The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (7 page)

"God knows I tried to quit often enough."

"Quit and go crawl into a hole was the way he put it, I believe. Once he wondered aloud in my presence if you were going to be a ninny all your life. Forgive me, but the quote is exact."

"I don't feel hurt. I've wondered the same thing."

"If Omar could have seen you this morning, he would have been heartened."

"Would he?"

"You were splendid, my boy. Skeptical, indignant, indifferent. I would have expected you to apologize to those five impressive gentlemen for any inconvenience you had caused them, make a full statement of what your duties have been, and gladly accept the position they offered."

"You know, I'm surprised I didn't. But people have been pushing me around ever since I got back here."

"You baffled them, Kirby. You gave them no leverage, no handle, no button to push. So naturally they think you were speaking with the independence of hidden millions."

"So Uncle would have been heartened. So what? It came a little late, didn't it?"

"It would seem so."

Kirby looked again through the telescope, sighed and put the watch in his pocket. "Let them squirm for a while. I'll take them off the hook when I'm ready. Or maybe I won't. I don't know."

"They won't just sit there wringing their hands, you know. Expect some sort of counterattack."

"When it comes, you can tell me what to do. You're my attorney."

"It would be interesting to know what Omar had in mind. I do wish we could open that letter he left for you. But I have had a long and ethical career, young man, because I have had the good judgment never to trust myself. We have a Mr. Vitts in this office, a man of truly psychotic dependability. I had him put that letter in his personal safety deposit box. Mr. Vitts delights in sacred trusts. Boiling him in oil would not give anyone access to that letter one day sooner."

"Before the year is up, I may have a better idea of what's in it."

"If you ever have a plausible guess please tell me. Omar was a strange fellow. He made no wrong moves. I've often wondered at the secret of his success, and the only answer that seems even halfway reasonable is that, long ago, he devised certain mathematical procedures which enabled him to predict future events. I keep wondering if those formulae are in that letter. It would account for his anxiety about you. The ability to predict would be a terrifying responsibility."

Kirby frowned and nodded. "It would account for those gambling winnings when I was a kid. And then he lost them back on purpose, so people would leave him alone."

"I intend to live through this year, too. Just to learn what is in the letter."

Kirby walked from Wintermore's office to a neighborhood drugstore for a sandwich and coffee. One little word kept rebounding from the cerebral walls. Ninny. It was a nineteenth-century word, yet he could not find a modern equivalent with the same shade of meaning. Probably it was a corruption of nincompoop. Ninny—that soft, smiling, self-effacing, apologetic fellow, the type who is terribly sorry when you happen to step on his foot, the kind you can borrow money from in the certainty he will never demand you repay it. And if he was a little brown dog, he'd wear his tail tucked slightly under, and wag it nervously, endlessly.

He wondered at his own degree of ninnyism. How severe was it? How incurable was it? Could a man walk through life in a constant readiness to duck? On the other hand, were not the opposite traits rather unpleasant? Arrogance, belligerence, domination. Yet the arrogant man seemed to have considerably less difficulty with one primary aspect of existence.

"Girls," he said aloud. A fat woman on the adjoining stool turned and gave him a long cold stare. Kirby felt himself flush and felt his mouth begin to stretch into a meek smile of apology. As he began to hunch over, he straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin and said, "Madame, I was talking to myself, not to you. If you feel you're in the presence of a dangerous nut, I suggest you move to another stool."

"Whaddaya? Some wise guy?"

"You glared at me, so I responded."

"All kinda nuts in Miami," she muttered and hunched herself over her tuna fish.

Kirby felt a small glow of pride. Perhaps not completely a ninny. But one had to start in small ways. One had to emerge, step by step, from ninnyism, acquiring confidence at each small victory.

Actually, at the conference, he hadn't given a true ninny reaction. Ninnyism would require making a detailed statement of what he had been doing for O. K. Devices, and making them believe it. He had told the truth, but as a gesture of revolt, had made it sound like an evasion. In all honesty he had to admit that it was the intransigence of Miss Wilma Farnham which had backstopped his moments of rebellion. Let the executives sweat.

