The period of waiting was as maddening as the suspense of the poor insomniac who implored the man next door to “drop the other shoe.” Mamise suffered doubly from her dual interest in Abbie and in Davidge. She dared not tell Abbie what was in the wind, though she tried to undermine gradually the curious devotion Abbie bore to her worthless husband. But Mamise’s criticisms of Jake only spurred Abbie to new defenses of him and a more loyal affection.
Day followed day, and Mamise found the routine of the office intolerably monotonous. Time gnawed at her resolution, and she began to hope to be away when Easton made his attempt. It occurred to her that it would be pleasant to have an ocean between her and the crisis. She said to Davidge:
“I wish Nicky would come soon, for I have applied for a passport to France. Major Widdicombe got me the forms to fill out, and he promised to expedite them. I ought to go the minute they come.”
This information threw Davidge into a complex dismay. Here was another of Mamise’s long-kept secrets. The success of her plan meant the loss of her, or her indefinite postponement. It meant more yet. He groaned.
“Good Lord! everybody in the United States is going to France except me. Even the women are all emigrating. I 294 think I’ll just turn the shipyard over to the other officers of the corporation and go with you. Let Easton blow it up then, if he wants to, so long as I get into the uniform and into the fighting.”
This new commotion was ended by a shocking and unforeseen occurrence. The State Department refused to grant Mamise a passport, and dazed Widdicombe by letting him know confidentially that Mamise was on the red list of suspects because of her Germanized past. This was news to Widdicombe, and he went to Polly in a state of bewilderment.
Polly had never told him what Mamise had told her, but she had to let out a few of the skeletons in Mamise’s closet now. Widdicombe felt compromised in his own loyalty, but Polly browbeat him into submission. She wrote to Mamise and broke the news to her as gently as she could, but the rebuff was cruel. Mamise took her sorrow to Davidge.
He was furious and proposed to “go to the mat” with the State Department. Mamise, however, shook her head; she saw that her only hope of rehabilitation lay in a positive proof of her fidelity.
“I got my name stained in England because I didn’t have the pluck to do something positive. I was irresolution personified, and I’m paying for it. But for once in my life I learned a lesson, and when I learned what Nicky planned I ran right to you with it. Now if we catch Nicky red-handed, and I turn over my own brother-in-law to justice, that ought to redeem me, oughtn’t it?”
Davidge had a better idea for her protection. “Marry me, and then they can’t say anything.”