by Fritz Leiber
“Guess I’m in bad shape this morning,” he said huskily. “Nerves all shot to pieces.”
I should have imagined they would be.
A man straight from an all-night debauch can’t witness a racing-car accident, help handle the human wreckage afterward, and go whistling merrily to tell his friends the tale.
I expressed that, though in more kindly chosen words, and then we were both silent a minute. Barney Finn had not been my friend, or even acquaintance, and while I was vicariously touched by Van’s grief and horror, my own dilemma wasn’t simplified by this news. Yet I hated to fling sordidness in the face of tragedy by speaking of money.
“Afterward I didn’t feel like watching the race out.” As Van spoke, I heard the outer door open again. This time it really was Mr. Terne, for I recognized his step.
“So I came straight here,” Van continued.
My own door opened, and a kindly, dignified figure appeared there.
“Barbour,” said the second vice, “have you that—ah, good morning, Richard.” He nodded rather coldly to Van, and went on to ask me for the list I was supposed to be at work on.
When I explained that the checking wasn’t quite finished, he turned away; then glanced back.
“By the way, Barbour,” he said, “Prang dropped me a line saying that when you were in his office yesterday he paid up four hundred he has owed me since last June. If you were too late to deposit yesterday afternoon, get it from my box and well put it in with this check from the United.”
I felt myself going fiery-red. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll let you have that money this afternoon, Mr. Terne. I—I—”
“He gave it to me to deposit for him, and I used it for something else,” broke in Van with the utmost coolness.
On occasion Van’s brain worked with flashlight rapidity. He had put the two and two of that four hundred together while another man might have been wondering about it. Terne stared, first at Van, then at me.
“You—you gave it—” he began slowly.
“He came here for your pass-book,” ran Van’s glib tongue. “I dropped in on him, and as I was going out past the tellers, I offered to put it in for him. Then I stuck it in my pocket, forgot it till too late, and needing some cash last night, I used that. Barbour has been throwing fits ever since I told him. I’ll get it for you this afternoon.”
Terne stared some more, and Van returned the look with cool insolence.
A brick-reddish color crept up the second v.p.’s cheeks, his mouth compressed to an unfamiliar straightness, and turning suddenly he walked out of not only my cubby-hole but his own office. The door shut with a rattle of jarred glazing.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” I breathed.
“Oh, rats! Fatty Terne’s gone to tell the governor what a naughty, bad boy I am. He’ll get thrown out. No news to the governor, and he’s sick of hearing it. Anyway, this is my fault, Clay, and I ought to stand the gaff. You’ve worked like the devil here, and then I come along and spoil everything. Drunken fool, me! Knew I’d queer you if we got together, and till yesterday I had sense enough to keep off. When I took those bills I knew there was something wrong, but I was too squiffy to have any sense about it. Plain highway robbery! Never mind, old pal, I’ll bring you back the loot this afternoon if I have to bust open one of the old Colossus’s vaults for it!”
At my elbow the house telephone jingled. “Just a minute,” I said. “No; wait, Van. Hello! Hel—oh, Mr. Vansittart? Yes, sir. Be over at once, sir. Yes, he’s here. What? Yes—” The other receiver had clicked up.
“Were in for it,” I muttered. “Apparently your esteemed governor hasn’t thrown Terne out!”
Vansittart, Sr., the gruff old Hon, granted lax discipline to no man under his control save one; and even Van, Jr., was, if not afraid, at least a bit wary of him. Though he had taken me on in the bank at a far higher wage than my services were worth, he had also made it very dear that so far as I was concerned, favoritism ended there. For me, I was sure the truth of the present affair would mean instant discharge.
“Shut that door!” the lion growled as we entered. “Now, Dick, I’ll thank you to explain for exactly what weighty reason you stole Mr. Terne’s four hundred.”
“Stole!” Van’s slim figure stiffened, and he went two shades whiter.
“Stole, yes! I said, stole. That is the usual term for appropriating money without the owner’s consent.”
“I don’t accuse the boy of theft!” Terne’s set face of anger relaxed suddenly. He didn’t like Van, but he was a man who could not be unfair if he tried.
“Keep out of this, Terne—please, Dick, I am waiting.”
“Well, really,” Van drawled, “if you put it that way, I couldn’t say what I did use the money for. There was a trifle of four hundred, owned, I believe, by F—by Mr. Terne, which I borrowed, intending to return it in a few hours—”
“From what fund?” The lion’s mane was up now in earnest. I felt instinctively that this interview was a bit different from any that Van had been through heretofore. “Are you aware that your account in this bank is already overdrawn to the sum of”—he consulted a slip before him—“of forty-nine dollars and sixty cents? You perhaps have reserve funds at your command elsewhere?”
Van looked his father in the eye. What he saw must have been unusual. His brows went up slightly and the same fighting look came into his face which I had seen there when he and I confronted the faculty together. On that occasion I had been genuinely inclined to meekness. I remained in college while Van was “sent down.”
He laughed lightly. “Excuse me half an hour while I run out and sell the lil old roadster. Forty-nine sixty, you said? I’ll pay you yours first, governor!”
