Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  Could she?

  “You mean everything to him, Lory—his whole life—and now there’s so little else left. Can you brush him aside to marry a man who’s done to him what Cash McCall has done?”

  Had he?

  Last night at Aurora nothing had seemed wrong, nothing in all the world. But this was tomorrow, and a different world, and she was thinking with a different mind. Was it possible that last night had been no more than the fulfillment of the mad desire that overwhelmed her so many times, lying here at night on this same bed, her sense of values so distorted that madness had totally displaced reason?

  Had there been that same disablement of judgment when Cash had talked to her yesterday afternoon about his Andscott Instrument dream? Had she been so eager to believe in the Tightness of everything that she wanted to happen, that she had blinded herself to the existence of wrong? Hadn’t there been a questioning shock, too hastily brushed aside, when he had told her how much money he might make? Shouldn’t she have known then that something was wrong … making so much money … so quickly … so easily?

  But what was wrong?

  Money?

  Because he might make a million dollars?

  Was this why Cash was the infidel barred from the temples … because he took so lightly the solemn reverence of the money-worshipers … because he could laugh at their grim dogma that the golden coins were only for those who had grubbed them out a penny at a time …

  Lory caught herself, realizing that she was thinking with Cash’s words. She had to stop this … think for herself … forget Cash … free this new mind of its too automatic impulses to protect and justify him. That had been her trouble when her mother had first told her what had happened … that flashback reflex to defend Cash.

  Or had she really been defending herself?

  If easy money were the measure of sin, she was more guilty than Cash. She had taken money, too … two hundred thousand dollars … and with no justification, none whatsoever! If it were true that there had been a conspiracy to force her father into selling the company, she had been the arch-conspirator. She was the one who had really wanted him to sell … willed it with all her heart … grabbing with greedy hands for what he had offered as a gift of love. If he had been cheated, she was the cheat.

  She closed her eyes, telling herself that she should have been aware of all this long before now. Maybe she had been. The check was still in her purse, uncashed. Was it the subconscious recognition of guilt that had kept her from depositing it … the knowledge that she had taken too much for too little?

  This was not Lory Austen’s first consciousness of her long-standing inability to respond to her father with the affection that a daughter should have held. Always before there had seemed some merit in the hiding, some blind belief that pretense constituted the discharge of her obligation. Now it appeared as a dishonesty all the more inexcusable because she had made so little effort to make it unnecessary. There was more that was fine and good in her father than she had ever bothered to discover. That must be true … if it were not, her mother couldn’t love him the way she did … and she did love him. There was no doubt of that now, not after all the things she had said. And her mother had asked nothing for herself … the test of love … “I’m thinking only of what it’s going to do to your father when you tell him.”

  Again Lory’s mind countered one question with another, silently spoken now as it had been silently spoken then, but no less demanding for a lack of utterance … what would happen when she told Cash?

  And she was the one who would be forced to tell him. If she failed to warn him of what her father planned to do, it would be the end of Cash’s love for her. And she would have no cause to blame him if it were. No love could survive the withholding of so dangerous a secret.

  But if she did tell him … yes, that would be the decision from which there could be no retreat. Could she face what it would mean to her father? Did she have any right to heap selfishness upon selfishness … all these years of taking without giving … thinking only of her own happiness, never of his?

  Her eyes opened and she looked at the clock, shocked when she saw how fast the minute hand had moved … Cash would be at the airport in half an hour!

  She jumped to her feet and began to dress, still without decision, suddenly aware as she went to pull the shade that it was raining. A blue-gray veiling hung from the sky, so heavy that only the near side of the city could be translucently seen, the rest lost in invisibility.

  Cash couldn’t possibly fly to Suffolk now!

  For a moment, she felt herself miraculously saved, even deciding that there was no point in going to the airport. Then the truth struck … not going would mean that her decision would be made by default, final and irrevocable.

  Hurrying, she finished dressing and flew down the stairs, snatching up a cape from the hall closet, out into the rain before she had it over her shoulders, fearful that she might be stopped by a call from her mother.

  The rain was a springtime torrent, even heavier than she had expected it to be, the car windows blanked by woven rivulets, the world reduced to the wedge of the wiped windshield. A half block away from the house there was a quick brushstroke of yellow across her vision and she guessed that it was a taxicab bringing her father home, certain when she looked in the mirror and saw the cab turn into the drive. At least there would be that much gained by going to the airport … he would talk to her mother first … more time to think before she would be forced to a final commitment.

  The crest of Orchard Ridge was lost in a black hood that solidly bridged the gap between earth and cloud, leaving a skyless world, almost without color until she saw the soil-red water that streamed in the ruts of the airport lane. Cross-ripping freshets made her blink with uncertainty as the wheels hit them. Driving demanded such close attention that she did not realize she was holding her breath until the hangar loomed ahead of her, a two dimensional silhouette, sky tone on sky tone. The big door was closed. A single bare bulb burned mistily yellow in one of the office windows.

