Neither Five Nor Three

by Helen Macinnes

  “I’ve been doing a little research,” Milton said, dropping his voice, “and I’ve found out several things. At one time, Scott Ettley did make a habit of cultivating Jon Tyson’s students. Murray was next in the assembly line. Through him, they were taken to Nicholas Orpen who looked them over. If they made the grade, then they were in for a whirl of discussion groups and parties like the kind Thelma gave. After that first meeting with Orpen, they didn’t see any more of him for quite a while. Not until they had been promoted to a series of meetings and intense discussions. And then, if they passed with top marks, they suddenly found themselves invited back to Orpen’s place for small meetings that were big stuff. Scott Ettley reappeared in their lives, then, I hear. He was cagey—just like Orpen; they never mentioned Party membership. That was left to men like Murray. And that’s as much as I could find out. The students who refused Murray’s approach didn’t get any further, and those who accepted aren’t talking, naturally. But it’s fantastic, isn’t it? The amount of trouble some guys take to convert a few pliable young men.”

  Paul looked at him in amazement. “How the hell did you find all that out?”

  “I began with the names of the fellows who had been coming up here on Friday nights for the last three years. I talked around with some of them—those who had just gone along out of curiosity, and then picked up their heels and ran when they found what they were getting into. It was they who gave me the pattern of the whole set-up. One thing, though,”—Leitner’s heavily marked eyebrows straightened into a frown—“Ettley seems to have dropped out of the picture recently. Bob Cash and I were the two last contacts he made here, and that’s about six months ago. Does that mean he has broken with the Communist Party?”

  Paul Haydn didn’t answer that. Perhaps, he thought. Or perhaps Ettley has got deeper in. “Have you told Tyson about this?” he asked quietly.

  Milton Leitner looked at him unhappily. “How could I? I was kind of hoping that you’d drop him a word. Someone must. There’s Rona to think of, too.”

  Paul said nothing, but his worry grew.

  Then Joe, saying a cheery goodbye to Peggy and Jon, called over to Leitner. “Milt! We’d better shove off. We’ve still a couple of hours to put in on the books tonight.”

  “You’re an optimist,” Milton Leitner said. He began moving to the door.

  Peggy said to him, “I never did get around to asking you about the summer. Have you taken the job in Cheyenne?”

  Milton nodded. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll be able to give Bobby all the lowdown on broncho busting when I get back.”

  “I’ll see you out,” Jon said, leading the way toward the hall. The good nights were made, good luck was wished. And as Milton Leitner left the room, he turned for a brief moment to exchange a glance with Paul.

  Peggy noticed it. “You like him?” she asked Paul. “So does Jon. Jon says he’ll go far. And Joe will, too. That’s why Jon is so pleased that he isn’t giving up college, after all. It would have been a waste.” She emptied an ashtray and straightened a cushion thoughtfully. “Joe was telling me that the reason he was determined to get married now is that he doesn’t trust what’s going to happen in the world. He thinks his generation had better get the happiness they can while they still can have it.” Her voice became strained. “What has made them so much older than we were at their age?”

  “Because we were too young to learn anything from the First World War, and they’ve grown up during the second one. That makes the difference, I suppose. Telling didn’t teach us very much, did it?” Paul hesitated, then he said:

  “To think that two and two are four

  And neither five nor three,

  The heart of man has long been sore,

  And long ’tis like to be.”

  “What’s this?” Jon asked, returning to the room. “Are you quoting poetry to my wife the minute my back is turned?” He grinned and put an affectionate arm around Peggy’s waist. “But why choose Housman in one of his remorseful moods?”

  “I was having an attack of gloom,” Paul said, trying to smile. “I had to work it off on someone.”

  Peggy, still following her own thoughts, said sadly, “Yes, we were the five-and-three generation, weren’t we?”

  “And the bill was a steep one,” Jon said. He looked at Paul Haydn again, wondering what was troubling him. “Well, let’s sit down and be comfortable,” he suggested. “Where’s your glass, Paul?”

