Ричард Деминг: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 8, No. 11, November 1963

Occasionally situations coincide in such a way that there remains only one thing for a sensible person to do. These instances, appropriately enough, are referred to as matters of life and death.

The phone call Lydia Hartman had been awaiting all day came just as she was leaving the office. She paused in the doorway and waited to see if it was for her.

She heard her boss say, “Apex Insurance. Mr. Tremaine speaking.” Then he looked up and motioned toward her energetically.

Crossing the room, she took the phone from Tremaine’s hand and said into it, “Mrs. Hartman speaking.”

“This is Jules,” a deep masculine voice said in her ear. “I’m calling from Buffalo.”

“Buffalo!” she said abruptly.

“You told me to stick with him no matter where he went,” Jules Weygand said a trifle resentfully. “When he caught a bus to Buffalo, I drove my car up and was waiting at the depot here when he arrived.”

Lydia glanced toward her boss, who had moved across the room and was lifting his hat from a clothes tree.

“Does he know you followed him?” she asked in a low voice.

“He hasn’t seen me. I feel like a private eye, tailing him around like this from one city to the next.”

From the doorway Mr. Tremaine said, “Night, Lydia. Lock the door when you leave, will you?”

Placing her hand over the mouth piece, Lydia said, “All right, Mr. Tremaine. Good-night.”

Then, as the door closed behind her boss, she said into the phone, “Is he all right?”

“Of course he’s all right,” Weygand said with a shade more resentment. “He’s registered at the Redmill Hotel, and since noon he’s had two pints of bourbon delivered. I told you he wasn’t planning anything but a drunk.”

“Oh, my!” she said. “If he’s drunk, he might do anything. I’m coming there.”

“I thought you probably would,” he said resignedly. “So I checked train and bus schedules. The next train leaves Rochester at six P.M. and gets here at seven-thirty. There isn’t a bus leaving there until eight.”

“I’ll be on the next train.”

“What do you expect to accomplish?” he asked.

“I might prevent him from doing something desperate, Jules.”

“Like killing himself? Drunks don’t commit suicide.”

“Jim’s hardly a drunk,” she said sharply. “You can’t blame him for going off the deep end after losing everything he had.”

“He lost it for me too,” Weygand said dryly. “I was his partner, remember?”

“I know,” she said on a note of contrition. “You’ve been like the Rock of Gibralter in this, Jules. You could have prosecuted.”

“I didn’t hold off for his sake, Lydia. Only for yours. You know how I feel about you.”

“I don’t want to hear that as long as I’m married to Jim,” she said with a return of sharpness. “And I certainly can’t leave him now, when he needs me more than he ever has.”

“That sounds as though you finally plan to, once he’s straightened out,” Weygand said in a pleased voice. “It’s the first real encouragement you’ve given me.

“Meet me at the station at seven-thirty,” she said, and hung up.

Jules Weygand was waiting when Lydia Hartman got off the train at Buffalo. When she saw him standing, tall and lean and handsome, at the top of the inclined ramp leading up from the trains, it occurred to her that a month ago the sight would have made her heart skip a beat. But then he had been a successful businessman; now he was a bankrupt. She might have traded one successful businessman for another, but she had no desire to trade a bankrupt for a bankrupt. At thirty-two a girl had to start being practical.

He stood smiling down at her as she moved upward toward him, openly admiring the rounded slimness of her body. When she paused before him and he took the small overnight bag from her hand, she tossed her blond head pettishly.

“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” she said.

“You shouldn’t be so beautiful,” he countered, taking her elbow to steer her toward the main exit.

His car was parked on the lot only a few yards from the exit. Dropping the overnight bag in back, he held the door for her, then rounded the car to slide under the wheel.

Without turning on the ignition, he said, “Now that you’re here, what are your plans?”

“To talk to him. If he won’t come home, I’ll stay here with him.”

“And watch him drink himself into a stupor? He may stay on this a week.”

“Then I’ll stay a week.”

“You’ll lose your job.”

“I can phone in the morning. Mr. Tremaine is understanding.”

“But you’ve only been there three weeks, Lydia. Even an understanding boss won’t put up with you taking a week off so soon.”

“I’m not exactly a hew employee,” she said. “I worked for Apex Insurance five years while Jim was getting on his feet.”

“You’ve been away five years too.”

“Apparently I haven’t been forgotten, or I wouldn’t have been taken back with a set-up to chief clerk.”

Yeah,” he said. “That hasn’t helped Jim psychologically either, you moving back to your old employer with a promotion at the moment he s bungled himself out of business entirely.”

“Bungled?”

“If embezzlement to play the ponies isn’t bungling, I don’t know what is. Why don’t you leave him to stew in his own juice, Lydia? A month ago you were considering it.”

“A month ago he wasn’t down. I can’t leave him now.”

“Your damned loyalty,” he said irritably. “He’ll never get back on his feet, even if you stick with him. He’s washed up.”

“So I should leave him for you?” she asked sarcastically. “You’re as bankrupt as he is.”

“But not through my own fault. I’ll spring back again, eventually. Jim won’t. Even if you managed to help him back on his feet again, he’d fritter it away a second time. He’s weak, Lydia.”

“Perhaps. But he’s my husband. And at the moment you’re no better prospect than he is. I don’t think you realize what a practical person I am, Jules. Even if I weren’t married to Jim, I wouldn’t have you at this point.”

He gave her a surprised look. “Are you serious?”

“Completely,” she assured him. “Maybe ten years ago I’d take the chance. As a matter of fact, I did with Jim. With youth, you don’t mind helping a man struggle ahead. But I’ve gone through that once. Now I’m thirty-two and you’re nearly forty. I’m not interested in any more financial struggles that can be avoided. I’m stuck with Jim, but I’m not about to jump from the frying pan into the fire. My next husband, if there is one, is going to be firmly established before we say the vows.”

“You don’t make sense,” he growled. “You’ll have a lot more financial struggle with Jim than you would with me.”

“We happen to be already married. And I’m just as loyal as I am practical. Shall we go where he’s staying?”

Wordlessly he started the engine and drove off the lot.

The Redmill Hotel was on lower Pearl Street, hardly the best section of town. However, Jules Weygand assured Lydia, it was a perfectly respectable second-class hotel. She left her overnight bag in the car when they went inside.

The building was ancient and both the furniture and carpet in the lobby were well worn, but it seemed a clean enough place. Two old men sat in the lobby reading newspapers and a middle-aged man with a bald head was behind the desk.

Going over to the desk, Weygand said to the bald man. “He still in his room swilling the booze?”