Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

He looked at it dubiously while Luthe stood there holding it for him. Then he looked up into Luthe’s face, as though appealing to some superior wisdom, more than he himself had at the moment. “That won’t help much, will it?” I heard him say almost inaudibly.

“No, that won’t help much,” Luthe agreed ruefully.

Luthe turned away with it, set it aside someplace, went out without it.

We tried to pick up the pieces of the conversation. Even Jean chipped in now, her humanitarian instincts aroused.

I kept watching his flayed face. I wondered if we were being cruel or kind.

“Don’t you think we’d better be getting along?” I suggested.

“No, don’t go yet,” he said, almost alarmedly. “Wait a little while longer, can’t you? It’s good to have you here. I feel sort of—”

He didn’t finish it, but I knew the word: lonely.

We stayed on, by common consent. Even the Cipher forbore looking at his watch, that gesture with which he had a habit of harrying Jean, any evening, anywhere — but home.

It would have been a case of leaving just as the curtain was about to go up, though we didn’t know it.

Suddenly drama had come fuming in around us, like a flash flood.

Luthe reappeared, went to him, bent down and said something. This time wholly inaudibly.

Dwight looked up at him, first in complete disbelief. Then in consternation. Then he pointed to the floor. I caught the word. “Here?”

Luthe nodded.

I caught the next two words too. “With him?” I saw him wince, as if in imminence of unendurable pain.

“All right,” he said finally, and gave his hand an abrupt little twist of permission. “All right.”

I got it then. There’s somebody else; that was her first message, the one that floored him. But not only that: She’s come right here with the somebody else.

He was a bad actor. No, I shouldn’t say that. We were in the wings, watching him; we were backstage. All actors are bad when you watch them from behind-scenes. He was a good actor from out front. And that was from where he was meant to be seen.

He got up and he went over quickly to where Luthe had parked that brandy bombshell. And suddenly the glass was empty. I never saw a drink go down so fast. It must have flowed in a steady stream, without a stop for breath between. He did it with his back to us, but I saw him do it just the same. Then he wagged his head and coughed a little, and it was all down.

It wasn’t a restorative now, it was more an anesthetic.

Then he slung himself to the arm of the settee I was on, and lighted a cigarette, not without a little digital difficulty, and he was ready for the curtain to go up. On the last act of something or other.

His timing was good, too.

Luthe showed up at the gallery opening, announced formally: “Mr. and Mrs. Stone.”

She came out onto the entrance apron, two steps above the rest of us. She, and a husband tailing her. But what it amounted to was: She came out onto the entrance apron. He might just as well not have been there.

She was familiar with the stage management of this particular entryway, knew just how to get the most out of it. Knew just how long to stand motionless, and then resume progress down into the room. Knew how to kill him. Or, since she’d already done that pretty successfully, perhaps I’d better say, knew how to give him the shot of adrenalin that would bring him back to life, so that she could kill him all over again. To be in love with her as he was, I couldn’t help thinking, must be a continuous succession of death throes. Without any final release. I imagined I could feel his wrist, hidden behind me, bounce a little, from a quickened pulse.

She stood there like a mannequin at a fashion display modeling a mink coat. Even the price tag was there in full view, if you had keen enough eyes, and mine were. Inscribed “To the highest bidder, anytime, anywhere “

She had a lot of advantages over the picture I’d seen of her. She was in color: skin like the underpetals of newly opened June rosebuds, blue eyes, golden-blonde hair. And the picture, for its part, had one advantage over her, in my estimate: It couldn’t breathe.

She had on that mink she was modeling, literally. Three-quarters length, flaring, swagger. She was holding it open at just the right place, with one hand. Under it she had on an evening gown of white brocaded satin. The V-incision at the bodice went too low. But evidently not for her; after all, she had to make the most of everything she had, and not leave anything to assumption. She had a double string of pearls close around her neck, and a diamond clip at the tip of each ear.

They have the worst taste in women, all of them. Who is to explain their taste in women?

She came forward, down the steps and into the room. Perfume came with her, and the fact that she had hip sockets. The bodice incision deepened, too, if anything.

I kept protesting inwardly, But there must be something more than just what I can see. There must be something more. To make him fall and hit his head at the telephone, to make him down a glass of brandy straight to keep from moaning with pain. To make his pulse rivet the way it is against the back of this settee. As though he had a woodpecker hidden in it.

I kept waiting for it to come out, and it didn’t. It wasn’t there. It was all there at first glance, and beyond that there was nothing more. And most of it, at that, was the mink, the pearls, the diamonds and the incision.

She was the sort of girl who got whistled at, passing street comers.

Her two hands went out toward him, not just one. A diamond bracelet around one wrist shifted back a little toward the elbow, as they did so.

“Billy!” she crowed. And her two hands caught hold of his two, and spread his arms out wide, then drew them close together, then spread them wide again. In a sort of horizontal handshake.

So she called him Billy. That would be about right for her, too. Probably “Billy-boy” when there were fewer than three total strangers present at one time.

“Well, Bernette!” he said in a deep, slow voice that came through hollow, as from inside a mask.

One pair of hands separated, then the other. His were the ones dropped away first, so the impulse must have come from him.

“What happened?” she said. “We were cut off.” I saw her glance at the court plaster. “Billy!” she squealed delightedly. “You didn’t faint, did you? Was it that much of a shock?” She glanced around toward her oncoming fellow arrival, as if to say: “See? See what an effect I still have on him?” I read the look perfectly; it was a flicker of triumphant self-esteem.

The nonentity who had come in with her was only now reaching us; he’d crossed the room more slowly.

He was a good deal younger than either one of them; particularly Dwight. Twenty-three perhaps, or — five. He had a mane of black hair, a little too oleaginous for my taste, carefully brushed upward and back. It smelled a little of cheap alcoholic tonic when he got too near you. He had thick black brows, and the sort of a beard that leaves a bluish cast on the face even when it is closely shaven. He was good-looking in a juvenile sort of way. His face needed a soda-jerk’s white cocked hat to complete it. It was crying for something like that; it was made to go under it. And something told me it had, only very recently.

Her hand slipped possessively back, and landed on his shoulder, and drew him forward the added final pace or two that he hadn’t had the social courage to navigate unaided.

“I want you to meet my very new husband. Just breaking in.” Then she said, “You two should know each other.” And she motioned imperiously. “Go on, shake hands. Don’t be bashful. Dwight. Harry. My Dwight. My Harry.”