The Golden Calves (17 page)

“Assured you? And only some of it? And only some of her share? Is that better than having
all
of it go to the institution that her aunt surely favored in her lifetime? Is that what you intended to accomplish, Miss Vogel?”

This was followed by another stormy whispering session at the dais. Mark noted the deepening air of bewilderment on Anita's drawn countenance. Her eyes were fastened on Chessie's back and gesticulating arms. She seemed hypnotized. And he realized suddenly that Chessie had based all her tactics on the use of one terrible weapon: her assurance that Anita would tell the truth and that he wouldn't! She returned now to the witness.

“Tell me this, Miss Vogel. Did Mrs. Pinchet promise you that she would use her influence as a donor to the Colonial Museum to get you a job there looking after the Speddon things?”

“I think she did say something to that effect.”

Mark almost jumped from his seat. How in God's name had Chessie known that? Or was it a wild gamble?

“I believe you were discharged from the Museum of North America?”

“I was. But—”

"Just answer the question, please. So, Miss Vogel, in return for a job supervising a mere handful of your patroness's artifacts you were willing to manufacture testimony that would destroy her entire testamentary plan. Quite a nice little revenge, isn't it, on the museum that fired you?”

This time, in answer to Stein's outraged objections, the judge reproved Chessie. But there was no repentance in her demeanor as she continued.

"Miss Vogel, you have read the deposition of Mrs. Kay?”

“I have."

“You will have noted, then, that she is of the firm opinion that the decedent was of sound mind to the very end. Is Mrs. Kay also, in your opinion, senile?"

“Oh, no. Not at all.”

Chessie glanced significantly at the jury before continuing with a new attack.

“You have testified that Mr. Addams made love to you in an effort to worm his way into Miss Speddon's confidence. Had any other man so presumed on your affections during the time that you lived at Thirty-sixth Street?"

"At Miss Speddon's? Certainly not."

"That sounds emphatic. How long did you live there?"

"Three years.”

"A good long time. So it was unusual for a male visitor to come to the house to pay you that kind of attention?”

"Oh, yes. Most of Miss Speddon's visitors were ladies.”

"And very ladylike, I'm sure. It was an orderly household, was it not?"

"Very orderly."

“And not seeing men there, being isolated in the company of your own sex, would you say that you might have lost touch, to some extent anyway, with the usual behavior of attractive young males in society?”

"I don't think so. I wasn't always at Miss Speddon's.”

“But didn't you usually go straight to work from there and straight home from work?”

"Yes.”

“Did you ever have a date in all that time?”

"I don't suppose I did.”

“Then might it not have been possible for you to mistake the normal gallantries of a young man in society for something more serious?”

"I don't think so.”

“You don't? I suggest that your experience in romantic matters has been limited, Miss Vogel. Did you not once, before you came to Miss Speddon's, break your engagement to a man because he was unkind to a cat?"

"I wasn't engaged to him!”

“Excuse me. Did you decide not to become engaged to him because he was unkind to a cat?”

"He left it out in the street to starve!”

“Wasn't that because he had no place to keep it?”

"As if that was an excuse!”

"That will be all. Thank you, Miss Vogel.”

Mark cursed himself for having told Chessie the silly story. He even hoped the jury might contain a cat lover who would take the episode as something other than a token of Anita's inexperience with men. But what a tigress Chessie was! To remember such details, to store them away in the law library of her mind for possible use in a court to stun some helpless mouse of a witness! When Anita passed in front of his bench, he could see that she was weeping. The judge recessed for the day, and Mark slipped out of the room without speaking to anyone.

But that night Chessie called him at his apartment, victory ringing in her voice.

"Oh, Mark, I've the most wonderful news! It seems Anita Vogel went bananas in Harold Stein's office and they had to cart her off to a sanitarium. I'm sorry if I was rough with her at the deposition, but all's fair in love and litigation."

