The Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  He sat down beside Jean.

  Paul Fairchild said, “Go ahead, Elaine. Indulge him.”

  “You’ll indulge him, Uncle Paul?” the woman flared. “That’s what you think of my devotion?”

  “Just run along, damn it,” said Harry’s daddy. “He’s got a reason, I imagine.”

  “Toot off, Elaine,” said Dick. “What do you care?”

  “And is she tooting off?” cried Elaine, her eyes on Jean.

  “No, no,” said Harry.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I need her,” said Harry, flatly.

  The doctor had Elaine by the shoulders. “You are being put out,” he said, “and Harry’s got us dying of curiosity, so you just go be mad at Harry somewhere else.”

  Elaine was looking wild, but the doctor put her out.

  Mei, standing in the hall, bent her head and walked away. She had walked warily in this house, where this woman had never welcomed her. Mei had no comfort to give, nothing to say. But Elaine raised her fists as if to pound on the door that had just closed in her face. She did not pound. But neither did she unclench her pale and anguished fists.

  Inside the room, Harry said, “Cousin Elaine may be the spy, Daddy, and if not, I’d be sorry for wronging her, if I had time, but not now.”

  “Well,” said his father, “whether she is or not (and I can’t believe it), you’ve got her insulted to the bone, so’s she’ll never get over it. But done is done. So come on. Tell us what you’ve been up to.”

  So Harry began to tell the tale of the pig hunt, with Jean chiming in, now and then. She began to enjoy herself, very much. She could not help it. They were wonderful listeners, they laughed in the right places, they caught every single point so quickly, the doctor was so keen, the governor was so kind, but the old man was just tickled to pieces and his white hair stood up on his head and his eyes shone and Jean got the feeling that the two brothers were sympathetic listeners, yes, but the old man would have gone right along with them through the whole idiotic sequence.

  When it had all been told, Harry glossed over the question of the third pig, giving no details, only saying falsely that the weekend had interfered with investigative processes. Then he stated his decision not to move at all.

  Now he demanded answers. “What’s the man’s name, in New Zealand?” They told him. Hightower. “Has he a grownup daughter, by some other wife?”

  Not that they knew, they told him.

  “O.K. Has this Kootz got a grown-up daughter?”

  “Who?” said Tom.

  “Who!” Harry was agog.

  “Oh, you mean Cuts.”

  “I thought his name was …”

  “Well, that’s the way he pronounces it,” said his brother. “Yes, he’s got a daughter. Had one, at least. I’ve studied the story of his life, believe me. I’ve got clemency, you know, and I went into the whole thing pretty carefully. Daughter hasn’t lived with him since early childhood. He sends money, we presume. She may not know where it comes from. Or else she uses another name, not to be embarrassed by his fame.” The governor bit on the word.

  “What other name?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Maximilian Cuts,” said Harry, in sober awe. “Otherwise known as Max-the-Knife?”

  “How did you know?” said the governor wearily. “That was years and years ago.”

  “And from ‘Knife’ comes Bowie.” Harry held his head. Jean Cunliffe strangled her credulous laughter.

  The governor said, “It’s not frantically funny. Our Max has caused more dirty corruption and human misery in one lifetime than I am going into. Which is neither here nor there, legally speaking. The issue is a first-degree murder. Conviction and sentence. Fair trial. Appeals. The law scrupulously cherishing his rights. But the law says that he dies on Wednesday.” The governor sounded noble and sad.

  “So now we know,” said Harry, “who and what Dorinda Bowie is. Well, well, well. But she’s not stupid, Tom. Does his daughter really think she can get him off? With these monkey-shines?”

  “I think I told you,” Tom said, “that I’ve been pressured ever since the Warden fixed the date. Maybe there’s been a little more pressure than I’ve let on. But they couldn’t touch me. For one thing, I don’t even need money. Then, no kids. And for some reason,” Tom rubbed his face, “they’ve shied off Pat. Pat’s my wife,” he said, aside to Jean. “But this … They’ve glommed onto this pressure, because …”

  Tom didn’t finish the thought but the knowledge was in the room. Tom was vulnerable, if at all, through his father.

