by Lionel White
It was seeing the fortune in stolen jewels glittering on the floor mat of the car in the dim rays cast by the dash light which triggered that decision. What brought it about, however, was a long series of events and circumstances which actually bore no relationship to the jewels or the method by which they had arrived at their present destination.
To understand this decision, it is necessary to know something about and to understand Gerald Hanna himself. Gerald belonged to that class which is loosely and incorrectly referred to as the great middle class. A white collar worker, employed by an insurance firm as an actuary, his background and upbringing was as normal, as routine, as mediocre, as it would be possible to imagine. He’d graduated from high school, taken two years at a Midwestern state university, and come East. He’d had to find a job but had also wanted to finish his education. The job, as a mechanic in a garage, had enabled him to complete a second two-year course at a business school. Then he had gone to work for the insurance firm which had hired him directly upon his graduation.
His college career had presaged his later business life. His marks had been average, he dabbled without distinction at a few extracurricular sports and activities. He didn’t bother much with girls, coming from slightly poverty-stricken but respectable parents who had to strain themselves in order to see him through college at all. He was a normal, rather dull, thoroughly respectable, reliable and very average young man. He had neither unusual vices nor outstanding virtues. He was, in short, the stuff of which the backbone of the nation is made up.
A hernia which bothered him not at all had kept him out of military service, for which he was vaguely grateful.
At thirty, Gerald was a good-looking, medium-built young man who still had all of his hair and almost all of his teeth. He was beginning to believe that his eyes were getting a bit nearsighted and had recently been promising himself to find out if he would be needing glasses, at least for reading. He had normal taste, rather limited ambition (knowing the possibilities of an insurance actuary’s career), and a sort of lingering desire to get married and settle down. He had met Maryjane Swiftwater at a house party given by one of the men who worked in his office, and they had been engaged for several years.
He had known, for some time now, that there was something wrong with his life. But he didn’t know quite what it was. Didn’t know, except that he realized his job was dull, his activities were dull and that even the girl he planned and hoped to marry had herself become just a little dull with the passing of the waiting years.
That evening he had taken a foolish chance when he had drawn to an inside straight. It wasn’t a matter of the petty sum of money involved. It was a silly, ridiculous thing to do. As an actuary, he could figure percentages.
But he had taken the chance and drawn to the inside straight and it had paid off.
Now, here, lying at his feet, was a fortune in gems.
Gerald’s decision involved a second foolish chance. A chance contrary to every law of percentages. A truly insane chance.
Gerald Hanna flipped on the dashboard light and opened the door at his side of the car. He circled around the front of the car and opened the other door. The boy’s body was surprisingly light. It took him only a minute or two to half lift and half drag the mortal remains of Vince Dunne from the front seat and over to the side of the road. He was almost gentle as he laid his burden into the pile of bushes, making only a slight effort to conceal it.
That was the easy part of it. What was a thousand times harder was making the trip back to Roslyn and the house in which he lived; finding the house and opening the garage doors and putting the ear away and taking the jewels and the gun and wrapping them in his jacket and carrying them up to his room.
He knew the chance he was taking; knew the percentages. He wasn’t sure, of course, if the car had been identified. Wasn’t sure that even now the pickup alarm wasn’t out. He also knew the chance of a cruising policeman stopping a car with a broken windshield, on general suspicion. Of course, if it happened before he turned into his own street, it would be all right. He’d just tell the truth, tell them that he was on the way to find help.
But it hadn’t been necessary; there had been no one to tell. He’d made the house without passing a single car or person. That had been a break and the second break was one which already existed and made it possible for him to put his plan into operation. The second break was the fact that the family from whom he rented his rooms were away for a month’s vacation in Bermuda. He had the house to himself and what was more important, he had the garage to himself.
There were neighbors, of course, but no one ever came around and even the milkman had suspended service while the owners were absent.
Sitting there in the small bedroom with the blinds carefully drawn and only the single dim desk light on for illumination, he was looking at more wealth, or potential wealth, than he would normally see if he worked for the rest of his life and saved up every cent he was ever to make.
Until this moment, not once in his entire life had he ever considered doing anything dishonest.
Very suddenly he laughed.
Well, in the purest sense of the word, he still hadn’t. A man with a gun in his hand had forced his way into his car. The man had later died, probably of a gunshot wound sustained in a battle with the police and had. conveniently, left a fortune in jewels scattered at his feet.
Gerald had merely removed a body which had intruded on him. He had driven home. One life already had paid for the gems and if Gerald was any sort of judge and his eyes hadn’t deceived him, several other lives had been forfeited. Certainly it was too late to do anything about that.
As for the owners of the gems, Gerald was certain they were covered by insurance.
Having spent some of the best years of his life slaving for a surety company which neglected to pay him enough money to get married and live decently, Gerald was not overly sympathetic. After all, that was why they were in business and why they charged very high premiums-to take care of just such losses as this.
Before going to bed, he did two things. He returned to the garage and removed the fragments of glass from the broken windshield. Then he carefully checked the car for bloodstains, wiped it over with a damp rag.
