Penelope Read online

  “I am afraid so,” Rothschild said. “It appears to be stolen property. We can ask the Sloan-Kettering people to return the price of it to you.”

  Sadaba spread her hands in horror. “Never. For the noble work they are doing, the money is Sadaba’s gift. Not one penny of it will Sadaba take back.”

  Rothschild took the yellow suit and they said good night to Sadaba. Afterwards Larry Cohen was curiously silent and thoughtful.

  CHAPTER SIX

  While Larry Cohen and the three policemen were conducting their investigation of the yellow suit and Madame Sadaba, the James R. Hastings were on their way home. At first they sat in a cab, which they managed to fill with a silence so suffocating that Penelope felt it would choke her, like air laced so thickly with chemicals that one breathes slowly and with difficulty. Silence was never very much to Penelope’s taste; those who knew her only superficially were of the opinion that she was apt to run off at the mouth on the slightest provocation, but this was simply Penelope’s antidote to the tensions of silence. If others kept the conversation going, Penelope was happy enough to listen in quiet pleasure. The present quiet, however, screamed with anger and hostility, set the air between cab and house vibrating in nervous waves, filled the elevator to choking, and then began to saturate the apartment.

  When they were in their bedroom, Penelope could tolerate it no longer, and she said to her husband:

  “My goodness, James, we can’t live the rest of our lives in silence, can we?”

  “We can try!” James snapped.

  “Why?” Penelope pleaded innocently.

  “If you don’t know, your stupidity and insensitivity exceed even my estimation of them.”

  “Oh, James, the things you say!” Penelope exclaimed sadly, dropping onto the chaise longue. “I would never think of saying such hideous things about you—”

  “You simply do all the hideous things imaginable!”

  “James, if you mean that poor, harassed Catholic priest—well, good heavens, he has feelings tool I wanted him to have the money. You got back your ten thousand, and I simply replaced it.”

  “Don’t be an idiot! We are insured, so it mattered not at all whether the money was found or not.”

  “But, James, that would have been dishonest.”

  “Dishonest?”

  “To cheat the insurance company.”

  “Who the devil said anything about cheating the insurance company?” he roared.

  “Didn’t you, James? Oh, then I misunderstood you again—I am such a silly ass. But what can I do, James?”

  “Use what small share of brains God gave you.”

  “Oh, James—I don’t know what to say. What did I do that was so wrong? Ten thousand dollars—when I have so much.”

  “Only to disgrace me with your idiocies. Then to make me out such a fool over that priest.”

  “But he’s human—he has feelings, James.”

  “He may be human, but this does not mean that I have to honor him with my money!”

  “My money, James.”

  “Goddamn it, your money, then!”

  “You know, James,” Penelope said, going a long step further than she had ever gone before, “as a banker, you never question the race or religion of the people who trust you with their money; but as James R. Hastings, you hate Catholics and Jews and Negroes and Baptists, and heaven knows what else—”

  “That’s a damn lie!”

  “James, if you insist on shouting like that, you will wake Martha, and you know that I can’t bear to have her know that we are quarreling again—”

  “Just what happens here that she doesn’t know? And furthermore, when the devil have you ever heard me say a word against Baptists? Frank Bingham, our first vice-president, just happens to be a Baptist, and he’s not only my good friend but a damn fine human being.”

  “You said Phil Sloan was a damned ignorant pecker-nose Baptist, and you know it.”

  “He is. Which does not mark me for prejudice. How could I be prejudiced against Catholics, Jews, and Negroes? We have thousands of them as our depositors—but does that mean that I bring them into my home as my social equals?”

  “Oh, James–”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just nothing.”

  “I agree that you are without prejudice, or you would not have made a spectacle of yourself with those cheap political cops and that just-too-damn-bright district attorney.”

  “Thank you, and good night,” Penelope said icily.

