... It is distressing to me to have to confide these sordid details to anyone. I do not lightly cast my burdens on other people, but since you gave my late father such expert counsel, I would very much appreciate your advice in the situation I have described to you.
If you would be so kind as to telephone me when you receive this letter and let me have your opinion in the matter, I would be extremely grateful. I intend, of course, to express my gratitude in more practical terms than words.
Yours very truly,
Helen Clarvoe.
The letter was delivered to Mr. Blackshear’s office and then sent to his apartment on Los Feliz because he had gone home early. He no longer appeared regularly at his office. At fifty, he was retiring gracefully, by degrees, partly because he could afford to, but mostly because boredom had set in, like a too early winter. Things had begun to repeat themselves: new situations reminded him of past situations, and people he met for the first time were exactly like other people he’d known for years. Nothing was new anymore.
Summer had passed. The winter of boredom had set in and frost had formed in the crevices of Blackshear’s mind. His wife was dead, his two sons had married and made lives of their own, and his friends were mostly business acquaintances whom he met for lunch at Scandia or the Brown Derby or the Roosevelt. Dinners and evening parties were rare because Blackshear had to rise long before dawn in order to be at his office by six o’clock when the New York Stock Exchange opened.
By the middle of the afternoon he was tired and irritable, and when Miss Clarvoe’s letter was delivered he almost didn’t open it. Through her father, who had been one of Blackshear’s clients, he had known Helen Clarvoe for years, and her constrained prose and her hobbled mind depressed him. He had never been able to think of her as a woman. She was simply Miss Clarvoe, and he had a dozen or more clients just like her, lonely rich ladies desiring to be richer in order to take the curse off their loneliness.
“Damn the woman,” he said aloud. “Damn all dull women.”
But he opened the letter because on the envelope, in Miss Clarvoe’s neat, private-school backhand, were the words: Confidential, Very Important.
. . . Lest you think I am exaggerating the matter, I hasten to assure you that I have given an exact account both of the telephone call and my subsequent conversation with the switchboard operator, June Sullivan. You will understand, I am sure, how deeply shocked and perplexed I am. I have harmed no one in my life, not intentionally at any rate, and I am truly amazed that someone apparently bears me a grudge.
When he had finished reading the letter he called Miss Clarvoe at her hotel, more from curiosity than any desire to help. Miss Clarvoe was not the kind of woman who would accept help. She existed by, for, and unto herself, shut off from the world by a wall of money and the iron bars of her egotism.
“Miss Clarvoe?”
“Yes.”
“This is Paul Blackshear.”
“Oh.” It was hardly a word, but a deep sigh of relief.
“I received your letter a few minutes ago.”
“Yes. I—thank you for calling.”
It was more like the end of a conversation than the beginning. Somewhat annoyed by her reticence, Blackshear said, “You asked me for advice, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I have had very little experience in such matters, but I strongly urge you to—”
“Please,” Miss Clarvoe said. “Please don’t say anything.”
“But you asked me—”
“Someone might be listening.”
“I have a private line.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
She must mean the girl, June Sullivan, Blackshear thought. Of course the girl would be listening, if she wasn’t busy elsewhere; Miss Clarvoe had probably antagonized her, or, at the very least, aroused her curiosity.
“There have been new developments,” Miss Clarvoe’s voice was guarded. “I can talk about them only in the strictest privacy.”
“I see.”
“I know how busy you are and I hate to impose on you, but - well, I must, Mr. Blackshear. I must”
“Please go on.” Behind her wall of money, behind her iron bars, Miss Clarvoe was the maiden in distress, crying out reluctantly and awkwardly, for help. Blackshear made a wry grimace as he pictured himself in the role of the equally reluctant rescuer, a tired, detached, balding knight in Harris tweeds. “Tell me what you want me to do, Miss Clarvoe.”
“If you could come here to my hotel, where we can talk—privately—”
“We’d probably have more privacy if you came over here to my apartment.”
“I can’t. I’m—afraid to go out.”
“Very well, then. What time would you like me to come?”
“As soon as you can.”
“I’ll see you shortly, then, Miss Clarvoe.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I can’t tell you how—”
“Then please don’t. Goodbye.”
