Aunt Cal determined that at nine, whatever the consequences, she would call Fifi inside; but she was saved this necessity, for after half an hour the young lady strolled in calmly and announced that Mr. Hopkins had gone home. They looked at her, speechless.
“Fifi!” groaned Aunt Cal. “My poor child! Sorrow and loneliness have driven you insane!”
“We understand, my dear,” said Aunt Jo, touching her handkerchief to her eyes. “It’s our fault for letting you stay. A few weeks in one of those rest-cure places, or perhaps even a good cabaret, will — — “
“What do you mean?” Fifi looked from one to the other in surprise. “Do you mean you object to my bringing Mr. Hopkins here?”
Aunt Cal flushed a dull red and her lips shut tight together.
“ ‘Object’ is not the word. You find some horrible, brutal roustabout along the beach — — “
She broke off and gave a little cry. The door had swung open suddenly and a hairy face was peering into the room.
“I left my stick.”
Mr. Hopkins discovered the unpleasant weapon leaning in the corner and withdrew as unceremoniously as he had come, banging the door shut behind him. Fifi’s aunt sat motionless until his footsteps left the porch. Then Aunt Cal went swiftly to the door and pulled down the latch.
“I don’t suppose he’ll try to rob us tonight,” she said grimly, “because he must know we’ll be prepared. But I’ll warn Percy to go around the yard several times during the night.”
“Rob you!” cried Fifi incredulously.
“Don’t excite yourself, Fifi,” commanded Aunt Cal. “Just rest quietly in that chair while I call up your mother.”
“I don’t want you to call up my mother.”
“Sit calmly and close your eyes and try to — try to count sheep jumping over a fence.”
“Am I never to see another man unless he has a cutaway coat on?” exclaimed Fifi with flashing eyes. “Is this the Dark Ages, or the century of — of illumination? Mr. Hopkins is one of the most attractive eggs I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Mr. Hopkins is a savage!” said Aunt Cal succinctly.
“Mr. Hopkins is a very attractive egg.”
“A very attractive what?”
“A very attractive egg.”
“Mr. Hopkins is a — a — an unspeakable egg,” proclaimed Aunt Cal, adopting Fifi’s locution.
“Just because he’s natural,” cried Fifi impatiently. “All right, I don’t care; he’s good enough for me.”
The situation, it seemed, was even worse than they thought. This was no temporary aberration; evidently Fifi, in the reaction from her recent fiance, was interested in this outrageous man. She had met him several days ago, she confessed, and she intended to see him tomorrow. They had a date to go walking.
The worst of it was that after Fifi had gone scornfully to bed, Aunt
Cal called up her mother — and found that her mother was not at home; her mother had gone to White Sulphur Springs and wouldn’t be home for a week. It left the situation definitely in the hands of Aunt Cal and Aunt Jo, and the situation came to a head the next afternoon at tea time, when Percy rushed in upon them excitedly through the kitchen door.
“Miss Marsden,” he exclaimed in a shocked, offended voice, “I want to give up my position!”
“Why, Percy!”
“I can’t help it. I lived here on the Point for more’n forty-five years, and I never seen such a sight as I seen just now.”
“What’s the matter?” cried the two ladies, springing up in wild alarm.
“Go to the window and look for yourself. Miss Fifi is kissing a tramp in broad daylight, down on the beach!”
III
Five minutes later two maiden ladies were making their way across the sand toward a couple who stood close together on the shore, sharply outlined against the bright afternoon sky. As they came closer Fifi and Mr. Hopkins, absorbed in the contemplation of each other, perceived them and drew lingeringly apart. Aunt Cal began to speak when they were still thirty yards away.
“Go into the house, Fifi!” she cried.
Fifi looked at Mr. Hopkins, who touched her hand reassuringly and nodded. As if under the influence of a charm, Fifi turned away from him, and with her head lowered walked with slender grace toward the house.
“Now, my man,” said Aunt Cal, folding her arms, “what are your intentions?”
Mr. Hopkins returned her glare rudely. Then he gave a low hoarse laugh.
“What’s that to you?” he demanded.
“It’s everything to us. Miss Marsden is our niece, and your attentions are unwelcome — not to say obnoxious.”
Mr. Hopkins turned half away.
“Aw, go on and blab your mouth out!” he advised her.
Aunt Cal tried a new approach.
“What if I were to tell you that Miss Marsden were mentally deranged?”
“What’s that?”
“She’s — she’s a little crazy.”
He smiled contemptuously.
“What’s the idea? Crazy ‘cause she likes me?”
“That merely indicates it,” answered Aunt Cal bravely. “She’s had an unfortunate love affair and it’s affected her mind. Look here!” She opened the purse that swung at her waist. “If I give you fifty — a hundred dollars right now in cash, will you promise to move yourself ten miles up the beach?”
“Ah-h-h-h!” he exclaimed, so venomously that the two ladies swayed together.
“Two hundred!” cried Aunt Cal, with a catch in her voice.
He shook his finger at them.
“You can’t buy me!” he growled. “I’m as good as anybody. There’s chauffeurs and such that marry millionaires’ daughters every day in the week. This is Umerica, a free country, see?”
“You won’t give her up?” Aunt Cal swallowed hard on the words. “You won’t stop bothering her and go away?”
He bent over suddenly and scooped up a large double handful of sand, which he threw in a high parabola so that it scattered down upon the horrified ladies, enveloping them for a moment in a thick mist. Then laughing once again in his hoarse, boorish way, he turned and set off at a loping run along the sand.
In a daze the two women brushed the casual sand from their shoulders and walked stiffly toward the house.
“I’m younger than you are,” said Aunt Jo firmly when they reached the living room. “I want a chance now to see what I can do.”
She went to the telephone and called a New York number.
“Doctor Roswell Gallup’s office? Is Doctor Gallup there?” Aunt Cal sat down on the sofa and gazed tragically at the ceiling. “Doctor Gallup? This is Miss Josephine Marsden, of Montauk Point… Doctor Gallup, a very curious state of affairs has arisen concerning my niece. She has become entangled with a — a — an unspeakable egg.” She gasped as she said this, and went on to explain in a few words the uncanny nature of the situation.
“And I think that perhaps psychoanalysis might clear up what my sister and I have been unable to handle.”
Doctor Gallup was interested. It appeared to be exactly his sort of a case.
“There’s a train in half an hour that will get you here at nine o’clock,” said Aunt Jo. “We can give you dinner and accommodate you overnight.”
She hung up the receiver.
“There! Except for our change from bridge to mah-jongg, this will be the first really modern step we’ve ever taken in our lives.”
The hours passed slowly. At seven Fifi came down to dinner, as unperturbed as though nothing had happened; and her aunts played up bravely to her calmness, determined to say nothing until the doctor had actually arrived. After dinner Aunt Jo suggested mah-jongg, but Fifi declared that she would rather read, and settled on the sofa with a volume of the encyclopedia. Looking over her shoulder, Aunt Cal noted with alarm that she had turned to the article on the Australian bush.
It was very quiet in the room. Several times Fifi raised her head as if listening, a
nd once she got up and went to the door and stared out for a long time into the night. Her aunts were both poised in their chairs to rush after her if she showed signs of bolting, but after a moment she closed the door with a sigh and returned to her chair. It was with relief that a little after nine they heard the sound of automobile wheels on the shell drive and knew that Doctor Gallup had arrived at last.
He was a short, stoutish man, with alert black eyes and an intense manner. He came in, glancing eagerly about him, and his eye brightened as it fell on Fifi like the eye of a hungry man when he sees prospective food. Fifi returned his gaze curiously, evidently unaware that his arrival had anything to do with herself.
“Is this the lady?” he cried, dismissing her aunts with a perfunctory handshake and approaching Fifi at a lively hop.
“This gentleman is Doctor Gallup, dear,” beamed Aunt Jo, expectant and reassured. “He’s an old friend of mine who’s going to help you.”
“Of course I am!” insisted Doctor Gallup, jumping around her cordially. “I’m going to fix her up just fine.”
“He understands everything about the human mind,” said Aunt Jo.
“Not everything,” admitted Doctor Gallup, smiling modestly. “But we often make the regular doctors wonder.” He turned roguishly to Fifi. “Yes, young lady, we often make the regular doctors wonder.”
Clapping his hands together decisively, he drew up a chair in front of Fifi.
“Come,” he cried, “let us see what can be the matter. We’ll start by having you tell me the whole story in your own way. Begin.”
“The story,” remarked Fifi, with a slight yawn, “happens to be none of your business.”
“None of my business!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Why, my girl, I’m trying to help you! Come now, tell old Doctor Gallup the whole story.”
“Let my aunts tell you,” said Fifi coldly. “They seem to know more about it than I do.”
Doctor Gallup frowned.
“They’ve already outlined the situation. Perhaps I’d better begin by asking you questions.”
“You’ll answer the doctor’s questions, won’t you, dear?” coaxed Aunt Jo. “Doctor Gallup is one of the most modern doctors in New York.”
“I’m an old-fashioned girl,” objected Fifi maliciously. “And I think it’s immoral to pry into people’s affairs. But go ahead and I’ll try to think up a comeback for everything you say.”
Doctor Gallup overlooked the unnecessary rudeness of this remark and mustered a professional smile.
“Now, Miss Marsden, I understand that about a month ago you came out here for a rest.”
Fifi shook her head.
“No, I came out to hide my face.”
“You were ashamed because you had broken your engagement?”
“Terribly. If you desert a man at the altar you brand him for the rest of his life.”
“Why?” he demanded sharply.
“Why not?”
“You’re not asking me. I’m asking you. . . . However, let that pass. Now, when you arrived here, how did you pass your time?”
“I walked mostly — walked along the beach.”
“It was on one of these walks that you met the — ah — person your aunt told me of over the telephone?”
Fifi pinkened slightly.
“Yes.”
“What was he doing when you first saw him?”
“He was looking down at me out of a tree.”
There was a general exclamation from her aunts, in which the word “monkey” figured.
“Did he attract you immediately?” demanded Doctor Gallup.
“Why, not especially. At first I only laughed.”
“I see. Now, as I understand, this man was very — ah — very originally clad.”
“Yes,” agreed Fifi.
“He was unshaven?”
“Yes.”
“Ah!” Doctor Gallup seemed to go through a sort of convolution like a medium coming out of a trance. “Miss Fifi,” he cried out triumphantly, “did you ever read The Sheik?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Did you ever read any book in which a girl was wooed by a so-called sheik or cave man?”
“Not that I remember.”
“What, then, was your favorite book when you were a girl?”
“Little Lord Fauntleroy.”
Doctor Gallup was considerably disappointed. He decided to approach the case from a new angle.
“Miss Fifi, won’t you admit that there’s nothing behind this but some fancy in your head?”
“On the contrary,” said Fifi startlingly, “there’s a great deal more behind it than any of you suspect. He’s changed my entire attitude on life.”
“What do you mean?”
She seemed on the point of making some declaration, but after a moment her lovely eyes narrowed obstinately and she remained silent.
“Miss Fifi” — Doctor Gallup raised his voice sharply — “the daughter of C. T. J. Calhoun, the biscuit man, ran away with a taxi driver. Do you know what she’s doing now?”
“No.”
“She’s working in a laundry on the East Side, trying to keep her child’s body and soul together.”
He looked at her keenly; there were signs of agitation in her face.
“Estelle Holliday ran away in 1920 with her father’s second man!” he cried. “Shall I tell you where I heard of her last? She stumbled into a charity hospital, bruised from head to foot, because her drunken husband had beaten her to within an inch of her life!”
Fifi was breathing hard. Her aunts leaned forward. Doctor Gallup sprang suddenly to his feet.
“But they were playing safe compared to you!” he shouted. “They didn’t woo an ex-convict with blood on his hands.”
And now Fifi was on her feet, too, her eyes flashing fire.
“Be careful!” she cried. “Don’t go too far!”
“I can’t go too far!” He reached in his pocket, plucked out a folded evening paper and slapped it down on the table.
“Read that, Miss Fifi!” he shouted. “It’ll tell you how four man-killers entered a bank in West Crampton three weeks ago. It’ll tell you how they shot down the cashier in cold blood, and how one of them, the most brutal, the most ferocious, the most inhuman, got away. And it will tell you that that human gorilla is now supposed to be hiding in the neighborhood of Montauk Point!”
There was a short stifled sound as Aunt Jo and Aunt Cal, who
had always done everything in complete unison, fainted away together. At the same moment there was loud, violent knocking, like the knocking of a heavy club, upon the barred front door.
IV
“Who’s there?” cried Doctor Gallup, starting. “Who’s there — or I’ll shoot!”
His eyes roved quickly about the room, looking for a possible weapon.
“Who are you?” shouted a voice from the porch. “You better open up or I’ll blow a hole through the door.”
“What’ll we do?” exclaimed Doctor Gallup, perspiring freely.
Fifi, who had been sprinkling water impartially upon her aunts, turned around with a scornful smile.
“It’s just Percy, the yardman,” she explained. “He probably thinks that you’re a burglar.”
She went to the door and lifted the latch. Percy, gun in hand, peered cautiously into the room.
“It’s all right, Percy. This is just an insane specialist from New York.”
“Everything’s a little insane tonight,” announced Percy in a frightened voice. “For the last hour I’ve been hearing the sound of oars.”
The eyes of Aunt Jo and Aunt Cal fluttered open simultaneously.
“There’s a fog all over the Point,” went on Percy dazedly, “and it’s got voices in it. I couldn’t see a foot before my face, but I could swear there was boats offshore, and I heard a dozen people talkin’ and callin’ to each other, just as if a lot of ghosts was havin’ a picnic supper on the beach.”
“What was th
at noise?” cried Aunt Jo, sitting upright.
“The door was locked,” explained Percy, “so I knocked on it with my gun.”
“No, I mean now!”
They listened. Through the open door came a low, groaning sound, issuing out of the dark mist which covered shore and sea alike.
“We’ll go right down and find out!” cried Doctor Gallup, who had recovered his shattered equilibrium; and, as the moaning sound drifted in again, like the last agony of some monster from the deep, he added, “I think you needed more than a psychoanalyst here tonight. Is there another gun in the house?”
Aunt Cal got up and took a small pearl-mounted revolver from the desk drawer.
“You can’t leave us in this house alone,” she declared emphatically. “Wherever you go we’re going tool”
Keeping close together, the four of them, for Fifi had suddenly disappeared, made their way outdoors and down the porch steps, where they hesitated a moment, peering into the impenetrable haze, more mysterious than darkness upon their eyes.
“It’s out there,” whispered Percy, facing the sea.
“Forward we go!” muttered Doctor Gallup tensely. “I’m inclined to think this is all a question of nerves.”
They moved slowly and silently along the sand, until suddenly Percy caught hold of the doctor’s arm.
“Listen!” he whispered sharply.
They all became motionless. Out of the neighboring darkness a dim, indistinguishable figure had materialized, walking with unnatural rigidity along the shore. Pressed against his body he carried some long, dark drape that hung almost to the sand. Immediately he disappeared into the mist, to be succeeded by another phantom walking at the same military gait, this one with something white and faintly terrible dangling from his arm. A moment later, not ten yards away from them, in the direction in which the figure had gone, a faint dull glow sprang into life, proceeding apparently from behind the largest of the dunes.
Huddled together, they advanced toward the dune, hesitated, and then, following Doctor Gallup’s example, dropped to their knees and began to crawl cautiously up its shoreward side. The glow became stronger as they reached the top, and at the same moment their heads popped up over the crest. This is what they saw:
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 315