Peter Cheever was going to dictagraph to his wife. The quaint charm of
the dictagram is that the sender does not know he is sending it. It is a
good deal like an astral something or other.
Peter had often telegraphed his wife, telephoned her, and wirelessed
her. Sometimes what he had sent her was not the truth. But now she was
going to hear from him straight. She would have all the advantages of
the invisible cloak and the ring of Gyges--eavesdropping made easy
and brought to a science, a combination of perfect alibi with intimate
propinquity.
Small wonder that the device which justice has made such use of should
be speedily seized upon by other interests. Everything, indeed, that
helps virtue helps evil, too. And love and hate find speedy employment
for all the conquests that science can make upon the physical forces of
the universe.
How Charity's motives stood in heaven there is no telling. It is safe
to say that they were the usual human mixture of selfish and altruistic,
wise and foolish, honorable and impudent, profitable and ruinous. She
came by the dictagraphic idea very gradually. She had plentiful leisure
since she had taken a distaste for good works. She had been so roughly
handled by the world she was toiling for that she decided to let it get
along for a while without her.
It was a benumbing shock to learn definitely that her husband was in
liaison with a definite person, and to be confronted in shabby clothes
with that person all dressed up. When she hurried to the Church for
mercy it was desolation to learn from the pulpit that her heart clamor
for divorce was not a cleanly and aseptic impulse, but an impious
contribution to the filthy social condition of the United States.
Charity had no one to confide in, and she had no new grievance to
air. Everybody else had evidently been long assured of her husband's
profligacy. For her to wake up to it only now and run bruiting the
stale information would be a ridiculous nuisance--a newsgirl howling
yesterday's extra to to-day's busy crowd.
Besides, she had in her time known how uninteresting and unwelcome is
the celebrant of one's own misfortunes. Husbands and wives who tell
of their bad luck are entertaining only so long as they are spicy and
sportsmanlike. When they ask for a solution they are embarrassing, since
advice is impossible for moral people. The truly good must advise him or
her either to keep quiet or to quit. But to say “Keep quiet!” is to say
“Don't disturb the adultery,” while to say “Quit!” is to say “Commit
divorce!” which is far worse, according to the best people.
We have always had adultery and got along beautifully, while divorce is
new and American and intolerable. Of course, one can and sometimes does
advise a legal separation, but that comes hard to minds that face facts,
since separation is only a license to--well, we all know what separation
amounts to; it really cannot be prettily described.
Charity, left alone at the three-forked road of divorce, complacency, or
separation, sank down and waited in dull misery for help or solution, as
do most of the poor wayfarers who come upon such a break in their path
of matrimony. She imagined Cheever with Zada and wondered what peculiar
incantations Zada used to hold him so long. She wished that she had
positive evidence against him--not for public use, but as a weapon of
self-defense. She felt that from his pulpit Doctor Mosely had challenged
her to a spiritual duel in that sermon against divorce and remarriage of
either guilty or innocent.
Also she began to want to get evidence to silence her own soul with.
She wanted to get over loving Cheever. To want to be cured of such an
ailment is already the beginning of cure.
Abruptly the idea came to her to put a detective on the track of Zada
and Cheever. She had no acquaintance in that field, and it was a
matter of importance that she should not put herself in the hands of an
indelicate detective. She ought to have consulted a lawyer first, but
her soul preferred the risk of disaster to the shame of asking counsel.
She consulted the newspapers and found a number of advertisements, some
of them a little too mysterious, a little too promiseful. But she took
a chance on the Hodshon & Hindley Bureau, especially as it advertised a
night telephone, and it was night when she reached her decision.
She surprised Mr. Hodshon in the bosom of his family. He was dandling a
new baby in the air and trying not to step on the penultimate child,
who was treating one of his legs as a tree. When the telephone rang he
tossed the latest edition to its mother and hobbled to the table, trying
to tear loose the clinger, for it does not sound well to hear a child
gurgling at a detective's elbow.
When Charity told Hodshon who she was his eyes popped and he was greatly
excited. When she asked Mr. Hodshon to call at once he looked at his
family and his slippers and said he didn't see how he could till the
next day. Charity did not want to go to a detective's office in broad
daylight or to have anybody see a detective coming to her house. She had
an idea that a detective could be recognized at once by his disguise. He
probably could be if he wore one; and he usually can be, anyway, if
any one is looking for him. But she could not get Hodshon till she
threatened to telephone elsewhere. At that, he said he would postpone
his other engagement and come right up.
Charity was disappointed in Mr. Hodshon. He looked so ordinary, and
yet he must know such terrible things about people. We always expect
doctors, lawyers, priests, and detectives to show the scars of the
searing things they know. As if we did not all of us know enough about
ourselves and others to eat our eyes out, if knowledge were corrosive!
Charity was further disappointed in Hodshon's lack of picturesqueness.
He was like no detective she had read about between Sherlock Holmes and
Philo Gubb. He was like no detective at all. It was almost impossible to
accept him as her agent.
