Jealous Woman
James M. Cain
Contents
Part One: The Playboy’s Second Wife
1
2
3
4
Part Two: Dishonorable Intentions
5
6
7
Part Three: The Willing Widow
8
9
10
11
Part Four: Hush Money
12
13
14
15
Part One: THE PLAYBOY’S SECOND WIFE
1
AT THE DESK, WHEN they said she was in 819, I knew hubby or pappy or somebody was doing all right by their Jane, because 19 is the deluxe tier at the Washoe-Truckee, one of our best hotels here in Reno, and you don’t get space there for buttons. They’re bright, big rooms on the southwest corner, facing the Sierras and overlooking the river, and they cost dough. I didn’t state my business, or mention insurance in any way when I rang her. No smart agent would. I just said I was Ed Horner of Edgar Gordon Horner, Inc., and that her husband had asked me to talk to her in connection with a certain matter, so she said come up. And waiting for me, at the door of her suite, a cigarette in one hand and the knob in the other, so she could step inside if she didn’t like my looks, was the Jane Delavan you read about in the papers.
Maybe you saw her pictures, but she was better-looking than they were, because it wasn’t Hollywood cheesecake that she had, but strictly class, like you see on the society pages, and sometimes it’s a little camera-shy. She was medium-size, and a little on the slim side, though there was plenty of shape of a nice, refined kind. But she didn’t dress to show it. Her clothes cost plenty, you could see that, but they hung on her loose and careless, so your eye went up one fold and down the other. Her face was long, with plenty of sunburn, and her hair dark, but with red in it. Her eyes were hazel brown, but they had something in them that was going to cost me some sleep before I got done with them. I mean they were beat up. Nobody had blacked them, but life had. She looked you straight enough in the eye, but not for long. Pretty soon she’d be looking at nothing at all, in a set, squinty way, and then she’d catch herself and come back to you, but with a little smile that was more to cover up than make like friendly. It was enough, pretty soon, to start me wondering about her, and unfortunately you don’t wonder about one part of a woman and let the rest go. When that starts, you wonder up the line and down the line, and across and between.
But I couldn’t honestly say I saw all of that at the time, even if I felt a little of it. What I saw mainly was a pretty girl that remembered my name from my giving it over the house phone, something an insurance man notices, because he’s got to fix names himself. I didn’t get to my business right away. I took a walk around the room, admired the view, said how lucky she was to get one of these suites. She said yes, it had taken some wangling. I asked if I could smoke, took out my cigarette case, got out a cigarette, felt for matches, didn’t find any, put the cigarette back, snapped the case fairly loud. I never carry matches. If you can make the prospect light you, you’re one up on him. He’s generally glad to do it, but what he doesn’t know is: it’s a little personal thing, and once he does it he can’t take it back. The time for a brush-off is past.
She lit me, and of course I jumped up very snappy and bowed to thank her and had a look at the lighter. “That’s an interesting thing, Mrs. Delavan. May I ask where you got it?”
“At the gift shop in the lobby.”
“Well—just the same, it’s nice.”
“I left my good one, that a soldier made out of a shell and that always lights in New York, and so I went down and got this. It cost $7.50 and I don’t think it’s a bit interesting and it hardly ever works, but if it has an admirer who am I to argue about it?”
“Anyhow, it’s some of that A-l local Reno stuff.”
“If that be a point in its favor.”
“... Somebody been gypping you?”
“Those blue chips. A bit expensive, I’d say.”
“Oh, them.”
“I was warned about the gambling, but—”
“Hey, hey, hey! It’s straight! Why, if they so much as thought one of their dealers had turned a crooked card they’d not only fire him, Mrs. Delavan, they’d put him in jail.”
“Well, it’s simply wonderful to know that instead of loaded dice it was Honesty Boys and their simple, barefoot, galloping percentage that took my money. I’m broke, just the same—or almost. It’s going to be two weeks before I can do anything at all. I’m furious at myself.”
“Oh, we got plenty to do here—practically free.”
“What, for instance?”
“You like to fish?”
“No.”
“Shoot?”
“No.”
“Ride?”
“Now there’s a nice cheap sport.”
“Not so fast, not so fast. We got a little number here called the Scout. It’s a dude ranch, but I keep a horse there and he’s yours any time you ring Jackie and tell her to get him ready.”
Well, not quite, if you know what I mean. I keep a horse there, and his name is Count Ten, which will give you some idea of the blood that’s in him. But anybody that would let a perfect stranger, and a girl at that, ride a thoroughbred horse, is plain crazy, and maybe I am, but not that crazy. But how would she know? For a pretty girl and a $100,000 sale, I could ring Jackie and have her saddle Bingo, who would put her back with his teeth, if she happened to fall off. “If you do like to ride, there needn’t be anything very expensive about it.”
“You seem most anxious to please me.”
“Why not? Your husband sure pleased me.”
“Do you mind giving me a rough idea of your business?”
“Insurance.”
