A dram of poison

"Not at all," said the artist. "I was in love last winter. If anyone had snickered at me, I'd have spit in their eye." He would have. Everyone believed this.

"How come this Ethel put the Indian sign on the both of you?" asked the bus driver. "How come she shook you? Anybody can see you two are in love." He was a gentle ruthless man.

"I was a rabbit," said Rosemary. "I should have spit in her eye." She was sitting very straight. "I am to blame."

Mr. Gibson felt exhausted and also very peaceful. "I, too," he said. "But I am old, lame, unsure . . . and extremely stupid. I permitted her to upset me. My fault. My blame." He wanted to cry. He drank thirstily.

"Whereas, our Paul," said the painter, "is as handsome as the hero in a slick magazine. And as good as he is beautiful. No offense. No offense. Sex, I presume?" He crossed his yellow socks and tried to look innocent. "According to lethal Ethel?"

"Lethal Ethel, that's good" said the bus driver angrily. "That's apt, that is."

Virginia said, "Surely people know when they're in love . . ." and bit her lips.

Rosemary leaned back with a little smile gentle on her face. "Do you know something? There is a fact they never take account of—in a magazine story or the movies either . . . that I ever saw. Why is it you . . . want to be where someone is? Why?" She looked at Virginia. "It can't be just because he's good-looking. (Although Kenneth is, very.) It certainly can't be just because somebody is young. To me," she continued to the lamp beside the sofa, "the most important thing of all is how much fun you have together, and I don't mean sex. Although—" Rosemary gulped and went on. "Do you understand me? I mean—just enjoying each other's.company. We had such good times ... as I had never known. We laughed," said Rosemary. She leaned forward with sudden vehemence. "Why don't people talk about that as if it were attractive? It is. It's powerfully attractive. I think it's the most powerful attraction of all."

"The most permanent," said Mrs. Pyne, softly.

"Absolutely," said Mrs. Boatright. "Or the race could not endure. All beloved wives, for instance, are not size twelve." She rocked a little indignantly on her great haunches.

"Hm," said the artist, "my fourth wife now ... I had a most delightful companionship with that one, all around the clock. And although her ankles were not perfect, she is the one I mourn ... it's a fact." He looked mildly astonished.

"I . . . agree," breathed Virginia. The bus driver slid his eyes under his lashes.

Mr. Gibson, with joy shooting in his veins . . . and shame and sorrow, too, but with an iron resolve that the rest of this was his own private business however much he loved —Yes, he did!—all of them . . . took Rosemary's hand and got to his feet. He said with a simplicity that achieved privacy with one stroke, "Thank you all very much for everything you have done and said. But we must go now."

To Mrs. Pyne he said, "If you will pray for us—that the poison be found . . ."

"I will," she vowed.

Paul said shyly, nervously, "Sure hope it works out O.K."

Jeanie said, "Oh, we all hope so!"

Mrs. Boatright said, "The police may still find it. Mustn't underestimate the organization."

It

The painter said, "It could be on a dump heap, right now and you will never know . . . never hear , . . You realize?"

The nurse said, "Oh, please ... be happy." Her whole cool responsible little person was dissolving in sentimental tears.

The bus driver said earnestly, "Lots of good books been written in jail; I mean to say, 'Stone walls do not . . .' "

"I'll remember that, Lee," said Mr. Gibson affectionately. For this man was the one who had set the fashion, the one who had decreed, in the beginning, that there would be no candy. He offered none now, really.

Mr. Gibson slipped one arm around Rosemary's waist and guided her out of the house.

They left seven people.

"He's a darling," sobbed Virginia. "She's a dear. . . . Can't we save them? Think, everybody!"

Then the seven were silent in that room—silent and sad and still fighting.

Mr. Gibson and his wife, Rosemary, walked rather slowly and quite silently along the terrace to its end and down the steps and across the double driveway. It was a quarter of six o'clock. A sweet evening coming. They passed the shining garbage cans. Beyond the steps to the kitchen there grew a shrub, and Mr. Gibson pulled his wife gently to the far side of this friendly green mass where no window overlooked them.

