James Cain - The Magician's Wife

“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.”

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 .”