The Innocent (16 page)

Charles asked, Why shouldn't I like it? Why shouldn't I take it and like it?

Why shouldn't Charles have sat back and taken the love and adoration she gave him? It didn't cost him a cent. It was no trouble to be loved. He loved to be loved. He's had a long training in being adored. Charles needed to be adored the way a drug addict needed his dope, the way a drunkard craved liquor. Charles used her adoration the way the drug addict and the lush used liquor or dope, to forget the real world in which they were misfits. With a dose of love Charles could go out and face the man's world for so many hours. But he didn't care which woman gave it to him, herself or Claire or even the switchboard operator, providing some rich old man fell for the switchboard operator's voice saying, “Brown & Bixby, good after
noon
,” and left her a fortune. If some woman adored Charles, he could take it for just so long. He had said this himself. Then he needed a refill, another slug, another jab with the hypodermic needle.

The hypodermic needle.

When little Pete started to come along.

When she had told Charles that she had started a baby and that, although she didn't blame him in the least nor was she in the least repentant, this changed the state of affairs. She had explained to Charles that, much as she wanted to, she could not go on at her job, be Miss Black, buyer of sweaters in Bloomingdale Brothers, while becoming more and more obviously
enceinte
. She had told Charles that she could not just go on in her bachelor apartment. Something would have to be done.

“Charles,” she had asked timidly, “could you possibly ask Claire for a divorce? If you told her about this—wouldn't she divorce you if she knew that you loved me and there was going to be a baby?”

Even though she had wanted this more than anything in the world, she could not but agree when Charles said he couldn't ask Claire. She had known, of course, that Charles was rather afraid of Claire, and accepted it. Charles could no more face Claire and tell her that he rejected her than he could face men in the business world. It wasn't in Charles. So then she asked him if he would permit her to tell Claire for him for, although she was rather afraid of Claire herself, she could be brave as a lion where Charles was involved, where even the beginning of little Pete was concerned. “I'll go to her,” she said. “I'll tell her about us. I won't like it, Charles darling, but there's more to be considered than the two of us.” She took his hand and placed it on her belly which was already slightly swollen, but he pulled it away as if the contact made him ill. She remembered that with a pang even now, even though it was so long ago that she had put his hand on her belly which had his child in it and he had pulled his hand away and his face twisted as if he had suffered something disgusting. “I'm perfectly willing to do it, Charles, since you don't think you can.”

Charles wouldn't let her go to Claire. Charles didn't want it. Charles wanted both Claire and Marjorie, not Marjorie more than Claire. Charles wanted Marjorie but only so long as she was no trouble. When it looked as if there might be trouble—

Charles had presented an alternative. Without consulting her, he had gone to this college friend of his for help, Dr. Edward Newhouse. Friend was an exaggeration; Charles had no men friends, but he had roomed with this Ned Newhouse in his freshman year. Ned Newhouse, Charles' old friend, Dr. Edward Newhouse, had offered to help Charles out of his dilemma. He had given Charles some stuff which he promised would do the trick, so that it wouldn't come to facing Claire, to upsetting the comfortable applecart, so Charles could go on as he had been going, having both her love and whatever Claire gave him. (Money? Bonds?) Dr. Newhouse gave Charles instructions: You injected this stuff and—

Wait a minute, wait a minute, not so fast.

Charles had come into her apartment that last evening and acted most peculiarly. He asked, do-you-love-me, do-you-love-me, do-you-really-love-me?

He said that there was no other way. He said if they went on much longer it was only a question of time before Claire found out, and then there would be hell to pay.

(There would be stolen bonds to pay?)

He begged. “If you really love me, Margie—”

“I really love you, Charles. I adore you.” Time out for the usual proof.

He said, “I've fixed it, Margie. (I doed it!) Everything can go on just as it's been. We can have our wonderful times and Claire won't find out. I've fixed it for us.”

It was so unlike Charles to have fixed anything that she stared at him.

