Kedzie simmered in her own wrath a long while before she realized that
she had let Gilfoyle escape. He was the very man she was looking for,
and she had planned to go even to Chicago to find him.
He had stumbled into her trap, and she had driven him out. She ran to
the window and stared up and down the street, but there was no trace of
him. She had no idea where he could have gone. She wrung her hands and
denounced herself for a fool.
She went to the hall to pick up the photograph of Jim Dyckman. Both
halves of it were gone. Now she was frightened. Gilfoyle had departed
meekly, but he had taken the picture; therefore he must have been filled
with hate. He had revenge in his mind. And she trembled at her danger.
He might strike at any time.
She suspected his exact intention. She dreaded to have Jim Dyckman call
on her. She had a wild notion of asking him to take her away from New
York--down to Atlantic City or up to the Berkshires--anywhere to be rid
of Gilfoyle without being left alone. If she had done this she would
have done just what Gilfoyle wanted her to, and the Mann Act could have
been wielded again as a blackjack.
Meanwhile Anita was afraid to have Dyckman come to her apartment as
he constantly did. She telephoned to him that she would be busy at the
studio all day. She would meet him at dinner somewhere. But afterward
she would come home alone on one pretext or another.
She carried out this plan--and spent a day of confused terror and anger.
When Gilfoyle's letter arrived, saying that he was on his way to
Chicago, it gave her more delight than any other writing of his had
ever given her. She need not skulk any more. Her problem was as far from
solution as ever, but she wanted a respite from it, and she gave herself
up to a few days of rapture. She was free from her work at the studio,
and she was like a girl home from boarding-school on a vacation.
Dyckman found her charming in this mood. She made a child of him, and
his years of dissatisfaction were forgotten. He romped through the
festivals of New York like a cub.
There was no discussion of any date of marriage, and he was glad
enough to let the matter drift. He did not want to marry Kedzie. He was
satisfied to have her as a playmate. He was afraid to think of her as a
wife, not only from fear of the public sensation it would make, but from
fear of her in his home. Young men also know the timidities that are
considered maidenly. He did not dream of Kedzie's reason for postponing
always the matter of a wedding date.
Kedzie had come to depend on Jim for her entertainment. He took care of
her evenings, gave them vivacity and opulence. He took her to theaters,
to the opera, the music-halls, the midnight roofs, and other resorts for
the postponement of sleep. Occasionally he introduced her to friends of
his whom they encountered. It pained and angered him, and Kedzie,
too, to note that the men were inclined to eye Kedzie with tolerant
amusement. There was a twinkle of contempt in their smiling eyes that
seemed to say:
“Where did Dyckman pick you up, my pretty?”
Kedzie's movie fame was unknown to Dyckman's crowd. She was treated,
accordingly, as some exquisite chorus-girl or cabaret-pony that he had
selected as a running-mate.
Dyckman could not openly resent what was subtly implied, but it touched
his chivalry, and since he was engaged to Kedzie he felt that he ought
at least to announce the fact. He was getting the game without the name,
and that seemed unfair to Kedzie.
Kedzie felt the same veiled scorn, and it alarmed her; yet when Dyckman
proposed the publication of their troth she forbade it vigorously. She
writhed at the worse than Tantalus fate that compelled her to push from
her own thirsty lips the grapes of felicity.
She had no intention of committing bigamy, even if she had been
temptable to such recklessness. The inevitable brevity of its success
was only too evident. A large part of the fun of marrying Dyckman would
be the publication of it, and that would bring Gilfoyle back. She never
before longed so ardently to see her husband as now.
She finally wrote him a letter begging him to return to New York for a
conference. She couched it in luringly affectionate tones and apologized
lavishly for scratching his face when he called. She addressed the
appeal to the General Delivery in Chicago, as he had directed in the
letter he wrote as a blind.
She neglected, as usual, to put her own address on the envelope or
inside on the letter, which she signed with a mere “Anita.” Gilfoyle
did not call for the letter in Chicago, since he was in New York. It was
held in Chicago for the legal period and then it was sent to the Dead
Letter Office, where a clerk wasted a deal of time and ingenuity in an
effort to trace the sender or the addressee.
Kedzie meanwhile had watched for the postman and hunted through her
mail with frenzy. There was a vast amount of mail, for it is one of the
hardships of the movie business that the actors are fairly showered with
letters of praise, criticism, query, and flirtation.
But there was no letter ever from Gilfoyle.
Yet Gilfoyle was constantly within hailing distance. With the aid of his
friend Connery he had concocted a scheme for keeping Kedzie and Dyckman
under espionage. They had speedily learned that Dyckman was in constant
attendance on Kedzie, and that they were careless of the hours alone,
careless of appearances.
Gilfoyle never dreamed that the couple was chaperoned doubly by a
certain lukewarmth of emotion and by an ambition to become man and
wife. Gilfoyle imagined their relations to be as intimate as their
opportunities permitted. He suffered jealous wrath, and would have
assaulted Dyckman in public if Connery had not quelled him.
Connery kept a cool head in the matter because his heart was not
involved. He saw the wealth of Dyckman as the true object of their
attack, and he convinced Gilfoyle of the profitableness of a little
blackmail. He convinced Gilfoyle easily when they were far from Kedzie
and close to poverty; but when they hovered near Kedzie, Connery had the
convincing to do all over again.
He worked up an elaborate campaign for gaining entrance to Kedzie's
apartment without following the classic method of smashing the door
down. He disliked that noisy approach because it would command notice;
and publicity, as he well knew, is death to blackmail.
Connery adopted a familiar stratagem of the private detectives. He went
to the apartment one day when he knew that Kedzie was out, and inquired
for an alleged sister of his who had worked for Kedzie. He claimed to be
a soldier on furlough. He engaged the maid in a casual parley which
he led swiftly to a flirtation. She was a lonely maid and her plighted
lover was away on a canal-boat. Connery had little difficulty in winning
her to the acceptance of an invitation to visit a movie-show on her
first evening off.
He paid the girl flattering attentions, and when he brought her back,
gallantly asked for the key to unlock the door for her. He dropped the
key on the floor, stooped for it, pressed it against a bit of soft
soap he had in his left palm. Having secured the outline of the key,
he secured also a return engagement for the next evening off. On
this occasion he brought with him a duplicate of the key, and when he
unlocked the door for the maid this time he gave her the duplicate and
kept the original.
And now that he and Gilfoyle had an “open sesame” to the dovecote they
grew impatient with delay. Gilfoyle's landlady had also grown impatient
with delay, but Connery forced her to wait for what he called the
psychological moment.
And thus Kedzie moved about, her life watched over by an invisible
husband like a malignant Satan to whom she had sold her soul.