Catch-As-Catch-Can

by Charlotte Armstrong

  He said, “Maybe she ran away.”

  “Ran away?”

  His voice was staccato.

  “Because she’d had her heart broken.”

  Dee knew that this was so. She seemed to herself to be walking on eggshells. She took a step down.

  “Was there anything,” she asked him quietly, “to make you think she might?”

  He moistened his lips. “She did say she wanted to be by herself. She ran into the house.…”

  “To be by herself,” Dee repeated.

  “Away from me. And you, I suppose. I suppose you were right.”

  Dee said, very quietly, “She’s so young and I suppose she felt like running away. I suppose she runs on feeling, just as you said. I suppose that’s it”

  He didn’t answer. He looked stricken.

  Lorraine had collapsed on the stairs behind them. “Will she get like Mrs. Vaughn?” she moaned. “Poor sweet little thing! Will she die?”

  “Oh, no, of course not,” said Dee vigorously. “We—we must just—find her.”

  “How many hours?” said Andy loudly.

  “Sixteen—”

  “Counting from—this morning?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Midnight, to be safe,” he said. “Midnight. I’ll find her.”

  Dee herself began to glow. It was an illusion caused by determination. “We’ll go, right now, and find her,” Dee said.

  “Wait a minute …” said Andy. “Use our heads. Need all the help we can get. She’s got to be found.” He ran to the phone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Laila Breen walked very fast. She thought she had better not run, although she wanted to. She walked down the curving, descending street, finding the heels of her pumps a nuisance and hating the clatter they made on the pavement To be barefoot and running swiftly would be better. But she thought it might make people stare.

  The sun and shadow through which she passed was all gray to her. She didn’t want to be seen. She’d had a bad shock and her face felt hot with shame.

  It hurt to look back and see and hear herself. She should have been sly. It would have been bittersweet to worship Andrew secretly and never let anyone notice. Then she could have loved him all her life. And when he and Dee were married, still keep the sweet bitterness, the darling pain.

  Not now. No more.

  And Dee would know everything. The wonderful, brilliant competence of Dee was something Laila admired. Still it couldn’t be borne if Dee knew everything. It was very easy to see, now, that she couldn’t take so much from Dee, now that she had been told. She would be ashamed in front of Dee because it was Andrew who had to tell her.

  Her heart felt sore about Dee—about Andrew.

  Dee was one of the only three in the world whom Laila had truly trusted. But that very trust was too much, Andrew said, to put on Dee and so it couldn’t be any more.

  There was only one person left, really.

  Not Dee—not Andrew. No more.

  Not Dr. Stirling. He always said “Nonsense!” But Jonas was dead, just the same.

  Laila wished she were home, but there was no home. The old station was sold, her mother’s things all gone to the four winds, the old life never to be again. It had been a house of women, since Laila could remember, her French grandfather dead before she was born.

  Her American grandmother, for whose sake English was the tongue of the house, her mamma, herself. A home of dreaming women. Grandmother dreaming of old times, Mamma dreaming of a day to come, Laila tucked sweetly into a golden present tense, half dream. Grandmother forever saying, “Emily, you should have gone with him. You should soon go to America.” Mamma forever replying, “And will you go?” “No.” “Well, then.” It was a refrain. It was like music. When Grandmother was gone, the refrain was silent. But when Mamma was gone, Jonas had been, and for Laila to come to America rang like a old chord, a sweet familiar sound in her ear.

  But now she wished she were home, and there was no home. There was nothing like it. No long days when Mamma sang and told her dreams, or long slow nights listening to the sea and nobody telling time. There was only one link left to the kind of world it had been and that was Pearl Dean.

  Pearl never said “Nonsense.” Pearl had dreams. Pearl would understand.

  Her heels hit the hard pavement noisily. She could hear a rush of traffic now somewhere beyond the trees.

