Chapter XVIII

THE LOW STRUCTURE on the high knoll looked not only rustic but abandoned. The front wall was blank. Weeds grew up to the doorstep. On a narrow terrace of old brick, overrun by wild grass, a few dilapidated redwood outdoor chairs sat at careless angles, their cushions faded and torn. A cat leaped out of one of these and fled into the wilderness.

No sound, no sign of life came from this building.

Mrs. Boatright rapped smartly.

Without sound, the door swung inward. They could see directly into a huge room and the north and opposite wall was glass, so that this space was flooded with clear and steady light. The first thing Mr. Gibson saw was a body.

The body was that of a female in a long flaring skirt of royal blue and nothing else. It was lying on a headless couch. As he blinked his dazzled eyes, it sat up. The naked torso writhed. It was alive.

A man’s living voice said, “What have we here? Mary Anne Boatright! Well! Is this a club?”

The torso was pulling on a loose white T-shirt, slightly ragged at the shoulder seams. It went strangely with the rich silk of the skirt and the skirt’s gold-embroidered hem.

“This is important,” said Mrs. Boatright, “or I wouldn’t disturb you, Theo.”

“I should hope it is,” said the voice. “It better be. Never mind. I’m tired. I just decided. Put your shirt on, Lavinia.”

“I did, already,” said the girl or woman on the couch who was sitting there like a lump, now. She turned her bare feet until they rested pigeon-toed, one over the other. Her eyes were huge and dark and placid as a cow’s.

Mr. Gibson tore his gaze away from her to see this man.

“Theodore Marsh,” said Mrs. Boatright formally, but rapidly. “This is Mrs. Gibson, Miss Severson, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Townsend, Mr. Coffey.”

“You don’t look like a club,” said the painter. “What are you? I’ve surely seen several of you before, somewhere.”

He was tall and skinny as a scarecrow. He wore tweed trousers, a pink shirt, and a black vest. His hair was pure white and it looked as if it had never been brushed but remained in a state of nature, like fur. His face was wizened and shrewd, his hands knobby. He must have been seventy.

He was full of energy. He moved, flipperty-flop, all angles, beckoning them in. He had yellow teeth, all but three, which were too white to match the rest, and obviously false. His grin made one think of an ear of corn peculiarly both white and golden. He certainly had not been poisoned.

“Did you find a bottle of olive oil?” Rosemary attacked in a rush.

“Not I. Sit,” he said. “Explain.”

Mr. Gibson sat down, feeling weak and breathless. The nurse and the bus driver sat down, side by side. Paul remained standing, for his manners. His eyes avoided the sight of the model’s bare feet.

Mrs. Boatright, standing, her corsets firm, told the painter the story succinctly and efficiently. Rosemary, by her side, punctuated all she said with wordless gestures of anxiety.

Theo Marsh subdued his energy long enough to listen quickly, somehow. He got the situation into his mind, whole and fast.

“Yes, I was on a bus. Took it in front of the public library late this morning. You the driver? I did not study your face.”

“Few do.” Lee shrugged.

“Can you help us?” interrupted Rosemary impatiently. “Did you see a green paper bag, Mr. Marsh? Or did you see who took it?”

The artist took his gaze off the bus driver and put it upon Rosemary. He leaned his head sharply to the right as if to see how she would look upside down. “I may have seen it,” he said calmly. “I see a lot. I’ll tell you, in a minute. Let me get the pictures back.”

Mrs. Boatright took a throne. At least she deposited her weight upon a chair so regally that it might as well have been one.

“You, with the worries and the graceful backbone,” the painter said, “sit down. And don’t wiggle. I despise wiggling women. I must not be distracted, mind.”

Rosemary sat down in the only remaining place, on the couch beside the model. She sat … and her spine was graceful … as still as a mouse.

(Mouse, thought Mr. Gibson. Oh, how have we come here, you and I, who surely meant no harm?)

Six of them, plus the model Lavinia, all stared solemnly at Theo Marsh. He enjoyed this. He didn’t seat himself. He moved, flippety-flop, all elbows and angles, up and down.

“G-green,” stammered Mr. Gibson.

“Green?” the painter sneered. “Look out the window.”

Mr. Gibson looked, blinked, said, “Yes?”

“There are at least thirty-five different and distinct greens framed there. I know. I counted. I put them on canvas. So tell me, what color was the bag?”

