The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow

by Patrick Quentin

  “Well, goodbye, dear.” He kissed the dry forehead which reminded him dimly of paper. “Tell Mrs. O’Roylan I’ll be back for dinner.”

  He was always home for dinner, but those were always his parting words. In the kitchen, bright with shelf paper and flowered oilcloth, he prepared his own breakfast. The daily woman didn’t come in until nine-thirty. After stacking the dishes, he moved out into the suburban street lined with neat little homes just like his own, and walked the three blocks to the trolley which would take him to the center of town.

  As he jolted through the tame prettiness of the city spring, with children, housewives, and other businessmen seated around him, It was still with him. At times these curious spells puzzled him, although they had been coming with increasing frequency during the last two years. He had been to Mexico City for a month’s vacation a long time ago and he had been fascinated by its exotic beauty. But later, through the years of a dull, not unhappy marriage, he had hardly given it a thought. Why should it have returned to him now?—so transformed, so wonderful and shining like a mirage of Paradise.

  He knew that he should bring himself down to earth. There was a lot to be done to perfect his new sales-promotion scheme which had already won an unofficial nod of approval from the head office. As the town’s sole representative for Bonifoot Shoes, John was a conscientious employee. But his painstaking efforts to concentrate on shoes only brought him visions of huaraches, and then of bare, dust-stained Mexican feet padding over distant sidewalks—the feet of Indian peons from the hills, carrying baskets of rare flowers, strange fruit, and exotic pottery to the markets….

  When he reached the one-room office where he conducted his business modestly, without the aid of a secretary, John Flint still felt the odd sensation of not belonging here. In these periods he wasn’t a man of forty-three dutifully wedded to a bedridden wife and a humdrum job in a banal industrial city. He was—what? A boy—that was it—a boy, free as the mountain wind, in a world where Popocatepetl’s great hump loomed against a translucent sky.

  It was the arrival in the office of Harry Shipley which pulled John back to reality. He hadn’t seen Harry for a long time—not since Harry had worked for a while as a salesman for Bonifoot Shoes. But he looked exactly the same—the same flashy sports coat, the same violent, hand-painted tie; the same false camaraderie; all designed to counteract the essential insignificance of his face and personality.

  “Hi, there, John, you old horse, you. Long time no see.”

  “Hello, Harry. Sit down. What can I do for you?”

  Harry Shipley sat down opposite the desk where the mail, which John had picked up from under the door, still lay unopened. The moment Harry started to speak, John sensed a touch. And he was correct. Kind of a tough period, Johnny. Just the right opening’s hard to find. There were marital difficulties, too. Harry had never got on with his wife. Now finally he had persuaded her to agree to a divorce. He was desperately eager to get to Reno and then start a new life with a new girl—a fresh start far away—say, on the Coast. He had a little saved up, but not enough. If John, as an old pal, could see his way clear to a loan of five hundred dollars—

  It wasn’t difficult to plead temporarily straitened circumstances himself and get rid of Harry Shipley. But the look of bleak disappointment on the other man’s face remained to haunt John. Secretly he had been impressed by Harry—daring to attempt something so bold as a divorce and a new life. For a moment, as an image of Amy’s emaciated figure passed across his mind, he thought It was going to come back….

  Deliberately, he started to open his mail.

  There were two letters from the head office. One finally okayed his promotion scheme, which involved a street check and the distribution of coupons for free shoes. The second letter was from the Personnel Manager. As John read it, his heart began to thump violently.

  Dear John,

  Old Pemberton, our Mexico City representative, is going to retire shortly. He finds the altitude too tough on his ticker. Gummet tells me that you are familiar with Mexico and that you have applied for a South of the Border position. So, if you feel like a change of scenery, here’s your chance. There’s no hurry about this, but let me know as soon as you can.

