Free Laura (Femmes Fatales) by Vera Caspary

this town. How could he get away with it?”
    “Sawed-off shotguns are carried by gangsters,” I observed. “At least according to the education I’ve received at that fount of popular learning, the movies.”
    “Did Laura know any gangsters?”
    “In a way, McPherson, we’re all gangsters. We all have our confederates and our sworn foes, our loyalties and our enmities. We have our pasts to shed and our futures to protect.”
    “In the advertising business they use different weapons,” he observed.
    “If a man were desperate, might he not sacrifice sportsmanship for the nonce and step out of his class? And tell me, McPherson, just how does one saw off a sawed-off shotgun?”
    My plea for practical information was disregarded. Mark became guarded again. I spoke of the insurance policy.
    “Shelby’s eagerness to tell you about it was undoubtedly a device for disarming you with his charming frankness.”
    “I’ve thought of that.”
    The music changed. My hand, holding a wineglass, was stayed on its journey to my lips. My face was drained of color. In the bewildered countenance of my companion I caught a reflection of my pallor.
    Yellow hands slid coffee cups across the table. At the next table a woman laughed. The moon had lost its battle with the clouds and retreated, leaving no trace of copper brilliance in the ominous sky. The air had grown heavier. In the window of a tenement a slim girl stood, her angular dark silhouette sharpened by a naked electric bulb.
    At the table on our left a woman was singing:
    So I smile and say,
    When a lovely flame dies,
    Smoke gets in your eyes.
    Fixing offended eyes upon her face, I spoke in my courtliest tones. “Madame, if you would spare the eardrums of one who heard Tamara introduce that enchanting song, you will restrain your clumsy efforts at imitation.”
    She made a remark and gesture which, lest my readers be squeamish, I shall not describe. Mark’s eyes were fixed on my face with the squinting attentiveness of a scientist at a microscope.
    I laughed and said hastily: “That melody is significant. Common as it has become, it has never lost a peculiarly individual flavor. Jerry Kern has never surpassed it, you know.”
    “The first time you heard it you were with Laura,” Mark said.
    “How astute of you!”
    “I’m getting used to your ways, Mr. Lydecker.”
    “You shall be rewarded,” I promised, “by the story of that night.”
    “Go on.”
    “It was in the fall of ’33, you know, that Max Gordon put on the show, Roberta , book by Hammerstein Junior after a novel by Alice Duer Miller. Trivia, of course, but, as we know, there is no lack of sustenance in whipped cream. It was Laura’s first opening night. She was excited to no end, her eyes burning like a child’s, her voice rising in adolescent squeaks as I pointed out this and that human creature who had been, until that night, magic names to the little girl from Colorado Springs. She wore a gown of champagne-colored chiffon and jade-colored slippers. Extraordinarily effective with her eyes and hair.
    “‘Laura, my precious babe,’ I said to her, ‘we shall drink to your frock in champagne.’ It was her first taste of it, McPherson. Her pleasure gave me the sensation that God must know when He transforms the blasts of March into the melting winds of April.
    “Add to this mood a show which is all glitter and chic, and top it with the bittersweet froth of song, throatily sung by a Russian girl with a guitar. I felt a small warmth upon my hand, and then, as the song continued, a pressure that filled me with swelling ecstasy. Do you think this a shameful confession? A man of my sort has many easy emotions—I have been known to shout with equal fervor over the Beethoven Ninth or a penny lollypop—but few great moments. But I swear to you, McPherson, in this simple sharing of melody we had attained something which few achieve in the more conventional attitudes of affection.
    “Her eyes were swimming.