Alphabet Hicks

Ten

Out in the country the September night was cool and the orchestra of crickets and katydids applied itself to its intricate lovely symphony — or its infernal racket, to those who felt that way about it — with an urgency that forecast the imminence of an early frost to chill the musicians into silence.

The windows of the office in the laboratory building had been closed to keep the night air out, so that the cricket concert came only faintly to the ears of the three men who sat there around midnight, but it appeared from the expressions on their faces that they would not have been attentive to it in any case. Herman Brager looked exasperated and peevish, Ross Dundee stubborn and truculent, and R. I. Dundee about ready to explode.

He did explode. He pushed the record-playing machine away, shoved aside stacks of sonograph plates, and pounded the desk with his fist.

“It’s a damned farce! I’ve spent twenty years of my life building this into one of the soundest and most successful businesses in the country, and this is what I’ve come to! You don’t like it, do you? My God, neither do I! I’ll repeat it and keep on repeating it, my own wife selling me out, and one of you helping her do it! Shut up! And stealing the evidence I got of it! It wouldn’t surprise me if you were the both in on it! Not a bit! Not a bit! By God, I’ll clean it all out, this place and the factory and the office, the whole works, and start over again!”

He sat trembling.

“I can resign,” Brager said in a strained voice. “That is all I can do with dignity. I can resign. I resign.”

“So can I,” Ross said. His face as white; his eyes focused on his father. “I guess Mother was right, I shouldn’t have gone to work for you. We should both have known better. We might have known something impossible would happen. But I told you this afternoon — even when you lose your temper you shouldn’t say things that are absolutely crazy.”

Dundee got up and walked to a window and stood there with his back to them.

“Everybody loses his temper once too often,” Brager said. “I don’t dare lose my temper. I haven’t lost my temper for thirty years. All I can do and keep my self-respect — I can resign.”

There was a long silence but for the outdoor orchestra, which no one heard. Finally Dundee turned around and faced them.

“Facts are facts,” he said harshly.

Brager shook his head. “Not in science,” he declared. “A fact is a phenomenon observed or recorded by an imperfect instrument.”

“Bosh! A sonotel may not be perfect, but it doesn’t lie. As you do, or my son does, or both of you. I heard that record, and I heard my wife’s voice. That is a fact.”

Brager’s lips tightened. “I will not lose my temper. I will repeat, I know nothing of that record. Your son may lie about it, I don’t know. A boy will do many things for his mother. But try to be reasonable about it, Dick. I am not in his position, am I? Why should I do such a thing?”

“I don’t know, but I can guess. I once heard you talking to my wife.”

“I have often talked with your wife.”

“I know you have. This time you didn’t know I was there. I listened because it was amusing. It was amusing then. Nor did I resent it. I never have resented it because other men have found my wife attractive and desirable, why the devil should I? But if you ask me why you should lie for her, or even why you should conspire with her to sell me out, I say I can guess why. I tell you straight, Herman — where are you going?”

It was not Brager who had moved, but Ross. He was on his way to the door. With his hand on the knob he turned:

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re staying here till we settle this.”

“No. I’m leaving. I was going to go without saying anything.” Ross’s jaw quivered. He clamped it shut and went on through his teeth: “I didn’t say it this afternoon, but I’ll say it now. You’re my father, and I’ve known you all my life, and I think you’re trying to get rid of Mother, and I think that record is a fake and you did it. I didn’t want to say it!”

He was out and the door was closing behind him. Dundee started for the door, but Brager, surprisingly quick, intercepted him and caught his arm.

“Let him go, Dick,” Brager said. “Let the boy go and cool off.”

Ross did literally cool off, physically if not mentally. The air outside was chilly under the stars, and in the black darkness of the woods, where he halted on the bridge over the brook, he shivered his reaction to it. He stood there as if he were listening to the brook but actually didn’t hear it. He was thinking about his father and mother. All his life he had been emotionally aligned with his mother, he was aware of that, and regarded it as proper and natural, but that only made it the more imperative to keep his faculties free and his reason clear in a situation like this. Though it was hard to see how any further consideration of the facts could help any. In the past few days he had done about all the considering he was capable of. Besides, his mind wouldn’t stick to it; it kept flying off.

She loved that brook. He heard the brook again.

She was probably lying on her bed with her eyes open, or sitting on a chair or walking up and down her room, thinking of her dead sister.

He went on through the woods and crossed the lawn to the house, and found that she was doing none of those things. She was sitting on the side terrace, in a chair not ten feet away from the diagram marking the location where her sister’s body had lain. The white chalk-lines were plainly visible in the starlight.

Ross swerved from the path to the door and went over to her. She turned her head to him as he approached, turned it away again, and said nothing.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

She made no answer.

He moved a chair so that it was at right angles to hers, and sat on it. In the dim light of the stars her face, in profile, could have been any face to most eyes, but he was seeing it.

“Are any of those fellows around?” he asked.

“I think not.” She stirred and was quiet again. “Not in the house. Their cars are all gone.”

