I
What had given him his first hint that all might not be as well at home
as he imagined was the incident of the automobile. Up to that time he
had not had a troubled thought about her, not one. But after—Well, it
was a year and a half now and although suspicion still lingered it
was becoming weaker. But it had not been obliterated even though he
could not help being fond of Beryl, especially since they had Tickles
to look after between them. But anyhow, in spite of all his dark
thoughts and subtle efforts to put two and two together, he had not
been able to make anything of it. Perhaps he was being unjust to her
to go on brooding about it.... But how was it possible that so many
suspicious-looking things could happen in a given time, and one never
be able to get the straight of them?
The main thing that had hampered him was his work. He was connected
with the Tri-State Paper Company, at the City Order desk, and as a
faithful employé he was not supposed to leave during working hours
without permission, and it was not always easy to get permission. It
was easy to count the times he had been off—once to go to the dentist,
and two or three times to go home when Beryl was ill. Yet it just
happened that on that particular afternoon his superior, Mr. Baggott,
had suggested that he, in the place of Naigly who always attended
to such matters but was away at the time, should run out to the
Detts-Scanlon store and ask Mr. Pierce just what was wrong with that
last order that had been shipped. There was a mix-up somewhere, and it
had been impossible to get the thing straight over the telephone.
Well, just as he was returning to the office, seated in one of those
comfortable cross seats of the Davenant Avenue line and looking at the
jumble of traffic out near Blakely Avenue, and just as the car was
nearing the entrance to Briscoe Park he saw a tan-and-chocolate-colored
automobile driven by a biggish man in a light tan overcoat and cap
swing into view, cross in front of the car, and enter the park. It was
all over in a flash. But just as the car swung near him who should he
see sitting beside the man but Beryl, or certainly a woman who was
enough like her to be her twin sister. He would have sworn it was
Beryl. And what was more, and worse, she was smiling up at this man
as though they were on the best of terms and had known each other a
long time! Of course he had only had a glimpse, and might have been
mistaken. Beryl had told him that morning that she was going to spend
the afternoon with her mother. She often did that, sometimes leaving
Tickles there while she did her mother’s marketing. Or, she and her
mother, or she and her sister Alice, if she chanced to be there, would
take the baby for a walk in the park. Of course he might have been
mistaken.
But that hat with the bunch of bright green grapes on the side.... And
that green-and-white striped coat.... And that peculiar way in which
she always held her head when she was talking. Was it really Beryl? If
it wasn’t, why should he have had such a keen conviction that it was?
Up to that time there never had been anything of a doubtful character
between them—that is, nothing except that business of the Raskoffsky
picture, which didn’t amount to much in itself. Anybody might become
interested in a great violinist and write him for his photo, though
even that couldn’t be _proved_ against Beryl. It was inscribed to
Alice. But even if she had written him, that wasn’t a patch compared to
this last, her driving about in a car with a strange man. Certainly
that would justify him in any steps that he chose to take, even to
getting a divorce.
But what had he been able to prove so far? Nothing. He had tried
to find her that afternoon, first at their own house, then at her
mother’s, and then at Winton & Marko’s real estate office, where Alice
sometimes helped out, but he couldn’t find a trace of her. Still,
did that prove anything once and for all? She might have been to the
concert as she said, she and Alice. It must be dull to stay in the
house all day long, anyhow, and he couldn’t blame her for doing the few
things she did within their means. Often he tried to get in touch with
her of a morning or afternoon, and there was no answer, seeing that she
was over to her mother’s or out to market, as she said. And up to the
afternoon of the automobile it had never occurred to him that there was
anything queer about it. When he called up Beryl’s mother she had said
that Beryl and Alice had gone to a concert and it wasn’t believable
that Mrs. Dana would lie to him about anything. Maybe the two of them
were doing something they shouldn’t, or maybe Alice was helping Beryl
to do something she shouldn’t, without their mother knowing anything
about it. Alice was like that, sly. It was quite certain that if there
had been any correspondence between Beryl and that man Raskoffsky, that
time he had found the picture inscribed to Alice, it had been Alice
who had been the go-between. Alice had probably allowed her name and
address to be used for Beryl’s pleasure—that is, if there was anything
to it at all. It wasn’t likely that Beryl would have attempted anything
like that without Alice’s help.