Her face went hard. “I’m not interested in insurance, and I don’t believe my husband sent you here to talk about it.”
“You ought to be interested, and he did send me.”
I gave it to her, what he had told me, and I was casual, friendly and not too long-drawn-out. But the more I talked the more she burned, and pretty soon there was nothing for me to do but cut. Something was here I didn’t understand, and until I knew what it was I couldn’t go on. When I shut up she began to talk. “In the first place, everything my husband seems to have said to you is true. He has told you nothing that isn’t true, and yet he has not told you the slightest part of his real reason for taking out this insurance.”
“Which is?”
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to talk to him.”
She went in the bedroom, and in a minute I heard her voice on the phone. I could hear a little of it, and mainly it seemed to be: “Tom, you simply cannot do this thing to me. I can’t face it, and believe me it will have consequences you don’t even suspect”—stuff like that. So of course that made it perfectly ducky, because whatever it was that she meant I’d have to report what she said and that’s when the trouble would start.
It was quite some time before she came out, and when she did she had on riding clothes. They weren’t Western, like girls wear in Nevada, with tight dungarees, stitched boots, and cowboy hats. They were whipcord breeches, high boots, tailored coat, and derby hat, and crop, like they wear to the Eastern horse shows. She stood there a minute, pulling on her gloves, and then: “Mr. Delavan will speak to you about the insurance. Apparently I have no voice in the matter, one way or the other, except to protest, so I’d rather not be bothered about it any more, if you don’t mind.”
“There’s just one thing.”
“I’d rather you spoke to him.”
“I’m trying to tell you: Hara-kiri’s out.”
“I beg your
pardon?”
“We don’t pay off on suicide.”
“That’s not what he’s up to.”
“I heard some of your call, and it sounded like it.”
“Then you don’t pay off on suicide.”
“I just want you to know. And him to know.”
“I rang Jackie, by the way, and she’s getting me a horse. Do you mind if I go? It’s getting late, and I shouldn’t like to get caught in this country with night coming on.”
“Do you have a car?”
“I’m taking a cab.”
“I’ll ride you out.”
I rode her out and arranged to bring her back, and took Jackie aside and said if she showed any signs of being able to ride she should have a run on the Count. But where I went then, as fast as I could scoot into town, was the Sierra Manor, to see Delavan, her husband, and find out what it was all about. I preferred talking to him there than at my office, where he had come earlier in the day. I told him what she’d said and told him to put it on the line and put all of it on the line. “Just a minute, Mr. Horner. There’s something in your manner I don’t wholly like. You act as though I’ve concealed things from you.”
“Well, she says you have.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Horner, but I’ll decide what’s relevant.”
“No. I will. What’s back of this?”
“An action for annulment.”
“That’s she’s bringing?”
“That I am.”
“Then what’s she doing here?”
“She came here for the usual six-weeks period of residence, expecting to get a divorce. With my knowledge, of course. But my situation changed. I couldn’t let her.”
“How did it change?”
“The lady I expect to marry objected.”
“What did she have to do with it?”
“Though American, she’s the granddaughter of an Anglican bishop. These people have strong, almost unshakable convictions on the remarriage of divorced persons. So long as there was no help for it, she was willing to give up the church wedding, performed by her own rector, a thing that means a great deal to her. But when a chance remark of mine, made a couple of weeks ago, just after Jane left for the West, showed that grounds for annulment existed, the whole picture changed and she demanded that I take advantage of my opportunity. I’ve run into a pretty thick situation with her, I can tell you, and not only with her but the family. If I can get an annulment I have to do it.”
“... Annulment? You mean—you and your wife have been married in name only?”
“No, I mean her first divorce may have been defective. You’ve heard about correspondent unknown?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Except she wasn’t unknown.”
“Oh, that was bad judgment.”
“They let Jane’s maid make the $500.”
“Is the maid here?”
“I’m serving her papers today.”
“As a material witness?”
“Yes. Compelling her to give bond.”
“But what does she know?”
“That the alleged infidelity, on the part of Jane’s former husband, was a complete phony, cooked up by Jane, the husband, and the maid. That the whole divorce was collusive, based on manufactured evidence.”
“Well, no wonder she’s sore.”
“She has no reason.”
“Except she’ll still be married to No. 1.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s married again.”
“Then he’ll be a bigamist.”
“Nowhere but in Nevada and on the basis of a Nevada decision.”
“But you still feel guilty?”
“It upsets me, yes.”
“And you want this insurance so you can begin taking the curse off it? So you can feel like a hero instead of a heel?”
“In case of eventuality, yes.”
He began to falter and stammer, and then to talk fast and jerky, but straight to the point, as well as I could see. I mean, he got to it at last, the reason for this $100,000 straight life policy he had come in to see me about this morning. He had very little money, he said, in spite of his name, which he seemed to think had made me drop in a faint when I heard it, on account of the dough his family was supposed to have. It meant nothing to me, which may prove how ignorant I am, or on the other hand how big the country is. Anyhow, in West Virginia was an old coal mine he owned, that had been closed down, but that opened up again when some kind of a machine was invented that made operation profitable where they’d been in the red before. And he’d got a dividend check of two or three thousand dollars that he didn’t expect. And what he wanted to do was sock this dough into the first premium of the life policy, so his wife would be protected the first year after the annulment, and he would feel easier in his mind about it. I said: “What about the second year?”