  “What they want,” the governor said, “is simply time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t found new hopes of buying up, oh … one or two bits and pieces of somebody’s conscience—somewhere along the line. They must think, that if I will only give them a little longer, they might now get back on the legal merry-go-round. But you see, if I do not … Well, that’s the way it is, I guess. It can’t be anything else.” There was an electric silence, crackling with the knowledge that the governor had the power to grant a stay.

  Harry broke it, saying, “Yep, I guess that must be the way it is. But they haven’t got our little sister. So they still can’t touch us. Hey, Daddy, you should be in bed. Come on, Jean.”

  Now there was a hot discussion about what was to be done with Jean Cunliffe for the next two days. Paul Fairchild wanted her to stay right here in his house. But Harry said no. All right, then his daddy would put guards on wherever she was going to be, and nobody had better argue with that, damn it. Harry said, fine, she’d be in his apartment.

  Jean said no, she could go to her own apartment, but to this they all said no.

  So Harry got up and went with his brother Dick to phone and fix it from downstairs, and in a moment the governor thought of something he had meant to mention, and went after them.

  The old man, who knew very well why all his sons had gone off by themselves, smiled at Jean Cunliffe.

  “This whole damn house could be bugged, for all we know,” said Harry to his brothers in the upstairs hall. “And Cousin Elaine insulted to the bone, for nothing. So where?”

  So they chose to confer together while sitting on the middle stair of the staircase, neither up nor down.

  “I’m making this statement tomorrow,” said Tom, in a low voice, “because it’s too late to drift. The story is creeping out, for one thing. Two columnists have called me on it already. I can’t quit. I won’t put the onus on a successor. And I won’t chicken out, especially since it would obviously be either unnecessary or futile. And that’s the way it is. They haven’t got her yet. But they had better not get her.”

  “Story got out through the cops, eh?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Then it must be out that you’re looking for a woman named Hanks, in Los Angeles?”

  “Don’t doubt it.”

  “Yep,” said Dick, “but if we can’t find her, and the cops can’t find her, the chances are they can’t find her. The chances, I say.”

  “If they do,” said Tom, “and Kootz goes—has it occurred to you, Harry, that there is such a thing as revenge?”

  “I hoped I was only being sentimental,” groaned Harry.

  “No, no,” said the governor. “Hope they don’t get the child. Don’t hope for anything, after they do. And hope, by the way, that this hasn’t occurred to Daddy.”

  “Don’t bet on that,” said Dick. “Has it occurred to you, Harry, that the Hanks woman might turn up on the front lawn, at any moment and walk right into one of ‘them’?”

  “Occurred to you,” said Tom, “that she could start asking around?”

  “Occurred to you,” said Dick, “that if some columnist prints himself a little item, people who know where Hanks is may read it, and seek a little fleeting fame?”

  “Chow-ee!” said Harry, holding his head.

  “Sure you shouldn’t go after information about this yellow pig?” said Tom. “Quick? And go after it? Ta
king an army? Cops, maybe?”

  “Ah, no,” groaned Harry. “To tell the cops is telling them, as you’ve just agreed. How can we know they won’t leapfrog? And if I go by myself, I know they’re following me.”

  “Why not hole up here?” Tom asked. “Worried about Elaine? What could she do?”

  Harry said, “I’m worried about somebody in this house. Maybe it’s this Mei. I’d rather you laid on protection for my place.”

  “Don’t blame you,” said Dick, with a brotherly leer, “but this Mei seems like a good kid. Nuts about Daddy, of course. I got her a job. She works hard.” Dick had betrayed his scheme of values. “She stays in the house, waiting it out. But she’s a hell of a lot better for Daddy than old sourpuss Elaine ever was, I can tell you that.”

  “Daddy looks good,” said Harry cautiously.

  “He does,” the doctor agreed. “He looks better. Well, he’s got a living-tension on.”

  Tom said, “He’ll never hold it against me.”

  “We don’t have to get sloppy,” Dick said.

