Fletcher Flora

The Seducer

1

Bradley Cannon, professor of mathematics at Peermont College, stood at a west window of his classroom, his hands folded behind him at the base of his spine, and looked out upon a bright October day.

In this position, he could look either down a gentle slope of browning grass to a small grove of fruitful walnut trees or, by the simple maneuver of shifting slightly the focus of his eyes, at his class behind him in the reflective pane.

The room was caught and held in concentrated silence, for Brad had sprung upon his students in the last quarter hour of this particular session one of the terrifying pop quizzes for which he was justly infamous.

He found pop quizzes to be amusingly deceptive. You put one problem on the blackboard for solution, two at the most, and if a student missed a point or two, the penalty was, after all, quite slight, say three points deducted from a maximum of ten, and often the student would go on in this way until the end of the term, happy and comfortable in the delusion that he was doing well, and never realize until it was too late that three from ten on a basis of one hundred is seventy, which is damn near failing in any respectable class. Brad had seen many strong young characters disintegrate under the impact of this tardy and terrible understanding.

On he blackboard today, Brad had copied the following problem, not original, which he had extracted from a supplementary text to which his students did not have access: The Great Pyramid of Gizeh, Egypt, has a square base. Its faces are isosceles triangles that intersect in the four edges. Before vandals removed the outer limestone casing and the top 31 feet of the pyramid, each edge was 719 feet 2.6 inches long and made an angle of 42 degrees 0.6 minutes with the horizontal. Find the original height and the length of a side of the base.

To the solution of this problem his students, for a maximum of fifteen minutes, were now dedicated, thus setting the professor free in the identical period for lazy reflection and discreet observation.

There was a red squirrel frisking among the walnut trees. Beyond the trees and a little above, a white cloud scudded across a hard blue sky. Brad sighed and glanced at his wrist watch, bringing one arm from behind him for the purpose.

Five minutes remained until the bell would ring and bring the session to a close. There was now, he noticed, an intermittent stirring in the room behind him, and he began to watch the shadow of matters in the glass. The stirring was created by students who had solved their problem and were leaving the room.

Each, upon completion, would fold his paper, sign his name on the outside, leave the paper on Brad’s desk, and quietly depart according to established procedure. Brad watched this orderly thinning of the population until, with one minute to go, there was no one left in the room except Miss Margaret McCall, more commonly called Maggie in the informal rapport of peers.

Brad now watched Maggie exclusively, and he found the watching a pleasure. He was aware, in fact, of a kind of excitement that expressed itself in mildly salacious prickliness.

She was sitting erect in her stiff desk-chair, applying pencil to paper assiduously, her ankles touching and her bare knees, still brown from summer sun, exposed delightfully below the hem of her short brown skirt. She seemed to be engaged in a furious race against time, the ringing of the bell. But it was clear from the movement of her pencil across her paper that she was writing, not computing. She had just finished, apparently, when the bell rang, for she immediately folded her paper and wrote her name and walked forward to Brad’s desk.

Turning away from the window, Brad met her there. He extended a hand for the paper, and she delivered it up to him with a grave smile that gave her small face a kind of inner light, a sorrowful translucence that seemed at once an appeal for clemency and an invitation to intimacy.

She was, he thought, a damnably insidious little charmer with her deceptive air of gravity and her soft pink mouth and her alluring brown knees — a paradox of sex and someone’s sister. Her head, capped by a calculated shag of brown hair, Italian cut, was cocked a little to one side. In its simple sweater and skirt, her body by some subtle trickery, possibly deliberate, was a slender incitement. Feeling suddenly short of breath, Brad concealed his temporary affliction behind a rather grim examination of her paper.

She had copied the problem dutifully from the blackboard, and there it was, neatly written on her paper in a small round hand, but there was no solution, not even an abortive attempt at a solution. After a line left blank — a hiatus to show clearly where trigonometry left off and something else began — the rest of the sheet was filled with a warm little communication of a personal nature directed to him, Brad, dear Professor Cannon.

He did not read the communication at this moment, refolding the paper instead and tapping it with an implication of restraint against the fingers of his left hand. He smiled at her faintly, yet making the smile broad enough to form the dimples in his cheeks of which he was invariably conscious.

“Well, Miss McCall,” he said with an effect of wry humor, “I see that you have failed again to find a solution.”

“That’s true,” she said. “I knew at once, when you wrote the problem on the board, that it was simply no use.”

“I see also, however,” he said, “that you have wasted your time entirely. You have, I believe, been employed for the past fifteen minutes in writing me another of your charming notes.”

“Yes, I have. Are you angry? I surely hope not, for it will make me feel bad if I have done anything to make you angry. There is always the fifteen minutes to put in, you see, and I never seem to know anything about the problem, or even how to begin solving it, and so I got the idea of using the time to write these notes to you, instead of wasting it. When you didn’t object after the first one or the second one, I thought it would be all right if I just kept on, and so I have.”

He looked at her sharply to see if he could detect in her expression the note of mockery that was incredibly absent from the tone of her voice. But she was looking at him gravely, in all apparent simplicity, and he felt, noting somewhat parenthetically the delightful thrust of her small breasts against her sweater, an acceleration of prickliness.

“No,” he said, “I’m not in the least angry. However, I think you have posed a problem, quite outside the area of trigonometry, to the solution of which we must now apply ourselves. Two heads, in this case will be better than one, I’m sure. Not now, though. You have another class coming up, and I mustn’t detain you any longer. I shall be free after three o’clock this afternoon, and I shall expect you to come to see me as soon thereafter as possible. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes. Perfectly.” Her mobile face of lights and shadows expressed such delight that he thought for a moment she was going to jump up and down and clap her hand like a small girl. “Three o’clock. I’ll be here right on time. You can depend on it. You must not forget and go off yourself, either. I’d be rather disappointed if you did.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be here. And now you had better run along to your next class. I trust that you will be better prepared there than you were here.”

As she went out, he watched the delightful play of contiguous nates. Then, seating himself at his desk with a free period to spend, he spent a brief part of it wondering how old she was, guessing twenty and giving her, actually, the benefit of five years and, not actually but in a valid sense, the immensely greater benefit of immeasurable eons, for she was, in this latter valid sense, as old as any age one would care to select from a geological table.

After a couple of minutes, he unfolded her paper again and began to read the note she had written while the rest of the trigonometry class had been attempting to discover the height and the length of a side of the base of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, Egypt. Before vandals, that is.

Dear Professor Cannon, he read, I find it remarkable and interesting that vandals would actually steal the top 31 feet of a pyramid, and I can’t understand why they would have wanted to do something like this, which doesn’t seem to make much sense. But I suppose there have always been certain people, even away back then, who would go to any trouble to do something that someone else wouldn’t want them to do.

I understand that pyramids are built of great blocks of stone that weigh tons and tons apiece, and I must say that taking off the top 31 feet seems to me to be even a greater waste of time and effort than putting them up in the first place.

I’m sorry that I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I hope you don’t feel that it is your fault, that you weren’t a good teacher or anything like that, because it is my own fault entirely in that I don’t seem to be able to care much about trigonometry or how big a pyramid was.

The truth is, you are the very best teacher I’ve ever had in anything, and it is a pleasure to listen to you talk and watch you show how to do things on the blackboard, even though I don’t quite understand what you are saying or showing.

I suppose I shall be put out of the class at the end of the term for not having learned anything, but I hope you will let me stay until then, at least, because I enjoy it so much for the reasons I have mentioned. Sincerely, Margaret McCall.

Refolding the paper, he leaned back and smiled, making a little tent of fingers tip to tip above his chest, elbows braced on the arms of his chair.

He conceded that Maggie McCall was nothing short of a remarkable phenomenon — altogether the most interesting specimen of college life that he had uncovered as a pedagogue. Or, for that matter, as anything else. And this covered a considerable area, to tell the truth, for Brad was especially sensitive to the enchantment of female students, as well as females in other categories, and it was one of his secret regrets that his particular forte was mathematics, inasmuch as enrollment in his classes was thereby rather severely limited. If he were teaching in another department, say English or Education, his sensitivity would have been exposed to a much more numerous and varied collection of stimulants.

This brought him, in his reflections, to one of the more curious matters relative to Miss Maggie McCall. How the hell, he wondered, had she ever managed to get into his trigonometry class?

It was assumed, naturally, that anyone enrolled in trig had satisfied certain essential prerequisites, such as algebra and geometry, but there was not the slightest evidence that Miss McCall knew any more about the latter than the former, which was about as much as you could teach a cat in three easy lessons. It was certain that her record had been checked upon enrollment, however, which indicated that these essential subjects were on her transcript, if not in her head.

Brad, who possessed his share of professional cynicism, was reasonably certain how this had come to pass, and it could be safely deduced from the evidence that Miss McCall, although abysmally ignorant in certain areas, was by no means stupid, and that she was, on the contrary, master of a technique for acquiring unearned credits that was palpably admirable and probably exciting.

Feeling again the pleasant prickliness, Brad got up and walked over to the windows and assumed his former position, hands holding each other at the base of his spine.

Using a short focus, he examined briefly his own reflection, taking note of the thick brown hair parted cleanly at the side and worn rather long over the ears in order to display the dusting of gray that made such an intriguing contrast with his boyish face.

He was a handsome man, no question about that. He had, in fact, often been compared in appearance with the late Ronald Coleman, and there was indeed a genuine resemblance, except that he, Brad, wore no mustache and had the added attraction of dimples. He looked a good ten years younger that he was, and he felt in certain respects ten years younger than he looked.

Lengthening his focus, he sought the red squirrel among the walnut trees and could not find him.

Releasing his right hand from his left, he looked at his watch for no good reason except that he was restless and rather bored with the prospect of classes until three o’clock, which was, suddenly, an hour of the day that he was impatient to have arrive.

2

Bradley Cannon was a charming man, and he had been a charming boy. He had been, by all reliable reports, a charming baby. This was undoubtedly true, for one does not change all at once in an instant, and one of Brad’s earliest memories was that of being fussed over by a group of admiring women who had come to play bridge with his mother.

He was very young at the time, possibly three, and he had thick golden hair, later to darken, and large solemn brown eyes that could be made to twinkle in response to proper attention. His manners were enchanting, even then, and since his mother claimed that they had been so from the beginning, as evidenced by a serene and considerate infancy at play and breast, it must be assumed that he learned them as an amiable embryo in the womb.

Moreover, to make almost too much of a good thing, he had a lively intelligence that found expression in an early ability to walk and talk and read from a primer.

These qualities prompted one of the first bits of surly criticism of the type that Brad was to receive frequently later from disgruntled males.

To be precise, however, it was not really criticism of Brad, but of his mother, and it was not so much criticism as slander. A neighboring husband and father was known to have remarked in company that such a paragon of brains and beauty could hardly have been the issue of Cannon, Senior, who had little of the former and none of the latter, and that he must have been, consequently, an outside job.

At any rate, Brad became aware easily and early of his capacity to charm, especially members of the opposite sex, and admiration was part of his basic conditioning. He learned first to expect it, and later he developed a strong compulsion to attract it, at any price, in every instance where he decided for one reason or another that he particularly wanted it.

In his tender years, this excessive need for essential admiration was, of course, a simple sort of thing that was adequately satisfied by little attentions and cooing confirmations of his superior attributes. But as he grew to puberty the need naturally developed glandular complications.

In the ideational readjustment brought on by glands, he discovered that there is, as between male and female, a specific biological consummation of physical attraction if it is thoroughly exercised — a kind of definitive capitulation of the female to the male, or possibly vice versa in cases involving males less dominant than he.

Being intelligent, he had correctly analyzed this quite some time before he was prepared to test it, and if in the initial testing, when it came, the conquest turned out to be somewhat more vice versa than otherwise, there was at least sufficient question about it that he was able with some justification to claim a draw.

His partner in this rather mutual conquest was a young lady, the daughter of a prosperous jeweler, who lived in the next block east of the Cannon’s modest home. Brad was fifteen at the time, but he was in his senior year of high school, thanks to having skipped a couple of years as a result of diligence and ability. The young lady, whose name was Fern, was five years older and two grades higher. A sophomore in college, she was currently at home for the Easter holiday.

Rumor had it that Fern was wild, and observation confirmed that she surely had not lacked opportunities in this direction, if she felt inclined to take advantage of them, for she not only had plenty of enticing features, taken head to toe, but knew exactly how to dress them up for maximum effect.

She and Brad were not wholly unacquainted with each other, having been nearly neighbors for years, but the considerable difference in their ages had kept the acquaintance superficial. Brad had sprouted recently, though, standing about five-ten, and Fern, having seen him pass in front of the house several times in the past couple of days, had felt a decided reaction in certain reactors, some of which are not supposed to function wantonly in young ladies at any time, and only discreetly in the most circumscribed of times.

Anyhow, she was bored by the holiday, therefore susceptible, and when she saw him approaching along the sidewalk on the afternoon of the third day, she just happened to decide to go out into the front yard at that moment, and being there, naturally, to speak to him.

“Hello, there, Brad,” she said.

“Hello, Fern.”

“You’re getting so big I hardly recognized you.”

“Well, I’m growing up, I guess.”

“And good-looking, too. Do you know that you’re very good looking, Brad? You’re just about the best looking boy I’ve seen in ages.”

Brad was in agreement with this judgment, although he would have omitted the qualification, but he didn’t think it would be prudent to say so.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“You are. You really are. What grade are you in now, Brad?”

“I’m a senior. I graduate this spring.”

“Honest to God? I thought you were only a sophomore.”

“I skipped a couple of grades.”

“Well, if that isn’t just too much! Some people have everything, it seems. What does a boy as good-looking as you need with all those brains besides?”

“I don’t know. They’re pretty handy to have.”

“I’ll just bet they are. They make school a breeze, I bet. Are you coming up to my college next year, Brad?”

“I’m not sure about that. It looks like I’ll get several scholarship offers, and I’ll have to look them over before I decide.”

“I hope you come up to mine. It would be nice to have you there.”

“Well, thanks. Maybe I will, after all.”

“Where are you going now, Brad?”

“Home.”

“If you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea or a coke or something?”

“That would be fine if you’re sure you want me to.”

“Of course I’m sure. It isn’t often I get to talk with a boy as good-looking as you.”

“Oh, come off it. I’ll bet there are plenty of better looking boys up at your college.”

She denied this, as he had expected, and they went up to the house and inside together. In the living room, he sat on a sofa in front of a fireplace in which there was a small wood fire, and she asked him if he wanted a coke or tea.

He wanted a coke, but he had a notion that it would create a better impression if he took tea, and so he did, and she brought it in from the kitchen in a pot with sugar and lemon slices on a tray.

“How would you like some music?” she said. “Don’t you think some music would be nice?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“You choose something.”

“Here are the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier. Do you care for these?”

He didn’t, knowing nothing about them, never having heard them. He had no appreciation whatever of music, in fact, this being one of his deficiencies that he was never able to correct. But he hated to confess to ignorance about anything, so he lied and said that he cared a great deal for the waltzes. She put them on the phonograph, and they began being played softly, but he was never aware in the slightest of the rare privilege he had that afternoon of executing, or suffering, his first seduction to the accompaniment of Strauss.

Fern sat down on the sofa beside him and poured tea and curled her legs under her, exposing a pair of nylon knees. The knees were quite close to his thigh, and when either of them shifted position a little, knees and thigh would touch lightly, and he began almost at once, in his youthful virility, to have a normal reaction that threatened to become apparent and prove embarrassing.

“In my opinion,” Fern said, “there is nothing quite like a fire and tea and music and good company. Don’t you agree?”

“Especially,” he said, “if half the company is you and the other half is me.”

“Well, what a charming thing to say, Brad. I was just thinking that myself.”

“It’s true. I’d much rather be here with you than with any other girl I know.”

“Do you mind that we’re all alone?” she asked, her eyes holding a bright sheen.

“I wasn’t sure that we were.”

“We are. My mother is at her bridge club and won’t be home until five at least. My father is at his shop, of course, and will be even later. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“It makes it all the better as far as I’m concerned,” he said, grinning.

“I’ll bet a good-looking boy like you has been alone plenty of times with girls.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because all the pretty girls with any sense would be trying to arrange it all the time, that’s what.” Fern’s voice was as soft as a caress and her eyes watched him with a warm and alert interest.

“Did you arrange it?” Brad asked.

“Well, I didn’t actually arrange it, because I just happened to be in the yard as you came by, but now that it’s sort of arranged itself, I’m perfectly satisfied.”

“Do you know what I’d like to do?”

“No. What?”

“I’d like to kiss you.”

“Say, you do work fast, don’t you?”

“What would you do if I did?”

“Better be careful. I might kiss you back, and you know what that can lead to.” She laughed lightly, her eyes warming him with their intensity.

“Tell me what.”

“I don’t think I’d better. You’re too young.”

“Come on and tell me. I dare you.”

“Something interesting, that’s all.”

“I’m going to go ahead and kiss you and find out,” he declared.

“Take your own chances, Brad.”

And so he did. His chances and her by the fire to Strauss.

To the magical music of the immortal waltzes, in shaggy pile before the dancing fire, she emerged in salacious three-four time from blouse and skirt and underthings. As nearly a poet at that time as he had ever been or would ever be, he thought that he had exposed, simply by removing her clothes, something wondrous and unique and entirely perfect — a new dimension in beauty that was his particular discovery. He explored the dimension with a kind of dreamy greed, his hands learning the shape and texture and response of small breasts and lean waist and agitated thighs. In the meanwhile, she was busy with his buttons, making her own discoveries, and in the end, locked head to toe, they still sustained, in spite of greed and agitation, the leisurely and lilting and enchanting illusion of having danced a peculiarly intimate waltz.

All this took quite a long and entertaining while, thanks to her superior ingenuity acquired through some experience. He felt for an instant immediately afterward a fearful dread of unpleasant consequences, for he had heard that many girls did this sort of thing in heat and haste and then became stormy vessels of regrets and recriminations.

To his vast relief, Fern did no such thing. She was, more than anything else, like a kitten full of cream. He was certain, in fact, that she literally gave off a soft purring that now and then assumed the intelligible sounds of endearments, and so he was fortunate enough to learn at the very first that there are women in the world who are capable of feeling a proper gratitude.

She continued to lie streatched out in front of the fire without embarrassment in nothing but stockings that had somehow not got removed. This lush lassitude proved, after a while, to be almost a major misfortune, for she was still there in that condition when a car turned suddenly into the drive outside.

Brad, as good luck would have it, was not quite so denuded, and he managed to get himself presentable in record time, while Fern scurried upstairs with her arms full of clothing.

When Mrs. Tillery, Fern’s mother, sailed into the living room a minute or two later, she discovered Brad sitting alone before the fire, neatly arranged and a perfect picture of rectitude.

He stood up, facing her, and flashed his dimples as he made the slightest bow from the waist. Mrs. Tillery, for her part, thought only what a ravishingly handsome boy Brad was, and she was absurdly glad, considering the long gap of time between them, that she was herself still slim and sleek enough to stir a wanton thought.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tillery,” Brad said.

“Oh, it’s you, Bradley. How are you? Have you been having tea with Fern?”

“Yes, ma’m. She just went upstairs for something. When she comes down, I’ll have to be leaving.”

“Did you have a pleasant time?”

“Oh, yes. It was very nice. We listened to the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier.”

“Those are nice, aren’t they? I think it’s so important for young people to learn to appreciate fine music.”

“I think so, too,” said Brad, who didn’t and never would.

At that moment Fern came into the room, repaired and composed, and Brad was compelled to admire an attitude of innocence so readily and perfectly assumed that it did not, as innocence must, seem assumed at all.

“Hello, Mother,” she said. “How was bridge?”

“Wonderful, darling. I had the most incredible run of good cards.”

“Brad and I have been having tea. It was fun, wasn’t it, Brad?”

“It surely was,” Brad agreed.

“Well,” Mrs. Tillery said, “I must change clothes and start thinking about dinner. Bradley, you must come for tea again sometime.”

“Thank you,” Braid said. “I’d like to.”

Fern took him to the door and showed him out, at the last moment giving his arm a firm squeeze and pursing her lips into the shape of a silent kiss. Returning after a minute to the living room, she found her mother still there.

“What a charming boy,” Mrs. Tillery said.

“He is, isn’t he?” Fern said.

“What a shame that he’s so much younger than you, darling.”

“He’s much more mature than most boys his age.”

“I could see that. Quite intelligent, too, I understand.”

“Well, he’s very interesting, I’ll say that for him.”

Saying it, however, she did not say precisely what she meant, and Mrs. Tillery, who had in fact been prompted by circumstances to recall a certain memorable episode among tea cups before a fire in her own past, did not, somehow, consider for a moment that anything remotely similar might have happened in the present instance.

Brad, making his way slowly toward his home in the next block, was considering with detachment a remarkable discovery that was later to be confirmed and reconfirmed and accepted as a significant and secret deficiency in the kind of person he was and had to be.

The discovery he had made with the fervent cooperation of Fern was simply that, while the imposition of his personality and the definitive capitulation of a partner in the act of love were enormously exciting and absolutely essential to his special ego, the act itself, for his part, was a flat disappointment. But he did not actually consider this a deficiency.

Eventually, indeed, he came to think of it as a peculiar strength. It helped him, in the end, to avoid becoming all mixed up and messy in a confusion of glands and brains.

3

Now, a quarter of a century after Fern, at three o’clock in the afternoon of a Friday in his classroom at Peermont College, Brad was waiting for Maggie McCall.

It is hardly exact to say that he was waiting at three o’clock, however, for he had just dismissed his last class of the day, and Maggie could hardly have been expected to arrive on the instant from wherever she herself was required to be at that hour, conceding that she was required to be anywhere at all.

By ten minutes after, though, Brad certainly considered himself to be waiting, and he didn’t like it. By a quarter after he was definitely annoyed and feeling considerably less amiable than he had formerly felt. But then she arrived, at precisely a quarter after, a little flushed and breathless, and Brad began immediately to feel amiable again, and rather amused in a patronizing way.

She came in and stood at something like attention in front of his desk, like a private before his captain. He told her to sit down and relax, for God’s sake, and she did, crossing her legs and showing her knees, which he observed and admired.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Professor Cannon,” she said, “but I was on my way here, and would have been here at three or just a little after, as I promised, but then I met Buddy outside the library on the way, and he was even more difficult than usual. I had to stop and talk with him and explain why I couldn’t do something we had planned to do, which took simply forever, and that’s why I got here late instead of getting here on time, as I really intended.”

She completed this explanation, miraculously, with a reserve of breath, and he watched her for a few seconds afterward with his amused expression, one of his best that involved the precise cocking of the left eyebrow, while she waited quietly for whatever judgment he would decide to pronounce.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I only meant as near to three as you could make it. Who’s Buddy?”

“Buddy? Buddy’s a boy I know. Buddy Jensen. He’s a student here. I don’t suppose you’ve ever met him because he never takes anything like mathematics that might turn out to be difficult.”

“I do hope that he’s not the reason for your having neglected to prepare a single trigonometry assignment since the term began.”

“No, no. You mustn’t blame Buddy. He’s persistent and often a bother, but I never permit him to interfere with anything I really want to do.”

“Am I to deduce that you didn’t really want to be here on time?”

“Oh, no. Why should you think so?”

“You said you never permitted Buddy to interfere with anything you really wanted to do, but you did, I believe, permit him to delay you.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it to be taken quite like that. I often have trouble saying exactly what I mean, to tell the truth, and some clever person like you is always twisting me up to mean something that I didn’t intend at all. Anyhow, Buddy was all upset because I couldn’t do this thing we had planned to do. I didn’t think a few minutes one way or the other would be very important.”

“Quite right. I rather suspect that Buddy himself isn’t very important. What do you say to disposing of him?” Brad picked up her paper, which had been lying at hand, and opened it. “This is a most charming little note, Miss McCall. I agree with you completely that stealing the top thirty-one feet of a pyramid was an exceptional piece of vandalism.”

“Besides removing the outer limestone casing.”

“True. Besides removing the outer limestone casing.

I’m flattered, since we apparently cannot communicate trigonometrically, so to speak, that you have devised this means of reaching me.”

“You aren’t angry?”

“Angry? Not at all.”

“I’m so glad. I thought you might be, and it would make me unhappy if you were. I only wanted to please you and make you notice me.”

“You’re an attractive girl, Miss McCall. It’s probable that I’d have noticed you in any event.”

“Thank you. It’s kind of you to say so.”

“It’s merely the truth, and I suspect that you are well aware of it.”

“Well, anyhow, I’ve never been told so by anyone so clever and important as you. It’s a great relief to know that everything is all right, after all.”

