Magician's Wife

by James M. Cain

  “You mean we have to wait?”

  “Till she gets in touch with us.”

  She dropped him at the Marlborough, so upset she didn’t say good night, and he went to bed, though not to sleep. It was around nine the next morning, and he had just finished dressing, when Miss Homan rang him to say a lady was there to see him. Grace, when he let her in, was gay in red-checked gingham, and explained: “I didn’t know what was coming and—wanted to look casual, as though nothing had happened. As though nothing possibly could.”

  She had the paper with her and had thoughtfully bought two, so they both could read. Silently, side by side, they went through the main item, finding little in it that added to what they knew. The police, they learned, would “question Mrs. Alexis today,” when the autopsy would be completed and its results known. “So,” said Clay at length, “you got all worked up over nothing.”

  “I’m still all worked up.”

  “Over what?”

  “Why are they questioning her?”

  “Why not? She found him. They have to.”

  “Clay, I’m frightened to death.”

  “Have you talked to Sally yet?”

  “For a minute, over the phone.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “That ‘it served him right’—for whapping the nuts in his mouth, I suppose she meant. ‘Like a porpoise,’ she called it. And that frightened me, too. Perhaps she didn’t like him, perhaps nobody did, but her phone could be—what do they call it, Clay? ‘Bugged,’ I think is the word. And besides, he’s dead.”

  “You can’t exactly blame her.”

  “I can! She shouldn’t talk like that!”

  He continued offering her reassurance, perhaps a bit in excess of what he really felt, and then she broke in to cut him off. Opening the paper to an inside page, she pointed to a box beside the jump head and told him: “All right, you want to know why I’m worked up—that’s why. I don’t think you read it. You’d better.”

  The heading was “Skeeter Tox Baffles Police,” and the item told how officers answering the call had been perplexed by a smell in the air, which they took to be ether. It seemed that Sally confirmed this, explaining how she happened to have a bottle of ether with her. Her husband, she said, had had a rabbit he used in the act, “that had to be put away, and ether seemed the humane way to do it. So,” she went on, “we got a bottle of it,” and then later found out “it worked on mosquitoes too.” She said, “They fall right over as soon as they come near it.” So, going to Brice’s Point, “where they don’t have mosquitoes, of course, except occasional ones,” she brought the ether along, “and of course nothing would suit Mr. El but that he had to try it too. So that’s why the bottle was out. You rub it on, that’s all—and it works.”

  “Well?” asked Clay after reading.

  “That means nothing to you?”

  “No, Grace. Not a blessed thing.”

  “Clay, I never heard of the rabbit—she uses it as a solvent, on her typewriter keys mainly. But also it happens to be the one thing that works on surgical gum—the stuff on adhesive tape. Does that mean something to you?”

  “You mean if Mr. El—was all smeared up with that gum? From tape being slapped on his mouth? And then was quickly cleaned up—”

  “Clay! No more, please!”

  “But that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “You must not make me say it!”

  “O.K., you don’t have to say it, but it’s what you mean just the same, and it’s been in your mind, or something like it has, from the beginning, when you started your campaign to get me to marry her now. You’ve been scared to death of what’s been in her mind, and I can’t say that nothing was. But the point is, if something was in her mind, it’s not there any more! What’s been in her mind, that I don’t know—she never talked about it to me any more than to you, and God knows I never brought the subject up. But the point is, if anything was in her mind, it’s not there any more. She’s given that idea up. She proved that yesterday when she promised to do as I wanted and break her marriage up! This thing now is coincidence—as you’ll realize once you think about it. It had to happen sometime! But when it happens now, you fit the thing together and come up with adhesive tape—which exists, so far, in your imagination, and your imagination only! You’re pinning something on her that’s completely your own think-up. Do you hear what I say, Grace? You have self-manufactured jitters, not caused by what actually happened!”

