behind them. So, but a considerable distance back, did the Jaguar.)

  A little way beyond Ridgefield, having by-passed the village itself, John slowed the car, and looked at the watch on his wrist. It was a lit
tle after one; they had not driven fast; it had taken time, after they had left Mme. Jacques’, to pick up John’s car, to wheedle their way through city traffic.

  “Lunch?” John said, and when she nodded, he turned the car at a sign which read, “Fox Hill, an Inn.” They climbed a winding road to a spreading building—a mansion of the past. They had a cocktail on a sweep of lawn, with what seemed half of Connecticut laid out before them. The trees were lacy with spring—spring seemed caught, a tinted haze on winter branches.

  (The black sedan did not turn after them, but pulled in at a lunchroom on Route 7, almost opposite the inlet road to Fox Hill. The Jaguar checked slightly, and then went on.)

  It was after two when John found a parking space on Danbury’s main street. They walked half a block to “Mme. Jacques’.” The Danbury shop was less reticent than its parent; there were several dresses in the window, and the door was uncurtained.

  This time, Barbara had the stock number of the green dress, and its maker’s name. But, this time, the dress was not remembered; this time, Barbara Phillips was merely a girl in a spring dress (not from Mme. Jacques’) in the company of a tall man who looked perfectly all right, but like everybody. So there was delay; there was a telephone call, for authorization, to Madison Avenue. (After that, there was much less reluctance, and much busying among files.)

  Only three of the dresses had been sold in Danbury. Two of them had been bought by known customers. But the third—a size ten, in green—had been sold for cash. The salesgirl shook her head. “I wasn’t even here then,” she said, but then she said, “Wait,” and went into the rear of the shop. She came back with an older woman.

  There had been discussion of an alteration, which the old lady had suggested, out of which she had been talked, by the fitter and the girl.

  “Wait,” John said. He took from an envelope in his pocket the sketch of the dead girl, cut from the World Telegram and Sun. He showed it to the older woman. “Was this the girl?”

  The woman looked at it; she held it so that the light fell on it. Finally, she shook her head, slowly. “It’s not much to go by,” she said. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.” She held the picture out, still shaking her head. “Could be,” she said. “But, if she walked in here this moment, I couldn’t swear to anything. As for this—” She shrugged. John took the reproduced sketch. He put it back in the envelope.