Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“But if I went home instead—”

He shook his head. “With your husband on business in Paris—”

“But the servants,” she said. “Surely—”

“Blighter may already be in with one of them. I would rather trust the Ritz, my dear,” he said positively. “A formidably reliable establishment. Then, tomorrow, I shall accompany you to the vault. I think we might go now, if you’ve finished your drink,” he suggested.

They returned to the street where Henry obtained yet another cab. He directed it to the misty glitter of Piccadilly Circus and said to the woman, “Much better if you get out and walk to the hotel rather than taking another cab. If someone should be following this one, they’ll continue, I think. When we next stop with the traffic, simply get out and join the crowd on the sidewalk. I’ll call you at the hotel the second I’ve gotten home.”

“I do hate leaving you, Henry.”

Henry smiled. “I hate leaving you, Elizabeth.” He touched her, then said, “Now, my dear.”

She got out swiftly and hurried toward the crowded sidewalk where neon cut through swirls of reflecting fog. The cab moved on, and Henry looked through the back window just as a small figure in a pin-striped suit, wearing tinted glasses and a wide-brimmed fedora over long greasy hair, came up to Elizabeth. An arm was put around her waist, and she was drawn toward a dark doorway. Her mouth opened as though she might be screaming, but Henry, looking away and settling back in his seat, guessed that she wasn’t making a sound.

When he reached his flat, the telephone was ringing. He lifted it, saying, “Henry Thornwall here.”

“Oh, Henry!” Mrs. Peter Sterling-Bahr said in anguish. “How could it have happened!”

“Are you all right?” he asked with concern.

“Not hurt. Not physically. But he just came up on me on the sidewalk the minute I got out of the cab. He put his arm around me and whispered he had his gun pointed at me and made me go into a doorway where he got the stone out of my purse and ran off! What could I do! It’s stolen! I couldn’t... Oh, Henry! How could he have followed us? In the fog? Two cabs? The club? And yet be there on the sidewalk, waiting... Henry?”

“I don’t know how,” Henry breathed. “I rather... thought I’d been so clever. But I guess I’m no good at that sort of thing. Oh, damn, Elizabeth. Dreadful, altogether.”

“Dreadful, yes,” she said limply. “Yes, it is. What do I do now, Henry?”

“Go home, I should think. Have something to drink. Try to forget it.”

“It that really all there is for me to do now?” she said wearily. “Henry, is that all?”

“I rather think,” he said slowly, “that it is.”

Twenty minutes later, Henry’s door buzzer sounded. When he opened the door, he saw no one on the stoop. Then he looked behind the bushes and saw the small figure wearing the wide-brimmed hat and tinted glasses standing beside the wall. Henry reached out and pulled the figure in and closed the door. “And here you are, my dear,” he said fondly, then kissed a boyish forehead.

The sound of the shower stopped in the bath off Henry’s comfortable bedroom. Henry stood in the adjoining study by the bar mixing two Scotches with soda. When his visitor, an extraordinarily beautiful creature with thick blonde hair, came out of the bedroom, he could see the suit, hat, glasses, and wig on the bed beside the carelessly dropped currency. The girl was dressed now in a satin negligee. She smiled beautifully as she crossed to Henry and put her arms around his neck.

“Oh, darling,” she said, “it was so smooth, wasn’t it?”

“Practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?” he said, kissing her boyish forehead again.

Bill O’Connell knew all about the way his wife Alice liked to have Paul Newman in the kitchen with her when she washed the dishes. He didn’t mind. After all, didn’t he sometimes have Raquel Welch snuggled by his side as he drove home from work?

Everyone was entitled to his own private fantasies, and certainly a pretty girl like Alice must occasionally yearn for something a little more spectacular than an ordinary, slightly homely, not-very-tall guy who made an adequate but not fancy living in an insurance firm, a guy who was totally untalented except for a real flair for emptying the garbage.

Bill knew he was neither handsome nor suave, and definitely not the dashing romantic type. But Cortland Marshall was, and, confound him, he was coming through Los Angeles on his way to Washington, D.C. from his most recent diplomatic post in Thailand, an exotic spot if Bill ever heard of one. He couldn’t blame Alice for being all agog over the fact that Cortland was coming to dinner. Cort had never married and liked to keep in touch with Alice, even though she had married. When he wrote that he was coming through L. A., Alice had written back insisting that he stop and visit.

So now the kids were packed off to Grandma’s, the house was shining with wax and polish, the rib roast in the oven was giving off an aroma which could tempt any man to give up his bachelorhood, and Bill was cautioned to “be nice to Cort.”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if Cortland had been a plumber or a grocery clerk; but a man with a glamor job like his could set a girl’s heart to thumping even if he was bald and hollow-chested, which Cortland was not. It had never been quite clear to Bill why Alice had married him — Bill — when she could have had Cort. But then she was the type who yearned over stray kittens and wept for starving dogs, and she said she fell in love with Bill because he looked as if he needed someone to take care of him.

The big question was, could that kind of love withstand the strain of Cortland showing up once or twice every year still obviously smitten with his old flame? Certainly Alice seemed perfectly happy — but what was it then that made her cheeks glow when she ran to open the door in answer to Cortland’s knock?

“Cort!” she cried, and then giggled happily as Cortland engulfed her in a bear hug. Right in front of Bill. As if Bill did not exist.

“Alice, honey,” he said. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you, Cort,” Alice-honey said.

Bill had to admit she was right. He had been away almost a year this time, but his well-tailored clothes and close-cropped dark hair were as attractive as ever. And he absolutely oozed charm.

Finally Cortland noticed Bill. “Well, Bill,” he said affably, “howza boy?”

Bill wanted to snap his teeth and snarl, but instead he pasted on a wide silly grin and said, “Fine, Cortland. How are you, buddy?” Immediately he felt like a clod, which was how Cortland always made him feel.

His duties to his host taken care of, Cortland turned back to Alice. “Tell me what you’ve been doing to stay so beautiful,” he said.

Alice giggled again. “Oh, Cort, I’ve just been a housewife. Come on out in the kitchen and talk to me while I finish fixing dinner.”

Cortland put his arm around Alice’s shoulders and they walked into the kitchen, leaving Bill alone with his bad thoughts. He wished that Cortland, in the time since Alice last saw him, had lost his teeth or his hair or something so that he didn’t look like every housewife’s dream of romance.

Not that he was afraid Alice would run off with Cortland or anything like that. Or would she? Even if she didn’t, she might start imagining it was Cortland standing by her side each time she washed the dishes. Bill could put up with Paul Newman in the kitchen. But Courtiand Marshall — NO!

“Oh, Bill,” Alice sang out, “come on in and join us.”