He took her in his arms and she came close. He kissed her gently and then again, less so. Her head came upon his shoulder.

"You do remember the restaurant, Kenneth?"

"I do. I do."

"How we laughed! I thought after you were hurt, that you couldn't, didn't remember."

But remembered woe was far away. She only sighed.

"I remember the fog, too," he murmured. "We said it was beautiful."

"We didn't—altogether—mean the fog?"

"No." He kissed her, once more, most tenderly. "It's an old-fashioned plot, mouse. Isn't it? A misunderstanding. But then, I am an old-fashioned man."

"I love you so," said Rosemary. "No matter what— don't leave me."

"No matter what," he promised. He was a criminal. He

might leave her, although not "really." There was bitter. There was sweet.

In a few minutes, he turned her gently, and they began to go up the steps to the kitchen door.

Chapter XXI

ETHEL GffiSON returned to the cottage shortly after four o'clock that afternoon. She frowned to find the doors unlocked, the place wide open, and empty. Very careless of her brother! Still, he might be over at the Townsends', just across the driveways. Ethel did not feel in a mood to join him, if so. She had arranged her day in her mind and did not like to break her plan with idle and unexpected sociability.

She put off her summer suit-jacket and marched into the kitchen. What disarray! Really, order was essential in so small a house. Ethel did not like living in this cottage; an apartment would be so much less labor. She thought they would be moving elsewhere before very long. Now she compressed her lips. Lettuce limpening on the open counter. Bread not neatly in the bread box. Cocoa, tea, should be on the shelves. Cheese ought to be refrigerated. A green paper bag. Now what was this? A tiny bottle of olive oil. Imported! Much too expensive!

She shook her head and proceeded to clear the things away, properly washed the lettuce and put it in the crisping bin, the cheese in the icebox, threw the paper bag into the kitchen wastebasket, placed cans and bottles in the cupboard.

She stepped into the living room long enough to switch on the radio. Music was a habit with her. She paid no attention to it but felt its absence.

She then walked back to her (and Rosemary's) bedroom, drew off her business clothes and hung them, put on a cotton dress. Ethel then threw herself down upon the bed to relax. Music came distantly. When there were voices, she did not listen. She never listened to commercials. Her mind ran over the first day at this office. This job would serve. She already felt that she had some clues to the hid-

den springs of the boss's character. She foresaw an orderly, courageous, and useful life in this quiet town. Excellent for her health. She dozed.

She was wakened at a quarter after five by the telephone. The house was still empty.

"Yes?"

"This is the Townsend Laboratories calling," said a female voice. "Is Mr. Kenneth Gibson there?"

"No, he is not." Ethel was crisp.

"Where is he, do you know?"

"No, I do not. I daresay he will be here at dinner time."

"When?" The voice faded feebly.

"At a quarter of six."

"Oh. Well, will you be sure to have him call this number?"

Ethel took down the number.

"It's important," said the voice, fading again as if in some mysterious agitation.

"I'll tell him," said Ethel, soothingly.

Ethel hung up. She was slightly annoyed.

Inconsiderate! Consideration was the first rule in such a menage as this. Rosemary should have returned, must soon. Where could Ken be? She couldn't imagine. Yes, she could. Probably he was lost in a book at the branch library.

Dinner at a quarter of six.

She would start dinner.

They knew the dinner hour.

The radio still played. She felt a bit martyred in this mysterious loneliness and she turned it off, feeding a grievance.

She went into the kitchen and began to prepare their dinner. It would be very simple. Ethel approved of a spaghetti dinner, inexpensive and nourishing and easy to put together—these packaged brands. She dumped the boughten sauce out into a pan. Thought better of this. One ought to doctor up a boughten sauce, she knew. Ethel chopped an onion fine and put it into the sauce. She was not a sensitive cook. She had eaten what restaurants put before her, for so many years. Food was food. It was either cheap or it was expensive. Still, she realized that she ought to have sauteed the onions. Perhaps in the olive oil? What did Ken mean it for, anyway? The bottle didn't hold enough for a salad dressing, Ethel did not like it in a dressing, having made do with cheap vegetable oils for so

long. Surely not for fruit! No, he must have fancied the taste of olive oil in the spaghetti sauce. Perhaps it was some fancy of Rosemary's.

