Double Jeopardy Read Free Page A

argument started exactly but it became more vigorous as the minutes passed until I felt embarrassed witnessing it. I retired to the drug room, hoping that a customer would come in so that they either would have to cease their quarrel or continue it some place else. From what I overheard I gathered that Anita wanted to attend some party or other and Leo did not. This seemed to me to be a trivial cause for a scrap but, at length, Anita stamped out of the store, slamming the screen door viciously behind her. Leo remained where he was.
    As I came from the back, carrying some packages of supplies to explain my disappearance from the scene of the dispute, Leo made the remark: “Well, if that's the way she feels, to hell with her!” Then he turned to me. “Aren't women the limit, Pete? Treat them nice, and the first thing you know they think they own you!”
    From that time on, I am afraid I entertained the notion that Leo was not in love with her; and that if she was capable of ranting at him the way she had, the affair would not last long. I did not know then that passion plays strange tricks on people. I did not know that the ones who hate hard, love hard.
    The following day I learned that Anita had gone to the party unescorted and, although the weather was too cold to be suitable, had taken a swim. To my disappointment, I also learned that they had made up later on and had driven off in his car for the remainder of the evening.
    Indeed, the graph of my hope was erratic; first up and then down as weeks rolled by. Whenever she would come into the store to purchase some item she would smile pleasantly and direct at me only those impersonalities which had to do with the temperature or the weather. Only once did she say, “And how are you today?” Fearful that in a moment of weakness I might let slip something which would give me away, I retreated behind my best storekeeper's manner.
    The opinion might be formed by this time that I am something of a stoic and, except for one instance which I set down at this point, I think I did rather well in concealing my love. But I could scarcely keep myself from vaulting the counter and striking Doctor Carpenter the day he walked into my store and requested that I sell him a certain article which, I had no doubt, he intended to employ in wooing the woman for whom I yearned. Naturally, I did no such thing. Instead, I controlled my temper and curtly informed him that I was completely sold out of what he wanted. I think he looked at me in a puzzled way. My tone, I suppose, was quite the reverse of the usual deferential manner I adopted when speaking to customers.
    In that the doctor weighed fully twenty-five pounds more than I did, and was well respected as an amateur boxer, you may draw the conclusion if you like that I controlled myself because I was afraid of reprisals. Carpenter was not the type of man to permit himself to be struck without retaliating. But the truth of the matter is that at the moment I was too enraged to think of what bodily harm any such action on my part would involve. I held myself in check only because I knew it would give me away.
    Through the plate-glass window, I watched the doctor cross the street and enter Ray Cavender's place, proceed to the back of the store and emerge a few minutes later putting something into his vest pocket. I felt sick to my stomach and a little dizzy. I locked up the drug room and, when my errand-boy returned from a delivery, I ordered him to take charge of the place for the rest of the day.
     
    The following events which immediately preceded my marriage seem now to have happened with incredible swiftness but I imagine the days must have appeared intolerably long at the time. My prescription record informs me that on June 28, 1917, I began to make myself sleeping powders out of mild opiates. Since I am usually a sound sleeper, this suggests that I tossed and turned on my mattress as my mind tortured me by conjuring up visions of Anita in