which was something she had given up after she married Marvin.
He went on up the drive to the last turn where he could see the lower front of the house clearly, and there he stopped again.
There was a car standing in the darkness under the porte cochere directly in front. For a brief moment he was irritated by the sight of it there. Ellie knew how he felt about automobiles. He always said that garages were built to protect cars from the damp night air, and he never allowed one to sit out at night.
He stepped closer and his irritation vanished and turned into something else. It was neither his sedan nor Ellie’s coupe that stood in front of his house. It was a convertible with the top down and with lots of bright chrome.
He took two more hesitant steps forward and stopped again. He recognized the convertible. It belonged to Harry. Harry Wilsson. One of their closest neighbors, and Marvin’s best friend in Sunray.
3
He stood there in the night, petrified and disbelieving, staring at the convertible parked in front of his house, knowing there must be some mistake.
Oh, it was Harry Wilsson’s car all right. There was no mistake about that. There were only two or three convertibles in Sunray, and Marvin had sold this one to Harry Wilsson himself about two months ago. They had argued together good-naturedly about the trade-in value of the Dodge sedan that Harry was turning in on it, and Marvin had ended up by giving his good friend a deal that had left him with almost no profit on the transaction.
But he knew there must be some mistake about its being there at his house tonight. That is, some simple and reasonable explanation. His first thought was that Harry and Minerva had dropped over to spend the evening with Ellie and cheer her up on the last night her husband was away from home. That was a perfectly natural thing to think. The couples visited back and forth together quite informally all the time.
But why was the light on only in Ellie’s bedroom and the rest of the house dark?
Well, he thought, maybe it was just Minerva who had come over for the evening. It was perfectly natural that the two women might have taken a drink up to the bedroom to relax and have a session of female talk.
But why hadn’t Minerva driven her own Plymouth coupe if that was it? Harry was funny and very possessive about his new convertible. He didn’t trust Minerva to drive it because she was a careless driver and was always scraping a fender or smashing a headlight in minor accidents. Marvin distinctly remembered an on-the-surface laughing but under-the-surface acrimonious discussion about that very thing between the Wilssons the night after Harry brought his new convertible home.
So there had to be some other answer.
What was it?
Suppose Sissy were sick and the Wilssons had come over to help. Maybe that was why they were all upstairs in the bedroom and the rest of the house dark.
But there was no light showing in Sissy’s bedroom. Marvin Blake stood in his own driveway not more than thirty feet from the house staring up at the shaded bedroom window and straining his ears to pick up some sound. But the house was shrouded in utter silence. And it was awful funny to see the shades drawn at the bedroom window, too. It was quite a warm night and their house was so secluded that no passerby could look into the upstairs rooms, and Marvin couldn’t remember those shades ever being drawn at night before.
He stood there looking helplessly up at the shaded windows and hearing no sound from within the bedroom. All he had to do was walk up to his own front door and put his key in the latch and open the door and shout up the stairs, “Yoo-hoo, Ellie. It’s me. Marv. I’m home.”
That’s all he had to do. Simplest thing in the world. So, why didn’t he do it? Why did he stand there like a ninny, transfixed, his heart beating queerly, his mouth dry and his stomach churning?
Because he thought for a moment there was anything wrong inside his house? Because he was afraid of what might be going on behind the drawn shades in that bedroom? Because he even remotely suspected the possibility that Ellie and Harry… that Ellie and Harry might…?
Oh God, no! He shook himself like a man emerging from a trance. What a foul and nasty mind he had! To even think that of Ellie. Or Harry either. Harry was his best and most-trusted friend. He’d no more think of a thing like that than…
And Ellie! Good God, he knew Ellie, didn’t he? She was his wife. She was Sissy’s mother. She loved him. She’d no more do that with Harry than she’d…
Well, all he had to do was walk in the front door and prove that he had a foul and nasty mind.
That was all he had to do.
But suppose…?
If he did walk in the front door the stairs leading up would be right in front of him and there’d be no back way out for Harry if he was upstairs with Ellie. The two of them would be cornered if he walked in the front door.
He had a revolver. It was loaded and ready to shoot and it rested handy in the top drawer of the bureau right there in the hall.
He could go in quietly and get the gun out and then go upstairs and see what was what.
Suppose Harry were there with Ellie?
He could shoot them both. It was the unwritten law that he could.
Not Ellie!
Yes, Ellie, too. Didn’t his manhood demand it?
Damn his manhood and the unwritten law! What was he thinking about? Because it wasn’t so. None of it was so. There was some other explanation for Harry’s car being there and a single light on in the bedroom behind drawn shades and the silence. All he had to do was walk in the front door and find out what the real explanation was.
He couldn’t walk in the front door.
He didn’t believe any of it for a moment, but he couldn’t put it to the test.
Because, supposing it were so? What would he do then?
He couldn’t be an outraged husband and start shooting to protect his honor. It simply wasn’t in him to do that.
There was the detached and dignified approach, of course. Something like: “Sorry to break in on you two like this, but I simply didn’t know how it was with you. It’s all right, Ellie. If you prefer Harry to me, why should I stand in your way? I’ll expect custody of Sissy, of course. And I’ll expect you to do the honorable thing by her, Harry old boy.”
No. Marvin knew that wasn’t for him either. So, what could he do?
God, he thought helplessly, if only he hadn’t come home tonight. If only there’d been some warning. If only he had known he shouldn’t come unexpectedly and had telephoned Ellie from Miami.
Well, he could turn away now and slip back to the station without being seen and catch that late train back to Miami, and then come back tomorrow afternoon on schedule… and he would never need to know.
Could he do that? Could he stand to go on living with Ellie without knowing? He could never ask Ellie. He could never admit to her that he had come home tonight and seen Harry’s car outside and turned away because he suspected something bad.
No, he couldn’t go on living without knowing for sure. First, he had to know what the truth was. After that he could decide what to do, how to live with it.
He shrank back into the shadow of the hibiscus hedge and set his suitcase down very carefully so as to make no sound. Then he lowered his weight down on it and buried his face in his hands.
He told himself angrily that he had a dirty mind. If he trusted Ellie at all… if their marriage vows meant anything to him… he would go boldly up to the front door and at least ring the bell and give Ellie a chance to come down and explain the situation.
Ellie deserved that much trust. Where was his faith in her? Didn’t he know she loved him? He was a lousy bastard to let himself suspect for one single moment that Ellie would do anything wrong. He was surely going to hate himself when it all came out in a simple and innocent explanation.
All right, he told himself fiercely, so he would hate himself. But he knew he would hate himself more if he