  She had no mother and no father and almost nobody, now. Jonas who had been so kind and loving, whom she had trusted totally, was dead, and she herself had seen it and never told anyone. Seen Dr. Stirling seize the cloth roughly and bare the skin and plunge in the wicked needle and press the shining cylinder close. The nurse had seen it, too, and pressed her stern lips together and a look had gone between them.

  Neither had known Laila was there in that room, frightened and quiet as a bug. Neither had seen her slip away. Neither had ever mentioned that awful thing they’d done.

  She had mentioned it only once. She’d run into cousin Clive and cried in her terror, “They’re killing Jonas.”

  But Clive had told her sharply, “You mustn’t say a thing like that, you little dope. That’s libel. They could put you in jail, lock you up for that”

  So she had not said it, ever again. But just the same, Jonas was dead.

  All they told her was the news. Maybe she didn’t understand! She was afraid to ask, but she didn’t trust Dr. Stirling very much. She couldn’t.

  Anyhow Pearl said Jonas was gone away, not far, and only because he was needed in another world. It must be true.

  There really wasn’t anyone left in the whole world to trust but Pearl Dean.

  Laila pulled herself up. She had reached the boulevard. Well, then, she’d run away successfully if she was all the way to the boulevard and nobody after her. She had never been alone, on foot, before, in an American city. But she was not afraid. It was time to put the house, and the people there, behind her. What was to be done next?

  She meant to get to Pearl, of course, and hide her head. Laila put aside her longing for Pearl’s presence to consider how to get to it She knew the name of the woman at whose house Pearl was staying. Estelle. Estelle Fleming. But Laila did not know any street or number.

  She had nothing in her hands. Her head was bare. It didn’t cross her mind to find a phone book and look up the number or to use a telephone. It hadn’t crossed her mind to bring some money. She was all alone and empty-handed and the great city stretched miles below and all around her. But she was not afraid. People would be kind.

  She thought she would find a taxicab, as Jonas always had. And the driver would know. She would just ask him to take her to Mrs. Estelle Fleming’s house. So she stood on the sidewalk and her long black hair stirred and whispered on her back against the coral color of the suit she wore as she began to peer into the traffic for a taxicab.

  A man on the sidewalk, couldn’t keep his eyes off her. His wife used her elbow. “Hollywood,” she said contemptuously.

  Clive Breen was mortified. He could not help feeling that everyone on the bus knew slyly what had happened to his car. Of all the humiliations a man must face, to be stripped of his wheels, his mobility, especially in Los Angeles, was one of the worst Clive could imagine. For two hundred lousey bucks! He’d get it and throw it in their faces. Maybe he’d get the whole twelve hundred and throw that.

  Meanwhile he didn’t have two hundred or even twenty. He was overdrawn and he was angry, thinking of it. Five thousand dollars was peanuts. How could a man operate on peanuts?

  Sometimes he wished he had made a little more fuss of Uncle Jonas. Clive hadn’t cared for him. All Jonas’ yarns had seemed to Clive to be the purest guff. Him and his pearls. Him and his Chinese connections. Clive, himself, swallowed much taller tales every week in the year with no trouble, but they were “deals” whereby he and some like-minded associates would sell something they hadn’t got yet for fabulous profits. These deals were different. They were in his own idiom. Pearls
he couldn’t take.

  But there must have been pearls or something, he thought glumly. Jonas had left a half a million to an eighteen-year-old girl. He thought about his cousin Laila. Kid didn’t know anything. She had, he happened to know, twenty thousand bucks in a checking account. What a ridiculous place that was for twenty grand to be!

  Clive didn’t think Stirling was any business man and what did Dee know? Dee had her five thousand in a savings bank and that was ridiculous, too. Why was it that people who couldn’t see over the horizon were always the ones who had the capital?

  He thought he could get two or three hundred from Laila all right if he ever got up there on this damn pokey bus. One thirty already. He prided himself on having been darned nice to Laila. Clive fancied that the ladies fancied him. He was thirty. He thought of himself as tall and handsome. He thought of himself as smooth and shrewd, although a little unlucky. He had not the slightest suspicion that the inside of his sleek head was filled with the confused and childish stuff of which bad luck is made.

