Two-Thirds of a Ghost

by Helen McCloy

  She wandered into the living room and saw the Tribune Book Review section crumpled into a ball. She smoothed it out and reread the article by Emmett Avery which she had glanced at this morning. She recalled Tony’s rage. “That little pipsqueak Avery! To think that I introduced him to his first publisher because I thought his stuff wasn’t quite good enough for us. I suppose he’s never got over our rejection.”

  The water had ceased to run. In the silence, she called softly: “I must go, Amos. See you later.”

  “We’ll be there around five,” he called back cheerfully.

  “Good-bye.” She went across the terrace slowly to the tree where she had tied the dog. An unwelcome thought invaded her mind. Suppose—just suppose—that Maurice Lepton was wrong for the first time in his long and distinguished career as a critic. Suppose that this Emmett Avery was right in all his nasty sarcasms about Passionate Pilgrim. Suppose Amos Cottle’s mystique was pure sham, a pose to enhance the prestige of mediocre books.

  Philippa did not trust her own judgment entirely in intellectual matters. She was intelligent enough to know her own limitations. She had taken the word of people like Maurice Lepton for Amos’s writing ability and Amos was right about one thing—that was the secret of her desire for him. If she couldn’t write great books herself, she could at least serve those who did as primitive priestesses served male worshippers of their goddesses.

  But if the worshipper were insincere and his gifts unworthy of the goddess? Then the priestess must find a worshipper with greater gifts.

  Maurice Lepton’s disturbing smile came back to her mind’s eye. No one had ever questioned his intellectual power. He himself seemed to radiate a superb confidence in his own power as Amos never had.

  The boxer rose to greet her. Before she bent to untie his leash, she looked back at the house. Why did she suddenly feel that she had said good-bye to Amos Cottle forever? Could it be that she was already seriously in love with Lepton, a man she had seen only twice in her whole life?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That same Sunday Meg Vesey, like Amos, woke late to full daylight. Friday’s snow had turned to muddy slush in a temperature just above freezing. The bleak December day painted the city scene in the hushed, faintly ominous palette of Utrillo. To Meg the world seemed like an empty stage where something dreadful was just about to happen.

  She hadn’t told Gus yet. She had shown him the news story in the tabloid Friday evening and the letter that should have gone to Vera. “Don’t send it,” he told her. “Vera’s going to stay with the Kanes, thank God! And we’re going out there to dinner Sunday. Tony’s got it all fixed.”

  It was then that Meg opened her mouth to tell Gus about the other letter that had gone to Vera by mistake, but the words wouldn’t come. They had just settled down for a cosy evening alone together with Hugh away at the Devlins and Polly soon to be asleep. Why spoil it? She’d wait and tell him Saturday. Or Sunday at the latest. She’d have to tell him then.

  But when she found Polly running a slight temperature with a sore throat that Sunday morning, she forgot everything else for a while. The doctor came and prescribed the latest antibiotic. Aspirin, too, if the temperature went over 100 that afternoon.

  “I’ll have to stay with her,” cried Meg. “You can go to the Kanes without me.”

  “It would be better for you to come with me,” insisted Gus. “Better for Polly and better for you. The doctor’s been here, so we know it isn’t anything horrible, and anyway we’ll be home early. If you stayed here, there’s nothing you could do but watch her temperature and give her pills. Maddelena can do that and Polly’s just as happy playing with Maddelena as she would be with you, maybe happier. Maddelena is much nearer a child’s level than you are.”

  Meg yielded reluctantly. “A party should be fun,” she moaned. “But driving fifty miles on a winter day and leaving Polly ill…”

  “This isn’t fun, this is business,” said Gus firmly. “We must hold Amos’s hand while Vera is around.”

  “Don’t worry, Mommy, I’ll be here,” said Hugh, relishing melodrama. “I’ll call you at once if anything goes wrong, so you can dash back.”

  Gus quelled him with a glare. “Nothing is going wrong. How could it? We’ll only be gone a few hours.”

