Chapter 10

 

“Dear Aunt Emily: I know I have found the girl. She is perfect and I love her. Thank you for your help. I think it was etiquette that done it. Signed, Texas Lonesome.”

For the life of her, Emily couldn’t formulate a response. Tears kept blinding her.

# # #

“I’ll never understand it as long as I live, Thomas. I swear to God, she loves me. I can see it in her eyes every damned time she looks at me.”

Will shook his head as he paced back and forth in front of Thomas Crandall’s elaborate fireplace in the upstairs sitting room. Thomas hadn’t even had a chance to delve into his Sherlock Holmes mystery today before Will cornered him.

He had never seen his friend so upset; indeed, he hadn’t known before right this minute Will could become this overwrought, just over a woman. Thomas held in his laughter out of respect for Will’s broken heart.

“I mean, look at the whole situation, Thomas. Just take a good look at it,” Will said. “She met me in the park. She found out I was from Texas. She asked me if I was ‘Texas Lonesome.’ I swear, Thomas, she nearly fainted on the spot when I said I was. I know she planned right then to snag me. You even said that was probably her game.”

Thomas felt obliged to agree. “That’s so, Will. I believe I did.”

Will nodded miserably. “That’s what I mean. I remember, because I thought you were wrong. Then, when I knew you were right, I could only be amazed at how damned smart she was. So, why in God’s name did she refuse to marry me? I mean, Thomas, she won! I swear to God, I’m hers, body and soul. I can’t even imagine being with another woman now that I’ve fallen in love with Emily.”

“I don’t blame you, Will. She’s really something, all right.”

“And she loves me. I know she loves me. You may think I’m being foolish, but I can tell. For God’s sake, I spent my entire childhood reading people’s expressions and gestures. I was taught by an expert in the field! I can tell the real thing from a good acting job any day of the week. Emily doesn’t have it in her to dissimulate. She loves me, God damn it!” Will was yelling now, even though Thomas had not contradicted him.

“I believe you, Will. You don’t have to holler. I believe you. Although,” he couldn’t help adding, since he found the whole situation so funny, “I guess she did dissimulate a little bit when she tried to trap you.”

Will frowned. “Well, I guess she did. A little, tiny bit. But she wasn’t very good at it.”

“No?”

“No.” When Will recalled the first time Emily tried batting her eyelashes at him he almost cried. The thought of losing her now was so horrible, he wouldn’t allow himself to think about it. He had to concentrate on winning her.

“But how can I win her if I’ve already won her, and she still won’t marry me?”

Will was hollering again, and Fred, who had been snoring blissfully in front of the fireplace, looked at his master in concern. Will absently bent to pat his dog’s head.

“Sorry, old friend.”

“Will,” Thomas said at last, “has it ever occurred to you that she refused to marry you precisely because she is honorable?”

Will straightened. “That’s crazy, Thomas.”

“No, it isn’t.” Thomas sounded very sure of himself.

“Yes, it is.” So did Will.

“Will Tate, you’ve come a long way since you broke your connection with your Uncle Mel, but you still have a habit of thinking like him. Did you know that?”

“The hell I do!” Will’s disclaimer bounced from wall to wall in Thomas’s sitting room like a ricocheting bullet. “I rejected every damned thing my uncle ever taught me, and you know it, Thomas! And then I rejected him! You just insulted me worse than I’ve ever been insulted in my life.”

“I didn’t mean it the way you’re taking it, Will. What I mean is that, even though your better nature tells you different, you can’t, deep down in your soul, really believe people aren’t out for what they can get.”

Will glared at Thomas and didn’t answer.

Thomas went on. “Now we both know Aunt Emily started out by trying to get ‘Texas Lonesome’ to marry her. When you think about it, it was a reasoned, sensible action on her part. The man wrote to her saying he was rich and wanted a wife. It’s not her fault you’re not Texas Lonesome.”

“Of course it isn’t.” Will had no what Thomas’s ultimate point might turn out to be.

“The problem, my friend, is that she’s started to care about you.”

“Well, of course she has. That’s what I just told you.”

“There. You see? My point exactly.” Thomas settled back in his wing chair, a smug smile on his handsome face.

“What point?” Will’s bellow made Thomas flinch. “Just what the hell point are you trying to make? She loves me? That’s why she won’t marry me? That doesn’t make a lick of sense, Thomas, and you know it!”

Thomas sighed. “Of course it does.”

