CHAPTER FIVE

I didn’t go inside with Cheryl and Michael Spur. Somehow the atmosphere in there was too overcharged for comfort. But I couldn’t help hearing Mrs. Trent’s stifled scream just as the window closed and blotted out everything but the croaking frogs and the lapping waves on the shore. And because I didn’t want to just stand there, I wandered along the path in front of the house until I came to a stone bench under a lilac bush, sat down, closed my eyes and listened to the odd night noises. I shivered involuntarily, and found myself wishing for the reassuring rattle and dash of the Third Avenue L. I think I was rather frightened. So I said to myself, “My girl, this will never do.” I got a cigarette out of my case, but I didn’t have a match. I just sat there, trying to make up my mind that this wasn’t a madhouse and that everything would be swell in the morning.

I had almost convinced myself of it when I heard a voice not far from me. It was Agnes Hutton. She was behind the lilac bush, so that I couldn’t see her. I realized also that my dress, one of those lace things with a tricky jacket you can pack and unpack and wear most any time, was dark, and that she couldn’t see me. I was about to speak to let her know I was there; but I heard her soft husky voice saying “If she’s half as smart as she thinks she is, you’ve got to be careful. Swell time to have a stranger here. No . . . no . . . please; stop it! Don’t make love to me. That’s not the point. Anyway, we’d better go in.”

I heard a subdued male voice, but although by this time I was listening as hard as I could, I couldn’t catch what he was saying or who he was. I sat perfectly still until they’d gone. Then I got up and slipped quickly back along the grass and through the long window into the living room.

It was empty, and I sat down quietly in a corner of the sofa in front of the fireplace and picked up a magazine. Just then I heard someone behind me.

“Oh, here you are.”

It was Agnes Hutton. I looked around. She was standing in the door, smiling.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Cheryl said you were outside.”

I smiled at the absurdity of such an idea.

“Have you been here long?”

“Not very. Why?”

“Mr. Trent wants to see you. I told him you were probably frightfully tired and didn’t want to listen to anything tonight. Not even his childhood.”

“I’m not really tired at all,” I said. “If he’s not . . . too busy.”

“You mean about Michael Spur? That’s all Mrs. Trent’s nonsense. Don’t let it worry you. Mr. Trent doesn’t, you know. He’s used to it.”

“To what?”

I wondered if Michael Spur or some similar person returned every week or so.

“Oh, I mean to Mrs. Trent’s fads and fears. This psychology is just the latest. A little over a year ago she turned nudist and made poor Perry Bassett go round the place in shorts and a pair of sandals. It was very funny, because Perry insisted on wearing his old brown hat too. Then the high priest of the cult ran off with her French maid, so it didn’t last. Then she met Dr. Sartoris at a tea in Baltimore, and took up psychology. Oh, it’s a great place,” she added with a delicately stifled yawn. “Never a dull moment. You won’t forget to drop in the library to see Mr. Trent before you go to bed? They’re all having a powwow in there now. Good night.”

I must have looked a little surprised. After all, it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. She laughed a soft gurgling little laugh that was rather attractive, mostly because it didn’t sound at all like her silky Mona Lisa smile.

“Yes—I’m getting out of the way,” she said. “You’ll always find it best when there’s a family conclave. Always ends in a frightful row.”

She was quite right. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard a door slam violently and Mrs. Trent came storming across the hall into the living room, almost beside herself. Her brother and Dr. Sartoris were following her. I didn’t quite get what had happened. I learned later that Mr. Trent had ordered Dr. Sartoris out of the house and Mrs. Trent had threatened to go with him, and Mr. Trent had told her to go ahead and good riddance.

“He wants to get me out of here so he can have that woman in my place,” she cried hysterically. “Ill never go now. I’ll just show him!”

“Now, my dear Emily,” said Dr. Sartoris firmly. “You’re not quite yourself. Sit down and be calm a moment—do you hear me?”

I’d got out by that time.

The library door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped inside. It was a high paneled room lined with mellow old calf volumes that looked as if nothing had disturbed a single one of them for centuries.

Mr. Trent and his lawyer Mr. Archer and Michael Spur were sitting around the large table, talking earnestly. I backed out, but Mr. Trent caught sight of me.

