Chapter Five

He’d dreamed the whole thing.

The realization was a great relief to John J. Malone, lying there in bed with his eyes still closed. Because there were only two alternatives to its having been a dream, and he couldn’t face either of them, especially at this hour in the morning. It didn’t happen, he thought, and he wasn’t crazy. Just a dream.

He regretted having wakened from it. It had been a beautiful dream, and an ecstatic one. “For a little while,” he whispered, “I thought you were really here.”

“I’m still here,” a soft voice said, not very far away.

John J. Malone opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, clutching the sheet around his shoulders. There she was, Anna Marie St. Clair, sitting in the one easy chair, wrapped in his old bathrobe, her tawny hair loose over her shoulders, sipping a cup of coffee. And there on the floor was the newspaper, telling how Anna Marie St. Clair had been electrocuted last night at twelve.

“I phoned downstairs for coffee,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. You’d probably like some yourself.” She poured out a second cup and handed it to him.

He took it automatically and drank it, still staring at her, while his mind slowly snapped back into focus. Suddenly the empty cup slid from his fingers and rolled down to the floor, unnoticed.

“You had a double,” he said. “I mean, she had a double. You were identical twins.”

She laughed pleasantly and lit a cigarette. “Nothing like that. I’m Anna Marie.”

Malone crossed himself hastily and instinctively. Then he looked at her for a moment. Some of the details of what he’d considered to be a bright and colorful dream began to come back to him. “You’re no ghost,” he said, almost accusingly.

She laughed again. “Of course not,” she said. “I never was one.” Her face grew sober. “I’m terribly sorry, really. But I couldn’t resist. I had to find out what the effect would be. If people would—believe in me. Really, you’ve no idea how glad I am that you did.”

“But damn it,” Malone said crossly, “you looked—” his eyes narrowed. Her face had been white, dead white, her eyes enormous and shadowy, her lovely mouth almost blue. Now, though there was a faint prison pallor on her smooth cheeks, her skin was alive and glowing, her lips red, her eyes bright. “Make-up!” he said. “For the love of Mike—”

He grabbed the newspaper, read hastily through the story of how Anna Marie St. Clair had died at midnight, a smile on her lips, protesting to the last that she was innocent.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me.” His voice was hoarse.

“The confession got there in time,” she said. “Lucky, isn’t it, that they broke the news to me before they gave it to the newspapers.”

She told him the rest of it. The trial, the bland assurances that she had nothing to worry about, the verdict and the sentence, the appeal for a new trial, automatically refused, the long weeks in prison when no one, not even Jesse Conway, had come to see her and when she couldn’t get in touch with anyone.

Malone already knew all the legal details, he’d read them again and again in the newspapers. And what she’d thought, and felt, during those weeks was something he’d not only guessed at, but lived through with her.

She told him about what she’d thought were going to be her last few hours alive, and the walk to the warden’s office, and what had happened there.

“Now,” she said, “I’m a ghost.” She glanced at the tiny platinum watch on her wrist and said, “And a damned hungry one. It’s eleven o’clock.”

“I’m hungry, too,” Malone said. He reached for the phone and said, “What do you want?”

“Anything, as long as it isn’t lukewarm oatmeal, dry toast, and thin coffee.”

The little lawyer shuddered, called room service, and demanded a rush double order of pancakes with sausage, scrambled eggs, hot biscuits with marmalade, coffee, half an apple pie, and a quart of cold beer.

“There’s a lot more to discuss,” he said as he hung up the phone, “but I dislike doing my discussing on an empty stomach.” He managed a delicate operation of wrapping the sheet around him, squaw fashion, and getting out of bed, all at the same time. “I’m going to take a shave and a shower. There’s all kinds of make-up and stuff in the top left-hand dresser drawer in case you want any. And if you want a drink, there’s a bottle of gin under the clean socks in the middle drawer.”

He stood under the shower for a long time, and lingered over his shave. He should have had a hangover, but he felt like a million—hell, two million—dollars.

He knew what Anna Marie was doing. He knew why she was doing it. Frankly, he didn’t blame her. But maybe he could talk her out of it. Because if she went ahead with what was undoubtedly in her mind, she was going to blow the lid off a political pot that was already beginning to steam a little.

It would destroy a number of his best connections, if such a thing took place, but that wasn’t his reason. He could always make new connections. It would ruin a number of his friends. Or were they his friends? Malone paused, razor in hand, and the lathered face that looked back at him from the mirror answered, “No.”

It might bring about a reform administration in the next election, and he’d have to find a new place to play poker. That had happened before, and he’d always managed.

There would be danger to Anna Marie herself. Malone’s razor paused again, halfway down one cheek, and he said, “Not with me around, there wouldn’t.”

But there would be trouble, big trouble, before the thing was through. Some of it he could anticipate, some of it he could sense. Murder, and suicide, and ruin, and political upheaval. Anna Marie was holding dynamite in her frail, lovely hands. Malone didn’t like explosions.

He finished shaving and began rubbing lotion on his face. Maybe he could talk her into giving up the whole thing. If she wanted to have a little fun with Bugs Brodie, or Butts O’Hare, or some of the boys at the City Hall first—well, he, Malone, was always willing to lend his hand to a practical joke. Then the whole thing could be explained as a joke. He grinned at the recollection of how Joe the Angel’s face had looked, and sobered quickly when he thought of how his own face must have looked. All right, a joke was a joke.

Sure, that was the thing to do. Talk her out of it.

Malone patted talcum powder on his face and brushed his hair. He’d carried his clothes into the bathroom, and he dressed slowly, rehearsing what he was going to say to her.

And then, when he had talked her out of it—

He could make a lot more money than he did and manage his affairs a lot better. He might even be able to collect some of the money his clients owed him. He could reorganize his office arrangements and go after some really important cases. Why, with his brains, and his connections, he could be a rich man in no time at all!

There were some beautiful little apartments overlooking the lake, up on the drive.

Or maybe a pretty little house in Wilmette. Anna Marie might like a house. Just a tiny but perfect house, like a jewel box.

He’d reopen his charge accounts at Saks’ and Blum’s-Vogue. He’d make a lunch date for tomorrow or next day with that wholesale jeweler. And didn’t that pawnbroker he’d successfully defended on an arson charge have a brother-in-law in the fur business?

Malone whistled happily as he tied his tie. From now on, everything was going to be wonderful.

He was glad that his brown suit had just come back from the cleaners, and that he had a new tie. He whistled a few more bars as he polished his shoes with the end of the towel and stuffed the towel behind the bathtub. Finally he gave his hair one last lick with the brush. Then he opened the door.

There was Anna Marie, standing before the dresser, smiling at him in the mirror. She’d dressed and made up her face. He stared at her.

The tawny hair rippled on her shoulders when she moved her head. She was the most gorgeous girl Malone had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of gorgeous girls in his time. The whole picture of what had happened to her ran through his brain, like the life history that’s supposed to run through the brain of a drowning man. It took about ten seconds, but he saw all of it—the trial, the appeals, the long weeks in the deathhouse, the final walk to what she’d thought would be the electric chair. Someone had planned, deliberately, that it would happen to her, that way.

It wasn’t going to be a practical joke. It was going to be something serious, and deadly. It was going to be dynamite. And, Malone told himself, he was going to love it.

“All right, baby,” he said quietly. “We’ll do it your way.”