“Not entirely. We still have the small matter of trigonometry to discuss.” He tapped the paper with an index finger. “I’m gratified that you exonerate me of all blame for your almost perfect ignorance. As a matter of fact, I’m inclined to admire you, in a way. It must surely require considerable intelligence and ingenuity to sit in a class as long as you have sat in this one and learn absolutely nothing.”

She uncrossed her knees and placed them together and tugged at her skirt without any apparent effort. Lacing her fingers in her lap, she stared down at them and shook her head slowly and looked up again sadly.

“You’re being sarcastic,” she said. “It’s all right, of course, because I deserve it. I suppose you will put me out of the class.”

“I haven’t said that.”

“I won’t blame you if you do. I admit that I’m hopeless.”

“Perhaps you would tell me why you enrolled in the class in the first place. You were surely aware of your deficiency in mathematics.”

“Oh, yes. I know practically nothing about mathemaries, except simple things that almost everyone knows.”

“I’m curious as to how you managed it. As you must know, there are certain prerequisites to the study of trigonometry. Have you ever had, for example, algebra and geometry?”

“I’ve had them, naturally, for I wouldn’t have been permitted to enroll in trig if I hadn’t. But I didn’t learn anything, or hardly anything, and so they don’t help much.”

“But you must have passed the courses. How do you explain that?”

“I think it must have been because the teachers liked me for some reason and wanted to be kind or something.”

“I see.”

“My marks weren’t very good, of course.”

They must have been average, he knew, or she would have been denied entrance into his class. He was tempted to ask if her teachers had been men or women, but the question would have been strictly rhetorical, for its answer and implications were already clear enough.

Watching her with lively curiosity accompanied by the faint prickliness, he tried to diagnose the quality of the impression she gave. A kind of compromised innocence? Suggestive demureness? He liked both phrases and repeated them in his mind. Sensing the deception of her overt propriety, he felt as if he had peeped into a pair of cotton bloomers and found the private parts of the Queen of Sheba.

“We still haven’t solved the mystery of your enrollment,” he said. “You obviously don’t care for mathematics. I’m sorry to say that it’s equally obvious that mathematics is something that you know practically nothing about. You have admitted as much. Why in the devil, then, did you take my class?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“I’m not so sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t. I’m determined to tell you the truth, if I tell you at all, and it’s possible that it would only make everything worse.”

“Come, Miss McCall. I’m quite capable of facing the truth. I even prefer it on most occasions.”

“First you must promise not to be angry or amused or tolerant or anything disgusting.”

“I have no intention whatever of being anything disgusting.”

“Well, it was only because I wanted to be near you, of course, and have a time when I could simply sit and watch you do all the little things that are sometimes important in connection with a particular person, although they are not important at all in connection with anyone else.

“I had seen you on the campus before the term began, you see, and right away I fell in love with you and couldn’t help myself, no matter how I tried and kept telling myself that you were married, which someone told me, and were an older important person and all that. So I decided to enroll in whatever one of your classes was possible, which turned out to be trig, and I knew from the beginning that I would surely flunk it, but I didn’t care.

“I still don’t care, not in the least, but what I care about is that I will be put out of the class before the end of the term. I wish that you would let me stay, but I suppose you won’t.”

She was silent, watching him closely with grave apprehension. He arose slowly from his chair with the gaseous sensation of having had his cords cut.

In a lengthy career of major and minor conquests, he had never felt half so exhilarated as he did now. Certainly he had never been made to feel so absolutely heady by a college girl, many of whom had, naturally, been ready to offer what he had scorned to take.

Moving around his desk to a front corner, he hooked a thigh over it and leaned forward, half sitting and half standing, in the casual position he frequently took when he was inviting a bit of intimacy into a class discussion.

“Miss McCall,” he said, “you are truly a remarkable young woman.”

“Oh, no. I’m quite ordinary, really. As you know, I can’t even learn mathematics or any of the difficult things clever people are always learning.”

“You’re utterly ignorant of mathematics, that’s true, but in your case I’m bound to admit that it hardly matters.”

“But it does matter, in a way, for I’ll surely receive an F in trig.”

“You surely will. You will undoubtedly receive the lowest F I’ve ever given in my entire career as a teacher.”

“Well, there you are. I was afraid you’d do it, and you are doing it. You’re putting me out.”

“Nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t dream of it. If you wish to stay until the end of the term and take your F philosophically, I have no objection whatever. Indeed, I implore you to do so.”

“Honestly? Why?”

“Because you are, however ignorant, delightful and exciting, qualities rarely found in serious students of mathematics, and I should hate like the devil to lose you.”

“That’s settled, then,” she said. “I’ll stay.”

She rose and was suddenly standing quite close to him. She was, in fact, so close that she could have easily, by leaning a little forward, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Which is precisely what she did, all at once as if by compulsion. It was not a cool kiss or a chaste kiss or a promissory peck, but an accomplished kiss that had in it heat and artistry and a merest touch of tongue. This went on for perhaps half a minute. Then she stopped kissing him as suddenly as she had begun, standing quietly between his knees and observing him with her special gravity.

“Now I’ve really torn it,” she said. “Now you will certainly put me out. I’ve spoiled everything as usual.”

“Are you always so impetuous?” he inquired, feeling oddly shaken.

“Not always. Only about things that I want very much to do. When I want to do something very much, I keep thinking about it, and then when an opportunity arrives to do it, I simply go ahead all of a sudden without thinking any more. It’s a kind of weakness.”

“It’s certainly a good way to make trouble for yourself. Don’t you know that?”

“Well, it hasn’t seemed to work out that way. I’ve never been in any trouble of any consequences.” Her voice was bland and artless.

“You’re fortunate. And in this case, so am I. We might both have been in trouble of some consequence if someone had happened to come into the room just now.”

“There you are. That’s what I mean about myself. I didn’t think of that at all, but just went right ahead and kissed you. If I had got myself into trouble, it would have been no more than I deserved. But it would have been too bad if I had got you into trouble with me, for it was in no way your fault.”

“Never mind. No harm has been done, and I must admit that I feel flattered by your demonstration. It was quite thorough, to say the least.”

“Do you think so? I’m glad. In my opinion, if you want to kiss someone, you had better do it thoroughly or not at all. I simply can’t stand being pecked at, or pecking at someone else. It’s so disappointing, I mean, and gets no one anywhere.”

“Yes. I see what you mean. But now, unfortunately, I must end this interview. Thank you for coming in, Miss McCall. Now that we understand each other, I’m sure we’ll make out very well until the end of the term.”

“I wish you would call me Maggie. It seems silly to keep calling me Miss McCall after we have become friends. We are friends, aren’t we?”

“Yes, indeed, Maggie. Friends we are.”

“It just goes to show you, doesn’t it? You might think, since you are so clever and all at mathematics while I am so ignorant, that we would have nothing at all in common, or any reason for being friends, but it isn’t true in the least, as we have discovered.”

“True. A common devotion to mathematics may not be the most satisfactory basis for friendship after all.”

“That’s what I mean. Other things are important, too. Well, I had better go now. Good-by, Professor Cannon. After a while maybe you will let me call you Brad. That’s what you’re called by your friends, isn’t it? It’s such a fine name, I think. Much better for a man than Maggie is for a girl. Thank you for not putting me out.”

“Don’t mention it. I greatly prefer having you in.”

At the door, she hesitated and looked back with her grave and provocative smile, and then she was gone. He leaned back in his chair and made a tent, fingers tip to tip, and considered the implications.

Soon, reluctantly, he sighed and stood up and began to gather books and papers, for there was someplace else he had to go and someone else he had to meet.

4

Kansas City was where, and Cornelia York was who. Meeting Cornelia was not in any way essential to Brad’s main purpose in going to Kansas City, but was something incidental that he and Cornelia had worked out between them to add interest and a bit of excitement to what would otherwise have been, for him, a rather dull chore.

In the beginning, at least, it had added interest and excitement, not to say drama, but now unfortunately, again for him, it was becoming more of a bother and a complication than a pleasure.

As Peermont’s most glamorous mathematician, he had been selected to conduct a television class in college algebra. This was flattering to his physical presence, as well as to his professional skill, and he had accepted readily enough in the beginning. However, he had been chagrined to discover that the televised session was scheduled for seven o’clock on Saturday morning, which was a bad day and a worse hour.

In order to reach the studio on time, he was forced to arise at five-thirty at the latest, if he drove to KC the same morning of the telecast, and this was not nearly late enough, especially on Saturday, when he might have lain abed as long as he pleased.

He had mitigated this dreary disadvantage to some extent by driving to the city Friday evening and spending the night in a hotel near the studio, and that was why Cornelia had become incidentally involved. They had decided that it was really a waste of time and opportunity for him to spend the night alone, and so she had been driving in independently and spending it with him.

Cornelia had been first a challenge and later a most satisfactory conquest. A member of the Peermont faculty in the department of foreign languages, appropriately Romance, she was a tall woman who had reached an age somewhere between thirty and forty without appearing to have reached any specific age at all. That is to say, one could have accepted without much question either of alternate contentions that she was a remarkably preserved forty or a mature twenty-five.

Rather tall, she was somewhat too amply endowed to be called willowy, but she succeeded, nevertheless, by tricks of dress and locomotion, to appear to be what she was really not. She wore her black hair bound in braids around her head, sometimes for variety in a knot on her neck, and she affected an air of sophisticated reserve that contrived subtly to suggest banked fires.

It was this subtle paradox of cold and heat that had initially tickled Brad’s fancy. He was both intrigued and challenged. He met her occasionally at faculty functions and devised occasions to meet her casually elsewhere.

To his surprise, she did not seem to be impressed by him, or even to like him very much. This was, of course, intolerable, and he began to develop in connection with her an almost frantic sense of frustration.

He was not the man to bear this philosophically, and if it was far too late for Cornelia’s virginity to suffer assault, her chastity, such as it was, was definitely imperiled.

The peril, if she had known it, would not have disturbed her. She was willing to risk it, even to invite it. What did disturb her, on the contrary, was the oppressive feeling that Brad was, after all, a fraud who was never going to make the pass she had sensed and expected and wanted.

She spent quite a bit of time wondering in both French and English how she could incite him to action without appearing to do so. Finally, after an interval during which they both suffered needlessly, they discovered that they had a common enthusiasm which not only brought them together unexpectedly at a favorable time and place, but also made it possible for them to arrange naturally other times and places equally favorable.

The enthusiasm was for walking in the country — a simple kind of exercise which, when enjoyed together by a comparatible pair, affords all sorts of opportunities for supplementary exercises and enthusiasms. Brad did a great deal of walking because it helped to keep his belly flat and because it was one of the few forms of physical exertion that he honestly enjoyed.

For her part, Cornelia did a great deal because it was part of a picture she had of herself. Anyhow, it had happened one raw, wet Sunday afternoon in early March of this year that they had met beside a hedge of Osage Orange along a country road, and it would have been impossible to imagine a pair more surprised and delighted and covertly calculative of the other’s virtue.

“Why, Brad!” she said. “How delightful to meet you so unexpectedly!”

“How are you, Cornelia? You’re looking exceptionally fine.”

“So are you, for that matter. It must be the country air.”

“If so, I’d like to recommend it for all women. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess you at the moment to be about eighteen.”

“How charming we are today, aren’t we? You ought to walk in the country more often, Brad.”

“But I’m forever tramping about the country. I’m positively addicted to it.”

“Really? So am I. How has it happened, I wonder, that we have never come across each other before?” There was a sparkle in her eyes and her voice.

“However it happened, it was damned bad luck. Now that we have met at last, however, I suggest that we set a better precedent for the future.”

“Agreed. Shall we begin by walking along together?”

He responded by offering his arm, which she accepted and held lightly and released after a minute or two because she wished to avoid the impression of clinging, which was in conflict with her assumed role of a woman sharing equally his masculine pleasure.

They walked briskly along the road in the shadow of the Osage Orange. After a while, at the end of the hedge, he crawled over a barbed wire fence and parted two strands with a foot and hands for her to follow, admiring as she did so the fine flowing swell of her flanks and behind as tweed tightened over them in her strained position.

He felt a powerful urge to pat the behind and get things begun or ended without further preliminaries, but experience in such matters qualified the urge, and they walked on together across a pasture toward a thin line of timber that grew along a creek on the other side.

The sod beneath their sturdy shoes was soft and springy after the March thaw. Overhead, the sky was low and gray, a lusterless course for blown clouds. The thin timber, when they reached it, was little or no shelter from the biting wind. She began to shiver a little when they stopped to catch breath, he filling his pipe from a leather pouch and she lighting a cigarette from the match he struck for the pipe.

“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice solicitous.

“A little, now that we’ve stopped. It’s all right, though. I refuse absolutely to be delicate. I love this time of year, don’t you? The short, sad time between seasons.”

“Yes, indeed. I’m always reminded of Swinburne’s lines: ‘When the hounds of Spring are on Winter’s traces, the mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.’ ”

“Why, Brad, you’re simply the most astonishing man. Who’d have dreamed that you could quote off-hand from Atlanta in Caly don?”

“Oh, please. I hope you don’t think I have nothing in my head but equations and formulas.” He smiled almost boyishly.

“Well, mathematicians are so forbidding, you know. One somehow never suspects them of being quite human.”

“You’ll find me human enough if you care to try me.”

“Perhaps I shall,” she answered archly.

“You already have, to be candid.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware of it. How?”

“By crawling through a barbed wire fence. My thoughts, I assure you, were human enough to be censorable.”

“Truly? I’m thoroughly flattered and delighted.”

“I was tempted to pat your pretty bottom.”

“I’d surely have snagged my stocking if you had, but I shouldn’t have cared. You must promise to submit to temptation the very next time we come to a fence.”

“I promise with pleasure. Now you are cold, though. I see you shivering. We need more shelter from the wind than these trees afford.”

“There’s a little hay barn over there in the field beyond the creek. I’ve stopped there before when I’ve walked this way. We could go there and rest and get warm, if you like.”

“I’ve already confessed to being a licentious sort of fellow. Do you feel that you can trust me in a hay barn?”

“My dear Brad! Do you actually think I’m so dull?

Whoever would want to go into a hay barn with a man she could trust?”

“Excuse me. I see that I’ve done you an injustice. How do we get across this damned creek? ”

“There’s a log fallen across to the opposite bank downstream a bit. I’ll show you.”

She took him by the hand and led him, as if the way were obscure and endangered. There was a kind of childish innocence in this that seemed to him very appealing, although later her tendency to behave this way in moments of excitement was to strike him as incongruous and ridiculous, like a matron in a pinafore.

Downstream a few yards, they came to the fallen log, bridging the stream at what seemed to him a rather threatening angle, and she released his hand and scampered across with reckless bravado — another bit of retrogression.

He followed more cautiously but with a casual air that disguised successfully his genuine fear of falling and becoming in an instant a comic figure, which was something he could never bear to be, and they went on together from the opposite bank toward the small hay barn that was visible in the field beyond.

The raw, wet air was suddenly full of a drizzle of rain, and they ran, hand in hand, the last thirty yards, tumbling through the door and into the hay with shouts of breathless laughter and an irrational conviction of having become, in the thirty yards, at least half as many years younger.

Somehow they could not recover from this exhilarating delusion in time to develop a more sophisticated approach to what they both wanted and meant to have — insofar, that is, as sophistication can function in a hay barn. Accordingly they fell upon each other in a fierce and abandoned frolic.

Her big body was wild with wanton charity, throwing itself upon him and demanding reciprocity with shameless hands. He went under her skirt and beneath her blouse with the reckless compulsion of a novice, claiming almost brutally her ultimate intimacy, and she responded with hoarse sounds of incitement and a frantic and rhythmic thrusting of her pelvis. Soon there was a hysterical discarding of tweeds and then not a single sound except gutturals and aspirants and the threshing of hay and a strange word that Cornelia kept repeating wildly at the end, apparently French.

Afterward, Cornelia was palpably prepared to rest and repeat the performance, but Brad was cold and was suffering, besides goose pimples, the familiar stale redundancy of disappointment.

It required almost a quarter of an hour, in which the gray rain fell and tweedless Cornelia lay lush in the hay, to achieve a proper appreciation of his nth triumph, which had been, after all, somewhat easier than conjugating a French verb or solving for x.

Oh, well. That had been in March, and it was now October, getting on toward November, and in a matter of hours in a KC bar he would again be meeting Cornelia, who was becoming something of a bore, a familiar formula. Meanwhile, he would have to go home and pack a bag and have dinner with his wife, who was also a bore and a problem besides.

5

Madelaine Cannon had lain down early in the afternoon for a nap, but she had lain for quite a while without sleeping. Her eyes open in the darkened room, she had considered the condition of her marriage and the value of her husband. The marriage, she knew, was superficially pacific and inwardly disturbed. Her husband, she decided, was worth keeping.

This latter decision, which may have been surprising under the circumstances, was based on a strange mixture of motives indicative of the person who made it.

Compounded of pride and possessiveness and a kind of passionless love, it was directed to the preservation of a certain kind of life that suited Madelaine Cannon perfectly. Rich enough to live where and however she might choose, she chose deliberately to live where and how she did. She liked the academic life associated with Peermont College. She liked the kind of people this life included. She liked being a quiet and subtle power in college politics — a power she had inherited from her father through his money, and which she exercised firmly if not blatantly. And she liked being married to Bradley Cannon, who was handsome enough to excite her pride and brilliant enough to merit a measure of distinction even without the shadowy support of her money.

She wanted, in brief, to live and die precisely as she was now living and dying, and she was fully prepared to sacrifice lesser prides and pretensions to the preservation of the process.

She was certainly no fool. She knew Brad very well, the good and the bad in him, and she knew more of his affairs than he ever dreamed she knew.

Sometimes her knowledge gave her a sense of shame and anger, and she was tempted to destroy the life she had made and go away alone to make another in another place. In the end she did nothing. She accepted the truth that Brad was not a man that any woman could hold to strict fidelity. Still more remarkably, she accepted the further truth that she was not the woman who could have held him — even if he could have been held.

She was a good wife, and might have been a good mother, but she was not a good mistress. Her attachments were strong, but they were almost passionless. She did not, therefore, value highly what she could not feel. And she was too realistic to pretend to any enormous loss or betrayal when what she did not want was expended elsewhere on another.

What she did value highly was her position, with all it involved of pride and immunity to public shame. And what she would never accept without reprisal, if it came to that, was any threat to it through reckless aberrations.

Having reached without much stress the same decision she had reached before, she closed her eyes and went to sleep. She slept lightly and quietly until she was awakened later by the sound of Brad moving around in his own room beyond the intervening bath. She lay a while awake, listening, and then she got up and pulled a brush a few times through her hair and went into the bathroom and knocked on Braid’s door. In response to his invitation, she opened the door and walked into his room.

He was, as she had expected, putting a few things into an overnight bag. Crossing to his bed, she sat down on the edge and folded her hands between her knees.

“Hello, Maddy,” he said. “You were asleep when I came in, so I didn’t bother you.”

“That was considerate of you,” she said, “but I’m sorry I wasn’t awake. Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes. As usual. It’s Friday, you know.”

“So it is. I’d forgotten for the moment. Do you really think it’s necessary to spend every Friday night in Kansas City?”

“I suppose not, but it’s convenient. Haven’t we discussed this before?”

“Several times, I believe.”

“Well, the conditions are no different. It makes it much easier to reach the studio on time in the morning.”

“I can see that. Perhaps I should go with you for company.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it. You’d be bored to death in the hotel room. Besides I wouldn’t be able to take you out. I always review my lecture for an hour or so and go immediately to bed. You wouldn’t believe how demanding that damn half hour on television can be.”

“Is it actually such a trial? I’ve always had the feeling that you rather look forward to Friday evenings.”

“Nothing of the sort. I’ll be immensely relieved when the course is over. Believe me, they’ll have to look for someone else to conduct the next one.”

“Will you stay at home for dinner?”

“Yes, if it’s early.”

“We can eat at six-thirty, if you like.”

“That will be fine.”

“All right. I’ll dress and go down and give the instructions.”

She went back into her own room, but she did not immediately dress and go downstairs. Instead, she began automatically to brush her hair again, and she thought, while brushing, that Brad was a most accomplished liar. Oddly enough, she was not shocked or shamed by this, for her father had also been an accomplished liar when occasion demanded it, and she herself could lie readily enough when it suited her. Neither her training nor her nature had been calculated to make her excessively sensitive to moral or ethical niceties.

The only daughter of an only son, the granddaughter of a wheat farmer whose land had later produced oil, she had come in due time into a comfortable fortune which she had handled competently and preserved intact. Her mind was strong but not subtle. It saw a problem whole and approached it directly with no self-deception or devious nonsense.

This was precisely the way she had first seen Brad and still saw him, and precisely the way she had approached him and now held him. No nonsense then or now.

She had first decided that she was in love with him, or at least wanted him, and then she had tried to decide deliberately upon the surest method of acquiring him. Characteristically, the method was direct. In essence, almost crude.

He would not have considered her judgment of him flattering in all respects, if he had ever known exactly what it was. Fortunately, he never knew. To her it was merely a realistic appraisal that she would have applied, in a more or less the same way, to a piece of property. Indeed, in her mind, that was pretty much what Brad amounted to. A piece of property with certain inalienable human rights.

He was handsome, which she liked. He was brilliant, which she admired. He was single, which was necessary. He was palpably vain, which would make him vulnerable. He was driven by ambition, if not cupidity, which would make him susceptible to material seductions. He was available and worth owning, and she wanted to own him.

She met him in the fall of his first year on the Peermont faculty. She had been a graduate student then, not because she had any desire or need for an advanced degree, but simply because there was nothing at the time that she preferred to do. She was getting pretty bored with her superficial studies, though, and she had nearly decided to drop classes and go home to stay when the Thanksgiving holiday came round.

It was then, three days before the holiday was to begin, that she met Brad at an afternoon party, a deadly dull affair of tea and chamber music, and it was a fact, which she recognized later with some astonishment, that she began almost at once to feel possessive about him, and to consider the best means of giving her feeling, after a while, a legal status.

She was wearing black that day, and she always looked her best in black. The dress was, moreover, a slim sheath that presented her fine figure as boldly as seemed appropriate to tea and chamber music. She was, in short, pleasantly conscious of looking more attractive than she ordinarily looked, and she had the additional pleasure of understanding that her place beside him on a small uncomfortable love-seat was as much his contrivance as hers.

Since she was a genuine realist with a hard head, she accepted without bitterness the possibility that he may have been partly motivated by the oil in her background and the knowledge that her father was a person to be reckoned with on the Peermont campus.

After suffering through part of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a lovely string quartet that she did not have the ear to appreciate, she looked sidewise from under lashes at Brad’s face, deducing instantly from its stiff expression of artificial attention that she had already discovered one thing — a bad ear — that they had in common. On impulse, she leaned toward him so that her shoulder brushed his and her breath stirred on his cheek.

“I’m looking for a man to take me out of this,” she whispered.

His face swung round, flashing a smile in brackets of dimples, and she had a notion suddenly that he was going to kiss her, which was a ridiculous notion in such a place among such people, but which left her, nevertheless, with a sense of disappointment when he didn’t.

He did, however, reach over and lay his hand on hers, which was lying in her lap, and she felt for just a second or two the tips of his fingers brush lightly the inside of her thigh.

“You’ve found him,” he whispered back. “Just follow me.”

They were at the rear of the group, luckily, quite near a doorway into a hall, and they were able to slip away almost unnoticed.

Outside the house, they breathed deeply and laughed with a kind of childish exultation, as if they had shared and survived a somewhat shady adventure.

“I’m sorry if you wanted to stay for the music,” she said.

“I didn’t. I much preferred leaving with you.”

“To tell the truth, music bores me. On top of tea, I find it intolerable.”

“I share your intolerance, and I feel indebted to you for luring me away,” he assured her, his eyes furtively appraising her figure.

“Truly?”

“Yes, truly.”

“In that case, perhaps you’d like to pay your debt by taking me somewhere for a cocktail and dinner,” she suggested.

“I’d like it very much, but I’m not sure that it would be discreet.”

“Oh, nonsense. Why not?”

“You’re a student, aren’t you?” he queried.

“Sort of one. I’m doing graduate work.”

“Well, perhaps a teacher may be allowed a little more freedom with a graduate student than with an undergraduate.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it, if I were you. Don’t you know who I am?”

“Of course. We were introduced inside. Your name is Madelaine Jorgensen.”

“Haven’t you heard of my father?” she asked, a little impatient.

