I Come as a Theif (21 page)

"More or less." Tony liked her yellow eyes. They were large and cool and frank. "I induced your husband to see it my way."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"I don't think about it."

"Because you don't care. I see that. And, of course then, nothing will happen to you."

"It takes caring?"

"It takes caring. About a drink, for example." She moved over to the bar table. "You're not beyond that?"

"Oh, no."

She poured him his whiskey as he had asked for it, straight, and continued in her intimate vein. "Jack says your wife has left you. How mean of her. Doesn't she believe in what you're doing? Believe in your helping Jack? With all your wonderful testimony?"

Tony shook his head. "Oh, least of all that. She thinks that's the purest self-indulgence. At her expense. Most women would agree with her, don't you think? When a man leans more to a principle than to a woman, he's going to find himself in trouble with that woman. What else should he expect?"

"Well, he should expect his wife to know that's how men are," Judith retorted. "I know. Nobody could be married to Jack for a year and not know. He's all for moral principles. Why, his divorce from his first wife almost killed him!"

"Don't you believe in moral principles, Mrs. Eldon?"

"Call me Judy. No."

"Not any?"

"Well, I don't believe in them where individuals are concerned. For example, take you. I suppose I don't believe that government officials should take bribes. But the moment I meet you, you cease to be a government official. You become Tony Lowder. That's different."

"That's sentimental."

"But women
are
sentimental. So are men—the men of my generation, anyhow. Your wife wouldn't give a damn what you did if she thought you really loved her. You'll see. It'll be all right."

"Because I really do love her?"

Judith looked at him critically for a moment and then nodded. "Yes. I think you do."

Jack Eldon at this point came hurriedly into the room. He had just arrived from his office.

"Tony, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't realize, when I asked you, that Judith had friends for dinner. But it's all arranged. You and I will have our dinner in the library and shan't be disturbed at all."

Judith looked from one man to the other, smiling. "Maybe Tony would
like
to dine with us."

"Don't be ridiculous, Judith. It's out of the question. Do you want to embarrass him to death?"

"But, Jack," Tony interposed. "I can go. Your guests will need you."

"My guests? You mean Judith's. Certainly not. You will oblige us both very much if you do just as I say. Please bring your drink into the library."

Tony bowed to Judith and followed his host obediently into the small, paneled, book-filled room where Jack was evidently allowed to escape from the remorselessness of his wife's interior decoration. He noted, as Jack closed the door, that this room, too, had a bar table.

"I didn't know you'd been divorced," he said, while Jack was making his own drink. "You were so worked up about Lee."

"I learned the hard way."

"You mean your wife left you?"

Tony noted with composure how vividly he had discountenanced his host. Jack's lips tightened, and his pale face, which Tony could see in profile, seemed even paler. He took a deep swallow of his drink without turning around.

"No. I left her for Judith."

"Did you have children?"

"Oh, yes. Three. At the worst ages for that kind of thing, too. Twelve to seven. It was all pretty ghastly. I don't know why I'm telling you."

"Because I'm a convicted crook. Like a dead person. Perhaps I shouldn't be so personal, but the prospect of jail makes me impatient of small talk."

"Everyone was against me," Jack continued, as if he had not heard Tony. "They were all on Peggy's side. Even my parents. I was practically read out of the family. You'd think I'd invented divorce! You see, Peggy was so good and so wronged ... God, it was hell!"

"I'm sure it was." Tony scrutinized his prosecutor's dark, shifting eyes. The latter had now taken a seat opposite him. "We don't need an after-life to balance old scores. But I have a kind of grudging admiration for a man who can break out of the kind of trap yours must have been."

"Even if he jumps into another?" Jack was surprised by the candor of his own question, for he followed it up with a quick, mirthless laugh.

"I couldn't have done it," Tony went on, ignoring this lead. "I could never bear to hurt people. That can be a terrible weakness, you know. When I was a boy, I went through the usual religious phase, but it all blew up when I read the history of religion. Nothing but crucifixions and burnings and throwing to wild beasts. I wanted no part of it. I still don't."