It took all the patience Will could draw upon not to grab Thomas by his pleated shirt front and shake a proper explanation out of him. “Tell me,” he demanded through gritted teeth. “Why does it make sense?”

“Don’t you see it yet, Will? It’s so simple. In spite of what your Uncle Mel taught you, not everybody in the world is comfortable fooling people. In fact, most of us try our very best to be honest with one another.”

“Emily is obviously a woman of high moral principle.”

“Yes.”

Thomas smiled. “All right. So you see, once she realized she’d begun to care for you. She probably refused you because she’s afraid you’ll hate her forever when you find out her family is in financial trouble. She knows you’ll find out, since there’s no avoiding it, and I bet she can’t stand the thought of facing your contempt once her true scheme is revealed.

“After all,” Thomas went on wryly, “She had no way in the world of knowing you only love her all the more for having succeeded in her confidence game. Most people would actually frown on such a scheme, you know. I don’t mean to disparage you or your family, Will, but your Uncle Mel’s standards are not necessarily those the rest of the world runs by. Barring politicians and lawyers, of course.”

Comprehension burst across Will’s face. “Of course!”

Then he grabbed Thomas’s hand and nearly shook it off of his arm.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Thomas. Of course that’s it. God almighty, I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner.”

“It probably never even entered your brain.”

“No. It didn’t.” The admission cost Will a clutching sensation in his chest, and he shook his head. “I wonder if I’ll ever completely recover from Uncle Mel.”

“Probably not, but that’s not all bad, you know. After all, he taught you some things that have helped you in business much more than what most of us were taught in childhood. Hell, we’re both rich now, thanks in large part to your devious brain.”

“I suppose so,” Will agreed glumly. “But how the hell am I going to get Emily to stop feeling guilty and marry me?”

“Well, what about those stupid dogs of her uncle’s? You’re helping him a little bit now. What if you made his business so successful he begins to get rich on his own? If anybody in the world can make people want something completely useless, it’s you, Will. If you do a little work, I’ll bet you can even make weasel dogs attractive. If her uncle’s business begins to prosper and it looks as though it’s all his doing, then she can settle her own debts and won’t need your money. That way she won’t feel she’s deceived you. I bet she’ll agree to marry you then.” Thomas sat back and smiled.

“Just think of it, Will. Leland Stanford walking his sausage hounds on the grounds of that college he built. Mrs. Crocker taking her dachshunds for a ride in her new horseless carriage. Collis Huntington, using a weasel-dog as the mascot for one of his midnight specials.” His grin broadened. “Why, the possibilities are endless.”

Will’s smile was so full of affection, Thomas looked away, feeling self-conscious.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had in my life, Thomas. You know that, don’t you?”

“Actually, Will, I think I’m the only friend you’ve ever had in your life.”

“Well, I guess that’s true, too. But still, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I really don’t.”

“Ah, hell, Will. Just cut me in on the sausage-dog profits, is all I ask.” Thomas reached into his breast pocket and plucked out a bank note. “After I met your little Emily, I decided to invest in those silly critters after all. Shoot, we’ve always done things together. I didn’t want only one of us to be a fool.”

Will took the bank note and had to blink quickly. He’d never cried in his adult life and didn’t intend to start now.

“Thanks, Thomas.” His voice was thick.

“It’s all right, Will. But now, let’s start thinking about how to market those stupid dogs. I don’t want to lose my investment.”

So the two men spent several hours in Thomas’s sitting room, plotting marketing techniques for a breed of small, mean-tempered, low-slung dogs, for which neither one of them could think of a legitimate use. When their brain-storming session concluded, Will was whistling and Thomas was grinning from ear to ear. Both men went to bed that night feeling very pleased with themselves.

# # #

“‘Sleep no more. von Plotz does murder sleep,’” Emily muttered mournfully, fracturing Mr. Shakespeare’s famous words. She stood in front of her big, blotchy mirror and stared with melancholy at the huge purple rings under her eyes.

Her night had been spent tossing, turning, wishing, despairing, and constantly thinking about Will Tate. She felt as though she had been flung head-first into a bubbling cauldron of emotion. One moment she told herself she might just as well go ahead and marry him, only to revile herself the next moment as a vicious harpy without a shred of honor in her soul. Such inconsistencies had not made for a restful night.

“At least I have my column.”