“No less than Daniel Jorgensen. And I get your point. I am, in a sense, in protective custody. Where would you like to go for your cocktail and dinner?”

“My car’s there at the curb. I’d like to go to Kansas City, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t, and they went. Three days later, when Madelaine went home, it was not, after all, to stay. She went to tell her father, Dan Jorgensen, that she had found the man she wanted and meant to have. Home was in the western part of the state on the site of the old wheat farm that Grandfather Jorgensen had once cultivated, but there was no wheat now on what remained of the land.

The old frame house had been torn down long ago and replaced by a brick colonial, painted white, on the crest of a long rise. Dan Jorgensen, who had married late and buried his wife soon, was well into his sixties at this time. He had a strong sense of his own importance, an irascible temper and a bad heart. He didn’t know it, of course, but he was not destined to survive his last well, which was almost dry. The others already were.

He was somewhat ambivalent about Madelaine’s pronouncement.

He felt on the one hand that the man, whoever he was, was probably motivated by cupidity and ought to be exposed and somehow punished. On the other hand, he decided that the chap had damn well better be reasonable and available if Maddy wanted him.

“Who is this fellow?” he said.

“His name is Bradley Cannon.”

“Bradley Cannon? Never heard of him.”

“He teaches mathematics at Peermont. It’s his first year there.”

“One of those professor fellows? Seems to me, with your advantages, you could do considerably better for yourself,” the old man gruntled irritably.

“I don’t want to do better. I want Brad.”

“Are you sure he’s all right? These intellectual fellows go off the deep end sometimes. They have no common sense or judgment.”

“He’s no left-winger or anything like that, if that’s what you mean. As a matter of fact, I doubt if he has any very deep convictions about anything.”

“Well, at least I’m glad to hear he teaches mathematics. There’s some sense to mathematics. Can’t say I’d relish having a son-in-law who taught poetry or philosophy or any of those fancy things that don’t do anything but get a man confused.”

“He’s a very good teacher of mathematics, I understand. He’ll probably go up at Peermont pretty fast.”

“If you marry him, he’ll go up faster than that. I’ll see to it myself.

“I thought you might be willing to help.”

“If you’re sure you want this fellow, you bring him out here so I can talk with him. He’ll marry you, all right, if he knows the difference between a good time and a bad one.”

“Oh, he’ll marry me, all right. You needn’t concern yourself with that in the least. I’m sure I can manage it without difficulty.”

“I’ll bet you can. Same as you manage me and everyone else when it serves your purpose.” He stared at her with sudden suspicion. “You got yourself into a condition? You been sleeping with this fellow?”

“If I had been, I wouldn’t tell you, but I haven’t. Not yet.”

“You’ll do as you please. I know that. When do you plan to get married?”

“I’m not sure yet. Possibly in the spring. What I’d like to do is invite him out here for a week at Christmas.”

“Sure. Bring him out. Right now, though, I’m going out to shoot some quail. You want to come?”

“Is quail season open?”

“If it is or isn’t, I’ll shoot quail on my own property if I want to.”

“You go ahead, then. I don’t feel like hunting today.”

When he was gone, she went up to her room on the second floor and began to read, but she was not interested in the book that day, or very much in any book any day. After a while she simply sat quietly by a window and stared out and down a long poplar-lined drive to a road at its end.

For some time she thought of her past, of her life in this house with a strong and possessive father who had made her, in her turn, as strong and possessive as he. Then, tiring of this, she began to think of Bradley Cannon, whom she wished to possess.

She became aware after a long while that the light was fading outside the window, the poplars along the drive slim and wavering shadows in descending dusk. She had not heard her father in the house since his departure, and this was odd, she thought, for he was not a quiet man, and the light had surely been too weak for shooting for some time.

Going into the hall, she walked down to her father’s room and knocked. There was no response, so she went on downstairs to the kitchen, where she was told by the cook and the maid that her father had not returned!

She left the kitchen by the back door and walked across a wide yard to a barn that had little purpose except to house the cars. She was standing at a corner of the barn peering across fading fields when she saw two men approaching along a fence with a burden between them. The men were hunters, as it turned out, and the burden was Daniel Jorgensen, who was dead.

At first she thought that he had been shot accidentally, but this was not true. He had simply dropped dead in a field and had lain entangled in a thicket until the pair of hunters had come along to find him.

Later in his room, where she had him carried, she stood beside his bed and tried to summon grief and a feeling of definitive loss, but she was curiously empty and inept, as if she had been caught unprepared for a performance. She had difficulty, now that his eyes were closed and his face set, in convincing herself that he had ever been alive to her in any real sense.

She buried her father three days later, and two days after that returned to Peermont and withdrew as a student. She called Brad in the evening and asked him to come and see her, which he did. They walked that evening across the campus of Peermont and sat in chill darkness for almost an hour on the stone steps of the library.

“What are you going to do now?” he said.

“First,” she said, “I’m going home and arrange for the sale of all the property there. I don’t want to keep it, now that father’s dead.”

“Are you sure that’s the wise thing to do?”

“Yes. You can be assured I’ll get everything out of it that it’s worth, and probably more. There won’t be as much money for me as most people think, but there will be plenty. About a million, I’d guess.”

“Where are you going afterward?” he asked with real interest.

“I’m coming back here and buy a house near the campus. I like it here. It’s the most pleasant place I know to live. I may live here the rest of my life. I don’t know. I’ll see how it works out.”

“I’m terribly sorry this has happened, Maddy.”

“Are you? I’m not sure that I am. I’ve tried to analyze my feelings, and I’m not sure. I don’t seem to feel any particular sorrow.”

“You’ve had a shock, that’s all. You’re alone now, aren’t you? Will you be living alone in the house you buy?”

“I don’t know.” She turned on the stone step and looked at him levelly in the darkness. “That depends on you.”

He was never certain afterward if she had made a solicitation or laid down an ultimatum. It didn’t really matter.

They both knew, now that her father was dead, that she was offering him a kind of contract in which the terms were, in practically every way, more favorable to him than to her.

Although he was reluctant to qualify his freedom, he had been considering the advantages of marriage, and it didn’t take a college professor to see which side of his bread the butter was on in this instance.

They were married in June after a proper and passionless engagement, and only rarely thereafter, during their honeymoon that summer in Bermuda, did their relationship achieve brief flashes of carnal heat and intensity.

These episodes were really rather embarrassing to Madelaine, and so it was a relief that they occurred as rarely as they did in the beginning, and that they occurred hardly ever as time went on. She was capable of giving perfect fealty to such a relationship, and she did. But Brad could not and did not, and that was the trouble.

Yes, she thought, that was the trouble.

But it was getting late, trouble or none, and dinner was to be early.

She stopped brushing her hair and dressed and went downstairs.

6

He had been in the hotel cocktail lounge almost an hour when Cornelia came, and it was indicative of his changing attitude toward her that he was annoyed because she was late, although he really was in no hurry to meet her and would actually have preferred it if she had failed to come at all. Seeing her enter in the mirror behind the bar, he slipped off his stool and moved toward a small table in a shadowy corner. They met there and sat down.

“Have you been waiting long, darling?” she said.

“Almost an hour, I think.”

“I’m sorry. Would you like to go right up?”

“No. I’d like another drink or two first. Will you have a Martini? That’s what I’m having.”

“A Martini will be fine.”

He ordered the Martinis, and they drank them slowly. The truth was, he was reluctant to go upstairs at all, having a fear of failure, and he was merely delaying as long as possible what he knew he could not agreeably prevent. It was quickly apparent, however, that she did not share his reluctance, quite the contrary, and after two more Martinis had been slowly consumed in the better part of another hour, she arose abruptly and spoke urgently.

“Darling, let’s go up.”

“All right. You go ahead. I’ll follow.”

“Hurry, darling. Come right away.”

“You knew very well that we have to practice some sort of discretion. We can’t afford to be obvious.”

“I know. Come soon, though. Don’t wait too long.”

“I’ll be there soon. What room are you in?”

“607. I’ll be ready, darling.”

He did not watch her as she left the lounge. Feeling now a kind of negative urgency himself, the desire to get finished with what he couldn’t avoid, he waited only a few minutes longer, and then went upstairs to his own room on the fifth floor. He stayed there only long enough to remove a robe from his bag, which was still unpacked and then he walked upstairs with the robe folded compactly under his coat and knocked on the door displaying the number 607 in chrome. He did not wait for an answer to his knock, but opened the door and entered, snapping the lock behind him, and Cornelia was lying on the bed in the light of a bedlamp. She was, as she had promised, ready.

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve been waiting and waiting.”

“Not long,” he said. “Only a few minutes.”

“It seemed like forever. Come quickly, darling.”

Driven now by his negative urgency, he undressed with a rush and went to the bed, where he was drawn downward at once into the hot heart of her importunate hunger, and was even incited by it, after a while to an importunate response.

He was quicker than she and sooner done, spent and ready to quit while she was still importunate and insatiate, a demanding redundancy that had become almost an imposition, and he wondered how in God’s name he had ever found her exciting and challenging, and why the excitement and the challenge must always be reduced to the exhausting repetition of this stale act.

Compelled to a kind of frenetic exertion by a fear of failure, he felt tricked and trapped by adhesive flesh that would never release him except in shame, and it was with an exorbitant sense of escape that he achieved at last, just when he thought with despair and anger that he never would, her final carnal fury.

He lay for a minute gathering strength, and then he stood up abruptly, breaking with brutal impatience the embrace of arms. She stirred and sighed, turning her head on her pillow. He stood for another minute looking down at her in the soft light of the bedlamp, observing with clinical and contemptuous detachment, now that he had survived again the ordeal of her importunacy, the bald display of her satisfied flesh — the large firm breasts and heavy thighs above and below the soft swell of belly. He would have preferred darkness in the end, in the submission that was necessarily his as well as hers, but she always wanted light and demanded it and always had it.

“Darling,” she said, “come back.”

“In a minute,” he said, wondering with instant annoyance why she always told him to come back in that imperious way, when he had in fact hardly left, as if he could return at once as he had been before to do what he had just done, although she knew perfectly well it was impossible.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“In here,” he said, cursing silently the foolish answer to a foolish question that did not need asking or answering. He resisted with an effort the temptation to say instead that he was going anywhere at all that was away from her, and he wished for God’s sake that she would put up her hair and put on her clothes and go away somewhere too.

“Don’t be long,” she said.

He put on a robe that he had brought from his own room in the hotel and went into the bathroom and sat down, pretty soon, on the edge of the tub. There were cigarettes and matches in the pocket of the robe, and he lit one of the cigarettes with one of the matches. Then he began to think about the problem of Cornelia on the bed, or Cornelia anywhere, and how he could bring to an end without recriminations or any ugly display of emotions a relationship that was no longer worth sustaining, and was threatening, besides, to get out of control.

He had been betrayed originally into false assumptions by Cornelia’s practiced air of sophistication. Now he was forced to accept the unfortunate truth that the sophistication was more apparent than real and did not rise to a casual evaluation of all it invited. There would certainly be, in brief, a nasty fuss when he broke things off. But the time for breaking was surely due, or overdue, and tonight, when he was determined, would be better than tomorrow or next week, when he might not be.

Discarding his cigarette in the commode, he went back into the bedroom and sat down on the side of the bed and lit another.

Cornelia was still lying as he had left her, and this made things doubly difficult, if not impossible, for a woman is not inclined to be reasonable in absolutely nothing.

“There’s something we need to talk about, Cornelia,” he said.

“No, don’t talk.” She spoke with her eyes closed, and her voice had a thick, drugged sound. “Lie down beside me,”

“Damn it, Cornelia, I want to talk without distractions. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, but I’m getting very sleepy. Darling, I feel so good and so sleepy. Couldn’t we talk later? In the morning?”

“I’ll be gone in the morning before you’re awake. You know that.”

“What a shame! It would be nice in the morning if you had no place to go. Then we could talk and do other things and have a wonderful time.”

“Listen, Cornelia. You must listen to me. The time has come to discuss reasonably what we are going to do.”

“Do?” Her lids parted slightly, and he thought he could see, watching her intently, a quickened awareness under the shadow of lashes. “Is there something we have to do?”

“It should be apparent that something must be done. About you and me, I mean. Obviously we can’t go on like this indefinitely.”

“Has something happened that I don’t know about? Has someone learned about us and begun talking?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. Not yet. But it’s something that will certainly happen sooner or later.”

“I don’t care. I don’t give a damn,” she murmured in sleepy irritation.

“Don’t talk like that. It’s irresponsible. Of course you care, and so do I. We both stand to lose too much from a scandal. We could hardly survive it in our positions.”

“We’ll be very careful, darling. Haven’t I always been careful? Have I ever been the least bit reckless?”

“We’re being a bit reckless right now, it seems to me,” he stated.

“Yes, I suppose we are. I didn’t realize that it frightened you, however.”

“I’m not frightened. I’m only trying to be realistic.”

“Darling, you’re concerned over nothing. I’m sure of it. Everything will be all right until summer, at least, when the term is over. Then we can decide how to arrange matters most easily and quietly so that it won’t matter any longer what anyone sees or says or thinks about us.”

She was watching him now as intently as he was watching her. The light of the lamp seemed to gather and glitter in the pupils of her eyes, giving her a sly and calculating look. He reacted inwardly to the clear implication of her words with such horror and anger that he was in danger, for a moment, of being sick to his stomach. He was conscious at the same time of having developed suddenly a tic in his left eyelid. This, because it was absurd, had the effect of increasing his anger and complicating his effort to control himself.

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” he said. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“I’m talking about us and what we must do. Isn’t that what you wanted? I agree that we can’t go on like this indefinitely, although I don’t agree that there is an immediate urgency to change. Summer will be early enough. We had better get positions in another college for the fall, I think. It would be much better all around. You can get a divorce in the summer, or let Madelaine get one, and everything should be settled without difficulty by September.”

He was stunned by the extent and particulars of her planning. He had never dreamed that she had made such gross assumptions, or that she would be willing to make such fantastic commitments. He had completely misjudged her, and the consequences were beginning to look disagreeable.

Standing, he walked away from the bed and the light into the shadows of the room. Turning, he watched her from a distance.

“Jesus,” he said. “You’ve got it all worked out beautifully, haven’t you.”

Her eyes widened at the harshness of his voice. She sat up slowly in the bed, leaning back against the headboard and peering to see his face clearly in the shadows.

“You sound angry,” she said. “Have I said something to displease you? It’s only that I think we should wait for a time to settle things when it can be done quietly.”

“What in God’s name, I’d like to know, ever gave you the idea that I wanted to settle things that way at all?”

“What other way is there? You said yourself that something must be done.”

“So there must. We must simply quit meeting like this. Here or any place.”

She apparently had not heard him or could not understand him, for she continued to probe the shadows for his face with only the slightest expression of anxiety, as if she were waiting for the laugh or word or sign that would give away his brutal joke.

“What did you say?” she said. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Oh, come off, Cornelia.” He tried to achieve a quality of lightness that would secure a reasonable response. “You know very well that there has never been any suggestion of permanence between us. We were two reasonably intelligent adults who knew what we wanted, and we’ve had it, and now it’s time to quit. It will be better for both of us if we do, and better now than later.”

However he may have expected her to react to this, it was certainly not as she did. Her face was older all at once, and she was apparently incited not so much to anger as to shame. An ugly flush suffused her flesh, and she reached down with one hand to pull up a sheet and cover her nakedness.

“You’ve tricked me,” she said. “You’ve told me lies.”

“No. I never tricked you. I never lied to you.”

“You deliberately let me believe what wasn’t true. That’s as bad or worse.”

“I thought we understood each other. I’m sorry if we didn’t.”

“And I thought you loved me. I had every right to think so.”

“You had no such right. I never said so.”

“Never said so? Did you say you never said so? Oh, God, that’s quite amusing. That’s really very amusing. I must merely have assumed it. Yes, that’s surely what I did. Forgive me, please, for assuming that you loved me, even though you never said so. I must have been confused by the way you acted. I assumed from the way you acted that you loved me. Isn’t that what they call what we have just done? Making love, I mean?”

She began to laugh softly, with desperate intensity, and he realized with apprehension that she had reached, almost instantly, the edge of hysteria. This was another reaction he had not expected, and he stood helplessly, wondering what to do, until she stopped laughing after a few moments as suddenly as she had begun, staring at him with a strangely abstracted expression, as though she could not remember what had amused her so. Then she began to scream.

Fortunately, it was more of a wail, a softer cry of anguish, and after his initial frozen terror at the possible consequences if she were heard outside or in another room, he leaped to the bed and gathered her into his arms and smothered the wail against his chest.

She was shaking violently. Her body was cold. To quiet her and to dispel the present threat that she was, he began to tell the lies that he had denied telling. She clung to him, her fingers like talons fixed in his back, and he thought with despair that he would have to try again in another place at another time, and that now, very soon, there would be no escaping another dreary pretense of passion that was, as she had charged, the greatest lie of all.

7

Couchant on the floor, belly down and her chin cupped in her hands, Maggie was watching television. On her face was a small frown of the most intense concentration — two vertical lines running parallel between her brows and her short nose. Her lips moved silently, forming the shapes of words, and she appeared to be repeating the words that were coming miraculously through her set all the way from Kansas City, and this was, in fact, exactly what she was doing.

Repeating things in this way was a habit of hers that gave her some sort of secret satisfaction. It was often disconcerting to people when they first became aware of it and were unused to it.

Lying there on the floor where she had been for twenty full minutes since seven o’clock, fixed and utterly still except for the slight movement of her lips and the barely perceptible movement of her breasts in breathing, she was so absorbed in what she heard and saw that she was even unaware of being a little cold because of being completely naked.

This was also a habit of hers around home, being naked, which was also disconcerting to people when she occasionally opened the door to them before remembering.

On the twenty-one inch screen, Brad was teaching algebra in black and white. He was talking about something called a quadratic equation, and Maggie had a vague notion that this was a way of solving problems that she had been exposed to at some time or other in the past, but now she knew nothing about it of any significance, and it did not matter in the least that she didn’t, for she was only watching and listening because it was Brad she was seeing and hearing.

She wished that he could see her too, exactly as she was, just for the fun of watching his reaction in the box with his blackboard and his silly piece of chalk. This struck her as being a very entertaining speculation — what Brad would do if he could suddenly see her as she was, with nothing on at all. She smiled a little and kept thinking about it, but all this while, although she was not conscious of a single thing he said, her lips kept forming exactly the shape of every word.

After a bit, tiring of speculation, she again became conscious of the words, their meaning as nearly as she could grasp it, and she admired him tremendously for what he knew that she didn’t. Mostly, however, she admired him for looking so handsome and talking so cleverly, with just the merest tone of condescension for his unseen students. As a matter of fact, relative to her feeling in these matters, admiration was by no means the proper word for it. Whatever the word was, the feeling had something itchy in it.

Behind her, on a tousled bed pulled down into the room from a compartment in the wall, Buddy Jensen stirred and grunted and rose on one elbow.

He was a stocky young man with swarthy skin, thick shoulders and a dark sullen face that was given a cast of ferocity by black brows and thick curly hair, also black, that grew rather low on his forehead and always needed combing. His body matching Maggie’s in its present condition, was hard and powerful. It was the body of an athlete, though this was a kind of natural deception since he abhorred exercise of all sorts — physical and mental alike.

He had met Maggie about a year ago in another town, where she had been at loose ends, restless and bored but living fairly comfortably on the wages and fringe benefits of a temporary job as a waitress in a fancy bar, and there had been between them almost immediately a kind of dark combustion. Buddy had also been in comfortable circumstances at the time, thanks to a careless gentleman, slightly drunk and very lucky, who had been in a poker game that Buddy had been kibitzing in the back room of a cigar store. The gentleman had also been indiscreet, which was where his luck ended, and he had wakened later in an alley behind the cigar store, by which way he had left the game, with a splitting head and an empty wallet. The almost two thousand dollars that had been in the wallet were by that time in Buddy’s pocket, although Buddy was the only one who knew it. Not even Maggie ever knew it, although she helped spend the money.

Buddy’s parents were reasonably prosperous folk who had disowned him after paying off his third bad check, and he was himself at loose ends at this time. He had been going to college when the third bad check was written, but he was now unemployed and unoccupied and wondering what to do with himself. He was, in fact, wondering if it was worth while doing anything at all at the time he met Maggie. She had given him a sort of illicit purpose, justification for a bad life, and she had become, in fact, his only reason for wishing to live in a world that was generally threatening and inhospitable. Consequently, when she had decided later in the summer to leave town and enroll in college, without apparent logic from his point of view, he had quite naturally followed her to the town in which they now were, and had himself even enrolled in college again to keep her company. To finance all this, he robbed a filling station.

Now, having just awakened, he rubbed his eyes, scratched his scalp and looked foggily around the room to see where Maggie was and where the man’s voice was coming from.

After a few moments he located the lighted television screen, Brad in black and white and, finally, Maggie on the floor before it. He rubbed and scratched again, rearing a little higher on his elbow.

A faint flush came into his dark cheeks, adding to his look of ferocity. The flush was incited partly by the sight of Brad on television and partly by the sight of Maggie on the floor, each part for different reasons.

“What the hell are you doing down there on the floor?” he demanded.

She did not answer or turn her head. Her lips kept forming the shapes of words.

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” he told her.

Brad in the box, telling a funny anecdote all the while, kept writing numbers and letters on the blackboard with chalk, and there on the board all at once, as simple as could be, was the answer to everything, the whole problem, and Maggie was exorbitantly proud of Brad for getting the answer, even though she couldn’t see how, or why anyone would want to. Her lips formed the shape of the answer slowly, with pleasure, as if it had taste and the taste was good.

“You’d better answer if you know what’s good for you,” Buddy said.

“Shut up,” she answered, her voice carrying no inflection whatever.

His flush deepened and his heavy brows drew together over his nose, but he was quiet just the same, lying propped on his elbow and watching the finish of the algebra lesson. The lesson was already finished, as a matter of fact, and now in the last minute or two Brad was merely being clever about making the assignment. He faded away with his last word, and the theme came up, and credits began to appear on the screen one after another.

Still Maggie did not move. She continued couchant, belly down and chin cupped, apparently intending to remain in that position until the next lesson next Saturday. It was not a position, to say the least, that was calculated to alleviate the mixed emotions of Buddy behind her, scorned and contemptuously silenced. He was obviously brooding over this summary treatment, for when he spoke again it was with ominous truculence.

“What the hell did you mean,” he said, “telling me to shut up?”

“What I meant was plain enough,” she retorted. “Do you have to have the simplest thing explained to you in detail?”

“You’d better be careful how you talk to me, that’s all.”

“Oh, God! I’m utterly terrified.”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy or something?” he demanded, his voice carrying a note of honest puzzlement.

“Maybe I am. I must be crazy to have anything to do with you.”

“That’s not the way you talked last night.”

“Well, don’t let it confuse you. What I said and did last night don’t necessarily mean anything this morning.”

“I ought to give you a good beating, that’s what I ought to do.”

“What you ought to do is get dressed and get out of here. I can’t stand you first thing in the morning,” she told him flatly, still not deigning to look around at him.

“Come here and I’ll show you how to stand me.”

“No, thank you. I prefer to stay here.”

“Why do you want to keep on lying there on the floor?”

“Just because I want to, that’s why.”

“You can’t go on lying there all day,” he pointed out.

“I can if I choose. I may do it.”

“Maybe you think if you lie there long enough your precious Professor Cannon will come back on television.”

“If I lie here long enough, that’s exactly what he’ll do. Next Saturday morning.”

“He’s about the worst creep there is. I don’t understand what you see in him.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re too stupid.”

“You’re a hell of a one to talk about being stupid,” he snorted. “You didn’t have the least idea what he was talking about.”

“That’s all right. He gave me some other ideas that were a lot more interesting.”

“You better not get any ideas about trying any funny business with him, I can tell you that.”

“You can’t imagine how grateful I am for your advice. What would you do if I did?”

“Don’t worry. I’d stop it one way or another.”

She rolled over then and sat up, hugging her knees and staring at him angrily over the tops.

“Would you really? Just try it. Perhaps you’d like to have the truth known in a certain place about a certain hit-and-run accident. Manslaughter, I think they call it. I wonder how much time they give you in prison for something like that.”

“Don’t try to threaten me. You’ll never tell,” he muttered, his glance wary and savage.

“Don’t be too sure. I will if you cause me any trouble.”

“If you did, I’d kill you.”

“Talk, talk! You always talk big. In my opinion, in spite of looking like a hoodlum, you’re nothing but a coward.”

“You’ll see. Just try any funny business with old Cannon, and you’ll see.”