He hung up quickly. He didn’t like the sound of Miss Clarvoe’s gratitude spilling out of the telephone, harsh and discordant, like dimes spilling out of a slot machine. The jackpot of Miss Clarvoe’s emotions—thank you very much.
What a graceless woman she was, Blackshear thought, hoarding herself like a miser, spending only what she had to, to keep alive.
Although they communicated quite frequently by letter, he hadn’t seen her since her father’s funeral the previous year. Tall, pale, tearless, she had stood apart from the others at the grave; her only display of feeling had been an occasional sour glance at the weeping widow, Verna Clarvoe, leaning on the arm of her son Douglas. The more tears her mother shed, the more rigid Helen Clarvoe’s back had become, and the tighter her lips.
When the services were over, Blackshear had approached Miss Clarvoe, aware of her mute suffering.
“I’m sorry, Helen.”
She had turned her face away. “Yes. So am I.”
“I know how fond you and your father were of each other.”
“That’s not entirely accurate.”
“No?”
“No. I was fond of him, Mr. Blackshear, not he of me.”
The last time he saw her she was climbing stiffly into the back of the long black Cadillac that was used to transport the chief mourners, Mrs. Clarvoe, Helen and Douglas. They made a strange trio.
A week later Blackshear received a letter from Miss Clarvoe stating that she had moved, permanently, to the Monica Hotel and wished him to handle her investments.
The Monica was the last place in the world he would have expected Miss Clarvoe to choose. It was a small hotel on a busy boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, and it catered not to the quiet solitary women like Miss Clarvoe, but to transients who stayed a night or two and moved on, minor executives and their wives conducting business with pleasure, salesmen with their sample cases, advertising men seeking new accounts, discreet ladies whose names were on file with the bellhops, and tourists in town to do the studios and see the television shows. All the kinds of people Miss Clarvoe would ordinarily dislike and avoid. Yet she chose to live in their midst, like a visitor from another planet.
Blackshear left his car in a parking lot and crossed the street to the Monica Hotel.
The desk clerk, whose name-plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin, elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of statistics, eradicated by sheer weight of numbers. They came and went; ate, drank, were happy, sad, thin, fat; stole towels and left behind toothbrushes, books, girdles, jewelry; burned holes in the furniture, slipped in bathtubs, jumped out of windows. They were all alike, swarming around the hive, and Mr. Horner wore a protective net of indifference over his head and shoulders.
The only thing that mattered was the prompt payment of bills. Blackshear looked solvent. He was smiled at.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”
“I believe Miss Clarvoe is expecting me.”
“Your name, please.”
“Paul Blackshear.”
“Just a moment, sir, and I’ll check.”
Horner approached the switchboard, walking softly and carefully, as if one of his old enemies had scattered tacks on the floor. He talked briefly to the girl on duty, hardly moving his mouth. The girl looked over her shoulder at Blackshear with sullen curiosity and Blackshear wondered if this was the June Sullivan Miss Clarvoe had mentioned in her letter.
Blackshear returned her stare. She was an emaciated blonde with trembling hands and a strained, white face, as if the black leech of the earphones had already drawn too much blood.
Horner bent over her, but the girl leaned as far away from him as she could and started to yawn. Three or four times she yawned and her eyes began to water and redden along the upper lids. It was impossible to guess her age. She could have been a malnourished twenty or an underdeveloped forty.
Horner returned, his fingers plucking irritably at the lapels of his black suit. “Miss Clarvoe didn’t leave any message down here, sir, and her room doesn’t answer.”
“I know she’s expecting me.”
“Oh, certainly, sir, no offence intended, I assure you. Miss Clarvoe frequently doesn’t answer her telephone. She wears earplugs. On account of the traffic noises, a great many of our guests wear—”
“What is the number of her suite?”
“Four twenty-five.”
“I’ll go up.”
“Certainly, sir. The lifts are to your right.”
While he was waiting for a lift, Blackshear glanced back at the desk and saw that Horner was watching him; he had lifted his protective veil of indifference for a moment and was peering out like an old woman from behind a lace curtain.
