“All right. I’ll resign tomorrow night and turn the case over to Wilcox. How’s that?”
“It’s all right only if you agree with me. I’m thinking of your own good. We’ll talk it over when I get back.”
“Fine. I’ll be looking forward to that. Do you want to speak to Joey now?”
“I haven’t time. Tell her everything was—was done properly. Tell her I’ll be in on the evening train tomorrow. If she wants to, she can meet me in Baldwin. Somebody can bring her.” That was all.
Mark wondered about the layout of Beacham’s office. He knew one thing definitely; if there were two doors, there was a nondescript man outside each one. He returned to his table, finished his coffee, and escorted Joey out to the lawn. He signaled to Perley, who settled his hat under his arm and tiptoed up the hotel steps like a shy sacrifice.
It was growing dark outside. The air was cooler but there were no stars, and the trees were silent. Mark sat on the cottage porch and Joey took the steps.
“Your father can’t make the early train,” he said. “He’ll be along later. Do you want to meet him?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. He told her what Beacham had said about the funeral and she listened without comment. After a while she came up on the porch and leaned against him, resting her sharp little chin on his shoulder. He absently pulled her into his lap.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” he said. “Big day today.”
She didn’t answer. “Joey,” he said softly, “what did your mother look like? Like you or like Roberta?”
She waited before she spoke. “I don’t know that.”
“No pictures?”
“No sir.” She closed the subject. “I think I will go to bed,” she said.
“No reading out loud?”
“No sir.”
This was unnaturally formal and indicated stress. He let her go and he knew better than to offer his assistance.
The Pecks came by, proudly flanked by the Haskells. They called jovial and noisy greetings. Thanks for the party invitation. They’d be there with bells on.
“The bells of hell go tingalingaling, but not for you and me,” sang Archie.
The Haskells looked wistful, even in the twilight. They hadn’t been invited. Mark addressed them mentally. Wait until Monday, he said silently, and you’ll be glad.
Perley came over for instructions. He was bristling with information of his own at the same time. “You know what they call a cabbage in there?” he asked. “Shoo! Like you say to a fly, shoo! Fellow waiting on my table told me that. It’s French. Shoo! Pansy’s going to call me a liar when I tell her.”
Mark stood at the railing that overlooked the Peck cottage. He watched the lights go on in the living room.
“You’re not paying me any mind,” Perley said. “I was telling you what they call a cabbage—”
“I know what they call it. . . . Take the hotel until midnight, then I’ll relieve you. Go up to the second floor and stick to the side of the hall that leads to the fire escape.”
CHAPTER TEN
AT 5:00 a.m. Mark came back to the cottage and told Perley to get some sleep. He took the porch hammock himself and slept until Joey called him. She told him it was nine o’clock and said she couldn’t keep on chasing people away. Everybody was hungry, she said, and Roberta had ordered breakfast sent over.
He struggled up. “Where’s the sun?”
“There isn’t any today. It’s a terrible looking day.”
The sky was low and dark and the tree tops met each other with sibilant whispers, recoiled, and met again.
He bathed hastily and joined the others at the living room table. Joey had already bolted her food and was trying to see how far she could tilt her chair without falling over backward.
“Don’t do that,” Roberta said. Her voice was mild and preoccupied. Mark gave her a covert look. The old sharpness wasn’t there and she looked as if she’d had twelve hours sleep. He knew she hadn’t. He tried to read in her eyes what had happened the night before, but they were as bland as a child’s.
Joey straightened up and made her napkin into a cocked hat which she tried on. Perley sat stiffly at the end of the table, conducting himself according to the code he had heard Pansy lay down for Floyd; left hand in lap, right hand grimly but daintily wielding his fork. His elbows were so far removed from the table that they might have been underslung wings, and he chewed his food as if it were a deadly secret.
Joey slid down from her chair and asked to be excused. Mark paid no attention until he heard the lock turn in her door.
“What’s the idea, locking herself in?” he asked Roberta.