“Come in, Miss Gather,” he said, getting up with a smile. “Have you met Michael Spur? “

“Yes, we’ve met.”

“That’s fine. Well, Archer, we’ll look into the business tomorrow. I want to talk to my Boswell a while and just get our bearings.”

Mr. Archer smiled genially, and he and Michael Spur got up.

“What about a rubber of bridge, Michael?” he said. “How’s your game?”

“Just fair, sir.”

“Fine. Just what I like.”

“Be careful of him, Michael,” said Mr. Trent. “He’ll get your shirt.”

“That’s about all I’ve got, sir,” Michael Spur grinned.

I was almost startled to see the change that had come over Mr. Trent. His face was tired and drawn, and he sat down heavily when the two of them had gone, as if the business of keeping up a genial front had suddenly got to be too much for him.

“Well, that’s that,” he said. “Sit down over here, Miss Cather. I want to talk to you.”

I took the chair Michael Spur had been sitting in and faced him across the table. There was an amber-silk-shaded lamp between us. He pushed it aside and leaned forward, his hands folded in front of him.

“Have you ever thought what a shingle that’s caught in an eddy in the tide feels like?” he said. I shook my head.

“Well, that’s just what I feel like,” he went on. “My ideas about this autobiography of mine have changed a good deal since McCrae first talked to me about it.”

“You don’t mean we’re not going to write it?”

He laughed what the old melodrama called a mirthless laugh. I felt distinctly not at ease,

“Yes, we’re going to write it,” he said. “But it’s going to be different.”

He seemed lost in thought for a moment. Then he said, “But that can wait”—as it turned out, a profoundly and tragically untrue statement. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about first. Cheryl says you know this fellow Sartoris. What kind of a bird is he?”

“Cheryl’s wrong, Mr. Trent,” I said. “I don’t know him at all. I met him today for the first time.”

“That straight?” he demanded quickly. Through the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles his eyes stared coldly at me.

“That’s straight, Mr. Trent,” I replied.

“Then he’s not a famous New York doctor?”

“He may be. I just don’t happen to have heard of him.”

I suppose I might have told him that Dr. Sartoris had been in our office to see McCrae that morning, but I didn’t. It’s always hard to know what to tell people and what not to. I usually manage to do just the wrong thing.

“Well,” he said abruptly, “what do you think of this nonsense about young Spur? “

“You mean that he may kill someone else because he killed his father here?”

He nodded impatiently.

“I should think any doctor would agree that it’s perfectly possible, Mr. Trent,” I said. “But I don’t know much about it.”

He grunted.

“You think I did wrong in telling that fellow to get out of here and mind his own business? You think maybe the boy is still dangerous? I’m running into trouble by not letting Sartoris take him in hand?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Trent, really,” I protested feebly. “I don’t think Dr. Sartoris would hurt him.”

His manner changed instantly.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said quickly. “That’s just where you’re wrong. You don’t know anything about it. There’s something wrong about that fellow. And that’s another thing I want to ask you about. If it was just my wife I wouldn’t care what he did—but it’s my daughter.”

He got up and began to pace back and forth along the table. He had just begun to speak again when there was a tap at the door and Michael Spur came in.

It was the first time that I’d got a very clear sight of him. As he stood just inside the door, looking at Mr. Trent for a moment and shaking his head a little, with a queer and despondent look on his face, I saw a tall and almost rugged young man, his face a healthy bronze, his crisp curly hair a chestnut brown that looked as if it had been burned under a tropical sun. His mouth was full and generous, and while he wasn’t handsome in the smooth, suave manner of Dr. Sartoris or Cheryl’s fiancé Major Ellicott, he was decent and clean-looking and dependable. But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were dark, and somewhere in the depths of them there were brooding unhappy shadows that came to the surface whenever his face was in repose. They were apparent now as he came up to the table and sat down.

“Well,” he said with a short laugh, “I can’t stay in there. I guess it’s no use.”

He ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of unhappi-ness and almost of despair.

Mr. Trent cast me a sharp glance.

“I thought I was over all that. I thought I could come back here and take things up, without any trouble. But my God, the place hasn’t changed at all. Perry’s still bidding a slam on two aces, Aunt Emily’s passing, Mr. Archer’s doubling. It seems just as though, if I looked up, Dad would be standing there in the door telling Perry to learn how to count.”