  Meg knew that Gus hated to leave Polly ill almost as much as she did herself. They had never left Hugh with a fever when he was Polly’s age. But by the time Polly came along they had learned that a slight temperature in childhood rarely meant serious illness. A sore throat was something that would bear watching because so many serious illnesses began that way, but, thank God, nine times out of ten it wasn’t serious at all.

  She dragged herself into her room and put on the old black velvet. A tortoise-shell locket and chain matched the high comb in her hair, and she wore the big ruby Gus had bought for her with his commission on Amos’s first movie sale. Even the glitter of its great red eye did not raise her spirits today. Even the soft, thick folds of her fur coat could not warm the chill in her bowels.

  I must tell Gus now. I must. I’ve waited too long already. But still she was silent.

  She tried to imagine how Vera’s face had looked when she read that letter. Had the dulcet voice lost its saccharine smoothness for once?

  Imagination boggled. This just wasn’t one of those annoying mishaps that could be straightened out by a frank apology. “So sorry I called you an incompetent actress and a vicious woman. I didn’t really mean it, you know.” This was a colossal blunder, an irrevocable declaration of war. And how was it going to affect the fortunes of Augustus Vesey, Inc., member of the Society of Authors’ Representatives?

  Meg knew all about the literary side of the agency. An editor’s daughter, herself an author of short stories, she was useful to Gus as a first reader, winnowing the slush pile of unsolicited scripts that came into the office and selecting the few that might stand a chance after revision. It was she who had discovered Amos Cottle when she found the script of his first book in a mass of trash that Gus had handed over to her without bothering to read himself one week end five years ago. But Meg had never been able to understand the financial side of the agency. She had no idea just how important Amos Cottle was to them.

  Maybe Vera would never get the letter. Maybe she hadn’t stopped at the studio on Saturday to pick up her last mail. Maybe Catamount secretaries were careless with letters for actresses who left the studio in a huff and it would never be forwarded. Maybe the postman would break a leg, or maybe Vera’s plane would crash.

  Meg tried to drag her mind away from such a wicked thought. But the image persisted balefully. Fog, a great transcontinental plane crashing in flame against a peak in the Rockies, and a soft voice that suddenly began to scream like a slaughtered animal.

  When they ran into fog on the parkway, the coincidence seemed like a materialization of her evil thought. The world was a mass of dirty, damp cotton wool pressing in on every side, clogging speed and blurring vision. Other cars were glaring yellow headlights with no form or substance, going much too fast for comfort. In her morbid frame of mind she found herself running through the terms of her will and wondering whom Gus would marry if he survived and she didn’t. All the while, gnawing underneath the surface of her thought, was a little maggot of guilt. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She must tell Gus now, before the party.

  “Gus.”

  “Yes?”

  Again the words wouldn’t come. Not right away. She must lead up to this confession somehow. “Gus, how does Amos himself really feel about Vera?”

  Gus hesitated. “It’s hard to tell about Amos. He was damn glad to see her go. We both know that. He told us all about it. But he’s reticent about her now, and of course she must have some attraction for him or he wouldn’t have married her in the first place. Just how strong that attraction will be when he sees her again, I don’t know. Sometimes he seems to miss her, but perhaps he’s just lonely.”

  “Poor Amos!” Meg was touched
. “I never thought of it before but he must be lonely. No family, no friends, just business associates like you and Tony and living all alone in that big, isolated house. Yet he hardly ever goes to parties.”

  “In our world it’s hard for a reformed alcoholic to lead a normal social life,” said Gus. “There are so few parties without drinks, and it’s awkward to demand ginger ale when everyone else is mopping up gin and tonic. As it is, nobody knows about his weakness except you and me and Tony. You never told anyone, did you?”

  “Of course not. Not even Philippa.”

  “I think Amos is wise to lead a hermit’s life,” went on Gus. “He works hard at his writing, he reads a lot, he plays a little golf with Tony and he goes to town once a week for the TV show. He has no financial worries or family problems. It’s an ideal life for a writer of talent.”

