The box from japan, p.74
The Box from Japan, page 74
“But,” she said desperately, “according to what you’ve told me, there were two who could have killed Proctor. Two who handled that pestle. Two—who will both perhaps not be able to prove that—that they did not. Clifford is terribly hot tempered. I don’t know what has taken place between him—and Mr. Proctor. How do we know that he himself didn’t commit that murder? The statement left by the dying man certainly indicates the possibility of that. And another thing: Cliff is a fellow who reads newspapers, no matter where he is; and tunes in eagerly on radio-news broadcasts. He always carried with him a portable Multi-Mu radio, and used it much and frequently—that is, for most everything but music. He told me once that he felt that Uncle Abner was more than likely some day to leave his property to him. Surely he would have seen that big story about Uncle Abner’s dramatic death in the Sunday papers—and he would have communicated with Sheridan, Wyoming. Which he hasn’t. Surely he would see—and hear—all these efforts being made to get to him, first by your uncle and this Orski, and now by the police. But, Carr, the fact that he does not come forth indicates plainly either that he is dead—or else that he dare not, for the reason that he ended Proctor’s life fear some reason.”
She paused.
“And either way—things are not very nice for me—are they?”
CHAPTER LIX
And Along Came Nurse
A pause followed her disheartened statement. Whereupon Halsey made haste to cheer her up:
“Now I wouldn’t look at matters in such a blue light as that. If your brother were dead, I, too, would be out of luck, for a certainty. Not in the way you would, to be sure, but bad enough—for me. But the fact that Proctor left a message saying that Clifford Hemingway was under the name of S—Something-or-Other—what?—shows that he at least is not dead. I’d think simply that he is hiding from McCollum—except for the matter involving all that confounded publicity and notoriety. Odd thing, that. For even if he muffed it—missed it—why on earth hasn’t Proctor told him that the name Hemingway and Wisconsin-U are the names that just now are galloping into print? I don’t understand that, I will admit. But I do feel that McCollum, after the grilling he’ll get tonight at Federal headquarters, will confess that he killed Proctor—and exactly why. The why is the only mysterious feature of it now, as I see it. At any rate, I have hopes of finding daylight in this affair after McCollum has been on the grill a while—and rest assured that my friend Baxter will ring me on the dot the moment anything touching my affairs—and now they’re your affairs, too—comes up down there.”
The girl was silent a moment. Then she spoke.
“I can only hope you’re right,” was all she said, and sighed deeply.
Now indeed a protracted silence fell upon them both. Presently her dark eyes rested on him with a penetrating gaze once more.
“Carr,” she said, “will you tell me something—further?”
“Why of course,” he answered, wondering what there was left to be explained now. “I’ve told you just everything. But what is it?”
Her eyes still rested on him puzzledly. Then she replied to his query.
“Mrs. Morely made a somewhat curious remark—when I had her up here earlier tonight. She said—” She paused.
A chill went over him: “She didn’t say, by any chance, that she realized that her rooms were more expensive than most rooms, but that quality was the keynote of this house?”
She grinned that boyish grin of hers again. The white skin at the base of her shapely, dainty nose even crinkled ludicrously each side, so amused was she at something. “You should be her official go-getter. Yes, that was just what she said. Almost to the word. And she also said—she also said—that by charging $10 for a room like this, she kept out—well—trash.”
He scratched his head. “She did?”
“Yes, she did.” She regarded him gravely now. “Didn’t you tell me this room was $4 per week?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know it was $10?”
He threw out his hands in a helpless gesture: “Yes.”
“Then why did you charge me only $4—for a $10 room? Was it pity—of some sort?”
“Oh no, no, no,” he hastened to assure her. “I—I didn’t know enough about you to have any pity.”
“Then why—why did you do that?”
He scratched his head again.
“You really want to know, now?” He gazed at her sadly.
“Of course.”
“That is—you want the correct reason—and no equivocations?”
“Assuredly.”
He threw out his hands once more in that helpless gesture. “All right. You asked for the truth.” He paused. “I fell in love with you. Yes, the minute I saw you. Before I was halfway up those steps, I guess. At least I was three-quarters in it by—by the time I reached the stoop—and when you spoke—I was all gone. Sunk. I had a hunch right off the—the bat, that you wouldn’t be able to see Mrs. Morely’s stiff prices. I knew you’d go away. And I’d never see you again. And it came on me suddenly that, confound it, what is money for if it isn’t to buy something very nice with—and I had a crazy idea at that moment that I could go on paying $6 a week, in some wild manner, I didn’t even know how, just to have you in the same house—a charming, pretty neighbor. And—well—that’s all. You asked for it, you know.”
“Yes. I did.” There was a faint smile on her lips, but withal a friendly smile. “So you really fell in love with me—that quickly?”
