Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

She sat down again in the chair and motioned the attendant. Everyone was standing around in a big half-circle taking it all in. “Take me to my husband—” she said, and lifted up her head proudly for me to see what she thought of him.

I could have stopped her by using force; that was the only way. Dragged her back with me to the city against her will, turned it into a sort of legal kidnaping. What was the use? She would have only beat it right back to him again, probably, the first chance she got. I couldn’t arrest him, while she was right with him, without dragging her name into it, spreading her all over the papers, making a hash out of her future.

So I just stayed there hunched on the railing, with my face tingling, while the darky pivoted her chair around to start back with her. “I’ll be at the St. Charles, Betty,” I muttered hoarsely, “and you’ll find a telephone installed in that house of yours when you move in tonight, whether you like it or not.”

The last thing she said was, “I don’t want to see you or hear from you again, you’re going to apologize to me on your bended knees first, before I have anything more to do with you—!”

“I’ll be at the St. Charles, Betty,” I said again, more loudly than before, “remember that, when you feel his hands closing around your throat. It’ll be too late, then!”

And as the darky guiding her chair lost himself in the throng moving along the Boardwalk, I didn’t give a damn about the people standing there watching me, I hid my face in my two hands.

Chapter VI Trapped Related by Betty

He was as good as his word; I was alone in the house, unpacking Frank’s things, which had been sent on from the city, when a man came to install the phone. Frank, who had come over with me when we checked out of the hotel, had gone out again only a short while before, to the station to get a refund on our round-trip tickets, he’d said. Now that we were staying down here, there was no reason the railroad company shouldn’t return our fares, he’d remarked. Personally I thought it could have waited; it was only a matter of fourteen-odd dollars, the tickets had been good for sixty days, and one or both of us might have found occasion to use them within that time. But I didn’t argue the point with him. It never occurred to me that, since brides usually don’t carry their own money with them on their honeymoon, I hadn’t fourteen cents with me to get back on, much less fourteen dollars; I was stranded away from home down here. But why should such a thing have occurred to me? One isn’t stranded with one’s own husband; wherever he is, is home. He’d said he’d be back in about an hour.

If he’d been there with me when this phone-man came, I’d undoubtedly have Lad my way; there wouldn’t have been any phone put in. The idea of Ritchie butting into our personal affairs this way! I was still humiliated and furious at the beastly way he’d behaved on the Boardwalk, but a good deal of the edge had already been taken off my resentment. However, I was there alone, and this phone-man was one of these roughnecks who just barged in without so much as a “by your leave” and paid no more attention to me than if I were a stick of furniture!

I went chasing after him. “Here!” I said, “Where are you going with all those tools? We’ve made no application for a phone!”

“Oh, yes, you have, lady!” he grunted. “Paid your deposit and everything! I’ve got my orders, and it’s a rush-job!” And he went right ahead. This was Ritchie’s work, of course; he and that badge of his!

The wiring was still there from the phone the last people had had in the house; the whole thing only took him about ten minutes. He simply detached the sound-box from the baseboard where it was clamped and screwed it on again inside the clothes-closet opening of the hall. “Here!” I gasped, “Who ever heard of a telephone inside a clothes-closet!”

“I’ve got my orders,” he repeated stubbornly, and took out a pencil-diagram of the lay-out to show me. I recognized Ritchie’s handwriting on the margin; he’d evidently copied a floor-plan of our house from the real-estate office. I was nearly speechless for a minute, but in Frank’s absence there didn’t seem to be anything I could do, short of running out and getting a policeman. And our house was situated in such an isolated spot...

“You can install it,” I said, “but we’re not paying a cent—”

“That’s all right,” he said. “All charges have been paid up thirty days in advance.” And he ran the wiring very cleverly under the closet-door, hooked-up the instrument to it that he’d brought with him, put it down on the floor in the dark, tested it by calling the central office, brushed his hands, and departed. I followed him to the door. “Just wait’ll my husband hears about this!” I called after him helplessly.

“That reminds me,” he grinned, and handed me a sealed note. I gave him a dirty look, tore it open and read it.