She grimaced but took the bottle down and turned the cap. Oh, well . . . she dumped it into the saucepan. She hoped it would not taste too much. She washed out the bottle and set it upside down to drain. King Roberto stood on his head. Ethel filled a large pot with water for the pasta.

She began to cut up fruit for salad. She doubted the lettuce would be crisp at all. Five thirty-four and nobody home yet.

Ethel began to set the table in the dining alcove of the living room. From here she could see the driveways and she heard and saw Paul's car come in and a great load of people begin to get hastily out of it. Ethel averted her eyes. It was beneath her to spy on the neighbors. A party, she presumed. The word "party" meant something lightweight to her, timewasting, profitless chitchat. (Nobody ever asked Ethel to parties.)

Now the table was set. The water at a boil. The sauce ready enough. She turned it low. She mixed the salad.

When the clock said twenty of six, Ethel felt injured. She threw the pasta into the boiling water, and went into the living room and sat down with her back to the mantel to watch the clock on the opposite wall.

She would knit for nine minutes.

Then dinner would be ready. And they should remember and be considerate. She was always considerate.

At eleven minutes of six she marched to the kitchen.

She heard their feet.

"Where on earth have you been?" said Ethel heartily. "I see you're together . . ."

"Yes," said Mr. Gibson, "we are together." He was a little surprised to see the same old Ethel, standing on both feet in her accustomed way, vigorous and sure of herself.

"Dinner is exactly ready," said Ethel ."Now, you just have time to wash. There is nothing for you to do, Rosemary. I've done it alh Now, get to the table while I drain this and mix in the sauce. Shoo!" said Ethel, indulgently.

Meekly, they crossed the kitchen. But they kissed in the hall.

"Doesn't know . . ." said Mr. Gibson wonderingly.

"No, she doesn't seem to. They aren't broadcasting your name . . ."

"Well, we must tell—"

"Yes . . ."

•TSTot easy."

"No." The sweet was so very sweet.

"Everybody ready?" hallooed Ethel.

Mr. Gibson let Rosemary go and he went into his own place. It already looked antique to him, a former way of life. Could he have books in a cell, he wondered? Alas, he couldn't have Rosemary. Face reality. Face wicked folly. Face love. Face it, that you are beloved.

He washed, musing, perceiving that Ethel was right. Or somewhat right. He had not seen clearly his own motives. He had rationalized. He had plastered a black philosophy in the mind over a quivering wound in the heart. Although it was not really that simple, either. Still, worms might have eaten him. . . . Well, he knew a little more now. He knew he had been too suggestible, too quick to abandon his own faiths. He ought to have trusted himself better.

Ethel made us both doubt ourselves, he mused, gave us that terrible feeling that one cannot trust oneself, no use to try. Such doubt as this, in quantity, judiciously used, might be a tonic and a medicine. But oh, too much, swallowed blindly at a bad time, had shaken him to his foundations.

It was dangerous stuff.

He met Rosemary in the hall. Their hands touched' They went across the living room to the dining alcove.

"Sit ye doon," said Ethel with ponderous good will and forbearance. "You naughty children." Her eyes were wise and speculating. She'd soon "know" where they had been.

They sat them down. Ethel spooned portions of spaghetti from the steaming mass in the wooden bowl. "Confess," she said. "What have you been up to?"

"There was a little mixup," said Mr. Gibson. He stared at the spaghetti, not feeling any appetite.

Rosemary nervously took up her fork. "We'll tell you about it, as best we can," she began. Dear Rosemary, brave enough to try to help him tell.

"I suppose you've had a talk?" said Ethel, giving them one of her looks. "Now, my dears, it is not my business

and I do not pry. It is your privilege to have your little secrets—"

Rosemary put the fork down abruptly. "Any decision that will affect me," said Ethel kindly, "I'm sure you will tell me about." "Yes," said Rosemary steadily.

