The McKinnons exchanged a rueful look. “So we did,” Todd murmured, and Georgine went on, “You were right enough. That interview must have pushed her clean over the edge, poor thing.” She looked at the clock, rose hastily to pour the last bit of milk over her potatoes, slid the covered casserole into the oven and sat down again. “I tried to get some food or coffee into her, but she wouldn’t take a thing because the fast day isn’t over until sunset. She just sat there and babbled about trying to save Chloe, and denials of Truth, and Hugh Hartlein coming to her in a vision at dawn. She was going away, I gathered, and not taking anything that Chloe had given her. There was nothing left, she said. I was horribly sorry for her, but I was scared too. She held onto my skirt so I couldn’t move—” Georgine paused and her blue eyes darkened at the memory.
“She didn’t say where she was going?” Todd asked sympathetically.
“Back to the Canyon first, I think, to leave the car because it belongs to Mrs. Majendie. But before she left she went off into the wildest ravings of all, some vision of hers that she’d been afraid to pass on to the old lady—and I don’t wonder. It had a sort of—of unholy poetry to it; I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”
“Can you remember how it sounded?”
“Pretty well.” Georgine gazed at the table. “She knew that evil was hovering. She looked in the window and—let’s see; ‘her back was turned,’—not Joan’s, the person’s she was watching; ‘but the door of the painted cupboard was open. Her hand went up and there was the round silvery tin in it, and inside—buried in something—another, smaller tin. And she carried that away very softly.’ ” Georgine shivered. “Joan went to the tin later, she told me, and found that the smaller tin had been replaced, and took out some of the contents—a white powder, she said. And then—how did she put it? ‘I caught a ground-squirrel and gave it some to eat. And it died, after a while. It flung itself about, dying.’ ”
Todd’s eyebrows went up. “Sounds pretty circumstantial— but it doesn’t sound like cyanide.”
“Well, I know. Miss Godfrey actually said she’d thought of that, but the animal took too long to die, so it was different and she didn’t mention it to anyone.”
“What it does sound like is arsenic.”
“Yes. And later on, the poor Godfrey said something about—‘when that lesson had been learned with the white powder she remembered what she had been taught, she remembered Truth.’ Todd, there couldn’t really have been anything in Hartlein’s story? Do you think Chloe was giving Ryn a course of slow poison to teach her the error of her ways?”
“Did the Godfrey say it was Chloe?”
“No, she never mentioned her name; it was just ‘she’ all the way through. Oh, it was all ravings. I’ve probably made it sound more lucid than she did, and that’s not saying much.”
“And was that all?”
“Yes, except that at the very end she came out with something about the flaming door—and the painted cupboard and the ‘hands with evil in them.’ I was one mass of goose-pimples,” said Georgine, half laughing. “And then she seemed to come to herself, back out of the Beyond-Truth, you know, and squeaked out something about having to hurry, she would be back from the Fast-breaking Supper and Joan didn’t want to see her again. And off she went, like—like a lizard. I stood here for three full minutes, goggling around and wondering if it had really happened.” She sighed contentedly and sat back. “Now that I’ve talked it out, I see there was nothing to bother about at all. Along with everything else, the poor thing was light-headed from hunger.”
There was a faint sizzle from the oven, and she added, “And how have you been?”
“All right,” said Todd absently. “I had a big lunch.” He sat looking into space, his eyes narrowed in thought, and Georgine rested for a moment and watched him. His hand went into the coat pocket where his mouth-organ habitually traveled and fondled the little instrument, turning it over and over but not bringing it out. For the moment he was lost to the world; she glanced through the window and saw long shadows on the hedge behind their house. The sun was almost down.
“Todd,” she said presently, “do you suppose she got home all right? Ought we to go up and see, or will Mrs. Majendie be there?”
“From what I gathered,” said Todd slowly, “the feasting and games after the fast-day go on until about ten o’clock. I expect the Leader stays till the bitter end.”