He placed the jewels in a brief case and put it into his bottom dresser drawer. He knew there would be no point in trying to hide the stuff; he must take a gamble that no one had taken the license number of his car.
It was a calculated risk and one which, in view of the possible rewards, he was perfectly willing to assume.
It was very much like the poker game; he’d already filled his inside straight. Now all he had to do was be sure no one else held a higher hand and he would collect the proper rewards for the rather insane risk he was taking.
Just before falling asleep, Gerald Hanna reminded himself that he must be sure and call Maryjane the first thing in the morning. He must make the proper excuses about the week end. It would, of course, be perfect if he were only able to run up to Connecticut as he usually did, but that would be impossible. You can’t run around in a car without a windshield. Certainly not in a certain Chevvie convertible which even now was sitting downstairs in the garage.
The idea of disappointing Maryjane failed to upset him and he had no difficulty in falling asleep almost at once.
After all, Maryjane had been disappointing him for a number of years now.
* * *
The people who knew Maryjane Swiftwater all agreed on one thing-she was a nice girl. A nice girl and a good girl. Just look at the way she took care of that invalid father of hers. And everyone knows how hard invalids are to get along with.
The expression Maryjane used, however, as she slammed the receiver back on the hook, was anything but nice. In fact, even people who didn’t know Maryjane and hadn’t as much as thought about her one way or the other, would have been hard put to figure out how anyone who looked as sweetly innocent and demure as Miss Swiftwater, would even
know such an expression.
Old Horace Swiftwater, however, was neither surprised nor shocked when he overheard his daughter’s bitter voice as she hung up. Horace knew his daughter very well indeed.
“What’s the trouble, baby,” he called, from the front room where he sat in the wheel chair with the afghan over his shrunken legs. “Was that Gerald?”
“It was indeed,” his daughter said, striding into the room. She looked over at her father hatefully. “He must be either drunk or insane. He knew very well that I’ve planned the outing for this afternoon. How he can dare, at the last minute…”
“He’s unable to come up?”
For a moment Maryjane stared at him, as though aware for the first time that he was in the room. Her small, sharp face was bitter and the thin mouth was drawn tight as her pale eyes looked him slowly up and down.
“No excuses-nothing,” she said. “Just called and said not to expect him this week end. As though he didn’t know that I’ve been planning for weeks now…”
“Perhaps he’s ill,” the old man said. “You know how it is sometimes, a man…”
“Oh, God, I know all right,” Maryjane said. “Don’t think I could have been around here for the last dozen years waiting on you hand and foot without knowing. But he isn’t ill. There’s nothing wrong with Gerald. He just merely called and said he wasn’t coming up. And when I very politely asked him why he wasn’t, he didn’t say a thing for so long that I had to repeat my question. And then do you know what?”
She stopped for a minute as she stared at her father and her eyes narrowed.
“He said that he damned well didn’t want to come. Can you imagine? Gerald Hanna-said that he damned well didn’t want…”
She sputtered and stopped speaking then, her face suffused with color and her slender, reedy body shaking in anger and frustration.
“The boy must have been drinking,” Swiftwater said. “Perhaps…”
“Please don’t be a fool. Father,” Maryjane said. “Gerald drinking! The very idea is preposterous.”
“Well, then maybe he meant what he said,” the old man said, taking his eyes away from his daughter and staring out of the window. “Maybe he’s finally getting tired of waiting, getting tired of having you postpone…”
She swung toward him swiftly and for a second it looked almost as though she was going to strike him.
“Gerald knows very well why we must wait,” she said. “And certainly you, of all people, can’t accuse me of postponing or procrastinating. As long as I have you to take care of, and Gerald must send money home to his family, marriage is out of the question. Gerald knows it and he agrees with me.”
For a long moment the old man looked at his daughter and then slowly shook his head.
“Baby,” he said, his voice tired and old, “baby, you know better than that. Nothing stands in the way of you and Gerald getting married except you yourself. I can manage to get by all right. I’ve got my pension and I can go to a home…”
“No father of mine is going to go to a home so long as I can work,” Maryjane said. “Just stop talking foolishness. Anyway, Gerald still has to send money home and he makes so pitifully little.”
Once more the old man shook his head.
“I won’t argue with you, baby,” he said. “You know the truth as well as I do. I’d be happier in a home and no matter how little Gerald makes, you two could get along if you really wanted to. You’re like your mother-you’re afraid. You’re afraid of marriage and what marriage means. You want a husband but you don’t…”
Maryjane turned and started for the door. She yelled the words in a thin high voice over her shoulder as she left the room.
“You’re a miserable old man,” she said. “You have a bad mind. You don’t understand; you just don’t understand anything…”
She was crying as she ran up the stairs and slammed the door of her bedroom.
Flinging herself on the white counterpane of the single four-poster bed, she doubled her fists and pounded the mattress at her sides.