“It was a kind of …” said Mr. Gibson feebly. “—well, greenish …”

“They have eyes and see not,” mourned the painter. “All right.” He began to act like a machine gun, shooting words.

“Pine green?”

“No.”

“Yellow green? Chartreuse? You’ve heard of that?”

“No. It wasn’t—”

“Grass green?”

“No.”

“Kelly green?”

“Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright warningly.

“Am I showing off, Mary Anne?” The painter grinned.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Boatright.

“Well then, truce to that.” The painter shrugged. “Well then, gray green?”

“Y-yes,” said Mr. Gibson, struggling. “Palish, dullish …”

“In other words, paper-bag green,” said the painter, amiably. “Of course.” He rambled to the left and stopped still and looked blind. “I sat on the left side of the bus,” he said dreamily. “For the first ten minutes I examined a hat. What blossoms! Watermelon shade. Nine petals, which is unlikely. Well, to proceed. I saw you … the man there with the good eyes. That can’t tell one green from another.”

“Me?” squeaked Mr. Gibson.

“A man of sorrows, thought I,” the painter continued. “Oh yes, you did have in your left hand a gray-green paper bag.”

Mr. Gibson began to tremble.

“I watched you a while. How I envied you your youth and your sorrow! I said to myself, this man is really living!”

Mr. Gibson thought one of them must have gone mad!

The artist’s eyes slid under half-drawn lids. “I saw you put the paper bag down on the seat.” The eyes were nearly closed now, and yet watched. “You took a small black-covered notebook out of your pocket …”

“I … did?”

“You produced a gold ball-point pen, about five inches long, and you wrote—brooded—wrote …”

“I did!” Mr. Gibson began to feel all his pockets.

“Then you got to brooding so bad you forgot to write. I lost interest. Nothing more to see, you know. Besides, I discovered an ear without a lobe, two seats ahead of me.”

Rosemary had jumped up. She stood over Mr. Gibson as he drew his little pocket notebook out and flipped the pages. Yes, pen marks. He looked at what he had written on the bus. “Rosemary … Rosemary … Rosemary.” Nothing but her name three times. That was all.

“Trying … a letter to you,” he stammered, and looked up.

Rosemary’s eyes were enigmatic … perhaps sad. She shook her head slightly, walked slowly back to the couch and sat down. Lavinia changed her feet, and put the top one underneath.

“I saw you, Mary Anne,” the painter said, “and pretended not. I lay low. Forgive me, but I didn’t want to be snared and exhibited.”

“I saw you, you know.” said Mrs. Boatright calmly, “or we wouldn’t be here. Had nowhere to exhibit you, profitably, at the moment.”

“You lay low?” The painter sighed. “Ships in the night. I am a vain man, amn’t I? Well, let’s see. Let’s see.”

“The paper bag?” pressed Rosemary.

“Quiet, now,” the painter’s eyes roved. “Ah yes, the heart-shaped face. Saw you.”

“Me?” said Virginia.

“On the right side, well forward?”

“Yes.”

“Where you could turn those gentle eyes where you liked,” said the painter, mischievously.

Virginia’s face turned a deep soft pink. Lee Coffey’s ears stood up.

“I didn’t try to see whether he was looking sly at you. Perhaps in the mirror?” said the painter and swung to the driver. “Were you?”

“Me!” exploded Lee, and then softly, “Me?”

“Theo,” said Mrs. Boatright severely, “you are showing off again. And behaving like a bad little boy.”

“I don’t care to have her embarrassed,” said the bus driver stiffly. “Get on to the subject, the poison.”

The painter flapped both hands. “Don’t mind me,” he said irritably. “I see things. I can’t help it.” (The bus driver picked up the nurse’s hand in his, although neither of them seemed aware of this or looked at each other.) The painter clasped his hands behind him and arched his thin ribcase and teetered on his toes. “There was that ear …”

“Whose ear?” demanded Rosemary fiercely.

“Can’t say. All I noticed was the ear. We could advertise. Wait a minute … Didn’t Mary Anne say your name is Gibson?”

“Yes.”

“Then somebody spoke to you.”

“Did they? Why, yes,” said Mr. Gibson. “Yes, that’s true. Somebody said my name, twice. Once while I waited. Once, just as I was getting off. Somebody knew me.” He was suddenly excited.

“Who, Kenneth? Who?”

He shook his head. “I … don’t know,” he said with shame. “I paid no attention.”

