Jealous Woman (2 page)

“In case of eventuality, yes.”

He began to falter and stammer, and then to talk fast and jerky, but straight to the point, as well as I could see. I mean, he got to it at last, the reason for this $100,000 straight life policy he had come in to see me about this morning. He had very little money, he said, in spite of his name, which he seemed to think had made me drop in a faint when I heard it, on account of the dough his family was supposed to have. It meant nothing to me, which may prove how ignorant I am, or on the other hand how big the country is. Anyhow, in West Virginia was an old coal mine he owned, that had been closed down, but that opened up again when some kind of a machine was invented that made operation profitable where they’d been in the red before. And he’d got a dividend check of two or three thousand dollars that he didn’t expect. And what he wanted to do was sock this dough into the first premium of the life policy, so his wife would be protected the first year after the annulment, and he would feel easier in his mind about it. I said: “What about the second year?”

“... I may have to let it lapse.”

“So I judge. But I mean about her?”

“Mr. Horner, do I have to go on with this marriage for the rest of my life? Jane and I made a mistake, but in marriage a mistake takes two to make. Once it’s erased from the ledger, why not be honest about it? Jane is a well-bred, good-looking girl, who’s going to get married again and make some guy a swell wife. That’s fine with me, and I wish her, and him when he comes, everything that life can give them. But I see no need for overlap. All I think is necessary is to see that she’s protected in the near future—as I said, in case of eventuality. In the case of an annulment, no alimony, property settlement, or anything of the kind is possible, since of course it is merely the legal declaration that no marriage existed. But if I should die in the near future, if for some reason I did come into money and a large estate were settled, I don’t want her left out completely in the cold. Does that answer all your questions?”

It did, or I thought it did, even if it struck me he was more interested in going through the motions of protecting her than actually doing it. I mean, it seemed to me he was going to kid himself he was actually making her a present of $100,000, and square it up with himself for the way he figured to leave her, neither married or not married, just dangling in mid-air, with no court to take her side, because mixing it up that way is what most of the courts, including our 100% wonderful Supreme Court, seem to be fondest of. But I didn’t see, on my end of it, why I was called on to step in and block the insurance in any way, whether she was squawking or not. Because in the first place, it’s practically impossible to convince an agent he’s doing anybody an injury, or in fact anything but a favor, in helping them become beneficiary of any kind of policy at all. And in the second place, there was kind of a personal reason I’d better be on the level about, as later the subject came up. My company, the General Pan-Pacific of California, General Pan for short, gives an annual cup to the agent making the best score for the year, all averaged up so the fellow in a small city has just as good a chance as a big city general agent, and my first few years, when I was just a kid, I collected four of those, one right after the other. But when Washington upped the high Army brass from four stars to five, the home office upped General Pan, because until then the cup had four stars on it, for his rank. And that new one, with five stars all in a cluster, I hadn’t been able to get, and I wanted it, and specially before my thirtieth birthday, so bad I could cry. With this $100,000 policy, I’d grab it in a walk. And it was none of my business if next year he let it lapse or not. Plenty of policies lapse, and the contest had no rule covering that. If I wrote the business, and he paid the first premium due, that was that, and that was all. So when he finished, and I thought it over, and said O.K. I’d shoot his application through, I could feel my heart doing flip-flops inside. General Five-Star Cup, come to baby.

W
HEN I GOT BACK
to the stable, my friend Mrs. Delavan had the Count on the track, and Jackie was out there watching it. I mean it was something to see. He was under an English saddle, with curb bit and martingales, and my own Western saddle was nowhere around. Believe it or not, she was walking him. It was the first time I knew he
could
walk. He’s a gray, with dark mane and tail, and a comical forelock that makes him look a little like Whirly, if you remember him, and he’s a clown, but strictly a dancing clown, not a walking clown. And it took me a minute or two to figure it out. There was 105 pounds of will power on his back that said walk and he walked. In a minute her feet shifted and he went into a canter, then into a dead run. It was beautiful, the way he obeyed. I mean, he loved it the way she handled him, and he was letting her know it, every move that he made, how he liked to go when there was somebody up there that knew how to make him go. She pulled him down to a trot, and then, so sudden you wondered why she didn’t go over his head, to a walk, and came on over. “What on earth, Mr. Horner, have you been doing with this horse?”

