Nine Times Nine

by Anthony Boucher

  “Infant’s a bit strong, old man, but still … She’s Concha Harrigan. Her uncle is Dad’s attorney. But don’t get me wrong. This isn’t any of your family-arranged affairs. We met at a party and were going swell before we even knew who each other were … was.”

  “You mean she’s one of the Harrigans?”

  “You know them?” Greg seemed doubtful.

  “I know about them, of course, and I’ve read Wolfe’s books on the screwball cults that bless our fair city. Swell stuff. But Concha? That’s no Irish name.”

  “Her mother was a Pelayo. Aristocratic old Spanish family—dons and land-grants and such. Rancho Pelayo, that they made all the subdivisions out of. Only it was old Rufus Harrigan that made the money on that. Her name’s really María Concepción Harrigan Pelayo. Sometimes she even signs herself that way. She is such a kid.”

  “Hold on. This is going too fast. She’s called Concha because her grandfather made subdivisions?”

  “Sort of. It’s a nickname for Concepción. I wanted to call her Mary, but she likes Concha. She says she’s as much a Pelayo as a Harrigan. I don’t know. One thing’s sure anyway. She’s not going to be a Randall.”

  “But why? How did she—?”

  “We were engaged. Six weeks after I met her we were engaged. I know she’s young, but eleven years isn’t so much difference. Lots of people work out all right that way. And then her aunt … Well, you see, Aunt Ellen is religious. I mean they all are, the Harrigans and the Pelayos, all but Arthur, only Ellen’s more so. She does good works and goes to church every day and won’t eat meat on Wednesdays. You get the picture?”

  “I get it.”

  “So Aunt Ellen decided to give the Sisters of Martha of Bethany a memorial chapel in honor of Rufus Harrigan, that eminent and sainted land-pirate.”

  Matt smiled. “You haven’t gone Red, have you, Greg?”

  “No,” said Gregory seriously. “What makes you think that? Anyway, this Sister Ursula starts coming around to see Aunt Ellen about arrangements, only she sees Concha, too. And you could just see her licking her chops. Such a nice girl and such a good wealthy family. Mmm! So she and Aunt Ellen go to work. Uncle Joseph and her father probably had a hand in it, too. We will give our daughter to the honor and glory of God. Poverty, chastity, and obedience!” He set his glass down with a startling thump which drowned out his monosyllable. The bartender chose to misinterpret the thump, and that was all right with everybody.

  “You mean they’ve—they’ve framed this poor kid into this thing?”

  “I guess you’d call it that. I never thought much about the power of the Church. I mean, you read about Jesuits and Inquisitions and such; but you think about all that as past and gone. Only when it comes into your own life like this … well, it’s different.”

  “It’s a damned crime, that’s what it is,” Matt announced vigorously. “To bust up your life to lure the Harrigan heiress into a convent. … Well, Greg?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what the hell are you going to do about it?”

  “Do about it? What can I do about it? She won’t be eighteen till next month—she can’t marry without her father’s consent. And I’m no young Lochinvar anyway, Matt. I can’t see myself carrying her off from it all.”

  Matt seized the fresh drink enthusiastically. “Can’t you? That’s just too bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s just what you’re going to do.”

  “Look here, Matt, old man—”

  Matt’s voice approached exaltation. “Are you going to let this Concha child of yours be walled up for life like a heroine in a Gothic novel? The sweet hell you are. You’re going to go out there and confront the Harrigan family and tell them what’s what. You’re going to grab Concha and tell her you love her and she’s going to marry you. And what you’re going to tell Sister Ursula I blush to mention. This is 1940. A girl leads her own life now without family or superstition. Are you going to let her slip through your hands?”

  “But, Matt …” said Gregory Randall feebly.

  “Have you got your car? Good. I’ll drive you out; I haven’t had my hand on a steering wheel in months. Make a new man of me. And we’ll show the Harrigans—and the Pelayos—a thing or many. Come on.”