“She’s going to try on clothes and look at herself in the mirror. Deciding what she’s going to wear.”
“Wear when?”
“This afternoon. Sunday school.”
“Well she can save herself the trouble. She’s not going. Run along and tell her I said so, will you?”
He heard Roberta knock, heard the door open and the low murmur of voices. Joey came out instantly and frantically. She had tied herself into a pongee bathrobe, wrong side out.
“You’re not going,” Mark said before she could open her mouth. He fell back before the avalanche.
She had to go, she told him furiously. He couldn’t make her stay home. He hadn’t the right of bossing over her. She had to go. It was her birthday next Wednesday. He knew that. She had to.
“What has next Wednesday got to do with today?” he managed to ask. “I thought you were still steamed up over keeping that banner.”
Well, the banner too. But Wednesday was why she had to go. Didn’t he have any sense at all? Didn’t he know anything? If Mike was here he’d say she could. He knew. He understood.
His own nerves were raw and he counted ten twice before he was sure his voice would have the right quality. “Tell me all about it,” he said. “Maybe, just maybe, I’ll understand too.”
She told him earnestly, looking from him to Perley. It was, she said, all because of Baby Moses. He asked her to say it again, to make sure he’d heard it right. She did. It was all because of Baby Moses and the Guardian Angel. The Angel was no good and they had six of them left, but there was only one Baby Moses.
He threw Perley a frantic look and got no help. Roberta carefully looked away.
“Can you enlarge on that?” he asked faintly. “I mean, tell me a little bit more?”
Certainly she could, she said, grinding an elbow into his knee. As the words rushed out, he sifted the wheat from the chaff. There was, it seemed, a pleasant custom attending birthdays. Children due to celebrate were cordially invited to drop their age, in pennies, into a goldfish bowl. Publicly.
A jack-knife convulsion brought the pennies out of the bathrobe pocket. He could see, couldn’t he? Nine of them. Nine. She would walk up the aisle to the little table and drop them in the bowl. Right in front of everybody and all the kids would count out loud. And after that they let you pick out a picture for a present. A colored picture, pasted on cardboard so you could have it framed. But there was another kid who had a birthday on Tuesday and he was bragging around to everybody that he was going to pick the Baby Moses. He bragged all over town that he was going to get it. And there was only one. She stopped for breath, and Mark intervened.
“What, exactly, is there about this Baby Moses?”
Joey’s eyes glistened. He was beautiful. He was lying in a little yellow basket with green cattails all around. The basket was floating on blue water, and a lady with big brown eyes and a long white veil was peeping at him. And there was only one Moses and she had to have him.
“But the Guardian Angel?”
“That’s two kids picking flowers on the edge of a precipice and if they walked another step they’d fall over and get killed.”
“But the Guardian Angel—”
“It’s floating over their heads, low down and almost touching them with its feet. And they don’t even know it. There’s a pretty go
od yellow butterfly in it, but it’s no comparison to Baby Moses. They’ve got six Angels left and only one Moses. That goes to show you, doesn’t it?”
Perley sent Mark a pleading look, and Joey intercepted it. “They let you pick out a song too,” she added plaintively. “Any song you want.”
Mark played his only card, hopelessly. “Can’t we postpone the whole thing until next Sunday?”
She wailed. “I won’t be here! I’ll be gone! Next Sunday I’ll be gone! This is my very last day!”
It ended as he had known it would. He gave in. He told her they’d ride down together in the station wagon and he’d pick her up after the performance. Performance didn’t sound like the right word, but he had to talk fast to avoid a deluge. “And don’t tell me what you’re going to wear. I want to be bowled over.”
Then almost at once he realized he had been too quick, too eager to please. He couldn’t go. He couldn’t leave the grounds. He didn’t dare.