When a chunky girl came to take his money he braced himself and said, "The coffee is lousy."

"Huh?"

"The coffee is lousy."

She gave him a melting smile. "Boy! It sure is."

He went to the phone booths and called Wilma Farnham at her apartment. She answered on the second ring, her voice cool and precise.

"Kirby Winter. I tried to get you yesterday," he said.

"Yes?"

"Well, I thought we ought to talk."

"You did?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with me, Mr. Winter. The office has been closed. I've turned the books over to the attorneys. I'm seeking other employment. Mr. Krepps left me a generous bequest, but I shan't receive it for some months they tell me. The relationship is over, I would say. Good-by, Mr. Winter."

He called her back. "What could you possibly have to say to me, Mr. Winter?"

"Listen, Miss Farnham. Wilma. I heard you burned all the records."

"That is correct."

"So it looks as if the tax people might subpoena us—"

"Mr. Winter! I knew you would call me. I knew that the instant Mr. Krepps died you'd forget your word of honor to him. I intend to
keep
my word, Mr. Winter. I would rot in prison rather than break my word to that great man. But I knew you would immediately start currying favor with everybody by telling them everything you know. Believe me, there is no longer any documentation for anything you have told them or will tell them. And you cannot wheedle me into breaking my word, or frighten me into breaking my word. You are a miserable, sycophantic weakling, Mr. Winter, and I would say your uncle overestimated you all your life. Don't bother me again, please."

And once again the line was dead.

Twenty minutes later he was pressing the bell for her apartment. When she answered over the communicator and he told her who he was, there was a silence. The lock was not released. He pressed other bells at random. The door buzzed and he pushed it open and went into the tiny lobby. The elevator was in use. He went up two flights of stairs, found her apartment in the rear and beat upon the door with his fist.

"Go away!" she yelled.

He kept hammering. A door down the hall opened. A woman stared at him. He gave her a maniac grin and she ducked back into her apartment.

Finally the door swung open. Wilma Farnham tried, to block the way, but he pushed roughly by her, turned and shut the door.

"How dare you!"

"Now
there's
a great line. It swings, Wilma."

"You're stinking drunk!"

"I'm stinking indignant. Now you sit down, shut up and listen." He took her by the shoulders, walked her backward into the couch and let go. She fell back with a gasp of shock and anger.

"Nothing you can say to me—"

"Shut up!" He stared at her. She wore a burly, shapeless, terry-cloth robe in a distinctly unpleasant shade of brown. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders. She was not wearing her glasses. Her small face was wrinkled with distaste, and she squinted at him myopically. "What the hell gives you the impression you've got this monopoly on loyalty and virtue and honor, Wilma? What makes you so damn quick to judge everybody else, on no evidence at all? What gives you the right to assume you know the slightest damned thing about me, or how I'd react to anything?"

"B-but you always just sort of drift with—"

"Shut up! You did as you were told. That's fine. My congratulations. But it doesn't make you unique. I did as I was told, too. I did not tell them one damn thing."

She stared at him. "You're trying to trick me somehow."

"For God's sake, call any of the brass. Ask them."

She looked at him dubiously. "Not a thing?"

"Nothing."

"But those lawyers told me you would tell everything. They said it was the only way you'd get a dime out of the estate."

"They made just as bad a guess as you did."

"Did you just say—nothing? Just refuse to talk?"

"I did better than that. I told them something they couldn't possibly accept—something they couldn't possible believe."

"What?"

"I told them I gave it all away."

Her eyes were suddenly too round for squinting. "But, that's—"

Suddenly she began to giggle. He would not have thought her capable of any sound so girlish. Then she began to guffaw. He laughed with her. Her hoots and shouts of laughter became wilder, and the tears were running down her small face, and suddenly he realized her laughter had turned into great sobs, great wrenching spasms of grief and pain.

He went to her, sat with her. She lunged gratefully into his arms, ramming her head into the side of his throat, snorting, snuffling, bellowing, her narrow body making little spasmed leapings with her sobs, and he could make out a few words here and there. "Sorry—so alone—ashamed—didn't mean—"

He held her and patted her and said, "There, there, there."

