I told him that according to my paper Mrs. Healey was the lady who had rubbed Healey — the lady who was on her way back East in a box.
Card shook his head intelligently and said: “Wrong. That one was an extra. Mrs. Healey is alive and kicking and one of the sweetest dishes God ever made.”
I could see that he was going to get romantic so I waited and he told me that Mrs. Healey had been the agency’s client in the East and that she’d come in from Chicago Monday morning by plane and that he’d met her in the agency office, and then he went on for five or ten minutes about the color of her eyes and the way she wore her hair, and everything.
Card was pretty much of a ladies’ man. He told it with gestures.
Along with the poetry he worked in the information that Mrs. Healey, as he figured it, had had some trouble with Healey and that they’d split up and that she wanted to straighten it all out. That was the reason she’d wired the Salt Lake office of his agency to locate Healey. And almost as soon as they’d found Healey he’d shoved off for L A and the agency had wired her in Chicago to that effect. She’d arrived the morning Healey had been spotted in Caliente and had decided to wait in L A for him.
Card said he had helped her find an apartment. He supposed the agency had called her up and told her the bad news about Healey. He acted like he was thinking a little while and then asked me if I didn’t think he ought to go over and see if he could help her in any way. “Comfort her in her bereavement,” was the way he put it.
I said: “Sure — we’ll both go.”
Card didn’t go for that very big, but I told him that my having been such a pal of Healey’s made it all right.
We went.
Mrs. Healey turned out a great deal better than I had expected from Card’s glowing description. As a matter of fact she was swell. She was very dark, with dark blue eyes and blue-black hair; her clothes were very well done and her voice was cultivated, deep. When she acknowledged Card’s half-stammered introduction, inclined her head towards me and asked us to sit down, I saw that she had been crying.