“She pleaded with us, when we told her we were clearing up the suspicion she had created against Mrs. Delavan. We were not to be shaken, but we agreed at last, if she paid the $100,000, to say Mr. Sperry was on the roof alone with the dog, that he jumped, so it would correspond with her story, except she could say she had seen it in the dark and thought it was a window, and we could say we had withheld our evidence to keep out of trouble and to save his name from disgrace, as we regarded suicide as a scandalous thing. But then she said she would pay the $100,000 in cash, but as naturally so large a withdrawal would arouse interest at the bank, she didn’t want to be seen talking with Mr. Delavan. Would he get a horse from one of the stables and ride over to the spot she described and meet her there? She was most insistent about it, and as the amount was so large and we needed it so badly, he finally agreed and I, fool that I was, let him go.”
Her voice got a rasp to it then, and I saw Keyes brace himself. She went on: “And I swear as I sit here that she enticed him to this lonely spot to kill him, and that she did kill him, for with him out of the way it would be my word against hers, and I had already compromised my reputation for honesty by withholding my true story and telling a false one, at the inquest. I have been in hiding since Mrs. Delavan discharged me, but she had her very good reason and always treated me well, and I cannot remain silent, now I know how the affair stands.”
That seemed to be all, and I switched off the machine and for a while we sat there, nobody looking at anybody else. Then Keyes held up one finger for us to hold everything, got up, and reached way over, to the doorknob, and jerked it open. Mrs. Sperry was there in the ante-room, leaning close to the door jamb to hear what went on inside. She came in and looked us over and then went over and held her face up to Keyes with tears running down it. “You wouldn’t believe anything this cheap little slut might say about me, would you?”
“Yes. I would and I do.”
15
SHE SAT DOWN AT my desk, and began to hook it up big on the weep stuff. Then she began begging Norton to pay no attention to anything Jenkins had told us, and kept saying to forget the insurance claim, that she’d pay it herself, that she was really thinking of Jane, because of course Jenkins had only cooked up this tale to shield her and eventually the truth would come out. Norton didn’t even look at her, and it was when she went over and dropped on her knees beside him, and took his face in her hands to turn it toward her that we all jumped. Norton said later he knew at last how a man feels when he’s out in a cemetery at night and a ghost comes floating up to him. How she got in we never found out, because while the street door was unlocked it seemed impossible we wouldn’t have noticed somebody open it, and when she got in we never found out either, but stalking into the room, one step at a time, her eyes focused on Mrs. Sperry like somebody in a trance, and a horrible little grin on her face, was a tiny, pale, queer-looking woman, maybe thirty-five or so, in a black suit with black stockings, black shoes and a black hat. When she began to talk it was in a little high, squeaky, sing-song voice that sounded like some kid reciting stuff in Sunday School. She kept going closer to Mrs. Sperry, one step at a time, and as she moved she talked:
“It may help with him, going down on your knees, but it’ll do you no good with me. You got away from me yesterday, but not this time, not tonight. Oh, I knew it was another woman, in spite of the lies he told me, but he wouldn’t say who it was, and it wasn’t till I followed him yesterday, in the car I rented, and saw him get on the bus, then get off at the riding stable, and come out in boots, and keep looking at his watch before they brought him the horse, that I knew he was meeting somebody. And I got out, and walked over the hill where I could see the whole bridle path, and there you were, with the golf bag over your shoulder, waiting, and at last I knew what you looked like. Then here he came, and you ducked behind the piñon tree until he had passed and turned off the path into the wash. Then you went after him, running. And I went after you. And when I reached the place you both turned off, where I could see, you were down on your knees to him too, and I was glad, whatever it was he had done to you, that you were paid in suffering for the suffering you had brought to me. Then you both started back, and he mounted. Then you dropped the scarf and he dismounted again to climb down into the gully and pick it up for you. Then you swung the golf driver on his head and ran, and I was cheated, for I was waiting to kill you both, and all that came my way was the horse you slapped and started for home before you went running off toward the golf links. You escaped me then, and it wasn’t until tonight, when you went hurrying out of the hotel that I got on your trail again, and could finally track you down. You’ll not escape me now—”
Keyes grabbed her handbag and Norton grabbed her. She screamed but Norton held onto her while Keyes took the gun out of the bag and dropped it in a desk drawer. I called the cops.
