Part 2

Now, seeing again the scrubbed potatoes and the built-in oven, he decided to ignore them. When he went to the refrigerator to get a lemon he noticed the row of gleaming copper pans on the pegboard at one side of the stove. They came in graduated sizes and Marion treated them as though they were heirlooms made of some precious metal. The knife that he usually used to cut lemon peel was not in the rack but he had no wish to look for it and he used the next size, cutting generous slices and bruising them against the bottoms of the Old-Fashioned glasses with the end of a mixing spoon before adding water and bitters and sugar, a pinch for him, a more generous portion for her. He cracked ice, added whisky, stirred, and still he stood there until he was sure he could face her with his thoughts and emotions under control.

She had not moved while he was in the kitchen, and when he had put her drink on the end table, he took the chair which faced hers from the other side of the fireplace. He took a cigarette from the silver box beside him, not offering her one because she had stopped smoking when her pregnancy was confirmed. When he had a light he said: “Cheers, dear,” and pretended not to notice when there was no reply.

He took a big swallow and the whisky put a welcome warmth in his throat and the top of his stomach. He let the silence build as he studied her, and though she still would not look at him he saw that her cheekbones, which to him had always added some extra beauty to her face, were pale now, the smooth skin taut-looking, the full, sweetly shaped mouth compressed and severe. The hazel eyes were fastened on her glass, but he could see the long black lashes, unblinking now and fixed by some inner struggle that was tormenting her. She was wearing a flannel skirt and cashmere sweater set, and it came to him now that she did not look four months pregnant.

She denied this when he had mentioned the subject before. She said her clothes were beginning to feel too tight but he could only be sure at night when, under the gentleness of his hand, he could feel the rounded firmness beneath the satiny skin of her belly that grew so gradually from week to week. He had told her that she must tell him when the first signs of life came, so he could feel it for himself, and she had promised him that she would....

He pulled his thoughts back to the moment and a sickness began to grow inside him as he tried to make his voice hearty.

“Have a tough day, baby?”

“You could call it that.”

“Any morning sickness after I left?”

“Some.”

“Has Junior been behaving?”

“Junior’s been fine,” she said in the same dull tones. “Unfortunately--” She stopped here; then, as though becoming aware of the glass in her hand for the first time, she lifted it and he could see her throat move as she took two quick swallows. She put the glass down on the end table and the sound of it was loud in the otherwise quiet room. But she was looking at him now, her chin up, the stiffness still in her face, her eyes enormous. He saw her lips quiver once and then she said harshly: “Unfortunately for Junior, he’s going to be a bastard.”

He heard the phrase distinctly but he did not believe his ears, and for that first shocking instant he was more distressed by the word itself than by the inference it conveyed. The effect was more punishing than a physical blow because it struck deep inside him and he had as yet no time to consider her meaning or speculate about the reasons for her outburst. For one of the first things that had attracted him to her was a look of breeding that he had found authentic, and in their fourteen months of married life the closest Marion had ever come to profanity was three or four determined damns, and then only under extreme provocation.

True, in the past couple of months there had been small emotional upheavals, but he understood that these were due to her condition and he made the proper allowances. He knew that she felt queasy at times, that morning sickness bothered her now and then. There were occasional tears that seemed to have no logical explanation, but if she was sometimes a bit difficult she could also be contrite; when the outbursts were over, the proof of her feeling of guilt was often demonstrated by a passion that surprised him. All these thoughts came to him as he stared at her, and before he could demonstrate or reply she attacked him again.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard you.”

“Well, say something. Or do you want me to repeat it?”

It came to him then that she was trying to tell him something that he was in no condition mentally or emotionally to accept. This was no outburst brought about by some instability of the mind. He knew somehow that she was close to hysteria and such knowledge chilled him and put a further strain on nerves already ragged. He wanted to come out of the chair and shake her, to shout at her to stop this nonsense, but some inner warning signal made him sit still and demand an explanation as soberly as he could.

“Not now or any other time,” he said, an edge in his tone. “Just give a simple explanation of what you’re talking about--if you can.”

The cold, no-nonsense quality of the words had their effect, and he saw her labored breath as she fought for some self-control. He watched it, the slow gathering of that control, and her voice, when it came, was as distant as his own.

