by Philip Wylie
"These darned cubes are harder to break up than an old-fashioned hunk."
"Need help?"
"No." She appeared, presently, en déshabillé. That is, she was wearing some sort of net over her gray hair--a purple net--and the most voluminous red silk kimono Aggie had ever seen. The ice bag had been lashed to her neck with a lurid batik. She walked across her room and dropped down on her enormous four-poster bed. She observed, after a sigh of relaxation, the activity of her nephew. "You make a practice of going through other people's mail?"
He glanced up from the bedside table. "Invariably. You know what you remind me of, Sarah? Sunset over Grand Canyon."
She whooped with laughter. That act seemed to hurt her throat and she spent a moment grimacing. Then she held out her hand for the telegram.
"That's from Hank Bogarty," she said, "'ARRIVING SHORTLY FOR NEW
GRUBSTAKE. LOVE. HANK.''
"I can read," Aggie answered. "Who's he?"
"Oh. An old friend. I can't imagine why he's coming. We haven't seen him around here for ages. Some of us grub-staked him once--lent him the money to go prospecting with--ever so long ago. It'll be nice to see him."
Aggie was satisfied.
For a moment, the sight of the knife in the doorjamb had startled him. There was something sinister about it. Like finding a medicine man's ouanga pinned on your tent.
Now, his momentary fear vanished. Foolish, he thought, to bring the associations of Congo voodooism to the United States. He was always doing things like that. The price you paid for being an anthropologist.
Sarah was settling herself for a talk. He helped her arrange the bedcovers. John knocked lightly on the door and came in. "Mr. Calder's outside," he said. "He wants to talk to you."
Aggie looked at his aunt with feigned dismay and said flatly to the old man, "His daughter Beth is with him, I suppose? Has he got a wedding license filled out in triplicate? A ring? Tell him I never marry except on Thursdays."
Old John was perplexed. "Miss Calder isn't there. He's alone. He seems disturbed."
Aggie glanced at his aunt--and his glance held. Something had happened to her.
She looked afraid--or worried. He said, "You'd better interview this cluck after you get some sleep. Isn't he the cad who ran off with the doctor's wife--and then left her in California--a fate worse than death?"
Sarah did not smile. "Tell him to come in, John. Aggie, beat it."
"I will not. I'm your guardian--for a change. I stay. What does this oaf want?
Why. are you suddenly full of hornets?"
"I'm not," Sarah said. "It's just that--well--nobody cares for Jim Calder--much. He rarely comes up here. His family does--his daughter--and his son--and his son's wife. But Jim has hurt so many people--that he's--"
There were steps in the hall.
The man who came in looked unlike either a home-wrecker or a robber of widows and orphans. He was a gaunt, weary-appearing person with a short, iron-gray pompadour and liver-spotted hands. Although it was a warm evening, he wore a dark, wool business suit and a stiff white collar. His dull plaid tie had too tight a knot in it. His face was sanctimonious; his eyes were blue, hard, and not particularly pleasant. He said, in a crackling voice, "Oh--Sarah--you had a wire from Bogarty--?" and then he saw Aggie.
He did not introduce himself, or wait for an introduction, or even allow Aggie to perform the amenities. He said, "John didn't tell me you had anybody here! The old fool is probably getting senile! I want to see you alone."
Sarah's gray eyes were placid. "Probably, Jim, you didn't give poor old John a chance to tell you anything. You generally don't. Your manners were always cheesy."
That did not disturb Jim Calder in the least. He stared at Aggie. "Will you leave the room, please?" He added, "whoever you are."
Aggie found himself angry. Calder's rudeness was of the deliberate, meaningless sort that evokes rudeness in others. He replied, after a second, "Why, I'm sorry. My aunt's ill. I'm a doctor. I was going to treat her. But you need treatment more--for too much gall."
A faint flush tinged Calder's pallid cheek. It increased as he perceived that Sarah was giggling. "Who are you?" he asked. "Sarah, are you sick?"
"Jim," she said, "for heaven's sake, sit down. You'd think, at your age, you'd have learned that you don't have to beat everybody on earth to the draw. Yes, I heard from Hank. Here's the wire. And this is my nephew--the famous Dr. Plum, of Brandon University. Make an obeisance, Aggie, and beat it."