She bared her teeth in a tigerish little smile, at the same time studying him with an air of judicious detachment. The truth was, she had a kind of soft spot for him in her heart. As nearly soft, that is, as she could come to softness. As nearly in her heart, that is, as she could come to having a heart.

He was interesting and sometimes exciting, and she would have liked to keep him around for times when he was wanted. But if it became necessary to send him away or eliminate him somehow, it was nothing that would give her any sense of enduring loss or even the least regret.

She did not feel quite so easy about him, however, as she pretended. He was lazy and a little dull, surely, but there was a depth of darkness in him out of the common — a kind of disturbing mutation that made him a very dangerous young man. In short, to draw a comparison, he was quite a lot like her.

“I had to see him yesterday after classes because I’m flunking trig,” she said. “We had a nice talk, and then I kissed him. He’s much more fun to kiss than you are.”

“You know what I think? I think you’re a damn liar.”

“Think as you please. It couldn’t matter less to me.”

“Do you imagine a man like him would pay serious attention to someone like you? You’ll only make a fool of yourself.”

“You’re the fool if you think so,” she responded.

“What have you got to gain?”

“You might be surprised. Anyhow, did it ever occur to you that I might be in love with him? He’s handsome and very intelligent, and I’ll bet he’s better in bed than you could ever be even if you took professional lessons.”

“Oh, God, what a laugh! You talking about love!” A sneer wreathed his tight lips.

“You think it’s funny? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. Just because it’s impossible to fall in love with an ugly clown like you doesn’t mean it’s impossible with someone else.”

“You’re about as capable of love as a copperhead. Not that it makes any difference to me. I like you that way.”

“Well, haven’t you become suddenly profound! It’s amazing how someone who can barely read and write should possess such wisdom.”

“Oh, go to hell. Pretty soon you’ll be talking some drivel about marriage or something.”

“Perhaps I will. I’m considering it.”

“With old Cannon? You’ve really lost your marbles, haven’t you, Maggie? He’s got a wife, in case you didn’t know, and his wife, they tell me, has a million bucks.”

“That’s true. He would probably be reluctant to give up so much money. It’s a problem.” She appeared to ponder that a moment.

“You won’t solve it with algebra or trigonometry, either. It’s an interesting problem though, I admit. How do you lose a wife without losing her money?”

“Never mind. I’m considering that, too.”

“Nuts.” He sat up all at once, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Stop talking like a fool and come here.”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m tired of you. You bore me. I wish you’d go away.”

“If you don’t come here, I’ll come there.”

“Come ahead,” she snapped. “It won’t do you any good.”

“We’ll see.”

“If you touch me, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

He got up and walked across the littered room and sat down beside her and facing her. She continued to hug her knees, turning her head deliberately away.

“Oh, come off, Maggie,” he said. “Why do you want to act like such a bitch?”

“Is that how I’m acting? It doesn’t matter. If you don’t like it, you can go somewhere else. Do you always just keep staying and staying where you’re not wanted?”

“I was wanted last night,” he reminded her.

“That was last night. It’s simply impossible to get it through your head that things are not constantly the same.”

“You look charming the way you are.”

“Do I? You don’t,” she said. “You look rather absurd.”

He was silent for a few seconds, the flush of anger deep and ugly in his dark cheeks. For a moment, watching him warily from the corners of her eyes, she thought that he was going to hit her, which was something he had done before in anger.

The thought sent a little shiver of aberrant excitement through her folded body held steady by the clasp of her arms around her knees. He was dark and ugly and exciting in anger, and he often did blindly exciting things, although sometimes painful.

Now, however, he seemed to think better of violence. She could sense the fury draining from him, the color of rage leaving his cheeks. He reached out and drew a surprisingly gentle finger down her arched spine.

“Why do you stay on and on here, Maggie?” he said. “You don’t give a damn about college.”

“I’m a career college girl. I plan to spend my life at it.”

“Be serious for once. Why don’t you give it up? There are lots of things you could do that would be more fun and make you some money besides.”

“Why don’t you give it up? You’ll probably flunk everything at the end of the term and get booted, anyhow. You could try working for a change.”

“I will if you will. Give it up and go away, I mean. Let’s go away together, Maggie.”

“Fat chance.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t go across town with you.”

“Please.”

“No, damn it! No, no, no! And don’t beg. You only sound foolish when you do.”

“All right,” he said. “All right, by God!”

He swiped at her suddenly, before she had even an instant in which to duck or defend herself, and his heavy open hand cracked against the side of her head. Still clasping her knees, she spun comically on the pivot or her tail, then went sprawling on the floor with arms and legs flying. She was up on her knees in a flash, spitting obscenities and coming at him with open claws, but he swept her arms aside with a contemptuous gesture and clipped her brutally on the jaw, his hand folded this time into a fist. She fell away again in a flash of pain and garish light fading swiftly to brief darkness, and when the darkness receded she was flat on her back on the floor, pinned beneath the weight of his hard body. She spat in his face and cursed him, but he had been relieved by the catharsis of violence and did not care at all.

His grip was almost gentle and did not hurt her in the least, but it was very strong, unbreakable, and it was impossible to scratch his eyes out, as she had threatened. This, however, was only something she had said to goad him, anyhow, and he was in fact now doing, beginning to do, what she had expected and wanted.

There was a morning newscaster in the box where Brad had been. He watched Buddy and Maggie with professional gravity as he read the latest releases.

8

“Will you have some tea now?” Madelaine asked.

Brad looked up from the book he was reading. It was a dull book, he thought, but even the dullness was pleasant, something he badly needed after the stormy session with Cornelia and the trying television session in the morning.

It had been altogether a pleasant afternoon, a welcome change of pace, and he had spent most of it doing exactly what he was now doing, sitting before his living room fireplace, in which there was a small wood fire, reading sporadically the agreeably dull book.

“Is it time?” he said.

“It’s nearly five.”

“Really? It doesn’t seem possible. Saturday afternoons at home always pass so quickly. A characteristic, I suppose, of all good times and things.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“What? Oh, yes. The tea. I believe I’ll have a cocktail instead, if you don’t mind.”

“I suggest that you don’t. We’re going to the picnic party at the Nortons later, you know, and you’ll have something there.”

“That’s true,” he admitted. “I’d forgotten about the party. To tell the truth, I would prefer to go right on forgetting it. Those damn backyard affairs of old Norton’s are terrible bores. Besides, it’s getting too late in the year for outside parties. We’ll all freeze our tails.”

“I hardly think so. The temperature’s mild enough, even in the evening, and there will be a fire. Anyhow, most guests appear to enjoy Dr. Norton’s backyard parties. I rather enjoy them myself.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your pleasure. We’ll go of course.”

“I should hope so. You can hardly afford to be cavalier with the head of your department,” she reminded him tartly.

“You think not? I doubt that old Norton has much influence left where it counts. No matter, though. I’ll have the tea, as you suggested.”

“If you prefer the cocktail, I’ll mix it. A Martini?”

“No. You’re quite right about it. I’d better have the tea.”

“All right. I’ll have to make it myself. The maid is off this afternoon.”

She turned away from the window against which she had been standing and crossed the room to a door opening into a hall that led back to the kitchen.

Watching her go, Brad gave due credit to her fine figure and the practiced grace of her movements, which had been learned early and never lost. The dress she was wearing was very expensive, he thought, far more expensive than she could have worn if they were living on his salary. But he did not resent this. On the contrary, he fully approved it.

A man of his own appearance and position needed an impressive wife at any cost, and it surely made matters much easier if he didn’t have to pay the cost himself. It was a pity, really, and perhaps not entirely her fault, that she was, like old Norton’s backyard brawls, such a bore. Actually, his feeling for her nowadays was somewhat more positive than mere boredom. It had in it a core of animus that might easily, sufficiently incited, become hatred.

He got up and walked over to the window that Madelaine had left, holding his book folded upon an index finger. Looking across the side yard to the box hedge that separated them from their neighbor, a botanist of considerable repute, he wondered what in the devil he was to do about Cornelia, for it was certain that something had to be done as quickly and quietly as possible.

Well, he wasn’t seriously worried about her, so far as that went. He was positive that she wouldn’t kick up a public fuss and ruin her own career at Peermont, as well as his. But it was possible that she might do something covertly that was calculated to smear him in some way while leaving her untouched. He wondered if she would. Or if she could, if she would. He doubted it. She was, after all, a mature woman, much too sophisticated and intelligent to create a sticky mess over an affair that had been mutually conceived and, until recently, rather pleasantly conducted.

Oh, she would certainly make things difficult when it came to a break. She had already demonstrated that. After a while, however, she would accept it amiably enough, and later on she would probably even convince herself that it was she who had decided to make the break for her own good.

Reassured, aware of a vacancy that Cornelia, in his mind, had already left, he began to think of Maggie. Thinking of her caused his lips to slip into the shape of a slight smile, developing dimples.

She was an odd and intriguing little devil, he thought. She possessed, somehow, a unique quality that made her different from anyone he had ever known before. Puzzling and exciting and somewhat disturbing. What was it?

He stood and tried to think what it was until Madelaine returned, carrying a silver service, and then he turned away, walking back to his chair and pulling it a little forward so that he could reach, sitting, the low table on which the service sat.

“Did you watch the television session this morning?” he inquired.

“No. I have no interest in mathematics. You know that.”

“Of course. I thought you might have watched out of general interest. Merely to see how I did and all.”

“I’m sure you did very well. You always do. The truth is, I slept right through it.”

“It’s an ungodly hour. I wonder sometimes if anyone watches. It will be a relief to be finished with it.”

“As I’ve said before, I’ve had an idea that you rather enjoyed your weekend trips to the city,” she murmured, her eyes oddly intent upon him.

“Not at all. They’re a terrible nuisance. What on earth makes you persist in such an idea?”

“It was just an impression I got. Is your tea strong enough?”

“Just right. Isn’t this a different brand from the one we’ve been using?”

“Yes. Do you like it as well?”

“Better. Much better.”

“I’ll tell Wanda to continue ordering it.”

They finished their tea in silence, she one cup and he two, a pair of distinguished-looking people staring into the small fire and forming together a pretty picture of lush domestic contentment.

When Brad finally replaced his cup on the silver tray, emptied the second time, she took from a deep pocket in her skirt something that appeared to be an envelope, which in fact it was, and tapped it against the knuckles of her left hand, watching him the while with perfect composure.

“I have something here that I think will interest you,” she said.

“What is it? It looks like a letter.”

“That’s what it is. At least it came in this afternoon’s mail.”

“From someone I know?” he asked idly.

“No. Actually, it’s not precisely a letter at all. It’s a report.”

“Report? What kind of report? About what?”

“I think it would be simpler and save time if I were to read it to you. It’s quite short. Do you mind listening?”

“Not in the least. If you’ve been trying to arouse my curiosity, I must say that you’ve succeeded.”

“Very well, then. I’ll just skip a few lines at the beginning and get right to the part I want you to hear.”

She removed a single sheet of paper from the envelope and unfolded it to its full 8½ X 11 size. There was a letterhead at the top that he couldn’t read at a distance, and the typewritten contents indicated a business character rather than a social one.

He was already beginning to feel a little uneasy, and as she began to read crisply and unemotionally for about three minutes that seemed like three hours, he sat fixed in his chair in the beginning of hatred, the incited animus stirring and boiling and welling in his throat to make him sick.

“ ‘Professor Cannon,’ ” she read, “ ‘arrived at his hotel at nine o’clock. He was checked into room 515 and went immediately up. At 9:27 he came down and went into the cocktail lounge. He sat at the bar for approximately twenty minutes, during which time he had one dry Martini and engaged in conversation with a lady who sat at his left. This was clearly a chance encounter. He has never been observed in the lady’s company before. The conversation was clearly casual.

“ ‘At 9:50 Miss Cornelia York, reference all prior reports, came into the lounge. She had earlier checked into room 607, same hotel, at 8:17. Professor Cannon moved with her to a table, where they had three Martinis apiece and engaged in conversation for more than an hour. Operator was not in position to overhear the conversation.

“‘At 11:08 Miss York left the lounge and took the elevator to the sixth floor. Operator walked to the sixth floor and took a position from which the door to Miss York’s room could be observed. At 11:23 Professor Cannon approached the door and knocked. He was immediately admitted to the room.

“‘Operator remained in position until 2:00 A.M., in accordance with instructions pertaining to this and prior operations. At that time, Professor Cannon had not yet left the room. Movements of principals were basically identical with movements reported in all prior operations. Implications are clear. Please inform if you want further observations or actions in this case.’ ”

She refolded the paper and returned it to the envelope, leaning forward to place the envelope on the silver tray beside her cup. Then she sank back again in her chair to cross her knees and observe Brad with a quiet, expectant smile, as if she were awaiting his comments on something she considered very amusing, if not very important.

He wasn’t deceived or reassured by this appearance of restraint, however. He recognized its deadliness. Rising suddenly, he walked to the window and looked out and came back. He was not aware of this movement, and never remembered afterward having made it.

“You had me followed,” he said bitterly. “You had me followed by a cheap private detective.”

“Not so cheap, darling,” she countered, her voice dry and mocking. “Quite expensive, as a matter of fact. And, as you can see, exceedingly competent. He really writes quite a literate and lucid report, don’t you think? One would hardly expect it of a detective, would one?”

“I would hardly have expected it of you. To resort to such sordid tactics!” Brad’s face was ridged and suddenly ominous and unpleasant.

“Sordid? Darling, in the face of what you are and what you’ve been doing, do you actually have the temerity to accuse me of being sordid? Well, perhaps I am. Perhaps you would be astonished to know what I can be and what I can resort to when it becomes necessary. You had better think about it.”

“Would it do any good to tell you that this business with Cornelia is finished, and that I wish to God it had never begun?” he ventured.

“Oh, it’s finished, all right. I don’t need your assurance for that. At least it had better be, if you know what’s good for you. To tell the truth, I’m not greatly disturbed by your silly affair. Chances are that I would have ignored it if you hadn’t become so stupidly blatant about it.

“You see, darling, I know perfectly well what kind of man you are, and I accept you as that and nothing more. I would leave you free to make as big a fool of yourself as you pleased if it were not for the incidental danger of your making a fool of me, too.”

“I see. Thank you very much. I suppose, then, that you wish to divorce me on innocuous grounds. Mental cruelty or some such. Very well. I’ll not contest it.”

“Oh, no. If I were going to divorce you, it would surely be on grounds of adultery, and I would do my best in any other way I could to ruin you. Do you see how vindictive I can be when I feel inclined? However, don’t worry about it. I don’t wish to divorce you on any grounds whatever. If you have any such notion, you’re greatly mistaken.

“The business with Cornelia is finished. I’ll accept your word for that, and if it isn’t, I’ll soon find out about it. Other than that, darling, it isn’t so much what I will do as what you will do, and I will tell you what it is. When Dr. Norton retires, which will be soon, you will become head of your department at the college. That’s established. Later, in a reasonable time, you will become president. That’s also established.

“In the meanwhile, you will revert to the dull business of being my husband, and you will give it your full attention. For my part, inadequate as I may be, I promise to try to satisfy your reasonable needs to the best of my ability. These are the things that you will do, as I have planned. If you wish to consider the alternative to them, I shall be glad to tell you exactly what it is. I don’t think you do, however. It’s not pleasant.”

All the while Madelaine spoke her voice remained cool, precise and reasonable. Her very blandness and composure were maddening.

“Is that all you have to say?” he asked.

“Every word. I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear.”

“Perfectly.”

“Good. We understand each other, then, and can forget this unfortunate episode.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt over her hips. “I believe I’ll just leave the tea things here. Wanda can remove them later. I’m going upstairs now and lie down a while before the party. Don’t be late in getting ready. And don’t neglect to dress warmly enough. You had better wear a sweater under your jacket.”

She went out, and Brad sat down, staring into the fire, to consider the conditions of his probation. They were, however, too depressing to consider at length, and so, after a few minutes, he began to think again of Maggie McCall.

9

The party, which Brad had expected to be dull, was worse. But this may have been due largely to the fact that he was not in a mood for any party at all, let alone one of old Norton’s deadly variety.

Indeed, all the elements were pretty much the same as they had been on other occasions, including the guests. There was a fire in the huge barbecue pit, of which Norton was inordinately proud, and Norton himself in an apron and high chef’s hat was the hearty host presiding over a standing rib roast.

There was a table spread with other food, from which one was supposed to help himself, buffet fashion, and there was a second, smaller table supporting a variety of bottles from which one was also supposed to help himself. The result of this was about thirty people broken up into small groups, all balancing plates and glasses and cups in precarious positions, sitting and standing and leaning, and conducting conversations which were severely handicapped by the conditions imposed, for it is difficult, naturally, to be animated or impressive when your mouth is full half the time and you do not have proper use of your hands.

There had been an early trying moment directly after Brad and Madelaine had arrived. Cornelia, already there, had greeted Madelaine with effusive gayety that had the effect, under the circumstances, of deliberate needling. But of course Cornelia didn’t know the circumstances that had been established by the private detective’s report, and so she really could not be suspected of brazenly flaunting her status upon the other woman, which was what she seemed to Brad to be doing.

Anyhow, Madelaine had met the situation admirably with cool and courteous scorn that Cornelia had failed utterly to recognize as anything other than rather snobbish good manners. Ever since his survival of that first meeting, Brad had been carefully avoiding them both.

This maneuver was not without its problems, especially in the case of Cornelia, and he wished to God that he had not been forced to submit to the false and exhausting reconciliation that now made it necessary to start all over again with the dreary business of getting rid of her.

He wished to God also that he could go home. But Madelaine was perversely enjoying herself and not inclined to leave. He was glad, after a while, that she wasn’t, for it was later that he found Maggie sitting on a stone bench in some shrubbery.

She wasn’t supposed to be there, but there she was. Brad’s finding her was purely accidental, for he had been wandering from group to group with no particular direction except that it was away from Madelaine and Cornelia, and it was on impulse that he slipped around a juniper to get away from all the others too.

The stone bench was behind the juniper, and Maggie was on the bench. Having visited the smaller table frequently, he was at first inclined to think that he was being tricked by a light head, that she was not really there at all, but she smiled as if she were, and spoke as if she were, and gave the impression of expecting to be considered as real as anybody else.

“Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come along. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How in the devil did you get here?” he said. “Do you know the Nortons?”

“Nortons? Who are they?” Her question was blandly innocent, her shrewdly knowing eyes naive in their inquiring stare.

“Dr. Norton is the head of my department, and he happens to be your host,” Brad told her.

“Well, he’s not properly my host, when it comes to that, for I’m not properly a guest.”

“You mean you weren’t invited?” he asked.

“Yes. I’d scarcely be invited to a party by someone who doesn’t even know me, would I?”

“It seems reasonable that you wouldn’t. It also seems reasonable to wonder, in that case, why you came.”

“That’s easy to explain. I came because I knew you were going to be here. I thought I might be able to see you and talk with you. And that, as you see, is exactly what has happened.” Maggie smiled in almost childish triumph.

“So it has. May I ask how you knew that I was going to be here?”

“Oh, well, that wasn’t quite the truth, but it seemed the simplest way of saying it. The truth it, I saw you and your wife leave your house and start walking this way. I guessed you weren’t going very far, or you wouldn’t have been walking, so I just followed along behind.”

“How did you happen to be outside our house when we left?”

“I didn’t happen to be there. I was there on purpose. Do you remember how it was when you were a child? You got a crush on someone, and you stood all by yourself and looked at his house just for the excitement of being close to where he lived, or you waited on a corner or some place just for the excitement of seeing him pass by. That’s why I was deliberately outside your house this evening when you left, although I’m not a child any longer, of course, and what I have is not merely a crush.”

Brad regarded her with an uneasy mixture of delight and foreboding. He was pleased by what she had done, and intrigued by what she might do, but he was surely in no position to add to the problems he already had.

Knowing quite well that he had better send Maggie away, or turn and walk away himself, he sat down beside her on the stone bench and somehow came immediately into possession of her near hand. He couldn’t remember later whether he had taken it or received it.

“I’m not so sure that you’re not a child any longer,” he said. “At least you have done a childish thing. Suppose someone else had found you here? What would you have said or done?”

“Oh, I haven’t attempted to remain hidden or anything. That would have been a mistake. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to several people and had something to eat and a couple of drinks. The man in the chef’s hat brought me a plate and was very considerate.”

“Good God! That was old Norton himself. Didn’t he even wonder who you were?”

“Apparently not. That’s an amusing thing about situations like this, you know. No one knows you, but everyone assumes that you were brought by someone else. Sometimes you are asked difficult questions, of course, but it’s easy to evade them if you are careful and clever. Dr. Norton had been drinking quite a lot, which helped. People who have been drinking always accept odd things more readily than people who haven’t.”

“What helped most is that the old idiot is in an early-stage of senility,” Brad stated acidly. “If you have been out mingling with the guests, why didn’t you come and speak to me?”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“Because it may be safer later if no one knows we are even acquainted. Outside of class, that is.”

“What’s the harm in being acquainted?”

“Perhaps none. It will depend on what we decide to do.”

“You’re a very cryptic young lady, I must say. Why should we decide to do anything?”

“If you can’t resist me and want to do something, I mean,” she added gravely.

He laughed aloud, feeling the strongest urge to do something at once, right there on the stone bench behind the juniper. There was in the feeling a wild sweetness and excitement that he had not experienced for a long time — or had never, rather, with his limitations, experienced at all.

He did not quite know how or why he now felt as he did, except that he had never before known anyone quite like Maggie, whose strange candor may have been the expression of incredible innocence or subtle device or simple immunity to inhibitions. He didn’t know which it was precisely, but he was reasonably certain that it was not the first, and whatever it was, it was exhilarating even though it might be dangerous.

“Are you sure you know just what you’re saying?” he said.

“Certainly. I’m not very smart or a good student or anything exceptional, as you know, but I’m at least capable of knowing what I mean and saying it directly.”

“I’m inclined to think that your capabilities are considerably more extensive that that. In some respects, you strike me as being positively precocious.”

“Precocious? Doesn’t that mean advanced for your age?” she queried, her eyes directly meeting his.

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

“Then I’m not precocious at all. There’s nothing I can do or want to do that shouldn’t be expected in almost anyone as old as I am.”

“Excuse me. You’re quite right. Precocious isn’t exactly the word for you. What I meant was that you are apparently capable of doing things that are not expected at any age whatever. How old are you, by the way?”

“Well, I’m older than you think, because I look younger than I am.”

“I’d guess you to be about twenty, then, because you look about eighteen.”

“You see? And all the time I’m actually twenty-eight.”

“Nonsense. You couldn’t be.”

“I could, and I am,” Maggie insisted.

“What class are you in?”

“You mean junior or senior or what? I’m not certain, to tell the truth, because I haven’t gone along a class a year as most students do. I’m not truly a student at all, when you come right down to it.”

“If you aren’t a student, what are you?”

“Nothing especially. I just got started going to college, almost accidentally, and I discovered that there are a great many advantages to it, and so I’ve kept going one place and another. It’s a kind of way of life, if you know what I mean. But I suppose I’ll have to give it up eventually, even though I do have the advantage of looking younger than I am.”

“Probably. One can hardly go to college forever. Do your parents support you in this way of life?”

“I don’t have any parents. They’re dead. At least my father is, and I suppose my mother is, although I don’t know certainly. She ran away from my father and me when I was a child. About two or three. I can’t even remember her.”

“That’s too bad. It must have made things difficult.”

“I don’t think so. According to my father, it rather made things easier. He was apparently happy to be rid of her, and I never felt any need for her later. My father and I got along fine. We understood each other, and he was very interesting to live with in spite of not being always responsible about things liks food and shelter and clothing.

“He was a kind of operator in this and that, whatever came up and looked like a good bet. Sometimes we had plenty of money and everything we wanted, and other times we didn’t have any money at all. We moved around a lot, and I went to many different schools and always managed to get along pretty well, although I can’t remember that I learned much.

“I kept thinking I might run off and try things on my own, but I never did. Finally, when I was nineteen, we were in this little town where my father had something going, and all of sudden he died. Fortunately we had had a fairly long run of good luck, and he had quite a lot of money — about five thousand dollars — that became mine.

“There was a little college in this town that wasn’t too strict about letting you in, and I didn’t have anything else to do, or anywhere in particular to go, so I thought I’d try it for a while. As it happened, I liked it. Not the studying, or anything like that, but just the general conditions.

“As I said, there are advantages to going to college. You can always find decent places to live for not much money, for it seems to be understood that college students don’t have much to pay, and you can eat well at the cafeteria or one of the places around the campus for less than you could eat elsewhere.”

