The Protégé

by Charlotte Armstrong

  He didn’t know it was loaded. Surreptitiously he had since removed the one and only bullet. Now he knew that it was not loaded.

  It looked well, however. Zan believed in it.

  Simon—or whoever he was—hadn’t taken the slightest interest in the gun. Neither had Mrs. Moffat. They had other things on their minds, he guessed. Other things? Who in Hollywood would have believed that? It must be that either they didn’t believe the gun was dangerous, or they didn’t believe that Nicky was, and they were right on both counts.

  Zan came in from the hall, stepping high, like a prancing pony. She said, low-voiced, “Nicky, the phone’s cut off. I’ll run to a neighbor’s. Polly’s in a bad way. We’ve got to have the doctor and the law. So hold everything—okay?”

  “Okay,” he croaked.

  Zan withdrew, dancing backward, saying no more, smiling faintly, behaving as if the silence in the sitting room were precious as fine old china and must not be broken.

  They all heard the front door close behind her with a soft thud and a clicking.

  “No,” cried Simon, electrified. He rolled his eyes toward Mrs. Moffat.

  “Then do something,” said Mrs. Moffat instantly. “Go help Alexandra.”

  “Wait. Wait!” But Simon had rushed away, and Nicky was only bleating after.

  “Mrs. Moffat,” said Nicky, between outrage and pathos, “tell me what’s happening!”

  Her grandmother said, “Zan shouldn’t have gone out.”

  “She went to phone. The phone’s cut off.”

  “Yes. Well, he would know.” The old lady shaded her eyes with her trembling hand. Her lips went on moving.

  Nicky, still holding the gun, began to run. He passed through the front hall where Polly was slumped in a chair, and let himself out the front door. He jogged down the private walk and saw them to his left on the public sidewalk, racing in and out of shadow; he pounded after.

  He reasoned backward. Or upside down or inside out.

  There was a man out there.

  He was dangerous to Zan.

  The phone company had not had trouble on Mrs. Moffat’s line so coincidentally.

  Who knew where the phone wires came into the house?

  Polly had used the phone to say Simon was digging; when Nicky and Zan had arrived ten minutes later, he was still digging.

  He had not since been out from under their eyes.

  Yes, he had. He had spidered off into the dark.

  He never had been Simon.

  There was another man out there.

  Zan was up on the stoop of a lighted house. She had her finger on the doorbell button. Simon stood at her back.

  “May I use your phone, please?” Zan said to the woman who opened the door an inch only. “It’s an emergency. Just me,” she added, her head high. The woman let her in and they both slammed the door in Simon’s face.

  Nicky rushed up behind Simon. “Who is the other man?”

  Simon put his arm on the house wall and his face in the bend of the elbow. “I should have known she wasn’t rich enough. She wasn’t rich enough for pearls.”

  Mrs. Moffat was not sure where Polly was or how. She would have liked to know. But if Polly felt able, Polly would be beside her right now. Mrs. Moffat did not want to stir Polly to an attempt to do what she was not able.

  The old lady was no longer concerned for Zan running to the neighbor’s house in the dark. Zan was protected. She was thinking about Zan’s shock, to find out where and how Tommy Moffat was. She knew very well that Simon didn’t want Zan to find out: Simon had had some romantic dream of coaxing Tommy Moffat far away from here. But could he, without the treasure they’d expected?

  Had Simon, under any circumstances, the force to make Tommy Moffat do what all authority, society, science and art had never—

  She heard the small whine of the metal spring at the top of the screen door. The floor boards of the porch were old.

  She was alone; the shock of her fall still ran in her nerves and weakened her limbs. She was old and afraid.

  But Mrs. Moffat shook herself, came smiling up from these waters. Seven years ago she had said certain words to her only grandson. For seven years they had stood, for better or for worse, indelibly her last words. Now there came from the soft dark of an ordinary Monday night the gift and surprise of another chance. Ah, but she would take no thought for what she would say.

  “Come in, Tommy,” she sang out.

  He came.