“Yes. Do you believe—in love at first sight?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s too well known a phenomenon to deny that it exists.” She was silent a moment. “To be frank with you, I’ve always felt that it’s the rightest kind of love there is—that there’s something fundamentally sound when one person falls smack in love with another, without having any influence to work on them. It sort of—sort of means that the basic call has sounded across a few feet of space or so.”
“Gosh—I’m glad you believe all that. I was afraid you’d be fearfully angry.”
“Why should I be? Love isn’t anything that anybody in the world can control. It comes to a person—and they can take it and like it. It goes—and they can like it or lump it, as it’s termed. But now that you know me better, confess—your spontaneous fascination has faded a bit, hasn’t it?”
He shook his head. “I’m talking only truths tonight,” he said. “No, instead of fading—it’s ever so much more intense.”
“Is it—well—three times as great?”
“Easily.”
“Then,” she said mockingly, “since it’s three times as great now, you were just one-third in love when you first met me, weren’t you?”
“Never read Ouspensky, did you, Loris?” he countered.
“No. Who is he?”
“A philosopher who presents a new key to the riddle of the Universe. He uses, as mathematical proofs, only infinite magnitudes, on which, he says, the multi-dimensional universe is really based. And he shows that when you get to those things, the part of anything is equal to or greater than the whole!”
“I am lost indeed,” she said whimsically, “if you go into deep mathematics.” She reflected a moment. “Then love is one of those infinite things?”
“Well,” he wavered, “it’s—it’s one of—those things, whatever it is! Anyway—not to use Ouspensky on you—whether I was only one-third in love, or what when I met you, I only know that it was more so than I ever loved anybody before.”
“Come over here,” she said suddenly, moving a bit to one side in the bed. “Sit beside me. You interest me—so much. I can’t imagine a sportswriter ever reading—philosophy. That makes you a character—instead of a type, doesn’t it? For a character is somebody who has a—a discrepancy in their makeup. Come, sit beside me. Outside of being interested in you, it’s always rather interesting to have someone in love with one anyway. Everyone just isn’t in love with one, you see.”
He rose, and sat down next her, facing her, as she made room for him on the side of the bed.
“We have a duenna,” she told him, with a smile, “just through the partition there.”
“Yes, judging by that faint sign—something like a snore—we have,” he laughed.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed and questioning:
“Well, now that you feel as you do about me, what are you going to do—about me? You just can’t go on paying my room rent, you know.”
“No, I suppose not—well why not, confound it? I’ll have plenty of money if I locate that brother of yours—ahead of certain others. I got you in here. So—”
She shook her head to stop his specious arguments: “You may be a very poor man if Clifford isn’t found at all. Or not found within less than a week. Your $90,000 fortune won’t be worth a cent. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, that’s true. But I can pay $6 a week, come what may.”
She smiled up at him faintly, and it seemed to be the ghost of appreciation, rather than derision. But her smile quickly faded. “I didn’t know what this thing was all about, remember, and I divulged—divulged to Mrs. Morely that you had rented the room to me for $4.”
He looked down at her aghast. His blood ran cold. “You—did?” he ejaculated. “Then Lord have mercy on my soul! I—I paid her the full $10, and pretended it had come from you.” He shook his head dolefully. “I am done here.”
“I’m afraid you are,” she replied. “At least so Mrs. Morely practically told Miss Kinneally.” She regarded him gravely. “Are you so sorry—to have to leave here?”
“Yes,” he groaned. “My four-poster bed—my woodburning fireplace—my green parklet—my—” He shook his head despairingly. “Especially the little park. Gad, I hate to go. But I’m done—with the completion of my week tomorrow night. That’s certain.”
“Aren’t there any more places—facing green parks—with woodburning fireplaces?” she asked curiously.
“Oh yes,” he said wearily. “But only a few. On Washington Square, not so terribly far from here, there’s a new apartment building just gone up. Woodburning fireplaces, and even free wood—specially guaranteed to crackle! They begin renting next week. No inadoor, inawall, or inafloor beds—you bring your own honest-to-God four-poster, or what have you. And a green square with trees, flowers and kids in it, to look across. But they’re actual full-fledged apartments. Fitted up to live in. To cook in. Four life-size rooms. And I can’t cook. I have to recite Mother Goose when I boil an egg, and invariably I get the wrong rhyme.”
“You should mark the right rhyme in your book, little boy, and read it aloud.” She paused. “And I’ve gone and got you in trouble, I guess,” she commented contritely. “And so—these apartments are all fitted up—for two persons to live in?”
“Yes. To live in. Not exist in. But—”
“Seems like I ought to sort of marry you and see that you get your precious woodburning fireplace—and your parklet?”
He opened her fingers apart whimsically, fanlike, and put them tenderly together again. “No, you’re not obligated to do anything like that. You couldn’t be expected—to do that.”
