TT
| B a lll, 7 as


s = F x * * * * *
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY of
The extremely well ordered life of Martin-
Pryor misses total perfection in only one simple
way. He has murdered his wife and somebody
knows it. Not just anybody, but one of his
close friends in the exclusive suburban com-
munity of Alden Park. An anonymous black-
mail note of annoying flippancy and familiarity
has just arrived in the morning mail.
Exhilarated rather than frightened, and sure
of his superbly logical mind, Martin patiently
set about narrowing down his list of suspects
to five people he knows well.
Thus the scene is set for the dangerous and
carefully calculated contest between blackmailer
and murderer. Martin plays his hand with un-
usual thoroughness even for him, and only
becomes alarmed when he realizes he is really
falling in love for the first time in his life—and
with one of his principal suspects. His clear
headed thinking is threatened, his motives con-
fused.
But even worse is the awful shock to his
pride—he is facing the humiliating situation of
admitting to himself that the blackmailer may
be cleverer than he. The reader is cunningly
drawn into an almost satanic sympathy with
the hero-villain, and as the scene darkens the





T H E P E R F E C T I O N I S T





T H E P E R F E C T I O N I S T
B Y L. A N E V K A U F F M A N N
U”
J. B. L 1 P P 1 N C o T T C o M P A N Y
P H I L A D E L P H I A A N D N E W Y O R K


To Peter Sekaer
ºf 4 |
k & 13
ºf cº-


- - -----
---- ----- «


T H E P E R F E C T I O N I S T





And all in all, as he sat down at his prettily arranged break-
fast table and touched the bell that would summon his chilled
orange juice, he was suffused with a gratifying sense of his
own superiority as a human being. For superiority consisted
not in any remarkable talent (because Martin presumed to
do several things passably well but no one thing superla-
tively) but simply in ordering one's life in such wise as to
make the utmost of one's capabilities and amusements.
And that he had surely done. A full life: stimulating, ener-
getic, entertaining—yet disciplined as a superior person's
life should be. After breakfast he would retire to his study,
devote himself first to whatever bill-paying or correspond-
ence was necessary (his replies to the many letters of con-
dolence had been attended to as fast as they arrived), and
then the rest of the morning would be free for research and
note-making toward his long projected biography of his
grandfather, a gentleman whose sterling record as Senator
and Governor would have been crowned by a place in Bryan's
cabinet if an ignorant electorate had not seen fit to elect Taft
to the presidency in 1908.
This part of the daily routine was already sacrosanct; the
remainder was designed for a charming, though limited, flexi-
bility. Since today was a warm autumn day, and his pros-
trated grief over Grace's death had been replaced by a spirit
of ‘carrying on, he would play golf in the afternoon. In poorer
weather there was the card room at the Country Club, or the
squash courts at the Harvard Club in town. The evenings
were left for social intercourse of one sort or another. This
evening, for example, there would be bridge at Bill Benson's.
All very satisfactory.
“Professor Benson called,” Mrs. Hodges announced as she
put the icy orange juice in front of him.
“Oh, damn,” said Martin. The one thing wrong with a well
[10]


planned life was the casualness with which other people
could upset the plans.
“He said to tell you he's caught one of those virus things
so he'd have to postpone tonight. He said somebody-or-other
could make it for next Thursday and you should call him.”
Martin glowered at Mrs. Hodges' plump, retreating back.
No doubt her principal reaction to Benson's illness was mere
concern about whether she'd have to stay and get dinner in-
stead of being able to leave after lunch. But no, that wasn't
fair. She would probably welcome the extra work if it meant
that Martin stayed home. She disapproved of his gadding
about. She never tired of telling how she hadn't set foot out
of her house for nearly six months after her adored Willie had
died.
Well, she would have her evening off nevertheless. Martin
had determined on going out for the evening, and go out he
most certainly would. He was not dependent on Bill Benson
for entertainment. If he wanted bridge, there was always a
game to be found at the Club. Or, for that matter, he might
go into the city. . . .
He had not been there, in any sense of an excursion for
pleasure, since Grace's death. Or for several months before.
Surely there would be no harm in it now, even if he were seen.
And it was most unlikely that he would be. He had a good
assortment of night spots which were quite unknown to fellow
suburbanites from Alden Park.
No, the problem was no longer one of being seen, but
whether, after so long an absence, he would be likely to find
suitable companionship. Would Diana or that little blonde
girl—Denise—(what quaint names the little dears did give
themselves!) still be available? And if not, was he in the mood
to take a chance on some new girl? They were usually pretty
enough as to face and figure, but all too inclined to be indif-
[11]


ferent company, at best, across a table, and equally indiffer-
ent company in bed until he had schooled them a trifle. That
Diana, though, had been a real jewel. . . .
Mrs. Hodges returned with the toast, and declared that she
supposed he wanted her to order something for his dinner.
“The lamb chops that Jensen sent for your lunch are nothing
but fat. He hasn't sent us a decent piece of meat since Mrs.
Pryor passed away.”
Martin gave thirty seconds of silent tribute to Mrs. Hodges'
passive euphemism for a death that had been both bloody and
violent, and then said, No—she needn't worry about his din-
ner, he would probably be going in to New York to do some
. . . research. As for the lamb chops, he was sure that in her
capable hands they would be superb.
Mrs. Hodges was not to be baffled by compliments. She
felt it necessary to press on him the information that butchers
were apt to be dreadfully lax unless there was a mistress of
the house to keep after them all the time. She, Mrs. Hodges,
did her best, as Mr. Pryor surely knew, but they just didn't
pay any attention when a mere servant complained. . . .
Martin's attention, as frail as any butcher's, strayed. He
glanced at the morning paper, neatly folded beside the butter
plate, its headlines partially obscured by the morning mail.
And it was then, for the first time, that he noticed the letter.
It attracted Martin's attention at once simply because he
could not imagine who had sent it. Bills, business correspond-
ence, and advertisements always clearly, sometimes ostenta-
tiously, announced their source; letters from his few distant
friends were invariably recognizable. Some weeks back, to
be sure, there had been many unfamiliar-looking letters, but
those had declared themselves as notes of condolence by the
feminine, personal stationery and the fact that they were ad-
[12]


dressed by hand. This was a plain white business envelope,
and the address was typewritten. Martin idly turned it over
in search of a return address but there was none.
“Mrs. Hodges,” he interrupted, “surely you can see that
I cannot call up a butcher whom I have never spoken to be-
fore and complain about faults in his meat which—due to
your superlative cooking—I have scarcely noticed. Wouldn't
it be better if you just told him I had been disappointed?”
Mrs. Hodges said pessimistically that of course she would
do her best, and went away.
Thinking that perhaps the letter might be a remarkably
quick reply to his advertisement, which had appeared in last
Sunday's literary supplement of the New York Times, re-
questing documents and memories relating to his grand-
father, Martin slit open the envelope.
The salutation “My dear Martin” immediately disposed of
that guess. Piqued by the anonymous familiarity, he turned
to the last page for a signature, but there appeared to be
In One.
So he began again, and after the first few lines his eyes
raced on to the end without faltering, except once to let him
put down a piece of toast he had been holding in midair for
fully sixty seconds.
“My dear Martin:
“It must be nice to be so clever and so sure of yourself that
you never have any uncertainties like the rest of us. I’m sure
that a little thing like having evidence of a murder wouldn't
bother you for a moment—you'd think of something clever
to do with it. But somehow I doubt if you'd take it to the
police. That would be much too obvious. Martin is never satis-
fied with being obvious, Grace used to say. Poor Grace.
“I expect you found her pretty irritating. I did myself, at
[13]


from me soon again, after I have given the matter more
thought.”
And that was that.
With a less than steady hand Martin picked up his news-
paper and the remainder of his correspondence and retired to
his study, leaving his breakfast virtually untouched.
He was not afraid, not really. Not with the cold, unreason-
ing fear which had gripped him briefly after the murder. Un-
reasoning, because he simply didn't overlook vital details
. at least predictable ones. Unreasoning, too, because the
police simply wouldn't suspect a husband of independent
means of murdering his wife—even if her income was three
times the size of his—unless there were another woman in the
case. And there wasn't. Diana could scarcely be considered
“another woman”: he was merely one of her several patrons,
and, besides, she was quite happily married to a salesman
who had to be out of town most of the time.
So that fear had faded into the most trifling background
nervousness, and eventually, when the police had proved most
sympathetic and helpful, had vanished altogether.
Now, for the first time since then, the possibility of dis-
covery had reappeared, but he was not afraid. For the whole
tone of the letter so clearly showed that the writer was a
reasonable being that Martin saw no cause for anxiety. It was
perfectly true that he could afford to pay a modest blackmail.
If necessary, he would. Cheerfully.
Well, perhaps not cheerfully. The condescension of the
letter raised a smart which was aggravated by the truly baf-
fling problem of who its writer might be. Was it possible that
one of Grace's stuffy, conservative, fatuous friends, whom he
so despised, was actually masking such an amoral intelligence
[15]


and sense of superiority as the letter revealed? A frightful
thought. Yet the only alternative was that one of his own inti-
mates or acquaintances treated him with affection and respect
while covertly holding him in the malicious contempt which
the letter throughout displayed. Yet one of these two possibili-
ties must certainly be the case, for the letter gave every evi-
dence of a familiarity with the Pryors which no one outside
their respective circles could possibly possess.
It was an unpleasant problem.
And as soon as he began to recover from his initial astonish-
ment, Martin realized that it was a problem which he must
solve. Not merely because blackmailers notoriously grew
greedy with the passage of time, but because it would be in-
tolerable to go on, year after year, ignorant of who was bleed-
ing him, laughing at him. His peace of mind, which he had
taken such a risk to achieve, would be gone.
The problem would have to be solved. And he must learn
to think of it not as an unpleasant problem, for that would
make him over-anxious, but as a fascinating puzzle, even a
stimulating one. A challenge to his wits. And in a contest of
wits with anyone in Alden Park, Martin could not doubt that
in the long run he was sure to win.
A puzzle, then, and he enjoyed puzzles and was good at
them. Such was the superior discipline of Martin's mind that
with no more ado, and in much the same mood as of a Sunday
he would settle down to a cryptogram or a crossword puzzle,
he leaned back in his easychair, closed his eyes, and concen-
trated on the game of guessing who his blackmailer might be.
Faces and names chased through his mind.
It seemed as though an astonishing number of people fell
under the heading of friends. Of course, most of them were
Grace's, not his. He chose his intimates with some discrimina-
tion; she with none. She had lived in Alden Park all her life;
[16]


her parents had been among the first to establish the area,
moving there from some inner suburb which had been over-
taken by tradespeople. So Grace had counted as friend vir-
tually everyone in the vicinity of any social standing, and
she'd had remarkably few preferences among them. She had
been fond of saying that there was some good to be found in
everyone, and though “everyone” to her had had a fixed mini-
mum of breeding and income, still she had been diligent in
finding the good. Anyone who was not openly vicious had
been a “lovely person” to Grace. Brilliance at conversation
and the successful production of offspring had been equal
accomplishments in her generous eyes, and she had always
been sweetly and exasperatingly cordial to any old bore who
chanced to be about. She'd had a few favorites, perhaps, but
they might as well have been chosen for the color of their eyes
as for any other attribute which Martin had been able to dis-
tinguish.
There would have to be some way of narrowing down this
horde, some systematic process of elimination, but for the
moment none occurred to him. And in the meantime there
could be no harm in speculating about one or two of the
possibilities. . . .
For obvious reasons, the first person who popped into his
mind was Dennis Morley. Dennis was the one man in Alden
Park of whose animosity he felt quite certain.
The antagonism which had sprung up so quickly between
Dennis and himself was originally caused by Dennis's mous-
tache. It was a quietly bushy sort of moustache which made
Dennis look most dignified, and that doubled its offensiveness
in Martin's eyes. Moustaches are rare in Alden Park and such
communities, at least among youngish men, and Martin had
felt free to generalize about them, and had even gone so far
[17]


c H A P T E B 2
Martin ate his lamb chops with good appetite, and drove
over to the Country Club. The sky had clouded over, and an
occasional rumble of thunder discouraged the thought of golf;
besides, he wanted to be among people, probing at them. This
early in the afternoon the card room was nearly empty. Alec
Frobisher and Wally Herndon greeted him with delight.
“I think I saw Finletter about,” Wally said. “He'll make a
fourth till someone else comes along.” And he trotted his gross
body up the stairs.
Alec's lean, misleadingly ascetic face crinkled into a smile
and just the suggestion of a wink. “I wonder what Wally'd do
if he came here some afternoon and there was no one to play
bridge with,” he remarked genially.
This was just the sort of remark that had always made Mar-
tin despise Alec. Not because it was either unkind or untrue.
Wally would have been the first to acknowledge his passion
for bridge and his dependence on the game. He would not, in
fact, have been able to deny them if he wanted to, for he was
generally the first to arrive at the card room in the afternoon
and the last to leave it in the evening . . . and no one who
[21]


knew his wife could blame him. Agnes Herndon was some-
thing of a terror.
So Wally's understandable infatuation with bridge was a
phenomenon that would have impressed itself upon even the
stupidest child, and even the stupidest child would have ac-
cepted the fact and dismissed it. Not Alec. The obvious had
an endless fascination for him, and the more obvious some-
thing was, the more inescapable Alec's comment. Drenched
pedestrians would be informed that it was raining, suffering
snifflers that they had quite a cold there, and bereaved rela-
tives that death must come to each of us sooner or later.
So it was with considerable chagrin that Martin found him-
self chuckling amiably and agreeing that Wally would cer-
tainly be lost without his daily bridge game.
And this imanity of his, Martin realized even as he was
committing it, was solely the result of the fact that however
much of a bore Alec might be, he was surely no blackmailer—
for he was one of the richest men in Alden Park. Nor had his
wealth been inherited. Despite his conversational fatuous-
ness, there was a streak of brilliance in the man, and an un-
canny grasp of stock-market fluctuations. Martin had never
clearly understood what position Alec had held in Wall Street
before his retirement some years back, but had long since
discovered that it was profitable to consult Alec before tinker-
ing with his investments.
In any case, Alec could not be deemed a suspect. His
friendliness could be taken at its face value, and credited
with as much sincerity as could be expected of any such re-
lationship in a community founded on an affinity of incomes
rather than of interests.
So the untainted simplicity of Alec's friendliness was justi-
fiably relaxing, and Martin realized that in responding to it
he had not been a hypocrite after all. For until the black-
[22]


mailer was found, he knew now that he would be wholly
comfortable only with such men as Alec, whose innocence was
unquestionable. The prospect was mildly dismaying, but for
the moment Martin was content to chat good-naturedly with
Alec until Wally came down the stairs with Dr. Finletter in
tow.
As always, on entering the card room, the clergyman wore
an air of heavily feigned furtiveness, and voiced the hope
that his bishop wouldn't catch him. “In any case,” he said,
“I’ll have to cut out as soon as someone else comes.”
Dr. Finletter was a lanky man, with the sad, naked face of
an un-made-up clown, and enough nervous mannerisms to
serve three laymen. When he had first come to Alden Park
(so older residents had informed Martin), he had had evan-
gelical tendencies and a deep consciousness of Sin. But he
had been a young man then, and as malleable as he had been
enthusiastic, and the oldsters had tolerantly taught him what
was expected of him. Nowadays he was social and hearty,
and more apt to draw his lesson from the good and faithful
servant who multiplied his talents than make embarrassing
observations about the difficulties a rich man might encounter
on trying to enter the kingdom of God. In fact, he seemed to
have modeled himself after Shakespear's curate: “A marvel-
ous good neighbor, faith, and a very good bowler.”
“Who will have the bad luck to play with me?” wondered
the clergyman, facing the knave of diamonds with a gesture
that nearly sent the card shooting off the edge of the table.
Alec also cut high, and Martin was bored by finding himself
paired with Wally Herndon. Wally's penchant had not been
rewarded with skill. He called himself a “sound player,”
which meant that he could be counted upon always to do the
orthodox thing, even when it was wrong.
Alec dealt, and the game was on. Dr. Finletter made a part
[23]


What could be more innocent-seeming than an “accidental
death” on the way to or from some social function? If one
had the patience to wait for the perfect moment, and the
foresight to have anticipated it when it arrived, one could
combine all the advantages of both premeditation and im-
petuosity, and avoid the disadvantages of either.
With typical indifference and lack of imagination, Grace
had shown an unquestioning acceptance of his sudden will-
ingness to accompany her to the various socializings he had
formerly shunned.
Before each such excursion Martin had examined in detail
the various opportunities for murder that the outing might
provide: perilous staircases, trafficky intersections, lonely
spots where violent ruffians might possibly lurk—each had
received due consideration in advance. Unfortunately, un-
like the accommodating victims of detective fiction, Grace
did not suffer from a weak heart; on the contrary, she was ir-
ritatingly healthy. She could not be conveniently frightened
to death; some quite real act of violence would be necessary.
It seemed to Martin, when he came to examine the matter,
that the inhabitants of Alden Park lived lives that were pusil-
lanimously free of the opportunities for violent deaths. True,
they might drown in their tubs or break their necks on cellar
steps, but such accidents seemed to him unprepossessingly
domestic. There was little point in forever rendering such
simple acts as taking a bath, or visiting the wine bin, preg-
nant with morbid associations; quite apart from the fact that
homely tragedies inevitably aroused homely suspicions.
So gradually he was driven back on one of his original
notions: a contrived and fatal accident.
For a time he toyed with the sporting idea of himself driv-
ing the car into a calculated smash-up, relying on his fore-
warning to escape unharmed himself. There were certain ad-
[26 )


vantages to the idea, chief of which was complete safety from
suspicion. But after giving the matter deep thought, and
coming to the conclusion that it was possible to achieve the
same effect with no personal danger at all, he decided that in
such a matter as murder there was no point in being unneces-
sarily sporting.
Methodically Martin scouted the neighborhood for likely
spots for a crash. He found three, and easily the most suitable
of these was a lonely and tricky stretch on Prospect Drive.
The community had occasionally brooded about one par-
ticularly dangerous corner, and spoken of guard rails, but
nothing had ever been done about it.
However, Prospect Drive was not a route commonly used
by Grace or Martin, and several weeks went by, which Martin
put to thoughtful use, before a plausible excuse presented
itself. This excuse was an invitation from the Camerons to
attend the wedding of their daughter, Ann, and the reception
afterwards—and the Camerons' place lay in such a direction
that it would be natural enough for the Pryors to take Prospect
Drive. Even Grace had been surprised at the delight with
which Martin greeted an invitation to celebrate the nuptials
of a girl he had so frequently denounced as an impertinent
and disrespectful brat, and Martin had to exaggerate out-
rageously Joe Cameron's taste in champagne to get himself
back in character.
Actually Martin scarcely tasted the champagne—though
he worked hard at creating the illusion of downing numerous
glasses and exuberantly encouraged Grace to overindulge. He
chose the moment of their leaving, early enough to avoid the
rush of departures; invited Grace to drive back, and suggested
Prospect as a pleasant route; and at the preselected spot pro-
duced the plausible reason for her to stop the open convertible
just there.
[27


He walked around to Grace's side of the car, looking about
to make sure the coast was clear—(who could anticipate an
idiotic camera enthusiast on the opposite hill?)—and stood
over her for an instant, reviewing his plans. She looked up at
him inquiringly with those dull, doggy brown eyes, just as he
took her head and with all his strength brought it crashing
down on the rim of the steering wheel. He didn't pause to
learn if she were dead or merely unconscious, but released the
handbrake and with the ferule of his umbrella prodded the
accelerator—first gently, trotting beside the car, and then
sharply to give the car impetus to send it hurtling well out
over the edge and down the thirty-five-foot drop.
The smash was most satisfactory. He hurried down the
slope, and was delighted to detect, on approaching the wreck,
the heavy reek of leaking gasoline. Quickly he lighted the
screw of paper intended for just this eventuality, and tossed
it where a trickle of gas was visible. A blast of flame drove
him back, but he remembered to toss the umbrella into the
fire. Since there was still no sound of an approaching car, he
hurried back up to the spot where the convertible had gone
off the road.
This was the unpleasant part of his plan. The spot he had
selected for his fall lay more than fifteen feet down and to
his right, and from this vantage point it looked anything but
soft. Yet a fall, mussing himself up and even hurting himself
a bit, was essential to complete the picture of his having been
thrown free of the car in its flight.
In midair he had time to wonder why he was holding his
breath, and this thought distracted him from his intention of
relaxing as he had read circus acrobats did. So he landed
stiffly and heavily on one heel, off balance and further forward
than he had intended, so he doubled over and rolled and
skidded the rest of the way down the slope. Something gave
[28 J


his shoulder a terrific blow; something else clawed at his face
and neck. When he stopped at last he was slightly stunned,
and until he identified the roaring in his ears with the blazing
car, he thought he was worse hurt than he really was. Groggily
he sat up, and assayed the damage. One ankle was badly
sprained and already swelling; his shoulder hurt like fury. His
clothes were obviously effectively torn and filthy. One trouser
leg was half ripped away, and the shin had an ugly scrape,
and when he touched tentatively at the painful spot on his
left cheek his hand came away bloody. Most artistic, he de-
cided; even better than he had hoped for.
Awkwardly he hobbled over to the burning car, that there
might be traces that he had tried to go to Grace's aid and
found it hopeless, and then in considerable pain he crawled
back up to the road again. At this point the loneliness of
Prospect Drive had ceased to be an asset, for he had had time
to lurch with what speed he could muster fully half a mile
toward the village before the wide-eyed delivery boy had
picked him up and rushed him to the nearest telephone, where
futile assistance might be summoned. After all the appropriate
gestures had been made, Martin had let himself be taken—
protesting brokenly—to the hospital.
But from there on his role, carefully planned in every detail,
had been ridiculously easy to play. His injuries, though super-
ficial, had been real enough and honestly painful enough to
substantiate his story, and he had cleverly declined to say
whether he had leapt or been thrown from the car, lest some
shred of evidence arose to contradict him. He had simply in-
sisted unhappily that he could remember nothing from the
instant the car went over the edge till he had found himself
lying some distance from the wreck. As for the cause of the
accident, he had offered nothing except the fact that as they
had come over the crest of the hill, the late afternoon sun had
[29]


First of all, had Gerald been at the Cameron reception?
Yes, he undoubtedly had, and for an instant Martin thought
of striking him out. But then memory came back to him:
Gerald had been there, but had talked of having to leave
early because he had something he wanted to do, and when
Dr. Finletter had left after making his courtesy appearance,
Gerald had begged a ride with him.
That had been a good hour and a half before Grace and
Martin had left—and the “something” which Gerald had
wanted to do might easily have been a matter of photography
before the light faded; he hadn't specified. As for Gerald's
financial position . . .
Penniless in his own right, Gerald had married, at twenty-
six, Barbara Chernet—whose first husband had inherited and
enlarged the Chernet steamship millions. It had been, seem-
ingly, a successful marriage, and for fiften years Gerald had
lived high. Then Barbara had died. Naturally the steamship
fortune, the income from which had been Barbara's in her
lifetime, had passed to the Chernet children, who had a
cordial dislike for their stepfather. Their family pride enabled
him to keep up appearances, but their antagonism was such
that their generosity stopped dead short when appearances
were satisfied.
For this antagonism their mother had been largely to
blame. A good-hearted soul who hated to refuse anyone any-
thing, yet dutiful to her first husband's theories of the value
of a spartan upbringing, she had dodged the problem of disci-
plining her children by thoughtlessly blaming any necessary
punishments on Gerald. Presumably the consequences of this
strategy in the event of her demise had never occurred to her;
and Gerald had been too little interested in the children to
notice what was happening, or too shortsighted to protest if
he had noticed.
[31]


morning, and whenever I do that I feel lucky. And I think
I've found a new way of tackling the dogleg on the twelfth.
If you—”
Once again Martin examined his partner with some curi-
osity. Gerald had opportunity, motive and temperament to
be a blackmailer; here was the first real suspect Martin had
met in the flesh since that dreadful letter had arrived in the
morning mail. The man seemed quite as usual—but this meant
nothing. Whoever was clever enough to have written the let-
ter would be equal to socializing with Martin with unaltered
countenance and behavior.
No, all that had changed was Martin's attitude toward
Gerald, and this not because he had any reluctance to wel-
come the man as a suspect. Martin had never liked Gerald.
On the contrary, he had despised him as only the amateur
gigolo can despise the professional. Martin's income (in his
own estimation at least) placed his marriage to an income
three times as large on the dignified footing of a marriage of
convenience; Gerald's had been that of a common fortune-
hunter.
But previously Martin had been content to dismiss Gerald
as a fool. An amiable fool, so that it was possible to suffer him
affably, if not gladly; but a tiresome fool, with his constant
enlarging on his adventures on the golf links. Now it was,
necessary to consider the possibility that underneath the
tiresomeness might lie unsuspected reserves of malice and
shrewdness. It was by no means inconceivable.
“. . . a chance of avoiding the sandtraps even if your ap-
proach shot is short,” concluded Gerald, rapidly sorting out
his hand. “Two spades. See, I said I was feeling lucky!”