  It wasn’t so much that Matt was tight. All the rye had done was loosen him up a little—put him on a splendid peak from which he could see the troubles of others and free himself from his own concern by godlike intervention. And so he plunged himself headlong into the lives of the Harrigans—and the tragic events that followed the Nine Times Nine.

  Chapter 2

  When they came out of the bar, it had begun to rain. Nothing serious, but a persistent March drizzle.

  “I think I’ll stop in this drugstore,” Gregory Randall said as they walked to the parking lot. He came out with a glugging parcel tucked under his arm.

  “Cold medicine?” Matt asked.

  “No, I don’t believe in syrups. I always—Oh, I see. You mean—Yes. It is that kind of cold medicine.”

  “Go easy on it. We’ve had enough already. Remember you’ve got to make a good impression on the family.”

  As Matt slid behind the steering wheel, Greg tucked himself into the corner and unwrapped the parcel. He tore the foil off the bottle and handed it over.

  “No, thanks. I think maybe I’m through drinking tonight. I’m having fun without it.”

  Randall took a long draught. “You understand, Matt, old man, I’m not really what you’d call a drinking man. It’s just that … Well, I was a lot younger when you knew me. Almost as young as Concha. Things that were all very well then … I’ve got a position now, you understand. Dad’s office—I wouldn’t have you think that I’m just the boss’s son. I’m someone in my own right.”

  “Who?” Matt asked.

  “Who? Why—I mean, I count for something. That’s why I feel it’s time I got married. A man in my position. And that’s why I feel I really need this. I’m not used to this sort of thing. Dashing around at night in the rain …”

  “Remember about the course of true love? What did you expect? Just find a girl, say, ‘Look here, I think it’d be nice if we got married,’ so then you marry her and settle down in your position? It isn’t so simple. Hell, Greg, if you want something you’ve got to fight for it.”

  “I wouldn’t like you to think I’m not a fighting man, Matt.” Glug. “Remind me to tell you about the way I handled the Warden-McKinley bond issue. But this is different. This is so—so personal.”

  “She’s worth it, isn’t she?”

  “Concha,” said Gregory Randall, with broad and glugging simplicity, “is worth anything.”

  “All right then.”

  It was a long drive from Main Street to the hills just west of Hollywood, but they said little more. Matt was too busy enjoying his sudden and exhilarating release from self-preoccupation and the smooth pleasure of a fine car, glidingly responsive to his touch; and Greg seemed to find the cough medicine sufficient in itself.

  The rain was worse now. The neon of the city glistened with a wet radiance when they hit that splendid stretch on Sunset where the south side of the boulevard seems to fall away like a dissolving curtain and reveal the city in gleaming miniature.

  Matt felt almost sober now, but his exalted mood persisted. “One thing I do understand in the Bible,” he said, “is the temptation on the mountain. To see the kingdoms of the earth spread out before you. … That was before electricity, too. If Satan had had neon, he might have won.”

  Gregory Randall said nothing.

  A block farther on, following the directions Greg had given him, Matt turned north and drove up a winding road with infrequent streetlights and no sign of house numbers. At the end of the road loomed an imposing building, not so vast in size (probably a mere six bedrooms, Matt calculated), but still with something of old-fashioned massiveness about it. Definitely not a house—a mansion.

  Matt slowed down
and turned to his companion. “Is that the place?”

  The only answer was a snore.

  Matt pulled up to the curb, then leaned over and shook his passenger. From Greg’s lap rolled the bottle, now nearly glugless. The next snore was louder and more resonant.

  “Damn,” said Matt. This was a nice howdyedo. Quite obviously Gregory had been indulging in purest truth when he said he was not a drinking man. Even a man with a position should recognize the parlous borderline between stimulating the nerves and passing out.

  But Greg or no Greg, Matt had come here on a mission. Childe Roland to the dark tower came and things. There was a maiden in distress—

  Matt had started out without an overcoat—not that his threadbare remnant would have made much difference in this downpour. Greg was wearing a beautiful camel’s hair coat, which he obviously did not need in the seclusion of the closed coupe. Matt’s earlier unconscious prophecy was coming true; Gregory Randall was doomed to end the evening by being rolled.