“... I may have to let it lapse.”
“So I judge. But I mean about her?”
“Mr. Horner, do I have to go on with this marriage for the rest of my life? Jane and I made a mistake, but in marriage a mistake takes two to make. Once it’s erased from the ledger, why not be honest about it? Jane is a well-bred, good-looking girl, who’s going to get married again and make some guy a swell wife. That’s fine with me, and I wish her, and him when he comes, everything that life can give them. But I see no need for overlap. All I think is necessary is to see that she’s protected in the near future—as I said, in case of eventuality. In the case of an annulment, no alimony, property settlement, or anything of the kind is possible, since of course it is merely the legal declaration that no marriage existed. But if I should die in the near future, if for some reason I did come into money and a large estate were settled, I don’t want her left out completely in the cold. Does that answer all your questions?”
It did, or I thought it did, even if it struck me he was more interested in going through the motions of protecting her than actually doing it. I mean, it seemed to me he was going to kid himself he was actually making her a present of $100,000, and square it up with himself for the way he figured to leave her, neither married or not married, just dangling in mid-air, with no court to take her side, because mixing it up that way is what most of the courts, including our 100% wonderful Supreme Court, seem to be fondest of. But I didn’t see, on my end of it, why I was called on to step in and block the insurance in any way, whether she was squawking or not. Because in the first place, it’s practically impossible to convince an agent he’s doing anybody an injury, or in fact anything but a favor, in helping them become beneficiary of any kind of policy at all. And in the second place, there was kind of a personal reason I’d better be on the level about, as later the subject came up. My company, the General Pan-Pacific of California, General Pan for short, gives an annual cup to the agent making the best score for the year, all averaged up so the fellow in a small city has just as good a chance as a big city general agent, and my first few years, when I was just a kid, I collected four of those, one right after the other. But when Washington upped the high Army brass from four stars to five, the home office upped General Pan, because until then the cup had four stars on it, for his rank. And that new one, with five stars all in a cluster, I hadn’t been able to get, and I wanted it, and specially before my thirtieth birthday, so bad I could cry. With this $100,000 policy, I’d grab it in a walk. And it was none of my business if next year he let it lapse or not. Plenty of policies lapse, and the contest had no rule covering that. If I wrote the business, and he paid the first premium due, that was that, and that was all. So when he finished, and I thought it over, and said O.K. I’d shoot his application through, I could feel my heart doing flip-flops inside. General Five-Star Cup, come to baby.
2
WHEN I GOT BACK to the stable, my friend Mrs. Delavan had the Count on the track, and Jackie was out there watching it. I mean it was something to see. He was under an English saddle, with curb bit and martingales, and my own Western saddle was nowhere around. Bel
ieve it or not, she was walking him. It was the first time I knew he could walk. He’s a gray, with dark mane and tail, and a comical forelock that makes him look a little like Whirly, if you remember him, and he’s a clown, but strictly a dancing clown, not a walking clown. And it took me a minute or two to figure it out. There was 105 pounds of will power on his back that said walk and he walked. In a minute her feet shifted and he went into a canter, then into a dead run. It was beautiful, the way he obeyed. I mean, he loved it the way she handled him, and he was letting her know it, every move that he made, how he liked to go when there was somebody up there that knew how to make him go. She pulled him down to a trot, and then, so sudden you wondered why she didn’t go over his head, to a walk, and came on over. “What on earth, Mr. Horner, have you been doing with this horse?”
“Riding him. Why?”
“He has no more manners than a baboon.”
“He been eating with his knife?”
“I don’t think you even know what I’m talking about.”
“We get there, he and I, and we get back.”
“But it’s a crime! What he came into this world with, his looks, his action, are beautiful. But what you’ve taught him, if anything, is simply embarrassing.”
Jackie began sticking her finger at me, because she’d been telling me for some time that now that I had a horse it might be a good idea to learn something about him. I gave her the old so’s-your-old-man and we went in the ring, where the jumps are. He went into one of those whirling movie starts I had impressed the girls with. I thought it was pretty nifty, but she pulled him down stockstill before his front feet were halfway up in the air. “This is really dreadful.”
“I like it, that stunt.”
“There ought to be a horse court that would take him away from you and establish guardianship.”
Jackie had told her he’d never been jumped, so she walked him off about fifty feet, turned him, let him look at the jump, then brought him up to it at a slow canter. When he got the idea she raised her hands and leaned forward, and he went over like a cat. She turned him and let him look at it again. He got the comicalest look on his face I ever saw, Then she took him over it again. “Put another bar on.”
Jealous Woman Page 1