  How much he secretly believed of this impassioned harangue it would be hard to say, but he kept at it, patting her, squeezing her hand, giving her little shakes, as he tried to pull her together. She listened, yielding to his caresses, trying to be convinced, but scarcely abating her woe. Sometimes she interrupted, as once when she spoke about Mrs. Granlund: “I forgot to mention, Clay, that when I spoke to her last night, she said not a word about any plan, any previous plan, to take Elly up to Cape May. And the papers didn’t speak of it, either—according to them, Sally was paying him a ‘visit.’ If she left you to take him from Mr. El and hand him over to Bunny, why didn’t Bunny know? And why didn’t she tell the police?”

  “Maybe—she was just making it simple.”

  “For the police, perhaps. But how about Bunny?”

  “... I’m sure she had her reasons.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  They were interrupted by the phone, and he jumped up to answer, hoping for some word. But it was Mankato, Minnesota, calling. Pat, up early, was full of things that had come to him during the night—about Clay, about Grant’s, about the Channel City branch. He led off by asking who Clay had in mind to succeed him, and when Clay mentioned Hal Daley, he seemed pleased. “I’ve had my eye on him too,” he said. “He’s a fine, resourceful salesman, and our problem, after all, is selling. But, Clay, get to it: name him, make it official, and the sooner you do it, the better. From now on if you try to be half on and half off that job, you’ll wind up on the floor. Once the word gets around you’re out, then someone else must come in. So, if I were you, I’d call the papers and break it. Then things can go on: he’ll know where he’s at.” Clay said he would do it that day, and Pat went on: “The next thing, Clay, is you. I want you to take some time off—partly because you deserve it and partly to let Hal get started, so he can make his mistakes, deal with the opposition clique, and there’s bound to be one, have his brawl with Steven Granlund—all without you breathing down his neck. Then, in the early fall we’ll say I want you to take the grand tour—drop in on all our branches, spend a couple of days at each, get acquainted with our bunch, and enlarge. See the whole picture, so that when you take over, you’ll be president of all the company, not just a branch manager reaching up to the ceiling, trying to look tall. It’s on us—I want you to entertain, give ’em nice cocktail parties, but that part I needn’t coach you on. Now, have I made myself clear? Something you want to ask?”

  He was brisk, clear, and a little curt, not sounding at all like a fake. Rather, he talked like the board chairman of a well-established concern, who knew what he wanted and pretty well how to get it. Clay responded in kind, briefly, respectfully, and loyally. When he hung up Grace seemed more composed. “I’ll take myself off,” she said. “You have big responsibilities—and I have a few, myself. ... Thanks. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. And if things do stand as you think, if it’s all a routine affair—it may turn out well after all.”

  She clung to him, then impulsively kissed him. “Clay,” she whispered, “I hope you’re right—but if I can think of it, they can.”

  “Think of what? And who are ‘they’?”

  “The police.”

  “Listen: they’re not mind readers, quite.”

  “It’s what they’re paid for, though. I’m so horribly, utterly terrified. For her sake—and his.”

  “ ‘His’?”

  “Elly’s!”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “My little lamb. He’d be
branded!”

  “Grace! Stop borrowing trouble!”

  “Yes, Clay. I’ll—try.”

  It was eleven when he reached the office, and at once he told Hal Daley to “stand by for lunch—I want to talk to you.” He drove him to the club, at that hour almost deserted, and they sat at the same table as he had sat at when Pat broke the news to him. He saw Hal give way to the same euphoria as had taken possession of him, and did as Pat had done, talked of small irrelevancies until Hal was himself again. Back at the office, he called The Pilot, and they sent over the same reporter that had written the piece about him, flanked by the same photographer. He “released it” for the morning edition, but posted the company notice down on the bulletin board, a battered-looking appendage to the customers’ room. As a final rite he ushered Hal into his office, telling him: “The place is yours—I’m out. Except for one personal file, which I’ll have sent to my home, I brought nothing in here but my hat.”

  “Except you don’t wear any hat.”

  Miss Helm sounded waspish, and he realized all of a sudden that she had been in an ill-concealed sulk these last hectic hours and, in fact, of all those who worked in the place, hadn’t yet congratulated him. “Hey, wait a minute!” he exclaimed, leaning over her desk and at last twigging the reason. “What’s eating on you? Don’t you want to go to Mankato? The West’s prettiest small city? Where Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street? Where—”

  “Oh, you mean you’re taking me with you?”