  It was not easy to remove an overcoat from an inert snoring mass. Twice Matt found himself slapped in the face by a flabby hand, and once, as he was being rolled about, Gregory opened his lips, though not his eyes.

  “Think nothing of it,” he said genially, and relapsed into chaos.

  Matt wrapped the sumptuous coat around himself and started out to the dark tower.

  There was a butler. There would be. It is rumored that the middle class of other countries takes servants calmly, as a matter of course; but no American under the rank of economic royalist is happy in the presence of a man whose occupation and manner combine to murmur politely, “I am, sir, your inferior.” When this same manner is accompanied, as in this case, by an eyebrow quirk which adds the qualification, “In a pig’s eye,” the difficulties of the situation are intensified.

  Matt’s fine fervor was fading. Childe Roland may have faced an ogre, but never a butler. “I should like,” he said as bravely as he could, “to see Miss Harrigan.”

  It was probably the camel’s hair coat that did the trick. Obviously no one completely beneath notice could possess such a garment.

  “Is she expecting you?” the butler went so far as to say.

  “I—well, I have an important message for her.”

  “And what is the name?”

  “Matthew Duncan.”

  “Please step in here. I shall inquire if she will see you.”

  He retired. The British spirit of compromise had triumphed; he had admitted the intruder, but had not said sir.

  The full tide of chivalry had pretty thoroughly ebbed from Matt’s bosom. He was well on the way to deciding that he had made a damned fool of himself. If the butler had returned twenty seconds later, he might have found an empty hallway.

  “This way, please,” the man enunciated—there was no other word for it. “Miss Harrigan will see you.”

  Matt wondered what she would be like. Almost all he knew specifically was her age and her mixed lineage. An Iberian Hibernian of seventeen, however, was promising enough. A brunette she would be—that much was more than likely. A good deal of temper probably—temper that would certainly be vented full on his hapless head. If he had only had the sense to turn around and drive Greg home …

  “Mr. Duncan,” the butler announced, opening a door.

  Matt smelled incense as he came in. That puzzled him. He somehow hadn’t pictured her as the exotic type. Then he saw the odd-looking sort of madonna opposite the door and the candles burning in front of it. This was worse yet. The devout type. Maybe after all she belonged in a—

  “Yes, Mr. Duncan?” said a quietly sharp voice.

  He looked away from the shrine. In a carved oak chair, resembling an individual-size pew, sat a small elderly woman, dressed in formless black. Her right hand, resting on the arm of the chair, dangled a long chain of brown wooden beads, which seemed only slightly smaller replicas of her intense little eyes.

  “You find me at my evening devotions,” she said. There was no tone of explanation or apology—simply a statement of fact and an implied hope that she would not be long interrupted.

  “I … I asked to see Miss Harrigan,” Matt ventured.

  “I am Miss Harrigan.”

  Then Matt remembered. The religious Aunt Ellen, the source of all this trouble—naturally, she was Miss Harrigan. The butler would interpret literally according to formal usage: the girl would be Miss Concha—no, you couldn’t say that. Miss Mary, perhaps? Miss Concepción?

  Aunt Ellen also understood. “From your confusion, young man, I take it that you wished to see my niece?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry I interrupted you at your prayers. If you’ll tell me where I can find her …?”

  “I am afraid she is busy at the moment. You could not see her. If there is some message that I—”

  This had all gone hopelessly wrong. More than anything else, Matt simply wanted to get the hell out of there. Silence was strong in the chapel. From the next room came the sound of typing.

  “I’ll come back some other time,” Matt said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

  The door from the hall opened and a round pink face appeared. “Ellen,” it said, “has Mary come down yet?”

  “No, Joseph. She is still with Sister Ursula.”

  “It’s taking a long time, isn’t it? I hope she’ll be able to make the child see the proper path to follow—Hello! Company at your prayers, Ellen?”

  “Come in, Joseph,” said Miss Harrigan. “This is Mr. Duncan—my brother, Mr. Harrigan. He came with some sort of message for Mary.”