  “I’ll have to leave,” Paul said. “But...” he hesitated, frowned. “I heard a piece of news about Scott Ettley,” he went on. “Of course it may only be a rumour, a piece of gossip, but it’s certainly—well, unexpected.”

  “You mean about his new job?” Peggy asked.

  “What’s that?” Paul looked at her quickly.

  “He’s going to join his father’s newspaper. I suppose he will be editor some day, if he’s good enough. Very nice, too.”

  “He will be good enough. He’ll make sure of that,” Paul said so bitterly that Jon and Peggy exchanged glances. “And we are all so damned helpless,” he went on angrily. “What can we do? Go to William Ettley and tell him? He wouldn’t believe us. And I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him, anyway.”

  “Tell him what?” Peggy asked.

  Paul’s lips tightened. His grey eyes seemed to darken with worry. “Perhaps we had all better sit down,” he said. “Jon, here’s a piece of news that Milton Leitner passed on to me. If it’s true, it affects us all. In different ways. But I think we ought to—”

  At that moment, a long piercing cry of pain drew them back on their feet. Then, just as suddenly, it was over, and there was nothing but silence, a grim warning silence filled with threats.

  “My God!” Paul said. “What was that?”

  “Bobby! It’s Bobby!” Peggy cried, and she ran into the dark hall with Jon. Paul began to follow, but he halted outside the bedroom door. Barbara had wakened, and she was wailing with fear. But from Bobby, there was now only a small moan and then silence.

  Jon rushed back into the hall and began telephoning for the doctor.

  “Thank God he was at home,” he said to Paul after his call was over. He stood beside the telephone for a moment. “We’d better get hold of Rona,” he said. He picked up the ’phone again.

  “I’ll do that,” Paul said, taking the receiver. “You get Barbara quiet. What’s wrong, Jon?”

  Jon shook his head, unable to reply. He saw Bobby, stretched out so rigidly on his bed, his face small and thin and white with pain, his frightened eyes asking for help. He shook his head and went back to the bedroom.

  Paul dialled Rona’s number. There was no answer. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter of eleven. Had she gone to bed early? He waited patiently, listening to the monotonous ringing of the bell. Then at last he came away.

  He stood hesitatingly at the bedroom door, his grey eyes troubled as he looked at the still quiet figure of Bobby, and then at the haggard faces of Peggy and Jon. Jon was standing beside the bed. Peggy was sitting with Barbara in her arms. Only Barbara’s questions broke the silence.

  The doorbell rang, and Jon pushed past him to answer it.

  “I’ll look after Barbara,” Paul said. He took a good grip of the fat soft waist and carried her into the living-room. Behind him, Paul heard the doctor’s quiet business-like voice as he hurried up the long hall with Jon.

  Barbara raised her sleepy head, took a surprised look around the lighted living-room, decided this was an adventure not to be missed, and became suddenly awake. She sat up on Paul’s knee and opened her large blue eyes very wide. “Tell me a story,” she commanded.

  “About what?”

  “Tell me,” she said. She smiled happily.

  Paul smiled back, watching the tufts of golden hair pressed upward at the back of the small round head. “All right,” he said. “And then you’ll go back to sleep?”

  She nodded, and folded her short fingers with a story-for-a-good-girl pose.

/>   “Well,” began Paul, “there was once a hippopotamus who lived in the zoo.” Shocking original writer you are, he thought. He listened to the doctor’s voice telephoning the hospital. Emergency. Immediate operation.

  “What zoo?” asked Barbara.

  “Central Park Zoo.” No time for an ambulance. The doctor was bringing the boy in his car.

  “What then?” Barbara yawned and mastered herself. She looked at him expectantly, apparently still more wide awake in spite of the yawn. In the hall, there was now silence.

  “One fine day,” Paul began obediently, “the hippopotamus was lying in the sun. And—”

  “What was its name?”

  “Rosebud. You approve? Good. All right; Rosebud was lying in the sun, flat on her side, her ankles delicately crossed for she had gone to a very good school, and her eyes closed.”

  “She was asleep.” Barbara sounded disappointed. Nothing exciting ever happened when you were asleep.