But Jack was not interested in religion. He was interested in cases, in his own and in Tony's. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you," he said now. "Something that's been puzzling me. Why are you being so cooperative in this case?"

"I should have thought you might have heard Mr. Lanigan answer that one often enough."

"Oh, to reduce your term, of course. But there's still something in the whole business I don't get. Maybe I should be asking why you did what you did, not why you're doing what you're doing."

"It might be more interesting."

"That's it. For you
are
interesting, Tony. I find myself thinking more and more what your motives can have been. At first I didn't like you at all."

"Oh, I knew that."

"Did I make it so obvious?"

"Not that obvious. But I could tell."

"And now I do like you. Very much. But I'm damned if I understand you."

Tony reflected on the peculiarity of his not even being tempted to tell Jack that he had been forestalled in his plan of confessing. He saw perfectly how completely it would rehabilitate him in Jack's mind, but this now seemed a matter of little importance. He did not feel the least compulsion to mitigate his crime in Jack's or anyone else's mind. What he had done was quite as wicked as any of them cared to think or not to think. The only thing that had happened to him that was in any way remarkable was the feeling that had come over him afterward, but this experience had been so intensely personal—so exclusively personal—that he knew that there was no point even trying to convey to another what it was like. Had he not tried with Lee? With her father?

"Well, I like you, Jack," he said, and he hoped that it did not sound perfunctory. "And I doubt if you're any easier to understand."

Jack raised his glass. "Good," he said. "We've got that settled. We like each other, and we're both very difficult to understand. Such interesting people! I drink to you, Tony, and to a suspended sentence. But whatever happens, remember this. You're not nearly as dead as you think."

Lee sat alone in her father's office, waiting for him to return. He had told her that he had to confer briefly with one of his partners who was going to Washington that afternoon, but she knew he had gone to the men's room. It was his time. Why did the neatness and bareness of his office strike her for the first time that day as pathetic? He did not
have
to have only one picture on the wall: a drawing of William Maxwell Evarts challenging the constitutionality of the income tax before the Supreme Court. His desk did not have to be stripped of all objects but the tiny bronze replica of Hudson's vessel, the
Half Moon,
and a silver-framed photograph of Selena, looking very regal (her mother's little private fantasy). And there was no necessity for the bookcase to be a stranger to all volumes but tax reporters and the Social Register. No, it was pathetic because it was like a monk's chamber. It was pathetic because there was so little consolation in a religion of tax avoidance.

There was no picture of her and Tony. There had been one, she was quite sure, beside that of her mother. And now it was gone. Obviously, her father could not bear to look at him. Could she blame him? Could she bear to herself? In the last days had she not even begun to speculate that she might at last learn to live without Tony? The long dull weeks in northern Connecticut, in the borrowed house of one of her father's clients, where she had read novels while Eric roamed the woods with a bird book and Isabel pounded the piano, had taught her that peace, a dead peace, might lie ahead. But she wondered if she could ever learn to live, not without Tony, but without her love of him. That, she was beginning to see, would be her real problem. She was more dependent on the habit than on the man.

She might have forgiven him but for Eric. It had been too terrible to watch the boy's silent suffering. He never complained about being out of school and never once mentioned Tony. But he had given up his old arguments with her and Isabel. It was only too evident that he felt disqualified, as the son of a dishonored man, to be the champion of law and order. When he talked it was all of particular things: birds he had seen, or trees, or the plots of novels he had read. But for the most part he was silent and moody.

Isabel, as Lee had foreseen, let it all out in emotional outbursts. She even seemed to enjoy the excitement of the isolation, the drama of the newspapers. At times her tears were genuine; at times, stagey. But she would come through. No thanks to Tony. Lee clenched her fists in anger as she thought how little Tony had given to her or the children. Joan had only to beckon. Max had only to weep. His old mother had only to wail. But his own family he took for granted. Because they were a part of himself? That, of course, would be his argument. But if he thought so little of himself, it was hardly a compliment. It was certainly not enough of a compliment to live on.

