“Who has this policy?”
“This gentleman here.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
I said: “I’m the agent.”
“And what are you doing with it?”
“Holding it for her benefit.”
“Why you and not her?”
“I’m going to marry her.”
It wasn’t until the flicker came in his eye that I realized how that sounded, and how it could even tie me in without in any way including her out. “I see. I get it now, pal. And how much was this life insurance?”
“$100,000.”
“You putting a claim in, Miss?”
“I don’t know.”
“You bet she’s putting a claim in.”
“O.K.”
They left and we went on upstairs. When we got to her suite I said: “Well, it’s easy to see whose fine Italian hand that is. Mr. Keyes has got into it again, as there’s nobody here that knows about that policy.”
But she started to tremble, and then she began to cry, awful quivering sobs that nothing I did could stop. And she acted like I wasn’t even there. There didn’t seem much for me to do but go, so I did. But my three hours wasn’t up yet.
It was after eleven when I got to the apartment house, but the operator goes off and the door locks at ten, so when I saw a woman sitting over by the lobby fireplace it meant she’d been waiting some little while. It wasn’t till I heard my name called that I saw it was Mrs. Sperry. I said: “Well—this is an honor. To say nothing of a surprise.”
“Mr. Horner, I have to talk to you.”
We sat down and I helped her out of her coat. She had on house pajamas, some dark color, blue, I think, and I got a load of the figure. Then she began to talk. “I had a chat with Mr. Keyes today.”
“I thought he was in Los Angeles.”
“He called me from there. He’s flying here.”
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow some time.”
“I had supposed he would.”
“On this Delavan case.”
“He’s hipped on the subject that Mrs. Delavan murdered your husband, Mrs. Sperry, and he’s probably hipped that she killed Delavan. If she ever murdered anybody, then we’re all Chinamen.”
“As I’ve tried to tell him.”
“Oh, you’ve discussed it with him?”
“And I think annoyed him.”
“He seemed to like you.”
“Until recently.”
“He gave you the air?”
“I haven’t heard from him at all.”
She looked at the fire some more, and said: “Mr. Horner, it would be a great deal better, for everybody concerned, if Mr. Keyes could be persuaded to let this thing rest. I don’t know Mrs. Delavan, but she was briefly a part of my husband’s life, and I don’t relish even the sideswipe of scandal. Is it in your power to have Mr. Keyes taken off this case?”
“It is not.”
“Can’t you suggest it?”
“I can and I will.”
“It won’t help?”
“Not if he really tears in.”
“What is his interest in it?”
“A $100,000 insurance risk that my company is on.”
“And that’s all?”
“How do you mean, that’s all?”
“If that were paid, would his interest cease?”
“... Are you willing to pay it?”
“Possibly you don’t know. I have some means.”
“I heard you were rich.”
“I—have some means.”
I told her it was the kind of stuff that insurance companies don’t like and have to watch close any time they have to fool with it, or think they have. I explained how it was all tied up with concealment of evidence of a crime, and while often a go-between is used on the recovery of stolen jewels, the company is pretty safe as it can always say the stuff they paid a reward for was represented to them as found, not stolen. “On a case like this, it would have to be done through the beneficiary. If she would accept indemnity from somebody else, I think you would have to leave the company out of the deal and she would have to renounce claim by admission of some misrepresentations in connection with the application, or something of that sort, and even that would be pretty hard because she wasn’t the one that applied.”
“But it could be worked out?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But it might be?”
“I don’t say it couldn’t.”
“Mr. Horner.”
“Yes?”
“Will you be my go-between?”
Now, believe it or not, what was running through my mind, even after all that Jane had figured out on her, was that it didn’t seem possible she could be guilty of anything, and so far as being willing to pay $100,000 to hush it up went, that might look funny in somebody else, but for a woman that had $20,000,000 how funny was it? But by now, she was leaning toward me, where I was sitting beside her on the sofa, in a queer, please-please way, and then I felt something shoot through me. Because, from the look in her eye, I knew if I wanted to take her upstairs, there was nothing she’d stop at to get me to be her go-between. Then, for the first time I knew, without there being any question about it, she was guilty, not only of Sperry’s death, but of Delavan’s.
I took her hand and gave it a little pat, and she took mine and gave it a squeeze, and smiled again. I said: “I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t touch it, or anything connected with it, with a ten-foot pole.”
Her face almost seemed to fall apart, and after a while she licked her lips on the inside, the way people do to keep them from twitching. She said: “But—but—what am I going to do?”
“Get ready to take it, I guess.”
“Take it!... What do you mean?”
“Scandal. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Oh. ... Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Unless you’ve forgotten.”
She got up, went clumping over to the door like she had lost the use of her legs. I let her out. Then I phoned Jane. I phoned her three times, and each time she hung up on me. The fourth time the hotel operator said the orders were she was not to be disturbed.
13
THE WIRE FROM KEYES was waiting for me at the office next morning, and around eleven I drove over and met him at the airport. With him was Norton. Not much was said going over to the office, but as soon as we got there, Keyes said: “Mr. Norton, I think you’d better tell Ed what we agreed on coming up.”