“He was sunk,” said the painter nodding vigorously, looking like a turkeycock, his wattles shaking. “He was sunk. I noticed that.”

“Did you notice who spoke to him?” Rosemary demanded.

The painter looked dashed. “Darned if I did,” he said with chagrin. “I’m so eye-minded. Oh, I heard. But I made no picture of the speaker. I did not connect. However …” He paused in vanity until all of them were waiting on him. “I believe I did see somebody pick up the paper bag.”

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Who?”

They exploded like popcorn.

“A young woman. A mere girl. A very handsome young female,” the painter said. “I was looking at her face. But I do believe she picked up that greenish paper bag and carried it off the bus. Yes.”

“When?”

“After he got off, just after. I was driven back to the ear by default.”

“Who was she?”

The painter shrugged. “I’d know her,” he said, “but I’d have to see her. Names, labels, mean nothing to me.”

“Where did she get off?”

“Oh, not many blocks after …” Distance meant nothing to him, either.

“Was she dark?” said Paul Townsend, tensely.

“I suppose you mean … to put it, crudely … was her hair of a darkish color? Yes.”

“Jeanie! cried Paul. “Oh Lord, oh God, it could have been Jeanie. Where’s your telephone?”

“No telephone,” said Mrs. Boatright. “Who is Jeanie?”

Paul had moved into the center somehow. He was tall and angry. He glared at everyone. He was a raging lion.

“But Paul,” said Rosemary, “what makes you think it could be Jeanie?”

“Because she went to her music lesson just about then. Her teacher is out on the Boulevard. She could have got on as he got off. She knew him, She would have spoken. She might have taken his empty seat. Jeanie!” Paul’s handsome face contorted.

“Who is Jeanie?” the painter wanted to know.

“My daughter!” yelled Paul. “My daughter!”

“But if Jeanie saw him . . .” Rosemary frowned and concentrated.

“How could she know where he’d been sitting? How could she know it was him,” said Paul, losing control of his grammar in his agitation, “who left the poison? Maybe she … Oh, no!” Paul groaned. “Jeanie’s got sense. Jeanie’s a darned sensible kid. You all know that,” he appealed pitifully. “But I got to call home. If anything’s happened to Mama! Oh no, oh Lord … I’ve got to get to a phone. She was pretty, you say?”

The painter said, “She was lovely.” His eyes were watching. “Not quite the same thing.”

“Jeanie is lovely. That’s sure. I’m getting out of here.” Paul was beside himself. “Listen, Mama likes her supper early. Jeanie will be fixing Mama’s supper too soon now. It’s getting on to five o’clock. I got to call. If Mama were to get that poison, what would I do?”

“Mama?” Mrs. Boatright raised her brows at the Gibsons.

“His mother-in-law,” said Rosemary rather awesomely. “An old lady … a crippled old lady …”

“She may be old but she’s lived long enough to know something,” raved Paul, as upset as anyone had ever seen him. “She’s raised my Jeanie—raised me, if you want to know the truth. She’s a wonderful old lady, God love her.… The whole house depends on her. I could never have gone on without her, when Frances died … Listen, I’m very sorry but I have to get going and it’s my … well, my car.”

“Mr. Marsh,” said Rosemary, springing up, “could it possibly be his daughter?”

“Could be,” said Theo Marsh. “No resemblance.”

“Jeanie looks like her dead mother,” cried Paul. “Not a bit like me. Listen, I’ll take you all back into town, but you’ll have to come now.”

“I’ll drive, said Lee Coffey with instant sympathy. “You’re kinda upset and I’m faster. I suppose this is possible?” he said to the rest of them.

“Is there a phone at the junction?” cried Paul.

“Yes, a phone,” said Virginia, her hand still in Lee’s hand.

“Oh yes,” said Theo Marsh, “at the gas station. Up, Lavinia.” The model stood up in her weird garb. The rest of them were streaming to the door.

“Wait for us,” said the painter.

“Are you coming?” said the bus driver curiously.

“Certainly, I’m coming. If you think I’m not going to be on hand to see how this works out! I’m not a man who misses much. Snap it up, Lavinia. We dump her at the junction. Her father runs the gas station.”

Mr. Gibson had time to marvel at this, as they streaked for the car.