The door opened and quickly closed, and her father was in the room, rubbing his hands. "There, my dear, there. I'm all ready for you now and our little discussion. Let me see. Let me see."

Lee watched as he folded his handkerchief twice and tucked it into his pocket, as he polished the lenses of his glasses and pushed the model of the
Half Moon
to and fro. It would be the same later, if he took her to lunch. He would straighten the silver, fuss with his napkin, nurse his food into yummy little particles, chew and chew, cough and blink, shift his buttocks over the seat. It was as if the sensuousness of some lost lover within him had been converted to a hundred nervous reflexes. What room could there be, in the heart of a man so absorbed, for a mere daughter?

"Your mother and I have exhaustively discussed our long-range plans," he was saying. "Let me assure you at once that we have agreed to take on the education of Eric and Isabel. It's a big tab to pick up, but, after all, they're our only grandchildren. We have decided to see them through."

"That's very generous, Daddy."

"Wait, my dear." His voice was always particularly gentle when he had something disagreeable to say. "There is a condition."

"A condition?" Lee demanded, instantly resentful. "Why should there be a condition? You and Mummie are perfectly well off. You're rich—by my standards, anyway." She noted how he winced at the imputation. "I may be down and out, but I'm damned if I'll beg."

"I'm not going to ask you to beg," her imperturbable parent rejoined. "Eric and Isabel are my grandchildren, and I always expected to be a dutiful and loving grandparent. But you have suggested something quite different: namely that I assume the duties of a parent."

"Oh, I'll be around to do all the chores, don't worry."

"You evade me, darling. I am speaking of the financial duties of a parent. Those are the ones you wish me to assume, are they not?"

"Of course. What else?"

"Very well. And in assuming these duties—ones not normally required of a grandparent—I feel that I am entitled to stipulate a condition."

"Well, what is it?"

"I want you to divorce Tony." The words fell like a scythe on soft grass. "I want you to obtain custody of the children. I don't think that's unreasonable. Particularly as my firm will handle the details. I anticipate no trouble from Tony. I think he will understand that the smaller the role he plays in your lives, the better for all."

"Have you discussed this with him?"

"No."

Lee was startled to find that her first violent reaction was one of almost painful relief. Tony, at least, had not agreed to be abandoned. Then she reflected that her father was probably right. Tony would agree to it. He would claim that he was doing it as a necessary sacrifice. But would he be? She stamped her foot under the desk. Was it another fagot in the pyre of his self-immolation?

"I think this may be very hard on Tony," she murmured, in the frustration of her conflict.

"It's entirely his doing. He has put you in a position where you can't practically do anything else. I suggest it's your simple duty to your children."

"What about my simple duty to my husband?"

"He's canceled it! He's released you from your vows! First, by his flagrant infidelity with Mrs. Conway. Secondly, by his crime in betraying a public trust. And lastly, and worst of all, by exposing you and the children to mortal danger with his reckless game of playing informer."

"You don't think that was his duty? To the public?"

"I think his first duty was to the home that he had violated and endangered."

Lee found that she was fighting for time. "Even if that were so," she pointed out, "haven't we to consider what people will think? I mean from the children's point of view. Will it be good for them to be known as having repudiated their father when he was in trouble?"

"It will have been done when they were young. You and I will take responsibility for that. They'll never be blamed."

"You assume, then, that
I
won't mind."

"Consider your dignity, Lee! This man has made hash out of your life. Oh, I know a lot of sentimental fools would clap their hands and toss their bonnets in the air if you 'stuck by him,' as they say. But you and I are not people to be swayed by the mob. We have standards, and we live up to them. And when a man breaks every trust, as Tony has, we should not be afraid to condemn him and cast him out! Particularly now that he seems to have developed messianic delusions! I propose that you take back your maiden name and call yourself Mrs. Lee Bogardus."