“A child whose parents are not married is illegitimate. If you prefer that word, let’s use it. All I’m trying to say is that our baby will be illegitimate.”

“What?” He felt the back of his neck prickle as he sat up, and suddenly his scalp was tight. “What the devil are you talking about? You must be--”

“But I’m not,” she said, interrupting. “I found out today that we’re not married, at least not legally.”

“_Marion!_”

“No.” She gestured impatiently with one hand. “Let me finish, please. It’s really very simple. Ted is still alive.”

He knew what she meant then but he could not accept the statement. His mind and senses rebelled and he fought against belief, even though he knew that for her there could be but one Ted. He himself had never seen the man--Marion had been widowed for six months when he first met her--but he knew that for a period of three years she had been Mrs. Ted Corbin.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, aware of the inadequacy of his words but unable to find others.

“I didn’t want to believe it either but it’s true. I saw his picture--”

A sob that was a convulsive choking sound cut through the sentence and he saw her face crumble. Tears spilled from her eyes. When she could no longer face him she bowed her head and covered her mouth and eyes with her hands. The sight of all this torment and helplessness chewed his insides and he came to his feet with a muffled curse. Two long strides took him to her chair and he went to one knee and leaned close.

In his effort to comfort her he took her hands and pulled them gently down and she did not resist. He started to slide an arm around her shoulders and draw her close, and suddenly he could feel her stiffen. When he tried to persist she drew back. Her head came up, and though her eyes were still wet, they were wide open now and there was a look in them he had never seen before. Then, as the astonishment grew in him, she put her hands against his chest and pushed.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Marion!”

“I mean it.”

The cold and brittle sound of the words told him that she was deadly serious, and although he did not understand what prompted the outburst, he wisely withdrew his arm and came to his feet.

He went back to his chair, glaring now as he saw his drink. He snatched it up and finished it in one gulp, but this time the whisky did him no good. For the anger was rising in him now, an impotent helpless anger that had no direction. It took a considerable effort for him to sit down and face her again, to see that the tears had stopped and that she was frightened by what she had done.

“Who told you?” he demanded.

“A man.”

It seemed then, as he recalled the information he had picked up at Cramer’s filling station and Jerry’s Tavern, that he already had the answer.

“Was his name Adler?”

The question seemed to startle her. “How--how did you know?”

“When was the first time you saw him, yesterday afternoon?”

He had her attention now. Her lips were parted and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She sat up a little straighter, the hazel eyes puzzled and all traces of hysteria gone.

“But--how did you know, John?”

He told her. He spoke of Lee Cramer and Doris Lamar and George Freeman. He kept his voice level in an effort to mask his own doubt and anxiety.

“Yes,” she said when he repeated his question. “I guess it was around four.”

“Did you let him in?”

“No. I hadn’t finished dressing. I had the chain lock on the front door like I always do when you’re not here. He said he was a book salesman. I told him I didn’t want any and he asked me if I had any children. I said no.”

“Then what?”

“He said he was selling some sort of encyclopedia for children. He seemed pleasant enough and I didn’t want to be rude so”--she hesitated and sounded a bit embarrassed as she continued--“I don’t know why I told him this but--”

“Never mind why. Just tell me what you said.”

“I told him there might be a child in another five months and if he wanted to come around again after that I might consider his proposition.” She hesitated again, a frown working on the smoothness of her brow and worry once more clouding her glance. “I started to close the door and he put his weight against it. He gave me a funny smile and suddenly I was afraid of him. I told him if he didn’t leave I would call the police and he said that would be all right with him. He said he wasn’t really selling books; he just wanted to get a look at me. He said he had a message from my husband.”

Again she stopped and once more Hayden prompted her. “What did you say?”

“I told him he was being ridiculous, that if I wanted to talk to my husband all I had to do was pick up the telephone. He said he didn’t mean my present husband; he meant Ted Corbin.”

She took a small breath and said: “I don’t know what all I said then. I know I told him I didn’t believe him, that Ted had been killed along with fifty-eight other people in a plane crash more than two years ago. I guess I said some other things and he waited until I finished, that sly look still in his eyes and that half-smile on his mouth. Then he told me I was mistaken. He said he had seen Ted two weeks ago, that he was in perfect health.

