With her coffee the waiter brought the morning paper. She turned at once to the dramatic section, thinking that she might read Gil’s name in some press agent’s notice. And thus-she learned that Jackstraw had closed on the previous Saturday night.
It was the final irony. After all she had given to it, she had not seen a single performance of Gil’s play.
Forlornly she followed a porter through the cold station, and rode to her apartment alone in a drafty cab. The day was miserable. Rain streaked the taxi windows so that she could not even enjoy Fifth Avenue’s brilliance. As soon as she got into her apartment, while the shades were still drawn and the radiators cold, she telephoned Gil. A switchboard operator’s nasal voice informed her that Mr. Jones had given up his apartment.
She called Nancy. Her cousin uttered condolences on the death of Phyllis’s husband, and Phyllis consoled Nancy on the death of her play.
Phyllis said, “How’s Gil taking it?”
“Bearing up bravely, looking for a new part.”
“I must let him know I’m back.”
There was a long silence. A happy thought entered Phyllis’s mind. Should Gil want to put on another show, there need be no long, agonizing search for a backer. Fred was no longer alive to remind Phyllis that she could not expect the privileges that Nancy enjoyed; the money Fred had put into insurance would back Gil’s new play. She was so eager to speak to Gil, to console him with her golden promise, that she paid little attention to Nancy’s unnatural silence.
She did not like to confess to Nancy that she was ignorant of Gil’s whereabouts, and she decided to call his agent instead. She was very fortunate, for Gil had just come into the office. He also expressed sympathy, but he could not say much else as his agent was with him. He promised to come and see her that afternoon.
She dressed carefully; used her best perfume. The failure of Jackstraw did not seem so dismal now. She was almost grateful for it, knowing that as a result of disappointment Gil would be in a soft, self-pitying mood. She sent out for a bottle of his favorite whisky, arranged it on a tray with seltzer and glasses. When there was nothing else to be done, she watched raindrops roll down the windowpane.
The doorbell rang. She sat quiet for a moment lest she betray too large a measure of eagerness, then drew a deep breath and ran to the door.
Gil was not alone. There was Nancy, too. No woman who was not a millionaire would have appeared in public in such an old, streaked raincoat. She had on galoshes and had a green scarf tied around her head.
Gil took both of Phyllis’s hands, gazed deep into her eyes. “Well, dear,” he said, in a thick voice. They held hands until Nancy spoke sharply. “I wish you’d help me with these boots, Gil.”
He turned to help Nancy. “We were sorry to hear about Fred.”
“Thank you,” said Phyllis.
Nancy took her wet things into the bathroom. For a couple of minutes Phyllis and Gil were alone. Neither spoke. They were aware of rain dripping against the window and the sizzling of steam in the radiator.
When Nancy came back, she asked, “Have you told her, Gil?”
He shook his head.
“You might as well know, Phyllis. Gil and I are married.”
Phyllis handed around drinks, then raised her own. “To your happiness,” she said, and finished the highball before she put down the glass. She saw the look of triumph in Nancy’s eyes.
Gil and Nancy soon left; but on Saturday of that week Nancy happened to be in the neighborhood of Phyllis’s apartment and stopped in. Phyllis was not at home, and Nancy said that she would wait. She read a magazine, washed her face, and used the telephone, which was in Phyllis’s room between the twin beds. Before she went, she wrote a note begging Phyllis to dine with them the following Tuesday. Phyllis found it on the bed table, tore it into small pieces, and threw it into the wastebasket.
“No use being a hypocrite about it,” Phyllis remarked several weeks later when she told the story to Mike Jordan.
On the Tuesday of Nancy’s dinner party Gil was called to the telephone by Phyllis’s maid, who told them that Mrs. Miller had been taken to the hospital. When she came to work that morning, the maid said, she had found Mrs. Miller unconscious in her bed. The doctor thought at first that she had taken an overdose of sleeping medicine, but an analysis showed that she had been poisoned. It was a poison that worked slowly and the dose had been insufficient.
Gil suffered extravagant remorse. It was only natural for him to blame himself for the poor girl’s attempt at suicide. As soon as she was allowed visitors he visited her at the hospital. She was sitting up in bed, looking very frail and gentle in a white maribou jacket with enormous sleeves.
She held out both hands. He took them. They were cold and so soft that there seemed no bones under the thin flesh. His eyes filled as he bent over to kiss her.
She looked up at him with burning eyes and whispered, “Someone tried to kill me, Gil.”
His hands dropped. He moved away and stared as though he were looking at a ghost. She shook her head and repeated the astonishing statement. “You don’t believe I’d have done such a thing myself?” she asked. “You know me so well, Gil, you know I’m not brave enough for that.”
It was discovered later that five or six poisoned capsules had been placed in the box with her sleeping pills...
The telephone rang again. New York Operator Forty assured Mr. Jordan that she was still working on his call. When he came back to the patio, he said, “I’m thirsty, Lissa; may I have a drink?”
We went into the kitchen, which was on the east side of the house, and about twelve degrees cooler than the patio. I got out some cheese and crackers, and we sat with our drinks in the breakfast nook.
“Had someone tried to murder Phyllis, or was that merely an excuse because she was ashamed to admit that she had tried suicide?” I asked.
“Wait,” Mike said. He was a playwright, and as keenly as he felt this story, he was still too much of a technician to give away the climax before recounting the events that led to it.
He finished his drink and held out his empty glass to me. While I squeezed a lemon, he began the final chapter...
A few months later Mike Jordan came to New York on a Hollywood writer’s holiday. He had a suite in an expensive hotel and went to night clubs at which he would never before have dreamed of spending money. He saw both Phyllis and Nancy, and each told him in precise detail her separate story.
Phyllis was being frightfully gay at this time, spending Fred Miller’s money wildly and surrounding herself with good-looking young men. She had become extremely chic. This Mike thought was an affectation. Like so many bored women, she was seeking compensation for the dullness of her nights by exhibiting herself in costumes whose extravagance advertised her loneliness.
Frequently at parties or the theater she met Gil and Nancy. They and all of their friends dutifully appeared at all the smart places and saw the same people over and over again. To show that she bore them no malice, she invited Mr. and Mrs. Jones to a couple of her big parties, and Nancy returned the hospitality by inviting Phyllis to dine... with seven other guests, four of them male and attractive.
For a few months Gil and Nancy considered themselves the happiest couple in town. Nancy thought her husband the handsomest man in the world and herself an extremely fortunate woman. Gil was good-natured and disinclined to quarrel, and as long as his wife admired him, he was indulgent of her moods. The one subject on which they could not agree was the story Phyllis had told him about the poisoned sleeping pills. Gil still believed that someone had tried to murder Phyllis, and Nancy held to her theory that this was an excuse to cover an unsuccessful attempt at suicide.