“Why yes,” Heimrich said. “That sort of thing, naturally.”
“But still,” MacDonald said, “the character has to fit in the end.”
“Now doctor,” Heimrich said, “it does. It has to, as you say. Once you find out what it is, of course.”
“I think Oslen was lying,” MacDonald said. “Mary thinks so too. We think you do.”
“Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “I think he probably was. About certain things, at any rate. He would, naturally.”
“With Wells dead.”
“Oh, as for that,” Heimrich said. “With Wells alive too, I’d think. Whenever it was necessary to his purpose. To his—ends.”
“Their ends,” MacDonald corrected.
Heimrich opened his eyes, then. He nodded again as he had earlier, seemed pleased again. His attitude patted Dr. Barclay MacDonald paternally on the back.
“He wouldn’t diverge,” MacDonald said. “Wouldn’t take things into his own hands. You agree?”
“Well,” Heimrich said, “we can’t be sure, of course. Not from their ends, probably. But—means vary, don’t they, doctor? One thing here, other things somewhere else. However, I do see what you mean, doctor. It’s a nice point, I think.” He closed his eyes. “A very nice point,” he said. “I’ve asked Mr. Shepard to meet me here, doctor. Do you mind?”
“Why should—oh,” MacDonald said. He stood up.
“Good hunting,” he said.
“Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “And you—you’ll be careful, naturally?” He paused. “Within reason,” he added.
Barclay MacDonald walked down the long lounge toward the elevator. He discovered that he was thinking of Mary Wister. He hoped she would be careful, too.
Florence Sibley’s manner retained poise; she held her tall body with dignity; she was a distinguished woman in her late fifties. There was no strain in her voice when, standing in the door of Mary Wister’s room, she expressed the correct hope that her intrusion was not unpardonable. But there was strain in her eyes. There was uncertainty in her eyes. At first, Mary was too unaccountably relieved to notice this. It was Mrs. Sibley. Not— But Mary could not imagine who she had been afraid it might be, or why she had any cause to fear. Nevertheless, she said, “Oh,” in relief, before she said, “Of course not, Mrs. Sibley,” and asked the gray-haired woman to come in.
“You have a very pleasant room, my dear,” Florence Sibley said. “Pleasanter than ours, I think.” She went to the window and looked out at the lawn and the trees, lighted obliquely by the setting sun. “It is so restful here,” she said. “It could be.” She stood for a moment looking out and then she turned and spoke quickly, as if she finally had nerved herself to speak.
“I have to talk to someone,” she said. “And—try to find out what’s happening. I know I haven’t any right but—will you be generous with a very—a worried woman. Because I’m terribly worried, my dear.”
“Of course,” Mary said. She sat on the edge of the bed, and motioned toward a chair and said, “Please, Mrs. Sibley.”
Mrs. Sibley looked at the chair for a moment, and seemed uncertain. But then she sat in it.
“I don’t know why I—come to you with my worries,” she said. “But I think the policeman, Captain Heimrich I mean, talks to you. He does, doesn’t he?”
“He talks to everyone,” Mary said.
But Florence Sibley shook her head. She said she did not mean that.
“You and the doctor,” she said. “Such a charming man, my dear. You’re both in his confidence. Isn’t that true? Because you’re both in all this and still, not in it.”
“I don’t know that anybody’s really in the captain’s confidence,” Mary said. “I can’t tell. Neither Mac nor I knew him until a few days ago.”
Florence Sibley nodded, but she seemed hardly to listen.
“I’m terribly afraid about the judge,” she said. “What does Captain Heimrich say about the judge?” She looked at Mary, and her eyes now were frightened. “I know I shouldn’t ask you,” she said. “You must believe I realize that. I just—can’t help myself.”
“The judge?” Mary repeated. “Judge Sibley? I don’t think the captain has said much about him. Not to me.”
“The judge won’t tell me anything,” Mrs. Sibley said. “He—he never likes to worry me. When I try to talk he just says, ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Flo. Don’t worry your pretty head.’” She lifted her hands to her ordered, gray hair. “My pretty head,” she said, and her smile was oddly embarrassing in its deprecation. “I’m afraid he hasn’t really—really looked at me for years,” she said.