  Penelope dreamed, not about robbing Fort Knox, but about lying on Gregory’s couch and telling him that she had already robbed Fort Knox. She awakened in the comfortable glow of that dream, jotted down the rough outline of it on her bedside pad—otherwise it would be lost in a moment and she would be assuring Gregory that she never dreamed—and satisfied herself that James had already taken his departure. He was compulsively early to wake and early to work—and looked upon this habit as a highly endowed virtue. There were so many actions that James fitted into a scheme of holy virtue that Penelope lived with a constant itch of guilt. Proper form was a virtue, and Penelope most frequently ignored all proprieties; walking was a virtue, and Penelope took no pleasure in walking; theater was a virtue, but Penelope liked films better; modest dress was a virtue, and Penelope was in love with bright red and bright yellow; cold showers were a virtue, and Penelope adored steaming for hours in baths as hot as she could stand—and so it went, an endless parade of virtue in all of which Penelope was bitterly lacking.

  Since James had left, Penelope had her hot bath. Lying there in the steam of her gold-fitted Pompeian-type bathroom, specially designed by Sherle Wagner, she contemplated the interesting fact that men were so sweet and so often pathetic and lovable, if only you were not married to them. It was true that gentle, lovable Gregory Mannix was divorced; but both Police Commissioner Comaday and District Attorney Cohen had wives, with whom they were at least reasonably miserable, and whom no doubt they in turn made miserable beyond endurance. And they were so sweet, Penelope decided, both of them, the commissioner with his bulldog build and manner, trying always to remember that he was a tough, irascible policeman and not a man who had graduated from Harvard with honors and had become a cop because it was rock-bottom in the depression of the 1930s; and the district attorney, impressing everyone with his cleverness and his mysterious questions and statements.

  “Oh, you clever Mr. Cohen,” Penelope said, giggling and making scrolls on the pink-marble shelf of the tub, “you are pleased with yourself, aren’t you? Because you imagine that you are positively the only one in the whole world who knows that Penelope Hastings of the Park Avenue and Sag Harbor Hastingses, is a plain but not ordinary crook. Oh, you must be strutting all over the place and proud as punch about all those sly and silly allusions you threw at me last night; but if you had some real sense instead of Harvard Law School sense, which is no better than Mr. Comaday’s Harvard College sense, you would know that no policeman could accept me as a crook. It would be such a blow to their pride, their professional know-how and their folklore. And if you should try to tell them that I am a thief, they will wrap you up and drive you right over to Gregory’s couch. And as for my husband, he is convinced that I lack the intelligence to crack a nut, much less his burglarproof Madison Avenue bank. In addition to which, there is not one shred of proof—”

  Which reminded her of John Comaday’s billfold, and she could not wait to get out of her bath and go through it. She dried, perfumed, and dressed in record time, never giving a thought to the fact that all her face required at the age of forty-four was a comb through her blond curls and a bit of lipstick on her mouth. Her cheeks were already bright with excitement, and while she considered prying and snooping as dastardly actions, she always exempted herself from such ethical judgment, knowing that when she did these things there was not a bit of malice in the act, but only healthy curiosity—and who could be blamed for that?

  And she
did so love the exploration of men’s wallets—or at least she was convinced that she would love it, this being the first one she had ever stolen. Penelope hardly considered it the beginning of a career, for she realized that one had to be rather chummy with a man to do it properly, and there were limitations to the number of men Penelope would chance rubbing knees with.

  At her desk, Penelope took the wallet out of her purse, emptied it, and laid out the contents neatly. There was $116 in cash, a picture of a dowdy, middle-aged woman who was no doubt the commissioner’s wife, pictures of two young men and one lovely young woman—a very nice family, Penelope thought, and why can’t he be content with it?—a picture of a large French poodle (a sentiment Penelope would never have suspected), a Diners Club credit card, an Esso credit card, a membership card in the International Association of Police Chiefs, Commissioners and Commanders, a card identifying him as honorary sheriff in Dodge City, Kansas, a tiny gold badge identifying him as honorary marshal in Tombstone, Arizona, the holographic signatures of J. Edgar Hoover, Matt Dillon, Dick Boone, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a place card for dinner at the White House.