“That’s kind! After stealing one man’s money you propose selling another man’s car to replace it. Yes, my car, I said. What have you got in this world but your worthless brains and body to call your own? Wait! We’ll go into this matter of ownership more deeply in a few minutes. Barbour,” he whirled on me, “you allowed funds belonging to your superior to pass into unauthorized hands. That is not done in this bank. As things stand, I shall leave your case to Mr. Terne, but first you will make one direct statement. I wish it made so that no question may arise afterward. Did you or did you not hand four hundred dollars in bills, the property of Mr. Terne, to my—to my son, God help me!”
It was up to me in earnest. I was now sure beyond doubt of what Van had run against. His leonine parent had turned at last, and even the whole truth would barely suffice to save him. My lips opened. To blame though he was in a way, Van mustn’t suffer seriously in my protection. I could not forget that momentary hesitation on my part, save for which I could easily have retrieved the bills before Van was out of reach.
“I gave it to him,” I began.
And then, abruptly, silently, another face flashed in between me and the president. Instead of Vansittart’s dark, angry eyes, I was staring into a pair of clear, amused, light-blue ones. A finely cut mouth half smiled at me with lips that moved.
Always theretofore the face had come only when my lids were closed. Its wish to communicate with me—and that it did wish to communicate I was sure as if the thing had been a living man, following me about and perpetually tugging at my sleeve—had been a continual menace, but one which I had grown to feel secure from because the thing’s power seemed so limited.
Now, with my eyes wide open, there hung the face in mid air. It was not in the least transparent. That is, its intervening presence obscured Vansittart’s countenance as completely as though the head of a real man had thrust in between us. And yet—it is hard to express, but there was that about it, a kind of flatness, a lack of the normal three-dimensional solidity, which gave it the look of a living portrait projected on the atmosphere.
I knew without even glanc
ing toward them that Van and Mr. Terne did not see the thing as I did. It was there for me alone. At the moment, though, I fought the belief again—later, I knew beyond question that what I beheld was the projection of a powerful, external will, the same which, with Alicia’s dynamic force to aid, had once actually taken possession of my body.
The finely cut lips moved. No audible sound came from them, but as they formed words, the speech was heard in my brain distinctly as if conveyed by normal sound-vibrations through the ear-drums. It was silent sound. The tone was deep, rather agreeable, amiably amused:
“You have said enough,” the face observed pleasantly. “You have told the truth; now stop there. Your friend has a father to deal with, while you have an employer. He is willing to shoulder all the blame, and for you to expose your share in it will be a preposterous folly. Remember, that hard as you have worked, you are receiving here twice the money you are worth—three times what you can hope to begin on elsewhere. Remember the miserable consequences of your own father’s needless sacrifice. Remember how often, and very justly, you have wished that he had thought less of a point of fine-drawn honor, and more of his family’s happiness. Will you commit a like folly?”
I can’t tell, so that anyone will understand, what a wave of accumulated memories and secret revolts against fate overswept me as I stared hard into the smiling, light-blue eyes. But I fought.
Grimly I began again. “I gave it to him!” and then—stopped.
“That’s enough.” This time it was Vansittart speaking. “You may go, Barbour. Mr. Terne, I will ask you to leave us. You will receive my personal check for the amount you have lost.”
“But—but—” I stammered desperately while those clear eyes grew more amused, more dominating.
The lion’s hard-held calmness broke in a roar. “Get out! Out of here, both of you! Go!”
Mr. Terne laid his hand on my arm, and reluctantly I allowed myself to be steered toward the door. As I turned away the face did not float around with the turning of my eyes.
It hung in mid-air, save for that odd, un-dimensional flatness real as any of the three other faces there. When my back was to the president, the—the Fifth Presence was behind me. On glancing back, it still hung there. Then it smiled at me—a beautiful, pleased, wholly approving smile—and faded to nothing.
I went out with Mr. Terne, and left Van alone with his father.
CHAPTER X.
THE BELOVED SERAPION.
One hour later I departed from the Colossus Trust Company with instructions not to return. Oh, no, I had not been ruthlessly discharged by the outraged second vice. The inhibition covered the balance of the day only, and, as Mr. Terne put it: “A few hours’ quiet will give you a clearer view of the situation, Barbour. I honor you for feeling as you do. It was Richard, I believe, who obtained you a position here. Just for your consolation when Mr. Vansittart has—er—cooled off somewhat, I intend making a small plea in Richard’s behalf. Now, go home and come back fresh in the morning. You look as though all the cares of the world had been dumped on your shoulders. Take an older man’s advice and shake off those that aren’t yours, boy!”
He was a kindly, good man, the second vice-president of the Colossus. But his kindliness didn’t console me. In fact, I felt rather the worse for it. I went home, wishing that he had kicked me clean around the block instead of—of liking, and petting, and, by inference, praising me for being such a contrast in character to poor, reckless, loose-living, heroic Van!
When I left, the latter was still in his father’s office. Though I might have waited for him outside, I didn’t. He was not the kind to meet me with even a glance of reproach; but just the same I did not feel eager to meet him.