Mr. Gibson saw, in Ethel's eyes, himself, the lamb, the softhearted, the unworldly, the bom bachelor, wifeless, living on into old age with his devoted spinster sister. Doomed to this. It was not true.

"We are very much in love, Ethel," he said quietly and firmly, "Rosemary and I."

Ethel's eyeballs swiveled and a blank look came down. But her mouth twitched in tiny disbelief, and the veiled eyes wondered. She did not speak.

But Rosemary spoke, "Just what was said—" "What . . . ?"

"Just what was said. That's what is meant, Ethel." "I'm so very glad," said Ethel in a false-sounding flutter. "But don't let dinner get cold . . ."

She didn't believe them. Her face remained blank but Mr. Gibson had an image of her thoughts, writhing and scrambling to detect some "real" meaning behind what he had said . . . until they writhed like . . . like a bowl of spaghetti. He couldn't stomach the stuff. However, he had better eat her dinner or offend her. He turned his fork. Ethel's fork thrust into her spaghetti. Suddenly, people were shouting. Startled, they all looked toward the window.

Six people steamed off Paul's porch and came roaring across the driveway.

"Gibson! Hey! Hey!" the bus driver was shouting. Mr. Gibson skipped to the front door nimbly, limp and all. He was terribly, amazingly, glad to' see them. Life throbbed in the house suddenly when in trooped Lee Coffey with Virginia on the end of his arm. Then Theo Marsh—flippety-flop—his seamed face beaming, and yoimg Jeanie, ducking lithely under his waving limbs. And then Paul, holding the door for the looming up of Mrs. Boat-right, who came in like an ocean liner. "We found it!" they all shouted.

"Everything's under control," yelped Lee, who was waving a sheet of paper. "The marines have landed! We did it, after all!" He pounded Mr. Gibson on the back rather violently. "No sting! O grave, where is thy...!" he babbled.

"Tell us!" screamed Rosemary, over the noise, "one of you--"

"This Jeanie child," roared Theo Marsh, "this Jeanie is so sound and intelligent that I am lying in the dust at her feet. Fool! Fool, that I am. My life! My work!" He snatched the paper from the bus driver.

"But what—?"

The nurse said, "Well, tell them!" Then she told them. "It was Jeame who asked Theo to draw the face he'd seen."

"And he drew it so well," cried Jeanie aglow, "that Grandma recognized her!"

The paper was thrust under Mr. Gibson's nose. A few pencil lines—a face, a beauty.

"Mama said it was Mrs. Violette," yelled Paul, "and I couldn't believe her. I never thought she was so darned lovely."

"Have eyes ... and see not," droned the artist. His hair stood on end. He held the drawing in both hands and moved it softly to and fro. "Has she ever done any modeling?" he crooned. "These exquisite nostrils!"

"But what," gasped Mrs. Gibson, "What happened!"

"Virginia called up her house." explained Lee excitedly. "This Violette, or whatever. And it was this Violette. Some sister or other was there, and this sister says, "Yes she had it."

"This sister ha—?"

"Mrs. Violette had it!" boomed Paul. "She's gone to. the mountains. She took it with her! But Mrs. Boatright called the police ..."

Lee said, "And she's buddies with the high brass. She told them what to do, all right." He spanked Mrs, Boatright on the shoulders. "Hey, Mary Anne?"

"They will stop her car," said Mrs. Boatright calmly, "or truck, as I beheve it is. We secured the license number. An all-points bulletin. The organization is quite capable." Mrs Boatright was beaming like Santa Claus, for all her calm.

"So you see!" gasped Virginia. "She's not going to use it en route. How could she? So you are saved!"

Ethel stood there. "Furthermore," said Mrs. Boatright, looking around as if this were a committee, "I see no reason, at all, since there has been no catastrophe, for any further proceeding. Justice will not be served by publicity or by punishment. Mr. Gibson is not going to kill himself. Nor will he ever do such a thing as he did. I do believe that I convinced Chief Miller ... If not, I will."

