by Rufus King
“No, Stuyvesant. Not yet. It has been such a day.”
“Then thank God that I have come. I shall be in a fever of impatience until you do so—and if you don’t I will. Initial this at once, Christine, right here.”
He handed Christine the pen, and she sat down at the desk just as the sound of the door chime floated in. Christine stood up again.
“That must be Lida and Barry.”
“Sign your initials, Christine!”
Christine started for the door.
“I will, darling.”
Stuyvesant stewed until she came back. Lida and Barry were with her, and Lida was saying: “Such a lovely afternoon!”
“The meal was completely up to expectation, Mrs. Admont,” Barry said. “Grilled flanks of Arabian chargers and flaccid potatoes baked in their shrouds.”
Cordelia came down the turret stairs, followed by Alan and Hugo. Lida had gone over to Stuyvesant and was saying: “Good evening, Mr. Swain.”
“Lida, my dear girl, I understand you are to be wished all happiness. Mr. Vanbuskirk? Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Mr. Swain.”
Alan, ever volatile, had found the crest of the wave ripped from under him when Cordelia had told him that Stuyvesant was in the house. Again he was certain that the old Beelzebub (female variety) had changed her will. His intention of furiously to dissemble was, in consequence, hitting on all cylinders. He smiled radiantly at Stuyvesant, whom he found practically facing him like a stolid, granite wall, and said: “Cordelia told me you were here.”
“Mr. Admont, I presume?”
Alan seized and pumped Stuyvesant’s hand.
“Christine and I both missed you at the wedding.”
“Quite so.”
Christine introduced him to Lida and Barry, and Alan continued in his role of the gracious host. Lida, now that she was face to face with him, was instantly struck (everybody always was) by Alan’s good looks and build. Even though she had been prepared for his youth, for the chasm between the ages of himself and Christine, this visual proof of it affected her like a cataract of chill water. It was curious, she thought, how you could understand one of these spring-and-winter marriages when it was the man who had the frosting of ice. And how distasteful it was in reverse.
“Do pour cocktails, Alan,” Christine said. “Godfrey’s getting temperamental about the pheasants.”
Alan went to the cellaret while Stuyvesant pointed significantly to the annuity on the desk and said: “Christine!”
“Right away, Stuyvesant. Have you met Dr. Wintersweet?”
Stuyvesant bowed to Hugo.
“How do you do, Doctor?”
“Hugo,” Christine said, “is abysmally brilliant. He is experimenting with roentgen rays.”
“During my odd moments, Mr. Swain.”
“Very interesting, I’m sure.”
Cordelia had joined Barry and Lida.
“Your mother telephoned, Mr. Vanbuskirk,” she said. “She and your father are in New York at the Plaza and would like you to call them up.”
“Thank you. I’ll give them a ring from the inn after dinner.”
“Call them up from here, Barry,” Christine said. “The phone is on the desk.”
“Thank you very much.”
Christine took a cocktail from Alan, and Stuyvesant, with what definitely could be called anguish in his voice, said sharply: “Chris-tine!” He pointed again to the annuity.
“Yes, Stuyvesant.”
Barry said into the telephone: “Will you connect me with Mrs. Glendenning Vanbuskirk, please, at the Plaza Hotel in New York?”
“Better hang on, Barry,” Christine said. “I had Alan get Florida yesterday, and the call practically blew back in his face. Godfrey wanted stone crabs.”
“I will, Mrs. Admont.”
Stuyvesant, with considerable suspicion, accepted a cocktail from Alan.
“Number Thirty, I believe?” he said.
“That’s right. Cognac, yellow chartreuse, and lime.”
“The lime,” Hugo said, taking one, “unquestionably is unslaked.”
Cordelia offered canapés of an interesting brown-ball effect on toothpicks.
“Godfrey is outdoing himself,” Hugo said, swallowing one.
“What are they?” Stuyvesant asked, swallowing one too.
“Snails.”
It was too late.
