The Magician's Wife

by James M. Cain

  “Describe the tarboosh, please.”

  “Like a hat, in the form of a silk turban.”

  “You left the car then, or what?”

  “I stayed where I was, beside my parked car—after my brush with him that day down at the shop I wanted no piece of this guy. I waited to see what he’d do, and sure enough he spoke to the boy, who trotted to a car and in the next minute or two backed it out in the middle.”

  “All right. Then what?”

  “Miss Conlon piled out of the door.”

  “She was in costume, too?”

  “She was in tights, trunks, and jacket.”

  “And what happened then, Mr. Lockwood?”

  “They had this comedy brawl.”

  “Object.”

  “Sustained.” The judge’s manner was kind as he turned to Clay. “Tell what they said, tell what they did—omit your interpretation.”

  “He was laughing at her,” snapped Clay at the judge, “and where I come from, that makes a comedy brawl. I tell it as well as I can. Do you want the truth out of me or not?”

  “Objection withdrawn,” said Mr. Kuhn.

  “Tell it your way,” said the judge.

  “You tell it according to law,” growled Mr. Pender at Clay. “I request the jury to disregard ‘comedy brawl,’ and pray the court to instruct the reporter to strike it.”

  “So ordered,” said the judge.

  “What did they say?” asked Mr. Pender.

  “She said it was all a fake, what he had said to her about going home early to talk about divorce. She said: ‘You’re going back to her, that’s what you’re up to, you louse—so go on, see who gives a damn!’ She screamed it, and he started to laugh. He said: ‘So O.K., I’m lying, I’m the world’s original louse—but come on, see for yourself! It’ll cost us a million bucks, but anything to please!’ And she said, ‘Well, maybe I will,’ and jumped in.”

  “Did she threaten to kill him at all?”

  “No. At least, not that I heard.”

  “Did she make any threats of any kind?”

  “Well—I guess she did, in a way. She said: ‘O.K., go back to her, but don’t you come back to me! You try coming back to me and see what happens to you!’ ”

  “Did she say what she meant by that?”

  “God knows what she meant. Maybe nothing.”

  By then it was nearly five, and when Mr. Kuhn, asked if he meant to cross-examine, said yes he certainly did, the judge adjourned until morning. Mr. Pender, leaving the courtroom, was exultant. “Boy, did you smash ’em up!” he whispered, grabbing Clay by the arm. “And with comical stuff yet! That ‘l-l-l-lies’ was worth all the rest put together!” He led Clay over to Buster, who was waiting for her policewoman, and she patted his arm, her eyes soft, her nervous fingers grateful. Home, he told it all to Grace, including his fine for contempt and its inexplicable remission. “It was remitted to you,” she said, “because even that judge knew that you were telling the truth and that truth’s day had come—it was entitled to be heard.” They both laved themselves in the healing balm of the truth, it seemingly occurring to neither of them that the truth had not been told—that he had scarcely heard twenty words before leaving that night and that Mike had formed no part of his purpose. But, in their twisted, left-handed way, they had helped basic justice, and so were warmed for one night.

  “Mr. Lockwood, where did you dine the night in whose early morning hours you drove to the Lilac Flamingo?”

  “... Well, I don’t just offhand recall. I generally dine at the Channel City Yacht Club and no doubt did that night.”

  “Alone?”

  “I do as a rule, Mr. Kuhn.”

  “And then you went home?”

  “I assume so, yes.”

  “You drove?”

  “I always do.”

  “In your own car?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you do with it then?”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Mr. Pender got to his feet, saying: “Your honor, I don’t like to clog up a trial with objections that merely obstruct, but I must say I don’t see the point of all this. We’ll stipulate the car if it makes any difference, and it’s assumed, I would think, that Mr. Lockwood did something with it—after all, it won’t go in his pocket. So unless there’s some reason for this I don’t see, I must object at this point.”

  “So.”

  Mr. Kuhn was very quiet and then went on: “Perhaps it’s just as well, your honor, that counsel has raised the question, but before I answer, I suggest that the court exclude the jury.”