Those words, which only yesterday she had uttered in an attempt to make herself believe she had some control over the morass of her aunt and uncle’s failing fortunes, today were being used for another purpose entirely. Faced with a bleak lifetime alone, unloved, and with no Will Tate, Emily’s column was the one, solid thing to which she could still cling. She could write, if nothing else, and pass away a listless lifetime giving advice to the lovelorn.

The irony did not escape her. “I? Who am I to give advice to anybody?” Two enormous tears rolled down her cheeks and she chastised herself for being a miserable fraud.

Well, it was her own fault. She was a fool and a cheat, and she had nobody but herself to blame for her misery. “So, Miss Emily von Plotz, what are you going to do now? Stand here and whine? Or face the day with fortitude?”

Her pep talk didn’t have much of an effect on her sick heart, but she forced herself to lift her stubborn little chin, don a defiant glare, and nod firmly into her mirror.

As a precaution against nosy relatives who might ask too-personal questions about her ragged appearance, she rubbed face powder over her purple eye ringlets in an attempt to hide them. Then she pinched her cheeks with unnecessary viciousness to give them some color, picked up the pages of her column, headed out of her bedroom, grabbed some bread and cheese in the kitchen, and left the house.

Her spirits did not improve as Emily walked towards her editor’s office, but she did manage to contain her agony until it was a more manageable, steady ache. From some previously untapped inner resource, she was able to force a smile as before she knocked on Mr. Kaplan’s door.

“Why, Miss Emily, my star columnist. It’s so good to see you, dear. You’re always so prompt. Always so conscientious.”

Mr. Kaplan rose and gestured Emily into the chair in front of his desk. Then he sat back and smiled at her.

Her editor’s honest appreciation usually made Emily feel good about herself. Today, however, his praise pierced her throbbing heart like a poisoned dart. If he only knew, she thought with terrible bitterness. Oh, if he only knew.

She did, however, manage to keep her smile in place when she handed him her sheaf of work. “Thank you, Mr. Kaplan. Here are six letters. I’m not sure whether you can use all of them, but I seem to be getting more mail than usual lately.”

“That’s because people love you, my dear. Aunt Emily is becoming quite famous in San Francisco. As a matter of fact,” her editor added with a twinkle, “what would you think if we were to expand your column space?”

A mere day before, such news would have sent Emily’s heart soaring. Today the same heart felt cold and untouched by her editor’s words. “How wonderful,” she said listlessly.

Even those two words sounded forced to her, but Mr. Kaplan drew his own conclusions. “Are you feeling well, Emily? You look a little pale.”

Wonderful. Just wonderful. She’d even donned makeup, a practice she, as a respectable, moral young lady, deplored, and people still thought she was sick. Well, by grace, if she looked sick, then she’d play sick. Nobody needed to know her sickness was of the heart and not of the body.

“I believe I’ve come down with a small malady, Mr. Kaplan. I’m sure it will soon pass.” Her sweet smile belied her inner turmoil. Only she knew that her little malady probably would indeed soon pass—into a deep, life-long melancholy.

“Well, you take care of yourself, Emily. We can’t have our favorite aunt laid up.”

Mr. Kaplan’s small show of levity was accompanied by such an expression of genuine concern that Emily was touched. He was a truly nice man.

“Thank you, Mr. Kaplan. I certainly shall.” That the fact he cared about her almost made her burst into tears aggravated Emily a good deal. “How many lines do you think you’ll need for my column, Mr. Kaplan?”

“We’ll be giving you another twenty, my dear.”

Surprised, Emily cried, “My goodness, Mr. Kaplan, are you expanding the paper?”

Mr. Kaplan’s sigh sounded as though it had been torn from his scuffed shoes. “I’m afraid Mrs. Puddingstone will be leaving us, Emily. You’ll take over her space since your column is so popular.”

“Oh!”

Emily was distressed to hear Mr. Kaplan’s news. She enjoyed reading Mrs. Puddingstone’s recipes. In fact, she used to clip them and save them in a little booklet in the hope that one day, when she married, she could use them in her own household. Since the possibility of her ever marrying was now a thing of the past, she didn’t suppose it mattered.

“Why is Mrs. Puddingstone leaving?”

Mr. Kaplan looked at his closed office door as if to assess the possibility they might be overheard. His surreptitious gesture made Emily’s eyes open wide and she leaned forward, her own unhappiness momentarily forgotten.

“Mrs. Puddingstone,” Mr. Kaplan whispered confidentially, “is, I’m afraid, much given to the consumption of strong spirits.”

