I nodded. “Sure, what is it?”
“I want you and me to go away. Never come back to this State. To go south a long way, and start all over again—will you do that?”
“You mean never come back?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But, Mardi, we’ve gotta live. My connections are here. I’ve lived here so long. I’m known here. I’ll keep away with you until the trial is over, but if I’ve to earn dough it’s here that I can earn it.”
She shook her head. “Money doesn’t matter. I have all we want.” She pulled a long envelope out of the bedclothes and put it into my hand. “Look, it’s for you.”
I opened the envelope blankly and shook out a bundle of bearer bonds. There were twenty thousand dollars. I pushed the bonds away from me and sat a little stunned, looking at her.
“They’re mine,” she said fiercely. “They’re for you and me—with that, surely we can go away and you can start again.”
I said, “But, Mardi, that’s a lot of money for a girl to have. How did you get it?”
She said, “At the Mackenzie Fabrics. I saved and I heard tips. Spencer invested for me ”
“I see.”
She began to cry. “Say you’ll take the money and come away with me, Nick—please….”
I rolled into bed beside her, shoving the envelope under her pillow. “Suppose we leave it until to-morrow? We’ll be able to think clearly to-morrow,” I said.
I felt her stiffen. “No,” she said, “it must be now. I couldn’t sleep. I must know. It’s so important to me.”
“Why is it, Mardi? Why should you want to hide yourself away?”
“Nick, you’ll lose me if you go back,” she said, suddenly sobbing violently. “I can’t tell you why, but I feel that is what will happen. You must say now.”
And because nothing really mattered to me except her happiness, and because I knew she loved me as much as I loved her, I gave her the promise.
She said, “You really mean that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll take the car on and we’ll go to the coast. We’ll get us a small house somewhere near the sea with a garden and we’ll be just you an’ I.”
“And you’ll be happy?”
“Sure, I’ll be happy. I’ll find something to do.” Lying there in the dark, I suddenly felt fine about the idea. We’d got money, we were going to the sun, and we had each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WE GOT A PLACE a few miles out from Santa Monica. It was small, but it was cute—the kind of place movie-stars week-end in. As soon as we saw it, we fell for it. The garden ran down to the sea, and if you wanted a bathe you just opened a gate in the wall and stepped on to the hot yellow sands. The sea was right ahead.
The house had two bedrooms and a large sitting-room leading out to a piazza that encircled the whole building. The garden was big enough to screen the house from the road. The rent was high, but we didn’t think twice about it—we took it.
Maybe I should have felt a heel taking all that money from Mardi, but I didn’t. If the money had been mine, I should have wanted Mardi to share it with me. Well, the money was hers, and I wasn’t going to spoil things by refusing to share with her.
We had a grand time fixing that house up. It took us a week to get straight, and we did all the work ourselves, even to fixing the carpets. When we got through, we were tickled to death with it.
Getting Mardi to the sea was a good thing. In a week or so it began to make a big difference to her. She lost the drawn, tense look that had begun to worry me, and she tanned mighty quick in the sunshine and sea air. She was happy and so was I. I reckon I never felt happier.
We got up every morning and had a bathe in the sea. It was grand swimming in that deep blue water, with no one to watch us— just the two of us, in the rolling swell of the sea. Mardi wore a white swim-suit that made her figure look better than it was, and that’s saying something. She never bothered about wearing a cap, and we played around with each other without a care in the world.
Mardi said to me, a couple of weeks after we had settled down, “Nick, you must start working.” I’d just come out of the sea, and was lying down on the sand, too lazy to dry myself, and letting the hot sunshine do it for me.
“That’s okay with me,” I said. “I’ll look around and see what I can find.”
Mardi knelt over me, her knees and thighs buried in the soft sand and her hands crossed in her lap.
“Nick,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you write a book?”
I blinked up at her. “Write a book?” I said. “Why, hell— I couldn’t write a book.”
She shook her head. “You’ve never tried,” she said, which was true. “Look how some novels sell. Why don’t you try, and see what happens?”
“Yeah, but look how some flop. I guess novel-writing ain’t so hot.”
She said, “Why don’t you write a novel about a newspaper man? Don’t you think you could do that?”
There was an idea there. I sat up and thought about it. Ackie had enough background to fill three books, and I had had a few experiences. Mardi could see that I was looking at the idea favourably, and she began to get excited. “Oh, Nick, wouldn’t it be fun if you could. You wouldn’t have to leave me then, would you? I could get your meals and sit around darning your socks, and you could be working—”
I grinned at her. “Don’t sound much fun for you,” I said, but she scrambled to her feet.
“You stay and think about it, Nick,” she said. “I’ll go back to the house and get the breakfast on. I’ll call you.”
Well, I thought about it, and the more I thought the more I liked the idea. Before she called me, I was itching to make a start. I went back to the house, bolted my breakfast and got down to it. It took me all the morning to work out the general idea of the book, and when I was through it seemed pretty good to me.
I took it along to Mardi, who was in the kitchen, and explained the synopsis to her. She leant against the kitchen table, her eyes wide and bright with excitement, and was as enthusiastic about it as I was.
“Okay, honey,” I said, when I had finished. “The next move is to get a typewriter, and I’ll make a start.”
It took me two months to get the book done, and if it hadn’t been for Mardi it would never have been written. I got stuck half-way through and lost patience with it, but Mardi kept at me until I just had to go on. She was so excited that I hadn’t the heart to fold up. When it was finished, and I read it through, I knew I had something. It wasn’t going to be a best seller or anything like that, but it was good enough.
Mardi said, “This is only the beginning; you’re going to write more and more and you will very soon be famous.”
I grinned at her. “Don’t pin too much on this. Maybe it’ll come back with the usual rejection slip.”
Mardi had faith. It didn’t come back, it stuck. A couple of months after sending it off, I had a letter from the publishers in New York I had mailed it to, saying that they liked it and would I come on over and meet them.
I didn’t expect to hear so soon, and we were right in the middle of painting the outside of the house. Mardi insisted on my going, and she stayed behind to finish the work. I knew she’d be all right on her own. We’d been clear of the trial and things had settled down. Spencer and his gang had all caught pretty stiff raps, and although, at the time, Mardi was pretty het up, she’d forgotten about the business by now.
So I took the train west and left her. The publishers were mighty nice to me, offered me a very fair advance, and a contract for two more books. I wasn’t going to waste time hanging around New York. Once I got their contract signed, I grabbed a taxi and made for Central Station. I found I’d got a couple of hours before I could make connections to Santa Monica, so I turned into the refreshment bar for a drink, before deciding where lid go to pass the time. Standing at the bar was Colonel Kennedy.