  Now he was remembering bitterly that he was a married man. Nedda wasn’t living with him. It had gone pfft long ago. He’d never felt the necessity of sinking money in a divorce. Now he wished he’d bought a divorce with some of that five thousand. If he was divorced, say, and could have played up to Laila.… He happened to know that if Laila got married and had a kid the kid got it all.

  But no, he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t be happy marrying for money. Something in what this guy Talbot had said. He couldn’t have gone through with it, the necessary romantic attitude, the necessary lies. Clive felt himself honorable. He would owe, for the money, a good counterfeit of love. But, he couldn’t have done it for Laila. She made him nervous. Odd little thing. And besides they were cousins and he didn’t know if that would matter.

  He wished his cousin Dee would mind her business. Fine thing, her living up there!

  His mind went back to the department of ways and means. Tell Laila he needed five hundred. Why not? If Dee wasn’t around to ask him questions why Laila’d never know the difference. And he did have deals pending. Might as well try for a little margin.

  He saw his corner coming up and he lurched down the aisle. Now he’d have to climb up about six blocks but maybe he could call a cab to get down again, if he was lucky this time.

  So he pressed his foot to the sidewalk and there, standing next to the florist’s booth, looking so odd with that long black hair that you couldn’t miss her, was his cousin Laila!

  CHAPTER 6

  She saw him and her face changed and she came toward him.

  “Hey, Laila! For the love of Mike, what are you doing?”

  “Oh, Clive!”

  “Are you alone?” he asked incredulously.

  “Clive, will you help me find a taxicab? I don’t know what’s the matter. They look at me but they don’t stop. Clive, will you help me?”

  “Sure, honey. Sure I will.” He felt a touch of the exultant sensation that told him this was luck! “Where you going in a taxicab?”

  “I want to go to Pearl Dean. I must.”

  “Anything the matter?” He had his eyes squinted; it was a muscular habit. Long ago, he had thought it made him look shrewd and inscrutable.

  “I want to be with Pearl for a while,” Laila said, sounding desperate. “Please, Clive.”

  “But listen, can’t Sidney take you in the car?” She shook her head and Clive thought, What’s up? He said, “Well, why shouldn’t you go see Pearl Dean if you want to? Where is she, honey?”

  “At the house of Mrs. Fleming.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “A taxicab will take me.”

  “Honey,” Clive said, “you’ll have to tell him where to go.”

  “But I don’t know,” she said. He stood there marveling, and then her face changed. “But Clive, you do know. One time you drove Dee and me.…”

  “Did I?”

  “Of course. Clive, drive me there in your car? I’d be so grateful.”

  Clive agreed that she would. He said regretfully, “I just don’t happen to have my car today, honey. But don’t you worry. I’ll see that you get there.”

  “It would be a great favor,” Laila said warmly.

  He smiled. He took her arm and pretended to peer up and down the busy boulevard. “Funny thing. You know, I was on my way to ask you a favor.”

  “Oh, were you? Oh, Dee told me. You need some money, do you not?”

  Clive cleared his throat. Damn Dee, he thought.

  “I wish I had brought some money,” Laila said, “so that I could give it to you.”

  He looked down on her, squint-eyed. “How were you going to pay the taxi?” he inquired.

  “Oh I … should have brought some for myself,” Laila flushed. “I forgot.”

  Clive wanted to hoot. He thought, of all the nutty things to do, walk off without a cent of carfare! Of all the …! But something hurt and quivering in her upturned face warned him not to jeer. He said carefully, “How come you forgot? Were you upset or anything?”

  “Yes, I was.” An expression of pure pain stained her face and vanished. “I hope you will help me. If I could be with Pearl for a day or two.…”

  “A day or two,” he murmured. Then he said, lightly, although he was eaten with curiosity. “Why not? Sure, I’ll help you. I tell you, though … do you have any cash? I mean at the house. Or … I suppose you’ve got a checkbook someplace. You see, you won’t get very far without money.”

