Seducer

by Flora, Fletcher

  “Just right. Isn’t this a different brand from the one we’ve been using?”

  “Yes. Do you like it as well?”

  “Better. Much better.”

  “I’ll tell Wanda to continue ordering it.”

  They finished their tea in silence, she one cup and he two, a pair of distinguished-looking people staring into the small fire and forming together a pretty picture of lush domestic contentment.

  When Brad finally replaced his cup on the silver tray, emptied the second time, she took from a deep pocket in her skirt something that appeared to be an envelope, which in fact it was, and tapped it against the knuckles of her left hand, watching him the while with perfect composure.

  “I have something here that I think will interest you,” she said.

  “What is it? It looks like a letter.”

  “That’s what it is. At least it came in this afternoon’s mail.”

  “From someone I know?” he asked idly.

  “No. Actually, it’s not precisely a letter at all. It’s a report.”

  “Report? What kind of report? About what?”

  “I think it would be simpler and save time if I were to read it to you. It’s quite short. Do you mind listening?”

  “Not in the least. If you’ve been trying to arouse my curiosity, I must say that you’ve succeeded.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll just skip a few lines at the beginning and get right to the part I want you to hear.”

  She removed a single sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it to its full 8½ } 11 size. There was a letterhead at the top that he couldn’t read at a distance, and the typewritten contents indicated a business character rather than a social one.

  He was already beginning to feel a little uneasy, and as she began to read crisply and unemotionally for about three minutes that seemed like three hours, he sat fixed in his chair in the beginning of hatred, the incited animus stirring and boiling and welling in his throat to make him sick.

  “ ‘Professor Cannon,’ ” she read, “ ‘arrived at his hotel at nine o’clock. He was checked into room 515 and went immediately up. At 9:27 he came down and went into the cocktail lounge. He sat at the bar for approximately twenty minutes, during which time he had one dry Martini and engaged in conversation with a lady who sat at his left. This was clearly a chance encounter. He has never been observed in the lady’s company before. The conversation was clearly casual.

  “ ‘At 9:50 Miss Cornelia York, reference all prior reports, came into the lounge. She had earlier checked into room 607, same hotel, at 8:17. Professor Cannon moved with her to a table, where they had three Martinis apiece and engaged in conversation for more than an hour. Operator was not in position to overhear the conversation.

  “‘At 11:08 Miss York left the lounge and took the elevator to the sixth floor. Operator walked to the sixth floor and took a position from which the door to Miss York’s room could be observed. At 11:23 Professor Cannon approached the door and knocked. He was immediately admitted to the room.

  “‘Operator remained in position until 2:00 A.M., in accordance with instructions pertaining to this and prior operations. At that time, Professor Cannon had not yet left the room. Movements of principals were basically identical with movements reported in all prior operations. Implications are clear. Please inform if you want further observations or actions in this case.’ ”

  She refolded the paper and returned it to the envelope, leaning forward to place the envelope on the silver tray beside her cup. Then she sank back again in her chair to cross her knees and observe Brad with a quiet, expectant smile, as if she were awaiting his comments on something she considered very amusing, if not very important.

  He wasn’t deceived or reassured by this appearance of restraint, however. He recognized its deadliness. Rising suddenly, he walked to the window and looked out and came back. He was not aware of this movement, and never remembered afterward having made it.

  “You had me followed,” he said bitterly. “You had me followed by a cheap private detective.”

  “Not so cheap, darling,” she countered, her voice dry and mocking. “Quite expensive, as a matter of fact. And, as you can see, exceedingly competent. He really writes quite a literate and lucid report, don’t you think? One would hardly expect it of a detective, would one?”

  “I would hardly have expected it of you. To resort to such sordid tactics!” Brad’s face was ridged and suddenly ominous and unpleasant.

  “Sordid? Darling, in the face of what you are and what you’ve been doing, do you actually have the temerity to accuse me of being sordid? Well, perhaps I am. Perhaps you would be astonished to know what I can be and what I can resort to when it becomes necessary. You had better think about it.”

  “Would it do any good to tell you that this business with Cornelia is finished, and that I wish to God it had never begun?” he ventured.

  “Oh, it’s finished, all right. I don’t need your assurance for that. At least it had better be, if you know what’s good for you. To tell the truth, I’m not greatly disturbed by your silly affair. Chances are that I would have ignored it if you hadn’t become so stupidly blatant about it.

  “You see, darling, I know perfectly well what kind of man you are, and I accept you as that and nothing more. I would leave you free to make as big a fool of yourself as you pleased if it were not for the incidental danger of your making a fool of me, too.”

  “I see. Thank you very much. I suppose, then, that you wish to divorce me on innocuous grounds. Mental cruelty or some such. Very well. I’ll not contest it.”

  “Oh, no. If I were going to divorce you, it would surely be on grounds of adultery, and I would do my best in any other way I could to ruin you. Do you see how vindictive I can be when I feel inclined? However, don’t worry about it. I don’t wish to divorce you on any grounds whatever. If you have any such notion, you’re greatly mistaken.