Then the remaining names had been checked against the
guest list of the Cameron reception. Since the newspaper list
was doubtless unreliable, being based on invitations rather
than acceptances, this had meant a tedious and very difficult
afternoon with Helen Cameron, who had persisted in trying
to change the subject tactfully at every opportunity. He had
got his way finally, though he had doubtless left behind an
impression of brooding morbidity.
And then Martin had narrowed the list still further on
purely geographic grounds. He had decided that the hill
opposite Prospect Drive was not sufficiently elevated, nor did
it afford such scenic possibilities, to entice a photographer
from any distance. Surely it would occur to no one from the
other side of the village to seek out that wholly undistin-
guished eminence to take pictures from. Martin had obtained
a scale map of the township and drawn a circle to include only
those houses within a mile of the hill.
He had been left with five names.
Gerald Marshall.
Dennis Morley, of the moustache and the radical tend-
encies.
Agnes Herndon, Wally's difficult wife.
Bill Benson and Sally Teal.
On this list, which now existed solely in his own mind,
there were question marks after the last two names. After
Benson's because Martin considered him a close friend, and
after Sally Teal's because she was more or less of an unknown
quantity.
She was a poor relation of Alec Frobisher's, a second cousin,
or something of the sort. Alec had brought her to Alden Park
two or three years ago, and had given her the guest house in
the corner of his estate. From report, Martin knew that Sally
had turned some part of the house into a studio, and made
[35]


essential virtues as Anglo-Saxon ancestry and respectability
of income. When adolescent children, with the cynicism ap-
propriate to their age, questioned the purpose of this ex-
clusiveness, they were treated to a lecture on the importance
of tradition in a world of debased and vanishing values, and
told that when they grew up they would discover how much
it meant to come from a community of only the very finest
people. Usually the matter ended there, but occasionally one
of the more difficult youngsters would ask: “The very finest
people like Professor Benson?”
There was no dodging the fact that Benson was an embar-
rassment. Newcomers who had surmounted the obstacles to
residencehood were especially dismayed by his presence. Yet
nothing could be done about it, for the Benson family far
predated any other in the community, and indeed had once
owned much of the land of which Alden Park was com-
prised. Until recently it had been a family of the utmost re-
spectability, if of little eminence. “Good yeoman stock,”
Grace's father had called them, with more condescension
than justice. Benson could number several ministers and one
very minor astronomer among his forebears—but no one (and
perhaps this was what Grace's father had meant) with any
talent for money. Benson's father had had ambitions in that
direction. He had sold off his land with enthusiasm, and in-
vested the proceeds in stock which could not possibly fail to
make him as wealthy as his new neighbors.
Fortunately Benson's mother had had a small income of her
own; enough to keep the household going and to put Bill
through college.
Bill proved a prodigious scholar. He took his B.A.; polished
off his M.A. while his parents were still arguing about whether
they could afford the extra expense; easily got an instructor-
ship to support him while he disposed of the Ph.D. A born
[38]


Politically he epitomized the Opposition. He called him-
self a “middle-of-the-road non-Aristotelian anarchist”; since
nobody else seemed to occupy this position or even under-
stand it, he had an unassailable base from which to launch
his polemics against all other political shades, left or right.
He had strong opinions on every social and economic prob-
lem, and not a little of their strength was derived from their
inconsistency.
Somewhere along the line he had gone to war with Alden
Park. Once upon a time he had been backed into a corner
and forced to defend his attitude; he had replied with a sav-
age attack on the sort of social system which permitted par-
venus to snub the man who taught their children what little
they would ever know. Evidently he later decided that this
was an undignified position, for he never again would admit
that there was any attitude to defend. “I just don't pay any
attention to the rest of Alden Park,” he would insist gravely.
“This is my home; I go my way, and they are free to go theirs.”
The more paranoic of his neighbors felt that Benson's way
was a calculated affront.
Alden Park was a suburb of pastel, modern houses with
trimly landscaped lawns and flower beds. In the midst of
these squatted the Benson Victorian monstrosity, painted an
uncompromising, ugly dark brown—and generally in need of
paint. The grounds were a squalor of vegetable plots, con-
nected by patches of grass which was invariably uncut for
Benson's only interest was in the vegetables. Biodynamic
gardening was his hobby; his compost pile was the child of
his heart—and an offense in the nostrils of his southeast neigh-
bor, whose protests were coldly overridden by lectures on the
iniquities of artificial fertilizers.
Something of a dandy at the university, at home Bill wore
aged huaraches, filthy corduroys held up by a length of
[40]


clothesline, and shirts of vivid and uncomplementary colors.
Occasionally he omitted the shirt while working around his
place—especially on afternoons when the Garden Club was
having tea on Mrs. Mitchell's lawn.
And as if these indignities were not enough, he wrote of
Alden Park (for he was a frequent contributor of witty and
contentious articles to the “class” magazines) as if it were a
private zoo. He called it “the middle-class suburb where I
spend my summers” and retailed the habits of his neighbors
in the manner of an aristocrat describing a rustic frolic, if he
were being witty; or, if contentious, like an anthropologist
analyzing a savage ritual.
The most maddening part of it was that the details on
which Benson erected his structures of sarcasm were in-
variably accurate. For Alden Park did not offer a united front
against the professor: there were those who found him en-
tertaining company, sought entrance to the circle around him,
and paid their way by tattling on their friends and neighbors.
Gossip aside, conversation tended to be reasonably good
at the Bensons', mainly because it was a major fetish of Bill's.
“People complain that conversation is a dying art and go back
to their television sets,” he would say. “Actually, what is
dying is original thinking, which was all that ever made con-
versation an art. Nowadays people read the same newspapers
and magazines, go to the same movies and plays, let their
books be chosen for them by the same clubs. After a while,
with the inconsequential exceptions of politics and religion,
they think the same thoughts. By the time they're twenty-five,
they are bored by their friends, and by the time they're thirty
they are bored by themselves. Who can blame them?”
If the dying art found shelter in the Benson salon it was a
restricted shelter, fenced about with rules and regulations
initiated by Benson himself “to keep the talk from degenerat-
[41]


ing into nonsense.” And if these rules not merely excluded
Eve but seemed designed to let Bill indulge his fondness for
monologue, it couldn't be denied that he did his very best to
provide both wit and variety, for the monologues ranged from
the odd corners of his own special field, to almost anything
under the sun . . . including, evidently, blackmail.
“Blackmail?” inquired Martin.
“Martin is surprised,” Benson informed the others. “He
pictures some overmarried businessman paying out money
to suppress the evidence of a sexual indiscretion, and wonders
why we are discussing anything so squalid.”
“Why are you?” Martin asked.
“We aren't, of course,” Bill said crushingly.
Martin pulled out a handkerchief to dry his palms, and sank
into an overstuffed armchair. Belatedly he nodded to the
others in the room. The Hollands were there, and the Wal-
laces. And, curled in one corner of the sofa, Sally Teal. But he
had never paid her any attention before, and now contented
himself with a fleeting smile of greeting.
“It is probably the fault of detective novels,” Benson di-
gressed, thus flouting one of his own rules, “that if a word
has a criminal meaning this is the one we invariably think of
first. Which is absurd. Now, in medieval Scotland, for ex-
ample, blackmail meant the tribute that the small border
landowners paid to the chiefs for immunity from being plun-
dered. It was a sort of tax, collected by extortion, of course,
but there wasn't anything criminal about it.”
With renewed suspicion Martin was reminded of the last
time he had encountered the comparison between blackmail
and taxation.
“We weren't exactly talking about border landowners
either,” Myra Holland said with sly triumph. She was the
[42]


clever one of the couple, a former academic star fighting
against the stagnation of suburban housewifery.
“We were not,” Benson agreed, “but we might have been.
As it happened, we were dealing with the non-financial va-
riety: social blackmail.”
“Bill was saying that society couldn't get along without it.”
“Not exactly,” said Benson. “I said that it was one of the
two basic methods people have of getting what they want
from other people. Bribery is the second. But bribery offers
a real reward and implies a certain superiority of briber to
bribee; its frequency is limited by a natural scarcity of people
who have anything worth while to offer. Blackmail, on the
other hand, is a tactic of weakness and inferiority, and is
therefore quite common. The blackmailer needn't have any-
thing to offer, he merely threatens—and who is so weak as
not to have a threat handy? The wretched old lady keeps her
adult children in line with threat of a heart attack, the meek
wife threatens with her weeping and the child with his tan-
trums. Every profitable social relationship exists either on—”
Benson's voice had the arresting flexibility of a trained
speaker's, but when you were waiting to insert an important
question it was as maddening as the dreariest drone. His
gestures were restrained to a constant fiddling with his black-
rimmed spectacles, which he used much as a hypnotist's
bauble, till the raising of the shafts could produce the erect
emphasis of a couple of exclamation points, or the abrupt re-
settling of the glasses upon his nose an intimidating effect on
anyone who might be thinking of replying to a rhetorical
question. He was a spare, meticulously graceful man in his
fifties, with a mobile, thin-lipped mouth, deep-set eyes, and
a shock of grey hair cropped close to his head in scholarly
parody of undergraduate style.
Myra Holland and Charlie Wallace listened with a ferret-
[43]


like intensity, alert for a point of dispute that might show off
their own cleverness. Their spouses listened in wary earnest-
ness, ever determined to maintain their sophistication in the
face of Benson's flippant perversities, and rarely succeeding,
Eve, as always, seemed the perfect audience, alert and per-
ceptive; it was only when she talked that she appeared a fool.
And Sally Teal . . . P
At last Martin allowed his attention to fasten surreptitiously
on Sally.
And he was at once taken off guard by the irrelevant dis-
covery that she was lovely. It wasn't surprising that he had
never noticed this before; unlike virtually every other woman
in Alden Park she made the least, instead of the most, of her-
self. Her orange-blonde hair was pulled straight back into an
untidy bun. Her pale eyebrows were left without assistance,
and her lipstick seemed to have been applied more in anger
than in vanity. Yet it was a lovely face—a sensitive and sensual
face—the face of a passionate patrician.
She was sitting in a corner of the sofa, schoolgirl fashion,
with both feet tucked under her. Her figure was slender and
long legged; her breasts were high and small. Her hands, lying
passively in her lap, were rather large and knuckly, with
short, unpolished nails. She was wearing a pale blue frock
with an unbecoming neckline and a row of ugly yellow but-
tons down the front; her only jewelry was a Mexican bracelet
of silver and turquoises.
She attended Benson's onrolling sentences with easy tran-
quility. In repose her face had a certain blankness, so that
Martin might have thought she was bored or thinking of
something else, but for the occasional shy, secret smiles that
appeared in response to Bill's better turns of phrase. Each
smile was the merest flicker of intelligence, vanishing in an
instant to be replaced by enigmatic expressionlessness.
[44]


Martin was intrigued—and attracted. He decided that it
might be a pleasure getting to know Sally better, and hoped
that that face was not the face of a blackmailer.
Benson's voice swooped to a full-throated and doubtless
well-expressed conclusion. Ascertaining that nobody was
about to leap in with rebuttals, Martin seized the opportunity
to insert his question.
“How did you get off on this subject?” he inquired. “Black-
mail, I mean.”
Benson pulled his glasses down on his nose and peered at
Martin over the rims, as if searching for cryptic significance
in the question. Martin knew that the gesture was pure af-
fectation—Benson was half blind without his glasses—but
consciousness of ulterior motive made him nervous in the
face of that shrewd inspection.
“How did we get off on this subject?” Benson repeated
vaguely. “These things can be so difficult to retrace. Didn't
you raise the matter, Sally, my dear?”
Martin snubbed out the cigarette he had just lighted.
Sally was flushing at finding herself so suddenly the center
of attention. “No, I didn't,” she protested. “You did.”
“Did I?” mused Benson. For an instant his questioning
gaze flicked back at Martin, and then returned politely to
Sally. - - -
“I was just telling what Dr. Finletter had said about Cousin
Alec,” Sally said. “You were the one who called it blackmail.”
“That's right, I did,” Benson admitted.
“The rectory is just opposite my place,” Sally explained
to Martin. “Dr. Finletter often drops over to watch me work.
Something he said the other day—though I know he didn't
mean it that way—made methink that Cousin Alec's kindness
to me might have come more from fear of public opinion
than from affection for me. That was all I said. And then Bill
[45]


started talking about blackmail.”
“And I was absolutely right,” Benson said. “You used the
fear of public opinion to blackmail Alec Frobisher into giving
you his guest house to live in. It wasn't the least bit like him
to do it. Normally he doesn't give anything away that he can't
deduct twice over from his income tax.”
“That isn't so,” Sally said. “He’s very generous. And I cer-
tainly didn't intend to blackmail him.”
“You certainly did,” Benson said, “though I’m sure you
didn't think of it that way. Most social blackmail is more or
less unconscious.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Bill,” Martain said, explaining
to himself that if he wanted to get to know Sally better there
could be no harm in coming to her defense. “He’d probably
just been thinking about what he calls social blackmail and
used what you said to launch into one of his lectures.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Benson, charging happily into
battle. “I was quite accurate. Alec is only Sally's second
cousin. She'd never met him in her life until three years ago.
When she had finally been—”
Sally looked anguished, but it was Eve who interrupted
warningly: “Bill!”
“Quite right, my dear,” Benson said. “When Sally was in
some difficulty,” he continued, shying away from whatever
confidence he had been about to disclose, “there was no one
else she could turn to. But people don't usually rush to shower
kindnesses on unknown second cousins; particularly people
like Alec. In this case, though, if Alec had declined to come
to her rescue he would have felt like a dreadful stinker, and
he knew it. Sally must have known it too. It's nothing that she
should be ashamed of. She'd have been a fool not to take ad-
vantage of the only weapon she had.”
“I’ve paid back every single penny,” Sally said defiantly,
[46]


C H A P T E R 4
It was on Friday of that same week that Agnes Herndon
baffled the fifth in a series of Martin's most plausible reasons
for calling on her by the simple means of not being home
when he arrived. In some irritation he pressed the novel
which Agnes simply had to read into the hands of the pimply-
faced Herndon heir and retreated to his car with a profound
conviction that Agnes was deliberately avoiding him.
The afternoon was wasted.
But inspiration seized him as he swung out of the drive,
and he decided that there was a chance to retrieve the day
after all. His way home went directly past Sally Teal's place,
and there was no reason why he shouldn't simply drop in.
True, there was no reason why he should, but by now Martin
was thoroughly tired of trying to think up ingenious pretexts
—which usually failed anyway—for every call he made on
one of his suspects. Other people paid purely social calls;
why not he?
The Frobishers enjoyed the isolation afforded by four
whole acres, and their house was located, or rather concealed,
in the center of this ground. The driveway was guarded by
[48]


Sally's cottage, formerly the guest house—which the Fro-
bishers quite seriously called “The Gatehouse.” Martin parked
in front of the cottage, and took the flagstone path up to the
front door at a saunter calculated to give him the air of an
offhand visitor. Several unrewarded assaults on the doorbell
were beginning to make him think that his afternoon was in-
deed wasted when Sally appeared around the corner of the
house. She was wearing soiled dungarees and a man's shirt
with the sleeves rolled up; her hair was caught back by a
rubber band.
“I thought I heard someone ringing, but I wasn't sure,”
she said. “Most people come straight back to the studio be-
cause that's where I usually am.”
“Do you mind visitors when you're working?” Martin
asked as he picked his way across the lawn. “You said the
other evening that Dr. Finletter often comes over, so I
thought you might not.”
“No, no. Come on back,” and she turned to lead the way.
Her manner was perfectly matter of fact: she didn't seem in
the least surprised at seeing him, nor pleased nor annoyed.
The studio had originally been a two-car garage. The big
doors had been sealed off, and a large window let into one
wall. In front of the window stood what obviously was a
potter's wheel . . . and seated on a stool in front of the wheel,
very much at his ease, was Dennis Morley. “Hello, Martin,”
he said pleasantly enough.
It was with some difficulty that Martin managed a polite
smile and a hypocritical inquiry into the state of Dennis's
health. The presence of the bemoustached radical was unex-
pected but not really surprising, for he lived close by, but to
Martin it was even more unwelcome than usual. From the
very first his resolve to see as much as possible of his suspects
had been qualified by the thought that it would be nice to
[49]


“Everyone regretted it,” Martin said. “Especially my grand-
father.”
The pipe seemed to need the most careful attention. “When
you come to that part of the biography, Martin,” Dennis said,
“are you going to point out that the governor's wife, your
grandmother, was a stockholder in the Jordan Tool Com-
pany?”
Martin glared at Dennis in disgust. Out of sheer, spiteful
malice the man had been prying. “The muckrakers of the day
made enough scandal out of that wholly irrelevant coinci-
dence,” he said stiffly. “It seems better forgotten. My grand-
mother had quite a few securities which she'd inherited from
her father; I doubt that a list of them would make particularly
interesting reading.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Dennis said. “Anyone interested
enough in your grandfather to read a whole book about him
would surely be interested to know that he had five men
killed in the course of protecting one of his wife's invest-
ments.”
“That's a vile way to put it!” Martin snapped, finally out-
raged. “You radicals act as though you had a monopoly on love
of humanity, but you can never think of any motives but
vicious ones. The whole thing was just an unfortunate coinci-
dence.”
Dennis had been engrossed in lighting his pipe. Now he
looked up at Martin and smiled sweetly. “I may not have
much of a reputation for it,” he said in his most patronizing
manner, “but I am a professional critic. And if I might give
you a bit of professional advice, it would be to bring such coin-
cidences out into the open. Explain them away if you like, but
don't try to keep them concealed. Reviewers are often better
informed than you might expect, and omissions make them
suspicious.”
[51]


He stood up, still smiling in the face of Martin's momen-
tarily inarticulate fury at such presumption. “Bye-bye, Sally.”
“You off?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I’d best be running along,” Dennis replied. And he drifted
out the door, leaving a swirl of aromatic smoke behind him.
“You mustn't let Dennis upset you so,” Sally said soothingly,
though without turning around.
“I know I shouldn't,” Martin agreed. He realized that he
had not cut a very impressive figure in his clash with Dennis,
and he would have liked to shrug the whole episode away
with some clever jibe at Dennis's expense. But his sense of
outrage was too great for cleverness. “He’s so utterly unfair,”
Martin complained.
“Dennis can be frightfully tactless.”
Martin bridled slightly at the suggestion that he needed to
be treated with tact. “He certainly can, but I'm willing to
overlook that,” he said magnanimously. “It’s his unfairness
that I can't stomach. My grandmother's holdings in the Jordan
Tool Company amounted to about five percent of the out-
standing stock; that scarcely made her a major stockholder.”
“I see,” Sally said.
“My grandfather was a man of remarkable integrity who
would never have let his private interests influence his public
actions.”
“I see,” Sally said.
“When he became Senator he was responsible for some
legislation that was considered quite advanced for its time.
But you notice that Dennis didn't say a word about that.”
Sally finished with a carton and paused for a cigarette. For
the first time since Dennis had left she was looking at Martin.
“Your grandfather sounds like a fine man,” she said seriously.
“Do you remember him well?”
[52]