There was nothing to say to that. Mary could only shake her head slightly, and wait.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “That’s always so embarrassing for everyone, isn’t it? So gauche, really. Forgive me. I’m almost an old woman, my dear.”
That could be answered. “No,” Mary Wister said.
“I don’t feel old,” Florence Sibley said. “They say people never do, or most people never do. It isn’t fair, somehow. Is it?” She did not give Mary time to answer. “But you won’t have to think of that for years, of course. Years and years.” She paused again. “I’m trying to avoid it, aren’t I?” she said then. “I break in on you to ask—to ask you something, and I chatter about growing old.” She paused again.
“Miss Wister,” she said, “does Captain Heimrich think the judge killed Mr. Wells?”
“Think the judge—” Mary said. “Why should he?” There was incredulity in her voice, and in her mind. But then she remembered. It was strange she had forgotten. That she remembered showed in her face.
“He does,” Florence Sibley said. “Oh, he does!”
“I remember now,” Mary said. “Mr. Oslen said something about the judge. About a hearing at which Mr. Wells was going to testify. And Captain Heimrich said, yes, he had thought of the judge—of the judge and you, Mrs. Sibley. But I felt he meant, just as he’d thought of everybody. Of Doctor MacDonald. I suppose of me. Of everybody. I didn’t feel he—well, that he thought very seriously about the judge.”
“He will,” Florence Sibley said. “Everybody will.” She lowered her head into her hands for a moment. She lifted it. “And it’s all because of me,” she said. “Because—oh, years ago—I was foolish. Idealistic.”
(“That idealistic wife of his,” Oslen had said.)
“Things are so dreadfully mixed up now,” Florence Sibley said, and she seemed to be talking to herself more than to the slim young woman in green linen, who sat erect on the edge of the bed, who listened. “So dreadfully mixed up. Things that were innocent, that seemed like good things, are all mixed up with something else. Like what we do to the nigras.” Instantly she corrected her pronunciation. “Negroes,” she said. “I’m from the South, you know, and I felt—guilty. Many of us do, my dear. About their schools and—oh, everything. And this organization—it seemed to be for all the things I thought were true. And then there was Spain—so many of us thought Franco, with Hitler and Mussolini—” She broke off. She looked at Mary. “You’re so young, my dear,” she said. “Can you understand any of this—really understand it?”
Mary remembered what MacDonald had said about a difference in generations. Perhaps she couldn’t.
“I’m not that young,” she said. “Yes.” She remembered something else; something she had heard a lecturer read in a course on contemporary drama. “‘If you want a clean, Armageddon battle, all the beasts of hell against the angels of light, you won’t get that, not in this world,”’ she quoted. “Maxwell Anderson said that. In a play called Key Largo. But still you have to take sides. That was what the play meant, I think.”
Mrs. Sibley nodded.
“I thought that,” she said. “Oh, I knew there were communists on the Loyalist side—that Stalin was in it, along with Hitler and Mussolini. But I thought—well, one thing at a time, and that I weighed where the greatest right was. But now, you see, it comes out that I associ
ated with—with devils. Joined with devils. With communists.”
“Do you mean,” Mary asked, “that you actually joined the Communist Party?”
Mrs. Sibley looked at her with utter astonishment, with some outrage.
“My dear Miss Wister!” Mrs. Sibley said. “Whatever made you think that? Of course not!” She shook her head. “You don’t understand at all,” she said. “You’re like—like so many others.”
This is a statement which all resent; Mary Wister resented it. Also, in so far as she could tell from Mrs. Sibley’s rather indirect approach—probably, Mary thought, to everything—she was not in this case like the “others” to whom Mrs. Sibley referred.
“I’m not,” Mary said. “I see perfectly how a person, an idealistic person, could be for things that even the communists are for, or say they’re for. And not be any part of a communist.”
