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

I went down the gallery of lost loves. The room door was open now. I went past it without stopping, and down the steps to the drawing-room arena.

I took off my “things,” as he’d put it, and primped at my hair, and moved idly around, waiting for him to join me.

I looked at things as I moved. One does, waiting in a room.

He’d left them just as they were, to take his visitor to the door. Probably I hadn’t been announced yet, at that moment. I must have been announced after they were both already at the door, and he hadn’t come all the way back in here since leaving it the first time.

There were two glasses. Both drained heartily, nothing but ice sweat left in their bottoms; the interview must have been a cordial one.

There were two strips of cellophane shorn from a couple of expensive cigars.

There was a single burned matchstick; one smoker had done that courteous service for both.

His checkbook folder was lying on the corner of the table. He must have taken it out of his pocket at one time, and then forgotten to return it again. Or perhaps thought that could wait until afterward; it was of no moment.

I didn’t go near it, or touch it, or examine it in any way. I just saw it lying there.

There was a new blotter lying near it. Almost spotless; it had only been used about once.

That I did pick up, idly, and look at. As if I were a student of Arabic or some other right-to-left scrawl. I looked at it thoughtfully.

He still didn’t come in.

Finally I took it over to the mirror with me and fronted it to that, and looked into that.

Part of his signature came out. “-lings” It was the thing he’d written last, so the ink was still freshest when the blotter’d been put to it. Above it were a couple of less distinct tracings, earer.” And three large circles and two smaller ones. Like this: “OOOoo.”

I turned swiftly, as though that had shocked me (but it hadn’t; why should it?) and pitched it back onto the table from where I stood. Then I fixed my hair a little more, in places where it didn’t need it.

He came in, looking sanguine, looking zestful. I don’t remember that he rubbed his hands together, but that was the impression his mood conveyed: of rubbing his hands together.

“Who was that man?” I said indifferently.

“You’ll laugh,” he said. And he set the example by doing so himself. “That’s something for you.” Then he waited, as a good raconteur always does. Then he gave me the punch line. “He was a detective. A real, honest-to-goodness, life-sized detective. Badge and everything.”

I stopped being indifferent, but I didn’t get startled. Only politely incredulous, as a guest should be toward her host’s surprise climaxes. “Here? What’d he want with you?”

“Asking if I could give him any information,” he said cheerfully. Then in the same tone: “You’ve heard about Bernette, haven’t you?”

I said I hadn’t.

“I think you met her up here once.”

I visioned a pink brassiere and pink drawers. “Yes,” I said, “I seem to recall.”

“Well, she’s disappeared. Hasn’t been heard of in weeks.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is that bad?”

He gave me a wink. “Good,” he whispered, as if afraid she’d come in just then and overhear him. And he flung one hand disgustedly toward the doorway, meaning it for her invisible presence. She should stay away.

“Why do they come to you about it?” I asked him.

“Oh,” he said impatiently, “some tommyrot or other about her never having been seen again after — after the last time she left here. I dunno, something like that. Just routine. This is the third time this same fellow’s been up here. I’ve been darn good-natured about it.” Then he said, more optimistically, “He promised me just now, though, this is the last time; he won’t come back anymore.”

He was fixing two drinks for us, in two fresh glasses. The first two had been shunted aside. The checkbook and the blotter had both vanished, and I’d been facing him in the mirror the whole time; so maybe I’d been mistaken; they hadn’t been there in the first place.

“And then there was something about some clothes of hers,” he went on offhandedly. “She left some of her things here with me—” He broke off to ask me: “Are you shocked, Annie?”

“No,” I reassured him, “I knew she stopped here now and then.”

“I was supposed to send them after her; she said something about letting me know where she could be reached.” He shrugged. “But I never heard from her again myself. They’re still waiting in there...”

He finished swirling ice with a neat little tap of the glass mixer against the rim.

“Probably ran off with someone,” he said contemptuously.

I nodded dispassionately.

“I know who put him up to it,” he went on, with a slight tinge of resentment. I had to take it he meant the detective; he offered no explanation to cover the switch in pronouns. “That dirty little ex-husband of hers.”

“Oh, is he ex?” I said. That was another thing I hadn’t known.

“Certainly. They were annulled almost as soon as they came back from their wedding trip. I even helped her to do it myself, sent her to my lawyer—”

And paid for it, I knew he’d been about to add; but he didn’t.

“I told this fellow tonight,” he went on, still with that same tinge of vengefulness, “that they’d better look into his motives, while they were about it. He was only out to get money out of her—”

(And she was only out to get money out of you, I thought, but tactfully didn’t say so.)

“Do they think something’s happened to her?” I asked.

He didn’t answer that directly. “She’ll probably turn up someplace. They always do.” Then he said grimly, “It won’t be here. Now let’s have one, you and me.” And he came toward me with our drinks.

We sat down on the sofa with them. He didn’t need any urging tonight.

We had another pair. Then a third. We let the third pair stand and cool off a while.

I was the upright arm of the parenthesis tonight, I noticed presently; he was the toppled-over one.

I didn’t move my head aside the way he had his; his lips just didn’t affect me. It was like being kissed by cardboard.

“I want you to marry me,” he said. “I want — what you wanted that night. I want — someone like you.”

(That’s not good enough, I thought. You should want just me myself, and not someone like me. That leaves it too wide open. This is the rebound. You want the other kind of woman now. Safety, security, tranquility; not so much fire. Something’s shaken you, and you can’t stand alone; so if there was a female statue in the room, you’d propose to that.)

“Too late,” I said. “I’ve passed that point, as you arrive at it. You got to it too late. Or I left it too soon.”

He wilted and his head went down. He had to go on alone. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“I am, too.” And I was. But it couldn’t be helped.

Suddenly I laughed. “Isn’t love the damnedest thing?”

He laughed, too, after a moment, ruefully. “A bitch of a thing,” he agreed.

And laughing together, we took our leave of each other, parted, never to meet in closeness again. Laughing is a good way to part. As good a way as any.

I read an item about it in the papers a few days afterward, quite by chance. The husband had been picked up and taken in for questioning, in connection with her disappearance. Nothing more than that. There was no other name mentioned.

I read still another item about it in the papers, only a day or two following the first one. The husband had been released again, for lack of evidence.

I never read anything further about it, not another word, from that day on.