“She did. She said so. Dad went to New York and came back with the information.”
“—and never told Sarah. Just sabotaged the thing on other grounds. The evidence would support the theory. Damn it, Jimmie, that would be a dirty trick!”
“Still—Sarah gave him up.”
Audrey was sitting straight in her chair. Her eyes flashed. “Wait! Let’s think! Your mother finds out your sister’s boy friend is partly Jewish. Your sister doesn’t know. Your mother is positive that it would make no difference whatever to your sister. So—she improvises. She turns the town against the lad. She makes Sarah fear that, if she married Harry, everybody would hate her and that Harry would probably desert her. That sort of stuff. Besides which, your mother works personally on the poor gal, day and night, to make her sign off. The pressure gets unbearable and Sarah, who is not an iron woman, finally does sign off—against her will, nature, desire, hope, wish, et cetera.”
“It could be,” Jimmie said slowly. “Shall we phone her up?”
Audrey smiled. “Efficient business man! ‘Do it now!’ It’s a delicate topic, Jimmie. Lemme think. Maybe we ought to phone up Harry, first. See if he’s still carrying the torch, too. After all, he may have gone the way of all flesh.”
“A point.”
Fifteen minutes later, excited, feeling at the same time a benighted fool, Jimmie was in a phone booth waiting for Mr. Meade to be summoned. He could hear a dance band playing faintly in the Chicago hotel he had called. Not faint was the pressure of Audrey’s chin on his shoulder. She had crowded into the booth with him—and unscrewed the bulb there, for “privacy.”
In a moment Jimmie heard a man’s voice, young, worried, suspicious. “Yes? This is Harry Meade. Is Muskogewan calling me?”
Jimmie swallowed. “Yeah. Hello, Harry. Look. This is going to seem like a cockeyed call to you. My name is Jimmie Bailey. Sarah’s brother. I just got back from England—”