But just the same he had never been able to prove that they had been
in league, at that time or any other. If there was anything in it they
were too clever to let him catch them. The day he thought he had seen
her in the car he had first tried to get her by telephone and then had
gone to the office, since it was on his way, to get permission to go
home for a few minutes. But what had he gained by it? By the time he
got there, Beryl and her mother were already there, having just walked
over from Mrs. Dana’s home, according to Beryl. And Beryl was not
wearing the hat and coat he had seen in the car, and that was what he
wanted to find out. But between the time he had called up her mother
and the time he had managed to get home she had had time enough to
return and change her clothes and go over to her mother’s if there was
any reason why she should. That was what had troubled him and caused
him to doubt ever since. She would have known by then that he had been
trying to get her on the telephone and would have had any answer ready
for him. And that may have been exactly what happened, assuming that
she had been in the car and gotten home ahead of him, and presuming her
mother had lied for her, which she would not do—not Mrs. Dana. For when
he had walked in, a little flushed and excited, Beryl had exclaimed:
“Whatever is the matter, Gil?” And then: “What a crazy thing, to come
hurrying home just to ask me about this! Of course I haven’t been in
any car. How ridiculous! Ask Mother. You wouldn’t expect her to fib for
me, would you?” And then to clinch the matter she had added: “Alice
and I left Tickles with her and went to the concert after going into
the park for a while. When we returned, Alice stopped home so Mother
could walk over here with me. What are you so excited about.” And for
the life of him, he had not been able to say anything except that he
had seen a woman going into Briscoe Park in a tan-and-chocolate car,
seated beside a big man who looked like—well, he couldn’t say exactly
whom he did look like. But the woman beside him certainly looked like
Beryl. And she had had on a hat with green grapes on one side and a
white-and-green striped sports coat, just like the one she had. Taking
all that into consideration, what would any one think? But she had
laughed it off, and what was he to say? He certainly couldn’t accuse
Mrs. Dana of not knowing what she was talking about, or Beryl of lying,
unless he was sure of what he was saying. She was too strong-minded
and too strong-willed for that. She had only married him after a long
period of begging on his part; and she wasn’t any too anxious to live
with him now unless they could get along comfortably together.
Yet taken along with that Raskoffsky business of only a few months
before, and the incident of the Hotel Deming of only the day before
(but of which he had thought nothing until he had seen her in the car),
and the incident of the letters in the ashes, which followed on the
morning after he had dashed home that day, and then that business of
the closed car in Bergley Place, just three nights afterwards—well, by
George! when one put such things together—
It was very hard to put these things in the order of their effect
on him, though it was easy to put them in their actual order as to
time. The Hotel Deming incident had occurred only the day before
the automobile affair and taken alone, meant nothing, just a chance
encounter with her on the part of Naigly, who had chosen to speak
of it. But joined afterwards with the business of the partly burned
letters and after seeing her in that car or thinking he had—Well—After
that, naturally his mind had gone back to that Hotel Deming business,
and to the car, too. Naigly, who had been interested in Beryl before
her marriage (she had been Baggott’s stenographer), came into the
office about four—the day before he had seen Beryl, or thought he
had, in the car, and had said to him casually: “I saw your wife just
now, Stoddard.” “That so? Where?” “She was coming out of the Deming
ladies’ entrance as I passed just now.” Well, taken by itself, there
was nothing much in that, was there? There was an arcade of shops which
made the main entrance to the Deming, and it was easy to go through
that and come out of one of the other entrances. He knew Beryl had done
it before, so why should he have worried about it then? Only, for some
reason, when he came home that evening Beryl didn’t mention that she
had been downtown that day until he asked her. “What were you doing
about four to-day?” “Downtown, shopping. Why? Did you see me? I went
for Mother.” “Me? No. Who do you know in the Deming?” “No one”—this
without a trace of self-consciousness, which was one of the things
that made him doubt whether there had been anything wrong. “Oh, yes; I
remember now. I walked through to look at the hats in Anna McCarty’s
window, and came out the ladies’ entrance. Why?” “Oh, nothing. Naigly
said he saw you, that’s all. You’re getting to be a regular gadabout
these days.” “Oh, what nonsense! Why shouldn’t I go through the Deming
Arcade? I would have stopped in to see you, only I know you don’t like
me to come bothering around there.”