  “Well, if you want to come, of course!”

  Her round, soft, apple-dumpling face wreathed into a smile, and for a moment she was almost beautiful. Then, with desperate self-consciousness: “Don’t worry about the file—I’ll send it out, Mr. Lockwood! It can go on one of our trucks! It’ll be no trouble at all!”

  “Then, I’ll leave it to you.”

  But under all this quivered the fear of what was happening to Sally. He ate again in the hotel, to be near the latest editions when they appeared on the lobby newsstand. But the 5:30, when it came out, told him nothing he wanted to know. The police, it seemed, were continuing their investigation, but the body had been released and the funeral set for next day. He went home, called Grace, and found she had heard nothing. Then once more he sat by the window, watching the dark creep in. But, exhausted by strain, by loss of sleep, by excitement, he dozed, and then suddenly awakened. Soft fingers were over his eyes, a loved smell in his nose. “Sally!” he whispered. “Sally!”

  Then she was in his lap, her arms locked around him, her lips yielding to his. After a long moment he asked: “Is it over? This damned investigation? Or—what?”

  “Well, of course it’s over! Here I am!”

  “I know, but—is there a catch to it?”

  “How could there be? He choked on a nut, that’s all, as the autopsy plainly showed, with no marks of violence or anything. Their making a federal case of it had nothing to do with that. Clay, they took me down to the beachhouse two o’clock this morning—to talk with MacReady, they said, that nurse the old man had. But I have a different idea. Those cops have great big hearts, and great big hands too, which may have had more to do with it than what MacReady was saying, or the autopsy report, or anything. They told me I could ‘retire,’ as they called it, but I didn’t care to, if you know what I mean. I didn’t dare take off my clothes— I haven’t had them off since six o’clock last night, when I changed my dress at home and started out for the beach.”

  “Have you had any supper, Sally?”

  “Not much—what I really need is a bath.”

  “Well, we have a bath.”

  “You going to soap me?”

  “Soap you and kiss you and love you.”

  13

  BUT BEFORE THE BATH came calls that she had to make. The first was to her mother, to whom she explained that she was calling “from some friends’ apartment—you know, I gave you their number before.” Then she repeated what she’d told Clay, about her release, the autopsy report, and so on. Then she got on to what apparently was the real reason for the call, the question of a dress she could wear to the funeral, “something black and fairly quiet.” Apparently Grace had it in stock and would get it to her next day. Then once more, answering questions from the other end of the line, she got back to the day’s events, though annoyed at Grace’s questions and also at her concern. “Well, Mother,” she said sharply, “I don’t know why you’re upset. His number was up, that was all, from the way he always ate nuts—as who knows better than you? After all, you protested enough, and straight to his face in my hearing, about what could easily happen if he persisted in slapping them into his mouth in that perfectly hoggish way. So, it did happen, that’s all.” That pretty well wound up this call, and then she rang Bunny, at Cape May, to know “how my lambkin is and how he stood the trip.” The lambkin, it seemed, was asleep and had stood the trip fine. She repeated to Bunny what she had said to Clay and then said to her mother, but with more personal details: “It was pretty horrible, Bunny, to go running in there and find him flat on his back, banging his heels on the floor. An old man, dying, is not a pretty sight—I’m still not over that.”

  During all this, Clay changed to T shirt and shorts, put out soap, brush, and towel, and started the water running. At last she fluttered past him, down the hall to the bedroom, and then prettily reappeared, dressed as September Morn, a clean dish towel pinned around her head. She felt the bath with her toe, then climbed in. He soaped her, slowly, carefully, tenderly, and she scrubbed herself with the brush. Then, as the tub filled she stretched out. Occasionally she washed water over her breasts, but mostly she just lay there, her eyes closed, saying nothing. He said nothing, either, being content to drink her in with his eyes as he sat beside the tub on the little bath stool. Presently, though, her face twisted, as though in pain, and she covered it with her hands. “Now!” he admonished her, kindly but peremptorily. “No more of that! It’s over, that’s the main thing! It’s all that matters.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s over.”