“Are you saying that you’ve been going to college since you were nineteen?” Brad asked, incredulous.

“Not regularly,” she replied seriously, her fair features pretty and serene. “Off and on. I’d get tired of it and try something else for a while. But I always came back to it. I never carried a full load of classes, and so I didn’t get ahead very fast. Besides I was forever losing credits by moving from one college to another. That doesn’t matter, however, for I don’t particularly want a degree. I can’t see the value of it.”

“You certainly haven’t lived all this time, since you were nineteen, on about five thousand dollars,” Brad hastened to point out, his surprise and bewilderment growing apace.

“Oh, no. I didn’t say I had. There are always ways you can pick up money if you need it. You become quite good at it if you are forced to learn by circumstances. Besides, there is almost always someone who is willing to help if you approach him in the right way.”

Brad started to ask her how she had picked up the money and solicited the help, but then decided it wouldn’t be advisable. Watching her with a strange sense of fantasy, he assured himself that she was real, flesh and bones and the breath of life, but he found it incredible. It crossed his mind that she might be a constitutional liar.

Standing, he said, “It’s chilly sitting here. I must get back to the party, and I think you had better leave before you get into trouble.”

“Would you like to walk with me a way? I’d be pleased if you would.”

“I’d like to, but I won’t.”

“Why? Because you wife might miss you?” She asked, staring up at him.

“Not only that. There are others reasons.”

“I can’t think what they would be. You’re only making excuses.”

“Not at all. As you put it a few minutes ago, it might be unwise in view of what we may decide to do later.”

This was something he had not intended to say, and he wondered afterward why he had said it. On her face in the shadows, he thought, there was an odd little smile of satisfaction, as though he had said, intentionally or not, exactly what she had anticipated.

“Well,” she said, “You go on back, then. Never mind me. I’ll sit here a little longer, I think, before I leave. Do you mind? If I were to leave this minute, I’d have the feeling of being sent, and I wouldn’t like it. Perhaps it’s unreasonable, but I have the strongest feeling against being sent away from anywhere.”

She sat on the bench with her hands folded in her lap, smiling and not moving, and so there was nothing left for him to do graciously except say good night and rejoin the party, which he did.

When he looked behind the juniper a quarter of an hour later, she was gone. He felt, seeing the empty stone bench, a ridiculous urge to cry out her name and call her back.

10

Wednesday afternoon after classes, unable to delay any longer a second attempt to shed Cornelia, Brad went to see her in the small office behind her classroom.

This time he was compelled to accomplish, amicably or otherwise, what he had failed to accomplish by the abortive effort in her hotel room, for it was, of course, imperative to cancel the tryst for Friday next, and for all Fridays following.

He had chosen to see her in her office because he thought that the environment would impose restraints that had been lacking before. Surely, he reasoned, the bare and ascetic room would help to sustain a rational atmosphere that would be favorable to the renunciation of a mistress without excessive fuss and bother.

He found her, as he had half hoped he wouldn’t, sitting behind her desk in the pale light of a late sun that found entrance through a west window. She appeared tired and somehow apprehensive, the sunlight exposing pitilessly a fine pattern of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He had never visited her here before, and she was obviously surprised and grateful that he had come now.

Rising, she moved around her desk toward him, and he was afraid for a moment that she was going to be demonstrative and make things doubly difficult, but then she thought better of it, if she actually intended it, stopping instead and supporting herself against the desk in a position that was neither standing nor sitting and seemed a part of her vague apprehension.

“Why, Brad,” she said with a kind of mock brightness, “what a delightful indiscretion! What on earth has brought you here?”

“There’s something I must tell you plainly,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

“Oh?” Her mouth grew slack for an instant in lines of ugly bitterness and then resumed the shape of her terrible, bright smile. “What is so urgent that it couldn’t wait until Friday?”

“That’s what you must understand. We can’t meet on Friday. Not this week or any other week.”

“Is that so? How kind of you to let me know. Is this something you have decided all by yourself without considering me at all?”

“I didn’t simply decide, Cornelia. The decision was imposed on me. I had no alternative.”

“Imposed? Imposed by whom?”

“By Madelaine. She knows all about our meetings. She’s known for some time.”

“You’re lying. You’re only saying that to justify deserting me.”

“It’s the truth. I swear it is,” he declared, his voice rising.

“How could it be? How could she know?”

“She hired a private detective to keep me under observation. He’s been reporting to her weekly. All the details.”

“All? Not quite all. I’m sure of that.”

“Oh, well. You know what I mean. Enough to be conclusive.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe there has been a detective at all.”

“Damn it, there has! What can I say to convince you?”

“Nothing, probably. If Madelaine has known about us for some time, why hasn’t she said or done anything before?”

“Madelaine has her own way of doing things. You’d have to know her better to understand.”

“It’s a singularly odd way,” Cornelia observed. She was quite pleasant to me Saturday night at the party. Do you expect me to believe that she knew about us then?”

“She did. I tell you, you just don’t understand Madelaine. If you did, you might be more concerned.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She’s dangerous. She wouldn’t hesitate to ruin us both if we pushed her to it.”

“I’m not afraid of Madelaine, even if you are. If she knows about us, all right. I’m rather glad. We can be free of pretense from now on.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Panic flickered briefly inside Brad. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I haven’t lost my mind, but I think I’ve lost my lover. That’s what you’re really saying, isn’t it? That you’re tired of me and don’t want me any longer?”

“All right! All right, by God! I had hoped that we could be reasonable and remain friends, but I see that we can’t. I’ve told you the truth, but you can believe anything you please.”

Cornelia didn’t respond immediately. She seemed, in fact, not even to have heard. It was obvious to him now that there would be no repetition of Friday night’s emotional eruption. This should have been a vast relief, but it wasn’t. The terrible smile remained fixed on her lips, and the feverish brightness was in her eyes.

“Go away,” she said. “Go away at once.”

He made a small gesture, a slight supplication. “We’re adults, Cornelia. We can be friends.”

“You are not my friend. You have never been. I’ll decide for myself what you are, and I may make you sorry for it, whatever it is. Perhaps it will be I, not Madelaine, who will ruin you.”

“If you do anything foolish, you’ll hurt yourself as much as me.”

“Will I? There may be a way to avoid that. I’ll consider it.”

Brad was frightened by her smile and her bright eyes. It would have been preferable, after all, if she had screamed or cursed or wept. Turning away from her, unable to stand the sight of her any longer, he went out through the empty classroom and out of the building.

In his car, he left the campus, driving slowly along a residential street. He was merely driving, escaping to nowhere in particular, and it was entirely by chance that the street was the same one on which Maggie McCall happened at the time to be walking.

Seeing her on the sidewalk, he thought that she was exactly the odd and intriguing diversion that he desperately needed at the moment. Accordingly, without thinking again, he stopped and called to her. Crossing the parking strip between sidewalk and curb, she got in beside him and settled herself comfortably before saying a word.

“Hello,” she said. “Were you looking for me?”

“No, but I’m glad I found you. May I take you somewhere?”

“I was going home, to my apartment, but I’d just as soon go somewhere else if you prefer.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have time for a preference. Where do you live?”

“You keep right on going down this street for three more blocks beyond the next corner, and then you turn right and go four blocks that way, and there it is.”

“You live quite a distance off campus, don’t you?” he inquired, feeling a little awkward with her now.

“Yes, I do. I’ve discovered that living quite a distance off campus has many advantages.”

“I’m surprised that you’re allowed to live off campus at all. Isn’t there some sort of rule about it?”

“I suppose there is. There’s some sort of rule about practically everything. However, as I told you, I’m a sort of special student, which makes me an exception.” She smiled sweetly at him.

“You’re an exception, all right.”

She had slumped into the seat beside him as if it were a familiar place where she had often been before, her body from hips to head a relaxed arc supported in its position by the back of her neck and a small area of contact near the base of her spine. Rolling her head on the back of the seat, she looked at him gravely while she considered what he had said.

“I’m not sure how you meant that,” she said. “How did you?”

“As a compliment.”

“That’s all right, then. Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary. I merely acknowledged a fact. Is this the corner?”

“Yes. Turn here and drive four blocks.”

He turned the corner and drove the four blocks. The building in which she lived turned out to be a brick structure that had been converted into apartments from something else. It was two stories high, and he judged that there were two small apartments on each floor, but there were actually three smaller ones instead.

He parked at the curb in front of the building, remaining behind the wheel while she opened the door on her side and swung around on the pivot of her stern. Pausing on her pivot, her feet on the sidewalk, she issued an invitation over her shoulder.

“Will you come up for a few minutes?” she said. “I’d be pleased if you would.”

“I don’t think so. Thanks just the same.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to?”

“I want to, but I don’t think I should.”

“Oh, come on. Once won’t matter. Besides, no one pays any attention around here to what anyone else does.”

“That’s reassuring, at least. I’m not so sure, however, that once won’t matter. Are you?” He gave her a level, inquiring glance.

“No, I’m not, to tell the truth, and I’d like to find out. Please come up.”

She got out onto the sidewalk and turned, waiting. He knew very well what he should do — the only sane and sensible thing — and he knew also that he wouldn’t do it.

He knew that he should drive away quickly, while there was still time, and the knowledge was an uneasiness in his brain all the while he was getting out of the car and crossing the sidewalk and climbing beside her up the stairs.

“The place is a mess,” she said, opening her door. “I’m not very neat.”

He followed her inside. The bed was still down from the wall, unmade. Glasses, ash trays and magazines and items of clothing and incidental junk made a vast litter on the floor, the bed and the table, wherever she had left whatever she had used and might or might not use again.

Her portable television set was at the foot of her bed on its wheeled stand. On a table beside the bed, within easy reach of an incumbent, was a pack of cigarettes, a dirty glass, and a quart bottle half full of dark port wine.

Ordinarily a fastidious man, he was not offended by all the clutter. He accepted it as a diametrical expression of herself. If the room was dirty, she was not. If it was littered, her mind wasn’t. Indifference to incidentals and tedious distractions made it possible for her to remain consistently what she was. Not that he knew what she was exactly.

It may have been, if he had, that he would still have gone away, as he should have gone before and hadn’t. But perhaps he wouldn’t have gone in any event, in spite of all knowledge. For the first time in his life, although he wasn’t fully aware of this yet either, he had met someone he would never want to leave or lose or live without.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “don’t you ever pick anything up?”

“Sometimes I do if it seems necessary. It seldom does, however. I rather like things left around. Does it disturb you?”

“Strangely enough, it doesn’t.”

“If it does, I’ll pick up immediately,” she offered.

“Thank you. I have an idea that’s quite a concession. Never mind, though. I’m afraid it would take far too long.”

“Won’t you take off your coat and sit down? You’ll have to clear a chair, I guess. There doesn’t appear to be one without something on it. Will you have a glass of wine? It’s all I have.”

“No, thanks. No wine.”

“Oh, have a glass. It’s cheap but quite good. It comes from California, I think. It’s port.”

“A small glass, then, just to be congenial.”

He took off his coat and cleared a chair and sat down. After removing her own coat, Maggie disappeared for several seconds into a closet-like kitchen, returning with two glasses which she filled from the bottle on the bedside table. Leaving one glass on the table, she carried the other across to him.

“See if you don’t think that’s quite good to be so cheap,” she said. “It costs less than a dollar a bottle if you buy it by the case. Buddy bought a case and left it. Most of it’s still in the kitchen.”

“That was generous of Buddy, I’m sure. Does he come here often to help you drink it?”

“He would if I’d let him, but I won’t. I’ve given him up. He came last night and wanted in, but I wouldn’t open the door. After making quite a fuss about it, he went away. Go on and try the wine. Don’t you think you’ll like it?”

The wine was bad, but he said that it was good, and she was exorbitantly pleased. Returning to the bed, she sat down and drank a little from her own glass, then began to remove her shoes and stockings.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Getting barefooted,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“Do you always go barefooted in your apartment?”

“I usually go bare entirely, feet and all, but I thought you might object to that on such short acquaintance.”

“I see. You go bare entirely only with friends.”

She looked at him gravely, stretching her legs and flexing her toes. “Are you making fun of me? I think you are.”

“Not at all. I’m only trying to understand you. You must realize that your attitudes are a bit confusing at first.”

“Do you think so? I don’t see why,” she countered.

“Because they are different from those generally encountered in young ladies,” he told her.

“Well, I don’t know much about young ladies, and I don’t particularly pretend to be one. Anyhow, I’m not so young, either, when you come to that. I told you I’m twenty-eight.”

“I’m beginning to suspect that you may be infinitely older than that.”

“Oh?” She cocked her head, peering at him. “That’s supposed to mean something special, I think, but I don’t know what.”

“I mean you have a kind of ageless quality.”

“Is that bad?”

“On the contrary, it’s intriguing.”

“I suspect it’s a result of the way I grew up. Some things I never learned at all. Other things I was forced to learn almost from the beginning.”

“A remarkable combination of ignorance and incredible shrewdness.”

“I don’t think you should criticize me for being ignorant. It isn’t fair.” Her eyes clouded with annoyance.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean it critically.”

“Oh, well, it’s true. I admit it. I don’t suppose someone like you would particularly care to become the friend of someone like me.”

“It would definitely have some attractive features.”

“What? Oh, yes. What we were just talking about.”

She began to laugh softly, the wicked little sound he remembered from before, her eyes shining at him over the rim of the glass which she had raised to her lips.

“Does it seem so ludicrous?” he asked.

“No, no. I was only thinking about last Saturday morning.”

“What about it? If it’s so amusing, I’d like to know.”

“Well, I was lying on the floor watching you on television, and I had just got out of bed and wasn’t wearing anything, and I suddenly thought how funny it would be if you could see me as clearly as I could see you.”

“It would have been distracting, to say the least.”

“That’s what I thought, and I kept wishing and wishing you could.”

“Next Saturday, I’ll look harder.”

“All right. If you care to wait.”

He finished his cheap, bad wine and set the empty glass on the floor beside his chair, where it looked natural in relation to the general litter.

Getting up, he walked over to the bed and sat down beside her. She immediately twisted around from the hips and put up her mouth to be kissed. After the kiss, which transcended the scent and flavor of the port, she stood up and elevated him quickly and deftly, with the hiss of a zipper and a whisper of cloth, to the status of friend. She was slim and taut and full of tricks, and the most remarkable thing of all was that there was never the slightest sense, before or during or after, of the familiar stale redundancy.

In the abatement of excitement, under his eyes and hands, she seemed to preen and project herself, not so much in brazenness as in childish pleasure in her body and complete assurance of its ability to sustain its charm even in the dulled and difficult aftermath of passion. It was a mute and rather arrogant expression of braggadocio, defying him to deny what was plainly true and inviting him to enjoy what was openly in evidence. With the tips of her fingers, in self-love, she traced the lines of her small alert breasts, her nipped waist, her lean and talented hips and flanks.

“Did I please you?” she said.

“Yes. Very much.”

“Have you ever known anyone half so good?”

“No, no. Not half.”

He kissed her throat, drawing his lips downward across silken skin.

It was surely an illusion induced by the character of subsequent events, and actually applied much later to the present instance, that there was all the while in the room an elusive and caustic scent of sulphur.

11

Buddy walked upstairs to Maggie’s efficiency apartment, so-called, and knocked on the door. He had not seen her now for quite a long time, although he had tried, and he had been feeling, as a consequence, extremely depressed.

As always during such dark episodes, nothing he saw or touched or did was securely related to reality. He moved with a gaseous sensation of lightness, and he had difficulty, at times, in focusing his eyes properly. His humor was ugly. His potential was dangerous.

He was not anticipating a warm welcome. On the contrary, he was expecting curses and threats, and this expectation was based soundly on something that had happened more than a week ago, and what had happened was a fight, a real Donnybrook, between him and old Cannon. The fight had been Buddy’s fault, of course, although he had not actually planned it, and had known immediately after it was over that it was a bad mistake.

Motivated by his hatred for the man who was stealing his girl, he had merely waited for Brad at a place along the route the latter usually took home from the campus, and he had originally intended no more than to stand and hate and wish his adversary the worst of luck, a kind of irrational catharsis, but then at the last moment, in compulsive violence, he had stepped onto the sidewalk and blocked the way with glowering belligerence. Brad had stopped and taken a half-step backward, not in fear, for he was no physical coward, but in surprise. He had never seen Buddy and did not know him, but he had instantly a conviction of his identity.

“I want to talk to you, ” Buddy said.

“Yes?” Brad said.

“You don’t know me, do you?”

“We’ve never met, but I think you may be Buddy Jensen.”

“I suppose Maggie’s told you about me.”

“You mean Miss McCall? She’s mentioned you, I believe, but we really haven’t discussed you at length. Miss McCall and I are only casually acquainted, you know.”

“Like hell you are!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you’re a hell of a lot more than casual acquaintances, that’s what I mean, and I’m warning you to let her alone if you don’t want trouble.”

“As a matter of academic interest, suppose Miss McCall and I were as well acquainted as you seem to believe. And suppose that I refused to abandon her merely because you demanded it. Why would you do?”

“I’d beat your God-damn face in, that’s what I’d do.”

“In that case, you’d better begin beating as a matter of principal, for I’d pay absolutely no attention to you in this imaginary situation, or in any real one that I could possibly think of.”

“Maybe you think I won’t do it.”

“I think you may try, but I doubt that you’ll succeed.”

It had never occurred to Buddy that old Cannon would display such calm courage, even contempt, and he was so blindly enraged that he leaped forward and swung wildly and took a stiff blow in the face for his carelessness. With blood streaming from his nose, he settled down to a more methodical attack, stalking his adversary and hurling clenched flesh and bone only when there was a fair target. After several minutes his youth and superior stamina began to tell to his advantage, but even so it was a grim and bitter battle, fought in silence except for wheezing breath and thudding fists, that exceeded anything that he had experienced since boyhood encounters in back alleys. In fact, he was in danger for a while of taking the beating he had set out to give, and he was more than willing in the end to stagger away and leave Brad, on his hands and knees on the concrete sidewalk, dripping blood and struggling to rise.

The fight had only made matters worse with Maggie. Buddy had seen her afterward on the campus, and he had tried to stop her and speak to her, but she had only called him a dirty name and spat on him, soiling his jacket. Having made bad worse, he had attempted several times to force his way into her apartment, and then, having had no luck, he had begun spying on her and following her at a distance. But he had not returned again to her apartment until now, this evening, when he waited in the hall after knocking on her door.

After a few seconds had passed, Maggie opened the door. She was wearing a white terry cloth robe belted loosely at the waist. Bare feet were tipped with bright red nails. When she saw Buddy in the hall, her face assumed an expression of ferocity.

“What do you want?” she said.

“You know what I want. I want to see you. Let me come in.”

“Like hell I will. I told you not to come here again, and I meant it. Go away.”

She started to close the door in his face, but he reached out and braced himself against it before she could complete the action.

“There’s no use closing the door,” he said. “If you do, I’ll break it down.”

For several seconds they strained against each other, she trying to close the door and he not trying to force it open any wider, but merely to hold it where it was. Then she relaxed, accepting the futility of her effort, and the ferocious expression on her face altered subtly to one of contempt.

“Well,” she said, “I can see that you are even more despicable that I thought you were. You’re nothing but a stupid, hulking baby, that’s what you are, and I suppose I must treat you like one. You can come in and cry if you want to, but that’s all the good it will do you.”

She turned and walked into the room, seating herself on a leather hassock and lighting a cigarette that she took from a crumpled pack that was in a pocket of her robe. She smoked the cigarette calmly, looking away from him and appearing for all the world to have forgotten entirely that he had just come to the door, and that he was now standing a few feet away glaring at her darkly from under his heavy brows.

“Do you think you can go on ignoring me forever?” he said.

“Why not?” She drew on the cigarette, tilting her head back and blowing a long plume of pale smoke upward at an angle. “I don’t owe you anything. I can ignore you forever if I want to.”

“That’s what you think.”

“So it is. I just said so.”

“You’d better think again,” he muttered, his eyes ugly and narrow.

“I may do that. Someday when it suits me. I’ll let you know if I ever want you to come back.”

“That’s damn considerate of you. What gives you the idea that I’ll just hang around waiting to hear from you?”

“Suit yourself. It makes no difference to me if you do or don’t.”

“I ought to beat hell out of you, that’s what I ought to do,” he said.

“Try it,” she said tersely. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”

“There’s no need. I’ve got a better way of taking care of you now.”

“Is that so?” She glanced at him slyly from the corners of her eyes, feeling much more uneasy than her attitude indicated. “You’re simply scaring me to death!”

“You’d better be scared, if you’re not.”

“I can’t imagine why. I’m not in the habit of being scared by just any overgrown baby who insists on hanging around when he’s no longer wanted.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” Buddy murmured.

“Have I been up to something? Please tell me what it is. I can hardly wait to hear.”

“I know all about you and old Cannon. Don’t think I don’t.”

“What about us?” Maggie asked, her voice a brittle taunt.

“You’ve been sneaking out with him on the sly, that’s what. Just last night he picked you up at the corner of Twelfth and Doan Streets, and there have been plenty of other times before that.”

“You seem to know quite a lot. I wonder how a stupid lout like you could learn so much and remember it so long. It might be interesting to know how you found out all these things.”

“I’ve followed you, that’s how. I followed and waited until he picked you up. I even wrote down all the times and places.”

Now she turned her head and looked at him directly, her face set in such lines of loathing that his own face flushed, and the black brows drew straight above his eyes.

“In other words,” she said, “you’ve been spying on me. You’re not only ugly and stupid, you’re a disgusting sneak and spy besides. Did you follow us and watch us after he picked me up? No, you couldn’t do that because you haven’t had a car since the old wreck you were driving when you killed that man, and you don’t have the brains to get one. Too bad. You would have found it interesting. A natural sneak and Peeping Tom like you, who are no better than a pervert, would have enjoyed it immensely. Shall I describe it to you? I’d be happy to tell you just what happened if you’d like to know.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve got a good notion what happened. And I’ve got another good notion to kill you for it.” His big hands clenched spasmodically and his lips thinned out.

“A notion is all you’ve got, I imagine. On top of all the other dirty things you are, you’re almost certainly a coward, too.”

“You keep on playing fancy with old Cannon and see how much of a coward I am.”

She looked around for a convenient ash tray. Not finding one, she deliberately dropped her cigarette on the floor and lifted a foot to grind it out. Remembering just in time that her foot was bare, she held it suspended for a moment over the small red coal, then withdrew the foot and picked up the cigarette and arose from the hassock in a single fluid pattern of motion. Strolling over to a table with accented, indolent swaying of her terry cloth behind, she buried the cigarette in a pile of butts and ash overflowing a saucer.

“It’s really amusing how you keep referring to him like that,” she said. “You’re just jealous because he’s handsome and you’re ugly, and he’s smart and you’re stupid, and he amounts to something and you don’t and never will. You make me sick, and that’s the truth. Every time I look at you I want to vomit.”

“Keep on talking to me like that, and you’ll be worse than sick.”

“Oh, God! Threats again! I’d like to remind you that it’s you who had better be careful of what you say and do.”

“I suppose you’re harping on that old hit-and-run stuff again.”

“That’s right. I am.”

“You were with me when it happened. Remember? If you told on me, you’d only get yourself into trouble, too.”

“Like hell I would!” Maggie flared. “The cops would be tickled to death to have a witness.”

“I’ve told you what I’ll do if you ever tell.”

“God, yes! You’ve told me and told me and told me.”

She was leaning back against the table, staring at him contemptuously. After a moment, with deceptive casualness, he walked across and took her by the hair with one hand and the throat with the other. She did not resist or stir, but continued to stare at him with no change of expression whatever.

“Maggie,” he said, “come away with me.”

“Don’t start that again. You know I won’t.”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I’d be sorry afterward if I did.”

“I’ll say you would. You don’t know the half of it,” she told him.

“Maybe I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t. Most likely you won’t.”

His soft grip on her throat tightened for a moment almost imperceptibly, and then relaxed. Turning away with a sigh, he walked to the door, where he stopped with one hand on the knob, looking back at her.

“It’s no use,” he said. “It’s absolutely no use.”

“That’s right,” she said. “It isn’t.”

He went out, closing the door behind him, and she had in the first few moments after his leaving a strange feeling of emptiness that was nearly loneliness.

This feeling did not last long, however, and she went over and sat down on the hassock again and lit another cigarette and began to wonder if he would really try to cause her trouble. Considering the matter and Buddy’s basic nature, she didn’t think he would. It was much more likely that he would go into a wild spell, as he sometimes did, and get himself into some kind of trouble instead, or maybe even kill himself in one of the fits of despair that often took hold of him.