“Do take one, Lida,” Christine was saying. “They’re the last snails out of Paris.”
Barry’s connection came through, and they heard him say: “Mother? Barry talking. Yes—yes, dear—certainly, if you wish it. I’ll start after dinner.”
Christine went over to the desk.
“Do let me talk to her, Barry.”
“Mother—Mrs. Admont wants to speak to you.”
Christine took the telephone.
“Mrs. Vanbuskirk? I’m Christine Admont. Barry tells me that you and Mr. Vanbuskirk will be with us tomorrow. I couldn’t be more delighted. Do manage to reach here in time for luncheon or dinner, and plan to stay over. Oh? So sensible—and of course Lida will understand. Until tomorrow afternoon, then. Good-by.”
Barry had joined Lida. He said to her: “Mother wants me to drive in tonight and stay with them at the Plaza.”
“Oh, darling—if this wretched fog lifts there’ll be a moon.”
“They’ve been digging around Chelsea and have uprooted three aunts. I’m to take the role of the fatted calf.”
“I hope each aunt gets indigestion.”
“Christine,” Stuyvesant said in a voice plainly meant to brook no further nonsense, “at once!”
He stood over her at the desk and pointed severely to the annuity. Christine put her initials on the indicated spot.
“There.”
“At last!”
Stuyvesant picked the document up and waved it to dry the ink.
Ice swiftly clutched Alan’s arrested heart. “What are you signing, darling?” he asked almost sharply.
“Not, at any rate, a new will,” Hugo said. “No witnesses have been asked for.”
Alan threw him a vicious look. He was thoroughly startled.
“Will? Christine—you haven’t—you wouldn’t—”
“How could you think such a thing of me, Alan? It is something else entirely. In fact, you will be enchanted. You might almost call it a present.”
It was remarkable how Alan rebounded. The distressed front lifted, and he looked like a stroked and well-pleased cat.
“Really? But my birthday isn’t until next month, darling.”
“It isn’t that sort of a present, darling.”
Stuyvesant folded the annuity and put it in his pocket.
He announced to the room at large: “There is a word in the English language known as comeuppance.”
“Christine,” Hugo said, “a whiff of brimstone is sifting through the air.”
“Dear Stuyvesant was so efficient, Alan. He had the whole thing put through in no time—physical examination—transfers—everything, so far as immediate coverage is concerned.”
“Darling, what are you talking about?”
“An annuity, dear. For me.”
The word dropped like a stone in the silent pool. Hugo gave a short laugh, while Alan turned an oyster gray. He looked as if he were about to faint.
“An annuity?” Cordelia said. “But what a good idea! It brings in so much more than any other type of investment, doesn’t it?”
Stuyvesant said: “Yes.” He glared pregnantly at Alan and added: “But only during the holder’s lifetime.”
“And,” Hugo added further, “the insurance company hits the jackpot when Christine dies.”
“Oh, but we mustn’t think of that,” Cordelia said calmly.
Christine managed to make her eyes bewitchingly fond. She turned them on Alan. “We will have so much more to spend through the happy, happy years.”
Alan felt as though he were strangling. He managed to blurt out:
“Did you put everything into it? All? The whole thing, darling?”
“Everything but the jewels. I knew you would be pleased, dear.”
“Come and get it, folks,” Godfrey’s bass voice bellowed from the doorway. “Pheasant—a la chasseur!”
Christine linked her arms with Barry’s and Lida’s. “I’m starving after the drive out.”
“I’m starving,” Barry said, “after that meal.”
They followed Godfrey from the room. Cordelia walked after them with Stuyvesant.
“I remember now,” she said, “that Victoria Swansbeck bought an annuity when she was fifty-four years old. She wanted to feel safe. I forget which depression it was during, but a day didn’t pass without some stockbroker jumping out of a window.”
Alan was still rooted to the spot. Hugo asked him, with wicked solicitude, “Won’t you join us, Alan?”
“In a minute. I’ll be right in.”