Blackshear disappeared into the lifts and Mr. Horner lowered his net again, and let the lace curtain fall over his thoughts: that suit must have cost a hundred and fifty dollars . . . these con men always put up a good appearance ... I wonder how he’s going to take her and for how much . . .
Miss Clarvoe must have been waiting behind the door. It opened almost simultaneously with Blackshear’s knock, and Miss Clarvoe said in a hurried whisper, “Please come in.”
She locked the door behind him, and for a few moments they stood looking at each other in silence across a gully of time. Then Miss Clarvoe stretched out her hand and Blackshear took it.
Her skin was cool and dry and stiff like parchment, and there was no pressure of friendliness, or even of interest, in her clasp. She shook hands because she’d been brought up to shake hands as a gesture of politeness. Blackshear felt that she disliked the personal contact. Skin on skin offended her; she was a private person. The private I, Blackshear thought, always looking through a single keyhole.
The day was warm for November, and Blackshear’s own hands were moist with sweat. It gave him a kind of petty satisfaction to realize that he must have left some of his moisture on her.
He waited for her to wipe her hand, surreptitiously, even unconsciously, but she didn’t. She merely took a step backward and two spots of color appeared on her high cheekbones.
“It was kind of you to go to all this trouble, Mr. Blackshear.”
“No trouble at all.”
“Please sit down. The wing chair is very comfortable.”
He sat down. The wing chair was comfortable enough but he couldn’t help noticing that it, like all the other furniture in the room, was cheap and poorly made. He thought of the Clarvoe house in Beverly Hills, the hand-carved chairs and the immense drawing-room where the rug had been especially woven to match a pattern in the Gauguin above the mantel, and he wondered for the dozenth time why Miss Clarvoe had left it so abruptly and isolated herself in a small suite in a second-rate hotel.
“You haven’t changed much,” Blackshear lied politely.
She gave him a long, direct stare. “Do you mean that as a compliment, Mr. Blackshear?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It is no compliment to me to be told that I haven’t changed. Because I wish I had.”
Damn the woman, Blackshear thought. You couldn’t afford to be nice to her. She was unable to accept a compliment, a gift of any kind; they seemed to burn her like flaming arrows and she had to pluck them out and fling them back with vicious accuracy, still aflame.
He said coldly, “How is your mother?”
“Quite well, as far as I know.”
“And Douglas?”
“Douglas is like me, Mr. Blackshear. He hasn’t changed either. Unfortunately.”
She approached the walnut desk. It bore no evidence of the hours Miss Clarvoe had spent at it. There were no letters or papers visible, no ink marks on the blotter. Miss Clarvoe did not leave things lying about. She kept them in drawers, in closets, in neat steel files. All the records of her life were under lock and key: the notes from Douglas asking for money, her bank statements and cancelled checks, gardenia-scented letters from her mother, some newspaper clippings about her father, an engraved wedding invitation half torn down the middle, a bottle of sleeping pills, a leash and harness with a silver tag bearing the name Dapper, a photograph of a thin, awkward girl in a ballet dress, and a sheaf of bills held together by a gold money clip.
Miss Clarvoe picked up the sheaf of bills and handed it to Blackshear.
“Count it, Mr. Blackshear.”
“Why?”
“I may have made a mistake. I get—flustered sometimes and can’t concentrate properly.”
Blackshear counted the money. “A hundred and ninety-six dollars.”
“I was right, after all.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone has been stealing from me, Mr. Blackshear. Perhaps systematically, for weeks, perhaps just once, I don’t know. I do know that there should be nearly a thousand dollars in that clip.”
“When did you discover some of it was missing?”
“This morning. I woke up early while it was still dark. There was some argument going on down the hall, a man and a woman. The woman’s voice reminded me of the girl on the telephone, Evelyn Merrick, and I—well, it upset me. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I began to wonder about Miss Merrick and when—whether I would hear from her again and what she hoped to get out of me. The only thing I have is money.”
She paused, as if giving him a chance to contradict her or agree with her. Blackshear remained quiet. He knew she was wrong, but he didn’t feel that anything could be gained, at this point, by stating it: Miss Clarvoe had another thing besides money which might interest a woman like Evelyn Merrick, and that was the capacity to be hurt.