“Games?” said Georgine, washing her hands. “Really, games?”
“Bridge,” said her husband simply. “They have a duplicate tournament every Tuesday night.”
“Todd McKinnon, you’re making that up.”
“I’m not. Comes right on top of the solemn fast and testimonial meeting. Out of the Cosmos and into Culbertson.”
Georgine burst into helpless laughter. “Did you ever in your life hear of a funnier religion?”
“You know, Georgine, one minute I’m laughing at it and the next—I find it giving me a cauld grue. It feels almost dangerous to laugh at it.”
“Todd, for heaven’s sake!” Georgine turned round to look at him sharply; but he was smiling now, and getting briskly to his feet. “We might just run up there, if you feel like it,” he said. “Or can’t the dinner be left to stew in its own juice?”
“Literally, it can. And I don’t suppose we ought to be too upset if we don’t see the poor old Godfrey around, I got the impression that she meant to go off in a sort of cosmic huff.”
They drove up the winding road, past the Johnson cottage—whose garage was empty, and on whose porch full milk-bottles could be descried, supporting the conclusion that both girls had been out all day—and to the very top of Cuckoo Canyon. The sleek car was parked in the driveway, and on the porch of this house Joan Godfrey herself was visible, plying a broom in a sort of frenzy that caused dead leaves to spray madly into the air.
“Do you want to stop and speak to her?” Todd inquired.
Georgine shuddered. “Oh dear, no! Let someone else worry about her now. The sun’s gone down, and pretty soon maybe she’ll have something to eat and get her wits back again.”
“Just for the record,” Todd concluded, “I’ll tell Nelse about her visit. And then—”
“Then we’re clear,” said Georgine. The sun slipped down behind the Marin hills, and before they reached home its afterglow was gone.
***
Todd’s typewriter clacked busily all that evening. After breakfast on Wednesday morning he spent another hour in his upstairs workroom and then came down, bearing a big envelope of typescript. “It’s kind of a shoeshine job, but I’ll get it off and take more time on the others,” he said, kissing his wife good-bye. “Do you need the car, Georgine? There are a couple of things I want to check on before I mail this.”
Georgine said she didn’t need the car, she’d be home all day. After he was gone she went upstairs to look at the carbon copy, which had been left out for her to see. It was called “Slender Thread,” and though Todd had made the protagonist a bewildered-seeming little man whose later crimes were solved only when it was learned that twenty years before he had successfully concealed his murder of an unfaithful wife, it was not hard to trace the connection to Miss Joan Godfrey. Georgine stood thinking about it, idly passing her duster again and again over the surface of Todd’s desk. The little man in the story had been subtle in diverting suspicion from himself and casting it on someone else who could be proved innocent; yes, Joan might have done that about the death of Hugh Hartlein. But—there was that conversation of yesterday. Through all its incoherence, one thing had emerged. Joan was thinking about another poison besides cyanide, and that train of thought seemed to lead directly to Ryn Johnson. Surely, if she intended killing Ryn, she wouldn’t talk about it ahead of time?
Georgine gave it up. The telephone shrilled downstairs and she answered the questions of a bored feminine voice asking for Mr. McKinnon on behalf of some firm called Haynes and Hunter. No, he wasn’t in. No, she wasn’t su
re when he would be. Very well, let Mr. Haynes try again late in the afternoon.
It was while she was dusting the living-room that she found, under a pillow on the couch, a handsome flat alligator handbag. Inside it was a plump billfold, and the identification cards and licenses indicated that it was the property of Joan Godfrey, white, of the female sex and aged 54. Georgine frowned at it; the overwhelming possibility was that Joan had forgotten it in her frenzy, though she had made that remark about taking nothing that Chloe had given her—but in that case, the bag should have been taken home and, so to speak, flung in Mrs. Majendie’s teeth. Well, it would have to be returned, of course, but she didn’t feel like walking up to Cuckoo Canyon with it this morning. Maybe Joan had another hoard of cash to draw on, at home.