Mr. Calder's expression was still uncompromising. "Oh," he said. "Yes. Heard of you. Excuse us."
Aggie wandered to the door. "Rudeness is pretty inexcusable," he said, "when you consider it abstractly. Nevertheless, Mr. Calder, inasmuch as I have no further desire to stay here--"
"Oh--for mercy's sake, man--get going!"
Aggie went. He found old John standing uneasily in the living room. "That man, "
said the servant, exercising the liberty of long habit, "always makes me boil!"
"Like dry ice," said Aggie. "Has he a daughter named Beth?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Aggie. And a son. Bill. Neither of them anything like their father."
"I should think not. The impossibility of tribal survival for the completely misanthropic strain--"
"I beg pardon, sir?"
"I said, among savages, upon whom we so-called civilized people look down, such a man would have been taken outside the compound and knocked on the head."
"Plenty of people would applaud it."
"So Sarah said."
Aggie strolled over to the bookcases as if to discover what his aunt's reading habits were. He was thinking that be did not know much about Sarah. They corresponded--merrily--through the years. They saw each other fleetingly during winter vacations. At Indian Stones, and in New York, she was a social high priestess, a fabled meddler in the affairs of others, and a gossip without a peer. He knew, also, that she was generous to the point of vice, and that her heart was made of mercy. As old John went on talking, Aggie pretended to look at the book titles. But he did not see them. The attitude of Mr. Calder about the long-time unseen Mr. Bogarty was obviously one of perturbation--and Sarah was obviously connected with it.
"Mr. Calder," said John, "ruined the life of Mrs. Davis. And left the doctor with a young daughter--"
"So Sarah said," Aggie repeated.
"He is a broker. His family was one of the first to settle at Indian Stones. He managed the fortunes of many of us. Lost some--Mr. Browne's, for example. James Calder stripped him. Mr. Browne killed himself and his wife died shortly afterward. Mr.
Browne's son--Jack-manages the club, now. A very splendid young man, for all his tragedy. I mean--losing his father and mother and his inheritance--in one swoop, so to speak. Jim Calder's underhanded work cost your aunt money. And the Draymans and the Pattons. Lots of us.
Aggie smiled at the old man's inclusion of himself in the communal disasters.
"Too bad. But most of 'em could afford it."
"I couldn't," John sighed.
"You?"
The old man nodded tremblingly. "Even me. He has that preacher's face. Even when you know he's not to be trusted, he can make you trust him. He's very shrewd.
Positive--and sort of--hypnotic. He got to talking, one day, about how had I invested my life savings--"
"How much did he take you for?"
"Nine thousand three hundred and sixty-two dollars. All I had." John cleared his throat. "Your aunt knows nothing of it, Mr. Aggie. I'd rather you didn't tell her. It was my own fault--my own foolishness. Miss Sarah will take care of me of course--when I become too old to be useful. I realize that. I'd only hoped--before the incident--that I could be independent--at that time. You know how a man feels--"
Aggie glanced bitterly toward the hall. "Yeah. I know about men like Calder, too.
For fifty cents, when he comes out, I'd hang one on him--"
"I've felt that way myself. Very often. Indian Stones has been a tranquil plac
e. A place of a good deal of affection. But, having him here all through the years is like--"
"--a ghoul at a feast."
At that point, the subject of their talk came out of the bedroom. He slammed the door without reference to Sarah's condition and stalked through the living room. At the front door he turned and said, "You're a doctor. Tell me something better than tramping the woods at night for insomnia."
Aggie looked at him. "A clear conscience." Calder did an effective piece of work with his second slam; the house shook. Aggie caught sight of John's wistful grin at the insult. He went back to Sarah's room. His aunt was manifestly upset. Her color was poor and she kept fiddling with the ice bag on her neck. "Some human beings," she said,
"ought to have been born inside the fur of jackals."
Aggie nodded. "Look. What's this all about?"
