would find it impossible to be faithful to anything or anyone. He imagined that he was a good sportsman, but he would cheat rather than lose a game. He even thought that he was an idealist and yet I've never known any one with less ideals.
'He had two main troubles - money and women. He had to have both, and I don't think that he was awfully particular about either. He was spasmodic in his business - one week he would be very industrious and the next let everything go.
'He got tired quickly. He couldn't stick, and if anything needed concentration or real thinking he would quit.
'I believe he had a good business organisation. Burdell was the clever, efficient one as regards work. I believe that he was the one who made the money when it was made. Granworth was a gambler. He had to try for bigger and bigger money all the time, and the result was that very often we were broke and then, suddenly, he'd make some money and all would be well.'
She gets up outa the chair, and walks over to the french windows. She stands there lookin' out. She looked as miserable as hell.
'He was weak, nervous, and excitable,' she went on, 'and he was untrustworthy. I had ideas for a long while that he had been running around with women, but I thought that they were the usual sort of women that men like Granworth went for - chorines and such like. It didn't matter to me anyhow because during the last three years of our married life we were practically strangers to each other. I saw him occasionally and as often as not he was drunk.
'Then, quite suddenly, he made this quarter of a million. And he seemed to take a pull at himself. He told me that he was giving me the two hundred thousand Dollar Bonds so that I should know that there was something for our future. He said he was going to start over again; that he was going to think ahead and maybe we could string along together like we had in the old days when we were first married. He seemed so sincere that I almost believed him.'
I light myself a cigarette.
'If you knew that he was runnin' around with dames,' I say, 'then why was you so burned up when you got this unsigned letter from this guy who said that Granworth was runnin' around with a dame, an' that he was goin' to get nasty about it? Didn't it look a bit funny to you that this guy should write you about it. Didn't you wonder why he didn't write an' tell Granworth to lay off?'
She turns around.
'The answer to both those questions is the same,' she says. 'Granworth knew that whilst his love affairs were confined to people who didn't matter, that I wasn't fearfully interested in either him or them, but I had told him that if he made any scandal or caused any more annoyance or bother to me that I would divorce him.
'He didn't like the idea of divorce and so he kept his so-called love affairs out of my existence. It seemed to me that the man who wrote me that unsigned letter might have told Granworth that if he didn't stop fooling around with his wife he would write to me.
'When I got the letter I was furious. I was even more furious when I telephoned Granworth about it from Conneticut and he seemed quite disinterested in what I had to say.
I was amazed at the change in his attitude after all the protestations I had heard such a short while before. I made up my mind that either he would give up this woman or I would divorce him.'
She smiles as if she was rememberin' somethin'.
'I suppose that I'm like most women,' she says. 'In the first place I thought I could make something of Granworth. I suppose every woman who marries a weak type of man thinks that she can improve him. We are all would-be reformers.'
I grin.
'You're tellin' me,' I crack at her. 'That's why the bad guys get such a break. If a guy is a good sorta guy women ain't interested in him much. If he's a bad egg then they think that they oughta get out an' start reformin' him.
'I'm tellin' you dames are the funniest things,' I tell her. 'I once knew a dame in Illinois an' she was for reformin' some guy that she was stuck on. This guy usta drink a coupla bottles of rye every day an' she reckoned that she'd gotta stop this before she married him. She said she wasn't goin' to marry no rye vat.
'OK. Welt I met this dame two years later. She had got so interested in reformin' this guy that she'd taken up drinkin' rye an' she could drink him under the table any day. He was sore because he said if she'd only left him alone in the first place he woulda been dead through drinkin' hooch by now an' out of trouble, but he'd got so fed up with watchin' his wife drink that he was considerin' turnin' prohibitionist. It just showed me that the reformin' gag don't always work out the way it seems to the reformers.'
I give myself another cigarette.
'So you don't like Granworth,' I say. 'That's what it boils down to, don't it? Say, Henrietta, what sorta guy do you like? Are you sure that you wasn't stuck on some other guy yourself? This eternal triangle bezusus can be played two ways you know!'
The smile goes off her face. She looks durn serious at me, an' she walks over an' stands lookin' down at me where I am sittin'.
'You listen to this, Mr 'G' man,' she says. 'I've never been really interested in any man in my life until now - just when it's not likely to be of the slightest use to me.'
I grin.
'I don't get you, lady,' I tell her. 'This Maloney is a good guy. He'd probably make you a swell husband.'
She smiles at me.
'I wasn't thinking of Maloney,' she says. 'I was thinking of you.'
I am hit for a home run. I get up an' stand there lookin' at her. She don't bat an eyelid. She just stands there lookin' at me smilin'.
'You're the only sort of person in the man line who's ever meant a thing to me,' she says. 'If I ever thought about Jim Maloney, it was because I know he's straight and a good friend.'
She steps a little bit closer.
'I think that you're a swell man,' she goes on, 'and you're tough and very much cleverer than you allow people to believe. If you want to know exactly what I think about you, here it is!'
She takes a step forward an' she puts both her arms around my neck an' she kisses me, an' boy, can that dame kiss or can she? I stand there like I was poleaxed. I am wonderin' to myself whether this is a pipe dream or whether it is really happenin', an' all the while at the back of all this comes the idea that this Henrietta is puttin' on one big act because she thinks that I am workin' up to a pinch an' she imagines maybe that she can play me for a mug.
I don't say a word. She turns around an' goes to the table an' pours out another shot of the Kentucky. She brings it over an' she hands it to me. Her eyes are smilin', an' she can hardly keep herself from laughin' outright.
'That scared you, didn't it?' she says. 'I guess I'm the first woman to ever scare the great Lemmy Caution. Well, here's your drink and after you've had it, you can be on your way.'
I sink the whisky.
'I'm goin',' I tell her, 'but before I get outa here I wanta tell you somethin', an' it's this. I think you're a swell baby. You got everything an' you know all the answers. I could go for a dame like you in a big way, an' maybe forget where I was while I was doin' it. But if you think that a big kissin' act is goin' to get you outa this jam you're in, you're wrong. I been kissed before - plenty, an' I like it. I am also very fond of dames in general, but, lady, if I make up my mind to pinch you in this business then all the kissin' in the world ain't goin' to save you. So get that behind them sweet eyes of yours.'
She laughs.
'You're telling me,' she says, imitating the way I talk. 'That's what I like about you. Well, goodnight, Lemmy. Come around some more when you've got the handcuffs ready.'
An' with this crack she walks outa the room an' leaves me there with a glass in my hand.
I scram. I go outside an' start up the car, an' ease off towards Palm Springs. I am doin' a lotta heavy thinkin', but believe it or not the way that dame kissed me has got me in a spin.
There is another thing that is stickin' out a coupla feet an' that is that this Henrietta is a clever number. She