"You did already," cried Lee. "You beat it into him, Mary Anne. Believe me, you were superb! So All's Well that Ends Well! Hey? Hey?"

"Hey?" joined Theo.

Rosemary made a little whimpering sound of relief and staggered and drooped into a chair.

"Is there any brandy?" said the nurse anxiously, observing this collapse vsdth a professional eye.

Ethel stood there. She had no idea what was happening. She understood nothing. "Brandy in the kitchen," she said mechanically, "left-hand cupboard, over the sink ..." Her face went into a kind of social simper. She expected to be introduced to them all.

But the nurse ran toward the kitchen with the bus driver on the end of her arm.

The telephone rang and Mrs. Boatright rolled in her swift smooth way to answer it.

It was Theo Marsh who turned, elbows out, chin forward, eyes malicious, and said loudly, "So this is Ethel? Lethal Ethel?"

"Really," said Ethel, turning a dull red, "who are these people!"

Mr. Gibson, trembling in every limb, had fallen into a chair himself. He realized that Ethel was completely at a loss. She. was not on the same level as the rest of them. She couldn't understand their swift communications. She'd been insulted besides . . . But he could not speak, for he was saved who had been doomed, and he tingled and was dumb.

Rosemary said weakly, "We were just going to tell you—just a min—" She gasped to silence.

There was a silence as they all understood this with surprise. Ethel did not know?

Mrs. Boatright spoke into the phone, "Yes, he is here. . . . But may I take a message—? The Laboraory? Ohy I see. But it has been found, you know, and no harm done at all. . . . Oh, you did? . . . No, you couldn't have known at that time. ... I see. . . . Oh no, it was never

loose upon the public. That was just an error. . , ." She went on murmuring.

Out in the kitchen the nurse found the brandy with dispatch, but then Lee, with enterprise, embraced her. They stood in a clinch. A green paper bag lay on top of the other trash in the kitchen wastebasket. The bottle, with King Roberto's picture on it, stood upside down on the counter. But they whispered, and they were not looking at the scenery.

In the living room, Theo bared his particolored teeth at Ethel. (Mrs. Boatright was too busy on the phone to restrain him, for now she was calling to have a car sent.) So Theo said, "Ethel herself? The dead-end kid? The doom preacher? The amateur psychiatrist?"

Ethel looked as if she would choke.

"I cannot see," she cried, hoarse with rage, "why a perfect freak of a strange old man is permitted to come in here and call me names! Until somebody in this room makes sense, I intend to eat my dinner, which—" her voice rose to a scream— "is getting cold!"

Ethel never could bear an interruption in her schedule, or any surprises. She went to the table and sat down with a plop and plunged her fork blindly into the congealing mass of the spaghetti. Theo Marsh drifted after her. He leaned on the wall and watched—his head cocked.

But to Mr. Gibson, in the chair, in the living room, his senses were returning. His eyes were clearing. He had assimilated the news, the wonderful surprise. He was saved. He was free. He loved and was loved and nobody was going to die of the poison, and prayers are really answered for all a human being dares to know, and he looked about with relish to receive the sense of home— his dear—his earthly home.

And his breath stopped.

"Rosemary! he cried. "What is that? On the mantel?"

"What, darling?" Rosemary, who had risen, restless with joy, moved, drunken with relief. "This?" She took a ball of mustard-colored string up in her hand. "There's money here," she said wonderingly, "where the blue vase used to stand."

So Mr. Gibson, his wits working as fast as ever they had in his life, quickened with terror, plunged like a quarterback between Paul and Jeanie past the body of

Thee Marsh to seize the loaded fork from the hand of his sister, Ethel.

"Mrs. Violette was here!" he shouted.

"Really, Ken, I couldn't say," said Ethel huffily. "But you left every door in this house unlocked and we could have been robbed . . ." She was livid with anger.

"Olive oil!" he shouted. "A bottle of olive oil! Where is it?"

"In the sauce," said Ethel. "I presumed you meant it for the sauce." Her brows were at the top of their possible ascent. "Have you gone mad?" she inquired frigidly.