Miss Clarvoe continued quietly. “I got up and took a pill and went back to sleep. I dreamed of her—Evelyn Merrick. I dreamed she had a key to my suite and she let herself in, bold as brass. She was blonde, coarse-looking, made up like a woman of the streets—it’s so vivid, even now. She went over to my desk and took my money. All of it.” Miss Clarvoe stopped and gave Blackshear a long, direct stare. “I know such dreams mean nothing, except that I was disturbed and frightened, but as soon as I woke up again I unlocked my desk and counted my money.”
“I see.”
“I told you about the dream because I wanted to make it clear that I had a reason for counting the money. I don’t usually do such a thing. I’m not a miser poring over a hoard of gold.”
But she spoke defensively, as if someone in the past had accused her of being miserly.
“Why do you keep such a large amount of cash in your room?” Blackshear said.
“I need it.”
“Why?”
“For—well, tips, shopping for clothes, things like that.”
Blackshear didn’t bother pointing out that a thousand dollars would cover a lot of tips, and the black jersey dress Miss Clarvoe was wearing indicated that her shopping trips were few and meagre.
The silence stretched out like tape from a roller until there seemed no logical place to cut it.
“I like to have my money around,” she said, finally. “It gives me a feeling of security.”
“It should give you the opposite.”
“Why?”
“It makes you a target.”
“You think that’s what Evelyn Merrick wants from me? Only money?”
He realized from her stressing of the word “only” that she too suspected other factors were involved.
“Perhaps,” he said. “It sounds to me like an extortion racket. It may be that the woman means to frighten you, to harass you, until you are willing to pay her to be left alone. It may be, too, that you’ll never hear from her again.”
Miss Clarvoe turned away with a little sighing sound that whispered of despair. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid sometimes even to answer the phone.”
Blackshear looked grave. “Do you know more than you’re telling me, Helen?”
“No. I wrote everything in my letter to you, every word that was spoken. She’s—she’s crazy, isn’t she, Mr. Blackshear?”
“A little off-balance, certainly. I’m no specialist in these matters. My business is stocks and bonds, not psychoses.”
“You have no advice for me, then?”
“I think it would be a good idea if you took a vacation. Leave town for a while. Travel. Go someplace where this woman can’t find you.”
“I have no place to go.”
“You have the whole world,” Blackshear said impatiently.
“No—no.” The world was for couples, for lovers, for husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. Everywhere in the world, all the way to the horizon, Miss Clarvoe saw couples, like her mother and father, and, now, Douglas and her mother, and the sight of them spread ice around her heart.
“England,” Blackshear was saying. “Or Switzerland. I’m told St. Moritz is very lively in the winter-time.”
“What would I do in such a place?”
“What do other people do?”
“I don’t really know,” she said seriously. “I’ve lost touch.”
“You must find it again.”
“How does one go about finding things that are lost? Have you ever lost anything, Mr. Blackshear?”
“Yes.” He thought of his wife, and his endless, silent prayers when she was dying, his bargains with God: take my eyes, my arms, my legs, take anything, but leave me Dorothy.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Clarvoe said. “I didn’t realize—I’d forgotten—”
He lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking with anger and remembered grief and sudden loathing for this awkward woman who did everything wrong, who cared for no one and gave nothing of herself even to a dog.
“You asked me for advice,” he said with no trace of emotion. “Very well. About the missing money, you’ll have to report that to the police. Whether you like it or not, it’s your duty as a citizen.”
“Duty.” She repeated the word after him, slowly, as if it had a taste that must be analyze d, a flavour pungent with the past: castor oil and algebra and unshed tears and hangnails and ink from leaky pens. Miss Clarvoe was a connoisseur. She could pick out and identify each flavour, no matter how mouldy with age.
“As for the woman, Evelyn Merrick, I’ve already given you my advice. Take a vacation. There are certain disordered persons who get a kick out of making anonymous phone calls to strangers or people they know slightly.”
“She gave me her name. It wasn’t an anonymous call.”
“It was as far as you’re concerned. You don’t know her. You’ve never heard of her before. Is that right?”