“That’s it,” Mrs. Sibley said. “I think perhaps you do, my dear. But—so many nowadays don’t. That’s why I said everything’s so mixed up now. And Mr. Wells saw everything so black and white, you know. What he might have said, before the committee—well, the judge and I both didn’t know what he might have said. Dreadful things that weren’t really true, but could be made to sound true, particularly when people wanted them to sound true.” She shook her head. “The judge is such a wonderful man,” she said. “He can do so many things if they’ll let him. For the country. For everybody. And he’s been so set on it.”
It did come out. Not clearly; perhaps Mrs. Sibley did not want it to come out clearly; did not want to think of it clearly.
“You mean,” Mary said, “that because you joined certain organizations, which perhaps the communists had taken over as fronts, or have taken over since, your husband won’t get this appointment?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Sibley said. “His whole career—” Momentarily, she clenched well-cared-for hands into fists. “Because of things I did. And, Miss Wister, innocently. Innocently!”
“I don’t—” Mary started to say. But then she realized she did believe it; that it was the sort of thing which, that winter in their country, could happen.
“Did your husband know about these—these activities of yours?” she asked. The very word “activities” had unpleasant connotations in her own mind.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Sibley said. “He didn’t think much about them. But he didn’t try to stop me or anything. After all, how could he know things would be—the way they are now? How could anybody know?”
There was no answer to that, or Mary could think of none. One had to believe what he believed in his time, not what, ten years later, it would be found proper, and safe, to have believed.
“And, of course,” Mrs. Sibley said, “I can see that all this might make Captain Heimrich think—think—” She put her head in her hands. Mary waited, but Mrs. Sibley did not lift her face from her hands. Now, Mary saw, her shoulders were shaking. She’s not sure herself, Mary thought. That’s what it is, that’s why she’s this way—so uncertain, so almost vague. She’s not really thinking about what she’s saying. Because she’s not sure herself!
Mary waited. After a few moments, she said, “You mustn’t. You mustn’t, Mrs. Sibley.”
For a moment, Florence Sibley sat as she had been sitting. Then she lifted her head. She looked at Mary. She seemed to find in the younger woman’s eyes more than had been in her words. She managed something like a smile.
“You think I have little faith,” she said. The formality of the words was unexpected, yet was appropriate. “I haven’t, really. I know that the judge couldn’t have had anything—anything to do with another person’s death. But—you’re so young, my dear. One can know something and yet, at the same time, or sometimes, not be sure—be afraid. One gets less—less sure as one gets older. Little fears come in. Sometimes you feel that things, important things are—slipping out of your hands.” She nodded. “But it doesn’t last,” she said. “It doesn’t really last.” She paused again and this time managed a somewhat better smile. “It’s gone now,” she said. “You’re a sweet child to listen.”
She moved as if to get up, but then did not. After a little she spoke again, and this time her voice was entirely steady, almost dispassionate.
“You see,” she said, “the judge has been under strain recently. He feels that there are so many things that need to be done, by this country in the world, in the United Nations, and he—he’s driven to do what he thinks is his part of it. But there’s always this—snarling, these attacks which have to be met. It drains so much time, so much energy and—so much confidence. He’s been very tense in the last few months, sometimes not like himself. And, of course, being afraid that Mr. Wells would hit at him through me—would make me ridiculous, make me seem like a silly, irresponsible woman—all that upset the judge.” She smiled, and this time as if at something she remembered.
“It may be,” she said, “that I am silly and irresponsible. But the judge doesn’t think so. He’s—he’s proud of me, my dear.”
Mary nodded.
“You’re very sweet,” Florence Sibley said. “I’m not so worried now.” But as she said this, the worry came back into her eyes.
“Listen,” Mary said, “there are simple things. Mr. Wells was killed early in the morning, they think. Before you and the judge were up, surely. You must know he couldn’t—”
“Of course,” Florence Sibley said. “Of course I know, dear. It’s just that—”
But then she stopped and looked at Mary Wister; she looked at her intently, as if forcing belief on her.
“Of course I know,” she repeated. “And last night when Captain Heimrich was attacked. We were together then. Of course I know.”