“Riding him. Why?”

“He has no more manners than a baboon.”

“He been eating with his knife?”

“I don’t think you even know what I’m talking about.”

“We get there, he and I, and we get back.”

“But it’s a crime! What he came into this world with, his looks, his action, are beautiful. But what you’ve taught him, if anything, is simply embarrassing.”

Jackie began sticking her finger at me, because she’d been telling me for some time that now that I had a horse it might be a good idea to learn something about him. I gave her the old so’s-your-old-man and we went in the ring, where the jumps are. He went into one of those whirling movie starts I had impressed the girls with. I thought it was pretty nifty, but she pulled him down stockstill before his front feet were halfway up in the air. “This is really dreadful.”

“I like it, that stunt.”

“There ought to be a horse court that would take him away from you and establish guardianship.”

Jackie had told her he’d never been jumped, so she walked him off about fifty feet, turned him, let him look at the jump, then brought him up to it at a slow canter. When he got the idea she raised her hands and leaned forward, and he went over like a cat. She turned him and let him look at it again. He got the comicalest look on his face I ever saw, Then she took him over it again. “Put another bar on.”

I did and he took it so easy I started to put on another. “Wait a minute. That we’ll have to think about.” She got down, lit a cigarette, studied him, and he did the same for her. She patted him and he nuzzled her. Then she stamped out the cigarette. “O.K.”

I put the bar on and she rode him off and turned him. She let him look at it, then started him for it, and for the first time I felt a prickle of nervousness shoot up my spine. They came on, he hooked it up, she let off the reins and leaned forward, and he went up. It was a frightening thing to be under because all of a sudden you felt it, the power in those muscles, when it was delivered, all in a bunch, right where it was wanted, and when. And you felt it, how high that jump was.

They were over, and down with such a rush you could hardly believe one slim leg could take the whole shock and hold for the others to take over. It did though, and they were in stride again. Just then I saw the puppy, and she did, and he did. She swerved him, but he braided his legs. I was there as soon as she hit the ground, but she had had just enough warning to be able to fall clear. I knelt beside her, and she seemed to like it that my arm was around her. Then she sat up and opened her eyes, and a look of horror came into them. I looked, and the Count was still lying there, with Jackie racing toward him. Jane jumped up, and just then he did. She went over and put her arms around him. “Baby! Did he knock himself out?”

She went over him, inch by inch, feeling his withers and hocks and every part of him, and he did the same by her with the tip of his nose. But he was all right, and pretty soon we started home. About halfway, she said: “In his fifth year, I make him.”

“That’s right.”

“Then he’s young enough, thank heaven.”

“For what?”

“To learn. I’m here, and I’m going to teach him.”

“He’s all yours. Stable suit you?”

“Stable’s fine.”

When we got to the hotel, a girl in maid’s uniform came running across the lobby from where she had been sitting, keeping company with the elevator girl, and waving a paper with a blue cover on it. She was one of those girls you don’t hear about in England, but when you go there you see them all over. She was red-haired, and black-eyed, and pretty, and had a Cockney way of talking and kept going on about the “bloody garnishee,” as she called it. I pretty well knew from my talk with Delavan what it was, and that it wasn’t a garnishee, but I kept to myself what I knew.

Jane stood there, reading the paper, and her face got the beat-up look I’ve mentioned before, and pretty soon she looked up and held out her hand. “I think—I’ll go upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll ring you.”

“Please do.”

She and the maid went on up and I went over to my office. I tried to have fun thinking about my cup that was coming. It didn’t give me much. I could see Linda, my secretary, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I told her I was going over to Carson to close a deal, and wouldn’t be back. Where I did go was out and walk around.

