He tiptoed over to the window and looked out. All the lights in the Walkers’ house — all that were visible from here — had been extinguished for nearly an hour. That should be sufficient time for them to be settled into sleep over there. The Hollisters, who had retired about an hour ago, were well settled themselves; a throbbing chorus of snorts and snores from the back of the house attested to that.
“All right, chick,” he said. “Time to go. Got everything?”
She picked up her diary and the farewell letter to Victoria and Robert, and nodded miserably. He blew out the candle, and when their eyes had become adjusted to the dark they crept down the stairs.
The stars seemed even more brilliant than night before last; the sky was luminous with them. ‘I’ll never see stars like this again,’ she thought. They blurred. She stumbled along beside her father, blind with tears.
“Front door? Back door?” he murmured.
Her only wish now was to get the pain over with as quickly as possible. “Front,” she choked.
Mr. Shaw stopped when they reached the porch steps. “Shoes!” he whispered, pantomiming the removal of his boots; he wasn’t going to take any chances in the house. They sat down on the bottom step and took off their shoes — his genuine American articles, and the button-ups she had borrowed from Victoria. ‘I’ll leave them behind,’ she thought. ‘Nothing I can do about the dress, though.’ Not so long ago she had day-dreamed about going to town with Victoria and buying a whole wardrobe … The memory wrenched her heart.
They crept up to the front door in their stocking feet. Mr. Shaw opened it with extreme caution. Silence closed around them inside, broken only by their own breathing and the muffled ticking of the grandfather clock. They felt their way step by step among the dim shapes of parlor furniture. Here was the curtained doorway through which Maggie had made her appearance this morning. “Time — time — time” the clock dirged as they passed by.
“All right, Susie,” Mr. Shaw whispered, “call it up.”
She put her farewell letter on the table, propping it against the stuffed owl’s glass bell, and placed Victoria’s shoes side by side underneath. The lump in her throat felt as large as a fist. She turned quickly to the wainscotting of the outer wall, and pressed her thumb against the warm wooden surface. She could feel the vibration of the faraway mechanism lurching into life.
Her shoulders began to shake. Mr. Shaw murmured and put his arm around her. They waited. Behind the paneling sounded a hum, an approaching muffled groan … The wainscotting split, and rumbled apart. They flinched under the glare of the electric light.
There was a new sign attached to the rear wall of the elevator, but their eyes were so dazzled that they couldn’t make out the words. Another one of Mr. Bodoni’s notices, no doubt, about “smokking” in the elevator or dropping “liter” on its floor …
They got in.
Her aching eyes were beginning to accommodate to the light. SUSAN SHAW, she read on the new sign. Her mind was so numb with grief that she did not recognize these words for an instant. MR. SHAW …
“Daddy!” she whispered.
He already had his finger on the third-floor button. He had not looked twice at the sign.
“No!” she whisper-shouted, seizing his hand and pulling it away from the bank of buttons.
“What are you doing?” he muttered.
“Look, look, look!” She pulled him around by the arm so that he was forced to see the sign again.
SUSAN SHAW — MR. SHAW — DON’T COME DOWN UNTIL YOU READ WHAT’S INSIDE!
They stared, too astonished to move.
“What’s that all about?” Mr. Shaw murmured after a moment. “Inside what?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Do you think one of the Walker kids—?”
“No. The elevator wouldn’t come up for them. It must be—” The idea was incredible, but she could think of no alternative. “It must be from the twentieth century!” And as she said it, the answer came to her.
Robert and Victoria had been successful after all.
She stepped forward and tore the sign from the wall. It was not a sign, but a manila envelope. Inside … She tried to force her finger under the glued-down flap. The elevator door sighed, and began to trundle shut.
With a squeak of fright she hurled herself at the door, caught it just in time, and forced it back. It began to bunt against her hand with convulsive little leaps.
“Get out, get out!” she whispered to her father. “We have to read this.”