"Nothing. Nothing important. Things that happened long ago. Some day Jim Calder's past is going to catch up with him. Right now--he's worried. He wanted my moral backing for a little inhospitality, that's all. You go to bed, Aggie. It's late. You need sleep--and so do I. Whatever I've got, it feels like triple-grippe plus hangover, and a small case of crud, besides."
There was no use in trying to coerce or trap Sarah. He made an attempt--and gave up. After he had said good night to her and before he started up to his room, he felt Bogarty's card in his pocket. That reminded him of the knife he had left on the veranda rail, and, since there was no chance that Sarah would see him bring it in, he went out to get it.
The knife was gone. He hurried down the front steps and lit matches to search behind Sarah's ferns, but it had not rolled off the rail. Someone had taken it. He returned and asked John--but the old man denied having been on the porch.
"Well," Aggie said, "maybe Calder saw it and took it. He seems to have a habit of grabbing everything he can."
"No doubt," John said.
Aggie bade him good night, and started up the stairs. His eyes grew misty when he went into his room. The objects there--banners, pictures, trophies, knickknacks and books--had belonged to a twelve-year-old boy. The scientist sat down on his bed, trying to summon that youngster back to existence: a boy who'd been slight, sun-tanned, shy, knowing. An interested kid--one who was afraid of grown people. He still was, the man finally thought.
He undressed and put on faded flannelette pajamas. He turned back the covers of the bed, slid into it, and did not especially try to go to sleep, which was why he found himself waking from a deep repose at the sound of stair-creaks. Only his mountainous aunt could make such noises. He had a light on and was sitting up when she knocked.
"Come in."
Her face was blotchy. She was panting slightly. There was a diamond dust of sweat on her skin. "I'm a hysterical old woman," she said thickly. "But, Aggie, I feel extraordinarily ill. My jaws are like a vice. I was on the verge of sleep when I thought of tetanus. It scared me so, I popped awake--and I've worked myself into a first-class tizzie.
I hated to bother anybody--and yet--I found myself coming up to see you."
He was standing, then, pulling his trousers over his pajamas. "I'll drive over and get Dr. Davis right away. If he's here. If not, I'll push on into town and raise somebody."
He knew that she wanted him to do that--although she was protesting. "I don't think it's tetanus--I've seen a few cases. But I haven't any idea what it is. Do you still keep the car keys in the teapot?"
"The new ones-the shiny ones-are for the station wagon."
He helped her back to bed.
Outdoors, it was still pitch-dark. But he could have found his way around to the garage blindfolded. He switched on a light. The place had once been a stable--and somehow it still smelled like a stable, although there had been neither horse nor harness in it for more than a quarter of a century. He heard Windle's feet hit the floor in the servants' rooms above and called, "It's me, Windle! Sarah feels badly and I'm going for the doctor. Don't bother to come down." Then he was driving over the familiar roads--by memory-paths that he had not known were still in his brain.
The Davis house, much like Sarah's, was called "Medicine Lodge" in quaint if obvious adherence to the local tradition. There was no doorbell. He banged the door with his fist, waited, banged again, and waited again. From the vast interior he presently heard quick, sharp footfalls--the steps of a woman--and soon he saw a light moving inside.
Because that was not what he had expected, he looked into a window.
A woman was coming down the stairs; she carried a candelabrum. As she descended, she lighted more candles. Her mules--pale green--made the sharp steps, and her negligée--half green, and, crazily, he thought, half mauve--floated behind her. She had smooth, red-gold hair that curled at the ends--just below her shoulders. She was young and opulently beautiful. Aggie had no idea who she was, but he imagined that perhaps Dr. Davis had married again--and he thought that he would hate to be a man in late middle age with a wife like that.
The woman didn't ask, "Who's there?" She somehow was not that sort of person.
She merely opened the door and said, "Yes?"
"I'm looking for the doctor. My aunt--Sarah Plum--is ill. Very ill."
"Come in." She pushed back the screen and he moved around it. She held the candelabrum toward him. Her lips twitched slightly. "So you're the celebrated Agamemnon Telemachus Plum! How do you do? I'll call Father immediately."