I had resolved, however, that unless Van pulled through scathe-less, I would myself “make a small plea in Richard’s behalf,” and next time not all the smooth, smiling devils from the place-that’s-no-longer-believed-in should persuade me to crumple.
On the train—I commuted, of course—I deliberately shut my eyes, and waited for the vision to appear. If it could talk to me by moving its lips, there must be some way in which I could express my opinion to it. I burned to do that! Like a sneak, it had taken me unawares in a crucial moment. I had a few thoughts of the Fifth Presence which should make even that smug vision curl up and die.
I closed my eyes—and was asleep in five minutes. I was tired, you see, and, now that I wanted it, the Fifth Presence kept discreetly invisible. The conductor, who knew me, called my station and me at the same time, and I blundered off the train, half awake, but thoroughly miserable.
There was no one at home but my mother. Of late dad’s sight had failed till it was not safe for him to be on the street alone. As he liked to walk, however, Cathy had gone out with him.
I found mother, lying down in her darkened bedroom, in the preparatory stage of a headache. Having explained that Mr. Terne had given me an unexpected half-holiday, I turned to leave her, but checked on a sudden impulse.
“Mother,” I said softly, “why did you name me Ser—why was I given my uncle’s name instead of just dad’s?”
“What an odd question!”
Mother sat up so energetically that two cushions fell off the couch. I picked them up and tried to reestablish her comfortably, but she wouldn’t have it. “Tell me at once why you asked that extraordinary question, Clay!”
I said there was nothing extraordinary about it that I could see. My uncle’s name itself was extraordinary, or at least unusual, and the question happened to come into my mind just then. Besides, she had spoken a good deal of him lately. Maybe that had made me think of it.
Mother drew a deep breath.
“He told me—can you believe this?—he told me that some day you would ask that question! This is too wonderful! And I’ve seemed to feel a protecting influence about us—this house that was his—and your good position in the bank!”
“Mother, will you kindly explain what you are talking about?”
My heart had begun a muffled throbbing.
“Be patient! I have a wonderful story to tell you. I’ve doubted, and hoped, and dared say nothing, but, Clayton dear, in these last miserable weeks I have felt his presence like the overshadowing wings of a protecting angel. If it is true—if it only could be true—”
“Mother—please!”
“Sit down, dear. Are my salts on the dresser? Yes, and the cologne too, please. That’s a dear boy. And now sit down. Your father never liked dear Serapion, and—why, how wonderful this all is! Your coming home early, I mean, and asking me the question just at the one time when your father, who disliked him, is away, and we have the whole house—his house!—to ourselves. Can’t you feel his influence in that, dear?”
“What have you to tell me, mother?”
“I shall begin at the very first—”
“If you make the story too long,” I objected craftily, “dad and Cathy will be back.”
“That is true. Then I’ll just tell the part he particularly wished you to know. Dear Serapion was universally loved, and I could go on by the hour about his friendships, and the faculty he had for making people happy. Physically, he had little strength, and your father was very unjust to him—”
“Can’t we leave dad out of this, mother?”
“You are so like your uncle! Serapion could never bear to hear anyone criticized, no matter how the person had treated him. ‘My happiness,’ he would say, ‘is in living at harmony with all. Clayton,’ your father, he meant, of course, ‘Clayton is a splendid man, whom I admire. His own fine energy and capacities make him unduly hard, perhaps, toward those less gifted. I try to console myself with the thought that life has several sides. Love—kindliness—good humor—I am at least fortunate in rousing the gentlest qualities in most of those about me. Who knows? From the beginning, that may have been my m
ission in life, and I was given a delicate constitution that I might have leisure merely to live, love, and be loved in return!
“Of course, he wouldn’t have expressed that beautiful thought to every one, but Serapion knew that I would understand—yes, dear, I shall come to your part in the story directly.
“Serapion passed to his reward before you were born, my son. He went from us in January, and you came into the world the April following. The doctors had told him that only a few hours were left him of life. When Serapion learned that he asked to be left alone with me for a little while.
I remember every word of that beautiful conversation. I remember how he laid his hand on mine and pressed it feebly.
“‘Do as I ask, Evelyn,’ he said. If the child is a boy, give him my name. I only ask second place. Clayton has first right; but let the boy have my name, as well as his father’s. I’ve been too happy in my life—too happy in my loves and friendships. I can’t bear to die utterly out of this good old world. I haven’t a child of my own, but if you’d just give your boy—my name. Some day he will ask why, and then you are to tell him that—it’s because—I was so happy!’”
Mother was sobbing, but after a moment she regained self-control to continue. “You may think it weak in me to cry over my brother, who passed long age. But he has lived in my memory. And he said: ‘Some people only talk of life after death, but I believe in it. It is really true that we go out to go on. I know it. There is something bright and strong in me, Evelyn, that only grows stronger as I feel the body dying from about me. Bright, strong, and clear-sighted. I have never been quite like other men. Not even you have understood me, and perhaps that is for the best.’
“With his hand on mine he smiled, and, oh, Clayton, I have wondered many times since what that smile meant! It was so beautiful that—that it was almost terrible!