“Why can’t we read it going down?” he said.
“No. It says don’t go down until after we read it!”
“But—”
“Oh!” she cried—tried to cry; her voice was too choked with urgency to sound very loud. She let the bucking door go, flung herself on him, and yanked him out into the hallway with the strength she had never suspected in herself. The wainscotting closed up again, the elevator groaned away down the shaft, and they were left clinging together and panting in the dark.
“Susan,” he said in a low dangerous voice, “I am at the end of my patience with you. I have had all the frustrations I am able to cope with. Call that elevator back.”
“Daddy, I will, but I have to read this first!”
“Just how the devil do you propose to read anything in this dark?”
“I—” she began, casting desperately about, “I — Candles!” She started to back down the hallway. “There’re candles on the mantelpiece in the parlor.”
“Susan, you—”
“Daddy, just a minute, please!”
She turned and hurried as quickly as the dark permitted back to the parlor. Ooops! She found herself bending double over a hassock or something that had caught her on the shins; fortunately it was well padded. She looked about. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness again. A shape loomed nearby. She touched smooth wood and plush — it was the sofa. And there, dimly gleaming a few yards away, was the white marble of the fireplace.
Somewhere at the other end of the house a door opened.
She whirled around toward the doorway and went rigid. Voices murmured and a light flickered on the other side, in the hallway where her father—He was going to be caught flat-footed!
Unless it was Victoria and Robert, in which case—
It was not Victoria and Robert. The voices were different. Two voices — one weeping, one murmuring …
They were almost in the parlor. Candlelight wavered through the portieres, shadows swayed on the parlor rug. Susan broke out of her paralysis. For some reason her father hadn’t been seen. She mustn’t be seen either. She scurried behind an armchair and crouched. But the urge to look could not be resisted, and she straightened up again until her eyes were just above the back of the chair.
Through the doorway came Mrs. Walker in a white peignoir, stumbling, weeping. “I can’t bear it,” she sobbed. “Oh, I can’t bear it anymore!” Her loosened waistlength hair tumbled about her face, half hiding it. In candlelight it no longer looked chestnut, but dark, nearly black. The effect was both ravishingly beautiful and heart-breaking. Susan groaned to herself, and gripped the back of the sofa.
Maggie trotted along next to Mrs. Walker, supporting her with one arm. She held the candlestick in her free hand. “Ah, sure, sure now,” she murmured. “It’ll be all right, Mum. Sure, now.” They slowly passed through the parlor into the front hall, and paused, out of Susan’s sight now, at the foot of the staircase.
“Isabelle!” said Cousin Jane’s voice from upstairs.
The candlelight flickered violently. Mrs. Walker murmured a wordless reply.
“We have much to accomplish tomorrow, Isabelle,” Cousin Jane’s voice crackled. “I suggest that you come up to bed immediately and obtain a full night’s sleep. Wandering about at this late hour is not conducive to good health, and sets a bad example. Is Maggie with you?”
“Yes …”
“Have you locked up the house for th
e night, Maggie?”
The candlelight flickered again. “Sure, Mum, and wasn’t I jist on the edge of doin’ it when ye asked me.”
“In other words, you have not done it. Lock up at once, and then get to bed! I hope I shall not have to tell you twice tomorrow night. Come up, Isabelle.”
“Lock up, is it?” Maggie muttered. The bolt on the front door banged into place. “There, ye black-hearted she-divel! As for the rest of it, ye may do it yerself. I draw me wages for housekeepin’, not guardin’ a jail.”
“Good night, Isabelle!” Cousin Jane said. It was not a wish, but a command. Doors closed. Maggie, still muttering in a fierce undertone, trudged upstairs. The candlelight faded, and all the downstairs was dark again.
Susan stood up and groped her way back to the hall. “Daddy?” she whispered.
The curtains by the window stirred. “Here!” he whispered.
“They didn’t see you?”