In a couple of minutes a patrol car stopped outside and a couple of uniformed men came in. They began working on the little woman, who was Faith Converse, to make her stop screaming and kicking, and the way they did it was take off her shoes. After a couple of stomps in her stockinged feet she quit and began to cry. Then Lindstrom came in and began taking names. Then he listened to the records and while the uniformed cops were still working on Faith to get her in some kind of shape, he listened while I gave it to him what had happened in the gully. He nodded, pretty friendly. “We had it doped out something like that. We didn’t know who yet, but we had a 100 per cent check on the wife all that afternoon. It wasn’t her, we knew that. But we’d have had it.”
All this time Keyes was sprawled on the sofa, staring at Mrs. Sperry like somebody sitting up with a corpse. Then he jumped, but he was too late. The report went off like a cannon shot in that enclosed space, but I’m afraid La Sperry didn’t hear it. The .38 that Keyes had dropped in the desk drawer was right under her hand, where she was sitting, and she made an A-l clean job of it.
By the time the police photographers got through, and Linda got there, and transcribed the Jenkins stuff for the reporters, and they took the body out, and a few other little things had been cleaned up, it was well after daylight, and I was out on my feet, and didn’t get up until around four that afternoon. Around five, when I was dressed, there came a couple on the buzzer, and my heart jumped. I opened the door and it was Jane, in her gambling pants, with the mink coat on and the red ribbon around her hair. I was so happy I couldn’t talk for a minute, even after she was in my arms. “Mr. Horner, I hear you’ve a check for me.”
“Somebody tell you that?”
“A certain Mr. Norton.”
“Yes, the agent likes to deliver it in person. He gave it to me. However, I must say I’m surprised he looked you up.”
“He wanted to meet the future Mrs. Horner.”
“Shows he’s got manners.”
She cut out the gagging, then, looked me in the eye, and said: “Ed, when I got it all straight, from what he told me, that at last I’ve come to the end of it, these things that have dogged me the last three years, I could have kissed him. But I thought I’d come over and kiss you.”
“Then let’s begin.”
“I looked after your horse, by the way.”
“I know.”
After a while we got around to the newspapers that she had with her, and looked at all our pictures, even my picture, that were smeared all over them, and read the story, and then we thought we better go over to the hotel and see how Keyes was making out. He was sitting not far from the porter’s desk, where Norton was getting their transportation back to Los Angeles, and if he wasn’t exactly what you’d call cheery and chipper, he was anyway quite a lot better. And while he started a long explanation to Jane of why he had pulled what he did, I drifted over to Norton and he gave me the recent developments. It seems there was a bill-fold, an alligator bill-fold, with a coronet burned on it, and initials, that had been turned in at the desk and that he’d been asked about, and it pretty well proved there was a lord or an earl or
something who had been staying in San Francisco and visiting La Sperry week-ends. But instead of making Keyes sore, when he got it through his head at last what she’d been up to all the time, it relieved his mind. “Because,” he told Norton, “if she’d rather choose the deep end than come to him with a stain on her escutcheon, that proves what I knew all the time, that she was a thoroughbred.”
“Kind of a five-gaited job,” I said to Norton.
“Or anyway five-faced, we could safely say.”
So while we were snickering at that, they came over, Keyes looking very noble, Jane patting his hand in a forgiving kind of way. And then Norton snapped his fingers and cocked his eye across the lobby and we all looked. And headed for the dining room, a $40 plumed hat on her head, $40 suede shoes on her feet, a $150 black crepe dress giving the works to her shape, and the mink coat hanging carelessly off her shoulders, was Jenkins, and a little bit behind her, but not too much behind her, a carnation in his buttonhole and a Swede grin on his face, was Lindstrom, the detective. We all wondered the same thing, whether this was some more police stuff that would mean we could begin to worry all over again, and it didn’t take any high sign from Norton to start us all over to the dining room door. But by the time we got there we knew we could quit worrying. The captain was seating them, and he couldn’t see it, but we could: Lindstrom was playing footie with her, and she was giving it the old Limehouse leer.
So that’s how Jenkins came to live in Reno too, and how Jane, whenever she’s got a big party coming on, has just about the slickest personal maid service anybody ever had. We throw quite a few parties, it seems. Maybe that’s because we’ve got a collection of five cups in our trophy room, to say nothing of the Count’s first, that I kind of like people to look at. Maybe it’s because Jane is a swell girl that likes people, I don’t know. Anyway, we’re happy, she, I, and the little lady that was waiting upstairs, and that’s a wonderful thing.
The End
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copyright © 1950 by James M. Cain
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-9159-7
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James M. Cain, Jealous Woman
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