They Call Me Patrice

“No,” she said fiercely, “you’re not the kind who would overlook anything like that, you vicious leech! Haven’t you done enough to me? What are you trying to do, drive me completely out of my mind?”

His manner changed abruptly, tightened. “Get in,” he said crisply. “I want to talk to you. I’ll drive you around for a quarter of an hour or so.”

“I can’t ride with you. How can you ask me to do that?”

“We can’t just stand still in this one place, talking it over. That’s far worse. We’ve done that twice already. We can circle the lake drive once or twice, there’s no one on it at this hour and no stops. Turn your collar up across your mouth.”

“Why are you holding the check? What are you meaning to do?”

“Wait until we get there,” he said. Then when they had, he answered her, coldly, dispassionately, as though there had been no interruption.

“I’m not interested in five hundred dollars.”

She was beginning to lose her head. Her inability to fathom his motives was kindling her to panic. “Give the check back to me, then, and I’ll give you more. I’ll give you a thousand. Only, give it back to me.”

“I don’t want to be given more. I don’t want to be given any amount. Don’t you understand? I want the money to belong to me, in my own right.”

Her face was suddenly stricken white. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say to me?”

“I think you’re beginning to get it, by the look on your face.” He fumbled in his pocket, took out something. An envelope, already sealed and stamped for mailing. “You asked me where the check was. It’s in here. Here, read the address. No, don’t take it out of my hand. Just read it from where you are.”

“Mr. Donald Hazzard

Hazzard and Loring

Empire Building

Caulfield”

“No—” She couldn’t articulate, could only shake her head convulsively.

“I’m mailing it to him at his office, where you can’t intercept it.” He returned it to his pocket. “The last mail collection, here in Caulfield, is at nine each night. You may not know that, but I’ve been making a study of those things recently. There’s a mailbox on Pomeroy Street, just a few feet from where I’ve been parking the last few times I’ve met you. It’s dark and inconspicuous around there, and I’ll use that one. It takes the carrier until nine-fifteen to reach it, however. I’ve timed him several nights in a row and taken the average.”

He silenced her with his hand, went on: “Now, if you reach there before the carrier does, this envelope stays out of the chute. If you’re not there yet when he arrives, I drop it in. You have a day’s grace, until nine-fifteen tomorrow night.”

“But what do you want me to be there for—? You said you didn’t want more—”

“We’re going to take a ride out to Hastings — that’s the next town over the state line. I’m taking you to a justice of the peace there, and he’s going to make us man and wife all over again.”

He slowed the car as her head lurched back against the top of the seat for a moment.

“I didn’t think they swooned any more—” he began. Then as he saw her straighten again with an effort he added: “Oh, I see they don’t. They just get a little dizzy, is that it?”

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked in a smothered voice.

“There are several good reasons. It would be a good deal safer, from my point of view, than the basis we’ve been going on so far. There’s no chance of anything backfiring. A wife, the law books say, cannot testify against her husband. That means that any lawyer worth his fee can whisk you off the stand before you can so much as open your mouth. Then there are more practical considerations. The old couple aren’t going to be around forever, you know. The old lady’s life is hanging by a thread. And the old man won’t last any time without her. Old Faithful, I know the type. When they go, you and Bill are due to inherit a sockful of money. Don’t look so horrified: it stands to reason they’d take care of their dead son’s wife and their only grandson. I can wait a year until that happens, or even two or three. The law gives a husband one-third of his wife’s property. Half of — I may be underestimating, but roughly I’d say four hundred thousand, that’s two hundred thousand. And then a third of that again— Don’t cover your ears like that, Patrice. You look like someone out of a Marie Corelli novel.”

He braked the car. “You can get out here, Patrice. This is close enough.” And then he chuckled a little, watching her flounder to the pavement. “Are you sure you’re able to walk? I wouldn’t want to have them think I’d plied you with—”

The last thing he said was, “Make sure your clock isn’t slow, Patrice. Because the United States mail is always on time.”

It seemed hours they’d been driving like this, in silence yet acutely aware of one another. They passed a self-lighted white sign, placed so that it could be read as you came up to it. It said “Welcome to Hastings.”

“That’s across the state line,” he remarked. “Travel broadens one, they say.”

He turned up one of Hastings’ side-streets and stopped in front of a dimly lit house.