  “Very well.”

  Waiting until the bailiff had shoed the jury out, Mr. Kuhn went on, still in his quiet way. And he had hardly said ten words when Clay’s head began to reel, for he knew his perfect alibi was rising up to destroy him. “What he did with his car,” said Mr. Kuhn, “what he did with his night, these commonplaces which my colleague would have me assume, are actually of the essence, for they prove that Mr. Lockwood, in spite of his outbreak yesterday, his noisy appeal to Truth, was actually lying out of hand in all that he told this court, of his trip to the club that night, the reasons he had for taking it, what he heard, and what he saw. I’ll bring incontrovertible evidence that he spent the night at home, that he never left his apartment, that his story was pure invention. In fact, so overwhelming is this evidence that I intend to charge him with perjury and ask that he be held, when he leaves the witness stand, for the action of the grand jury.”

  He produced a paper, approached the judge’s desk, and, when Mr. Pender had joined him, let him read. Then, in a low tone, he went on: “Your honor, when that insurance came to light, when Mrs. Gorsuch rang in about it, the police checked this girl out—the defendant, Miss Conlon, especially the men she’d been seeing. There were four, including this man Lockwood, who had been the subject of a thinly veiled newspaper item, which coupled him with the defendant. What he did the night of the crime was thoroughly investigated, and so far as complicity went, he was cleared one hundred percent. And in fact, until he took the stand yesterday, he hadn’t figured in this case. Now, however—”

  “Your honor,” asked Mr. Pender, “what is this, anyway? Here’s a man, a community leader, president-elect of one of our biggest corporations, who takes the stand for a girl he thinks falsely accused, and his reward, on the basis of still another police report, is to be charged in this court with perjury without any—”

  “Yes, Mr. Kuhn,” said the judge. “I’m disturbed.”

  “Then I hold the charge at this time.”

  “Perjury is easy to allege when a witness won’t say what we want him to. And here, it seems to me, you’re less concerned with a violation of the law as such than with winning this other case—or in other words, you seem to be using it tactically, as a means of smoking this witness out, as the saying goes. That I can’t have.”

  “If so, I wasn’t aware of it.”

  “Of course if the cross-examining develops evidence of a substantial kind, the court itself must take cognizance of it.”

  “Then I await your honor’s decision.”

  “Bailiff, bring in the jury.”

  Mr. Kuhn then began his dreadful drumfire, and Clay could feel himself sweat. He brought out the visit to the garage, the arrangements about the car; Clay’s parking it outside, snug to the curb on Spring Street; his little scene with Doris, and her putting the keys in his box; his arrival in the apartment, his call to Pat, his call to Miss Helm, and her call to Atlantic City. “And then?” asked Mr. Kuhn.

  “She called me to check on the rate.”

  “And you told her?”

  “That forty a day was all right.”

  “And then?”

  “I started to take off my clothes, but was restless and didn’t feel like going to bed. Then I remembered Mike, and he seemed as good an excuse as any to get out of the house again and go somewhere. So I went.”

  “Out through the lobby, of course?�
��

  “No—after all that hocus-pocus about putting the keys in the box, I would have felt kind of silly asking Doris to start over again. So I dropped duplicate keys in my pocket and went out the back way. I keep three or four sets around, ignition keys and trunk keys, on little spiral rings.” He took out a pair and clinked them at Mr. Kuhn. “I took a set from a bureau drawer and drove off without telling Doris.”

  “Straight to the Lilac Flamingo?”

  “That’s right—to the side street by the club.”

  “When was this?”

  “At a guess, I’d say I left at eleven-thirty.”

  “And then you came back?”

  “I did.”

  “Parking where?”

  “Same place as before.”

  “The same way as before? Snug? To the curb?”

  “Mr. Kuhn, I haven’t the faintest idea. I always park according to law, or try to—and in this case I suppose I followed habit. But if independent recollection is what you want, I don’t have any.”

  “What time was this?”

  “One-thirty, one-forty-five.”

  “And you went in the back way, as before?”