The telephone rang again, and she thought, Oh dear—this is going to be one of those mornings when everyone wants you to buy an encyclopaedia or have your picture taken. — The voice in the receiver this time was again feminine, but not bored. It said, “Is this Mrs. McKinnon, Mrs. Georgine McKinnon? —You the one who used to be a Mrs. Wyeth?”
Georgine said she was. And who was this? Mrs. Trumbull, in San Francisco? No, the name wasn’t familiar—
“My husband’s there?” she repeated a few seconds later. “But—what’s the matter? Has he been hurt? He left home less than an hour ago…”
She found herself sitting half on, half off the small telephone chair, gazing stupidly at the black thing in her hand that was still emitting quacking noises. It had said something— something—she hadn’t heard it, surely? And how long ago had it been said?
“Say, are you all right? Are you still there?” The voice was shouting now, so that she could hear it though the receiver was far from her ear. Dizzily she lifted it again, and said through a dry throat, “Yes, I’m all right. What did you say?”
“I said, it’s your real husband who’s here, the first one. He says his name’s James Madison Wyeth, and you thought he was dead but he isn’t.”
“There’s—there’s someone who says he’s Jim Wyeth?” Georgine stuttered. She put out a free hand as if to push back something tangible. “He can’t be! Let—let me talk to him.”
“I told you, dearie, you can’t. He’s sick, see? I keep this rooming-house, and he’s been here four, five months, and he told me how he ’n’ you were married young, living in Colorado, and it got too much for him, and he saw his chance and skipped out. He found a fella who’d died and put his own boots and belt and stuff on him and pushed him in the water so’s he’d get carried off down stream and not be found for two-three weeks. And your husband struck off across country and disappeared, and everybody thought the dead fella was him.”
“No,” Georgine whispered. “No.” She pushed again at the black swirling mist that kept moving down on her. “I—I don’t believe it—”
“Well, suit yourself about that,” said Mrs. Trumbull cheerfully, “only, he’s here and he’s broke and pretty sick. And he says, he’d found out where you were and he’d never have bothered you except there was nobody else to turn to. And he wants you should come pretty soon, because—” her voice sank and became confidential, “they think he won’t last more’n a day or two longer.”
“I can’t—” Georgine began; and then her words trailed off. Every bit of her was sick with revulsion. She tried to stiffen herself with disbelief, and could not; the story was too circumstantial, it might just possibly be true, and—who but Jim Wyeth would have known those details? No one outside her own family.
If it were he—if by ghastly mischance it were he—she could not refuse what might be a last request.
And if it were a request—but not a last one? —No, she’d deal with that if it arrived. She’d have to go. She’d have to see him at least.
“I—I don’t know where you are,” she said, fighting off nausea. Her fingers found a pencil unsteadily, and scrawled the directions on a pad. No, she wouldn’t be driving—yes, take a number 21 bus and get off at Gough and walk—not so terribly far from the Civic Center—turn on this street, turn on that one…
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” she said, and hung up, and bent forward until her head rested on the table. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
After a few minutes she jerked up and began looking for the San Francisco section of the telephone book. If this were some horrible joke— No, there was an entry there: Trumbull, Mrs. Amy—and the address that woman had given. She kept her finger on it and called the number. No hope there; it was the same voice, and she had to stammer out something about not understanding some part of the directions. You turned left? yes, that was correct…
If she were to move at all, this horror of resurrection must be pushed into the back of her mind. Just concentrate on the immediate details, she thought, and found herself in her bedroom without knowing how she’d climbed the stairs. Something to wear—not too good, not giving any hint of prosperity—heaven knew it wouldn’t be untruthful, and none of her clothing was expensive. It was an ignoble move, but it was safer. Money enough to get there, and very little more…
***
There were some things she must have done; she remembered her painstaking locking of the house and turning off the sprinkler, and even taking an automatic look into the mailbox as she went down the steps.