“Joey,” he began. He stopped, and started again. “Listen, Joey, I—”
Perley took over with a pair of paternal arms. “Now, now,” he said. He stood Joey between his knees and briskly turned the bathrobe right side out, retying it properly. “I guess we can go all right. I’ve got to drive home for some clean clothes and I can put this young lady in Pansy’s care. That station wagon isn’t going down today. I heard the fellow say so. He’s a sugar baby, he is, afraid of the rain. Well, we’ll just turn things over to Pansy. And then when you’ve got your nice picture, I’ll come by and drive you home again.” He leaned back, satisfied with himself, until he saw that he’d left the spoon in his coffee cup. He removed it hastily, with a sidelong look at Roberta.
But Roberta wasn’t looking at him; she was facing the door, expectantly. Nick came up the steps with tennis rackets and swimming bag.
“Coming,” Roberta called out. She took her own things from a chair and went out. “We’ve got to have exercise,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t know when we’ll be back.” The door slammed, defiantly.
“That’s mighty foolish,” Perley said. “If they stay out long they’re liable to be struck by lightning. I’ve seen it happen. They’ll stand under a tree to get out of the rain and fry to a crisp.”
Mark gave him a wondering look. “What’s the matter with you all of a sudden? You sound like Bittner.”
“I’m nervous. It just came over me. I’m nervous as a cat.”
“Well, get over it,” Mark warned in a low voice. “Little pitchers.”
Perley looked at Joey on the floor; she was counting her pennies and practicing the routine with the goldfish bowl. He got down beside her, wincing as his knees cracked in protest.
“If you’d have told me,” he said to her, “I’d have got you some new ones from the bank. But we can fix these up. Gimme, I’ll show you.” He buffed a penny briskly on the grass rug and proudly displayed the resulting shine. “Learned that thirty years ago.”
Joey fell to, wordless and enthralled. Mark left them, and went out to the porch. Beulah was coming across the grass.
“What kind of a night?” he asked.
“Frightful. People tramping up and down the halls all night long.” She came up to the porch and sat down. “Frightful.”
“I know. I was there most of the time.”
“I don’t think anybody slept,” she went on. “And old Sutton gave poor George a terrible time. My room is over his, and I could hear George arguing. ‘Come back, pal, it’s too late,’ he kept saying. ‘You can’t go anywhere now.’ Things like that. It sounded awful in the middle of the night. Does it mean anything?”
Mark shrugged. “Who knows?” He waited a minute. “The Pecks had a party. Know anything about that?”
“I heard about it from the maid on the Haskells’ floor. She said the Haskells couldn’t get up this morning. Nobody got up, as far as I could see. Miss Rayner, the Pecks, the Haskells, Sheffield, Kirby, all missing at breakfast. What happened here?”
“Nothing special.”
Perley came out, rubbing his knees. “Joey’s trying on clothes. She says do I think she’ll look good in all white. I told her yes.” He examined the sky. “I don’t like the way that looks,” he said. “So low you’d think you could touch it. She’s going to be a bad one when she comes. She’ll take a while to get going. First you get the wind, slow and steady rising. Then the dark. I’ve seen it dark as night at five in the afternoon.”
“Yes,” Beulah said. “I know.” She shivered, and scowled at the whispering trees. “They sound human.”
Perley went on as if he were talking to himself. “Then you get the lightning and the thunder. Bad, real bad. I’ve seen the lightning blast a tree into the shape of a cross and overturn a gravestone.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Mark asked.
Perley sat on the steps and pulled out his pipe. “No. Somebody with cold hands is playing the piano up and down my spine. You want to know something? I used to like summer people. I never did like winter people, like the kind we had last December. It never seemed natural to me when folks took time off in the winter and loafed. Summer people, I used to say, are all right. Put their money aside for a nice little holiday, take the kids and maybe the old folks, and go off to the country for a couple of weeks. And the man of the house coming up on Saturdays with a box of candy and his new white shoes. It looked nice. That’s what I used to think. I don’t know now.” It was a long speech, and when he finished he was embarrassed.
Beulah eyed him thoughtfully. “It’s the waiting that makes you feel that way,” she said. “You know something’s going to happen and you don’t know what it is. All you can do is wait. You’ll feel better tomorrow. And,” she added with a leer, “next summer you’ll want to take boarders.”