“Reasonably well,” Martin said. “I was nearly eleven when
he died.” -
“Was he very fond of you?”
“No, I don't think he liked children much, so he used to give
me silver dollars by way of apology.” Sally seemed interested,
so he went on. “He was tall and very erect and I think he wore
a corset. He had a white spade beard and bushy white eye-
brows and very gentle blue eyes. I know it's a cliché, but when
I was small I used to think God must look exactly like grand-
father.” Martin found that his anger was gone and he was
much more relaxed now, and realized that Sally had brought
this about quite deliberately. “No, of course I don't remember
him as a real person,” he said, smiling at her, “but from all I've
been able to find out, he really was a fine man.”
Sally laughed one of the friendliest laughs that he had ever
heard from a woman. “I’m sure he was,” she agreed, and then
turned back to her work.
Martin marveled at her unquestioning acceptance of his
presence. He had strained at excuses for coming, and she
seemed to find it natural that he had come without one. He
decided that she must be so accustomed to having people drop
in on her while she was working that she simply didn't think
anything about it.
Undistracted now, he looked about him curiously. The
floor was a seeming chaos of crates, boxes and tins, many of
them covered with sheeting against the dust. The long wall
where the doors had been blocked off was composed entirely
of shelves, holding the results of Sally's labors. The light there
was dim, but Martin could make out that at one end the pieces
stood separately and were the color of pale clay; presumably
they were drying or waiting their turn to be fired. At the other
end, murky splashes of color indicated pieces finished and
glazed, and these were sometimes piled in stacks. Along the
[53]


really been listening. He had picked up one of the pieces he'd
spied from his chair and was examining it with considerable
surprise. It was the head of an African warrior, about twelve
inches high including the pottery base, with a deep purple
glaze that was somehow at once dull and lustrous. The fea-
tures were exquisitely done, to such an extent that one could
find in them a wealth of character. The expression was one of
stern sadness, yet there were traces of sensuality, mockery,
cruelty, and an almost feminine sensitivity. It was a beautiful
work of art, one that Martin would have liked to own. He
wanted to know the price of it, but shied away from the in-
delicacy of asking. But he had to revise his opinion of Sally
on the spot: she was unquestionably an artist, and a fine one.
For most of an hour after that they chatted about nothing
in particular, and Martin found that he enjoyed himself thor-
oughly. When he left, Sally complimented him prettily on
having been her first visitor who hadn't badgered her with
questions about her work.
She didn't ask him to come again, but she obviously took it
for granted that he would.
On his way home, Martin remembered the way Sally had
soothed his ruffled feelings after Dennis had left. It had been
done quite deliberately and quite effortlessly. Someone, vir-
tually a stranger, had been upset, and Sally's instinct had been
to repair the damage. And she'd done it.
Grace never would have done such a thing.
Perhaps Grace couldn't have done it so skillfully if she'd
tried, but it never would have occurred to her to try. Even
with her own husband, much less a comparative stranger.
Once when he had been moody and shaken, after a rare
outburst of temper provoked by the stupidity of one of her
friends, he had suggested to Grace that the slightest effort
[ 55]


on her part could have averted the storm. She had gazed at
him in total incomprehension. He was a grown man, she had
pointed out, and if he wanted to let himself get so upset over
nothing she couldn't imagine what he expected her to do
about it. Which was perfectly just—but who on earth wanted
perfect justice from his wife?
Grace's appearance had promised an emotional generosity,
but through no fault of her own the promise had been a lie.
She had seemed both intensely feminine and deeply sensitive
—but she certainly had not been sensitive, and Martin had
never even been able to determine how feminine she actually
WaS.
He had seen her first across an exceedingly crowded room,
and a noisy one as well. The Barnetts, who lived in bohemian
casualness in the Village, had been giving one of their periodic
brawls. Martin had then had an apartment, which he studi-
ously called a “flat,” in the East Fifties, because he preferred
a good address to more expansive living in a less expensive
neighborhood. But he took his social life where he found it,
and the Barnett cocktail parties were not to be missed. He
had picked up several charming and accommodating girls
there at one time or another.
He had spotted Grace as a newcomer as soon as he arrived
at the party. Undeniably it had been her body which had first
attracted his attention: a full-breasted, voluptuous body, and
her stance—she had been posing by the fireplace—had shown
it off superbly. Her vis-à-vis, a goggle-eyed young dancer, had
been even more goggle-eyed than usual in his efforts to peer
down the low-cut bosom of her dress.
The dress was a black cocktail frock of that deceptive sim-
plicity which is popularly supposed to indicate a Fifth Ave-
nue exclusive and which nowadays is just as apt to mean
medium-priced Madison. But Martin knew more about wom-
[56 )


en's clothes than most men—he had had brief but educa-
tional affairs with two fashion models and an editor of a
fashion magazine—and he knew the real thing when he saw
it. This frock was the real thing. So was her jewelry, of which
she was wearing just a trifle too much.
The crowning touch, which he noticed last of all, was the
almost remarkable homeliness of her face, set off by the car-
riage and comportment of a reigning beauty.
Obviously here was none of the Barnett's theatrical riffraff,
however accommodating, and Martin hastened to make in-
quiries.
He learned that her name was Grace Blanchard, that she
lived in a suburb not ten miles from his own birthplace, and
that she had come to see a former schoolfriend who was stay-
ing with the Barnetts and in whose honor (as if an excuse
were necessaryl) the party was being given.
With this information in hand Martin cut away the young
dancer, introduced himself as practically a former neighbor,
and within five minutes had trotted forth the names of half
a dozen acquaintances who were also friends of Grace's. He
had found her cool, self-assured, witty and charming. By the
time he got home that night, after dropping her at her station,
he had already half convinced himself that he was in love.
Of his infatuation in the ensuing days of courtship there
could be no doubt whatsoever. Grace was temperamentally
incapable of the simplest dissimulation; he could never blame
her for having assumed the virtues which he had seen in her
then.
He had bedded her two weeks before the wedding. The
voluptuous body had proved somewhat of a disappointment:
without confinement the full bosom was a little on the saggy
side, and a ragged appendectomy scar offended Martin's
fastidiousness. But of the strength of Grace's passionateness
[57]


he could make no complaint. It was crude, to be sure, and
misdirected, but he had no doubt that under his expert tute-
lage she would make an excellent lover.
It was discovering the fallacy in this blithe assumption
which had otherwise opened his eyes. Grace hadn't the slight-
est interest in becoming an excellent lover. She obviously felt
that to place a well-sexed body at his disposal should be
enough for him, and concentrated on her own satisfaction,
enjoying him for his endurance rather than his finesse. He
was to be a tame stallion, not a tutor.
And this was quite typical of Grace. Under her façade,
which was simply the habit pattern established by what is
called a “good up-bringing,” she was a monstrously self-
satisfied and self-centered woman. She had no warmth, only
gregariousness; no sensitivity, only a certain shrewd acute-
ness. Her good taste was simple snobbery, and what Martin
had taken for a rather charming lack of possessiveness was
really indifference.
His disillusionment was not quite complete: Grace's money
was real enough. And since the money had been a consider-
able part of her charm, Martin had honestly tried to make the
best of the situation. If he had failed, it had surely been
largely Grace's fault. After a time, living with indifference
and insensitivity could do terrible things to a man's ego. Not
that Grace would have understood this. If a flash of foresight
had somehow seized her in that moment before Martin had
struck the fatal blow, she would have stared in innocence and
most probably asked: “But what have I done?” For by her
standards she had done nothing wrong. -
In fact she had often remarked, in the course of bringing
her own style of incomprehension to bear on somebody else's
fall from virtue, that she herself had never done a single thing
in her life of which she had cause to be ashamed. And it was
[58]


making the same request twice a year for the past decade.
Martin, whose record for absenteeism was exceeded only
by two indomitable husbands who had lived in Alden Park
longer than he, had no standing at all, and Agnes simply over-
looked his plea for scotch. She told him firmly that she had
simply adored the detective novel he had lent her, except
that the victim reminded her so much of poor dear Grace,
and with equal firmness that he had to try the punch—she was
sure he'd like it. And she filled a cup for him herself and stood
watching until he'd downed the first swallow, as though that
would alter his opinion.
Across the room he noticed Dennis and Gerald Marshall
talking together, and deciding to kill two birds with one stone
he headed in their direction. He was stopped several times by
kindly old ladies who patted his hand and told him encour-
agingly how wonderfully well he was looking, and how glad
they were to see that he was getting out a bit, but the two
men were still together when Martin reached them. Gerald
had trapped Dennis with some story of a triumph on the links.
Martin waited politely till the nineteen foot putt had miracu-
lously fallen into the cup, and then broke in quickly, to gain
as much advantage as he could from the element of surprise.
“You’re just the two I've been looking for,” he said with
what sounded in his own ears like very false enthusiasm. “I’ve
been thinking of getting myself a really good camera, and
I want some advice. I think you're both devotees . . . .” It
was his plan to observe whatever reactions he might evoke,
and make what sense he could of them later on.
Dennis looked at him oddly, denied knowing one end of
a camera from the other, and seized the opportunity to escape.
Gerald, on the other hand, pounced on the chance to show
off an area of knowledge, and proceeded to deliver himself
of an exhaustive technical lecture, wholly incomprehensible
[60 )


pale green linen, but somehow less natural than she did in
her working costume. He hesitated between joining her and
hunting out Wally, who presumably knew where the scotch
was hidden, and decided that the scotch could wait.
“I didn't expect to find you here,” he remarked, dropping
into place beside her.
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, I don't know. I wouldn't have thought it was the sort
of crowd you'd find amusing.”
Sally looked back at the shrill crowd swirling in front of
them. “Do people always have to be amusing?” she asked
finally.
“Well, at a cocktail party it helps.”
“Agnes has been very kind to me,” Sally said, and it was
meant to be an explanation. “She can be, you know. And be-
sides, I like watching people. The way they stand and move
and gesture; their expressions. It's the sculptress in me, I ex-
pect. Look at Cousin Alec over there with his head thrown
way back. He looks so fierce and proud and noble—and actu-
ally he's just looking at Dennis through the bottoms of his
bifocals. Someday I may want to do a cinnamon bear at bay,
and then I'll remember Cousin Alec's expression.”
Martin smiled and tried to see the over-populated room
as he supposed Sally must see it: as lines and curves, postures
and poses. But he couldn't do it. All he could see were the
same old tiresome faces, the quick, exaggerated smiles and
the empty gestures. It would be nice to have a way, as Sally
did, to make them seem interesting. He was so tired of them
as they were, and especially tired of envying them the com-
placency that made them blind to his contempt.
“Do you find them amusing?” Sally inquired.
Whatever a petard might be, Martin felt hoist by his own.
He groped for some way of accounting for his presence that
[62 )


wouldn't sound too frivolous. He was rescued by their hostess.
Agnes had been prowling through the party trying to look
like a capable hostess on whose ministrations the success of a
party depends. Now she caught Martin's eye and came to-
ward them, shaking her dyed red head and wagging an ap-
pallingly roguish finger.
“I’m ashamed of you, Martin Pryor,” she announced. “Grace
is scarcely three months in her grave and here you are chas-
ing the pretty girls.” She pretended shock, then smiled
brightly and wandered away on some new errand of uncon-
scious destruction.
Which was just like Agnes.
Martin did his best to act as though nothing had happened,
but somehow the tete-à-tête had been spoiled.


C H A P T E R 5
Mrs. Hodges never said Good morning, but she always had
a remark to bring in with the orange juice. Today it was: “You
haven't had anyone in of an evening since Mrs. Pryor passed
away. Not once.”
Martin concluded that either Mrs Hodges's calendar of
respect for the dead now permitted a little private socializing,
or that she had some scheme of her own. Possibly both. But he
had already noticed among the morning mail an envelope
that was certainly a second communication from the black-
mailer, so he merely agreed, “I haven't, have I?” and declined
to enlarge on the matter despite Mrs. Hodges's interested
stare. Temporarily baffled, she retreated to organize her next
assault.
He was in no hurry to open the letter, but sipped his orange
juice tranquilly and considered blackmail in general and his
own personal puzzle in particular. By the thoughtful logic
in which he took so much pride, he had reduced his suspects
to four: Sally and Agnes, Benson and Dennis Morley. The
problem now was to eliminate three of these.
It was gratifying that the camera “trap" had removed Ger-
ald Marshall from the list, but no further result could be ex-
[64 )


pected from this approach. Dennis's protest of ignorance
Martin discounted, and he had learned that the other three
dabbled slightly in the art. As for the matter of getting sam-
ples of various typescripts to compare with the letters, this
scarcely seemed worth the bother. Martin was not disposed
to place too much faith in such physical clues, and was pre-
pared to concede that a passably sensible blackmailer could
avoid any of the tangible errors beloved of Sherlock Holmes.
But to remain anonymous, the blackmailer had to write
letters, and in those he could not help but leave traces of his
character as individual as fingerprints. These were the clues
Martin was counting upon: psychological clues that he would
pounce on and put to use, just as he had so ingeniously used
one already.
Of course, ingenuity was all very well, but he had to be
grateful for having been given an opportunity to exercise it.
He had been lucky that the blackmailer had not confined him-
self to a bare statement of the facts; if he had, then Martin
would have been stopped before he had even got started.
A simple statement would have sufficed—yet the black-
mailer had rambled on, showing off, giving himself away at
every turn. Was there some significance to be gleaned from
this? Was the blackmailer naturally a garrulous person? Or
was he normally uncommunicative, and here was trying to
hide behind a smokescreen of words? There was no way of
telling, but Martin felt confident that, whatever inspired
them, words were bound to be revealing,
He reached for the second letter, hoping for new revela-
tions, but was interrupted by Mrs. Hodges with waffles and a
determined air.
“I was thinking,” she announced, “that Thursday night
would be a good time, if you wanted to have someone in for
dinner. I could stay late to clean up, this Thursday night.”
[65 |


“You could?” Martin asked, patiently awaiting develop-
ments. Mrs. Hodges never went at things head-on, but re-
sented being hurried through her circumlocutions.
“And I'd like Friday off, if you don't mind,” she added art-
lessly. “My sister and I want to get in town for some shopping
and the new show at Radio City.” *
“Of course,” Martin said, amused at this confirmation of
Benson's theory. In her own fashion, Mrs. Hodges was dis-
tinctly a strong personality, and her technique of getting her
own way had always been one of straightforward bribery.
“Well, perhaps I'll take advantage of your suggestion. I've
been thinking of having the Bensons in for bridge. Let's say
dinner for four, unless I can't round up a fourth.”
As soon as Mrs. Hodges had left the room he slit open the
envelope. Four photographs tumbled out; Martin inspected
them curiously. One, somewhat blurred (as if the photogra-
pher had been agitated), showed Martin at the edge of the
road looking down on the wrecked car; the next two showed
him standing near the blazing wreck, and beginning to climb
back up towards the road again; and the last looked much
like the first except that the car was burning. Martin puzzled
over this last one, since he didn't remember having paused to
look back at the scene of his crime. Then he realized that the
pictures were out of order: this last should really be the third,
and it showed him just before he had jumped down the face
of the hill to make it appear as if he had been thrown free
of the car.
Martin realized that he had been very lucky. The photo-
graphs were excellent substantiation for a story—but without
the photographer to tell the story and explain the order in
which the pictures had been taken, there was nothing that
Martin couldn't explain away. The pictures alone might em-
barrass him, but they would never hang him.
[66 |


the bridge table was already set up, with green suede cover
and fresh cards, a portent of things to come.
Sally evidently found it an intimidating sight. “I’m afraid
I'm going to be dreadfully rusty,” she told Martin. In his quest
for a fourth it had occurred to him that she might play, and
after some protests she had allowed herself to be persuaded.
“Now don't be coy,” Benson said. “You’re probably much
better than Martin deserves. He wouldn't know what to do
with a first-rate partner.”
“But really, it's years since I’ve played,” she insisted. “I
simply haven't had the time.”
Martin winced inwardly. In the most innocent fashion
Sally had a way of making him feel thoroughly frivolous. “It’s
just a game,” he said insincerely. “There's no need to take it
so seriously.”
“That's right,” Benson said to Sally. “You’ll find that Mar-
tin takes the game quite light-heartedly—as long as he's
winning.”
“Oh, stop trying to frighten the girl,” Martin said. “I had
enough trouble persuading her to play at all.”
“Well, we need some sort of handicap,” Benson explained.
“Eve is cracking up. The other evening, against the Wallaces,
she missed an absolute baby end-play.”
“You’ve been rubbing that in for days but it isn't true,” his
wife replied. “The end-play would have worked, as it hap-
pened, but Charlie hadn't bid so how was I to know he had
all the cards?” In her indignation she had lapsed into a whiny
twang, but now she caught herself and resumed her usual
super-elegance of diction. “Keep tokking,” she said threaten-
ingly, “just keep tokking and I'll trump ev'dy ace you hold
this evening.”
This wildly affected accent of Eve's had long since led
Martin to the conclusion that Benson had married far beneath
[68 )


his level. Blonde rinses and careful make-up preserved the
remains of what once must have been an exceptional pretti-
ness, and Eve still displayed, to the world at least, a figure
that Aldous Huxley would have called “pneumatic.” But
nothing could conceal the fact that she talked like a fool, if
allowed a chance to talk at all. Apart from her inflection, she
clothed her drab ideas in an archly ponderous vocabulary
that displayed an incurably provincial notion of how a pro-
fessor's wife should talk. Whatever his friends might think
of this mismating, Benson seemed perfectly content with it,
and his unfailing courtesy towards Eve was the one sign of
good breeding which his enemies would allow him.
But if Eve was a total loss conversationally, Benson's posi-
tion in Alden Park was such that he could cope with that
problem very neatly. If you went to the Bensons', and con-
versation was the order of the evening, Eve was tacitly re-
duced to the status of a caterer. But if the evening were to
be devoted to bridge (and if you invited the Bensons out it
was always for bridge), then Eve was permitted to shine.
For she was one of those people with an uncanny flair for
cards, even though hopeless in all other respects. Eve was
probably the best bridge and canasta player in Alden Park,
and as such was welcomed to card parties in homes where her
husband was anathema.
To Martin, who hated above all things being bested at any-
thing by someone he despised, Eve represented a source of
continual frustration. He enjoyed playing against her, horribly
resented losing, yet could derive no real sense of triumph
from the occasions when he won. It was an ideally unsatis-
factory relationship.
As they moved to the bridge table, Martin watched for the
hundredth time, but with undiminished awe, the transforma-
tion that Eve achieved in the space of a few feet. There was
[69 |


a perceptible shift of personality: she arose from the armchair
in futility, she sat down at the table in competence.
“A fifth of a cent?” Benson inquired.
Sally's dismay was evident. “I think Sally would prefer to
play for a twentieth,” Martin said firmly. “I’ll carry the re-
mainder.” From Sally's expression it seemed likely that she
would have preferred to play for nothing at all, but she made
no COmment.
She was as rusty as she had warned, but her visibly de-
termined, almost school-girlish concentration kept her from
making any bad blunders. The cards were running their way,
and Martin bid in such fashion as to see to it that he played
most of the contracts.
Eve had been looking about her in a vaguely perturbed
fashion between hands, and finally announced that the room
looked different. “The breakfront!” she exclaimed a moment
later. “Grace's beautiful, beautiful breakfront. You've moved
it.”
“I always thought it made that wall look awfully cluttered,”
Martin said.
“But where did you put it?”
“There wasn't any place to put it. I sold it.”
Eve looked stricken. “But Grace was so fond of it,” she
mourned. “It belonged to her great-grandmother.”
“I know,” Martin said shortly. The sarcasms which leapt
to his mind were repressed out of sheer habit here in his own
living-room. Grace had made such an issue of the way he
treated Eve: “How can you possibly enjoy tormenting any-
one so defenseless?” she'd asked one time.
“It's not that,” Martin had said; “I just can't stand her sly
delight in pointing out my mistakes at the bridge-table.”
“What would you expect?” Grace had demanded.
“I doubt if she understands half the things I say,” he'd
[70 )


retorted, surprised that even Grace would think otherwise.
“She can understand your tone of voice,” Grace had said;
“and, anyway, it makes me uncomfortable.” And eventually
he'd learned to desist, at least in his own home, not from any
eagerness to spare Grace discomfort, but simply because she'd
nagged at him. Now it annoyed him to have Eve nag him
about Grace. It particularly annoyed him to have it happen
in front of Sally—to have Grace even mentioned in front of
Sally—which was preposterous, but that was the way he felt.
Benson crashed in with the statement that he'd never
thought much of the breakfront—it had just been another
antique; and the game was suspended for a few moments
while the old argument of modern furniture versus antiques
was dusted around a bit.
Late in the evening, when the game was breaking up, Sally
remarked to Martin that she hadn't seen him since the after-
noon of Agnes's party. Martin mumbled that he had been
busy, and added quite inaccurately that he had been meaning
to drop in at the studio when he had a chance.
Actually it had taken considerable strength of will to keep
himself from dropping in at the studio. What had stopped him
was the recognition that there had been more than a little
accidental truth in Agnes's tactless gibe about his chasing
after Sally. There was no doubt that he was much attracted
by her. And he didn't want to be, not now. Sally was a suspect.
It did terrible things to his vanity, which was shaky enough
at the moment, to contemplate getting himself involved with
the person who was blackmailing him.
Martin's vanity, of which he was perfectly well aware,
consisted solely of a conviction that he was a superior human
being . . . and in a number of respects he undoubtedly was.
To begin with, if doing a number of different things passa-
bly well was any criterion, his vanity was not misplaced.
[71]


He played a good game of bridge, and when one considers
how many people play the game badly, the talent is worth
mentioning.
He played the piano well. Not exceptionally well; not a
cut below concert level, but several cuts below. Yet on his
music rack there was a copy of Debussy's Children's Corner
Suite; most amateurs could only hack their way through it,
and Martin could play it well enough to give pleasure to a
critical ear.
He wrote well enough that his biography of his grand-
father, if he ever finished it, might prove to be dull, might
prove to be stuffy, but would be written in nicely polished
English.
And he was technically most proficient in bed; a quality
which wives will testify is not to be sneezed at.
Four major talents, besides a number of lesser accomplish-
ments: not a bad showing at all. Most people could probably
not claim so much. On that ground alone Martin could have
maintained a fair justification of his superiority.
But apart from these considerations, Martin's consciousness
of superiority rested on an instinctive recognition of a pro-
founder talent than all the others. Man's superiority to the
other animals lies chiefly in his unique ability to mold his
environment, instead of being molded by it, and Martin was
something of a genius at doing exactly that. Out of the en-
vironmental materials at his disposal he had built for himself
a life perfectly suited to his own character. His methods may
have been ruthless, may have been viciously selfish, but they
undeniably had been—up to a point—completely successful,
which was the same as saying that they were survival-
methods.
Up to a point—there was the catch. For the act of murder
had modified his superiority to that of a predatory creature,
[72]


and the law of the jungle says that a predatory animal must be
entirely successful . . . or dead. There was no longer such a
thing as a partial success.
So there could be no peace in Martin's own private universe
till the blackmailer was ferreted out and dealt with. Until that
was accomplished, it was obviously essential that he devote
his attention to nothing else, and that he keep a clear head,
undisturbed by irrelevant emotions. Even if Sally was not his
unknown enemy (and all his instincts assured him that she
was not), it would be foolish in the extreme to let himself
get involved with her now.
Besides, it would be ridiculous to slip into any sort of inter-
esting relationship until he could give his whole attention
to it.
Yet, when he was driving Sally home and she mentioned
that she had just finished a new piece, wanted his opinion on
it, and why didn't he drop around tomorrow afternoon? he
could not find in him the strength of will to resist the tempta-
tion. It seemed a dismally long time since he had driven
along moon-dappled streets, conscious of an attractive and
desirable woman at his side, and he reveled in the innocent
delight. It was an adolescent boy who said, almost shyly, “Of
course, I'd like to come.”
And when they stopped in front of her house, Martin was
taken with an adolescent urge to try for a good-night kiss. But
Sally forestalled him, perhaps unconsciously, by saying “Good
night” briskly and slipping out of the car before he could
think of an excuse to detain her.
“Usually I’ve decided on a glaze long before I've finished a
piece,” Sally explained the next afternoon, “but not this time.
What would you suggest?” -
The figurine, about a foot high, was that of a coquettish-
[73]


looking colt. Martin thought it disappointingly commonplace,
especially after the other things he'd seen, and couldn't feel
that it mattered much what color it was glazed. But since
something was expected of him he said: “Green? Maybe a
sort of turquoise green?”
“Perhaps,” Sally said doubtfully. “We'll see what Dennis
suggests. I've asked him over, too.”
“Oh,” said Martin, doing his best to keep the outrage out
of his voice.
Sally blandly overlooked the fact that Martin's best had
been quite inadequate. “I suppose the reason it doesn't sug-
gest a color is that it's so damn conventional. That's not my
fault; it's part of a special order. One of my best customers
wants some animals and specifically asked for a cute colt. This
should please him. It's so cute it's nauseating.”
“Dennis will probably like it,” Martin said.
“Dennis's taste is every bit as good as yours,” Sally said. She
smiled up at him, and for the first time Martin realized that
underneath the seriousness she had quite a bit of the imp in
her. “In fact,” she added, “that's why I decided to see if I
couldn't get the two of you together without any squabbling.
You really have a lot in common.”
Normally Martin would have been furious at the thought
of anyone presuming to tamper with one of his animosities.
But there was a truly charming innocence about Sally's ap-
proach that took him completely off his guard, and before he
recovered it occurred to him that he had very practical reasons
for wanting to establish a less contentious relationship with
Dennis. So he merely murmured a noncommittal “Do you
think so?” and returned his attention to the figurine. “If it's
a special order, I’m surprised your customer didn't suggest a
color himself.”
[74]