He seemed eager to help, however, and when she told him that she
suspected her husband of being overly friendly with an insect named
Zada L'Etoile, and that she wanted them shadowed, he betrayed a proper
agitation.
Now, of course, women's scandals are no more of a luxury to a detective
than their legs were to the bus-driver of tradition or to any one in
knee-skirted 1916. Mr. Hodshon was a good man as good men go, though he
was capable of the little dishonesties and compromises with truth that
characterize every profession. A man simply cannot succeed as a teacher,
lawyer, doctor, merchant, thief, author, scientist, or anything else if
he blurts out everything he knows or believes. No preacher could occupy
a pulpit for two Sundays who told just what he actually thought or knew
or could find out. The detective is equally compelled to manipulate the
truth.
Hodshon gave his soul to Charity's cause. He outlined the various ways
of establishing Cheever's guilt and promised that the agency would keep
him shadowed and make a record of all his hours.
“It'll take some time to get the goods on 'em good,” he explained, “but
there's ways we got. When we learn what we got to know we'll arrange it
and tip you off. Then you and me will go to the door and break in on the
parties at the right moment, and--”
“No, Thank You!” said Charity, with a firm pressure on each word.
“You better get some friend to go with us, for a detective needs
c'roboration, you know. The courts won't accept a detective's uns'ported
testimony. And if you could know what some of these crooks are capable
of you wouldn't wonder. Is that all right? We get the goods on 'em and
you have a friend ready, and we'll bust in on the parties, and--”
“No, thank you!” said Charity, with undiminished enthusiasm.
This stumped Mr. Hodshon. She amazed him further. “I don't intend
to bring this case into court. I don't want to satisfy any judge but
myself.”
But what he had said about the credibility of the unsupported detective
had set Charity to thinking. It would be folly to pay these curious
persons to collect evidence that was worthless when collected. She mused
aloud:
“Would it be possible--of course it wouldn't--but if it were, what I
should like would be to be able to see my hu--Mr. Ch--those two persons
without their knowing about it at all. Of course that's impossible,
isn't it?”
“Well, it was a few years ago, but we can do wonders nowadays. There's
the little dictagraph. We could string one up for you and give you the
usual stenographic report--or you could go and listen in yourself.”
“Could I really?” Charity gasped, and she began to shiver with the
frightfulness of the opportunity.
“Surest thing you know,” said Hodshon.
“But how could you install a dictagraph without their finding it out?”
“Easiest thing you know. We'll probably have to rent an apartment in the
same building or another one near-by, and--one of the hall-boys there
may be workin' for us now. If not, we can usually bring him in. There's
a hundred ways to get into a house and put the little dictor behind a
picture or somewheres and lead the wire out to us.”
“But can you really hear--if they talk low?” Charity mumbled, with
dread.
“Let 'em whisper!” said Hodshon. “The little fellow just eats a whisper.
Leave it to us, madam, and we'll surprise you.”
The compact was made. Charity suggested an advance payment as a
retainer, and Hodshon permitted her to write a check and hand it to him
before he assured her that it wasn't necessary.
He went away and left Charity in a state of nerves. Her curiosity was
a mania, but she feared that assuaging it might leave her in a worse
plight. She hated herself for her enterprise and was tempted to cancel
it. But when she heard Cheever come home at midnight and go to his room
without speaking to her she felt a grim resentment toward him that was
like a young hate with a big future.
Every night Charity received a typewritten document describing Cheever's
itinerary for the day. The mute, inglorious Boswell took him up at the
front steps, heeled him to his office, out to lunch, back to the office,
thence to wherever he went.
The name of Zada did not appear in the first report at all, but on the
second day she met Cheever at luncheon, and he went shopping with her.
Charity, reading, flushed to learn that he bought her neither jewelry
nor hats, but household supplies and delicacies. He went with her to her
apartment and thence with her to dinner and the theater and then back,
and thence again after an hour to his home.
The minute chronicle of his outdoor doings, intercalated with the
maddening bafflement of his life in that impenetrable apartment, made
such dramatic reading as Charity had never known. She grew haggard with
waiting for the arrival of her little private daily newspaper. When she
saw Cheever she could hardly keep from screaming at him what she knew.
His every entrance into the house became a hideous insult. She felt that
it was herself who was the kept woman and not the other.
She longed to take the documents and visit the Reverend Doctor Mosely
with them, make him read them and tell her if he still thought it was
her duty to endure such infamy. She felt that the good doctor would
advise her to lay them before Cheever and confound him with guilt, bring
him to what the preachers call “a realizing sense” of it and win him
home.
She was tempted to try the imaginary advice on Cheever, but something
held her back. She wondered what it was, till suddenly she came to a
realizing sense of one fearful bit of news: her soul had so changed
toward him, her love had turned to such disgust, that she was afraid
he might come back to her! He might cast off his discovered partner in
guilt and renew his old claim to Charity's soul and body. That would be
degradation indeed!
Now she was convinced that her love had starved even unto death, that it
was a corpse in her home, corrupted the air and must be removed.