At this moment the nurse and the bus driver came on loud quick feet. "What's this!" Virginia said. She had a glass of brandy in one hand and a small empty glass bottle in the other, which bottle she shook at them.

"And this! Hey!" puffed Lee Coffey, showing them the green paper bag.

"It's here" said Mr. Gibson. "Don't touch it, Ethel! It is a deadly poison!"

"Poison?" she said recoiling.

Mr. Gibson scraped spaghetti off all three plates into the bowl and then he took up the bowl in a grim clutch. "It must have been Mrs. Violette who spoke to me," he told them. "She did have to go to the bank. I remember she said so. She took the bus, down and back. She spoke the second time when she saw me leave it in the seat. She knew it was mine. She brought it back with the string!"

"She is so very honest . . ." said Rosemary awesomely.

"That's it?" cried Theo. "You got the poison, there?"

"It's here. And it's been here all afternoon," said Mr. Gibson, and he took the bowl tenderly with him and sat down and held it on his lap and bowed his head.

"We must inform the police," said Mrs. Boatright briskly—but with deep pleasure.

"We are all heroes," said the bus driver.

But Jeanie Townsend, girl heroine, stood with all the other heroes, and frowned. "But why doesn't Miss Gibson know about the poisoned olive oil?" she asked. "I heard them telling all about it ... on her radio. This one, right here."

"I . . . don't under—what poison?" said Ethel, rising, tottering. "I don't understand. Olive oil?" Paul began, "He stole it from my lab . . ." "The laboratory called earlier," said Mrs. Boatright

sharply. "They were just on the line. They had discovered their loss. The police had not got to them then. But surely, they must have told you about your brother who had the only opportunity—"

"I—took a message," said Ethel thickly. "Nobody mentioned . . . poison? Did Ken have poison?" Her eyes rolled.

"He was going to do himself in," said the bus driver chattily. "But he thinks better of it now."

"Do himself . . . what? Please . . ."

"He thinks better of it now," said Rosemary shakily. "Oh, darling, have we really found it?"

"Right here," said Mr. Gibson. "I've got it." He tightened his tight fingers. Rosemary looked angelic, suddenly, as if she would now fly up to the ceiling on great white wings.

"Je-ust a minute," said Theo Marsh. He looked at Lee Coffey. "What have we here?" he inquired. > "Hoist?"

"Hoist! Hoist!" croaked the bus driver. "I see what you mean. With her own petard." He flung out one arm.

"Uh-AwIiI"' said Theo. "We better analyze this. Now, Ethel . . ." He rounded upon her. "You know, of course, that we are all impelled by subconscious forces. Primitive and low. Hey?" (He had picked up the bus driver's "hey.")

Ethel looked absolutely stupid.

"You say you didn't 'hear' the warning? Hah-hah-hah." The artist gave forth a mirthless sound. "But the subconscious hears all things, my dear. Now, you know that. Then the laboratory phoned. But told you nothing? Nor did you ask?"

"Likely story, all right," said Lee cheerfully. "Where was your subconscious . . . hey? All God's chillun got sub—"

"Her subconscious was putting two and two together," said Theo, shouting him down. "Therefore it is obvious, is it not, Ethel? You wished to kill your brother and his wife. You must have."

Ethel stared at him.

"Because you nearly did kill them, you know," said Theo. "There is a deadly poison in that sauce. Don't try to tell us you never 'meant' to do it." He put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. He looked like the sheriff in a Western.

"I , , ." croaked Ethel, "I had no warning ... I don't

understand. . . . Please." Her wits seemed to return. "You mean we would have become ill?"

"You would have become dead," said the bus driver. Her eyes popped, staring.

"Failing this," said Theo, "you then obviously wished to kill yourself" Theo veered to the bus driver. "Say, how does that come in?"

"We'll figure something," said the driver enthusiastically. ''We'll tell her what her motive was." "Sex?" said Theo, brightening. Mr. Gibson was speechless.

Rosemary said indignantly, "It doesn't come in. Stop it, both of you."