“My God, poor Anita! Is she really in a bad way?”

“Oh, it's just a fit of nerves. They say she'll be fine in a day or so,”

“Really? You
were
rough on her, Chessie.”

“Well, she started it all. She was the one who got Pinchet to sue. And you know what they say about ill winds. This one may blow us right into port.”

“You mean win the case?”

“I've already called Stein. I told him how concerned we were about Miss Vogel and that if the strain was too much for her and they wanted an honorable out, how about a settlement? How about their withdrawing their suit in return for the museum's pledge to name the new wing the Evelyn Speddon Gallery of Modern America?"

“You think they'll buy that?”

“Why not? Stein must know his case is shot. This gives his client the chance to claim a moral victory and issue a press release saying that all she really wanted was a proper recognition of what her aunt had done for the museum."

"And how will Claverack take it?”

"Well, he didn't like it. I'll tell you that. I'm sure he was planning to get his own name on that wing. But he saw that it fitted the bill. He had to go along."

"But Anita! What we've put her through.”

“What she's put
you
through! From where I sit you two are even-steven.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess there's one thing we can all agree on. That you, my dear, are a great lawyer."

“Oh, that tone! I guess I know what you think of lawyers, great or otherwise. How about coming over for a victory drink?"

He looked critically at the receiver and then shrugged. "Why not?”

She greeted him at the door, as in the old days, in pajamas under a black Chinese robe embroidered with gold flowers. In one hand she was holding a glass of champagne, which she pressed into his.

"To victory!"

"Any more word about Anita?”

She made a face. “I knew you'd ask, so I called the hospital. She's going to be fine. Just a slight collapse. She probably did it on purpose. Witnesses like that often do.”

He stood by the fireplace and pensively drank the champagne while she watched him from the divan. On the round table between them was a plate of caviar. Chessie was obviously planning more than a celebration. Well, again, why not? Didn't she deserve it? Maybe poor Anita was only the egg that had to be broken for the making of Chessie's fluffy omelette. And if Anita really was going to be all right...

“You
were
hard on her.”

“I was only doing my job. She shouldn't start things she can't finish. Don't be soppy about her, Mark. She did her best to do
you
in.”

"I guess she had some reason.”

“Well, shut up on that score. I don't want to hear any more about that.”

"Oh, you lawyers! You do keep your fingers clean. Can I have some more champagne?”

"Take the whole bottle! And there's another on the ice. Unless you prefer whiskey. Oh, Mark, just think: the museum's safe, and you're safe, and I shall have my just reward, and everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds!”

“Can this be the stern, realistic Miss Norton talking?”

"Oh, Miss Norton has her human moments. Just because she doesn't crumple up and burst into tears under cross-examination doesn't mean she has no feelings. But damn it all, let's not waste this wonderful evening talking about a drip like Vogel. Can't you and I get together again? I've missed you frightfully. There, it's out, and I'm glad of it. There hasn't been anyone since you, either. What really broke us up? What but my lousy temper? Well, you see I admit it! Come back, lover, and I'll be good, I promise."

He had never seen her so warm, so inviting. Perhaps she had been drinking before he arrived; otherwise she might not have been able to humble herself. And it began to seem to him, as he strolled across the room to replenish his glass, knowing he had plenty of time to answer her, that it might be fun to be once more in bed with this large, splendid creature and to know that her hard nipples and tossing bare limbs depended more on his organ than on her own forensic triumph. And didn't he need it? Hadn't there been enough humiliation, private and public?

"I think you may have a point.”

She jumped up. “Then what are you waiting for?”

The image in his mind, as he took her in his arms in her bed, was of the naughty little boy taking a vigorous revenge on the lady teacher. And then the image of Anita's shaking shoulders interfered, and he knew the bliss would fade away and with it his manhood, and there would be nothing, nothing at all. He tried desperately to lose himself in the generosity of Chessie's tense embrace, to become a part of her better existence. But he knew it was no use. For all her frantic and prolonged efforts it was no use.