She went away up the stairs. She knew his whole name. Of course, they all had--
all the Indian Stones people. That had been just one of his juvenile tragedies. His father, a Greek scholar, had chosen his name. His mother had just died and Sarah had been too worried about her brother's condition, at the time, to interfere with the naming of a hapless infant.
A second thought burst upon him expandingly, erasing the first. Her father. She had said, "My father." Then she was--he tried to remember her name. He could recall the grubby pigtails, the loud, raspy voice, and the quality that had passed for wit among children. She was the one who had started calling him Agriculture Telephone. It was Dorothea--Doreen--something more unique--boy's name--Danielle. Candlelight was eddying in the stair well again.
He found himself trying to be reserved and amused. He tugged his beard impressively. "How are you, Danielle?"
She came to the bottom step, smiling, and she looked at him for a moment.
"Father's probably still out in his darkroom. Working. Our electricity's off. Power line down--I guess. Anyhow--we got here this morning and we ordered it fixed--but the men didn't come. If you'll follow me--"
She led him through the kitchen and across the lawn. The garage--a converted stable, like Sarah's--served also to house Dr. Davis's photographic development room. It was on a short corridor off the main floor. Danielle walked along, trailing her greenish garments, carrying the candles, and staining the night with a subtle, insistent perfume that was like rhythm or a musical chord, in that it affected other senses than the one which perceived it. She knocked on a door.
The response was crisp. "Just a second! Who is it?"
"Me. Dr. Plum has come over. Sarah's sick."
"Be right out." There was a moment of silence. ''Tell him I've got to wash up--and get my bag." A lock clicked and the door opened. From the dark corridor, Aggie had a glimpse of a tight little room, crammed with photographic materials. A candle burned there, behind a red globe. He noticed one small window very high up over a sink. "I'll be only a jiffy!" Aggie could see nothing but the man's arm. He realized Dr. Davis did not know he was standing behind Danielle. She started back down the corridor.
When they reached the living room, she inspected him attentively. "I generally find these meetings--following a common childhood--extremely disillusioning. You, at least, have made a mark somewhere--even if the rest of us haven't."
He had no idea what she did, or whether she was married, or if she was widowed or divorced-or anything else. He had forgotten her. He could see that she was a beautiful woma--and no more. He n
odded.
"You look, heaven knows, like Joe Academy, the Cloistered Wonder-boy! How many honorary degrees have you by now?"
That hurt him--and annoyed him intensely besides. He thought of a retort--which, as a rule, he failed to do. "The pigtails are still there--in a figurative sense. I remember them. Blonde--basically--but vertiginous from being a mite soiled. You were a vile child, Danielle. At six--anyway."
She smiled with what seemed to be pleasure. But he could also see the rise and spread in her cheeks of a faint wrath. There was a brisk step in the rear of the house and her father came into the room.
"Aggie, old man!" He slowed for a fraction of a second at the sight of the Vandyke. "Splendid to have you here! Heard you'd be up for the summer. What in heaven's name is wrong with Sarah? Got the constitution of a loggerhead!"
Dr. George G. Davis didn't look two decades older. Only one. Crisp and lithe.
Pince-nez and pin-striped suit. A really fine surgeon and neurologist--who could pass as a good banker or the director of corporations--anything successful and important. He was leading Aggie toward the door. "Got a car?"
Danielle came to the window with her branched candlestick to watch them leave.
Aggie glanced up from the controls. She stuck out her tongue. It took three noisy attempts to get the car in gear.
"My daughter's with me for the summer, too," the surgeon said. "First time since--
" he broke off. "About Sarah?"
"She thinks it's tetanus. I don't. No rigor. Not the look in the eyes--"
The other man chuckled. "We aren't diagnosing people by facial expression these days, Aggie."
"You ought to."
While the surgeon made his examination Aggie waited in a dismal circuit of anxiety for his aunt, and irritation at Danielle. Outdoors, the slow wattage of nature leaked bluely up into the sky with a hue that was not normal in daytime, but dawn's sickly counterpart of noon. He could hear his aunt's voice buzzing in her room--and once she laughed. She'd gossip on her deathbed, he thought. Presently he went out on the porch and examined the luminous murk, breathed the air, lighted his pipe. He sat quiet--