  He was dressed in gray trousers and a gray shirt. The garments were not clean. His shoes were scuffed; the laces were knotted, where once they had been broken. His face was half covered with a black beard; Mrs. Moffat saw, with sadness, a thread or two of gray in it. The beard was clipped close in imitation of Simon’s, although it was not curly. Tommy’s hair was long and straight; it lay wild on his head, and on his forehead—his forehead …

  “Where did they all go?” he said.

  “To telephone,” she answered. “Too bad about the pearls. I think there is almost a hundred dollars in the right hand secret drawer of my slant-top desk. You know where that is.”

  He limped across the room; it was a bad limp. She was sorry. He opened the desk, yanked out the silly little “secret” drawer, shook the paper money forth, snatched it up, and turned back to her, leaving the slant-top open, the drawer out, his whole deed revealed as having been done.

  Now he came close and put his hands on the arms of her chair. His sunken eye was jeering. “Best you can do, Gran?”

  Mrs. Moffat put up her hands and touched the deformity of his forehead, not likely the result of disease, but sufficiently repulsive.

  She said earnestly, “Tommy, did they help you at the treatment place? Was it in any way pleasant there?”

  His good eye flickered, but the little eye, diminished in its deep place, burned steadily with malice. He snatched her hands down.

  “So Al told you about the treatment place?”

  “No.”

  “He told Zan?”

  “Nobody told Zan.”

  “I’m an arrested case, you know. I’m not dangerous.”

  “Good,” she said. She didn’t believe him.

  “Maybe I’ll stay and tell her myself. I’m not dead, for instance. I ought to be able to prove that.”

  Mrs. Moffat put up her left hand to shade her eyes. “Don’t stay, Tommy.”

  “Why not? You don’t think Zan would be glad to see me?”

  “She can take it,” said Mrs. Moffat, “but if she sees you—”

  He snatched at her hand and wrenched it away and she offered him the candor of her eyes. “Do as you like,” she said. “You may be right. It’s best the hauntings stop. She ought to see her pretty lover’s dead and gone.”

  “Lover,” he snarled. He began to wrench at the diamond rings on her third finger.

  Her knuckles had thickened; force would never get her rings past that obstacle. The pain was excruciating. Mrs. Moffat hissed with it. “You’ll never get them off,” she gasped. “If you don’t let me.”

  He threw her hand into her lap. The finger was bloody. With her good right hand she wiggled and turned her solitaire, her wedding band of smaller stones, twisting and working them along, as she had to do.

  She dropped them into his hand. “These are all the jewels that I own,” she said, and wished she hadn’t. He wouldn’t believe her.

  “I’ll bet,” he growled. He put the rings into his trouser pocket. “I’ll make a deal. Send money. Mail it to me in Mexico. Then Zan won’t have to know about my trouble.”

  “That’s not going to work,” said Mrs. Moffat calmly. “Zan’s going to know all about it this very night.”

  “You’re going to tell her?”

  “Nobody’s going to tell her.”

  “She thought I was Al out there. He won’t let me down.”

  Mrs. Moffat said, “You can’t make a deal, Tommy. but I will give you money—not much, I suppose, but something, regularly. For
free. For nothing—as long as I live.”

  He muttered under his breath, words of disgust and disbelief. He leaned very close; his breath was bad, his teeth were brown, and one was broken.

  “If they find you dead in that chair, then all you’ve got I’ll get, you realize?”

  Mrs. Moffat made her skull heavy on the chair’s headrest. She knew he would inherit only the end of his own life; he was almost there, as it was.

  “No,” she said wearily, “but try it and see. No one could ever tell you anything. Poor Tommy.”

  Zan’s voice rang out in the house. “The doctor’s coming, Polly. How are you now?”

  Tommy Moffat’s neck craned slowly around and he looked over his shoulder. But it was Simon who came into the sitting room.

  “The police are coming,” he said quietly, and came walking steadily into the room.

  “You pushed her, by accident. I wasn’t here. Okay?” Tommy said in a low voice.