“Ed, I have bad news for you.”
“O.K., so I’m fired.”
“Wait now, not so fast.”
“My heart’s not broke as I told you before.”
“Temporarily relieved, if you’ll let me talk.”
“About the same, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. Keyes has insisted on it, not because he thinks you made a mistake in insisting on this policy, and in fact making an issue of it, as you recall you did, for he thinks anybody has the right to make a mistake, and everybody ought to make an issue of what he regards as a matter of principle. It’s not that. But he does feel that you’re bound up with too close a personal tie to the person most involved in this to be a disinterested and helpful agent. But if our investigation shows the person most involved is not involved at all, believe me, Ed, you’ll be reinstated, and I’m sure Keyes joins me in the wish that that’s the way it’s going to turn out.”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, the same to you, Keyes, and many of them.”
“Thanks, Ed, thanks.”
“What for?”
“Well—it sounded friendly.”
“Not if you were listening it wasn’t. And especially if you were listening to J.P. here, and what he said about the person most involved. You stupid jerk, don’t you know who did this?”
“I think so.”
“I don’t think. I know. It was La Sperry.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“She was around last night.”
“... Around where?”
“To see me. To get you called off.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“To buy you off.”
“Now Ed, I know it’s a lie.”
“To buy General Pan Pacific off. To pay that claim.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Keyes, how would I know you called her last night from Los Angeles if she didn’t tell me? You called her and told her you were coming. All of a sudden you thought this proved that all that stuff about the dog didn’t mean anything in connection with the death of Sperry, and you couldn’t wait to call her up to say ‘here I come.’ You did, didn’t you? And it was the first call you’ve made in some time, wasn’t it? O.K., she’s scared worse of you than you ever were of her, or anything. So the same to you and many of them, but just how disinterested and helpful you’re going to be I wouldn’t like to say—not in the presence of witnesses.”
“Ed, on this subject you’re getting unbalanced.”
Norton kept looking at me, like he was trying to dope the thing out, and then he reached for the telephone. I had forgotten he knew Mrs. Sperry, but in a few seconds he was talking to her like they used to be pals and then he banged her right between the eyes with it, the offer she had made me the night before. She held him on the line I guess twenty minutes and he talked pleasant and friendly the one or two things he said, but mostly it was “I see,” “I see,” and some more “I see.” When he hung up he said: “It sounds awfully funny that a woman would be willing to kick in $100,000 to hush something up, until you recall how much money Constance Sperry has, and what an awful mess it’s going to mean if we do go ahead on this, especially as the papers will unquestionably do everything they can to drag her in, even if it’s only indirectly, as that would blow the story up big.”
“Then why don’t you take her up?”
“Ed, first let’s let Keyes do his stuff.”
“Yeah, but will he?”
“Well, Keyes, what about it?”
“Put somebody else on it if you want.”
I said: “If you’ve got any sense you will put somebody else on it, and put us both on suspension. I’m telling you, La Sperry killed Delavan, as she killed her husband. She killed her husband so she could marry some X guy not identified yet, and I don’t think it’s Keyes. She killed her husband after an annulment idea fell through and as he wouldn’t give her a divorce she had to use a little direct action, or thought she did. What she killed Delavan for I don’t know, and how she killed him I don’t know, but if you’d only hold everything a day or two until I locate an English maid that seems to know more than she’s told, I think I can fill in whatever it is we don’t know. I’ve got detectives trying to find her, and I don’t think they’ll be so long.”
Keyes had listened to this with a face like it was cut out of stone, and what he felt about it he didn’t say. But he had Norton over a barrel, because back of it all was the fact that Keyes had been trying to block this policy, and there wasn’t much Norton could do now but let him have his way. He thought quite a while, and went out in the ante-room and sat in the spare chair and in a minute Linda came in with me and Keyes to leave him alone. Then after a while he was back. “All right, Keyes, take over. Ed, I’ll walk home with you.”
We went out and started down the street and in a different tone of voice asked me for the lowdown on Mrs. Sperry, and why I was so sure she had done it. I said: “There’s no low-down, nothing I could prove in court, just something she pulled when she was talking to me last night, kind of a pass she made at me, that only a desperate woman would make, and I’ll be damned if I believe people get that desperate over something like scandal. If that was all, couldn’t she leave town? She’s got the dough to go to Siam, if she wants to. Keyes, he’s awfully proud of himself that he knows, most of the time, without knowing how he knows. O.K., that’s how I know now.”
“That, I confess, shakes me.”
“However, we’ve got other things to talk about. I still have that policy.”
“Our policy? On Delavan?”
“That’s it.”