“‘I can prove it to you Mrs. Corbin,’ he said. ‘Or Mrs. Hayden, if you like it better that way. Suppose we keep it a secret, just the two of us, until tomorrow. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon and I’ll bring that proof with me. If you’re smart you’ll listen to the proposition I have in mind.’”

Again she ran out of breath and this time she stopped. She continued to look right at him but it seemed to him that she did not really see him and after another moment he stood up, the glass still in his hand.

“I take it he came back this afternoon.”

“Yes.”

“With proof?”

“He showed me a snapshot of Ted.”

“It could have been taken a long time ago.”

“That’s what I told him but I knew it wasn’t so. Ted’s alive.”

There were a lot of things he wanted to say then but he knew they could wait. He saw that his wife’s drink had scarcely been touched, and now, as he stopped beside her chair, he took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and passed it to her.

“Blow your nose.” He waited until she took the handkerchief. “And work on that drink a little, will you?”

“I don’t want it.”

“Pretend it’s medicine. We’ve got some talking to do,” he said. “I want to hear more about this proof Adler has. I want to know just what happened this afternoon.”

He moved through the dining room area to the kitchen door and stopped to glance back at her. He said he was going to make another drink and while he was doing it she could try to remember exactly what had been said.

_3_

John Hayden did not make a fresh Old-Fashioned but simply added ice and whisky to the dregs of the first one. He gave the mixture a quick and violent stir. When he had tossed the spoon aside he did not lift the glass but stood staring with unseeing eyes at the darkness outside the windows while he tried to ease the tension inside him and quiet his trembling nerves.

He held one hand out palm down and watched his fingers shake. When he could not still them he clenched his fist and shifted his glance. Again he noticed the steak, and because he knew it would not be cooked tonight, he put it back into the refrigerator and tossed the potatoes into the vegetable bin. The diversion helped and his breathing was all right now but there was some thinking to be done and it came to him that this was the time to do it.

He had to think logically, reasonably, sensibly, and he was afraid he could not do so while sitting opposite Marion and watching the naked display of emotions on her sensitive face. To see and understand her distress was to undermine his own self-control and involve him emotionally as well, and this would only further erode his own resolve to find the truth as soon as possible.

To set the pattern he directed his mind deliberately to the accident which had taken Ted Corbin’s life more than two years ago. At the time the name meant nothing to him and he had not yet met Marion, but the accident was a front-page story, not only because of the lives lost, but because the mid-air disintegration of the aircraft was so similar to an accident that had happened some months before.

He had left New York and was working for Brandt Radio and Electronics Company at the time and later, when he met Marion, he remembered the accounts he had read. At first there was some talk of sabotage because the destruction of the aircraft was complete and parts of it, as well as bodies and parts of bodies, had been scattered over a wide area of the farm land on which they fell. Later, the experts were able to determine that the disaster was caused not by sabotage but by some structural failure which, combined with the air pressure at thirty-two thousand feet, had produced the explosive effect.

He learned other details while he was courting Marion. She had already been widowed for six months when he met her at a party in Greenwich, and it was another six months before they were married. The accident had not been mentioned since, but he remembered now that Ted Corbin had gone to Illinois, ostensibly on business but actually to look for a new job. He had gone aboard this particular flight at Capitol City one evening, and about an hour out, somewhere over Indiana, tragedy had struck the plane, its crew, and its passengers.

Because of the violence of the accident, identification had been difficult in many instances; in some it had been impossible. As a result the remains of certain passengers known to have been aboard the aircraft had been buried in a common grave. Ted Corbin was one of these. He had been an orphan who had no living relatives, and Marion, in no condition to consider the grisly evidence, had taken the advice of friends and approved the arrangement.

There had been some insurance involved--a small life policy that Corbin had carried for some time, plus a seventy-five-thousand-dollar trip policy he had bought in the airport. The fact that the insurance company had paid this claim seemed proof enough that Ted Corbin did indeed die aboard that aircraft. It was this fact that now came to bolster Hayden’s contention that Corbin was dead and that Sam Adler’s scheme, whatever it was, could not be based on fact. Such thoughts helped as he picked up his glass and started for the living room.

Knowing nothing at all about the proof his wife had spoken about, he understood that she was convinced that Sam Adler had told the truth. He was willing to let matters stand that way for the present because it seemed more important to reassure her about the baby and make her understand that her fears were exaggerated, that the conclusion she had reached was subject to sensible revision. Once he had explained things to her, he could go on to the details of her talk with Adler and see just what had to be done.