“Oh!”

The editor nodded somberly. “Aye, it’s too bad. But unless she decides to take a cure, she’s just become too undependable. We can’t run a newspaper if our columnists are unreliable, now can we? Mrs. Puddingstone, I regret to tell you, is a dipsomaniac.”

“Oh, my.” For a bare moment, Emily’s worries seemed to pale beside those of the unfortunate Mrs. Puddingstone. “How sad.”

Rising from his chair, Mr. Kaplan smiled once more. “Yes, it is sad, my dear, but one must try to master one’s baser impulses, you know, or all is lost.”

Emily rose, too. “Yes. All is lost,” she whispered.

After she left Mr. Kaplan’s office, Emily wandered to the park and sat on a bench. As she sadly munched her bread and cheese, she reviewed every second she had spent in Will Tate’s company. A morose smile played upon her lips when she recalled Gustav and Helga’s initial attack on his big dog. When she remembered the two glorious kisses they had shared, a tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away angrily.

Stop it, Emily von Plotz, you unnatural girl. Just stop it. It’s your own fault. Mr. Kaplan was right when he said we must all master our baser impulses. You gave in to yours, and just look at where that course of action has got you now. Foolish, foolish Emily.

Emily paid a short visit to the rose garden before she left the park, remembering every tiny, eensy-weensy second of her time spent there with Will. Then she slowly walked home, grateful for her additional column space, even it was due to poor Mrs. Puddingstone’s affliction. At least, she thought, there was a Mr. Puddingstone to help her through this time of trial. Emily hoped he would be kind to his errant spouse.

She was astonished to see a wagon from the San Francisco Municipal Telephone Company parked in front of her aunt’s door when she got back home. Inside her aunt’s office she found a harried telephone installation man being instructed by her Uncle Ludwig. Ludwig, of course, had no idea on earth how to install telephones, but little things like that never stopped him.

“Emily,” he cried when he spotted her in the doorway. “Come see! Your Mr. Tate is having them install a telephone in the house. For our dogs.”

“For the dogs?”

Emily knew her uncle was fond of his pets, but she didn’t think even he would expect them to be able to use a telephone. And what on earth did Will have to do with it? She steered Ludwig out of the office and into the hall so the poor telephone man could finish his job in peace.

“Yah, yah. For the dogs. Mr. Tate has put advertisements in all the newspapers, and he says people will begin to call soon, wanting our wonderful dogs.”

“But uncle, you don’t have any dogs except Gustav and Helga.” She didn’t want to burst his happy bubble, but still, she felt certain facts must be faced.

“Oh, yah, I know that. But Mr. Tate has already written a letter to Germany. Within six months, we’ll have more dogs, Emily. More wonderful dachshunds. I tell you, they’re the coming thing. Everybody will want our dogs. Everybody!”

“What will you do in the mean time?”

“Ach, Mr. Tate has explained it all to me. What I do now is, I take orders!”

“Take orders?”

“Yah, take orders. I take orders and tell people their dogs are coming to them direct from Germany. He says that will make them even more coveted. That Mr. Tate of yours is wonderful! A genius!”

Ludwig skipped off back to the office to confuse the telephone installation man further, leaving Emily to stare after him.

“My Mr. Tate,” she whispered. “That sounds so nice.”

But she knew it wasn’t to be.

# # #

When Will called at the Schindler home later in the day, he did not ask to see Emily. He ached to hold her again but, thanks to Thomas Crandall’s insightful instruction, he understood her now.

It had never before occurred to him somebody might feel guilty about winning just because he or she played dirty. Will had always just assumed a person who played dirty was happy to win, period. His personal opinion was that Emily had played her game brilliantly, had won it, and should be proud of herself. The good Lord knew, he was proud of her. He’d never seen anything to rival the art she’d used in snaring him.

He himself possessed no such scruples. By fair means or foul, he planned to win Emily von Plotz. If it meant playing “Texas Lonesome” until the day he died, he would do it. If it meant a crazy project like the marketing and sale of a useless breed of nervous, foul-tempered, noisy hounds, he would do it.

“Here’s the artwork for the poster, Mr. von Plotz. I think it looks pretty good.” Will handed Ludwig a poster and watched Ludwig’s reaction with genuine pleasure.

“Oh, my, Mr. Tate. It’s wonderful. Just wonderful.”