“They’re all dirty-all men,” she said in a high, tight voice. “Vile, lecherous, filthy…”
The words ended in a hysterical series of sobs as she lay staring up at the ceiling with the tears flowing from her half-closed eyes.
* * *
She didn’t quite know how or why, but she just assumed that once they were man and wife, his masculinity would no longer frighten and shock her.
She never thought of herself as being cold or frigid; she merely thought of herself as decent and proper. She knew all about sex, having read considerable material on the subject, but it was a knowledge obtained solely from books. In fact, she prided herself on her open-mindedness and her intellectual approach to something which she considered to be, after all, a minor part of the relationship between a man and a woman.
She never did know how she’d happened to let him talk her into agreeing to spend the week end at the lodge up in Saratoga. The place was owned by a friend of Gerald’s and he told her that his friend and his friend’s wife had asked them both up over the week end. They drove up, leaving on Friday night.
It was a small, weather-beaten shanty, a sort of hunting cabin, up in the mountains above the town and they went up late in the fall when the weather was brisk and clear and very cold at night. He’d been there before and he had no difficulty in finding the place in spite of the lonely back roads leading to it. They arrived near midnight-finding the cabin completely dark.
She hadn’t suspected anything at first, had merely assumed that Gerald’s friends had tired of waiting for them and retired. Gerald had taken their bags from the car and gone to the front door and let himself in, using a key that he carried. The place was empty and he explained that their hosts were probably late getting away from the city and had not arrived as yet.
There was a fire already laid in the great field-stone fireplace, which covered one wall of the room, and Gerald had lighted it. Then, while she warmed herself and took off her coat, he went into the kitchen and made a pot of hot coffee.
She was chilled through and the steaming coffee was welcome. Immediately she noticed the peculiar taste and Gerald explained that he’d laced it with brandy. She protested, as she almost never drank, but he’d insisted. It was odd the effect the drink had on her. It seemed to go through her veins like fire, warming her and making her pleasantly drowsy. He hadn’t had to argue about her taking a second cup.
Later, when she came to think about it, she realized that those two drinks had actually made her half drunk. It was while she was finishing that second cup that Gerald had confessed to her. The people who owned the cabin were not coming up. They would be alone in the place.
The strange thing was that she had argued only feebly. She knew of course that she should have insisted and that they left at once. She should have been furious at his deception. But the fact was she was very tired from the drive and she hated to face the thought of the long, lonely road back. She hated to leave the warm comfort of the place.
He had pulled the great bear rug from the couch and thrown it on the floor in front of the fireplace and she stretched out on it, half dozing in front of the flickering flames. She was only half conscious of his sitting beside her, holding her head in his lap as he talked with her. She was very drowsy, and the brandy was making her sleepy so she only half listened as he talked.
Then suddenly she had decided that she hated him; that she hated all men but especially him.
The strange part of it was the decision she reached the moment she realized it. She would never let him go. She would marry him, as they had planned, sometime in the future. He must belong to her, now and forever. But there must be time, time for her to adjust herself.
He owed her something and he must be made to pay for it. Yes, they would be married, but when the time came, things would be different. It would be a marriage on her terms, not his.
She was the stronger of the two; in spite of what he had
done to her, she was the stronger. And it would work out the way she wanted it to. There was no doubt about that in her mind.
* * *
Lying on the bed and thinking things over, her thin-lipped mouth formed into a hard thin line and her jaw became resolute and firm. Gerald was like her father and she could handle him the same way she handled her father. If he thought he could callously break dates with her, he’d have another guess coming.
* * *
It was the sound of the ringing of the bell which awakened Sue, but she didn’t open her eyes. Instead her hand instinctively reached out and she fumbled around until she found the small, square clock and pressed the button on the top of it.
The ringing stopped and she started to fall back on the bed again. But just as her head again reached the pillow, the ringing began once more.
“Damn,” she said, her voice low and sleepy. This time she opened her eyes and the first thing she noticed, even before again seeking the clock, was the fact that it was barely daylight.
Almost immediately it came to her then. It wasn’t the alarm clock at all which had awakened her. The ringing was coming from the other room. She grabbed the dressing gown from the end of the bed as she leaped to her feet and started for the door. It wasn’t the telephone. It wasn’t that kind of a ring. It must be the doorbell.
Sue Dunne silently cursed whoever it was that was waking up the household at this unearthly hour.
The living room curtains were drawn and the room was in semidarkness, but she had no trouble finding her way to the front door which opened directly into the apartment. The first thing she noticed was that the burglar chain was not in its slot, but the significance of this failed to register. She twisted the knob and when the door didn’t at once open, realized that the lock had been snapped. She turned it and opened the door, standing in front of it sleepy-eyed and barely avoiding a wide yawn. With her robe held tight around her and her disheveled hair circling her small sleepy face, she looked very much like a little girl. Which, indeed, she was.
The man didn’t open his mouth. Didn’t say a word. He waited only a second until the door three-quarters opened and then he suddenly lunged forward and crashed into the room, pushing her roughly aside with one heavy, long arm as he entered. It was then that she saw the gun in his hand.