  “No, I went in through the lobby.”

  “Being checked in? By the late man? On the desk?”

  “No—Frank was asleep.”

  So far, having had his moment of warning, while the lawyers wrangled, Clay had made lightning improvisations, and feeling they might be believed, had regained his big-shot manner, a combination of cold civility and slightly annoyed impatience. But it all began to wear thin when Mr. Kuhn abruptly asked: “Isn’t it true, Mr. Lockwood, that you stayed home that night, that you didn’t leave at all, by the front door, back door, or any door, and that you’ve told this incredible tale simply to help Miss Conlon—that you’ve been her paramour and are trying to get her off, at any cost, even a breach of the truth?”

  “No, Mr. Kuhn, it’s not true.”

  “You’ve been a visitor at her home?”

  “I’ve never been to her home.”

  “Mr. Kuhn picked up his report and, elaborately letting the jury see, asked Clay: “You deny that on August eighteenth last you went to her home, leaving around dusk?”

  “Her apartment house, not her home.”

  “Explain this distinction, please.”

  Clay’s mouth, disconnected from his mind, began to talk, explaining his concern for Buster, her safety in the projected act, and “I wanted to check on it, what had been done with the rails—and I wanted no piece of Gorsuch, or Alexis, as he called himself with me. So, being in Baltimore one evening, I decided to look her up, and after finding her in the phone book drove over to that part of town. I located her place, went in, and checked the mailboxes, lighting a match to look, as I’m sure your report says. Her box was there, but then I decided I’d better call, rather than barge out of the blue. So I went up the street, looking for a call box, and, not finding any, came back. Then, to my surprise, she came bouncing out of the doorway and down the steps. So we had our talk, right there on the sidewalk, and I found everything had been done in the way I had said it should be. But then we went on to other things and stepped into a vestibule—of an office building nearby. You want the details of what we said?”

  “Not particularly,” said Mr. Kuhn.

  “WHY DONT YOU WANT THE DETAILS?” thundered Clay.

  His mouth having come up with a tale that at least steadied his nerves, he summoned courage to take the offensive, and sounded once more, as he had the day before, like the big, overbearing, self-righteous business executive, determined to be heard. “Or do you only want part of the truth? The part that’ll burn this girl.”

  “Then—the details,” said Mr. Kuhn.

  Clay told of Buster’s concern over Mr. Alexis, that he was ‘giving me the air, so he can go back to her—out of gratitude for what she did, helping his father die, at least as he thought, and bringing him all that money.’ Pointing at Sally, whose eyes looked like fragments of glass, Clay explained: “She meant that lady there, Mrs. Sally Gorsuch—though of course, Mr. Kuhn, your police reports cover it. I hope you’ve referred to them—I know of course you wouldn’t suppress anything.”

  “Mr. Lockwood, you’ve been warned,” snapped the judge.

  “If you’re trying to shut me up, I won’t shut!”

  Clay looked at Judge Warfield, as utter recklessness swept caution aside. It was his great moment at the trial, and for a long interval silence hung on the courtroom. Then Mr. Kuhn resumed: “So even then, on August eighteenth, the defendant, Miss Conlon, had her mind on revenge?”

  “On a replacement, I’d say,” Clay told him.

  “... Replacement? What do you mean?”

  “Some guy—in Alexis’ place.”

  “Ah! Meaning you?”

  “Yeah! We kidded along about it!”

  “And you kissed her?”

  “You bet I did. She kisses nice.”

  24

  MR. KUHN HAD NO further questions, Mr. Pender only a few deferential ones of a kind to remind the jury of Clay’s personal eminence, and there was no more mention of perjury. Nevertheless, Clay’s face was drawn as he left the stand, and he didn’t look at the judge, the jury, or anyone, not even at Buster, where she sat trying to beam him a smile. Not waiting for lunch with Mr. Pender, he hurried out to his car and drove home, finding nobody there. He went to Grace’s bedroom and flung himself down on her bed, a square, newfangled thing with shelves in the place of a headboard and no footboard at all. There, some time later, returning from market, she popped in and sat down beside him. But when she asked how it went, he merely said, “O.K., I guess,” in a vague, dull way, still keeping his face in the pillow. But when she opened the paper she had bought, he turned over and stared at the headline. It was The Pilot’s noon edition, which had the perjury charge but not its subsequent withdrawal. In a jerky, dramatic way then, he said: “So—you want to know how it went, that’s how. They later withdrew the charge—but the word was used—and for a couple of minutes there, to leave that court I’d have had to put up bail.”