  Meg glanced at him sidewise. “Do you really believe Amos has a great talent? Just between you and me and the lamppost?”

  “You should know. You discovered him yourself.”

  “That was his first book and it was so much better than those other scripts I was reading. But these later books…”

  “Meg, how often have I told you that you aren’t really capable of appreciating anything written since 1910? Amos is extremely representative of his period and it’s a period you hate. His output is prodigious and yet it has never fallen below the standard he set himself in that first book. That is always a sign of superior talent. His success was immediate with his first book. All the critics hailed him as a rising star. That wasn’t accident, you know. Amos has something. Just what it is, I can’t say, but, whether you like his later stuff or not, his writing has that mysterious something that makes people want to read his books.”

  “The Cottle touch.” Meg sighed. “That man in today’s Tribune doesn’t like it at all.”

  “Do you mean to tell me you’re allowing yourself to be influenced by a review?” Gus poured scorn into the word review. “Emmett Avery is an old rival of Maurice Lepton’s. Avery’s review was probably written to take Leppy down a peg because he’s gone all out for Amos every time.”

  “What a mean thing to do!”

  “Don’t worry about that review of Avery’s. It’s the first adverse criticism Amos has ever had in a literary journal of major importance, and that’s a sign of his final success. A writer hasn’t arrived until one important critic has said publicly that his work stinks. Then all his admirers leap to his defense, and the controversy stirs up more excitement about him than ever before.”

  “You’ll be making me think that Tony planted Avery’s review in the Tribune!’

  “You can’t plant things in the Trib, but if you could, Tony is perfectly capable of it.”

  Silence held the fog-choked car for the next twenty miles. Then Meg screwed her courage to the sticking point again.

  “Gus.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper.

  His eyes were on the murky red taillights of the car ahead. “Yes?” He sounded impatient.

  Once again Meg’s nerve failed at the jump. “Why do you care so much about what happens to Amos? We have other clients.”

  “Yes, but there’s only one Amos.” Gus took a chance and swung around the car ahead at higher speed while Meg held her breath.

  “I don’t suppose you ever have really understood what an important part Amos plays in our economy,” went on Gus as they came back safely into the right-hand lane. “A small literary agency like ours is in the same position as a small publishing house like Tony’s. One really successful author who produces regularly and hits the best-seller list every time can make or break us. Amos is exceptionally prolific for a writer of such prestige. One book a year for the last four years. With each new book, I’m scared to death that he’ll slip, but he hasn’t yet, and as long as he doesn’t, he’s a big slice of our bread and butter as well as all our cake and jam. When Amos gets a movie sale, that ain’t hay. It’s the cornerstone of our economy. Amos pays for the apartment, the car, clothes, entertaining, everything. Without Amos, my agency would just be one of a dozen little outfits that struggle along with a gross profit of ten or fifteen or twenty thousand a year. After taxes and overhead, our income would be even less. We’ve got all our eggs in one basket, Meg, and that basket is named Amos Cottle.”

  “Ten or twenty thousand.” Meg’s smile was haggard. “In 1933 I would have considered that a nice income, but…”

  “You wouldn’t now with prices what they are and two children to support. You’ve got used to spending a lot more, and spending is one of the habit-forming drugs, you know. We’re both addicts.” Gus frowned. “So—we’ve got to head off Vera somehow.”

  “Gus.”

  “Yes?”

  “I—There’s something I have to tell you.”

  But Gus was hardly listening. His mind was still fixed on Vera. “Telling her flatly to leave Amos alone would probably be the worst thing we could do. Remember when Polly was two and we got her to eat by telling her positively not to touch her food? Vera has all the perversity of a child of two. Maybe that’s it. Maybe we should tell her that we all want her to come back to Amos. That he needs her and that it’s her duty to do so, no matter how hard it is on her. Maybe she’d have nothing to do with him if she thought he wanted her back and we approved the idea.”

  “Would she believe that?”

  “Why shouldn’t she? There’s only one really good thing about this whole situation. If it weren’t for that, we’d be sunk.”