She’s scared silly, Mark said to himself, but she puts on a good front. “Sure he will,” he said. “And he’ll hang a sign in his window, like Buster.”
Cora Sheffield and Kirby, dressed for riding, came out of the hotel and headed for the lot.
“If I was looking for a crazy person,” Perley said, “I’d pick one of them two. Do they want to get their necks broken? This is no weather for riding. If the wind takes a notion, and one of those old elms down the road decides to shed a branch—”
Mark turned to Beulah. “You’re wasting time sitting here,” he said abruptly. “Talk, talk, talk. I don’t want to talk. Go on back to the hotel and hang around the lobby.” You can do that, can’t you?”
She was startled, but she didn’t show it. “I can,” she said quietly. “What shall I do besides hang?”
“Anything, but not too thoroughly. Read a magazine, knit. But keep one eye open for the people who go out. Nobody will go far in this weather without a sound—or unsound—reason. Call me on the house phone if anybody does. No matter who, servants, week-enders, anybody who goes through the main gates or down the path to the pool.”
“Roberta and Nick—”
“I’ll take care of that. And another thing. Check the garage and stable before you go in. Call me if any car is out, or any horse aside from the two we just saw. I’d do it myself, but I can’t leave here.” There was suppressed fury in his voice.
“Mad because you can’t be in two places at once?” she asked flippantly. “I’ll check. And if anybody walks through the lobby wearing a hat, I’ll follow. That what you want?”
He relaxed. “Yes. Thanks, Beulah. My bark is worse than my bite. But somebody’s playing the piano on my spine too, and it feels like Chopin’s Funeral March.”
“Wait till they get to the middle part,” she said. “It’s pretty, there.” She stood up. “What are you going to do with Joey this afternoon? You can’t have her underfoot. You can’t have her here. There’s too much in the air.”
“I know.” He looked his distress. “I want her where I can see her, more or less. Where I can reach her in a hurry if I have to. Pansy’s out. Too far. Almost everybody’s out—up here. I’m even afr
aid of my own judgment.”
“What about me? I can take her.”
“To Crestwood? You’re crazy. No.”
“I mean to the hotel,” she said patiently. “Send her over to me when Perley brings her back. I won’t take her to my room. We’ll play checkers in the lobby in full sight of everybody. And tonight”—Beulah swallowed—“tonight I think I can get a nice girl to take my place. Maid on my floor. Bessy had her in the fourth grade. You—you want Joey out of the way tonight?”
“I do. I simply hadn’t got around to arranging it. That’s okay then. Perley will leave her with you after Sunday school. She’s a cheerful kid. She won’t give you any trouble.”
“I know she’s cheerful. Sometimes I’ve wondered about it.” Beulah had been agreeable too long. “Very cheerful and very calm. Not much heart, if you ask me. Considering that the poor woman was practically her mother—”
He gave her a cold stare. “I’m going inside to refresh what little mind I have left,” he said.
She watched him go, and when he was out of sight she turned to Perley. She had never cared for Perley in the old days; his family and hers had been separated by more than the five miles between Crestwood and Bear River. But Perley as a man was at least hardworking and honest. She stepped down to his level with ease.
“Cross as two sticks,” she whispered. “What’s he got up his sleeve?”
“Truffles.” Perley was serious. “Did you ever eat any?”
“Once. They made me sick.” She wondered at the grim look he gave her, but she didn’t ask why. If Mark was thinking about food, let him. It was a healthy sign.
“Well,” she said, “I’m off.” She went down the steps and started across the lawn. An ill wind crept around the end of the cottage, hugging the ground; when it reached her, it rose. She finished the trip bent double, her long arms futilely embracing her knees. The wind followed her to the stable door.
She entered with a rush and a moan and collapsed on the oat bin. It was quiet in there and mercifully without weather. The air was sweet with hay, and the only sound was a soft, contented nuzzling. Only two stalls were empty, and that was as it should be.
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