He nodded. “Yes, I have. You remember my friend, Ned Newhouse? Dr. Edward Newhouse? I used to room with him in college. Ned was the only one there who ever was decent to me, and now he's proved he's still my pal.” Charles had reached into his jacket pocket and carefully lifted out a handkerchief. Wrapped in the handkerchief was a wad of sterile gauze; wrapped in the sterile gauze was a hypodermic syringe.

Marjorie shivered violently. She closed her eyes but that only clarified the picture of Charles in her small apartment that night, standing there with a hypodermic syringe in his hand.

He continued, “You don't have to worry about my not knowing how to inject this stuff. See?” There was a tiny spring attached to the syringe.

Claire had written: “I showed her the little spring thing. I said anyone, however inexperienced, could give an injection with this gadget.”

All right, Marjorie thought, groaning, all right I admit that the syringe Claire wrote about must have had that same mechanism as the one Charles held that night, but that doesn't prove anything. That only proves that there are lots of those syringes that work that way, so that amateurs can operate them, so that diabetics can give themselves injections.

All syringes look alike.

All cats are gray in the dark.

All women are gray in the dark; me or Claire, Claire or me, Charles didn't care.

I haven't proved that, I've proved only that those two syringes were alike.

Claire had written: “I showed Edna how it worked without working it, because there are five cc. of insulin in that baby.”

I have no reason to believe that the one Charles begged me to let him inject had insulin in it. He had received his from his friend, Ned Newhouse. He had not sneaked it from the third drawer of Claire's desk. When Charles explained that I would be pretty sick for ten minutes or so, violent cramps, he said, and then it would all be over, he didn't mean
I
would be over, finished. He didn't mean that I would be dead and he would be safe. He didn't mean that in ten minutes there would be no possibility of Claire finding out about me and threatening to do something about those bonds he had taken. He didn't mean that if I let him inject me, he would be free and I would be dead. He meant only that our love would be free to continue.

But Charles had frightened her that night.

He must have frightened her that night or else she never would have changed her mind about dying rather than going back to Wilton in disgrace. Was it because she had been forced to consider death as a real alternative? Was it because Charles pointing the syringe at her had been death? Was that why she had been willing to go back to her aunt and father and Wilton?

Something about Charles had made her promise him to leave immediately, to stay out of his life, to have her child in secrecy and raise him in secrecy so that it couldn't endanger Charles in his relation with Claire. Had she found the strength to leave Charles because she had suspected that he was prepared to kill her if she continued to threaten his security with Claire?

Her composure which had lasted eight months during which time she had flung herself into frenetic love-making with Charles to forget her worries, during which she had actually been grateful for her fears for little Pete's life because they were easier to bear than the other fears, was gone. Her teeth chattered, her eyes stared, she wrung her hands and walked up and down with short jerky steps. If it was six of one and half a dozen of the other with Charles, if he might have killed either herself or Claire, if it was a toss-up which of them he killed——

Oxford Unabridged Dictionary:
fear; apprehension, alarm, dread. A primitive affection marked by revulsion and agitation in the presence of the object feared and normally by a desire to flee or avoid it
.

For the first time Marjorie was suffering fear for herself, for Marjorie, not for Charles, not for little Pete, not for Claire, not for Edna. She was worried about her own skin, which is a different matter from worrying over anyone else's. There had been a muscle that twitched in Claire's cheek, her heart had pounded against her ribs, she had burped, she had perspired. Marjorie was conscious of a dreadful constriction in her chest; each nerve in her body seemed to be jumping. She wanted to run. Claire had probably wanted to run, too, but Claire had been crippled. Marjorie wasn't much better off; she couldn't run, either. She scurried from one part of the apartment to the next but from the bedroom windows, the dining room window, from the living room and the kitchen, she could see that it was raining. She could not grab up her baby and run out into the rain with him. She was held to the apartment by her child as Claire had been held by her injuries. But there was one thing Marjorie had which Claire had not had, the telephone, the blessed, blessed telephone. Marjorie called the hotel where the Winants were stopping. Beckwith answered the phone. “This is Marjorie Carter. Is Eve there?”

“No, she's out in Great Neck today with the Lawrences. Fine day, isn't it?” For ducks, she was supposed to answer.