  She opened her eyes, let them wander vacantly. Then, closing them, she recited, in a ritualistic way: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over—I keep telling myself that. It’s over.”

  Then, in a different voice, opening her eyes again and staring at her hands : “If it is... If it is!”

  “If it is? Of course it is!”

  “... Clay, I haven’t told you all.”

  “You mean you’re going to be held?”

  “Well, I hope not—but I could have been. Clay, do you know why they took me? To that beachhouse? At two A.M.? It was to check out a tip from Alec.”

  “You mean he informed? Against you?”

  “Nice, wasn’t it?”

  “But he wasn’t there! How could he know anything?”

  “By psychology, Clay—or something. At the hospital he smelled ether on the corpse and knew the answer at once. I did take the ether—”

  “For mosquitoes, the paper said.”

  “That’s right—but as he figured it out, I swabbed the gum off with it from four-inch bandage I used to smother his father to death. So he brought the cops to the house to look for bandage and ether. Oh, yes, that’s what he did—I could hear him talking to them, a long time, out in the drive. So then, when neither one was found, we had to go down to the beachhouse, to talk with MacReady, they said, that nurse the old man had, but actually to keep up the search. So the ether they found at once, right on the living-room table, where Mr. El had put it—he had to use it, too, and of course smeared on plenty, greedy as he was. All that was proved by his fingerprints right on the bottle. They never found any bandage—though I’ll say for them, they looked. All day long their scuba divers were out combing the bay, trying to find it there. Well, who knows where it is? Alec had four-inch bandage that he used on wicker baskets, patching them up inside where the sword would cut the strands—so he wouldn’t have to buy new ones every week and a half. But that was back in the spring, an
d who knows what happened to it? The cleaning woman comes, and she could have thrown it out. Or I could have and not remembered about it. Or Elly, God bless him, could have put it somewhere. It wasn’t there, that’s all we know—but did he have to talk with the cops? Before he talked with me?”

  “I wouldn’t call it friendly.”

  “Friendly? Friendly?”

  She slapped the side of the tub, to indicate how she regarded it, and then after some moments said: “So, that’s why this is good-by, Clay.”

  “... Good-by?” he whispered, stunned.

  “That’s it, much as I hate it.”

  “But why?”

  “Well, Clay, you made yourself clear, and I accept what you said: I come with you now, or don’t come. So I can’t come with you now, so—good-by.”

  “But why can’t you come with me now?”

  “There’s something I have to do.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  “Nothing that—concerns you.”

  “If it concerns you it has to concern me.”

  After popping herself back and forth, first by pressing a toe to the spigot, then by bumping with her head, she said: “I shouldn’t be like this—but it’s how I am, and I can’t help myself. Clay, when someone does something to me, I can’t let it pass, that’s all. I have to do something back. And I’m going to. But it may take some little time, and so—I can’t come with you now.”

  She said it with brisk decision, suddenly standing up, tweaking the drain, and starting to towel off. Then, stepping out on the mat and slipping the cloth from her head, she led the way to the living room, still without a stitch on, and curled up in the chair by the window. He followed, tramping around uneasily, trying to readjust to this new development—or old development, now almost in the open. Presently, in a somewhat different tone, she went on: “And there’s something I mustn’t forget. Clay, in justice to those cops, hands and slobber and all, they didn’t really believe him—they did their stuff, of course, but when they didn’t find anything, they tried to get through his head I was not the girl he thought. And of course, he had to shut up. But he thought what he thought, and he’s not going to unthink it, regardless of what they said, and regardless of time passing by. Twenty years can go by and he’ll still think that’s what I did—and where do I go from there? Suppose I did come with you. My life would never be safe. And yours wouldn’t, darling! I can’t forget you for one minute. He could be crazy enough to move against you too—as being in on it, maybe, and helping to raise his boy. He might even move against Elly. I tell you, in some ways he’s not all there in the head.”