And if he did the latter, she thought, it might be the best possible thing for himself and everyone else concerned.

12

The year had turned, the holidays had come and gone, and it was a cold, clear night. Though the outside temperature was below zero, it was warm in the car with the engine idling and the heater fan turning a low speed. It was a kind of anesthetic warmth that was just faintly scented with exhaust fumes.

Below the bluff on which the car was parked in a grove of leafless trees, a river in the moonlight was a silver shield of ice above black water still moving.

Maggie was drowsy. Turning her head in Brad’s lap with the soft sound a kitten makes, she pressed a cheek against his thigh and reached up lazily to trace with the tips of fingers the hard lines of his jaw.

Beneath her cloth coat, drawn loosely over her like a cover, he stroked the satin surface of her shoulders, her lean and narrow back and compact rump. She shivered, drawing her knees up closer to her belly.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No, no. Not cold. It’s not that.”

“Perhaps you had better put on your clothes.”

“In a little while. When it’s time to go.”

“It’s time now. Almost eleven.”

“Really? So soon? Darling, we have so little time together. It’s not fair.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It may be that we will soon have no time together at all.”

“Don’t say that. I don’t like it,” she complained. “Why do you say such a thing? ”

“Never mind. I’m just depressed, I guess.”

“No. Something’s happened. You’ve been worried all evening. I can tell. What is it?”

“Nothing that you can do anything about,” he stated flatly.

She sat up suddenly beside him, drawing her coat over her shoulders like a cape.

“Don’t be too sure of that. I’m often quite clever at doing something about things when I set my mind to it. Are you in serious trouble?”

“Serious enough. I don’t think I can stand much more, to put it honestly. It’s impossible to go on as I am, at any rate.” A deep frown ridged his brow and his eyes held a bleak expression.

“Has your wife learned about us somehow? I don’t see how she could. Darling, we’ve been so careful about everything. I haven’t taken even the slightest chance.”

“It’s not Madelaine. It’s Cornelia, God damn her. She’s obviously determined to drive me insane, and I’m almost convinced that she’s insane herself.”

“It serves you right. I simply can’t understand why you ever got involved with such a woman. Ugh! It’s disgusting to think about.”

“All right. Please don’t start that again. I wish now that I hadn’t told you about her. But I thought you might be a little understanding, especially after your own experience with that oaf of a Buddy. You’re hardly in a position, darling, to be critical of my taste.”

“Oh, well, we musn’t quarrel,” she murmured. “You had your Cornelia, and I had my Buddy. Maybe it was a mistake that we were honest and confided in each other. It’s often a mistake to be honest about private matters. What has Cornelia been doing?”

“Anything to harass me and keep me uncertain and disturbed. The woman’s sick in the head, that’s all. It’s a wonder I didn’t see it sooner.”

“That’s because you were busy looking at other parts, darling, although they aren’t so damn attractive either, if you ask me. What has she been doing specifically?”

“Telephoning me at home. Leaving the most dangerous and incriminating notes in my box at school. God knows what she will do next, if I don’t find a way to stop her.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Maggie declared. “There’s nothing at all that you need to do. After a while she will stop of her own accord. A phony bitch like her would never hurt herself to hurt someone else, which is what she would have to do. She’s only trying to frighten you as a kind of revenge, or to make you come back to her on her own terms. Can’t you see that? You mustn’t be a coward and permit it to spoil things for you and me. It’s not exactly pleasant to spend our time talking like this when we might be saying and doing things much more interesting and exciting.”

“It’s easy enough for you to call me a coward and to say that nothing needs doing. In my position, it’s a little more difficult to be so assured where Cornelia’s concerned. I wish to God that she were dead, and that’s the truth.”

His voice was petulant and his face in profile, touched by the weak light of the remote moon, was the face of a sulking boy.

She began to laugh at him, the wicked little aspiration that seemed to come from some inner, inexplicable glee. Suddenly as if by compulsion, she took hold of his head and pulled it down against her naked breasts and held it there tightly, as if he were truly the injured boy he had seemed to be. Her voice had nearly the quality of a croon, the expression of a half-dream.

“You’re such a child,” she said. “Truly you are. In spite of being important and intelligent and all that, you are much more a child now than I have ever been, even though I am not important at all and have practically no intelligence whatever. You’re a bad child, however. You are always doing bad things.

“I imagine that you have been getting yourself into fixes like this for years. Somehow you have always survived and been forgiven for being bad. Now you are afraid and hurt and angry because you think you may have to face the consequences of what you are and can’t help being.

“Don’t worry, darling. Cornelia’s a fraud. I promise you. She will do nothing but make threats, and pretty soon she will not even do that. It’s in no way necessary for her to die. If you are going to wish someone dead, you had much better wish it for Madelaine. She’s the real problem and the real danger, and has much more to contribute by dying than anyone else. Come, darling, let’s be sensible and wish that Madelaine were dead instead of Cornelia. There’s something to be gained from that.”

He felt, indeed, absurdly young and comforted, his anxiety abated and senses lulled by the whisper of her voice and the exciting scent of her warmly naked flesh. The scent, so far as he could tell, was an odd and soporific combination of cinnamon and carbon monoxide. Its effect, at any rate, was strangely pleasant, for it left his mind floating free and unencumbered on the surface of a vast lethargy, at liberty to indulge in the most exciting play of speculation.

“Madelaine’s strong as an ox,” he said. “She’ll live forever.”

“No one lives forever. Some people, for one reason or another, die sooner than others. They have accidents or something.”

“Not Madelaine. Nothing happens accidentally to Madelaine. Things happen to Madelaine because she makes them happen.”

“Or someone else makes them. The capacity to make things happen isn’t limited to one person.” Maggie’s voice held a positive ring.

“If something accidental happened to Madelaine, something unfortunate might happen to me. If something went wrong, I mean. Under the circumstances, I would certainly be the most logical suspect.”

“That’s true.” Maggie stroked Brad’s hair, holding his head against her pink-nippled breasts. “Accidents are tricky and are better avoided. It would be very difficult, I should think, to plan one that wouldn’t go wrong in some way and turn out to look like something else. It would be much simpler and safer, in my opinion, to do directly what you wanted to do, and make it appear to have been done by someone else.”

“Wouldn’t that be a dirty trick to play on someone else?” he asked with a strange sort of detachment.

“I don’t mean someone else specifically. I mean someone else generally. It would be too bad to arrange for someone else specifically to pay your consequences.”

“What kind of general person would you suggest?”

“Oh, a burglar, maybe. I suspect that lots of unjust blame is put onto burglars.”

“I can think of instances when it was tried and didn’t work.”

“So can I, now that you mention it. Do you know what I would really do if I wanted something done to someone and did not wish to be associated with it? I’d have someone else do it, a third party, when I was somewhere else and couldn’t be reasonably suspected in the least. It’s what’s called having an alibi, isn’t it?”

“What about the third party? Wouldn’t he run the risk of being suspected?”

“Not if it were someone who would not be related to either of the other two,” Maggie replied. “It would be like taking a stranger off the street.”

“And it would put you at the mercy of this third party for the rest of your life. It would be difficult to live in such constant jeopardy.”

“It would put you at each other’s mercy, wouldn’t it? It seems to me it would. And if you were two people who were equally involved and did it for each other, for your own sakes and what you wanted, it wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other.”

“It’s all very interesting as a kind of abstraction, but actual circumstances are something else entirely,” Brad stated.

“Abstractions? I know nothing about abstractions, darling. It’s merely a way something might be done to someone. Even to Madelaine, for instance. She frequently goes to bed early with a sick headache and takes a sedative. Isn’t that what you told me? Isn’t that what she did this very evening, as a matter of fact? One evening when she did, you would only have to arrange to go somewhere else where you would be seen and known and remembered, so that no one could possibly blame you for what happened at home. While you were gone someone else could simply walk in a door that you had left unlocked and do quickly what needed to be done.”

“You sound as if you’ve had experience,” Brad said drily.

“No, darling. It’s only a game we’re playing. It’s only a way of thinking out how something might be done.”

“Yes. Of course. We’re only playing a game.”

But it was a game, he knew, that needed only a word or a sign in exactly the right desperate moment to become a plan. And he knew, also, that Maggie had offered herself obliquely in a crooning voice as the instrument of murder.

Brad’s mind, free-floating on the vast surface of the drowsy half-dream, was wonderfully receptive and immune from guilt. He could accept without wonder the enormity of his own dark potential and he could sense for the first time without fear and without shame the fullness of his submission to the ageless and lawless woman-child who held his head against her warm breasts and stroked his hair.

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve heard that Madelaine is quite wealthy. Is that so?”

“Yes. It’s so.”

“How much money does she have altogether, do you think?”

“I don’t know. About a million, I’d say.”

“A million dollars is quite a lot,” Maggie said.

“Yes, it is.”

“I wonder what it would be like to have a million dollars all your own.”

“I couldn’t say. I’ve never had a million.”

“You have some of the use of it, though. That’s almost as good.”

“Is it? I suppose it is.”

“It would be too bad to lose it after having it,” Maggie murmured, pressing his face firmly against her bare skin.

“Yes. It would.”

“I’d like very much to have some of the use of a million dollars. Do you think I may ever have? It seems almost too good to be possible.”

He didn’t answer. His senses were acute in the sustained half-dream. He could hear with stethoscopic clearness beneath flesh and bone the sure and steady beating of her heart. Her breasts rose and fell at last on a sigh.

“Darling,” she said, “we must go back now. The clock on the dash says almost twelve, and we must not become careless and indiscreet.”

13

Wanda, the Cannon maid, found Madelaine in the library, where she had gone to write checks for the monthly accounts.

“There’s a young man asking to see you,” Wanda said. “He says his name is Jensen.”

“Jensen?” Madelaine tapped her front teeth with the capped end of her pen and considered the name. “Am I supposed to know him?”

“He says not, but he says he’s got something important to tell you that you’ll be interested in hearing.”

“How odd. I can’t imagine what it could be.”

“Shall I send him away? To tell the truth, I don’t much like his looks. He’s not very clean, and he kept glaring at me as if I’d done something to make him angry.”

“Lots of young men nowadays are not very clean, Wanda, and lots of them are angry. Send him in here, please. I’ll see what he wants.”

Wanda left, registering disapproval, and a minute or two later Buddy Jensen, a stranger to Madelaine, came three steps into the room and stopped, looking around in turn at the shelves of books, an opaque projector on a table in a corner, a world globe that was also a lamp, and finally at Madelaine herself, who had turned sidewise to her desk in order to face him.

A slanting shaft of sunlight touched him where he stood, lighting his face and tousled hair and verifying Wanda’s observations that he was not very clean and looked angry. Madelaine thought, watching him, that he was surely deeply disturbed about something, and that he was, perhaps, not quite rational.Touched by madness, she thought, aware of uneasiness and pity as the hackneyed phrased passed through her mind.

“Are you Mr. Jensen?” she said politely.

“That’s right,” he replied. “I am.”

“You wanted to see me about something?”

“That’s right. I do.”

But he seemed to be in no hurry about it, now that he had been admitted. His dark eyes traveled again around the room, from books to projector to globe to Madelaine. The second excursion had the effect of increasing his anger and the ferocity of his expression. There was something besides anger in his eyes, however, and she thought that it was pain.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said.

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’d better.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t be welcome here when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.”

“We won’t know that until you’ve said it, will we?”

“You’ll see. You won’t like it. You’ll throw me out.”

“Nonsense. I don’t believe I could manage it even if I wanted to. You appear to be quite a strong young man.”

“I didn’t mean literally. I meant you’ll make me go.”

“Well, I assume that you didn’t come with the intention of staying forever. Please tell me whatever it is you want to tell. And please sit down. It makes me uncomfortable to see you standing there like that.”

He moved slowly, in a kind of sequence of jerks, to the chair she indicated and sat down, conveying in doing so the impression of a sullen boy obeying a command reluctantly under threat of punishment.

Once seated, he did not know what to do with his hands, which were for a moment a disturbing problem. Finally he disposed of them by folding them into fists and laying them on his knees.

“It’s about Professor Cannon and Maggie McCall,” he said.

“Maggie McCall?”

“That’s her name. She’s a girl goes to school here. She’s in the professor’s trig class.”

“I don’t believe I know her.” Madelaine’s manner turned stiff and wary.

“Well, it isn’t likely he’d have introduced you. They’re having an affair.”

“My husband and one of his students? Are you quite sure?”

She did not appear to be shocked or angry, and he was shrewd enough to observe that the information was not something she immediately discounted as absurd, or even unlikely.

Buddy deduced from this that the professor was not a first offender, which was no surprise, for the slick bastard was exactly the kind of guy who would have women lying down for him all over the place. Not that Buddy resented this on moral grounds. He had, indeed, no more morals himself than a Tom cat. What he resented with despair and fury was that Maggie had been his girl and had been stolen from him. And he wanted her back.

He missed her and wanted her, and there was nothing he would not do, however shameful, to make her return to him or to make her sorry if she didn’t

“Are you sure you’re not imagining this?” Madelaine queried, watching him sharply.

“Sure enough. She was my girl, and now she’s not, and he’s to blame.”

“Are you the one who fought with him and gave him a beating?”

“Yes, I am.”

“For this reason?”

“That’s right.”

“I wondered what had happened. He refused to say.”

“Now you know. I beat him up, but it didn’t do any good. It only made things worse. That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re obviously disturbed. People often exaggerate things when they are in such a state.”

“Look. Don’t treat me like a damn kid or some kind of nut. I know what’s been going on between them. I thought maybe you’d like to know, too, so you could do something about it before somebody gets hurt. I guess you don’t though. I guess you don’t care what he does or whose girl he steals. Excuse me for bothering you. I’d better get the hell out of here.”

“Oh, sit down. Please don’t be so belligerent. And I’d rather you didn’t swear at me. Of course I care. If you can convince me that you’re telling the truth, I’ll certainly do something about it.”

Buddy had begun to rise, but now he settled back into the chair, flexing his blunt fingers and folding them into fists again on his knees.

“Why should I try to convince you of anything? You can believe me or not, just as you please.”

“Why should I believe you, when it comes to that? I have no doubt that you would tell any lie that suited your purpose.”

“That’s right. I would.”

“Could you prove a single word of what you’ve told me?” she asked.

“He’s been picking her up in his car at different places, and I can tell you where and when exactly. He’s been in her apartment, and I can tell you when he went and when he left.”

“That’s not proof. Only your word again. But never mind. I believe you.”

“That’s good of you. Thanks.”

“Tell me something.” Madelaine looked at him curiously, sensing more strongly than ever his dark potential for violence. “If I should decide to do nothing about this, what would you do?”

“I don’t know. I might kill her. I might kill him, too.”

“Yes, I think you might.” She stood up and smiled at him in a friendly way, as if she were preparing to say good-by to the most ordinary visitor. “Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Jensen. I’ll call Wanda to show you out.”

“Don’t bother. I can get out by myself.” He walked to the door, pausing there for several moments in a position of peculiar rigidity. Then he turned his head and looked back. “You’ve been good about it,” he said. “You didn’t throw a stinking fit or toss me out or anything like that. It’s too bad you have to be married to a son of a bitch like old Cannon.”

He went on out, and after waiting by the desk until she had heard the front door close after him, Madelaine walked into the hall and called for Wanda. She returned to the desk after that and sat down and waited for Wanda to come.

“When my husband gets home,” she said, “tell him that I would like to see him. I’ll still be here in the library.”

“Yes, Mrs. Cannon.”

Alone again, Madelaine picked up her pen and continued writing checks for the accounts. Then she wrote two letters that she had owed for some time to friends. She was just finishing the second letter when Brad entered the house and, seconds later, the library.

“Hello, Maddy,” he said. “Wanda told me you want to see me.”

“Yes.” She sealed the envelope of the second letter and placed it neatly on top of the first. “I had a visitor this afternoon.”

“Really, Maddy, what’s so urgent about telling me that? Visitors are certainly not unusual in this house.”

“This one was. He was very unusual.”

“That’s nice. Someone I know?”

“Possibly. I’m not sure. And it wasn’t nice. The visit wasn’t nice, and the visitor wasn’t nice. Both were exceptionally unpleasant.”

“What are you trying to say? Who was this mysterious visitor?”

“A young man.”

“What young man?” Brad asked, his curiosity aroused.

“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you might make things difficult for him if I did.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Are you trying deliberately to be obscure?”

“On the contrary, I mean to be absolutely clear. Perhaps you should sit down.”

He did, laying on the floor beside his chair the briefcase he had carried into the room. He knew, of course, that something was wrong, and he had a notion, directed by guilt, of what it was. But he still couldn’t believe that she had learned about Maggie. They had been so careful, and possibly, after all, it would turn out in the next minute to be something else of less consequence.

“It’s apparent that I’m on trial,” he said. “Am I entitled to hear the charge?”

“Of course. The charge is the same one that I have made before, although not so bluntly as I’ll make it now. You are charged with being a liar and an adulterer. Is that clear enough?”

“Quite. Can you support the charge?”

“In court? Not in this instance. Not yet. I probably could if I worked at it. Would you like to have me try?”

“I’d like to know exactly what you mean by this instance.”

“Certainly. This instance is a girl named Maggie McCall. She’s a student of yours, I believe. A girl young enough to be your daughter.”

Brad was a fair actor, having had much practice, and he managed a creditable expression of surprise.

“She is a student of mine. A very bad one, I might add, and nothing more. Where on earth did you get the fantastic idea that there was something between us?”

“I was told, and it’s the truth. Don’t lie to me, Brad, for it will do you no good.”

“I suppose, then, that I’m not even going to be allowed to defend myself.”

“You could only defend yourself by lying. It’s no good.”

“In that case, I must ask you what you are going to do and what you expect me to do.”

“What I’m going to do is something I’ll decide. What you do is your business. I don’t care. I no longer care. Do you know what I used to hope? I used to hope that you would lose your hair or your teeth or become crippled and ugly, anything like that, because I thought that then you might be reconciled to me and what I had to give you, that I might be enough for the man you might become. But I don’t suppose it would really have made any difference, or that you could have changed for any reason from what you are and what you have to be. No matter now, because I don’t care. I no longer care. Liar. Cheat. Profligate.”

He retrieved his briefcase and stood up slowly, clutching the case tightly to control the trembling of his hands.

“Thank you very much for your opinion,” he said, angry and embittered and also uneasy.

“It’s not opinion. It’s truth.”

“Then I must leave the house.”

“Not unless you wish. I’ll leave myself in a few days. I’ll go away somewhere. Perhaps to Europe. In the spring I’ll return and sell the house and go away again for good. You are to be out by that time.”

“So it’s all cancelled out. You and me. Our life and my career in this place.”

“Yes. Cancelled out.” Madelaine’s tone was blunt and final.

“I’ve no doubt that you could ruin me completely if you choose.”

“I may choose. I’ll have to decide if the satisfaction would be worth the dirty publicity it would entail.” She stood up and walked without pausing to the library door. “Now I’m going upstairs to my room. I have a sick headache.” She pressed against her eyes with a thumb and finger, holding to the knob of the door and swaying a little on her feet. “I think I’ll take a sedative and go directly to bed. Wanda is leaving early this evening. You’ll have to manage dinner for yourself.”

She was gone then, the door closed behind her. Brad sagged into the chair from which he had risen as if his bones had suddenly dissolved and left him limp. His face was gray and his lips were bloodless. For the first time in his life he looked old. Old and sick.

14

At seven o’clock, Brad went upstairs and tried Madeline’s door. It was not locked, and he pushed it a few inches into darkness and stood listening intently to the sound of deep and languorous breathing.

It seemed to him, standing in the dimly lighted hall at the threshold of the black room, that it was the whole house breathing, not merely Madelaine, the walls swelling and contracting to the rhythm of quiet breath against a quicker and barely perceptible drumming of a giant pulse.

Pushing the door farther into the room, admitting a swath of light from the hall behind him, he stepped into the light and out of it into darkness and made his way silently, after standing still for a moment while the pupils of his eyes adjusted, to the bed where Madelaine lay.

There was a tiny night lamp on her bedside table, and he turned this on with a soft click of the switch, the light fanning out to fashion in the darkness a small perimeter that encompassed the face of the sleeping woman.

Madelaine did not stir. She lay on her back with her hair spread upon the pillow. Her mouth was slightly open. Her breasts rose and fell to the deep and languorous cadence of her breathing and the breathing of the house.

She was heavily sedated, drugged in sleep and defenseless against all device. She would sleep this way for hours, and she had made in the end a fatal error. Having known her husband for what he was, she had failed to understand what he could, when driven, become.

Switching off the night light, Brad turned and left the room, closing the door behind him and standing for a full minute leaning against it in the hall, his own pulse thundering in his heart and head now that a decision had been made.

There had been no decision minutes before, when he had ascended the stairs compulsively. But he had known instantly, standing beside the bed in the dark room behind him, that Madelaine must die for his sake. It was not, he felt, so much a decision which he had made himself in that instant as a decision that had been made long ago without his connivance, and which he must now accept as part of an order of things he could not change.

Pushing away from the door, he went downstairs and into the library, where he dialed a number that rang a bell in the littered little apartment where Maggie lived.

The bell rang three times, bringing no response. He was about to hang up with a feeling of reprieve, the order of things having been changed after all, when suddenly, just after its beginning, the fourth ring was cut off, and Maggie’s voice came on. It had the lazy, mutilated sound that a voice has when it is heard through a yawn.

“Hello.”

“Maggie? This is Brad. Are you alone?”

“Yes. All alone. I was lying and wondering what to do, and I went to sleep. Would you like to see me, darling? Do you want me to meet you?”

“Not tonight. I have a departmental faculty meeting to attend.”

“Couldn’t we meet afterward? I want so much to meet you.”

“No. Not tonight. Listen to me, Maggie. We’re in trouble.”

“Trouble? Did you say trouble? Why are you talking so softly? I can hardly hear you.”

He became aware then that he had been whispering into the mouthpiece, not because it was a necessary precaution in a house that was empty, except for himself and the sleeping Madelaine, but only because he was reacting instinctively to the abortive influence of guilt. This struck him as being a dangerous sign, and he made a conscious effort to speak normally. His voice, however, in spite of the effort, was still conspiratorially low.

“Madelaine knows about me. Someone told her.”

“Knows? Did you say she knows? How could that be, darling, when we’ve been so careful and clever?”

“As I said, someone told her. She had a visitor this afternoon.”

She was silent, the open wire singing softly between them. There was in the singing sound of the wire a kind of incongruous deadliness, like a murderer humming in the midst of his work. She was apparently thinking at the other end of the wire, drawing a conclusion from what he had said. Finally, after almost half a minute, she expressed the conclusion succinctly.

“That God-damn Buddy!” she said.

“Just how much does Buddy know? Have you told him anything?”

“Certainly not. Buddy doesn’t need to be told things. He finds them out by being a sneak and a spy.”

“Well, he has put us in a vulnerable position. What are we going to do about him?”

“Don’t worry about Buddy. I know how to handle him. What’s more important is what we’re going to do about Madelaine.”

“Whatever it is, it will have to be done quickly. She’s going away in a few days.”

“For good?” Maggie queried.

“Until spring. She intends to have a divorce when she returns.”

“Really? That would be too bad.”

“Yes, it would. It would be disastrous.”

“Are you calling from home? Is she there now?”

“She’s upstairs asleep,” Brad informed her. “She’s under sedation.”

“You mean she’s taken something to make her sleep?”

“That’s right.”

“Will she sleep soundly for quite a long time?” Maggie asked, sudden eagerness in her voice.

“For hours. Until morning at least.”

The wire sang softly again between them, the murderer humming, and each of them knew what was in the other’s mind, although neither expressed it directly — the understanding of what must be done now or never, thanks to Buddy, the necessary disposition of Madelaine which might, even tomorrow, be too late to be any longer necessary or beneficial.

“Did you say you’re going to some kind of meeting?” Maggie asked.

“Yes. A departmental faculty meeting.”

“When are you going?”

“The meeting’s for eight. I’ll leave here a little earlier.”

“Will you be late returning?”

“Some of us will stop off somewhere for coffee and a snack,” Brad told her. “It’s routine. I’d guess that I won’t be home before eleven. Possibly after.”

“Maybe it would be helpful if I were to call on Madelaine while you’re gone. Do you think so?”

“I did think so, but now I’m not sure. What about Buddy?”

“Nothing about him. He’ll be sorry for the trouble he’s caused, and I know how to prevent him from causing any more.” Maggie’s voice was grim and controlled.