“I suppose they’re all out looking for him. I don’t know how to feel about that, because I don’t know how you feel. I want to feel the way you do about it. Of course, if he did that — to your sister—”

“He didn’t.”

Ross stared in astonishment. “But he must have!” he exclaimed. He added, at once, hastily, “I’m sorry. Only I didn’t think there was any doubt about it. There was no one else — who else was here?”

“You were here. And your father and Mrs. Powell.”

He continued to stare. “For God’s sake. That’s the first stupid thing I ever heard you say. Me? My father?”

“I’m often stupid.” She moved in her chair. “You asked who else was here and I told you. You were upstairs when Mrs. Powell went shopping to the village, and she was gone over an hour. Anyone could have walked in from the road.”

“But good heavens...” Ross sounded dazed.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Heather said. “I can’t think about it. My head just whirls around.”

“I’m sorry I said you were stupid. I have a bad habit—”

“That’s all right. I am stupid. As you remarked once before.”

“I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter. But you did.”

“I did not. That isn’t fair. It was a general observation regarding laymen who discuss scientific technique.”

“It doesn’t matter. I forgot it long ago.”

Ross opened his mouth, and abruptly closed it again. That inconsequential action, the opening and closing of his mouth, marked the end of an era for him and the beginning of a new one. It was a crucial victory of matter over mind, the matter consisting of a particle of flesh and bone weighing a hundred and nineteen pounds and distinguished from other particles not by its chemical formula but by the wholly unscientific appellation “Heather Gladd.” The young male mind sells logic dearly, and he had sold. The point his mouth had opened to make was unimpeachable: she mentioned something he had once said, distorting it, and then immediately declared that she had forgotten it long ago. But his mouth had closed again.

Not that he was sitting there analyzing it and saying farewell to an epoch; he was not thinking in terms of epochs.

“I always do get off on the wrong foot with you,” he began after a silence. “I did the very first day — not the first day I saw you — but you know — that day. When I asked you to go to the movies.”

“You commanded me to go to the movies.”

“Good lord! Command! Me command you! I know exactly what I said, the exact words. I said, ‘Get the car out while I change my clothes and we’ll go to the movies.’ Isn’t that right?”

“Something like that. It doesn’t matter. That’s approximately it.”

“And you said you didn’t care to go, and I went with Brager and Mrs. Powell, and three minutes after we left you took the station wagon and went by yourself, merely because you resented the way—”

“I didn’t resent it. I merely preferred to go alone.”

“Well, you didn’t like it. Did you?”

“Certainly not.” Heather was looking at him. “But I’m not as touchy as all that. It was just that it was obvious that being Mr. Dundee, Junior, you regarded me as being at your disposal as the fancy struck you, and it didn’t strike me that way.”

“What! You don’t mean that!”

“Of course I do. It was obvious. For heaven’s sake don’t think I’m complaining, it hasn’t bothered me any, and I’m quite aware that a conceited kid like you often doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway.”

“Conceited! My God!”

“You don’t even know you’re conceited? You’re the type. Perfect. The boss’s son. All the best firms have them. Sometimes I’ve thought there must be a book of rules for it and you were following them.”

“Of all the—” Ross was stunned.

The crickets and katydids were tapering off.

“Listen,” Ross said earnestly. “This is ridiculous. You must be kidding me. I may be a little conceited about my work — but no, I’m not even conceited about that, I just know I’m pretty good at it. If you think I’m conceited about girls — why listen, I’ve hardly ever looked at a girl. The fellows at school used to ride me because they thought I was girl-shy, but I wasn’t. Once about four years ago I gave a lot of consideration to it, why girls didn’t seem to impress me any one way or the other, and I decided that it was only because I was more interested in other things. Oh, I danced once in a while, and so on, but you know, all that kissing around and stuff, I tried it a few times, but I never really got into it. I decided I probably had a mother-fixation, but a fellow, the only one I ever discussed it with, said he didn’t think so because if I had I would be more emotional about it. He used some other word, but he meant emotional. Anyway, I never had the feeling that I had to kiss a girl, the way some fellows seem to feel that they’ve got to kiss a girl or bust — I never felt like that until that day in the office I leaned over and kissed you on the cheek. Then I knew it wasn’t—”

He stopped abruptly.

“Good lord,” he said in a tone of stupefaction, “you thought I was being conceited!”

Heather didn’t say anything.

“I certainly can stick my thumb in my eye,” Ross declared. “The way you acted that day I kissed you, at first, I admit it made me sore, because a kiss on the cheek is not anything involving moral turpitude, but if you thought I did it because I was conceited and expected you to like it — it wasn’t that at all, I did it because it came on me and I couldn’t help it. Anyway, I never did it again, and I could never get started talking to you. You wouldn’t let me. You never gave me a chance. So I got what I thought was a pretty clever idea. But I see now, you probably thought I was only being conceited, it was just a conceited idea.”

He stopped.

Heather asked, “What idea?”

“Those records.”

“What records?”

“Don’t do that,” he implored. “Please don’t. I don’t blame you, I have no right to ask you, I know I haven’t, but that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Otherwise I wouldn’t—”

“Oh! That’s what you’ve been talking about.”