We walked on, as far as my apartment, and went up there, and I talked and kept on talking. I told him what had happened on the policy, just as I’ve told it here, but on certain points I told them over two or three times so there couldn’t be any question I was trying to make myself look good. I told it like it was, and he didn’t often interrupt. Then I said: “But that’s not all. I mailed it to myself, but I won’t tell you to what address, and I won’t tell you where it is now. Until this thing happened, Delavan’s death, I mean, it was a question of something I wanted, the company cup; something I thought was good for her, the protection that I meant to get for her even if she was acting silly about it; and Reyes’s nonsense, that got under my skin, and plenty. But it’s moved past any of that. It’s a question of her—Jane Delavan, I mean, and cops and charges and things I can’t even anticipate. It just so happens she prefers not to see me at the moment, and maybe never will again. But on how I feel about it, if it costs me my job, if it costs you $100,000 or $1,000,000, or it costs Keyes his mind, if he’s got one—I put her ahead of any of that and all of that. And you might as well know it. I think if anything is done about that policy now, it could boomerang on her—I mean if I took it somewhere, if I turned it in to you, if I sent it to her, if I joggled it in any way. I’m sorry. The company’s been swell to me and you have and allowing I don’t think he’s all there in the head, Keyes has. But on this, I’m rock.”
He took a minute or two after I stopped, and I’m proud to set it down here, word for word as well as I remember it, and I think it’s engraved in my mind pretty good, what he said, which was: “I can see, Ed, why you attach importance to this, and in fact seem to be pretty well rung up about it. However, there are two questions in connection with it, and I think you’ve got them pretty thoroughly confused. The first one is: What should you have done, after you and Keyes came in from the mountains and he had given you his dress rehearsal of the moving finger’s drama—when you heard what the cop said about the death at the hotel, and were faced with a decision as to what should be done, about the policy and Delavan’s check. I don’t in any way follow you as to the horrendous nature of your decision. If you had got Delavan’s check back from the post office certainly you would have held onto the policy pending more details on the death, and just as certainly when you found out it was not Delavan who was killed, as Keyes thought, but Sperry, you would have sent the check on again, without Delavan’s being any the wiser, and the result wouldn’t have been in any way different. For my part, when I was trying to work the thing out I think if there was any doubt in my mind I would have held things up. But on the basis of things as they stood then, I’m not at all sure that I wouldn’t have done just what you did, considering I had given you a green light, as I did, and considering how little importance was to be attached to Keyes at the moment, moving-finger previews or not, on account of his imbecile infatuation with Constance Sperry, and the silly monkeyshines he was indulging in on account of it. That, I think, takes care of the first question.
“The next question is what you should do about the policy now. You seem to have some idea I expect you to turn it over to me, apparently under the impression that now Delavan’s dead, and the beneficiary has never had the policy, I can escape liability, or that no claim can be made, or whatever it is that’s in your mind. In the first place, when we took Delavan’s money, the policy’s in force, and we’re liable. In the second place, if I attempted to avoid liability, it would cost me more than I could possibly gain. It would cost me you, for one thing. Let me do that and you can’t sell for General Pan, that I’ll promise you. You’re an idealist, a fanatic, on insurance in general and this company in particular. But let this happen and you’ll have to move to another company, as you’ve once or twice told me you might do—simply because as a fanatical id
ealist you wouldn’t believe in this company any more. In the third place, you can rest quite assured that if any fact disclosed by the investigation relieves me of liability, on a suicide clause, complicity of the beneficiary in homicide, as Keyes insists may be the case, or anything else, I am going to deny liability and refuse to pay until a court compels me. I may wish I didn’t have to, but I have stockholders to think of, and don’t you get the idea I’ll be soft-hearted in any way. I’ll be tough, down to the last comma of the bond. In the final place, however, which is the main place, so far as I’m concerned—are you listening, Ed?”
“I am, J. P.”
“I pay what I owe, period, new paragraph.”
His face tightened, as he said that, and I knew that maybe paying what he owed had cost him something now and then, but as I say, I felt proud of him. I didn’t feel much better about most of it, because we were talking about terrible things, at least as far as Jane was concerned. But at least I knew I could still call my friend one man that meant something to me. We sat there a few minutes, and he said:
“I’d like you to know, Ed, I had to humor Keyes after his efforts to block that policy, which of course would have saved us the rap, if we’d listened to him. But I came here prepared to pay on the nail, as I’ve told you I make a practice of doing. He doesn’t know it, but there’s a cashier’s check for $100,000 in my pocket right now, made out to Jane Delavan. I have it with me.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I wanted you to know.”
“That pleases me.”
I ate lunch somewhere, maybe the Bonanza. It seemed funny not to be with Jane, and pretty soon I called her. A woman answered. She said Jane wasn’t in. I asked who she was and she said she was taking all Mrs. Delavan’s calls. It turned out later she was a nurse that had been called in on account of a crack-up Jane had had, but it hit me in the stomach to be given a brush-off. I left word I had called and went on out to the Scout Ranch, changed into riding clothes, and went on back for the Count. At least I could exercise him, now the situation had changed but there was no way to tell him so. I found him out back, tied up to a-post, with Jackie wiping him off. She said hello and to get Red, one of their trail horses, out of the first stable, or she’d do it for me if I could wait a minute. I said: “Well, thanks, he’s O.K., but I’ve got one of my own or have I?”
Jealous Woman Page 10