“But then—” Mary started to say, and stopped herself before the words were spoken. “But then, what are you afraid of?” she had started to say. But she did not need to ask the question; there was no point to asking the question. The whole sudden, uncharacteristic directness in the older woman’s assertion was the answer to a question unasked. Because, Mary thought, her husband wasn’t with her, either time. She doesn’t know where he was.
Something of what she thought apparently was revealed in her face.
“The judge didn’t leave the room that morning,” Florence Sibley said. “Last night we were together all evening and were in our room when the captain was—hurt. I’ve told them that. I’ll—tell anybody that.”
“Then it’s all right,” Mary said. “Then you shouldn’t worry.”
But the knowledge that there was need to worry, because Mrs. Sibley was saying that she had lied, and would lie again—was saying that she did not know her husband not to be a murderer—was exposed between them. Knowledge was in Mary Wister’s voice; acceptance of that knowledge in Florence Sibley’s eyes.
“You’re kind, my dear,” the older woman said, after a long pause. Then she went.
IX
Paul Shepard was,he assured Captain Heimrich, anxious to do anything to help. He did not know what he could do. He awaited suggestions. He could listen, if he didn’t mind, Heimrich said, and told him about the charge Rachel Jones had made against Oslen. Shepard’s eyebrows went up as he listened; at the crux of the accusation he whistled softly. At the end, he said, “Hm-m,” and his eyes narrowed in thought.
“You’re in charge of the news staff of your network,” Heimrich said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Shepard agreed. “UBA News.”
“And you haven’t ever heard anything to substantiate this—this story of Miss Jones’s?”
“I was trying to think,” Shepard said. “No—it sounds damned unlikely to me. From all I’ve ever heard, Oslen is just a pretty good pianist. Does concerts in this country and I think he’s toured in Europe to a certain extent. Not newsworthy, as they say. I can only give you my opinion, captain.”
“Do that,” Heimrich said. “Do that, Mr. Shepard.”
“It sounds to me,” Shepard said, “
like one of those stories people make up now and then to attract attention, to get notoriety. That sort of thing isn’t uncommon. But you know that as well as I do, probably better.”
Heimrich closed his eyes; he nodded.
“Of course,” Shepard said, “I wouldn’t want to say that that sort of thing couldn’t happen. I mean, the use of someone like Oslen, someone publicly known as an anti-communist, as an agent provocateur. There’ve been one or two cases in the past few years that people have wondered about. I wouldn’t put it beyond the commies. I don’t know what I would put beyond them. But I’ve never heard any rumors about Oslen. Never heard much about him in any connection, when you come to that.” He paused for a moment. “Of course,” he said, “secrecy would be of the essence, wouldn’t it? Even rumors would queer any pitch like that.”
“Particularly,” Heimrich said, “if a man like Mr. Wells, a man of his standing, spread them.”
“As apparently he planned to,” Shepard said. But to that Heimrich shook his head a little doubtfully, said, “Now Mr. Shepard.”
“We don’t know what Mr. Wells planned to do, naturally,” Heimrich said. “We know what Rachel Jones says she hoped he would do. She might not have convinced him.”
“Wells wasn’t particularly hard to convince on things like that,” Shepard said. “Remember, he knew them. Things which might seem to us—well, too devious for reality, wouldn’t to him. That was one of his arguments, you know—that people like you and me simply can’t grasp that a conspiracy is really that—a conspiracy. Complete with—well, with all kinds of deviousness.”
“You knew him,” Heimrich said. “At least, I gather you did.”
Paul Shepard shook his head.
“Say, I knew about him,” he said. “I’ve had correspondence with him. Met him a couple of times.” He looked at Heimrich with shrewdness in his eyes. “Probably you thought he was something of a fanatic,” he said. “A good many people did. Perhaps even that he wasn’t too scrupulous?”
“I talked a little to him one evening, Mr. Shepard,” Heimrich said. “I’d heard of him, of course. But in one evening—” Heimrich closed his eyes.
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