“I think so. I’m not sure.”
“Do you ordinarily remember people well—names, faces, conversations?”
“Oh yes.” Miss Clarvoe gave a nod of bitter satisfaction. “I remember them.”
Blackshear got up and looked out of the window at the traffic below. After-five traffic, with everyone hurrying to get home in all directions; to Westwood and Tarzana, to Redondo Beach and Glendale, to Escondido and Huntington Park, to Sherman Oaks and Lynwood. It was as if the order had gone out to evacuate Hollywood and the evacuation was taking place with no one in command but a single traffic cop with a tin whistle.
Blackshear said, over his shoulder, “You’re not good at taking advice.”
“What you suggest is impossible. I can’t leave Los Angeles right now, for personal reasons.” She added vaguely, “My family.”
“I see. Well, I’d like to help you but I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can do.”
“There is.”
“What?”
“Find her.”
He turned, frowning. “Why?”
“I want to—I must see her, talk to her. I must rid myself of this - uncertainty.”
“Perhaps the uncertainty is in yourself, Helen. Finding a stranger may not help you.”
She raised her hand in an autocratic little gesture as if she meant to silence him. But almost immediately her hand dropped to her side again and she said, “Perhaps not. But you could try.”
“All I have to go on is a name.”
“No. There’s more than that. Remember what she said, that one of these days she’d be famous, her—her body would be in every art museum in the country. That must mean that she poses for artists, she’s a model.”
“Models are a dime a dozen in this town.”
“But it at least gives you a place to start. Aren’t there such things as model booking agencies?”
“Yes.”
“You could try there. I’ll pay you, of course. I’ll pay—”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“I’m not for hire.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Have I offended you by mentioning money? I’m sorry. When I offer to pay people, I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s simply all I have to offer.”
“You have a low opinion of yourself, Helen.”
“I wasn’t born with it.”
“Where did you get it?”
“The story,” she said, “is too long to tell, and too dull to listen to.”
“I see.” But he didn’t see. He remembered Clarvoe as a tall, thin, quiet-mannered man, obviously fond of and amused by his frilly little wife, Verna. What errant chromosomes or domestic dissensions had produced two such incongruous children as Helen and Douglas, Blackshear could not even guess. He had never been intimate with the family although he’d known them all since Helen was in college and Douglas was attending a military prep school. Once in a while Blackshear was invited out to the house for dinner, and on these occasions the conversation was conducted by Verna Clarvoe, who would chatter endlessly on the I-me-my level. Neither of the children had much to say, or, if they had, they had been instructed not to say it. They were like model prisoners at the warden’s table, Douglas, fair-skinned and fragile for his age, and Helen, a caricature of her father, with her cropped black hair and bony arms and legs.
Shortly after Clarvoe’s death, Blackshear had been surprised to read in the society page of the morning paper that Douglas had married. He had been less surprised when a notice of annulment followed, on the legal page, a few weeks later.
“I know what you are thinking,” Miss Clarvoe said. “That I should hire an experienced investigator.”
Nothing had been further from his thoughts but he didn’t argue. “It seems like a good idea.”
“Do you know of anyone?”
“Not offhand. Look in the yellow pages.”
“I couldn’t trust a stranger. I don’t even tr—” Her mouth closed but her eyes finished the sentence: I don’t even trust you. Or mother, or Douglas. Or myself.
“Mr. Blackshear,” she said. “I—”
Suddenly, her whole body began to move, convulsively, like that of a woman in labour, and her face was tortured as if she already knew that the offspring she was going to bear would be deformed, a monster.
“Mr. Blackshear-I—Oh, God—”
And she turned and pressed her forehead against the wall and hid her face with her hands. Blackshear felt a great pity for her not because of her tears but because of all the struggle it had taken to produce them. The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse.
“There, there, don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. Just take it easy.” He said all the things that he’d learned to say to his wife, Dorothy, whenever she cried, words which didn’t mean anything in themselves, but which fulfilled Dorothy’s need for attention and sympathy. Miss Clarvoe’s needs were deeper and more obscure. She was beyond the reach of words.
