"Anyway, I'm going."
"And I know perfectly well why you're going. Now the publicity has blown over a little, you're going to sing for Sunbake, for $2,500 a week. All right—but this time, don't come back."
Mildred's voice rose as she said this, and Veda's hand involuntarily went to her throat. Then Veda went to her father, and kissed him. He kissed her, and patted her, but his eyes were averted, and he seemed a little cold. Then she left. When the taxi door slammed, and it had noisily pulled away, Mildred went to the bedroom, lay down, and began to cry. Perhaps she had something to cry about. She was thirtyseven years old, fat, and gettin'g a little shapeless. She had lost everything she had worked for, over long and weary years. The one living thing she had loved had turned on her repeatedly, with tooth and fang, and now had left her without so much as a kiss or a pleasant goodbye. Her only crime, if she had committed one, was that she had loved this girl too well.
Bert came in, with a decisive look in his eye and a bottle of rye in his hand. In masterful fashion he sloshed it once or twice, then sat down on the bed. "Mildred."
"Yes."
"To hell with her."
This remark only served to step up the tempo of Mildred's sobs, which were approaching a wail already. But Bert took hold of her 'and shook her. "I said to hell with her!"
Through the tears, the woe, Mildred seemed to sense what he meant. What it cost her to swallow back her sobs, look at him, squint, and draw the knife across an umbilical cord God alone knows. But she did it. Her hand tightened on his until her linger nails dug into his skin, and she said: "O.K., Bert. To hell with her!"
"Goddam it, that's what I want to hear! Come on, we got each other, haven't we? Let's get stinko."
"Yes—let's get stinko."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES M. CAIN (1892-1977) is recognized today as one of the masters of the hard-boiled school of American novels. Born in Baltimore, the son of the president of Washington College, he began his career as reporter on the Baltimore papers, served in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and wrote the material for The Cross of Lorraine, the newspaper of the 79th Division. He returned to become professor of journalism at St. John's College in Annapolis and then worked for H.L. Mencken on The American Mercury. He later wrote editorials for Walter Lippman on the New York World and was for a short period managing editor of The New Yorker, before he went to Hollywood as a script writer. His first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, was published when he was forty-two and at once became a sensation. It was tried for obscenity in Boston, was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, The Stranger, and is now a classic. Cain followed it the next year with Double Indemnity, leading Ross MacDonald to write years later, "Cain has won unfading laurels with a pair of native American masterpieces, Postman and Double Indemnity, back to back." Cain published eighteen books in all and was working on his autobiography at the time of his death.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce
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