  Simon said, “No.” He was braced to leap, to attack, to hurl himself. “Get away from her.”

  Tommy said, whining, “Break my leg. Run out on me. Turn me in to the cops. Tell me you’re going to stick with me. Sure you are. You lousy traitor. Worm your way in with my grandmother!”

  He lurched, moving awkwardly but without much sound, through the double doors. The porch floor creaked. Simon kept walking steadily in a straight line to the double doors. Mrs. Moffat heard Tommy make a profane suggestion—what Simon could do to Tommy’s wife.

  Zan called, “You’re not going anywhere, Simon!” She appeared, sprightly as an elf, in the door from the hall.

  Simon stopped at the double-door sill. Mrs. Moffat listened, breathless, for the screen door, but a siren screamed outside somewhere.

  “The cops are coming,” cried Zan with satisfaction, “and we’ll get the straight of this. Are you a twin?” she said to Simon, as she went dancing toward her grandmother. “Have you a little shadow, goes in and out? Gran, there’s a taxi—”

  At this moment Nicky Pomerance came into the sitting room with a burly middle-aged man in a gray suit.

  “This is Mr. Allenstag,” he began, but the man began to stumble the long way of the room, one hand outstretched.

  “Oh, you poor damn fool kid—am I glad to see you!”

  Simon was pulled up, his back arched like a Spanish dancer’s, his head high, his eyes glittering. The big man’s arm went around the boy’s shoulders, his cheek to the boy’s cheek, the impetus of his rush and his affection carried them both over the doorsill into the quiet dimness of the porch. Simon went with a sudden breaking of his back.

  Zan glanced at Nicky, who shrugged and vanished to answer the doorbell. She glanced at her grandmother. The old lady’s eyes were closed. Her right hand was cupped over her left hand, and both were held to her breast.

  Chapter 15

  The doctor and a policeman had come. Zan had to help old Polly to her bed, while Dr. Sebastian took a look at Mrs. Moffat. He passed Zan when she returned to the sitting room.

  “Your grandmother will do,” and off he went to tend to Polly.

  Zan drew nearer to the others, noticing the white tape covering the third finger of Mrs. Moffat’s left hand. She sat down to listen. It seemed to Zan that the policeman was asking questions in one language and Mrs. Moffat and Simon, too, were answering in another.

  “So you said you were this Simon Warren?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That wasn’t true?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you know that, Mrs. Moffat?”

  “I soon knew it, yes.”

  “But you didn’t mention it to him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It didn’t matter very much.”

  “Why did he come here under a false name?”

  “He was after my pearl beads.”

  “Beads?”

  “Yes. They were not real pearls.”

  “Where are these beads?”

  “Buried in the yard.”

  Simon had not sat down; he was standing against the one closed leaf of the double doors, his head in profile to the room. Listening. Mrs. Moffat was listening, too.

  Zan had spotted the old desk in the corner. She could feel her nerves tightening and her temper rising. She said, “Her grandson and my husband stole them, years ago. My husband buried them because he couldn’t, I suppose, fence them at his age. He sent this friend of his, I think, to dig up the loot.”

  “Thank you, Mrs.—er—?”

  “Moffat,” said Zan.

  “The chap you call Smitty is named Moffat?” said Mr. Allenstag to his son.

  Simon didn’t answer.

  Zan said, “My husband deserted me more than seven years ago and ran away from the law, but I believe that he’s out there now. When he pushed my grandmother down, I took him for this man in the poor light. He has a beard also. But he cut the phone wire. He came inside while we were elsewhere, phoning. He took money from that desk, do you see? And look at her finger! He tore her rings away. My husband is without any particular mercy. I’m sorry to have to say so, but it is true.”

  “He is a leper, isn’t he, Paul?” said Mr. Allenstag.

  “Not if he takes the medicine,” said Simon quietly. “I bought some today. It’s in the house next door. I don’t know whether he’ll find it.”

  There was a very deep hush, and then a faint shout outside. Simon slid suddenly around the leaf of the doors and was on the porch. The policeman was after him. The screen door banged behind them. More shouts went up.