“Oh, they never do that,” Sally said.
“Why not?”
“Glazes are so unpredictable that it's simpler for them to
wait and see what I've sent, and then plan their color
schemes.” Then she noticed Martin's very blank expression,
and went on to explain. It seemed that whereas she did a
certain amount of conventional stuff (“junk” she called it)
which was sold in some store, these figurines were her spe-
cialty (and main source of income) and went only to interior
decorators. Each figurine went with a bowl or ashtray in
matching glaze; every pair was unique; and they were known
to the trade as “Teal Conversationals.” (Sally winced when
she came to that part of the explanation.) Evidently they were
very much in vogue, and the decorators who used them built
their color schemes around them.
“How much do they sell for?” Martin asked.
“I never know,” Sally replied. “Whatever the traffic will
bear, I expect. I get two hundred a pair; sometimes two-fifty.
It all depends.”
Martin was impressed. He was quite aware that her output
must be limited, and that she doubtless had to work like a
beaver to show a profit at the end of a year. Nevertheless, it
was impressive that she was able to command such a sum.
But he hadn't much chance to dwell on it, for just then Dennis
slouched in. As soon as he spied Martin he reached for his
pipe.
“Hello, Martin,” he said. “Hi, Sal.”
She beckoned him over to the window with one imperious
finger, and then pointed at the figurine. “It stinks,” Dennis
said promptly.
“Never mind that,” Sally said. “What color?”
Dennis thought about it for long enough to fill his pipe and
[75]


set it going. “Dark red,” he said finally. “That very dark Chi-
nese red. It's the only thing that will give this coy beast any
distinction at all.”
Sally nodded slowly. “I think you're right.”
Martin was annoyed at himself for having thrown out his
answer in such an offhand manner. There was no special vir-
tue to dark red, but at least Dennis had taken his time, treated
the question seriously, come up with a thoughtful suggestion.
Martin felt that he had lost face, and fumbled for a way to
reestablish himself. He thought of disputing Dennis's sug-
gestion, but that seemed futile now that Sally had taken a
view. So he looked for another direction in which he might
take the offensive.
“I don't entirely agree with you, Dennis,” he said, “but I'm
not able to differ with you.”
“An impediment in your perversity?” Dennis asked solicit-
ously.
“Never that,” said Martin. Feeling that Dennis had thrown
away his advantage by rushing to commit the first hostility,
Martin made his own good temper all the blander as he con-
tinued: “No, it's just that Sally is determined that you and I
must become friends.”
The situation he had created delighted Martin. His head-
long approach had a ring of manly forthrightness to it, and
also left him in a position of sophistication that Dennis would
have difficulty duplicating. It was gratifying that Sally seemed
amused rather than appalled by the line he had taken, but he
was disappointed that Dennis gave no sign of being in the
least discomforted.
“She is always in favor of peace,” Dennis remarked.
Martin threw his last bombshell: “She insists that we have
a lot in common, you and I.”
Dennis considered the notion with an air of faint distaste,
[76]


and then shrugged. “I’ve learned the hard way that Sally is
usually right about people,” he said. “I wouldn't dream of
contradicting her until I'd heard her reasons.”
Sally was laughing at the two of them. “In a lot of ways
you're so much alike it's funny,” she told them.
“That doesn't mean that we have anything in common,
though,” Dennis pointed out.
“Oh, but you do,” Sally said. “Quite a bit. You'd be sur-
prised how much alike your tastes are. But you found one
little thing to disagree about and you're both so pugnacious
that you've been fighting about it ever since.”
“Surely you don't expect us to agree that politics is just a
‘little thing,” Martin said.
“And that shows how much alike you are,” Sally retorted.
“You disagree, but you both take your politics so seriously as
to go on fighting over them, even though neither one of you
has any expectation of converting the other.”
Dennis and Martin looked at one another. They agreed
silently that Sally had a kind of point—and agreed, too, that
there were some things you just couldn't expect a girl like
Sally to understand: that a conflict of politics on their level
meant a clash of two utterly opposite basic philosophies. . . .
“You’re both so sure that you're right,” Sally continued,
“that each of you assumes the other must be a different breed
of animal to be able to disagree.”
Dennis had a vaguely guilty expression, as though he were
renouncing male chauvinism forever, and Martin imagined
he must look the same way.
“Which is just silly,” Sally said. “I’m not saying for a mo-
ment that you could ever become good friends, or that there's
any reason why you should. But if you stay away from the
things you clash over, I promise you'll find enough you can
agree on to get along perfectly well in one another's company.
[77]


And you won't make other people so uncomfortable.”
Martin gamely maintained his position as the large-minded
sophisticate. “I’ll try anything,” he volunteered. “Will some-
one suggest a non-controversial subject?”
“Gossip,” said Sally firmly, and started to busy herself about
her work. “I'd be willing to bet that you dislike all the same
people and would enjoy hearing each other tear them apart.”
And to Martin's unpleased surprise, she was absolutely
right.


C H A P T E R 6
“Martin?” Sally's voice crackled in his ear. “You have to
help me.”
Her tone was not urgent, simply matter-of-fact. Martin was
charmed. He found most appealing the non-flirtatious fashion
in which she had calmly accepted his presence in her life,
even to the extent that she felt free to call on him for help.
“Of course,” he said warmly.
“I’m afraid it's going to be a dreadful bore for you.” She
didn't bother to thank him; she had obviously taken it for
granted that he would help. “I’m awfully sorry . . . but
there's no one else. I've tried Dennis, but he's tied up this
afternoon.”
But this was too matter-of-fact. Martin let himself sound
hurt: “You should have called me first. I'll be delighted to do
anything I can.”
“No, you won't,” Sally told him. “But it's a situation, and
I'm no good at coping with situations by myself.”
Martin found that difficult to believe, but mumbled sympa-
thetically into the phone and reached for a cigarette.
“Agnes is being patronizing,” Sally explained. “Some old
school chum, obviously very rich, is staying with her and
[79 |


Agnes is dragging her over here to show her my stuff. With
the transparent intention of getting the friend to buy. Agnes
has been kind to me—I can't stop her from coming, but she
simply refuses to understand that I will not sell my own stuff.
Under any circumstances. Ever.”
“Mmmm,” Martin contributed.
“In the first place, I'm under contract to the store and under
obligation to the decorators to sell only through them. In the
second place, I just plain don't want to.”
“I see,” said Martin.
“Well, Agnes doesn't. She probably thinks she's doing me a
great big favor, bless her foolish heart.”
“But what can I do?”
“Come and give me moral support,” Sally said. “Distract
Agnes's attention while I explain to her friend where she can
buy my stuff if she really wants to. And sit on her, I mean
Agnes, if she tries to explain to me in front of her friend how
I can charge a whole lot more when I sell direct to a cus-
tomer.”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” Martin said. “What time are they
supposed to be coming?”
“You’re a dear. About four, Agnes said.”
Martin got to the studio at a quarter of, and his greeting
was, “But wouldn't you make more of a profit if you sold
direct?”
“You can't make things and market them too.” At the mo-
ment she was making dust-raising efforts to tidy the place
a bit, and looking very annoyed about it. “This ruins my whole
schedule for today.”
“I suppose your regular customers wouldn't like it if you
competed with them,” Martin mused.
“There's that,” Sally said. “But I think it's mostly a matter
of temperament. I just haven't the sort that would enjoy hold-
[80]


ing up something I'd made and saying, in essence, ‘If you
want this beautiful object, give me lots and lots of money for
it.” Oh, damn. There they come.”
With friend in tow, Agnes came breezing in, radiating good
will. When she spotted Martin her eyes brightened, and too
late he realized what interpretation she would undoubtedly
put on his presence. But, surprisingly, she held her fire for
the moment, and introduced him simply as a dear, dear friend
—though of course she could not refrain from mentioning
Grace and her recent death.
Her friend, Mrs. Hudderfield, was a plump, short woman
wearing a grey business-suit and a fur-piece of a manginess
which only the very wealthy can afford. She had small eyes
and a small mouth, and a very loud, positive Texan voice.
Martin would have felt sorry for Mr. Hudderfield, except that
Mr. Hudderfield was doubtless a Texan too.
“I just had to bring Lizzie over here to see your work,”
Agnes told Sally. “She's so interested in . . . well, in modern
art.”
“In everything modern,” announced Mrs. Hudderfield.
“We don't care so much about traditions out in the Southwest.
It's a big, vital country, and we're only interested in what is
alive and vital.” She looked doubtfully at Sally, as though
uncertain of the girl's vitality. “Well, why don't you bring
some of your things over here by the window where there's
more light. I'm particularly fond of modern pottery.”
Agnes drifted over to where Martin sat. “Are you particu-
larly fond of modern pottery, too?” she asked. “Or just of the
potter?”
“I’m here to give Sally moral support when she tries to ex-
plain that she never sells stuff herself.” Martin said.
“Oh, I don't think Lizzie will want to buy anything. She's
filthy with money, but she hates to spend it. I suspect she's
[81 )


staying with me just to avoid paying a hotel bill.”
Mrs. Hudderfield was examining the coquettish colt, now
glazed a rich, deep red. “This is a very pretty horse, my dear,”
she informed Sally, “but it has no roots at all.”
“No roots?” Sally asked faintly.
“I am not one of those people,” Mrs. Hudderfield declared,
“who think that something is good just because it's modern.
That is every bit as foolish as thinking that a painting is good
just because the painter has been dead for three hundred
years. Don't you think so, Mr. Pryor?”
“Well, yes,” Martin said, but only because he could think
of no rational way to disagree.
“After all,” continued Mrs. Hudderfield in forcefully reason-
able tones, “everything that is made today is modern in a
sense. But to be worthwhile, a work of modern art must have
more than modern feeling behind it—it must have cultural
roots as well.”
“But I thought out in the Southwest you disapproved of
traditions,” Martin said.
“Traditions are the dead branches of the tree,” Mrs. Hud-
derfield explained. “Roots are what keep it alive and vital.
As I was telling Aggie, my husband and I have spent the last
few summers in Santa Fe and Taos. Have you ever been to
New Mexico, my dear?” she asked Sally.
“No,” said Sally.
“Perhaps you should go. Such enchanting art colonies; the
atmosphere is positively vibrant with creativity. The work
is so modern, so vital! And do you know why, my dear? Be-
cause the artists there have so many cultural roots they can
draw strength from. The Spanish . . . the Indian. . . . And
the American too, of course. There's one young potter there
whose work would interest you, I know. He takes his designs
[82 )


from the old Indian sand-paintings, but he modernizes them
>>
Martin drew Agnes over to the door, ostensibly for a ciga-
rette. “Has she always been like this?” he murmured.
“Lord, no. I haven't seen her in twenty years, but she was
my best friend at finishing-school. In those days she was a
perfectly nice girl from Maplewood, but then she married a
Texan and went native. I'd pity her husband, except that
every time he digs a divot, oil gushes out. She's shown me
twenty-seven pictures of him, and in every one of them he's
wearing a Stetson. They have three children, and the children
all wear Stetsons too.”
“She's really something,” Martin said almost admiringly.
“Isn't she a terror?" Agnes agreed happily. “She's going up
to Boston tomorrow, but she'll be back the end of next week.
I'm taking her to the Frobishers' cocktail party.” And she
looked up at him mischievously.
Underneath Agnes's mop of dyed red hair was a face that
was easily subject to misinterpretation. Her brow was wide
and clear, and her wide-set, dark brown eyes gave an im-
mediate impression of candor and intelligence. It took a
better acquaintance to understand that the intelligence had
expended itself in futility, and that the candor was not a
virtue.
And that large mouth, so often grinning—surely there was
humor there, and a lot of it? Well, in a sense there was, but in
Agnes humor was anything but a saving grace.
When he first came to Alden Park, even before he met her,
Martin had heard a great deal about Agnes. The women were
frankly terrified of her. They exchanged stories about her
(“She told Dr. Finletter right to his face that the Song of
[83]


is frequently tiresome or worse when it comes from an adult,
and as her audiences showed less and less enthusiasm, Agnes
unconsciously strove to refine the formula which had served
her so well, honing her wit and enlarging her outrages—and
never entirely understanding why she wasn't the popular fig-
ure she once had been.
Considered in this light, Agnes was an object of pity, and
whenever he had all his patience about him, as he did this
afternoon, Martin tried to be as nice as possible. So he re-
frained from commenting on the now obvious fact that Agnes
had inflicted Mrs. Hudderfield on Sally only for the selfish
reason of sharing her misery. Instead, he considered the prob-
lem of how to come to Sally's rescue.
Mrs. Hudderfield was rattling along at a rate that defied
interruption, but her expansive gestures gave Martin an idea.
He suddenly shouted “Carefull” and plunged across the studio
to snatch up a vase which had stood in no danger of being
knocked over.
Mrs. Hudderfield was properly startled, and murmured
with vague apology that she'd had no idea.
Martin fondled the vase and smiled with gentle reproach.
“I expect that coming from Texas it's difficult to remember
how cramped we are here in the East,” he said, and then, as
Agnes glared at him, wondered if he'd gone too far.
But Mrs. Hudderfield, doubtless brooding over the thought
of having to pay for anything she broke, just nodded absently
and said that she did get carried away sometimes. Then she
pulled herself together, and said, “Well, Aggie, I don't think
we should keep this child from her work any longer.” She
thanked Sally effusively for having let them barge in, told
her firmly that her work was very sweet and very pretty, and
that she really must try to get out to Santa Fe some time.
Then the two women left. Mrs. Hudderfield's voice trailed
[85)


behind them: “I did like the head of that nigger, but the lips
were much too thin. . . .”
Chuckling, Martin turned to find that Sally was distinctly
not amused. “That wasn’t nice,” she told him.
Martin gaped at her in astonishment. “But she'd have bored
you silly if I’d let her rattle on indefinitely.”
“I know,” Sally said. “She's an idiot. But she meant well.”
“So did I, for that matter.”
“Of course you did!” Sally exclaimed ruefully. “You were a
darling to come, and you really were a great help. I’m just up-
set at having my schedule knocked into a cocked hat.” She
patted his arm. “Now be a perfect angel and run along and
let me see what I can do to retrieve it.”
Martin had done very little day-dreaming of late.
This was unusual. Day-dreaming had formerly been one
of his major pastimes. In his latter days in New York, when he
had been living on the ragged edge of what he considered ade-
quate comfort, many of his happiest hours had been spent
conjuring up pictures of the way he would like to live. And
though the dreams had gradually taken a somewhat different
direction, the habit had persisted into his married life.
But since the murder he had discovered that any reverie
tended to slither imperceptibly into speculation about the
interesting old problem of the immortality of the soul. In kill-
ing Grace, had he utterly extinguished her ego, or had some
part of it survived as a soul? Did she, in other words, realize
that she had been murdered, and by whom? If so, there was
the possibility (for by no stretch of the imagination could
Martin accept the existence of a Hell) that he might encoun-
ter her in some future life. Martin had made one attempt to
visualize that scene and thereafter had left the matter alone
as morbid and unrewarding.
[86)


Nowadays, however, the temptation to day-dream about
Sally had become irresistible, and Martin yielded cheerfully,
although he soon discovered that Grace intruded upon these
reveries with tactless persistence. Grace's effortless, though
unsummoned, appearances had made him realize that in one
sense at least she had surely survived: as long as he lived she
would have an entity of sorts within his mind.
On the last occasion, when Martin had been imaginarily
baring his complex self to Sally's understanding, and Grace
had intruded, he had amused himself by comparing the two
women, seeking the one detail that epitomized the contrast.
Physically they were of opposite types, of course, but Martin
had made love to enough women in his life to be relatively
indifferent to the gulf between Grace's dark homeliness and
Sally's blonde beauty. There was a more pertinent difference
in their bodies—Grace's voluptuous curves; Sally's slender
boyishness—because Sally's body was somehow the more
feminine for being the less female. But it was on their hands
that Martin had finally settled. Grace had been very proud of
her hands, which in truth had been lovely: small and pink
and delicate, with carefully tended, painted, pointed nails.
Whereas Sally's hands were broad, with blunt, knuckly fingers
and nails bitten down to the quick. It had pleased him to con-
trast Grace's strongest point with Sally's weakest—for Sally's
hands were deft and competent and gentle, whereas Grace's
had been soft and futile and quite without character.
On this particular afternoon, when Martin would have de-
voted a reverie to Sally, Grace came instead. It was really
quite maddening; was there no being rid of her?
“Why do you waste so much of your time thinking about
Sally?” Grace wondered. “She quite disapproves of you, you
know.”
“I know,” Martin replied.
[87]


leading a celibate life ever since . . . well, for the last four
months, and Sally is the only half-way attractive unattached
girl around. So you find all sorts of qualities in her that really
aren't there at all. She's undoubtedly frigid, and will raise all
sorts of hell if you're ever such a fool as to make a pass at her.”
“I’m not so sure. As I was forced to remind you altogether
too often, a person as conscious of his vanity as I am isn't too
apt to be deluded by it. I am not credulous in believing Sally
is fond of me, nor vain in inferring, from the rapidity with
which that fondness appeared, that she is attracted by me.
After all, however unpleasant you may think me underneath,
you know perfectly well that I am not unattractive.”
“Too well,” said Grace.
“When I say that I know there is passion in her, I am as
sure of it as when I knew the same of you, and I have no less
confidence in my ability to evoke that passion. That super-
ficial placidity of Sally's is sitting on top of a smouldering
temperament, and there is sensuality in every line of her face
. . and that adds up to as much latent sexuality as any man
could ask for. Anyway, I have every intention of finding out
personally whether I’m right.”
“Blackguard,” Grace said unemotionally.
Usually it was difficult to separate Sally from her work in
the daytime, but, as it happened, Martin was lucky. She had
just finished firing, and had nothing to do till the kiln cooled
down in its own good time. And she would love to drive down
to Philadelphia with him—especially if he would help her
find a good art-supply store.
Undeniably it was a dull drive and much pleasanter with
company. He found her store, attended to his own business
and then picked her up and took her to lunch at The Bellevue.
They found a movie they both wanted to see in the neighbor-
[89 |


hood, so it was late afternoon when they left the city, and the
heavy traffic slowed them down. At Martin's suggestion they
stopped for dinner at a good roadhouse some distance short
of Alden Park.
It was a gay, pleasant-looking place with a great barn of a
room, one end of which was a dance floor. There was also a
small, dim, secluded dining-room, but at Sally's suggestion
they took a table in the main room. Martin was uncertain
whether this indicated a preference for the chaperoning pub-
lic eye, or simply a desire to dance.
They had cocktails, several of them, and Sally began to
glow appreciably. With their insubstantial dinner, Martin
expansively insisted on a bottle of wine, and later brandy
with their coffee. And in the midst of all this he realized with
amusement (though he did not then pause to analyze the
matter) that his expansiveness was animated not merely by
an innocent curiosity to see what Sally was like when she was
a little tight.
After dinner they danced.
To Grace, dancing had been a social exercise, to which she
had brought all the competence of one who had attended
dancing-school as a matter of course, and all the lack of verve
of one with no instinctive sense of rhythm. She never refused
an invitation—but after a time Martin, to whom dancing had
once been a major joy, had given up asking her, and had come
to think that in any pleasurable sense his dancing days were
OVer.
Sally instantly dispelled that attitude. She was the perfect
partner, following so lightly and easily that she seemed to
spur on his own enthusiasm. He found himself trying more
and more complicated steps, and even a few dips—old-
fashioned now, but still so satisfying to execute. When they
returned to their table he was puffing slightly, but feeling
[90 )


absurdly pleased with himself.
Without consulting Sally, he ordered scotch-and-water for
them both. She was already obviously feeling the effects of
the alcohol: she was a little flushed, a little more talkative
than usual, and just the least little bit kittenish, though in
a thoroughly attractive way. She had never seemed so appeal-
ing, and Martin unimpatiently savored his desire for her. In
a few hours he would take her home—and now his eyes and
his imagination dreamily anticipated the love-making which
would occur then.
It was only after he had ordered the second round of high-
balls that he suddenly began to understand the implications
of the fact that he had been trying, semi-unconsciously, to get
Sally tight. For this was most unlike him. He was not one to
take any pleasure in making love to half-drunken women. The
few occasions when something of the sort had taken place had
been so distasteful that Martin had restricted himself to the
most abstemious of seductions.
Yet here he was feverishly plying Sally with liquor, just like
any unimaginative businessman on the make! And now that
Martin had paused to examine this curiosity, he soon realized
to his horror that he was, for the first time in as far back as he
could remember, wildly unsure of himself.
The cause, when he came to look for it, was not difficult to
discover: this was a direct result of the seven years of his
marriage to Grace.
When he had come to see that he was not in love with
Grace, and had determined to make the economic best of a
romantically bad bargain, there had been one law that he had
created for himself. Or not so much a law, perhaps, as a point
of honor. And this was that whatever extra-marital dalliance
he might get involved in must be entirely divorced from
Grace's social circle.
[91]


Martin rarely thought of how old he was but now, quite
abruptly, he acknowledged middle age. The joy in taking
chances was gone; the love of security had set in. This was
natural enough, of course. But now that he understood it, he
despised this yearning for security for having tried crudely
to insure Sally's compliance by liquor. This was simple cow-
ardice, and he refused to give in to it.
Accordingly, in that instant of self-understanding, Martin
revised all his plans for the evening.
When, in the future, a suitable occasion presented itself, he
would risk a rebuff. But he would never, for the sake of his
own self-respect, risk the suspicion that Sally had let him
make love to her just because she had had too much to drink.
So in due course he paid the check and took her home. He
saw her to her door like a goddamn little gentleman; claimed
one casual and insignificant kiss, and then drove home. On
the way it struck him as terribly funny that an uxoricide
should have such delicate scruples—and his laughter, per-
haps because he himself was not entirely unaffected by the
liquor, was just a bit hysterical.


c H A P T E R 7
It was Martin's dearest belief that although he might make
occasional errors of judgment he never made stupid mistakes.
Therefore it came as a particularly nasty shock when he dis-
covered that he had made a very stupid one. In his relief at
finding how much less incriminating the photographs were
than he had feared, he had unthinkingly thrown out the
envelope which had contained the blackmailer's second letter,
and he had never even glanced at the postmark. It had not
occurred to him that there might be anything to learn from
it . . . until now.
October was nearly over, and that meant that colleges had
been in session for over a month. During the academic year
it was Benson's practice to drive to college each Monday
morning. He kept very modest quarters on campus, and had
arranged his schedule so that he had no duties after noon on
Thursday, when he invariably drove back to Alden Park for a
Jong weekend. Obviously, if the letter had been mailed locally
on either a Tuesday or a Wednesday, it was at least most un-
likely that Benson had mailed it. And now Martin would never
know.
Although perfectly aware that it was most improbable that
[94 |


the postmark would have revealed anything, Martain brooded
greatly about his error. For some time now he had been con-
scious of the strain of his position, and this mistake seemed
proof of the extent to which it had affected him. He had
already lost weight, and now he was committing stupidities.
All his adult life he had aimed at, and striven towards, a
tranquilly comfortable and self-sufficient existence, and it
still was as elusive as ever. He had glimpsed it in the two
months between Grace's death and the arrival of the first
letter. But since then, life had been sheer hell. Except for
Sally, of course, and she had been a distracting influence at a
time when he couldn't afford to be distracted. He had been in
a constant turmoil of confused emotions, and for someone who
preferred his emotions tidy and under good control nothing
could be more unpleasant.
For one thing, he had come to hate Alden Park, and the
essential irrationality of this emotion made it no easier to
bear. He was morally certain that the blackmailer was one of
his handful of suspects—so why did he regard his other neigh-
bors with a faint suspicion and distrust that made him uneasy
with all but the richest and dreariest of them? The truth was
that the existence of the blackmailer had forced him to think
like a murderer again, instead of the contented widower he
had wanted to be and expected to be. What had been simply
consciousness of success had been transformed into conscious-
ness of guilt and awareness of danger. Instinctively he ex-
amined innocent remarks for implications that weren't there;
instinctively he weighed his own every utterance to make sure
of its innocuousness. This wasteful sharpening of his acuteness
had so dilated every inanity, so exaggerated every fatuousness,
that he had become irascible. But there was no escaping into
unsociability when kindly idiots credited him with excessive
grief and strove all the harder to “keep him from brooding.”
[95 |


with some frequency over the fact that in his entire career
he had missed only four days at the office.
That office was in Wall Street; Benjamin had been a partner
in a small and very dignified firm of stockbrokers. Neither
that smallness nor that dignity had been of any help when the
bottom had fallen out of the market in Twenty-nine.
Martin's sophomore year at college had been rudely inter-
rupted when he had been summoned home to attend his
father's funeral. The overdose of sleeping-pills which had
occasioned this sad event was called an accident only because
the coroner, who was also the family doctor, somehow con-
trived to overlook the rather incoherent note which Benjamin
had left behind for his family. In this note he had tried vaguely
to make his suicide into an act of noble self-sacrifice, as
though his insurance made him more valuable dead than
alive. But since their position wasn't so desperate on the one
hand, nor the insurance so great on the other, Martin hadn't
believed a word of it. It had seemed much more likely that his
father, in one of his fits of depression, had not been able to
face living in a world where the puritan virtues by which he
had lived had proved worthless.
Since Martin was amply provided for (his grandmother's
fortune having been divided among the grandchildren), the
lawyer advised Mrs. Pryor to purchase an annuity with the
insurance and the remainder of the estate, and Martin had
returned to college. For the benefit of his classmates he had
manifested a modest grief, but his only sincere reaction was
relief at the realization that now he wouldn't have to take
another tedious job during the coming summer vacation.
But the real effect of his father's death hadn't become
apparent until somewhat more than a year later when he came
of age, and into possession of an income of over six thousand
dollars a year. Despite Martin's rebelliousness, Benjamin
[98 )