  The Fairchild boys were silent, a moment.

  “Sum it up,” said Harry. “There is a little girl named Barbara. Somebody named Hanks has got her. We guess she’s hereabouts. We know Daddy’s army is looking. We can be pretty damn sure that so is theirs. And one of ‘them’ had Jean tied up like a chicken and I don’t like any part of it. And maybe Daddy can take it, but …”

  (He thought, I don’t care so much about some little girl having to take it. Any little girl, damn it.)

  “God help our little sister,” Tom said, “if such she be.”

  “Or even if she isn’t,” Dick finished briskly. “I sure wish to God I could think of somewhere brilliant to look. Pull her out of a hat like a rabbit. But if I can’t, the chances are, they can’t. So it’s the tightrope, for two days. Daddy can take it.”

  “You understand,” said Tom, “this statement might not do a thing for us? They’ll want to hurt. They’ll know what would hurt.”

  “Unless,” said Dick quickly, “after Kootz has bit the dust, there’s a cooling-off period. Power structures do change. Sentiment does give way to business-as-usual.”

  The governor nodded.

  “So,” Dick continued, “I think you’re right. Harry, wait out Kootz’s span. Get the child later on. Via pig, if necessary and/or possible.”

  “So I figured,” said Harry.

  “Agreed,” said Tom. “Best we can see to do.”

  The Fairchild boys sat, a moment more in silent communion.

  Chapter Twenty

  The old man was explaining to Jean how come he had no grandchildren. Tom’s wife and Tom didn’t really like each other very much. It was well known that they lived together, but apart, she settling for the status and the money, and Tom for the smooth surfaces necessary to his career. Patricia Fairchild, said her father-in-law, was ambitious, but not for offspring. Dick’s wife, Diane, she had up and died. And Dick and his colleagues hadn’t been able to save her. So Dick was a wounded man. From this stemmed his jolly insouciance about death; meantime, he knocked himself out, every day, to keep folks from dying too soon. He wouldn’t marry again, for awhile. As for George, he was young …

  “George?” Jean wondered. She’d never heard of a George.

  “I give you my word,” said the old man solemnly, “my wife and I, when we named the first two boys, never thought of such a thing.”

  “Oh. Harry!” said Jean and bit on her laughter until she caught his eye and then they both laughed.

  “Oh, Harry may be the baby,” said his daddy, “and not—uh—quite so pushing. But he’s smart in his own way. Now, you take pigs.” He went on to speculate that his elder sons might not have taken pigs that seriously.

  Jean said she thought it showed imagination and intelligence to have taken pigs so seriously. And the old man beamed upon her.

  Jean asked if Harry’s daddy realized how Harry had saved her from a whole lot of mess and bother in that hut. And maybe he had even saved her life. She said she’d like somebody to know that she appreciated this. She couldn’t say so to Harry.

  “Well, Harry’s shy, you know,” said Harry’s daddy, twinkling. “Scared to death somebody might catch him admitting that he’s just as human as anybody else. He may turn out to be the smartest of the lot.”

  They were having a lovely time.

  “I think you have remarkable sons, Mr. Fairchild.”

  “Boys are fine,” he said, “fine. But girls I’ve kinda missed out on. I always did want a little girl, too.”

  “It’ll turn out all right,” she said. “I can’t help believing that it will.”

  He patted her hand. But he let her see his toughness. “It may be that my little daughter will just vanish away from me. I’d settle for that, of course, rather than have her hurt. Be no different for me than it was … before I knew about a little girl named Barbara, seven years of age, with flaxen hair. I’d be the same old fella …”

  “But not quite,” she burst.

  “Not quite, honey,” he said. And he let her see what she had already seen. He wasn’t all that tough. “Oh, we’ve got good hopes,” he went on robustly. “First, the police will trace the Hanks woman, as a part of the Beckenhauer case. And we’ll be led safely to her. Second, the woman herself knows what’s up and is just lying low, and she’ll bring my little girl to me, when it is safer.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll bet she will!”

