Chapter 14

“If it’s going to be long,” she said, “we’d both better have a drink. You always think better if you have a glass in your hand.”

“Now, what is it you want to know?” I answered, after we were comfortably settled in front of the electric fire.

“It’s--it’s just that everything is so queer,” Germaine began. “You’ve changed so that you almost seem like a different person. You even look better, not so flabby, as though you took regular exercise. At least I see a change, and then suddenly I find that you’ve been carrying on with that Briggs girl and I can’t tell whether you’ve really changed or are just trying to fool me. She’s a nice person, of course, and if you must have another girl, I’d rather have you pick someone--oh--safe and comfortable like her. But you said you hadn’t been playing with the office girls. And then there’s Ponto. He used to adore you and you swore by him. Now he tries to bite you and you want to get rid of him. And then there’s all this talk about where you were during Holy Week and that F.B.I. man and Myrtle tells me they’ve been asking a lot of questions about you and Virginia. What have you been doing, dear, that you can’t remember when our whole life may depend on it?”

“Jimmie,” I told her. “I wish to God I knew. You must believe me when I tell you I can’t remember things before Easter Monday. That was the second and today is the eleventh and I can remember everything that’s happened since then. Before that it is all blank and all mixed-up in that dream I had.”

She moved away from me, slightly. “You can’t tell me that the F.B.I. would be interested in your dreams,” she said sharply. “Not in time of war.”

“They are in this dream,” I told her. “You see I dreamed--if you want to call it that--that a certain American ship blew up in the North Pacific. The trouble is that the public hasn’t been told that there is such a ship, like that ‘Old Nameless’ in the Solomons, and that the Navy Department doesn’t know what happened to it. I believe that it did blow up. Harcourt believes my story, in the main, but from the F.B.I. angle they have to check up on whether I’m not part of an Axis spy-ring which could have caused the explosion. If I could only remember where I was and what I was doing the week before I could clear myself.”

Her face lighted and she relaxed. “Oh, is that all?” she exclaimed. “I know you couldn’t have done anything like that. All you’ve probably been doing is to go off with one of those silly girls of yours to some out-of-the-way place. That ought to be easy to check, even if you registered under a false name. For the first time, you know,” she added, “I’m almost glad you’ve been chasing all those stupid blondes of yours. It will make it easy to establish your alias.”

“Alibi,” I corrected her. “Let me fix you another drink. From now on,” I added, “there are going to be no more blondes or red-heads. I like Arthurjean Briggs--she’s named Arthurjean for her father and mother. It’s one word like Marylou or Honeychile--but she’s more like a friend than a--oh--you know. You saw her. But I guess you’re right. I must have been chasing around so much my mind got tangled up in itself and sort of blew a fuse. If I can’t get my memory straightened out soon I’ll look up a psychiatrist and see if he can’t fix me.”

“You know, Winnie--” Germaine began and then fell silent.

“Yes, Jimmie?”

She turned towards me and smiled rather wistfully. “You know, I was going to say that you and I--perhaps--Well, it’s so long since we’ve been really--oh--close to each other. I wondered--”

“You mean that perhaps we ought to patch things up between us?”

“Isn’t that what a wife’s for?” she asked. “I mean--I mean when things get difficult it ought--there ought to be one person to whom you could turn.”

I slipped my arm around her and drew her close to me on the lounge. She lowered her face against my coat and I could feel her shaking.

“You’re crying!” I said. “You mustn’t cry.”

“Oh, Winnie, I’ve been so alone--so--”

I raised her face to mine and kissed her, tasting the wet, salt tears. Her lips were warm and soft against mine. Suddenly she pressed herself against me and responded to my kiss so fiercely that we were both startled. We sprang apart, almost guiltily.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh--you haven’t kissed me like that--”

She raised her lips again and this time we held it.

What with one thing and another, I didn’t get back to the office until the Market closed on Thursday afternoon. I found my two partners in pretty good control of our operations but frankly mystified as to the cause of the official mugging of Tompkins, Wasson & Cone. We had laid out two and a half millions in all, despite the attempt to scare us off. The market had continued steady.

Neither Graham nor Phil asked me any direct questions about the events on Wednesday. They talked straight business and kept their curiosity in check. It was close to half-past four when we finished our general discussion of the operation, so I decided that they were entitled to some kind of explanation in return for their loyalty.

“See here, boys,” I told them. “You’ve both been perfectly swell about this rat-race the S.E.C. started. Harry Willamer tried to put the squeeze on me for half a million dollars to finance him and a bunch of official bastards in a shady deal. When I turned him down he threatened to tie us up with a Commission investigation. I bluffed him out of it at the time by pretending there was an F.B.I. dictaphone record of our talk, so he laid off the heavy heat and just started needling us a little. Any time now he’ll make the check at the F.B.I. and when he finds there isn’t any record he’ll try to tie us up tighter than a drum. All we can do is wait it out. The market’s going to start dropping any day now and we’ll clean up.”

“Oh!” Wasson said. “Was that it? Willamer’s a bad actor. Thanks for telling us, Winnie. Phil and I knew that there must be something screwy when--”