“No, I zipped behind here and they went right by. I saw her, though. Good night!”
Something about him felt different. A kind of electric tenseness radiated from him; but it wasn’t the anger and frustration of their recent quarrel over the elevator. Not now …
“Crying!” he muttered to himself. “Good lord! She was crying …”
She didn’t know what to say. They stood there for several minutes. He seemed to be holding his breath, or caught up in a trance.
At last he breathed out with a sharp sound, almost a snort. He whispered, “All right, chick, let’s go.”
She became aware that she was still holding the manila envelope. “Daddy,” she whispered, “we haven’t read the message yet.”
“Never mind that! Later!”
“But—”
He seized her arm with such a grip that she almost yelped with pain, and began propelling her toward the place where the elevator door was.
And past it.
And through the parlor.
And out the front door, whose bolt and knob yielded as silently and easily to him as if magic had been in his touch; and across the porch; and down the front walk.
“Daddy,” she whispered, scarcely able to get the words out, “are we staying?”
“Absolutely!”
Then, in the middle of the Ward Lane, he stopped again, and let go of her arm, and fell into that trance-like state.
“By George!” he burst out after a moment. “I never even looked at her before! Never even saw her! I mean, all the time she was right in front of my eyes, and I never — Oh, good lord!”
Susan was in something of a trance herself. The smell of the night air, the brilliance of the stars, were too sweet to bear. Something inside her went pop, a warm bubbly explosion. Hello, stars! They blurred again — but this time through tears of happiness.
“Oh, Daddy …!” she choked.
“What?” he said, starting out of his reverie. “What’s that? Oh, yes! Well, come on.”
Again he seized her arm in that powerful grip. She let out a squeak. He paid no heed, but swept her back to the Hollisters’ so rapidly that she had to half-run to stay on her feet. The symphony of snores changed its pace for a measure or two, as they crept up the stairs, and then continued a tempo.
She put her diary and the envelope down, and felt around the bureau top until she found a match, and lit the candle. Mr. Shaw stood in the soft yellow light looking down with a puzzled expression at his boots — which were dangling by their laces from his left hand. She noticed now that she was in stocking-feet, too; her shoes — Victoria’s — were still under the little table in the hallway of the Walkers’ house … Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered now!
“I never felt a thing!” she laughed. “We’ve been walking on air!”
“Ah,” he said profoundly. He sat down on the edge of his bed, and was lost to the world again.
Susan tore open the manila envelope, and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper. Houses for sale. Houses for rent … She turned the paper over and saw a crayoned circle. REWARD for info. leading to contact with Jane Hildegarde Clamp … Question mark in crayon. Familiar name … Oh, she couldn’t concentrate! A fit of giggles took possession of her. She kept looking at her father, who sat there muttering “By George!” to himself, with a dazed look on his face.
Suddenly he stood up, strode over to her, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Susie,” he said, “thank you. Thank you very, very much. It all makes sense now. I mean, the whole thing. You knew it all along, didn’t you? It’s just that I couldn’t see it until … But I mean it makes sense now. What I mean is — do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” she said, laughing up into his lunatic face. “I know what you mean.”
14. Mr. Swingle States his Business
… tried to figure out what that notice in the newspaper meant. Was the name just a coincidence? While we were talking about it somebody came to call on us. He was a man with a beard, named Arbuthnot Swingle. The moment I saw him I knew he looked familiar …
Mr. Shaw’s behavior at breakfast was so remarkable that even Mrs. Hollister forgot her shyness long enough to look at him directly, instead of out of the corner of her eye. At one moment he would be gay and laughing, delighted with everything. Abruptly he would plunge into a fit of abstraction; his eyes would glaze over, and with a look almost of gloom he would poke at his eggs and bacon. Just as abruptly, his eyes would crinkle into a smile again, and with a great laugh he would attack his breakfast like a man recently rescued from starvation.