Will saw tears glittering in Ludwig’s eyes and had to restrain himself from laughing. He’d never seen anybody quite as fanatical about anything as Ludwig von Plotz was about his beloved dogs.

“I’ve brought copies of both newspapers, too. The ad is there, bold as brass.”

“Mr. Tate, you’re a genius. You’re a real genius.” Ludwig took the papers and wandered into the parlor to gaze at them further.

Will followed him and sat on the sofa. “I see they’re installing the telephone. You should be getting calls pretty soon. The posters will start going up this afternoon, and the ads are already out in today’s papers. Do you remember what to do?”

“Yah, I remember, Mr. Tate.” Ludwig nodded energetically. “I take name and address and send the flyer and order form as soon as I get them from the printer’s.”

“And?” Will prompted.

“And when I’m not here to answer the telephone, I instruct our sweet Emily or Mr. Blodgett what to say and what to do. I don’t let Gertrude talk to the clients.”

Between them, they had decided Gertrude’s association with the every-day world was too slippery for them to trust her with the important business of dachshund marketing. She didn’t mind, for she much preferred communing with her spirit friends through her crystal ball now that she had gotten past the bubbles.

While Ludwig and Will were discussing business in the parlor Clarence Pickering came to call once again. Blodgett showed him in.

Pickering stiffened perceptibly when he saw Will Tate, and then stepped pointedly toward Ludwig, giving Will a wide berth.

The glare Will shot him could have withered spring leaves, but Pickering was made of impenetrable stuff and he ignored it.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Pickering,” Ludwig said with a smile. “Look what we’re doing here. You should advise Gertrude to invest in my dogs now. They’re going to be famous.”

“Indeed?” Pickering’s sneer might have been intended to be polite.

“Yah, yah. Mr. Tate here is running the business now. He’s a genius, Mr. Pickering. Our dogs are going to be selling like hotcakes pretty darned soon.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so, Pickering.” Will shot him a challenging scowl, and Pickering seemed to draw even further away from him.

“Well, isn’t that grand? I think that’s just fine.”

How Pickering managed to make his voice sound so damned sincere, Will didn’t know. He even manufactured a sincere smile for Ludwig. “I can tell you’re very happy about this, Mr. von Plotz.”

“He will be,” Will told him, usurping Ludwig’s answer. His voice was full of meaning. “This will spell an end to any debts in the Schindler home, that’s for sure.”

With any luck, the damned vulture would go away if he thought his pickings were going to dry up. Especially if he knew Will Tate would be watching him like a buzzard hawk.

“Yah, yah. Mr. Tate’s got posters and ads and flyers and letters and everything,” Ludwig put in, seemingly oblivious to the tension between the other two men in the room.

“Well, isn’t that just fine,” Pickering repeated. Although he sounded sincere, he apparently possessed no turn for a creative phrase.

“Yah, it’s real fine.”

Will only glared stonily at his adversary, daring Pickering to try any further tricks such as disappearing horse herds, African ship-building or, worse, kennel-burning.

It looked to him as though Pickering got the message. He stood up after a second or two of uncomfortable silence, and said, “Well, I’ll just go on along and visit Mrs. Schindler. She asked me to call this afternoon.”

Will stood, towering over Pickering. He knew his height was intimidating. His Uncle Mel had taught him to use every advantage he possessed. Pickering seemed to shrink into himself when he looked up at Will.

“Just be careful with your advice, Pickering. And be careful where you put your hands.”

Will’s message was unmistakable. Pickering glowered at him in all sincerity and then made an exit that strove for dignity and didn’t quite make it.

A good half hour later, Will and Ludwig were still discussing the dachshund business when Gertrude Schindler floated into the room, waving a telegram in her hand.

“Oh, Ludwig, dear, look what we just got. Oh, Mr. Blake,” she cried when she noticed Will, “What a pleasant surprise.”

Will had, of course, stood at Gertrude’s entrance. He wondered wryly if she would ever get his name right. When—he refused to think “if”—he had his way and married Emily, he supposed Gertrude would be introducing her as “Mrs. Blake” for the rest of her days.

“Howdy, ma’am. How are you today?”

“Oh, I’m fine, I think, Mr. Blake. Or, rather, not fine, but all right, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not even that. It’s just that we got this—oh, Mr. Blake, weren’t you going to marry our Emily?”

Will felt an uncharacteristic twinge of sorrow. He stamped it down vigorously, refusing to admit to anything but a slight set-back in his plans. She would be his, one day. He produced a smile for Gertrude.

