James Cain - The Institute

He stopped talking but kept walking around. I opened my mouth to say it fit what Teddy had told me, but changed my mind.

Pretty soon he sat down on the sofa across from me. I must have showed the strain because he said: “I’m sorry, Lloyd; it’s hard for me to realize that someone else — meaning you — can be just as concerned as me. To me, there is only one Hortense—”

“There couldn’t be two.”

Then I added: “However, what’s going through my head right now is an angle you seemed to have overlooked. You’re concerned about Inga’s interest in balconies. Try that in reverse — for Hortense.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“By one little push, Hortense could also—”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Of course, it wouldn’t really be like Hortense.”

“The hell it wouldn’t. It would be exactly like her.”

We sat there awhile, studying our feet. He started to say something, but I held up my hand. I had just heard the freight elevator speak. It was now after midnight and a most unlikely time for anyone to be using that elevator — except one person. It creaked and creaked and creaked. Then it stopped. From the sound it made, I could tell that it had stopped at the seventh floor, my floor. Then came the sound of a key and the door to the hall opened. The person who came in was a dumpy little woman, maybe forty years old, with a halfway good-looking face, a black winter coat, and a little black hat. She was kind of foreign-looking. Behind her, closing the door, was Hortense in her mink coat, without a hat. My heart skipped a beat as the coat broke in front in a way that suggested the bulge of her belly. She led the way into the living room, but when she got as far as the sofas, the other woman stopped and made two “knicks.”

So far, Garrett hadn’t moved and neither had I. Suddenly Hortense was furious, blazing away at us: “It’s customary for gentlemen to rise when ladies enter the room — or are you gentlemen?”

“We do get up when ladies enter the room,” I said very loudly, “but when idiots enter a room, we’re all crossed up. What was the big idea, just walking out like that? Why couldn’t you call just once? Didn’t you have any money for a phone call? Why?”

“Don’t you talk to me that way!”

“It’s my place. I’ll talk as I please.”

“It’s my place, too, and—”

“That’s what you think, sister.”

She screamed, then came charging over in back of the sofa, and began slapping my face from behind. She yelped at Garrett: “Why don’t you get up?”

He still hadn’t moved. Now he yawned a big phoney yawn which he pretended to hide behind the back of his hand. “I would have got up,” he said, “except I wasn’t quite sure I was here. Thought perhaps I had died or turned into glass or something or into air like a ghost. No one has spoken to me since they came into this room or even noticed that I exist.”

“I did speak to you — just now.”

“Oh, yeah, but I mean, to greet me. I have feelings, and they’re tender, like young asparagus. And—”

“Then hello.”

She snapped it out, but Garrett got up. “And hello, yourself,” he said with a cold little smile. “What do you want?”

“From you, nothing. We’re calling on Lloyd Palmer, so keep out of it, please, until someone asks you in. As to what’s going to be said that concerns you, you’d better stick around so you’ll know what’s going to be done. Then perhaps we’ll talk.”

“I’ll sit down, if you don’t mind.”

After Hortense had glowered at him for a moment, she turned to me. “Lloyd,” she began very dramatically, “will you, for Inga’s benefit, repeat what you’ve said to me, that you want to marry me, that is, if you still want to?”

“This is Inga?”

“Yes, of course it’s Inga.”

“Then why don’t you introduce us?”

Shook as I was at seeing her, I was plenty annoyed, and I must have showed it, that she was treating Inga so rudely, not even bothering to introduce her, obviously for the same reason that Garrett had balked at marrying her: she was a servant. As far as I was concerned, though, she was a guest in my home, and there I had rules.

“Well!” she gasped, “if we have to be that formal about it — Inga, Dr. Palmer; Dr. Palmer, Inga.”

“Does Inga have a last name?”

“I just told you her name.”

“Her last name, I said.”

Hortense looked blank.

“It is Bergson,” Inga said.

“Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss, Dr. Palmer, it is Miss.”

“Miss Bergson, I am honored. Please sit down.”

“Sank you, sank you.” She got off another knick but remained standing. Apparently, if Hortense couldn’t forget what she was and Garrett couldn’t, then she couldn’t either. I didn’t argue about it, but instead stepped back to where Hortense was standing, by the bookcase next to the fireplace.

“Answering you question,” I said, “I want to marry you, of course, and the sooner the better.”

“Then why don’t you marry me?”

“Because you’re still married to Mr. Garrett.”

“By my choice or his?”

I hesitated before answering, and turned to Mr. Garrett. “Sir,” I said very stiffly, “we’ve shaken hands these last few days, and I’ve done all I knew how to prove the way I feel toward you. Nevertheless, I have to repeat now what you said to me here in this room the last time this subject came up: you refuse to set her free, to give her the divorce she wants, lest you yourself become free to marry Miss Bergson. You didn’t think you would, you said; but at the same time, you feared that you might and that you mustn’t let yourself on account of her being a servant. If she’d stolen money or committed some other high crime, you thought you could face that; but a servant you couldn’t accept. So you refused Hortense a divorce and promised her that if she sued for one, you would inform the court she was carrying another man’s child, my child, to be exact. I think I’m quoting you correctly.”

“Richard?”

Hortense barely whispered it, then waited while he turned the color of chalk. In a moment she went on, to Inga: “It’s not true, what he’s told you, that I’m blocking the divorce, that I meant to be Mrs. Garrett no matter whose child I’m carrying, and that if he sues for divorce, I’ll break the news to the court, about another woman — you. It’s a lie, what he’s told you. Are you convinced? Do you believe me?”

“Yiss, Mrs. Garrett. Sank you.”

But Mr. Garrett cut in a muffled, queer voice: “Why do you listen to them, Inga, to her or to him? It’s all a lie, what she said — and what Dr. Palmer says, too. It is she who is blocking me, in spite of what’s been said. It will all be unsaid tonight when she calls me later to say, O.K., I can sue for divorce but that, of course, she can’t deceive a court and will have to tell them about you. That’s all it needs, Inga. Now do you know who is lying?”

“Yiss, Mr. Garrett. You.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. He just sat there with his face hanging off his cheekbones while Hortense stared, Inga stared — and I, no doubt, stared. Then very briskly Hortense chirped: “So! Shall we get on with it?”

“Pliz, Mrs. Garrett, yiss.”

Hortense stepped past the sofa, the one on our side of the table, sat down on it, opened her bag, and took out what looked like a blank check. Turning to Inga, she said: “Now, we’ve been to New York. We’ve talked to Sven, and he’s willing to marry you, provided I kick in, which I’m willing to do from my own private fortune that my uncle bequeathed me, not from anything out of my marriage. I will pay you a quarter million in cash, $125,000 tonight and the rest when my stocks are sold by brokers in Chester. But there’s one small catch, Inga: the check I write you tonight will be payable to Inga Nordstrom, not Inga Bergson.”