He sank his head in his hands suddenly, a dry painful sob racking his strong lean body.

‘Oh God,” he said, “I can’t forget it. I killed him! It’s just as if it was yesterday.”

The glance Mr. Trent gave me was very grave, but his voice was confident.

“Now, my boy,” he said gently. “You’ve got to snap out of it. We can’t go on like this. That’s all over-”

“I know. It can’t go on. That’s the worst of it. I figured that out years ago. I forced myself to quit thinking about it. It got to be like a bad dream that really never happened. That’s why I came back—I thought I was all over it, and I’d prove it and carry on. But it’s no go. I guess I’d better get back to the sticks.”

It was at that point that Mr. Trent made what I suppose was one of the greatest concessions he had ever made in his life.

“Look here, Michaei,” he said. “Why don’t you talk things over with this doctor of Emily’s? They say he’s very successful with cases like yours. No harm in giving him a try. What’s he called himself?—a psychoanalyst.”

Michael shook his head.

“No use,” he said wearily. “I’ve been to a couple of ’em. One in San Francisco told me to come back here and one in Chicago told me to stay away. They talk a lot and that’s all there is to it. I guess the Chicago one was right. Anyway, I’ll clear out in the morning.”

Mr. Trent hesitated.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll talk about it in the morning, anyway. You’d better get to bed.”

Talking things over in the morning seemed to be Mr. Trent’s approach to all his problems. Fie put an arm around Michael’s shoulders and walked out into the hall with him.

He came slowly back into the library, his head sunk forward on his chest, his hands clasped behind his back, and stood in front of the fireplace, making odd noises in his throat. Then he looked up suddenly with a very odd expression on his face.

“Did it ever occur to you tonight, young lady, that you’ve sort of stumbled into a pretty funny situation?”

I must have looked puzzled in the extreme, for he laughed shortly.

“Did you ever happen to think, this last hour or so, what a weapon anybody round here has got, if he happens to know how to stir Michael Spur up just right?”

I suppose I did see what he meant, but the expression on my face must still have been rather queer. He laughed again.

“You probably don’t know anybody you’d like murdered, young woman,” he said. As a matter of fact I could think of several people, just offhand. But I said “No.”

He nodded almost absent-mindedly, as if he were thinking very hard about something else.

“Well, there’s a couple around here that I could be rid of without losing sleep,” he went on. “If that boy does shoot anybody, I hope he’s careful who he picks out.”

He lapsed into a moody silence again.

“It’s funny, now,” he said, “his deciding to come back here just now. It’s damned funny. Well, Boswell—I’ll look into that in the morning. See you about ten. O.K.?”

I nodded and said “Good night, Mr. Trent,” and started for the door. He stopped me.

“Look here, young lady,” he said earnestly. “Keep an eye on my little girl for me—will you? She means a lot to me.”

I smiled. “I’ll be glad to, Mr. Trent,” I said. “Good night.”

I went back into the living room to say good night to Mrs. Trent. She and Dr. Sartoris were playing bridge with Perry Bassett and Cheryl. Mr. Archer and Major Ellicott were engrossed in a game of chess, and Agnes Hutton was sitting in front of the fireplace reading.

When I came in Cheryl looked up and smiled, and her mother said, “Oh, is that you, Miss Mather? We looked all over for you to make a fourth at bridge, but we couldn’t find you. So poor Miss Hutton had to read a book.”

“I really don’t find that a hardship, Mrs. Trent,” Agnes Hutton said sweetly. Mrs. Trent flushed. As I had no idea that what she would say, if anything, would help, I broke in. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been talking to Mr. Trent. Anyway, I’m rather tired, if you’ll excuse me.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “You can play tomorrow night. That’s my trick. It was my jack.”

“I know, mother,” Cheryl said patiently. “But Perry trumped it with the two of diamonds. Anyway, mother, Miss Cather’s waiting to say good night.”

“Oh, good night, Miss Mather.”

Mrs. Trent looked around and smiled brightly.

“I hope you get some sleep. Queen Elizabeth slçpt in your bed. They say it’s well over a hundred years old.”