  Yours for bigger Bonifoot sales,

  Sam

  John Flint found himself shivering. This couldn’t be true. Life didn’t do this for you. Of course, several years ago he had told Gummet, the District Manager, that he would like a South American assignment if one ever came up. And yet … and yet … Suddenly It was upon him again, as if It had known all along and had been preparing him for this moment. And now It was much more glorious than ever before. For this was real. Those bustling, colorful streets three thousand miles away were no longer a mirage. They were his future—a true, concrete future which nothing could snatch away.

  He read the letter again and, as he did so, his glance settled on the sentence: He finds the altitude too tough on his ticker. A chill began to invade him and with it rushed the image of Amy lying, bejewelled, in her dim bedroom; Amy nursing her high blood pressure and her faltering heart. Somehow in all his golden dreams he had never thought of Amy. With a sense of impending disaster he called Dr. Jepson and listened in silence to his clipped, relentless reply.

  “Take Amy to Mexico City? My dear man, a week in that altitude and she’d be dead. Out of the question. Quite out of the question. It would be murder.”

  John put the receiver back. He sat for a long time looking at the letter….

  Late that night John Flint lay awake in his bed. Only a few feet away, his wife’s thin figure was stretched, invisible, in the darkness. He had not told her about the Mexican offer. What was the point? It would only make her feel guilty, make her feel more of a drag on him than she felt already. If only she could be cured! He had a little nest egg put away. And then there were her jewels. Wasn’t there some specialist—New York? Even London? But he knew this was only idle dreaming. Dr. Jepson had made that abundantly clear many times. There was nothing that could be done for her condition.

  Against his will he started to think about Harry Shipley. Harry was divorcing his wife, beginning a new life. Divorce … But how could he divorce Amy? She had no one in the world but him. And it wasn’t her fault that she was sick. What had she ever done to him except try to be as little trouble as possible?

  “John.” Her whispering voice came from the other bed. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I hate to ask … but could you please get me a glass of milk?”

  John scrambled out of bed as he had done a thousand times before and turned on the bedside lamp. Amy blinked up at him. She had forgotten to take off the earrings. They glittered with incongruous splendor beneath her untidy hair. Because John had loved her and knew that it was his duty to go on loving her, he had not for years really thought about her or even looked at her. But now he had been jolted from his anesthetizing habit-pattern and he saw with merciless clarity the rough skin under the defeated eyes, the sharp angles of her cheekbones, the withering neck. She was suddenly a stranger, something infinitely removed from the solemn, fresh young girl he had married….

  So it’s this, he thought, almost wonderingly, that stands between me and everything that matters. It’s this pointless woman who is chaining me forever to this prim little house, this suburb, this awful town.

  He went down to the pretty kitchen. As he was pouring milk into a glass, the thought came, sudden, shocking, unlike any other thought he had ever had.

  If she would die, he thought… If she would only die …

  In his mind, faint guitar music was trailing from behind pale pink adobe walls. What was that song? Oh, yes, he remembered:

  Ya yo me voy

  Al puerte donde se alla…

  It had come back.

  Next morning John Flint awoke with the thought: What if burglars broke in some afternoon when Amy was alone in the house and killed her for her jewels? It was not imposs
ible. Mrs. O’Roylan was a confirmed gossip. Everyone in the neighborhood must know about Amy’s jewels and her odd habit of wearing them in bed. All that day, as he put the last touches on his Bonifoot promotion scheme, he kept the Personnel Manager’s letter unanswered on his desk and the thought of burglars in his mind. Now that he had invented them, it seemed somehow certain that they would come. That evening he returned to his house with a fearful expectancy, half dread, half joy, of what he might find. But Amy greeted him with a smile from her bed: it had been one of her good days.

  John could never have told exactly when he decided to make the burglars real. But the next day in his office he found himself working out a Plan with the same impersonal efficiency which he used to tackle one of Bonifoot’s problems.

  The burglars would come on Thursday afternoon, of course, because Thursday was Mrs. O’Roylan’s afternoon off and Amy was invariably alone. In his mind’s eye he saw burly men, with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths, creeping up the stairs to the bedroom. Amy was lying there in the semi-darkness, behind closed drapes, the jewels gleaming at her throat and ears. She would see the intruders, of course, so they would have to be quick. A pillow pressed on her face—that would stop her cries for help and work swiftly, considering her heart condition, with a minimum of discomfort to her. He could picture the men, after the deed, fumbling the jewels from the limp body and stealing furtively away.