Pryor had always maintained a strong moral ascendency over
his son. Martin's cerebral dexterity might produce the
cleverer arguments, but his father had had access to truths
that were superior to logic. Sometimes Martin had gotten his
own way against his father's wishes, but he had always been
made to feel guilty about it, just as he would have been made
to feel guilty if he had not left his inheritance in his father's
hands, for the income to be reinvested. As it was, he was his
own master, free to do as he chose—he had bought a car. And
then an elegant wardrobe. And then had had to scrimp for
the rest of the year to make up for the extravagance.
The scrimping had affected his thoughts in his senior year,
much of which he had spent in the approved fashion of de-
ciding what he would do with his life, though the conclusions
he came to would have been approved by nobody. These
conclusions had been arrived at easily enough; the difficulty
had been in justifying them. It had been necessary to con-
vince himself that the philosophy he was evolving for him-
self was no longer a reaction from his father, but the inevitable
consequence of his intellect, temperament . . . and inde-
pendent income.
This personal philosophy was founded on his complete non-
interest in work of any sort. The conventional view—which
his father had carried to a diseased extreme—would call that
a defect in Martin's character, but Martin had never been
willing to accept any conventional view without a struggle.
Why should a man work if he didn't have to? Obviously be-
cause idleness harmed him, and broadly speaking this was
undoubtedly true. The average man lacked the capacity to
support idleness, the stability to withstand its temptations,
and the resources to offset its stagnation. Looked at that way,
the puritan hatred of idleness was based on sheer envy of a
state which most people couldn't enjoy.
[99]


It was most satisfactory to have this worked out for once
and all, and Martin never thought of the matter again.
Obviously the incapacities of the average man didn't apply
to him.
So when he graduated from college Martin went to live in
New York City as the best spot for an existence of cultivated
leisure. Quite as he had expected, the time passed easily and
pleasantly, and he had rarely been bored. Apart from a con-
viction that a good address was a necessity instead of a luxury,
Martin's tastes were epicurean rather than sybaritic, and his
income, in those days of lower taxes, would have sufficed if it
had not been for his main hobby, which was women.
Calling women a “hobby” was not really a flippancy on
Martin's part: he had collected love affairs as a pastime as
other men collect bookbindings or antique watches—knowl-
edgeably, artistically, and tenderly. He rarely troubled to get
emotionally involved, but unless he did he was scrupulously
careful to make sure that the lady remained as fancy-free as
he. It spoke well for his finesse that (with one harrowing
exception) he had never parted from a love on any but the
very best of terms.
But if this was the most exquisite of hobbies, as Martin be-
lieved, it was also horribly expensive. New York was un-
doubtedly full of girls of simple tastes, but in the circles
Martin frequented at that time he had encountered few of
them. Although he specialized in restaurants that had not yet
been discovered, and nightclubs that offered more value than
fashion, the incidental expenses of seduction were enormous.
Fortunately, his mother was both indulgent and generous.
As is so often the case, widowhood had greatly improved Mrs.
Pryor's health, and she seemed to enjoy the last decade of her
life much more than she had enjoyed the previous five. Mar-
tin was always a welcome guest, and he was not ashamed to
[100 }


impose upon her hospitality whenever his squiring about of
some prospective mistress had reduced him to the alternatives
of delaying his rent or going hungry for a couple of weeks.
Moreover, he played bridge for quite high stakes. He could
usually count on this for pin-money of twenty-five a week or
thereabouts, but occasionally there had been catastrophes at
just the wrong time, and his mother had bailed him out to the
tune of a couple of hundred each time.
Even then there had been embarrassments. Several times
he had had to borrow from his mistresses, and one of the con-
veniences of running with a wealthy set—one that he hardly
could afford, really—was that the girls could help him out in
a pinch. It need hardly be said that Martin had always scru-
pulously paid back every cent, but it might be noted that a
girl who had helped him out never remained his mistress
much longer. Martin was proud in those days, or at least
rather prouder than he later became.
He was proud enough that when he met people whom he
wanted to like him, and who would have disapproved of his
idleness if they'd known of it, he had saved their feelings
(and his) by inventing purposeful projects which supposedly
occupied him. Occasionally he even lived up to them for a
while. His biography of his grandfather dated from this era,
though all he had to show for his work at that time was one
small notebook full of illegible notes. He'd served on various
charitable and philanthropic committees. And for a while
he composed tunes for the suggestive and theoretically
sophisticated songs of a friend of his who knew and supplied
a night-club singer of such ditties.
Then, just about the time the war started the taxes shoot-
ing up, Martin's mother had died, and of course that source
of income died with her. A punctured ear-drum had kept
Martin out of the army, for which he was grateful at first,
[101 ||


though less so later on. The ladies were interested only in
uniforms, and besides, soldiers were able to spend so much
more heavily than he. Finances were becoming an increas-
ing consideration.
In fact, in time his income shrank to such a point that he
had to choose among four distasteful alternatives. He could
give up sex altogether, but that seemed drastic; he could move
to a cheaper apartment, but they weren't to be found any
more; he could get married, but he couldn't possibly afford
that unless his wife had an income at least as large as his; or
he could give up running with a crowd that was actually much
too expensive for him. He had known for some time that this
retrenchment was coming, and had tried to delay it with small
economies—till a disastrous run of luck at the bridge table
hastened the inevitable.
There was no gulf between the social set Martin left and
the upper-class bohemia he entered; actually they over-
lapped quite a bit. By then fully a third of his friends had
fallen under the latter classification, so the mechanics of the
alteration was simply a matter of concentrating on this mi-
nority. But the shift in viewpoint, which was the only real
difference between the two groups apart from the economic
pace, had not been to Martin's taste. He had moved from
conventional elegance to equally conventional informality,
from gaiety to earnestness. Catholic in his tastes, he had
taken in stride the change from musical comedy to reproving
drama, ballet to modern dance, French chanteuse to guitar-
strumming balladeer. But he lamented the intense intellec-
tualism which discounted his polished wit, and deeply re-
sented the standard of manners which permitted any young
upstart to make fun of his opinions or even contradict him to
his face. Still, on the whole, life continued pleasant, though
as prices and taxes continued to rise he had had to economize
[102 )


more and more stringently for each extravagance.
Once in this period it had occurred to him to wonder why
he had not married back in the days when an advantageous
match would have been easy to achieve. Of course it would
have meant an end to his womanizing, but one could always
sacrifice a hobby for the comfortable life. But when he'd
looked back, he had found that in none of the few occasions
when he had become emotionally involved had the girl had
any money to speak of. And he could never have married
solely, or even primarily, for money: playing the gigolo, as
he had inadvertently proved, was just another form of work,
an exceptionally repugnant one at that. No, money was simply
one of a girl's attractions, and though in his position at that
time no girl could have been marriageable without it, love in
some degree or other would have had to be present. Though
he had undeniably been on the look-out for well-to-do girls
when he had met Grace, that marriage had still been a love
match, pure and simple. Martin's love for her money had been
only one of the emotions involved.
Still, it was now pleasant to realize that if he should ever
want to marry again—not that he was contemplating the idea,
even remotely—he would be able to consult his emotions
alone, without worrying about expediency.
“You have such lovely hair,” Martin observed.
“Why, thank you,” Sally said, and he felt a fleeting an-
noyance at the fact that, like most American women, she
knew of no better way to cope with a compliment than by
formal gratitude.
But the atmosphere was an auspicious one, and Martin
couldn't be bothered with irrelevant irritations. He had
dropped in at the studio late in the afternoon, and had found
Sally just cleaning up after a day's work. She had brought him
[103 ]


into the house and given him a drink and a magazine to keep
him amused while she had a shower. And now, in a long, blue
terry-cloth robe, she was sitting opposite him, working on a
drink of her own. It was all very cosy.
“I said you have lovely hair,” Martin repeated, “but I didn't
exactly mean it as a compliment.” He paused, tantalizingly,
expecting some murmur of curiosity or encouragement. But
Sally simply watched him with that expression which he had
once thought blank, and in which he now saw so much
earnestness and so much quiet merriment, canceling each
other out to all but the discerning eye. “What I meant was
that your hair can't help being lovely, despite the fact that
you don't pay it any attention.”
“That still sounds like a compliment.”
“It isn't, though. I’m implying that you could be so much
lovelier than you already are if you made the slightest effort.
But you don't.”
She smiled at him. “Men always want a girl to look her
prettiest, and the prettier she looks the less seriously they take
her.”
“And you insist on being taken very seriously,” Martin
asked gravely.
“I have a living to make,” she reminded him. “Which means
that much of the time I'm too busy to care what I look like.
Besides, it's hard enough for a woman to make herself re-
spected as an artist; if she's attractive, sex just gets in the way
to make it harder.”
“I suppose that's true,” Martin admitted, thinking that it
would be a poor man indeed who could see Sally as she was
now and keep his mind on ceramics. The robe was becoming,
and, as far as Martin could tell, she didn't have on a thing
underneath it. This costume, or rather its deficiency, gave the
whole situation a familiar, almost hackneyed, quality, and
[104 )


made Martin feel full of confidence and very much at his ease.
“But it's after working hours,” he continued, “and I’m not one
of your customers. You know how much I admire your work,
but I'm afraid that I can't help thinking of you as a woman
first, and an artist distinctly second.”
“And thinking of me as a woman, you wish I'd go and put
on some lipstick,” Sally grinned at him.
“Not just now,” he replied firmly.
For an instant she seemed uncertain; then she stood up.
“Let me get you another drink,” she said, reaching for his
glass.
He put the glass aside instead, pulled her easily into his lap,
and kissed her. Her lips firmed to an immediate response, and
he hugged her to him tightly, wondering that he had ever
been such a fool as to be unsure of her. He closed his eyes, the
better to enjoy the delicate sensuality of unfamiliar kisses, and
the fresh scent of her just-washed body filled his nostrils. His
hands lightly fondled her shoulders, slid over the fine, silky
hair, touched at the nape of her neck. He kissed her ever more
deeply, and he could feel her ardor matching his, each step of
the way.
And then, in his exuberance, he made the mistake of at-
tempting to proceed too rapidly.
It was a moment before she reacted, but Martin sensed his
error and tried to rectify it with the tenderest, most innocent
of caresses. Yet she went quite passive in his arms and said
quietly, tritely, “No, Martin. Let me go.”
He was still confident, from the quickness of her response
to his kisses, but perfectly willing to cater to her sense of
decorum. So he let her sit up away from him, but held her in
his lap, lightly gripping her shoulders. “I’ve wanted you so
much,” he said gravely. It was offered as a graceful and flat-
tering apology, and he fully expected it to work. But when he
[105 |


tried to pull her close to him again she shook her head, and
with a quick motion stood up.
“I was getting you a drink,” she said with a brisk casualness
that didn't ring true at all, and took his glass over to the table
that served as a bar.
Martin was still convinced that this was just a momentary
pique at his crudeness. He followed her, not wanting to let the
mood escape too far. Perhaps a more direct apology was in
order, so he manfully said, “I’m sorry, darling,” and kissed
her neck.
“So am I,’” Sally replied, and refused to let him twist her
around and into his arms.
Confusion and outrage swept over him with the sudden
realization that he really was being rebuffed after all. A frus-
trated fury built up in him till it took every bit of the sophisti-
cation and self-control he possessed to keep him from bursting
out with some irretrievably damaging snarl. She was acting
like a virginal school-girl, and he wanted to tell her so; wanted
to tell her what he thought of a woman who evoked passion,
responded to it, and then ran away from it. But he forced him-
self to keep silent, to walk shakily back to his chair and sit
there patiently until she brought him his drink.
And his self-command was rewarded. Either Sally had
sensed his turmoil, or she hadn't needed to, but now she was
obviously feeling guilty. If he'd assailed her with furious
words he would have driven her to the defensive; as it was,
she avoided his gaze. “You have every reason to be angry with
me,” she said faintly, “but I hope you aren't.”
Martin swigged at his drink until his throat felt relaxed
enough to produce a normal voice. “More confused than any-
thing,” he lied.
“I don't blame you.” She seemed uncertain how to go on,
and Martin made no effort to help. “Has Bill ever told you any-
[106 |


Then he remembered that this was the day of the Frobisher
cocktail party.
His first impulse was to skip the party, but he instantly re-
belled against giving in to such weakness. He was proud of
his self-discipline, was he not? Well, this was certainly a time
to exercise it. Anyone could keep himself in hand when things
were going well, but it took an exceptional man to rise above
them when they were going badly. He had planned on going
to the party for a specific purpose, and go he would, even if it
was the last thing on earth he wanted to do.
Back in the days when he had considered Dennis and his
moustache a pair of unnecessary excrescences, they had
seemed all too unavoidable. But recently, despite Sally's at-
tempt to make Dennis and him more friendly, Dennis was
rarely to be encountered. He would surely be at the party,
however, and Martin had a little trap to spring on him. Ac-
cordingly, to the party he would go, and somehow he would
put aside this welter of emotions and calmly and craftily
spring his trap. He could leave the party by six with any luck
at all, and that was time enough to be going into the city.
But it was quite maddening to recollect that it was fear of
just this sort of situation, where extraneous emotion would
interfere with the job of ferreting out the blackmailer, that
had made him hesitate about getting involved with Sally.
Damn and blast the girl!
A morning of bill-paying and other routine household tasks
served to calm his mind, and he was able to devote the early
afternoon to a relatively tranquil mental rehearsal of the more
intricate part of the forthcoming scene with Dennis. For this
trap was of necessity a bold one. If Dennis were the black-
mailer he would instantly comprehend what Martin was
about, and it must appear that Martin was insinuating that he
had found Dennis out; on the other hand, if Dennis were in-
[109]


nocent the conversation must seem an innocuous one so that
Dennis would have ample opportunity to demonstrate that he
was unaware of any overtones. This took a bit of planning,
since Martin wanted to be able to deliver his own speeches
with an ease which would leave him free to devote all his at-
tention to Dennis's reactions, if any. But he felt prepared in
time to give a leisurely hour to a bath and shave, and the care-
ful choosing of a suit that would be equally appropriate for
the party and the trip to town. When he finally set off he was
feeling fully nine-tenths in command of himself.
If Martin went off to the Frobishers' in a spirit of duty, he
was probably the only guest so animated. This was one of the
smaller, or forty-guest parties. The Frobishers gave one enor-
mous party each year, and half a dozen of the smaller sort.
There was some mysterious rotation in the guest list for the
latter, so they had come to be an index of one's standing in
Alden Park. To be seen at most of them was a sign of distinc-
tion; to be missing from several in succession was evidence
of some social crime, such as failure to contribute when Betty
Frobisher approached you on behalf of one of her favorite
charities.
But apart from the arbitrary laws that hedged the invita-
tions, the Frobishers' parties suffered from no excess of for-
mality, and were usually quite pleasant. Alec and Betty met
Martin at the door with their customary little cries of social
delight, and waved him in. As always, in one corner of the
large hall a bar had been set up, presided over by a white-
coated bartender imported from the city—to the great an-
noyance of emulatively-inclined hostesses whose husbands
boggled at such expense on the grounds that his cocktails
weren't a damn bit better than those of the local caterer. The
bartender asked Martin's fancy, and he chose a scotch sour.
He didn't like scotch sours, thinking them an unfriendly way
[110]


to treat good scotch, so he could be confident of not drinking
it too quickly.
Glass in hand, he paused at the top of the three steps that
led down into the vast, airy living-room. There was no sign
of Sally's sleek blonde head, and for the sake of his coolness of
mind he was glad. But he was more than a little chagrined to
realize that he'd looked for her first of all, and almost eagerly,
at that.
At the foot of the steps was Mrs. Hudderfield, talking ani-
matedly to Gerald Marshall. Evidently her thoughtfulness in
explaining ceramics to Sally had not been an aberration but a
normal effusion of her personality, for she was telling Gerald
all about golf. The links in Texas were apparently a superior
variety, and one couldn't really appreciate what a challenging
game golf was until one had played there.
Martin strolled through the room, exchanging smiles of
greeting with those who had one eye cocked for newcomers.
Mrs. Mitchell broke off a monologue on herbaceous borders to
pat him on the arm and tell him how much she missed Grace
at the Garden Club meetings. Martin summoned up a wistful
smile, and moved on. Wally Herndon had backed Dr. Fin-
letter into the far corner, and was telling him with unusual
heat: “Just listen to this and tell me if you've ever heard any-
thing more idiotic. My partner opened with one spade, and I
held six clubs to the king, four hearts to the ace. . .”
In the library beyond, Martin found Dennis Morley and
Agnes talking all by themselves; the party was not yet large
enough for any more of an overflow. He braced himself, and
joined them.
“She was telling Alex all about how to make money on the
stock market,” Dennis was saying.
“Lizzie Hudderfield,” Agnes explained unnecessarily to
Martin.
[111 ||


“I can imagine,” he said. “Just now she was telling Gerald
all about golf.”
“She's so wonderfully predictable,” Agnes said happily. “Of
course, I made a point of telling her that Gerald is our local
champion.”
Agnes's presence posed a problem. A complete outsider
wouldn't have mattered, but a second suspect would multiply
his difficulties. If she didn't leave of her own accord, it would
soon be necessary to drive her away, but for the moment
Martin could see a way to put her to use. So he waited until
the subject of Mrs. Hudderfield was exhausted and then told
Agnes that he had another detective novel that she would en-
Joy.
She was delighted. She counted on small economies, like
cheap liquor in the punch-bowl or borrowing books instead
of buying or renting them, to balance her extravagances in
other directions. Martin allowed her no chance to enlarge on
her gratitude, lest Dennis realize that the conversation was
taking a turn that might bore him.
“I don't suppose you've acquired the taste yet,” Martin said
provocatively to Dennis.
Dennis had not, most emphatically. Martin had heard him
on the subject before, so it was no trick to get him to repeat
his opinion that detective fiction was unrealistic, inartistic and
unimaginative. Martin encouraged him to expand these
views. Just as he had hoped, Agnes soon lost interest in hear-
ing her favorite form of reading-matter ridiculed. Her atten-
tion strayed; through the open door she spotted someone who
promised to be more entertaining, and she darted away, leav-
ing the two men alone.
“I admit there's a great deal in what you say,” Martin broke
in promptly in a tone that implied that what Dennis had said
[112 )


was both obvious and beside the point, “but I think you go too
far when you say they're unimaginative.”
“Oh, I know many people think they're most ingenious,”
Dennis said.
“And they can be,” Martin replied. “Of course, lots of them
are just stupid, and I suspect that the only ones you've read
were like that. But some of them can be devilishly clever. For
example, I was reading one the other evening that centered
around a little puzzle that stumped me completely, and I'll
wager it would have stumped you, too.”
“Some tricky horror involving a corpse in a locked room?”
Dennis asked contemptuously.
“No, nothing of the kind. It was quite a homely sort of prob-
lem—the type of thing you wouldn't expect to be much of a
problem at all, but almost unsolvable once you really started
to think about it.”
Dennis succumbed. “What was it?” he asked, obviously de-
termined to solve the riddle or prove that the author's solu-
tion had been ridiculous.
Martin took a deep breath and launched into his carefully
prepared speech. “Well, the background doesn't matter—it
was a sort of spy story with a gang of crooks mixed up in it,
and not very plausible, I'll admit. But the problem was
straightforward enough. The hero had to have one of the vil-
lains deliver a package to him in such a fashion that the villain
couldn't possible discover to whom he was delivering it. This
happened in a small town, and I thought of it in terms of Alden
Park. Do you see the idea? How could I, for example, in a small
place like this, have you get a package to me without there
being a chance of your finding out who I am? Quite a neat
little puzzle, isn't it?” And he looked at Dennis with an ex-
pression, patiently rehearsed in front of a mirror, that might
be taken for either defiance or insinuation.
[118)