Lee, Virginia, and Paul were in the front, as before. In the back, Mrs. Boatright’s broad beam occupied the center solidly. On her left, Theo Marsh held Lavinia on his lap, and on the right, Mr. Gibson held his wife, Rosemary. He felt tumbled and breathless, but fallen into a warm and lovely place, in the lee of Mrs. Boatright’s good and warm and solid flesh, with Rosemary’s physical being pressing upon his thighs and his arm holding her.

The car flew down the hill. It stopped. Everybody swayed. Paul was out and at the telephone. Lavinia kicked the long blue skirt about with her bare feet and got out clumsily. Mr. Gibson heard her say, “Hi, Paw.”

“I suggest you get some pants on,” a man’s voice said without passion, “and take over the pumps, Lavinia. Mother’s been announcing dinner the last five minutes and I’m famished.”

Mr. Gibson heard Paul shouting that the line was busy. That something terrible could have happened.

Theo Marsh bellowed back, “Look here, you at the telephone. Let Lavinia get on the telephone. She’s absolutely reliable. I guarantee that.” He was leaning over the side waving his long skinny arms.

“No nerves, Lavinia,” said the unseen father complacently. “What’s up?”

“Let her keep calling,” bawled the artist. “While weget there.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Lavinia. “Don’t touch any olive oil and youse guys is on the way.”

“No nerves, no diction,” said the sad voice of the gas station man, with a shudder, unseen by but nevertheless divined by Mr. Gibson.

“Yes, do it.” Paul was hoarse. “I can’t stand here.” He beat the telephone number out three times. (Lavinia got it the first time.) Then Paul climbed back into the car.

“All right, Lee,” said Virginia to the bus driver.

“Off we go,” howled the painter in joy. “So long, Lavinia. Good girl,” he told them. “She understands one hell of a lot about art.”

“She does?” said Rosemary breathlessly. The car lurched and Mr. Gibson hung on to her.

Rosemary leaned to see around Mrs. Boatright. “Of course, as an artist, Mr. Marsh,” she said in suspiciously sweet tones, “you live way out here to retreat from reality.”

“The hell I retreat from reality,” said the artist angrily. “Who told you that?” Mrs. Boatright contrived to shrink her bosom back against her backbone, somewhat, as they talked across her. “I see more reality in half a minute than any one of you can see in a day,” raved the artist. “I don’t even drive a car. I …”

“Because of your eyesight?” piped up Mr. Gibson promptly.

“Right,” said Theo grumpily. “Good for you, Gibson, if it was Gibson speaking.” The artist retreated into silence. Mr. Gibson felt as if he had just won a thrust.

“Hey?” said the bus driver over his shoulder. “What’s this?”

“He sees too much,” explained Mr. Gibson. “An ear, for instance. He’d be in the ditch.”

“I bet he would.” Rosemary actually chuckled in her old Rosemaryish way. Mr. Gibson was exhilarated. He pressed his cheek secretly against her sleeve, not wishing to laugh. After all, he was still a criminal. But with mirth rumbling inside of him, just the same.

“Pretty keen, this Gibson,” said the bus driver to the blonde. “Mighty lively corpse he makes, hey?”

Paul said tensely, “Drive the car.”

Virginia said soothingly, “He is. He will.”

“Don’t worry, Paul,” said Rosemary, rather gaily. “Jeanie is a sensible girl.”

“I know that.” Paul turned and swept them with a harassed look. He put both palms swiftly over his hair, not quite holding his head, but smoothing it on, as he turned to yearn ahead once more.

“I’ve got the rest of you sorted out, but who is Paul?” asked the painter, reducing his volume. “He wasn’t on the bus.”

“He’s a neighbor of theirs,” said Mrs. Boatright. “This is his car. We ought to have called the police, you know.”

The painter said under his breath to the back seat, “I doubt very much it was his daughter who took the green paper bag. She was distinguished. Whereas he …” The painter made an unspellable noise. It meant Big Deal!

“Paul,” said Rosemary rather drowsily, “is as good as he is beautiful.”

“And perishing dull,” said Marsh. “Am I right?”

Rosemary’s arm came around Mr. Gibson’s neck, to hang on, of course, for they were speeding. “Well, he is conventional,” she said softly. “He’s nice, but … everybody can’t be interesting, like you.” She leaned from Mr. Gibson’s breast to peer at the painter.

“Oh ho, I’m interesting all right,” said Theo Marsh.

Mr. Gibson felt furiously jealous. This conceited ass was seventy if he was a day.

