Free Eleven by Patricia Highsmith Page A

they found she was hoarding her money, they came and found it and took it, for the truth was they didn’t trust their own doorman when it came to taking bribes. She threatened to kill herself, and she meant it, so they sent her to Chattanooga with two other girls in a car, to a hotel owned by a partner of the Star Hotel manager. If anybody didn’t believe her, let them go to Chattanooga and see the Blackstone Hotel standing there for themselves. Let them go inside and look around. She got so run down at the Blackstone, they sent her back to the Star Hotel. It worked this way: there was a whole syndicate all over the South, and wherever business was heavy, they shipped girls, or if they thought a girl was about to make a break, they shipped her where she didn’t know anyone.
    Geraldine sat up at the knock on the door.
    “Got everything you need?” called the frail, high voice of the landlady.
    “Yes—” She swallowed air, and her heart beat wildly. “Thank you.”
    “There’s ice water in the pitcher on the dresser. Hope you weren’t asleep, didn’t see no light.”
    “No, I wasn’t asleep,” said Geraldine, beginning to smile.
    “Awful early,” said the woman pleasantly, sounding as if she were turning away.
    “Yes, it is.” Geraldine wished she could think of something nicer to say. “Good night,” she called, and lay down on her back, still smiling.
    And then Clark. She’d tell them about those first four visits of Clark’s to the Star Hotel and every word he said, and just let themjudge for themselves. She could still see him exactly as he looked when he stepped into her room for the first time, a really impressive man with his straight back and heavy black brows and moustache. He’d had on his square-toed boots with his trouser cuffs tucked into them and his long, nearly black jacket, and she’d thought right away he looked like some kind of a statesman or maybe an actor around the time of the Civil War. He was still and formal and hardly said a word or even looked at her until just as he went out the door, and she remembered that look like no other, because it had scared her. If she had only obeyed her instinct then! He had turned with his hand on the knob of the open door and looked back at her over his shoulder, as if he might have forgotten something or as if he wanted to remember her because he hated her. She hadn’t liked him at all, and when he came in a few days later, she’d been about to tell him to leave, when he just sat down and lighted a cigar and started talking. He wanted to know all about her, how old she was and how she happened to be there, and though his brown eyes were really quite kind, almost fatherly if it wasn’t sacrilegious to say such a thing, she’d resented his idle curiosity and not answered much.
    Then the third time, he had brought her candy, and the fourth time flowers, presenting them with a bow, and the fourth time she’d told him the whole story and cried on his shoulder when he sat down beside her, because she’d never told anyone, not even Connie Stegman, that much. “What would you say if I asked you to be my wife?” he’d asked right out of the blue. “You think it over till I come back. I’ll be back in a week.” She hadn’t believed him, but naturally she’d thought about it, about the farm he’d described in the flat country north of New Orleans, and the fancy cheeses he made for a livingand the duck-callers he made out of wood and shipped to hunters everywhere—little wooden boxes with a cover that scraped and made a sound like a duck, he’d brought her one to show her—and she’d thought what a special kind of farmer he was, not just a dirt farmer but an educated gentleman. And the girls at the hotel told her how lucky she was, for Clark Reeder was a fine man even if he was over forty and a little old-fashioned, and Margaret the hotel director had told her how many girls had found themselves good husbands that way and how often the