Twice the blackmailer had indicated he was finding it dif-
ficult to think of a safe way to collect the price of his silence,
and Martin, having given the matter some thought, could ap-
preciate the problem. If Dennis could solve it, that in itself
would be significant, but even more revealing would be the
way he reacted to the problem. And Dennis's expression
showed only a calmly competitive concentration.
“Oh, I don't know,” he said after a moment. “It doesn't seem
as difficult as you make out.” And he proceeded to tackle the
problem, thinking out loud as he went.
Despite his dislike of the man, Martin couldn't help being
impressed by the speed with which Dennis organized his
thinking. In a moment he had sketched out the various haz-
ards that would have to be coped with, and then went on to
examine different possibilities. The first three he dismissed as
unsatisfactory on one count or another. He toyed with a
fourth; started to throw it out, and then came up with a twist
that made it seem foolproof. A fifth was nearly as good, and
the sixth–almost an afterthought—was devastatingly simple.
All this with the air of a lofty intellectual solving a child's
riddle. But he spoiled that effect, and added the final touch
to his display of innocence, by inquiring with ingenuous
eagerness which had been the author's solution.
Martin chose the cleverest of Dennis's solutions and said
that was the one the author had used. And then he patiently
paid the penalty for having started the argument by listening
while Dennis, obviously very pleased with himself, went on
to explain condescendingly that writers of such stories started
out with some elementary gimmick and then spent the rest of
their time trying to make the puzzle seem more complicated
than it really was so the reader would be all the more im-
pressed when the author solved it. Martin took no offense at
the condescension. The argument had been an artificial one,
[114 |


ened himself with the thought of what awaited him in the
city. “I'm afraid I was just leaving,” he apologized. “I have to
run into town. I'm . . . ah . . . going to a party. Some
friends are giving it,” he added hastily, as if that detail would
make it all more plausible.
“I see.” She seemed disappointed. “Look, I know we're go-
ing to the Bensons' Friday evening, but I want to see you some
time before then. Could you drop around to the studio tomor-
row, perhaps? Or during the day on Friday?”
“Probably Friday,” he said. “I’m staying in town tonight,
and I may not be back till late tomorrow. Well, have fun.” But
the instant he lefther he began to wish that at least he'd stayed
for more of a chat.
Mrs. Hudderfield was still by the steps, but her victim now
was Dr. Finletter, looking as though he had been trapped
within inches of freedom. She was telling him firmly all about
God, Who apparently was proud of having created Texas,
whatever He might think about the rest of the world.
He stopped at a bar along the highway, and had a short
straight drink to revive his spirits and clean away the taste of
the scotch sour. Then he closed himself into the booth and put
in a call to Mrs. Trotter, a lady whom he knew only by her
rich, fruity contralto on the telephone.
“Mrs. Trotter? This is Martin Parker.” The pseudonym had
seemed a reasonable precaution at first, and now he was stuck
with it.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Parker. I haven't heard from you in quite
some time.”
“No, I've been out to the coast on business.” Martin was
very proficient at lying to Mrs. Trotter. “I’m going to be in the
city tonight, and I wondered if by any chance Diana were
available.” -
[116 |


and saw that his guess had been correct: it was the sulky
blonde with the long-haired furpiece.
Léon rushed away to justify the most recent ten-dollar bill
by producing a table for two, and Martin introduced him-
self to Carol Crawford. The sulkiness vanished instantly, to
be replaced by a quick, talkative gaiety. To the extent that
she was pleased to find him not bald, fat, or ten years older,
the gaiety was probably sincere rather than mechanical. For
his part, Martin would have preferred to find Carol ten years
older than she looked, which was shockingly young: no more
than eighteen or nineteen, he judged. She was very pretty in
the fashion established by the motion pictures: a circular face,
with symmetry of feature substituting for character. Unlike
Sally, she evidently thought highly of make-up, and used a
eat deal of it. Her perfectly arched eyebrows were more
pencil than hair, her eyes were delicately shadowed, and her
lipstick had traced a line rather fuller than nature had pro-
vided for. However, if he didn't look too closely, the effect
was certainly attractive. Her figure, if he could believe what
he saw, was on the spectacular side. There was a noticeable
craning of masculine necks as Léon led them to their table.
Martin put aside his dismayed reaction to her youth, re-
pressed his dislike of southern accents, and immediately set
about trying to establish a personal relationship. He urged
her to call him by his given name instead of the “Darlin’” she
seemed disposed to, and talked to her as to a person he wished
to make a friend. He had once had an opportunity to read the
Memoirs of Fanny Hill and one sentence in that charming
book had left an impression which influenced all his subse-
quent dealings with ladies of Fanny's profession. “Men know
not in general,” the sensible Fanny had observed, “how much
they destroy of their own pleasure, when they break the re-
spect and tenderness due to our sex, and even to those of it
[118


who live only by pleasing them.” Martin had thought this
eminently logical, and out of the impulses of his own tempera-
ment had glossed the need for tenderness as the need for a
cordial intimacy, even in a financially motivated relationship.
The social aspect of sex was essential to him; he had to make
love to a human being, and not just a willing female body.
So he firmly steered her away from her line of chatter, which
consisted primarily of a recital of all the nightclubs she had
visited in the last fortnight and the celebrities she had spotted
in each one, and urged her to talk about herself. As delicately
as possible he indicated that he had none of the amateur
sociologist's morbid curiosity as to how she had arrived at her
present occupation, but was sincerely interested in her tastes,
her amusements, her ambitions. What did she hope to be, for
example?
She was going to be a model, it seemed—but further ex-
amination elicited only that in a few weeks some man was
going to take pictures of her, and if they turned out well she
would, in some remote future, take them around to the agen-
Cles.
Martin abandoned that line as unproductive and turned
to the theatre: what plays had she seen? Carol produced a list
of the three most popular musical comedies and then stopped
short. Evidently she had seen each of them at least four times,
and whatever pleasure they might have given her originally
had long since escaped her mind. Martin decided against in-
quiring into her reading habits, and, after having ascertained
that she came from North Carolina and had been in New York
less than two years, he asked if she liked the city—and, if so,
what she thought its chief attraction. This was a mistake. In
no time at all she was back on the nightclubs and the celebri-
ties to be found in them.
After dinner she was visibly disappointed when he vetoed
[119 |


the more glittering night-spots for one of the more intimate
supper clubs which offered good enough entertainment on
its diminutive stage that nobody much cared who might be
sitting at the next table but one. Martin was sorry to create a
hiatus in her lion-hunting, but he had found the conversation
tiresome, and felt in the need of outside distraction.
Because the evening was going badly, he set out to get tight
as quickly as possible. This was not an easy task, since like
most of its kind the supper club served as little liquor to each
drink as the law allowed, but Martin did his best. Instead of
cheering him up, however, the liquor depressed him still fur-
ther, and he became terribly morose when a girl, who looked
enough like Sally to be her sister, came out on the stage and
sang bawdy songs in a loud, baritone voice.
Without any urging on his part, Carol matched him drink
for drink, but the liquor seemed to affect her not at all. Some-
where along the line, though, she sensed his mood, and did her
best to cheer him up with a kind of heavy-footed, adolescent
teasing. There was more kindliness than wit in her efforts,
though once she came very near to humor, when she remarked
that he hadn't once mentioned his wife. “Most of the men do,”
she explained.
“My wife is dead,” he told her.
“Gee, that's too bad,” she said sympathetically, and a mo-
ment later was trying all the harder to amuse him, doubtless
assuming that he was a recently bereaved widower.
But though Carol's efforts accomplished little in them-
selves, they did serve to remind him that he had no right to
spoil her evening. He forced himself to brighten up, and set
out to entertain her, as he should have done in the first place,
by doing most of the talking himself. He told her all the funny
stories he had heard recently, carefully weeding out the
lewder ones because he had long since learned that girls like
Carol often had a nice sense of propriety in language. He
[120 )


tin, and he wanted nothing so much as to be rid of her. Even
a Sally who left him shaken with frustration was preferable
to the passion of such trash as this, if she had any passion in
her. “You’re a very stupid little girl,” he told her coldly. “No,
I had no desire to whip you or perform any of the other filthy
things you refer to as 'fancy stuff.' And now I think you'd
better run along.”
“I’m sorry I said what I did,” she said placatingly. “I guess
I didn't understand what you were driving at.”
“I guess not,” he agreed. “As I said, you are a very stupid
little girl.” -
“You’ve no call to talk to me like that,” she snapped, fum-
bling into her shoes. “Anybody can make a mistake.”
“I suppose that's true,” Martin admitted. He was sick of
the whole episode, suddenly bone-weary, and interested in
nothing but a soft bed and oblivion. “Just run along, please.”
“I can keep the fifty dollars?”
“You may.”
“And you won't tell Mrs. Trotter that I called you a pervert?
Please don't do that!”
“I shan’t,” Martin promised, and she was gone.
Resolutely he sat in his chair and finished off his drink and
Carol's before he went to the bedroom. In his foggy state it
seemed desperately important that he make sure that he
would fall asleep the instant his head touched the pillow. He
didn't want to lie awake even for a minute with the under-
standing that, unlike any other woman he had ever known,
Sally had somehow destroyed the pleasure in casual sex. He
wanted to postpone till tomorrow the realization that he was
deeply, desperately, head-over-heels in love with a girl who
showed no sign of being anywhere near that much in love
with him.


C H A P T E R 9
Early the following morning Martin drove home in a fash-
ion that showed no consideration for the other drivers on the
highway. As the least disturbing line of thought he tried to
concentrate on his three remaining suspects, Agnes, Benson
and Sally, but he kept ending up thinking just of Sally, and
not as a suspect at all. He got into a row with Mrs. Hodges
for not having anything in the house for his lunch, and was
proved thoroughly in the wrong. Then he puttered aimlessly
about the house in a state of sullen impatience until late after-
noon, when Benson could be presumed to have returned home
from college. And when he went to see Benson, even that was
not a visit to a suspect but to someone who knew something
of Sally's mysterious past.
He found Benson in a towering rage. In such states Bill
fancied himself Olympian, but “incoherent” would probably
have been a better description. It was several minutes before
Martin could even discover what all the fuss was about. Ap-
parently another of Bill's scholarly books had just come out,
something about The Heritage of Medieval Thought, and a
well-meaning friend had sent him a copy of the review that
was about to appear in the New York Times. “Of all the mean,
[124 |


underhanded, swinish tricks, this is the worst!” Benson de-
clared. He popped his spectacles into place and glowered
furiously at Martin. “Do you know who they went out of their
way to get to review my book? The eminent historian’—
that's what they call him—the eminent historian, Cyril Tal-
bot.’ Do you know who he is?”
Martin admitted that he'd heard the name.
“Of course you have,” Benson roared. “The man has a press
agent. He was thrown out of England because he was boring
the population to death, but we've made a hero of him here.
Eminent historian, indeed! They'd have been nearer the mark
if they'd called him an eminent metaphysician. What little
history there is in his books has been twisted out of shape to
fit Talbot's adolescent notions about the historical importance
of the religious impulse.”
“But don't you think . . . .” Martin began.
“I think the man's an ass,” Benson said. “Listen to this.
‘Professor Benson dwells at unnecessary length— Unneces-
sary length, eh? That from a man who once devoted sixteen
jejune and long-winded chapters to demonstrating that a
nation's geography could have an effect on its history!”
“It seems excessive,” Martin said soothingly.
“Don’t you humor me,” Benson snarled. “Listen to this.
‘It is often difficult to tell from his tone whether or not Pro-
fessor Benson expects us to take his theories seriously. Do
you know what that means? It means that a sense of humor
is so foreign to Talbot's nature that he doesn't know what to
make of one when he encounters it. Of course, this is just self-
preservation in action. A sense of humor would ruin him in a
minute. Have you ever read any of his books?”
“Well, I've read about them,” Martin said.
“That's the best approach,” Benson said, “as long as you
don't believe anything they tell you. Talbot benefits from our
[125 |


rized, brightening visibly. “Really, I suppose I ought to be
ateful to the man. What were you wondering, Martin?”
“Well,” said Martin, deciding that under the circumstances
there was more to be gained from a direct approach than a
circuitous one, “well, you knew Sally before she came to live
in Alden Park, didn't you?”
“Sally?” asked Benson. “Sally Teal? Of course I did. You
knew all about that. What does she have to do with Talbot?”
“Nothing,” Martin admitted. “What did you mean when
you said I knew all about that?”
“I told you all about Sally and her husband—oh, five or six
years ago.”
“I don't remember,” Martin said. He hadn't even been
aware that Sally had ever been married.
“You must,” said Benson, whose own memory was phe-
nomenal, and who never could understand that everyone was
not just like him. “Surely you recall my telling you about a
young new colleague in my department, a very brilliant fel-
low I was quite interested in. He taught Ancient History, but
he knew more about the Middle Ages than a lot of specialists
ever do. Larry Burton was his name. Doesn't that ring any
sort of bell?”
“Very vaguely,” Martin said.
“He asked my help on a book, and I got very friendly with
both him and his wife, Sally. I distinctly remember telling
you that she was the only vivacious girl I'd ever known who
also had a brain in her head.”
“And that's Sally Teal?” Martin asked, unable to associate
the adjective “vivacious” with the Sally he knew.
“Of course,” Benson said disgustedly. “I naturally assumed
you'd made the connection years ago, though at Sally's re-
quest I made a point of saying nothing about her background.
Honestly, Martin, at times you carry your self-centeredness
[127]


into the study for the dictionary, and the overhead light blew
out as he switched it on. He was grateful for the task of having
to replace the bulb, but for the moment he was content to
fumble in the dark for the dictionary. He carried it—both
volumes, to be on the safe side—into the living-room. It was
the Shorter Oxford, which Grace had given him one Christmas
as a sop to his anglophilia. She had thought his fondness for
it an affectation, and had never hesitated to say so in that
archly nagging manner which had been her substitute for
teasing.
He looked up “jejune” and found that it meant “unsatis-
fying and insipid” which was approximately what he had
guessed.
The dictionary was indelibly associated with Grace not
merely because she had given it to him, but also because it
had, strangely enough, played a part in that critical moment
when he had passed from wishing Grace were dead to think-
ing of doing something about it. A small hurdle, but a mo-
mentOuS One.
In retrospect, Martin found it hard to understand why it
had taken him so long to arrive at a decision so logical. The
marriage had not been six months old before his disillusion-
ment had been complete, and he had taken the position that
he would play the sort of husband Grace wanted in return
for the comparative luxury of life in Alden Park. If his love
had vanished without a trace, Martin had sincerely tried to
replace it with affection—but this Grace had destroyed within
the year by the petty attrition of indifference. After that,
there was nothing left but play-acting, for he had come to feel
nothing for Grace but hatred.
It was a quiet hatred, which rarely came to the surface
because Grace had despised scenes of any sort. It was a mild
hatred, which expended itself in reveries of the contented,
[129 |


tranquil life he would lead (there was irony for you!) if
“something” happened to Grace. It was a static hatred, which
seemed neither to grow nor to diminish with the years.
And years had gone by in just this fashion, six of them.
Years in which he had never seen Grace drive off to the city
without some faint thought of a fatal traffic accident; years
in which she had never had a summer cold without giving him
the materials for a day-dream in which the cold flourished into
a pneumonia that defied every known wonder-drug. Yet never
once in all that time had it occurred to him that he might take
matters into his own hands.
Consciously, at least.
But as he had realized later, the long slow descent to cal-
lousness must have been traveled unconsciously, for when
the thought of violence had at last appeared he had not re-
coiled from it, though by nature he was not a brutal person.
Perhaps the onset of his forties had accented the feeling of
failure in life; a failure all the more humiliating because his
ambition had been so modest. With his superiority he might
have demanded so much more, but he hadn't: merely a serene
and comfortable existence. A small desire, surely, yet he had
failed to achieve even that. There could be no serenity with
Grace; there could be no comfort without her income.
And somewhere deep under the dumb despair of his day-to-
day thinking must have grown the recognition that Grace was
the sole cause of his failure; that if she were not there—if
in any fashion she were . . . erased from the picture—then
his humiliation would end, his superiority would have justi-
fied itself, and he would suddenly be a success.
It was a relatively minor thing that had finally jarred that
recognition out into the open one evening last December. Not
even a year ago.
[130 )


The evening had started off badly. There had been a quarrel
at dinner about something he couldn't now remember; one
of those small, hot quarrels that lapsed into furious silence
every time Mrs. Hodges entered the dining-room. After din-
ner they had taken their cold hostility to the living-room.
Grace had set up the card-table and laid out one of the two-
pack solitaires that held an inexhaustible fascination for her;
flanked by his dictionary Martin had settled down on the
couch with the Sunday crossword puzzle. Actually, the puzzle
was less of an end in itself than a pretext. Every time he looked
up a word he read on for page after page, enchanted by the
wealth of quotations, proverbs, and fragments of erudition
that the editors appended to each word they defined.
As usual, Grace wondered aloud that anyone could just sit
there reading a dictionary, and as usual he replied courte-
ously that solitaire was not generally regarded as an intellec-
tual pursuit.
Then she began to fidget, and think of things for him to do.
From experience he knew that this was a punishment for
having let her set up the card-table herself, but since he
couldn't prove this point there was no advantage to be gained
from raising it. So he obediently went upstairs to turn on her
electric blanket; went downstairs to make sure that Mrs.
Hodges had locked the basement door behind her; went out
to the kitchen to fetch a glass of ice-water. He was returning
from this last errand when he tripped over a scatter-rug and
lost his balance. His instinctive effort to keep the water from
spilling cost him any chance of recovering himself gracefully,
and he had to reach wildly for some support to keep himself
from falling. His flailing left hand crashed through one of the
glass panels of Grace's great-grandmother's breakfront, but
he went down to the floor nevertheless. Grace came running
[131I


in alarm—but after one quick glance at Martin's bleeding
hand, her concern was obviously all for her precious break-
front.
Later, after washing disclosed that all the blood had come
from two shallow gashes in the fleshy part of the palm, and a
little gauze and adhesive tape had sealed off the damage,
Grace insisted that she'd seen at once that he hadn't been
really hurt. “After all,” she pointed out sensibly, “your hand
can heal up, but the breakfront might have been harmed be-
yond a point where a cabinet-maker could ever make it look
the same.” Martin, who had suffered the pain and the blood
and the frightened thought of a cut tendon, leaving him with
a left hand that could never again stretch an octave, was not
appeased. Neither was he especially angry. The whole epi-
sode was so utterly typical of Grace that he shrugged it off
much as he had shrugged off countless other instances of her
egoism.
That is, he went back to his couch, consoling himself with
a day-dream wherein Grace expired of some rapid but pain-
ful ailment, and his first action as a widower was to sell the
breakfront to any antique dealer who would offer him a decent
price for it. By furious haggling he got the price up to four
hundred dollars and then spent every penny in laying down
vintage wines for the long, lovely future . . .
“How is your hand?" Grace asked with an abstract solici-
tude that was as close as she could come to an apology.
“It hurts like the blazes,” Martin replied coldly, outraged
at being reminded that she was still very much alive. He and
his aching hand and his shattered day-dream had retreated
to the dictionary, where comfort might be found among com-
plex derivations and subtle usages. And he had found not
merely comfort, but inspiration as well, and, of all places,
under the word “Barefoot.” The editors of the Shorter Oxford
[182 )


had embellished this innocuous-seeming word with a proverb
of manifest antiquity. Coming upon it at such a moment had
given Martin the eerie sensation that the cynical wisdom of
the ancients had come to his assistance: “Who waitth for
dead men shoen, shall go long barefoote.”
“But why wait?” Martin had inquired of the living-room.
“What was that?” Grace had asked.
“Nothing,” he had said, already lost in a new line of thought.
“Are you working?” he asked from the doorway.
“Not really,” Sally said. “Come on in.” She mashed down
the clay she had been toying with and tossed it back into the
trough. “I haven't accomplished much of anything the last
couple of days. I've been brooding, mostly.”
“You take things too seriously,” Martin told her. Perhaps in
anticipation of his coming, the kitchen chair was for once un-
cluttered, and he settled into it.
“Oh, not about the other afternoon, exactly,” Sally said.
“I’ve been wondering whether I made a mistake in keeping
my background a secret. People like me shouldn't keep such
secrets, but Alden Park is so damned stuffy and old-fashioned,
and there were business reasons as well. But if I hadn't kept
it dark, I wouldn't owe you this explanation now. You see,
I'm not exactly what I seem to be.”
Martin had come prepared for almost anything except this
atmosphere, which, to his over-strained nerves, seemed highly
melodramatic. “Don’t be so intense,” he urged uneasily.
Sally laughed. “I’m not, really. It's just difficult to talk
about, and I’ve been rather dreading it.”
“My curiosity will keep till another time,” Martin said,
somewhat to his own surprise.
“It wouldn't be any easier another time,” she said. “Besides,
I know I shouldn't be secretive, and it will probably be good
[133 )


for me to talk about it again. And there isn't really much point
in telling you what happened without telling the why of it as
well.”
She brushed the dried clay from her hands and accepted
the cigarette he held out for her. “I know you were married,”
he said helpfully, “and that's just about all I do know.”
“That was when I was eighteen,” she said. “I could go back
before that and tell you about a couple of parents who
shouldn't have been permitted to have children, but that
seems pretty much beside the point. It's easier to begin when
I was eighteen and going to a small college in the Middle
West. I was very gay at being away from home, and thought
I was very grown up because I'd read a lot of books, and I fell
in love with one of the instructors, Larry Burton. That spring
Larry got just the break he'd been hoping for, an assistant pro-
fessorship at one of the Ivy League colleges, so we got married
and came East.”
“I know your husband was a colleague of Bill's,” Martin
said, to spare her any unnecessary evasions.
“That's right,” Sally agreed absently. “He was just ten years
older than I. That's young for an assistant professor, but Larry
deserved it if ever anyone did. He was the most brilliant boy
I've ever known. And one of the best looking, too. I wish I had
a picture to show you, but I threw them all out a few years
ago. I adored him madly, and I loved the life of being an
assistant professor's wife. I was . . . less serious than I am
now, I suppose, and all the academic feuds went right over
my head, and I just had a wonderful time. Larry used to bring
the bright young men from his classes home for cocktails;
they were just my age, but already they seemed like such kids
to me. But they were fun, too. Oh, everything was just heav-
enly. And then one day I came home and found Larry in bed
with one of his bright young men.”
[134 )


Martin, who had gradually been coming to suspect some-
thing of the sort, wasn't too surprised. “You probably didn't
even know such things existed,” he said sympathetically.
She grinned at him briefly. “The Middle West isn't as back-
ward as all that,” she pointed out. “Besides, I've already said
that I had done a lot of reading. No, the idea of homosexuality
never bothered me; it was just finding it in Larry. And it's
probably difficult for a man to understand just what that did
to me.” In her anxiety to express herself clearly, Sally was
wearing that look of schoolgirlish concentration Martin had
been charmed by before. “You see, a girl in love—physically
in love as well as all the rest of it—is proud of her femininity,
proud of whatever attractions she may have . . . and all that
was suddenly taken away from me. It was the most helpless,
hopeless feeling in the world.”
“You’d been rejected in favor of something you couldn't
compete with,” Martin offered.
“That's it exactly,” Sally said gratefully. “If it had been an-
other girl, I could have fought, and even if I'd lost nothing
much would have been damaged but my ego. As it was,” she
shrugged, “all my values went topsy-turvy. That was part of
it, anyway. Then, too, it seemed that my happiness had been
based on a complete delusion; that Larry had never loved me
at all, that he had just used me as a blind to protect his nice
new job. Much later on, when it didn't matter any more, I
found out that wasn't true. He had loved me—as much as he
could, anyway. He was so unhappy with himself as he was
and wanted to change, wanted desperately to be normal. And
he fell in love with me and hoped that with me he could be
normal. But it didn't work out that way.”
“It rarely does,” Martin said.
“I suppose not. But I’ve often thought that if I'd known, at
least, I might have been able to help him more.”
[185 )


that I’d come out of the dream world I'd fled into, and it was
just a matter of learning to face up to reality. They stopped
the baths and the shock treatments, and set me to occupa-
tional therapy. God only knows how they decide these things,
but in my case they gave me clay to play with. And that's how
I happened to discover that I have a talent for the stuff.”
“Good Lord,” Martin exclaimed.
Sally nodded. “Yes, it's funny how these things work out.
Well, I came out of the hospital to find that I had to build a
new life right from scratch. Enough of the facts had come out
to send Larry's career down the drain; he'd gone West, got-
ten the divorce, and the last I heard he had a job grading
papers for a correspondence school. It seems a terrible waste.”
Martin could find no pity to spare for Larry. “What about
you?”
“I wouldn't go home to be brooded over, so I went to New
York. I studied ceramics like mad and went to my analyst
three times a week. My family sent me money, and Larry sent
me some whenever he could, but it wasn't enough, so I got
jobs for a couple of months at a time. By then I had a pretty
good idea of what I wanted to do, so I worked mostly as an
interior decorator's assistant, to have the contacts for later on.
After about a year I found I couldn't afford both the analyst
and the pottery classes, so I gave up the analyst. I was pretty
sure of myself by then.”
None of Martin's considerable experience with women had
taught him to esteem the sex. For the most part he thought
women shallow creatures: even those who were not blind-
dominated by their instinct to perpetuate the race were un-
able to pursue any end remoter than next week's comfort. He
subscribed heartily to Bill Benson's dictum that their only
natural creative outlet was sex: even the most foolish of them
brought to a romance a flair and a subtlety that she showed in
[137 j


C H A P T E R 10
“Martin looks as if he's ready for another cocktail,” Eve
Benson observed in her most hostessy voice.
“That is just his normal expression, my dear,” Bill said.
“You shouldn't call attention to its significance.” Nevertheless
he got up obediently and began to do things with the cock-
tail shaker.
In all fairness, Martin had not been thinking of his empty
glass. He had been sitting passively, letting the other three
carry the conversation while he brooded over the suspicion
that his passion for the subtle, roundabout approach was a
major weakness. The occasion for this line of thought was the
fact that, although he had a highly important question to put
to Sally, he had completely thrown away the opportunity of
the drive from her place to the Bensons' in looking for a suffi-
ciently delicate opening. From worrying about this he had
gone on to reflect that if he had just pushed Grace firmly down
the basement stairs, instead of getting involved in his elabo-
rate car smash-up, he might now be a perfectly carefree
widower. It was a depressing line of thought, to be sure, but
no more so than many that occupied him these days.
[140 )