  “But how could they charge you with that?”

  “I was guilty of it, that’s how.”

  “But you never lied in your life. Not once!”

  “And I didn’t lie now—that’s where it gets good. But down underneath the fraction of truth I was telling, the whole truth was rumbling around, and they heard it! They didn’t buy what I said, especially not that jury. They knew something was wrong, even if they didn’t know what. And that Kuhn even came out and said it, that I lied under oath—and the cockeyed part was that the lying he thought I had done, I didn’t do, at all. ... Ah, why slice it so thin? I blew it, that’s all.”

  “But how could you? Yesterday—”

  “Oh, boy, yesterday! You should have heard me today!”

  “Clay, will you calm down? What happened?”

  “My alibi, remember? It ruined me.”

  “But—it was supposed to be good.”

  “And was, airtight, lawyer-proof, and copper-riveted, and that was the trouble with it. It exploded right in my face. Hoist by my own petard. What is a petard, if you know?”

  “Why—a powder keg, I think.”

  “And how! And how!”

  Disconnectedly, half-heartedly, he tried then to tell her what had happened, and did sketch out most of it. But then he broke off, pleading: “Don’t ask me to talk, Grace. If I had scored, I’d say so, don’t worry—no one’s as gabby as I am when I’ve stuff to brag about. The very fact I don’t want to tell it is the proof that there’s nothing to tell—at least, that you’d want to hear. And the worst of it is, I hurt the girl’s case instead of helping it.”

  “Well, that, at least, I can bear.”

  Her waspish tone caught his ear, and he pressed her to know what she meant. “I mean, it serves her right,” she told him virtuously.

  “In what way serves her right?”

  “Well, C
lay! Look at what she did!”

  “And what did she do, Grace?”

  “Well! The life that she led with Alec!”

  “She did no more with him than I did with Alec’s wife. And if that’s what serves her right, all I can say is—”

  “And trying to put it on Sally!”

  “Grace, Sally did it!”

  “But Sally was not even there!”

  “Sally was in it up to the hilt. She planned it with me— she’s guilty, just as guilty as I am.”

  “And I am, don’t forget!”

  “... And let’s have an end of that!”

  He stared at the ceiling, went on: “Your wanting to share with me, your standing by me the way you have, is the one bright spot in this mess. But don’t let’s play games. No one’s here with us but God, and I don’t think we’re kidding Him. So let’s not kid ourselves. You share my pain, I know—and that warms me, fills me with hope, and gives me strength. You can’t share my guilt. Nobody can except—”

  “My daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled her to him, unbuttoned her sweater, broke the strap of her bra, and nuzzled and kissed and inhaled.

  That went on for three days, with interruptions only for the meals she cooked and brought him, and for her hourly trips outside, to buy papers as they came out. He took little interest, however, as she read him the rest of the testimony, Buster’s outbreak on the stand, arguments by the lawyers, and speculation as to the verdict while the jury was “out.” And his face was blank as she came in the fourth day, tossed him a paper, and said: “Well, it’s over—they convicted her. Of manslaughter, whatever that is. Less than murder apparently. So, she won’t go to the chair. So, you did what you could. So, do you mind? If we forget this dreadful girl? And talk about something else?”

  “Forget her?” he said dully. “How could I?”

  “Well, you’d better! She’s all but ruined your life!”

  He glanced through the paper, learning that Mr. Pender had moved for a new trial and had served notice that, failing that, he would appeal, and that sentence would be passed on Monday. Then, almost as though in a stupor, he asked: “And why should I forget her? Or even try to forget her?”