And so he had dismissed it from his mind—until the incident of the car.
And then the matter of the letters ... and Raskoffsky ...
Beryl was crazy about music, although she couldn’t play except a little
by ear. Her mother had been too poor to give her anything more than a
common school education, which was about all that he had had. But she
was crazy about the violin and anybody who could play it, and when any
of the great violinists came to town she always managed to afford to
go. Raskoffsky was a big blond Russian who played wonderfully, so she
said. She and Alice had gone to hear him, and for weeks afterward they
had raved about him. They had even talked of writing to him, just to
see if he would answer, but he had frowned on such a proceeding because
he didn’t want Beryl writing to any man. What good would it do her? A
man like that wouldn’t bother about answering her letter, especially if
all the women were as crazy about him as the papers said. Yet later he
had found Raskoffsky’s picture in Beryl’s room, only it was inscribed
to Alice.... Still, Beryl might have put Alice up to it, might even
have sent her own picture under Alice’s name, just to see if he would
answer. They had talked of sending a picture. Besides, if Alice had
written and secured this picture, why wasn’t it in her rather than
Beryl’s possession. He had asked about that. Yet the one flaw in that
was that Alice wasn’t really good-looking enough to send her picture
and she knew it. Yet Beryl had sworn that she hadn’t written. And Alice
had insisted that it was she and not Beryl who had written. But there
was no way of proving that she hadn’t or that Beryl had.
Yet why all the secrecy? Neither of them had said anything more about
writing Raskoffsky after that first time. And it was only because he
had come across Raskoffsky’s picture in one of Beryl’s books that he
had come to know anything about it at all. “To my fair little western
admirer who likes my ‘Dance Macabre’ so much. The next time I play
in your city you must come and see me.” But Alice wasn’t fair or
good-looking. Beryl was. And it was Beryl and not Alice, who had first
raved over that dance; Alice didn’t care so much for music. And wasn’t
it Beryl, and not Alice, who had proposed writing him. Yet it was Alice
who had received the answer. How was that? Very likely it was Beryl
who had persuaded Alice to write for her, sending her own instead of
Alice’s picture, and getting Alice to receive Raskoffsky’s picture
for her when it came. Something in their manner the day he had found
the picture indicated as much. Alice had been so quick to say: “Oh
yes. I wrote him.” But Beryl had looked a little queer when she caught
him looking at her, had even flushed slightly, although she had kept
her indifferent manner. At that time the incident of the car hadn’t
occurred. But afterwards,—after he had imagined he had seen Beryl in
the car—it had occurred to him that maybe it was Raskoffsky with whom
she was with that day. He was playing in Columbus, so the papers said,
and he might have been passing through the city. He was a large man
too, as he now recalled, by George! If only he could find a way to
prove that!
Still, even so and when you come right down to it, was there anything
so terrible about her writing a celebrity like that and asking
for his picture, if that was all she had done. But was it? Those
long-enveloped gray letters he had found in the fireplace that morning,
after that day in which he had seen her in the car (or thought he
had)—or at least traces of them. And the queer way she had looked at
him when he brought them up in connection with that closed car in
Bergley Place. She had squinted her eyes as if to think, and had then
laughed rather shakily when he charged her with receiving letters from
Raskoffsky, and with his having come here to see her. His finding
them had been entirely by accident. He always got up early to “start
things,” for Beryl was a sleepyhead, and he would start the fire in the
grate and put on the water to boil in the kitchen. And this morning
as he was bending over the grate to push away some scraps of burnt
wood so as to start a new fire, he came across five or six letters,
or the ashes of them, all close together as though they might have
been tied with a ribbon or something. What was left of them looked
as though they had been written on heavy stationery such as a man of
means might use, the envelopes long and thick. The top one still showed
the address—“Mrs. Beryl Stoddard, Care of ——” He was bending over to
see the rest when a piece of wood toppled over and destroyed it. He
rescued one little scrap, the half-charred corner of one page, and the
writing on this seemed to be like that on Raskoffsky’s picture, or so
he thought, and he read: “to see you.” Just that and nothing more, part
of a sentence that ended the page and went to the next. And that page
was gone, of course!
