We Can't Have Everything Part 60

He saw at a glance that the dictagraph had told the truth. She was entirely too well. He felt his wrath at Zada vanishing. But this also he transferred to Cheever's account. He spoke as quietly as he could, though his face revealed his excitement.

"Sorry to trouble you, but I had hoped to find Mr. Cheever here."

"Mr. Cheever?! Here?!" Zada exclaimed, with that mixture of the interrogation and exclamation points for which we have no symbol. She tried to look surprised at the unimaginable suggestion of Cheever's being in her environs. She succeeded as well as Dyckman did in pretending that his errand was trivial.

"Er--yes, I imagined you might happen to know where I could find him. I have a little business with him."

Zada thought to crush him with a condescension--a manicurial sarcasm:

"Have you been to the gentleman's home?"

Dyckman laughed: "Yes, but he wasn't there. He isn't there much nowadays--they say."

"Oh, do they?" Zada sneered. "Well, did They tell you he would be here?"

"No, but I thought--"

"Better try his office in the morning."

"Thanks. I can't wait. What club does he affect most now?"

"Ask They," said Zada, ending the interview with a labored yawn.

But when Dyckman bowed and turned to go, her curiosity bested her indignation. "In case I should by any chance see him, could I give him your message?"

Dyckman laughed a sort of pugilistic laugh, and his self-conscious fist a.s.serted itself.

"No, thanks, I'm afraid you couldn't. Good-by."

Zada saw his big fingers gathering--convening, as it were, into a fist like a mace, and she was terrified for her man. She scrambled to her feet and caught Dyckman in the hall.

"What are you going to do to Mr. Cheever?"

Dyckman answered in the ironic slang, "I'm not going to do a thing to him."

Zada's terror increased. "What harm has he ever done to you?"

"I didn't say he had done me any harm."

"Is it because of his wife?"

"Leave her out of it."

There was the old phrase again. Cheever kept hurling it at her whenever she referred to the third corner of the triangle.

Zada remembered when Cheever had threatened to kill Dyckman if he found him. Now he would be unarmed. He was not so big a man as Dyckman. She could see him being throttled slowly to death, leaving her and her child-to-be unprotected in their shameful folly.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't!" she implored him. "I'm not well. I mustn't have any excitement, I beg you--for my sake--"

"For your sake," said Dyckman, with a scorn that changed to pity as she clung to him--"for your sake I'll give him a couple of extra jolts."

That was rather dazzling, the compliment of having Jim Dyckman as her champion! Her old habit of taking everybody's flattery made her forget for the moment that she was now a one-man woman. Her clutch relaxed under the compliment just long enough for Dyckman to escape without violence. He darted through the door and closed it behind him.

She tugged at the inside k.n.o.b, but he was so long that he could hold the outside k.n.o.b with one hand and reach the elevator-bell with the other.

When the car came up he released the k.n.o.b and lifted his hat with a pleasant "Good-night." She dared not pursue him in the garb she wore.

She returned terrified to her room. Then she ran to the telephone to pursue Cheever and warn him. They had quarreled at the dinner-table. He had left her on the ground that it was dangerous for her to be excited as he evidently excited her. It is one of the most craven shifts of a man for ending an endless wrangle with a woman.

Zada tried three clubs before she found Cheever. When she heard his voice at last she was enraptured. She tried to entice him into her own shelter.

"I'm sorry I was so mean. Come on home and make peace with me."

"All right, dear, I will."

"Right away?"

"After a while, darling. I'm sitting in a little game of poker."

"You'd better not keep me waiting!" she warned. The note was an unfortunate reminder of his bondage. It rattled his shackles. He could not even have a few hours with old cronies at the club. She was worse than Charity had ever dreamed of being. She heard the resentment in his answer and felt that he would stay away from her for discipline. She threw aside diplomacy and tried to frighten him home.

"Jim Dyckman is looking for you."

"Dyckman? Me! Why?"

"He wants to beat you up."

Cheever laughed outright at this. "You're crazy, darling. What has Dyckman got against me?"

"I don't know, but I know he's hunting you."

"I haven't laid eyes on him for weeks. We've had no quarrel."

Zada was frantic. She howled across the wire: "Come home, I beg and implore you. He'll hurt you--he may kill you."

Again Cheever laughed: "You're having hallucinations, my love. You'll feel better in the morning. Where the deuce did you get such a foolish notion, anyway?"

"From Jim Dyckman," she stormed. "He was here looking for you. If anybody's going crazy, he's the one. I had a struggle with him. He broke away. I begged him not to harm you, but he said he'd give you a few extra jolts for my sake. Please, please, don't let him find you there."

Cheever was half convinced and quite puzzled. He knew that Dyckman had never forgiven him for marrying Charity. The feud had smoldered. He could not conceive what should have revived it, unless Charity had been talking. He had not thought of any one's punishing him for neglecting her. But if Dyckman had enlisted in her cause--well, Cheever was afraid of hardly anything in the world except boredom and the appearance of fear. He answered Zada with a gruff:

"Let him find me if he wants to. Or since you know him so well, tell me where he'll be, and I'll go find him."

He could hear Zada's strangled moan. How many times, since male and female began, have women made wild, vain protests against the battle-habit, the duel-tribunal? Mothers, daughters, wives, mistresses, they have been seldom heard and have been forced to wait remote in anguish till their man has come back or been brought back, victorious or baffled or defeated, maimed, wounded, or dead.

It meant everything to Zada that her mate should not suffer either death or publicity. But chiefly her love of him made outcry now. She could not endure the vision of her beloved receiving the hammering of the giant Dyckman.

The telephone crackled under the load of her prayers, but Cheever had only one answer: