Leaven of Malice tst-2

by Robertson Davies

  “Now folksies, this is just the start of the Whee! You chose your partners by lot, and now you’ve got ‘em. I’m going to time you, and the first couple to get untied without breaking the string, and to pull off the adhesive tape without using your hands, gets the Grand Prize. Ready? Go!” She discharged a cap pistol which she held in her hand.

  Pearl had heard of people wishing to die, in books, but she had never experienced that feeling herself until now. For the young man with whom she was bound and gagged was Solomon Bridgetower.

  Professor Vambrace did not sit long in his chair after Pearl had gone. A plan was working in his mind, like yeast. That is to say, part of a plan was there, and he was sure that the remainder of it would follow soon. But he did not want to wait until the plan had completed itself. He wanted to be up and doing. He was still smarting from the feeling that his grievance and his lawsuit had been taken from him and had become the property of Mr Snelgrove. Pearl’s unwillingness to play the role of a submissive, wronged daughter with perfect trust in his power to win justice for her had nettled him. Nobody, it appeared, saw this matter in the proper light. But he was not a man without resource, and he would uncover the whole plot—for a plot it surely was.

  “I shall be out for a time,” he said to his wife, and added mysteriously, “on this business. If anyone should call, say that I’m in but cannot be disturbed. You understand?”

  “Oh Walter!” said she; “you are not going to do anything rash, are you?”

  The Professor laughed, for it pleased him to be accused of rashness.

  “You need not worry about me, Elizabeth,” he said, almost kindly. “I know what I am doing.”

  This latter claim was perhaps an exaggeration.

  The Professor went to the coat cupboard, and put on, first, a thick cardigan under his jacket, and then a heavy, long scarf which was a relic of his university days. Next he brought out, from the back of the cupboard, a very long, very heavy tweed overcoat, belted across the back, which he had not worn for years. He put this on, and a pair of heavy gloves, and from the depths of the hall-seat he recovered a tweed cap, which he had not worn since the days when they were fashionable wear for golfers. He took a blackthorn walking-stick from the umbrella vase, and surveyed himself in the small, dim mirror in the back of the hall-seat. No question about it, he was effectively disguised, ready for rough weather and rough exploits, a man not to be trifled with. In fact—he finally admitted the word into his conscious thoughts—he looked like a detective. He left the house and strode briskly up the street. Disguised the Professor was, in the sense that he was unusually dressed. He was not, however, unobtrusive, looking as he did like a fugitive from some Irish racecourse. A tall, gaunt man, nothing could disguise his characteristic long, swift stride, nor the thin, whistling sound which he made with his nostrils as he walked. But faith is a great gift and, atheist as the Professor was in matters of religion, he was not troubled by even the slightest agnosticism concerning himself and his abilities. In his own opinion, he was wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.

  He was not sure where he was going, nor what he meant to do when he arrived, but he thought that a general reconnaissance would be a good beginning to his detective work. Therefore he made his way to the house in which Gloster Ridley’s apartment was. This was a Victorian mansion toward the middle of the city, and when the Professor reached it, there were lights on all three floors.

  It is well known to readers of detective stories—and Professor Vambrace liked to relax his mind in that way—that detection must be conducted according to the School of Force, or the School of Intellect; the detective can either burst into rooms and fight whomever he may find there, or he can collect infinitely tiny pieces of information, fit them together into a mosaic, and astonish the simple by his deductions. The Professor was unhesitating in his adherence to the latter school. Looking carefully in all directions to make sure that no one was watching, he hastened to the back of the Victorian mansion and literally stumbled upon valuable evidence in the form of a collection of garbage cans. They made a clatter, and almost at once the back door on the ground floor opened and a female voice said, fiercely, “Get out of that, you filthy brute!”

  The Professor, in detective parlance, “froze”. That is to say, he crushed himself flat against the wall, ducked his head, and stopped breathing. Unfortunately, in this manoeuvre, he dropped his heavy stick among the garbage cans and made another clatter.

  The unseen woman came further out of the house, and said, “Scat!”

  There was an inaudible question from within.

  “It’s those damned dogs again,” said the woman. She heaved half a brick among the garbage cans, frightening the Professor, and hurting him when the brick bounced and hit him on the shin. But she then went inside, and after a few rigid moments he carefully extricated himself from the cans, and observed them closely. Upon one was roughly lettered RIDLEY. Aha! Well, he had known that Ridley lived in this house, but there was satisfaction in proving it in this thoroughly detective-like way. Here was another can with the same mark. Tut! He had heard that Ridley was unnaturally interested in food; a glutton, it was said, for all his thinness. Still—two garbage cans for a single man! It was effete.

  As this part of the house yielded no further evidence the Professor crept around to the front, and went into the main entrance, which was in a square Victorian tower which ran up the façade of the house. Three cards were enclosed in three brass frames. George Shakerly Marmion; yes, it had been Mrs Shakerly Marmion who had mistaken him for a dog. Gloster Ridley; the second floor apartment. Mrs Phillip West; top floor. Well, he now knew precisely where Ridley lived; he had seen lights on the second floor; Ridley was within. No car was parked near the house; Ridley was probably alone. Deduction was going smoothly, and bit by bit was being added to the mosaic. True, there was nothing absolutely new in any of this, but Rome was not built in a day.

  Then, all of a sudden, there was a sound on the stairs within the door which was marked with Ridley’s card! The detective was nonplussed, and in his confusion he did what he knew at once was a silly thing. He tried the door of the Shakerly Marmions’ apartment, and when it would not yield, he rang the bell. The footsteps in Ridley’s entrance grew louder, and the Professor was conscious that the hair on his head was stirring. He pressed his face against the Marmions’ door, to conceal it, and thus he could not tell who it was that came out of Ridley’s door and stood so near to him. Why didn’t the man go outside, and let him make his escape before the Marmions’ door was opened! But no; there were mail boxes in the hall, and whoever it was put a key in one of them, and stood by it, presumably examining some letters. The door of the Marmions’ apartment opened, and there was Mrs Shakerly Marmion, whom he knew slightly, and who might be expected to recognize him, looking him in the face. It was a moment of ingenuity, and the Professor rose to it.

  “Would yez like to subscribe to The War Cry?” he asked, disguising his voice as completely as he could, and assuming what he later realized was the broadest possible Cork accent, recollected from childhood. To give colour to his performance, he winked confidentially at Mrs Shakerly Marmion, who immediately slammed the door in his face.

  The man in the hall had gone. The Professor hurried into the street, and—yes, there he was, just turning the corner. After him!

  It was Ridley, and Vambrace set out to—detective parlance—tail him. After a block or so, however, he became conscious that his quarry was hurrying in a nervous fashion. Aha, Ridley knew that he was being tailed! But the Professor was equal to that; he halted for a moment, and then changed his step to a limp—a good, audible limp, such as a man with a club foot might own. That was disguise! In his exertion to maintain his limp and a high rate of speed, the Professor’s nasal whistling became positively uproarious, and cut through the November night air with astonishing clarity.

  Ridley, almost on the run, turned into a house, rushed up the steps and entered without knocking. Vambrace knew
it. It was the home of the Fieldings. Well, it had been an exciting chase. Now he would, in the best detective fashion, lounge unobtrusively at some little distance, ready to follow his man when he came out again.

  Pearl’s first coherent thought after her chaotic dismay at finding herself bound and gagged with Solly Bridgetower, was that this was what came of disobliging her father. He had not wanted her to come to this party; she had insisted on coming; this was the shameful result. It was so often like this! Whenever she tried to assert herself, and to prove to Father that she was an adult, she got into some dreadful scrape. It was as though Father were in league with God. In spite of her atheistic upbringing Pearl still had, at the back of her mind, a notion of God as a vindictive old party who was determined to keep her humble and uncertain. God and Father were not mocked. Mock them, and what happened? Some kind of unpredictable, farcical hell, like the Whee.

  There was little time for painful reflection. Having briefly enjoyed the spectacle of her guests in bonds, Dutchy was moving around the room, giving advice,

  “It’s a technique,” she said; “best thing is to get the plaster off your mouths first. Then you can work out of the string. Come on, folksies, don’t be shy!”

  Norm, who had been tied to a lady in middle life who was secretary to the University registrar, showed the way. It involved rubbing the face against the face of the partner, until the sticking-plaster could be rolled off. The middle-aged lady, who had a bad breath and a short temper, was not fully co-operative, but this only added to the fun of the thing, for Dutchy. Couple by couple the guests, realizing that this was the price of freedom, set about a sheepish rubbing of face upon face. For men who had not shaved since morning, for women who wore heavy makeup, it was a painful and messy business. Their necks were twisted; the string bit into their wrists and ankles; some stockings were torn and a good deal of dust was picked up from the floor. Most of the guests weakly pretended to think their predicament funny; a few were inwardly raging but still, borne down by Dutchy’s overwhelming gaiety and a weight of painfully acquired politeness, they did not break into open rebellion.

  Pearl knew Solly Bridgetower well enough by sight. She had once acted in a play—that same performance of The Tempest in which Mr Swithin Shillito had so admired her father—of which he was assistant director. She had met him a few times at social gatherings; she had seen him from time to time in the Library. But these were scarcely preparations for rubbing her face repeatedly against his, while their eyes watered, and they breathed stertorously. Her hair fell forward, and when she tried to throw it back with a jerk of her head she bumped Solly sharply on the nose with her chin. His nose was long and apparently very sensitive, for from beneath his sticking-plaster came a sound which might have been a cry of pain, or an oath.

  Dutchy, who was running about the room, encouraging and exhorting, stopped beside them.

  “Say, I only just heard about you two,” said she, excitedly. “Congratulations, kids! But this ought to be duck soup for you two. Come on! Do it like you meant it! Say, I’ll bet this was a plant. I bet you fixed it so’s you’d get his name, Pearl!”