“And deeply interested, too. Same thing, you realize. Say, what’s-your-name-Gibson … why did you plan to kill yourself in the first place?” asked Theo Marsh. “No money?”

“Money!” shrieked Rosemary.

“Why not?” said the artist. “Money is something I take care to have about me. Believe me. I’m a shrewd moneymaker. Am I not, Mary Anne?”

“A leech and a bloodsucker.” said Mrs. Boatright calmly.

“Well, money is a serious matter,” said Theo with a pout, as if nobody would talk seriously. “So naturally, I wondered. Is he broke?”

“No,” said Rosemary shortly.

“In some kind of way,” said Lee Coffey, with his keen ears stretched backward, “he was broke …”

“I assume,” said Theo Marsh loftily, “that something bothers him. Want to know what, that’s all.”

“He won’t say,” said Mrs. Boatright, “but perhaps he can’t …”

“Yes, he can,” said Theo Marsh. “He’s articulate. And I’m listening. It interests me.”

“Oh, it does?” said Mr. Gibson spitefully. He felt Rosemary’s body tensing.

“Shall I guess?” said she, in a brave voice that was full of fear. “He married me ten weeks ago … to s-save me. He likes to help waifs and strays, you see. It’s his hobby. But when I got well … there he was, still stuck with me.”

“What!” cried Mr. Gibson, outraged. He grabbed her with both arms as if she might fall with his agitation. “No. No!”

“Well, then?” she trembled. “I don’t know why you wanted to do it, Kenneth. I only guess … it’s something Ethel put in your head.” She leaned forward, far away from him, and put her hands on the front seat and laid her face on her forearm. “I’m afraid—it’s something about me.” And Mr. Gibson’s heart ached terribly.

“We don’t know,” said Lee mournfully, over his shoulder. “Nope, we still don’t know what it was that shook him.”

Virginia said, “I should think you might tell us. We’ve been so close. Please tell us.” Her little face was a moon setting on the horizon of the back of the seat. Her hand came up and touched Rosemary’s hair compassionately. “It would be good for you to tell us.”

Mrs. Boatright said with massive confidence. “He will, in a minute.”

Paul said, “You can take a short cut up Appleby Place.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” said Lee, “and Lavinia’s had them on the phone by now.”

“Lavinia!” spat Paul. “That girl with no clothes!” He evidently couldn’t imagine being both naked and reliable.

Marsh said airily in his high incisive voice, “I guess Gibson likes his secret reason; hugs it to his bosom. Won’t show it to us. Oh, no, we might spoil his fun.”

“Don’t talk like that!” cried Rosemary, straightening up. “You sound like Ethel.”

So everybody talked at once, telling the painter who Ethel was.

“An amateur,” the painter groaned. He had one foot up against the seat ahead. His socks were yellow. “How I loathe and despise these amateurs! These leaping amateurs! Amateur critics.” He uttered a long keen. “Amateur psychologists are among the worst. Skim a lot of stuff out of an abbreviated article in a twenty-five-cent magazine … and then they know. So they treat their friends and neighbors out of their profundity. They put their big fat clumsy hands in where the daintiest probe can’t safely go, and they rip and they tear. Nothing so cruel as an amateur, doing good. I’d like to strangle the lot of them.”

Mr. Gibson stirred. “No,” he said. “No, now I want you to be fair to Ethel. I’ll have to try to make you understand. It’s just that … perhaps Ethel made me see it … but it’s the doom.” There. He had told them.

“Doom?” said Mrs. Boatright encouragingly.

He would have to explain. “We aren’t free,” he said earnestly. “We are simply doomed. It … well, it just suddenly hit me very hard. To realize … I mean to believe and begin to apply—the fact that choice is only an illusion. That we are at the mercy of things in ourselves that we cannot even know. That we are not able to help ourselves or each other …”

They were all silent, so he pressed on.

“We are dupes, puppets. What each of us will do can be predicted. Just as the bomb … for instance … is bound to fall, human nature being what it …”

“Baloney,” groaned the painter. “The old sad baloney! Predict me—Gibson. I dare you! You mean to say you got yourself believing that old-fashioned drivel?” he sputtered out.

But Rosemary said, “Yes, I see. Yes, I know. Me, too.”

Then everybody else in the car, except Paul, seemed to be talking at once.

