Death of an Old Sinner by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

watch. It was a few minutes past ten. He was suddenly very tired. Despite the note in his pocket, he was beginning to doubt the seriousness of Nick Casey’s threat.
    “Ransom, when you write your memoirs, am I goin’ to be in them?”
    He pulled her down on his lap. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you hidden away in my heart forever,” he said.
    She was slow in speaking and her eyes came round to his slowly, as she pushed away from him. “I don’t really mean much to you, do I, Ransom?” she said, and he had never seen so venomous a look. “Just somethin’ you pick up once in a while like a toy doll.”
    “A damned expensive toy,” he blurted out. “Oh, Flora, what the devil’s the matter with you?”
    She began to pace the room. “I don’t like bein’ a toy, even an expensive one!” There was something to Flora he had never known, the General thought. But of course he should have known it, the strain of panther in her. He watched the sly sensuousness of her movement.
    He threw back his head and laughed. “Come here, Flora! I never loved you as well, my girl!”
    She stopped and whipped the trail of her negligee from where it had twisted around her ankles. The garment fell open and she was very nearly naked. “If I come, it’s not because I’m lovin’ you, but ʼcause I’m owin’ you.”
    The General dropped his eyes. He got up slowly and put on his overcoat without a word. They had had quarrels before, but never on this level. There was but one answer, she no longer needed him. Nick Casey was not so far away, after all. Flora flung herself on the studio couch then, face down, and began to weep. A really sordid scene, the General thought, adjusting his hat in the mirror. He did not want to seem to hurry, but he felt a certain urge for haste, nonetheless. There was not much point in his being heroic when their affairs had come to such a pass. He started violently at the ringing of the doorbell. Flora too started up. The parakeet made such a racket, she needed to throw the sheet over it on her way to the house phone.
    “I think it’s Nick Casey,” she said, her hand over the mouthpiece. But automatically she was pressing the buzzer to admit him.
    “Is there any other way for me to leave here?” the General demanded.
    Flora nodded, waving to the window. “The fire escape.”
    The General tried to recall an occasion when he had been here in daylight. The window looked down on some sort of court. He sat on the windowsill and swung his legs out. She was all but pushing him.
    “I’m an old man, Flora,” he protested, and for the first time in his life.
    “Then hang onto the railin’,” Flora said.
    He caught hold of it and took his first step down. The whole contraption sagged and he came near pitching forward and down.
    “Be careful, Ransom,” Flora cried, and immediately closed the window between them.
    His temper warmed him then to the task of his descent. It was, after all, but three floors. On the second he paused and without thinking what he was doing, stared inside. A woman looked up from where she had been polishing her toenails. She gave a scream and leaped for the phone. The General moved gingerly, and the ladder rode down to the ground beneath him. He found the passage to the street that brought him out a few feet from the building entrance. There at the door of a black limousine—double parked—waited the two lads who had tried to pick him up coming out of Robbie’s.
    Thank God he had put the Jaguar in a garage. He retreated into the court again and looked for another exit opposite. Finding it, he looked up at the window from which he had made his departure. She had even pulled the blind! Oh, what a dissembling witch, his Flora!
    The General was making his way out of the court onto another street when he heard police sirens. Perhaps to rescue the lady with the unfinished paint job on her toenails? How would Mr. Casey feel, hearing the sirens? Would his boys drive off