  “The business with Cornelia is finished. I’ll accept your word for that, and if it isn’t, I’ll soon find out about it. Other than that, darling, it isn’t so much what I will do as what you will do, and I will tell you what it is. When Dr. Norton retires, which will be soon, you will become head of your department at the college. That’s established. Later, in a reasonable time, you will become president. That’s also established.

  “In the meanwhile, you will revert to the dull business of being my husband, and you will give it your full attention. For my part, inadequate as I may be, I promise to try to satisfy your reasonable needs to the best of my ability. These are the things that you will do, as I have planned. If you wish to consider the alternative to them, I shall be glad to tell you exactly what it is. I don’t think you do, however. It’s not pleasant.”

  All the while Madelaine spoke her voice remained cool, precise and reasonable. Her very blandness and composure were maddening.

  “Is that all you have to say?” he asked.

  “Every word. I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear.”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good. We understand each other, then, and can forget this unfortunate episode.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt over her hips. “I believe I’ll just leave the tea things here. Wanda can remove them later. I’m going upstairs now and lie down a while before the party. Don’t be late in getting ready. And don’t neglect to dress warmly enough. You had better wear a sweater under your jacket.”

  She went out, and Brad sat down, staring into the fire, to consider the conditions of his probation. They were, however, too depressing to consider at length, and so, after a few minutes, he began to think again of Maggie McCall.

  9

  THE PARTY, which Brad had expected to be dull, was worse. But this may have been due largely to the fact that he was not in a mood for any party at all, let alone one of old Norton’s deadly variety.

  Indeed, all the elements were pretty much the same as they had been on other occasions, including the guests. There was a fire in t
he huge barbecue pit, of which Norton was inordinately proud, and Norton himself in an apron and high chef’s hat was the hearty host presiding over a standing rib roast.

  There was a table spread with other food, from which one was supposed to help himself, buffet fashion, and there was a second, smaller table supporting a variety of bottles from which one was also supposed to help himself. The result of this was about thirty people broken up into small groups, all balancing plates and glasses and cups in precarious positions, sitting and standing and leaning, and conducting conversations which were severely handicapped by the conditions imposed, for it is difficult, naturally, to be animated or impressive when your mouth is full half the time and you do not have proper use of your hands.

  There had been an early trying moment directly after Brad and Madelaine had arrived. Cornelia, already there, had greeted Madelaine with effusive gayety that had the effect, under the circumstances, of deliberate needling. But of course Cornelia didn’t know the circumstances that had been established by the private detective’s report, and so she really could not be suspected of brazenly flaunting her status upon the other woman, which was what she seemed to Brad to be doing.

  Anyhow, Madelaine had met the situation admirably with cool and courteous scorn that Cornelia had failed utterly to recognize as anything other than rather snobbish good manners. Ever since his survival of that first meeting, Brad had been carefully avoiding them both.

  This maneuver was not without its problems, especially in the case of Cornelia, and he wished to God that he had not been forced to submit to the false and exhausting reconciliation that now made it necessary to start all over again with the dreary business of getting rid of her.

  He wished to God also that he could go home. But Madelaine was perversely enjoying herself and not inclined to leave. He was glad, after a while, that she wasn’t, for it was later that he found Maggie sitting on a stone bench in some shrubbery.

  She wasn’t supposed to be there, but there she was. Brad’s finding her was purely accidental, for he had been wandering from group to group with no particular direction except that it was away from Madelaine and Cornelia, and it was on impulse that he slipped around a juniper to get away from all the others too.

  The stone bench was behind the juniper, and Maggie was on the bench. Having visited the smaller table frequently, he was at first inclined to think that he was being tricked by a light head, that she was not really there at all, but she smiled as if she were, and spoke as if she were, and gave the impression of expecting to be considered as real as anybody else.

  “Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come along. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “How in the devil did you get here?” he said. “Do you know the Nortons?”

  “Nortons? Who are they?” Her question was blandly innocent, her shrewdly knowing eyes naive in their inquiring stare.

  “Dr. Norton is the head of my department, and he happens to be your host,” Brad told her.

  “Well, he’s not properly my host, when it comes to that, for I’m not properly a guest.”

  “You mean you weren’t invited?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’d scarcely be invited to a party by someone who doesn’t even know me, would I?”

  “It seems reasonable that you wouldn’t. It also seems reasonable to wonder, in that case, why you came.”

  “That’s easy to explain. I came because I knew you were going to be here. I thought I might be able to see you and talk with you. And that, as you see, is exactly what has happened.” Maggie smiled in almost childish triumph.

  “So it has. May I ask how you knew that I was going to be here?”

  “Oh, well, that wasn’t quite the truth, but it seemed the simplest way of saying it. The truth it, I saw you and your wife leave your house and start walking this way. I guessed you weren’t going very far, or you wouldn’t have been walking, so I just followed along behind.”