Susan giggled, and choked over her toast, and stuffed herself, and giggled again. She was acting as loony as Daddy! Mrs. Hollister’s lips tightened as she pushed the coffee pot to them. She looked as though she suspected them of having taken a pre-breakfast nip of spirits! Susan doubled over with uncontrollable giggling.
After breakfast they went upstairs. Mr. Shaw paused at the door of his room, and collapsed against the jamb.
“Susie,” he groaned, “how can I ask her to marry me? I haven’t got a thing to offer!”
“You have too! You’re handsome and kind and—”
“And I’m flat broke, or right on the edge of it. Look!” They went into his room, and he pointed at the handful of coins on the night table. “There’s our fortune — and we probably owe most of it to the Hollisters. We have what’s left, plus the clothes we stand in.”
“Plus our intelligence,” she added. “We’re both awfully smart, Daddy. And our knowledge! We know lots that people these days don’t.”
“Mmm … But that may not be the advantage you think it is. What I know best, for instance, is how to keep track of corporate finances. But I do it with machines that probably haven’t been invented yet.”
“Maybe you could invent them!”
“Oh, chick!” he laughed. “I’m not the Connecticut Yankee …” He sat in a wobbly rocking chair and put his chin in his hand. “The point is, I’m going to have to earn a living, but I don’t know how to make my way around in this century. It’s like being in a foreign country. I know I’m capable of learning my way around eventually, but it takes time; and while I’m doing it —” he pointed again at the money on the table “— that’s what we have to live on … Sure wish I knew what happened to that treasure!”
“So do I,” she sighed. “There’s something funny about that. I don’t think it was a tramp with a dog, or boys looking for nests.”
“Well, whatever it was …” He lifted his hands and let them drop. “If I knew anybody here, I could borrow some money to tide us over. But I don’t. And good night!” he cried, “all this is based on the supposition that Isabelle is willing to accept me in the first place. How are we even going to see her again, with that Clamp monster standing in the way?”
“Don’t worry, Daddy. Bobbie and Vicky got around her yesterday, and so can we. Oh! Clamp! I almost forgot!” She ran into her room and brought back the piece of newspaper. “Here — Bobbie and Vicky asked the witch for help,
and we got this in the elevator.”
“What? What witch?”
She explained.
He began to laugh and shake his head. “You kids are — amazing! The way you accept …!
“It’s just a matter of getting used to it, Daddy. Here, read this. It’s weird. I can’t figure it out.”
“Hmm,” he said, after looking at the circled item for a while. “Is Cousin Jane’s middle name Hildegarde?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who the devil would be looking for her, anyway? I should think almost anybody in the world would be happy not to know where she is.”
“But look, Daddy — what’s so weird about it is that it’s a twentieth-century paper. I think.”
“What! Mm — no date; top’s been torn off. You’re right, though, it does look like a — yes, see, it says ‘blood plasma’ here. That’s twentieth century, all right. The name must be a coincidence, then — they can’t be talking about our Clamp. Worse luck!”
“Why worse luck?”
“Because think how convenient it would be if she were in the twentieth —”
There was a timid knock.
Mrs. Hollister stood squirming in the hall when Susan opened the door. “Gentleman to see you,” she murmured at the ceiling.
“Me?”
“Well, no, both of you. He says it’s kind of important, could you spare the time right now?” And Mrs. Hollister, looking hard at her own feet, handed Susan a card.
She studied it in bewilderment. Slowly untangling each Gothic letter from the thicket of ornament in which it lay concealed, she deciphered the name: Arbuthnot Swingle.
With a shrug she gave the card to her father.
“Who’s this?” he asked Mrs. Hollister.
“I don’t know, sir,” she murmured at the door lintel. “Gentleman with a beard …”
It was Mr. Shaw’s turn to shrug. “Beard …? Oh, well, all right, send him up.”
Mrs. Hollister departed, and the Shaws frowned at each other.
All in Good Time Page 10