“Take your time. If shock doesn’t kill during the first few minutes, the chances are about fifty-fifty that the victim will recover.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, leave me alone!”
“I’ll let them know you’ll be right in.”
Hugo presented Alan with his best Mephistophelean grin and left the room. Alan waited for a moment and then, swiftly as a cat, ran to the doorway and stood listening to the dying murmur of voices. He took the telephone from the desk and stood with its cord full-stretched so that, while phoning, he could keep an eye along the hall.
He gave the operator the number of Joe’s penthouse in New York. His blood was alternately fever and ice. His hand shook as he held the receiver to his ear. He gave an almost convulsive sigh of relief when Joe’s voice answered.
“This is Alan, Joe.”
“Yes?”
“Something ghastly has happened. Something that affects you-know-what.”
“Spill it.”
“Christine saw her lawyer when she went into town. He’s out here now. She has turned her entire fortune into an annuity, and the papers are signed.”
There was, at Joe’s end of the line, dead silence.
“Don’t you see what that means?” Alan said frantically. “If she—if anything happens to her, I don’t get a cent. The insurance company takes the works. You’ve got to cancel that deal. You’ve got to get hold of the Dove right away.”
“You can’t. I told you that this morning.”
“I know you did, but you’ve got to get in touch with him. You’ve got to call him off!”
“For the last time, get this straight, Al. Not a soul on earth could put a finger on the Dove until this job is finished and he decides to show up and collect.”
“But there won’t be anything to collect. I can’t let Christine be mur—Don’t you see I’ve got to keep her healthy?”
“I cannot be more final, Al. He is on the job, and I told him it had to be done quick. You can start picking the hymns out right now. Tell me this. Did she turn in her jewels?”
“No. But what of it? Nowadays they probably wouldn’t fetch more than fifty thousand.”
“It will just about take care of the Dove and me.” Alan started to scream the words and then remembered. He forced his voice back to a whisper.
“I should hope it would! It means that if I don’t keep her alive I’ll be penniless. Joe—Joe, for God’s sake, don’t you realize that Christine has just gone in to eat? The Dove might be poisoning her right now!”
“And that,” Joe said coldly, “is your tough luck.”
Joe hung up.
CHAPTER VI
The receiver of the telephone remained in Alan’s palsied hand, still pressed against his ear, until the impersonal voice of the operator asked: “Are you still connected with your party, please?”
“No. No, thank you very much.”
Alan set the phone back on its cradle. What could he do? What were the things which must be done? A parade of decisions was instant in his feverish mind: preventatives against this implacable, untouchable, undeniable force (the Dove) which had been loosed so properly for his benefit and which now was calmly busied in phantasmal occupations for his swift ruin. Definitely with all the ingratitude of a Frankenstein’s monster.
Notes, Alan thought, could be left commanding the Dove to call the deal off. A note here, another one there, throughout the dust-sheet-shrouded empty spaces of the vast house. But was he in the house? And anyhow, notes were both silly and dangerous.
He wondered almost hysterically how he could address them (Dear Dove—Dear Mr. Dove?) and what he could ever say which would deter the Dove from accomplishing Christine’s exit and which would still not incriminate Alan himself. He had a tremendous respect for the advisability of never putting a thing down in writing.
Whisk Christine away? Perhaps. But would she whisk? Alan thought not. And even so, where on this currently troubled earth could he take her to? Or what reason could he sensibly offer for a sudden evacuation of Belder Tor and headlong flight to parts unknown?
He dallied with the temptation of cutting it all out and himself decamping from the cruel and unfair mess. But what then? A distressing vista of such a future chilled Alan into revolt at the noisome thought. Rich old fools were few and far between these days. It could be months, years even, of a horrid hall-bedroom existence before he could net another fish as financially gaudy as Christine.
And in any case would Joe be pleased if he were to skip?
Alan shuddered. It was a blank wall. All was despair except for the rigid necessity of keeping the old witch alive.
