Free Laura (Femmes Fatales) by Vera Caspary Page B

her . . .” he began in a voice of masculine omnipotence, but paused, leaving the rest unsaid.
    “What a contradictory person you are, McPherson!”
    “Contradictory!” He tossed the word into the very center of the garden. Several diners stared at us. “I’m contradictory. Well, what about the rest of you? And what about her? Wherever you turn, a contradiction.”
    “It’s the contradictions that make her seem alive to you. Life itself is contradictory. Only death is consistent.”
    With a great sigh he unburdened himself of another weighty question. “Did she ever talk to you about Gulliver ?”
    My mind leaped nimbly in pursuit. “It’s one of your favorites, too, I take it.”
    “How do you know that?” he challenged.
    “Your boasted powers of observation are failing sadly, my dear fellow, if you failed to notice that I took care to see what volume it was that you examined so scrupulously in her apartment on Sunday afternoon. I knew that book well. It was an old copy and I had it rebound for her in red morocco.”
    He smiled shyly. “I knew you were spying on me.”
    “You said nothing, because you wished to let me think it was a murder clue you sought among the Lilliputians. If it gives you pleasure, young man, I’ll confirm the hope that she shared your literary enthusiasms.”
    His gratitude was charming. I counted the days that had passed since he had spoken of Laura as a two-timing dame. Had I reminded him tonight, I dare say he would have punched my face.
    The genial combination of good food, wine, music, brandy, and sympathy had corrupted his defenses. He spoke with touching frankness. “We lived within half a mile of each other for over three years. Must have taken the same bus, the same subway, passed each other on the street hundreds of times. She went to Schwartz’s for her drugs, too.”
    “Remarkable coincidence,” I said.
    The irony was lost. He had surrendered.
    “We must have passed each other on the street often.”
    It was a slender morsel of consolation he had found among all the grim facts. I resolved then and there to write about this frustrated romance, so fragile and so typical of New York. It was the perfect O. Henry story. I can hear old Sydney Porter coughing himself into a fever over it.
    “Wonderful ankles,” he muttered, half-aloud. “The first thing I look at is the ankles. Wonderful.”
    They had turned off the music and most of the diners had left the garden. A couple passed our table. The girl, I noted, had remarkable ankles. Mark did not turn his head. He dwelt, for that brief moment, in the fancy of a meeting at Schwartz’s drugstore. He had been buying pipe tobacco and she had put a dime into the postage-stamp machine. She might have dropped her purse. Or perhaps there had been a cinder in her eye. She had uttered but a single word, “Thanks,” but for him sweet bells jangled and the harps of heaven were joined in mighty paean. A glance at her ankles, a meeting of their eyes, and it was as simple as with Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullavan.
    “Have you ever read my story of Conrad?” I inquired.
    My question interrupted the schoolboy reverie. He regarded me with a desolate glance.
    “It is a legend told over port and cigars at Philadelphia dining tables some seventy-five years ago, and whispered in softer tones over tapestry frames and macramé work. The story has of late been attributed to me, but I take no credit. What I am telling is a tale whose only basis of truth lies in its power over stolid folk celebrated for their honest and lack of imagination. I refer to the Amish of Pennsylvania.
    “Conrad was one of these. A stalwart, earthy lad more given to the cultivation of rutabagas than to flights of superstitious fancy. One day as he worked in the field, he heard a great crash upon the road. Running, hoe in hand, he came upon the confusion attendant upon an accident. A vegetable cart had collided with a smart carriage. To his great surprise Conrad