Tom Doody tried to say something, but only muttered.
“Mumbling won’t do any good,” Fincher snarled. “I want my five hundred dollars. Where is it?”
“That’s all I’ve got,” Tom Doody whined. “I spent the rest, but I’ll pay every cent of it back, if you’ll only give me time.”
“I’ll give you time, you dirty crook, I’ll give you time!” Fincher stamped to the telephone. “I’ll give you till the police get here, and if you don’t come across, I’m going to swear out a warrant for obtaining money under false pretences!”
The Joke on Eloise Morey
Brief Stories, Vol. 8, No. 4, June 1923
“But, good God, Eloise, I love you!”
“But, good God, Dudley, I hate you!”
The cold malevolence of her mimicry brought a quiver to his sensitive lips, as she had known it would, and his pale, tortured face went altogether bloodless. These not unfamiliar, and in this case anticipated, indications of pain infuriated her even as they pleased her. From her advantage of perhaps two inches in height she let her hard gray eyes — twin points of steel in a beautiful, selfish face — range with studied insult from the wave of chestnut brown hair that swept over his forehead to the toes of his small shoes, and then up again to his suffering red-brown eyes.
“What are you?” she asked with frigid bitterness. “You’re not a man; are you a child? or an insect? or what? You know I don’t want you — you’ll never be anything. I’ve certainly made that clear enough. And vet you won’t give me my liberty. I wish I never had seen you — that I’d never married you — that you were dead!”
Her voice — she usually took pains to keep it carefully modulated — rose high and shrill under the pressure of her wrath.
Her husband blenched, cringed under the lash of each acrid word, but said nothing. He could not say anything. His was far too sensitive, too delicate, a mechanism to permit of any of the answers he might have made. Where a cruder nature would have met the woman on her own ground, and hammered its way to victory, or at least an even distribution of the honors, he was helpless. As always, his silence, his helplessness, the evident fact that he did not know what to do or say, spurred her on to greater cruelties.
“An artist!” she derided, making the phrase heavy with contempt. “You were a genius; you were going to be famous and wealthy and God knows what all! And I fell for it and married you: a milk-and-water nincompoop who’ll never be anything. An artist! An artist who paints pictures that nobody will look at, much less buy. Pictures that arc supposed to be delicate. Delicate! Weak and wishy-washy daubs of color that arc like the fool who paints them. A silly fool smearing paint on canvas — too fine for commercial art — too fine for anything! Twelve years you’ve spent learning to paint and can’t turn out a picture anybody will look at twice! Great! You’re great now: a great big fool!”
She paused to consider the effect of her tirade. It was indeed worthy of her oratory. Dudley Morey’s knees shook, his head hung, his abject eyes were on the floor, and tears coursed down his pale checks.
“Get out!” she cried. “Get out of my room, before I kill you!”
He turned and stumbled blindly through the doorway.
Alone, she raged up and down the room with the lethal, cushioned step of some great forest cat. Her lips were drawn back, revealing small, even teeth; her fists were clenched; her eyes burned with an intensity more eloquent than the tears that never came to them could have been. For fifteen minutes she paced the room. Then she flung open a closet door, caught up the first coat that came to her hand, a hat, and left the room, the confines of which seemed too small to hold her anger.
The maid was in the hall, dusting the balustrade; she looked at her mistress’ passionate face with stupid surprise. Eloise passed her without a word, hardly seeing her, and descended the stairs. At the front door Eloise stopped suddenly. She remembered that when she had passed the library door she had seen a desk drawer standing open; and it had been the drawer in which Dudley’s revolver was kept. She went back to the library. The revolver was gone.
She bit her lip thoughtfully. Dudley must have taken the revolver. Would he really kill himself? He always had been morbidly sensitive, and he had courage enough, if it came down to that, even if he was such a failure — such a fool at puddling with his paints. His inability to encompass success of one sort or another was the result of inordinate sensitiveness rather than anything else; and, taunted sufficiently, that sensitiveness could easily drive him to self-destruction. Suppose he did? What then? Wouldn’t she— But, no! As likely as not he would bungle it somehow, as he had bungled everything else, and there would be a lot of unpleasant publicity, with her name displayed in not too flattering a light. Then, too, it would be hard upon her to think that she had driven him to it; though, of course, his failure with his work was more directly responsible. Still— She decided to go to his studio at once. That was the only thing to do. She couldn’t telephone; he had no telephone in the studio. If she arrived in time she would stop him; and perhaps his attempt, or the bare intent, could be made to win the divorce he had refused her. Lawyers were clever at twisting things like that around to their clients’ advantage. And if she arrived too late — well, she would have done her part. She knew her husband too well to doubt that she would find him in his studio.
She left the house and boarded a street car. The line ran past the building in which he had his studio, and she would get there sooner than if she called a taxicab.
She left the car at the corner above the studio and found herself running toward the building. The studio was on the fourth floor and there was not an elevator. She became excited as she climbed and her breath came with difficulty. The stairs seemed interminable. Finally she reached the top floor and turned down the corridor that led to Dudley’s room. She was trembling now, and moisture stood out on her face and in the palms of her hands. She tried not to think of what she might see when she opened her husband’s door. She came to the door and stopped, listening. No sound. Then she pushed the door open.
Her husband stood in the middle of the room, under the skylight with his back to the door. His right arm was raised in an awkward position: the elbow level with his shoulder, his forearm bent stiffly toward his head. Even as she divined the import of the pose, and screamed, “Dudley!” the air vibrated with the force of the explosion. Dudley Morey rocked slowly, once forward, once backward, and then crumpled face down upon the bare floor.
Eloise crossed the room slowly; she felt surprisingly calm now that it was all over. Beside her husband she stopped; but she did not bend to touch the body; it was too repulsive in death for that. A hole gaped in one temple — ringed by a dark, burnt area. The revolver had fallen over against the wall, under a window.
She turned away with a feeling of disgust: the sight sickened her. She went to a chair and sat down. It was all over now.
On the table before her she saw an envelope addressed to her in Dudley’s tiny handwriting. She tore it open and read the inclosed letter.
Dear Eloise—
You are right, I suppose, about my being a failure. I can’t give you up while I live — so I am doing the best I can for you. Between losing you and never succeeding in finding what I want in my painting I can’t think of anything to live for anyway. Don’t think that I am hitter, or that I blame you for anything, dear.
I love you,
She read it through twice, her face flushing with chagrin. How like Dudley to leave this note to brand her as the cause of his death! Why could he not have shown some thought, some consideration of her position? It was fortunate that she had found it: what an idea it would have given anyone else! And then it would have got into the newspapers. As if she were responsible for his death!