  It was all so unexpected and so overwhelmingly improbable that Penelope found her eyes filling with tears and whispered, “Oh, the dear man—and I made such a fool of him!”

  But in spite of this, Penelope felt that she could not send the money back. It would have been improper, and it would have cut too much ground from under her.

  She still had a number of the manila envelopes left. In the first of them, she put Commissioner Comaday’s $116, addressing it in careful, characterless block letters and using the commissioner’s name as the identification on the return address. In the second envelope she placed the commissioner’s wallet and sent it directly to him, addressing both envelopes to Centre Street, the first to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (simply assuming that there must be one) and the second to Police Commissioner John Comaday.

  After she had done this, she felt it was a pity for that very nice Larry Cohen to be left out of things. If the truth be told, she did not feel this way about Lieutenant Rothschild or Captain Bixbee. Rothschild, with his rich Brownsville speech and his practical and cynical City College background, his utter lack of any but professional interest in any woman except—presumably—his own wife, left Penelope cold; and Captain Bixbee, with his granite face and his cold professional eye, was a nice man for a tight situation but hardly anyone Penelope would cotton to. Gregory might say that she was unduly timid with men too far removed from her own class, but since she was hardly a snob, Penelope could live with that.

  Whereupon, she took the rest of the money from the bank robbery and addressed it to the Sloan-Kettering people, carefully printing Larry Cohen’s name on the envelope as the donor, giving him his title as District Attorney, and Centre Street as his return address. Penelope was not at all sure that he worked at Centre Street, but he seemed so familiar with the place that it was a good enough guess. She had the sense of doing a nice, charitable deed; and when she finished, she felt a glow of goodness, a very deep satisfaction indeed.

  The glow did not last. The telephone rang, and it was Florence Crichton, who said, “Penelope, did you receive something in the mail?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t say what.” Her voice vibrated, and Penelope could imagine the fat little woman, so agitated, at the other end of the wire. “That’s why I am asking you.”

  “But what are you asking me?”

  “Goodness gracious—didn’t I just tell you?”

  “Not at all,” Penelope said.

  “I mean about receiving something in the mail.”

  “Did you receive something in the mail?” Penelope inquired gently.

  “Penelope, look—you are so understanding. I mean, everyone knows how open-minded you are—”

  “About what?”

  “You know—about things.”

  “I don’t know, Florence,” Penelope sighed, as delighted as a sadistic small boy who has a fat fly stuck on the end of a pin. “And I can’t go on talking to you if I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

  Deep, tremulous breathing at the other end of the wire, and then apparently Florence Crichton decided to take another tack:

  “Penelope—do you remember all those jewel robberies, the papers called them the ‘Raffles Series’ or ‘The Return of the Society Thief?’”

  “I could hardly forget them,” Penelope said.

  “Of course. I remember that you were robbed of a diamond ring.” (A theft Penelope executed upon herself. An unrobbed lady in her circle would have stood out like a sore thumb.)

  “Yes—yes, a lovely ring.”

  “Well—was it returned to you?” Florence whispered.

  “You must talk louder, Florence, really.”

  “Was this stolen ring returned to you, Penny?”

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Florence,” Penelope said, her voice sharp with nicely contrived exasperation, “will you please say whatever you are trying to say?”

  “Can I have your word of honor as a friend—?”

  “I don’t gossip, Florence. You know that.”

  “Well, I must talk to someone, Penny, I simply must. You remember the diamond pin that was stolen from me?”

  “Sort of.”

  “It was returned,” Mrs. Crichton whispered hoarsely. “In today’s mail.”

  “Congratulations,” Penelope said brightly. “You are a lucky woman.”

  “I am not a lucky woman, Penny. The pin was insured. The insurance company paid us eleven thousand dollars.”

  “But now you have the pin, and you can return the insurance money.”

  “Penny, we spent it.”

  “Then sell the pin.”