At last she began to quiet down. He became conscious of the fresh clean smell of her hair, and of the soft warmth of her against him, and of a hint of pleasant contour under the dreary robe. She gave a single great hiccup from time to time. Abruptly, she stiffened in his arms, thrust herself away and scrambled to the far end of the couch.

"Don't come near me! Don't touch me, you son of a bitch!"

"Wilma!"

"I know all about you. Maybe the rest of them roll right over on their back, but you better not get the idea I'm going to."

"What the hell!"

"Hah! A wonderful imitation of innocence, Kirby Winter. I'm glad you're loyal to your uncle, but that doesn't mean I have to respect the
other
things you stand for.

"I knew what you had in mind, setting up those little conferences in that sordid hotel room. We both knew what you were after, didn't we? That's why I was on guard every single moment. I knew that if I gave you the slightest opportunity, you would have been after me like a madman."

"What?"

"I was on guard every single minute. I had no intention of becoming your Miami plaything, Mr. Winter. You got enough of that, all over the world. I used to go to that room in absolute terror. I knew how you looked at me. And I thanked God, Mr. Winter, I thanked God for being so plain you weren't likely to, lose control of yourself. And I made myself plainer when I came to that room. Now that it's all over, I can tell you another thing too, something that makes me sick with shame. Sometimes, Mr. Winter, in all my fear and all my contempt, I found myself wanting you to hurl yourself at me."

"Hurl myself!"

"It was the devil in my heart, Mr. Winter. It was a sickness of the flesh, a crazy need to degrade myself. But I never gave way to it. I never gave you the slightest hint."

"All we did was sit in that room and go over the reports and—"

"That's what it
looked
like, yes. Ah, but how about the things unsaid, Mr. Winter, the turmoil and the tension underneath. What about that, Mr. Winter?"

He raised his right hand. "Miss Farnham, I swear before God that I never, for the slightest moment, felt the smallest twinge of desire for—"

He stopped abruptly. He saw anew the neat sterility of the apartment, the plain girl, the look on her face of sudden realization, hinting at the horrible blow to her pride that would soon be evident. And he knew that even if she was slightly mad, he could not do that to her.

He dropped his hand abruptly and gave her a wicked wink. "I guess I can't get away with that, can I?"

"Beg pardon?"

He winked again. "Hell, baby, I used to see you walking, swinging that little round can one sweet inch from side to side and I used to think—uh—if I could just get you out of those glasses and those old-lady clothes and muss your hair up a little and get a drink into you, you'd be a pistol."

"Y-you filthy animal!"

He shrugged. "But, like you said, cutie, you never gave me an opening. You never made the slightest move."

She seemed to cover the distance from the couch to a doorway across the room in a single bound. She whirled and stared at him. Her face was pale. Her mouth worked. "Th-then," she whispered, "if I didn't—why in God's name didn't you?"

In the trembling silence he reached for the right response, but all he could find was his own terrible moment of truth. He felt impelled to meet it. "Because—I'm scared of women. I try to hide it. Women terrify me."

She wore an expression of absolute incredulity. She took a half-step toward him. "But you're so—so suave and so—"

"I'm a lousy fake, Wilma. I run like a rabbit, all the time."

She bit her lip. "I—haven't had many chances to run. But I always have. Like a rabbit. But you!"

"You're the first person I've ever told."

Suddenly she began to laugh again, but he could not laugh with her. He heard the laughter climbing toward hysteria.

"No," he said. ''Not again! Please."

She whooped, whirled, bounded through the doorway and slammed the door. He could hear her in there, sounding like a small stampede heading through swamp country. He slowly paced back and forth until the sound diminished and finally died away. He sat in a chair, his back toward the bedroom door.

"Wilma!" he called.

"In a minute," she answered, her voice husky from weeping.

He took the gold watch out. He looked cautiously through the little telescope and shivered. He was studying the intricate monogram on the back of the watch when the bedroom door opened.