  “And that is?”

  “That Vera herself has not the slightest idea of how all the rest of us feel about her.”

  Meg choked.

  “Something wrong?”

  She managed to swallow. “No.”

  “What was it you wanted to tell me, darling?”

  “I…” Meg hesitated. Then, “It seems to have slipped my mind.”

  “Then it can’t have been very important.”

  Through the swirling fog, they saw the signpost that marked the Weston exit. Gus pulled farther to the right and slowed down for the turn. Meg sighed with relief. Once they were off the parkway, on winding country roads, there would be less traffic and speed would be reduced automatically.

  Ten minutes later they left a highway and turned into a wooded drive. When they came out of the trees, they saw Tony’s house at the top of a hill, its lights glowing golden through the mist. It was that rare thing in New England, an old farmhouse built of stone with a large, stone barn. Tony, who had lived and worked in Manhattan, was aggressively bucolic now that he could afford that greatest of all modern luxuries—a farm. There were saddle horses in the stable, Jersey cows in the barn, hens in the hen house, pigs in the sty, and even doves in the dovecote—all screened from the house by distance and a twelve-foot hedge of juniper and hemlock. On Tony’s writing paper the place was described as Hilltop Farm, and when Tony filled out forms he always put under Occupation the words farmer and publisher in that order, though even Tony knew he could never have been a farmer if he hadn’t been a publisher first. At Christmas his office staff received presents of home-grown turkeys and homemade fruit cake. At Easter they all got baskets of fresh eggs from Hilltop.

  The house itself stood at the highest point of the hill overlooking a brook with a lily pond. Beyond, lawn and meadows sloped down to the treetops of the woods on the hillside below. In summer these trees formed a leafy screen that hid the nearest houses from view. In winter their shapes, scattered at random like a child’s blocks, could be seen dimly through the branches. To-night, with snow on the ground and lights at all the windows, the view looked like a giant Christmas card derived from Currier and Ives.

  There was only one other car in the half moon of gravel—Philippa’s little Austin. Gus parked his car and rang the bell. Meg shivered nervously inside her warm coat as they waited.

  A Negro in a white jacket opened the door. Gus surrendered his wraps while Meg made her way up the familiar stairs to the guest room. Whe
n she came down again, Gus was waiting for her in the hall. Together they entered the great drawing room that made even an apartment as large as theirs seem cramped and cluttered.

  Philippa, in gray velvet and emeralds, stood with her back to a blazing fire in the grate. At her elbow, in an attitude of gallantry, was Maurice Lepton, the critic. An ugly, fascinating man, thought Meg, a perverse compound of grace and malice.

  There was no sign of Tony.

  “He’s gone to call Amos’s house again.” Philippa’s voice was strained! “They should have been here by this time.”

  “There’s fog on the parkway,” said Gus. “Everyone will be late.”

  Philippa sighed and rested one slender arm on the mantelpiece, trailing a chiffon stole of pale green. “What a responsibility Amos is! I hate to think of his driving out from Idlewild in a fog. I know just how the owner of a winning racehorse must feel.”

  Maurice nodded. “A good analogy. Each book is a new race that he may not win. Between races, there’s always the possibility of illness or accident or…” His eyes twinkled. “Somebody from Macmillan’s slipping into the stable with a hypo.”

  “It’s a little like being a mother, too.” Meg’s mind went back to Polly with a sudden pang of anguish. “The more people you care about, the more vulnerable you are to every kind of disaster.”

  “Amos has solved that problem,” said Philippa tartly. “He doesn’t care about anybody but Amos.”

  “Oh, really, Phil!” protested Meg. “How can you say such a thing?” In her mind she added, especially in front of Maurice Lepton, whose good opinion is so important to Amos.

  “Well, who does Amos love?” demanded Philippa. “Not Vera, I’m sure.”

  She halted as Tony came into the room. His worry was obvious. “No answer. I let the phone ring ten times. Of course they were supposed to come directly here from the airport, but…”