by H. F. Heard
“In reference to your inquiry I can give you an appointment at three-fifteen on Monday the thirtieth. It is important that you should bring with you adequate specimens of the code in question (period). The examples with which you have provided me indicate that the system employed is (comma) pretty certainly (comma) one of that class in which for purposes of decodification it is necessary to detect the repetition of a series of letters or transposed words (period). In these circumstances.…”
I rattled it off at such a pace that, to my delight, I forced Miss Delamere to put down her cigarette. I couldn’t hope to drive her to cry for quarter with, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that.” But the abandonment of that careless, casual, only-need-half-of-my-attention-and-must-fill-up-the-rest cigarette—that was making one’s opponent give ground, if not drop her point. Indeed, I felt that all the ground which I had lost had been regained.
Victory must be confirmed, though, and I worked away all through the lunchtime till every letter was complete. Miss Delamere never even grew tense. If I chose to stick it and so disprove her casting of me in the role of the all too easily touched Englishman who lets business come second because an acquaintance has had to leave business for good, well, then, I had proved my unspoken contention. But I must prove it to the hilt. It must be no mere temporary rally, but a fixed attitude. The hilt, I think, really was reached about four. We were both tired and both with our wary admiration of the other restored—maybe heightened.
“I think,” I said, “you needn’t type all those till tomorrow.”
“It won’t take me really long,” she said.
“No; do those four important ones about appointments and the two long ones giving readings and references.”
“Would you like flowers sent to Miss Brown’s address?”
I knew now that she was the fully co-operative secretary. The hard-enameled glamour girl had had her innings and, if not the human-hearted, at least the more natural-skinned secretary was taking her place.
“I don’t think she had any relatives, as far as I know. So I don’t see the use.”
There, I knew, I was gaining another point, for we old post-romantics, when we jettisoned crape-and-jet mourning, left obsequies to become part of sub-hygiene; while, to the young hard-boiled, a funeral had, by good business salesmanship, become another essential social function. It was an opportunity for another style of sartorial smartness and a muted wit—another chance of showing oneself able, even with Death, to chat lively across even that super-silent Presence.
“I think, though, you might inquire if there is anything we”—I used the plural—“could do to help in tidying her affairs. She may have left some things unarranged.”
“I’ll see,” was answered with an emphasis that made me sure that the inquiries would be properly made and that my secretary-observer was glad to be able to serve in this way.
I was therefore able, when it was collected, to be given information without its seeming food for sentiment. It was simply reporting back on a minor business arrangement: “Yes, Miss Brown had sent for Dr. Innes, who thought she was faced with a pretty sharp attack of flu. There had been some about for a little while, but this was evidently the first—at least to his knowledge—of the second wave which is always considerably more severe and can easily have complications. Sure enough, on the second day they did turn up: high temperature, considerable discomfort, inflammation. Condition was acute in another twenty-four hours. Patient had evidently lived on rather a low diet and pretty certainly had a tired heart. She was one of those unlucky cases sulphanilamide doesn’t seem to help, and, for one or two of them (of whom she might have been one), it’s now and then actually contra-indicated. She had a really bad day. Then, the fight given up, she went out easily enough.”
Well, that was all there was to it. I’d liked her in an easygoing professional way; should certainly have never known her but for that. It was the suddenness that jarred—like leaning against the back of a firm little chair and suddenly it collapses. My work went on, and, even in real losses, I’ve heard that work, at least when one’s at it, makes one forget. There was plenty to do and at the same time, in all the cases, not one in which I could have needed to ask her opinion. I didn’t, of course, forget Miss Brown, It’s silly to say that, I think, of almost anyone you’ve known—at least for years. I just got used to knowing she was dead.