  By this time the burglars were so lifelike that it was all he could do to remember that they would, in fact, merely be himself.

  And what of him? At the time of the crime, of course, he would have to be far away, in some definite place, where there would be unimpeachable witnesses to his presence.

  It seemed obvious that his Bonifoot promotion scheme should somehow provide the alibi. The scheme was a simple publicity stunt which the company had never tried before; but they had been impressed with John’s idea and, if his first tests proved successful, they were considering adopting it throughout the nation. Every day for a week, John was going to stand at a busy midtown intersection, taking note of all the wearers of Bonifoot models who passed him on the sidewalk. Every tenth individual who walked by wearing Bonifoot Shoes would be stopped, asked his or her name and address, and then given a coupon entitling the lucky person to a free pair of Bonifoot Shoes at any of the local stores. As a final twist, every hundredth Bonifoot patron who passed by would receive a coupon for five pairs of shoes.

  Yes, if the burglars were to kill Amy next Thursday afternoon, John would be standing with his notebook at the corner of 15th and Market.

  But how? That was the kernel of the problem. How could he be at 15th and Market and at his home, three miles away, simultaneously?

  It was the thought of Harry Shipley that clinched it. Harry’s blank, nondescript face with its typical salesman’s grin came into his mind—and suddenly John Flint saw his way.

  He called Harry on the phone.

  “Hi, Harry. Still interested in that loan?”

  “Johnny, old horse!” Harry’s voice was thick with eagerness. “I knew it. I knew old Johnny-boy wouldn’t let me down.”

  “Fine. How about coming over to the office right now. I’ve got a little proposition.”

  While he was waiting for Harry, John Flint surveyed his own reflection in the mirror behind his desk. He had always disliked his face. It was so depressingly ordinary: a smooth, uneccentric face which could have been worn by any of countless thousands of small businessmen or salesmen; a face, surely, that gave no hint of his personal uniqueness. But now, for the first time, the colorlessness of the reflection pleased him. He practiced a jovial salesman’s grin. Yes, that vacuous face might be anyone’s face—Harry Shipley’s, for example.

  He called the railroad station and was told that the Western Express to Reno arrived daily from New York at 6.47 P.M. and left at 6.49 A.M.

  When Harry Shipley burst exuberantly into the office, he was wearing grey flannel trousers and a brand-new, flashy sports jacket, beige with large orange squares. On his necktie, two hand-painted cockers struggled cutely for a bone against a tan background.

  “Hi, Harry, how soon are you headed for Reno?”

  “Just as soon as I can put my hand on those five hundred smackers.”

  “How about holding off until next Thursday?”

  “Gee, Johnny, you really mean…?”

  “This week I’m up to my neck. Got a promotion project that’ll keep me on the streets all day. I need someone to hold down the office. Just to answer the telephone and make a couple of trade calls. That’s all it amounts to. If you’ll do that for me, I’ll write you a check right now. You can knock off a hundred bucks for salary and pay me back the rest when you’re good and ready.”

  As John scribbled the check, Harry’s gratitude was almost oppressive. Sure, he’d start work tomorrow, sure, he’d do anything for old Johnny. And, boy, come 6.49 A.M. next Thursday this town wasn’t going to see him for dust.

  When finally Harry got up to leave with the check in his pocket, John Flint glanced from his own sober grey lounge suit to the dazzling sports jacket.

  “That’s a good-looking jacket, Harry. New, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Just picked it up the other day at Hunt & Hunt.” Harry fingered the necktie proudly. “Picked this up too. Sharp, isn’t it?”

  “Very sharp. Wear them around the office, Harry. I like a snappy dresser. Gives people a good impression.”

  After Harry had left, John went out to Hunt & Hunt. A sports coat, exactly like Harry’s, was on the rack. He bought it. He also bought a tan necktie with gamboling cockers, and a pair of grey flannel trousers. He took the box back to the office and hid it in a closet.

