Free Sinful Woman by James M. Cain Page A

circumstance. But Dmitri looked at Mr. Layton as though he were plain crazy. “You ask me that? What I have to do with? Me? Dmitri Spiro, president of Phoenix Pictures, that makes all Shoreham production? Me, the best friend of Baron Adlerkreutz? You ask me what I have to do with?”
    “And what have you got to do with it?”
    Tony was cold, hard, malevolent. Mr. Layton answered with a smile, a genial freckled smile, in the accents of Dmitri. “Me? You ask me what I got to do with? Me, agency chif for Southwest General of N. A.?” Then, speaking with a smile not so genial, he asked Tony: “And what have you got to do with it?”
    “You can go to prison in this state. For slander.”
    “And you can hang, for murder.”
    “Suppose you get out.”
    “O. K., O. K.”
    He got up, but Dmitri held up his hand, said there should be no hard feelings, that Tony didn’t really mean what he said. Mr. Layton, turning from the door in very friendly fashion, said: “Yes sir, yes sir, making it accident was bad. If it had been suicide, now, I wouldn’t have a word to say.”
    Tony and Dmitri looked at each other, and Dmitri said: “Why?”
    “We don’t pay off on suicide. Not for three years, we don’t. It used to be one year, but during the depression we raised it. Got to be too many fellows taking out a fifty-thousand-dollar life policy in favor of the little woman, then diving out a fifteenth-story window in some hotel downtown. Same way on the accident-and-health, all bets off on suicide. So, if she’d make it suicide, it wouldn’t have concerned the Southwest General of N. A. even a little bit. But when she made it accident, that concerns us a lot. That means exactly one hundred thousand bucks to us, so it’s what you might call, the hundred-thousand-dollar mistake. I’m going to miss her, too. I go to all her pictures. All of them.”
    He sat down again, in no hurry to go. Dmitri stared at Tony in abject misery, and Tony stared at Mr. Layton, a look in his eye that one sees in the eye of a Siberian tiger. After a long time, Dmitri looked over and said: “Look here, old man. It’s ridiculous. It’s quite ridiculous. It was an accident, we all know it was an accident. I was there. He died in my arms. Just the same, nobody wants any trouble. Can’t we make a deal? Can’t—”
    “Hey, hey, hey!” Mr. Layton jumped up as though he had been shot, and said: “Don’t you talk to me about any deal. Not to me! ”
    “Why not?” Tony’s tone was savage.
    “Weren’t you talking about laws?”
    “Laws? What do you care about laws? All you’re thinking about is money. O. K., so it’s dead open-and-shut. Why don’t you make a deal? It’s like Mr. Spiro says, you’re talking through your hat, there’s been no crime. But she’s a big picture actress and your measly hundred grand don’t mean half as much to her as not having any mess. Well, suppose they agree to tear up your policies? What do you care? Don’t that let you out?”
    Mr. Layton had a wild, instinctive notion that Mr. Gans, if he had been present, would have made a deal. But he had got a great deal further than he had even dreamed was possible, and his only clear idea was that he had to get out of there, that he had no authority to make a deal and that he had to consult Mr. Gans. Then, probably a deal would still be possible. Blandly he asked Tony: “Where’s Ethel?”
    “What’s Ethel got to do with it?”
    “Ethel saw something today.”
    “Such as, what?”
    “I don’t exactly know. Mighty pretty girl, Ethel is. Part Indian.”
    Tony’s pasty pallor, as well as Dmitri’s soft look of complete collapse, told him quite a lot. Mr. Layton added: “She’s not coming back to work, I guess. She’s a little worried, though I can’t imagine what for.” Then, to Spiro: “I’d talk to Ethel, if I were you. She’ll be in the lobby of Shoreham’s hotel at seven o’clock.”
    He picked up his hat, and there was a tense, strained silence.