  “How did you happen to be outside our house when we left?”

  “I didn’t happen to be there. I was there on purpose. Do you remember how it was when you were a child? You got a crush on someone, and you stood all by yourself and looked at his house just for the excitement of being close to where he lived, or you waited on a corner or some place just for the excitement of seeing him pass by. That’s why I was deliberately outside your house this evening when you left, although I’m not a child any longer, of course, and what I have is not merely a crush.”

  Brad regarded her with an uneasy mixture of delight and foreboding. He was pleased by what she had done, and intrigued by what she might do, but he was surely in no position to add to the problems he already had.

  Knowing quite well that he had better send Maggie away, or turn and walk away himself, he sat down beside her on the stone bench and somehow came immediately into possession of her near hand. He couldn’t remember later whether he had taken it or received it.

  “I’m not so sure that you’re not a child any longer,” he said. “At least you have done a childish thing. Suppose someone else had found you here? What would you have said or done?”

  “Oh, I haven’t attempted to remain hidden or anything. That would have been a mistake. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to several people and had something to eat and a couple of drinks. The man in the chef’s hat brought me a plate and was very considerate.”

  “Good God! That was old Norton himself. Didn’t he even wonder who you were?”

  “Apparently not. That’s an amusing thing about situations like this, you know. No one knows you, but everyone assumes that you were brought by someone else. Sometimes you are asked difficult questions, of course, but it’s easy to evade them if you are careful and clever. Dr. Norton had been drinking quite a lot, which helped. People who have been drinking always accept odd things more readily than people who haven’t.”

  “What helped most is that the old idiot is in an early-stage of senility,” Brad stated acidly. “If you have been out mingling with the guests, why didn’t you come and speak to me?”

  “I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it may be safer later if no one knows we are even acquainted. Outside of class, that is.”

  “What’s the harm in being acquainted?”

  “Perhaps none. It will depend on what we decide to do.”

  “You’re a very cryptic young lady, I must say. Why should we decide to do anything?”

  “If you can’t resist me and want to do something, I mean,” she added gravely.

  He laughed aloud, feeling the strongest urge to do something at once, right there on the stone bench behind the juniper. There was in the feeling a wild sweetness and excitement that he had not experienced for a long time — or had never, rather, with his limitations, experienced at all.

  He did not quite know how or why he now felt as he did, except that he had never before known anyone quite like Maggie, whose strange candor may have been the expression of incredible innocence or subtle device or simple immunity to inhibitions. He didn’t know which it was precisely, but he was reasonably certain that it was not the first, and whatever it was, it was exhilarating even though it might be dangerous.

  “Are you sure you know just what you’re saying?” he said.

  “Certainly. I’m not very smart or a good student or anything exceptional, as you know, but I’m at least capable of knowing what I mean and saying it directly.”

  “I’m inclined to think that your capabilities are considerably more extensive that that. In some respects, you strike me as being positively precocious.”

  “Precocious? Doesn’t that mean advanced for your age?” she queried, her eyes directly meeting his.

  “Yes, that’s what it means.”

  “Then I’m not precocious at all. There’s nothing I can do or want to do that shouldn’t be expected in almost anyone as old as I am.”

  “Excuse me. You’re quite right. Preco
cious isn’t exactly the word for you. What I meant was that you are apparently capable of doing things that are not expected at any age whatever. How old are you, by the way?”

  “Well, I’m older than you think, because I look younger than I am.”

  “I’d guess you to be about twenty, then, because you look about eighteen.”

  “You see? And all the time I’m actually twenty-eight.”

  “Nonsense. You couldn’t be.”

  “I could, and I am,” Maggie insisted.

  “What class are you in?”

  “You mean junior or senior or what? I’m not certain, to tell the truth, because I haven’t gone along a class a year as most students do. I’m not truly a student at all, when you come right down to it.”

  “If you aren’t a student, what are you?”

  “Nothing especially. I just got started going to college, almost accidentally, and I discovered that there are a great many advantages to it, and so I’ve kept going one place and another. It’s a kind of way of life, if you know what I mean. But I suppose I’ll have to give it up eventually, even though I do have the advantage of looking younger than I am.”

  “Probably. One can hardly go to college forever. Do your parents support you in this way of life?”

  “I don’t have any parents. They’re dead. At least my father is, and I suppose my mother is, although I don’t know certainly. She ran away from my father and me when I was a child. About two or three. I can’t even remember her.”

  “That’s too bad. It must have made things difficult.”

  “I don’t think so. According to my father, it rather made things easier. He was apparently happy to be rid of her, and I never felt any need for her later. My father and I got along fine. We understood each other, and he was very interesting to live with in spite of not being always responsible about things liks food and shelter and clothing.

  “He was a kind of operator in this and that, whatever came up and looked like a good bet. Sometimes we had plenty of money and everything we wanted, and other times we didn’t have any money at all. We moved around a lot, and I went to many different schools and always managed to get along pretty well, although I can’t remember that I learned much.