“You must tell us about this dreadful friend of Agnes's,”
Benson said greedily. “What the devil is her name?”
“Mrs. Hudderfield?”
“That's the one. Sally's mentioned her several times, with-
out going into any detail. I can never get Sally to describe
these impossible creatures: she's so soft-hearted she hates
saying unpleasant things about people even when they're
quite true.”
“That makes me sound so wishy-washy,” Sally complained.
“You are wishy-washy, my dear,” Bill assured her.
Just in time Martin realized that he was being baited, and
refrained from leaping to Sally's defense. It disturbed him to
know that Bill sensed his infatuation, till it occurred to him
that Sally had perhaps been talking of him to the Bensons,
and that idea, though it had its disquieting side, raised his
spirits considerably.
He dutifully tried to appease Benson's appetite for odd
characters by describing Mrs. Hudderfield, and did his very
best to make the lady sound amusing, but his heart wasn't
really in it. When a superior person like himself was filled
with self-doubts, Mrs. Hudderfield's unjustified complacency
seemed almost a personal affront.
Eve agreed with him to the extent that she said Mrs. Hud-
derfield sounded feahful, simply feahful, and went off in dis-
gust to the kitchen. Bill, on the other hand, purred delightedly
throughout and when Martin finished lamented that he hadn't
met the lady himself.
“She would have explained the Middle Ages to you,” Mar-
tin said.
“My students do that all the time,” Benson replied. “No,
the charm of people like Mrs. Hudderfield is their complete
lack of self-consciousness. The trouble with most of us is that
our self-consciousness acts as a kind of extra-temperamental
[141 |


timidity, so that we accept fools at their own inflated evalu-
ation simply to avoid being thought discourteous. Whereas
the Mrs. Hudderfields of the world go charging in where we
angels are too dainty or too cowardly to tread.”
“But she's a bigger fool than any of them,” Martin said.
“That has absolutely nothing to do with it,” Benson insisted,
suddenly serious. “That's your worst failing, Martin: once
you've decided that someone is a fool, you are incapable of
seeing anything about him except his foolishness. Your own
contempt blinds you to the fact that there are all sorts of
fools—clever ones, useful ones, dangerous ones, entertaining
ones—all sorts of them. But you just lump them all together
as your inferiors and dismiss them.”
“Oh, I know; there's some good to be found in everyone,”
Martin scoffed, thinking that Bill was sounding like Grace at
her most maudlin.
“Not necessarily,” Benson replied. “All I said was that
people aren't negligible for being what you call fools.”
“Tell me what qualities I’ve overlooked in Mrs. Hudder-
field,” Martin challenged.
“I haven't the remotest idea,” Benson replied. “Possibly the
same ones you've overlooked in her hostess.”
“Agnes?” Martin said. “I hadn't realized that you were one
of Agnes's champions.”
“Are there others?” Bill inquired.
“I’d be one of them,” Sally said quickly.
“And quite properly,” Bill agreed. “But Martin, here, con-
siders her a fool, if I’m not mistaken.”
Since Sally had already taken a position, Martin was more
circumspect than he otherwise might have been. “I think she's
a spoiled brat who's never grown up,” he said.
“Perfectly true,” Benson said, “but what does that prove?
[142 |


The same might be said of Richard Coeur de Lion, Teddy
Roosevelt, and possibly even me.”
Before Martin could think of a reply, there was an inter-
ruption from the kitchen. “Billeee,” Eve called.
“Excuse me,” Benson said. “Whenever Eve undertakes
hollandaise an extra pair of hands seems to be essential. No,
sit still, Sally. You're going to have to help later with the
dishes.”
Martin had wished for nothing so much as that Sally and he
might be left alone for a few minutes. He had promised him-
self that if this happened he would waste no time in devious,
roundabout approaches, but would grasp the nettle boldly.
“Sally,” he said with determination.
“Yes, Martin?”
“Ah . . . isn't Eve's new dress attractive?” At the last
moment he had decided that the nettle was a fragile thing,
and might easily be crushed.
“Yes, isn't it!” Sally agreed warmly. “Why don't you tell her
So?”
Martin gave due thought to this odd suggestion.
“You know,” she continued, “Bill may have been talking
about Agnes and Mrs. Hudderfield but I wouldn't be sur-
prised if he had Eve in mind too. I don't blame you for think-
ing she's rather a fool, but I wish you wouldn't make it so
obvious that you think so.”
“Do I?” Martin asked in amazement.
“I’m afraid you do. There's a lot more to her than I think
you realize, and anyway she's been awfully kind to me. For
my sake, at least, I wish you'd try to be nicer to her.”
“I’ll try,” Martin promised. The sheer pointlessness of wast-
ing time on Eve Benson evoked the boldness which he had
previously lacked. “Sally, listen. There's something I want to
[143 ]


cently, and now still another was added to the list: it was
with something very like humility that he asked, “And what
did you decide?”
This time her smile was mischievous, and something more
as well. “You’re taking me home later, aren't you?” she asked.
“We can straighten that out then.”
“A tradition-loving colleague of mine has just sired a seven-
pound daughter,” Benson explained as he slipped the cello-
phane off the cigar and sniffed at it doubtfully. “If this is any
indication, I suspect he wanted a son.”
Sally and Eve were out in the kitchen doing the dinner
dishes while Martin and Bill callously enjoyed their coffee in
the living-room. The meal had gone well. In a rare state of
elation, Martin had beamed upon everyone, and made a par-
ticular effort to be nice to Eve. Sally had appreciatively
squeezed his hand under cover of the table, and Martin, quite
fatuously happy, had redoubled his efforts. Now he beamed
at Benson with uncertain affection. Sally had made quite a
point that afternoon of Bill's fondness for him, and it would be
nice to be quite sure she was right. If he could be confident of
Bill's friendship, he could strike Bill from his dwindling list
of suspects, for the blackmailer was certainly no friend. But
how could you test a person's friendship?
“It was lucky for you Eve called me into the kitchen when
she did,” Benson remarked. “I was just about to illustrate
Agnes's essential good-heartedness by reminding you that she
went out of her way to be kind to Sally back in the days when
you were asking me why I bothered to have that odd, silent
girl over so often.”
“I never did,” Martin protested automatically. It had oc-
curred to him that there was one way, crude but effective, to
test a friendship. But was it too absurd?
[145 )


“You did,” Benson said, “you most certainly did. You called
her a frightened rabbit, and I distinctly remember your ask-
ing what I could see in someone with just enough intelligence
to keep her mouth shut.”
“You’re making all this up,” Martin said. Normally he would
have taken his idea home, fussed with it, worked it all out,
rehearsed it. But this evening was different. The thought that
in a few hours he would be taking home a complaisant Sally
filled him with exuberance and self-confidence. He could cope
with anything. Caution was for lesser folk. “Bill,” he said
impulsively, “I have a tremendous favor to ask of you.”
“Ask away,” said Benson, with an airy wave of his cigar.
“Can you lend me ten thousand dollars?”
The cigar stopped in mid-flourish. “Are you serious?” Ben-
son asked bewilderedly.
“Quite serious.”
“But with Grace's money and your own . . . you ought to
be in fine shape.”
“I know it,” Martin said ruefully, or as ruefully as he could
manage. “I don't want to go into details, but it's beginning to
look as though I may have made a damned fool of myself in
the stock market. I don't know yet. But I may need a devil of
a lot of money to pull me through, and even that might not do
it. I could be wiped out. In which case, frankly, it would be
quite a while before I could pay you back.”
Someone like Alex Frobisher would have pulled this story
to pieces in no time, but Benson swallowed it without ques-
tion. From past experience Martin was aware that whereas
Bill knew everything there was to know about medieval
economy, he was as innocent as a child about the financial
structure of the world he lived in. Wall Street, to him, was just
a malevolent agency which had whisked away his father's
capital by means which Bill preferred not to understand.
[146 )


Martin mumbled shame-faced thanks.
“Not to the tune of ten thousand dollars,” Benson told him,
glaring fiercely. “I simply couldn't raise that much. But if you
absolutely have to have it, I expect I can scrape together six
or seven thousand. You'll have to find the remainder some-
where else.”
Martin was both astonished and embarrassed by the suc-
cess of his improvised plot. On the one hand, he had had no
idea that Benson regarded him that fondly; on the other, he
could not have conceived of anyone making such a grave de-
cision in such an offhand manner. Evidently Benson either
discounted practical considerations where friendship was in-
volved, or he so despised the mercenary instincts of his neigh-
bors that he preferred to pretend that he had none of his own.
But in any case such unhesitating generosity made Martin
feel ashamed of himself for having put Benson to the test, and
he immediately set out to undo as much damage as possible.
He said that he was probably being unduly pessimistic, that
everything would doubtless straighten out in due course and
he wouldn't have to call on Benson for a penny.
Bill grunted skeptically, indicating that he thought it most
unlikely that any entanglement with Wall Street could end
otherwise than catastrophically, and that he was already re-
signing himself to the loss of what must have been the major
part of his life's savings. But if by any chance Martin did
emerge with his shirt, Bill had some trenchant advice as to
what should be done with the money, the essence of which
was that whereas there were some advantages to government
bonds, there were even more to a nice tin box buried in a safe
Ot.
"tiºning meekly to Benson's witty nonsense was Martin's
way of apologizing for ever having included Benson on his
list of suspects. What blackmailer could hear his victim's re-
[148 ||


quest for a staggering loan and respond, first with a harangue
on the subject of underpaid college professors, and then by
volunteering most of his laboriously acquired capital? No,
this was a friend, and a real friend. And it struck Martin as
rather ironic that he should never have realized what a friend
Benson was till he had come to think of him as a possible
enemy. Doubtless this was his own fault. Martin had never
thought of himself as a lonely man, but now it seemed to him
that his own capacity for friendship must have been relatively
shallow, if he could have regarded Benson's so lightly or been
so unsure of it.
In keeping with Martin's thoughts, when Benson had con-
signed to perdition the last known form of investment he re-
verted to the subject of Agnes, and Martin's inability to
appreciate her good quilities. “She's one of the civilizing influ-
ences in Alden Park,” Bill said. “Do you remember the cock-
tail party she gave for that Negro contralto, Elizabeth What's-
her-name?”
“And you'll recall that she invited mostly the stuffiest
people,” Martin pointed out. “She wasn't trying to civilize
them; she was just hoping to shock them.”
“She was,” Benson agreed, “and forty stuffed shirts dis-
covered that the colored wench was more charming company
than half their friends.” Then he looked at Martin in surprise.
“I think I see where you make your mistake. You think motives
are important. You haven't discovered yet that the only good
motives are the wrong ones.”
It was at this moment that the girls returned to the living-
room. From the inquisitive glance Eve threw at him, Martin
guessed that he had been a topic of conversation, and for once
the idea did not offend him. He smiled at Sally in hungry
possessiveness, and for the merest fraction of a second she
[149 |


drooped an eyelid at him companionably. “It takes a good
dinner to inspire Bill's best paradoxes,” she said.
“I don't see that it's so much of a paradox,” said Benson,
who would have been disappointed if no one had called atten-
tion to the fact that it was.
“I don't see that it makes much sense,” said Martin.
“The people who set out to do good are always meddlers,”
Benson explained, “and generally undo all their own work.
Unless there's money to be made in it, all the good that gets
done is done by accident. Agnes is one of those accidents.”
“And what good does Agnes do?” Martin asked.
“She makes people think,” Benson replied. “That's why they
dislike her so much.”
Martin merely sneered, but sneering effectively was an-
other of his accomplishments. Most people seemed to believe
that sneering belonged in old-fashioned melodrama, and left
the expression out of their repertoires, but Martin had per-
fected an eloquent sneer, well calculated to drive argumenta-
tive friends out onto insecure conversational limbs.
“Oh, it's quite true,” Benson insisted as he began to set up
the card-table. “It’s unpleasant to have to admit that Agnes
succeeds where you and Imerely put people on the defensive,
but it's so. People who usually think in clichés are chary of
uttering them when she's around, because she's perfectly
capable of making fun of them. They can't resent her because
they know she's not one bit cleverer than they, but they're
frightened because she's so unpredictable. So to avoid being
ridiculed, they actually have to go to the trouble of thinking
before they speak. And to some extent that becomes a habit
that persists even when Agnes isn't around.”
“I doubt that,” Martin said.
As soon as everything was in place, Eve slid into her seat
and began shuffling the cards with a sharp, impatient rifle.
[150


Martin was sincerely astonished to discover that there
could be two interpretations of Agnes's character so different
from his own and from each other. In a vague way the dis-
covery troubled him, but he was not allowed to find out why
or to brood about the matter: Eve took matters firmly in hand
and made the three of them concentrate on bridge. As usual
the game settled down to a battle between Martin and her,
with Bill and Sally as innocent bystanders who took the blame
meekly whenever a hand went sour.
Although the cards ran his way, and at first sheer exhilara-
tion enabled Martin to play over his own form, he could find
very little pleasure in the game this evening. He did his con-
scientious best to think of Sally solely as a bridge-partner,
and tried to obliterate from his mind the fact that in a few
hours he would be taking her home and almost certainly to
bed; but he didn't succeed at either one for very long at a
time. As the hours crept slowly by, the sight of Sally frown-
ing studiously over a hand tended increasingly to arouse ir-
relevant and distracting thoughts. And the more impatient he
became for the hour when they might decently depart, the
more his concentration suffered. Eve had a field-day, calling
attention to his mistakes with malicious glee, but for once
Martin was feeling too benign to retaliate.
Five rubbers, and it was scarcely ten-thirty. A sixth (de-
layed by a dispute between the Bensons over how one hand
should have been bid), and it was a few minutes past eleven.
Martin, who seldom had been more wide awake, doubted if
he could muster a convincing yawn, and peered ostentatiously
at his watch. The Bensons looked horrified, and said they must
play just one more rubber. Sally looked innocent, and said
that would be lovely. Martin did his best to look agreeable.
The Bensons looked puzzled when Sally burst out laughing
and refused to explain why.
[152 )


Inevitably the last rubber produced a series of plausible
but impossible contracts, and dragged on interminably. Mar-
tin made matters worse by relaxing his concentration and
letting his imagination race ahead to Sally's bedroom, with
the result that he misplayed a couple of hands which would
have ended the rubber then and there. By the time he pulled
himself together, the cards had gone back to being contrary,
and it was well after midnight before the scores were finally
totaled. The Bensons had lost the vast sum of eighty cents—
and of course Bill lacked the proper change. Martin suggested
hopefully that the score could be carried overtill the next time
—but no, that would never do, and Eve vanished up the stairs
in search of her purse, which was eventually located out in
the kitchen.
This last delay might have done unfortunate things to
Martin's good humor if Sally had not kissed him promptly as
he was helping her into the car. “I thought we'd never get out
of there,” he grumbled as he settled behind the wheel and
started the motor.
“So did I,” she assured him.
“You tease!” he laughed. “You were the one who got us into
that ghastly last rubber.”
“I was just thinking of you,” she said. “I know how fond of
bridge you are. Besides, it would have looked odd if we'd left
that early, particularly after Eve spent half an hour warning
me against getting involved with you. She thinks you're cyni-
cal, untrustworthy, and too old for me—all of which means
that you've been sarcastic with her much too often. But I told
her you were nice.”
Martin's vanity was wounded. “How old does she think I
am?” he demanded of the night.
“I have no idea,” Sally said. “Anyway, I told her I preferred
the elderly, dignified type, so it was perfectly all right.”
[153 ]


“The elderly, dignified type, eh?” Martin said. In the reflec-
tion from the headlights he could see that she was looking
remarkably demure. He braked the car to a stop beside the
road, disengaged the gears, and pulled her to him. For a mo-
ment he kissed her hungrily and expertly; then he ran his
hand down from her shoulder over the curve of one breast,
firmly but without pausing, and down to the tender spot
among the lower ribs. Then he tickled her mercilessly. When
she was gasping for breath he let her go, reengaged the gears,
and drove sedately on.
“Untrustworthy, just as Eve said,” Sally muttered, and he
let her have the last word for the moment. When they reached
her house she asked in her politest tone if he would like to
come in for a night-cap.
“I'd be delighted,” he assured her, and followed her to her
door.


C H A P T E R 11
“Draw the curtains,” Sally said briskly. “It would never do
to shock dear Dr. Finletter.” Then she vanished into the bed-
room.
Martin did as he was told, and then mixed a couple of light
highballs and sat down on the couch. He lit a cigarette and
waited quite patiently, though with some curiosity, for Sally
to reappear. Marriage had not dulled the imagination of his
approach to the mating-dance, nor had prostitutes diminished
his appreciation of the artistry that could be brought to it. In
his bachelor days he had settled on a rule-of-thumb for such
moments: seduction called for a certain amount of initiative,
but if the lady obviously expected to be made love to, it was
better to let her establish the mood. This was not just laziness
on his part. He had discovered that, except for virgins (who
were never worth the bother anyway), each woman had her
own private notions as to what was romantically or erotically
suitable, and it was generally simpler and more satisfactory
to humor her at the first encounter. Later on he could teach
her better, if necessary.
Apart from its other advantages, this approach had kept
his own technique from slipping into a rut.
[155]


He found it hard to imagine what to expect from Sally.
Whatever logic had led to her decision to accept him as a lover
had evidently left her with no stray doubts; she seemed quite
carefree in a matter-of-fact fashion, and she was obviously
having a fine time with her own impish style of seductivity.
It could be assumed that she had had no lover since her hus-
band. That much was implicit in her story. She had been
young at her marriage—far from the sexual maturity which
she was just now entering—and it was most unlikely that her
husband, with his homosexual inclination, would have been
very adept as a lover. So, as far as experience went, Sally was
probably still relatively innocent, and Martin instructed him-
self to keep to the essentials and eschew the more esoteric
refinements. It was a critical step that Sally was taking, re-
suming a more normal life, and it was his job to make that
step as simple and uncomplicated as possible. He must do
nothing to startle her—
“Is that my drink?” asked Sally, materializing so suddenly
that Martin jumped. It dismayed him slightly to realize how
tense with anticipation he had become. “Whatever were you
in such deep thought about?” she asked.
“Silly question,” he said. Her shoes and stockings were
gone, but she was still wearing the pale blue cashmere sweater
and the darker tweed skirt. He was glad she hadn't changed,
partly because he had feared the inhibiting associations of
the terrycloth robe, and partly because all evening long he
had been anticipating the sensual possibilities of the cash-
mere SWeater.
He had expected her to sit down beside him, but instead
she picked up her drink and wandered off to a far corner. “I’m
an elderly and dignified gentleman,” he reminded her, “and
chasing you around the house would undoubtedly wear me
out.”
[156]


“There's something I want to show you,” she said, and he
saw that she was fumbling in a cupboard.
She brought it to him diffidently and put it on the coffee-
table before him: a reclining nude, modeled in some greenish
material he was too ignorant to identify. The body was that
of an ecstatic bacchante, big breasted and heavy thighed; the
face was hidden by long trailing hair. The workmanship was
crude, but the fleshiness and the abandoned disposition of
the limbs gave a powerful impression of almost orgiastic sexu-
ality. Martin realized, from the way Sally had presented it,
that the work had some special significance for her, and that
he was expected to divine it. “When did you make this?” he
asked.
“When would you imagine?”
“Not too long after you got out of the hospital,” he hazarded.
Sally nodded. She was sitting beside him now, her feet
tucked beneath her, looking bemusedly at her own creation.
Martin had no interest at all in guessing games, but knew that
he was being put to a test of some sort, so he forcibly with-
drew his attention from the lithe living body and focused it
on the voluptuous inanimate one. There were so many per-
sonal meanings it might contain, and he wasn't feeling clever
at all. “A self portrait of sorts,” he offered, hoping that vague-
ness might be taken for profundity. “A Sally you would have
preferred to the real one?” If he meant anything, it was that
she might have wanted to be more passionate than she then
WaS.
“That's it,” Sally said delightedly. “You have no idea how I
hated my own body then. Larry had always been so enthusi-
astic about its . . . boyishness. That was the adjective he had
used. When I understood why—oh, how I wished I were more
womanly! I'd have sold my soul for a body like that one there.
Now it doesn't seem to matter so much, but I wondered if
[157]


you’d understand. I should have known that you would.”
Martin accepted the credit without shame.
“Forgive me for bringing up Larry, which wasn't very tact-
ful,” she said. “I suppose that whole business isn't as well
buried as I had hoped.” She leaned back, her body arching
provocatively against the cushions. “Does my boyish figure
attract you, Martin?”
This was heavy-handed coquettry, but Martin realized that
she was trying to make up for the rebuff of the other after-
noon, and in any case was not disposed to quibble. “Not be-
cause it's boyish,” he said, and reached for her.
The somewhat boisterous passion of her response en-
chanted him, and made him want to weep for the waste of
her celibate years. His own celibate months merely added
zest to his ardor.
Her kisses were eager and long, and with an exciting re-
laxedness which had been lacking the time he had tried to
make love to her and failed. Then there had been reserva-
tions based on uncertainty, even fear; now there were none.
Then he had been offering caresses which she had welcomed
only diffidently, until finally she had refused them; now she
raked her fingers across his back in invitation for his hands
to greet her breasts, and he was not backward about accept-
ing the invitation. The cashmere sweater fully lived up to
expectations, but did not last for very long. He followed her
into the bedroom.
Always Martin had been extremely conscious of the tech-
nical dexterity of his love-making, the skill with which he
hunted out a woman's own particular eroticisms and excited
her with them, and this time was at first no exception. He
had made himself into a polished practitioner of the refine-
ments, and he delighted in the aesthetic finesse with which
he performed very nearly as much as he enjoyed the pleasure
[158 )


itself. But this time, somewhere along the way, any conscious
aestheticism was driven out by a joyous passion of a strength
that was utterly new to him. His dexterity was none the
hastier for it, but the intensity of feeling that gripped his
entire being was such as he had never experienced before.
After a climax that was more gently violent and then more
deeply satisfying than any he had known, he was shattered.
For a time he lay breathless and empty, drifting in the new
knowledge of why some poet had applied the word “dying”
to this consummate act. Then he became aware again of the
one beside him in the dim light, and he was swept, to an ex-
tent that was almost physical, by waves of grateful love for
the girl who had called up such passion in him, and in frag-
ments of sentences he tried to tell her what she meant to him.
She stirred herself and rumpled his hair, kissed him. He
was instantly frightened to find more tenderness in the ges-
ture than he wished to see. Was it possible that she had not
experienced an intensity of feeling comparable to his own?
This touch of doubt suspended some of his joy in the moment.
Hoping for reassurance, he asked.
She kissed him again and pulled his head down between
her breasts, urging him to silence. But he was really alarmed
now, remembering that she had never said a word about lov-
ing him. He pushed himself away. Surely she realized how
much he loved her? he demanded of her. Surely she could
love him no less?
“Don’t be so upset, Martin,” she said gently. “You have
every reason to know how fond of you I am.” Mutely he
begged her to go on, and finally she did. “Don’t you under-
stand that I'm still afraid of any emotion stronger than that?”
she asked almost sulkily. “That was what gave me the courage
to come into this affair: the belief that I wouldn't have to
worry about getting in over my emotional depth. I don't have
[159 |