But it was funny wasn’t it, that at sight of them the thought of
Raskoffsky should have come to him? And that ride in the park. Come to
think of it, the man in the car had looked a little like Raskoffsky’s
picture. And for all he knew, Raskoffsky might have then been in
town—returned for this especial purpose,—and she might have been
meeting him on the sly. Of course. At the Deming. That was it. He had
never been quite able to believe her. All the circumstances at the time
pointed to something of the kind, even if he had never been able to
tie them together and make her confess to the truth of them.
But how he had suffered after that because of that thought! Things had
seemed to go black before him. Beryl unfaithful? Beryl running around
with a man like that, even if he was a great violinist? Everybody knew
what kind of a man he was—all those men. The papers were always saying
how crazy women were over him, and yet that he should come all the way
to C—— to make trouble between him and Beryl! (If only he could prove
that!) But why should she, with himself and Tickles to look after, and
a life of her own which was all right—why should she be wanting to run
around with a man like that, a man who would use her for a little while
and then drop her. And when she had a home of her own? And her baby?
And her mother and sister right here in C——? And him? And working as
hard as he was and trying to make things come out right for them? That
was the worst of it. That was the misery of it. And all for a little
notice from a man who was so far above her or thought he was, anyhow,
that he couldn’t care for her or any one long. The papers had said so
at the time. But that was the whole secret. She was so crazy about
people who did anything in music or painting or anything like that,
that she couldn’t reason right about them. And she might have done a
thing like that on that account. Personally he wouldn’t give a snap of
his finger for the whole outfit. They weren’t ordinary, decent people
anyhow. But making herself as common as that! And right here in C——,
too, where they were both known. Oh, if only he had been able to prove
that! If only he had been able to at that time!
When he had recovered himself a little that morning after he had found
the traces of the letters in the ashes he had wanted to go into the
bedroom where she was still asleep and drag her out by the hair and
beat her and make her confess to these things. Yes, he had. There had
been all but murder in his heart that morning. He would show her.
She couldn’t get away with any such raw stuff as that even if she did
have her mother and sister to help her. (That sly little Alice, always
putting her sister up to something and never liking him from the first,
anyhow.) But then the thought had come to him that after all he might
be wrong. Supposing the letters weren’t from Raskoffsky? And supposing
she had told the truth when she said she hadn’t been in the car? He had
nothing to go on except what he imagined, and up to then everything had
been as wonderful as could be between them. Still....
Then another thought had come: if the letters weren’t from Raskoffsky
who were they from? He didn’t know of anybody who would be writing her
on any such paper as that. And if not Raskoffsky whom did she know? And
why should she throw them in the fire, choosing a time when he wasn’t
about? That was strange, especially after the automobile incident
of the day before. But when he taxed her with this the night of the
Bergley Place car incident—she had denied everything and said they
were from Claire Haggerty, an old chum who had moved to New York just
about the time they were married and who had been writing her at her
mother’s because at that time he and she didn’t have a home of their
own and that was the only address she could give. She had been meaning
to destroy them but had been putting it off. But only the night before
she had come across them in a drawer and had tossed them in the fire,
and that was all there was to that.
But was that all there was to it?
For even as he had been standing there in front of the grate wondering
what to do the thought had come to him that he was not going about
this in the right way. He had had the thought that he should hire a
detective at once and have her shadowed and then if she were doing
anything, it might be possible to find it out. That would have been
better. That was really the way. Yet instead of doing that he had gone
on quarreling with her, had burst in on her with everything that he
suspected or saw, or thought he saw, and that it was, if anything,
that had given her warning each time and had allowed her to get the
upper hand of him, if she had got the upper hand of him. That was it.
Yet he had gone on and quarreled with her that day just the same,
only, after he had thought it all over, he had decided to consult the
Sol Cohn Detective Service and have her watched. But that very night,
coming back from the night conference with Mr. Harris Cohn, which was
the only time he could get to give it, was the night he had seen the
car in Bergley Place, and Beryl near it.
Bergley Place was a cross street two doors from where they lived on
Winton. And just around the corner in Bergley, was an old vacant
residence with a deal of shrubbery and four overarching trees in front,
which made it very dark there at night. That night as he was coming
home from Mr. Harris Cohn’s—(he had told Beryl that he was going to the
lodge, in order to throw her off and had come home earlier in order
to see what he might see) and just as he was stepping off the Nutley
Avenue car which turned into Marko Street, about half a block above
where they lived whom should he see—But, no, let us put it this way.