“Funny,” she said, letting her hand linger in his, “I’ve always had a lot of peculiar theories myself on love. Like believing that the love that’s rendered to a woman on first sight was the only thing she could truly rely on. And I had another sort of obsession, Carr. It sounds erratic, I know. But I always wanted to marry a man without knowing a single thing about him—except that I liked him—well—terribly tremendously. And he me, of course. I wanted to go through all the thrills of getting better acquainted with him—after we’d gone to the altar—on the solid basis of affection, of course—instead of before. I always dreaded dragging through some long-drawn-out courtship, in which I’d come to learn every phase and angle of his personality, and in which there’d be nothing left to be revealed—after we married. There’s only one honeymoon in a person’s life. It should be made to be just as intriguing, exciting, as it possibly can. And so that it may be all that, it should, by rights, include a complete getting-acquainted. At least that’s always been my odd notion.”
“How much would you have to like a man—to embark on a journey like that?”
“Oh very, very much, I will admit. Almost as much as I like.”
He stared down at her: “You really say that—in your own words?”
“Yes. I have to. I have to speak quickly. And now. You’re due to win $90,000 if Cliff is located—well, located by your own outfit, that is—and in time, in the bargain. It looks terribly bleak to me—right now, anyway—as to anybody’s getting him. But if ever I’m to take you, I’ve got to do it right now—else, if I don’t and he’s found, you’ll always have a deep suspicion—oh yes, it would turn out to be a profound belief, in time—that the $90,000 was what really won me over. Goodness, Carr, I—I wouldn’t talk like this—but I have to. That terrible money—you see? Yes, I liked you ever so much, even when I first saw you. And more and more—as you talked to me, and showed me this room. I felt that my coming into this place was the beginning of destiny. I could see it. Sense it. I almost saw the end.”
“Your sensing all that was what Ouspensky calls a noumenon, instead of a phenomenon. The hidden thing that lies in back of the manifest thing. The—” He looked at her gravely. “Still—what was the end—that you saw?”
“Oh, the one that is! Now! I’ve got to see that you get your parklet—and your fireplace.” She smiled up at him. She put both of her small hands around his. “You are very, very nice—but I’m glad that you don’t really know how nice you are. Maybe that’s why I like you—because you’re so unconscious of it—and so little boy-like, in so many ways. Just seems like if I’m ever to put my theory of a happy, thrilling marriage into execution—it should be now. For you say you’ve fallen in love with me—and then there’s these doubts about that money—and you’ve lost your fireplace!”
“You darling,” he said, patting her soft cheek. “Nobody would ever give a whoop about my fool fireplace, but somebody like you.” He beamed with the sudden happiness that was in him. Then grew momentarily solemn. “Then—it really is—you’ll marry me—”
“Any time,” she cautioned, “say—after next Saturday—when the new Marriage Laws go into effect. After all—we must be prudent. ’Twas all a little speedy, you know. And after Saturday, all we have to do is to—how does it go?”
“To just go before a magistrate six months afterward—declare it a dud—and dissolve it mutually.”
“Well, for safety’s sake, we’ll leave ourselves that ‘out.’”
He heard faint creakings from the other side of the partition doors. Miss Kinneally was evidently coming back to earth.
He leaned down to the girl next to him. “I can’t believe it,” he said happily.
A slender arm, the blue silken gown falling away from it, revealing its exquisite lines, crept about his neck.
“Can’t believe what, Carr Halsey?” she said.
“Oh—all this,” he returned, in a low voice. “Yesterday—or now it’s day-before-yesterday, isn’t it?—you were sitting on my steps. A Miss Something-or-Other. Tonight we were calling each other by our first names. And now—now you’re going to marry me. Seems sort of unnatural. I’m afraid of it. Not of you. But of it.”
The arm about his neck tightened, and he leaned down and kissed her long and tenderly on the seductive red lips. And of a sudden he was not afraid of it—any longer. He realized then that the Ouspenskian philosophy was correct—that Time had neither a concrete nor an abstract existence—that a second can be a million years—and a million years can be a second. He heard her speaking, close to his ear.
“It only seems swift to you, darlin’,” were her words, “because you belong to another age—the day of woodburning fireplaces. The—the shambling ’90’s. It’s all really quite in keeping with—” She stopped.
“With what?” he asked.
“With the Flying ’40’s,” she said. “I’ll expect a ring therefore, tomorrow. Just a teeny $5 ring. That will be plenty. With a little diamond chip in it. Just as a symbol. Of everything. That will be adequate. More than sufficient. Now kiss me again. For our chaperon is coming.”
“Chaperon?” he laughed. “Who’s talking the language of the ’90’s now?” He bent down to fulfil her suggestion. “But have it your own way. Chaperon? A chaperon who, I fear, has been badly asleep—on her job!”
CHAPTER LX
A Letter in the Night
He kissed her again, quickly, and arose.