won't love you,” she continued, after a moment in which Mar-
tin had brooded over the way all but the most fleeting
glimpses of happiness had always seemed to elude him. “All
I've said really is that right at the moment I'm not capable
of anything much more than an affair. And I think that when
you're less tired and upset you'll be able to forgive me for
that.”
In the welter of his self-pity, Martin was remembering a
fragment of a line he had once heard: “I have had my hand
upon the stars. . . .”
“Why don't you try to take a nap,” Sally suggested. “I’ll
wake you in an hour.”
Martin knew for a fact that he could not possibly sleep with
this new calamity upon him—but he did, for sixty minutes
by the clock.
“You don't look well this morning, and that's a fact.” Mrs.
Hodges brought this cheery information in with the grape-
fruit. “Didn't you sleep well last night?”
“Not especially,” Martin admitted. After he had returned
home, about four in the morning, his mind had been bubbling
with the problems that needed to be thought out, and his
efforts to postpone such thinking until the morning had been
rather frantic than successful. What sleep he had gotten had
been troubled by dreams of a derisive Grace, who seemed to
find his various predicaments hilariously funny.
“You’ve been looking run down recently,” Mrs. Hodges
continued. “Maybe you ought to see Dr. Osborn.”
“Maybe I shall,” Martin said for the sake of peace. He ate
his breakfast listlessly and retreated to his study for the first
cigarette of the day. On the desk, in a tidy pile, lay the notes
and documents for the biography of his grandfather—symbol
of the contented widower's life—untouched these several
[161 |


months. Martin stared at them gloomily for a bit, contrasting
the innocent days when he had last worked on them with his
present tortured, feverish existence, and briefly wondered if,
after all, murder had really been such a logical solution to his
previous dilemmas. But there could be no profit in that specu-
lation, and he pulled himself back to consideration of his
immediate situation.
Last evening, with more than half his mind devoted to
Sally, he had given no more thought to the elimination of
Benson as a possible blackmailer than to regret that he had
never before realized how fond of him Bill really was. Now
he had to face the knowledge that without Benson, his list
of suspects was reduced to two names: Sally and Agnes.
From his hiding-place in the desk he took out the two letters
from the blackmailer and reread them slowly, weighing every
phrase. With his present knowledge, it now seemed obvious
that there was something feminine about the style: an effemi-
nate use of words, a feline quality to the animadversions—
and he wondered that he hadn't noticed it before. Moreover,
come to think of it, there was some significance in the black-
mailer's timid secrecy: a man would not have been so fearful
about coming directly to him.
Sally or Agnes? If his life depended on it (and it easily
might!) how could he be expected to be objective about such
a choice? Every instinct demanded that he dismiss Sally at
once and settle upon Agnes, but the much-battered remains
of his intelligence protested against such an abject surrender
to his emotions.
Yet it was intolerably difficult to think of Sally without
dwelling on the astonishing strength of his love for her. He
was still shaken from last night's experience, though he was
by no means sure that he liked what had happened. There
[162 )


moral means in order to get a little additional income?
There was her natural gentleness. Benson had commented
on her inability to say unkind things, however true, about even
the most dreadful people. Could such a person, even for the
sake of deception, have authored the sneering viciousness of
the two letters he had received?
Yet even stronger than that gentleness was the integrity
which last night had kept her, even at the cost of hurting him,
from so much as hinting at promises which she might not be
able to keep. Could a person of such integrity have embarked
on a project that was not merely criminal but cruel, under-
handed, and devious?
Martin was pleased to answer all three questions with a
thumping No.
And there was still another argument, more weighty than
such a delicate matter as interpretation of character. Sally's
story of her background had to be accepted as true: it would
be too easy to check for there to have been any sense in falsi-
fying it. Now, even if she had exaggerated her uncertainty in
her emotional stability, surely anyone who had been through
such an experience would be wary of emotional whirlpools
forever after. It seemed unlikely that such a person would
undertake the strains of a course of blackmail, and downright
incredible that she would multiply those strains by getting
herself involved in an affair with her victim.
Could there be a flaw anywhere in this reasoning? With
heroic will-power he sustained his objectivity for five min-
utes longer to satisfy himself that there could not. Then he
surrendered. Sally was eliminated.
As for Agnes, he could think of no argument against her
being the blackmailer. She had opportunity, she might be
presumed to have means, she unquestionably had motive.
There was nothing in her temperament that made such a role
[167]


c H A P T E R 12
Martin glowered at the telephone. “Well, how about Thurs-
day, then?” he asked.
“What a shame!” Agnes exclaimed, sounding perfectly
cheerful. “We’re tied up then, too.”
Martin was exasperated. There had been no difficulty in
arriving at the tentative conclusion that the most practical
way to cope with Agnes was to kill her. But to do a thoroughly
tidy job of it, one that would leave no loose ends to plague him
afterwards, required that he have a much more intimate
knowledge of her habits and her personal life than he now
had. The simplest way out of this dilemma was to see as much
of her as possible, but Agnes was refusing to cooperate.
“What about some evening next week?” he persisted.
“Next week is so muddled, you have no idea,” Agnes said.
“Why don't I give you a ring?”
As a target she reminded him of one of those pingpong balls
which, in shooting galleries, bob maddeningly up and down
on uncertain spouts of water.
“All right,” he said, not knowing what else to say. But sheer
nervous exhaustion made him impatient, and it seemed in-
[169 |


ging at him; he could not possibly wait that long to continue
his research into her habits.
Martin's compulsion towards making an intimate collection
of the minutiae of Agnes's life was motivated only secondarily
by hope of turning up some weak point by which she might
be attacked. This was important, of course—it would be ridic-
ulously short-sighted to prepare a poisoned cocktail for a
teetotaler—but even more important was the need to reduce
Agnes, as quickly as possible, from a human being to a speci-
men of study. Only when this was accomplished could he
really begin to think of her as a prospective victim. Psycho-
logically speaking, the cold-blooded killing of a fellow crea-
ture was an ugly business, and the only way to keep from
being brutalized in the process was to convince oneself that
the victim was something less than human. Soldiers might
whip themselves into the belief that the enemy was a species
of vermin, fit only for extermination; the civilian murderer,
in peaceful social contact with his enemy, had to find a more
complex form of self-deception. To the extent that he was
sensitive, Martin was a humane and well-meaning individual;
he could not think (except tentatively in the suburbs of his
conscious mind) of killing his acquaintance, Agnes Herndon.
But from experience he knew that intimate inspection would
transform her into a walking collection of neuroses, habits,
frailties, small cruelties and petty sins. Then she would be
something less than human which could fittingly be sub-
tracted from the world; in short, a victim.
The sooner this could be achieved, the better. If Agnes in-
considerately was going to be reluctant to cooperate, then he
would have to learn as much as he could without her help.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of trailing her about ,
for a day or two. The thought of the discomforts involved,
[174]


ing tradespeople to gossip about another customer. All that
kept him from conceding defeat in advance was his innate
conviction that a superior person could do anything he set his
mind to. Nevertheless he frittered away the morning in pro-
crastinations and nostalgic reflections on the relative con-
venience of confining murder to one's own household.
But after lunch he went down to the village, with deter-
mination if no enthusiasm. He started with the bookstore,
where at least he was well known. The rental-library section
was happily untended, and he got a peek at Agnes's card.
Aside from murder mysteries she seemed to read only histori-
cal romances of the sort where the plot was a mere mechanism
to provide the hero, every fifty pages or so, with a new wench,
each with a more awe-inspiring bosom than the last. Martin
filed this taste away as evidence of Agnes's general expenda-
bility.
Then he sat in the car for some time, staring at the drug-
store. He would have liked to know if the Herndons were in
the habit of using sleeping-pills in any quantity, but was there
any plausible way to lure a pharmacist into disclosing such
information? Martin could think of none, unless the pharma-
cist were uncommonly talkative. But it was worth a try, so
he went into the store. The pharmacist seemed talkative
enough: he and an equally articulate friend were explaining
to one another how one of last summer's baseball games ought
to have been played. Martin stalled for time with a rootbeer
he didn't want, but when he gave up in disgust and left the
game had still only reached the fifth inning.
Ten harrowing minutes in the confectioner's elicited the
fascinating datum that Agnes bought a pound of assorted
gumdrops every other week. Martin had been prepared to
study up on poisons if necessary, but was easily discouraged
by the thought that there was no practical method of tamper-
[177 )


ness; that their love-making was doubtless inferior to his, and
their joy a trifle compared to that which he was capable of. But
none of these arguments prevailed against the simple fact that
they were happy, and he was not.
He envied them, that was the truth of it. These days his own
love was as much a pain as a pleasure.
“I thought you were coming down with something.” Sally
declared as soon as she saw him that evening.
“I do not have a cold,” Martin said firmly, and sneezed four
times in rapid succession.
“Of course you do,” Sally said impatiently. “You were an
idiot to come out on a night like this. Haven't you any sense at
all?”
Martin meekly supposed not, and tried to gain some credit
by suggesting that he had been irresistibly drawn to her, but
she was not to be appeased so easily.
“I’d like to put you to bed and keep you there for a day or
two,” she said, “but I can just imagine Dr. Finletter's expres-
sion when he woke up and saw your car still out in front. Yet
it's just wicked to let you go out again.” She glared at him
crossly. “What a muddle you can make of things. Honestly,
you need someone to look after you.” Then she looked ap-
palled at what she'd said, and went off in confusion to fix him a
drink.
He was delighted by her possessiveness. In spite of having
caught cold—and it was a very slight cold, at that—this was
unquestionably one of his luckiest days. He hadn't felt so con-
fident of himself in months. At long last things were going his
way, and Sally, too, was beginning to come around. He felt
sure that with a little time, and the peace of mind to woo her
properly, he could break down her reserve and persuade her
to let herself love him as he knew she could. Anything was
[188 )


to finish before seven in the evening, much to the exasperation
of non-participating wives and husbands. Martin thought it
scarcely conceivable that Agnes and Gerald would fail to take
advantage of such a perfect opportunity to snatch an extra
meeting. So he would only have to wait until tomorrow, and
even that much delay would have seemed unbearable if he
had not been almost manic with elation and self-confidence.
Although the weather forecast talked of more snow on the
way, the evening was mild, and he took his improved self over
to Sally's without fear of reproach. He announced that he had
spent the entire day in bed being looked after by Mrs. Hodges,
which wasn't entirely true but which served to satisfy Sally's
feminine notions about how a cold should be treated. He him-
self believed that if one ignored a cold it would go away, and
eventually it always did.
They chatted companionably about Sally's work, about
Alden Park, about how dull most of the local parties were com-
pared to the Bensons'. (Martin made a mental note to call Bill
the very next evening and reassure him that the Benson sav-
ings would not have to vanish into Wall Street's greedy maw
after all.) He found himself talking about the biography of
his grandfather, and was surprised to find that either neglect
had fertilized the project or some of Sally's industry had
rubbed off on him. He was now thinking of making the bio-
graphy into an intimate study of local state politics of the
time; as far as he knew, nothing of the sort had been done be-
fore. Of course, probably nobody would want to publish such
a book, but if it turned out well he might have a few hundred
copies printed up and give them to libraries and friends. Some
historian might even get a footnote out of it some time.
Sally appeared intrigued by the idea, and Martin, who had
been making most of it up as he went along, became more and
more enthusiastic as the possibilities multiplied even as he
[191]


that this was nothing but stage-fright, and that he would be
perfectly cool when he came face to face with her. With hands
that were not entirely steady he put the car in gear, entered
the driveway and stalled the motor in front of the house.
Between the driver's seat and the front door he rehearsed
his plans one frantic last time. He knew the door would be
unlatched; he would walk right in without pausing to ring,
and on into the living-room. Agnes would look up startled,
and say something cutting about his rudeness. He would gaze
at her with cold hostility, and say, “Never mind that, Agnes;
we have business to discuss. I believe you have some pictures
of me that I'd prefer not to have lying around.” Would she
deny it? He'd brush away her denials with withering con-
tempt. Would she be frightened? He'd assure her calmly that
she had nothing to fear, that he only wanted to make a little
bargain with her. But beyond that point he could not plan;
everything would depend on the way Agnes reacted. Besides,
the front door was at hand.
He walked in without pausing to ring, and on into the
living-room.
“How nice of you to drop by,” Wally said hoarsely. “How
did you know I was sick?”
With a frustration and a fury which he strove to keep from
reaching his face Martin stared at Wally—in pyjamas and
bathrobe, with a blanket around his feet, stretched out on the
sofa with a mountain of pillows propping him up. His nose was
red and his eyes were runny. On the table beside him were a
box of tissues, an atomizer, pills of three different colors, and
a glass of orange juice. Stunned though he was, Martin was
able to make the deduction that Wally had an even worse
cold than his own.
“Sit down, Martin,” Wally urged. “You don't look so well
yourself.”
[193 )


and continued to prattle away contentedly. He patted the
book lying face down on his belly and told Martin that Agnes
had found him a wonderful new bridge book to keep him
amused. “The most fascinating hands I’ve ever come across,”
he said in a moist whisper, and proceeded to describe them.
The trouble was, Martin decided, that all his confidence had
been based upon suppositions that this was true and that that
would work. However valid the suppositions might appear,
there was no real security until they were proven true and the
damning evidence was safely up in smoke. There was no more
real reason for his present black depression than there had
been for his excessive elation of the past couple of days. Noth-
ing had been changed—just postponed for a while. He simply
could not afford any more of these wild emotional ups and
downs; somehow he would have to pull himself together and
keep on an even keel until this ghastly business was over and
done with.
As Wally's voice became huskier and fainter, Martin
realized that he would have to begin his campaign of self-
discipline by playing out his role of the cheering visitor. With
nothing to go on but the fact that Wally had been babbling
on about bridge, Martin said the first thing that came into his
head: “Maybe those lessons Agnes is taking are to make her
into an expert at bridge.”
“Not at bridge,” Wally said with a wheezy chuckle.
“I thought you had no idea what they were all about.”
“Are you teasing me?” Wally asked. “Don’t tease me, Mar-
tin. You know perfectly well that Agnes isn't taking any
lessons.”
Martin felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. “What?”
he squeaked.
Perturbed pale eyes studied him. “Didn't you know?" Wally
asked. “I shouldn't have said that, then. I thought everybody
[195 |


knew by now. People have been hinting at me for weeks about
Agnes's affair with Gerald.”
So it was common gossip, and he hadn't heard a word of
it! But of course he wouldn't: people never gossiped with
him. . . .
Painfully Wally hoisted his bulk up on to one elbow and
stared at Martin with pleading eyes. “Promise me you won't
say a word about this,” he said with desperate earnestness.
“You must promise me that, Martin. When people hint at me
I pretend not to understand. Because the important thing is
that Agnes mustn't find out that I know. You can understand
that. It would be a terrible, terrible blow to her if she ever
found out that I know, and she has a frightfully weak heart.”


to a halt. “I suppose it can,” she agreed. She dabbled her
fingers in a bowl of clayey water and wiped them on her
dungarees. “May I have a cigarette, please.”
Normally her seeming lack of anger or outrage would have
chastened him, perhaps even frightened him a little. But now
he was concentrating every bit of attention on the problem
of how to ask what he had to ask without giving away too
much. He gave her a cigarette, lighted it for her with a hand
she had to steady with her own.
“You ought to be home in bed,” she observed.
“Never mind that,” he said. “Sally, have you . . . have you
been entirely honest with me?”
She frowned over the question. “Is anyone ever entirely
honest with another person?” she inquired. “I doubt that it
would be either possible or advisable.”
“Well, have you kept any secrets from me, then?”
“Probably lots of them.”
“Important ones, I mean,” he said with the dregs of his self-
control.
“Important to whom?" Sally asked sweetly.
“To me, of course,” he snarled, almost hating her for her
evasiveness. His head felt hideously stuffed up and was be-
ginning to ache, and it seemed intolerable that she wasn't
more sympathetic and understanding,
“Important to you?” Sally said. “It’s difficult to tell what is
important to you, Martin. From all you've said, I would have
thought that my affection was important to you, but if that
were the case I doubt if you would have come storming in
here as you did, demanding to talk to me, and then smash up
my work when I failed to give you my instant and undivided
attention.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Martin said tensely. “I really am,
Sally. I'm upset and my nerves are shot to hell, and—”
[202 |


“And you belong home in bed, as I said,” Sally put in.
“Perhaps I do,” Martin admitted, “but this is too important.”
“What is?” Sally asked.
“I can't explain exactly,” he muttered. He was reminding
himself that, innocent or guilty, Sally could know nothing of
what he had been going through the past months. As far as
she was concerned, he had simply been run-down and mildly
irritable the last few weeks—and now he had suddenly
marched in to rage at her. Even if she were his enemy, there
was no reason for her to know how he had reached this state,
or to understand that any fears she might nurse about reveal-
ing herself were completely groundless. He knew that he
could never harm her, whatever the circumstances, but how
could she possibly know that unless he told her? “Sally, you
realize that I would never do anything to hurt you, don't
you?” he asked beseechingly. -
“I don't know anything of the kind,” she replied. “You hurt
me quite a lot when you showed such lack of respect for my
work. Right now, I'm inclined to think I was wise to make
sure you couldn't hurt me any worse than that.”
“I mean, hurt you physically,” he almost shouted at her.
“If you could only see the way you're glaring at me now,
you’d understand why I'm not even so sure of that.”
Martin wiped at his brow, exasperated almost beyond en-
durance at the way she persisted in refusing to see how
desperately earnest he was. “Sally, you're being terribly diffi-
cult,” he told her wearily.
“I’m being difficult!” she exclaimed, on fire at last. “Martin
Pryor, you're the most disgusting egoist I’ve ever known.”
“You don't mean that.”
“Oh, I certainly do,” she assured him. “You barge in, you
lose your temper, you smash my work—”
“I’ve apologized for that!”
[203 ]


“I know you have. I'm sure you're apologetic every time
you're destructive, but you go on being destructive just the
same. Because you can't help it. Because you never think
of anyone but yourself. Because you're selfish all the way
through.”
“Not any more,” Martin said so imploringly that Sally was
thrown off her stride for a moment.
“Of course you are,” she said finally. “I’ve never had any
illusions about how selfish you were. That was what made
me feel safe in having an affair with you—knowing that you
couldn't care too deeply for anyone but yourself.”
“But I do. You know how much I love you.”
She looked away from his pleading gaze. “Oh, damn, I sup-
pose I do. Martin—go away, go home, go to bed. I've used up
today's patience and in a few minutes I'm going to lose my
temper or burst into tears or both, and I don't want to do
either.”
“Then you won't help me,” Martin mourned, blind to every-
thing but his own self-pity.
“Then you won't help me?” she mimicked. “Me, me, me.
Don't you see what I mean?”
“You’re the one who doesn't see,” he said dully, with little
hope that he could accomplish anything now except to an-
tagonize her still further. “That's just what I've been trying
to make you understand all along; that I'm not thinking of
myself, but of both of us.”
“Then you can stop right now,” Sally said, and started cry-
ing. “Now are you satisfied?”
Martin left.
On the slow drive home, past half-familiar landmarks
crouched behind the snow, his mind was working with a
[204]


benumbed lucidity, and he methodically examined his down-
fall to see if there was a loophole left anywhere. He scarcely
seemed to care whether or not there was. His sick, exhausted
depression had reached a state so deep that for the moment
he was capable of neither hope nor despair. Emotion had been
burned out in him. He was just remotely curious.
He could not run away and hide without giving up the com-
fort and security which were all he had to show for the first
forty-three years of his life.
He could not stay and endure the torment of his persecutor
—except perhaps with Sally to give him strength. Yet he
could not have Sally while the blackmailer was a source of
danger.
Anyway, apparently he had lost Sally. Yet even assuming
that he could woo her to forgiveness, persuade her to reestab-
lish the old, unsatisfactory relationship, what would be the
point of it? If she were his hidden enemy, then today had
shown at least that she could never trust him enough to re-
veal herself, and unless she did there was a barrier between
them that cut off any real hope of joy in the relationship.
And if Sally were not his enemy? Then somewhere along
the line the whole structure of his logic had been faulty, and
no part of it was to be trusted. The blackmailer might be any-
one in the whole world—the bootblack from this village, or
a casual sightseer from the next—and no amount of cleverness
or ingenuity would ever discover him. Besides, why search?
In Agnes's case he had been lucky enough to stumble on a
weapon he might have used against her, but that couldn't be
expected to happen again, and he knew that under no circum-
stances could he go to Sally with a second murder on his
hands.
So he could never have Sally anyway.
[205)


was starting up to bed with it when he spied the afternoon
mail on the hall table. There were two letters, and one of them
—how well he had come to recognize those chaste envelopes!
—was from the blackmailer. Martin scowled at it nervously.
Once he had greeted this sight with hope, seeing each new
communication as a possible flaw in his enemy's anonymity;
now he was only frightened. The timing seemed ominous.
When he went to pick up the letter he found that he was
shivering slightly, and even the cheerful snugness of his
study failed to warn him. He lighted the fire, drank off half
the scotch, and slit open the envelope.
The familiar salutation “My dear Martin:” brought on a
spasm of fury that almost blinded him; he had to force him-
self to calm down again before he could read on.
“I have been concerned by your interest in Sally Teal, and
had thought of ordering you to leave her alone, on pain of
exposure. But I am not so sure any longer. I have to admit that
she seems to be very fond of you, and unquestionably she
needs someone older and more stable than herself. If kept in
line, you just possibly might be the man for her. So, if she
will marry you, I have decided to give you as a wedding-
present the assurance that as long as you treat her well you
have nothing to fear from me. But if I ever learn of your tor-
menting her, as you enjoy doing to other defenseless women,
then I shall—”
Martin never reached the threat. The blackmailer's con-
cern for Sally had set him thinking, and now the remark
about tormenting defenseless women, reminiscent of some-
thing Grace had once said, suddenly made him realize with
sickening clarity who his enemy really was.
What an idiot he had been.
How foolish of him to have let himself be tricked into as-
suming that the blackmailer's only motive was money, when
[207 )


scrawled a quick note to Bill Benson, thanking Bill for his
generosity, and saying that his financial difficulties were all
a mirage but that other problems were too much for him. As
an afterthought he added a postscript, sending his regards
to Eve.
The note to Sally was more of a problem, a problem com-
plicated by the fact that his efforts to jog his feverish mind
to inspiration were interrupted by tears that came streaming
down his face. He was not sobbing, not even crying at all, but
still the tears came—the ultimate humiliation. He disregarded
them, and wrote “Dearest Sally:” in a firm hand, and then
paused to blow his nose with a loud and somewhat comic
honk. The thought that he was spoiling this most tragic mo-
ment of his life, just as he had spoiled the rest of it, really did
make him want to cry, but his tears contrarily had stopped,
and he snatched at the moment of sanity to marshal his
thoughts.
“Forgive me for my behavior of this afternoon,” he wrote,
“and try to understand that it was not entirely my fault.” He
wondered how he could possibly justify that ridiculous state-
ment, and promptly thought of one way that should arouse
Sally's special sympathy. “For more than a year now I have
been afraid that I was losing my mind; today's was just the
most recent of a long series of such aberrations.”
And now that the lying was done, and he could be com-
pletely honest with her for the first time, he could find no
eloquence in him.
“Thank you, my darling, for many of the happiest hours
that I have ever known. All my love, Martin.”
The triteness of the wording offended him, but otherwise
he was prouder of the letter than of any other action in his
whole life. It would shield Sally from any fear that she might
have been responsible for his suicide—and writing it was the
[210 )


most unselfish act he had ever performed. He spent a moment
regretting that none of the people who had accused him of
egoism would ever know how sublimely unselfish he could
really be. It seemed most unfair.
He sealed the notes, addressed them, and propped them on
the center of the desk. From the bottom drawer he got out the
revolver he had purchased against just such an eventuality,
and made sure that the safety-catch was off. And then, with
the same imaginative efficiency which all his life he had mis-
taken for superiority, Martin blew out his brains.








FOURTEEN DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
AUG 27 1955 LU
zººs
SEPI 2 1955 tº
20/40'56.JP
Tº 9 1986 tº
3Jun'60FW
RECTLD
JUN 3 1960
—iswelt"
Ar- -
***** º re
* *
º - º --> *
- .9 KK General Library
*ś 55 University of California
Berkeley