  “We don’t know what kind of woman she is,” the old man went on. “She could be so scared she’ll never come out of whatever hole she’s holed up in.”

  “But then,” said Jean, “we can go after the pig, and find her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “There must be something in it that will help. I believe in the pig, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely. I’m very high on pigs. That’s if you’re sure you can surely find the third one.”

  “I’m sure.” She began to twinkle at him.

  And he flew one eyebrow. It went up just the way that Harry’s did. So she leaned very close and said, “Don’t say I said so, but we already know.” Then she added quickly, “Don’t blame Harry. He doesn’t want the spy to know where it is. He believes in the spy. He said you were a big boy, now. You could take it. He’s awfully fond of you.”

  The old man blinked. “I appreciate …”

  “And he’s right,” she went on. “It’s safer not to try for it now. I won’t tell you where. But oh, you should hear how he found out.”

  “Now that I’m a big boy,” said Harry’s daddy, looking cherubic “couldn’t I keep a secret?”

  “Oh, of course, you can. Listen.” So Jean poured into his ear all about the traveler’s check and Harry’s tale to the bank. “And Bonzer,” she said, “was just wonderful. I won’t tell you the address. I better not, honestly. But you see, there’s a lot of hope that you will find your little girl, once we wait this out.”

  He patted her hand. “You do me good,” he said. “Now, you let us Fairchilds take very good care of you. Yes, that gives me better hope. And mum’s the word.”

  There came a knock on the door.

  “We’ve been having a hot discussion of the weather,” he said and called, “Come in.”

  Elaine came in. She was looking very sour. “Since your immediate family is no longer with you, Uncle Paul,” she said bitterly, “I thought perhaps you were ready to be helped to bed, by the help? Oh, I’m sorry. I see you’ve got the girl.”

  “I certainly do hope,” said Paul Fairchild, “that my little girl grows up to be a whole lot like this one. Goodnight, Jean, honey.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Fairchild,” said Jean, who was dying to smack him a daughterly kiss. But it was just as if she had done so, since he knew all about that.

  So Jean said goodnight to Elaine and went floating out of the room, feeling for a reason she didn’t analyze as happy as she had ever felt in her life.

  �
�Don’t say it,” said the old man to Elaine. “I don’t want a word said. Puts a hex on. By George, George is turning out the way I’d want a son of mine …” For some reason he seemed as happy as he could be. “Oh, he’s the smart one!”

  “I’m sure,” said Elaine grimly. She shut her mouth tight again, and attacked the bed to whip it into readiness.

  “And you know,” the old man said, as he rose, “we should have taken notice, long ago. You take a man like Bonzer. Very good man, Bonzer. Knows how to do what he is told, and do it damned well. Devoted to my son George and always has been. Goes to show.”

  “I suppose your smart son George has found the child?” said Elaine haughtily.

  “No, no. No, no.” The old man chuckled. “I can’t help taking pleasure in my boys, you know. I can’t help that.”

  “You’ve had too much excitement,” she said. “Much too much excitement.”

  “And tomorrow’s going to be a doozy, too,” the old man said, not without grim relish. “And all the way to Wednesday.”

  Then his boys were at his door, for a brief goodnight.

  Harry took Jean under his wing and summoned Bonzer from the back regions of the house and off they went, Harry driving, Bonzer watching on all sides and making sure that the car-load of hired guards was on their heels.

  Dick, the doctor, roared off, separately.

  Tom, the governor, went upstairs to a guest room,

  Mei had already retired, and was saying her prayers.

  Elaine, having seen Paul Fairchild to his couch, and darkened his room, and closed his door, went to a telephone.

  “What?” The voice was sharp.

  “George Fairchild, (that is, Harry) and the girl, have gone to his apartment, with guards all over the place.” She spoke in the monotonous manner of one making a report. “I must leave here.” Suddenly Elaine began to weep. “I can’t take this. You better pay me what you said. I’ve got to start a new life. I’m not as young as I … There is nothing you can do now, but I did the best I could, even after I found out you had lied to me. Don’t forget you owe me …”