The bus driver’s voice emerged on top. “Lookit!” he shouted. “You cannot, from where you sit, predict! I told you. Accidents! There’s the whole big fat mixed-up universe …”

“What if I can’t predict?” said Mr. Gibson, somewhat spiritedly defending his position. “An expert …”

“No, no. We are all ignorant,” cried the nurse. “But it’s the experts who know that. They know we’re guessing. They know we’re guessing better and better, because they’re trying to check up on the guesses. You have to believe that, Mr. Gibson.”

Mr. Gibson was suddenly touched. His heart quivered as if something had reached in and touched it.

Mrs. Boatright cleared her throat. “Organized human effort,” she began.

“This is not the PTA, Mary Anne,” the artist said severely. “This is one simple intelligent male. Give me a crack at him.” He had come so far forward to peer at Mr. Gibson that he seemed to be crouching, angular as a cricket, on air. “Listen, Gibson. Take a cave man.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Gibson, helplessly, with a kind of melting feeling. “I’m taking one.”

“Did he foresee his descendants flying over the North Pole to get from here to Europe tomorrow?”

“Of course not.”

“So … how can you be as narrow-minded as a cave man?”

“Narrow?”

“Certainly. You extrapolate a future on what’s known now. You extend the old lines. What you don’t take into account are the surprises.”

“Hey!” said the bus driver. “Hey! Hey!”

“Every big jump is a surprise, a revelation,” lectured the artist, “and a tangent off the old. Penicillin. Atom splitting. Who guessed they were coming?”

“Exactly,” cried Virginia. “Or the wheel? Or television? How do we know what’s coming next?” She was all excited. “Maybe some whole vast opening up in a direction we’ve hardly thought of …”

“Good girl,” said Theo Marsh. “Have you ever done any modeling?”

“Of the spirit, too,” boomed Mrs. Boatright. “Of the mind. Men have developed ideals undreamed in antiquity. You simply cannot deny it. Would your cave man understand the Red Cross?”

“Or the S.P.C.A.,” said the bus driver, “him and his saber-toothed playmates. Doom—schmoom. Also, if you gotta, you very often do. Take a jump, I mean. I’m talking about the bomb …”

“So the bomb might not fall,” said Rosemary. She lifted her clasped hands in a kind of ecstasy, “because men might find something even better than common sense by tomorrow morning. Who knows? Not Ethel! Ethel is too—”

“Too rigid, I expect,” said the painter. “Death is too rigid. Rigor is mortis. Keep your eyes open. You’ll be surprised!” This was his credo. Mr. Gibson found himself stretching the physical muscles around his eyes.

“It’s gonna fall if you sit on your fanny and expect it,” the bus driver said, “that’s for sure. But everybody isn’t just sitting around, telling themselves they are so smart they can see their fate coming. Lookit, we’ll know the latest news today, when we look backward from fifty years. Not before. The present views with alarm. It worries. It should. But these trends sneak up like a mist that you don’t notice.”

“Righto!” shouted the artist. “You don’t even see what’s already around you in your own home town.”

“People can, too, help each other,” said Rosemary. She was sitting on his lap yet turned in facing him. “And I’m the living proof. You helped me because you wanted to, Kenneth. There wasn’t any other reason.”

“The ayes have it,” the painter said. (Perhaps he said “eyes.”) “You are overruled, Gibson. You haven’t got a leg to die on. You can’t logically kill yourself on that silly old premise.” He drew back upon the seat and crossed his legs complacently.

The bus driver said dubiously, “However, logic …”

The nurse suddenly put her forehead against his arm.

Mrs. Boatright said firmly, “If you see that you were wrong, now you must admit it That is the only way to progress.”

And then they waited.

Mr. Gibson’s churning mind settled, sad and slow as a feather. “But in my error,” he said quietly, “I may have caused a death.”

Paul said uncontrollably, “If anything happened to Mama or Jeanie, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Don’t say ‘never,’” said Virginia, raising her head and speaking gently.

“It ain’t scientific to say ‘never,’ hey?” said the bus driver, and leaned and kissed her ear.

The car shot off the boulevard upon a short cut.

Everyone was silent. The excitement was over. The poison was still lost. They hadn’t found it.

And if in error there was learning and if in blame there was responsibility and if in ignorance there was hope—and if in life there are surprises—and if in doom there were these cracks—still, they had not put their hands upon a little bottle full of death, and innocently labeled olive oil. And it was no illusion.