“You spoke about proof,” he said as he sat down, “but let’s skip that for now.” He put his glass aside and fashioned a smile for her. “Come on, baby, take another sip of your drink.”

He waited, pleased and encouraged when she took a small and dutiful swallow.

“Okay,” he said. “Now, before you tell me just what happened this afternoon, let’s get one thing straight.” He paused again, his dark eyes intent. “Junior is not going to be illegitimate except in a very technical sense and probably not even that.”

“But if Ted is alive--”

“Please! Let me finish. If he _is_ alive, and I’m not buying that yet, you have plenty of grounds for a quick and quiet divorce that no one around here has to know about. You can do that in Nevada or Alabama or Mexico. We can be remarried just as quietly. So if we can do that, how can the baby be illegitimate?”

“Are you sure?” she said, hope touching her glance for the first time.

He was not at all sure and knew little about such laws, but he also knew there would be some way out and he lied convincingly.

“Certainly I’m sure. So let’s forget about that angle and talk about this guy Adler. He says Ted Corbin is alive and I say he isn’t. I wasn’t there at the time, but you and Roger Denham went out west after the accident. You know the facts; you told them to me. Corbin wired you that he would be on that flight. The airline people said he was checked aboard, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“They found his trench coat and figured this had been hanging in the tail compartment, which explained why it wasn’t burned. You identified that trench coat. The name tape you had sewn in it was still there. The baggage check they gave him when he handed in his ticket was in the pocket. They found his suitcase. Part of it was charred but there was enough still intact for you to identify his toilet kit and a pair of his shoes.”

“Yes, but--”

“Furthermore,” he went on, not to be interrupted, “the insurance companies never pay off until they are convinced the claim is justified. So let’s get back to Adler.”

He sat up, aware that he had her attention now, that all traces of hysteria had gone. “He came here yesterday afternoon and talked to you. He came back this afternoon and you let him in.”

“I had to. I had to find out the truth, didn’t I? I’d thought about nothing else for twenty-four hours. I was scared but I tried not to show it. I told him the same things you’ve just told me and he just nodded, and smiled in that sly way of his, and showed me the snapshot. It was Ted.”

“How do you know it hadn’t been taken a long time ago?”

“I just know. He had coveralls on with some insignia on the chest. I could see a little of the background and it looked to me as if he was working in a filling station. It certainly hadn’t been taken while we were married and I know he couldn’t have looked like that before that. He looked older, and a little leaner, and he was bareheaded, and tanned--”

“There could be some other explanation,” Hayden said. “One little snapshot isn’t enough.”

“He also showed me some fingerprints.”

“What?” He peered at her. “What fingerprints?”

“He had a picture of the fingerprints of one hand, a photograph. He said they were Ted’s fingerprints.”

The statement jarred Hayden and his earlier uncertainty began to undermine his thoughts, even as he sought some way to refute this new evidence.

“How do you know they’re Corbin’s?” he demanded. “Those prints could be anybody’s.”

“Adler said he could prove it if he had to.”

“How?”

“When Ted was in college he worked two summers for some government project in Tennessee. I don’t know what it was but he had to be fingerprinted. He told me. Those prints would be on file somewhere with the government, wouldn’t they?”

She shifted her weight as she spoke and leaned forward, her arms crossed and hugging her breasts. She was dry-eyed and serious now, and what she said then reminded him again that his wife was as intelligent as she was lovely.

“I think we should stop talking about the word _if_. Instead of doubting that Ted is alive, let’s assume for a moment that he _is_.”

He did not like the assumption but he was forced to admit that it had some merit.

“All right,” he said. “Adler says he can prove that your husband is alive. So what’s his angle? What does he want?”

“Just what you’d think he might want. Money.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“And for this he gives you the picture and the fingerprints and promises to forget the whole thing.”

“Something like that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him we didn’t have that much money and we couldn’t raise it. He said that would be too bad because in that case he’d have to go to the insurance company. He knows the insurance people paid me seventy-five thousand dollars. He said he thought that they’d be delighted to pay him ten thousand in order to collect seventy-five thousand. If he could prove what he says, we’d have to give the money back, wouldn’t we? And how could we do that?”