A month must have passed and then I was given a small opportunity of doing something for her memory in quite an unexpected way. I certainly would have declined, had not what I was asked to do seemed to be a slight act of acknowledgment of our acquaintance and her general niceness. One morning, going through my mail, there was a bulgy unopened envelope left on my desk by Miss Delamere—resting like an egg in a nest of neatly opened sheets. Miss Delamere had left it intact because, written on two corners of it in heavily “printed” letters was the “keep out” word “PERSONAL.” I put it aside until, with Miss Delamere, the opened letters were all adjudged and decided on. Then, when she had withdrawn to begin the answers, I turned to my personal correspondent. I slid a little steel spatula (I hate poking my finger into an envelope; it’s just the way to get hangnails) into the tightly sealed flap and cut it open along the top edge. The spatula flipped out what had made the envelope bulk. It fell on my desk. It was, besides a letter, another envelope that had been folded inside the outer. Before retrieving it I dropped the outer envelope into my wastepaper basket. I then picked up the letter and looked at it.
On it I read, “Dear Mr. Silchester: I must ask your assistance. I am at a loss. After the help you have already given me”… so he acknowledged I had been of use … “on two occasions”… so he was able to appreciate now that I had helped the last time also … “I feel sure you will a third time solve my problem.” Well, he couldn’t turn to Miss Brown, poor lady! But what was this! Here she was becoming the mystery herself. “Where has Miss Brown gone? How can I find her? I was hoping just to finish off, with her aid, the detail of some of the clues you two had provided for me”… a none-too-neat way of saying he’d been by-passing me, trying to save “toll”… “I applied for an appointment and was given one. Unfortunately a sudden business call compelled me to cancel that. I wrote, the very next day, apologizing, and asking for another, and enclosing my fee as evidence of bona fides. I received a reply naming a date a week ahead. I waited impatiently, I own. Miss Brown’s gift is surely, not in such great demand!” (That vexed me: who was he to judge!) “Then I arrived at her address, only to find the house closed and that she had gone.” Yes, that was indeed a fact, though he evidently had no idea how far. Then my mood, which had been shifting from impatience to vexation, suddenly, like a boom on a yacht, was flung right over into full-blast indignation by the sentence which concluded this increasingly complaining letter: “I’m a poor man. I know I did once keep her waiting for her fee”… no reference to his treatment of me … “But I did pay her and you”… now I was included when it came to his praising himself … “handsomely enough, didn’t I? So”… and here was the astounding impudence, “she shouldn’t have bilked me. I suppose you know why she has gone off and where, and I will ask you, as the man who introduced me to her, to let me have her new address. I enclose a stamped and addressed envelope, as the matter is urgent.”
Had Miss Brown been a bad woman, I thought, how gladly would I have given you her present address and told you to go there! As it was, wherever she was, she was away from the irritation of this little self-centered fool. I hesitated, about to tear up his impertinent note. Then the chance of giving him a piece of my mind seemed the better choice. I snatched up a pen and wrote rudely on a scrap of scribbling paper, “Mr. Silchester presents his compliments to Mr. Intil and begs to inform him that Miss Brown is buried!”
There, I thought, he won’t believe me; he’ll have to make inquiries and then he’ll find that it’s literally true—as true as of John of that ilk. I read it again: there was quite a little punch in the phrasing.
Yes, he should have it. It might jar him a bit. And I’d send it to him in his own make-haste-please reply-paid envelope. He’d then see his own writing, think I’d risen all anxious to please and try for another fee, and then inside would be this neat smack in the face like a jack-in-the-box. I folded my note carefully. I reached out my hand and picked up the still folded envelope he had enclosed. Yes, it was correctly stamped, and addressed—this time to a box number, not to a residence. I tucked in my note so that till the last moment he shouldn’t see what I’d written, and think he’d gained his point.
I was actually raising it to my lip to moisten the flap when I paused, hearing Miss Delamere’s voice raised in rear-action barrage: “No, Mr. Silchester is engaged—is busy. Please wait here.” It was a rear action, for her voice was coming closer to my door. She was yielding ground to someone who was evidently not even troubling to reply to her. The door swung open. I saw her to the side. She had failed to act “Bar Lass” and to keep the gate. In the doorway stood another figure—Mr. Mycroft.