There were other things that she knew she had done. Todd’s small pistol was in her handbag, for safety.
And some of the things she had done, also for safety, she had herself undone. She was walking along Gough Street, with very little recollection of the trip across the Bay, and she stopped to check on those cross-streets up which she was supposed to turn. Yes, she had brought the directions, she had picked up the whole pad, though she couldn’t remember doing that either. The whole pad—and on the second page of it was the note she had written to Todd, telling him where she was going although not why—oh, no, not why!—and where to look for her if—if anything went wrong.
Georgine stopped on a street corner and shut her eyes hopelessly. Well, it couldn’t be helped. Todd might not have come home anyway, he hadn’t said how long he’d be gone. She had to go on. In some one of these shabby houses, around one corner or another, lay a sick man who might be Jim Wyeth. He had found poverty and uncertainty too much for him, and had taken a way out—but he’d known she would be provided for. There was his insurance… Like Hugh Hartlein and his mother; but Hartlein was dead beyond doubt…
She had turned the wrong way. She faced about and doggedly retraced her steps, forcing herself to think about the weather, the street, anything but what she was approaching… This was an unreal sort of place, this narrow lane of old dingy houses, only a few blocks from the green dome of the City Hall and the clangor of Van Ness Avenue. It was one of several mid-block streets that didn’t “go through,” and across them decaying wooden houses looked, sometimes at other houses, sometimes at mysterious blank walls.
It was so quiet. Here and there an old car waited with its wheels up on a curb, but no one came out to it. Once a grayish alley cat went shooting across the street; in one of the basement windows a small face peered out, unmoving, and giving the impression of a child locked in the house by itself. There was no other sign of life except the papers and trash that swept fitfully along in the wind, and swerved and came to rest in areas already carpeted with litter. The hard sun was still shining overhead, making her shadow into a moving blot around her feet, but this street was as lonely as a gray Sunday.
Her shadow moved with her, but more and more slowly. A sense of utter horror was slowing the connection from will to muscles, and she walked as if through water that grew deeper and deeper. She looked, with the same reluctant slowness, at a house number dimly showing on a clouded transom. 820—and the next was 824; there was another block to go.
—This won’t do, said Georgine savagely within herself. She wrenched her mind away from the address in the next block, and fixed it on details of the houses she was passing. This street was no
t quite a slum; here and there were freshly painted houses, but next to them might be one with dreadful outside stairs angling up to separate doors across the building’s face. At some of these windows were torn green shades, pulled down against the beat of the sun. At others there were rayon glass curtains, whole but sunburned and dusty, hanging in limp folds as if the very look of the street had taken the heart out of them. The window of one basement flat was open, and through it was visible the tangle of blankets on an unmade bed.
If you wondered what sort of people lived here, the answer was plain. They were the Existers, the people who had jobs, but who made enough only to eat and sleep and go back to work again. There might be a little bit over, and that went for movies, three or four of them a week, and not for the washing of curtains. “You can hardly blame them,” Georgine said half aloud, and found herself stepping down from a curb, crossing a street—the address was only a few houses away now.
A car passed the end of the cross-street, but she had set her gaze forward and would not look around. It was something moving at last, but it was a block away; this street she was on was tranced in stillness. Two houses more. One house more. This was the one.
The sunlight beat cruelly on the board steps, from which the paint had long ago flaked away. She mounted them, one by one in her mind, one by slow one to her weighted feet. The roof of the porch enclosed her, and the sense of dread shut down as if that decaying wood were physically emitting it.
Her finger was on the bell. She could hear it pealing, far off in the shadows of the hall, and after a long minute someone began to move through those shadows. The door had a glass top, curtained with more of the dusty rayon panels, and through it could be dimly seen a section of worn carpet and the beginning of a flight of stairs.
The Smiling Tiger Page 12