Just at that moment or a moment later as he turned toward his home an
automobile that had been going the same way he was along Winton swung
into Bergley Place and threw its exceptionally brilliant lights on
a big closed automobile that was standing in front of the old house
aforementioned. There were two vacant corner lots opposite the old
house at Bergley and Winton and hence it was that he could see what
was going on. Near the rear of the automobile, just as though she had
stepped out of it and was about to leave, stood Beryl—or, he certainly
thought it was Beryl, talking to some one in the car, just as one would
before parting and returning into the house. She had on a hooded cape
exactly like the one she wore at times though not often. She did not
like hooded capes any more. They were out of style. Just the same so
sure had he been that it was Beryl and that at last he had trapped her
that he hurried on to the house or, rather, toward the car. But just
as he neared the corner the lights of the car that had been standing
there lightless flashed on for a second—then off and then sped away.
Yet even with them on there had not been enough light to see whether
it was Beryl, or who. Or what the number on the license plate was. It
was gone and with it Beryl, presumably up the alley way and into the
back door or so he had believed. So sure was he that she had gone that
way that he himself had gone that way. Yet when he reached the rear
door following her, as he chose to do, it was locked and the kitchen
was dark. And he had to rap and pound even before she came to let him
in. And when she did there she was looking as though she had not been
out at all, undressed, ready for bed and wanting to know why he chose
to come that way! And asking him not to make so much noise for fear of
waking Tickles...!
Think of it. Not a trace of excitement. No cape with a hood on. The
light up in the dining-room and a book on the table as though she might
have been reading—one of those novels by that fellow Barclay. And not a
sign about anywhere that she might have been out—that was the puzzling
thing. And denying that she had been out or that she had seen any car,
or anything. Now what would you make of that!
Then it was, though, that he had burst forth in a fury of suspicion and
anger and had dealt not only with this matter of the car in Bergley
Place but the one in Briscoe Park, the letters in the ashes and the
matter of Naigly seeing her come out of the Deming, to say nothing of
her writing to Raskoffsky for his picture. For it was Raskoffsky, of
course, if it was anybody. He was as positive as to that as any one
could be. Who else could it have been? He had not even hesitated to
insist that he knew who it was—Raskoffsky, of course—and that he had
seen him and had been able to recognize him from his pictures. Yet she
had denied that vehemently—even laughingly—or that he had seen any one,
or that there had been a car there for her. And she did show him a
clipping a week later which said that Raskoffsky was in Italy.
But if it wasn’t Raskoffsky then who was it—if it was any one. “For
goodness’ sake, Gil,” was all she would say at that or any other time,
“I haven’t been out with Raskoffsky or any one and I don’t think you
ought to come in here and act as you do. It seems to me you must be
losing your mind. I haven’t seen or heard of any old car. Do you think
I could stand here and say that I hadn’t if I had? And I don’t like
the way you have of rushing in here of late every little while and
accusing me of something that I haven’t done. What grounds have you for
thinking that I have done anything wrong anyhow? That silly picture of
Raskoffsky that Alice sent for. And that you think you saw me in an
automobile. Not another thing. If you don’t stop now and let me alone
I will leave you I tell you and that is all there is to it. I won’t be
annoyed in this way and especially when you have nothing to go on.” It
was with that type of counter-argument that she had confronted him.
Besides, at that time—the night that he thought he saw her in Bergley
Place—and as if to emphasize what she was saying, Tickles in the
bedroom had waked up and begun to call “Mama, Mama.” And she had gone
in to him and brought him out even as she talked. And she had seemed
very serious and defiant, then—very much more like her natural self and
like a person who had been injured and was at bay. So he had become
downright doubtful, again, and had gone back into the dining-room. And
there was the light up and the book that she had been reading. And in
the closet as he had seen when he had hung up his own coat was her
hooded cape on the nail at the back where it always hung.
And yet how could he have been mistaken as to all of those things?
Surely there must have been something to some of them. He could never
quite feel, even now, that there hadn’t been. Yet outside of just that
brief period in which all of these things had occurred there had never
been a thing that he could put his hands on, nothing that he could say
looked even suspicious before or since. And the detective agency had
not been able to find out anything about her either—not a thing. That
had been money wasted: one hundred dollars. Now how was that?