My surprise at the intrusion was, need I say, great. It kept me gaping, with the envelope raised to my lip as if I were blowing a kiss or doing something equally idiotic. But the first shock, considerable as it was, was completely obliterated by a second. He didn’t say “Good morning,” or “The reason for my intruding”; he simply snapped, “In time!” and strode across to where I sat behind my desk, and pointing at me, almost shouted, “Put that down!” My anger flared up, as fire will out of a whirl of smoke. The intolerable insolence of the old intruder suddenly rushing in from God knows where! I suppose it was a kind of involuntary defiance that made me do it. Under the transparent excuse of going on with what I had been doing before this intrusion—moistening the envelope—I stuck out my tongue as far as I could until it nearly touched the gummed flap. The effect of this gesture led to an action far more outrageous than anything he had done so far. Mr. Mycroft literally swooped and, shooting out his long, skinny left arm, caught my wrist, while with his other hand he snatched the envelope out of my fingers. Surprise made me speechless, until I heard him saying, “Go and wash your hands at once and thoroughly.”
Those words, after the snatch and grab, brought back so vividly my nurse relieving me of candy and sending me off to clean my fingers, that I broke into laughter.
“Here we are again. It’s like a pantomime farce. The old dominie drops from the ceiling and the bad boy is hurried off to be birched. But, joking apart, Mr. Mycroft, to what do I owe the honor of this visit, where in the name of heyday have you dropped from, and what the mischief do you mean by dashing in and snatching my stationery practically out of my mouth?” My tone showed I was roused. His answer showed, though, that my irony had been misspent on him.
“It’s not your stationery,” was his queer reply. Then, taking a small box out of his pocket, he gingerly dropped the envelope into it.
I could only think to say, “Kind of you to mail my letters in your private box.” I added to rouse him, “It’s no joking matter.”
“You wholly mistake me if you think I imagined it was.”
“Then why the devil—”
“Yes, it’s quite diabolic.”
“Mr. Mycroft,” I cried almost in despair, “where have you come from? What are you up to? Are you mad or am I?”
His answer was certainly methodical: “I have been hereabouts a considerable time. I am up to my old game. There is a madman—not you nor I, but the cause of our meeting—and the cause of your death, had I been a moment later, a second more ceremonious over my entry.”
Yes, he was sane enough. So, when with increased emphasis he said, “Well, if you won’t wash your hands, I must,” we both did so. And when I saw the thoroughness he used, I followed suit, for I have a real fear of infection. When a man whom you have known to be brave and careful takes from his pocket a small bottle of that horrid creosote disinfectant, makes a wash and scours his hands with it—well, when one has been handling the object he just touched so carefully, one is inclined to imitate. That small purification rite somehow eased the ridiculous tension between us and I listened, I must own, eagerly to what he was telling me.
“You have just escaped a curiously clever death.”
It was an unpleasantly professional way of talking of my possible demise. But by whatever epithet anyone names one’s own death hardly matters—that noun is so dominant that any adjective scarcely counts. I was convinced that here was a case I should have to listen to. However much the old man grated, if there was any shadow of truth in what he said I should have to ask him for any aid he could give. We returned to my sanctum; Miss Delamere, realizing that the citadel had capitulated, made no attempt at a relief expedition.
As soon as we were seated, the old man remarked, “I’m not going to give you theories. I know they rouse your suspicions. I will, therefore, bring you proofs, facts. To provide you with these I must leave you for an hour or so. I would ask you to accompany me so that you might follow every step. But not only would you, I am sure, prefer to be left quietly in your office to complete a morning’s work which my intrusion may well have deranged, but it may, as probably, be safer for you to stay here till I return. I promise to keep you waiting no longer than is absolutely necessary.” He rose. “I may leave, may I not, by the back way? I don’t see any danger, now, that we have not”—he paused—“under our hands. But you are right, I may overlook some things just because I see and attend carefully to others.” He spoke quietly, considerately; made a gentle, old-fashioned bow and was gone.