Self-pity overwhelmed him as he watched himself growing older year by year, saw the very best and ripest years of his life being frittered away in the irritating dullness of dancing attendance on a constantly disintegrating Christine.
Forty years at least. Alan (as well as Stuyvesant) was convinced that she would hit the century mark. Then (grim thought) he would be sixty-five, his good looks which were his stock in trade lost forever, and with nothing to show for it beyond such crumbs as he might have gathered from her opulent table and have salted away. He almost cried.
His head was desperately tired and his nerves were at the shattering point. Possibly the morning would bring some cogent plan which would fend off his ruin. A good night’s sleep. Dared he sleep, and thus leave his now precious Christine wide open to heaven alone knew what shape or method of precarious attack?
On leaden feet Alan propelled his handsomely muscular body from the morning room and detoured through the entrance hall en route to join the others at Godfrey’s succulent buffet.
The suits of armor which had usually amused him as being something out of simply nowhere now disturbed him. He knew the notion was full of the rankest corn and that the device had been thrown out into Shubert’s alley, or its then equivalent, somewhere back in the days of Avery Hopwood, but just suppose the Dove were to be ensconced inside of one of them?
Absurd.
But is was not absurd to suppose that the Dove might be somewhere close at hand. (“I told him it had to be done quick,” Joe had said.) How poorly the hall was lighted, with what spectral gloom! What bitter, dead-sea fruit the annuity made of the brilliant scheme right now.
Alan passed the foot of a dark stairway, then hesitated and turned back to it again. The upper hall, to his feverish eyes, was a stygian curtain threaded with vague shapes. No, there was nothing to see. No sound to hear.
But that (the blood in his remarkably healthy veins turned to ice) was, of course, the idea.
CHAPTER VII
A wind had sprung up and was sighing in its inscrutable passage through the pines. Hugo had started a log fire on the hearth, which added little more than a witch’s note to the morning room’s mortal, depressive tone. An hour had passed and the buffet was done.
Christine was seated on a lounge which, at the insistence of Charles, had been upholstered in royal purple. A large Sheffield tray with a silver service was on the coffee table before her. Alan was at he
r side. He watched her with the nervous anxiety of a mother hen, an anxiety which he was doing his best to conceal.
The others, almost as though under some ephemeral spell, were grouped: Lida, Barry and Godfrey near the hearth, Cordelia and Stuyvesant on a love seat (glumly petit-pointed) near the cellaret, while Hugo was sardonically observing them all as he stood leaning back against the clavichord, sipping his coffee.
Little could have been more depressing than the anecdote which Godfrey was just completing to Lida: “—which was, of course, back in nineteen thirty-seven. The miserable creature telephoned me at the Dome around midnight and said, ‘Why go on?’ I tell you that I wept!” Godfrey sighed gustily. “As a model she was superb—a new set of psychoses every time she posed.”
“But what happened to her, Mr. Lance?”
Barry said, “There is always the Seine.”
“Precisely,” Godfrey boomed. “She died.”
Alan all but choked on his coffee. “Died!… Are you sure your coffee tastes all right, Christine?”
“The flavor is perfect.”
“The statistical rate of suicides in the Seine River,” Stuyvesant said pompously, “used to be enormous.”
“Something on your mind, Alan?” Hugo asked.
“No!”
Cordelia said with placid vagueness: “I wonder whether there’s a storm in the air? There’s a feeling of tension. I always remember how storms would affect dear Mabel Potash. At times they would give her fits.”
“Some more coffee, Stuyvesant?” Christine asked.
“No more, thank you.” He stood up. “Christine, I shall say good night.”
Stuyvesant felt as satisfied as he could be. Christine still, it was true, was surrounded by her entourage out of Dementia, but at least the fangs of the most virulent one of them had been pulled. With a touch of irritation he shoved aside a coffee spoon that Godfrey poked under his nose.
“You are a foolish man,” Godfrey was saying, “not to let me paint you. The portrait would remain famous long after you are dead.”