  R. Joseph Harrigan stepped into the room. He was tall and solid, just this side of corpulence. His cheeks had the sleek smoothness of the well-barbered man-about-town, and his lips fell easily into the smile of one who must meet too many people. His suit was unobtrusively excellent. His lapel was empty, but you felt he must have just put the gardenia in the icebox.

  “I am always glad to meet one of Mary’s friends,” he announced in rounded tones. “A man mustn’t let himself get out of touch with the younger generation, you know.”

  “You say,” Matt hesitated, “that Miss Harrigan is with Sister Ursula?”

  “Why, yes,” said Miss Ellen. “Though I—”

  The lawyer withdrew his extended hand. “Exactly, young man. We fail to see what concern it is of yours if my niece chooses—”

  “Oh, no concern of mine, sir. But as I said, I’m here as an envoy, so to speak; and I certainly think it is a concern of Gregory Randall’s.”

  “Randall? He sent you here?” Joseph was patently incredulous.

  “Yes.” It was not an exact statement, but it would serve. “He sent me here with a message to his fiancee, and I feel that I should deliver it. Will you let me see Miss Harrigan, or is she being held incommunicado?”

  This taunting phrase slipped out unpremediated. Matt himself was amazed to hear it, and instantly more regretful than ever that he had involved himself in this embassy. R. Joseph Harrigan swelled visibly. “Young man,” he puffed, “I cannot believe that any friend of Gregory Randall’s would have the brazen effrontery to come here and insult us in our own home. Frankly, sir, I think this is some trick, and I must request you—”

  “Please,” said Ellen Harrigan. “This is a chapel.”

  Harrigan lowered his voice. “Quite true, Ellen. And that is all the more reason why this fellow should display some trace of common decency.”

  There was a pause. The typing went on in the next room, and one of the candles spluttered.

  “Look,” said Matt. “This is a h—a frightful mess. It’s just sort of happened. I don’t know how I got into it or how to get out. Let’s just say quits and wash the whole thing up. I’m sorry I’ve offended you, and please don’t hold it against Greg. There. Goodby.”

  He stepped to the door and tried to turn the knob. It was locked. For an instant absurdly melodramatic thoughts flashed through his mind, to be dispelled by Ellen Harrigan’s calm, “That’s
the wrong door.”

  “Who’s there?” said a voice on the other side, as the typing halted.

  “No one, Wolfe. Just a mistake.”

  So the unseen typist would be A. Wolfe Harrigan, author of those excellent books on bogus cults. Matt should have liked to meet him—he imagined a quiet but brilliant scholar, so wrapped up perhaps in his researches that he did not even notice the fate which was being forced on his daughter. But there was no hope now of a social meeting with any Harrigan.

  No one spoke, as Matt, feeling more completely humiliated than he had ever before felt in his life, found the right door and went out. As he reached the hall he heard Joseph Harrigan’s dulcet voice.

  “Ellen, that young man has been drinking.”

  The butler, thank God, was nowhere in sight. Matt reached the door unobserved and tightened the camel’s hair coat about him before facing the wet night. Damn it all, he didn’t have even intoxication to fall back on as an excuse. He had simply made a complete idiot of himself, upset an old lady at her prayers, infuriated a leading citizen, and possibly done unmeasured harm to Greg Randall’s cause. And all not even for Hecuba—just for some wild quixotic notion.

  He stood in the rain and looked back at the house. One thing he had not liked, and that was the smug complacency with which R. Joseph Harrigan had hoped that the nun would show the girl the proper path to follow. Perhaps he should have tried harder to see her. It wasn’t pretty to think of a young girl being bludgeoned into …

  Someone else was watching the Harrigan mansion. Matt noticed it abruptly—the sheen of a wet raincoat in the light from a window. Over at the left toward the back of the house, about (as best he could figure) where the chapel was. But the chapel had no windows at body-level—only two squares for ventilation high in the wall.

  Was the house being guarded? Was that part of the plan? No, that didn’t make sense. If there were guards, he himself would have been challenged before he reached the butler. Then it must be …