“I didn’t say I have been, I said I wanted to. Another one got in by mistake, a record I’ve simply got to have.”

“Have you looked in the filing cases?”

“It’s not there. It’s unmarked. It would be with the ones you’ve got. If you played it—”

“You seem,” Heather interrupted, “to be under the delusion that I have a precious hidden treasure of unmarked sonograph plates. I don’t know how—”

“I didn’t say they’re precious. I don’t say they’re any treasure. But you must have done something with them. Darn it, you couldn’t eat them! I’m asking you — please! Don’t you realize how embarrassing and humiliating this is for me? I can’t very well tell you—”

“Someone’s coming. Your father and Mr. Brager.”

They could not be seen on account of the intervening shrubbery, but the sound of their voices was quite close. Heather arose abruptly, said good night, and disappeared into the house. Ross, to escape an exchange of words with his father, tiptoed quickly to the far end of the terrace and was in an angle of the shrubbery by the time the footsteps of the two men reached the flagstones. He heard the door open and close behind them. In a quarter of an hour he went inside, listened a minute at the foot of the stairs and heard no sound from above, and ascended to his room. When he wound his watch before getting into bed it said five minutes after one.

The indefatigable orchestra was still at it an hour and forty minutes later when a car with its lights dimmed went creeping along the road in front of the house, passing the entrance without turning in. A quarter of a mile farther on it stopped, backed into a lane to turn around, and retraced its route, passing the entrance again. A hundred yards beyond, it swerved onto the roadside and stopped.

The driver turned off the lights and the engine, climbed out, and walked back to the entrance. There was no glimmer of light from the house, vaguely discernible through the trees.

“Nuts,” Hicks muttered. “A peaceful rustic scene.”

He started up the curving driveway, half expecting momentarily to be challenged by a police guard, but he reached the house and circled it to the hedge of shrubbery bordering the side terrace without being halted. There he stood on the grass and frowned at himself. What was he going to do now? Go back to the car and drive home and go to bed? Get a flashlight and search the place for a corpse? Rouse everyone and tell them he had come to see if they were all alive?

“This is me,” he muttered at the darkness. “Life size. Why in the name of God—”

He wheeled sharply and stopped breathing. A door had creaked and he recognized the creak, having caused it himself some eight hours earlier when he had entered the kitchen and scared Mrs. Powell out of her wits. The creak came again. Silently and swiftly on the grass, avoiding the flagged walk, he stepped to the rear corner of the house and, shielded by the foliage of a vine, was peering through the interstices of the leaves when he hastily drew back flat against the wall and stood rigid.

The figure passed so close to him that there was no doubt of its identity; it was Heather Gladd, in a long dark coat. She walked rapidly, but not at all furtively, with no backward glances, straight across the lawn to the entrance of the path in the woods.

Hicks waited until the woods had swallowed her and then followed. If from cover she turned for a look to the rear he would of course have been seen on the open lawn in the starlight, but there was no sign that she had; and once in the woods himself, he saw the beam of a flashlight forward on the path. It bobbed along thirty yards ahead of him, and he let it increase its distance, sure now that she was bound for the laboratory, and concentrating on the effort not to betray his presence by a misstep in the pitch darkness of the woods.

Suddenly he halted, for the light had stopped bobbing and had changed its direction. He stepped from the path for the protection of a tree trunk, thinking she had heard him and was turning for an inspection of the rear, but the beam swept only to a right angle and began bobbing again. Apparently she had left the path, about where the bridge was. Hicks went forward with more speed and less caution, for he could hear the brook plainly and knew it must be a tumult in her ears. Almost with too little caution; he reached the bridge sooner than he expected, caught a toe on it, and nearly fell.

He left the path for the protection of a tree trunk and watched a strange performance not twenty paces away. There at the edge of the brook she had placed the flashlight on a rock and removed her coat. The beam of the light was aimed down at the rushing water, not at her, but he could see that she was removing her shoes or slippers and rolling up the legs of her pajamas, and he wondered idiotically if the upshot was going to be that he had driven fifty miles in the dead of night to sneak up on a pretty long-legged girl and watch her go wading.

Then he saw that she had brought something with her. He could not tell what it was; he could see only that it was something fairly large which she picked up from the flat rock where she had also placed the flashlight. With it in one hand, and the light in the other, she stepped gingerly into the brook, waded in a few feet, and stooped over until she was bent double. Her back was to him and he couldn’t see what she was doing with her hands. At length she straightened up and waded back to the bank, and one of her hands was empty. She put the light down on the rock and started unrolling her pajama legs.

Hicks knew his location wouldn’t do. The tree wasn’t big enough, and on her return to the path the beam of light would be directly at him. The best course was to cross the bridge. He moved cautiously, and was about to step on the bridge when suddenly he whirled around.

It could not have been a sound that alarmed him, above the commotion the brook was making, but something did, for he whirled completely around before the blow fell. He saw something moving, right there at him, and then he went down.