  “No, I arranged that,” said one of her assistants, a large, dark, genial dentist. “I didn’t even look at her piece of paper; just grabbed Solly and tied them up.” He laughed the self-approving laugh of one who knows that he has done a good deed.

  Pearl’s mouth was free at last. “I want to get out of this,” she said.

  “Sure you do,” said Dutchy. “And seeing it’s you, I’ll give you a hint; the way the string’s tied, you can get loose at once if he lies down flat and you crawl right up over his head; then the string drops off without untying the knots. “Bye now.” And she was off to encourage other stragglers, who lay in Laocoön groups about the floor.

  Solly made a noise which sounded like entreaty. Pearl, maddened by the arch looks of the dark dentist, leaned forward, seized a loose corner of his sticking-plaster in her mouth, and jerked her head backward savagely. Solly howled.

  “I think you’ve killed me,” he said when he could speak.

  “I wish I had,” said Pearl, venomously.

  “It’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to be tied to you.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “No use shutting up, when we’re tied together like this. Let’s get out. What’s the trick? I lie down and you crawl over me, or something.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You must.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me I must.”

  “You’re being a fool. If we don’t get out of this mess we’ll be the last, and you’ll have to do it with everybody looking. Come on; I’m lying down.” And he did lie down, and Pearl had no choice but to lie down also. Solly was on his face on the floor, and she lay flat on his back.

  Inch by inch she hitched herself upward along his spine and at every move Solly groaned. But as she moved the strings became looser, and at last, as she hunched her bottom over his head, they were free enough to permit her to shake them off, and stand up. In a moment Solly, much ruffled, stood beside her.

  They were one of the last couples to escape, but they were not observed by the others, who were too much occupied in trying to straighten and dust their clothes to pay close attention to anything else. Nor did Dutchy leave them time for embarrassment; swift passage from one delightful experience to another was part of the technique of party-giving, as she professed it. Very rapidly she herded her guests into a circle of alternate men and women.

  “Now this one’s easy, kids,” she said. “Here’s an orange, see? You stick it under your chin, Jimmy, see?” Jimmy, the dark, zealous dentist, did so. “Now you just pass it to the lady on your right, not either of you using his hands, see, and she gets it under her chin, and so you pass it all around the circle back to me. Anybody drops it, they have to fall out of the game.”

  This last remark, as Dutchy quickly realized, was an error. The more reticent and more selfish people made haste to drop the orange as soon as it reached them, sometimes without any pretence at gripping it. There were, however, eight or nine people who either feared Dutchy’s disapproval, or felt some necessity to do as their hostess wished, or who positively liked passing oranges from neck to neck, and they remained in the middle of the room, while Dutchy spurred them on the finer flights. After the orange they passed a grapefruit in the same way; after the grapefruit came a melon. And after the melon appeared a watermelon, which Dutchy and Jimmy the dentist passed merrily between them a few times, just to show that it could be done. The watermelon had been borrowed from the freezing locker of a neighbour in the apartment building, and its coldness was the matter for much mirth. But the secretary to the registrar was not amused.

  “When I was a girl I always hated the kissing games at parties,” said she, “and until tonight I thought that they had gone out of fashion.” Her tone was low, but a surprising number of the guests heard her, and the dissatisfied faction gained heart. So much so, indeed, that Dutchy sensed a change of atmosphere, and decided that she would not continue with her programme as she had planned it. Dutchy was not stupid, but she had not had much previous experience with people whom she could not dominate—who did not, indeed, welcome domination. She passed the purple drink, and became conciliatory. She asked her guests what game they would like to play next.

  It is as dangerous, in its way, to ask a group of people associated with a university to choose their own games as it is to leave the choice in the hands of a trained director of recreation, like Dutchy. The secretary to the registrar immediately set out to explain a kind of charades which she called The Braingame; it was, she declared, a barrel of fun.

  “It’s just like the old kind of charades we played as children,” said she, “except that a letter must be dropped from each syllable as it is guessed, in order to get the right answer, and when the group acts out the full word, it must express both the full word, and the word which is left when the superfluous letters are dropped Is that clear?”r />
  It was not clear.

  “Let me give you an example. Suppose, for instance, that your real word—the word the others must guess—is ‘landscape’. Well, the word which the group acts is ‘blandscrape’. They pretend to be eating a pudding, and putting more salt in it; that gives the word, ‘bland’. Then ‘scrape’ is easy; you simply act somebody in a scrape.”

  “As it were, crawling backward over a complete stranger?” asked a masculine young woman from the Dean’s office, who had had to do this not long before with a young man from the classics department, who had playfully pinched her bottom. The registrar’s secretary laughed lightly, and went on.

  “Now, recall that your word was “landscape”; you must now act the whole word, or rather, both words. So you act “blandscrape”. One of the group is being given a smooth shave, while the others peer admiringly at an imaginary view. You see? Blandscrape and landscape at once. Of course after a round or two we can have some really hard ones.”

  The party seemed depressed by this notion. The masculine young woman seized her chance to make the cunning suggestion that they play a game in which they could all sit down. This was greeted with such eagerness that she launched at once into an explanation.