“He’ll certainly suspect the truth,” Brad warned.

“I doubt it. He’s too stupid. I keep telling you not to worry about him.”

“Nevertheless, perhaps we’d better wait a while.”

“Perhaps. If you want to lose everything that you might otherwise have. After you have given her time to make different arrangements about her money, there will be little purpose, as I see it, in doing anything whatever.”

“Are you sure you can manage it?” Brad asked nervously, a cold sweat starting from the skin of his forehead.

“Of course I’m sure. I can manage practically anything I set my mind to. There’s simply no use in talking about it. You do as I say, and I’ll do the rest.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Simply leave the house dark and the back door unlocked. You had also better leave something for me to use. Leave it just inside on the floor. A hammer or something. It will be necessary to avoid making noise. Besides I don’t believe I’m strong enough to manage without using something.

“Good God!” Brad exclaimed. “It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly pleasant when you face up to it, but I don’t see why you should be so squeamish when I’m the one who will do all the work,” Maggie told him with a terrible and frightening practicality.

“All right. I suppose it must be done. I’ll do as you say.”

“Good. As you see, there’s hardly anything for you to do. You must try very hard, however, not to seem nervous or disturbed at your meeting. It might be recalled as odd in view of what will be known later.”

“I’ll do my part all right.”

“Of course you will. I’m sure you’ll behave admirably. But now we must stop talking. You will need to leave soon to get to your meeting. Good-by, darling.”

Brad said good-by and hung up. His hands were shaking again, and he laced the fingers together to stop the shaking. It was almost seven-thirty-five, and he would have to hurry.

15

The night was cold and overcast. The dead moon reflected the light of the hidden sun sporadically and briefly in the intervals between black cumulus clouds. The thin light filtered, such times, through a rough lacery of bare branches to form tremulous patterns of shadow on the concrete walk.

Maggie’s flat heels on the same walk were barely audible in brisk tempo to Maggie’s own ears. Her shadow, when the moon was out, fell across the patterns of shadow. Through her teeth, a companionable hiss, she whistled off-tune the Londonderry Air.

She crossed an intersection, and there ahead was Brad’s house, the middle one of three on that side of the street from corner to corner.

Houses were not built close together, of course, in a fine residential area, and it suited Maggie’s purpose tonight that they weren’t. The lots were deep, moreover, with high hedges between houses for privacy, and the more privacy there was, she thought, the better.

She passed the house, slowing her pace slightly. At first she thought it was completely dark, but then she saw through a small pane set high in the front door that a dim light was burning in the lower hall. No others were visible up or down.

Passing the boundary hedge, she quickened her pace again, her flat rubber heels picking up their previous tempo. Less than a minute later, at the next corner, she turned left to the alley that divided the block, then left again without hesitation into the alley and down it to a rear gate, set in a rough stone wall, that opened into the Cannon back yard.

Through the gate, she found herself on a flagstone walk. She went up the walk toward the rear of the dark house. Midway, in an interval of thin light when the moon broke free, she noticed to her left, in the center of a circular dais of ground, a concrete basin with a kind of stone bowl on a pedestal standing up in the middle.

The basin was a fish pool, obviously, although there was neither water nor fish in it now, and the stone bowl was actually part of a fountain, which was now dry. She had always admired pools and fountains, and she stopped for a moment or two on the flagstone walk to observe this one. It was easy to imagine how pretty it would be in a summer night when the moon and stars were near and warm in an uncluttered sky and the light struck smaller stars from the flowing fountain and the overflowing bowl.

She could even hear the slight, musical ripple of water falling in drops into the basin. She stopped whistling through her teeth to listen to the music, but then the moon was overtaken by another cloud, and the fountain went dry again, and the music stopped. Moving on up the flagstone walk, resuming her off-key hissing of the Londonderry Air, she reached a door to a back porch at the head of three steps. Quickly she went up the steps and inside.

Across the porch was a door to the kitchen. At this door, Maggie hesitated for the first time, as if the way hereto had been familiar but was strange from here on, so that she had to stop and study and recall directions.

She was, in fact, hesitating because she was reluctant to test a sudden depressing conviction that the door would be locked. If it were locked, it would mean that Brad had changed his mind in fear and guilt, and then there would be nothing left for her to do but turn and go away and give up for good and all the last hope of everything she had so carefully planned.

She had again stopped whistling in the brief period of her hesitation. Now she reached out and turned the knob all at once, to get it over with. The door swung silently inward, and she slipped through into the dark kitchen with a sigh of relief.

She lowered her body carefully in the darkness, bending at the knees and holding herself erect from the hips. With one gloved hand she groped blindly near the floor where the jamb met it, and her fingers touched and grasped something hard and round, like a handle.

When she had taken the object into both hands, standing again, she could tell by touch that it was not a handle at all, but a short length of pipe such as might have been left by a plumber and put away to meet a possible future contingency which had not then included in anyone’s mind, certainly, the present one of murder.

Maggie’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the thick darkness that seemed to stir silently all around her. She could make out across the room two closed doors, widely separated, and she went across and opened one to discover the dining room on the other side.

Turning away, she moved to the other and passed through into a central hall running past a staircase to the front door. Burning on a table near the foot of the stairs was the shaded lamp whose light she had seen from the street through the small pane in the door.

She walked along the hall, carrying the pipe, and turned up the stairs, ascending through the light into upper darkness. The Londonderry Air was now the merest whisper of breath between her teeth.

Standing at the head of the stairs in the upper hall, Maggie realized that she had neglected to get precise directions to Madelaine’s door. This was an example of the inexcusable kind of carelessness that could cause difficulties and create dangers that ought to be avoided. As it was, however, she must do the best she could as quietly as possible, although it was unlikely, if Madelaine was heavily sedated, that a little noise would disturb her.

The hall crossed the house from side to side, perpendicular to the hall downstairs, and Maggie moved left from the head of the stairs. She had decided that Madelaine would certainly have a front corner room, that being a choice location, and she was heading for the appropriate door to try it, but she stopped on the way and tried another door first.

The room beyond was large and very dark, drapes drawn across windows in the opposite wall. From the pocket of her coat, Maggie took a small flashlight, hardly bigger than a pocket cigarette lighter, and turned it on. The narrow, bright beam played back and forth, showing her that the room was regularly used, and that it was used regularly by a man. Brad’s room.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The playing beam picked out another door, leading to a closet or a bathroom. If to a bathroom, there was probably a way to the room beyond, which must be Madelanie’s. Following the beam across the floor, Maggie tried the door, opening it into the bathroom she expected.

A moment later she was standing between the closed door behind her and the closed door ahead of her, confined briefly in a small tiled room between intention and action.

Quickly now, she opened the door to action and paused at the threshold listening, the flashlight off. She could hear clearly in almost total darkness the sound of Madelaine breathing so deeply and rhythmically that it resembled the breathing of someone under the effect of ether.

The beam of the flashlight, renewed, crept from Maggie’s feet across a pastel carpet and found the bed. In the bed it found Madelaine, who did not move. Maggie, following the beam again, stood beside the bed.

In her right hand she held the length of pipe. She stood there for several seconds, looking down at the sleeping woman with an effect of detached appraisal. Suddenly Madelaine made a harsh, strangled sound, as if her breath had clotted in her throat. The harsh sound was followed instantly by a whispering cry, terror striking through sleep from some strange sense of danger, and she reared up in the bed on the verge of waking.

Maggie struck savagely with the length of pipe. With all her strength she struck again. After the second sodden sound, she stepped back and waited, alert and listening, but there was no further sound or movement, and so, after a minute, she turned on the bedside lamp.

Madelaine lay twisted aside in the bed, her arms spread wide. Her body was still covered to the hips by a sheet and a nylon comforter, but they had been jerked awry by the threshing of her legs between blows. There was a ruddy seepage in her hair, just above the hairline, and already the beginning of swelling. She was clearly dead.

Maggie examined her dispassionately, her head cocked. She seemed almost to be listening for something inside herself, a voice or sound. In fact, in a way, she was. She had never killed anyone before, and she had been curious to learn how she would feel after the act.

Now, the act completed, she was not really surprised that she felt very little at all. Long ago, as a child, she had discovered that she did not respond to the claims of pity and remorse as other children did. The deaths of pets and friends left her unmoved to any more than a cursory wonder as to the apparent vagaries of death, and she was unfamiliar with genuine grief. She had once thought that this indicated a grave deficiency in character, but later she had come to consider it an advantage in many ways, for it left her free from the effects of crippling emotion.

Madelaine’s position in the bed was exactly right. It implied clearly that she had been struck while trying to rise in bed, having wakened to surprise an intruder. This was precisely the implication Maggie had intended to accomplish, even if it had meant arranging the body after death, which would have been a disagreeable task, to say the least. Now this was not necessary, thanks to Madelaine. Things had worked out beautifully with no extra effort.

Laying the length of pipe on the table beside the lamp, Maggie walked over to Madelaine’s dressing table and examined with intense interest a silver comb and silver-mounted brush and mirror, members of a set, and several jars and bottles of creams and lotions and scents.

Opening a drawer, she found a quilted jewel box. She took it out and opened it and fingered covetously the costume jewelry it contained — pins and ear-rings mostly — letting the pieces roll off the tips of her fingers and back into the box. They were of no great value, but they were very pretty. She would have liked to take a few away for her own use and pleasure, but she decided that it would not be wise.

Turning away, she saw the sliding doors of a huge closet. Crossing to the doors, she pulled one back on its runners over the other, exposing part of a long row of dresses on hangers, all kinds and colors and materials, and she took one of the dresses down, a black wool sheath, and held it against her for size.

It was much too large, which pleased her and made her feel somehow superior, and she moved over in front of the mirror of the dressing table, still holding the dress against her, and examined her reflection in detail, trying to imagine how she would look in the dress if it were cut down to fit. She tried several other dresses in the same way, holding each against her in front of the mirror, and she had to admit that they were all very nice and in the best of taste Even the least of them was, moreover, far more expensive than any dress she had ever owned.

Closing the closet at last, Maggie returned to the bedside table and retrieved the length of pipe. She had been quite curious about Madelaine, and out of curiosity had enjoyed seeing and handling some of Madelaine’s personal things, but now she had lingered long enough, she thought, and had better go. Without looking at Madelaine again, she turned off the light and went out directly into the hall and downstairs.

She threw the length of pipe into the dead weeds of a vacant lot on the way home.

16

Trajan was the name of a Roman Emperor. It was also the name of the detective-lieutenant who was assigned to investigate the murder of Madelaine Cannon.

Trajan, the detective, was an obese man who suffered from a chronic condition that he referred to as acid indigestion. He really knew very well that acid indigestion is not a condition which is at all likely to be chronic, for he was not stupid. But a deep and tortuous fear of the truth, or of what might turn out to be the truth, kept him from getting a more accurate diagnosis. He was given, naturally, to much belching, and he always carried in his pocket a tin snuff box filled with milk of magnesia tablets which he bought for economy’s sake in large bottles.

The tablets were ineffective, except for the slight psychological effect of a placebo, but chewing them gave him a feeling of doing something constructive and sensible, and he was prevented by their laxative power from consuming them in sufficient quantity to do him any particular harm. His breath was sour, and his disposition was as sour as his breath. His attitudes were controlled by a kind of graduated scale of hatreds. The degree of his hatred for any particular person, place or thing could be measured by the expression of a pair of sick little eyes buried deep in folds of pasty flesh.

His hatred of Bradley Cannon was intense. It was not merely a sudden development, an instant reaction, but a virulence that had lain dormant within him, fully grown and festering, for the time when Brad would come along to claim it.

The presence of this sick hatred in the room was as real and ugly in its implications as the body on the bed. From the moment of their meeting more than an hour ago, Brad had been convicted in the mind of Trajan of the murder of his wife. Neither the conviction nor the hatred was diminished in the least by evidence that Brad had been elsewhere when the murder occurred.

Now, standing by the bed and looking down at the body for at least the tenth time, he belched and rubbed the big belly hanging over his belt. Feeling no particular pity for the dead woman, he derived a deep and dark satisfaction from damning her killer.The son of a bitch, he thought.The arrogant, slick son of a bitch.

Turning away from the bed and the body, he began again to prowl the room, opening drawers and looking into the closet, all of which he had opened and looked into before, and finding nothing conspicuous either by its absence or its presence. No sign of burglary. No sign of searching. No sign of anything at all but murder. The body of a woman in an undisturbed room. Not even the weapon. Not even the single, lousy, lucky break of a weapon dropped and left behind. His thick lips slack, his hips and huge bottom quaking like an enormous woman’s, he rounded the room and came back to the bed.

“Where in hell is that God-damn coroner?” he said.

In his place near the bathroom door, where he had been standing almost motionless for the past twenty minutes, Detective Latreel Freeman shrugged and looked away from Trajan. Freeman was a thin, fastidious man, gray and dry and aseptically clean, and he found his superior revolting. The sight and smell of Trajan made him uneasy in his stomach.

“I told you,” he said. “He’s on a hospital call. He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

“That’s the trouble with having a lousy practicioner as coroner. Every time you need him, he’s out running down a God-damn case of measles or something.”

“Pregnancy.”

“What?”

“I said pregnancy. He’s delivering a baby.”

“Jesus Christ. He may be at it half the night.”

“Maybe. It won’t make a lot of difference.” Freeman executed an abbreviated gesture in the direction of the bed. “This one’s in no hurry.”

“That’s right. She don’t mind waiting at all. But I do. You think I got nothing better to do than hang around all hours waiting for a dead woman to be pronounced dead?”

“I wouldn’t know. Have you?”

Trajan turned his sick little eyes on Freeman, but the latter was staring at nothing special in a far corner of the room, his dry, gray face cleaned carefully of all expression. Trajan knew very well that he was offensive to Freeman, and the knowledge gave him a bitter pleasure. Contempt prevented him from exaggerating his inferior’s significance, but he did accord the frail detective the distinction of a minor hate. He belched and rubbed his belly, then fished in a pocket for the can of magnesia tablets.

“Where’s Cannon?” he said.

“Where you said to put him. Downstairs in the living room.”

“I’ll go down and see him. You stick here.”

“The guy’s tired and shook up. You’d have better luck if you sent him to bed and talked with him in the morning.”

“Bed? You think a guy whose wife has just been murdered could just go off to bed and go to sleep like nothing had happened?”

“He could take something. There are such things as sedatives, you know. Or hadn’t you heard?”

“I heard, Freeman. I know. I also know you’re a God-damn smart-aleck.”

“Am I? Sorry.”

“You’re right about this guy’s sleeping, though. He wouldn’t have any trouble at all, and he wouldn’t need the help of any sedative. He’s the kind of son of a bitch who could crawl right into the same bed with the body and go to sleep.”

“You think so? I hadn’t formed that opinion yet. It seems to me he’s pretty upset, but I haven’t got your insight into character, of course.”

“See what I mean, Freeman? A God-damn smart-aleck. That’s what you are.”

“I heard you before, Lieutenant. A God-damn smart-aleck.”

Trajan wheezed, his big belly quivering. His tongue slipped out to wet down his thick lips, leaving visible traces of the white magnesia. His flesh-enfolded eyes looked yellow in the light, as if he had been for a long time on atabrine.

“You’re sharp, Freeman. Real sharp. Big brain. Big heart.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“It’s a wonder to me how a guy so smart got left behind. I wonder why you’re not the lieutenant and I’m not just a plain detective. It don’t seem fair, does it, Freeman?”

“Things happen, Lieutenant. Who knows why? Maybe you got some ideas about it.”

“A few, Freeman. I got a few. One of them is that you got no guts. You got no guts for your job. You bleed too much and too easy, Freeman. You even bleed for a lousy murderer. A wife-killer.”

“I don’t bleed. I don’t start off hating and accusing, either. I wait for some evidence.”

“He stinks, Freeman. He stinks of murder, and he’s guilty as hell.”

“He must be a magician, then, as well as a murderer. He wasn’t even here. He was at a meeting. There are at least six unimpeachable witnesses to it.”

“I know. Half a dozen crack-pot professors. I’ll talk to them myself later, Freeman, and not over the telephone. Next time I won’t leave it to you. There’s something wrong, and I’ll find it. You’ll see. It’ll turn out he was away for a while, long enough to commit murder, and they just forgot to remember it. Something like that.”

“I doubt it. College professors aren’t the absent-minded idiots that illiterates like to make them out.”

“Meaning me for one, Freeman?”

“Are you illiterate, Lieutenant? I thought I saw you reading a newspaper once. Maybe you were only looking at the comics.”

“Maybe.” Trajan’s pasty face flushed a little and quickly drained again, having more than ever the color and texture of old and yeastless dough. “You despise my guts, don’t you, Freeman? You think I’m a sick, sadistic son of a bitch, don’t you, Freeman?”

“I’d rather not answer those questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind, Freeman. I don’t mind a damn. I know God-damn well what you think without any answers, and I couldn’t care less. Why the hell should I care about the opinion of a miserable little puke like you?”

Trajan belched again and rammed his fat fingers under his belt, pressing inward against his belly. His lips twisted in disgust at the taste in his mouth.

“You better go to a doctor about that, Lieutenant,” Freeman said. “It might be cancer.”

Trajan left the room without another word, walking across to the door from the bed with short, quick steps, almost mincing, that seemed somehow obscene in relation to his gross body. He gave no overt sign of the obsessive fear, aroused by Freeman’s words, that kept company inside him with his possible malignancy.

Descending the stairs into the lower hall, he passed a policeman in uniform and went into the living room where Brad sat slumped in a chair in front of the cold fireplace. Dragging a straight chair into position alongside, Trajan sat down and leaned forward. Laughter, secret and sour, stirred within him when Brad’s head turned away from a current of polluted breath.

“How are you feeling?” Trajan said.

“Very tired and confused.” Brad looked at Trajan and away. His voice was apathetic, his eyes lusterless.

He appeared to be in a state of shock. “I simply can’t believe it. It can’t be true.”

“It’s true, all right. Your wife’s dead. Murdered. What time was it when you found her body?”

“I told you that before. A little after eleven. When I came home from a faculty meeting.”

“Who else was at the meeting?”

“Members of the department. The Mathematics Department. I gave the names to the other policeman. Freeman. He wrote them down.”

“Yes. So you did. He’s already checked with some of them, but I’ll check again. I’ll check and check and check, and maybe sooner or later someone will remember something significant he had been forgetting before.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. It’s just the way I work. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who would be glad to have your wife dead?”

“God, no! Such an idea is fantastic. It must have been a burglar. Someone who killed her when she woke up and surprised him in the room.”

“Nothing was taken. You said so yourself. What kind of burglar takes nothing away with him?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he didn’t have time. Perhaps he became frightened and fled after killing Madelaine. It’s reasonable to assume that he did.”

“Now that’s a nice thing about being on a case where a bright guy like you is concerned. He’s always available to tell me what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable. Being reasonable, Dr. Cannon, you might care to comment on the fact that there was no sign of breaking and entering. No window jimmied open. No door forced. No sign at all of B & E. Does that seem reasonable? Does that seem like burglary?”

“The back door must have been left unlocked. He must have tried the door and simply walked in.”

“The back door? Why? Why not the front door?”

“Because I left by the front door, and I remember locking it. It was still locked when I returned home.”

“You don’t remember locking the back door?”

“No. As I recall, I neglected to check it.”

“Were you usually so careless?”

“Usually, when I went out alone at night, my wife was up and presumably locked it herself.”

“But tonight she had gone to bed early. Isn’t that what you said? With a sick headache.”

“That’s right. She took a sedative and went to bed.”

“Did she frequently have these headaches?”

“Quite often. I suppose you could say frequently.”

“It all worked out pretty conveniently, didn’t it?”

“Conveniently? I don’t understand.”

“Well, for this hypothetical burglar who didn’t steal anything. You gone, your wife in bed under sedation, the back door unlocked. Wouldn’t you say that was all pretty convenient?”

“What in the name of God are you implying?” Brad demanded.

“Am I implying something?”

“It seems to me that you are, and it may be that you’ll regret it. Frankly, Lieutenant, you’ve been as offensive and brutal under the circumstances as you could possibly be. You may be sure that I’ll say so to the county attorney, who is a friend of mine, at the first opportunity.”

Trajan stood up. He looked down at Brad with dull and venomous eyes, his hatred alive and virulent and wholly irrational. It occurred to him that it might be smart to start looking for another woman. A great, griping pain was in his belly, and his belch, which he could not restrain, had the effect of a deliberate and vulgar insult.

“You do that, Dr. Cannon,” he said. “You talk to the county attorney.”

He heard an ambulance pull up in the street at last, and he turned and walked out into the hall.

17

Buddy sat in Maggie’s room and waited for Maggie to come back from wherever she was. He had been sitting there for a long time, but he didn’t care or even know that the time had been long, for he had no place else to go and nothing at all to do, and it was a great comfort to be there in the familiar stale litter where he had found, before things had changed and gone to hell, as much of happiness and peace as it was possible for him to know.

He loved Maggie in his own compulsive and destructive way, and he had been terribly lonely and strangely afraid without her. He did not think that he could bear the fear and loneliness much longer.

His world had reverted, in fact, to the conditions prior to Maggie’s entrance, a world of dark fantasy entailing fantastic threats to which he reacted with a bitter and brutal belligerence that was fear disguised. It was a world of reference and apathetic rage in which he felt compelled to do anything just to be doing something, although it was quite impossible in his lethargy to do anything whatever.

He had quit attending the classes he had been failing anyhow. Some days he took food, hardly knowing that he ate, and some days he fasted without awareness that he did. He drank cheap wine and got sick and made worse what was already intolerably bad.

He had come several times to see Maggie, to plead and threaten and do what he could to recover what he had lost, but she wouldn’t open the door and let him in, and he had finally been forced each time to go away.

Today, however, he had come and found her gone, her door locked, and he had let himself in with the blade of his pocketknife. Now he sat in her litter, drinking her wine, and waited for her to come home. It was light when he arrived at her door, but it had since grown dark. The date, although he didn’t know it, was the fourteenth of February, St. Valentine’s Day.

Secure and comforted in the dark room, he became a little drowsy under the influence of the wine, and he was fixed in a warm and wonderful suspension between sleeping and waking when Maggie opened the door and switched on the ceiling light.

She was carrying something in a brown paper bag, and she walked with the bag into her tiny kitchen and came back without it. Removing her cloth coat, she tossed it toward a chair, where it caught and held for a moment on the arm and then slipped off into a pile on the floor.

All the while she was doing this, walking into the kitchen and walking back and removing her coat, she glanced several times at Buddy as if he were no more than a part of the general litter that would probably eventually need cleaning up.

“How did you get in here?” she said finally. “It seems to me I locked the door when I left.”

“I used my pocketknife,” he said, “and I may use it on you before I leave if you don’t treat me any better than you have been.”

“In that case, you’d better use it on me immediately, because I don’t intend to treat you a damn bit better, and you’re leaving right away.”

“Am I? Try and make me,” he challenged, his brows drawing together above his eyes.

“I could call the police and have you arrested. Don’t you know it’s against the law to break into someone’s private place?”

“Go ahead and call the police. I dare you. I’ve been thinking about having a talk with them anyhow.”

She stood staring at him contemptuously, legs spread and hands on hips. Absorbed in her contemptuous appraisal, she seemed not to have heard his response to her threat.

“Who the hell told you that you could drink my wine?” she said.

“I’m not sure it’s yours. I think it may be some that I bought and left here myself.”

“Take it and get out, then. I don’t want it or you.”

“I’m not going until I’ve talked with you, and I may not go at all. I may just move in and stay. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re sick, that’s what I think,” she said contemptuously. “You’ve always been crazy, of course. But now you’re crazier than ever. You ought to be in an institution.”

“You’re the one who ought to be in an institution. That’s where you’d probably be if everyone knew you as well as I do.”

“Why don’t you tell them? It would only prove, on the contrary, that you’re absolutely irresponsible and ought to be locked up where you can’t do anyone any harm.”

“You’re a fine one to be talking about doing someone harm,” he growled.

“Am I? Why? I haven’t harmed anyone that I know of. Am I to blame because you’re sick and keep imagining that you’ve been mistreated? Why don’t you simply go away and leave me alone and quit trying to impose yourself where you’re no longer wanted?”

“I wasn’t referring to myself,” Buddy muttered, his words insinuating some hidden and darker meaning.

“Weren’t you? Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me who. I can’t think of anyone else I know who is baby enough to imagine such nonsense.”

“You needn’t act so innocent with me because I know what you are, and I know what you’ve done. It was damn convenient when old Cannon’s rich wife got killed just when she did, wasn’t it? I’ve been thinking what a strange coincidence it was. To happen, I mean, right after I went and told her about him and you.”