“Yes,” she said. “When will Eve be back?”

“She's supposed to stay overnight. Shall I ask her to call you when she gets back?”

“Not until tomorrow?”

“Well, she might just change her mind and come home late tonight.” He had no reason for thinking so; it was purely wishful thinking.

“Not until late tonight?” Marjorie asked.

Even to Beckwith this sounded very much like “not until too late tonight.” He sneezed, blew his nose resoundingly, and asked if anything was up. “Anything I can do?” He sneezed again and didn't hear her answer. “Sorry, as you might have guessed, I've caught a famous cold. What did you say?”

“I said could you possibly—did you say you'd caught a cold?”

“A beaut. A whopper. What was it you wanted to know could I possibly?”

“Come over here, but if you've got a cold—”

“The rain, you mean? Look here, if it's vital I can hop a cab and get over to your place, cold and all. If it's that important, I mean.”

“No. I can't let you take care of him with cold; you'd give it to him. Dr. Larker said I shouldn't dare let anyone with a cold near the baby.”

Not a word of thanks, not a syllable of gratitude for his kind offer. Didn't give a damn whether he got pneumonia coming over, but her kid—boy, weren't mothers of babies selfish monsters! “Shall I ask Eve to call you?”

“Thank you. Thank you. No, it doesn't matter.”

What the devil is with her? Beckwith poured himself another shot of rye. He wished Eve were here to sympathize with him; he felt lousy all over and his head was packed solid with lead. He wondered if he could call the Lawrences on the pretext that Eve's girl friend had telephoned and seemed mighty upset about something and get Eve back that way. Better not. Eve would know it was a pretext and he'd never hear the end of it. If Eve didn't come home of her own accord, he didn't want her. He drank the rye in one proud gulp and blew his nose, but more cautiously this time; his nostrils were red as fire already, and sore as boils.

At the same moment someone was calling Brown and Bixby. The switchboard girl, with greatly diminished animation, for this was much later in the day and nobody could expect it, said, “Brown and Bixby, good after
noon
.”

“Mr. Carter, please.”

“Did you wish to speak to Mr. Nich-o-las Carter or Mr. Charles Carter?”

“Hold the wire, please, I'll make sure. Mr. Charles Carter, C. Carter.”

“Extension 241.” She turned to her twin. “Another outside call for The Great Lover, Betty. Evans isn't going to like this one bit. Brown and Bixby, good after
noon
.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “This is he. Speaking.”

“This is Dr. Gresham, Mr. Carter, Bellevue Psychiatric. I'm sorry to trouble you, sir.”

“That's all right.” Charles cleared his throat. “No trouble.”

“It's in connection with one of our patients here, Smith, Edna Smith, a colored girl who claims she was in your employ for about two years. Did you employ her, Mr. Carter?”

“I don't employ maids, Doctor; that's woman's work, isn't it?” Charles attempted to laugh masculinely, easily, heartily.

“I realize that, of course, and I have already telephoned Mrs. Carter earlier in the day.”

“Telephoned Mrs. Carter, did you say?”

“Yes, I did. She knew nothing that could help us and I wouldn't be troubling you, but Smith's sister came down to fill out case history and told me something that changed matters.”

Charles said, “What? What did you say?” He cleared his throat noisily to cover his confusion.

“You see, Mr. Carter, we assumed, when Smith spoke of a Mrs. Charles Carter that it was your wife. Your present wife, that is. We didn't understand, when we called her, that we were addressing a different Mrs. Carter. Your present wife couldn't be expected to know anything about a maid your first wife employed, could she?”

“Look,” Charles cranked himself up. “Look, Doctor, I'm a working man. I don't spend much time hanging around maids. I'm afraid I wouldn't know a thing that could help you.”

“We understand that, Mr. Carter, but if you'll just give us what you do know. Anything. As I told Mrs. Carter, your wife, that is, this girl is in a very disturbed state. We wish to proceed with all the available facts at our disposal and that's where you come in because, as far as we can make out, one of Smith's delusions appears to be that she had some part in your first wife's death.”