The light by the bed flashed on. She was up and pacing the chamber, tying and tightening the belt on her long black robe.

“Get dressed and go home!”

“Chessie, it's not my fault. After what happened today—”

"I didn't say it was your fault,” she interrupted fiercely. “I know when I'm not wanted. Oh, I don't say you don't
want
to want me. You feel obliged to me. You feel sorry for me, damn you. And why shouldn't you? Big, brassy castrator that I am!” Here she actually heaved a sob. "Oh, my God, I'm getting as mushy as the Vogel woman. Get the hell out of here, will you? Get up and get dressed and get out!”

He hurried to comply. As he buckled his belt and pushed his feet into his shoes, he tried once more to assuage her. “I'll call you in the morning. You'll feel better then.”

“Don't call me. You and I are through. I prefer abrupt, clean endings. I knew this wasn't going to work. I just hadn't faced it. Well, now I have. Go!"

And he went. In the rainy street, walking home, he was surprised at his own resilience. If he had, in the past months, come to accept the fact that Chessie was right about virtually everything, maybe he could now accept the most humiliating fact of all: that she was right about him. But however humiliating, he at least had his life back—for whatever that was worth.

He found a message on his answering service when he arrived home. It was from Carol Sweeters: “You and Miss Norton should be glad to learn that the doctors have saved Anita Vogel from the overdose she had taken before arriving at the hospital. Their timely action has also saved you both from my charge of moral manslaughter."

C
AROL
went every evening, when he left his office, to see Anita in the hospital. She was calm again, but it was the calmness of detachment, perhaps of indifference. She sat immobile in her bed, her hands resting on the border of the neatly drawn spread, and gazed at him with wide eyes which seemed faintly to question his being there, but more on the ground of the loss of his time than of hers. There was a tepid friendliness in her manner that seemed to accept his status of the person most nearly interested in her fate. And she was surprisingly candid about what she had done.

“Don't worry, it won't happen again. Because the circumstances won't happen again. When Mark denied those questions about the...” She turned her eyes to the East River, rolling and turbid, below her window. She seemed to be debating, but more as a matter of taste than of emotional concern, whether she should articulate exactly what it was that Mark had denied. "You see, the whole thing was suddenly ... well, so public, so crass, so humiliating, that I simply couldn't bear it. I wanted to blot it out, at any cost. But that's over now. I think I'm on top of any feeling of shame.”

“There isn't anything to be ashamed of."

“Yes, I see that now. I can even see Mark's point of view. I see that he couldn't admit those things and have any sort of a museum career left. The suit had put him in a position where he had no alternative.”

“I wouldn't go that far.” Carol had to make an effort to keep the growl out of his tone. "It seems to me that a gentleman always has the alternative of telling the truth.”

“But what he'd done was not important enough to merit the whole truth. A kiss? A couple of kisses? Was it really lying to deny anything quite so inconsequential? What would a kiss mean to you, Carol?”

"It would mean a pleasure, anyway. Not a rung in the ladder of my ambition.”

"You've always been hard on Mark.”

“I can't not be, Anita. The guy's a prick and always will be.” As he studied her impassive countenance for a sign of the least reaction, he felt a tiny throb of hope that her troubles might have killed her last bit of feeling for the director. But had they killed everything else? Was it better to have her alive and himself jealous or both dead? In his need to push past this disturbing question he asked abruptly, “What did the doctor say today?”

“He said that if I continued to improve at this rate, I'd be able to go home in another week."

"Home?”

"Well, that's it. I don't really have one, do I? Not where I wouldn't be alone, that is. He doesn't want me to be alone. For a while, anyway.”

“How about your mother?"

"I could go there, I suppose. She came in to see me this morning and was very nice about every thing. But that seems like another world, Carol. She and I are basically strangers.”

“How about Mrs. Pinchet?”