“So it was you who told. I thought it must have been, you sneaky son of a bitch.” Maggie’s lip curled and her eyes glittered with hate.

“Don’t call me names,” he said. “I won’t stand for it.”

“The hell you won’t! You’ll stand for a lot more than that before I’m through with you, if you aren’t careful. It’s a serious matter to accuse someone of killing his wife, especially when it had been proved impossible by reliable witnesses.”

“I didn’t accuse him of killing her,” Buddy said. “I only said her death was a remarkable coincidence, and it was.” He paused, watching her reaction with a sly expression. “I’ve been wondering if he hired someone to kill her for him. Did he? Doesn’t he tell you secrets when you’re sleeping with him?”

“Well, by God, you’re a greater menace even than I thought. There’s simply no telling what insane idea will get into your mind next. It’s the truth that I could have you committed if I wanted to go to the trouble. Perhaps he didn’t have to hire someone to kill her. Perhaps I did it for him myself out of friendship. How do you like that for an idea?”

This was an extremely precarious maneuver, and Maggie knew it. After executing it almost without thinking, with only the most fleeting notion that he would never suspect her of suggesting the truth, she waited anxiously for his response, her anxiety completely dissembled by the pose which she still held, legs spread and hands on hips, of aggressive contempt.

She could see instantly by the sudden stillness in his eyes and face that she had made a grave tactical error, to say the least. He didn’t dismiss her suggestion as sarcasm at all. He accepted it and considered it and seemed to be wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself.”

“You could have,” he said, his eyes shrewd and speculative. “You’re capable of it. I guess I’m about the only person on earth, maybe except old Cannon, who knows that you’re capable of anything, even murder, if it suits your purpose. The reason I know is that I am, too.

People like you and me know about each other. We have a feeling.”

“Well, isn’t that the most precious notion!” She sneered and shrugged, abandoning at last her aggressive pose. “It might interest you to know that the only feeling I have for you is a sickness to my stomach. You make me sick, sick, sick!”

Buddy stood up all at once, apparently distracted, tipping the glass he had been holding and spilling the cheap dark wine out onto the floor. Looking slowly around the room, he seemed to have forgotten where he was and why he had come.

Finally, when he became aware again of Maggie, his face softened and saddened. In his eyes, where the slyness had been before, there was a bitter and supplicating tenderness.

“Let me stay here with you, Maggie,” he said. “Please do. Without you I’m lonely and afraid and simply don’t know what to do or how to get along. Don’t make me do something to hurt you. Please don’t.”

“What the hell could you do to hurt me? It strikes me that the shoe is on the other foot.”

“You know what I could do, and I’ll do it,” he retorted sharply. “I’ll tell the police about you and old Cannon.”

“God, you’re a sneak! You’re an absolute monster of deception.”

“It won’t do any good to call me any more names. If you won’t let me stay, I’d just as soon you’d hate me as not.”

He was sick and sly and capable of any treachery, and Maggie understood, at last, that he was a far greater menace than she had imagined. Staring at him with a fierce scowl, she wondered desperately what to do, and she thought that the best and safest thing would be to kill him.

She was certain that she could get away with it with no worse consequences to herself than a certain amount of inconvenience. He had forced his way into her room and made a nuisance of himself, and she would only have to call the police, after it was done, and say that he had attacked her, compelling her to kill him in self-defense.

It would really be quite simple to get away with it after it was done, but the trouble was in doing it, and the principle trouble was that there was nothing at hand to do it with.

She could hardly kill him with her hands, for he was very strong. Hitting him over the head with something like a heavy glass ash tray would entail such obvious movements that he would surely be able to see her intent and defend himself. There was, however, a sharp knife in the tiny kitchen. If she could get the knife, she could probably hide it at her side or behind her and get close enough to stick it into him quickly in a soft spot, like the belly, before he knew what was happening. Yes, she thought, the knife would be surest and safest if only she could get it.

“Well,” she said amiably, “I see that you have the better of me, and I might as well admit it.”

“That’s right,” he said, his taut face relaxing.

“What we had better do is talk it over reasonably and come to some agreement. First, however, I’d like to go into the kitchen and pour myself a small glass of wine. Excuse me.”

She walked casually into the kitchen and went directly to the drawer where the knife was kept. Opening the drawer, holding the knife at her side, she turned to pour the wine, to which she had committed herself, and there was Buddy behind her, standing in the doorway, having followed her so silently that she had not heard.

“What have you got there?” he demanded sharply.

“Nothing.”

“It’s a knife, isn’t it? You were going to kill me, weren’t you?”

“Don’t be absurd. You’ve got such a guilty conscience that you imagine all sorts of wild things.”

“You were going to kill me. Did you really kill Mrs. Cannon too? I guess you really did.”

She had been moving toward him slowly during this exchange, and now she was quite close, within striking distance. Suddenly she whipped the knife up from her side toward the soft place below his diaphram. It proved to be another mistake.

Quick as she was, he was quicker, and it was only a matter of seconds before the knife was shaken loose onto the floor. She clawed at his face with her other hand and tried to curse him, but she couldn’t curse because his fingers were around her throat, crushing the column of her neck, cutting off the precious air and she was dying.

Watching her stiffen and die beneath his throttling hands, her eyes tilting upward in her head, her face mottling, Buddy knew with deep despair and sorrow that he had killed his only hope — that from now on fear and loneliness would never end in his world.

18

The chief of police was boiling. His expression, directed toward Trajan, was the equivalent of his voice, which was a growl.

“By God, Trajan,” he said, “this is the end! Do you hear me? The end, I’m telling you! I’m willing to go along with my men in any reasonable investigation, but if you think I’m going to support you in what’s assuming the character of persecution, you’re crazy as hell.

“By God, I’ve had the county attorney on my back. I’ve had the mayor on my back. I’ve had protests from men who are just too damn influential to be ignored. They’re all on my back, Trajan, and I’m on yours. The truth is, you’ve been acting like a maniac. You won’t listen to reason from anyone. Have you got an obsession about this Cannon or something? ”

Trajan shifted in his chair, fighting a gaseous eruption, staring behind and above the chief at a juncture of wall and ceiling.

“I got a notion he’s guilty,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Sure.” The chief put his hands flat on his desk, exercising control. “You got a notion, and that’s all you got. You got no proof. You got no evidence. As a matter of fact, all the evidence is to the contrary. God damn it, a half dozen men of the highest repute have testified that he was in their company at the time of the murder. He was there all the time. He didn’t leave for a minute. How the hell do you figure he’s guilty. Black magic or something? Voodoo, maybe?”

“All right. He didn’t actually do it himself. I’m satisfied about that. But he was involved somehow. I’d stake my job on it.”

“That’s exactly what you’re staking, Trajan, if you didn’t know it.”

“Well, you’ll see I’m right. I’ve been working on the angle of a collaborator. Someone in it with him, or maybe someone he just hired.”

“You got any evidence to support collaboration?”

“No. Not yet.”

“All right, then. I’ll tell you something, and you listen. You let Cannon alone until you’ve got evidence you could go to court with. You’ve hounded this man until you’ve got him on the verge of collapse. More important than that, you’ve got my guts in the sauce pan, and I don’t like it.

“This is the last word, Trajan. The last damn word. You go back in there where you’ve been grilling him for the past hour and let him go. Don’t you bring him back, or even go near him, until you’ve got something solid that will stick. What’s more, if you don’t have anything soon, you’re dropping the whole business for good and all. You hear me?”

Trajan stood up. He closed, his mouth tight against a belch, and his gross body shook from the confined eruption.

“I hear you,” he said.

He left the chief’s office and went down a short hall to another room which was his own, and went inside. Brad was sitting alone in a straight chair, his face livid and drawn, his eyes drained of light. He did not look around when Trajan entered.

“The chief says I’ve got to let you go,” Trajan said. “He thinks I’m persecuting you.”

Brad stood up, holding himself carefully erect. By extending himself, he managed to sustain an attitude of cold disdain that he was far from feeling. He was afraid of Trajan. The gross man was as terrifying to him as a nightmare.

“Thank you very much,” he said. “I’m relieved to learn that there is at least one rational man on this police force. Does this mean that I’m now to be free of your persecution?”

“It means I won’t bring you back here, and I won’t bother you anywhere else. Not until I’ve got the one who killed your wife for you. Don’t sleep too well, though. Don’t ever relax. I’ll keep working at it officially as long as they’ll let me, and then I’ll work on it unofficially on my own time. We’ll be seeing each other again, Dr. Cannon.”

Turning, Brad walked out of the room. He felt unreal, a monstrous distortion of himself. Nowadays, with more and more difficulty, he could barely sustain an identity with the man he had been, or a genuine conviction that there was any continuity of experience between then and now. He walked firmly and erect, moving and placing each foot in turn with an effect of excessive care.

It was dark outside. The lights were on. He didn’t know how long he had been in police headquarters, but it had been light when he arrived in response to Trajan’s peremptory summons, and it seemed like a long, long time ago.

He shuddered with a dreadful sense of near disaster when he thought how close he had come, in exhaustion and desperation, to ending his torment by shouting out the truth into Trajan’s ugly face. The fat detective was a madman. There was no question about that. He was a man obsessed and driven by virulent hatred that seeped from his rancid interior without any true relationship to whatever or whoever drew it forth. His final threat, just now delivered, had the quality of a profane vow.

There was to Brad, however, a nearer and more pressing menace than eventual exposure, and this was the menace of disintegration, the frightful dissolution of courage and confidence and control. It was evident in a growing inability to conduct his classes properly or to deal effectively with the slightest problem. The danger in this was that it would surely be open, after passing for a while as a natural reaction to shock and grief, to an interpretation of guilt and fear. In fact, he felt that this interpretation was already prevailing, and his mind was becoming as tormented as a paranoid’s by ideas of reference. Every intercepted glance was a glance of suspicion. Every half-heard word was an accusation.

Fortunately, since the turn of the term, Maggie was no longer in his class, and so he was not compelled to pretend a casual class-room relationship. That would have been a performance far beyond his capability. In his thinking now she had become an ageless and immutable child-woman, assuming an odd infallibility. It was she who could give him lasting assurance. It was she who would save him in the end from the implacable Trajan. And it was she whom he must now see, tonight, in order somehow to survive tomorrow.

In his car, driving, he exercised the same excessive care with which he had walked, as if moving in any way were extremely perilous and imposed the greatest challenge.

At a corner several blocks from headquarters, he saw a phone booth outside a drugstore, and he stopped at the curb in the next block and walked back to the booth and dialed Maggie’s number. The phone rang and rang and wasn’t answered, and after a while he hung up and wondered with despair what he should do.

Now that he had tried and failed to reach her, it was absolutely imperative that he see her and talk with her as soon as possible. Failure to do so, he felt, would surely be disastrous. What he would do, he decided, was go on to her apartment immediately. Perhaps she would be there before him, having arrived while he was on his way. If she wasn’t there, not having arrived, she would certainly be there later, and he would wait until she came.

He returned to his car and drove away, turning after several minutes onto a quiet residential street lighted only at intersections by overhead lamps. He drove slowly along this street for five blocks, watching the street behind him in the rear-view mirror, but there was no one following him, and so he turned off the street onto another in the direction of Maggie’s apartment.

Now, moving toward his destination by the most direct route, he was struck by the realization of how readily and naturally he had assumed the attitude and actions of guilt, looking over his shoulder along a devious way, and he had again the feeling of being unreal, a figure in a grim fantasy and a stranger to himself.

Parking on the street behind Maggie’s apartment house, he walked half around the block and entered the building. He met no one on the street or in the lower hall, and he ascended the stairs quickly to Maggie’s door. His sense of urgency had increased with each step, and when there was no response to his knocking he had a mounting and irrational conviction of everything going irremediably wrong.

Turning away from the door, wondering where he could safely wait without being detected, he reached back at the last instant, as an afterthought, and tried the knob. It turned in his hand, the door swinging inward into the room, and he had in an instant an exorbitant feeling of exhilaration, the unlocked door being a sign that everything might, after all, go right instead of wrong.

But it was only a cruel deception, for terror was waiting for him in the stale litter beyond the door. A light was burning in the ceiling of the kitchen, and Maggie lay on the floor and stared up at the light with blind eyes.

Her head was askew, her throat bruised and her open eyes and mouth gave to her face an expression of childish wonder, as if she had been entranced in the end by the incredible prospect of death. She looked for all the world like a bit of her own litter, dropped casually and left lying.

Fixed for most of a minute in a catalepsy of terror, Brad turned at last with a shrill whimper and ran into the hall and downstairs and out onto the street.

From the dark recess of a doorway across the street, Buddy had seen him come and now saw him go.

19

Buddy had lingered in the neighborhood at his own peril for no reason except a reluctance to leave Maggie alone. She actually was alone, of course, in her apartment, or wherever beyond the apartment she may have gone, but the aloneness was somehow alleviated in his mind by his presence across the street.

He felt terribly sorry for her because she was dead, and terribly sorry for himself because he had killed her and would have to live all his life without her. After standing for quite a long time in the dark recess of the doorway, he began to wish that he had taken time after killing her to pick her up and lay her decently on the bed. He regretted sincerely his failure to perform this last small service for her, and he had decided to return and perform it yet, in spite of all hazards, when he saw Bradley Cannon approach the entrance to the building and enter.

He remained where he was, in the dark doorway, and now in his mind with the dull pain and loneliness there was a new element of slyness, the hard bright malice of a grand idea born whole. He waited until after Brad came running out of the building, which was only a short while longer, and then he left the doorway and walked off down the street until he came, several blocks along, to a service station with a public phone booth.

In the booth, Buddy sorted the coins from a pocket and found a dime. Dropping the dime in the phone and making his connection, he dialed operator and asked for the police. When his call was answered by a policeman on desk duty, he gave the name of Maggie’s apartment house and the number of her apartment. The police should go there at once, he said, if they wanted to find something that would interest them. When the policeman asked him who was calling, he hung up.

He had been feeling at an utter loss, with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go for any good reason, but now he had started something that needed doing and ending, and it gave him a purpose that would last for a day or two at least, and he felt a little better.

Leaving the phone booth with a new decisiveness, knowing exactly what he would do and how he would do it, he walked back to the old residence near the college campus where he had a single room at the rear of the second floor. In his room, he undressed in the dark and lay down on the bed.

He could not sleep, lying on his back and hardly moving as the night passed, but his mind had secured a kind of rest in the birth and beginning of his plan, and finally he did sleep after all, when the night was almost gone, and did not waken until after noon.

There were still several hours of waiting to be survived, for he could do nothing until the daily newspaper was on the streets, and this would be late in the afternoon, about four o’clock. He remained in his room until almost that time, sustaining his peace in his new purpose. Then he dressed and walked downtown and bought a newspaper. The story of Maggie’s murder was on the front page, and he folded the paper without reading the story and carried it in his hand to police headquarters in City Hall.

The policeman at the desk asked him what he wanted, and he laid the newspaper on the desk in front of the policeman and said that he wanted to see someone about the murder of Maggie McCall. The policeman glanced down at the newspaper and up at Buddy. It was evident that he was thinking wearily that he had some kind of nut on his hands.

“What’s on your mind, sonny? You want to confess?”

“No. I want to tell someone about something I saw,” Buddy said.

“Saw? Saw where? Saw when?”

“Last night out at the apartment house where Maggie lived.”

“You talk like she was an old friend. First name stuff. You know this Maggie McCall personally?”

“She was my girl once, but she threw me over.”

“Yes? Jealousy’s a good motive. Were you jealous, sonny? Is that why you killed her?”

“I didn’t kill her. I only want to tell who I think did.”

“Go ahead and tell. I’m listening.”

“Are you in charge of the case?” Buddy queried.

“No, but I’ve got ears,” the policeman replied.

“I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

The policeman looked him over and shrugged. Maybe a nut, maybe not. You couldn’t always tell.

“You want Trajan,” he said. “Wait here while I see.”

He went out of the room and was gone no more than a couple of minutes. Returning, he resumed his position at the desk.

“Down the hall,” he said. “First door on the left. You better have something for real if you don’t want to be skinned alive.”

Buddy picked up his newspaper and went down the hall to the first door on the left. He found Trajan inside with his fat tail hooked over the corner of his desk. He looked sick and sour and mean, and he was all these.

He had been jerked off the Cannon case by the chief and put on the McCall business, clearly nothing but a sordid little crime of passion, probably committed by some crazy kid, and he resented it bitterly. In his mind, it was just a trick to get the Cannon case shelved.

“What’s your name, sonny?” he said.

“Buddy Jensen.”

“The policeman outside says you claim to know something about this girl who got killed last night. Let’s hear it. Sit down if you want to.”

Buddy sat down in a high-backed straight chair and covered each knee with a hand. Tousled and not too clean, he had a strained and awkward appearance suggesting a reluctant commitment to an unpleasant duty that he would have preferred to avoid. He even managed to suggest a kind of qualified innocence.

“Well,” he said, “I’d better tell you first of all that Maggie and I used to be good friends. I was in love with her, to tell the truth, and I thought she was in love with me, but I guess she wasn’t. Anyhow, she got to know this man who was quite a bit older, and she threw me over and started going around with him secretly, even though he was married. She simply wouldn’t listen to me any more, or even see me if she could avoid it.

“I know it was crazy, but I couldn’t stand never seeing her, or hardly ever, and I started going out to where she lived and standing around across the street just in hopes of seeing her for a minute from a distance when she came or left.

“That’s how I happened to be there last night, about the time the paper says she was killed, when this man she was going around with came and then left in a hurry a little later. A funny thing about it is, this man’s wife was killed only last month.”

Trajan had been staring sourly into a corner of the room, his position and attitude an expression of disgust and boredom. Now, in an instant, without moving in the slightest, he was wholly alert and intently listening in utter silence to a voice that only he could hear.

“What man?” he said.

“His name is Cannon. He’s a professor at the college.”

For a long, long minute Trajan was silent again, listening to his voice. Then he slipped off the desk and belched and rubbed his belly. On his face, despite the sour gas, there was an expression of religious exaltation.

“By God, I’ve got him!” he whispered. “I’ve got the son of a bitch good!”

20

At first Brad had been angry, and then he had been frightened, but now, near the end of the exhausting ordeal of evasions and lies and damning admissions, he was only very tired.

“All right.” He drew a hand across his forehead, pressing hard against the dull pain above his eyes. “I went there, to the apartment, but I didn’t kill her. She was dead when I arrived. She was lying on the floor, and I could see immediately that she was dead.”

“Sure.” Trajan’s voice came from shadows beyond the perimeter of focused light. “She was lying on the floor, and she looked dead. So you just turned and left. You didn’t call a doctor. You didn’t call the police. You didn’t do anything an innocent man would have done. You just turned and left.”

“I was frightened. I’ve told you that. I could think of nothing but getting away as quickly as possible.”

“Why did you go there in the first place?”

“I wanted to talk with Maggie. Miss McCall.”

“Did you go there often?”

“No. It was only the second time.”

“But you saw Miss McCall often. Isn’t that true?”

“I suppose so. Fairly often.”

“You were having an affair. Isn’t it true that you were having an affair even before the death of your wife? Don’t try to lie. We have the evidence.”

“It’s true. We were going to be married after a while.”

“Is that why you killed your wife? So you could marry Maggie McCall?”

“I didn’t kill my wife.”

“So you didn’t. You were somewhere else when it happened. What you did was hire someone to kill her.”

“No. That’s not true. I hired no one.”

Trajan’s bulk shifted in the shadows. His voice was assured and soft and almost gentle, the harsh dyspeptic hatred apparently having diminished or drained away in its hour of triumph.

“Well, Dr. Cannon, no matter. No matter at all. You killed Maggie McCall, and that’s enough. You were seen entering the building at the time of the murder, and you were seen running away. We have the witness, and we have you, and motives are a dime a dozen in a mess like this. We could almost take our pick. You get the picture, Dr. Cannon? You’re dead. You’re guilty and you’re dead.”

Brad’s mind was sluggish, moving uncertainly in a fog of dull pain, and it was only with the greatest effort of concentration that he could think coherently about what he should say or not say, or if there was anything left to be said at all.

He sat staring at the floor, and one thing, after a while, seemed assured. He had walked blindly into a trap — the littered little apartment where Maggie had lain dead, and there was no escape. No escape for Bradley Cannon.

He considered dully the possible advantages of confessing the truth about Madelaine’s death, which would reduce him to a conspirator instead of a murderer. This would really accomplish nothing, of course, for he was not charged with Madelaine’s murder, and now that Maggie was dead, could never be. It would help nothing to confess, nothing at all, and in fact it would only make matters worse, for it would give him a damning motive for killing Maggie, whom he had not killed.

Trajan, and later the prosecutor, would surely take the position that he had killed her, after the murder of Madelaine, because she was a menace to his security. It was ironical, being untrue, but he could not laugh. He was so tired, his head so filled with dull pain, that he couldn’t for the present even care.

He had acquired in the slow and painful consummation of his ruin a kind of immunity to further fear, and although this would pass and fear return, he felt now only a dumb wonder that Bradley Cannon had come at last to this bad end. He couldn’t believe it. It was surely no more a vivid delusion, a fantastic trick of the mind, and it must be someone else, some other man, who sat here on a hard chair in bright light without hope.

He looked up from the floor to test the delusion, and Trajan’s face was a livid smear against the shadows beyond the light.

21

Buddy Jensen was neither a philosopher nor a theologian. He had never wasted his time speculating about any life other than the one in which he was enmeshed, and he did not waste it now.

There was, indeed, very little time left for anything, since he had made up his mind to die, but it was not for this reason that he refused to speculate about his possible future, if any. It was simply that the speculation did not interest him. If he had any conviction along that line at all, it was only that matters could hardly be worse for him elsewhere than they already were where he was. He had his tragic aspects, but he was no Hamlet compounding his despair by anticipation.

His decision to die had nothing of the character of grim resolution. Dying was something he had to do, and he had neglected to accomplish it sooner because he was simply too apathetic.

This morning, however, he had wakened with the realization that this was the day, his day for dying, and that there was absolutely no point in hanging around any longer in a world where he was wanted by no one, and no one was left to want.

He owned a.22 caliber revolver, a small gun he had picked up long ago in a pawn shop, but he had no bullets for it. Therefore he had been compelled to go to a hardware store to buy some, and then he had kept on walking out of town with the gun and the bullets in his pocket, and here he was now, early in the afternoon, sitting on the bank of a small creek.

The gun was in his hand, and six of the bullets were in the gun. He would only need one, of course, but it seemed neater to fill the cylinder. Now, before shooting himself, he was waiting for a minute or two, taking his time, but he didn’t really know why he was waiting, for there was really nothing worth waiting for.

There was quite a lot of water in the creek as a result of spring rains. A tree had fallen across the stream onto the lower bank on the opposite side, forming a rude and sharply-inclined bridge. In a field beyond there was a small hay barn. Between the barn and the creek, moving slowly closer,’ was a woman walking.

The sight of the woman acted upon Buddy as a mild catalyst. Her approach gave him a kind of measure of time — the few minutes it would take her at her present rate to reach the creek — in which he must rouse himself sufficiently from his lethargy to do what he must do.

And so he sat and watched her come a minute nearer, growing in dimension in the rough field, and then he lifted the revolver and pressed the barrel against his temple and pulled the trigger.

Cornelia York, the woman in the field, heard the shot but thought nothing of it. It was, after all, not unusual to hear shooting in the country, and she did no more than lift her eyes in the direction of the sound.

Reaching the creek, she started across it on the fallen log, and it was then that she saw the figure of a man lying on his back on the higher bank. She thought nothing of this, either, for it was a warm May day, and she herself, not long ago, had lain on her back for a while in the sun to watch the clouds.

Next seeing the ragged bleeding hole in his head and his staring eyes, she still felt no more than a dull shock and a slight quickening of her pulse. Having lived for so many weeks with horror, she had become nearly immune to horror’s effects.

She had lived, indeed, through two terrible traumas. One was the new and disruptive knowledge of her own character, the deep and deadly malice which had made it possible for her to rejoice in the death of Madelaine, who had been her lover’s wife, and in the ruin of Brad, who had been her lover. The other had been the long and corrosive fear of contamination, the daily dread that her own intimate relationship with a murderer might be discovered in the process of investigation and indictment and trial. This latter trauma was still alive and intense, and anything was now compatible with the quality of her life and expectations.

She thought, however, that she had better tell someone about the dead young man, probably the county sheriff, and so she hurried away to do so.

Content

Fletcher Flora
The Seducer

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