Blackshear lit another cigarette and turned to the window and pretended to be interested in the view, a darkening sky, a dribble of clouds. It might rain tonight—if it does, I won’t go to the office in the morning—maybe the doctor was right, I should retire altogether—but what will I do with the days and what will they do to me?
He was struck by the sudden realization that he was in his way as badly off as Miss Clarvoe. They had both reached a plateau of living, surrounded by mountains on the one side and deep gorges on the other. Blackshear had at one time scaled the mountains and explored the gorges, Miss Clarvoe had not done either; but here they were, on the same plateau.
“Helen—” He turned and saw that she had left the room.
When she returned a few minutes later, her face was washed and her hair combed.
“Please excuse me, Mr. Blackshear. I don’t often make a fool of myself in public.” She smiled wrly. “Not such a damned fool, anyway.”
“I’m sorry I upset you.”
“You didn’t. It was—the other things. I guess I’m an awful coward.”
“What are you afraid of, the thief or the woman?”
“I think they’re the same person.”
“Perhaps you’re interpreting your dream too literally.”
“No.” Unconsciously, she began to rub her forehead, and Blackshear noticed that it bore a slight scratch that was already healed over. “Do you believe that one person can influence another person to—to have an accident?”
“It’s possible, I suppose, if the suggestion is strong enough on the part of the first person, and if it coincides with a desire for self-punishment on the part of the second person.”
“There are some things you can’t explain by simple psychology.”
“I suppose there are.”
“Do you believe in extra-sensory perception?”
“No.”
“It exists, all the same.”
“Perhaps.”
“I feel—I feel very strongly - that this woman means to destroy me. I know it. If you like, call it intuition.”
“Call it fear,” Blackshear said.
She looked at him with a touch of sadness. “You’re like my father. Nothing exists for you unless you can touch or see or smell it. Father was tone-deaf; he never knew, in all his life, that there was such a thing as music. He always thought that when people listened to music they were pretending to hear something that wasn’t really there.”
“It’s not a very good analogy.”
“Better than you think, perhaps. Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Blackshear. I appreciate your taking time out to come and see me. I know how busy you are.”
“I’m not busy at all. In fact, I’ve practically retired.”
“Oh. I hadn’t heard. Well, I hope you enjoy your leisure.”
“I’ll try.” What will you do with the days, he asked himself. Collect stamps, grow roses, sit through double features, doze in the sun on the back porch, and when you get too lonely, go to the park and talk to old men on benches. “I’ve never had much leisure to enjoy. It will take practice.”
“Yes,” Miss Clarvoe said gently. “I’m afraid it will.”
She crossed the room and unlocked the door. After a moment’s hesitation, Blackshear followed her.
They shook hands again and Blackshear said, “You won’t forget to report the missing money to the police?”
“I won’t forget to do it, Mr. Blackshear. I will simply not do it.”
“But why?”
The money itself isn’t important. I sit here in my room and get richer without even raising my hand. Every time the clock ticks I’m richer. What does eight hundred dollars matter?”
“All right, then, but Evelyn Merrick matters. The police might be able to find her for you.”
“They might, if they bothered to look.”
Blackshear knew she was right. The police would be interested in the theft but there wasn’t the slightest evidence that Evelyn Merrick was the thief. And as far as the phone call was concerned, the department received dozens of similar complaints every day. Miss Clarvoe’s story would be filed and forgotten, because Evelyn Merrick had done no physical harm, had not even voiced any definite threats. No search would be made for the woman unless he, Blackshear, made it himself.
I could do it, he thought. It isn’t as if I’d be investigating a major crime where experience is necessary. All I have to do is find a woman. That shouldn’t require anything more than ordinary intelligence and perseverance and a bit of luck. Finding a woman is better than collecting stamps or talking to old men on benches in the park.
He felt excitement mounting in him, followed by the sudden and irrational idea that perhaps Miss Clarvoe had contrived the whole thing, that she had somehow tricked or willed him into this reversal of his plans.
“Do you believe in extra-sensory perception, Mr. Blackshear?”
“No.”
No? He looked at her. She was smiling.
“You’ve changed your mind,” she said, and there was no rising inflection of doubt in her voice.