Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

I listened, and laughing came through the partition — Marie’s laugh, and Pierre’s, everything quite gay. I poised my stick on the strip of bare boards between the rug and the wall. I was all set to let it drop, when I thought to myself: Why? You signal her, and you know what’s going to happen, as you like her, plenty. I thought: Are you, after doing all this for one woman, going to ruin it by hopping in bed with another? I thought: How can you be such a rat, after the help you’ve been given by this brave, saucy little thing, as to leave her now in the lurch, without even telling her thanks? I thought: Rat or not, that ’ s what you have to do! I shoved the stick under one arm, opened my wallet. I got out two twenties, dropped them on the bed. I put the wallet away, went to the bare boards, poised my stick again, and dropped it to make a clatter. Then I snatched it up, tiptoed quick to the hall, closed the door softly, and sneaked down the stairs, listening as I went.

On the second floor I sensed something.

I wheeled, and looking at me was another man with a stick, who had also apparently been listening. Suddenly I remembered him: Marie’s guard, the one I’d seen on the high stool in her gambling room. I saw he remembered me, and went plunging down to the lobby and on out to the street. I tried to tell myself I needn’t feel like a rat any more, that if this man had been brought to act as emergency guard that took all the danger out. I felt still more like a rat, a rat that had been caught.

That didn’t get rid of the fact I had what I’d hoped to get, and as soon as I got back to my suite I worked like a wild man for the next couple of hours putting the scraps together. It wasn’t too hard a job, once I got system in it. My first gain came when I realized that pieces along the outside must have a straight edge. By studying the ones with lines and other ones without, I was able to figure out which scraps went at the top, which ones at the sides, and which ones at the bottom. When I laid them out on my escritoire blotter, I came up with kind of a frame around a blank space in the middle. Now finding edges that fitted edges was just a question of patience, and pretty soon I had all the pieces in place. Then I got out my gum arabic, the little bottle I had in my draftsman’s kit, and with that glued them in place, using hotel stationery as backing. At last I could read what they said, and it was damning so far as Burke was concerned. Because it was not only a trial draft, as I had hoped it might turn out to be. It was that, but it was also a translation from proper English, such as Burke always used, into dumb lingo, the kind an illiterate writes. In other words, on odd lines was a note, decently spelled and punctuated, giving details of the shoe shipment, while on even lines, under words to correspond, was the rough, misspelled printing of a pretended ignoramus, even to the signature LORL PATROT — everything in exactly the same style as the note I’d seen at headquarters.

I was plenty excited about it, but had to figure how to use it, and went down to the lobby to think. The point was that though I could name the informer, I couldn’t disprove his evidence if the Army insisted on believing it meant anything, and I kept telling myself Burke was incidental; the main thing was Mr. Landry and how to get him out. And then I suddenly saw that my tactic lay not in fine points of what proved what, but in taking the fun out of the Army’s self-righteous zeal for the sport of human sacrifice.

In a seat beside me watching the theater crowd enter was a newspaperman, John Russell Young, who wrote for a Philadelphia paper. After a moment or two he beckoned and another reporter, Olsen, who wrote for New England papers, came over. Young was just a boy, but Olsen was in his thirties, a bit seedy, with yellow paper stuffed in his pocket and a kind of hatchet face that squinted all the time. I halfway knew them both, and spoke; I couldn’t help hearing what they said. It seemed Young was taking a trip to field headquarters on the Teche and wanted Olsen to cover him here in return for copies of the Franklin dispatches. They fixed it up quick, then Young said: “Olsen, there’s one thing I’m having a look at, and that’s the camp followers they have out there — the bevy of colored girls who cook for the boys, as I hear, and press their pants, and do their laundry — and what else, would you say?”

“I couldn’t imagine,” said Olsen.

“I mean to find out,” said John Russell Young.

That’s when I remembered Dan’s panic at what the press might hear. I leaned over and interrupted: “Mr. Olsen, how’d you like it if I had a story for you?”

“I’d like it fine, Mr. Cresap. What story?”

“About a client of mine, falsely accused.”

“Not Adolphe Landry, by any chance?”

“I see you keep up with things.”

“Keeping up is my business. But how is he falsely accused? The way they tell it at headquarters, he’s practically a one-man Q.M. for Dick Taylor’s Army.”

“They tell it their own way,” I said, pretty grim, “but if you’d like to hear it my way, why don’t you have breakfast with me tomorrow, and I’ll have it all lined up.”

“Fine. Around eight-thirty, shall we say?”

“I’ll be expecting you then.”

I put in a call for 7:30, then went up and went back to work. I wrote a letter to the Commanding General, asking dismissal of the case on the ground of plain reason, but putting in other stuff too, like the motives the Army might have in being unduly severe, and other things the press could be interested in. I made two copies, and turned, in around 1:30. In the morning, shaved and brushed and slicked, I went down to find Olsen waiting, and took him to the main dining room, as the bar wasn’t open yet. When we’d ordered, I handed him one copy of the letter, telling him: “Keep it, I made it especially for you.”

He whistled as soon as he’d read it, and said: “Hey, hey, hey — I’ll say it’s a story, Cresap. You’ve practically accused this Army of inventing a false accusation in order to earn a bribe — something we’ve known goes on but haven’t been able to prove, as you say you’ll be able to do. You mind my asking how?”

“Well — I’ll reserve that for the confab.”

“What confab, Cresap?”

“At headquarters, today. That’s another thing I wanted to ask you about. How’d you like to attend?”

“Attend, Cresap? Hell, they wouldn’t let me.”

“Who is ‘they’? I’m this man’s counsel.”

“That’s right, so you are. So you are.”

He eyed me sharply then and read the letter again. Then he said: “But suppose you don’t have proof? This letter alone is a bombshell, enough to bring in the Gooch Committee. They’ll find the proof, if it’s there. And it has to be there, of course! This whole Army’s a mess of corruption, caused by cotton — graft, cumsha, and slipperoo, straight down the line and straight up the line, as this letter intimates. That’s what’ll interest Gooch.”

“Who’s Gooch, if I may ask?”

“Chairman of the committee in Congress that investigates this kind of stuff, the conduct of the war.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard of him.”

“He can’t disregard this .”

I let him run on, through orange, eggs, and coffee, until he’d folded the letter up, tucked it in his pocket, and patted it. Then I said: “Of course, I haven’t submitted it yet.”

“What do you mean, you haven’t submitted it?”

“But that’s understood,” I said.

“Not by me,” he snapped, quite annoyed. “You hand me a letter, a copy you say you made for me, and I supposed it had been sent.”