  “Oh, no! She was wide awake.”

  “Why her eyes closed?”

  “She was tired of the view. Every time she opened her eyes she saw the same old scenery. She said to herself, ‘What I need is a vacation. And besides, my bathtub is really much too small. I want a place where I can make a bit of a splash.’”

  Barbara nodded understandingly.

  “Right then and there, she decided to get away from it all.”

  “It all?” Barbara repeated. Her brow creased. “What’s it all?”

  Paul looked blankly at the questioning blue eyes. “My dear young lady, we’ve reached an impasse, I fear. Well, let’s say she wanted to get away from medicine and rainy days and early bedtime and rice pudding without currants in it. That do?”

  Barbara considered that, and decided it would do. “Then what?” she asked again, insisting on the story-line.

  “You’ll be a whale of an editor some day,” Paul told her. “Well, then she went to her friend the elephant and borrowed his trunk to pack her clothes. And she put on her new hat. The one with cherries on it. And a blue bow. And she was all ready.”

  Jon, behind him, said tensely, “We’re leaving for St. Luke’s. The doctor thinks it’s a ruptured appendix. Is Rona coming here?”

  “I’ll stay until she does,” Paul said.

  “I’m having a story,” Barbara announced happily, her eyes fixed on Paul.

  “Good girl,” Jon said and bent to kiss the back of her head. He left as silently as he had entered.

  “Rosebud took a bus to Peon Station,” Paul went on quickly.

  Barbara looked doubtful. “A bus?” She glanced round suddenly. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “It was a big bus. A very big bus.” Paul traced its size with his arms and recaptured her attention.

  “A very big bus,” she echoed, waving her arms too, smiling again.

  “And so she arrived at the railroad station. She went into a big hall, all gleaming and polished, but she couldn’t see a train, not anywhere. She went up to a kind man and asked where the trains lived. He said, ‘Madam’—that’s the way he always talked to lady hippopotamuses—‘Madam, you go downstairs and there you will find a train all ready and waiting.’ Rosebud nodded her head politely, and the cherries on her hat nodded too.”

  “And the blue bow,” Barbara said, unclasping and then again clasping her hands. She looked at the blue ribbon on her dressing-gown approvingly.

  “That’s the colour exactly,” Paul agreed. “So she started to look for the stairs to get down to the trains. She looked and she looked, but all the stairs had their gateways closed. And then, right over there in that corner, she saw an escalator.”

  Barbara frowned heavily and repressed another yawn. “Esslator?” she asked, puzzled.

  Paul began trying to describe an escalator in words of one syllable.

  “What then?” Barbara asked suddenly, tired of mechanical details. Her eyes tried to close and she forced them open.

  Then what? “Well, Rosebud stepped on the escalator. And it groaned and wheezed. It wheezed and groaned. And then it gave a big sigh—like this!—and it stopped. Rosebud said, ‘Dear me! What a nuisance. These things never work when you want them to.’ She tried to walk down, but she couldn’t. She tried to back up, but she couldn’t. She was stuck, right between the waiting-room and the trains in Pennsylvania Station.”

  He looked down for a smile of approval. Barbara’s eyes were closing. “The hippopotamus was stuck,” he repeated gently. But Barbara was suddenly asleep.

  So much for my story, he thought. It’s a good job I make my money in non-fiction. He waited for a few moments, and then rose quietly to carry her back to her cot.

  He paused for a moment to look at the empty bed where Bobby had lain. Then, with a last glance at the sleeping Barbara blanketed to her chin, he went back to the telephone. There was no answer from Rona’s apartment.

  * * *

  Almost midnight. There was still no report from Jon at the hospital, there was still no answer from Rona to any of his calls.

  Paul Haydn walked through the apartment again, paced around the living-room, looked out at the darkened buildings across the street, and then went back to the telephone. This time he called the hospital. The cool, antiseptic voice told him that she had no information available. Yes, she would call him when she found out. Yes, she would give Dr. Tyson his message: all was well at home, Barbara was asleep. Yes, she would call him at once if there was any change. Yes, yes...

