Jealous Woman by James M. Cain Read Free Book Online Page B

right. Sperry over there is at least fifty, he’s not an inch over five feet eight, he can’t weigh over 140, and his hair is light red.”
    “Probably some simple explanation.”
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    I rang Jane and told her I was hooked for the evening, but if I could make it later I’d call her. He and I went over to the hotel, and he said he’d be right down and went upstairs. He was gone quite a while, brushing himself up, he said, and then wanted me to drive him around, so he could think. I took him over into California on the road to Sacramento, and it goes over the Sierras but if it slammed him around a little I didn’t really mind. He lit a cigar, then threw it out the window, right in a fire zone. Then he pulled his legs up under him and sat with his heels kind of jammed over against me. So of course that made it nice, trying to drive. He wound down his window, stuck his elbow out, and leaned his chin on it. So of course that made it still better, with a draft blowing down my neck. Then he began clenching and unclenching his left hand, so it rubbed my brake leg. “Cut it out, will you, Keyes? How can I drive with—”
    “Quit bothering me.”
    “Then suppose it wasn’t her husband last night?”
    ”Ed, I’m trying to think.”
    Sore as I was, the way he rapped it out I didn’t have much more to say. I took a peep at him, and something in the way he was staring at those tall trees going by let me see it, just once, whatever it was he had in him that made him the greatest wolf on a phony claim west of the Mississippi River, and maybe the greatest in the business. He wasn’t sore, or squint-eyed, or whatever you’d think he would be, trying to dope this out. He was just like a child that asked his mother why something made a noise like it did, and when he got an answer that didn’t make sense, he was trying to fit it together. That hurt little frown, with 1,000,000 watts of concentration back of it, was something I’ve often thought of since. After a while he put down his feet, wound up his window, and said: “Well, I’ve thought of one angle anyway. Thank God you haven’t delivered that policy.”
    “How do you know what I’ve done?”
    “Don’t tell me she’s got it?”
    “While you were taking your own sweet time brushing up, and considering that when Norton left this was supposed to be signed, sealed and settled, it’s highly possible I slipped upstairs on the elevator and handed it to her, just to cheer her up. That could be. A lot of things could be. It would help a lot if you’d disconnect that assumer of yours and stop taking for granted what I do. I’m not under your orders, remember that.”
    I was pretty disagreeable, and he raved and tore his hair and hooked it up big. I let him run on, maybe encouraged him a little. Of course, I hadn’t delivered any policy. I hadn’t had a chance for one thing, and I had to figure on it for another thing, what I’d say to her about it. Before the three of us had left the office Norton had O.K.’d it for Linda to deposit Delavan’s check, and she’d mailed it out with two or three others, her final job every night, or most nights anyway, as there weren’t many days we didn’t handle payments. Once we took the money, the policy was legally in force, which was one thing that gave me a pain in the neck about all this delivery stuff Keyes was handing out, because short of a trip to the post office in the middle of the night, and another at daybreak to get the check back, there was no way to stop the thing now. That all-night run-around I wasn’t for one second going to start, because all this needed was one more hang-up, and it could land in the soup. At that time, I have to admit, that while I thought I was doing Jane a favor, as I’ve said, the real thing on my mind was the cup and that $100,000 tilt on my company score. It may have been childish, but in my experience the more childish something is the stubborner you get