  Only one car stood against the fence and she pulled up beside it, switching off the motor. But the windshield flooded as the wiper stopped and she started the motor again. The rain was so heavy now that she could see no more than halfway across the airport, the end of the runway lost. Cash couldn’t possibly come … but she would wait … her father at home … the longer, the better.

  Automatically, she glanced at her wrist and saw that in her haste to dress she had forgotten her watch. But it must be almost time now. If he were coming …

  She thought she heard a sound and ran down the window beside her. The rain whipped in and she closed it quickly, sliding across the seat to try the other window. The wind was from the opposite direction and no rain came in. But the plane sound that she had imagined hearing was gone.

  Looking out now, she saw the car parked beside her. It had a strangely derelict look, deserted and abandoned. A window had been left open and the upholstered back of the front seat was soggily black from the rain that had driven in.

  Then she heard the plane sound again, positively now, a faint roar off in the west, wavering with the wind but surely coming closer and closer. She jumped out of the car. The sound passed overhead but the plane was lost to sight in the shrouding clouds.

  Unmindful of the rain, she looked up at the sky, trying to follow the plane by its sound. For a moment it was lost, swallowed up by the wind, but then she heard it again. It must be Cash … and he was coming back to her!

  Suddenly, she saw the airplane, only a gray blur and higher than she had imagined it would be. Visibility was better than she had realized. The rain had lightened. She could see all the way across the airport now, even the farm buildings beyond. But when she looked up again, the plane was lost from sight. For an endlessly extended time the motor sound faded off, frighteningly lost in a lull of silence that made her want to cry out to the sky.

  And then she saw it, breaking out of the clou
d cover, swooping for the end of the runway, and she wiped the rain from her forehead as if it were the cold perspiration of a fear forgotten.

  The airplane came toward her, closer and closer. Now she could see the silver fans spun out of raindrops by the whirling propellers, the misted trail of the air blast, finally Cash’s face looking at her from the high perch of the cockpit.

  Her arm went up in a sweeping wave, suddenly leaden as she felt the full impact of a brain-pounding realization … this was the moment of decision, roaring down upon her, giving her no time to think …

  The plane door opened and she saw Cash—and it was as if a door had opened in her mind, letting in the clean spring wind that was bringing new life to the earth. He came down the steps and she ran to meet him, losing her rain cape as she ran, not even reaching back to catch at it.

  There was a lost beat before he kissed her, the hesitation not hers but his, and she knew what had caused it when, finally out of his arms, she heard him say, “Your father’s home, isn’t he?”

  Cash knew—how, she had no idea—but there was almost the feeling of disappointment in the realization that she had missed this chance to prove her love.

  “I think he is now,” she said. “I saw a cab come as I was leaving—but I’ve talked to Mother.”

  “I have to see him,” Cash said, sharply resolute.

  “See him? Why?”

  “Don’t you know what’s happening?”

  “Mother told me that—”

  “I can’t let it happen, Lory. I’ve got to stop it.”

  His pressing arm was moving her toward the car, but she resisted it. “Don’t try to talk to him now—please!”

  “It’s all I can do—wash the whole thing out and give him the company back.”

  Shock collapsed her resistance and they walked toward the car, Cash’s arm sweeping down to pick up her rain cape, a scarlet blotch on the black asphalt, the color crash of sudden fear. He was admitting that her father had been wronged! Yesterday … worrying about what was going to happen after he found out … wanting to send him on a trip … get him far away … keep him from knowing …

  No, that wasn’t true! It couldn’t be true. Cash didn’t know what had happened that night in the library … the real reason her father had sold the company …

  Or was this love again … the automatic defense … the blindness?

  “Lory, let’s talk this out.”

  She took the three silent steps that carried her up the aisle between the two parked cars. The rain squall had passed now, a distant slant-bristled brush moving off, slowly sweeping the earth, the swept path glistening green.

  Cash’s hands reached out, gripping her forearms. “Look, Lory, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do—but what else can I do?”

  “Why do you have to do anything?” she whispered, the question barely finished.

  “I happen to be in love with you,” he said, flatly factual. “I asked you to marry me because I thought I could make you happy. I can’t if your father goes on feeling about me the way he does now. There’d be no happiness for you—and if I can’t give you happiness there’s nothing I can give you.”

  His hands still gripped her arms, making no move to embrace her, denying her too-sharply focused mind the edge-softening relief of sentiment.

  “You’re going to wash it all out?” she asked, using his words. “Give him the company back?”

  “Maybe he won’t listen to me—I don’t know. It may have gone too far for that already. But I can try. That may mean something.”

  “But if you do—you’ll lose—”

  “The money doesn’t matter. You know me well enough now to know that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the money.”

  His hands dropped. “What were you thinking about—that it might look as if I was admitting I was wrong?”

