Belle said urgently, “Miles, I want to talk to you.”
He motioned her to be quiet without looking at her. “Go ahead. Be brief.”
I turned to Belle. “You probably won’t want to hear this, Belle. I suggest that you leave.”
She stayed, of course. I wanted to be sure she would. I looked back at him. “Miles, I’m not too angry with you. The things a man will do for a larcenous woman are beyond belief. If Samson and Mark Antony were vulnerable, why should I expect you to be immune? By rights, instead of being angry I should be grateful to you. I guess I am, a little. I do know I’m sorry for you.” I looked over at Belle. “You’ve got her now and she’s all your problem and all it has cost me is a little money and temporarily my peace of mind. But what will she cost you? She cheated me, she even managed to persuade you, my trusted friend, to cheat me…what day will she team up with a new cat’s-paw and start cheating you? Next week? Next month? As long as next year? As surely as a dog returns to its vomit-“
“Miles!” Belle shrilled.
Miles said dangerously, “Get out!” and I knew he meant it. So I stood up.
“We were just going. I’m sorry for you, old fellow. Both of us made just one mistake originally, and it was as much my fault as yours. But you’ve got to pay for it alone. And that’s too bad, because it was such an innocent mistake.”
His curiosity got him. “What do you mean?”
“We should have wondered why a woman so smart and beautiful and competent and all-around high-powered was willing to come to work for us at clerk-typist’s wages. If we had taken her fingerprints the way the big firms do, and run a routine check, we might not have hired her . . . and you and I would still be partners.”
Pay dirt again! Miles looked suddenly at his wife and she looked-well, “cornered rat” is wrong; rats aren’t shaped like Belle.
And I couldn’t leave well enough alone; I just had to pick at it. I walked toward her, saying, “Well, Belle? If I took that highball glass sitting beside you and had the fingerprints checked, what would I find? Pictures in post offices? The big con? Or bigamy? Marrying suckers for their money, maybe? Is Miles legally your husband?” I reached down and picked up the glass.
Belle slapped it out of my hand.
And Miles shouted at me.
And I had finally pushed my luck too far. I had been stupid to go into a cage of dangerous animals with no weapons, then I forgot the first tenet of the animal tamer; I turned my back. Miles shouted and I turned toward him. Belle reached for her purse, and I remember thinking that it was a hell of a time for her to be reaching for a cigarette.
Then I felt the stab of the needle.
I remember feeling just one thing as my knees got weak and I started slipping toward the carpet: utter astonishment that Belle would do such a thing to me. When it came right down to it, I still trusted her.
I never was completely unconscious. I got dizzy and vague as the drug hit me-it hits even quicker than morphine. But that was all. Miles yelled something at Belle and grabbed me around the chest as my knees folded. As he dragged me over and let me collapse into a chair, even the dizziness passed.
But while I was awake, part of me was dead. I know now what they used on me: the “zombie” drug, Uncle Sam’s answer to brainwashing. So far as I know, we never used it on a prisoner, but the boys whipped it up in the investigation of brainwashing and there it was, illegal but very effective. It’s the same stuff they now use in one-day psychoanalysis, but I believe it takes a court order to permit even a psychiatrist to use it.
God knows where Belle laid hands on it. But then God alone knows what other suckers she had on the string.