  “I see,” she said flushing, looking ashamed. “I forgot. I want to much to be with Pearl. I mustn’t ask her to pay for me, must I?”

  Clive heard the bitter hint of pain but he couldn’t place it. “Well, I don’t think Pearl’s got an awful lot of dough,” he said gently, feeling his way. “So we had better go back to the house, don’t you think? And.…”

  “Oh, no!” She pulled her arm away.

  He just stood there.

  “I don’t want to see them.”

  “See who?”

  “Dee … or Andrew. Please, Clive. Don’t make me.…”

  “Sssh.” He thought she might burst into tears there on the street. “Of course I’m not going to make you do anything. But why not, honey? What did they do?”

  “I want to be away.…”

  “Away from Dee!” She nodded, and he said, watching her face, “Well, Dee’s got no real jurisdiction and certainly Talbot hasn’t. If you don’t want to see them I don’t see why you should have to.” Her face showed relief and gratitude. (Gratitude, that was the thing.) “Maybe I could get the money for you,” he suggested.

  “Oh, could you? Oh Clive, you are kind! There is some money, I’m sure. In my dressing table. Where my stockings are.”

  “How much?” asked Clive, squinting.

  “Oh, there are some hundreds and some twenties, I think.”

  “All right,” he said, swallowing his emotion. “Now, I’ll tell you just what we’ll do. We’ll get us a cab and we’ll go up there. But the cab won’t turn in and you can stay in it. D’you see, honey? While I go in and get the money. That is,” he added cautiously, “if you’ll back me up. I don’t want to be taken for a thief or anything. I mean, that is all right with you?”

  “It would be most kind!” said Laila. “Then the taxicab could take me to Pearl.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you won’t make me see them?”

  “I won’t even let them see me, if I can help it,” said Clive genially. “You leave it to me, now. Clive’ll fix everything.”

  It was a good thing, Clive Breen reflected, that Uncle Jonas’ yard was such a tangle. Ideal for his purposes. He slouched inconspicuously along the tunnel of the driveway. He had a hunch he’d better try to duck Dee entirely, because that redheaded young woman would blast the facts out of him, as well he knew. He wanted to earn Laila’s gratitude and put himself in line for a nice loan, as could come about as naturally as anything in the world. But Dee wouldn�
�t approve, of course.

  He thought, she’s damn bossy. He knew that he himself should find out more about what was going on, should be a good deal surer than he was that for Laila to run away to Pearl Dean was right and proper.

  But Clive was going to. proceed, instead, on the simple premise that he was doing the girl a favor, and asking no questions because no gentleman would.

  Talbot’s convertible was standing in the drive.

  So Clive edged along the side of the house. Laila’s big Chrysler wasn’t in. He could see that. The garage was wide open. Then he saw Sidney Dickett come running around from behind the garage, hurry inside, fling open the door that led to the stairs to his living quarters above. Clive froze in the shrubbery as Sidney’s feet pounded upward.

  But then Clive noticed that there was no upstairs window on this side of the garage building, so he seized the chance to slip around to the back door of the big house. He saw no one in the little back entry.

  From the entry he could see that there was no one in the kitchen.

  From the kitchen, he touched softly the swinging pantry door. No one in the pantry, and that was all right, but from the pantry, now, suddenly, he could hear their voices in the hall. So he hesitated. He chose the third door out of the pantry, the one that led to the great dark dining room which lay at the right side of the staircase.

  He came softly around the huge hideous carved sideboard. He was in the house and near the stairs, but he could get no farther. He stood still, in there, listening.

  Dee’s voice, sharp and annoyed, was crying, “Hello? Hello? Mrs. Fleming? Mrs. Fleming?”

  “Let me talk to her,” Talbot said loudly.

  “She hung up!”

  “Call her back again.”

  “She won’t talk. She just keeps saying Pearl isn’t there. She won’t take a message. We’re wasting time.”

  “What’s the matter with the woman?”

  “She must be whacky. She’s one of Pearl’s nearest and dearest. She probably is. We’re wasting time.”