Miss Delamere sailed in and posed and poised in amanuensal readiness—watching me, I knew, to study another angle of English reaction-behavior. My tired mind would only reflect, not on the mail, but on how very wrong she was to think of going into the films—she should be a novelist. “Women Prefer Weaklings,” I thought would be the sure-fire title of her first, or “Ladies Prefer Loons” or “Ladies Like Loonies.” No, I must stop this wandering. I picked up the letters of the day’s mail which she and I had shared, trying with them to make a screen against the one which she had not seen. Somehow I dictated a few further corrections and replies, though I noted that this time I never gave the cigarette hand a moment’s uneasiness. Indeed, it carried on, keeping far more than half of Miss Delamere’s attention. It de-ashed, stubbed, selected, lit, yes, and even offered the cigarette so often to her lips that Miss Delamere’s head swung on an easy rhythm—almost each line of dictation by the right hand being balanced by a slow inhalation from the cigarette offered by the left. I was becoming hypnotized by her easy rhythm, as birds, I believe untruthfully, are said to be hypnotized by cobras swaying in front of them. I had to break the spell.
“You can type what is done,” I said.
“And if your visitor returns?” she questioned as an over-the-shoulder exit.
“Why, show him in.”
She nodded, not so much an assent as a confirmation to herself of her foregone conclusion. She had won this round and I might as well admit it and be counted out. Nor did it matter much. I really wasn’t very much interested in keeping up “face” any longer. My uneasiness was sufficient to make me indifferent as to what appearance I gave and whether I could or could not upset the picture Miss Delamere liked to have of me as foil and background to her patient, lifelong presentation of herself.
I waited until it could not be any longer merely my impatience which made the time seem long. Then I allowed myself to look at my watch—I won’t have a clock in the office; a clock often makes clients think they are not getting a long enough interview. I was right; it was late; Mr. Mycroft had well outstayed his own leave of absence. I waited again, trying to work on a code which I had been constructing, off and on, for some time. At least it served as a screen while Miss Delamere swung in, deposited the final letters I had given her, all typed, and remarked that if I wasn’t inclined to go on with further work, she would go out and get some lunch. I agreed, telling her gratuitously that I had had some new ideas about
the code, and thought, while they were fresh in my mind, I had better try them out. When she was gone I didn’t go on with the code, gave up all pretense. I started a little, with a sort of half hope, half fear, when I heard, after a considerable time, at last a step in the passage outside the office. But it was only my all-too-efficient secretary back from an all-too-slimmed lunch with an all-too-interested wish that we should get on with our work. Yes, I was thoroughly upset. I didn’t, I wouldn’t put my feelings into thoughts but I own I couldn’t help feeling something hanging over me.
At last another step was outside; I heard the outer door open. I heard two voices overlaid, talking at once, and once again Miss Delamere and Mr. Mycroft appeared together at my door. And again his conduct was as disconcerting (and of course deliciously bizarre to my secretary) as before. Again he swooped, but this time not to snatch my letter out of my hand—I wasn’t holding one anyhow; I was just waiting. But his action was just as extreme, and this time I noted, with a queer added discomfort to my anxiety, that Miss Delamere, though she was actually not looking on and treating us openly as a show, at least had allowed herself the liberty of leaving the door open. Mr. Mycroft, though, didn’t say anything. He simply dived under the knee-hole of my desk and took the wastepaper basket from its kennel.
“First out of my hands and now from under my feet,” I thought with that anaemic fun that seemed all that was left when one fell into such a searching grasp.
Emerging, like some sea-god playing with a monster shell, Mr. Mycroft, over the brim of it, questioned, “No one has touched this since I left?”
“Not even a discarded stamp has been added,” I answered.
“I’m late because Intil made a mistake,” was the way he disregarded my reply.
“Am I supposed to ask what you mean?” If he simply wanted to snub me, let’s get it over, and then, maybe, he’d do whatever he thought of doing in silence.