“Well, ma’am, she hasn’t said ‘yes’ yet, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” Gertrude frowned. “Do you suppose she found out about your other wife, Mr. Blake?”

“I don’t have any other wife, Mrs. Schindler.”

Will repressed a sigh and wondered how on earth Emily had managed to survive so beautifully with these two people for so long. His admiration for her grew ever greater with each fresh encounter with Ludwig and Gertrude.

“Oh.” Gertrude looked very puzzled. “I thought you had a wife in Arizona, Mr. Blake. Perhaps I’m confusing her with somebody else.”

The paper in her hand recaptured Gertrude’s wandering attention before she could become any more addled, and she held it up for Ludwig to see.

“Oh, Ludwig dear, we just got a wire from Gretchen.”

Ludwig raised his eyebrows. “Gretchen? What’s to do with Gretchen?”

“I’m afraid her poor Wilhelm is very ill, dear, and she has asked us to come and visit her for a short stay.”

“Ach. But I can’t leave now, Gertrude. I have my business to run. My wonderful dogs need me now more than ever.”

“But Ludwig, dear, she is our sister. I do believe we should honor this little request. After all, we haven’t visited her for the longest time, and if Wilhelm should happen to pass on to another dimension, I would feel terribly guilty if we weren’t there to comfort her.”

Ludwig’s attention was caught by Will’s discreetly cleared throat. “Gretchen is our sister, Mr. Tate. She lives in Redwood City. Not far away, but it would be a shame to leave San Francisco now, when we’re on the edge of success.”

“Well, Mr. von Plotz, I don’t think you need to worry about the business too much right now. I can make sure Blodgett knows how to take messages properly. And I’ll stop by every day to make sure everything is going smoothly and take care of answering any requests Blodgett writes down. If things get really busy, I can send over a clerk to handle the telephone.” Besides, although Will didn’t want to say so, if he could maneuver a little time alone with Emily, he might just get her to listen to reason.

“That’s a very sensible plan, Mr. Blake,” Gertrude said with a smile. “What sorts of requests to you expect to be receiving, Ludwig darling? I’m sure that snappish man at the Woodward Gardens has already requested at least a thousand times that you not visit there again.”

“Ach, Gertrude, not that kind of request. Requests for my dogs! Mr. Tate is helping me with my business, and we should be getting requests to buy dogs starting any day now!”

“Oh.” Gertrude’s vague, myopic gaze slid from Ludwig to Will and back again. “But, Ludwig, dear, you only have the two dogs. If somebody buys them, then you won’t have any more left.”

“Not to worry, Gertrude. Mr. Tate is taking care of everything. Soon we will have a kennel full of dogs. A glorious, glorious kennel full of the most wonderful dogs in the world. Mr. Tate knows just what to do.”

Will was moved by Ludwig’s obvious faith in his business acumen. Not that it was misplaced, for Will was well aware of both his strengths and his weaknesses, and business acumen was at the top of his list of strengths. He planned to have San Francisco, and then the rest of the country, groveling at Ludwig von Plotz’s large feet for dachshunds.

“You two just go on along to your sister’s place. I’ll take care of everything here. We shouldn’t be getting much of a response to the ads for a few days, anyway. I expect the posters to have more of an impact.”

The posters, which illustrated the glossiest, most noble-looking dachshund ever born, would have appealed to his Uncle Mel. The print below the image extolled the virtues of dachshunds in terms that had made Ludwig weep in ecstasy and would have had Uncle Mel roaring with cynical amusement.

But Will knew those posters would do the trick. If there was one thing he understood to perfection, it was how to create a throbbing need for a useless object in the breast of his fellow man. Once the need was established, he and Ludwig would fill it and rake in the profits.

“Well,” said Ludwig, still obviously unsettled, “If you really think so, Mr. Tate.”

“I know so, Mr. von Plotz.”

It was thus decided that Gertrude and Ludwig would depart the next evening for Redwood City on a trip to visit their sister Gretchen and her ailing husband Wilhelm. They told Emily about their trip over supper. The meal was taken, for once, unmarred by the presence of Clarence Pickering.

Emily felt guilty for not being more worried about her Uncle Wilhelm, but she couldn’t help it. Her poor heart had become an aching, wrinkled shadow of its formerly full self, and there wasn’t any more room in it for concern about relatives. It was already stuffed to the brim with grief over Will Tate.