That night I was still restless, and stepped out a little to get my mind off her and the rest of it. I generally play roulette, but never when I’m feeling good. When I don’t give a hoot I fool around with a stack of quarters. If I lose my stack, I go home. If I get ahead, so I’m gambling on their money, I make scientific mayhem out of it, and feel better. Before I saw her, I had shifted tables, and even joints, three or four times. At roulette, if you’re winning, you pick up a mob that follows your lead, and right there is where I don’t exactly trust Mr. Croupier. He may be honest, as they say he is, and as I firmly believe and tell everybody he is, and yet, I feel you ought not to put irresistible temptation in his way. If the bets are scattered, he has no reason to roll his ball any particular way. But if they’re all aboard one number, or a small flock of numbers, every square on the board except those numbers is a winner for the house, and it would be unfortunate if that was the particular moment in his life he picked out to have a slight change of character. Just to be safe, I move. I even move up the street, to really shake them, and I’d done that a few times before I saw her. She seemed sulky and I thought she meant me. I went over to the bar, ordered a couple of the free drinks, and went over and handed her one.

“Thanks, Mr. Horner, but don’t let me keep you.”

“From what, like?”

“Well, you seem to be avoiding me.”

I explained about the powder I’d been taking, and she seemed set back on her heels. “I—never even thought about that. You see, I’ve never had a winning streak.”

“Never too late to learn.”

“I’ve lost too much.”

“Let me stake you.”

I fished up a couple of pounds of what I’d been winning and chinked them around a little. In Reno, of course, they always pay you in silver. “I shouldn’t, you know, Mr. Horner. It’s a weakness of mine. If you keep rattling all that money around, I’m going to say yes, but—it’ll all be gone, I assure you.”

“I’ll take a chance.”

She started to play, and it was the craziest playing I ever saw. She just shut her eyes and plunked it down anywhere. “Hey, hey, that’s no way to do it!”

“What’s the difference? It’s all luck.”

“Yeah, but it’s got to make sense!”

An insurance man, he thinks percentage, first, last and all the time, because what he’s running is not charity for the widows, orphans, and aunts, like maybe you thought, but a great big wheel, with every chance figured by the actuaries, so that a bet is distinctly a matter of age, weight and occupation, and he hates to have anything running wild. So I took the young lady in hand and showed her a few things, like how to cut corners on a losing streak by running a small limit and fishing for small fish, like the 2-1 odds on one of the 12s, which some chance of two or three wins that would cause the switch from a losing streak to a winning streak. Once that happened, I showed her how to bunch her bets so as not to be on the hook for too much dough on any single roll, but at the same time to crack a pot if she really got a break. I showed her how, if she had $1 riding the first twelve, she should lay 50c on the first four and 25c on No. 1. Then, if the pill fell anywhere from No. 13 up, she had lost, but was only $1.75 out, and as she would be playing on their money, she could afford it. But if the ball fell in any number of the first 12, she cashed $2, and was 25c ahead. But if it fell in 2, 3 or 4, she cashed $2 on the first 12 and $4.50 on the first 4, and was $6.50 ahead. But if the ball rolled in 1, she not only cashed her $2 and $4.50, but $9, the pay-off on 25c at the odds of 36-1, and really did something for herself. “In other words, if you’ve got Lady Luck sitting there beside you, act like you knew how to treat her so she don’t have to be a contortionist to help you out. Besides, the way you do it, how would you know her? She doesn’t like it when you don’t place her face, any more than anybody else does.”

So she got hot, and I gave her her head. She caught a gang pretty soon, and we moved. She upped her bets and I said O.K. I picked up her money, and got so heavy with silver I felt like a pack donkey, but when she dropped three $5 combos I walked off and out. “But please. Give me some money! I’m winning! I—”

“Then quit!”

“You’re hateful! Now, to deny me—”

“I’m the best friend you’ve got.”

On the street, when I put handful after handful of money in her handbag, so it felt like a suitcase full of bricks, she laughed. “It’s the one silly streak I’ve got. On a horse, I’m a woman of ice. At other things I’m not stupid, I assure you. But when I get into one of these places I go crazy.”