  That evening, as he jolted home on the trolley, the lumbering vehicle seemed suddenly to be crammed with Indians. Bunches of Easter lilies, almost sickeningly sweet, seemed to be jostling against his face. Bajando. The air was full of excitable Mexican voices. Bajando …

  It had come back.

  Next morning, at nine o’clock, Harry Shipley, in his gaudy sports jacket, all smiles and coöperation, showed up at the office. John explained the routine setup to him and then sent him off with some new Bonifoot samples to a large department store. Once he had gone, John Flint produced the box from the closet and quite calmly, as if his entire life wasn’t changing, slipped into the sports jacket and flannel trousers and knotted the cocker necktie beneath his collar. Putting his own suit back in the box, he returned the box to the closet and studied his reflection in the mirror. His features, actually, were not at all like Harry’s. But essential insipidity gave them a kinship. A hearty smile, and, for all any casual observer would notice, that might be Harry Shipley beaming back at him from the glass.

  With his notebook and his coupons, John Flint took the trolley to 15th and Market. There he spent the day, conscientiously taking down footwear details, giving out the coupons, noting the names and addresses of the recipients. This was his scheme and there was no reason not to make a good job of it. But The Other Thing was always there, excitingly in the back of his mind. It made him take pains to attract the mild attention of the cop on the block and of the cripple who sold newspapers outside the bank building. A casual greeting, a smile, the beige and orange sports coat—they were enough to make him a distinct if unimportant feature of the corner.

  During the day he telephoned his office several times to keep a check on any business that had come up. At five o’clock exactly he called for the last time and told Harry he could go home.

  Back in the empty office, he typed up his material for the day and changed back into his grey business suit and sober tie, returning his borrowed plumage almost lovingly to the box in the closet.

  He repeated this procedure for four days, and during those days he behaved at home exactly as he had always behaved. He found it surprisingly easy. Something had happened, something which had made Amy completely unreal to him. Every morning he brought her breakfast tray, every morn
ing he went through the ritual with the jewel box. Every night he slept in the bed next to her. But she wasn’t there—especially at night when the Personnel Manager’s still unanswered letter glowed in his mind and then slowly, luxuriously dissolved into a panorama of broad foreign avenues, brilliant with sunshine, lovelier, more desirable than the streets of any earthly city….

  The fifth day was Thursday. Before John left the house, he unbolted the kitchen door. Later, when Harry, still in the snappy sports jacket, hurried flushed and apologetic into the office a few minutes after nine, John greeted him with a friendly smile.

  “Well, Harry, all packed?”

  “I’ll say I am. Bags all checked at the depot and my ticket bought. Johnny, you old horse thief, if you knew what you’ve done for me!”

  “Think nothing of it. Look, Harry, something’s come up from the head office. I’ve got to work on it all day and this is the last day of my street survey. Think you could take over the survey for me? You know the Bonifoot models by now.”

  “Sure, Johnny, glad to do it.”

  It did not take long to brief Harry on the survey. John explained how to make notes of each Bonifoot model that passed, how to handle the free coupons.

  “There should be a hundredth coming up today. That person gets the coupon for five pairs of shoes. And always keep a careful time note. That’s important. Jot down the exact minute you give out a coupon. I’m using that in my report. And, Harry, no sales talks, no personal conversations with the coupon winners. I want to keep this whole thing dignified.”

  “Fine, Johnny. And until five, you say? That’s a cinch. Plenty of time to bring my notes back here before I get that train. Boy, that train! Will I be singing hallelujah when I finally see the last of this old town!”

  After he had sent Harry off to 15th and Market, John Flint resisted the temptation to write to the Personnel Manager and accept the Mexico City offer. He found an old copy of Brush Up on Your Spanish in his desk drawer and carried it out with him to lunch. At two-thirty he took the trolley to his home. It was practically empty and, in any case, his ordinary appearance and drab suit were a perfect camouflage against attracting attention.