"Subconsciously," began the artist, his bright malicious glance examining his victim. "Theo," said Mrs. Boatright.

"Lee," said Virginia in exactly the same tone. The bus driver's sh6ulders dropped, his arms turned outward in a gesture of apology and relaxation. But he was grinning.

Mr. Gibson, however, watched his wife. Adoringly. (My darling, he thought, is truly kind and compassionate of heart. And if this is innocent, how sweet it is, this innocence, how lovely!) For Rosemary stood beside- Ethel, furiously defending her.

"Ethel just does not hear words when she turns on music. She has trained herself not to. She really wouldn't have heard the warning. She is not trying to kill anybody. She didn't mean to. She couldn't have. It would have been an accident. And you know it" she defied the artist, "and don't be so mean, now."

"Rosemary," said Ethel brokenly, reaching for her. "I don't understand this . . . honestly. I certainly wouldn't want to hurt you or anyone . . . honestly—"

"Of course not," said Rosemary, caressing her as one would comfort a frightened child. "Don't you pay any attention to these cut-ups. Now, I believe you'd never mean to, Ethel."

Mr. Gibson thought dizzily, Rosemary and I must try to help poor Ethel . . . poor, brave, unlucky Ethel, faithless, cheated of love. He seemed to himself to pass out for a moment or two. Everybody seemed to be telling Ethel the whole sequence, and he could not bear it. He revived to find hims elf still sitting in the chair with the

bowl of poisoned food tight in his hands. He looked about him.

Now Ethel sat alone.

Mrs. Walter Boatright was on the phone telling the police department exactly what it was to do now. (It would do as she said. He had no doubt.)

The little nurse, finding nobody interested in the brandy, had slipped to the floor beside Ethel's chair and sat there thoughtfully sipping it herself.

The bus driver and the painter were wringing each other by the hand, the artist literally hopping up and down in intellectual delight and still muttering, "Hoist! Hoist!"

"Judge not! Hey?" said the bus driver. "The biter bit. A bitter bite."

Jeanie had run for the door in a streak, a moment ago (now-he recalled), yelling, "I'll tell Grandma." And Paul, who had been hugging her, in his joy, now hugged Rosemary. (Anybody. Any soft huggable body. Mr. Gibson understood perfectly.)

He hugged the bowl and thought, Now who could predict such a scene as this? He felt delighted.

But he did not contemplate it long. Hanging onto the bowl, he plunged into the celebration, himself, in person.

A police car had slipped into the drive; now a cop got out.

He was young, and not too sure what he'd been sent here for. He approached the door of the cottage. Before he could ring, it was swinging in before him with a tremendous welcoming verve, pulled by a small, compact man with dancing eyes. This man had a slight, brown-haired, merry-eyed woman tucked under his other arm. She was smiling too, and she helped balance, between them, what looked to be a wooden bowl full of spaghetti. These two stepped back in unison, like a pair of dancers, bowing him inward.

In the small foyer, a big handsome gent was crooning into the telephone. "It's O.K., dear. It really is! Everything is wonderful and I'll be home soon." (The cop had no way of knowing he was talking to his mother-in-law.)

In the living room, a wiry old gentleman in a pink shirt whistling tunelessly through his teeth, and with his thin legs prancing, was enthusiastically steering the majestic

bulk of a beige-and-white-clad matron in the waltz. She stepped lightly.

Another man, in a leather jacket, crouched for the purpose of kissing the not unwilling lips of a cool little Nordic blonde who was sitting on the floor. From a tiny glass in her limp hand, something trickled on the back of his neck. He wasn't minding.

The cop's eye assessed all this. He was here, he supposed, to ask questions. "I dunno much about this," he confessed, lookmg at the plain-faced, middle-aged woman who sat in the midst of all the hilarity, stricken and still, staring at the carpet (as if she'd been shook, all right, he thought). "Is she the one," he said aside with pity, "who got careless with some poison?"

The man at the door hesitated. Then he said, "No, it was I. But mercifully . . . Come in. Gome in," said Mr. Gibson cordially. 'Tm all right now"

THE END