  “Penny,” Mrs. Crichton declared with exasperation, “that is exactly what I have been trying to tell you.”

  “What is?”

  “I sold the pin.”

  “You sold it?” Penelope cried. “When?”

  “I had this paste imitation made, and then I put four thousand dollars on a horse called Myrtle, because it was a sure thing; and then—well—well, I was simply swimming in debt, Penny, and I didn’t dare tell Dwight, because he was neck deep in debt, too, so when the insurance money came in, he talked me into letting him put it into his business, and how could I refuse, I was so guilty—”

  “You mean you let a thief steal a fake pin?” Penelope exclaimed, outraged. “All that effort and trouble and worry over a fake pin—how could you?”

  “Penny, would you please stop worrying about the thief and think of me? What am I to do?”

  Penelope sat in front of the telephone, holding it gently in her hand and smiling upon it.

  “Penny—”

  “I have no idea what you are going to do, Florence,” Penelope said, and then replaced the telephone just as gently as she had been holding it.

  But as a result of this, the warm glow surrounding her decision to send the bank money to Sloan-Kettering in Larry Sloan’s name vanished. She lived in a world cluttered all too much with all too many rules and regulations, and she realized that this money would be no more effective than the ten thousand dollars she had put into the collection box at St. Ignatius.

  Sometimes, she decided, she acted as childlike as Dr. Gregory Mannix thought her to be.

  She looked at her watch. It was 9:15, and she remembered that her hour with Dr. Mannix was at ten. She always felt better when something contemplated was done, and she put special-delivery postage on the packages for Commissioner Comaday and the Benevolent Association. At least that would be done with today.

  The other envelope—the one with Larry Cohen’s name on it, and the proceeds of the bank robbery (less ten thousand dollars) stuffed into it, she put in her purse. Someone might have thought it unduly strange that Penelope should not be perturbed by carrying a king’s ransom in her purse. To Penelope, however, it was perfe
ctly natural; she had never cared much for money and thereby had little respect for it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But before Penelope could leave her apartment, the phone rang again, and this time a most incredible accent assailed Penelope’s ears—one that she herself would hesitate before imitating.

  “Is Mrs. James R. Hastings, yes?”

  “Yes,” answered Penelope.

  “Is Sadaba.”

  “Who?”

  “Sadaba. Sadaba’s Creations—the taste of an angel. You will remember, Mrs. James R. Hastings, you was in Sadaba’s salon maybe a year ago, you are almost buying black-crepe evening, straight from Lanvin, only you are not sure is right? Sadaba is sure. Sadaba has eye like eagle, it never forgets. Magnificent, that black crepe. But is Mrs. James R. Hastings, Sadaba remembers.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Penelope wondered, recollecting vaguely a visit to a dress shop on Madison Avenue that was dominated by a tall, strange woman with a very odd name.

  “Is remembering now, Mrs. James R. Hastings?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Naturally. Who is forgetting Sadaba?”

  “I am already late for an appointment,” Penelope said. “What can I do for you? I am not buying any clothes now.”

  “Sadaba is in market to sell, not to buy.”

  “Just what do you mean?”

  “Think, Mrs. James R. Hastings. Yesterday, Sadaba is dressing window and what happens across the street but a bank is robbed? From the bank comes a woman in yellow suit, it has got to be a Givenchy, also with black hair. So Sadaba says to Ducky who is next to me, is possible with black hair, Mrs. James R. Hastings?”

  She paused to allow the effect of her words to register. “You are listening, Mrs. James R. Hastings? Because Ducky says, is possible.”

  “What absurd nonsense to bother me with!” Penelope exclaimed.

  “With absurd nonsense, people is hanging up. You are still talking on phone, Mrs. James R. Hastings. But there come to Sadaba policemen wanting to know what Sadaba knows about certain suit, is Givenchy. Sadaba knows nothing, only that Sadaba is out fifteen dollars from police confiscating suit. At same time, Sadaba is remembering who comes running out of bank yesterday.”