Gulick was opening the office. He seemed glad to see me.
“Did they find out who did it?” he asked awkwardly.
I went in and sat down on a desk where I could watch the loan office across the street. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. They had some kind of pipe dream I was the one until we finally got it straightened out that I was at the fire.”
He fidgeted, looking down at his shoes. “I know,” he said unhappily. “They were here Saturday, asking about you. I told ‘em just what happened as well as I could remember. I hope you don’t think I had any idea like that—“
“Of course not,” I said. “How was business?”
He looked a little more cheerful. “Good. The paper came out yesterday, with the ad. A lot of people have been in.”
“Excuse me,” I broke in. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She was coming along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, very fresh and lovely in the early morning sunlight.
When she saw me crossing towards her she stopped, shyness and confusion and a very warm sort of happiness all, mixed up in her face.
I came up and took her arm. She was still looking up at me. “Hello,” I said.
“Are you all right, Harry?” she asked eagerly. “I mean, is everything all right? I’ve been half crazy. Nobody knew anything, and I couldn’t find out anything.”
“It’s all right now,” I said. “It was just a mistake. We got it straightened out.” Somehow, the lies didn’t seem to matter. I wasn’t really lying, not about anything between the two of us. I was just protecting her from something she had no connection with and which would hurt her if she knew the truth.
“It was an awful thing for them to do,” she said, and suddenly her eyes were full of anger. I’d never seen her that way before. “Wait’ll I get hold of that Jim Tate. I’ll tell him what I think of him.”
“He wouldn’t mind,” I said. “Not if he could look at you while you’re telling him.”
“Well, I’d tell him anyway,” she said defiantly, and then all the vehemence went out of her and she was just confused and happy. “You’re teasing me.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not teasing you.” That terrific awareness of her began to get the best of me, and I wanted to take hold of her and kiss her so badly my arms hurt. She must have seen it in my face.
“Harry, I have to get to work!” she said hurriedly.
I walked with her up to the door. She unlocked it, and paused a moment in the doorway. “Sometime in the next year or so it’ll be five o’clock,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
She smiled. “I think it could be arranged.”
Somehow the day wore on. The hours dragged, but never did come to a complete standstill. We were busy, which helped a little. About three o’clock I drove back on to the lot after a short ride with a farmer who wanted a demonstration, and saw her come out of the office across the street and start up the sidewalk. I stopped in the middle of my sales pitch when I saw who was with her. It was Sutton.
The farmer hemmed and hawed and reckoned he’d have to think it over a little more. “Sure,” I said impatiently. “O.K. O.K.” I could still see them. They were turning in at the drugstore. He finally shuffled off and I slammed the car door shut and started walking across the street after them.
They were sitting in a booth. She was facing the front, and as I came through the door I got a glimpse of her face before she saw me. It was unhappy and afraid and somehow defenseless, as if she had come to expect humiliation from Sutton and knew of no way to escape it. There was something beaten about it. When she looked up and saw me I could see her begging me to stay away.
I was in no mood to pay any attention to it. There was nothing in my mind now except Sutton. I pulled up a chair and sat down at the end of the table, glancing at her and then at him.
“Well,” I said, “a little business meeting?”
He nodded affably, and then he said, “Sure. Why don’t you sit down? Oh, I see you already have.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
I leaned my arms on the table and looked at him. “You’re sure it’s all right? With you, I mean. You don’t have any objections?”
“Not a one, pal.”
“Well, that’s nice,” I said. “Isn’t it?” But I knew it wasn’t any use. Crowding him like that was just a waste of time. He was too much of the pro. He was pushing her around for what he could get out of it, and being jockeyed into a useless fight was only for suckers.
“Anything I could help with?” I asked.
“No-o, I don’t think so,” he said. Then he looked across at her and asked, with bland innocence, “Do you think there’s anything he could help with, honey?”
Her face was pale and you could see her fighting to keep from going all to pieces. I began to wonder if I was being very smart. I was blundering around in something I didn’t know anything about, and I began to have a feeling it was too deep to be cleared up by a kid stunt like slapping Sutton around, even if I could do it. She could only shake her head.
“Well, I’m sorry, pal,” he said with mock regret. “You see how it is. Maybe some other time, huh? We’ll give you a ring.”
“Please, Harry,” she said miserably, “it’s all right. It’s just a personal matter I have to talk over with Mr. Sutton.”
“O.K.,” I said. I shook my head and got up. There wasn’t anything else to do. I looked down at Sutton. “Sorry we couldn’t do any business.”
“Well, cheer up, pal. There’s days like that,” he said easily. “I’d cry, but it makes my mascara run.”
I went back to the lot. If she wouldn’t tell me what it was and didn’t want me mixed up in it, there was nothing I could do. I groused around the lot the rest of the afternoon. I already had an idea what it would be like when I picked her up at five o’clock, and it was. It was ruined. She was completely different when she had seen Sutton, or even when I mentioned him. She was tightened up and silent, and you could sense the desperate unhappiness tearing her up inside. We stopped on a little country road and I kissed her, but it wasn’t anything. She was somewhere else.
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I hate to be such a wet blanket, Harry. And I was looking forward so to seeing you.”
I took her face in my hands as I had that night. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s have it.”
She just shook her head with an infinite weariness,
“Don’t you see?” I said. “You’ve got to tell me. How can I help you if I don’t know what it is?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Harry.”
“The hell there’s not. It’s Sutton, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and then she nodded slowly.
“Well, Sutton puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else. All he needs is for somebody to have a talk with him.”
“No,” she said desperately. “Don’t do it, Harry! Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because. You have to. You just have to,” she said pleadingly. “Just give me a little time. Don’t you see? It isn’t that I don’t want to tell you. I just can’t—not yet. It’s all so mixed up. I almost go crazy trying to decide what to do. It was bad enough before, but now—“
“But now what?” I asked, turning her face so she had to look at me.
“Now there’s you,” she said simply.
I kissed her and sat there holding her with the top of the blonde head just under my chin. Her face was pressed into my shirt and she was crying, quite silently. I thought of Sutton. If we had much more of this, something was going to happen to him.