  She let silence be her answer.

  “That doesn’t matter either. You know what happened—and I know. If your father will listen to me, maybe he’ll know—remember what happened. Beyond that—well, that’s enough.”

  “But it isn’t, Cash, it isn’t. There are all the others—Mr. Atherson—Mr. Conway—”

  “I just left them.”

  “They didn’t ask you to do this, did they?” She waited out his silence. “Did they?”

  “No, they didn’t ask me to do it—but I told them I would.”

  “Didn’t they try to stop you?”

  “Why would they?”

  “Don’t they know that you didn’t do what Father thinks you did?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Cash, there is such a thing as right and wrong.”

  “Don’t blame them too much, Lory,” Cash said, looking away from her. “The world doesn’t give them much choice. One breath of scandal and the temple is defiled. Don’t you realize what it would mean to Freeholders Bank & Trust Company if your father charged Will Atherson with fraud—with being a member of the Cash McCall gang?”

  “But there is no gang.”

  “There would be if he says there is.”

  “Doesn’t the truth mean anything? Is it only gossip that matters—what the world thinks—whether it’s right or wrong?”

  “It matters to some men,” Cash said slowly. “It has to matter—if they want to stay in the temple. The code they live by is the opinion of their fellow men. The most important thing in their lives is what the world thinks of them. It has to be.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, afraid that he might have misinterpreted what she had said as meaning that she wanted him to be anything other than himself. “You’re right, I know you are—it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”

  He looked at her intently. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “I happen to be in love with you,” she said, an unsuccessful attempt at mimicry, failing to catch the flatly factual tone that had been in his voice when he said those same words before.

  He swept her into his arms, his hands cupping her head against the driving pressure of his lips.

  “If I hadn’t been in love with you before—” he whispered, “—I would be now.”

  “And I, too.”

  She reached out her hand for the door of the car, a gesture of agreement and decision, forcing herself to believe that the miracle of love would somehow be matched by the miracle of her father’s understanding.

  Her eyes had left Cash’s when she heard his exclamation of shocked surprise.

  Turning, she saw that he was staring at the other car.

  “This is my fault,” he said. “It’s Gil Clark’s car. I made him leave it—told him I’d bring him back and completely forgot it.” He had opened the door and was running up the window, his hand suddenly stopped as he looked at the instrument panel. “He even left his key.”

  “Maybe you’d better bring it into town for him,” she suggested.

  “Would you mind very much?” he asked, hesitant. “I feel like—”

  “Of course not,” she said quickly. “You can follow me.”

  What had been only a subconscious reaction an instant before had suddenly become a tangible plan.

  And Cash implemented it by saying, “I’ll get something out of the plane to throw over this wet seat.”

  She almost offered her rain cape but caught herself in time, quickly getting into her car, saying, “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  For an instant she was afraid that he had guessed what she was planning to do—he looked at her as if he were about to protest—but she pretended not to have noticed and started the motor, backing the car the moment it caught, tossing a preoccupied wave as she swung the wheel but without looking at him again.

  Freshets still coursed the lane and a sheet of water flooded the road where the drainage ditch had overflowed its banks, but she plowed through without cringing, intent on gaining every possible second.

  The canopy of dark cloud still hung over the town but there was a break in the western
horizon, an oddly sulphur-green slit through which the setting sun poured a red-orange light, the world eerily grotesque in these last minutes of the day. By the time she reached Boulevard Drive, lights were coming on in the bordering houses and, eyes straining ahead, she caught a glimpse of the multicolored glow of leaded glass windows. Her father was in the library.

  Her mother met her at the terrace door, hurriedly whispering, “He’s here.”

  Lory let a nod suffice, moving quickly to the library door, stopping for only a single deep breath before she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

  Her father was sitting at the desk, staring at the scrap heap of opened mail. His eyes flashed up but dropped as quickly, settling on the hem of her skirt.

  “So it’s you,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s me,” she answered, putting all her courage in her voice, walking toward him, curling down into the red chair beside his desk, a conscious duplication of that night when he had decided to sell the Suffolk Moulding Company.

  But he wasn’t looking at her.

  “Problems?” she asked.

  His eyes were still fixed on the telegraph blank in his hands, his thumbnail nervously picking at the message tape that striped the yellow paper.

  Softly pressing, she said, “I thought you might want to talk to me. You did once before—remember?”

  Her eyes caught the muscle ripple that ran along his jaw, and she waited for his head to turn. There was no movement. It was as if the consciousness she had tried to reach was too deeply buried to be touched. His thumbnail picked away at the paper, loosening the end of a strip of tape.

  “I thought you might have tried to call me last night,” she said, fighting the quaver that threatened her voice, knowing the risk she was taking.

  There was a tiny rip of paper, the sound incredibly loud in the silence. For an instant, his hand was rigidly tense. Then she saw a tremor, stopped as he gripped the edge of the desk.