  Nicky Pomerance went as far as the doors. “Your garage is on fire.”

  Zan popped up beside him. “The Halloran house is burning! See there?”

  “This house?”

  White-faced, Zan ran across the porch and backward on the lawn, looking up at the roof, and Nicky followed.

  When the doctor came from Polly’s room, via the kitchen, Mrs. Moffat was out of her chair, and he, with understanding, gave her his own arm for a crutch. So she attained her rocking chair and, with the doctor’s fingers on her pulse, she watched the light.

  The strange and beautiful terror of burning structures after dark. Sirens. A fire truck roaring. The police shouting. A crackle of gunfire. An ominous silence.

  Zan, standing with Nicky near the sundial, cried out and strained forward. Nicky held her back. A spotlight steadied on the man who had fallen just within the hedge, on Mrs. Moffat’s side.

  A policeman hunkered down; a man with a red beard came out of the darkness and knelt on the grass. Zan ran to kneel there, too, and Nicky let her go.

  “Marguerite, lean back,” said the doctor gently. “I imagine I’ll be wanted.”

  “No hurry,” she said grimly.

  “I don’t understand,” burst Simon’s father, his nose to the screen. “Why should my son be so devoted to this—to this … Excuse me.”

  “Once upon a time, they had a few nights and days during which it seemed to your son that they were joyous and free. There is power in that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d like to thank you. I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry.”

  When Zan came in, it was a standoff who would comfort whom.

  Nicky took Mr. Allenstag’s elbow. They went inside.

  Zan darted to the footstool and dragged it across the floor. She sat at her grandmother’s feet, holding her head in her ten fingers. In a moment Mrs. Moffat put her left hand flat on the girl’s back, fingers opened, spread, palm pressed close. At first the fabric of the dress was cool from the night air, but soon there was only warmth between flesh and flesh, and Mrs. Moffat could feel the living rhythms, the strong bones, the pulsing and being. While Zan drew from the small, warm, firm hand that held so calmly and so undemandingly and so reassuringly and so lovingly and attentively still, something too wonderful to mention ever.

  The fire light died away. Mrs. Moffat’s garage and car had not burned. The cottage was h
alf gone. The Halloran house had not been seriously damaged. The knots of neighbors and sight-seers had been dispersed. Not too many plants were beaten down. Fat canvas fire hoses were embroidering the ground. Mrs. Moffat was watching in silence, her hands folded in her lap now. Zan, still beside her, huddled warm against her knees. Sunrise would tell the damages.

  The doctor had gone. Tommy Moffat’s body was gone. Polly was abed, sedated. Mrs. Moffat was turning black and blue, and certain joints were stiffening, but this was no night for sleeping.

  Mr. Allenstag was still in the sitting room, talking with Nicky Pomerance in their civilized voices.

  Simon came to the door with his flight bag in his hand. Freakishly it was only scorched.

  “Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Moffat.

  He had her garnet pin in his hand. “Your beads are all over the place,” he told her, “and ground into the ground, some of them. But I found this.”

  “Thank you.” The pin was broken and dull with dirt. But time had not touched the day she had opened the jeweler’s box and found it new.

  “Now you must say good-bye,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, ma’am, I must say good-bye.”

  She held out her hand, and he took it briefly. It was just a handclasp. “I wish you good luck,” she said, “and good times.”

  “I’ll look for them,” he promised smoothly. “Goodbye, Mrs. Moffat.”

  Zan, gazing up, said, “I’m sorry you are leaving, Paul. I never got to know you.”

  He said, “I’m sorry it had to happen the way it did, Alexandra,” touched her hand lightly and went into the house where his father was.

  Paul Henry Allenstag, Jr., was the son of a wealthy man, with stocks and bonds of his own. He could have brought the pearls back, even if they had been real, and paid back the insurance company, too. It might have taken a touch of Quixote. He had the background of the right prep schools and the right clothes, and sports—sailing and skiing—good manners, of course, for old ladies—but a sense of changing styles for contemporaries.