  He put down the receiver. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said savagely. Then he calmed down. He wondered how many worried voices she had to answer each day. Pain and anguish and sorrow had become routine to her. Would she call him, would she even have time to find out how Bobby was?

  The telephone answered him. He raced back down the long hall. Yes, the same cool voice told him, the news was as good as it could be so far. The operation was over, the boy was beginning to come out of the anaesthetic, his parents were with him.

  “How good is all that?” he asked.

  “As good as can be expected,” the quiet voice said.

  “It’s serious? There’s little hope?”

  “It is much more hopeful now.”

  “But how’s the boy?” he asked angrily. The doorbell rang insistently behind him. He tried to ignore it, to concentrate on the next words.

  “He’s resting comfortably,” she said in a final way.

  “Oh...” A goddamned lie... Bobby resting comfortably when he was retching out of the anaesthetic, his raw wound stitched round a tube draining away the poison. Then Haydn recovered himself. He said, “Thank you. Thank you for calling me so quickly.” He had almost forgotten that. “Thanks a lot,” he added gratefully.

  “You’re welcome,” the nurse said, startled into sudden warmth and sympathy. “Don’t worry, now.” And then, as if alarmed at this breach of etiquette, she hung up the receiver abruptly.

  Paul Haydn went to the door. The bell was ringing for the third time. Behind him, from Barbara’s room, came a wail. That goddamned bell, he thought irritably and opened the door.

  Outside, there was Rona. Rona, and a policeman, and a thin-faced, dark-haired man.

  “You the brother-in-law?” the policeman asked.

  “No, he’s out,” Paul said, startled. “Rona—”

  “This all right, miss?” the thin-faced man asked.

  Rona nodded. She stepped into the apartment.

  “Rona,” Paul said again.

  She turned her face away, her hand over her neck, and drew aside as if to avoid touching him. She walked down the long hall without looking back. Then suddenly she stopped, as if she had just heard Barbara crying, and she went into the bedroom.

  “She’s had a bit of a shock. Attacked in Central Park. But she’s all right,” the policeman said in a low voice. “We’ll come back later to get any particulars she can give. It didn’t seem a good idea to ask anything except the routine questions tonight. The man who was with her was no help at all. He
beat it.”

  “You’d—you’d better come in and tell me,” Paul said. “Her sister and brother-in-law are at the hospital. There’s been trouble here, too.” And briefly he told them what had happened.

  The thin-faced man, who had been backing unobtrusively towards the elevator as soon as Rona had entered the apartment, suddenly turned round. You’re in a tough spot, he seemed to say. A crying child, a woman who might go hysterical at any moment. She had been far too quiet at the police station, far too quiet during the ride here.

  The policeman felt the same way. He half-turned to look at his companion.

  “And who are you?” Paul asked, looking at the unobtrusive clothes and the grey felt hat. Then he remembered the man he had seen in Benny’s.

  “Oh,” said the policeman brusquely, “he was just passing by when it happened.” He had suddenly become the professional.

  “Will you come in? Both of you? I guess I need help as well as information now.” He was still watching the man who had just happened to pass by. “A good job you were there. I wonder what happened to that smart FBI fellow who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Miss Metford? I guess he wasn’t so smart.”

  The man looked at him. “I guess not,” he said. He paused and added, “Well, if I can be of any help to you...” and he stepped over the threshold.

  There was silence now from Barbara’s room. Rona was still in there.

  “What do we do?” Paul asked, hesitating.

  “Leave her with the kid,” the policeman suggested. He looked at his watch with a frown.

  “Get her to go to sleep, I suppose,” the quiet man said. The three men looked at each other.

  “Well,” the policeman said in a resigned voice, “if I delivered a baby last week, I guess I can handle this.” He pushed the bedroom door open and looked round it cautiously. Then slowly and quietly he stepped back into the hall, closing the door gently. “She’s taken both our advice,” he said to the man who had come with his. “She’s asleep on the bed beside the kid’s cot.” He smiled, with relief. “Now,” he said to Paul, “all we have to do is to tell you what happened, as far as we can piece it together.”